which the wound had left, with an air of appeal, which even I, with all my scepticism, felt to be irresistible. In short, old Timothy was a privileged person; and terrible sot though he were, he almost deserved to be so, for his good humour, his contentedness, his constant festivity of temper, and his good will towards every living thing-a good will which met with its usual reward in being heartily and universally returned. Every body liked old Timothy, with the soli tary exception of the hostess of the Bell, who, having once had him as an inmate during three weeks, had been so scandalized by his disorderly habits, that, after having with some difficulty turned him out of her house, she had never admitted him into it again, having actually resorted to the expedient of buying off her intended customer, even when he presented himself pence in hand, by the gift of a pint of home-brewed at the door, rather than suffer him to effect a lodgment in her tap-room-a mode of dismissal so much to Timothy's taste, that his incursions had become more and more frequent, insomuch that "to get rid of the ddler and other scape-graces, who were apt to put upon a lone woman," formed a main article in the catalogue of reasons assigned by Hester to herself and the world, for her marriage with Jacob Frost. Accordingly, the moment she heard that Timothy's irregularities and ill example were likely to prove altogether unprofitable, she revived her old objection to the poor fiddler's morals, rescinded her consent to his admission, and insisted so vehemently on his being unordered, that her astonished husband, fairly out-talked and out-scolded, was fain to purchase a quiet evening by a promise of obedience. Having carried this point, she forthwith, according to the example of all prudent wives, began an attack on another, and, having coinpassed the unordering of Timothy, began to bargain for uninviting her next neighbour, the widow Glen. Mrs. Martha Glen kept a baker's and chandler's shop in a wide lane, known by the name of the Broadway, and adorned with a noble avenue of oaks, terminating in the green whereon stood the Bell, a lane which, by dint of two or three cottages peeping out from amongst the trees, and two or three farm-houses, the smoke from whose chimneys sailed curlingly amongst them, might, in comparison with that lonely nook, pass for inhabited. Martha was a buxom widow, of about the same standing with Mistress Frost. She had had her share of this world's changes, being the happy relict of three several spouses, and was now a comely rosy dame with a laughing eye and a merry tongue. Why Hester should hate Martha Glen was one of the puzzles of the parish. Hate her she did, with that venomous and deadly hatred that never comes to words; and Martha repaid the obligation in kind, as much as a habitually genial and relenting temper would allow, although certainly the balance of aversion was much in favour of Mrs. Frost. Ar exceedingly smooth, genteel, and civil hatred it was on both sides; such a one as would have done honour to a more polished society. They dealt with each other, curtsied to each other, sate in the same pew at church, and employed the same charwoman-which last accordance, by the way, may partly account for the long duration of discord between the parties. Betty Clarke, the help in question, being a sharp, shrewish, vixenish woman, with a positive taste for quarrels, who regularly reported every cool inuendo uttered by the slow and soft-spoken Mrs. Frost, and every hot retort elicited from the rash and hasty Martha, and contrived to infuse her own spirit into each. With such an auxiliary on either side, there could be no great wonder at the continuance of this animosity; how it began was still undecided. There were, indeed, rumours of an early rivalry between the fair dames for the heart of a certain lame shepherd, the first husband of Martha; other reports assigned as a reason the unlucky tricks of Tom Martin, the only son of Mrs. Glen by her penultimate spouse, and the greatest pickle within twenty miles; a third party had, since the marriage, discovered the jealousy of Jacob to be the proximate cause, Martha Glen having been long his constant customer, dealing with him in all sorts of fishery and fruitery for herself and her shop, from red-herrings to golden-pippins; whilst a fourth party, still more scandalous, placed the jealousy, to which they also attributed the aversion, to the score of a young and strapping Scotch pedlar, Simon Frazer by name, who travelled the country with muslins and cottons, and for whom certain malicious gossips asserted both ladies to entertain a lacking penchant, and whose insensibility towards the maiden was said to have been the real origin of her match with Jacob Frost, whose proffer she had accepted out of spite. For my own part, I disbelieve all and each of these stories, and hold it very hard that an innocent woman cannot entertain a little harmless aversion towards her next neighbour without being called to account for so natural a feeling. It seems that Jacob thought so too, for on Hester's conditioning that Mrs. Glen should be excluded from the party, he just gave himself a wink and a nod, twisted his mouth a little more on one side than usual, and assented without a word; and with the same facility did he relinquish the bough of mistletoe, which he had purposed to suspend from the bacon-rack-the ancient mistletoe bough, on passing under which our village lads are apt to snatch a kiss from the village maidens a ceremony which offended Hester's nicety, and which Jacob promised to abrogate; and, pacified by these concessions, the bride promised to make due preparation for the ball, whilst the bridegroom departed on his usual expedition to the coast. Of the unrest of that week of bustling preparation, words can give but a faint image. Oh, the scourings, the cleanings, the sandings, the dustings, the scoldings of that disastrous week! The lame ostler and the red-haired parish girl were worked off their feet" even Sunday shone no Sabbath day to them"-for then did the lame ostler trudge eight miles to the church of a neighbouring parish, to procure the attendance of a celebrated bassoon player to officiate in lieu of Timothy; whilst the poor little maid was sent nearly as far to the head town, in quest of an itinerant show-woman, of whom report had spoken at the bell, to beat the tambourine. The show-woman proved undiscoverable; but the bassoon player having promised to come, and to bring with him a clarionet, Mrs. Frost was at ease as to her music; and having provided more victuals than the whole village could have discussed at a sitting, and having moreover adorned her house with berried holly, china-roses, and chrysantherums after the most tasteful manner, began to enter into the spirit of the thing, and to wish for the return of her husband to admire and to praise. Late on the great day Jacob arrived, his cart laden with marine stores for his share of the festival. Never had the goodly village of Aberleigh witnessed such a display of oysters, muscles, perriwinkles, and cockles, to say nothing of apples and nuts, and two little kegs, snugly covered up, which looked exceedingly as if they had cheated the revenue, a packet of green tea, which had something of the same air, and a new silk gown, of a flaming salmon-colour, straight from Paris, which he insisted on Hester's retiring to assume, whilst he remained to arrange the table and receive the company, who, it being now about four o'clock P. M. our good rustics can never have enough of a good thing-were beginning to assemble for the ball. The afternoon was fair and cold, and dry and frosty, and Matthews's, Bridgwaters', White's, and Jones's, in short, the whole sacmerage and shopkeepery of the place, with a goodly proportion of wives and daughters, came pouring in apace. Jacob received them with much gallantry, uncloaking and unbonnetting the ladies, assisted by his two staring and awkward auxiliaries, welcoming their husbands and fathers, and apologizing, as best he might, for the absence of his helpmate, who," perplexed in the extrenie" by her new finery, which happening to button down the back, she was fain to put on hind side before, did not make her appearance till the greater part of the company had arrived, and the music had struck up a country dance. An evil moment, alas! did poor Hester choose for her entry! for the first sound that met her ear was Timothy's fiddle, forming a strange trio with the bassoon and the clarionet; and the first persons whom she saw were Tom Martin cracking walnuts at the chimney-side, and Simon Frazer saluting the widow Glen under the mistletoe. How she survived such sights and sounds does appear wonderful-but survive them she did, for at three o'clock, A. M., when our reporter left the party, she was engaged in a sociable game at cards, which, by the description, seems to have been long whist, with the identical widow Glen, Simon Frazer, and William Ford, and had actually won fivepencehalfpenny of Martha's money; the young folks were still dancing gaily, to the sound of Timothy's fiddle, which fiddle had the good quality of going on almost as well drunk as sober, and it was now playing solo, the clarionet being hors-decombat, and the bassoon under the table. Tom Martin, after shewing off more tricks than a monkey, amongst the rest sewing the whole card-party together by the skirts, to the probable damage of Mrs. Frost's gay gown, had returned to his old post by the fire, and his old amusement of cracking walnuts, with the shells of which he was pelting the little parish girl, who sat fast asleep on the other side; and Jacob Frost, in all his glory, sate in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, roaring out catches with his old friend George Bridgwater, and half-a-dozen other drowthy cronies," whilst "aye the ale was growing better," and the Christmas party went merrily on. Monthly Magazine. BROKEN HEARTS. BROKEN faith and broken glass, Broken legs and arms are seen; But for broken hearts, we pass To what are not, and ne'er have been. veen (For the Mirror., It was ON the west coast of Ireland, in the county of Kerry, and barory of Iveragh, lies the harbour of Valentia. originally colonized by the Spaniards. Some months since, it was proposed as the port from whence the steam-packets were to start for North America, in consequence of its having two entrances at east and west. The island of Valentia is seven miles in length and two miles broad, presenting towards the main land and harbour a gentle declivity, but guarded on the Dingle Bay side by tremendous precipices. The entrances to the harbour are extremely narrow; the east is the safest, although with a north-west wind, (which blocks both the east and west passages,) the sea breaks right across. The remains of an ancient fort still exist, seated on the Gun Rock; it is supposed to have been erected at the period Oliver Cromwell was in Ireland, and is called after him. Cahir Si, a small post village, lies opposite the east entrance. From east to west, inside the harbour, there are four safe anchorages, in from three to five fathoms water, viz. the first, from the west entrance, is under Captain Spottiswood's house on the hill, bringing it to bear on the bow and port Magee astern. The second, in the bight opposite Belville-house, the seat of Whitwell Butler, Esq. The third, opposite the Knight of Kerry's lodge, on the island side. And the fourth, off the tide-surveyor's house, which lies on lentia, opposite Cahir' Sivi Va The west entrance, when the night is dark, would deceive a stranger, from Puffin Island being situated nearly in the centre of the channel; and if the south instead of the northern side is taken, it is certain destruction. Bray Head is a fine bold cliff, frowning majestically above A LITHOPHAGUS. IN the Dictionnaire Physique of Father Paulian is the following curious case:The beginning of May, 1760, there was brought to Avignon a true lithophagus, or stone-eater, who had been found, about three years before that time, in a northern island, by the crew of a Dutch ship. He not only swallowed flints of an inch and a half long, a full inch broad, and half an inch thick; but such stones as he could reduce to powder, such as marble, pebbles, &c., he made up into paste, which was to him a most agreeable and wholesome food. I examined this man with all the attention I possibly could; I found his gullet very large, his teeth exceedingly strong, his saliva very corrosive, and his stomach lower than ordinary, which I imputed to the vast quantity of flints he had swallowed, being about twenty-five one day with the other. His keeper made him eat raw flesh with the stones, but could never induce him to swallow bread; he would, however, drink water, wine, and brandy. He usually slept twelve hours in the day, and passed the greater part of the night in smoking. 8 O WINTER, ruler of the inverted year, But urg'd by storms along its slippery way, 5 generally on this COWPER. ing the fields with verdure, and delighting us children of the earth with an early foretaste of spring! However, let us not deceive ourselves; our text is true, and we must truly tell of it, and of what is not. Perhaps the greatest difficulty we have to master is to adhere to our text. The sunbeams play into our room-our winter plants revive, and laugh the frost to scorn"-then our eye catches a glimpse of the fine January figure that heads this article and we are reminded that we must describe his " fickle reign," in spite of "out-of-door" evidence and appearances. We must now expect the most intense cold; a few bright sunny days are generally succeeded by showers of snow and blustering winds. It is now the depth of winter; and to her power all nature yields. Cowper's accurate and beautiful the earth is covered with broad flakes of snow, the forest harmony is hushed, and the pelting showers of sleet and hail, the bowling of the sweeping storm, the rushing of wild torrents, whose rapid floodings the fetters of winter cannot stay, are raging without doors, and proclaiming, far and wide, the desolateness and gloom peculiar to this inclement season. But all is not gold that glitters"-and all is not gloom that gloomy seems. True, the orchards are stripped of their golden fruits; the groves are bending with the snow, "Their beauty withered, and their verdure lost." Yet, when we explore these dreary scenes, the mind is amply gratified in contemplating, that were there no winter, neither the spring, nor summer, nor autumn, would display such a variety of beauties, for the earth itself would lose those rich stores of nourishment and fertility to which even the winter so copiously contributes. But we must cease this strain. Our paper already begins to warn us of 66 our limits;" and we have not even given a farewell to the Old Year, or a greeting to the New one! We The commencement of a new year cannot be witnessed without emotion. have all our hopes and fears. We have outlived the pains and perils of the past one, (and its pleasures too, for pleasures are sometimes fatal,) and we hope to be the actors in another "strange, eventful history."-" Though of different tastes and fancies," says a writer in the pleasant volume above quoted, "there should yet be but one heart and mind amongst us upon this festival, even although we may deem it fitting to cast a Parthian glance, as it were, back upon the glories or the griefs that now lie buried in the tomb of time. Such ought not to spoil our appetite for the present, or rob us of hope for the future. What, albeit that age doth steal with noiseless tread, And ere we fear, The sad unwelcome visitant is here,' though day buries day, and month the month,' still we shall find enough of food for content, and gratitude, and contemplation, to exist upon, in the knowledge of what has been, in the anticipation of what may be. Nay, even though some of us should labour under those griefs that crack the heart strings,' though others may bear seared and shrivelled-up hopes, yet we should rather be content to bear those ills we have, than, as the bard of Avon writes, fly to others which we know not of."" The merry bells have announced the departure of one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-six, they have as merrily ushered in one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-seven, and now we are journeying onwards with high anticipations to celebrate its close, and hail another New Year's Day. Aye, and another— and another and another. But let us not calculate rashly. Time hurries us on to death, and it were well for us to improve our time. A fine moral tone of feeling is conveyed in the following reflections on the new year; they may be read again and again with profit. From the pages of The Literary Magnet we copy them and we close our January article with LINES ON THE NEW YEAR. WHILE midnight's chime beats deep and drear I will not hail another's birth A smile, the new-born year to greet, Assembled in the festal room- A narrower circle seems to meet Around the board-each vacant seat But fled and gone, with all its ills,. To hail the sacred season's call, THE NEW YEAR. ANOTHER year-another! say- |