passed away, but the old men of Nastreuse had the circumstances from their fathers, who had personally mixed in the scenes here related, and still interest the passing stranger with the narrative of the Legend of Larnreagh.

THE FAREWELL OF THE BOYS TO CHAPMAN AND PENNY,

Arcades ambo, &c.

CHAPMAN, farewell! a long farewell
To Homer, Alpha, Beta,
A dose of Balsam, you'll allow,
Than School by far is sweeter.

No more the Aorist tense awaits
Your critical acumen :

You'll cut your trees, and not your boys,
Your pulse, beans, or legumen.

Of Persons, Cases, now no more,
Or Numbers you 'll remind one;
And as to Moods, you always were,
And will be, in a kind one.

And now no more the Usher's rod
With dignity you'll wield, sir;
The tree of knowledge you neglect,
And prune that of the field, sir.
Alas! farewell! old Domus prays
For years full more than eighty;
And hopes that long you may enjoy
Otium cum digging a taty.”

Then, farewell, both! you've had enough
Of Virgil, Priams, Hectors:
Correctors once, you drop one R,
And now become Co-Rectors.

And when old age creeps slowly on

(And those who'll not, why burn 'em!) You both will, with your latest breath, Cry "floreat æternum."

A CHAPTER ON PUFFS.

"Suffla."-Persius.

"Puff yourself.”—Unpublished Translation.

THERE are three things to be found in nearly every corner of this many-cornered world-a Scotchman, a potato, and a Puff. From the days of the frog in the

U

fable, puffing has been an epidemic more catching than the cholera, more fashionable than the influenza. The occupation of the world may be divided into the three heads of puffing itself off, puffing itself up, and puffing itself out; that is to say (in case the public, for whose improvement alone we write, should not at once comprehend the nicety of the distinction), the Puff Metaphorical, the Puff Moral, and the Puff Physical. It is principally with the first of these that we now intend to deal, conceiving it to be that one of them all which the philanthropist is most especially called upon to exterminate; the influence of the other two being confined to the persons of the puffers themselves. We have all the consciousness of rectitude to support us in our undertaking; for to the system which we shall endeavour to overthrow we attribute much of the growing immorality and licentiousness of the age: we have however, on the other hand, much to discourage our attempt; for we know how hard a task it is to persuade a man out of his own interest; and we are unable to deny that the puff metaphorical, however injurious to society at large, tends in no slight degree to the advantage of the employer. Nay, so convinced are we of its utility, that we are strongly inclined to believe that the unfortunate animal above alluded to, who by her ignorant application of the puff actual rendered herself liable to a verdict of felo de se, might, had she properly understood the virtues of the puff metaphorical, by this time have been an ox. She, by the puff actual puffed herself to death; more modern puffers have by the puff metaphorical puffed themselves, if not into life, at any rate into a living.

The audacity of puffs is astonishing. A respectable country village, possessed of half a mile of dead wall

bounding the squire's pleasure grounds, wakes up some fine morning, and finds, to its horror, the whole line of brickwork (hitherto regarded as sacred by even the juvenile disciples of the Sunday-school, the most sacrilegious company of imps breathing) usurped from end to end and from top to bottom by "Thorpe's Family Pills," or "Donaldson's Folding Hats." The village haberdasher goes into strong convulsions; and the village apothecary, despite his professional imperturbability, sits aghast for three whole hours, ejaculating "Shameful!" and "Horrible !" at alternate intervals of a minute and a half. We should feel some trepidation for the life of the perpetrator, should he by some evil chance encounter the indignant man of hats, shoes, gloves, umbrellas, cloaks, stuffs, smock-frocks, and shoe-ribbon. We should start at once to advertise the sexton if we saw him in the hands of the outraged Æsculapius. But, alas! by such a consummation, devoutly as it is to be wished by all haters of social agitation, the public eye is never blessed. The miscreants not only, like the phantoms in Macbeth, "grieve the eye and vex the heart," but they are also as untangible,-they "come like shadows, so depart." In the darkness and the silence of the midnight hour, in "the very witching time of night,” with the stealthy pace of the felon or the assassin, do they prowl forth on their nefarious errand: to them "the garish eye of day" is as evil an eye as that of a Bow Street officer; nay, we fear, that even the "pale regent" of the hour in which they most delight, when she has too fully "thrown her silver mantle o'er the dark," is greeted with harsh looks, which would be sufficient, even without the harsh words which accompany them, "to tell her how they hate her beams." The greatest of modern poets once anathematized the

moon in no very measured terms*; we are afraid the greatest of modern knaves pretty often follow his example.

Use, it is said, is second nature. We had been, till within these two or three years, so accustomed to light upon an occasional "Warren's Blacking" in our rambles through the country, that we had begun to look upon it, if not with a kindly, at any rate with an unmoved eye: but now, Salamis to Piraeus-(for the life and soul of us we can't help being classical; we were as nearly as possible citing Aristotle-ay, actual Greek-just now about use and nature, but we curbed our rising inclination,)— Salamis to Piraeus, we say, was not half such an eyesore as that detestable "30 Strand" is to us. It has been the prime spring of a mighty and eventful movement; it has paved the way for a vast organic change in the constitution of brick-walls, barn-doors, and parkpalings. We recollect to have read in the days of our youth a fairy tale, in which the hero was possessed of a fiddle, to whose magical music every man, woman, and child who was unfortunate enough to come within hearing was irresistibly compelled to dance; we are convinced that some similar power must be lodged in the announcement which we have stigmatized as "the guilty cause of all this guilt." Every trade that ever existed seems to have caught the infection; and the whole London Directory may be perused "free, gratis, for nothing," on the boundary wall of a moderately large estate. The tail of O'Connell himself is a fool to the "following" of this audacious innovator. Even while we write the evil is spreading; the sanctity of one's home is no longer inviolable,—a man's house is no more

* "D—— the moon!" said Lord Byron; "it always gives me the ague."-Vide Moore's Life.