panion did not offer to say a word to him, but presented his snuff-box to him that he might take a pinch. The miner was annoyed that he should attempt to interrupt his work, and knocked the snuff-box out of his hand. For this piece of politeness the gnome, very naturally, flew at his face, but the miner stood on the defensive with the weapon which he had in his hand. However, thinking that the sooner he was out of that the better, he turned to make a bolt of it, and very speedily found a heavy burthen on his shoulders, which was nothing less than the gnome riding him after the fashion of Sinbad's old man of the sea. It was with great difficulty, and only by the help of God, we are informed, that he managed to effect his escape out of the mine, but his shirt was torn to ribbons, and his body scratched and pinched to all the colors of the rainbow by the devil's talons, and he carried the marks of them to the grave. We are surprised that Christophorus should have humbugged his good father, the doctor, with this story.

These gnomes, however, are not confined to Europe, but are found in all parts of the world. We wonder whether there are any on the Neilgherries

should we succeed in catching

one we will start an opposition coach to our uncle of Agra.*

Neu

The negroes on the coast of New Guinea tell many wonderful stories of them, but, as they partake very much of the nature of Dr. Bräuner's, we refer the curious reader to the Africanishe reise Beschreibung, fol. 460, or an account of a recent journey in Africa, published, we know not when. Dr. Bräuner winds up this chapter by saying that he has thus established the existence of these gnomes beyond question; and, that the only point to be considered is, whether they are really spirits, or a cross between a man and a brute, which point, he says, is too knotty to be solved. For our own part, we suspect that the old gentleman chuckled hugely as he penned this chapter, and, laying his finger to his nose, said "Tell that to the horse marines."

* The Agra Bank, established for lending money to individuals who want it, on unquestionable authority, and at ten per cent.

CHAPTER XV.

"All the infections that the sun sucks up

From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me,
And yet I needs must curse. But they'll not pinch,
Fright me with urchin shows, pitch me i' the mire,
Nor lead me, like a firebrand in the dark,

Out of my way, unless he bids them."

TEMP. Act ii., Scene 2.

OF THE WILL O'the wisP OR IGNIS FATUUS.

Who has not, at some period or other of his life, in his native land, encountered, and, perchance, been led astray by a Jack o' Lanthorn, until, haply, he found himself plunged neck deep in a morass. But these natural Wills o' the

Wisp are not to be weighed in the balance with the moral and spiritual ones, which lead men continually astray. Who is there that can look back to the period of boyhood, and not reflect how sadly the stern, the bitter realities of after existence have proved at variance with the daydreams which he then formed, when, lying, perchance, extended in all the luxury of laziness, along the sunny bank of some babbling brook, visions of the future floated before him. His whole life has been a clutching at the mockery of the rainbow which recedes as he approaches; castle after castle in the air has been raised only to be demolished, even ere it assumed all its full proportions, and the burden of his experience is that of the poet,

"Man never is, but always to be blest."

This condition is finally expressed by Young in his Night Thoughts, as follows:

"Behold the picture of earth's happiest man;
He calls his wish, it comes; he sends it back,
And says he called another that arrives-
Meets the same welcome; yet he still calls on;
Till one calls him, who varies not his call,
But holds him fast in chains of darkness bound,
Till nature dies, and judgment sets him free;
A freedom far less welcome than his chain."

Who is there that has passed through even half of the threescore years and ten, allotted as the term of mankind's earthly pilgrimage, who can look back without discovering, in the gloomy

vista that he has passed through, the spectres of blighted hopes and ruined expectations, of friendships given to the air, or (if they have survived the rude shocks to which they have been subjected by the frailties of mortality) dissolved by death, so that, again he can take up the language of the poet and say,

"The spider's most attenuated thread

Is cord-is cable to man's tender tie

On earthly happiness; it breaks at every breeze.” But we have also spiritual Wills o' the Wisp, and, without touching on those of the Romish Church, which are abundant enough to furnish a Jack o' Lanthorn at every half mile between this and purgatory; and that is, we take it, rayther more than a mile and a bittock from this; we shall simply allude to those which are set up by various professing Protestants as erring lights to show the way to Heaven, the most notable thereof being Arminianism-that rag of popery, in all its various phases.

But come, we will call a halt to these meditations and doff the black coat and don the brown holland, for we are now going to peep into Dr. Bräuner, who says "That what we Germans call 'Irrwisch' is, by writers upon physics, termed Ignis fatuus, which the common people generally consider to be a legerdemain of the Devil: others hold the groundless opinion that