which I was born. A gentleman, an East Indian nabob of immense wealth, acquired, it was understood, by the blackest scheme of iniquity, had retired to a country seat in this village. I know nothing of his general feelings, whether they were those of a man at peace with himself or not. But as death was seen to make rapid approaches, his long-lulled conscience began to awaken, like a giant refreshed from sleep,' to call up byegone and half-forgotten deeds of darkness, and to invest them with all the terrors of judges, commissioned, without further inquiry, to pass sentence irreversible upon him. His horrors were unutterable. One figure, he exclaimed, he saw as plain as he saw his attendants; and to escape the dreaded vision's imaginary grasp, he plunged from one extremity of the bed to the other, and clung convulsively to the bed-post, with the concentrated energies of a wretch making one last effort for salvation. No one but his ignorant attendants doubted the spectral illusion; it read, however, to us who had ears to hear, the most awful moral lesson. But to my friend, such epithets as coward, or immoral, were wholly inapplicable. He had real courage, and true religion. This character served as the basis of my belief in his assertions; without such a guarantee, I should long ago have forgotten them as idle tales.

MAY.

Tis now the happy time when flowers,
And hearts, and love, are all in season;
Young Cupid decks the smiling bowers,
And laughs at Care and cold-brow'd Reason!

"Tis now the time when beauty's cheek
Blooms brightly, as the sunny
weather ;
The winds in gentlest murmurs speak,
All things are gay and glad together!

Now Nature wears her freshest green,
The birds, their softest notes are singing;
To hail the blushing May-Day queen,
The merry village-bells are ringing!

The skies a deeper azure wear

His brightest rays, the sun discloses.;
And looks from Heaven, all shining there,
As if to wake the opening roses!

All Nature smiles and the young breast
With life and hope is warmly glowing;
Pleasure is every bosom's guest,

On all her happy smiles bestowing!

Yes! 'tis the joyous time, when flowers
And hearts, and love, are all in season;
While Cupid decks the smiling bowers,
And laughs at Care and sober Reason!

C. B. W.

SOLITARY HOURS.*

THIS modest and unassuming little volume is evidently the production of a person of considerable genius, and can scarcely fail of securing for its author a very enviable share of popularity. The class of literature to which it may be said to belong has, to be sure, been sadly overdone since the publication of Washington Irving's Sketch Book: but the public mind is, nevertheless, not so entirely jaded by bad imitations of good books, as to have been rendered incapable of appreciating the merits of so agreeable a melange as this; for if we except Phantasmagoria,' which takes a far wider range of subject than any of them, we scarcely know a modern work, of the immense quantity that have been published during the last few years of the same class, which, with such modest pretensions, possesses so much sterling and intrinsic merit. Solitary Hours' consists of from thirty to forty sketches, in prose and verse, a considerable portion of which have appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, and not a few of which have been very frequently extracted therefrom in various newspapers and periodicals; a pretty tolerable test of their value. Among the prose pieces, the Smuggler may be particularized as a sketch of great force and fidelity, and one that we should hardly have looked for from a female pen. It is too long for us to be enabled to offer any thing like a fair specimen of its character; but from an admirable, and highly humourous paper, entitled Thoughts on Letter-writing,' we can select a few paragraphs, without injustice to the author. After expatiating upon the misery of having to compose a set, proper, well worded, correctly pointed, elegant epistleone that must have a beginning, a middle, and an end,' our fair satirist suggests that some mode should be devised of producing letters by a sort of mute barrel organ, on the plan of those that play sets of tunes and country dances, to indite a catalogue of polite epistles; or by steam; or, in short, by any contrivance that would obviate the trouble of thinking: she goes on to describe the persons to whom this adventitious aid would be of the greatest importance, and to superadd a few suggestions of her own on the subject of epistolary correspondence in general.

The following specimen of the sincerity of lady letter writers is quite to the life:

MY DEAREST LADY D.-With feelings of the most inexpressibly affectionate interest, I take up my pen to congratulate you on the marriage of your lovely accomplished Alethea.

To you, who know every thought of my heart, it is almost unnecessary to say, that next to the maternal tenderness with which I watch over my own girls, I am most anxiously interested in every thing that relates to your charming family.

That sweet love Alethea, has always, you know, been my peculiar favourite;

YOU TIRESOME OLD TOAD,-You've manoeuvred off one of your gawky frights at last; and I must say something on the occasion.

How the deuce did you contrive to hook that noodle of a lord, when I have been angling ever since he came of age to catch him for my eldest girl?

That pert minx Alethea has always been my peculiar aversion; and I'm ready to

* Solitary Hours, by the Author of Ellen Fitzarthur and the Widow's Tale. Blackwood. Duodecimo. pp. 236.

This is very clever and spirited; but after all, the portion of the volume which is most to our taste, is the poetry. There, indeed, we meet with several compositions, of the authorship of which known and established writers might justly be proud. To prove to our readers, that we are quite in earnest in this expression of our opinion, we shall lay before them the following exquisitely touching and beautiful poem :

TO A DYING INFANT.

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This poem might have been written by Wordsworth, in one of his tenderest moods of inspiration. Nor are others in the volume less deserving of commendation. Witness the charming Lyrical Ballad, Sunday Evening,' 'It is not Death,' 'Autumn Flowers,' &c.: we can only afford room for the last.

Who but would fain compress
A life into a day;

The last day spent with one,
Who, e'er the morrow's sun,

Must leave us, and for aye?

O, precious, precious moments'

Pale flowers! ye're types of those

The saddest! sweetest! dearest!
Because, like those, the nearest
is an eternal close.

Pale flowers! Pale perishing flowers!
I woo your gentle breath;

I leave the summer rose

For younger, blither brows,

Tell me of change and death!

An Essay on Childhood, full of truth and feeling, we had half forgotten to notice; but there is so much that is deserving of approbation in the volume, that we can only now refer our friends to its pages, for a confirmation of all that we have said in its behalf. Who the fair author is we know not; but rumour states her to be a relation of the Rev. W. Lisle Bowles, of Bremhill. Be she who she may, she has no reason to be ashamed of acknowledging her literary offspring.

CHIIT-CHAT; LITERARY AND MISCELLANEOUS.

Mr. Gifford's edition of Shirley is, we are confidently informed, nearly ready for publication.

Mr. Charles Knight, of Pall Mall East, has commenced a very talented and spirited weekly periodical, under the designation of The Brazen Head.’

A Military Sketch Book is, we perceive, preparing for publication.

Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, by the Rev. J. Conybeare, will be published in a few days.

The Biographie Moderne, edited by Messieurs Jouy, Arnault, &c. is just completed, in twenty volumes.

An extensive auto-biographical work is announced in parts: the first number will contain the life of Colley Cibber by himself.

A version of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, in the Russian language, has been published at Moskow.

The Sheridiana, recently published by Mr. Colburn, is a mere scissors and paste affair, manufactured, like the Percy Anecdotes, from newspapers and periodicals. A work is announced for early publication, entitled 'Spirits of the Olden Time,’ their Sayings and Doings.'

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Mrs. Peck, authoress of a bushel of bad novels, is about to publish the 'Bard in the West,' another work of fiction.

Mr. Martin has nearly ready for publication, a splendid mezzotinto engraving of his Belshazzar's Feast.

Miss Stephens has made her appearance in an opera, founded on the Eastern story of the Wonderful Lamp, as Aladdin-A-lad-in-breeches! We cannot admire the taste which has led to her debut in this character.

The Journal of the Two Sicilies declares there is no foundation for the statement

given by several journals of the discovery of a fresco painting at Pompeii, representing an irruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Ports of England.-No. 1. Containing two plates, Whitby and Scarborough, in highly-finished mezzotinto, from drawings by J. M. W. Turner, R. A. are announced as nearly ready for publication. The work will embrace all the licensed chartered Ports of England.

Mr. Frere has nearly ready for publication a corrected edition of 'A Combined View of the Prophecies,' in which he states, that he has availed himself of the advantages for perfecting this subject, which have been afforded by the late expiration of another grand prophetic period-the 1290 years of Daniel.