very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes. May be so converted, and see with these eyes? I cannot tell; think not: I will not be sworn, but love may transform me to an oyster; but I'll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool. One woman is fair; yet I am well: another is wise; yet I am well: another is vir tuous; yet I am well: but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall be, that's certain; wise, or I'll none; virtuous, or I'll never cheapen her; fair, or I'll never look on her; mild, or come not near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, an excellent mu sician, and her hair shall be of what color it please God.

THE CHARACTER OF A GOOD PARSON.-DRYDEN.

A parish priest was of the pilgrim-train;
An awful, reverend, and religious man.
His eyes diffused a venerable grace,
And charity itself was in his face.

Rich was his soul, though his attire was poor,
As God hath clothed his own ambassador,
For such, on earth, his blessed Redeemer bore.
Of sixty years he seemed; and well might last
To sixty more, but that he lived too fast;
Refined himself to soul, to curb the sense;
And made almost a sin of abstinence.
Yet, had his aspect nothing of severe,
But such a face as promised him sincere.
Nothing reserved or sullen was to see:
But sweet regards, and pleasing sanctity:
Mild was his accent, and his action free.
With eloquence innate his tongue was armed;
Though harsh the precept, yet the people charmed,
For, letting down the golden chain from high,
He drew his audience upward to the sky:
And oft with holy hymns he charmed their ears,
(A music more melodious than the spheres,)
For David left him, when he went to rest,
His lyre; and after him he sung the best.
He bore his great commission in his look:

But sweetly tempered awe; and softened all he spoke.
To preached the joys of heaven, and pains of hell,

And warned the sinner with becoming zeal;
But on eternal mercy loved to dwell.

He taught the gospel rather than the law;
And forced himself to drive; but loved to draw.
For fear but freezes minds: but love, like heat,
Exhales the soul sublime, to seek her native seat.
To threats the stubborn sinner oft is hard,
Wrapped in his crimes, against the storm prepared ;
But when the milder beams of mercy play,

He melts, and throws his cumbrous cloak away.
Lightning and thunder, (heaven's artillery)
As harbingers before the Almighty fly:
Those but proclaim his style, and disappear;
The stiller sound succeeds, and God is there.

HONOR AND VIRTUE,-COLTON.

Honor is unstable, and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food. She builds a lofty structure on the sandy foundation of the esteem of those who are of all beings the most subject to change. But virtue is uniform and fixed, because she looks for approbation only from Him, who is the same yesterday-to-day-and forever. Honor is the most capricious in her rewards. She feeds us with air, and often pulls down our house, to build our monument. She is contracted in her views, inasmuch as her hopes are rooted in earth, bounded by time, and terminated by death. But virtue is enlarged and infinite in her hopes, inasmuch as they extend beyond present things, even to eternal; this is their proper sphere, and they will cease only in the reality of deathless enjoyment. In the storms, and in the tempests of life, honor is not to be depended on, because she herself partakes of the tumult; she also is buffeted by the wave, and borne along by the whirlwind. But virtue is above the storm, and has an anchor sure and steadfast, because it is cast into heaven. The noble Brutus worshiped honor, and in his zeal mistook her for virtue. In the day of trial he found her a shadow and a name. But no man can purchase his virtue too dear; for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.

MINNA AND BRENDA.-SCOTT.

Minna and Brenda were the daughters of Magnus Troil. Their mother had been dead for many years, and they were now two beautiful girls; the eldest only eighteen, the second about seventeen. From her mother, Minna inherited the stately form and dark eyes, the raven locks and finely-pencilled brows, which shewed she was, on one side at least, a stranger to the blood of Thule. Her cheek,

O, call it fair, not pale,

was so slightly and delicately tinged with the rose, that many thought the lily had an undue proportion in her complexion. But in that predominance of the paler flower, there was nothing sickly or languid; it was the true natural complexion of health, and corresponded in a peculiar degree with features which seemed calculated to express a contemplative and high-minded character. When Minna Troil heard a tale of woe or of injustice, her blood rushed to her cheeks, and shewed plainly how warm it beat, notwithstanding the generally serious, composed, and retiring disposition, which her countenance and demeanor seemed to exhibit. If strangers sometimes conceived that these fine features were clouded by melancholy, for which her age and situation could scarce have given occasion, they were soon satisfied, upon further acquaintance, that the placid, mild quietude of her disposition, and the mental energy of a character which was but little interested in ordinary and trivial occurrences, was the real cause of her gravity; and most men, when they knew that her melancholy had no ground in real sorrow, and was only the aspiration of a soul bent on more important objects, than those by which she was surrounded, might have wished her whatever could add to her happiness, but could scarce have desired that, graceful as she was in her natural and unaffected seriousness, she should change that deportment for one more gay. In short, notwithstanding our wish to have avoided that hackneyed simile of an angel, we cannot avoid saying there was something in the serious beauty of her aspect, in the measured, yet graceful ease of her motions, in the music of her voice, and the serene purity of her eye, that seemed as if Minna Troil belonged naturally to some higher and better sphere, and was only the chance visitant of a world scarce worthy of her.

The scarce less beautiful, equally lovely, and equally innocent Brenda, was of a complexion as differing from her sister, as they differed in character, taste, and expression. Her profuse locks were of that paly brown which receives from the passing sun-beam a tinge of gold, but darkens again when the ray has passed from it. Her eye, her mouth, the beautiful row of teeth, which, in her innocent vivacity, were frequently disclosed; the fresh, yet not too bright glow of a healthy complexion, tinging a skin like the drifted snow, spoke her genuine Scandinavian descent. A fairy form, less tall than that of Minna, but even more finely moulded into symmetry-a careless, and almost childish lightness of step,-an eye that seemed to look on every object with pleasure, from a natural and serene cheerfulness of disposition, attracted even more general admiration than the charms of her sister, though perhaps that which Minna did excite, might be of a more intense as well as a more reverential character.

The dispositions of these lovely sisters were not less different than their complexions. In the kindly affections, neither could be said to excel the other, so much were they attached to their father and to each other. But the cheerfulness of Brenda mixed itself with the every day business of life, and seemed inexhaustible in its profusion. The less buoyant spirit of her sister appeared to bring to society a continued wish to be interested and pleased with what was going forward, but was rather placidly carried along with the stream of mirth and pleasure, than disposed to aid its progress by any efforts of her own. She endured mirth rather than enjoyed it; and the pleasures in which she most delighted, were those of a graver and more solitary cast. The knowledge which is derived from books, was beyond her reach. Zetland afforded few opportunities, in those days, of studying the lessons bequeated

By dead men to their kind;

and Magnus Troil, such as we have described him, was not a person within whose mansion the means of such knowledge was to be acquired. But the book of nature was before Minna, that noblest of volumes, where we are ever called to wonder and to admire, even when we cannot understand. The plants of those wild rigions, the shells on the shores, and the long list of feathered clans which haunt their cliffs and eyries, were as well known to Minna Troil, as to the most experienced of the fowlers. Her powers of observation were wonderful,

and little interrupted by other tones of feeling. The information which she acquired by habits of patient attention, were indelibly rivetted in a naturally powerful memory. She had also a high feeling for the solitary and melancholy grandeur of the scenes in which she was placed. The ocean, in all its varied forms of sublimity and terror-the tremendous cliffs that resound to the ceaseless roar of the billows, and the clang of the sea-fowl, had for Minna a charm in almost every state in which With the enthusiastic the changing seasons exhibited them. feelings proper to the romantic race from which her mother descended, the love of natural objects was to her a passion capable of not only occupying, but at times of agitating her mind. Scenes upon which her sister looked with a sense of transient awe or emotion, which vanished on her return from witnessing them, continued long to fill Minna's imagination, not only in solitude, and in the silence of the night, but in the hours of society. So that sometimes when she sat like a beautiful statue, a present member of the domestic circle, her thoughts were far absent, wandering on the wild sea-shore, and amongst the yet wilder mountains of her native isles. And, yet, when recalled to conversation, and mingling in it with interest, there were few to whom her friends were more indebted for enhancing its enjoyments; and, although something in her manners claimed deference, (notwithstanding her early youth,) as well as affection, even her gay, lovely, and amiable sister, was not more generally beloved than the more retired and pensive Minna.

Indeed, the two lovely sisters were not only the delight of their friends, but the pride of those islands, where the inhabitants of a certain rank were formed, by the remoteness of their situation and the general hospitality of their habits, into one friendly community. A wandering poet and parcel-musician, who, after going through various fortunes, had returned to end his days as he could in his native islands, had celebrated the daughters of Magnus in a poem, which he entitled night and day; and, in his description of Minna, might almost be thought to have anticipated, though only in a rude outline, the exquisite lines of Lord Byron,―

"She walks in beauty like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies."