at meal-times, he will drop his knife and fork, and sigh so heavily. He may turn me out of doors, as he threatened; or, what is worse, call me ungrateful or undutiful, but he shall see this boy."

"He never has seen him, then? and that is why you are tricking him out so prettily?" "Yes, ma'am. Mind what I told you, Walter; and hold up your hat, and say what I bid you."

Gan-papa's fowers!" stammered the pretty boy, in his sweet childish voice, the first words that I had ever heard him speak. "Grand-papa's flowers!" said his zealous preceptress.

"Gan-papa's fowers!" echoed the boy. "Shall you take the child to the house, Dora?" asked I.

"No, ma'am; I look for my uncle here every minute, and this is the best place to ask a favour in, for the very sight of the great crop puts him in good humour; not so much on account of the profits, but because the land never bore half so much before, and it's all owing to his management in dressing and drilling. I came reaping here to-day on purpose to please him: for though he says he does not wish me to work in the fields, I know he likes it; and here he shall see little Walter. Do you think he can resist him, ma'am?" continued Dora, leaning over her infant cousin with the grace and fondness of a young Madonna; "do you think he can resist him, poor child, so helpless, so harmless; his own blood too, and so like his father? No heart could be hard enough to hold out, and I am sure that his will not. Only,"-pursued Dora, relapsing into her girlish tone and attitude, as a cold fear crossed her enthusiastic hope"only I'm half afraid that Walter will cry. It's strange, when one wants anything to behave particularly well, how sure it is to be naughty; my pets especially. I remember when my Lady Countess came on purpose to see our white peacock that we got in a present from India, the obstinate bird ran away behind a bean-stack, and would not spread his train, to show the dead white spots on his glossy white feathers, all we could do. Her ladyship was quite angry. And my red and yellow Marvel of Peru, which used to blow at four in the afternoon as regular as the clock struck, was not open at five the other day when dear Miss Julia came to paint it, though the sun was shining as bright as it does now. If Walter should scream and cry, for my uncle does sometimes look so stern-and then it's Saturday, and he has such a beard! If the

child should be frightened! Be sure, Walter, that you don't cry!" said Dora in great alarm. "Gan-papa's fowers!" replied the smiling boy, holding up his hat; and his young protectress was comforted.

At this moment the farmer was heard whistling to his dog in a neighbouring field; and, fearful that my presence might injure the cause, I departed, my thoughts full of the noble little girl and her generous purpose.

I had promised to call the next afternoon to learn her success; and passing the harvestfield in my way, found a group assembled there which instantly dissipated my anxiety. On the very spot where we had parted, I saw the good farmer himself, in his Sunday-clothes, tossing little Walter in the air; the child laughing and screaming with delight, and his grandfather apparently quite as much delighted as himself; a pale, slender young woman, in deep mourning, stood looking at their gambols with an air of intense thankfulness; and Dora, the cause and the sharer of all this happiness, was loitering behind, playing with the flowers in Walter's hat, which she was holding in her hand. Catching my eye, the sweet girl came to me instantly.

"I see how it is, my dear Dora, and I give you joy, from the bottom of my heart. "Little Walter behaved well, then?" "Oh, he behaved like an angel!" "Did he say Gan-papa's fowers?" "Nobody spoke a word. The moment the child took off his hat and looked up, the truth seemed to flash on my uncle and to melt his heart at once; the boy is so like his father. He knew him instantly, and caught him up in his arms and hugged him, just as he is hugging him now."

"And the beard, Dora?"

'Why, that seemed to take the child's fancy: he put up his little hands and stroked it; and laughed in his grandfather's face, and flung his chubby arms round his neck, and held out his sweet mouth to be kissed; and, oh! how my uncle did kiss him! I thought he would never have done; and then he sat down on a wheat-sheaf and cried; and I cried too. Very strange, that one should cry for happiness!" added Dora, as some large drops fell on the rustic wreath which she was adjusting round Walter's hat: "very strange," repeated she, looking up, with a bright smile, and brushing away the tears from her rosy cheeks, with a bunch of corn-flowers-"very strange that I should cry when I am the happiest creature alive; for Mary and Walter are to live with us; and my dear uncle, instead of being angry

Delightful Wyoming! beneath thy skies,

The happy shepherd swains had nought to do
But feed their flocks on green declivities,
Or skim perchance thy lake with light canoe,
From morn, till evening's sweeter pastime grew,
With timbrel, when beneath the forests brown
Thy lovely maidens would the dance renew:
And aye those sunny mountains half-way down
Would echo flagelet from some romantic town.
Then, where of Indian hills the daylight takes
His leave, how might you the flamingo see
Disporting like a meteor on the lakes-
And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree:
And ev'ry sound of life was full of glee,
From merry mock-bird's song, or hum of men;
While heark'ning, fearing nought their revelry,
The wild deer arch'd his neck from glades, and then,
Unhunted, sought his woods and wilderness again.

And scarce had Wyoming of war or crime
Heard but in transatlantic story rung,
For here the exile met from ev'ry clime,
And spoke in friendship ev'ry distant tongue:
Men from the blood of warring Europe sprung
Were but divided by the running brook;
And happy where no Rhenish trumpet sung,

On plains no sieging mine's volcano shook,

The blue-eyed German changed his sword to pruninghook.

Nor far some Andalusian saraband

Would sound to many a native roundelay.

But who is he that yet a dearer land
Remembers, over hills and far away?

Green Albyn!' what though he no more survey
Thy ships at anchor on the quiet shore,

Thy pellochs rolling from the mountain bay,
Thy lone sepulchral cairn upon the moor,

And distant isles that hear the loud Corbrechtan roar !2

1 Scotland.

2 The great whirlpool of the Western Hebrides.

Alas! poor Caledonia's mountaineer,
That want's stern edict e'er, and feudal grief,
Had forced him from a home he loved so dear!
Yet found he here a home, and glad relief,
And plied the beverage from his own fair sheaf,
That fired his Highland blood with mickle glee;
And England sent her men, of men the chief,
Who taught those sires of empire yet to be,
To plant the tree of life-to plant fair freedom's
tree.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

DEATH OF GERTRUDE.

"Clasp me a little longer, on the brink

Of fate! while I can feel thy dear caress,

And when this heart hath ceased to beat-O think, And let it mitigate thy woe's excess,

That thou hast been to me all tenderness,

And friend to more than human friendship just.
Oh! by that retrospect of happiness,

And by the hopes of an immortal trust,

God shall assuage thy pangs-when I am laid in dust!

"Go, Henry, go not back, when I depart,
The scene thy bursting tears too deep will move,
Where my dear father took thee to his heart,
And Gertrude thought it ecstacy to rove
With thee, as with an angel, through the grove
Of peace-imagining her lot was cast

In heav'n; for ours was not like earthly love.
And must this parting be our very last?

No! I shall love thee still, when death itself is past.

"Half could I bear, methinks, to leave this earth-
And thee, more loved than aught beneath the sun,
If I had lived to smile but on the birth
Of one dear pledge;-but shall there then be none
In future times-no gentle little one,

To clasp thy neck, and look, resembling me!
Yet seems it, ev'n while life's last pulses run,

A sweetness in the cup of death to be,

Lord of my bosom's love! to die beholding thee!"

Hush'd were his Gertrude's lips! but still their bland

And beautiful expression seem'd to melt

With love that could not die! and still his hand
She presses to the heart no more that felt.

Ah heart! where once each fond affection dwelt,
And features yet that spoke a soul more fair.
Mute, gazing, agonizing as he knelt-

Of them that stood encircling his despair,

He heard some friendly words-but knew not what they were.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

SCHOOL FRIENDSHIP.

Colonel and Mrs. Nightingale reside in Albemarle Street. The colonel's movements may be said to form the two sides of an obtuseangled triangle: that is to say, he rides into Hyde Park before dinner, and to the Operahouse in the Haymarket after it. Mrs. Nightingale reads the English poets: she possesses them all neatly bound, placed upon a species of literary dumb-waiter. When tired of Sir Walter Scott, she has only to give her satinwood machine a jerk, and Cain a Mystery tumbles into her lap. About two-and-thirty years ago, Jack Nightingale (as he was then called) quitted Westminster School. His most intimate crony at that establishment was George Withers, a fair round-faced boy with flaxen hair. Old General Nightingale, Jack's father, used to call him "the sweet little cherub," partly with reference to the chubby-cheeked ornaments of old tombstones, and partly to Dibdin's celebrated ballad, which introduces that bodiless personage at the close of every stanza. The cherub would often accompany young Nightingale to dine with the General, in Hertford Street, May Fair. Upon these occasions, the latter would take upon him to cross-examine his visitant in Latin. The general seldom advanced into the Roman territories beyond "Mars, Bacchus, Apollo," but he continued, nevertheless, to make George Withers sit very uneasy upon his chair. Be that as it may, the friendship of the two boys was most exemplary: I am as fond of new quotations as the author of Saint Ronan's Well, and shall therefore satisfy myself with asserting that

"In infancy their hopes and fears

Were to each other known."

Time makes terrible havoc with school friendships. Jack Nightingale quitted Westminster, and became a member of his father's profession; George Withers entered the church, and became curate of Scoresby, in Yorkshire. For the first six months nothing could be more constant than their correspondence. Many a one shilling and ninepence of theirs did my lords the Joint Postmaster pocket: after that period the attachment hung fire, like the New Postoffice itself in St. Martin's le Grand. Something of importance was continually occurring to abbreviate their epistles: Jack Nightingale had to try on a new hussar cap, and George Withers had to bury an old woman. "So no

more at present from," &c. &c. The case is by no means a singular one. Gibbon, when living at Lausanne, was always hammering out an excuse for not writing to his friend Lord Sheffield. The fault, in these cases, seems to consist in attempting to apologize: why not boldly leave off writing at once, and imitate the man with a toothache, who, after being pestered with seven civil inquiries from a friend, couched in the accustomed phrase, "How do you find yourself now?" at length answered, "When there is any alteration I will let you know."

The revolutionary French war now broke out, and Cornet Nightingale joined his regiment in Flanders. Two letters, "like angel visits" (another new quotation), were despatched by him to his clerical Orestes, from before Valenciennes. In one of these the following phrase occurred, "Our troops have sat down before the town."-George Withers in his reply observed, "I am very glad to hear it, for the poor fellows must have been sadly tired." Our military Pylades took this as a joke, but I confidently believe that it was written in sober seriousness. George Withers had heard talk of camp-stools, and concluded that the Duke of York had provided his weary troops with a due assortment of them. Upon the firing of these two epistolary shots, both batteries were silenced.

After a lapse of upwards of thirty years, one fine Saturday afternoon, in the last variable month of March, when Colonel Nightingale had availed himself of a gleam of sunshine to take his canter in the park, his lady, busied at her rotatory book-stand, heard a hard double rap at the street door. The two heavy concussions made her think it was either a twopenny postman or a twopenny creditor. In either case the affair excited but little emotion. John, however, in a few seconds entered the drawingroom, and informed his mistress that a fat man wished particularly to see Colonel Nightingale or his lady. "Show him up," said Mrs. Nightingale, "but leave the door ajar, and remain within call." The door was reopened, and in walked the Rev. George Withers. He begged pardon for intruding; but, being summoned up to town to attend a trial (here he produced the subpoena), he could not for the life of him avoid calling upon his old friend and school-fellow, whom he had not seen for thirty years and upwards: he had had a vast deal of trouble in finding him out: at the Horse Guards he was referred to the United Service Club: he had turned, by mistake, into a large glass shop, in what used, thirty years

ago, to be called Cockspur Street, but the name was now changed to Pall Mall East, why he could not devise: the man at the counter was very civil, that he must say for him, but could give him no information: the two sentinels fronting Carlton Palace had contented themselves with shaking their heads: but at length, Mr. Samms the bookseller, at the corner of St. James's Street, had cast his eye over a little thick red book, called Boyle's Court Guide, and had directed him to the proper place. Mrs. Nightingale received Mr. Withers, notwithstanding the decided mauvais ton of his aspect, with great politeness. She intimated that she had often heard the colonel speak of his friend Withers, and how delighted he should be to meet with him again: the colonel was riding in Hyde Park; but she hoped and trusted that Mr. Withers would name an early day for partaking of a family dinner in Albemarle Street. Mr. Withers looked a little duller than usual at this sine die adjournment, and said that he must go back to Scoresby on the morrow. Mrs. Nightingale hereupon hoped that Mr. Withers would so far oblige them as to partake of their humble fare to-day. The reverend gentlemen acquiesced with alacrity; and after many bows, and backing against a frail mahogany table, surmounted with a chess-board, whereby knights and pawns were precipitated to the ground, took his departure to the New Hummums." I have invited a friend to dine with you to-day," said Mrs. Nightingale, as her spouse with splashed boots entered the room. The brow of Colonel Nightingale lowered-" My dear, how could you be so dreadfully inconsiderate: are you aware that it is opera night?" "True," rejoined the lady, "but the gentleman is obliged to quit town to-morrow.' "He must be a very extraordinary gentleman if he induces me to postpone Catalani. "I think, notwithstanding, that that consequence will follow, when you learn who it is." "And pray, who is it?" "What do you think of George Withers." "What, my old crony at Westminster?" "Yes, he." "My dear Augusta, you have acted with your accustomed good sense. George Withers! I shall be delighted to see him! Why, it is nearly twenty years since we last saw each other." "For nearly twenty, read upwards of thirty," thought Mrs. Nightingale, but she was too good a wife to give the erratum utterance.

"

Precisely at half-past six the same sort of heavy double-rap at the door denoted that George Withers had arrived. The schoolfellows advanced with delight to accost each other, but in the act of shaking hands mutually

gave a start of astonishment. Good heaven! said Nightingale to himself, is it possible that this can be Withers? and, Good heavens! said Withers to himself, is it possible that this can be Nightingale?-a sympathy of ejaculation which could only proceed from friendship of such a long standing. Dinner was immediately announced, and Mrs. Nightingale was destined to be amused by an eager recital of their mutual hairbreadth 'scapes" at their ancient seminary. "Do you remember Sam Talbot?" "To be sure I do. What is become of him?" "He married a planter's daughter, and settled in Tobago.' "Where's Lawrence?" -"Which of them, Charles or Robert?"— "Robert I meant."-"He is a barrack-master at Colchester."-" And what's become of Charles Enderby, who broke his leaping-pole, and fell into Drayton's ditch in Tothill Fields?"

"Oh, he has purchased half a million of swampy acres in the back settlements of America!"-"Indeed! well he always had a turn that way. Do you remember his battle with Frank Parsons? he certainly would have scalped him if he had not worn a wig." Discourse like this is highly entertaining to the parties interested; but they are apt, in the hurry of colloquy, to keep all the entertainment to themselves. Mrs. Nightingale, independently of her dislike to these exclusive reminiscences, found serious internal fault with the Reverend George Withers' style of eating. The food unquestionably reached his mouth, but somehow it never got there as it should have done. His four-pronged silver fork lay idle upon the table-cloth, while his knife was doing all the duty which polite custom has thrown upon its silver associate, passed to and fro from his mouth to his plate with fearful impetuosity. "I have one chance yet," sighed the lady to herself; "he will cut his own tongue out in a minute-I plainly perceive that nothing else can check his garrulity." Still the conversation ran in the same channel.— "Do you remember this?" and "Do you remember that?" ushered in every speech. At length the Reverend Mr. Withers asked the friend of his heart, whether he remembered how he served the Italian image-men? Nightingale had forgotten it. "Oh, then I must recall it to your memory," said the divine. "There was a party of us, madam (turning to the lady of the mansion), at our window, when in came a man into Dean's yard with a set of plaster images upon a board, balanced upon his head. These Italians are certainly admirable artists. Such correct grouping of figures, such har mony! Let me see, there were Socrates,

Mendoza, Necker, Lord Howe, Milton, a gilt lion, Count Cagliostro, Whitfield, and a green parrot, all cheek-by-jowl together. The man -oh, you must remember it, Jack-walked under the window, crying, 'Image, image, who'll buy my image?' when you-O, you must recollect-threw a basin of water upon his board. Away floated Whitfield and the green parrot: Mendoza gave Milton a knockdown blow the gilt lion fell tooth and nail upon Count Cagliostro: and Necker could not find ways and means to keep his place Lord Howe was the only officer who kept the deck." "Yes, yes, now I do remember it," exclaimed Colonel Nightingale, laughing heartily. It would have been better if he had remained serious. The opening of his fauces set Mr. Withers' tongue afloat upon a very ticklish topic. "Why, Jack," exclaimed the relentless clergyman, "you have got a new tooth." The colonel reddened; but the ecclesiastic proceeded. "Well, that's droll enough; you certainly had lost a tooth: I think it was your left eye-tooth.". "Do you retain your wise ones?" inquired the caustic colonel. "Yes, both of them," replied the matter-of-fact divulger of secrets. You must remember the loss of yours; it was on the left side: Frank Anderson knocked it out with a cricket-ball." There are certain secrets which men keep even from their wives. For "twice ten tedious years" the colonel had been hugging himself in the certainty that the affair in question was confined to Chevalier Ruspini and himself. "Will you take a glass of champaign, sir?" said the master of the mansion. The movement was most dexterous. The Rev. Mr. Withers had made a "god of his belly" too long to allow the thoughts of any teeth, save his own, to cross his Bacchanalian devotions.

"

When the summons of "Coffee is ready" had induced the two school friends to rejoin Mrs. Nightingale in the drawing-room, all former incidents had been pretty well exhausted, and they now proceeded to discuss "things as they are." But in this species of duet they by no means chimed harmoniously together. Withers thought Scoresby and its concerns were the concerns of all mankind; and Nightingale could not imagine that anybody upon earth had anything to think of save Rossini and his prima donna of a wife, Lindley's violoncello, Garcia in Agorante, and Catalani in Il Fanatico per la Musica. "I have news to tell you," said the country parson to the frequenter of the Italian opera, "which I am sure you will be glad to hear."-" Indeed, what is it?"-"My black sow has pro

VOL. I.

|

duced me seven of as pretty pigs as ever you saw in your life. Then I've another thing to tell you: I enlarged my pig-sty seven feet four inches: four inches? I really think it was five: yes, it certainly was five. This caused the building to project a little, and but a little, upon the footpath that leads the back way, up town from the Red Lion to Mrs. Marshall's meadow. Well, now, what do you think Tom Austin did? He told Richard Holloway that I had been guilty of a trespass: whereupon Holloway, by advice of Skinner his attorney, pulled down four planks of the new part of the pig-stye, and let the whole litter out into the village! Little Johnny Mears caught one of them—it was the black and white one-and Smithers, the baker, contrived to get hold of five more; but I have never set eyes upon the seventh from that day to this! The poor black sow took on sadly. Dick Holloway ought to be ashamed of himself. He is a fellow of very loose habits, and never sets out his tithes as he should do. But what can you expect from a Presbyterian?" "This bald unjointed chat" made Colonel Nightingale fidget up and down like the right elbow of Mr. Lindley pending the agony of his violoncello accompaniment to the " Batti Batti" of the now forgotten Mozart. The colonel had hitherto with marvellous patience, from complaisance to his guest, foreborne to mount his own hobby: finding, however, that the latter was in no hurry to dismount, he resolved, coute qui coute, to vault into his own proper saddle. The following dialogue forthwith ensued. I copy it verbatim, as a model of school friendship standing firm, in its community of tastes, amid the wreck of thirty years and upwards. "I am, I own, extremely partial to Rossini's Ricciardo e Zoraide: Garcia in Agorante excels himself: the critics object to his excess of ornament; but I own this has always appeared to me to be his chief merit."-"When the black sow litters again, I shall keep a sharp look-out upon Master Holloway; and if he pulls down any more planks from my pig-sty I mean to put him into the Spiritual Court.""Catalani's spiritual concerts are not particularly well attended, and I am not sorry for it: Bochsa has started his oratorios with all the talent in town, and therefore ought to be encouraged. By-the-by, Madame Vestris is a woman of most versatile talent. Her mock Don Giovanni is admirable: not that I approve of any mockery of the Italian Opera: profaneness cannot be too steadily discouraged. But it is not a little surprising, that a woman who can act that sprightly comic extravaganza should be able to depict the jealous and indig 20