THE GASCON PEASANT AND THE FLIES.
At Neuchatel, in France, where they prepare
Cheeses, that set us longing to be mites,

There dwelt a farmer's wife, famed for her rare
Skill in these small quadrangular delights.

Where they were made they were sold for the im

mense

Price of three sous apiece,

But as salt water made their charms increase,
In England, the fixed rate was eighteen pence.
This damsel had, to keep her in her farm,
To milk her cows, and feed her hogs,
A Gascon peasant, with a sturdy arm
For digging, or for carrying logs:
But in his noddle, weak as any baby,
In fact a gaby:

And such a glutton when you came to feed him,
That Wantley's dragon, who "ate barns and churches
As if they were geese and turkeys,".

(Vide the ballad) scarcely could exeeed him.

One morn she had prepared a monstrous bowl
Of cream, like nectar!

And would'nt go to church (good careful soul)
Till she had left it safe with a protector:

So she gave strict injunctions to the Gascon,
To watch it, while his mistress was to mass gone.
Watch it he did; he never took his eyes off
But licked his upper, then his under lip,
And doubled up his fist to drive the flies off,
Begrudging them the smallest sip,

Which if they got,

Like my Lord Salisbury, he heaved a sigh,
And cried, "Oh happy, happy fly!

How I do envy you your lot."

Each moment did his appetite grow stronger;
His bowels yearned;

At length he could not bear it any longer,
But, on all sides his looks he turned,

And, finding that the coast was clear, he quaffed
The whole up at a draught.

Scudding from church, the farmer's wife
Flew to the dairy;

But stood aghast, and could not, for her life,
One sentence mutter,

Until she summoned breath enough to utter
"Holy St. Mary"

And shortly with a face of scarlet,
The vixen (for she was a vixen) flew
Upon the varlet;

Asking the when, and where, and how, and who
Had gulped her cream, nor left an atom?
To which he made not separate replies,
But with a look of excellent digestion
One answer made to every question.
"The Flies."

The flies, you rogue!-the flies, your guttling dog!
Behold your whiskers still are covered thickly;
Thief! Liar! Villain! Gormandizer! Hog!
I'll make you tell another story quickly."

So out she bounced, and brought with loud alarms,
Two stout Gens d'Armes,

Who bore him to the Judge:-a little prig
With angry bottle nose,

Like a red-cabbage-rose,

While lots of white ones flourish'd on his wig.
Looking ot once both stern and wise,
He turned to the delinquent

And 'gan to question him, and chatechise
As to which way the drink went.

Still the same dogged answers rise,

"The Flies, my lord,-the flies, the flies."

"Psha" quoth the Judge, half peevish, and half

pompous,

"Why you're non-compos;"

You should have watched the bowl, as she desired

And killed the flies, you stupid clown."

"What is it lawful then," the dolt inquired, "To kill the flies in this here town."?

"The man's an ass!-What question's this? Lawful! you booby,-to be sure it is:

You've my authority, wherere you meet 'em
To kill the rogues, and if you like, to eat 'em!"
"Zooks" cried the rustic. "I'm right glad to hear it.
Constable, catch that thief! may I go hang
If yonder blue bottle (I know his face)
Is not the very leader of the gang

That stole the cream; let me come near it."
This said, he darted from his place,

And aiming one of his sledge-hammer blows
At a large fly upon the Judge's nose-

The luckless blue bottle he smashed;
And gratified a double grudge,

For the same catapult completely smashed
The bottle nose belonging to the Judge!

EXTRACT FROM FOSTER'S ESSAYS.

I will imagine only one case more, on which you would emphatically express your compassion, though for one of the most daring beings in the creation, a contemner of God, who explodes his laws by denying his existence.

If you were so unacquainted with mankind, that this character might be announced to you as a rare and singular phenomenon, your conjectures, till you saw and heard the man, at the nature and extent of the discipline thro' which he must have advanced, would be led toward something extraordinary. And you might think that the term of that discipline must have been very long; since a quick train of impressions, a short series of mental gradations, within the little space of a few months and years, would not seem enough to have matured such supreme and awful heroism. Surely the creature that thus lifts his voice, and defies all invisible power within the possibilities of infinity, challenging whatever unknown being may hear him, and may appropriate that title of Almighty which is pronounced in scorn, to evince his existence, if he will, by his vengeance, was not as yesterday a little child, that would tremble and cry at the approach of a diminutive reptile.

But indeed it is heroism no longer, if he knows that there is no God. The wonder then turns on the great process, by which a man could grow to the immense intelligence that can know that there is no God. What ages and what lights are requisite for THIS attainment! This intelligence involves the very attributes of Divinity, while a God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he cannot know but there may be in some place manifestations of a Deity by which even he would be overpowered. If he does not know absolutely every agent in the universe, the one that he does not know may be God. If he is not himself the chief agent in the universe, and does not know what is so, that which is so may be God. If he is not in absolute possession of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the one which he wants may be, that there is a God. If he cannot with certainty assign the cause of all that he perceives to exist, that cause

may be a God. If he does not know every thing

that has been done in the immeasurable ages that are past, some things may have been done by a God. Thus, unless he knows all things, that is, precludes another Deity by being one himself, he cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects, does not exist. But he must know that he does not exist, else he deserves equal contempt and compassion for the temerity with which he firmly avows his rejection and acts accordingly. And yet a man of ordinary age and intelligence may present himself to you with the avowal of being thus distinguished from the crowd; and if he would describe the manner in which he has attained this eminence, you would feel a melancholy interest in contemplating that process of which the result is so portentous.

If you did not know that there are more than a few such examples, you would say, in viewing this result, I should hope this is the consequence of some malignant intervention so occasional that ages may pass away before it return among men; some pecu

liar conjunction of disastrous influences must have lighted on your selected soul; you have been struck by that energy of evil which acted upon the spirits of Pharaoh and Epiphanes. But give your own description of what you have met with in a world which has been deemed to present in every part the indications of a Deity. Tell of the mysterious voices which have spoken to you from the deeps of creation, falsifying the expressions marked on its face. Tell of the new ideas, which, like meteors passing over the solitary wanderer, gave you the first glimpses of truth while benighted in the common belief of the Divine existence. Describe the whole train of causes that have operated to create and consolidate that state of mind which you carry forward to the great experiment of futurity under a different kind of hazard from all other classes of men.

You would find however that those circumstances, by which even a man who had been presented from his infancy with the ideas of religion, could be elated into a contempt of its great object, were far from being extraordinary. They might have been met by any man, whose mind had been cultivated and exercised enough to feel interested about holding any system of opinions at all, whose pride had been gratified in the consciousness of having the liberty of selecting and changing opinions, and whose habitual assent to the principles of religion had neither the firmness resulting from decisive arguments, nor the warmth of pious affection. Such a person had only, in the first place to come into intimate acquaintance with a man, who had the art of alluding to a sacred subject in a manner which, without appearing like intentional contempt, divested it of its solemnity; and who had possessed himself of a few acute observations or plausible maxims, not explicitely hostile to revealed religion, but which, when opportunely brought into view in connexion with some points of it, tended to throw a slight degree of doubt on their truth and authority. Especially if either or both of these men had any decided moral tendencies and