Vivian's tongue was glued to his lips. ""Tis a pretty toy," continued the old man, not heeding the student's silence, "a very pretty toy ;Hester M'Gregor had not such an one. Do you remember it, Vivian ?" Still was Vivian silent. Yes, he remembered it well enough; never could he forget it, though a thousand years of existence were granted him.

The clock struck twelve,-one, two, three,-four; the leaden hours of old father Time" roll on very leisurely when we are in a hurry for their departure: one would almost think they stayed to mock and jeer us. The clock struck twelve, and Vivian thought he had never before heard it strike so provokingly slow. He had hoped at midnight to see the being calmly take his departure; and as the last deep note of the surly monitor rang upon his ear, he half expected to see him rise from his seat; but the old man had no such intention, the warm fire-side was better than the cold night-air, so he continued to sit on, casting, at the same time, a most malicious, fiendish leer at the terrified student. "It is a beautiful jewel after all, and it may be your's again. What say you?"

"Never! Oh, say not it may be mine again—never! never!" answered Vivian, in a stifled shriek.

"The bargain is not hard, and is easily made; besides"Besides what?"

"Ah! what? Pretty girls love jewels; those eyes that looked upon you so smilingly, as you pressed through the town to-day to get your boat,-do you remember them ?"

Vivian must have remembered them, for he started as if a thunder-bolt had struck him; and we do not often start, and blush moreover as red as a new-blown rose, when bantered about the coquettish glances of some fair demoiselle," if there be no truth in the matter.

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Pretty girls love jewels,—she would like this watch, Vivian: oh! what a present on the marriage morning; and you have taken your degree, you know, and care nothing for a fellowship. Come, what say you?"

Vivian did not know what to say: he was most sorely puzzled as well as frightened. The creature before him could not, then, be of this world, for to no living soul had he breathed a word about the fair girl of whom he had been reminded; and no eye but his own had marked the pretty glance, that said a thousand things as it met and answered to his own on the morning. Vivian did not know what to say, but he contrived an answer.

"At what cost may it be re-purchased ?—at what further risk?" "Nothing, as regards yourself, but much, as concerns another?" "Whom?"

"The person to whom you give it."

"What, HER! foul fiend!" Vivian's blood rose, and came rushing to his face. "Dark and infernal villain! I charge thee, by the name of God, that thou depart from this room, and leave me to myself: if I have sold myself to thy base and diabolical arts, upon my own head come the consequences. Madness, madness,-raging madness! if thou wilt; but upon her's-upon her pure and sacred cheek, not even the sunny breath of summer should fall, if it left one tint behind it darker than the fair complexion over which it played. Go-go! now, this instant! I exorcise thee, by the name of God, depart!"

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The name of God! why namest thou that name to me? I that care not for God nor devil, angel nor demon, saint nor sinner. Theadore Vivian, I have watched thy destiny from thy infancy; I have marked the rising of the stars, and their courses, and their setting; I have listened to the sound of the blast, and the howling of the night breeze, and I have heard only thy name in all its utterance; thy name and mine-for they were both mingled together-have rung and echoed upon mine ear. Yes, tremble not; my name for I have a name, though it would freeze thy young blood to hear it.

And this have I learned from observation, that thy destiny and my own were connected, yes, by a tie which thou, poor mortal, couldst not shiver; by a bond which neither heaven nor earth shall break. My time, the time allowed me by the superintending order of fate, to which I owe my existence, is now elapsed-and we perish together!"

As the being said this, he rose from his seat, and approached towards the student. Stealthily he planted his right foot forward, with his piercing, snake-like eye fixed all the while upon Vivian. The latter could not fly: he was as the bird fascinated by the serpent-bound, riveted to the floor, and yet resolute in the midst of his alarms. He cowered not, nor quailed; firmly he darted his gaze upon the fiery eye of the being, sending back glance for glance. There was a silence, still and death-like: it could not last; Vivian's brain reeled with delirium, like the intoxication of the person drunk with laudanum. A thousand figures danced about the room,—a thousand fancies came flashing across his brain; images and forms innumerable, changing with the pulsation of every moment;-even the watch, that cause of all this mysterious peril and agony, assumed a thousand different shapes; as it lay upon the table, Vivian's eyes rested on it for a moment, and but for a moment; the being had sprang upon him, and he now felt himself half suffocated in his grasp. He must make one effort-he must wrestle with his antagonist, though it were with a superhuman foe. He put forth all his strength, but to no purpose. He felt the creature's breath come burning hot against his cheek; and his eyes,-oh! the glaring of those fiery orbs! like red hot coals did they shine out from their sockets. Vivian never looked upon a sight so awful. He could oppose him no longer, his brain swam round; he sank down, and the being fell with him. "It is done!" he shouted; "now hear your curse!"

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Vivian's ears were opened to catch the awful words: he gasped for breath; his hair stood on end with fright, as he listened to his sentence. The being spoke at last. The student caught the sounds, and heard the voice of some one bending over him the voice, as he thought, of the dread old man, beneath whose grasp he crouched, say, Why, Vivian! are you not coming out of chapel to-night?" Vivian opened his eyes in the greatest amazement, and found himself kneeling by the side of one of the forms, and his friend Philip Forester stooping down to awaken him, while all the other men were leaving the chapel. Why, Vivian, you have slept over all the prayers. What in the world have you been about? You surely were not in bed last night."

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TO THE POET WORDSWORTH.

"By our own spirits are we deified."

OH! I could kneel for ever at thy shrine,
And weep till summer days have passed away,
And drink, great Bard! the fulness of thy lay
For ever, and those strains be ever mine!
Wordsworth! thy name was as a creed foresworn,
And my proud heart refused to bend the knee
In adoration:-it now worships thee
With depth of homage, in the early morn,
And sunny noon, and eve's sweet sanctity:

For nature has unlock'd her secret store,
To teach thee wisdom, and the poet's lore
Has robed the dim shades of futurity
With hopes too bright for utterance.
Who gives to all, be bountiful to thee!

May He

W.

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THE MINISTRY.

Μαντις δ' άριστος όστις εικάζει καλως, says the Greek poet, and we may fairly put in our claim to be considered as prophets, having foretold in our advertisement that the "flash house' was on the point of dissolution, and now having the pleasing duty of announcing that the dissolution has commenced. In plain language, there has been a breakup in the ministry. The Whig-Radicals have been consistent-they have adhered to their old plan of deserting a friend in distress-they foresaw that Lord Glenelg would be attacked-they knew that neither he nor they could defend themselves, and preferring, as they ever have done, office to honour, they threw him overboard as the tub to the whale. But it won't do, my Lord Melbourne-it won't do. You may call out with all the affected indignation you can assume, Plague on that boy, he's asleep again,"* and to show your sincerity you may turn him out of your service with all the insolence and indignity that so well become you, both as a minister and a gentleman. But it won't do, my lord. Of course you and your worthy colleagues are perfectly welcome to rush into the Colonial Office, and wake up the fat boy by a slap on the shoulder, and when he rubs his sleepy eyes, and drawls out "what d'ye want with me?" to bid him be gone about his business, and add a kick to give his exit peculiar éclat. Of course, I say, you're at liberty to do this, and we're very glad to see it, as it shows us what stuff Whig ministers are made of, and exhibits a beautiful idiosyncracy as regards their notions of friendship. But you're vastly mistaken if you think to make a scape-goat of this sleeping wonder. Lord Durham would have whipped him from his trances, and truly delightful would it have been to behold his contortions and his wry faces, as the lash whistled round his head, before descending upon the nether regions. But this is neither here nor there it is little matter to the people of England whether Lord Glenelg or Lord Normanby is Colonial Secretary: what we want,what the people of England want, is, that the country should be rid of a ministry whose only principle is that of having no principle-whose only consistency is in inconsistency-who cling to office with the tenacity of a drowning man, only that they may gorge its emoluments. What we want is a ministry, who, having taken their stand upon some known political principles, resolve to abide by them, and carry them out; not one which, chamelion-like, changes its hue with the colour of the sky and the hour of the day, regarding office as the chief and noblest end of political ambition, and principle as the means to that end. We do not complain of you or your party for being Whigsyou have the same right to your opinions that we have to ours; but we do complain of you, and we have a right to do so, for keeping the country in the dark as to what your intentions are; for not letting them know where to find you, what to expect from you; for professing one determination one session, and acting just opposite to it the next; for

allowing your measures not to spring from your own opinions, if you have any, but from the demands of your supporters, not to derive their shape from the spirit within, but from the pressure without; in a word, for being, while you profess to act as a responsible and independent ministry, the merest tools in the hands of another party, upon whom you depend entirely for support, nay, even for existence. You issued your speech at the beginning of the session—are we a bit the wiser for it? Are we not rather more in the dark than ever as to what your future course will be? The time is come for throwing down the mask, you must declare yourselves—you must either stop, or concede further. Are you prepared to give up the Irish Church, with all its revenues, to O'Connell and the Priests? It is no longer a question of pounds, shillings, and pence, a dispute about a conjectural superfluity of income, an argument concerning the disposal of what has no existence; he unblushingly demands “that the whole of the property of the Irish Church should be devoted to secular purposes;" he who holds his seat in Parliament under an oath that he will do nothing tending to injure or weaken the National Church. But will you concede this? If not, can you endure—have you the spirit, the patriotism, to shake off your infamous ally? to break your unholy league? to beard the army of Precursors, men and women-we blush to write the word— in the person of their chief? to tell him to his face that you are not to be dragged at his chariot-wheels through the mire of his agitation any longer, the scorn of the wise, the pity of the good? while he, the wily knave, chuckles at your folly, well knowing that the deeper your degradation in the eyes of your fellow-countrymen, the closer must you cling to him for support. You have now a fair opportunity to disunite yourselves from him: he has openly expressed his determination to destroy the National Church: every blow you strike in concert with him will be aimed at her; and should she fall, posterity will curse you as the weak, deluded authors of her ruin. There must be some among you who are protestants and gentlemen; to these we would point out the noble examples of a Stanley and a Graham, who, when they perceived mischief intended to the church of their fathers, came out from among you, rather than share in so foul a disgrace, thereby preserving their honour, and leaving infamy and office to their successors. Like them, do you open your eyes to the injuries you are inflicting on the Protestant religion by your passive submission to a Papist demagogue, and like them "come out, touch not the unclean thing." There is no disgrace in discovering one's errors and retrieving them; it is worthy of such an age as our own to pour reproaches on men for abandoning a wrong course, and, however late, doing all they can to make up for the mischief they have done before: the real disgrace consists in rushing on with blind self-will in a course ruinous to one's country. We conjure you as gentlemen—as Protestants, no longer to act as underlings to an Irish ruffian in his attacks upon your own country and your own religion.

But above all would we turn to the Conservatives, and say-Yield not one single demand which bears the stamp and seal of O'Connell— look with suspicion on every proposition that comes from him, or to which he lends or sells his support-timeo Graios dona ferentes.