old man, whose beard, grey with age, reached nearly to his feet; my first impulse was to prostrate myself before him, but he prevented me, and, taking me by the hand, said in a voice which betrayed no signs of age, 86 Mortal, fear not, thou art under my protection; know that I, who stand beside thee, am no other than the most high and mighty Genius of snufftakers and cigar-smokers; thou hast well and duly served me during your life, it is meet, therefore, that thou shouldst now receive thy reward." At these words he took me by the hand, and, although I could perceive no instrument which caused us to move, I felt that we were journeying through the regions of the deep. At length we arrived at land, and I once more found myself on terra firma, but it was not that earth which I had quitted; no, it was, as the Genius informed me, the paradise of snuff-takers and cigar-smokers. This beautiful land was not like that which I had left; as far as the eye could see, the ground was covered with tobacco plant, which flourished with marvellous fertility.

The happy inhabitants of this land came forward to meet me, with their boxes in their hands, and cigars in their mouths; one offered me his box, another his cigar; here were no envy. ings, no strife, no ambition-they had all one common obect-that of taking their snuff, and smoking their cigars-no other ideas entered their minds; to them might be applied that most comfortable saying, that they passed their time in smoke.

In this happy country, you were not obliged to throw aside your cigar in order to refresh yourself by sleep, the body retained all its powers; and the Genius would send some inferior spirit to see that your cigar did not burn your lips.

The superiority of the tobacco over that of this world was remarkable, inasmuch as I could not help exclaiming, "Oh, my fellow smokers, it cannot enter into your heads to think, nor can your minds understand how, in the world from which I come, we are imposed upon; shall I say it, instead of this nourishing and excellent plant, a noisome weed which causes head-aches, and I know not what, is sold to us by the tobacconists: : yes, my brethren, frauds, of which you can form no idea, are practised upon us. I have even now (and here I shuddered,) in my pocket a cigar which I brought from that world of iniquity." At these words, methought I put a cigar

in their hands, at the sight of which there arose a loud and piercing shriek, so much were they shocked at the sight of the stuff which we call cigars. No more-no more-the shriek awoke me-I found myself in my chamber; yet I had great difficulty to persuade myself that the troubles which I had undergone, and the reward which I had enjoyed, were not realities; my trouble had been severe-my reward great; still I would not dream another such a dream, for even now, when my box is getting low, I hear the bubbling of the water, and I think on the last pinch and sigh. C. R. B.

HIGHLAND HONOUR.

Towards the beginning of the last century the county of Inverness was infested with a band of Catharans, or robbers, commanded by one John Gunn, who levied contributions in every quarter, and came under the walls of the city, to bid defiance to an English garrison which defended the castle. An officer who went to Inverness, bearing the pay of the troop, and esco.ted by a feeble detachment, was obliged to pass the night at an inn, thirty miles from the city. In the evening, he saw a man of a good figure enter, wearing the Scottish costume; and, as there was only one room in the inn, the Englishman invited the stranger to partake of his supper, which the latter reluctantly accepted. The officer, judging by his conversation that the stranger was perfectly acquainted with the defiles and by-paths throughout the country, begged him to accompany him the next morning, made him acquainted with the purport of his journey, and his fears of falling, together with the depot, which was confided to him, into the hands of the celebrated John Gunn. The Highlander, after a little hesitation, promised to be his guide; they, in fact, departed on the following day, and, in crossing a solitary and barren glen, the conversation again turned on the robberies of John Gunn.

"Would you like to see him?" said the guide, and he immediately gave a whistle, which was re-echoed by the rocks; in a few moments the officer and his detachment were surrounded by a body of Highlanders, armed from head to foot, and

sufficiently numerous to render every effort of resistance fruitless.

"Stranger," said the guide, "I am that same John Gunn, whom you are afraid of, and not without reason, for I came yesterday evening into your inn to discover the route you meant to take, in order to carry away your military chest; but I am incapable of betraying the confidence which you have put in me, and having now proved to you, that you are in my power, I shall send you on your way without loss or damage."

After giving him the necessary directions for the journey, John Gunn disappeared with his troop as suddenly as they had arrived.

SONNET.

BY FREDERICK TYRRELL, ESQ.

Night follows day, and morning follows night;
And Nature is the same from year to year.
Not so the lot of man-his life is care,
Changing incessantly from hope to fear,

Yearning for joys he ne'er can hope to share;
Meeting with bliss, and woe, as life takes flight.

Youth is the season of expectancy-
Deception meets it with a smiling look-
Eager for joy youth lends a willing ear,
And looks with doubting on a friends rebuke,
Resisting counsel, till conviction's tear
Enters and shows deceit's delinquency.

So passes life mid toil and hope and fear
Till death in mercy ends life's strange career.

EPIGRAM.

Good epigrams, like hailstones which descend,
Strike hardest by appliance to their end:

Bad, are like shoes, which cobblers cannot mend,
Or bring the understanding to the end.

P.

THE VAULTS OF ST. MICHAN'S.

It is not generally known that the metropolis of Ireland contains a very singular subterraneous curiosity,-a burial-place, which, from the chemical properties of the soil, acts with a certain embalming influence upon the bodies deposited within it. I speak of the vaults beneath St. Michan's church— a scene where those, who have the firmness to go down and look death in the face, will find an instructive commentary upon the doctrines of moral humiliation that are periodically preached above.

You descend by a few steps into a long and narrow pasage, that runs across the site of the church; upon each side there are excavated ample recesses, in which the dead are laid. There is nothing offensive in the atmosphere to deter you from entering. The first thing that strikes you is, to find that the decay has been more busy with the tenement than the tenant. In some instances, the coffins have already disappeared in others, the lids or sides have mouldered away, exposing the remains within, still unsubdued by death from their original form. But the great conqueror of flesh and blood, and of human pride, is not to be baffled with impunity. Even his mercy is dreadful. It is a poor privilege to be permitted to hold together for a century or so, until your coffin tumbles in about your ears, and then to re-appear, half skeleton, half mummy, exposed to the gazes of a generation than can know nothing of your name and character beyond the prosing tradition of some moralising sexton. Among these remnants of humanity, for instance, there is the body of a pious gentlewoman, who, while she continued above ground, shunned the eyes of men in the recesses of a convent. But the veil of death has not been respected. She stands first on the sexton's lists of posthumous rarities, and one of the most valuable appendages of his office, She is his buried treasure. less cheeks yield him a larger rent than some acres of arable land; and what is worse, now that she cannot repel the imputation, he calls her to her face "the old nun." In point of fact, I understood that her age was one hundred and eleven, not including the forty years that have elapsed since her second burial in St. Michan's.

Her sap

Death, as has often been observed, is a thorough radical, and levels all distinctions. It is so in this place. Beside the

nun, there sleeps, not a venerable abbess, or timid novice, or meek and holy friar, but an athletic felon of the seventeenth century, who had shed a brother's blood, and was sentenced for the offence to the close custody of St. Michan's vaults. This was about one hundred and thirty years ago. The offender belonged to a family of some consideration, which accounts for his being found in such respectable society.

The preservative quality of these vaults is various in its operation upon subjects of different ages and constitutions. With regard to the latter, however, it does not appear that persons who had been temperate livers enjoy any peculiar privileges. The departed toper resists decay as sturdily as the ascetic; supplying Captain Morris with another "reason fair to fill his glass again." But it is ascertained that children are decomposed almost as rapidly here as elsewhere. Of this, a touching illustration occurs in the case of a female who died in childbirth, about a century ago, and was deposited in St. Michan's. Her infant was laid in her arms. The mother is still tolerably perfect; exemplifying, by her attitude, the parental "passion strong in death;" but the child has long since melted away from her embrace. inquired her name, and was rather mortified to find that it has not been preserved.

But I was chiefly affected by the relics of two persons, of whom the world has unfortunately heard too much: the illfated brothers, John and Henry Sheares. I had been told that they were here, and the moment that the light of the taper fell upon the spot they occupied, I quickly recognized them by one or two circumstances that forcibly recalled the close of their career-the headless trunks, and the remains of the coarse, unadorned penal shells, to which it seemed necescary to public justice that they should be consigned. Henry's head was lying by his brother's side: John's had not been completely detached by the blow of the executioner; one ligament of the neck still connects it with the body. I knew nothing of these victims of ill-timed enthusiasm, except from historical reports; but the companion of my visit to their grave had been their contemporary and friend, and he paid their memories the tribute of a few tears: he lingered long beside them, and seemed to find a sad gratification in relating several particulars connected with their fates. Many of the anecdotes which he mentioned have been already published. Two or three, which interested me, I had not heard before.