He was interred in a shell

the 25th of August he was found dead in his bed, from the effects of poison which he had swallowed. in the burial-ground of Shoe Lane workhouse.

The heart which can peruse the fate of Chatterton without being moved, is little to be envied for its tranquillity; but the intellects of those men must be as deficient as their hearts are uncharitable, who, confounding all shades of moral distinction, have ranked his literary fiction of Rowley in the same class of crimes with pecuniary forgery, and have calculated that if he had not died by his own hand, he would have probably ended his days upon a gallows. This disgusting sentence has been pronounced upon a youth who was exemplary for severe study, temperance, and natural affection. His Rowleian forgery must indeed be pronounced improper by the general law which condemns all falsifications of history; but it deprived no man of his fame, it had no sacrilegious interference with the memory of departed genius, it had not, like Lauder's imposture, any malignant motive, to rob a party, or a country, of a name which was its pride and ornament.

Setting aside the opinion of those uncharitable biographers whose imaginations have conducted him to the gibbet, it may be owned that his unformed character exhibited strong and conflicting elements of good and evil. Even the momentary project of the infidel boy to become a Methodist preacher, betrays an obliquity of design, and a contempt of human credulity, that is not very amiable. But had he been spared, his pride and ambition would have come to flow in their proper channels; his understanding would have taught him the practical value of truth and the dignity of virtue, and he would have despised artifice when he had felt the strength and security of wisdom. In estimating the promises of his genius, I would rather lean to the utmost enthusiasm of his admirers, than to the cold opinion of those who are afraid of being blinded to the defects of the poems attributed to Rowley, by the veil of obsolete phraseology which is thrown over them. If we look to the ballad of Sir Charles Bawdin, and translate it into modern English, we shall find its strength and interest to have no dependence on obsolete words. In the striking passage

of the martyr Bawdin standing erect in his car to rebuke Edward, who beheld him from the window, when

"The tyrant's soul rushed to his face,”

and when he exclaimed,

"Behold the man! he speaks the truth,
He's greater than a king;”

in these, and in all the striking parts of the ballad, no effect is >wing to mock antiquity, but to the simple and high conception. of a great and just character, who

"Summ'd the actions of the day,

Each night before he slept."

What a moral portraiture from the hand of a boy! The inequality of Chatterton's various productions may be compared to the dis proportions of the ungrown giant. His works had nothing of the definite neatness of that precocious talent which stops short in early maturity. His thirst for knowledge was that of a being taught by instinct to lay up materials for the exercise of great and undeveloped powers. Even in his favourite maxim, pushed it might be to hyperbole, that a man by abstinence and perseverance might accomplish whatever he pleased, may be traced the indications of a genius which nature had meant to achieve works of immortality. Tasso alone can be compared to him as a juvenile prodigy. No English poet ever equalled him at the same age.

Some Account of the Great Law-Suit between the Parishes of St Dennis and St George in the Water.

MACAULAY.

[FROM KNIGHT'S QUARTERLY MAGAZINE.] THE parish of St Dennis is one of the most pleasant parts of the country in which it is situated. It is fertile, well wooded, well watered, and of an excellent air. For many generations the

manor had been holden in tail-mail by a worshipful family, who have always taken precedence of their neighbours at the races and at the sessions.

In ancient times the affairs of this parish were administered by a court baron, in which the freeholders were judges; and the rates levied by select vestries of the inhabitant householders. But at length these good customs fell into disuse. The lords of the manor indeed still held courts for form's sake, but they or their stewards had the whole management of affairs. They demanded services, duties, and customs to which they had no just title. Nay, they would often bring actions against their neighbours for their own private advantage, and then send in the bill to the parish. No objection was made, during many years, to these proceedings, so that the rates became heavier and heavier; nor was any person exempted from these demands, except the footmen and the gamekeepers of the squire and the rector of the parish. They indeed were never checked in any excess. They would come to an honest labourer's cottage, eat his pancakes, tuck his fowls into their pockets, and cane the poor man himself. If he went up to the great house to complain, it was hard to get the speech of Sir Lewis; and indeed his only chance of being righted was to coax the squire's pretty housekeeper, who could do what she pleased with her master. If he ventured to intrude upon the lord of the manor without this precaution, he gained nothing by his pains. . Sir Lewis, indeed, would at first receive him with a civil face; for, to give him his due, he could be a fine gentleman when he pleased. "Good day, my friend," he would say; "what situation have you in my family?" "Bless your honour," says the poor fellow, "I am not one of your honour's servants; I rent a small piece of ground, your honour." "Then, you dog," quoth the squire, "what do you mean by coming here? Has a gentleman nothing to do but to hear the complaints of clowns? Here! Philip, James, Dick, toss this fellow in a blanket; or duck him, and set him.in the stocks to dry."

One of these precious lords of the manor enclosed a deer park ; and, in order to stock it, he seized all the pretty pet fawns that

his tenants had brought up, without paying them a farthing, or asking their leave. It was a sad day for the parish of St Dennis. Indeed, I do not believe that all his oppressive exactions and long bills enraged the poor tenants so much as this cruel

measure.

Yet for a long time, in spite of all these inconveniences, St Dennis was a very pleasant place. The people could not refrain from capering if they heard the sound of a fiddle. And, if they were inclined to be riotous, Sir Lewis had only to send for Punch, or the dancing-dogs, and all was quiet again. But this could not last for ever; they began to think more and more of their condition; and, at last, a club of foul-mouthed good-fornothing rascals was held at the sign of the Devil, for the purpose of abusing the squire and the parson. The doctor, to own the truth, was old and indolent, extremely fat and greedy. He had not preached a tolerable sermon for a long time. The squire was still worse; so that, partly by truth and partly by falsehood, the club set the whole parish against their superiors. The boys scrawled caricatures of the clergyman upon the church door, and shot at the landlord with pop-guns as he rode a-hunting. It was even whispered about that the lord of the manor had no right to his estate, and that, if he were compelled to produce the original title-deeds, it would be found that he only held the estate in trust for the inhabitants of the parish.

In the meantime the squire was pressed more and more for money. The parish would pay no more. The rector refused to lend a farthing. The Jews were clamorous for their money; and the landlord had no other resource than to call together the inhabitants of the parish, and to request their assistance. They now attacked him furiously about their grievances, and insisted that he should relinquish his oppressive powers. They insisted that his footmen should be kept in order; that the parson should pay his share of the rates: that the children of the parish should be allowed to fish in the trout streams, and to gather blackberries in the hedges. They at last went so far as to demand that he should acknowledge that he held his estate only in trust for them. His

distress compelled him to submit. They, in return, agreed to set him free from his pecuniary difficulties, and to suffer him to inhabit the manor-house, and only annoyed him from time to time by singing impudent ballads under his window.

The neighbouring gentlefolks did not look on these proceedings with much complacency. It is true that Sir Lewis and his ancestors had plagued them with lawsuits, and affronted them at county meetings. Still they preferred the insolence of a gentle-. man to that of the rabble, and felt some uneasiness lest the example should infect their own tenants.

A large party of them met at the house of Lord Cæsar Germain. Lord Cæsar was the proudest man in the county. His family was very ancient and illustrious, though not particularly opulent. He had invited most of his wealthy neighbours. There was Mrs Kitty North, the relict of poor Squire Peter, respecting whom, the coroner's jury had found a verdict of accidental death, but whose fate had, nevertheless, excited strange whispers in the neighbourhood. There was Squire Don, the owner of the great West Indian property, who was not so rich as he had formerly been, but still retained his pride, and kept up his customary pomp; so that he had plenty of plate, but no breeches. There was Squire Von Blunderbussen, who had succeeded to the estates of his uncle, old Colonel Frederic Von Blunderbussen, of the Hussars. The colonel was a very singular old fellow: he used to learn a page of Chambaud's Grammar, and to translate "Télémaque" every morning, and he kept six French masters to teach him to parleyvoo. Nevertheless, he was a shrewd clever man, and improved his estate with so much care, sometimes by honest and sometimes by dishonest means, that he left a very pretty property to his nephew.

Lord Cæsar poured out a glass of Tokay for Mrs Kitty. "Your health, my dear madam; I never saw you look more charming. Pray, what think you of these doings at St Den nis's?"

"Fine doings, indeed!" interrupted Von Blunderbussen. "I wish that we had my old uncle alive, we would have had some of them up to the halberts. He knew how to use a cat-o'-nine-tails,