proaching one way, my friend on his bit of blood splashing and dashing at a devil of a rate on the other, like Obadiah on his coachhorse; I was in almost as bad a predicament as Dr. Slop :"Heavenly Trivia!" I exclaimed, "What shall I do?" and I was on the point of forcing a passage through the aforesaid palisade of mud which had been scraped up with most officious industry, when a well-known voice arrested my progress with "Well, Charles, have you been looking for the Abbot in the Park?" I looked up; it was Lady Emily's carriage that had been my opponent that way, and she was negligently leaning with her wellturned arm over the door. For the first time I recollected my promise, and the Novel, and immediately began stammering out a list of excuses, but I was evidently at a loss; I felt myself quite entitled to say, "What shall I do?""Any thing but stand staring there, with such a beautiful creature before you," replied Youth and Love. I thought the reproof just; fortunately her old uncle, the companion of her ride, had just been summoned away; moment the door was opened, and I offered to my lovely cousin the services of a penitent willing to atone in every way for his forgetfulness; it was accepted; and, pardon me, gentle Reader, if, while she pronounced my forgiveness, another of Lady Emily's bewitching smiles totally banished from my thoughts the recollection of "What shall I do?"

in a

C. B.

LINES TO FLORENCE.

LONG years have passed with silent pace,
Florence! since thou and I have met;
Yet-when that meeting I retrace,
My cheek is pale, my eye is wet;
For I was doom'd from thence to rove,
O'er distant tracts of earth and sea,
Unaided, Florence!- -save by love;
And unremember'd,-save by thee!
We met and hope beguil'd our fears,
Hope, ever bright, and ever vain ;
We parted thence in silent tears,
Never to meet,-in life, again.
The myrtle that I gaze upon,
Sad token by thy love devis'd,
Is all the record left of one

So long bewail'd,-so dearly priz❜d.

You gave it in an hour of grief,

When gifts of love are doubly dear;

You gave it and one tender leaf
Glisten'd the while with Beauty's tear.
A tear-oh! lovelier far to me,

Shed for me in my saddest hour,
Than feign'd and fleeting smiles could be,
In courtly hall, or summer bower.
You strove my anguish to beguile,
With distant hopes of future weal;
You strove!-alas! you could not smile,
Nor speak the hope you did not feel.
I bore the gift Affection gave,

O'er desert sand and thorny brake,
O'er rugged rock and stormy wave,
I lov'd it for the giver's sake;
And often in my happiest day,

In scenes of bliss, and hours of pride,
When all around was glad and gay,

I look'd upon thy gift-and sigh'd: And when on ocean, or on clift,

Forth strode the Spirit of the Storm, I gaz'd upon thy fading gift,

I thought upon thy fading form; Forgot the light'ning's vivid dart,

Forgot the rage of sky and sea, Forgot the doom that bade us part,— And only liv'd to love, and thee. Florence! thy myrtle blooms! but thou, Beneath thy cold and lowly stone, Forgetful of our mutual vow,

And of a heart-still all thine own, Art laid in that unconscious sleep,

Which he that wails thee soon must know, Where none may smile, and none may weep, None dream of bliss,-or wake to woe.

If e'er, as Fancy oft will feign,

To the dear land that gave thee birth

Thy fleeting shade returns again,

It

To look on him thou lov'dst on earth,
may a moment's joy impart,

To know that this, thy favourite tree,
Is to my desolated heart

Almost as dear as thou could'st be.

My Florence!-soon-the thought is sweet!
The turf that wraps thee I shall press ;
Again, my Florence! we shall meet,
In bliss-or in forgetfulness.

With thee in Death's oblivion laid,
I will not have the cypress gloom
To throw its sickly, sullen shade,
Over the stillness of my tomb:
And there the scutcheon shall not shine,
And there the banner shall not wave;
The treasures of the glittering mine
Would ill become a lover's grave:
But when, from this abode of strife,
My liberated shade shall roam,
Thy myrtle, that has cheer'd my life
Shall decorate my narrow home;
And it shall bloom in beauty there,
Like Florence in her early day;
Or, nipt by cold December's air,
Wither-like Hope and thee-away. -

E Was a Boy.

IN IMITATION OF WORDSWORTH.

"Passing sweet

Are the domains of tender Memory."-WORDSWORTH.

I WAS a Boy; and She was fair

As

you are when

you smile,

And her voice came forth like the summer air,

With a tone that did beguile,.

And her two blue eyes refreshing were

As two trees on an Indian isle.

Her dancing shape I cannot tell,
But never may forget;
The Heart remembers all too well-
Sweet Girl! I see her yet;

But I was hers by a holier spell
In the Soul's deep cavern set.

Ah me! what blissful rambles then,
Children in childhood's band,

Had we through many a lonesome glen,
And many a faery strand!

Now these scenes are fading! we busy Men
Are travelling from that land.

A little Shepherdess by birth,

An Orphan on that plain,

She drank the beauties of the Earth,
And never knew of pain-

But the breezy song of her maiden mirth
Shall ne'er be heard again.

Oh! can it be that She should lie
In a grave of cold, cold clay,
Whom I have known as fluttering high
As a new-born thrush in May,
And yet as quiet as the Sky

In the morn of a summer day!

With fairest maidens I have been,
And they were lovely things,
When they danced upon yon hidden green,
Like Fairies in their rings;
But a fairer still my heart hath seen
In her lone imaginings.

Nay, Chloris! 'twas a boyish love,

And desolated soon

A longer life hath the woodland Dove,
Longer the rose of June ;
And now She's gone, far far above
Or Sun, or Stars, or Moon!

Chloris! I'm thine; yea, by those eyes,

So soft, so bright, I swear!

Yet sometimes will a thought arise

Of One that was as fair;

Yea, my heart is thine, though from the skies

An Angel visit there.

G. M.

NOT AT HOME.

"An Englishman's House is his Castle."

"NOT at Home," said her Ladyship's footman, with the usual air of nonchalance, which says "You know I am lying, but→ n'importe!"

"Not at Home," I repeated to myself as I sauntered from the door in a careless fit of abstractedness. "Not at Home!"-how useful, how universally practised is this falsehood! Of what various, and what powerful import! Is there any one who has not been preserved from annoyance by its adoption? Is there any one who has not rejoiced, or grieved, or smiled, or sighed at the sound of "Not at Home?" No! every body (that is, every body who has any pretensions to the title of somebody) acknowledges the utility and advantages of these three little words. To them the Lady of Ton is indebted for the undisturbed enjoyment of her vapours; the philosopher for the preservation of solitude and study;-the spendthrift for the repulse of the importunate Dun.

It is true that the constant use of this sentence savours somewhat of a false French taste, which I hope never to see ingrafted upon our true English feeling. But in this particular who will not excuse this imitation of our refined neighbours? Who will so far give up the enviable privilege of making his house his Castle, as to throw open the gates upon the first summons of inquisitive impertinence or fashionable intrusion? The "morning calls" of the Dun and the Dandy, the Belle and the Bailiff, the Poet and the Petitioner, appear to us a species of open hostility carried on against our comfort and tranquillity; and, as all stratagems are fair in war, we find no fault with the ingenious device which fortifies us against these insidious attacks.

While I was engaged in this mental soliloquy, a carriage drove up to Lady Mortimer's door, and a footman in a most appallingly splendid livery roused me from my reverie by a thundering knock. "Not at Home!" was the result of the application. Halfa-dozen cards were thrust from the window; and, after due inquiries after her Ladyship's cold, and her Ladyship's husband's cold, and her Ladyship's lapdog's cold, the carriage resumed its course, and so did my cogitations. "What," said I to myself, "would have been the Visitor's perplexity, if this brief formula were not in use." She must have got out of her carriage; an exertion which would ill accord with the vis inertia (excuse Every one knows the gradations of vis, visit, and visitation ; vis inertiæ, therefore, signifies an idle vis.