'I told you how 'twould be,' says
Pierre ;

'It's fit to make a bishop swear!'
So growling forth, as if in spite,
Some words 'unfit for ears polite,'
He started off, as in pursuit
Of his emancipated brute;
While Cerberus, thinking it good fun,
Laugh'd at the mischief he had done.
Returning to his friend's abode,
A little way along the road,
Pierre didn't stop the dog to search,
Which thus had left him in the
lurch,

Because, as you may take for granted,
The dog was not the thing he wanted;

But this time, as was his intent,
He bagg'd the calf, and off he went.
The gensd'arme, seeing him once more
With the same sack he had before,
Of course concluded 'twas the dog,
And onwards suffer'd Pierre to jog,
Observing archly, as he pass'd,
He saw he'd caught the dog at last,
And hoped Monsieur was none the

worse

After his unexpected 'course.'
Pierre answer'd nothing, but within
Himself thought, 'Let them laugh
that win ;'

For, after cheating this old stager,
He gain'd his calf, and won his wager.
A. R. W.

HUMAN life is a mere dance-the nursery a bawl-room! Old maids and bachelors, for want of partners, are compelled to exhibit in a pas seul. Knavery practises the shuffle, while pride, prudence, and experience are professors of the art of cutting. Courage teaches the ‘en avant,' and discretion (the better part of valour') the 'en arrière.' Some are happy in their choice of' partners;' while many are doomed to go through the whole dance' with the dowerless and disagreeable Mis-Fortunes and Mis-Chances.

The ambitious and would-be-great are continually struggling to show off in a particular set ;' but, notwithstanding the pains they take in their steps,' frequently experience the mortification of a 'dos-à-dos,' when they are anxiously exerting all their efforts for a smiling vis-à-vis.'

6

These are the ups and downs' of the 'dance.' The 'lords of the creation' (with few exceptions) are very awkward and ungainly; while 'lovely woman' is most generally perfect in the figure.'

Love is generally 'master of the ceremonies;' but, being rather pur-blind, makes the most ridiculous mistakes in introducing partners; and, although Avarice (who officiates in the higher circles) is lynx-eyed, he commits as many errors in 'coupling' the company as his coadjutor.

Hope illuminates the 'festive scene,' and away they bound on the 'light fantastic toe'-hands across-down the middle-up again!till Time steps in, and throws a damp upon their merriment—the piper stops for want of breath,' and—the dance ends!

THE DYING MAN.

BY ABRAHAM ELDER, ESQ.

THE Antiquary and myself were one day walking along the shore at Ventnor, looking at the summer waves twinkling in succession upon the beach. At length the Antiquary pointed out to me a place where a piece of land, perhaps a quarter of an acre, missing its support below, had slipped several yards down the declivity.

There, you see, Mr. Elder,' said he, it is the solid earth that keeps continually changing its position, while the restless and variable ocean alone preserves its level from age to age.' The learned old gentleman then dived deeper into geology, and went on explaining how the undercliff was formed. In case the gentle reader should happen never to have visited it, it is necessary to observe that the south of the Isle of Wight consists of very high land; but a long strip of it, averaging perhaps half a mile in width, appears to have cracked off from the rest of the hill, and sunk down to the level of the sea.

'I suppose,' said I, 'that the great mass off the undercliff upon which yon town is built is nearly as old as the world,—as old as the flood, at any rate.'

6

'Some part of it, indeed,' he replied, may be so; but the cause even here is in continual operation. So late as the year 1818, a considerable land-slip took place in the same part; another preceded it in the year 1810; both together are estimated to have carried away about eighty acres of land. We will walk here by and by.'

While the antiquary and myself were carrying on this learned disquisition, a young man attracted my notice, as he reclined upon a rock by the shore, with a book before him; he seemed however to be rather counting the waves as they fell upon the beach, than occupied with the contents of the book. The Antiquary's dissertation upon the geology of the undercliff, which he was just near enough to hear, evidently arrested his attention. At length he rose, and approached nearer to us, apparently balancing in his mind a desire of joining our party and a fear of intruding. I therefore opened a conversation with him by one or two trivial remarks.

The Antiquary added, 'I presume, sir, that, like ourselves, you are amusing yourself with touring round the island.'

The young man shook his head with a kind of quiet resigned melancholy; there was even a smile upon his lips.

"No, sir,' he replied. 'I have come here upon the same errand with many of brighter hopes, and better worldly prospects-I have come here to die.'

I here observed the paleness of his complexion, and that spot of colour upon his cheek, with a clearly defined outline, which so frequently attends consumption.

'I perceive you look delicate,' answered the Antiquary, 'and conclude that you have been recommended to try the warm air of this place for the recovery of your health. I am sorry that you should add despondency to your other ailments. A cheerful mind is ever the readiest path to health.'

'You mistake me, sir,' replied the young man; 'I am neither de sponding nor yet unhappy. I have even a feeling within me that the warmth of the sun, and the fresh air which comes from the sea, might restore me to health and vigour; but my better reason tells me that these are but the very symptoms of consumption. How seldom does the consumptive patient give up the hope of recovery till long, long after every chance is gone! I have seen others that were dear to me fade away month by month like this; but I have resolved not to be deceived myself. I leave the world without regret, and without repining. I love to sit here in the sun, looking at its light dancing upon the waves. There is something in the sight and sound of water, whether a lake, the sea, or a waterfall, that has, and always had, a kind of magical charm which it throws over me. Wherever I see the light glisten upon water, I seem guided by some invisible power to its brink; and there, if I sit or wander within the sight and sound of its ripple, I fall into a kind of dozy, dreamy existence, not, however, like the heaviness of sleep. The coarse detail and circumstances of this working-day world soon fade from my view; and my mind, dropping into a gentle, pleasing, soothing melancholy, dwells upon purer objects,-upon love, with its future hopes and fears, or past disappointments. Then it would wander over the features and words of relations and friends who are gone, and have left me toiling here behind alone. But so pleasing is all this to me, that I would be continually dreading to meet some trumpery every-day acquaintance, or the recurrence of any accident that would recall my attention to the things that were passing round me. There was, however, something to me so striking in an observation that fell from you, of the solid earth crumbling away bit by bit, and being gradually swallowed up by the great ocean, that beautiful type of eternity, that, for the first time since I have been here, I felt no regret at the thread of my reverie being broken. But I am intruding myself upon you, and I wish you good day.' And, bowing to us, he turned to go away.

'Not so,' said the Antiquary. An acquaintance even thus casually made, that proceeds from a union of feeling, ought not thus lightly to be broken through. I trust that you will allow us to visit you at your residence, and improve our acquaintance into friendship.'

The offer was cordially and thankfully received, and we all three returned together towards the town; for so Ventnor must now be called.

Our new acquaintance at length began,-'It appears to me surprising with what complacency I have accustomed myself to watch the steady, gradual, and certain approach of death, which I had always in my earlier life pictured as a horrible and revolting spectre. Often before now I have felt melancholy thoughts creeping over me, even in the midst of the gayest revelling. I have sat me by myself in the corner of a ball-room, amidst the dazzling lights and enlivening music, and have watched the feelings and the passions, and strove to read the thoughts of the moving world around me,-the light-hearted laughing happiness of youth and beauty, and the soft and deep expression of love beaming from the eye; in others I would trace the cankering marks of jealousy and disappointment; then, with a slight smile of contempt upon my lips, I would follow the little pretty

tricks and schemes of vanity and avarice; then sometimes I would see with my mind's eye a new personage come upon the scene :Death would glide in quietly, and in silence, and select the fairest, the happiest, the most light-hearted in the room. I watched her as she was dancing, the admiration of every one; with flowers in her hair, and jewels on her neck, her light foot seemed scarcely to rest upon the floor. Her eye sparkled with joy, and her bosom seemed to heave with love. The cold hand of the intruder was softly laid upon her bosom, even while the light tresses of her long hair were playfully waving round it. She shrunk from the touch, turned pale, and fell to the ground. My attention was then turned to loathsome sores, and the glazed, fixed, stony eyes of death. Then my sickening imagination would dwell upon corruption and putrefaction, more revolting to the senses than the vilest refuse. Then I have given such a shudder as has astonished the dowagers on my right and left. But there was one other part of this day-dream to me still more painful: the gay crowd that fluttered round seemed totally heedless of the dreadful catastrophe. Her look of agony was almost hidden from my view by the petticoats and legs of the dancers; her groans and shrieks were drowned by the noise of the fiddle and the squeaking flageolet; her prayers to Heaven for mercy were smothered in observations about the last night's ball, and the next week's opera. no eye was moistened,—no smile was quenched. No one grieved, pitied, or thought about her, except one- -that was her mother. And then my mind would perhaps turn back to the realities around; and then again I would relapse into musing; I would collect the fair faces and lovely forms that had been numbered with the dead since the preceding year, and I would couple them with my lost friends, or their former partners.

'But I was not always such a musing, melancholy dreamer. My early life was gay as the liveliest flutterer of them all. But, in the midst of my brightest days my happiness received a blight from which it never recovered. I became reckless, careless alike of the present and the future, loving and caring for nobody, and feeling that nobody loved or cared for me. At length sickness overtook me; but I continued thoughtless of myself, and heeded neither the warning of the physician, nor the symptoms; and here I am at last, without the remotest chance of recovery, gliding quietly and smoothly down into eternity. And yet I am telling you the truth when I say that if the fabled fairy that presides over the Wishing Well at the top of yon hill were to offer me, for merely wishing it, health, and strength, and high spirits again, I would without hesitation reject them.

'It seems odd, but so it is, the approach of death appears sometimes to give an elevation to my spirits. I have contrived to scrape acquaintance with the sexton, and whenever I meet him I always stop to have a chat with him. I know perfectly well by sight the spade with which he will officiate for me. It is about one third worn, and has been mended in the handle. Ir is also evident that he has for some time had his eye upon me as a future job in prospect, with its consequent fees. I actually thought at one time that he showed some feeling upon the subject: for once, when I stopped to speak to him he put his spade behind him, under the pretence of leaning upon it, as it seemed to me; on the same principle that a

dentist conceals his instrument to the latest possible moment, that he may not unnecessarily hurt one's feelings. I was wrong, however; for he is evidently a stupid, unfeeling brute, and, in fact, it is only his occupation that has given him any dignity in my eyes. And yet, somehow or other, I cannot help thinking that when I tip him, which I do every now and then, if it were not for the anticipated loss of fees, he would drink to my better health.

'How different are my feelings with regard to death as my own approaches! I feel none of those loathsome, shrinking, shuddering sensations. It seems to me as if my soul was gradually separating itself from its coarser appendage.'

Here he stooped down, and plucked a broad leaf of coltsfoot, which he began tearing slowly and gradually in two.

Thus, bit by bit, day by day, does the separation between the spirit and the body become wider. Each day my mind appears to me to become purer, and my thoughts more elevated, while my bodily strength is daily and hourly fading.

I sit sometimes for hours and hours together, after nightfall, by the window in my room, watching the pale moon and the stars above me. It seems to me as if I have more in common with them than I have with anything upon the earth, upon whose surface I am still treading, and which I am so soon to leave.'

By this time we had arrived at his dwelling. It was a pretty cottage, with a little garden before it. He pointed out to us the beauty of a number of the commoner garden-flowers that were at that time in bloom. It was evident that they occupied no inconsiderable portion of his care and attention. He sat down on a seat in front of the house, and talked with us for some time on the subject of flowers and gardens. At length I made some observation about its being just the time for sowing some particular garden-flowers-I forget what-but it does not matter.

He shook his head, and said, 'No, I should be gone long before its buds had opened, and it would merely remain to be trodden down by the succeeding tenant.'

We were now joined in the garden by a lady, whom our new friend introduced to us as his aunt. A more kind, amiable, benevolent expression I never beheld! How anxiously she seemed to examine his countenance, to see if it looked more faded than when they parted an hour or two before; and when he gave a little, short dry cough, how she appeared to shrink, and then kept fidgeting about, by which she tried to conceal how ill at ease was her mind!

Here two little red and white spaniels, who had probably heard their master's voice in the garden, rushed out of the house, and whined and danced and jumped upon him, and then came and played round us as if in acknowledgement of our being friends of their master. The reader may perhaps think me tedious, and that there is nothing in all this worth either writing or relating. But for myself I must confess that these little trifles raised our new acquaintance still higher in my estimation. I always have a regard for a person that is fond of flowers and animals, that loves to see every thing smiling and flourishing around him, that can take pleasure in watching the frisks and gambols, the little fits of anger, and the various instincts of the inferior animals; that can take pleasure in throwing seed into