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thought banished-be ye holy and calmwheesht!"

There is a set of the generation of quietists, who are ever and anon coming up to you in the street with a curious entre-nous expression of phiz, as if, like a grief-laden ghost, they were possessed of some secret which they could not bring themselves to divulge. Now, for my part, I have no curiosity after secrets. I would rather want the best of them than be at the trouble of recollecting to keep them to myself. Yet these people do often seize me by the button, and attempt to work off a great secret" upon me, in their quiet way, dribble by dribble, notwithstanding all I can do to the contrary. "Have you heard of anything within the last few days? Anything about

It's a very deli

And so, after a
whisper, wink,

-? I heard it whispered last night, but I could not believe it. It was talked of to-day, however, I know, in the Parliament House. And Guthry, I'm told, knows all about it. For God's sake, however, speak loundly about it; and don't say I told you. cate business. Wheesht!" thousand insinuations, by shrug, and smile, they quit button, and leave you weltering in astonishment, unable to make out, for the life of you, what all this means; nay, perhaps, so completely do you feel bamboozled by the tide of new and imperfect ideas which has been let loose upon you, that you scarcely know that you are walking on the earth for five minutes after. You feel ravished away, as it were, into middle air, caput ferit alta sidera—not with elation, but with bother ation of spirit. Your imagination toils and pants after their meaning through the great abyss of space; and you hardly feel the pressure of the real world around you for the afternoon.

forward, holding up her hand, after the manner of a judge administering an oath, and only pronounces the single emphatic word-wheesht! You are beckoned in a most mysterious manner into a side-room, and told to be very quiet, for has just fallen into a sleep, which the doctor expects to do a great deal of good, and there must, upon no account, be any disturbance. Though the bedroom of the patient is so far away that no voice, however loud, could reach it, this high-priestess of silence still speaks thirty degrees below the zero of articulation, the sense of the necessity of quiet being so weighty upon her mind, that she totally forgets the state of the case in this particular instance, and even, perhaps, if she were removed to the distance of several miles, would still fear to give her words full utterance. You soon find this discreet old lady in full possession of your house, invested with the management of the keys, arbitress of all matters connected with the children's frocks, and sole autocrat of the bread and butter. If you live in any of the streets of the New Town, where hardly a cart or carriage is to be heard from morning till night, you immediately find the street in front of the door strewed with tanners' bark, to deafen the sound of those rarely-occurring annoyances. Of course, if you live in the Old Town, where carts and carriages are incessant, the patient is understood to have nerves accordingly, and no bark is required. Suppose the case to be one where the mistress of the house herself is indisposed: for some time you find your consequence as master entirely absorbed; you are a mere subordinate where once you were principal; the attentions of all the servants, and also of the discreet lady, are all engrossed by the patient; and you come into, Then there is a set of people, of the quieter and go out of the house, without ever being sex-good neighbours, mothers of families- heeded or regarded; unless, perhaps, when you who, when there is any sickness in your own happen to make a very leetle noise, and then a house, and the mistress of the house herself is troop of harpies, with the discreet lady at their not very well able to take care of it, rush in head, fly upon you, with open mouth and upunbidden, apparently upon the same instinct lifted hands, and all the gesticulation and expreswhich brings birds of prey to fields of battle, sion which might properly accompany an outand immediately begin to assume a strange burst of indignant remonstrance, but which, in kind of unauthorized directorate, as if they this case, is a kind of dumb thunder, ending had been all their lives as familiar with the all in the awful monosyllable- wheesht! scene as yourself. These kind persons leave, Then, there is an oiling of doors, and a throng their own houses to Providence, all selfish con- of women going through the house in their siderations being abandoned for the time at stockings, or at most in what are called carpet the call of what they term distress. On com- shoes, and a whispering and breathing of ing home to dinner, totally unwitting of the wheesht! for many days, till at last, through trouble which has befallen the family in your very contagion, you yourself become as timid absence, you are surprised in limine, at the as a titmouse, and almost forget the sound of very door-step, by meeting a quiet-looking your own voice. Then the mysterious old oldish woman in her stocking-soles, who comes | woman, how beautifully she manages every

thing! Her out-goings and her in-comings are all most becoming and composed. The flame which you see her occasionally sending over a plateful of brandy for the sick-room, is not more gently lambent than her own pace. You see her a few yards off addressing herself to some underling, and, although you hear not a whisper nor a breath, except, perhaps, the ever interjected wheesht, to your surprise her language appears to be comprehended by the person spoken to, and lo and behold it is immediately acted upon. The very children, albeit unaccustomed to the reign of silence, are overborne and dashed down by the awful influence of the everlasting wheesht, and are observed crawling, like so many kittens, through a suite of apartments, where they erst performed gallopades of the most outrageous description. If you happen to take a peep into the sick-chamber, you see the mysterious woman standing over the bed, with the air and gestures of an inspired Pythoness, pointing to distant bottles and boxes, and doing everything, speech excepted, to make herself understood. If the wrong bottle or box be touched by the servant, she writhes her whole body and countenance in an agony of dumb negation; but, when the right one is pounced upon at last, she suddenly relaxes into approval, and her agonies cease. Suppose that the patient at last "departs," the stillness of the household is not remitted, in consideration of there being no longer any one to be disturbed. It rather becomes more deep and solemn than ever. There is still the same carpet-shoeing as before -the same ejaculating of wheesht. The house begins to look like an absolute sepulchre, and the mysterious woman, like some marble and unspeaking cherub, planted to guard it. She takes a leading hand in the melancholy duties paid to the dead, and is always able to recommend a person who makes grave-clothes-Mrs. So-and-so-living in some close in the Old Town, first stair, fifth door up. She can even do something in the way of mournings for the survivors; the children will require this, and the servants that; so much crape for this one's hat; so much black ribbon for that one's bonnet. Even after all these matters have been arranged by her friendly intervention, she does not yet depart. She must see after the wine and cake at the funeral, and take care that everything is managed with decency, and, above all things, quietly. At last, when all is over, she soofs out at the door, with a strange rustle of silk, as if she were saying, and saying for the last farewell time, the oft-repeated shibboleth of her kind-WHEESHT!

AN INTERLUDE.

[Algernon Charles Swinburne, born in London, 5th

April, 1837. Poet. He is a son of Admiral Charles
Henry Swinburne. He studied at Baliol College,
Oxford; afterwards visited Florence, and enjoyed the
society of Walter Savage Landor. His works are: The
Queen Mother and Rosamond, two plays; Atalanta in
Calydon, a tragedy; Chastelard, a tragedy; Poems and
Ballads (from which we quote); Siena; A Song of Italy;
&c. He has written various prose essays, the most
notable of which is that on William Blake, the artist
"Mr. Swinburne is a remarkable and
and poet.
original poet"-Saturday Review. "He is gifted with
no small portion of the all-important divine fire, with-
out which no man can hope to achieve poetic success;
he possesses considerable powers of description, a keen
eye for natural scenery, and a copious vocabulary of rich
yet simple English."—Times.]

In the greenest growth of the Maytime,
I rode where the woods were wet,
Between the dawn and the daytime;
The spring was glad that we met.
There was something the season wanted,
Though the ways and the woods smelt sweet;
The breath at your lips that panted,

The pulse of the grass at your feet.

You came, and the sun came after,

And the flag-flowers lightened with laughter,

And the green grew golden above:

And the meadow-sweet shook with love. Your feet in the full-grown grasses

Moved soft as a weak wind blows; You passed me as April passes,

With face made out of a rose.

By the stream where the stems were slender,
Your bright foot paused at the sedge;
It might be to watch the tender

Light leaves in the springtime hedge,

On boughs that the sweet month blanches
With flowery frost of May:

It might be a bird in the branches,
It might be a thorn in the way.

I waited to watch you linger

With foot drawn back from the dew, Till a sunbeam straight like a finger Struck sharp through the leaves at you.

And a bird overhead sang Follow,

And a bird to the right sang Here;
And the arch of the leaves was hollow,
And the meaning of May was clear.

I saw where the sun's hand pointed,
I knew what the bird's note said;
By the dawn and the dewfall anointed,
You were queen by the gold on your head.

As the glimpse of a burnt-out ember Recalls a regret of the sun,

I remember, forget, and remember What Love saw done and undone.

I remember the way we parted,

The day and the way we met; You hoped we were both broken-hearted, And knew we should both forget.

And May with her world in flower

Seemed still to murmur and smile As you murmured and smiled for an hour; I saw you turn at the stile.

A hand like a white wood-blossom

You lifted, and waved, and passed, With head hung down to the bosom, And pale, as it seemed, at last.

And the best and the worst of this is
That neither is most to blame

If you've forgotten my kisses
And I've forgotten your name.

THE MINING CURATE.

[John Carne was the author of Letters in the East; Recollections of Travels in Syria and Palestine; Lives of Eminent Missionaries, &c., and he was a frequent contributor to the annuals of forty years ago. His works

structor of its inhabitants, was, in every respect, admirably suited to his office. His form was spare and fitted for activity; his features aquiline, and his large gray eye for ever restless. Had he doffed the cassock and assumed the broad-brimmed hat and the coarse woollen jacket and trousers of the miner, and descended every day into the earth, he would have found there a better return for his labour than the marble hearts of his parishioners were disposed to give him. But then his profession made him a gentleman; he had received a good education, and had lived, for some time at least, among scholars and men of taste-having been maintained at the university by one of the foundation societies, who often send there candidates for holy orders. Poor man! from the moment he set his foot in Calartha his daily and nightly study seemed to be, how to supply the wants of nature in a comfortable and sufficient manner: it would be profane to say luxurious-for what had he to do with luxury? He was acutely sensible he had nothing to do with it.

Men's minds soon grow submissive to their situations! and after a vain and ineffectual struggle of a few weeks to keep up appearances, to vie in many things with his neighbours, to be thought to have a decent table, to be seen to wear a decent dress-he gave it up in des

are distinguished by graphic and faithful descriptions pair, just in time to save himself from total

of places and people.]

A wide and a wild parish is that of Calartha. Its aspect is strange and unusual; for the mines with which it abounds are situated on the brink of precipices, and even carried out into the sea. The edifices attached to them are seen fixed on isolated rocks, in the midst of the wave; while the rich produce drawn from the bowels of the deep, far beneath, is conveyed, with singular ingenuity, over the lofty cliffs that tower behind. If any one is satiated with luxuriant scenery (and it will sometimes satiate); if he would exchange groves, meadows, and fertile fields, for some new aspect of the ever-varied and impressive face of nature, let him come to this territory. The miner thrives, so does the farmer who lives in the few cultivated and romantic valleys; the fisherman, also, plies his trade with great success off the coast; but the clergyman has scarcely enough to keep body and soul together. Notwithstanding the numerous population of the parish, he has only forty pounds a year. Now the man who, at the time of our acquaintance with the affairs of Calartha, was the appointed religious in

ruin. It may be said that a bachelor, in so distant a province, where there was no competition to enhance the price of a single article, need not be ruined, with economy, even on forty pounds a year; but the curate had a mother and sister to maintain; and they took a little house on the slope of a hill, and lived together in it. How they lived, how they lodged, what they ate and drank-are mysteries that have never yet been sufficiently explained.

Now, the curate was no economist; had the money found its way entire into his hands it would have all melted away like the mists on one of the neighbouring hills. He would often give, and wished always to give, to the poor; he loved, but not to excess, a cheerful glass; and sometimes would cast his eye on his threadbare coat, with a determined purpose to have a new one. All these indulgences would quickly have made frightful invasions on the income, if the mother and sister had not received the quarterly ten pounds with an eager grasp, and watched over its little, gradual ebbings with a lynx eye and iron hand. The money had as well been at the bottom of the tin shaft in the vale below for any indulgence it brought to

him who toiled for it. It was in vain that the fruitless remarks and desires of his mother and son sometimes appealed to the parent in mov-sister, who were hardly ever asked out on these ing terms, when, returned from a hot and occasions; and during the ensuing week the dusty walk in the midst of summer, he begged daily and frugal meal was often embittered with hard for a few shillings. their repinings.

"James," said the old lady, "remember the dignity of the cloth. Would you lower yourself by drinking, may be, more than you can bear? Go and finish the discourse you've been writing, bit by bit, all the week: 'tis a beautiful piece o' writing, and there's no doubt the squire will ask you to dinner after hearin' of it."

The son looked down at the sound of dignity of the cloth: both his elbows were struggling through the time-worn vestment; yet he rose with a sigh, took down his manuscript, drew the table near the window, and was soon plunged in the very depths of his subject.

It might be thought that the imagination would freeze, and the power of composition be arrested by the hourly pressure of petty sacrifices and denials-the uncertainty, when he rose in the morning, whether any sufficient refection would be that day given to the outward man; but it did not seem so, at least his public discourses were oftentimes very good, and even eloquent, and had evidently been the work of care and time. One reason of this perhaps was, that Sunday was his day of triumph, and he felt it to be so. After sinking, in temporal things, below his parishioners during the whole of the week; after pining for comforts which they enjoyed to the full-he found himself on this day elevated above them was their instructor, their pastor, looked on by them as a man of learning and of power. He was far better adorned, also, than on weekdays: the gown left by his predecessor was in very good condition, and his appearance, on the whole, was respectable and impressive. Then, after the service, the hand was held out more freely and respectfully; the squire stopped in the aisle, and the rich farmer without the door, to exchange kind and friendly words with him; and an invitation to dinner, from some one or another, sometimes followed. There was a singular difference in all his demeanour, and tone, and bearing, on this day: his look was no longer restless and depressed, nor his attitude stooping, nor his air soft and cringing; he spoke fast and free, sat at the friendly table as a gentleman should, and thought no more of his forty pounds a year. The privations of the whole week rendered the now loaded board an exquisite luxury. Perhaps, for his own peace, he had better never have sat there; for, on his return at night, he was beset with the

To entertain a friend in his own house was a thing that never entered his head; had he dared to make the attempt, he might as well have faced two hungry harpies, as met the looks and words of his rigid relatives. He was often to be seen of an evening seated in the little window-seat, overlooking the road; and there he feasted his eyes on the joyous groups that returned from the market of the neighbouring town, where they had ate and drunk, and were now returning, in the fulness of their hearts, to a comfortable home, to their own warm hearth. And then a knot of farmers would jog merrily by, talking in loud voices of the current prices, the coming harvests, and of their own well-stored barns and yards.

"And why should so great a gulf be fixed between the pastor and his flock?" was a question he might well ask himself. Even when twilight had spread its dimness over dwelling and path, the form of the curate might still be seen seated there: for candle-light was spared, with infinite care and skill, within the walls; and not till the middle of November was any fire allowed. So he loved to linger over the last gleams of light, rather than turn to the void of his cheerless habitation. To defend himself from the increasing cold, he used to put on his ancient and rusty great-coat, and fold it tightly round him. The want of light was supplied from the public-house of the village, which was directly opposite, and only a few yards distant; for, the rooms being as usual profusely lighted, a partial glare was received from them through the windows of the curate's apartment. But this was more to his annoyance than his comfort. Much has been said of the torments of Tantalus; but as much, and with equal justice, might be said of the sufferings of this thirsty, poor, and much desiring man, who sat from hour to hour in a partial gloom, in which all the senses are more vividly awake, listening to the ringing of glasses, and the calls, continually repeated, for more supplies of some refreshing beverage, of new and old ale, and even wine. Often he retired to rest with a spirit tried to the very core. Alas! it needs not a guilty conscience to embitter life; salt tears will stream down blameless cheeks.

Thus passed away two or three years; when one morning saw him summoned to a different scene to attend one of his parishioners, whose dwelling was at some distance. The man was

dying, and over his bed bent a form and face that the eye would hardly look for within such walls: his condition in life was only that of a peasant, yet the daughter, who was his only child, was, in all opinions, the loveliest girl in the parish. Often, with surprise, had the curate marked her beauty from the pulpit; and in his few visits to the cottage he had entered into conversation with her, and found, by the words that fell gently from her lips, that she had treasured his sermons in her memory and heart-the sweetest flattery, perhaps, that woman can pay to a youthful minister.

He thought little of these things at this moment, however, but drew nigh to the side of his parishioner, and spoke to him in earnest and heartfelt tones: the man raised his hand in token of satisfaction, and seemed to devour every word he heard; but his eye, on which the world was now closing, was not lifted to heaven, but bent on the girl who hung over him. She was to be an orphan; and it seemed to be more than he could bear: he strove to man his spirit and call faith to his aid. But it might not be; the dread reality of the moment would not yield to the hope of future protection, which the minister strove to inculcate. The parishioner, a man of strong but untutored mind, listened in seeming calmness for some time; but when death drew near, he struggled against the stern summons, laid one hand firmly on his daughter's form, and when he felt that hand loose its hold, he turned his glazing eye on his pastor, and said,

"Man, if there's a love stronger than death, 'tis that for a desolate daughter: watch over mine, if you hope for mercy, for she is an orphan."

The tears of the girl did not fall alone; for the feelings of the curate were moved to the uttermost. Deaths and funerals had, from habit, become to him familiar things, but a death like this assailed every avenue of his heart and memory; the sun was yet rising, and his red beams fell through the cottage window on the face of the dead, whose thin hand was still extended towards his child, as if he miserably mocked the king of terrors; and on the features of that child was utter friendlessness. The minister stood with folded arms on the other side of the bed: his earnest aspect and compressed lips showed him to be no passionless spectator: he bent forward, and taking the trembling hand of the girl, led her from the apartment. He hastened to his home; and thither the scene followed him, the dying charge still thrilling in his ear. On the next Sunday his eye wandered unconsciously to the people

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who entered: and when the orphan girl came in her mourning, the looks of the whole congregation were instantly turned on her; for utter desolation ever commands interest and pity.

A stronger feeling was excited in the curate's mind as he often sought the cottage and gazed on her beauty, and loved it. But what had he to do with love, when poverty, like an armed man, stood in his path, and sternly warned the resistless stranger away? Could he for a moment think of introducing another to share the small pittance of his household? If he did, the delusive hope flitted in a moment away, like a cloud from the bosom of the rocky hill on which his dwelling stood; yet in spite of fate he continued to love, and, in the meantime, exerted all his little influence in the parish to improve the condition of the orphan.

Thus passed away a year, at the end of which a change came over his fortunes, a sudden and a great change. An old sister of his mother's died and left to her nephew the property which had been the reward of a whole life of griping and saving. They were all at their scanty breakfast when a letter, with a black seal, was delivered: the son took and opened it; a sudden light came to his eyes that had long been a stranger there, and a deep flush passed over his cheek; for it was the letter containing the account of the bequest. The strong emotions that seized every one were some time in subsiding. There was now a delightful certainty that poverty would dwell with them no more: life had never brought an hour so elevating, they shed tears, and then they laughed loud and long, in the fulness of their hearts; for the bequest amounted to nearly a thousand pounds. As it was all left to the son, he had, of course, the entire disposal of every farthing; and while the mother and sister naturally wished to surround their little household with comforts and enjoyments, and extend their consequence among the neighbours, he was occupied with different thoughts. The use he made of the money affords an instance of the strange waywardness of the human heart. He no sooner received the sum than the insatiable desire of increasing it, like a demon, entered his heart. The strong and sudden novelty of the event had its share, perhaps, in this: to a man to whom the command of a few shillings at a time had been an object of desire, the possession of so much wealth was exquisite.

But there was a deeper cause also, and one of longer standing. The extensive parish of which he was the curate offered a beautiful and enticing field of speculation, in which any

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