halts, but it is only to plant his foot to go on again; and thus ne picks his way, planting his foot at every step, and then gaining ground with an effort. The lady lifts up her arms, as if to lighten him. See! he is almost at the top; he stops, he struggles, he moves sideways, taking very little steps, and bringing one foot every time close to the other. Now he is all but on the top; he halts again; he is fixed; he staggers. A groan goes through the multitude. Suddenly, he turns full front towards the top; it is luckily almost a level; he staggers, but it is forward :-Yes :-every limb in the multitude makes a movement as if it would assist him:-see at last! he is on the top; and down he falls flat with his burden. An enormous shout! Ie has won he has won. Now he has a right to caress his mistress, and she is caressing him, for neither of them gets up. If he has fainted, it is with joy, and it is in her arms.

The baron put spurs to his horse, the crowd following him. Half-way he is obliged to dismount; they ascend the rest of the hill together, the crowd silent and happy, the baron ready to burst with shame and impatience. They reach the top. The lovers are face to face on the ground, the lady clasping him with both arms, his lying on each side.

"Traitor!" exclaimed the baron, "thou hast practised this feat before, on purpose to deceive me. Arise!" "You cannot expect it, sir," said a worthy man, who was rich enough to speak his mind: "Samson himself might take his rest after such a deed!"

"Part them !" said the baron.

Several persons went up, not to part them, but to congratulate and keep them together. These people look close; they kneel down; they bend an ear; they bury their faces upon them. "God forbid they should ever be parted more," said a venera ble man; 66 they never can be." He turned his old face stream ing with tears, and looked up at the baron:-"Sir, they are dead!"

CHAPTER VIII.

The True Story of Vertumnus and Pomona.

WEAK and uninitiated are they who talk of things modern as opposed to the idea of antiquity; who fancy that the Assyrian monarchy must have preceded tea-drinking; and that no Sims or Gregson walked in a round hat and trousers before the times of Inachus. Plato has informed us (and therefore everybody ought to know) that, at stated periods of time, everything which has taken place on earth is acted over again. There have been a thousand or a million reigns, for instance, of Charles the Second, and there will be an infinite number more: the toothache we had in the year 1811, is making ready for us some thousands of years hence; again shall people be wise and in love as surely as the May-blossoms re-appear; and again will Alexander make a fool of himself at Babylon, and Bonaparte in Russia.

Among the heaps of modern stories, which are accounted ancient, and which have been deprived of their true appearance, by the alteration of coloring and costume, there is none more decidedly belonging to modern times than that of Vertumnus and Pomona. Vertumnus was, and will be, a young fellow, remarkable for his accomplishments, in the several successive reigns of Charles the Second; and, I find, practised his story over in the autumn of the year 1680. He was the younger brother of a respectable family in Herefordshire; and from his genius at turning himself to a variety of shapes, came to be called, in after-ages, by his classical name. In like manner, Pomona, the heroine of the story, being the goddess of those parts, and singularly fond of their scenery and productions, the Latin poets, in after-ages, transformed her adventures according to their fashion, making her a goddess of mythology, and giving

Her real name was Miss

her a name after her beloved fruits. Appleton. I shall therefore waive that matter once for all; and retaining only the appellation which poetry has rendered so pleasant, proceed with the true story.

Pomona was a beauty like her name, all fruit and bloom. She was a ruddy brunette, luxuriant without grossness; and had a spring in her step, like apples dancing on a bough. (I'd put all this into verse, to which it has a natural tendency; but I haven't time.) It was no poetical figure to say of her, that her lips were cherries, and her cheeks a peach. Her locks, in clusters about her face, trembled heavily as she walked. The color called Pomona-green was named after her favorite dress. Sometimes in her clothes she imitated one kind of fruit and sometimes another, philosophising in a pretty poetical manner on the common nature of things, and saying there was more in the similes of her lovers than they suspected. Her dress now resembled a burst of white blossoms, and now of red; but her favorite one was green, both coat and boddice, from which her beautiful face looked forth like a bud. To see her tending her trees in her orchard (for she would work herself, and sing all the while like a milk-maid)—to see her I say tending the fruit-trees, never caring for letting her boddice slip a little off her shoulders, and turning away now and then to look up at a bird, when her lips would glance in the sunshine like cherries bedewed,—such a sight, you may imagine, was not to be had everywhere. The young clowns would get up in the trees for a glimpse of her, over the gardenwall; and swear she was like an angel in Paradise.

Everybody was in love with her. The squire was in love with her; the attorney was in love; the parson was particularly in love. The peasantry in their smock-frocks, old and young, were all in love. You never saw such a loving place in your life; yet somehow or other the women were not jealous, nor fared the worse. The people only seemed to have grown the kinder. Their hearts overflowed to all about them. Such toasts at the great house! The squire's name was Payne, which afterwards came to be called Pan. Pan, Payne (Paynim), Pagan, a villager. The race was so numerous, that country. gentlemen obtained the name of Paynim in general, as distin

guished from the nobility; a circumstance which has not escaped the learning of Milton:

"Both Paynim and the Peers."

Silenus was Cy or "ymon Lenox, the host of the Tun, a fat merry old fellow, renowned in the song as Old Sir Cymon the King. He was in love too. All the Satyrs, or rude wits of the neighborhood, and all the Hauns, or softer-spoken fellows,-none of them escaped. There was also a Quaker gentleman, I forget his name, who made himself conspicuous. Pomona confess. ed to herself that he had merit; but it was so unaccompanied with anything of the ornamental or intellectual, that she could not put up with him. Indeed, though she was of a loving nature, and had every other reason to wish herself settled (for she was an heiress and an orphan), she could not find it in her heart to respond to any of the rude multitude around her; which at last occasioned such impatience in them, and uneasiness to her. self, that she was fain to keep close at home, and avoid the lanes and country assemblies, for fear of being carried off. It was then that the clowns used to mount the trees outside her gardenwall to get a sight of her.

Pomona wrote to a cousin she had in town, of the name of Cerintha." Oh, my dear Cerintha, what am I to do? I could laugh while I say it, though the tears positively come into my eyes; but it is a sad thing to be an heiress with ten thousand a year, and one's guardian just dead. Nobody will let me alone. And the worst of it is, that while the rich animals that pester me, disgust one with talking about their rent-rolls, the younger brothers force me to be suspicious of their views upon mine. I could throw all my money into the Wye for vexation. God knows I do not care two-pence for it. Oh Cerintha! I wish you were unmarried, and could change yourself into a man, and come and deliver me; for you are disinterested and sincere, and that is all I require. At all events, I will run for it, and be with you before winter: for here I cannot stay. Your friend the Quaker has just rode by. He says, 'verily,' that I am cold! I say

verily he is no wiser than his horse; and that I coulisim after my money.'

Cerintha sympathized heartily with her cousin, but she was perplexed to know what to do. There were plenty of wits and young fellows of her acquaintance, both rich and poor; but only one whom she thought fit for her charming cousin, and he was a younger brother as poor as a rat. Besides, he was not only liable to suspicion on that account, but full of delicacies of his own, and the last man in the world to hazard a generous woman's dislike. This was no other than our friend Vertumnus. His real name was Vernon. He lived about five miles from Pomona, and was the only young fellow of any vivacity who had not been curious enough to get a sight of her. He had got a notion that she was proud. "She may be handsome," thought he; "but a handsome proud face is but a handsome ugly one to my thinking, and I'll not venture my poverty to her ill-humor." Cerintha had half-made up her mind to undeceive him through the medium of his sister, who was an acquaintance of hers; but an accident did it for her. Vertumnus was riding one day with some friends, who had been rejected, when passing by Pomona's orchard, he saw one of her clownish admirers up in the trees, peeping at her over the wall. The gaping, unsophisticated admiration of the lad made them stop. 66 They are at it still," said one of our hero's companions, "they are at it still. Why, you booby, did you never see a proud woman before, that you stand gaping there, as

if your soul had gone out of ye? e?" "Proud," said the lad, look

ing down:-"a wouldn't say nay to a fly, if gentle folks wouldn't tease 'un so." "Come," said our hero, "I'll take this opportunity to see for myself." He was up in the tree in an instant, and almost as speedily exclaimed, "What a face!"

"He has it!" cried the others, laughing:-"fairly struck through the ribs. Look, if looby and he arn't sworn friends on the thought of it."

It looked very like it, certainly. Our hero had scarcely gazed at her, when, without turning away his eyes, he clapped his hand upon that of the peasant, with a hearty shake, and said, "You're right, my friend. If there is pride in that face, truth itself is a lie. What a face! What eyes! What a figure!"