heightening the rest, and just allowed the castle-turrets to appear, shadowed with the mystery of mist and imagination.

After a magnificent supper, consisting of a basin of boiled bread and milk, a salad, and a huge pancake, the common bill of fare of a German evening repast in a rural district, the philosopher and myself retired. I told him of my intention to part company there; begged him to proceed on his journey on the morrow; wished him good night; and heartily hoped I had lost sight of him for ever.

Not so! for scarcely had I sunk into a profound sleep, the delicious effect of air and exercise on him whose breast is not overloaded with that "perilous stuff" which Macbeth speaks of, when my bed-room door was suddenly burst open, and my wide-staring eyes beheld the figure of the philosopher, ungarmented, except in the scant drapery of a blue check shirt, a red cap on his head, and a pipe in his hand.

'

"For God's sake, get up! Jump, jump!" exclaimed he. A most beautiful sight! Look, look! There rises Scorpio over the chimneys, in conjunction with the Virgin! Look, look!"

Starting out of bed at the first invitation, I turned my gaze in the direction he pointed to; bewildered, for a moment, by commingling associations of snakes, scorpions, and tom cats, and a thousand incongruous fancies connected with house-roofs and conjunctions too numerous for momentary disentanglement. In my half-waking confusion I never dreamt of Scorpio and Virgo; and it was only when I fixed my eyes on the brilliant mystery first named, shining high above the lofty ridge of the castle walls, that I knew my philosopher added a smattering of astronomy to his alogies and ologies; and I almost cursed my stars for dooming me to endure the infliction of this persecuting caricature of science, both by day and night. I, however, quickly turned him out of my room, betook myself to bed again, and quite forgot him and his absurdities, till a chance informant lately told me that he was the possessor of at least 30007. a-year; and that his air of poverty and meanness was assumed to remove suspicion of his personal wealth,— not worth, he invariably carrying a large sum about him. I then determined that he was fair game for "a sketch,"❞—in his double сараcity of noodle and niggard.

THE FEMALE CONVICT-SHIP.

BY THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.

THE tide is in, the breeze is fair,
The vessel under weigh;
The gallant prow glides swiftly on,
And throws aside the spray:
The tranquil ocean, mirror-like,
Reflects the deep blue skies;
And, pointing to the destin'd course,
The straighten'd pennon flies.

Oh! none of those heart-cradled prayers
That never reach the lip,

No benedictions wait upon

That fast-receding ship;

No tearful eyes are strain'd to watch
Its progress from the land;

And there are none to wave the scarf,
And none to kiss the hand.

Yet women throng that vessel's deck-
The haggard, and the fair,

The young in guilt, and the depraved,
Are intermingled there!

The girl, who from her mother's arms

Was early lured away;

The harden'd hag, whose trade hath been

A

To lead the pure astray!

young and sickly mother kneels

Apart from all the rest;

And with a song of home she lulls

The babe upon her breast.

She falters, for her tears must flow,-
She cannot end the verse;

And nought is heard among the crowd
But laughter, shout, or curse!

'Tis sunset. Hark! the signal gun;All from the deck are sent

The young, the old, the best, the worst,
In one dark dungeon pent!

Their wailings, and their horrid mirth,
Alike are hush'd in sleep:
And now the female convict-ship
In silence ploughs the deep.

But long the lurid tempest-cloud
Hath brooded o'er the waves;
And suddenly the winds are roused,
And leave their secret caves;
And up aloft the ship is borne,
And down again as fast;
And every mighty billow seems
More dreadful than the last.

Oh! who that loves the pleasure-barque,
By summer breezes fann'd,
Shall dare to paint the ocean-storm,
Terrifically grand?

When helplessly the vessel drifts,
Each torn sail closely furl'd;
When not a man of all the crew
Knows whither she is hurl'd!

And who shall tell the agony
Of those confined beneath,
Who in the darkness dread to die-
How unprepared for death!
Who, loathing, to each other cling
When every hope hath ceased,
And beat against their prison door,
And shriek to be released!

Three times the ship hath struck. Again!

She never more will float.

Oh! wait not for the rising tide;
Be steady-man the boat.
And see, assembled on the shore,
The merciful, the brave;-
Quick, set the female convicts free,
There still is time to save!

It is in vain! what demon blinds
The captain and the crew?
The rapid rising of the tide
With mad delight they view.
They hope the coming waves will waft
The convict ship away!

The foaming monster hurries on,
Impatient for his prey!

And He is come! the rushing flood

In thunder sweeps the deck;

The groaning timbers fly apart, :

The vessel is a wreck!

One moment from the female crowd
There comes a fearful cry;

The next, they're hurl'd into the deep,
To struggle, and to die!

Their corses strew a foreign shore,
Left by the ebbing tide;

And sixty in a ghastly row
Lie number'd, side by side!
The lifeless mother's bleeding form
Comes floating from the wreck ;
And lifeless is the babe she bound
So fondly round her neck!

'Tis morn ;-the anxious eye can trace
No vessel on the deep;

But gather'd timber on the shore

Lies in a gloomy heap:

In winter time those brands will blaze

Our tranquil homes to warm,

Though torn from that poor convict ship
That perish'd in the storm!

INHABITANTS OF A COUNTRY TOWN.

BY MISS MITFORD.

No. II.-PETER JENKINS, THE POULTERER.

As I prophesied, so it fell out: Mr. Stephen Lane became parishofficer of Sunham. I did not, however, foresee that the matter would be so easily and so speedily settled; neither did he. Mr. Jacob Jones, the ex-ruler of that respectable hamlet, was a cleverer person than we took him for; and, instead of staying to be beaten, sagely preferred to " evacuate Flanders," and leave the enemy in undisputed possession of the field of battle. He did not even make his appearance at the vestry, nor did any of his partizans. Stephen had it all his own way; was appointed overseer, and found himself, to his great astonishment, carrying all his points, sweeping away, cutting down, turning out, retrenching, and reforming so as never reformer did before; for in the good town of B-, although eventually triumphant, and pretty generally successful in most of his operations, he had been accustomed to play the part, not of a minister who originates, but of a leader of opposition who demolishes measures; in short, he had been a sort of check, a balancewheel in the borough machinery, and never dreamt of being turned into a main spring, so that, when called upon to propose his own plans, his success disconcerted him not a little. It was so unexpected, and he himself so unprepared for a catastrophe which took from him his own dear fault-finding ground, and placed him in the situation of a reviewer who should be required to write a better book than the one under dissection, in the place of cutting it up.

Our good butcher was fairly posed, and, what was worse, his adversary knew it. Mr. Jacob Jones felt his advantage, returned with all his forces (consisting of three individuals, like " a three-tailed bashaw") to the field which he had abandoned, and commenced a series of skirmishing guerrilla warfare, affairs of posts, as it were, which went near to make his ponderous, and hitherto victorious enemy, in spite of the weight of his artillery and the number and discipline of his troops, withdraw in his turn from the position which he found it so painful and so difficult to maintain. Mr. Jacob Jones was a great man at a quibble. He could not knock down like Stephen Lane, but he had a real talent for that sort of pulling to pieces which, to judge from the manner in which all children, before they are taught better, exercise their little mischievous fingers upon flowers, would seem to be instinctive in human nature. Never did a spoilt urchin of three years old demolish a carnation more completely than Mr. Jacob Jones picked to bits Mr. Lane's several propositions. On the broad question, the principle of the thing proposed, our good ex-butcher was pretty sure to be victorious; but in the detail, the clauses of the different measures, Mr. Jacob Jones, who had a wonderful turn for perplexing and puzzling whatever question he took in hand, a real genius for confusion, generally contrived (for the gentleman was a "word-catcher who lived on syllables") by expunging half a sentence in one place, and smuggling in two or three words in another, by alterations that were anything but amendments, and amendments

that overset all that had gone before, to produce such a mass of contradictions and nonsense, that the most intricate piece of special pleading that ever went before the Lord Chancellor, or the most addle-headed bill that ever passed through a Committee of the whole House, would have been common sense and plain English in the comparison. The man had eminent qualities for a debater, too, especially a debater of that order, incorrigible pertness, intolerable pertinacity, and a noble contempt of right and wrong. Even in that matter which is most completely open to proof, a question of figures, he was wholly inaccessible to conviction; show him the fact fifty times over, and still he returned to the charge, still was his shrill squeaking treble heard above and between the deep sonorous bass of Stephen,-still did his small narrow person whisk and flitter around the "huge rotundity" of that ponderous and excellent parish-officer, buzzing and stinging like some active hornet or slim dragon fly about the head of one of his own oxen. There was no putting down Jacob Jones.

Our good butcher fretted and fumed, and lifted his hat from his head, and smoothed down his shining hair, and wiped his honest face, and stormed, and thundered, and vowed vengeance against Jacob Jones, and finally threatened not only to secede with his whole party from the vestry, but to return to the Butter-market at B- and leave the management of Sunham, workhouse, poor-rates, highways, and all, to his nimble competitor. One of his most trusty adherents indeed, a certain wealthy yeoman of the name of Alsop, well acquainted with his character, suggested that a very little flattery on the part of Mr. Lane, or even a few well-directed bribes, would not fail to dulcify and even to silence the worthy in question; but Stephen had never flattered anybody in his life; it is very doubtful if he knew how; and held bribery of any sort in a real honest abhorrence, very unusual for one who had so much to do with contested elections;-and to bribe and flatter Jacob Jones! Jacob, whom the honest butcher came nearer to hating than ever he had to hating anybody! His very soul revolted against it. So he appointed Farmer Alsop, who understood the management of " the chap," as he was wont to call his small opponent, deputy overseer, and betook himself to his private concerns in the conduct of his own grazing farm, in overseeing the great shop in the Butter-market, in attending his old clubs, and mingling with his old associates in B—; and, above all, in sitting in his sunny summer-house during the sultry evenings of July and August, enveloped in the fumes of his own pipe and clouds of dust from the high-road,-which was his manner of enjoying the pleasures of the country.

Towards autumn, a new and a different interest presented itself to the mind of Stephen Lane in the shape of the troubles of one of his most intimate friends and most faithful and loyal adherents in the borough - of B-.

Peter Jenkins, the poulterer, his next door neighbour in the Buttermarket, formed exactly that sort of contrast in mind and body to the gigantic and energetic butcher which we so often find amongst persons strongly attached to each other. Each was equally good and kind, and honest and true, but strength was the distinguishing characteristic of the one man, and weakness of the other. Peter, much younger than his friend and neighbour, was pale and fair, and slender and delicate, with