made elegantly rough with dot and eyelet-hole, like a huge nutmeggrater, thou art condemned to some old nurse, whose eager eyes, meanwhile she dandles, rocks, and trots, shall be engaged to look for some strange mark of leg of bacon, strawberry or peach, or read thy fortune in her grounds of tea. And worse than this, must ever and anon feed her huge nostrils with a pound of snuff, to help her incantations damned and dire. Who can depict the horror that must swell thy breast, when that lean, spectacled face fills the virgin retina of thine eye! If there be a standard of beauty, we pity thee.

But oh! most blessed by comparison, though cabined, cribbed, confined,' if thy mother be an bonest craftsman's wife, who cannot spare to buy thee foreign milk! Then shalt thou repose thy cheek upon a couch made soft by love and 'sleepless tenderness;' then shalt thou bite to please thyself, and ease thy sprouting gums, while she, 'fond creature,' shall be happy even in her pain. And happy still art thou, if born in some low, humble thatch, where decent poverty joined with pious trust shall make a little heaven for thy new eyes, with flowers and clambering vines, and all the thousand ingenious contrivances which taste prompts, and nature supplies materials for executing, where there is love, and virtue, and humility. Then too shall the arms of a father, made strong by toil, lift thee as if thou wert a feather, till thy tiny arms shall flap, and thy new-found voice shall crow, with joy at such a parentage.

เ

But where can we find tears enough to weep thy lonely fate, if brought a sinless child of sin' into this world, with none to own thy coming? Some cold evening in December, perhaps a wealthy merchant, warm from his coal fire, shall stumble over thee, encased in a band-box, in which thou hast been for hours upon his door-stone. Think not thy stay will be long in his abode. Thou wilt be handled tenderly, and women there may weep for a few moments; and they will look if thou bearest any mark of lover or acquaintance. But, curiosity satisfied, and the longing of some maiden aunt repressed, to adopt thee as a gift of heaven to her unappropriated existence, thou shalt be trundled to the Foundling Hospital. There babies. are no novelty - turned off like a morning baking of biscuits. We hope in mercy thou wilt die; not for thy body's sake, but for thy soul's. Not all the pleasing incidents of Japhet' in his 'Search' may chance to thee; but thou mayest bear all his pain, and more; and if heaven have given thee a sensitive mind, thou wilt live with a heavy sense of wrong rankling in thy bosom, and seek crime, and recklessly steep thy name in guilt, to wound thy cruel father's heart.

Dear infancy! whether born in palaces or hovels; whether thy birth be welcomed by the sound of bells, or namelessly thou art laid upon the stranger's door-stone; thou art doomed to have untold wishes, unexpressed desires, pains thou canst never tell, and to shed tears, of course.

Here is the greatest reason for sympathy with the infant's 'age.' Often no ingenuity can interpret its moan. An opiate may lull it, but it will wake to moan again. How many die in agony! What writhings of the limbs! A pin is now sticking deep in its tender flesh! It has no tongue to tell its intense suffering.

Its pains end not with the nurse's arms.' What thumps and tum

bles, what bumps and bruises, does it get in learning to walk? How bitterer than the drunkard's agony its thirst, when first denied the breast! It counts it all to cruelty and neglect. No sooner does it make an effort to talk, than it suffers perpetual disappointment in being misconceived, and in having its most earnest expressions slighted.

The

But though humanity is thus fulfilling its destiny from its earliest breath, still infancy has its mission to the world. It has been called most beautifully the Perpetual Messiah. The morality of childhood begins in the nurse's arms.' Infancy binds us to home. mother hurries from the theatre, the ball, sick of heartless mirth, to find real pleasure by her infant's side. Side-walks are less crowded in prolific years. The merchant pauses amid desperate speculations and the hazard of his fortune, for his little ones at home; the drunkard pushes aside the bowl; the gambler leaves his dice; and thoughtless youth, become a mother or a father, grows circumspect and grave. We do not talk much of this influence; perhaps are not fully aware of its extent; but it operates silently upon us all. Even the dying gladiator, butchered to make a Roman holiday,' heeded not the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.'

'His eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play.'

And this is our reading of the first chapter of our history.
Taunton, Mass.

J. N. B.

Up in the morning, 'as soon as the lark,'
Late in the evening, when falleth the dark,
Afar on the upland, or under the tree,
Come the sweet voices of children to me.
I am an old man, and my hair is gray,

But I sit in the sunshine to watch you at play,
And a kindlier current doth run through each vein,
And I bless you, bright creatures! again and again.
I rejoice in your sports, in the warm summer weather,
While, hand locked in hand, ye are striving together;
But I see what ye see not; the sorrow and strife
Of the years that will come in the contest of life.

For I am an old man, and age looketh on
To the time that will be, from the time that is gone;
But you, blessed creatures! you think not of sorrow,
Your joy is to-day, and ye have no to-morrow!
Ay, sport ye, and wrestle-be glad as the sun,
And lie down to rest when your pastime is done;

For your dreams are of sunshine, of blossom, and dew,
And the God of the Blessed' doth watch over you,
While the angels of heaven are missioned to keep
Unbroken the calm of your innocent sleep;
And an old man's blessing doth o'er you dwell,
The whole day long and so fare ye well!

:

SAY to the flower thou hast plucked, bloom on,
Bloom on, sweet rose!

Say to the grass that's mown, be fresh once more;
Say to the wreath removed from Beauty's brow,
When the mad hour of revelry is o'er,

Again be sweet and bright,

And grace that brow another night;
But say not to the fair girl's withered heart,
Crushed by a villain's coward art—

To that sad heart, erewhile so warm and pure,
But now whose wound the grave alone may cure,
'Sad heart, be glad!'"

Montreal, December, 1837.

THE DICTATOR'S TRIUMPH.

A SCENE FROM AN UNPUBLISHED NOVEL, BY THE AUTHOR OF THE BROTHERS.'

A. A. M.

It was a glorious morning in the latter part of June, and at an hour so early, that the heavy dews of summer were yet hanging unexhaled on wold and woodland, although the sun had lifted his broad disc above the horizon, when the two armies came in view on Winsley field, near Horncastle. It was a gallant and a graceful spectacle as ever met the eye of man. The scene a broad and waving tract of moorish meadow land, checkered with many a patch of feathery coppice — birch, ash, and alder- tufts of furze, full of its golden bloom, and waving fern - and here and there a bare gray rock peering above the soil, or a clear pool of water reflecting the white clouds that hung aloft, all motionless in the blue firmament; and over this romantic champaign a magnificent array of horse, four thousand at the least in numbers, contracting or extending their bright squadrons, now falling into column, and now deploying into line, as best they might among the obstacles of this their battleground their polished armor and their many-colored scarfs now flashing out superbly as the sunshine kissed their masses with its golden light, now sobered into mellower hues, as some great cloud would flit across the sky and cast its sweeping shadow over them; their trumpets ever and anon waking the echoes of the woodlands that surrounded them on every side with their exulting notes, and their gay standards fluttering in the breeze their gallant chargers, arching their necks against the curb, bounding and curvetting along, as if they panted for the onset - while toward the eastern limits of the plain, upon a gentle elevation, flanked on the one side by the gully of a deep and stony brook, and on the other by a coppice, tangled with ancient thorns, and matted with wild rose briers, which protected likewise the whole rear of his position, Cromwell had formed his line. Nor, though inferior far in numbers, lacking all that chivalrous and splendid decoration which their floating plumes and gorgeous dresses lent to the cavaliers, could his dark

and

ay, and admi

the

squadrons have been looked upon without attention ration also, by the most unromantic of observers. The admirable discipline and perfect armature of the stern zealots who composed the ranks -the plain, but soldierly and bright accoutrements horses, superior even to the chargers of the royalists in blood, and bone, and beauty, and, above all, in that precise and jealous grooming, without which all the rest are little worth—the grim and stubborn countenances of the riders some animated with a fiery zeal that would have smiled exultingly upon the stake of martyrdom, some lowering with a dark and sullen scowl, but all severe, and resolute, and dauntless! A single glance sufficed to tell that every battlefield to them must be a triumph or a grave!

Silent they stood and motionless - their long array drawn up, two deep, by squadrons at brief intervals solemn and voiceless, presenting a strange contrast to the shifting movements and the intricate manœuvres of their approaching enemy. Not a man moved in his saddle, not a sound broke the quiet of their discipline, save now and then the stamp and neigh of an unruly charger, or the sharp clatter of his steel caparison. And now the cavaliers, within a short mile's distance, having already cleared the broken ground, might be seen halting on the farther verge of the smooth space which swept away toward them in a gentle slope, unmarred by bush, or brake, or obstacle of any kind to the career of the most timid rider; when, with some three or four of his most trusty captains, Cromwell advanced before his lines. Of stout, ungainly stature when dismounted, none showed to more advantage on his war-horse, and in full caparison of battle, than did the colonel of the iron-sides. It was not that his seat was graceful, or that he ruled his charger with the ease of the manège, but that he swayed him with an absolute dominion, which seemed to arise rather from his mere volition, than from the exercise of strength or skill. His whole soul seemed engrossed by the approaching conflict careless of self, exalted, and enthusiastical. His eyes flashed with a brightness almost supernatural from the dark shadow of his morion, and his whole visage wore an aspect so irradiate with energy and mind, that Edgar wondered how he ever could have deemed him ill-favored or ungraceful. His horse, a superb black, bore him as if he too were conscious of Divine authority; and such was the commanding greatness of his whole appearance, that no human eye could have descended to remark the plainness of his wararray! Of the small group of officers who rode beside the bridle of their leader, the most were ordinary-looking men, burghers of Huntingdon, or small esquires of the surrounding country, selected for the stations which they occupied, by the wise politician who had levied them, on account of those morose and gloomy tenets which, with an early prescience, he discovered to be the only power that might cope with the high spirit of the gentlemen who formed the bulk of their antagonists men who affected, or imagined visions and transports who believed themselves predestined instruments, and deemed that in the slaying of malignants they were doing an especial service to the God whose chosen servants they declared themselves, with a faith in the truth of the assertion which rendered them almost

invincible. Among these plain and heavy-looking soldiers, the form of Ardenne, high-born, and full of the intuitive and untaught grace of noble blood, gallantly armed and handsomely attired - for he was not one of those who fancied that the approbation of Heaven could be won by a rusty corslet or an ill-blacked boot-mounted on a dark chestnut, thorough-bred, yet powerful enough to bear a man-at-arms fully accoutred through the longest day, showed like a glorious falcon among a tribe of buzzards; yet even he, handsome, and young, and fairly clad, filled not the eye like the majestic person of his colonel. At a quick trot they swept along the lines, inspecting their array, with now a word of commendation, and now a short reproof, to the dark fanatics, who had been chosen lance-pesades or sergeants for their savage and enthusiastic humor. Just as they finished their career, a long and cheery shout, accompanied and blended with the clang of kettle-drums and the shrill flourish of their trumpets, burst from the columns of the cavaliers, now wheeling into line, and eager for the onset. No shout or burst of instruments replied from the parliamentarians; but their leader, at the sound, checking his charger from his speed till he reared bolt upright, threw forth his arm with a proud gesture of defiance: Brethren,' he called aloud, in accents harsh, but clearly audible, and thrilling to the heart; 'Brethren and fellow-soldiers in the Lord, the men of Belial are before you the persecutors of the saints - the spillers of the innocent blood-godless and desperate! - slayers of babes and sucklings ravishers of maids and matrons-revilers of the prophets and the law accursed of the Lord Jehovah! Wherefore, faint not, nor be of feeble heart, for surely on this day shall the Lord yield them up into your hands, that ye may work his vengeance on their heads, and execute his judgments. For said he not of old, 'Lo! I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. For the day of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my redeemed is come!' So saith the Lord of Hosts,

Amen! amen! Selah!'

And, with a deep and sullen hum, the puritans took up the words, So saith the Lord of Hosts. Amen! amen! Selah !'

'And are not we,' continued the fierce zealot, with increasing energy, 'and are not we - blinded although we be, and ignorant, and sinful — I ask ye, brethren, are not we the chosen of the Lord, and shall we not obey his bidding? Smite them, then smite the idolatrous, besotted followers of the old Antichrist, even as just Elijah slew the priests of Baal at the brook of Kishon. Be strong, and fear ye not! For lo! the Lord hath said, 'Ye shall not suffer one of them to live!' and who are we that we should now gainsay the bidding of the Lord, even the Lord of Hosts? Lift up your voices, then that yon malignants may perceive in whom we put our trust!'

Again, and in a sterner and more heart-felt shout, the approbation of the puritans greeted their leader's ears; and as he ceased, with brandished blades and inflamed features, and with voices that drowned utterly the feebler music of the cavaliers, already confident of victory, and maddened with religious zeal, they thundered forth their favorite hymn.