object has been to improve your mind-your moral and intellectual nature-and along with the rest, no doubt, your temper. You therefore bite your lip, and shake your foot, and knit your brows, and feel yourself to be a most amiable, rational, and intelligent young gentle

man.

In the midst of these morning studies, from which the present and all future ages will derive so much benefit, the male and female servants begin to bestir themselves, and a vigorous knocking is heard in the kitchen of a poker brandished by a virago against the great, dull, keeping-coal in the grate. Doors begin to bang, and there is heard a clattering of pewter. Then comes the gritty sound of sand, as the stairs and lobby are getting made decent; and, not to be tedious, all the undefinable stir, bustle, uproar, and stramash of a general clearance. Your door is opened every half minute, and formidable faces thrust in, half in curiosity, and half in sheer impertinence, by valets, butlers, grooms, stable-boys, cooks, and scullions, each shutting the door with his or her own peculiar bang; while whisperings, and titterings, and horse laughter, and loud guffaws, are testifying the opinion formed by these amiable domestics of the conformation of the upper story of the early riser. On rushing into the breakfast parlour, the butt end of a mop or broom is thrust into your mouth, as, heedless of mortal man, the mutched mawsey is what she calls dusting the room; and, stagger where you will, you come upon something surly; for a man who leaves his bed at six of a winter morning is justly reckoned a suspicious character, and thought to be no better than he should be. But, as Mr. Hogg says, I will pursue the parallel no farther.

I have so dilated and descanted on the first head of my discourse, that I must be brief on the other two, namely, the connection between early rising and the various professions, and between the same judicious habit and the peculiar character of individuals.

Reader, are you a Scotch advocate? You say you are. Well, are you such a confounded ninny as to leave a good warm bed at four in the morning, to study a case on which you will make a much better speech if you never study it at all, and for which you have already received £2, 28. Do you think Jeffrey hops out of bed at that hour? No, no, catch him doing that. Unless, therefore, you have more than a fourth part of his business (for, without knowing you, I predict that you have no more than a fourth part of his talents), lie in bed till half-past eight. If you are not in the

Parliament House till ten, nobody will miss you. Reader, are you a clergyman?—A man who has only to preach an old sermon of his old father need not, surely, feel himself called upon by the stern voice of duty to put on his small-clothes before eight in the summer, and nine in winter. Reader, are you a half-pay officer?- Then sleep till eleven; for wellthumbed is your copy of the Army List, and you need not be always studying. Reader, are you an editor?-Then dose till dinner; for the devils will be let loose upon thee in the evening, and thou must then correct all thy slips.

But I am getting stupid-somewhat sleepy; for, notwithstanding this philippic against early rising, I was up this morning before ten o'clock; so I must conclude. One argument in favour of early rising, I must, however, notice. We are told that we ought to lie down with the sun, and rise with that luminary. Why? is it not an extremely hard case to be obliged to go to bed whenever the sun chooses to do so?-What have I to do with the sunwhen he goes down, or when he rises up? When the sun sets at a reasonable hour, as he does during a short period in the middle of summer, I have no objection to set likewise, soon after; and, in like manner, when he takes a rational nap, as in the middle of winter, I don't care if now and then I rise along with him. But I will not admit the general principle; we move in different spheres. But if the sun never fairly sets at all for six months, which they say he does not very far north, are honest people on that account to sit up all that time for him? That will never do.

Finally, it is taken for granted by early risers that early rising is a virtuous habit, and that they are all a most meritorious and prosperous set of people. I object to both clauses of the bill, none but a knave or an idiot-I will not mince the matter-rises early, if he can help it. Early risers are generally milk-sop spoonies, ninnies with broad unmeaning faces and groset eyes, cheeks odiously ruddy, and with great calves to their legs. They slap you on the back, and blow their noses like a mail-coach horn. They seldom give dinners. "Sir, tea is ready." "Shall we join the ladies?" A rubber at whist, and by eleven o'clock the whole house is in a snore. Inquire into his motives for early rising, and it is perhaps to get an appetite for breakfast. Is the great healthy brute not satisfied with three pennyrolls and a pound of ham to breakfast, but he must walk down to the Pierhead at Leith to increase his voracity? Where is the virtue of gobbling up three turkey's eggs, and demolish

ing a quartern loaf before his majesty's lieges are awake? But I am now speaking of your red, rosy, greedy idiot. Mark next your pale, sallow early riser. He is your prudent, calculating, selfish, money-scrivener. It is not for nothing he rises. It is shocking to think of the hypocrite saying his prayers so early in the morning, before those are awake whom he intends to cheat and swindle before he goes to bed.

I hope that I have sufficiently exposed the folly or wickedness of early rising. Henceforth, then, let no knavish prig purse up his mouth and erect his head with a conscious air of superiority, when he meets an acquaintance who goes to bed and rises at a gentlemanly hour.

PROFESSOR WILSON.

HYMN TO PAN.

O thou, whose mighty palace roof doth hang
From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth
Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death,
of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness,
Who lov'st to see the Hamadryads dress
Their ruffled locks, where meeting hazels darken,

And through whole solemn hours dost sit and hearken
The dreary melody of bedded reeds-

In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth;
Bethinking thee, how melancholy loath
Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx-do thou now,
By thy love's milky brow!

By all the trembling mazes that she ran,
Hear us, great Pan!

Thou to whom every fawn and satyr flies
For willing service; whether to surprise
The squatted hare while in half-sleeping fit;
Or upward rugged precipices flit,

To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw;
Or by mysterious enticement draw
Bewildered shepherds to their path again;
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,
And gather up all fancifullest shells
For thee to tumble into Naiad's cells,
And, being hidden, laugh at their outpeeping;
Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,
The while they pelt each other on the crown
With silvery oak-apples, and fir-cones brown-
By all the echoes that about thee ring,
Hear us, O Satyr king!

O hearkener to the loud clapping shears,
While ever and anon to his shorn peers
A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn,
When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn

Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms,
To keep off mildews, and all weather harms:
Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,
That come a swooning over hollow grounds,
And wither drearily on barren moors:
Dread opener of the mysterious doors
Leading to universal knowledge - see,
Great son of Dryope,

The many that are come to pay their vows
With leaves about their brows!

Be still the unimaginable lodge
For solitary thinkings: such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked train; be still the leaven
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth,
Gives it a touch ethereal-a new birth;
Be still a symbol of immensity;

A firmament reflected in a sea;

An element filling the space between;

An unknown-but no more: we humbly screen
With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending,
And giving out a shout most heaven-rending,
Conjure thee to receive our humble Pæan
Upon the Mount Lycean!

JOHN KEATS.

THE GREAT BALAS RUBY.

A TALE OF THE REIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD.

For faythe of knyghte may ne'er be broken;
Come lyfe, come dethe, hys worde must be
Faste kepte, by lawe of chevalrye.-Sir Amadis.

At the period when our tale commences, although the glories of Cressy and Poietiers as yet were not, these mingled influences of romance and chivalry pervaded every bosom. The spirit-stirring lay of the minstrel found an echo in every heart; the warlike tale of the disour had not been told in vain; and each knight, revelling in joyful anticipations of chivalrous enterprise, cast an eager glance toward the fair plains of Normandy and strong castles of Guienne, and awaited, impatiently as his falcon for her prey, as his war-steed for the battle-field, the summons that should bid him set lance in rest, and advance the red cross into the very heart of France. And now had the call been given, and a joyous response was returned by each valiant heart; for the high-minded Jane, Countess de Montfort, had sent Sir Amaury de Clisson to supplicate knightly aid of King Edward III. on behalf of herself and her small garrison at Hennebon, then besieged by Charles of Blois. What knight

could resist the call to do battle in the cause of a fair and noble lady, whose husband was captive in a far distant dungeon? a lady, too, whose chivalrous and "right valiant" bearing had rendered her the theme of admiration in every castle hall throughout the land? King Edward gave instant assent; and under the auspices of that bravest and gentlest of knights, that "flower and grace of all chivalry," Sir Walter Manny, a goodly array of knights and men-at-arms, with six thousand chosen archers, made ready.

On the evening preceding their departure, the streets of London were filled with a busy crowd; and as the summer's sun sank brightly to rest, there might be seen armourers hurrying to and fro, with file and hammer, or brightly burnished armour; herald-painters with newly blazoned shield or pennon; esquires carefully bearing the long slender lance or richly-gilded helmet; and young pages lightly bounding along with ribbon, scarf, or kind message, the parting gift of some "fayre damosel;" and many a man-at-arms, strong of limb and huge of size, and many a tall archer with sheaf of snowy-fledged arrows, and coat of Lincoln green, pressed hastily on, carolling snatches of ancient ballads, and gazing with delighted wonder at the splendid show (even then) of the London shops, or stopping to admire the graceful beauty of the cross in West-cheap, at this period one of the "lions" of London.

Amid these picturesque groups, a knight elad in tight long hose, pointed shoe, short tunic, and flat cap, leading a lady of remarkable beauty, whose long and delicately pearlbraided hair and ample silken robe, which, but for the care of her attendant page, would have swept the ground, passed along, and at length entered a house where one of the foreign dealers in gems and in the superior kinds of armour had taken up his residence. They ascended the dark and narrow staircase, which seemed to lead but to some mean abode (for the foreign merchant, to whom the protection of the wealthy and powerful London guilds was denied, found his safety in the apparent meanness of his dwelling), and entered an apartment which, in its size, the richness of its furniture, and the splendour of the plate and armour scattered about, formed a strong contrast with the rudeness of the entrance. There, at a table covered with a rich carpet, and surrounded by carved chests of various sizes, sat their owner, a Jew of advanced age and venerable appearance, who arose as the knight and lady entered, and, with more of dignity than might have been expected in one of that pro

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scribed race, bade them welcome. the unexpected splendour of the apartment, and still more by the appearance of the master for the Jews, although fifty years had elapsed since their expulsion, were still the objects of undefined and traditionary horror-the lady half drew back, while the knight, who seemed to be well known to the owner of these precious stores, advanced with a pleasant smile to the table.

"Well, Eleazar of Bruges," said he, "I have come to put your boastful saying to the test, ere I cross the seas to-morrow; so unlock your caskets, bring forth your choicest jewels, and let me see if I can find a gem so beautiful that even I myself shall deem it a worthy gift to my lady."

Eleazar of Bruges returned the smile, and, taking a small casket, applied the key to the intricate lock. "Ay, most noble knight, jewels so costly and so richly set that Sir Tristrem might have offered them to 'la belle Iseult,' or 'Morgain la fay' been won by them to release her long-slumbering King Arthur," cried the Jew, to whom the language of romance in the course of his various dealings among the fair and noble had become as familiar as his own.

"Nay, more costly, more beautiful, must they be," cried the knight, with a look of proud exultation, leading the lady toward the table, "since it is for one more lovely than 'la belle Iseult,' and more witching than 'Morgain la fay.'

"And fit lady-love for Sir Johan de Boteler, the Lord of Warrington, who made all Flanders ring with the praise of his valour," said the Jew.

"Nay, peace, I pray you," said the knight; "time presses, bring forth your jewels."

"What say you to this, or this?" said the Jew, successively taking from the casket rings and brooches, enriched with gems of the finest water, and chains of the most delicate workmanship, while the lady looked on in silent admiration.

'Nay, none of these," said the knight. "Have you still that carcanet of whose beauty you so boasted at Bruges-the heart-shaped ruby, inclosed within a border of that knightly flower, the fleur de souvenance?"

"We will see no more," said the lady, "for these are costly and beautiful enow, methinks, even for our sweet lady and queen.'

"They are so, fair lady," replied the Jew; "but choose not until you have seen the ruby, which I purchased not long since of a stranger at Bruges. Father Abraham! 'tis without