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Among the rocks his city was:
Before his palace, in the sun,
He sate to see his people pass,
And judge them every one

From its threshold of smooth stone.
They haled him many a valley-thief
Caught in the sheep-pens-robber-chief,
Swarthy and shameless-beggar-cheat-
Spy-prowler-or some pirate found
On the sea-sand left aground;
Sometimes from out the prison-house
The angry priests a pale wretch brought,
Who through some nook had pushed and pressed,
Knees and elbows, belly and breast,

Worm-like into the temple,-caught

He was by the very god,

Who ever in the darkness strode

Backward and forward, keeping watch

O'er his brazen bowls, such rogues to catch:

These, all and every one,

The King judged, sitting in the sun.

Old councillors, on left and right,
Look'd anxious up-but no surprise
Disturbed the old King's smiling eyes,
Where the very blue had turned to white.
A python swept the streets one day—
The silent streets—until he came,
With forky tongue and eyes on flame,
Where the old King judged alway;
But when he saw the silver hair,
Girt with a crown of berries rare

That the god will hardly give to wear

To the maiden who singeth, dancing bare,

In the altar-smoke by the pine-torch lights,
At his wondrous forest rites,-

But which the god's self granted him
For setting free each felon limb
Faded because of murder done ;-
Seeing this, he did not dare

Assault the old King smiling there.

Z.

709

DEFINITIONS OF CLASSES.

In order to show our qualification as schoolmaster in general, we have applied to sundry word-wrights, phrase-turners, and others of the order, to give us a due assortment of definitions by which to distinguish the good and bad, little and great, the likely-to-goon and the decidedly-distanced, and to mark out the distinctions by signs as palpable as what separated Guelph and Ghibelline, Roundhead and Cavalier, Covenanter' and his antagonist. We cannot say we have succeeded, nor can yet distinctly point out, the characteristics (but we promise to overcome the difficulty soon) of Whig, Conservative Whig, Conservative, Tory, Liberal Tory, Destructive, Utilitarian. We found so much promise, and so little performance, in the various teachers to whom we resorted, that we turned away in disgust, and resorted to our own often-thumbed and many-flogging-causing glossaries of past periods of our education. We began with those pages of undeniable characteristics,' A dog barketh,' a cat meweth,' a hog grunteth,' 'a rat' no, we could not find a rat in the whole octavo, and we threw our venerable remnant of early institutions into the fire. We must elaborate principles as we may. The proper study of mankind is man.' So we will take him up from a boy.

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A nursery-boy (we presume this is a correct phrase, since all words may have diminutives, and we have nursery-man) is a little martyr to sweet indigestions, (including kisses of Betty, which bury his little lips with a pressure he sputters to be quit of,) and a little tyrant to all who are influenced by the fear of a squall which shall penetrate the parlour.

A school-boy is more (in the nature of a Review) stuffed in the wrapper than substantially full, (we need not analyze a schoolboy's pockets,) his day is streaky with hours of uproar and dull silence; but he is not perfectly silent even in conning his task, for, in a general buzz, he would hear that, if he did not keep it out by buzzing too; so that he mutters audibly all he reads this propensity is a great annoyance to his elder sister in the holidays, as it quite interrupts the study of her novel and her listening to the coaches that are the expected relief of the monotony of her window prospect.

The biggest boy of the school is a thing of another species, he is no more a school-boy than a tadpole is the embryo it proceeds from, or the frog in which it merges. He is a thing destined to carry the immoralities of the scullion into the counting-house or college, and the going-on-tick into his dealings with duns more formidable than the widow who makes mince-pies, and the innkeeper who speculates on pay for the jade at the half-yearly steeple-chase. But shadows cast before' come thickly on and sweep this small villain from our view.

The college- man' has a gown, (woe to those who have not,

No. 107,

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and make holiday in numbers sufficient to call a muster of the 'gown,') he has wine, and he has a tail which, like the scorpion's, 'may do his business for him'-his creditors. He has a governor' to dun; he has a tutor to cut; he has a character to be made, (but adopts the set ;') he has this world of love and difficulty before him; and, alas! he disqualifies by low debauchery, swinish sloth, and the egotism of caste.

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The apprentice, whether for handicraft trade or a profession, is the unbroken drudge for the high road of life, father's purse' was a tail which is to be docked; habits of industry are to be taught in the drag; but he comes vicious to hand; he must feel the lash and the bit, and still he will kick and plunge; he injures himself in these vain attempts, and is sent to a lower employment, or he must be taken tighter in hand, and stamps and kicks, and champs and frets, and starts and stops, and at last takes to his work and earns his manger.

The place-man is a thing from college, or one cast in a profession, (of course I do not allude to parish beadles, wood rangers, and house porters, who all have the principal characteristics of their brethren,) and is made to grow sleek, and to balance between a bow to authority and a disdain of the industrious. knows nothing of the sphere in which he is a satellite. The will of a Sovereign, or an Act of Parliament, may bring all to a full stop; but he will not know about it, until he feels the jolt which shakes him into space. Yet he continues amid inquiries, and reports, and murmurs from without, and motions from within, as proud, and vain, and useless, as if he were only contracting college-debts to keep up the glory of the gown; and the governor' were the basis on which all maintained its equilibrium.

The wholesale dealer was a prince at Florence; a luxurious great house and garden holder at Genoa ; a very Turk in Turkey. But why should Mustapha have been so eager to enlarge his tent and fill it with gold, and jewels, and odorous woods, and silver lamps? after all it is but imprisoned moonshine; he rises from his surfeit to taste the veritable hour of dews and the influences of the crescent amid her starry path. Vanity, all is vanity.' So said the preacher in the gardens of the spot now occupied as you see in Burford's Panorama. Playthings of an hour, at the best. Who cometh meekly riding upon an ass towards the gate of that Jerusalem? Oh! Christian man, seek thy God, and love thy fellows!

The retail dealer fought the battle of Reform in despite of intimidating customers. Persevere! But I hope you don't reform on principles of trade. I know you do not. But have a guard upon thy money-gettingness; it begins on a rough unmade road. what slipping back and stumbling forward! what wearing of the withers and bruising of the shins! It is a pleasure to recollect it all. Hoare has set up his travelling keg, memento of days of

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Be

the last shilling, in front of his princely banking-house. proud of thy honesty, steady in thy practice, and, though fortune make thee a railway and puff thee by steam, think thou hast sufficient if it be so, and be liberal of the superfluity.

The learned. Learning is wit spelt backward. Mother wit makes his way in the world; learning does not. Shakspeare's, Milton's, Byron's, wit goes through to the inner man; learning spreads himself into huge proportions, and sympathy says there is no room for you here. But, stop! is this learning, or the so professed? We were forgetting ourselves. How often have we been annoyed by these pretenders, who would be nothing but for those panders or pimps to publicity, the Mecanases without taste, the middle men, apothecaries, parish clerks, blue-stockings, booksellers, attorneys, and all who brighten up this brazen sun which reflects its burnished rays on impudence, imposture, and ennui. Oh! that learning would shine forth in even a tithe of one month's share of the yearly publications. But why so stint our wishes? The poor Icelanders are all learned-all masters of more than their mother-tongue in languages, and more than their tradecraft in science. Why do the stars rise and set? why is science so lovely at the desk of Faraday, and Brande, and Cuvier? why old classics such dear friends to all who know them? and why should not the world be a wider college?

G. S.

THE MOURNER'S MORAL.

BY MRS. LEMAN GRIMSTONE.

WHO may teach like the sufferer-the one chartered by calamity to claim attention? Who may hope to command sympathy like the mourner-the one bowed by griefs which all of woman born may, perhaps must, bear? The transition of feeling, or rather its extension, which from passionate devotion to the memory of one has made me capable of turning to the many, the many who like me suffer, or may suffer, urges me to speak, not to dictate but to warn. Dictate! alas, in the prostration of sorrow I am but like the monument of the good, which, insignificant in itself, is interesting only for what it covers, and for what it re

cords.

Do any who are blessed with a father-more than that, a mother with any being bearing the tender name of relative and friend, pause over this page? Let them tarry one moment longer and hear me--hear me tell them to turn with new love, new manifestations of that love, to that father, that mother, that relative, that friend. Let me remind them that habitual intercourse is apt to lower the tone of feeling, and that love becomes implied, not expressed. Let me remind them that those things for which

apparently much time is given are often neglected altogether, and conscious intention is all the fruition of deferred designs. This, when the heart turns to tax itself about the past, will not do they now deem that they are doing their duty, that they are evincing sufficient affection; the day will come in which they will not think so; memory will knock at their hearts, and remorse will answer to the summons. Memory will require of them all that they did, all that they said, and then shall the little good that they may have done, the little kindness they may have shown, appear chaff, while every neglect, every omission, shall rise up in judgment against them, and leave them without consolation!

Let us write up in our hearts and houses the divine precept, 'LOVE ONE ANOTHER,' for a night cometh in which we love in vain. Let us set the precept upon our doors, our mantel-pieces, and when we feel it failing of effect, when faults offend us, when benefits feebly move us, let us shudder for the time to come! Words, looks, tones, and actions, which in the familiarity of habitual intercourse seem, if offences at all, very venial offences against living love, will grow in the shadow of death unto a gigantic growth, and spread round us a darkness dense as despair. us give while we may, forgive while yet we can, nor wait till the pale and parted sleeper says I want you not; I have suffered and am gone, where further wrong cannot reach me, nor future remorse affect me.'

Let

It is the peculiar property of the grave to give forth the virtues of the departed in bright contrast with itself; they shine as they never did when the daylight of life was round them; they shine mocking the night of death, and proclaiming the immortality of worth. Before this light, how shrinks up self-esteem! what appears the poor merit of which once we were made proud, because, in this scene of moral bankruptcy, mere duty, the payment of common dues for benefits received, is regarded as merit by reason of its rarity? In this light, what appear our offences and defects, our thanklessness, our indifference? They strike the heart with leprosy, and make it loathe itself.

But let me not speak alone unto those about to be bereaved; let me also speak to them over whom the shadow of the scythe of death is passing. I would entreat them to be less anxious about current events and present interests; I would entreat them not to leave it on the memory of those who shall mourn them, that they extracted all the bitters and few of the sweets from the circumstances of life.

Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.'

The admonition which commences with these words, full of the poetry of truth, and the truth of poetry, was not uttered to inculcate apathy, to generate indifference. Far be apathy and in

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