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I lately entered the church-yard of my native parish before-mentioned, and visited the tombs of those who in my youth were its busy inhabitants. The old Squire with his patrician monument, surrounded by an iron-railing to distinguish him in death from the plebeian dust around he who used to halloo to the hounds with a cry like the warwhoop of the savage, dole forth rustic justice, or what he imagined to be justice, for it was sometimes, when poachers were concerned, naturally a little twisted from the true meaning of the word, by reason of his worship's venatorious prejudices. In these prejudices, however, he was outdone by the Vicar, who reposes within the great aisle in the bosom of mother-church, not far from his fellow-sportsman. In fact, the Squire was, after all, the better practical Christian of the two. The Parson held the temporal as well as spiritual weapons, and advocated the preservation of game in the pulpit, out of which he would suffer no one to labour for its destruction that was not qualified like himself. How often I remember the return of both these defunct worthies from the chase, jaded and muddy, yet awful personages in the eyes of the cottagers, who gazed upon them and the bespattered horses from their doors as if they had been monarchs. Near the Squire reposed old Robin the huntsman, and not far off, around, a score of more ignoble personages, of whom I had numberless early recollections of character and circumstance. How busily memory employed itself at that moment! How I found the shadows of the past move in long array before me, following time into oblivion! I asked myself to what end they had lived, toiled, and mouldered away into dusty forgetfulness? I contrasted the feelings I once had when treading the same spot, with those that then came over me: then all the future was promised happiness, the past left no regretful feelings, and the present was pretty evenly balanced between pleasure and pain. But now the past is loaded with melancholy recollections, and the future with apprehension, and even these mournful recollections of past time are ranked among the gratifications of the present. I remember, when a boy, the landlady of the Full Moon Inn, the hotel of the village-she was even then styled an old woman,' who still survives, and looks strong and well : -she is an isthmus connecting two generations, having borne nearly the same aspect to both. After a certain period at the commencement of old age, the personal appearance in hale individuals changes very slowly from sixty-five to seventy-five there is less alteration in some robust frames than might be naturally expected. This venerable remnant of other times had not changed her habits and manners. Like all who live in subservience to the law of custom rather than reason, she was a stern enemy to innovation of every kind. I entered her sanded parlour, and found the same pictures on the walls, and the same pieces of grotesque china, I had seen when a boy. Here, thought I, I can fling myself back again into the past. Here I can cogitate upon "lang syne," and practise an innocent deception on the senses. The locality was, in truth, no illusion, and while sipping a glass of the old lady's sherry, I hailed the shades of former years, and toasted lips that bloomed no more." I forgot the long interval of chequered existence that had intervened since I beheld the same scene with the eyes of youth. I conversed with other years, and held solemn communion with the images of the departed. Meditation brought out of the storehouse of memory many a forgotten incident that lay piled under the lumber of more re

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cent impressions. The window of the room where I sat was open, and the fragrant blossom of an old white-thorn tree without came into the room, and brought with it a killing remembrance of the smell it bore long ago, as if no other could have exhaled so sweet an odour. The meadows beyond it looked the greenest I had ever seen, and the distant hills, aerially tinted, were to me for a short space more beautiful than my eyes had lighted upon before: all wore the colouring it was clothed with in my youth. The illusion was short, but delightful, and was dispelled by the painful reflection, that it was but an illusion, and only a minute portion of what was remaining, like an oasis in a tide of sand that had overwhelmed all beside of a beautiful landscape, or like a flowery eminence seen above a rising flood, and not yet buried beneath its waste of waters.

What must have been the feelings of the Emperor of France, when, after a battle with the Allies in 1814, he found himself under the very tree at Brienne, where he had read "Jerusalem Delivered" in his youth. He would no doubt have exchanged all the splendours of his turbid existence to recall those times again. How delighted was Johnson on visiting, just before the close of existence, the same willow-tree at Litchfield which he had known in his boyhood. Waller, in his old age, bought a small house and a little land at Coleshill, that he might return again to the place of his early recollections, and "die like a stag where he had been roused." How many similar instances might be quoted of attachment to the times of youth. We revert to them in the last period of existence, as if we would fain run our course of years over again; and yet this is really the case with very few of us-we love them perhaps because the innocence and artlessness of youth give us more satisfaction upon reflection than the artifice and selfishness of our intervening years. Y.I.

ΤΟ ΑΝΝΑ.

MAY thy lot in life be happy, undisturb'd by thoughts of me!
The God who shelters innocence, thy guard and guide will be;
Thy heart will lose the chilling sense of hopeless love at last,
And the sunshine of the future chase the shadows of the past.
I never wish to meet thee more-though I am still thy friend,
I never wish to meet thee more, since dearer ties must end;
With worldly smiles, and worldly words, I could not pass thee by,
Nor turn from thee unfeelingly with cold averted eye.

I could not bear to meet thee 'midst the thoughtless and the gay,

I could not bear to win thee deck'd in fashion's bright array;

And less could I endure to meet thee pensive and alone,

When through the trees the evening breeze breathes forth its cheerless moan

For I have met thee 'midst the gay-and thought of none but thee,

And I have seen thy bright array-when it was worn for me;

And often near the sunny waves I've wander'd by thy side,
With joy-that pass'd away as fast as sunshine from the tide.

I never wish to meet thee more-yet think not I 've been taught
By smiling foes to injure thee by one unworthy thought;
Noblest with some beloved one-from care and sorrow free,
May thy lot in life be happy, undisturb'd by thoughts of me!

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I WOULD lay a trifle, gentle reader (any thing you please under a crown) that you do not recollect* what Vauderie is; and therein, some will say, "your state is the more gracious." For, exclusive of that, the thing is in itself, like the Knight's pancakes, "naught."-What, I pray you, is all knowledge, whether of good or of evil, but "the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste" brought into the world the censorship, the law of hibel, and the Constitutional Society,-a fruit of which the Emperor of Austria sayeth to his subjects, "the less you eat, the better." But, granting,-what cannot be disputed with a worse argument than three hundred thousand bayonets,-that the Emperor of Austria knows what's best for his own subjects (and his worst enemies cannot say that he dispraises the dish in order to have it all to himself), yet you and I, "my public," are not, I thank heaven for it, of his parish; and therefore, all new international law notwithstanding, under no necessity of crying at his sermons. I shall, then,-let the said Emperor take it as he pleases, proceed to give you my notions on the subject of "Vauderie ;" and it is the more necessary to know something of the matter, inasmuch as it is a relick of those good old times, which read so well in novels and in manifestoes, and for the revival of which, so much of the best blood in Christendom, ay, and what's more, of the best gold in Threadneedle-street, has been shed without stint or forbearance. Besides, I do not absolutely despair of hearing a belief in Vauderie once more declared, as it was of old, "part and parcel of the common law of the land."

To define Vauderie after the manner of lexicographers and encyclopedists, it is-in political economy a branch of finance, in theology, an heresy,—in the arts, a method of aerial vectitation, and in commerce, a species of barter, that is, or has been contraband, by all the laws of the civilized world. Now the practice of Vauderie is in this wise:

He, or she (for in this affair, the gender makes little difference), who would "Aller en Vauderie," must first make provision of a certain ointment, with which the palms of the hands must be anointed, as must also a small switch, which is then to be placed between the legs; when, forthwith the party is carried through the air, and brought to a vast assembly, where there stand tables loaded with good cheer,-but where,-saving your presence-the "evil one" presides "en vrai Amphitryon," in the form of a goat, with a monkey's (prehensile ?) tail. To this feast, however, you are not invited gratis. "The price of admission is an act of homage (you cannot get into Almack's under a dozen at least, and plenty of antichambering to boot) which is paid to his

* Observe, I do not say “don't know;" for none but your political critic has a right to presume on the ignorance of his reader, and to hector and rhodomontade, as if nobody ever read a book but himself. I observe the decencies of literature; and if you will do me justice, so; if not, have the goodness to write the next article yourself.

black highness under a form so extraordinary that I must give it to you in the quaint old French of my author. "Puis baisoient le diable en forme de boucq au derriere avec candeilles ardentes." This the country gentleman must not expect me to translate; or to explain farther than by saying, that it is a middle term between doing homage to the Pope, and saluting one's grandmother. After this act of reverence to "old horney," the candidate for admission marks his disrespect for “all good angels," by an attitude* which at Eton is considered as the last proof of canonical obedience to the powers that be. Here let me obiter remark, that the devil acts more fairly by his servants than the government of France; which when it purchases of the people an act of homage in the form of Vive le Roi, by a donative of tongues and sausages, bribes the poor dupes with money taken out of their own pockets; whereas what the Devil gives for supper is beyond dispute his peculium, or private property, and a real largesse to his admirers.

These trifling ceremonies performed, you go to supper, “with what appetite you may," and then-but I think I may as well translate no farther, "pour doubte que les oreilles innocentes ne fussent averties de si villaines choses." By this time, reader, you will have formed a shrewd guess that Vauderie is nothing more nor less than that rather darkcoloured art, of which Sir Matthew Hale avers there is no doubting the reality, seeing that divers acts of parliament have been passed to punish its practice-a species of non sequitur by the way, in the use of which that great lawyer is by no means singular: Credo quia impossibile est, being at least as much a maxim of law as of theology. The fact is, that the same fooleries and indecencies of which the royal hero of "Nigel" was wont to accuse the victims of his "doings" against witchcraft, had in France, some century or more before, been imputed by an excess of malignity to a religious sect, known by the name of Vaudois, whose members were the precursors of Calvin and Luther. Barbarous as were the times, yet the humanity of the people revolted against persecution for conscience sake; and it was thought expedient by the supporters of establishments in that day to calumniate those innovators they hated and feared, before they ventured to destroy them.

Le Clercq, in his Mémoires, gives a curious account of a crusade against the Vaudois which took place in Arras in the year 1459, in which the bigotry and superstition of the inquisitors seem to have degenerated into a mere thirst for plunder. The principles adopted in the trial of those accused of this crime were the same which are known to have directed the ordinary proceedings of the Inquisition. The rack was employed, not only to extort confession of his own offences from the accused, but to force from him testimony for inculpating others. No one was permitted to succour an individual when once arrested; and not even father, brother, mother, or sister, could interfere in the process, without subjecting themselves to be included in the accusation. The most insidious solicitations and false promises were held out to seduce those to confess, whom pain and fear could not overcome and the confession once made was inevitably turned against the accused, and read to the people assembled at the execution, as a

* "Puis monstroient le cul devers le ciel et le firmament, en despit de Dieu.”

justification of the procedure, and a bar to sympathy or assistance. Thus every fresh victim became the instrument for putting on their trial all the individuals within the range of his personal knowledge; for as long as torture was applied, men were forced to give utterance to whatever passed through their minds; and the rack was continued till memory and imagination were exhausted; and nothing new, either of truth or falsehood, remained to be extorted.

Thus the fanaticism of the people was preserved at its boiling point, and the suffragan Bishop of Arras, one of the most zealous in the conduct of these infamies, even lost his senses from the exaltation of his bigotry; unless, indeed, he became insane through the goading of a conscience ulcerated by reiterated murders. So heated was his imagination, that he continually declared in all assemblies that many bishops and cardinals were "en Vauderie ;" and that so numerous were those who thus allied themselves with the Devil, that they wanted but a sovereign prince to join them in order to overthrow the whole Christian world.

The horror excited in the public mind by these events, rendered Arras the scandal of all France. A citizen of that time could scarcely obtain a lodging in a public inn; and such was the dread of the daily confiscations which in these cases followed conviction, that all who had lent money to an Arras merchant, hastened to call it in before the bishop and the feudal chief could seize on the debtor's effects, and divide the property between them.

Encouraged by their success, the inquisitors proceeded to attack persons of greater consequence; and amongst others they fixed upon a certain Seigneur de Beauffort, who, escaping from their search, appealed to the Duke of Burgundy. The duke, in consequence, as

sembled a council of the most learned men in his dominions to consult upon the case. Of these, some denied in toto the possibility of the offence; others credited the accusation, but attributed the phenomena to mental illusion, or to deceits practised on the credulous; while some held it "blasphemous" to deny that supernatural agency, which was a direct corollary from the established religion. After this consultation a deputation was forwarded from these "sad and learned” personages to examine into the matter on the spot, and to superintend the processes going on before the Bishop at Arras. They were, by the Duke's order, accompanied by his herald " Toison d'or ;" because, says the chronicle, it was asserted that "only the rich were accused, for the sake of confiscation, at which the duke was greatly troubled."

What private instructions these men received, does not appear; but that they were hostile to the procedure, may be collected, from the more favourable treatment of the prisoners, and from the fact that no new processes were commenced after this time. Notwithstanding, however, the presence of the deputation, Beauffort and three other persons were condemned. Beauffort was sentenced to be scourged, to be confined for seven years, and to pay enormous fines to different churches and monasteries: two others were sentenced to similar punishments; and the fourth, who had resisted the rack with the greatest firmness, was burned alive. After a lapse of two years, Beauffort's family appealed to the Parliament of Paris; and, armed with their warrant, and a good troop of horse, they forced the Bishop's

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