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mity which each was on the watch to entrap the others into suffering-now by daring them to stay at a mark not always reached by the water-now by distracting some witless one's attention, when he was confessedly on a spot liable to the incursion of the invading enemy and many a merry laugh chimed in with the dash of the surge, either as it caught a loiterer, or swept off from his stretched-forth fingers the prey he was just going to secure. The chief spoils here to be expected, are sea-weeds in their more recent state. Of the minuter sorts, there is considerable variety, and pretty enough they are in themselves, but I used to put them to a purpose for which they were not well qualified. Many a sheet of letter-paper, and many a sticky bottle of gum-water, did I lavish upon them in days of yore hours were spent in spreading out and disentangling with a pin their filaments of red, or green, or yellow, or brown-and so far was well enough. But I wanted to aid my graphic talents, and pressed them into the service as trees, which they represented rather vilely, though, to be sure, they were kept in countenance while acting in that character, by the houses, and men, and steeds, which I sketched around them. Of the larger sorts of sea-ware which lay within our ken, all flaccid and dripping, we found some of the consistence of Indian-rubber, having a round flexible stalk, with long evenly cut thongs diverging from it-(and, by a boy, in a passion, I saw it applied as a whip most furiously, but this was not in the present jaunt ;) then, too, there was that better known kind, of the breadth of antiquated ribbon, once used for sashes, all puffed and wrinkled at the edges, which inland folks carry off to hang up as a natural hygrometer-and humid enough all last summer (if summer it might be called,) this monitor truly was! Fain would I think that England had usually a more delicious climate, when I was wont to bask on the shore near Hurst-but this remark savours of Smellfungus-and, besides, we have not run through our list of waifs and strays. Here, perhaps, a dead star-fish raised our surprise, more like a botanical than a zoological product-there drifted in a cocoa-nut shell, covered with some fifty barnacles, each something like the neck and bill of a bird; whereupon our old artillery play-mate

made us gape and listen, while he
shook his noddle knowingly, and rc-
ported half credulously, that "
do say, that somewhere or other they
they
little creatures turn into birds, though
I won't swear as how anybody here has
seen such a thing happen." No hatch-
ing took place during our notice of
them, so we strayed on to a part where
there were some rocky fragments or
accretions embedded in the sand, on
which we saw the sea-anemone, not a
flower, although so like one, but a
beautiful living creature, which ex-
panded as if it were blossoming, every
time the pure wave washed over it ;-
here, too, were limpets, with their co-
nical shells as tenaciously stuck to the
stone, as if they were its own natural
excrescences; closely as they adhered,
they were not secured against the per-
severing intrusion of our school-boys'
knives, which chiselled them off. Else-
where the stranded jelly-fish caught
the eyes, ay, and the fingers too, of
the heedless, for not without reason is
it also called the sea-nettle—but what
says Poet Crabbe about them, as he is
delightfully in his element when he
has to write of the sea-shore?

Those living jellies which the flesh inflame,
Fierce as a nettle, and from that its name;
Some in huge masses, some that you may
In the small compass of a lady's ring;
bring
Figured by art divine-there's not a gem
Wrought by man's art to be compared to
them;

Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave
they glow,

And make the moonbeam brighter where they flow.

Our perambulation has brought us within sight of the public-house again

the Mermaid, I fancy, from a figure head of some defunct ship over the door; but it will bear a question. As the author of Reginald Dalton has incontrovertibly proved, that all great writers bring in somewhere or other the important topic of eating, I shall not shrink it. The air we had been breathing, had by no means been of a kind to wear away the keenness of youthful appetite; indeed, our twists were screwed up tighter than ever. Stop a moment, though; talking of eatables reminds me that you should look down at that solitary plant, for Flora keeps court soberly and sparingly in this Arabia Petræa. That dark-coloured thing among the flints is now accounted a culinary delicacy; it is no other,

indeed, than sea-kail in its native bed, and within the memory of man it was first introduced into our gardens by Curtis, who began the well-known botanical publication. At Hurst, however, long before that time, it was known and used; they bleach it in the rudest manner, merely by piling the shingle over the shoots when discovered. I cannot say that the wild sprouts are quite so tender as the cultivated-still let all due respect be shewn to the parent plant-though the coast of Sussex furnished Curtis with his first seeds. In this local dearth of Flora's bantlings, we ought not, perhaps, to overlook any-we have found an esculent vegetable; now for a flower, and there really is a handsome one indigenous on the shore; here you see is the Horned Poppy with its orange-tawny petals and long stamina, which entitled it to its distinguishing epithet. I hope the Nereids make much of it, and wreath their locks with its blossoms; for really this flower of ocean's marge, would be more becoming amid their hair than dank sea-weed, which painters and poets bestow on them for coronals, but which cannot but have a very slatternly and tattered appearance. Look, moreover, at this shrub, and then we will go in ; this is a curiosity, if the tradition be true, which is annexed to its appearance here. It is a Tamarisk, and mine host's garden, you see, has a hedge of them, all growing very flourishingly; they seem to love the arid soil and briny atmosphere. Now it is said of them, that the first plant of the sort which England saw, was brought hither, to this very spot where Hurst Castle was afterwards built, and that the importers were warriors returning from the Crusades. The trees of themselves are pretty trees enough, but ten times more worth notice, if this romantic report of them be true-I have warrant for it, which, with many good simple readers is decisive and final-I have read it in a printed book! Only think of a Montacute, or an Umfreville, or a De Argentine, half in earnest, half in sport, sticking in a wand which he had gathered in the Holy Land, on the first spot where he landed in his dear England! The twig stands unmolested in this sandy haven-the next spring it begins to sprout-and ere long it displays to the amphibious race, who occasionally came hither, the foliage of eastern climes, nay of Palestine itself.

But our conjectural romance must not make us lose our noonday meal, nor a hearty draught, for the sun has been potent of late. Most part of the regale we brought with us, trusting to the publican for the more ordinary victual to make the table complete, so that a good cold collation, backed by a foaming jug of ale, stood before us. We invited the old gunner to join in this part, (and that not the worst part,) of the day's enjoyment. A girl of the public-house waited on us, and as she did not froth the veteran's glass of stingo with the dexterity of a true tapster, it drew forth from him a rueful reproach as soon as she was out of hearing, couched in these terms:-"Ah! now, that girl can't even give one a draught of ale as she should. How it makes one miss poor Mary!" Poor Mary I had known; she was the daughter of the master of the house, and had been dead, by a lamentable accident, about a year or more. As a book, originally belonging to one of my brothers, had, in some sort, contributed to the catastrophe, I drew nearer the old man's knee, and heard with more heed what his kind old heart had to say in praise of her. I think her name was Mary Chiddell. What made my young feelings more especially alive when her fate was deplored, was this:-A highly respectable officer, who was intimate with my father's family, was called into garrison at Hurst Castle, and as there were no comfortable apartments for him in the fortress, he lodged at the little inn. Naturally enough he borrowed some books from us to amuse himself with in this dreary state of half-exile. This "Mary the Maid of the Inn," of course, waited on him to keep his room in order-she was at that time engaged to a young carpenter living at Keyhaven, who, no wonder, spent all his spare time and holidays down at Hurst, and their marriage was soon looked forward to.

One Sunday afternoon, it was proposed that herself, her lover, and her brother, should take a sail in a boat up to Yarmouth; and (without leave) she took one of the officer's borrowed books, in order to while away the long afternoon of their voyage-a petty liberty, which she perhaps considered herself half entitled to use, being so great a favourite with their guest for her neatness, readiness, industry, and eternal good-humour; but it was des

tined to be her destruction-she never came back. It was fine summer weather, with a very fresh breeze. The lover was to manage the sail; and as I am no proficient in nautical terms, I can only blunderingly relate the disaster according to my conceptions of it. The lover sat with one arm round Mary's waist, and read on the same page of the book with her; he held in the other hand the sheet or rope which regulated the sail, and did not fasten it to its proper place. In assisting to turn over a leaf, he let the rope fly loose a squall came on at that very instant-the boat upset, and out of the three, the brother only (from whom these particulars were heard) was saved by regaining the overturned boat, as it floated bottom upwards; and the corpse of the hapless young woman was discovered some days after, a great way off, upon the mud. Can it be wondered at, that, as a boy, I crept closer to the old mourner, and heard, with a full heart, the dismal story, which I knew so well before? But, as I have said, it made more than an ordinary appeal to my sympathy; for I thought myself somewhat involved in it by the circumstance of the book. Indeed the volume, young as I was, was a thing not above my comprehension, for it was one of a miscellany, called the Pocket Magazine. I had read in the identical one so lost; and the gap in the set at home did then bring, and has often since brought, that fatal turning of the leaf full upon my imagination. Upon what a brittle thread does our existence hang! The warm pulses of youth, and love, and beauty, of high and undoubting hope, and of passionate but innocent transport, were all stopt without a warning! Here sat two young creatures, this moment in fond belief that their course of life was as fair before them as the sunny path upon the waves, over which their boat was dancingthe next moment, "the rush of water was on their souls!" Little bosoms heaved with sighs at the recital, and little eyes swam with tears in that innparlour-but the tears of childhood are proverbial for their rapid evaporation; and, with reference to the present circumstance, I might allegorize this pretty stanza which fixes the time of year, in a little poem of my acquaintance,

VOL. XV.

"It was the pleasant season yet,

When stones at cottage doors Dry quickly, while the roads are wet, After the silver showers.'

Let the shining stones be the smooth cheeks of the child, and the roads the channelled features of the aged-and here were some of us youngsters in the pleasant season yet, in which the silver showers of sympathy dry quickly, while the transition refused to take place so easily beneath the wrinkled eyelids of our old guide, which still were wet, and for a time he was not so light-hearted as before. Children, however, are restless animals; no sooner was our campaigning dinner at an end, than we began to think what might be done next. The glare of noon was over the beach-it was too hot work to go again upon the sands-it would have been toil, instead of sport, again,

"with printless foot, To chase the ebbing Neptune, and to fly him

When he comes back."

So we wandered over the drawbridge of the Castle, and lurked about under the shade of its walls, peeping from time to time through the embrasures, where the moving pictures we caught through them were heightened in effect by the setting of the dark frame. Carronades and pyramids of iron-balls, and serpentlike coils of cordage, and the rest of the materiel of a fort, had no very permanent attractions, even though our friendly old engineer was now upon his own ground, and loquaciously descanted on many topics of great interest to himself; such as the range of the guns, and what execution would be done, if the French dared to sail in between the Needles, and much of the same import. At last the tide began to give signs of serving our purpose again; our boat was seen afloat; and the old waterman who brought us down, called out to us, as he hoisted his waistband with one hand, while he scratched his poll with the other, that he could now take us back, if we had a mind for it. He only delayed while we collected our treasures, which, with ourselves, being safely stowed, our Charon pulled stoutly for my place of sojourn, where a bubbling kettle for tea, an ample milk jug, and a hot hearth cake large as our appetite, awaited our return.

F

R.

SONNET.

'Twas in those hours of Youth's delicious spring,
When not a cloud 'mid ether's depths can stray,
But Hope's fond vision sees it melt away,
And every gale bears fragrance on its wing-
I first adventured my weak hand to fling
O'er the sweet lyre, and pour'd a simple lay
To Her who held me in her secret sway-
Ah! all unworthy I those charms to sing!
Since then seven lustres-half a life!-have flown,
And many a meteor-blaze has flamed and fled,
And many a bright illusion charm'd and died!
-Still, still She sits upon my memory's throne,
Unchanged! with such effulgence round her shed,
Ill yet mine eyes the glorious scene abide.

F. R. S.

HORE CANTABRIGIENSES.
No. VIII.

DEAR CHRISTOPHER, Ir has struck me that Horace, the Vates of old Rome, may have had a prophetical reference, in his Donarem pateras, &c. (Od. iv. 8.) to these later times. You shall judge of the extent and closeness of the parallel from the following paraphrase, to which I have but little to premise.

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You will observe, that I apply the vota in the last line of the original to the devoted Cockneys, and the rates to the vessels of the brewery immortalized by Peter Pindar-reading, by the by, Pindaride for Tyndaride: to the latter version our friend Buller says, the quassas, quassia'd," gives irresistible sanction. Those, who recollect the part taken by the late Lord Londonderry in early life on the question of Reform, et similia, will readily admit him to be a fit representative of Alcides, (quasi, ALL-SIDES.) The Liber of the last line I have translated, “The Book," meaning, of course, your Book. I am aware, that it is usually construed, "Bacchus." Archdeacon Wrangham, I see, in his Version of the Lyrics, adopts the received interpretation; and I will fairly own, that I was myself staggered not a little by the preceding pampinus -it is the nature, you will add, of the plant-till it occurred to me, that it was most probably put συνεκδοχικώς for vitis, the ordinary instrument of castigation in the Roman armies. This, instantly set all to rights. I claim your "ben trovato."

Buller further assures me, that as a double of the Ilia Mavortisque puer, I have hit upon a right personage in the "Marchesa's son.' He throws in a sly conjecture, that her Ladyship may be rather hard upon her tenants in these times, the dura messorum ILIA. I rather take her to be ob scurely obumbrated as the ILIA nimiùm querens.

Yours, very truly,

W. SEWARD.
Christ-Church, Oct. 29, 1823

P. S. You will give our common friend credit for some forbearance, when I tell you that he thinks it invidious to press the word interest, as applied to the modern Hercules, or to detail his very happy parallel of the Twelve Labours: only hinting, that in old Wood he had to encounter the Boar of the Forest of Erymanthus ; that the Hydra is the radical "beast of many heads;" the Bull, any antagonist Irishman you choose. M. A. Taylor, one of the carnivorous Birds of the Stymphalides; and Hume the Dragon, guarding the golden apples of Hesperia, the island of the West. Other points of more painful resemblance he, in generous delicacy, wholly omits. His greatest difficulty was, to find the "golden-horned" equivalent in the Opposition, whether we apply it to the Cornu Copiæ, or to the Cornu Conjugale.

HOR. OD. IV. 8.

GOLD would I give my friends, or plate—
Tureens for soup, epergnes for state-
Or medals won at Cambridge, prizes
For Greek and Latin exercises;

Nature's sweet scenes from Turner's easel,
Or breathing stone from Chantrey's chisel;
Portraits and busts, by waggon-loads,
Of chieftains only less than Gods :-
Nor, Walter, should you bear the least
Of these rich bounties, were I blest
With plenty of such precious stuff-
But you've already quantum suff.
Since then you say you like the chime,
For once I'll treat you with a rhyme:
And rhyme has merit now and then,
When Scott or Wordsworth wields the pen.
Nay-that I may not seem to flatter-
If negatives will mend the matter,
Not thanks unanimously sent
By either House of Parliament;
Gazettes, whose page embalms the dead, ·
Or wreathes with bays the living head ;
Thy billows, Spain, with carnage dyed;
Napoleon's menaces defied;

Boulogne's armada wrapp'd in flames,
Or bleeding Denmark's widow'd dames-
So everlastingly record

The memory of Trafalgar's Lord,
As can the Muse. If she her lyre
Unstring, the hero's deeds expire.
O, what were the Marchesa's son,
Had not the Post-bag of Tom Brown
Given him to fame? The Foet's breath,
Omnipotent, o'er-masters death.

Brook Watson, 'mid West-Indian waves
By shark half-gorged, the Rolliad saves:
Sung by Tom Brown, at Congress-feast
Sits Castlereagh, a jovial guest:
By Pindar snatch'd from Lethe's tide,
Old Whitbread's quassia'd vessels ride ;
And fools by satire kept alive,

Vine-scourged, in Blackwood's book survive.

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*The two following little pieces are from the classic pen of Archdeacon Wrangham. We venture to reprint them from one of the copies meant for private circulation.

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