Pure as the snow flake ere it falls and takes the stain of

earth,

With not a taint of mortal life except thy mortal birth,God bade thee early taste the spring for which so many thirst,

And bliss-eternal bliss-is thine, my fairest and my first!

224

COCKNEY.

THE origin of this term, which conveys a reproach to citizens, and especially the vulgar inhabitants of London, is traced to the following circumstance.

A knight in the reign of Edward III. held "duas carucatus terræ de domino Regis," at Cukeney, in the county of Nottinghamshire, by the service of shoeing the king's palfrey or saddle borse upon all four feet, with the king's nails and materials, and, if he lamed him, he was to give the king another at four marks price. (The tenure is found in the "ancient and jocular customs of manners," published by Blount.) The knight of Cukeney attended at the king's stables to perform the service, where one of the royal farriers offered for a small compen sation to instruct him how to drive the nails without pricking the horse. The knight, both ignorant and avaricious, said he would save his coin, and do without instruction. He went to work, and consequently lamed the horse. His obstinacy induced him to make a second and third effort, in both of which he failed, and had to forfeit more marks than the value of the land. This act of folly became proverbial at court, and every stupid, untutored citizen, was called a Cukeney knight. The name afterwards was exchanged to Cockney.

It has also been said that a citizen of London was on a visit with his son at the house of a farmer in the country, when on hearing a cock crow, the boy exclaimed, "father! father! hear the cock neigh. This seems a silly tale, and does not reflect much credit on the inventor.

2242

TAVERNS.

A TAVERN is the common consumption of the afternoon, and a murderer, or the maker away of a rainy day. To give the total reckoning of it, it is the idle man's business, the melancholy man's sanctuary, the stranger's welcome, the inns of court man's entertainment, the scholar's kindness, and the citizen's country. It is the study of sparkling wits, and a cup of canary their book.

"THIS is the evening on which, a few days ago, we agreed to walk to the Bower at the Waterfall, and look at the perfection of a Scottish Sunset. Every thing on earth and heaven seems at this hour as beautiful as our souls could desire. Come, then, my sweet Anna, come along for by the time we have reached the Bower, with yourgentle steps, the great bright orb will be nearly resting its rim on what you call the Ruby Mountain, Come along, and we can return before the dew has softened a single ringlet on your fair forehead." With these words the happy husband locked kindly within his own, the arms of his young English wife: and even in the solitude of his unfrequented groves where no eye but his own now beheld her, looked with pride on the gracefulness and beauty that seemed so congenial with the singleness and simplicity of her soul.

They reached the Bower just as the western heaven was in all its glory. To them, while they stood together gazing on that glow of fire that burns without consuming and in whose mighty furnace the clouds and the mountain tops are but as embers, there seemed to exist no sky but the region of it in which their spirits were entranced. Their eyes saw it-their souls felt it; but what their eyes saw or their souls felt, they knew not in the mystery of that magnificence. The vast black bars, -the piled up masses of burnished gold,-the beds of softest saffron and richest purple lying surrounded with continually fluctuating dyes of crimson, till the very sun himself was for moments unheeded in the gorgeousness his light had created, the show of storm, but the feeling of calm over all that tumultuous, yet settled world of cloud that had

come floating silently and majestically together, and yet, in one little hour, was to be no more;-what might not beings endowed with a sense of beauty, and greatness, and love, and fear, and terror, and eternity, feel, when drawing their breath together, and turning their stedfast eyes on each others faces, in such a scene as this?

But from these high and bewildering imaginations, their souls returned insensibly to the real world in which their life lay; and, still feeling the presence of that splendid Sunset, although now they looked not towards it, they let their eyes glide, in mere human happiness, over the surface of the inhabited earth. The green fields, that, in all varieties of form, lay stretching out before them, the hedge rows of hawthorn and sweet-briar, the humble coppices, the stately groves, and, in the distance, the dark pine forest loading the mountain side, were all their own, and so too were a hundred cottages, on height and hollow, shelterless or buried in shelter, and all alike dear to their humble inmates, on account of their cherfulness or their repose. God had given them this bright and beautiful portion of the earth, and had given them along with it, hearts and souls to feel and understand in what lay the worth of the gift, and to enjoy it with a deep and thoughtful gratitude.

"All hearts bless you, Anna; and do you know that the Shepherd Poet, whom we once visited in his Shealing, has composed a Gaelic song on our marriage, and it is now sung by many a pretty highland girl, both in cottage and on hill-side. They wondered, it is said, why I should have brought them an English lady; but that was before they saw your face, or heard how sweet may be an English voice to a highland ear. They love you, Anna; they would die for you, Anna; for they have seen you with your sweet body in silk and satin, with a jewel on your forehead, and pearls in your hair, moving to music in your husband's hereditary hall; and they have seen you too in russet garb, aud ringlets unadorned, in their own smoky cottages, blyth and free as some native shepherdess of the hills. To the joyful and the sorrowful art thou alike dear; and all my tenantry are rejoiced when you appear, whether on your palfrey on the heather,or walking through the hay or harvest field, or sitting by the bed of sickness; or welcoming, with a gentle stateliness, the old withered mountaineer to his chieftain's gate."

The tears fell from the lady's eyes at these kind, loving

and joyful words: and, with a sob, she leaned her cheek on her husband's bosom. Oh! why-why should I be sad in the midst of the undeserved goodness of God? Since the farthest back time I recollect in the darkness of infancy, 1 have been perfectly happy, I have never lost any dear friend, as so many others have done. My father and mother live, and love me well; blessings be upon them now, and for ever! You love me, and that so tenderly, that at times my heart is like to break. But, my husband -forgive me-pity me-but upbraid me not; when I tell you, that my soul, of late, bas often fainted within me, as now it does,-for oh! husband! husband!-the fear of death is upon me; and as the sun sank behind the mountain, I thought that moment of a large burial-place, and the vault in which I am to be interred."

These words gave a shock to her husband's heart, and, for a few moments, he knew not how to cheer and comfort her. Almost before he could speak, and while he was silently kissing her forehead, his young wife, somewhat more composedly, said, "I strive against it-1 close my eyes to contain-to crush the tears that I feel gushing up from my stricken heart; but they force their way through, and my face is often ruefully drenched in solitude. Well may I weep to leave this world-thee-iny parents-the rooms in which, for a year of perfect bliss, I have walked, sat, or slept in thy bosom-all these beautiful woods, and plains, and hills, which I have begun to feel every day more and more as belonging unto me, because I am thy wife. But, husband! beyond, far, far beyond them all, except him of whose blood it is, do 1 weep to leave our baby that is now unborn. May it live to comfort you to gladden your eyes when I am gone-yea, to bring tears sometimes into them, when its face or form may chance to remember you of the mother who bore it, and died that it might see the day."

The lady rose up with these words from her husband's bosom; and, as a sweet balmy whispering breath of wind came from the broom on the river's ban, and fauned her cheeks, she seemed to revive from that desponding dream; and, with a faint smile, looking all around the sylvan Bower. The cheerful hum of the bees, that seemed to be hastening their work among the honey-flowers before the fall of dark,-the noise of the river that had been unheard while the sun was setting,-the lowing of the kine going leisurely homewards before their infant drivers, and the loud lofty song of the blackbird in his grove,-these, and

a thousand other mingling influences of nature, touched her heart with joy,—and her eyes became altogether free from tears. Her husband, who had been deeply affected by words so new to him from her lips, seized these moments of returning peace to divert her thoughts entirely from such causeless terrors. "To this Bower 1 brought you, to show you what a Scottish landscape was, the day after our marriage, and from that hour to this every look, smile, and word, and deed of thine, has been after my own heart, except these foolish tears. But the dew will soon be on the grass-so come, my beloved,-nay, I will not stir unless you smile. There, Anna! you are your beautiful self again!" And they returned cheerful and laughing to the hall; the lady's face being again as bright as if a tear had never dimmed its beauty. The glory of the sunset was almost forgotten in the sweet, fair, pensive silence of the twilight, now fast glimmering on to one of those clear summer nights, which divide, for a few hours, one day from another with their transitory pomp of stars.

(To be Continued.)

ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND HIS DOG. ALEXANDER the Great, on his expedition to India, received from the king of Albania, a present of a dog of uncommon size. Struck with its appearance, he commanded bears, wild boars, and stags to be turned out successively before it; but the animal lay still in quiet contempt. The generous prince, offended at such want of spirit in so vast a bulk, ordered the dog to be killed. The Albanian king, hearing of this sent another, the only one of the kind remaining, with a request that they would try him, not with inferior kinds of game, but with a lion or an elephant. Alexander complied, and beheld a lion instantly torn to pieces. Greatly delighted with the spectacle, he then commanded an elephant to be brought out before him. The dog, bristling up the hairs of bis whole body, first thundered with a terrible barking: then flew at the elephant, and rising to him on this and that side, artfully attacking and yielding by terms, made him so giddy with the incessant motion, that at length he fell, the earth shaking at his fall.*

The above is Pliny's description of what the modern" Demosthenes of the ring" terms a turn-up.It is a lame account, doubtless. Would it were possible to breed such animals now! How delighted we could read a Pierce Eganified article on such a sport, dressed out in all his wouted gentility and decency, on the sabbath day to our families.