charge: Eliza my love, Mr. Lester has been admiring your works prodigiously!' Ah! oui! superlatively!' exclaimed a sharp wee voice; and a minikin ladylike gentleman sidled up to the fair ornamentor of wood. Ah! Mon Dieu! I sometimes amuse myself with turning a little.' Eliza looked as if she did not comprehend what this had to do with her Arabesque paintings. 'Oh Miss Hopkins! Oh! it would be tant d'honneur, would you but accord me cette faveur-la.' Do, do my dear;' cried Mamma with laudable consideration. Mr. Lester, I'm certain Eliza will be proud to oblige you.' Aye! well then, Miss Hopkins, depending upon the accuracy of your Mamma's statement, I shall send you to-morrow some of my own little works to be adorned by’—

6

'Vous me faites beaucoup d'honneur, Mons.,' replied the lady, with a smile amounting to a sneer; and she walked down the well-filled room, partly to supply the place of her mother, where that mother's presence was an etiquette scarcely to be dispensed with, and partly to flee from the coxcombries of Lilliput Lester.

At this moment I heard a laugh from Mr. Hopkins, and these sentences very loud: A penny saved, is a penny gained: He that would thrive, must rise by five: Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves,' as poor Richard says. 'How can Pa be so vulgar,' whispered Fanny to Maria, 'one would think he'd liv'd all his life in a shop! 'I can tell you,' said Mrs. Hopkins in a low voice, and with a terrific frown, that though your father is talking to young Thrifty, whose grand-sire was a silk-mercer, in that style, you might make a worse match, and here he comes.'

Mr. Thrifty, Jun., was a pert-looking creature, over whom the noun adjective Prig,' seemed in every inch pretty visibly embroidered: How do you do Miss Fanny have you mounted Pegasus of late?' She was very nearly thrown, last time she rode,' said Mrs. Hopkins, but Mr. Tobias, the name of Fan's horse is Billy, not Peggy.' 'O Mamma! Mamma!' screamed the

horrified Literata,' he only asked me classically, if I'd been writing poetry lately.' 'Very well dear, very well, and you can let Mr. Thrifty hear your last bit: Mr. Tobias, we all know, is a great poet himself: Yes, yes, when we see T. T. in the " Omnium," we well understand, as I may say, to a T., whom it means.'

The entré of some particular friends now attracting this accomplished lady's notice, she quitted her domestic coterie, and the part of the room where I was standing; and Miss Fanny having been well plied with coffee, cake, persuasion and flattery, by Tobias Thrifty, Lilliput Lester, and a soi disant beau, Major Saunter, at length condescended to favour them with

PHILLIS'S LAMENT.

Ye azure skies, and trees, and fields, and flowers! Why are ye verdant for so many hours

When I, with grief, am sad?

6

Maria, what's next?'

Something about, Will,

Fanny.' Aye now I remember :

Why art thou roaring so, thou silent rill?

When I am black and blue for love! I will-
I must go mad!

that's the end of one verse.'

'Bravissimo!' cried the

Major. Excellent indeed!' quoth Tobias, 'pray go on. Squisita Madamigella!' squeaked Lilliput. Charming! Fanny go on,' said Maria; and encouraged thus, the lady sang a second and third, which however we shall spare the reader the pains of perusing, being in our nature more merciful than the Misses Hopkins.

Beautiful! Admirable indeed! Delightful!' resounded from all sides. 'And yet,' cried the gratified Fanny, would you believe that the Editor of the New Monthly wouldn't insert 'em in his Magazine: I did think, being a poet himself, he would have had pity on me.' For that very reason,' replied Thrifty, 'you might have been sure of his jealousy; two of a trade can ne'er agree! and authors less than any persons, as I was once told by the celebrated'-At this instant, Mrs. Hopkins unfortunately appeared, and laying hold

of Maria's shoulder,Come,' cried she, Sir Capel Crotchet desires to hear you sing: no nonsense; I insist upon it.' 'La, Ma, I can't!' Lank Sir Capel thrust his bushy head over the shoulder of Mrs. H., crying out in his well-practised drawl, Me-e-ss Mare-ea must not say so; but alloo me-e to jurdge of her capabilities; Me-e-ss Mare-ea, will obléege mee, by letting mee accurmpany her in a song.' To which honor the lady assenting, Major Saunter offered his arm, and in a double slow time the whole party reached the piano. I need not relate what are the interesting preliminaries to a lady's musical performance; suffice it, neither airs, graces, turnings, nor tossings, were lacked on this occasion, nor a sufficiency of I cants,' and You musts.' Finally, Miss Maria, rejecting Sir Capel Crotchet's overture to sing with her, took up Cherry Ripe,' and the Freyschutz Bacchanalian Song.'O,' cried Lilliput, do pray favour me with Love was once a little Boy.' Sing, Isabel,' cried Mr. Bankes, who, with that adored damsel's name-sake, had just joined the party. 'I'm sure I shan't;' audibly muttered Maria, and commenced Cherry Ripe,' out of tune, time, and every thing but audacity Look at Janet,' said Eliza to me, there she sits, still talking to that odious Mr. Sapient: let us go and teaze them :' we approached, they were discussing a curious topic for Literati. I tell you,' cried the youth with energy, 'were I a woman, I'd never bring an action against a man for Breach of Promise of Marriage; I should want his love not his money.' 'Aye,' replied Janet, with unaccountable simplicity, but we want both; and unless the Law laid hold of such scrape-graces, we should get neither, and that would be very hard, would it'not?' Sapient looked extremely disgusted, but the beautiful quadrille band striking up Rossini's enchanting march from 'Pietro L'Eremita,' the Misses Hopkins were very shortly engaged in Showing Off,'

66

M. L. B.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FIRST-BORN.

And it came to pass that at midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh, that sat on the throne, unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon. Exodus, xii. 29. 'Tis night-and darkness, on a coal-black cloud, Sublime in horror, rules the cheerless sky; While rayless Luna and the starry crowd,

Shorn of the beams, no more attract the eye,
And Ether, compass'd with a sable shroud,
O'er earth extends her lampless canopy:

Nature seems dead, her sweet-tun'd harp unstrung,
And stormy winds her requiem have sung.
But hark! 'tis midnight-'tis the solemn hour-
And Egypt's cover'd with terrific gloom,
Her swarthy sons, enchain'd by slumber's pow'r,
Are mute and moveless as the silent tomb:
Regardless of the dreadful fates that low'r,

Trustless of him, whose lips pronounc'd their doom:
"At midnight,' Mizraim, hear Jehovah's word,
Thy first-born sons shall die beneath my sword.'
He comes-the messenger of wrath from Heav'n
On sounding pinions speeds towards Pharaoh's land;
To him the sword of vengeance has been given,

Flashing like light'ning in his pow'rful hand; Whilst from its balanc'd centre earth seems riven, And ocean dashes 'gainst the trembling strand : He comes-the Angel of the Lord draws nigh, And light'nings mark his passage through the sky. Hark! heard you not a soul-appalling scream?

'Twas Egypt's mothers mourning for their dead; Whilst others, rous'd from fancy's pleasing dream, Behold their offspring cold, their spirits fled; Others awake and feel the vital stream,

Grown cold, cease flowing from the fountain-head: Unequall'd scene! save when Jehovah drew His sword, and all th' Assyrian army slew. All feel the stroke-e'en Pharaoh's jewell'd crown Shields not his first-born from the common fate, VOL. 1. May, 1829.

U

His pow'r can never brave Jehovah's frown,
E'en though he sits enthron'd in regal state;
Against his son the fatal arrow's thrown,

And death triumphant on his body sate:
The monarch's tears admit of no control,
And all the father rises in his soul.

The Angel passes on-behold again,

A gloomy dungeon next attracts your eye,
See yonder wretch, whose limbs are bound with chain,
An only child was all the captive's joy;

But now he's gone-the Angel's sword has slain-
And the lone sire laments his darling boy:
He weeps unsolac'd--e'er the morning smil'd,
His disembodied soul rejoin'd his child.
Ah! who can paint the horrors of that night,
When rag'd the king of terrors uncontroll'd?
Who can describe the sad, heart-rending sight,

When mothers woke and found their children cold? The sun arose and shone with wonted light,

On houses fill'd with grief, though roof'd with gold: Each cheek was pallid, every hope had fled, Mizraim was now the kingdom of the dead. Was all the land of Egypt thus distrest? Were all devoted to the mould'ring grave? No-Israel's tribes were by Jehovah blest,

Though task'd and taunted as the meanest slave : The Angel struck not, for 'twas God's behest, His chosen, captive people thus to save: The Paschal Lamb's life-blood was on the door, The sword was stay'd, the Angel pass'd it o'er. Thus in the last-the solemn judgment-day, When earth's encircled with consuming fire, When all the elements shall melt away,

And Nature's self shall form her fun'ral pyre, When all shall rise, and stand in dread array,

None shall escape th' offended Judge's ire,

But they, whose marriage robes are white as snow, Wash'd in their Saviour's blood, which did from Calv'ry flow.

Halifax.

GULIELMUS.