secundis" of Horace, When the King found a valuable ring he had lost in the morning, in the stomach of the fish served up for his dinner, he considered his good luck had reached its climax, and prepared for approaching reverse; and the wretched captive who beheld a dish of firmity, given to him as an uncommon favor by a pitying gaoler, thrown over by an accident, rejoiced that Fortune had played her last stroke of mischief, and would soon relent.

The prosperous pay in general little attention to these maxims, but to the poor and unsuccessful they doubtless afford considerable comfort. They watch for the lucky hour when the wheel is to turn, the sky to clear; they cheer their adversity by its distant beams, they keep their hands ready to seize the oar, and shift the sail whenever the tide in their affairs" arrives which is to "lead on to fortune." If artists, they continue to paint in hopes of a discerning patron; if authors, they write on, in hopes of suddenly becoming the fashion; they

"Angle all their lives for fame,

And getting but a nibble at a time," cheer themselves with distant glimpses of magnificent fish, and when their rod and line are carried away by the stream, remember that when our troubles are at their height we may expect relief.

There are few professions so peculiarly under the power of Fortune as that of war,-Mars himself has less influence over military matters, trumpets and kettle-drums fail before her pipe. When she ceases to play, stratagem is called treachery; boldness, imprudence; and caution, cowardice patriotism becomes treason, and ambition madness. It is she who often decides the difference of a conqueror and a robber, whether laurel shall circle the head, or a halter the neck; for as Butler says:

"Slaughter and knocking on the head,
The trade to which they both are bred,
And is, like others, glorious when
'Tis great and large, but base, if mean:
The former rides in triumph for it,
The latter in a two-wheel'd chariot,

For daring to profane a thing, So sacred with vile bungling.' A thousand anecdotes might be easily collected to prove how often the General has owed his victory, the King his crown, to some apparently accidental and wholly unforeseen circumstances, over which they had no control, some chance as much beyond their influence as that which made Sforza Attendolo a soldier, and his grandson Duke of Milan. An Italian peasant was once invited to join a band of Condottieri. He hesitated, and throwing up his axe into a tree, resolved that if it hung suspended on the boughs he would enlist; if it fell, he would continue a woodman. The axe did not fall, and Francesco Sforza, pointing to his troops, his riches, and his splendor, was wont to say, "I owe all this to the branches of an oak which supported my grandfather's pickaxe." He indeed attributed too much to Fortune, too little to his own valor and genius; but the account is a difficult one to settle; the balance is not readily adjusted between merit and luck.

66

There is one circumstance, one event of human life, and that by no means of a trivial nature, over which the influence of Fortune's pipe is considered supreme. It is agreed that marriage goes by destiny." Here "luck" reigns paramount, and good guidance" is useless. No precaution can assure a man against a termagant wife, or a woman against a faithless husband; while unions contracted under the most apparently unfavorable auspices, sometimes afford very edifying examples of conjugal felicity. A ten years' courtship will not prevent quarrels in the honeymoon, while an affection sown suddenly at a ball, and of which the harvest follows in six weeks, shall endure unchangeably all the buffets of life. Couples arrived at years of discretion have proceeded gradually and steadily through the grammar of Love, and when duly qualified for a matrimonial degree, have advanced in the most decorous manner, and after the most

approved method, to the altar of Hymen, Cupid and Minerva preceding them hand-in-hand, and plenty of congratulating relations following in bridal attire, and a life à la cat and dog has been the result; while boys and girls, scarcely half way in their teens, have fallen in love at battledore and shuttlecock, galloped off the next morning to Gretna Green, been married by a blacksmith, and thrown two whole families into hysterics, who have afterwards passed their youth like turtle-doves, their maturer years like the tenderest of friends, and their age like Darby and Joan.

These strange anomalies are not to be denied, but they afford little encouragement to imprudence, since misery may and often does follow it, and there is, undoubtedly, no misery equal to self-reproach. If we cannot ensure success, we may at least deserve it.

But if Fortune is thus powerful over the events of human life, she appears to have little less influence over its termination. One man sucks an orange and is choked by a pip, another swallows a penknife and lives; one runs a thorn into his hand and no skill can save him,* another has the shaft of a gig pass completely through his body and recovers; one is overturned on a smooth common and breaks his neck, another is tossed out of a gig over a Brighton cliff and survives; one walks out on a windy day and meets death by a brickbat, another is blown up in the air, like Lord Hatton in Guernsey Castle, and comes down uninjured. The escape of this nobleman was indeed a miracle. An explosion of gunpowder, which killed his mother, wife, some of his children, and many other persons, and blew up the whole fabric of the castle, lodged

him in his bed on a wall overhanging a tremendous precipice. "Perceiving a mighty disorder (as well he might), he was going to step out of his bed to know what the matter was; but in the instant of his moving, a flash of lightning came and showed him the precipice, whereupon he lay still till people came and took him down."

But we feel that it is almost profane to talk of Death, even for a moment, as the effect of chance, although it is not perhaps more immediately under the control of an overruling Providence than every other event of our lives. The same hand decides all that concerns us, and decides it for our good. But it is not Reason from whom this lesson can be satisfactorily learned; Cato's soliloquy may give hope, but not confidence; and it is confidence which wretched man requires when he suffers here and thinks of an hereafter. The Christian alone knows that he is not the sport of an unknown power, the workmanship of a regardless Creator; that his sorrows are not without a meaning and a use, his sins without an expiation, his virtues without a reward. It is he alone who can reflect on himself and all around him without perplexity, confusion, and apprehension, without vain and fatiguing efforts to arrive at any satisfactory or intelligible deduction from what is past, and dim, dispiriting horrors of what may yet be to come. To him alone belongs that gift which a modern poet has so beautifully, so emphatically described as"A blessed mood, of aspect most sublime, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lighten’'d—is removed."

WITH each expanding flower we find Some pleasing sentiment combin'd: Love in the myrtle bloom is seen,

Remembrance to the violet clings,

Peace brightens in the olive green,
Hope from the half-closed iris springs,
Victory from the laurel grows,
And Woman blushes in the rose.

8vo.

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The Journal of a Naturalist. RURAL retirement, to be fully enjoyed, requires the exercise of much more mental activity than is commonly supposed. Men of heavy, sensual natures, only sleep away existence in such situations. The luxury of sunshine and green fields can, no more than any other luxury, yield a long delight of itself; and when the senses have once become acquainted with its sweetness, and the flowers and the singing of birds are no longer a novelty, the wilderness, to such people, is as well without roses as with. The beauty of country solitudes lies, like the sweetest flowers, wrapt up in leafy glens, and in paths that are hidden from careless eyes; beneath the long grass of lonely meadows, and old frowning rocks and ancient trees. To be discovered, it must be looked for with the eye of all the senses; in the still morning and the stiller night; in the face and in spite of the biting winter blast, as well as when the summer comes in at our doors and windows to call us forth.

The author of the charming volume before us has felt the truth of all this, and has set an example for the proper spending of a country life, which we should be glad to see many following. From his residence in a village, which stands between Gloucester and Bristol, he has accustomed himself, it appears, for many years, to examine with a curious and philosophic eye whatever objects lay within reach of his rambles. It matters not whether they be in the air or on the earth; whether they come before him in the form of some agricultural process, be discovered by him on the high road, or in the most unfrequented spot,everything which can furnish him with thought, or with some new illustration or intimation of what nature is about, is sufficiently worthy to engage his attention and find a place in his note book. The results of his experience

and amiable labors are given in the highly-interesting journal before us, and display, though not deficient in respect for science, the more attractive and more valuable characteristics of originality. The idea of the plan upon which the volume is written belongs to the learned author of the "Natural History of Selbourne," a work which men of science, as well as general readers, agree in considering one of the most delightful books ever written. To our author, as far as his work extends, belongs the same praise. He has produced one of the most interesting volumes we remember to have seen for a long time.

Biographical Sketches and Authentic Anecdotes of Dogs. By Captain Thomas Brown, F.R.S.E. &c.And why should not dogs have their biographers, as well as others who have made a noise in the world? This volume does honor to Captain Brown's sense of justice and fair dealing. All eminence, good and bad, is not biped. We will not say that a mighty conqueror is merely a fighting mastiff, or a great orator nothing but a barking cur-but there is, nevertheless, a good deal in common between the two characters in each case,—so much, at all events, as ought to prevent the admirers of the one from altogether despising the oth

er.

Captain Brown seems to have felt this-and hence the present amusing, instructive, and useful little volume.

Every dog, says the old proverb, has his day-the insinuation being, we suppose, that he has nothing more than his day, the night of death extinguishing him, body, soul, and memory, at once. It is the old proverb's turn now, to submit to fate-it must die like a dog—it has had its day. Captain Brown has boldly set about the business of giving immortality to quadruped genius and worth.

SCOTTISH INNS.-BY SIR WALTER

SCOTT.

THE Courtesy of an invitation to partake a traveller's meal, or at least that of being invited to share whatever liquor the guest called for, was expected by certain old landlords in Scotland, even in the youth of the author. In requital, mine host was always furnished with the news of the country, and was probably a little of a humorist to boot. The devolution of the whole actual business and drudgery of the inn upon the poor gude wife was very common among the Scottish bonifaces. There was in ancient times, in the city of Edinburgh, a gentleman of good family, who condescended, in order to gain a livelihood, to become the nominal keeper of a coffee-house, one of the first of the kind which had been opened in the Scottish metropolis. As usual, it was entirely managed by the careful and industrious Mrs. B- —; while her husband amused himself with fieldsports, without troubling his head about the matter. Once upon a time the premises having taken fire, the husband was met walking up the High Street, loaded with his guns and fishing-rods, and replied calmly to some one that inquired after his wife, "that the poor woman was trying to save a parcel of crockery, and some trumpery books;" the last being those which served her to conduct the business of the house. There were many elderly gentlemen in the author's younger days, who still held it part of the amusement of a journey "to parley with mine host," who often resembled, in his quaint humor, mine Host of the Garter, in the Merry Wives of Windsor; or Blague of the George, in the Merry Devil of Edmonton. Sometimes the landlady took her share of entertaining the company. In either case, the omitting to pay them due attention gave displeasure, and perhaps brought down a smart jest, as on the

following occasion :-A jolly dame who, not "sixty years since," kept the principal caravansary at Greenlaw, in Berwickshire, had the honor to receive under her roof a very worthy clergyman, with three sons of the same profession, each having a cure of souls; be it said in passing, none of the reverend party were reckoned powerful in the pulpit. After dinner was over, the worthy senior, in the pride of his heart, asked Mrs. Buchan whether she ever had had such a party in her house before. "Here sit I," he said, "a placed minister of the kirk of Scotland, and here sit my three sons, each a placed minister of the same kirk.-Confess, Luckie Buchan, you never had such a party in your house before." The question was not premised by any invitation to sit down and take a glass of wine or the like, so Mrs. B. answered drily, “Indeed, sir, I cannot just say that ever I had such a party in my house before, except once in the forty-five, when I had a Highland piper here, with his three sons, all Highland pipers; and deil a spring they could play amang them!"-Notes to the New Edition of the Waverley Novels.

PICTURESQUE BEAUTY OF THE OAK.

A fine oak is one of the most picturesque of Trees. It conveys to the mind associations of strength and duration, which are very impressive. The oak stands up against the blast, and does not take, like other trees, a twisted form from the action of the winds. Except the cedar of Lebanon, no tree is so remarkable for the stoutness of its limbs; they do not exactly spring from the trunk, but divide from it; and thus it is sometimes difficult to know which is stem and which is branch. The twisted branches of the oak, too, add greatly to its beauty; and the horizontal direction of its boughs, spreading over a large surface,