rude looms on the banks of the Ganges, and their frugal, industrious workers perished at a blow. But you know competition is the order of the day-the weak in these times must go to the wall."

Perceiving that I did not exactly understand the Christian spirit of this doctrine, he added, with a more earnest tone, "Perhaps the time will come, when the transition from a slow to a more speedy method of production, through the agency of machinery, will be made with some mitigation of all this sudden and unlooked-for misery-but while I am moralizing my lamp is burning, and I have a score of slides yet to show you."

With that the lantern threw upon the wall another picture. It was an African desert, and an Arab on horseback was hunting down the swift ostrich, which with outspread wings sailed along the burning sand. At length, worn out by the greater power of endurance of his pursuer, he was taken and slain, and his captor rewarded himself for his trouble by plucking from the yet bleeding bird his waving plumage. In the distance, a caravan comes winding along towards some distant mart, to which the Arab attaches himself-the wells fail the moving multitude, and one by one, man and beast, fall and leave their whitened bones as a track-mark for future travellers across the waste; but the merchandise is borne home, though human life is lost.

You would not think, to see with what negligent elegance this feather falls," said the stranger, holding up its white sweep, "that man had given even life in the struggle to bring it to this perfection. But there, what's to be done?-we always thought more of matter than of man. We have not quite finished yet," said he, taking up the cane framework of the bonnet; go to the New World for our next picture.”

we must

As he spoke, he adjusted a new slide, and showed a Brazilian plantation, in which the slaves laboured under fear of the cowhide of the overseer. "The bees who make the honey," said he, with his cold sneer, "how grateful man is to them! I suppose you think we have no such slaves. I have two or three choice slides here," said he, holding up the transparent glasses-" a figure or so of an exhausted milliner, and a Spitalfields weaver in his little garret, weaving inch by inch glossy satin, whilst his own poor family have only rags to cover them; but I have shown you enough of the misery that has gone towards making this little trifle. The pretty little miss, when she puts it on, and carries it so lightly on her head, will little think how it has been delved, and forged, and weaved, and built up into such a becom

ing fashion-but it is worth a thought about."

With that he

blew lightly on the scattered materials, and they rushed together as speedily as they had before fallen to pieces.

And clapping his magic lantern under his arm, he wished me a good evening and disappeared.

Why, Tom," said a sweet voice close to my ear, at the same time a soft little fist thumped me on the back—" why, Tom," said Anne, "you have been talking such strange things in your sleep this last half-hour. I told you how 'twould be, eating so many nuts." And truly I had gone fast asleep with my feet on the fender, and saw this vision.-Dr. Wynter's 'Our Social Bees,'

WILL WIMBLE.

As I was yesterday morning walking with Sir Roger before his house, a country fellow brought him a huge fish, which, he told him, Mr. William Wimble had caught that very morning; and that he presented it, with his service to him, and intended to come and dine with him. At the same time he delivered a letter, which my friend read to me as soon as the messenger left him.

"SIR ROGER,-I desire you to accept a jack, which is the best I have caught this season. I intend to come and stay with you a week, and see how the perch bite in the Black River. I observed with some concern, the last time I saw you upon the bowling-green, that your whip wanted a lash to it. I will bring half a dozen with me that I twisted last week, which I hope will serve you all the time you are in the country. I have not been out of the saddle for six days last past, having been at Eton with Sir John's eldest son. He takes to his learning hugely.

"I am, Sir, your humble servant,

"WILL WIMBLE."

This extraordinary letter, and message that accompanied it, made me very curious to know the character and quality of the gentleman who sent them; which I found to be as follows. Will Wimble is younger brother to a baronet, and descended of the ancient family of the Wimbles. He is now between

forty and fifty; but being bred to no business and born to no estate, he generally lives with his elder brother as superintendent of his game. He hunts a pack of dogs better than any man in the county, and is very famous for finding out a hare. He is extremely well versed in all the little handicrafts of an idle man: he makes a may-fly to a miracle; and furnishes the whole county with angle-rods. As he is a good-natured officious fellow, and very much esteemed upon account of his family, he is a welcome guest at every house, and keeps up a good correspondence among all the gentlemen about him. He carries a tulip-root in his pocket from one to another, or exchanges a puppy between a couple of friends that live perhaps in the opposite sides of the county. Will is a particular favourite of all the young heirs, whom he frequently obliges with a net that he has weaved, or a setting-dog that he has made himself. He now and then presents a pair of garters of his own knitting to ⚫ their mothers or sisters; and raises a great deal of mirth among them, by inquiring as often as he meets them how they wear? These gentleman-like manufactures and obliging little humours make Will the darling of the country.

Sir Roger was proceeding in the character of him, when we saw him make up to us with two or three hazel-twigs in his hand that he had cut in Sir Roger's woods, as he came through them, in his way to the house. I was very much pleased to observe on one side the hearty and sincere welcome with which Sir Roger received him, and on the other, the secret joy which his guest discovered at sight of the good old Knight. After the first salutes were over, Will desired Sir Roger to lend him one of his servants to carry a set of shuttlecocks he had with him in a little box to a lady that lived about a mile off, to whom it seems he had promised such a present for above this half year. Sir Roger's back was no sooner turned but honest Will began to tell me of a large cock-pheasant that he had sprung in one of the neighbouring woods, with two or three other adventures of the same nature. Odd and uncommon characters are the game that I look for, and most delight in; for which reason I was as much pleased with the novelty of the person that talked to me, as he could be for his life with the springing of a pheasant, and therefore listened to him with more than ordinary attention.

In the midst of his discourse the bell rung to dinner, where the gentleman I have been speaking of had the pleasure of seeing the huge jack he had caught, served up for the first dish in a most sumptuous manner. Upon our sitting down to it he gave

us a long account how he had hooked it, played with it, foiled it, and at length drew it out upon the bank, with several other particulars that lasted all the first course. A dish of wild fowl that came afterwards furnished conversation for the rest of the dinner, which concluded with a late invention of Will's for improving the quail-pipe.

Upon withdrawing into my room after dinner, I was secretly touched with compassion towards the honest gentleman that had dined with us; and could not but consider, with a great deal of concern, how so good a heart and such busy hands were wholly employed in trifles; that so much humanity should be so little beneficial to others, and so much industry so little advantageous to himself. The same temper of mind and application to affairs might have recommended him to the public esteem, and have raised his fortune in another station of life. What good to his country or himself might not a trader or a merchant have done with such useful though ordinary qualifications?

Will Wimble's is the case of many a younger brother of a great family, who had rather see their children starve like gentlemen than thrive in a trade or profession that is beneath their quality. This humour fills several parts of Europe with pride and beggary. It is the happiness of a trading nation, like ours, that the younger sons, though incapable of any liberal art or profession, may be placed in such a way of life as may perhaps enable them to vie with the best of their family. Accordingly, we find several citizens that were launched into the world with narrow fortunes, rising by an honest industry to greater estates than those of their elder brothers. It is not improbable but Will was formerly tried at divinity, law, or physic; and that finding his genius did not lie that way, his parents gave him up at length to his own inventions. But certainly, however improper he might have been for studies of a higher nature, he was perfectly well turned for the occupations of trade and commerce.-From the 'Spectator.'

THE COVERLEY SUNDAY.

I AM always very well pleased with a country Sunday, and think, if keeping holy the first day were only a human institution, it would be the best method that could have been thought

of for the polishing and civilising of mankind. It is certain the country people would soon degenerate into a kind of savages and barbarians, were there not such frequent returns of a stated time, in which the whole village meet together with their best faces, and in their cleanliest habits, to converse with one another upon indifferent subjects, hear their duties explained to them, and join together in adoration of the Supreme Being. Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week, not only as it refreshes in their minds the notions of religion, but as it puts both the sexes upon appearing in their most agreeable forms, and exerting all such qualities as are apt to give them a figure in the eye of the village. A country fellow distinguishes himself as much in the churchyard as a citizen does upon the 'Change, the whole parish politics being generally discussed in that place, either after sermon or before the bell rings.

My friend Sir Roger, being a good churchman, has beautified the inside of his church with several texts of his own choosing: he has likewise given a handsome pulpit cloth, and railed in the communion table at his own expense. He has often told me, that at his coming to his estate, he found his parishioners very irregular; and that in order to make them kneel and join in the responses, he gave every one of them a hassock and a Common Prayer Book: and at the same time employed an itinerant singing master, who goes about the country for that purpose, to instruct them rightly in the tunes of the Psalms; upon which they now very much value themselves, and indeed outdo most of the country churches that I have ever heard.

As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congregation, he keeps them in very good order, and will suffer nobody to sleep in it besides himself; for if by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up and looks about him, and, if he sees anybody else nodding, either wakes them himself, or sends his servants to them. Several other of the old Knight's particularities break out upon these occasions: sometimes he will be lengthening out a verse in the singing Psalms, half a minute after the rest of the congregation have done with it; sometimes, when he is pleased with the matter of his devotion, he pronounces Amen three or four times to the same prayer; and sometimes stands up when everybody else is upon their knees, to count the congregation, or see if any of his tenants are missing.

I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my old friend, in the midst of the service, calling out to one John Matthews