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had risen into fame at once; his reputation as a man of genius was acknowledged throughout his native land. His fortune was secured, and his name had already become illustrious. Everywhere was his society courted, and his opinions listened to with deference and admiration. There seemed to be no honours to which he might not aspire; no rank in society which he might not hope to attain. His ardent spirit, and his growing ambition, became only the more insatiable. Every difficulty had yielded before him; he had flown on upon the wings of success; his life had hitherto been a brilliant dream -a dream from which he saw no prospect of immediate awakening.

It was evening, and he was alone in her splendid drawing-room, with the loveliest woman in London-the daughter of a viscount. A hundred lamps, reflected by a hundred mirrors, shone around them. There was to be a magnificent entertainment, but the company had not yet ar rived. Edmund, and the lady Matilda, would not have cared had they never arrived at all. They sat near each other, and talked in low, soft tones of all that youth and beauty love best to talk about. Edmund had never felt so vain in his life before; for there were hundreds in the metropolis, blest with all the advantages of rank and birth, who would have given both their titles and their fortunes to have secured one of those smiles which the proud maiden now lavished upon him. And she she had read his works, she thought of his fame, she looked upon his elegant form and handsome features, and forgot the hundred scions of nobility who had offered up their incense at her shrine. A carriage was heard to stop, and they were soon to be interrupted. "I have taken a fancy to that emerald ring of yours," said the lady Matilda; "will you exchange it for one of mine ?" She took a glittering diamond from her finger, and put it on Edmund's; and at the same time his emerald became one of the ornaments of the prettiest hand in the world. It was a ring which Florence had given him the very morning he left Woodburn. The two years he was to be away had expired. "Florence," said her father to her one morning, "I never saw you looking so well; your cheeks are all roses, my sweet girl. Have you been watching the sun rise ?" Florence turned away her nead for a moment, to brush a burn ing tear from her eye, and then answered cheerfully to her unsuspecting father, that she had seen the sun rise. There was not a person in Woodburn, except her father, who had not observed how dread. fully she was altered—not in her manners,

nor habits, nor conversation, but in her looks. Her cheek, it is true, was red, but it was the hot flush of fever; her eye was bright, but it was the watery clearness of an insidious malady. She had heard of Edmund's success, and there was not a heart in the world that beat so proudly at the intelligence; but she soon heard of more than his success, and his letters became fewer, shorter, and colder. When her father was from home, she would sit for hours in her garden, by herself, listening, as she said, to the chirping of the birds, but weeping bitterly all the while.

"I have not heard you speak of Edmund lately," said her father to her one day, about the beginning of June. " I do not think of him the less," answered Florence, with a faint smile. The old man knew nothing of his apostacy. "I have good news for you," said he; "I saw the rector to-day, and Edmund is to be in Woodburn by the end of the week." Florence grew pale; she tried to speak, but could not; a mist swam before her eyes; she held out her hand, and threw herself into her father's arms.

It was Saturday evening, and she knew that Edmund had arrived early on the previous day, but she had not yet seen him. She was sitting in the summerhouse of her father's garden, when she heard a step on the gravel-walk; she looked through the willows and honeysuckle; it was he! he himself, in all the bloom and beauty of dawning manhood! A strange shivering passed over her whole frame, and her colour went and came with fearful rapidity. Yet she retained her self-possession, and with apparent calmness rose to receive him when he entered. The change in her appearance, however, struck him immediately. "Good God! you have been ill! you are altered, sadly altered, since I saw you last.”—“ Does that strike you as so very wonderful, Edmund ?" said Florence, gravely; 66 are you not altered too ?”—“Oh, Florence! I have behaved to you like a villain! I see it now cruelly, fatally do I see it! I wished to believe that you did not care about me, but it was delusion-it was madness-it was guilt! and now it is too late!"—" Edmund, that I did love you, yon setting sun, which shone upon us when last we parted, can still attest, for it was the witness of my grief. It has been the witness, too, of the tears I have shed in my solitude-tears which have been revealed to no earthly eye; and it shall be the witness, even yet," she continued, an almost heavenly smile illuminating her pale countenance, " of our reconciliation, for the wanderer has returned,

and his errors are forgiven." She held out her hand to him as she spoke, but he shrunk back. "I dare not-I dare not take it! It is too late! Florence! I am married!"-There was not a sound escaped her lips, but her cheeks grew deadly pale; her eyes became as fixed as stone; and she fell on the ground like a marble statue.

Her grave is in the church-yard of Woodburn; she lies beside her father. There is no urn nor monumental tablet to mark the spot, but I should know it among a thousand. Edmund's fame has travelled into other countries, and men have looked up to him as to a demi-god. Florence Willesden was never heard of beyond the limits of Woodburn till now. Literary Magnet.

SPIRIT OF THE

Public Hournals.

CONVERSATIONS OF PALEY. WHEN I went to live at Lincoln, in 1797, I knew that Archdeacon Paley had been some few years before appointed subdean; and as his place obliged him to three months' residence every year, I anticipated much delight and instruction in the conversation of the author of "Moral and Political Philosophy," of "The Evidences of Christianity," and, above all, of that sagacious and original work, "Horæ Paulinæ." On his arrival to perform his duty of residence, in the year above mentioned, I made him a visit without finding him "at home." It was

known afterwards that he was at this time occupied in the composition of his "Natural Theology." He returned my visit: unfortunately I was " from home." My curiosity was not, however, long to wait for its gratification. I was soon invited to meet him at a dinner-party-at one of those dinners which I have elsewhere spoken of as regularly interchanged between the residentiary and the society of the place. I entered the drawing-room with some degree of awe; the greater part of the company was assembled, and Dr. Paley was amongst them.

Imagine to yourself, reader, if you never saw Dr. Paley, and many of my readers may not have seen him, since I write about twenty years after his death, -imagine to yourself a thick, short, square-built man, with a face which, though animated and cheerful, could not but, at first sight, appear ugly; with bushy brows, snub nose, and projecting teeth; with an awkward gait and movement of the arms; a decent and dignified,

but by no means excessive, protuberance of belly; wearing a white wig, such as suited his place, and a court coat; but without what would also have suited his place, a short cassock. To this part of the dress of the dignified ecclesiastic he had a particular dislike, and ridiculed it by calling it "a black apron, such as the master-tailors wear in Durham." The whole of his dress was of course black. He wore silver buckles at his knees and in his shoes.

He was talking as I entered; and I perceived, with much surprise, that he spoke a very broad northern dialect. He had passed, indeed, great part of his life in the north of England; but he had been educated and lived long at Cambridge, and had seen a good deal of the world. Perhaps he was vain of this singularity; perhaps he would not seem to wish to correct what he found he could not cure without difficulty, and so gave up the attempt. I heard him repeat three or four times the word "noodge," pushing his elbows at the same time towards the sides of those who stood nearest to him: this motion explains the meaning of a word not very generally in use among scholars, nor in good company. But Paley's merits, though they might have been recomm ended by polished manners, were superior to them, and wanted them not; and his learning was the more agreeable by being entirely tree from formality, pedantry, or assumption of literary im portance. I could not learn to what all this "noodging" referred, as the story was finished; and soon after, dinner was announced.

When we were seated at table, the mistress of the house said, "Mr. Subdean, what will you be pleased to eat?""Eat, madam? eat every thing, from the top of the table to the bottom from the beginning of the first course to the end of the second." Then, putting on an air of grave doubt and deliberation

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"There are those pork staakes; I had intended to proceed, regularly and systematically, through the ham and fowls to the beef; but those pork staakes stagger my system." I sat next to him; he turned suddenly upon me :--" Mr. what would you do in such a case ?" As I had to answer the first question proposed to me by the great Dr. Paley, I endeavoured to do so in choice and correct phraseology. I said, that when the end was the same, and the means equally innocent and indifferent. Paley had a quick and nice tact on all occasions; whether he understood the preciseness of my sentence as in jest or in earnest I know not; but, not allowing me to finish it, he

cried out" Ay, I see you are for the pork staakes. Give me some of that dish"-naming neither pork steaks nor ham and fowl.

Every one who has heard Paley talk must be aware how much his talk loses by being written down: no speech of the greatest orator, not even that to which was applied "quid si ipsum videsses?" could lose by transcription more of its force and effect. Paley's eloquence, however, did not, like that orator's, consist in his action; that was by no means graceful. His utterance was at times indistinct; and when the persons to whom he talked were near him, he talked between his teeth; but there was a variety and propriety of inflexion in the tones of his voice-an emphasis so pronounced, and so clearly conveying his meaning and feeling, assisted too by an intelligent smile or an arch leer, that not only what was really witty appeared doubly clever, but his ordinary remarks seemed ingenious.

We, that is the society of the place, dined at the subdeanery. The weather was excessively cold; the fire in the room in which we dined had been lighted but just before dinner; we were all chilled. Paley felt it to be useless to make apolo gies for what might have been so easily prevented; he talked of a dinner-party, an improvement upon this room, for they dined out of doors." To one of the company who was helping to the trifle, as it is here called "Captain -, you seem to be up to to the elbows in suds; send me some of that; dig deep." I observed, that immediately after dinner he sent for his tooth-pick case, and was impatient till it was brought; that he drank very sparingly, of white wine chiefly ; and that some gingerbread was served, not as part of the dessert, but to him alone.

After dinner, one of the party said, "Mr. Subdean, if you will give me leave, I'll stir the fire." Paley rushed from his end of the table: "I understand your trick! you want to have an opportunity of warming yourself. These are reflections of a mind at ease: I have been farther from the fire than any of you: give me the poker." When we were seated round the fire, he gave me a letter: "It relates to the hare we had at dinner. It is written by a farmer, a tenant to the dean and chapter. Nay, read it aloud." I read :-" Reverend Sir: I request your honour's acceptance of a hare, as I mean to ask a favour in a short time. I am, &c. &c." Paley said, “As the dean remarked, so many thousand presents have been made with the same intention, yet the motive was never so honestly avowed before." I said, "I hope the farmer

will obtain the favour." "Very likely he will."

"When I lived at Carlisle, I used to send half-a-guinea to market on the market-day, and that supplied my family with provisions for the week." A proof, notwithstanding the cheapness of that country, of the straitness of Paley's circumstances. His family was numerous, and he had, he said, three servants. He talked without reserve of passages in his former life, which a man of ordinary character, in the situation he then filled, would have been careful to keep out of view. There was latent pride in this perhaps.

"When I set up a carriage, it was thought right that my armorial bearings should appear on the panels. Now, we had none of us ever heard of the Paley arms; none of us had ever dreamed that such things existed, or had ever been. All the old folks of the family were consulted; they knew nothing about it. Great search was made, however, and at last we found a silver tankard, on which was engraved a coat of arms. It was carried by common consent that these must be the Paley arms; they were painted on the carriage, and looked very handsome. The carriage went on very well with them; and it was not till six months' afterwards that we found out that the tankard had been bought at a sale!" His looks and manner were an admirable running commentary on this story, and rendered it superfluous for him to make, and he did not make, any remark upon it.

Mr. Subdean, we saw you this morning in a situation that must have been very distressing to you-in the midst of the crowd that was accompanying the poor man who was going to be hanged. "Why," said he, "I got into the crowd without intending it; but, being there, I waited to see the poor fellow pass by. I looked in his face to see the expression of it; he was amazed and stupified, and that was all: I observed that the nails of his fingers were perfectly white." Soon after he said, "How strange it is that we should be so much under the influence of our habits! the poor man who was executed this morning was a miller; had been brought up a miller; after the commission of the felony, when he knew that they were in search of him, he hid himself in a mill, and in a mill he was apprehended."

He told me, "When I wanted to write any thing particularly well,-to do better than ordinary,-I used to order a postchaise and go to Longtown; it is the first stage from Carlisle towards the north; there is a comfortable quiet inn there. I asked for a room to myself; there then I

was, safe from the bustle and trouble of a family, and there I remained as long as I liked, or till I had finished what I was about." I said, "That is a very curious anecdote ;" and I said it in a tone which, from a certain change in his countenance, I believe to have set him on musing how this anecdote would appear in the history of his life.

Paley took his rides on horseback occasionally, but always alone, without the attendance even of a servant. "I am so bad a horseman, that if any man on horseback was to come near me when I am riding, I should certainly have a fall; company would take off my attention, and I have need of all I can command to manage my horse and keep my seat; I have got a horse, the quietest creature that ever lived, one that at Carlisle used to be covered with children from the ears to the tail."

Understanding all this, and seeing him gambadoing on the race-course, I turned my horse's head another way. "1 saw what you meant this morning; it was very considerate of you; I am much obliged to you."

Paley was too careful of petty expenses, as is frequently the case with those who have had but narrow incomes in early life. He kept a sufficiently handsome establishment as subdean, but he was stingy. A plentiful fall of snow took place during an evening party at the precentor's; two of Mr. Subdean's daughters were there; he showed great anxiety on account of the necessity that seemed to have arisen of sending them home in a sedan-chair. Taking the advice of several of the company, whether such necessity really and inevitably existed, he said to me, only next door.". "The houses touch," said I," but it is a long round to your door; the length of both houses, and then through the garden in front of your house."

"It is

ordinary cases, gentle and good-natured; his tact enabled, and his seemingly-benevolent disposition prompted him to say what might he pleasing to those with whom he conversed, and to avoid what might be disagreeable. He certainly was not by nature of a selfish character; how far the example of the world, and the necessities of his own situation might have engendered this sentiment, which every man finds unamiable when exerted against himself, it is not for man to judge, who cannot know the heart, and can seldom impartially decide on the conduct of his fellow-man.-New Monthly Magazine.

WINTER.-IN SIX SONNETS.

NO. I.-DAY BREAK.
SLOW clear away the misty shades of morn,
As sings the redbreast on the window-sill:
Fade the last stars; the air is stern and still;
And lo! bright frost-work on the leafless thorn!
Why, day-god, why so late? the tardy heaven
Brightens; and, screaming downwards to the
shore

Of the waste sea, the dim-seen gulls pass o'er,
A scatter'd crowd, by natural impulse driven
Home to their element. All yesternight
From spongy ragged clouds pour'd down the
rain,

And in the vind-gusts, on the window pane
Rattled aloud:-but now the sky grows bright.
Winter! since thou must govern us again,
Oh, take not in fierce tyrannies delight.

NO. II.-SNOW-STORM.

How gloom the clouds' quite stifled is the ray, Which from the conquer'd sun would vainly shoot

Through the blank storm; and though the winds
be mute,

Lo! down the whitening deluge finds its way.-
Look up!-a thousand thousand fairy motes
Come dancing downwards, onwards, sideways
whirl'd,

Like flecks of down, or apple-blossoms curl'a

He consulted the precentor, who, to put By nipping winds. See how in ether floats the matter in the right point of view, cried out, "Let the girls have a chair; it is only three-pence a-piece.'

We all admired Paley's talents; we were all proud of having him for subdean; we all sought and delighted in his conversation: he was liked, yet it cannot be said in an unqualified sense that he was respected. The familiarity of his manners, his almost perpetual jests, his approximations to coarseness of language, weakened that splendour of his literary reputation by which we should otherwise have been dazzled. Yet he was, though rough and unpolished, perfectly well behaved. If ever he stepped aside from the conformity with the order and regulations of good society, it was in the spirit of fun, and understood to be so; he was, in all

The light-wing'd mass,—then, mantling o'er the
field,

Changes at once the landscape, chokes the rill,
Hoaries with white the lately verdant hill,
And silvers earth. All to thine influence yield
Stern conqueror of blithe autumn; yearly still
of thee, the dread avatar is reveal'd.

NO. III.-CLEAR FROST.
'Tis noon, the heaven is clear without a cloud;
And, on the masses of untrodden snow,
The inefficient sunbeams glance and glow:

Still is the mountain swathed in its white shroud.
But look along the lake!--hark to the hum
Of mingling crowds!-in graceful curves how
swings

'The air-poised skater-Mercury without wings!
Rings the wide ice, a murmur never dumb;
While over all, in tits harmonious, come
The dulcet tones which music lanward flings.-

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There moves the ermined fair, with timid toe; Half-pain'd, half-pleased: yes! all is joy and mirth,

As if, though frost could subjugate mean eartn, He had no chains to bind the spirit's flow.

NO. IV.-MOONLIGHT.

Behold the mountain peaks how sharply lined
Against the cloudless orient!-while, serene,
The silver moon, majestic as a queen,
Walks mid thin stars, whose lustre has declined.
There is no breath of wind abroad. The trees
Sleep in their stilly leaflessness; while, lost
In the pale, sparkling labyrinths of frost,
The wide world seems to slumber, and to freeze.
'Tis like enchanted fairyland !-A chill
Steals o'er the heart, as, gazing thus on night,
Life from our lower world seems pass'd away:
And, in the witchery of the faint moonlight,]
Silence comes down to hold perpetual sway;—
So breathless is the scene-so hush'd-so still!

NO. V.-VICISSITUDE.

Oh! sweetly beautiful it is to mark
The virgiu, vernal snow drop! lifting up-
Meek as a nun-the whiteness of its cup,
From earth's dead bosom, desolate and dark.-
Glorious is summer! with its rich array
Of blossom'd greenery, perfume-glowing bowers,
Blue skies, and balmy airs, and fruits, and
flowers,

Bright sunshine, singing birds, and endless day!
Nor glorious less brown autumn's witchery;
As by her aureate trees Pomona sits
And Ceres, as she wanders, hears by fits
The reapers' chant, beneath the mellowing sky;
But thy blasts, winter, hymn a moral lay,
And, mocking earth, bid man's thoughts point on
high.

NO. VI. CONCLUSIONS.

All things round us preach of death; yet mirth Swells the vain heart, darts from the careless eye,

As if we were created ne'er to die,

And had our everlasting kome on earth!

All things around us preach of death; the leaves Drop from the forest-perish the bright flow'rs— Shortens the day's shorn sunlight, hours on hours

And o'er bleak, sterile fields the wild wind grieves.-

Yes! all things preach of death,-we are born to die:

We are but waves along life's ocean driven;
Time is to us a brief probation given,
To fit us for a dread eternity.

Hear ye, that watch with faith's unslumbering eye,

Earth is our pilgrimage, our home is heaven! Blackwood's Magazine. DELTA.

Το

I HATE to see thy vain pretence,
To all the flowers of eloquence,
As boldly on thou rantest;

Tho' perhaps, thou still may please the crowd,

With gesture bad, and language loud,
Since sense alone thou wantest.

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and

I LOVE to pore upon old china to speculate, from the images, on Cathay. I can fancy that the Chinese manners betray themselves, like the drunkard's, in their cups.

How quaintly pranked and patterned is their vessel!-exquisitely outlandish, yet not barbarian.-How daintily transparent!-It should be no vulgar earth, that produces that superlative ware, nor does it so seem in the enamelled landscape.

There, are beautiful birds; thererich flowers and gorgeous butterflies, and a delicate clime, if we may credit the porcelain. There be also horrible monsters, dragons, with us obsolete, and reckoned fabulous; the main breed, doubtless, having followed Fohi (our Noah) in his wanderings thither from the Mount Ararat.-But how does that impeach the loveliness of Cathay ?—There are such creatures even in Fairy-land.

I long often to loiter in those romantic Paradises-studded with pretty temples -holiday pleasure-grounds the true tea-gardens. I like those meandering waters, and the abounding little islands.

And here is a Chinese nurse-maid,— Ho-Fi, chiding a fretful little Pekin child. The urchin hath just such another toy, at the end of a string, as might be purchased at our own Mr. Dunnett's. It argues an advanced state of civilization, where the children have many playthings; and the Chinese infants, witness their flying fishes and whirligigs, sold by the stray natives about our streets, are far gone in such juvenile luxuries.

But here is a better token.-The Chinese are a polite people; for they do not make household, much less husbandry, drudges of their wives. You may read the women's fortune in their tea-cups. In nine cases out of ten, the female is busy only in the lady-like toils of the toilette. Lo! here, how sedulously the blooming Hy-son is pencilling the mortal arches, and curving the cross-bows of her eye-brows. A musical instrument, her secondary engagement, is at her almost invisible feet. Are such little extremities likely to be tasked with laborious officesMarry, in kicking, they must be ludicrously impotent,-but then she hath a formidable growth of nails.

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By her side, the obsequious Hum is pouring his soft flatteries into her ear.

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