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A CITY SHOWER.

AREFUL observers may foretell the hour

CARE

(By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower: While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.

Meanwhile the south, rising with dappled wings,

A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings,

That swill'd more liquor than it could contain,
And, like a drunkard, gives it up again.
Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope,
While the first drizzling shower is borne aslope;
Such is that sprinkling, which some careless quean
Flirts on you from her mop-but not so clean :
You fly, invoke the gods; then turning, stop
To rail; she, singing, still whirls on her mop.
Not yet the dust had shunn'd the unequal strife,
But, aided by the wind, fought still for life,
And wafted with its foe by violent gust,

'Twas doubtful which was rain, and which was dust.
Ah! where must needy poet seek for aid,
When dust and rain at once his coat invade?

Sole coat, where dust cemented by the rain
Erects the nap, and leaves a cloudy stain!

Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
Threatening with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the draggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy.
The templar spruce, while every spout's a-broach,
Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.
The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
Here various kinds, by various fortunes led,
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.

Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs,
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Box'd in a chair the beau impatient sits,
While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits;
And ever and anon with frightful din

The leather sounds; he trembles from within.
So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,
Instead of paying chairmen, run them through,)
Laocoon struck the outside with his spear,
And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear.

Swift.

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PASTORAL DUTIES AND DELIGHTS.

METHINKS it were a happy life,

To be no better than a homely swain;

To sit upon a hill, as I do now,

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,

Thereby to see the minutes how they run :
How many make the hour full complete,
How many hours bring about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,

How many years a mortal man may live.

When this is known, then to divide the times:
So many hours must I tend my flock;

So many hours must I take rest;
So many hours must I contemplate;
So many hours must I sport myself;

So many days my ewes have been with young;
So
many
weeks ere the poor fools will yean;
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:

So minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years,
Pass'd over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.

Ah! what a life were this! how sweet-how lovely!
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade

To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy
To kings, that fear their subjects' treachery?
Oh, yes it doth; a thousandfold it doth.
And to conclude,—the shepherd's homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,

Is far beyond a prince's delicates,
His viands sparkling in a golden cup,
His body couchèd on a curious bed,

When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him.

Shakespeare.

TH

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

DOCTOR JOHNSON, all whose studies were desultory, and who hated,

as he said, to read books through, made an exception in favour of the "Pilgrim's Progress." That work was one of the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common merit that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most pedantic of critics and the most bigoted of Tories. In the wildest parts of Scotland the "Pilgrim's Progress" is the delight of the peasantry. In every nursery the "Pilgrim's Progress" is a greater favourite than "Jack the Giant Killer." Every reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. And this miracle the tinker has wrought.

All the stages of the journey, all the forms which cross or overtake the pilgrims, giants, and hobgoblins, ill-favoured ones and shining ones, the tall, comely, swarthy, Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her fingers playing with the money, the black man in the bright vesture, Mr Worldly Wiseman and my Lord Hategood, Mr Talkative and Mrs Timorous, all are actually existing beings to us. We follow the travellers through their allegorical progress with interest not inferior to that with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London. Bunyan is almost the only writer who ever gave to the abstract the interest of the concrete. In the works of many celebrated authors, men are mere personifications. We have not a jealous man, but jealousy; not a traitor, but perfidy; not a patriot, but patriotism. The mind of Bunyan, on the contrary, was so imaginative that personifications, when he dealt with them, became men. A dialogue between two qualities, in his dream, has more dramatic effect than a dialogue between two human beings in most plays. . . .

The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of

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