"But how has this most miraculous change been wrought?" "Why," said Sidik, "I believe I have some merit in effecting it; but you shall hear. of Merdek saw in a moment whose example it was that he imitated. "Take that," said she, as she gave him another cuff, "take that, you paltry wretch; you should," she added, laughing him to scorn, "have killed the cat on the wedding-day." RICHES AND HAPPINESS. AN EASTERN STORY. "After the ceremonies of our nuptials were over, I went in my military dress, and with my sword-Sketches of Persia. by my side, to the apartment of Hooseinee. She was sitting in a most dignified posture to receive me, and her looks were any thing but inviting. As I entered the room, a beautiful cat, evidently a great favourite, came purring up to me. I deliberately drew my sword, struck its head off, and taking that in one hand, and the body in the other, threw them out of the window. I then very unconcernedly turned to the lady, who appeared in some alarm; she, however, made no observations, but was in every way kind and submissive, and has continued so ever since." "Thank you, my dear fellow," said little Merdek, with a significant shake of the head-" a word to the wise:" and away he capered, obviously quite rejoiced. It was near evening when this conversation took place: soon after, when the dark cloak of night had enveloped the bright radiance of the day, Merdck entered the chamber of his spouse, with something of a martial swagger, armed with a scimitar. The unsuspecting cat came forward as usual, to welcome the husband of her mistress; but in an instant her head was divided from her body, by a blow from the hand which had so often caressed her. Merdek having proceeded so far courageously, stooped to take up the dissevered members of the cat, but before he could effect this, a blow upon the side of the head, from his incensed lady, laid him sprawling on the floor." The tattle and scandal of the day spreads from zenaneh to zenâneh with surprising rapidity, and the wife As Ortogrul of Bassa was one day wandering along the streets of Bag dat, musing on the varieties of merchandize which the shops offered to his view, and observing the different occupations of the multitudes on every side, he was awakened from his meditation by a crowd that obstructed his passage. He raised his eyes, and saw the chief Vizier, returning from the divan to his palace. Ortogrul mingled with the attendants, and being supposed to have some petition for the Vizier, was permitted to enter. He surveyed the spaciousness of the apartments, admired the walls hung with golden tapestry, and the floors covered with silken carpets, and despised the simple neatness of his own little habitation. "Surely," said he to himself, "this palace is the seat of happiness, where pleasure succeeds to pleasure, and discontent and sorrow have no admission. Whatever Na ture has provided for the delight of sense is here spread forth to be enjoyed. What can mortals hope or imagine which the master of this palace has not obtained? The dishes of Luxury cover his table, the voice of Harmony lulls him in his bowers; he breathes the fra grance of the groves of Java, and sleeps upon the down of the cyg nets of Ganges. He speaks, and his mandate is obeyed; he wishes, and his wish is gratified; all whom le sees obey him, and all whom he bears flatter him. "How different, Ortogrul, is thy ition, who art doomed to the perpetual torments of unsatisfied desire, and who hast no amusement in thy power that can withhold thee from thy own reflections! They tell thee that thou art wise; but what does wisdom avail with poverty? None will flatter the poor, and the wise have very little power of flattering themselves. That man is surely the most wretched of the sons of wretchedtess, who lives with his own faults and follies always before him, and who has none to reconcile him to himself by praise and veneration. I have long sought content, and have not found it yet: but I will from this moment endeavour to become rich." Fall of this new resolution, he hut himself in his chamber for six meaths, to deliberate how he should gow rich: he sometimes proposed to offer himself as a counsellor to one of the kings of India, and sometimes resolved to dig for diamonds in the mines of Golconda. One day, after some hours passed violent fluctuation of opinion, sleep insensibly seized him in his chair. He dreamed that he was ringing a desert country in search of some one that might teach him to grow rich; and as he stood on the top of a hill shaded with cypress, in doubt whither to direct his steps, His father appeared on a sudden standing before him. *Ortogrul," said the old man almly to him, "I know thy perplexity, listen to thy father; tar thine eye on the opposite mountain." Ortogrul looked, and saw a torrent tumbling down the rocks, roaring with the voice of thander, and scattering its foam on the impending woods. "Now," And his father," behold the valley that lies between the hills." Or togrul looked, and espied a little well, out of which issued a small rivulet. "Tell me now," said his father, "dost thou wish for sudden affluence, that may pour upon thee like the mountain torrent, or for a slow and gradual increase, resembling the rill gliding from the well." "Let me be quickly rich," said Ortogrul; "let the golden stream be quick and violent." "Look round thee," said his father, once again." Octogrul looked, and perceived the channel of the torrent dry and dusty; but following the rivulet from the well, he traced it to a wide lake, which the supply, slow and constant, kept always full. He waked, and determined to grow rich by persevering industry. Having sold his patrimony, he engaged in merchandize, and in twenty years purchased lands, on which he raised a house, equal in sumptuousness to that of the Vizier, to which he invited all the ministers of pleasure, expecting to enjoy all the felicity which he had imagined riches able to afford. Leisure soon made him weary of himself, and he longed to be persuaded that he was great and happy. He was courteous and liberal: he gave all that approached him hopes of pleasing him, and all who should please him hopes of being rewarded. Every art of praise was tried, and every source of adulatory fiction was exhausted. Ortogrul heard his flatterers without delight, because he found himself unable to believe. them. His own heart told him his frailties; his own understanding reproached him with his faults. "How long," said he, with a deep sigh, "have I been labouring in vain to amass wealth which at last is useless! Let no man hereafter wish to be rich who is already too wise to be flattered.-Idler. THE KING AND THE DERVISE. LABOUR AND REST. A DERVISE travelling through Tartary, being arrived at the town of IN the early ages of the world, Balk, went into the king's palacement of continual pleasure and mankind was happy in the enjoy by mistake, as thinking it to be a public inn or caravansary. Having looked about him for some time, he entered into a long gallery, where he laid down his wallet, and spread his carpet, in order to repose himself upon it after the manner of eastern nations. He had not been long in this posture, before he was discovered by some of the guards, who asked him what was his business in that place? The Dervise told them he intended to take up his night's lodging in that caravansary. The guards let him know, in a very angry manner, that the house he was in, was not a caravansary, but the king's palace. Now it so happened that the king himself passed through the gallery during this debate, and, smiling at the mistake of the Dervise, asked him how he could possibly be so dull as not to distinguish a palace from a caravansary? Sir," says the Dervise," give me leave to ask your majesty a question or two. Who were the persons who lodged in this house when it was first built?" The King replied, "His ancestors." "And who," says the Dervise, was the last person that lodged here?" The King replied, "His father." "And who is it," "that lodges says the Dervise, here at present?" The King told him, that it was he himself." "And who," says the Dervise, "will be here after you?" The King answered, The young prince, his son.' "Ah, sir," said the Dervise, "a house that changes its inhabitants so often, and receives such a perpetual succession of guests, is not a palace, but a caravansary."-Spectator. tion of Rest, a gentle divinity, who constant plenty under the protecrequired of her worshippers neither altars nor sacrifices; and whose rites were only performed by prostrations upon turfs of flowers in shades of jasmine and myrtle, or by dances on the banks of rivers flowing with milk and nectar. Under this easy government, the first generations breathed the fragrance of perpetual Spring, ate the fruits which without culture fell into their hands, and slept under the birds singing over their heads, bowers arched by Nature, with and the beasts sporting about them. But, by degrees, each, though all, was desirous of appropriating there was more than enough for part to himself. Then entered Violence, and Fraud, and Theft, and Rapine. Soon after Pride and brought with them a new standard Envy broke into the world, and of wealth; for men, who till then thought themselves rich when they wanted nothing, now rated their demands, not by the calls of nature, but by the plenty of others; and began to consider themselves as poor, when they beheld their own possessions exceeded by those of their neighbours. Amidst the prevalence of this corruption, the state of the earth was changed; the year was divided became barren, and the rest yielded into seasons; part of the ground only berries, acorns, and herbs. The Summer, indeed, furnished a but Winter was without any recoarse and inelegant sufficiency, lief: famine, with a thousand diseases, which the inclemency of the air invited into the upper regions, made havoc among the men, and there appeared to be danger lest they should be destroyed before they were reformed. only friend, and hasted to his command. He led them out to the open fields and mountains, and showed them how to open mines, to level hills, to drain marshes, and change the course of rivers. The face of things was immediately transformed; the land was covered with towns and villages, encompassed with fields of corn, and plantations of fruit-trees; and nothing was seen but heaps of grain, and baskets of fruit, full tables, and crowded storehouses. Labour and his followers added almost every hour new acquisitions to their conquests, and saw Famine gradually dispossessed of his dominions; till, at last, amidst their jollity and triumphs, they were depressed and amazed by the approach of Lassitude, who was known by her sunk eyes and dejected countenance. She came forward trembling and groaning; at every groan the hearts of all those that beheld her lost their courage, their nerves slackened, their hands shook, and the instruments of labour fell from their grasp. To oppose the devastations of Famine, who scattered the ground everywhere with carcases, Labour came down upon the earth. Labour was the son of Necessity, the nurseling of Hope, and the pupil of Art; he had the strength of his mother, the spirit of his nurse, and the dexterity of his governess. His face was wrinkled with the wind, and swarthy with the sun: he had implements of husbandry in one hand, with which he turned up the earth; in the other he had the tools of architecture, and raised walls and towers at his pleasure. He called out with a rough voice, Mortals! see here the power to whom you are consigned, and from what you are to hope for all your pleasures, and all your safety. You have long languished under the dominion of Rest, an impotent and deceitful goddess, who can neither protect nor relieve, but resigns ye to the first attacks of either Famine or Disease, and suffers her shades to be invaded by every eney, and destroyed by every accident. Wake, therefore, to the call groves and valleys which she had of Labour. I will teach you to hitherto inhabited, and entered into medy the sterility of the earth, palaces, reposed herself in alcoves, sad the severity of the sky; I will and slumbered away the Winter carpel Summer to find provisions upon beds of down, and the Sumfar the Winter. I will force the mer in artificial grottoes, with casters to give you their fish, the cades playing before her. There r its fowls, and the forest its was, indeed, always something ts; I will teach you to pierce wanting to complete her felicity, de bowels of the earth; and bring and she could never lull her refrom the caverns of the turning fugitives to that serenity tains, metals which shall give which they knew before their ength to your hands, and secu-gagements with Labour: nor was Tyto your bodies, by which you her dominion entirely without conybe covered from the assaults trol; for she was obliged to share the fiercest beasts, and with it with Luxury, though she alwhich you shall fell the oak, and ways looked upon her as a false de rocks, and subject all Na- friend, by whom her influence was ture to your use and pleasure. Rest now took leave of the in reality destroyed, while it seemEncouraged by this magnificent ed to be promoted. tation, the inhabitants of the The two soft associates, however, globe considered Labour as their reigned for some time without vi THE KING AND THE DERVISE. A DERVISE travelling through Tartary, being arrived at the town of Balk, went into the king's palace by mistake, as thinking it to be a public inn or caravansary. Having looked about him for some time, he entered into a long gallery, where he laid down his wallet, and spread his carpet, in order to repose himself upon it after the manner of eastern nations. He had not been long in this posture, before he was discovered by some of the guards, who asked him what was his business in that place? The Dervise told them he intended to take up his night's lodging in that caravansary. The guards let him know, in a very angry manner, that the house he was in, was not a caravansary, but the king's palace. LABOUR AND REST. IN the early ages of the world, mankind was happy in the enjoy ment of continual pleasure and constant plenty under the protection of Rest, a gentle divinity, who required of her worshippers neither altars nor sacrifices; and whose rites were only performed by prostrations upon turfs of flowers in shades of jasmine and myrtle, or by dances on the banks of rivers flowing with milk and nectar. Under this easy government, the first generations breathed the fragrance of perpetual Spring, ate the fruits which without culture fell into their hands, and slept under the birds singing over their heads, bowers arched by Nature, with and the beasts sporting about them. But, by degrees, each, though there was more than enough for all, was desirous of appropriating part to himself. Then entered Violence, and Fraud, and Theft, and Rapine. Soon after Pride and brought with them a new standard Envy broke into the world, and of wealth; for men, who till then thought themselves rich when they wanted nothing, now rated their demands, not by the calls of nature, but by the plenty of others; and began to consider themselves as poor, when they beheld their own possessions exceeded by those of their neighbours. Now it so happened that the king himself passed through the gallery during this debate, and, smiling at the mistake of the Dervise, asked him how he could possibly be so dull as not to distinguish a palace from a caravansary? Sir," says the Dervise, “give me leave to ask your majesty a question or two. Who were the persons who lodged in this house when it was first built?" The King replied, "His ancestors." "And who," says the Dervise, was the last person that lodged here?" The King replied, "His father." "And who is it," says the Dervise," that lodges Amidst the prevalence of this here at present?" The King told corruption, the state of the earth him, "that it was he himself." was changed; the year was divided "And who," says the Dervise, into seasons; part of the ground "will be here after you?" The became barren, and the rest yielded King answered, The young only berries, acorns, and herbs. prince, his son." "Ah, sir," said The Summer, indeed, furnished a the Dervise, "a house that changes but Winter was without any recoarse and inelegant sufficiency, its inhabitants so often, and re-lief: famine, with a thousand disceives such a perpetual succession of guests, is not a palace, but a caravansary."-Spectator. eases, which the inclemency of the air invited into the upper regions, made havoc among the men, and there appeared to be danger lest |