hollow note, at distinct intervals, and the fife sung sharp and mournfully. The coffin was at length borne out; and, with slow step, inverted bayonets, and downcast eyes, the procession moved on. Many who cared not to join, stood behind in silent contemplation; and many, out of idle curiosity, lingered round, scarcely knowing why they were there. Behind some low, white, desolate buildings, which would scarcely shelter it from the storms of winter, the solitary grave was dug. Round this, the soldiers crowded in silence. On either side they leaned upon their muskets, and hardly a breath was heard, as the book of prayer was opened, and the fervent supplication went up to Heaven. The scene was singularly impressive. Immediately round the grave, in the rear of the soldiers, stood some wrapt in gloomy attention; others, still behind, were seen eagerly gazing over the shoulders of those who had closed up before them. Every cap was off, and every eye fixed. Still beyond, the sick were seen peeping out of the half-opened door; and women and boys stood, with arms crossed upon their bosoms, before the miserable huts from which they had just issued. There, there was no moving—no noise-no roving of the looksall were bent upon the speaker, who stood on the brink of the cold grave, with his eye raised in adjuration to Heaven, and calling on the Father of Spirits with an eloquence so full, so commanding, that his very soul seemed to mount up with his words. He ended. Then came the hurrying of the ceremony. At the quick command of the officer, the coffin was loweredthe guns were brought down-the steel rung-and in a moment it glittered again in the last sunbeam. At a word the death-volley was fired off in the air-another followed-and then another-and the last was discharged into the grave. It was all over-the smoke curled slowly among the wet gravel, and settled down upon the coffin-'t was the war-smoke embalming the soldier! The drum beat merrily—and the files wheeled into the lines, just as the sun went down in his glory.

How it fared with the traitor can be told in a few words. He won high place in the ranks to which he came, covered with the leprosy of his treason. He was received with open arms by an enemy to whom he brought undaunted courage, leagued with unprincipled hate. If it was honor to hold distinguished place in any service, while his very life was tainted with the worst contamination that can stain it-the contamination of a betrayer of his land-then he had honor, high and glorious. If it was happiness to live in all the splendor of existence, while his memory, like the felons of old, who, while living, were chained to the dead, was doomed to linger only on events that colored all his magnificence with guilt, and tortured his heart, if he had any, with the worst torments that can fall on man, the torments of a harrowed conscience, then he had happiness, unequalled and unqualified. For a season, he walked in a foreign clime, covered with the stars and badges that had been purchased by the gold of defection and revenge. For a season, his way, perhaps, was bright with honors, adulation, smiles, perchance with giddy joy, attendant on a giddy elevation. He saw sunshine in faces that passed him in the day; but his heart was frowned upon through the long night. For a season the music of flattery lulled him into forgetfulness, while he walked in the crowded mart, among the children of men; but solitude woke upon his ear the far voices of conscience; the tale of a betrayed country was lond in the night watches, and his dreams were peopled with the phantoms of a soul lost to truth on earth, and despairing of forgiveness in Heaven. He sunk in silence to his pillow, and died, an old man, in the stillness of his chamber; but there was a

summons ringing through the ruins of his soul, that the world knew not of; there were voices round his head that his friends heard not; there were forms hovering there that his attendants saw not. Misery and everlasting woe pressed their iron hands upon his brow, and he yielded up his life in the torments of a being, without even the hope of annihilation to smooth his pillow.

A LADY'S ADVICE.

Why, love in a cottage, my dear,
Is all very well for the young-
But when you've been married a year,
A different song will be sung;
And flowers (if they suit the complexion)
Are all very well for the hair,
But jewels (a pretty selection)
Have a vastly superior air.

It's all very pleasant for girls

To prate about beautiful eyes,
Dark hair, and its masses of curls,
Love-kisses and moonlight's soft sighs;
But Spring with its lilies and roses,
For ever, my love, will not last,
And bowers where perfume reposes,
Must yield to December's cold blast.

I confess for myself when I married
I deemed that no pleasure could dwell,
Unless in a garden I tarried,

With dew-drops on violets to swell;
But dew-drops, and garden, and flower,

And incense, and light, and perfume,
Words of love, and a soft star-lit bower,
Passed away with the violets bloom.

And as for the poetry of Fred,

Why, every one writes in these days;
Believe me, my love, if you wed,

You will not be the star of his praise :
Remember the old man may die,

Just think on your jointures, dear girl;
What a portion you'll have by and by,
How many a jewel and pearl.

You may then marry Fred if you like,
Or wherever your fancy may lead ;
Ah! I see now my argument strike-
(The last was a strong one indeed).
There, like a sweet girl, dry your tears
(They do make you look such a fright),
And, despite of your sighs and your tears,
We'll go and lear Pasta to-night.

THE EXCURSION.

Dear Harry, I'm making a party

To go up to Richmond by waterAs I know that your appetite's hearty,

We shall dine at the Star and the Garter : There'll be Frederic Scheer from the city, There'll be Adelaide Rose from the west; And Mr. and Mrs. Van Chitty

Are sure to go with us if pressed.

And I have in my head such a scheme,
I have got such a sweet girl to go-
Like the visions which come when we dream,
Like the thoughts of a young poet's brow;
You must quit, my dear brother, your books,
And come up from your studies to town:
Pray put on your very best looks-

I shall put on my very best gown.

I have managed the matter so well,

There will not be one man fit to talk with her; You are certain to bear off the belle,

If you take but one nice quiet walk with her :

And you shall sit next her at table,

You shall breathe your soft tones in her ear; (Make love to her while you are ableShe has got fifteen hundred a-year.)

You must praise all Madonna-like faces
(For she fancies that her's is that style);
You must touch on her delicate graces,

You must vow how adored is her smile;
You can give her a stanza from Byron,
With a melody out of Tom Moore;
But don't say that you think her a syren,
Or she'll possibly point to the door.

You must speak about mutual affection,
You must talk about beauty and blight,
You must hint at your fear of rejection,
You must touch upon love at first sight;
You must give her a look of the tender,
You must talk about hearts that are fading-

If at that she declines to surrender,

I should try with a gentle upbraiding.

But, Harry, I dare say you're smiling,
To think of my lecturing you;

Who all these fine nights are beguiling,
By keeping such lessons in view:
All I say is, my dear brother, come,
And I'll wager a dozen of gloves
That when you go back again home,

You'll be murmuring of angels and loves.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, Esq.

'There's something in a flying horse,

There's something in a huge balloon,'

-as the poet of Peter Bell says; and we may add, there's something in an easy chair-for in one, as our readers will observe by casting their eyes on the opposite picture, sits that poet aforesaid, namely William Wordsworth himself, in propria personâ.

No man of his generation has been so much praised and abused. He truly prophesied, in his preface to Lyrical Ballads, that these poems would be enthusiastically admired, or consigned to the uttermost contempt. Not long after their publication, the cackling brood of the Edinburgh reviewers came into existence, and they were determined to crow down Wordsworth. Some local Westmoreland spite actuated Brougham; and Jeffery was from the beginning, as he will be to the end, a mean and petty creature. Accordingly, the Lyrical Ballads, and all that ever fell from Wordsworth's muse, were decried as the most unmeaning nonsense that ever emanated from the brain of a driveller; and though they fought their way gallantly up in the world, in the teeth of this adverse criticism, and much more founded upon it (for of hack critics it is true, as of dogs, that the filth of one acts as an incentive to the filth of another), yet, to the very last of Jeffery's career, Wordsworth was set down as an ass, great as that belabored by Peter Bell. A criticism even on the Excursion, the greatest didactic poem in our language, commenced with This will never do.'

He may now despise the Edinburgh reviewers, and all that to them appertains; but they had their effect in their day. Even Lord Byron, when attacking the crew in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, fell into their slang; and the strictures which he poured forth so unsparingly on Wordsworth-simple Wordsworth-were taken from the Edinburgh Review. It will be seen, by the edition of his works now editing for Murray, that his lordship repented afterwards of his injustice, and described his sarcasms as unfair and illiberal. Without this testimony, we might have inferred the fact from the circumstance of his having imitated the great Laker in some half dozen of his poems, and transferred some of the most striking passages of him whom, in Don Juan, he stigmatised as mad beyond all hope,' into the most celebrated of his own productions.

The reaction which took place in Lord Byron's mind, has taken place in the mind of the reading populace in general, and people are now good enough to admit that the author of the Sonnets to Liberty, Laodamia, Dion, the Song in Brougham Castle, the Old Cumberland Beggar, the 'Sweet Highland Girl,' Yarrow Unvisited, the White Doe of Rylstone, and fifty other things, any of which would immortalise an ordinary writer, is something of a poet, to be named in the days which have produced an Alaric Watts or a Robert Montgomery. His fame will increase, and the more steadily the more such productions as the

Idiot Boy, and Alice Fell, and all the rest of that tribe of compositions, are forgotten.

This he will not believe. Talk to Wordsworth of the Idiot Boy, at which all mankind have laughed, and he will tell you, with a most solemn intonation of voice, and great magniloquence of style, that Charles Fox was most particularly struck with admiration of that very poem, and caution you against committing the rash act of censuring a production written by such a poet as Wordsworth, and panegyrised by such a critic as Fox. The various other pieces of nonsense which he has published are furnished with sponsors equally famous; and as parents are generally strenuous in defence or patronage of their rickety children, so does the rogy of our poet shine most conspicuously in favor of those compositions which, to eyes not parental, appear the most deformed and unsightly. Any man of common sense in half an hour would, by blotting a couple of dozen pages from Wordsworth's works, render them secure from criticism; but these very couple of dozen are the pages which he would most strenuously insist on retaining, stunning you with oratory to prove them the most superb things ever composed.

For the rest, he is a good sturdy Tory, a most exemplary man in all the relations of life, and a stamp-master void of reproach.

THE WRECKERS OF ST. AGNES.

THERE are few parts of England more wild and desolate than the mining districts of Cornwall. Nature, as a counterpoise to the treasures which she has lavished on this region of her bounty, has imparted to its features a most forbidding aspect. Bleak and barren plains, unenlivened by vegetation, with neither tree nor shrub to protect the traveller from the wind that sweeps across their surface, and danger in every step, from the innumerable shafts by which they are intersected.

It is truly an inhospitable country; and the nature of the inhabitants seems quite in accordance with its unfriendly characteristics-repulsive and ungainly in appearance, disgusting and ferocious in manner, cruel by nature, and treacherously cunning. Not a step have they gained from the barbarous state of their savage ancestors. I allude more particularly to the town and district of St. Agnes, near Truro, and its people. St. Agnes is a small place, situated on the coast of Cornwall, about ten miles from Truro, across one of those sterile plains, almost covered with the refuse of mines, and perforated in every direction, like a gigantic rabbit-warren. The road, so called, through this waste, is little better than a track, which it would be difficult and dangerous to traverse, without a guide. Many a wanderer has found a nameless grave, by venturing rashly across those dreary moors.