sion left on my mind of such characters as Don Quixote and Sancho: yet probably a very indifferent one might do it; for we cannot master our fancies, nor give them at will a greater or less tenacity, a greater or less promptitude in coming and recurring.

You Friends are no less adverse to representation by painting than by acting.

Penn. We do not educate our youth to such professions and practices. Thou, I conceive, art unconcerned and disinterested in this matter.

Peterborough. Nearly, but not quite. I am ignorant of the art, and prefer that branch of it which to many seems the lowest; I mean portraiture. I can find flowers in my garden, landscapes in my rides, the works of saints in the Bible, of great statesmen and captains in the historians, and of those who with equal advantages had been the same, in the Newgate Calendar. The best representation of them can only give me a high opinion of the painter's abilities fixed on a point of time. But when I look on a family picture by Vandyke; when I contemplate the elegant and happy father in the midst of his blooming progeny, and the partner of his fortunes and his joy beside him, I am affected very differently, and much more. He who there stands meditating for them some delightful scheme of pleasure or aggrandisement, has bowed his head to calamity, perhaps even to the block. Those roses gathered from the parterre behind, those taper fingers negligently holding them, that hair, the softness of which seems unable to support the riot of its ringlets, are moved away from earth, amid the tears and aching hearts of the very boys and girls who again are looking at me with such unconcern.

Faithfullest recorder of domestic bliss, perpetuator of youth and beauty, vanquisher of time, leading in triumph the Hours

and Seasons, the painter here bestows on me the richest treasures of his enchanting art.-Imaginary Conversations.

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2. The Story of John Wellerby.

ETHELBERT! I think thou walkest but little; otherwise I should take thee with me, some fine fresh morning, as far as unto the first hamlet on the Cherwell. There lies young Wellerby, who, the year before, was wont to pass many hours of the day poetising amid the ruins of Godstow nunnery. It is said that he bore a fondness toward a young maiden in that place, formerly a village, now containing but two old farm-houses. In my memory there were still extant several dormitories. Some love-sick girl had recollected an ancient name, and had engraven on a stone with a garden-nail, which lay in rust near it,

POORE ROSAMUND.

I entered these precincts, and beheld a youth of manly form and countenance, washing and wiping a stone with a handful of wet grass; and on my going up to him, and asking what he had found, he showed it to me. The next time I saw him was near the banks of the Cherwell. He had tried, it appears, to forget or overcome his foolish passion, and had applied his whole mind unto study. He was foiled by his competitor; and now he sought consolation in poetry. Whether this opened the wounds that had closed in his youthful breast, and malignant Love, in his revenge, poisoned it; or whether the disappointment he had experienced in finding others preferred to him, first in the paths of fortune, then in those of the muses; he was thought to have died broken-hearted.

"About half a mile from St. John's College is the termination of a natural terrace, with the Cherwell close under it, in some places bright with yellow and red flowers glancing

and glowing through the stream, and suddenly in others dark with the shadows of many different trees, in broad overbending thickets, and with rushes spear-high, and partycoloured flags.

“After a walk in Midsummer, the immersion of our hands into the cool and closing grass is surely not the least among our animal delights. I was just seated, and the first sen sation of rest vibrated in me gently, as though it were music to the limbs, when I discovered by a hollow in the herbage that another was near. The long meadow-sweet and blooming burnet half concealed from me him whom the earth was about to hide totally and for ever.

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Master Batchelor!" said I, "it is ill sleeping by the water-side."

"No answer was returned. I arose, went to the place, and recognised poor Wellerby. His brow was moist, his cheek was warm. A few moments earlier, and that dismal lake whereunto and wherefrom the waters of life, the buoyant blood, ran no longer, might have received one vivifying ray reflected from my poor casement. I might not indeed have comforted: I have often failed: but there is one who never has; and the strengthener of the bruised reed should have been with us.

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Remembering that his mother did abide one mile further on, I walked forward to the mansion, and asked her what tidings she lately had received of her son. She replied, that having given up his mind to light studies, the fellows of the college would not elect him. The master had warned him before-hand to abandon his selfish poetry, take up manfully the quarterstaff of logic, and wield it for St. John's, come who would into the ring. "We want our man," said he to me, "and your son hath failed us in the hour of need. Madam, he hath been foully beaten in the schools by one he

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might have swallowed, with due exercise." I rated him, told

He was stung, and threw Twelve days have passed I hear he has been seen

him I was poor, and he knew it. himself upon my neck, and wept. since, and only three rainy ones. upon the knoll yonder, but hither he hath not come. I trust he knows at last the value of time, and I shall be heartily glad to see him after this accession of knowledge. Twelve days, it is true, are rather a chink than a gap in time; yet, O gentle Sir! they are that chink which makes the vase quite valueless. There are light words which may never be shaken off the mind they fall on. My child, who was hurt by me, will not let me see the marks.' 'Lady!' said I, none are left upon him. Be comforted! thou shalt see him this hour. All that thy God hath not taken is yet thine.'

"She looked at me earnestly, and would have then asked something, but her voice failed her. There was no agony,

no motion, save in the lips and cheeks.

Being the widow of

one who fought under Hawkins, she remembered his courage and sustained the shock, saying calmly, 'God's will be done! pray that he find me as worthy as he findeth me willing to join them.'

I

"Now, in her unearthly thoughts, she had led her only son to the bosom of her husband; and in her spirit (which often is permitted to pass the gates of death with holy love) she left them both with their Creator.

"The curate of the village sent those who should bring home the body; and some days afterward he came unto me, beseeching me to write the epitaph. Being no friend to stone-cutter's charges, I entered not into biography, but wrote these few words :

JOANNES WELLERBY

LITERARUM QUAESIVIT GLORIAM,

VIDET DEI.'

-Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare.

3. The Death of Hofer.

I PASSED two entire months in Germany, and like the people. On my way I saw Waterloo, an ugly table for an ugly game. At Innspruck I entered the church in which Andreas Hofer is buried. He lies under a plain slab, on the left, near the door. I admired the magnificent tomb of bronze, in the centre, surrounded by heroes, real and imaginary. They did not fight, tens against thousands; they did not fight for wives and children, but for lands and plunder: therefore they are heroes! My admiration for these works of art was soon satisfied, which perhaps it would not have been in any other place. Snow, mixed with rain, was falling, and was blown by the wind upon the tomb of Hofer. I thought how often he had taken advantage of such weather for his attacks against the enemies of his country, and I seemed to hear his whistle in the wind. At the little village of Landro (I feel a whimsical satisfaction in the likeness of the name to mine) the innkeeper was the friend of this truly great man.. the greatest man that Europe has produced in our days, excepting his true compeer, Kosciusko. Andreas Hofer gave him the chain and crucifix he wore three days before his death. You may imagine this man's enthusiasm, who, because I had said that Hofer was greater than king or emperor, and had made him a present of small value, as the companion and friend of that harmless and irreproachable hero, took this precious relic from his neck and offered it to me. By the order of Buonaparte, the companions of Hofer, eighty in number, were chained, thumbscrewed, and taken out of prison in couples, to see him shot. He had about him one thousand florins, in paper currency, which he