burned. On this St. Folx ingeniously observes, "If ever the Jack Ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this might serve as an excellent model."

AN English gentleman, on his travels, being charmed with the beauty and talents of a young actress at Paris, whose prudence he had experienced, sent her the following letter: "Madam, it is said that you are virtuous, and that you have taken the resolution always to remain so. This is, doubtless, very fine, and even a novelty in this age. I exhort you never to change your mind; and at the same time beg your acceptance of the contract which I now make, to allow you fifty guineas per month whilst this humour lasts. If, perchance, it should happen to pass over, I request the preference, and will then make it up 100."

It is not known what answer was returned by the young actress to her liberal admirer.

MACKLIN disputing with Dr. Johnson on a literary subject, the latter quoted Greek. "I do not understand Greek," said Macklin. "A man who argues should understand every language," replied Johnson. Very well," said Macklin, and gave him a quotation in Irish.

TEDIUM VITE.-Philip Mordaunt, cousin-german to the celebrated Earl of Peterborough, so well known in all the European courts, and who boasted of having seen more postilions and kings than any man.—Philip Mordaunt was a young man of twenty-seven, handsome, well-made, rich, of noble blood, with the highest pretensions, and, what was more than all, adored by his mistress: yet Mordaunt was seized with a disgust for life. He paid his debts, wrote to his friends, and even made some verses on the occasion. He dispatched himself with a pistol, without having given any other reason than that his soul was tired of his body, and that when we are dissatisfied with our abode, we ought to quit it. It seems that he wished to die, because he was disgusted with his good fortune.-Voltaire-Philosophical Dict.

CLOCK AND WOMAN.-Women, who are given to chattering, have been compared to clocks. Fontenelle being asked what difference there was between a clock and a woman, replied, "A clock serves to point out the hours, and a woman to make us forget them."

GOOD PILOTAGE.-Nothing is more amusing than the alacrity of Irishmen in getting into scrapes, and the happy

"naivete" and blunders by means of which they endeavour to extricate themselves. A captain of a man-of-war, newly appointed to a ship on the Irish station, took the precaution, in" beating out" of harbour, to apprize the pilot that he was totally unacquainted with the coast, and therefore he must rely entirely on the pilot's local knowledge for the safety of his ship. "You are perfectly sure, pilot," said the captain,

you are well acquainted with the coast ?"-"Do I know my own name, Sir?"—" Well, mind I warn you not to approach too near to the shore.". "Now make yourself aisy, Sir; in troth you may go to bed if you plase.""Then, shall we stand on?"-"Why, -what else should we do?"-"Yes, but there may be hidden dangers, which you know nothing about."-" Dangers? -I like to see the dangers dat hide themselves from Mick. Sure, don't I tell you I know every rock on the coast; (here the ship strikes) and that's one of 'em !"

CHINA. Some of the Chinese customs much resemble those of the Romans. The equipment of police-runners before a Mandarin is exactly that of the lictors; and the words "i Lictor college manus," if he understood, would produce just what takes place on the seizure of a culprit. All the strong work of rowers is done in China with the face to the head of the boat, and upon their feet; so one of the pictures in Herculaneum; and the words "incumbere remis" would as well apply to China this day as formerly to Italy. The Chinese invariably on all junks or large boats paint two eyes near the head, sensibly remarking, "How could the boat see to go without them?" This custom exists in Sicily to this day. The customs alluded to by Horace and Ovid, of having figures or tutelar deities in their boats and ships, is in constant use amongst boats of all sizes in China. No boat is without their deeply-painted images of Joss, and before him constantly burning a lamp or scented wood. A boat on the coast of China would be thought as sure of wreck without its Joss, as one on the coast of Sicily without a Madonna. These are trivial customs, but, pervading a white people, are probably ancient. greater matters the Chinese resemble the Romans in their degenerate daysin their venality-in their fondness for spectacles, which are entirely paid for out of the public money-in their lucky and unlucky days-in the customs of their theatres-in the vast number of their festivals, and many others.

In

Dr. Messenger Moncey, Physicianfto Chelsea College, who died in 1788, aged 94, by his will directed that his body should not have any funeral ce remony, but undergo dissection for the benefit of mankind; after which the remainder might be put into a hole, or crammed into a box with holes, and thrown into the Thames, at the plea sure of the surgeon. The physician was born in Norfolk, and the son of a clergyman. Sir Robert Walpole was on terms of intimacy with him, and knew and valued the worth of his "Norfolk Doctor," as he called him. He knew it, and neglected it. The Prime Minister was fond of billiards, at which the Doctor very much excell ed him. "How happened it," said Sir Robert, in his social hours, "that nobody will beat me at billiards, or contradict me, but Doctor Moncey ?"

Diary and

Wednesday, May 2.

OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE TERM BEGINS. SOLAR PHENOMENA.-The northern regions of the earth are arrayed with the beauty of Spring. The noon exhibits a canopy of boundless azure, the night reveals the wintry constellations sinking in the west, with the advance of those stars to the mid-heaven, which declare that the time of the singing birds is come, and that the summer is advancing. The flower and the star appear each in its season, and send forth, the one its ray, and the other its fragrance, with unfailing precision The lovely train of Flora delights the senses with its perfume and beauty; the thrush and blackbird fill the woods with melody, and Arcturus in the east, and Capella in the zenith, shed forth their brightest scintillations; the rose, the nightingale, and bright star in the hand of the virgin, bloom, sing, and shine together; the violet from its shady bank, the lark from "its watch-tower in the sky," send forth their tribute of odour and harmony, as the stars in their soft Pleiades fade away in the glowing twilight of the vernal eve. As the fervid heat of summer increases, and light is more copiously diffused over the northern world, the stars shine with a subdued brilliancy; the melody of the grove ceases; the Aster tribe of flowers, with their diversified radiations, decorate the field and the garden, and with pure adoration expand their bright flowrets to receive the full effulgence of the summer sun-Time's Telescope.

Thursday, May 3.

INVENTION OF THE CROSS.-This festival, though in the Protestant calendar, is kept only in the Catholic church. It commemorates the finding

the supposed cross of Christ at Jerusalem, by St. Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine, in the year 326.

Friday, May 4.

Sun rises 31m. aft. 4. sets 31m, aft 7.
Saturday, May 5.

TRANSIT OF MERCURY.-On this day (we learn from the Time's Telescope), in the morning, the planet Mercury will cross the disc of the sun, and appear on it as a circular black spot for nearly seven hours. The celestial phenomenon

"They get places," said the Doctor, "I get a dinner and praise, and that would not satisfy them." The Doctor detested family pride, and, by way of ridiculing it, used to relate, when any great man was talking about the ancestry of his family, that the first of his ancestors of any note was a baker and dealer in hops, a trade which enabled him with some difficulty to support a large family. To supply an urgent demand he robbed his feather beds of their contents, and supplied the deficiency with unsaleable hops. A few years afterward a great blight prevailed; hops became scarce and excessively dear. The hoarded treasure was ripped out of the beds, and a good sum was procured for the hops, which in a plentiful season would have been unsaleable; and thus, said the Doctor, our family hopped from obscurity.

Chronology.

will be visible, from its commencement to its termination, to the whole of Europe and a great part of Africa; the ingress will be visible to Asia and the egress to America. The beginning of the transit will be 9 h. 2 m. 57 sec, apparent time, and its end 3 h. 54 m. 31 sec. In order to see it well, the observer should have, for some time previous to the beginning of the transit, his telescope properly fixed and prepared with dark glasses to defend the eye, which he should keep fixed upon that point of the sun's limb where the planet is suspected to enter. At the instant he suspects the contact to have taken place, he must note the time, and proceed to observe, in order to be certain that he was not mistaken. The last transit of Mercury occurred 4th November, 1822, but invisible in this country; it was witnessed in India by Major J. A. Hodgson, Revenue Surveyor-General, whose account is inserted in the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society of London, A very pleasing method of observing the pheno. menon will be by transmitting the sun's image through a telescope into a darkened room; the image of the sun can be received on paper, and the whole transit observed without distressing the sight.

Sunday, May 6.

St. John the Evangelist, Ante P. L.

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER.

Lessons for the Day.-23, 24. ch. of Numbers, morn. 25 ch. of Numbers, even.

St. John, in his old age, during the persecution of Domitian, was sentenced to be thrown into a

cauldron of boiling oil, for preaching the Christian doctrine, but from which punishment he is said to have remained uninjured. The miracuLatina, which is the reason of the letters A. P. L lous event occurred before the gate called, Porta being put after his name, to this day.

Monday, May 7.

First quarter of the Moon, at 8 morn.
Tuesday, May 8.

The moon in conjunction with Saturn at nine o'clock in the evening. The conjunction will prove an occultation; the immersion will take place at the dark limb of the moon, and about an hour after it has passed the meridian.

THE sun was softly sloping his yellow rays over the orchards that half smothered the old grange of Hartmere, and the weathercocks on the tall hunting tower at Rough Park were beginning to glimmer above its long woods, when the Prince and Blauncheflor traversed together the field path on the hill top, overlooking the hall on the south-west, to the beautiful terrace of Cowley Bank.

It was now the very high and palmy prime of May-the reign of spring looked so superbly flourishing, that summer already began to cast glowing VOL. IX.

See p 308

and impatient glances on her sister's throne. Forest and field emulated each other in the most delicious freshness and luxuriance of verdure.Flowers of a thousand hues besprinkled the turf; soft fragrant airs were felt, not heard; and sun and sky seemed in that balmy silence to be wooing the beautiful and blooming earth. Remember those exquisite lines of Massinger in "The Great Duke of Flrence"

hung

They unattended walk into The silent groves, and hear the amorous birds Warbling their wanton notes; here a sure shade of barren sycamores, which th' all-seeing sun Could not pierce through; near that an arbour With spreading eglantine; a bubbling spring Watering a bank of hyacinths and lilies. and then picture our lovers in as fair a region on Cowley Bank;-and lo! the Lady Blauncheflor with a deep obeisance, and a countenance, where, like the moon governing the sea in which her image is agitated, an inalienable firmness of purpose predomi

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nates over softer, not weaker feelings, addresses the Prince :

"I am grieved, your Highness, deeply grieved," she began.

"Oh Blauncheflor!" interrupted the princely boy, "you call me nothing but your Highness; unkind Blauncheflor, have we not been brought up together?-were not my father and your's more than sovereign and subject?remember how blest we have been in each other since life began; and do not, oh do not, by this perverse resolve, overcloud the many years that may be ours before its close."

Blauncheflor had for some time been trembling with those sensations she felt it so sweet to indulge, so hard, yet so necessary, to controul; but at this speech, the weaker side had very nearly preponderated; she blushed, she wavered, she wept, but she spoke not; while the young Prince enchanted at this new feature in her behaviour, grasped her hand, and, his eye and cheek kindling with revived hope, pursued the advantage he appeared to have obtained with such impassioned pleading as might have subdued a heart less habituated to self-controul. This, however, gave Blauncheflor time to rally, and then her decision was confirmed.

Cowley Bank supports a majestic esplanade circling round the extensive platform of an abrupt hill. They were now standing under a group of twenty huge firs, whose black boughs formed a thick roof over their heads; while, behind them, waved a lordly assemblage of oaks, mantled with delicate foilage of sunny green; and at their feet, a prodigious scaur descended abruptly to a great depth, whose red and purple strata harmonized richly with the gay verdure of the thicket that wayed over it. Between the pillared stems of the fir trees they overlooked, as from a tapestried scaffold at a pageant, the entire Vale of Trent. There the regal river heaved his broad bosom to the sun, glittering among ten thousand meadows, proud towns, bowered villages, church spires, towered castles, picturesque manor halls, and warm sheltered granges, the stately spires of Lichfield cathedral, and the dun battlements of Beaudesart rising paramount over the magic scene; while solemnly upheaving his surgy bulk, and varied by the successive eminences of Gentle shaw, Castlering, Startley Head, Chetwynd's Coppice and Stilecopp-Cannock Heath closed with gigantic ram

part this lovely valley. It was a gallant prospect worthy the gaze of its royal heir.

"Princely Edward!"-it was thus the young mistress of Hamstal spoke; "behold this glorious vale! wealthy as thou see'st it-all its magnificence forms but one jewel in that wreath which one day waits thy wearing."

"Tis nothing, Blauncheflor, less than nothing, compared with the towers this envious thicket hides from my view, and which, in calling thee mistress, transcends them all."

"Yet hear me, my lord," persisted Blauncheflor, "if indeed our poor Hamstal be so dear to you, would you make it a wonder and a reproach to all England ?"

"How mean you, fairest?"

"Would you have the prelate, the noble, the knight, the yeoman, when they thronged to the courtly halls of Windsor, think with envy, with disgust, with scorn on the Staffordshire Homestal, which had presumed to mate with them?"

"And let them think with envy if they will, with disgust if they dare, with scorn if they can."

"No, Edward, no, my more than brother! be not so cruelly kind to poor Blauncheflor, to make her of a homely but respected country dame, to be flouted, traduced, and perhaps destroyed as an upstart queen!"

"Unjust to thyself-to thy countrymen-to thy lineage! Are Englishmen so blind to beauty and to worth because it is native? Are they so arbitrary with their prince, that they will constrain him to wed some painted poppet, because she may call a king her sire,' rather than a paragon of excellence, the daughter of a hundred warriors?"

"My Prince!" said Blaunchefor gravely, "urge me not! I am but a simple girl, young and vain, God wot! but I had a father who strove as zealously to strengthen my mind with the masculine virtues of honour and sound judgment, as if, instead of a weak maiden, I had been a hopeful son, to transmit through a long line the hereditary renown of his house."

"So much the fitter thou to be the imperial consort of this great reaulme."

"While that father lived," pursued the maiden, "he was to thine as his own heart; my poor mother is still, both to his Grace and the Queen, as a dear sister. But since her affection for your Highness, more than her de

Edward had relinquished the hand of Blauncheflor as he spoke, and like a pettish, thwarted schoolboy, stood half averted from her. Her blood mounted to her temples one moment till every blue vein seemed bursting, and the next it left her countenance pale as sepulchral marble. Had the habitual command, wonderful in one so young, ever deserted her it would have been then, while, throbbing with the consciousness of her hardly mastered love, her heart was suddenly wrung by the most cruel taunt that could fall from a lover's lips.

Her first impulse was, to fling herself upon that dear, but injured bosom, and at once abandoning herself to her feelings, avow that she was his through good report or evil report, his only and for ever. This dangerous temptation was, however, resisted and overcome, and Blauncheflor felt her security, if not her power, as she thus addressed her offended suitor :

"God forgive you, Prince, that hard speech! I have not deserved it, and you know I have not; but you can never know how bitter it was to bear; could you read this poor heart, your generous nature would not have wounded it with such poisoned words!”

The youthful Plantagenet turned to her, fell on her neck and hid his face in her clustered tresses. Blauncheflor felt his warm tears. She was the first to speak.

"This must not be, my Lord! thank heaven these woody solitudes hide us from all eyes! What would the chivalry of France and England say, to see the noblest Prince that ever belted a knight, turned childish with passion! Through his orphan," she continued

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in a solemn voice, her eyes glistening and her cheeks blushing with enthusiasm, "Through his orphan, the spirit of my dead father speaks! Think of transport, when clasping thee to his Crecy, Edward! Think of thy Sire's you have this day shewn yourself worbosom he exclaimed, 'My dear son! thy of the knighthood you have lately received, and the crown for which you have so bravely fought!' Wales! how would that father's heart Prince of be humbled, if he saw, if he heard thee

now ?"

speech, blushes covered his pale face, Edward was greatly moved at this as, throwing himself on his knees before his mistress!

"And thou!" he cried, "who can'st feel, who can'st counsel thus, art still so wrongful to thy desert, as to deem thyself unworthy of a throne. Oh more than kingly heart! Rebuke me, admonish me as thou wilt! I will obey thee, yield to me; forbid even against myself! Only in one point Blauncheflor, forbid me not to hope, nie not! Oh while I am striving to deserve!" One Blauncheflor, and then the bitterness of pang more, thought poor death is surely past! She paused a moment, and then, though her frame shook, she firmly spoke:

"My mother's partiality, your Highness, has won to be your advocate. My father, whose loyalty would have stood as a mailed warrior in the gap, is dead; and the task has devolved on a weak girl, who, with no aid but his spirit at her side, and his heart in her bosom, dares to affirm, that Blauncheflor of the Hamstal will never be the mate of Edward Plantagenet! Prince! I would swear this, did I for a moment distrust my resolution!"

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