Now we need not ask you, reader, whether you would not have preferred dealing with an inveterate hater, who would have bluntly told you that your wife's mother's first cousin voted against him for the county thirty years ago, and that he'd see you somethinged, before he'd make your brat a parish-beadle. Nay, would you not have thought yourself better off, had you known that the rogue expected a quid pro quo, and had positively refused you at once, because he knew of a better offer in another quarter. Then, again, quoad the friend who introduced you to this exceedingly well-intentioned lord, don't you think he had better have left you alone, when you were doing your best to provide for your boy by your own exertions? There was no such pressing occasion for his interference; but the mischief-maker had such a regard for you, and was so anxious to serve you, that he never stopped to weigh the value of a ministerial promise, or to ask himself if he had a quid pro quo, to repay the patronage he so foolishly drew upon.

But what need of looking about for illustration? You surely, within your own family circle, must be acquainted with some most excellent mother, who, with the best intentions in the world, has crammed her children into sickness, and physicked them, one after the other, into the grave? Do you know no one in your own neighbourhood, who labours under a morbid respect for the maxim respecting the preference of learning over house and land, and who imagines that he is fulfilling the duties of a careful parent in setting his daughter's shoulders awry over a tapestry frame, or in "cramming" his son into a consumption, that he may enter college with éclat? Or what think you of that other gentleman who, duly impressed with the danger of sparing the rod and spoiling the child, has brought up a family with such severity, that one son ran away to sea, and was eaten by the cannibals, that a daughter married an adventurer, to escape from the parental roof, while his youngest boy remains little better than an idiot, without self-dependence or resolution enough to carry any honest purpose into execution? That the wretched parent was influenced by the most praiseworthy motives is proved by the depth of his affliction at these family miscarriages, which, however, he still attributes to his own soft-heartedness in spoiling a self-willed and incorrigible offspring. We are ourselves acquainted with a worthy and excellent family, who, if good intentions paved the road to heaven, would be entitled to the best place at the disposition of St. Peter, but whose deeds have scattered ruin and discontent on all sides of their neighbourhood. The husband on coming to a splendid estate, and finding himself without any thing to do, married a wife to assist him in the discharge of his office. If they had only possessed the grace not to care a d-n for any body, and to have followed their own vagary-oh," without troubling their heads with their neighbours, they might have run through their large property with credit and comfort to themselves, and have had a tombstone over their heads, on leaving this mortal coil, that would have made the reputation of a Chantrey. But the malignant fairy who was not asked to their christening, cursed these good people with a desire to benefit all mankind; and so, before the honeymoon was quite over, to work they went with their confounded benevolence.

On taking possession, they found themselves surrounded by a thriv

ing tenantry, in the midst of a prosperous and contented village, with a well-appointed set of respectable and orderly servants. My lady began her labours by a course of what she called charity. She went through the village twice a week, scolding the children for not minding their books, and the mothers for not doing every thing in the world; and then, being somewhat ashamed of her own unnecessary severity, she scattered indulgences on all sides, to stand well with her dependents. If she heard of a couple who wanted to be married, she interfered to procure them an establishment; if a wife lay-in she provided her with stores of baby-linen from the big-house; but if the woman had twins, the family were positively pelted with gratifications. To the poor workman she gave tools, to the small tradesman materials. Coats and blankets were distributed at Christmas with a profuse and indiscriminate hand; and there was not a tramper who passed within ten miles of the manor-house, that did not go out of his way for the sixpences, shillings, and halfcrowns, which were freely doled out to every whining and canting impostor. Now what was the result of this "wondrous waste of unexampled goodness?" You need but go to the village, and it will stare you in the face. It is overloaded with mendicants, in the uttermost destitution; the cottagers, heretofore accustomed to depend on themselves, and to calculate their resources, have become careless and indolent. On every emergency they fall back on "the good lady," and lay by no savings against the rainy day. Notwithstanding all their lavish charity, the workhouse is crowded; for the husband, at his wife's intercession, built cottages, without reference to the condition of the applicants, and the place has twice the population it has the means to support. Of the workmen she bad "assisted to bring forward" and to "set up in business," half have displaced the independent traders, who had no one to rely on but themselves, and were undersold by the cheap interlopers; the other half, leaning on the bounty of their protectors, became idle, dissipated, and drunken, and finally ran away, leaving the parish in for the maintenance of their wretched families. By this lady's ill-advised donations of wine and nourishing broths to the sick, and to lying-in women, she has poisoned no small numbers, whose families have been thrown on the parish; and she has expelled a very respectable village apothecary from the neighbourhood, for his ill-nature in standing between her and his patients, by setting up a scamp in a dispensary of her own founding, who labours in vain in his hopeless capacity of a preventive check. But has she gained thanks for her pains? No. The peasantry dread her interference, and fly from her presence when not in immediate want of her aid; at the same time, being forced upon improvements which they do not themselves require, they make no efforts after comfort but as they are compelled. Where they formerly paid a penny a week cheerfully to the village schoolmistress, they are now difficultly driven into sending their children to the gratuitous school; and they abuse their benefactress for forcing them from their field-work. So effectually, indeed, has she laboured in her vocation, that the paupers she has created have quite outgrown her means of relief; and she is hourly abused by the poor, for the scanty shabbiness of her donations; and by the farmers, for raising the parish-rates.

The husband, on his part, set out as an improver of husbandry, and

assisted his tenantry so effectually to make improvements which were generally failures, that they will no longer do any thing without an advance of cash; while he tied them down so closely in their leases to certain rotations of cropping, that they ceased to think on the subject, and lived and worked by the rule of thumb. By ill-judged relaxations of his just demands, he created a prevalent absence of punctuality in the payment of his rents; and then, struck with the mischief of lenity, he became senselessly severe, that he might improve the bad habits he had created. So, having filled the village with poachers, by winking at their offences, he was roused by a savage murder which one of the crew committed, and covered his premises with man-traps and spring-guns, in the service of morality. As a magistrate he is exemplary for punctuality of attendance; but his humanity lets loose the evil-doer, while his respect for authority supports the county officials placed under his control in oppressions and plunders infinite. On a very recent occasion, he half-ruined the people, by causing a strike of the manufacturers, through a well-meant lecture from the bench on wages and profits.

In their own family this couple are not more happy. By goodnaturedly overlooking faults innumerable, they have not a sober servant left on their establishment; and they were compelled to transport their butler for participating in the robbery of their plate-chest, because they had not the heart to punish a series of petty dishonesties.

But the most dangerous member of this family of the Wrongheads is the maiden sister, who, to the constitutional kindness of her relatives, has added a religious solicitude for the souls of the community. The life of this really amiable female is passed in an unceasing course of tract distributing, preaching, admonishing, Exeter-halling, &c. &c. There is not a person within the sphere of her influence whose liberty of conscience she has not violated.

In her own home she has set one half of the family against the other, on the subject of grace and predestination; and she has bored her nephew into freethinking, by her searching investigations into the grounds of his adherence to the establishment. Generally speaking she has unsettled the belief of one half of the parish, and steered the other half into so settled an uncharitableness, and so fiery a zeal, that scarcely one man in three will speak to his neighbour. How far she is answerable for the death of the cobbler, who was found hanged in his own strap, it would be cruel to investigate: but there is no doubt that her well-meant rebuke at the weekly religious conference immediately preceded that untimely catastrophe.

If from private life we turned our attention to what is done in parliament, it would not be difficult to show that the worst miscarriages in legislation are owing to the good intentions of gentlemen who never thought on politics, economy, or any one public question, before they found their way into the house. How many hundred men, for instance, were hung for forgery, without the slightest effect on the statistics of crime, by the repeated votes of men who had no other intention than to secure the Bank, and preserve the credit of the paper currency! How many years were Catholics persecuted and Jews incapacitated by members voting conscientiously in support of the reformed religion! How many men at this day would root up trade and beggar the

nation, for the express purpose of preserving us from depending for food on our natural enemies!!

Our readers will, we flatter ourselves, by this time agree with us in thinking that Bayle's guaranteeing his intentions and not his ignorance, was no such promising surety; and that the world requires for its moral government, much more than the purest motives. Fools, it must be clear to evidence, are ten times more mischievous than knaves, and a hundred times more numerous. The worst of it is, too, that your well-intentioned blockheads are about the most obstinate animals in creation, and that they will consummate more mischief than the great fire of London, before they can be persuaded that they are not as wise as King Solomon, and as dexterous as the king of all the conjurers. We beg, therefore, in conclusion, to assure our readers, that in writing this paper we have not the slightest good intention (or hope either) of making them wiser or better,-nay, not so much as a desire for their amusement, further than in as far as that end is mixed up with a thoroughly selfish wish to turn this and other such lucubrations to the best pecuniary account. We therefore hope that they will not be materially the worse for favouring us with a perusal; and so we heartily bid them farewell.

μ.

NO!

No sun-no moon !

No morn-no noon

No dawn-no dusk -no proper time of day-
No sky-no earthly view-

No distance looking blue

No road-no street-no "t'other side the way"-
No end to any Row-

No indications when the Crescents go

No top to any steeple

No recognitions of familiar people

No courtesies for showing 'em-
No knowing 'em!-

No travelling at all-no locomotion,
No inkling of the way-no notion-
No go"-by land or ocean-

66

No mail-no post-

No news from any foreign coast

No Park

-no Ring-no afternoon gentility-
No company-no nobility-

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,

No comfortable feel in any member

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,

No fruits, no flow'rs, no leaves, no birds, November

T. H.

In one of the most wild and beautiful of all Tuscany's fairy cities -Pistoia, dwelt a young girl of noble birth and rare loveliness; she had genius too, a dangerous gift to woman! but for all that might have lived, and died, and been forgotten, as thousands more as beautiful and more talented have been, and will be, to the end of the world, but for the love that has immortalized her.

Ricciarda de' Selvaggia-the very name is music! And we can see her now in imagination in her splendid home-or among her flowers, for we are sure that she must have loved flowers, or else pale with high thought indulging in that sweet gift of poesy which makes its votaries blessed or cursed! Why should it be oftenest the latter?

At this distance of time we must be content with the vague knowledge that she was beautiful! Perhaps the affection of her poet-lover painted her so, and the world took it for granted. But this we know for certain, that she had a young, warm, and passionate heart, and, fearing no evil, was simple and loving as a child; and that he, her idol, was faithful to the last!

On the night to which we would refer, the father of Ricciarda, who was gonfaliere, or chief magistrate of the well-known faction of the Bianchi, gave a splendid fête, to which all belonging to his own party were invited. But the girl, who had little sympathy with such scenes, pleaded fatigue, and was allowed to retire to her own quiet garden, and amuse herself after her own fashion. Perhaps her indisposition was not altogether feigned, for she was never very strong.

We have all our favourite haunts. Ricciarda's was a marble balcony enwreathed with flowers, which made the air heavy with their perfumes, and commanding a noble view of the city, with the lofty Apennines towering far above it in the distance.

"How beautiful!" murmured the girl, as she stood that night in her soft muslin dress, with her wealth of bright tresses, and her fair high brow, and gentle eyes, unconscious of being herself a still lovelier picture. And then she drew forth her tablets, and noted down with a rapid hand the inspiration of that spell-fraught hour. There was nothing new-nothing striking or original in the verses thus composed. The same thoughts might have passed through the minds of the many