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as they will, their vague common-places about that human nature which they have never earnestly studied ; it remains a truth, that there is no true light for the guidance of a man save that which is evolved from his own conscience. This light was darkened in the mind of Benlow. He had been taught to consider his own true character as a mistake, and had been told that, to make himself a man, he must submit his mind and his affections to the sway of a dominant cant. He tried the experiment: the result may

be guessed. For some little time he appeared devoted to uncongenial studies; but, as his dislike of the course chosen for him increased, he became less and less careful in his conduct, until he found him. self associated with the most reckless and dissipated men of the university. He soon became one of the latest sitters at the convivial table ; he knew the way to Bicester well ; he gave parties ; followed the hounds ; accumulated debts, and, after two years, returned to Copseley with some proof that education had had some effect

upon him ; for he was altogether an altered man. He had not been at Copseley many weeks before he quarrelled with the old Squire. There had been some mention of again requiring the services of Mr. Holmes to prepare Tom for ordination.

You 'll never make me a parson,-mind you that, I'm fixed ! said Tom. “Why? Why? Why not?” stammered the old Squire.

? “ Because I was never intended to be a parson,—I am not fit for the office," said Tom. “ And if you are not fit, whose fault is it?" asked the father,

" I have laid out money enough upon you to make you fit!

“ Then you might have spent it in a better way,” said Tom. “You 'll disappoint all my best hopes,” said the Squire. “For that I care not a straw," said Tom, leaving the room.

To make the story brief,—Tom engaged a house a few miles from Copseley, and undertook the management of one of the old Squire's farms. He was never seen drunk ; but was known to be one of the hardest drinkers in the neighbourhood, and, in other respects, a dissipated character. He died, a bachelor, at the early age of thirty-two.

As he drank, talked, and laughed, like other country gentlemen, it might appear ludicrous if it were said that Tom died, at last, of a broken heart ; but this may be said, without fear of contradic

NO. XXI.--VOL. IV.

in anger ;

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tion, that his life was made unhappy, and, probably, shortened by a mode of education without regard to his natural character, by the perversion instead of the development of his good faculties.

A tree is cultivated as a tree : a flower is treated with a regard to its innate constitution; when shall we learn to respect man, and to educate him according to the nature of the faculties with which he is endowed ?

J. G.

MINE AND OURS.

Mine is the little hand, puny and weak,
Ours are the thousand arms, mountains to break;
Mine is the atom of clay for the grave,
Ours is the earth, with hill, valley, and wave :
Mine will evanish like corpse in the sod,
Ours will arise to the heaven of God!
Mine is the secret prayer, breathed low and lone,
Ours is the anthem of conquering tone ;
Mine is the little flower nurtured in dearth,
Ours are the blossoming Edens of earth:
Mine will evanish like corpse in the sod,
Ours will arise to the heaven of God !
Mine is the brain that but gleams like a spark,
Ours are the thoughts like stars lighting the dark ;
Mine is the heart that beats fearfully hurl'd,
Ours are the heart-throbs that gladden the world :
Mine will evanish like corpse in the sod,
Ours will arise to the heaven of God !
Mine is the hermit-life, lone in its hours,
Ours are humanity's loves, thoughts, and powers;
Mine, scarcely mine, is this frame, doom'd to fall,
Ours is our God, common Parent of all!
Mine will evanish like corpse in the sod,
Ours will arise to the heaven of God !

GOODWYN BARMBY.

PEARLS FROM POPISH PLACES.

BY A SERIOUS PARTY.

LETTER I.To MRS. RUSTLER.

Antwerp, - 7th, 1846. WELL, DEAREST MRS. RUSTLER,–

Over the sea

Maiden we flee ! As Anacreon Moore's Zeluco so sweetly sung to his Haidee. Bounding in my birth on the briny and bottomless billows,—& helpless worm, ---my playmates the Behemoth and the Shark, whose tooth,“ sharper than a thankless child,” has cut short so many a dauntless mariner's thread—you will be solicitous to hear whether elevation or depression ruled the hour, as I quitted the white cliffs of free-born Britain, to make acquaintance with the stranger's heart

O wound it well ! —and to study in foreign lands the manners denied us at home! Shall I own that I vibrated betwixt tearfulness and triumphancy? between the willows of Jeremiah and Deborah's exultant harp ? 0, believe me, not unfelt was the relief of being delivered from a companion whose perpetual thoughtlessness quashed my animation in the bud, and whose ever-springing audacities called for the assumption of a prematurity of matronliness ! Destructive as were my attempts to direct Mrs. Niblett—of all that frankness in myself which I ever cherished as a young woman's sweetest appanage; when her folly was at my side, it was needful for your friend to garb herself in a frigidity of observance, in spite of her own too warm heart's pleading protests --fluttering against its barricades, like the caged halcyon, who "fain would sing, yet cannot. Her observations, how futile !—the tone of her mind how insipid to the ear! “No," said I, as our barque (the Heir Apparent, Captain Crumpleton) rushed over the eddying whirls” of which Dean Swift's hymn gives us so lively a portraiture, “ No ! 'tis over ! Self-effacement, adieu! Henceforth, Diana ! walk on thy path of Pilgrimage unencumbered-and light be the thorns beneath !” Continent, I hail thee! False centre of

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untoward sophistication ! England !-nurse of delusions, and enfeebled by the luxury of Mammon's children, (who wring from the labourer the sweat of his brow to clothe their limbs in Corinthian purple !), I shake thy dust from my feet!”

!

So flowed my thoughts lyrically, while descending the associative Thames. Daylight had deceased on the storied shores of my ungrateful country, ere I yielded to fond entreaty, and meditation and anticipative delight were exchanged for the heavings of undignified agony ! - The sea is a serious business !” as dear Mr. Pecker said in his jocose mood, to cheer his failing partner, who saw Tinglebury in every cloud—and, in every white pinioned rambler of the expansitive waters, one of the well-known fowl of her leisure moments “who will cackle for her,” she touchingly observes " in vain.” These traits were hardly required to authenticate that the Peckers are the Peckers still-abroad or at home, the same proudly-sterling pair !--an cegis of Christian guardianship to a young and inexperienced pilgrim, proceeding forth, my dear, with “ unexplained intents big with resistless meaning." You would have been touched to observe how Mr. Pocker's active mind, which, like the Elephant's trunk, grasps the most minute details, was able to turn from the woes of his annihilated nation, to the preparations for a scene so new and unaccustomed. He was everywhere. Thanks to his fore-sighted invention, our equipment has assumed a completeness befitting those whose hymn of praise is order, and with whom brotherly kindness implies aids to failing nature, undemanded by those whose unawakened intellectual energies leave the scabbard at peace. Solicitous not to monopolize,—where other souls more selfish might have striven to elicit patents,--Mr. Pecker has merely circumstantially substantiated his plea by a correspondential account (with diagrammatic annexations) to the venerable Lindley Murray. One feature I may mention-à limber bell attached to the portmanteau's interior, which moves respondent to the slightest stranger's digit. We have each one. How sweetly might this unconscious guardian of our possessions, my dear, be adopted to an example, by all who would watch over that most inestimable of treasures. 0

may we be each like that metallic monitor,—and our ears tingle whensoever the hand of the scoffer, or those given to abstract philosophisings, assail our inmost cell! Little less active in the device of alleviations for the sufferings of his sensitive partner, it was inspiriting to watch our relative's calm sense combatting in

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anticipation the pangs which the watery element inflicts on her behalf. Homeopathic medicaments were dismissed as futile since, having tried them on land, no ostensible sea-sickness accrued, as we were acquainted would be the case, from the principles of contrary motion, which it is the tendency of Dr. Homo (the founder of the system) to encourage. The aquatic cure was next canvassed :—and an ample sponge ready saturated kept for several days in readiness, but, for once, dear Mrs. Pecker's gentle spirit asserted the unreasonableness of frail humanity. “To be sopped, she said, simply, “when on the water itself, was a contradiction in terms." To meet her non-acquiescence, her guide and partner's inventive fertility proposed the expedient of a perpetual rocking motion maintained by way of initiation into the oscillation of the waves : and useful, likewise, as diverting apprehension from its anxieties. This was carried into effect with great success, so far as Greenwich, Mrs. Pecker having prepared herself by previous installation in her berth. A prostration thence, on the floor, caused by a too sudden gyration, was followed by such stiffness and dizziness, that the experiment could not be carried out. hysteric tears taking its place. But Mr. Pecker enjoins me to recommend it at Wailford. The Miss Blackadders, he thinks, used to profess distemperature on your sheet of ornamental water. Have I been prolix? My desire to serve those I love in Old England is my excuse : for we are aware that a few are still waiting for our communications, who have not bowed the knee to the delusive crew of Cobden and O'Connell !

Some of our Belgravian friends were on board The Heir Apparent : dear Lady Tallboys, her venerable Aunt--and the latter's Italian medical attendant. These eyes, my dear, never beheld a more Hyperionic form, than that of the young physician. Thus looked David Rizzio when singing the madrigals of Beza to Mary of Arragon! The domestical elegance of this cortège im

! parted the flavour of aristocratic refinement to our society. Nor was Truth without its witness here upon the trackless waves. The Author of " Lucifer," whose profound satires have made the Powers of Evil more than once quake, hallowed The Heir Apparent : with his wife--the latter a woman of an unfeigned mediocrity of aspect. Though-in endeavouring to accost Lady Tallboys by a multiplicity of Christian advances, to which her preoccupied mind precluded responses, his valuable time was anxiously engaged—your friend ventured, while she yet trod the deck, to

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