psalms to her glorification. From this time the good lady waxed provokingly pious. She composed hymns in the nightseason, indited sundry sermons, spoke of the thing that was godly, made a collection of texts, clothed herself with sackcloth and ashes, like Evangelist in "Pilgrim's Progress," and in spite of the commandment "Thou shalt do no murder," murdered Ecclesiastes in a poetical paraphrase.

She had not been long in the neighbourhood, when the devotional appearance of Old Surly, as he sat among his pupils at church, excited her attention. The gravity of his deportment pleased her, and particularly his thorough-bass recitation of the psalmlings, or little psalms, of the day. She accordingly requested an introduction, and appeared to take much interest in the serious tendency of his conversation. He seemed equally interested; indeed, how could he help being smitten by so much goodness? The first symptom he gave of a tender nature, was in the improvement of his "outer man," and the clemency of his scholastic punishments. His visits, too, to the Three Cups, were gradually discontinued, until Kenedy became irritated by his neglect, and the publican removed his children from the school.

From this time his moroseness slowly, but surely, abated. He grew more thoughtful than ever, and looked both bilious and interesting. He rambled about the copse early in the morning, and late at night, and relaxed in his wonted attention to the school. Oh! love, love! thou art a devil of an affliction! But was this love real, or was it only feigned, in order to work upon the feelings of the gentle Miss Deborah? "In sooth I know not"-certain it is that she heard of it, and pitied accordingly. But it was in school-time that this love of Old Surly displayed itself in the strongest light. By the perpetual recurrence of his thoughts to Miss Deborah, her name was ever on his lips, and produced strange blunders, so much so, indeed, that on reading with his boys the first ode of Horace, he unwittingly commenced,

Deborah, atavis edita regibus.

A mistake which covered him with blushes, and elicited a sly grin from his pupils. His affection now increased to an alarming extent, and when he reflected on the income of

Miss Deborah, and the well-stocked farm of her brother, he indulged himself in the most delicious fantasies. With love comes poetry, and, strange to say, our hero no sooner became a lover than he waxed poetical; and, in the impetuosity of his transports, commenced a copy of hexameters to his flame, of which only the first line is extent,

Deborah, cara mihi, carissima Deborah, salve!

The composition of these poeties proved a salve to his perturbed spirits, and together with other symptoms, which I cannot stop to enumerate, betokened some great event, the crisis of which was at hand.

As he was seated one morning at his desk, revenging on the cheeks of his pupils some fancied slight of his mistress, a hurried messenger announced that Farmer Kenedy had left home, and that Miss Deborah was anxious to have a little spiritual conversation with him. His eyes brightened at the intelligence, and in the warmth of the moment he indulged his boys in a whole holiday, while he himself retired to adonize for the occasion.

To have seen him as, "dressed all in his best," he wound along the banks of the lake that skirted the farm of Kenedy, would have extracted a smile from the face of Apollyon. He had brushed up his wig with studied neatness, and, in order to augment the fleecy whiteness of the locks, sprinkled them with the contents of a pounce box. On the summit appeared a hat, which, compared with the immensity of the wig on which it was placed, gave the idea of a fly perched on the apex of a parched egg. The remainder of his garments were equally singular, and, in fact, from the way in which he caught the wind as he passed, he might be denominated a walking ventilator.

After a hurried walk he arrived, and was ushered into the drawing-room of his fair religionist. She was seated on the sofa, and received him with easy negligence. An animated conversation then ensued, which, after divers divergings, settled into a dispute upon Platonic affection. The lady was here in her element; she harangued very sensibly on the pleasures of love unconnected with sinfulness, while the obstreporous concupiscence of Old Surly, who leered with an

amorous obliquity of vision, gave the denial to her assertions. Several times in the course of the discussion he rose and resumed his seat, sighed with orthodox precision, snuffed the air like a mountain goat, until, unable any longer to suppress his emotions, he fell on his knees and made a formal declaration of love. Heavens and earth! what did he not vociferate? He raved about her charms, swore by her two eyes, (she had but one,) and concluded by offering to fling his wig

and fortune at her feet.

At this instant, while the heated pulse and swelling bosom of the old girl, (I beg her pardon, I should have said young lady,) attested her sympathy, the door opened, and in rushed Kenedy, followed by the excoriated exciseman, who, as it appears, had seen Old Surly enter the house, and had given an exaggerated statement to the farmer. The schoolmaster rose from his knees, while Kenedy attacking him with the epithets of "an old goat-a phenomenon of concupiscence-a cornucopia of lechery," rained a heavy shower of blows upon his carcase. A battle instantly ensued. The farmer attacked the schoolmaster, while Miss Deborah, unwilling to be neglected, fought with alarming intrepidity; and observing, that the Lord had commanded her to take the part of the godly, even as Jaal drove the nail into the temples of Sisera, drove her own nails into the cheeks of the exciseman. As for the poor flagellant, after a slight struggle, he remained in a state of passive obedience, while his fair virago, incensed at his timidity, and rendered desperate by passion, attacked his nose with infinite despatch.

This this was the unkindest cut of all,

For when the noble Laurence saw her scratch,
Ingratitude, more strong than Deborah's arms,
Quite vanquished him; then burst his mighty heart,
And-in his kerchief muffling up

his nose,

Which all the while ran blood-Old Surly fell.

There are some callous dispositions to whom disgrace is but the inconvenience of the moment. This was not the case with the schoolmaster, who could not hear his name branded with ridicule, and see his establishment drop away by degrees, without feeling compunction for the cause. The exciseman,

too, boasted every where of his revenge, and took all opportunities of insulting him. This could not last; his moroseness subsided into melancholy, and, neglected in his old age, and worn down with a sense of his degradation, he died of a broken heart; while the exciseman and French dancing-master followed him to the grave, as a token that their enmity had died with him. He was buried in the church mentioned in the opening description, and on the green sod was placed a marble slab with this brief memorial:

be

Laurentius Crab-tree,

Obiit A.D. MDCCLXXXIV.
Etat. 55.

The school after his decease was deserted, and gradually became the melancholy ruin which it now appears. I could very sentimental on the occasion, but am in a desperate hurry to come to the end of my story. Suffice it to say, that the exciseman and French dancing-master still continued in the village, while the publican and Kenedy were appointed joint presidents of the club, in the room of the defunct pedagogue. As for Miss Deborah, she found that not even her brother's influence could preserve her reputation for chastity, but consoled herself by reflecting that man is born to vilipend as the sparks fly upwards. Feeling, however, that she was held in general contempt, she observed one day, that the Lord had commanded her to sojourn in a foreign land, whither she shortly afterwards retired, to the satisfaction of her kinsfolk and acquaintance.

And now, gentle reader, my narrative is concluded, and if any one doubts its authenticity

I tell him, if a clergyman, he lies.

Should captains the remark, or scholars make,
They also lie too (under a mistake).

But the best way of ascertaining the fact, will be for the inquisitive reader to visit in person the scenes I have described. He will there find the Three Cups still in existence, and the remembrance of the schoolmaster still cherished in the neighbourhood. Nay, so fresh is his memory, that a few years since, his ghost was seen by one of his old pupils to stalk

through the school-room, with the intention, no doubt, of looking after his Phaedrus, which he requested should be buried with him. He was met by the parish clerk, whom he interrogated in Latin, and electrified with his classical proficiency. "But this was no wonder," said a notorious wag in the village, to whom the anecdote was related, for a dead man would naturally wish to speak in a dead language."

A FRAGMENT.

And say without our hopes, without our fears,
Without the home that plighted love endears,
Without the smile from partial beauty won,
Oh what were man? a world without a sun.

Who can the portrait of a smile pourtray,
Or who the limits of its power define?
Or is there one, on whom this genial ray

Has never deign'd benignantly to shine,
Like morning sun-beams on the verdant glade,
Chasing afar night's cold and dewy shade?

Campbell.

There is not one, whose warm romantic soul
Has not imbib'd the animating draught,—
Who has not the transparent bliss-brimm❜d bowl,
With an unsatiating ardor quaff'd,

And felt the rays of rapture o'er him steal,
Beyond the power of language to reveal.

There is within the smile a mystic spell

That sweetens life's embitter'd cup of woes,-
A beam, whose lustrous power can oft dispel

The shade which round the cup affliction throws,—
A mantling flower, with blossoms sweet and fair,
That gilds life's paths and hides the thorns of care.

As flow'rets wild on verdant meads and hills,
Their golden heads and honied cups expand
To drink the pearly showers which heaven distils
On all around with its benignant hand;
So mortals bask in syren pleasure's rays
To sip the smile which every toil repays.
Trin. Col. Oxford.

J. P.