AT Warmbrunt there lived a sober and industrious tradesman, who occupied a lonely house. His appearance bespoke great poverty: it was seldom that he entered into conversation with any person: and report alleged, that he occupied himself in chemical researches, with the hope of discovering the golden essence, and suddenly amassing great treasures. He would often wander forth alone into the wild district behind the Kynast, where he would bury himself for hours together in the dark woods, and only return to his hut in the twilight. To one person alone had he intrusted the secret of that spell which attracted him so frequently to this wild region, he had told him in an hour of confidence, how his heart was stirred

+ Warmbrun is a watering-place in the Sile sian mountains, celebrated for its warm springs which we e discovered in the beginning of the 12th century

One of the peaks of the Giant Mountain; VOL. I. I

within him while wandering in its lonely ravines, and how there lay concealed for him in its dark rocks, the long worshipped mystery of his life, and treasures inex haustible.

One day, as he took his way in a more melancholy mood than usual up the mountain, he perceived, while wandering under the dark fir boughs, a clear light shining at a distance, and on approaching it, disdefend the entrance to a lighted-up cacovered an iron gate, which seemed to, vern, full of open chests containing untold treasures of gold, and silver, and jewels, which all seemed to smile upon the dazzled beholder. As he stood gazing on the red gold, a gigantic figure suddenly appeared at his side, who addressed him in these words:"All those treasures are yours; only mark well the place when you return hither three days hence, yonder gate shall be standing open." The forest had an opening at this spot, which allowed a clear prospect into the valley beneath; towards the left of the Kynast, the steeple of Hermsdorf was just seen rising above an intervening eminence; above the Kynast rose the steeple of

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Warmbrun, and Hirschberg lay in the back-ground of the scene. The gigantic figure pointed out the bearings of the spires, and the principal objects in the landscape: "Fix the picture well in your mind," said he; "when you shall have returned three days hence, and recognized this spot by all those marks, then will you perceive the cavern lighted up as it now is, and the gate standing open; enter and your happiness is secured." The astonished and enraptured chemist endeavoured, by every means in his power, to fix the locality of the wondrous spot; he went away, returned again,-hesitated, -renewed his observations, and at last satisfied himself that he could not fail to recognise the identical spot from which he had beheld the riches of the cavern: "There is a piece of money for you,' said the mysterious figure," that you may not persuade yourself that you have seen all this in a dream;" he gave him a gold coin inscribed with strange characters, and then vanished from the chemist's sight. When the poor man looked around him, the cavern also had disappeared, and he would have believed all that had pas

sed to have been but an illusion, had not the piece of gold, which he still held in his hand, satisfied him of its reality.

Thoughtfully he went home, carefully. observing every step of the path by which he returned, and marking the neighbouring trees. On the third day he hastened with impatience up the mountain,-he found the trees which he had marked,he recognised the foot-path,-he beheld the dark rocks at a distance,-and now he tried to place himself on the appointed spot by observing the bearings of the distant objects. The steeple of Hermsdorf already appeared on the left of the Kynast, but he looked in vain for the steeple of Warmburg rising above the ruins which crowned it. At last, after long and toilsome search, he reached a spot from whence he could perceive the latter object:-but then the steeple of Hermsdorf had sunk behind the mountain. treasure seeker became feverishly anxious,

The

he shifted his position,-now he moved lower down, now climbed farther up the ascent,-now he advanced towards the right, now towards the left,-sometimes he got two objects in the right position,

but on looking round for the others they had vanished; the perspiration streamed over his agitated features, - his eyes rolled wildly-he threw his strained looks across the country,-" There now, I have it!" he would exclaim, and for a moment his countenance brightened up, but on looking again the deceitful landsmarks had shifted their position. Thus tortured by the dreadful agony of high wrought but perpetually disappointed expectation, he continued gazing wildly across the distant country, till the dusky twilight had concealed every object from his sight, and despair had risen to a pitch of madness. The poor wretch's brain began to burn wildly, he descended from the mountain a raving maniac; but every third day, during the rest of his miserable life, he sought to trace the position of the objects pointed out to him by Rubezahl, with the same indiscribable anxiety and baffled expectation.-Week. Rev.

A HINT TO RETIRING CITIZENS.

Yg Cits who at White Conduit House,
Hampstead or Holloway carouse,
Let no vain wish disturb ye,
For rural pleasures unexplored,
Take those your Sabbath strolls afford,
And prize your Rus in urbe.

For many who from active trades
Have plunged into sequestered shades,
Will dismally assure ye,
That it's a harder task to bear
Th' ennui produced by country air,
And sigh for Urbs in rure.

The cub in prison born and fed,
The bird that in a cage was bred,
The hutch-engender'd rabbit.
Are like the long-imprisoned Cit,
For sudden liberty unfit,
Degenerate by habit.

1

Sir William Curtis, were he mew 'd,
In some romantic solitude,

A bower of rose and myrtle,
Would find the loving turtle-dove
No succedaneum for his love
Of London Tavern Turtle.

Sir Astley Cooper, cloy'd with wealth,
Sick of luxurious ease and health,
And rural meditation,

Sighs for his useful London life,
The restless night-the saw and knife
Of daily amputation.

Habit is second nature-when
It supersedes the first, wise men
Receive it as a warning,

That total change comes then too late,
And they must e'en assimilate

Life's evening to its morning.

Thrice happy he whose mind has sprung
From Mammon's yoke while yet unwrung,
Or spoilt for nobler duty;-
Who still can gaze on Nature's face
With all a lover's zeal, and trace
In every change a beauty.

THERE the new-breeched urchin stands on the low bridge of the little bit burnie! and with crooked pin, baited with one unwrithing ring of a dead worm, and attached to a yarn-thread, for he has not yet got into hair, and is years off gut, his rod of the mere willow or hazel wand, there will he stand during all his play-hours, as forgetful of his primer as if the weary art of printing had never been invented, day after day, week after week, month after month, in mute, deep, earnest, passionate, heart-mind-and-souĺ engrossing hope of some time or other catching a minnow or a beardie! A tug -a tug with face ten times flushed and pale by turns ere you could count ten, he at last has strength, in the agitation of his fear and joy, to pull away at the monster-and there he lies in his beauty among the gowans on the greensward, for he has whapped him right over his head and far away, a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, and, at the very least, two inches long! Off he flies, on wings of wind, to his father, mother, and sisters, and brothers, and cousins, and all the neighbourhood, holding the fish aloft in both hands, still fearful of its escape, and, like a genuine child of corruption, his eyes brighten at the first blush of cold blood on his small fishy-fumy fingers. He carries about with him, up stairs and down stairs, his prey upon a plate; he will not wash his hands before dinner, for he exults in the silver scales adhering to the thumb-nail that scooped the pin out of the baggy's maw-and at night, "cabin'd, cribb'd, confined," he is overheard murmuring in his sleep, a thief, a robber, and a murderer, in his yet infant dreams!

From that hour Angling is no more a mere delightful day-dream, haunted by the dim hopes of imaginary minnows, but a reality-an art-a science-of which the flaxen headed school-boy feels himself to be master-a mystery in which he has been initiated, and off he goes now, all alone, in the power of successful pas sion, to the distant brook-brook a mile off-with fields, and hedges, and single

trees, and little groves, and a huge forest of six acres, between and the house in which he is boarded or was born! There flows on the slender music of the 'shadowy shallows there pours the deeper din of the birch-tree'd waterfall. The sacred water-pyet flits away from stone to stone, and dipping, disappears among the airy bubbles, to him a new sight of joy and wonder. And oh how sweet the scent of the broom or furze, yellowing along the braes, where leap the lambs, less happy than he, on the knolls of sunshine! His grand father has given him a half-crown rod in two pieces-ves, his line is of hair twisted--platted by his own soon instructed little fingers. By heavens, he is fishing with the fly! and the Fates, who grim and grisly as they are painted to be by full-grown, ungrateful, lying poets, smile like angels upon the padler in the brook, winnowing the air with their wings into western breezes, while at the very first throw the yellow trout forsakes his fastness beneath the bog-wood, and with a lazy wallop, and then a sudden plunge, and then a race like lightning, changes at once the child into the boy, and shoots through his thrilling and aching heart the ecstacy of a new life expanding in that glorious pastime, even as a rainbow on a sudden brightens up the sky. Fortuna favet fortibus-and with one long pull and strong pull, and pull all together, Johnny lands a twelve incher on the soft, smooth, silvery sand of the only bay in all the burn where such an exploit was possible, and dashing upon him like an Osprey, soars up with him in his talons to the bank, breaking his line as he hurries off to a spot of safety twenty yards from the pool, and then flinging him down on a heath surrounded plat of sheep nibbled verdure, lets him bounce about till he is tired, and lies gasping with unfrequent and feeble motions, bright and beautiful, and glorious with all his yellow light, and crimson lustre, spotted, speckled, and starred in his scaly splendour, be neath a sun that never shone before so dazzlingly; but now the radiance of the captive creature is dimmer and obscured, for the eye of day winks and seems almost shut behind that slow sailing mass of clouds, composed in equal parts of air, rain, and sunshine.

Springs, summers, autumns, winters, -each within itself longer, by many times longer than the whole year of grown up life, that slips at last through one's fingers like a knotless thread,pass over the curled darling's brow, and look at him now, a straight and strengthy

stripling, in the savage spirit of sport, springing over rock-ledge after rockledge, nor heeding aught as he splashes knee-deep, or waist-band high, through river-feeding torrents, to the glorious music of his running and ringing reel, after a tongue-hooked salmon, insanely seeking with the ebb of tide, but all in vain, the white breakers of the sea. No hazel or willow wand, no half-crown rod of ash framed by village wright, 'is now in his practised hands, of which the very left is dexterous: but a twenty feet rod of Phin's, all ring-rustling, and aglitter with the preserving varnish, limber as the attenuating line itself, and lithe to its topmost tenuity as the elephant's proboscis-the hiccory, and the horn without twist, knot, or flaw, from butt to fly, a faultless taper, "fine by degrees and beautifully less," the beau ideal of a rod by the skill of a cunning craftsman to the senses materialised! A Fish-fat, fair, and forty! "She is a salmon, therefore to be woo'd-she is a salmon, therefore to be won❞—but shy, timid, capricious, headstrong, now wrathful, and now full of fear, like any other female whom the cruel artist has hooked by lip or heart, and, in spite of all her struggling, will bring to the gasp at last, and then with calm eyes behold her lving in the shade dead or worse than dead, fast-fading and to be reillumined no more the lustre of her beauty, insensible to sun or shower, even the most perishable of all perishable things in a world of perishing!-But the salmon has grown sulky, and must be made to spring to the plunging stone. There, suddenly, instinct with new passion, she shoots out of the foam, like a bar of silver bullion; and, relapsing into the flood, is in another moment at the very head of the waterfall! Give her the butt-give her the butt-or she is gone for ever with the thunder into ten fathom deep! Now comes the trial of your tackle-and when was Phin ever known to fail at the edge of cliff or cataract? Her snout is southwards-right up the middle of the main current of the hill-born river, as if she would seek its very course where she was spawned! She still swims swift, and strong, and deep-and the line goes, steady, boys, steady-stiff and steady as a Tory in the roar of Opposition. There is yet an hour's play in her dorsal findanger in the flap of her tail-and yet may her silver shoulder shatter the gut against a rock. Why, the river was yesterday in spate, and she is fresh rum from the sea. All the lesser waterfalls are now level with the flood, and sh