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And now the hand that traces these words falters as it approaches the conclusion of its task, and would weave for a little longer space the thread of these adventures.

I would fain linger yet with a few of those among whom I have so long moved, and share their happiness by endeavouring to depict it. I would show Rose Maylie in all the bloom and grace of early womanhood, shedding upon her secluded path in life such soft and gentle light as fell on all who trod it with her, and shone into their hearts-I would paint her the life and joy of the fireside circle and the lively summer group; I would follow her through the sultry fields at noon, and hear the low tones of her sweet voice in the moonlit evening walk; I would watch her in all her goodness and charity abroad, and the smiling, untiring discharge of domestic duties at home; I would paint her and her dead sister's child happy in their mutual love, and passing whole hours together in picturing the friends whom they had so sadly lost; I would summon before me once again those joyous little faces that clustered round her knee, and listen to their merry prattle; I would recall the tones of that clear laugh, and conjure up the sympathising tear that glistened in that soft blue eye. These, and a thousand looks and smiles, and turns of thought and speech-I would fain recall them every one.

How Mr. Brownlow went on from day to day, filling the mind of his adopted child with stores of knowledge, and becoming attached to him more and more as his nature developed itself, and showed the thriving seeds of all he could wish him to become-how he traced in him new traits of his early friend, that awakened in his own bosom old remem. brances, melancholy and yet sweet and soothing-how the two orphans, tried by adversity, remembered its lessons in mercy to others, and mu. tual love, and fervent thanks to Him who had protected and preserved them—these are all matters which need not to be told; for I have said that they were truly happy; and without strong affection, and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is mercy, and whose great attribute is benevolence to all things that breathe, true happiness can never be attained.

Within the altar of the old village church there stands a white marble tablet, which bears as yet but one word,-" Agnes!" There is no coffin in that tomb; and may it be many, many years before another name is placed above it. But if the spirits of the dead ever come back to earth to visit spots hallowed by the love-the love beyond the grave -of those whom they knew in life, I do believe that the shade of that poor girl often hovers about that solemn nook-ay, though it is a church, and she was weak and erring.

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Cork.

CYPRUS WINE.

FROM THE FRENCH OF BERANGER.

O, CYPRUS, my heart, re-baptized in thy wine,
Knows again the blind Archer; the god of the song,
Venus, Mars, Juno, Pallas, and Jove the divine,—
All, all in my credo forgotten so long.

If our authors, who all wrote like pagans, 'tis true,
Made me curse in my wrath this old credence of earth,
'Twas because they ne'er quaffed of thy classical dew:*
In the wine of gay Cyprus the gods had their birth!

To the Grecian mythology taught in our classes,
By the logic of Bacchus persuaded, I fly.

To my songs shall advance all the Muses and Graces,
And Phoebus shall smile, and the Zephyrs shall sigh;
Fauns, Sylvans, and Dryads, a jubilant crew,

Ye shall waken around me your chorus of mirth—
With the Naiads my muse shall have nothing to do:
In the wine of gay Cyprus the gods had their birth!

Methinks, by the glow of the liquor beguiled,

I approach some old altar of mythical times,
Where Beauty with green myrtle coronal smiled,
To melt loving hearts beneath soft sunny climes.
Let us fancy the charm of the azure that lies

Far away from the cold and the turbulent North:
Oh! well may they people such beautiful skies!—
In the wine of gay Cyprus the gods had their birth?

Brave Hesiod of old, with his eyes in the cloud,

Sought high-sounding names for their godships in vain;
For the want of ideas, he commenced at an ode,

When a wine-skin from Cyprus arrived o'er the main.
He drinks, and gets drunk, and he hastens to mount
His Pegasus, prancing in ecstasy forth;

All Olympus flows out from that bacchanal fount :
In the wine of gay Cyprus the gods had their birth!

To the deities fabled of old we oppose

Our devils-consoling to few, I presume

Witches, goblins, and vampires, and ghouls, and all those
Most amiable playthings of ages of gloom.

Out, out on the spectres, and tombs, and all that!
Out, out on the horrible-what is it worth?

Let a dove be our emblem instead of a bat:

In the wine of gay Cyprus the gods had their birth!

The bards of old Greece, all unrivalled so long,
Have owed to their wine their immortal renown.-
Quick, fill up my goblet,-perchance that my song
To the far distant future may also go down.
But no-lovely Hebe, descend from the skies
With a bevy of Loves to encircle my hearth-
She fills up my cup with a smile in her eyes!-

In the wine of gay Cyprus the gods had their birth!

W.D.

* Or "'Twas because they ne'er reel'd with thy classical dew,”—which better translates the original.

COLIN CLINK.

CONTAINING THE CONTENTIONS, DISSENSIONS, LOVES, HATREDS,
JEALOUSIES, HYPOCRISIES, AND VICISSITUDES, INCIDENT
TO HIS CHEQUERED LIFE.

BY MASK.

CHAPTER 1.

Affords a capital illustration of the way of the world. For whereas, as knaves and fools not unusually take precedence of better men, so this chapter, though placed at the head of a long regiment, is yet inferior to any one that comes after.

no fall."

THE famous John Bunyan, or Bunion,-for the true orthography of this renowned name is much doubted amongst the learned of the present age, has laid it down as an axiom in that most glorious of all Progresses, the Pilgrim's Progress, that "He that is down needs fear And who, in good truth, will undertake to dispute the good pilgrim's remark? Since nothing can be more clear to an eye as philosophic as was that of Mr. Bunyan, that if a man be seated on the ground, he most certainly is not in much danger of slipping through his chair; or that, being already at the bottom of the water, he "needs fear no fall" from the yard-arm.

On this assurance, I take courage for Colin Clink. Down in the world with respect to its goods, down in society, down in the estimation of his own father and mother, and down in that which our modern political ragamuffins are pleased to term the "accident" of birth, he assuredly had not the least occasion for a single instant to trouble his mind with fears of falling any lower. For, happily, it is not in this world of solid matter, as in the world of spirits,-that a deep still lower than the lowest can open its atrocious mouth, and threaten to devour us.

From the very earliest, therefore, he had, and could have, but one prospect before him, and that was, the prospect of rising above his first condition. To be sure, like Bruce's spider, he afterwards fell sometimes; but then he reflected that rising and falling, like standing up and sitting down, constitute a portion of the lot of every man's life.

It is currently related amongst the good folks of the country-side wherein our hero first saw the light, that while three or four officious neighbourly women were stealing noiselessly about the room, attending to the wants of the sick woman, and while the accoucheur of the parish was inly congratulating himself on having introduced his round five-thousandth child to the troublesome pleasures of this world, young Colin turned from the arms of the nurse who held him, and, as though even then conscious of the obligation conferred upon him by his admission to the stage of life, stretched out his hand towards the astonished surgeon, and in a very audible voice exclaimed, "Thank you, doctor-thank you!"

I do not vouch for the truth of this anecdote; but this I do say, --whether or not he had anything to be thankful for will be seen,

much as he himself saw it, during the course of this his own true history.

That he was lucky in opening his eyes, even though in an humble cottage, amidst the scenes that nature spread around him, is certain enough. To be born poor as the spirit of poverty herself, is suffi ciently bad; but far worse is it to be thus born in the bottom of some noisome alley of a vast town, where a single ray of sunlight never falls, nor a glimpse of the sky itself is ever caught, beyond what may be afforded by that small dusky section of it which seems to lie like a dirty ceiling on the chimney-tops, and even then cannot be seen, unless (to speak like a geometrician) by raising the face to a horizontal position and the eyes perpendicularly. Fresh air, fields, rivers, clouds and sunshine, redeem half the miseries of want, and make a happy joyful being of him who, in any other sense, cannot call one single atom of the world his own.

Colin Clink was a native of the village of Bramleigh, about twenty miles west of that city of law and divinity, of sermons and proctors' parchment, the silent city of York.

Some time previous to his birth, his mother had taken a fancy, suggested, very probably, by the powerful pleading of a weak pocket, or, with equal probability, by something else to the full as argumentative, to reside in a small cottage, (as rural landowners are in the habit of terming such residences, though they are known to everybody else as hovels,) altogether by herself; if I except a little girl, some five or six years of age, who accompanied her in the capacity of embryo housemaid, gruel-maker, and, when strong enough, of nurse to the expected "little stranger."

For the discharge of the more important and pressing duties incident to her situation, she depended upon one or two of those permanently unemployed old crones, usually to be found in country places, who pass the greater portion of their time in "preserving" themselves, like red herrings or hung beef, over the idle smoke of their own scanty fires, and who, as they are always waiting chances, may be had by asking for at any moment. Their minimum of wages depended upon a small sum of money derived by Mistress Clink, the mother of our hero, from a source which, as she then followed no particular employment, we are compelled to pronounce obscure.

The sagacious reader may, perhaps, in the height of his wisdom, marvel how so young a child as one of five or six years of age should be introduced to his notice in the capacity above-mentioned; but the practice is common enough, and may be accounted for, in the way of cause and effect, upon the most modern philosophical principles. Thus-Great states require great taxes to support them; great taxes produce political extravagance; political extravagance enforces domestic economy; and doméstic economy, now-a-days, demands that every pair of hands, however small, shall labour for the milk that supports them; and every little heart, however light, shall be filled with the pale cares and yearning anxieties which naturally belong only to mature age.

Of such as these was Mistress Clink's diminutive housemaid, Fanny Woodruff.

Brought up amidst hardships from the first day of her existence, through the agency either of the rod, the heavier stick, or of keener hunger, during at least twelve hours out of every twenty-four that

passed over her head; she presented, at five years of age, the miniature picture, painted in white and yellow,-for all the carnation had fled from Nature's palette when she drew this mere sketch of incipient woman,―she presented, I repeat, the miniature picture, not of what childhood is, a bright and joyful outburst of fresh life into a new world of strange attractive things-not of that restless inquiring existence, curious after every created object, and happy amidst them all; but of a little pale, solemn thing, looking as though it had suddenly fallen, heart-checked, upon a world of evil-as though its eyes had looked only upon discouragement, and its hands been stretched in love, only to be repulsed with indifference or with hatred. The picture of a little baby soul, prematurely forced upon the grown-up anxieties of the world, and made almost a woman in demeanour, before she knew half the attractive actions of a child.

Notwithstanding all this, and in spite of the unnatural care-worn expression of her little melancholy countenance, Fanny's features retained something of that indefinite quality commonly termed "interesting." Two black eyes, which showed nothing but black between the lids, looked openly but fearfully from beneath the arched browless bones of the forehead, and, with an irrepressible questioning in the face of the spectator, seemed ever to be asking doubtfully, whether there was or was not such a creature as a friend in the world; but her sunken cheeks and wasted arms belied the happy age of childhood, and spoke only of hard usage and oft-continued suffering.

On the eventful day that gave young Master Colin Clink to the world, and about twelve hours previous to the time at which he should have made his actual appearance, Mistress Clink, his mother, was lying upon a bed in an inner ground-floor room of her cottage, thinking if the troubled and confused ideas that filled her brain might be termed thinking-upon her coming trials; while little Fanny, taking temporary advantage of the illness of her mistress, and relaxing, in a moment of happy forgetfulness, again into a child, was sitting upon the ground near the door, and noiselessly amusing herself by weighing in a halfpenny pair of tin scales the sand which had been strown upon the floor by way of carpet, when the abrupt entrance of some one at the outer door, though unheard by the sick woman amidst her half.dreaming reveries, so startled the little offender on the ground, that in her haste to scramble on to her feet, and recover all the solemn proprieties and demure looks which, in a returning moment of infantile nature, had deen cast aside, she upset the last imaginary pound of sand-made sugar that had been heaped up on a stool beside her, and at the same time chanced to strike her head against the other side of the little round table which stood at hand, whereby a bottle of physic was tossed uninjured on the bed, and a spoon precipitated to the floor. Her countenance instantly changed to an expression which told that the crime was of too black a dye to be forgiven. But patience without tears, and endurance without complaint, were also as visible; virtues which hard necessity had instilled into her bosom long before.

Ill as Mistress Clink may readily be presumed to have been, she started half up in bed, leaning with her elbow upon the pillow, her countenance, pale and ghastly with sickness, rendered still more pale and horrible with anger, and gasping for words, which even then,

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