ken: "I should only like to propose my friend Mr. Mouseley as a member of the club. Mrs. Mouseley does not act a kind part by him; and if he were now and then from home, I think he would like it much. She is not violent in temper, but what one may call a strong, loud, and determined kind of woman; in short, gentlemen, what I have heard denominated a masculine woman, a gentlemanlike lady, gentlemen,-though I take this to be a sort of libel on our sex, for I cannot see what need there is that a man should be rough and overbearing." At this moment the meeting was suddenly disturbed by a spirited vocal performance, combining the effects of many voices, mounting higher and higher on the staircase. The lady patronesses of the Rareborough assemblies were expending a torrent of eloquence on Mr. Boniface, the landlord of the George and Dragon, who was in vain begging to be allowed a hearing. Little Minniken trembled, grew white as a cauliflower, and held on by the back of his chair; for one familiar voice was there pre-eminent above all the rest. "Show us into a room, Mr. Boniface. I suppose you have another besides that which the gentlemen are in? The balls will be discontinued at this house, you may depend upon it!" "The whole committee of ladies are here!" exclaimed Mrs. Manly Minniken," and we will make a point of recommending all our friends to The Angel." "What have I done, ma'am?" responded the astonished landlord, -"how have I offended, ladies ?" "Never mind, never mind," trebled half a dozen ladies at once; "we shall all patronise The Angel in future." "Oh! there they are!" forcibly enunciated Mrs. Manly, as with her bevy of desperate dames she swept by the committee-room of the Benedict Club; "I hear the fellows talking-much good may it do them!"-and the opposition committee took possession of an adjoining apartment. Then Boniface was sent down stairs, and rung up again, and snubbed, and sneered at, and scolded, and his accounts examined, and disputed, and at length paid :-the landlord having, by sundry hints and inuendos, discovered that he had been guilty of lese majeste against the sovereign authority of woman, in allowing the Benedict Club to have a committee-room in his house. But did that conclave act?—that conclave, the assembly of which had caused such direful wrath in the united female bosom of Rareborough.-Reader, we are ashamed to state. Most of the gentlemen present, in common with Mr. Minniken, had heard the voices of their helpmates mingling in that flood of harmony, which, against all the principles of hydraulics, had ascended the staircase, and filled the adjoining room. The individuals comprising the committee of the Benedict Club looked from one to the other, and wished themselves at home. "Our resolutions are all passed," said Mr. Burnsides, with a voice which was rather husky, and consequently not so loud as it had been during the proceedings of the afternoon; "there is nothing to prevent our adjourning?" continued the chairman, appealing to about thirteen gentlemen with their hats in their hands. "Nothing!-nothing!" responded several committee-men. "Nothing!" said Mr. Minniken, who had been to the door, and ascertained that the apartment in which the ladies were assembled was farther up the passage, and that a retreat by the staircase was thus secured to the Benedicts. No one hinted to his neighbour what familiar household tone had met his individual ear; but, with as little confusion and as little formality as possible, the committee dissolved. Some months have elapsed, but no farther meeting of the club members has taken place. Old Mr. Thompson's house in High Street continues unoccupied, and the " Benedict Club" has not yet been established in Rareborough. OLD MOUNTAIN DEW. BY CHARLES MACKAY. AWAY with your port and your fine-flavour'd sherry, Our blessings upon her! Scotland for ever! and old mountain dew! Mountain dew! clear as a Scot's understanding, Her children have won her Scotland for ever! and old mountain dew! Neish! neish! neish! hurra! May her worth, like her lowland streams, roll on unceasing,— And the cold of her glens be confined to the climate, Or whiskey to toast her Scotland for ever! and old mountain dew! Neish! neish! neish! hurra! NIGHTS AT SEA; Or, Sketches of Naval Life during the War. BY THE OLD SAILOR. WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. No. IX. THE BURIAL AT SEA.-SLING THE MONKEY.-THE PIRATE CRAFT. My last left the gallant and noble commander of the Spankaway sitting in his cabin at early morning, with no other companion than the corpse of his associate and friend in boyhood, and perusing the manuscript book which had been so strangely bequeathed to him. Powerful emotions shook his frame as many an occurrence was revived in his mind by the narration, which was not written in a connected form, but seemed to have been compiled at different times, and under various feelings, for the language evidently expressed and manifested the ruling passion at the moment of committing the record to paper. Had the volume fallen into any other hands than those of Lord Eustace, the whole would have been unintelligible, and the reader would have considered it as the uncurbed demonstrations of some romantic enthusiast, or the production of an unfortunate individual labouring under the horrors of insanity. A great portion was occupied with abstruse reasoning to prove there was no hereafter-no judge of quick and dead-no future state of reward or punishment. And was the reasoning conclusive? No! it only betrayed the incessant struggles of his mind to crush a belief which was ever present to his conscience; it evidenced the futility of the creature warring against the soul-impressing power of the Creator. He had read the works of Paine, and fancied himself convinced of their truth; but there was a still small voice whispering ever in his heart that overturned the fallacies of the infidel; and though the never-dying soul was strong in believing, the pride of perishing human nature set itself up in array against the spirit, and it was not till the immortal essence was about to return to Him who gave it, that mortality yielded up the palm of victory, and in expiring agonies confessed the existence of the Deity, though with the same foolhardiness it rejected the hopes of his divinest attribute -mercy. And now there lay the frail body, cold, and rigid, and senseless; the heart could no more say, "I am faint," nor the head that "I am sick;" pain and grief, trouble or remorse, wound or disease, would never again produce corporeal suffering; the inanimate dead would return to dust as it was, and the spirit The removal of the dying prisoner to the captain's cabin had very soon become the subject of conversation fore and aft, and various indeed were the conjectures and reports which prevailed, though in one thing all agreed, viz. that in the person of the captive Lord Eustace had discovered a near relation. Amongst the inve VOL. III. 2 s |