For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warın precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires ;
E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonoured dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,—

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn;

There at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noon-tide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woful-wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care or crossed in hopeless love.

One morn I missed him on the customed hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

The next with dirges due in sad array

Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,—
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.

THE EPITAPH.

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A Youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown;
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send;
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,

He gained from Heaven, 'twas all he wished, a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,

(There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God.

ل

STERNE.

LAWRENCE STERNE. Born 1713; Died 1768. He was born in Ireland, and in his early years led an unsettled life. He had long been a clergyman in Yorkshire, and had already published some sermons, when the first volume of Tristram Shandy appeared in 1759. The Sentimental Journey, his other well-known work, appeared in 1768, the year of his death.

His style is often eccentric, but always idiomatic: and his humour is unsurpassed by any English writer, with the exception, perhaps, of Shakespeare: and along with this he has also, at times, the most tender pathos.

SLAVERY.

DISGUISE thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery, still thou art a bitter draught; and, though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. It is thou, Liberty, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till nature herself shall change-no tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chymic power turn thy sceptre into iron-with thee to smile upon him, the swain who eats his crust, is happier than the monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven! grant me but health, thou great bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion; and shower down thy mitres, if it seem good unto thy divine

Providence, upon those heads which are aching for

them.

Pursuing these ideas, I sat down close by my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I full gave imagination.

scope

my

to my

I was going to begin with the millions of fellowcreatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it nearer me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me

-I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in a dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door, to take his picture.

I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood-he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time—nor had the voice of friends or kinsman breathed through his lattice. His children—

-But here my heart began to bleed—and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.

He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the further corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed; a little calendar of small sticks were laid at his head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there—he had

K

one of these little sticks in his hand, and with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it downshook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh-I saw the iron enter into his soul-I burst into tears-I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.

THE STORY OF LE FEVRE.

It was some time in the summer of that year in which Dendemond was taken by the allies, when my uncle Toby was one evening getting his supper, with his servant, Corporal Trim, sitting behind him at a small sideboard, when the landlord of a little inn in the village came into the parlour with an empty phial in his hand, to beg a glass or two of sack. ""Tis for a poor gentleman, I think, of the army," said the landlord, "who has been taken ill at my house four days ago, and has never held up his head since, or had a desire to taste anything till just now, that he has a fancy for a glass of sack and a thin toast. 'I think,' says he, taking his hand from his forehead, 'it would comfort me.'

"If I could neither beg, borrow, or buy such a thing," added the landlord, "I would almost steal it for the poor gentleman, he is so ill. I hope in God