mentioned it to Murray. If there was a beautiful view, she broke off her raptures because dinner was ready; if the fatigue had been great, she was consoled with her dinner; if she was on a hill, she walked down to her dinner; if she was in a valley, she walked up to it; and if on the level ground, she walked to it. Now, when I read this chapter of the "Student," I said to myself, if there be any truth in these remarks, Mrs. Trollope must be a capital hand at the knife and fork, and not at all troubled with dyspepsia, as are the American ladies, by her account. I knew that she had dined with -, and in the afternoon when we met I inquired. The reply was, "Ah! mon Dieu! elle a furieusement d'appétit et mange comme quatre." There are all manner of deaths in this world besides dying. There are political deaths, as Brougham's, dead in the eye of the law, like a convict transported for life, &c.; but the worst death, after all, must be a literary death, that is to say, when a man has written himself down, or written himself out. It is analogous to the last stage of a consumption, in which you believe you are not going to die, and plan for the future as if you were in perfect health. And yet to this complexion must all authors come at last. There is not a more beautiful, or more true portrait of human nature, than the scene between the Archbishop of Grenada and Gil Blas, in the admirable novel of Le Sage. Often and often has it been brought to my recollection, since I have taken up the pen, and often have I said to myself, ‘Is this homily as good as the last?' (perhaps homily is not exactly the right name for my writings). The great art in this world, not only in writing, but in every thing else, is to know when to leave off. The mind as well as the body must wear out. At first, it is a virgin soil, but we cannot renew its exhausted vigour, after it has borne successive crops. We all know this, and yet we are all Archbishops of Grenada. Even the immortal Walter Scott might have benefited by the honesty of Gil Blas, and have burnt his latter homilies, but had he had such an unsophisticated adviser, would he not, in all probability, have put him out by the shoulders, wishing him, like the venerable hierarch, "a little more taste and judgment."

Poets

Since I have been this time abroad, I have made a discovery, for which all prose writers ought to feel much indebted to me. can invoke Apollo, the Muses, the seasons, and all sorts and varieties of gods and goddesses, naked or clothed, besides virtues and vices, and if none of them suit, they may make their own graven image, and fall down before it; but we prose writers have hitherto had no such advantage, no protecting deity to appeal to in our trouble, as we bite our pens, or to call upon to deliver us from a congestion of the brain. Now being aware that there were upwards of three hundred and fifty thousand canonized saints on the Roman calendar, I resolved to run through the catalogue, to ascertain if there was one who took prose authors under his protection, and to my delight, I stumbled upon our man. By-the-by, Tom Moore must have known this, and he has behaved very ill, in keeping him all to himself. But I must introduce him. It is the most holy, and the most blessed Saint Brandon. Holy St. Brandon inspire me, and guide my pen while I record thy legend! In the first place, let me observe that our patron saint was

an Irishman, and none the worse for that, as Ireland has had as good saints as any in the calendar. And it is now clear that he does protect us prosaic writers, by the number of reporters and gentlemen of press which have been sent over from the sister kingdom. But to proceed.

the

Saint Brandon, it appears, was a reading man, and amused himself with voyages and travels, but St. Brandon was an unbeliever, and thought that travellers told strange things. He took up the Zoology of Pliny, and pursued his accounts of "Andres vast, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." He read until his patience was exhausted, and, in a fit of anger, he threw the manuscript into the flames. Now this was a heavy sin, for a man's book is the bantling of his brain, and to say the least, it was a literary infanticide. That very night, an angel appeared to him, and as a penance for his foul crime, (in the enormity of which every author will agree with the angel,) he was enjoined to make the book over again, no easy task in those days, when manuscripts were rare, and the art of book-making had not been invented. The sinner, in obedience to the heavenly mission, goes to work, he charters a vessel, lays in provisions for a seven years voyage, and with a crew of seven monks, he makes sail, and after going round the world seven times, during which the world went round the sun seven times, he completed his task in seven volumes folio, which are now out of print. Probably, being in manuscript, he took it up to heaven with him as a passport into paradise. For this miracle-and certainly with such a ship's company, it was a miracle he was canonized, and is now the patron saint of all prose authors, particularly those whose works are measured by the foot rule.

And now that I have made known to my fraternity that we also have a saint, all they have to do, is to call upon him six or seven times, when their brains are at sixes and sevens. I opine that holy St. Brandon amused himself with hazard during his voyages, for it is quite clear that, with him, seven's the main.

May 26th.

Quitted Brussels. I don't know how it is, but I never have been able to get over a very unpleasant sort of feeling, when paying a long bill.

(To be continued.)

LOVE IN ADVERSITY.

BY L. M. MONTAGU.

THOUGH the last hope we cherished
Is faded and gone,
Yet love, ever faithful

To death, will live on;

And the frowns of the cold world
We fly from, shall be
But as seals to the bond
Of affection to thee.

Though we fly to the desert,
Like Eden's lost pair,
Yet green spots will rise

When thy footsteps are there;

And the waterless sands

Yield their fountains of life

To the cares, the devotion,
The tears of a wife.

Oh! it was not when fortune
And friendship were thine,
Thou couldst judge of a heart
So devoted as mine;
When joy hung its light

On each garland I wove;
Ah! where was the test,
Or the trial of love?

From the darkness and depth
Of the waters of woe,
Like the pearl that it cradled
In ocean below,

Love rises above

The dark breakers that roll

To shine as a gem

In the crown of the soul.

Then say not rude fate, Love,
Has stript us of all,

Nor lament that I wed thee;-
I would not recall

The vow that I plighted

For aught 'neath the skies,

The fortune I wedded

. Is still in those eyes.

TOUR OF MOUNT ÆTNA.1

CHAPTER II.

Leave Nicolosi-Tre Castagne, different places known by the common name of Aci-Calatabiano-Communicative Host-Castagno de' Cento Cavalli-Late Eruption-Randazzo-Sicilian muttonBronte-Lord Nelson-Murder of the Contessa L- - by her Husband-Error of Ricupero, Gioeni, and Spallanzani—Circumference of Etna.

WE left Nicolosi next morning early, and soon arrived at the charming village of Tre Castagne, delightfully embowered in a magnificent grove of chesnut trees; there are also in this neighbourhood some of the largest oaks I have ever seen. The country through which we passed might, for beauty and fertility, vie with the celebrated Tempe, or with the Elysian fields themselves. We breakfasted under the shade of a wide-spreading chesnut,

"So vast, he looked the father of the wood;"

and enjoyed the delicious scenery of these favoured regions at our leisure. Resuming our journey, we passed the celebrated monastery of " Maria di Valverde," at which we alighted to view the church, and examine a miraculous picture of the Virgin, said to have been brought from heaven by an angel. I cannot say, however, that it does much credit to the celestial painter, whoever he may be. The church and monastery were founded, according to Pirro in his “Sicilia Sacra," by a penitent robber, who having long laid the country under contribution, was directed to take this method of disposing of his ill-gotten treasures by the blessed Virgin, who appeared to him in his sleep, and commanded him to build a church to her on the spot where he then lay. A festival was instituted in consequence, which is observed with great solemnity on the last Sunday in August, when the temple is visited by a vast conflux of people from the surrounding country.

The scenery between this place and Aci Sant' Antonio is no ways inferior to that through which we had just passed. Aci Sant' Antonio is a small town, containing about three thousand souls, situated on a plain of lava, now covered with the most luxurious vegetation. Almost all the towns and villages in this neighbourhood are called by the common appellation of Aci, in remembrance of the Sicilian shepherd crushed to death by Polyphemus; they have some particular adjunct to distinguish them, such as

Aci Reale.

Aci Catena, a fine town, with three thousand five hundred souls. Aci Marina, a village on the coast.

Aci Santa Lucia, a hamlet.

'Concluded from vol. xiii. p. 406.

Aci Bonaccorso, a village.

Castel Aci, a village.

Aci Sant' Antonio, a neat town, containing a population of three thousand.

Aci San Filippo, containing a population of four thousand.

Leaving all these Acis behind, we entered a wood, which is also called the "Bosco d'Aci:" it abounds in chesnut and mulberry trees of magnificent growth, the shade of which was highly refreshing to travellers, who had been exposed to the ardour of a Sicilian sun in June. To our right lay the fertile plains styled the "Coste di San Giovanni di Mascali," abounding in corn, oil, wine, and fruits, in endless variety. There is also much game in the neighbourhood, hares of great size and excellent flavour, with numbers of the red-legged partridge; but the flesh of this bird acquires a bitter taste from its feeding principally on the myrtle-berry. We shot as we came along, and by the time we arrived at Calatabiano, had provided ourselves with a respectable supper, in case the landlord should prove insufficiently provided to answer the demands of a party so large and so hungry as ourselves. Never did St. Julian, the patron saint of travellers, inspire wayfaring mortals with a happier thought; dried kidney beans, lupines, eggs, and garlic, was all mine host of Calatabiano could afford us. To make up for the scantiness of his fare, he plied us with compliments in profusion, assuring us that had he known such illustrious travellers were on the point of honouring Calatabiano, he would have been better provided; although he acquainted us with what we had already perceived, that he was not an innkeeper by profession, but a galant 'uomo, who supported himself by the manufacture of spades, shovels, pickaxes, horseshoes, and other articles for the honest inhabitants of Calatabiano: it was true that when travellers of consequence, such as our excellencies, happened, which was very rare, to pass through the village, and he was thoroughly assured of their respectability, he usually invited them to sojourn under his roof during their stay. How long he would have gone on in this strain, there is no saying, accompanying every word with the grimace and gesticulation common to the lower classes of Sicilians, had we not, alarmed by the rapidity and perseverance of his elocution, cut him short, by requesting he would lead us to an apartment. We were accordingly shown out of the shop, in which we had been standing during his harangue, into an inner room, which served also for a kitchen, and was in every respect worse than the one we had quitted; but we preferred it, imagining we should, at least, have it to ourselves, but we were never more disappointed. Our eternal host burst on us every moment, told more stories in an hour than I could repeat in a day, and expressed considerable mortification at our sparing him the trouble of roasting our game, entering into a long dissertation on the culinary art, with an encomium on his own proficiency, from which I could collect that he held few dishes to be good without a plentiful proportion of oil and garlic.

After supper, arranging our mattrasses on the damp mud floor, we threw ourselves down; but scarcely had we got our talkative host out of the room, by extinguishing the light, as a polite hint for him to