against his interference, so the breach widened every day.

For some time the farmer continued to purchase corn himself, and to pay his two grooms their stated allowance beside, for the sake of peace; but at length considering himself manifestly imposed upon, he determined to be quit of his two inefficient grooms if it should cost him the price of his mare, and all that he had gained by her beside, accordingly he gave them warning to that effect.

Things were precisely in this situation when Mephibosheth, the Jew, came over to Bishop Paterson and his friends, assembled in the hay-loft, in order to procure some sly arrangement with him before coming to a final rupture with his opponent; for the Jew was cunning, and suspected that the Bishop would give him better conditions for the sake of bereaving his rival of him than for his own sake. He began, therefore, by declaring that as far as his skill went, Meg was the better pony of the two, provided she were as well fed, curry-combed, and ridden. That she had every advantage over the other, and therefore perceiving that, as he did, he had come to offer his services to take the charge and management of her, and if he was allowed to take his own way he would engage to drive Oakstick's Dunabbey from the turf for ever. In the first place he proposed a new saddle-cloth and new furniture; and likewise to have the Bishop's pony booked by the same name as the other, so that by the change of the furniture, the groom, and the name, the betters might be utterly confounded; and he concluded by assuring the Bishop that he should gain.

"I want just to hear the sentiments of my friends all round," said the Bishop, "before coming to a final arrangement. Mr. Murphy, what do you say to this ?"

"I don't know. I dare say it may be all very true that the gentleman says, Snap," said the groom. "The keep of the pony is no object to me, should you and he come to a bargain, my assistance shall not be wanting.’

"You are an honest, a worthy, and a good man,” said the Bishop. "I have long known you as such, and am determined never to part with you in one capacity or other."

"Perhaps it would preponderate protreptically if the operations of men were extended in a numerical capacity," said the bailiff. "Rather than my respected contemporary should be induced to exorbitance supervacaneously, I shall train my own gray colt to the turf."

"It wad set him better to be trained to a dung waggon," said Tom.

"I have a chestnut filly," said Count Skellowitz, "that was bred by a country dominie, and afterwards rode by a reverend divine, from whom I purchased her. I intend to start her next year fairly on her own bottom."

"If she was bred by a dominie and trained by a minister," said Tom, "she will have too much pedantry and self-conceit ever to win."

"She has no pedigree," said Bell-the-cat. "I would not look at a beast that has not an ancient pedigree."

"I like fine ancles, and beautiful eyes, and a wellturned chest, better than an old musty pedigree," said the miller.

"The devil you do," said the Bishop.

"But now

that I have heard all your sage and disinterested advice, I propose to strike a bargain with this new groom, and let my friend Oakstick get whom he will to ride his abominable, black, pin-tailed beast."

"I can assure your reverence," said the Jew, "that he will get no one to ride her against me, unless he do it himself; and in that case he shall not keep the stirrup a minute. I will, moreover, give you my friend Jacob Unicorn as my security and assistant, who shall be bound for the fulfilment of all contracted for."

"I have him by the leg and the horn already," said the Bishop.

to

The bargain was concluded: the new furniture and saddle-cloth contracted for, and the Jew hasted away the stewards of the next races, which were on Dunabbey Common, to get Meg booked by the name of the mare he had formerly rode. When Oakstick came up to book his mare, he wondered not a little to see her name there before him, as the property of Bishop Paterson; but suspecting some trick, he booked his pony simply by her familiar name of Blackie. Count Skellowitz put down his by the name of Dominie Felix; the bailiff marked his down by the title of The Waggoner; and all the North Riding of Yorkshire was one babble of boasting, speculation, and anxiety, with regard to the issue of the great contest.

[Here Anthony Poole's history abruptly finishes.]

L

THE "DANCES OF DEATH."

Ir is one of the chief and ostensible purposes of all graphic art to teach men wisdom and virtue; to direct their attention to both the serious and the pleasant side of human existence; and to enable them to draw rules for the government of their understandings and conduct in the ordinary affairs of life. For this comprehensive purpose, various means are employed. We have the sublime and elevated in art, the soft, the beautiful, the emotional, and the common-place; and likewise the satirical, the ridiculous, and the comic. Each artistic division has its appropriate field of action, its separate duties and offices to fulfil. It is against the constituted order of things that there should be any indiscriminate amalgamation of those separate elements of art. They may, on some occasions, be mixed or blended to a certain extent; but this is soon re-organized and rectified. Nature, which is ever on the watch, and neither slumbereth nor sleepeth, steps in to direct the labours of the artist, and to prevent him effecting any unnatural or hybrid union of sentiments and feelings confessedly antagonistic and unsuitable.

Nothing at first sight could appear more out of place -more directly opposed to the rule laid down, than to make one of the most serious and deeply interesting events of our lives, a subject of satire and comic teaching;

but a little reflection on the matter will enable us to reconcile this apparent incongruity and inconsistency. Death is the inexorable lot of all. This truth is deeply felt by all mankind. The other dispensations of life are, seemingly, meted out upon a more variable principle. Poverty and riches-pain and pleasure-dominion and servitude-fall to the lot of humanity according to no fixed scale that we can discover. A numerous host of feelings and sentiments spring from this source. It is upon these that are engrafted the lessons which the common mortality of us all, however variable and opposite our social condition, is fitted to teach. It is on this principle that artists have succeeded in drawing a deep moral from the ludicrous in the "Death's Doings" among mankind. No other event of our lives-nothing which the most vivid imagination of man could create— no combination of circumstances, however singular and momentous, could possibly be susceptible of this satirical application, but Death alone. It is an exception to an artistic rule, but an exception carrying with it a very pointed and universal truth, for a moral and religious purpose.

The various pictorial exhibitions of what are called the "Dances of Death," have long been objects of peculiar interest among artistic critics. Many controversies are connected with their history, and numerous volumes have been written concerning them. It is simply our present aim to give a brief and popular sketch of these graphic eccentricities, with a view of bringing them within the knowledge of those readers and youthful artists who may not have had any opportunities of making themselves ac