dells of these wild woods."

T OF THE

= Journals.

NT LIARS.

-s. I must not be unng those coiners and ds, always petty whe1, which are intended er persons, or to serve despicable creatures pervert the truth, as a end: all such I abanthey deserve. Nor ddling pettifogging, only lie by halves, or timidly set about ndwork of truth with creating. No; the he spirited emulators the Pintos, and the ho tell you the lie, nothing but the lie; lo not desire a softer amiliar," yet, in the ere applied, it is "by

rom no less noble an e, disinterested, holove of lying. So ation for that illusI cannot consent to n their temple even To say the truth, oor fellow after all. seriously pretended ulliver did exist, or e was nothing more a satire upon; the novelist. Gulliver

I have mentioned Munch-Hausen. It is generally believed that Munch-Hausen is only a nom de guerre. Such, however, is not the fact. Baron Munch-Hausen was a Hanoverian nobleman, and even so lately as five and forty years ago he was alive and lying.* It is true, that the Travels published as his, though not by him, were intended as a satire or parody on the Travels of the famous Baron de Tott; but Munch-Hausen was really in the habit of relating the adventures, now sanctioned by the authority of his mendacious name, as having positively occurred to him; and from the frequency of the repetition of the same stories, without the slightest variation even in their most minute points, he at length believed the narratives he had himself invented, and delivered them with as much sangfroid as if they had described nothing but so many probable events. There was nothing of the Fanfaron, or braggart, in his manner; on the contrary, he was distinguished by the peculiar modesty of his

The present paper is certainly admitted to be a suspicious medium for the conveyance of truth; nevertheless, the information concerning Baron Munch-Hausen is given under the positive belief of the writer that it is authentic. He received it from a Polish gentleman, one whose veracity has never been impeached, who assured him that when travelling many years ago through Hanover, he met with several persons who had been well acquainted with the hero, and that the

Home of Munch Hansen was then as it may be

there is nothing improbable , a few years afterwards, a prouting from it. The cold, ountry where he is travelling, as to freeze the tunes a posturs to play upon his horn. hung by the fire-side, and, in it become thawed, they ibly one after another. Ade, İ say, and there is nothing e consequence. Had he made neralds and rubies to spring rry-stones, or a band of muart out of his horn, (as some ward imitators would do,) he so long have maintained his nence as a consistent and crebut have been confounded in inventors of nonsensical Rho

main object in this paper is to oblivion a few of the mighty who, had he committed his entions to the press, instead of ploying them for the edificalight of those private circles ometimes honoured with his d eclipsed the whole galaxy it, alas! he is dead! Colonel ead! The day that witnessed n of that lying luminary of world, was a day of rejoicing ds in the air and all the fishes Ah! securely may'st thou von yonder pleasant slope, stag, for Nimrod is no more! your glittering wings in peace, habitants of ether; and you, hes and ye great, sprats, viathans, white-bait, whales, in your watery homes, for o more! Well might it be day of jubilee when their unestroyer was destroyed; to me of lamentation and sorrowing.

المسد

With what delicht

countries which never existed, sec sights which have never been seen, of deeds which were never done; such merely was Colonel Nimrod was an extempore prose poet. Such I would say liars generally, are your interesting tale-tellers; for nothing insipid as the bare truth; and the of this is, that we seldom meet w true story worth telling. This may pear to be a startling opinion, but people entertain it, and are often ur scientiously led to express it. Of a dred real adventures, ninety-nine are worth relating; and the common eu bestowed on any real occurrence w happens to be somewhat out of the u way, is, that it is as interesting as mance; in other words, that that par lar fact is as interesting as a fiction to come at once to the point, that true story is as interesting as if it we lie.

But I am digressing from my purp which is simply to record two or thre the most exquisite of the many admir lies I have heard delivered by my late mented friend, Colonel Nimrod ;* a outrageous and extravagant as they appear, I do most positively assert tha repeat them, as nearly as I can, in his words. His manner of narrating th marvellous tales, of which he always himself the hero, was perfectly easy assured, and was calculated to impress hearers with a conviction that, at le he entertained not the slightest doubt their truth. He seldom described feats, or the accidents of his life, as s jects to be wondered at; they were sually noticed, as the turn of the conv sation might afford occasion, and as m

"It need scarcely be observed that the na

of Nimrod is fictitious; but the person it rey sents was, for a very long period, a promin

ch had been left upon the en I was taken up my head be literally cut in two, and er my shoulders like a pair That was a broken, head, sir."

DE OF EXECUTING A ething having occurred in at led to the subject of arup and exclaimed, "Genbeen arrested oftener than gland! Once under most nstances. You must know ging at Steven's; my wife One morning, between t, while we were in bed, a to the room. I undersiness, my good fellow,' below, I'll get up and pany you to my solicitor, needful.' By G-, gen. -e I should get up and go

was.

Lid I.

What! in my He insisted-I ree scoundrel went to the out the poker which had all night, and thrust it, as, into the bed between

Mrs. N.-woman-like e felt the red-hot poker, ed; not so, your humble I lay, and there stood sking at me; and there mained, had not the bed

said I ever did the same thing twic point of number, I mean."

These specimens will serve to sho what perfection poor Nimrod had bro the art of lying. I could repeat an which he delivered whilst lying (in senses of the word) on his death-bed that it might be misconstrued int pure effect of delirium. For my own I consider it as another illustratio "the ruling passion strong in de That he believed his own stories, and pected they would be believed by hearers, I am fully persuaded. not attempt to trace the causes of thi firmity of mind; but wherever it exi the same degree, I consider it as pre ing a case for the consideration of the sician rather than of the moralist.

I

SLEEP, my lov'd girl-thy mother's breas
Shall be the pillow of thy rest;

Sleep, my lov'd girl-thy mother's knee,
And folding arms, shall cradle thee;
And she will lull thee with her song,
Thy gentle slumbers to prolong.

Thy sleep no fearful vision knows;
No cares disturb thy soft repose;
Thy guardian angel spreads his wings,
And dreams from heavenly regions bring
O, who can tell how bright they be,
The heavenly dreams of infancy.
And, as I watch the beamy smile
That plays upon thy face the while,
I feel its influence to my heart,
A soft pervading peace impart;
Chasing dull care with magic spell,
And whispering, "all will yet be well!"
O, all is well! the trusting soul
Sees the kind hand that rules the whole;
And, while such gifts from bounteous hea
As thou, my lovely babe, are given,

The wow however derk ond rude

Miscellanies.

SINGULAR RELATION AND COINCIDENCE.

(For the Mirror.)

IN the family of the writer lately lived a Welshwoman, who used to relate the following singular tale :

"When I was quite a girl, after having been out at service for a little while, I obtained leave to visit my parents in North Wales. On my arrival at home, they told me that a certain notoriously wicked man, a neighbour of ours, had just died, and a few hours previous to his departure, awaking in great terror from sleep, declared this had been his dream: -"I thought,' said he, that a gentleman came to me, and offered, if I were willing to go with him, to show me the place of eternal torment. I consented to accompany him, and he accordingly led me a long, very long way, till we arrived at an exceedingly beautiful place, and he told me this was hell. I answered, that I thought it impossible, as I had always imagined that dreadful place to be dark and horrible and full of fire. Nevertheless, he replied, my words are certainly true; and he then left me to walk about. I met many persons, all silent, and seemingly unhappy, and all had their hands close laid upon their breasts, at which I much wondered. At last I took courage to ask one of these people if this beautiful place were really that of everlasting misery?

It is indeed, said he, but not what you behold around you. No-this, this is the unutterable and eternal torment of which you have heard. So saying, he took his hands from his bosom; it was transparent like glass, and I saw his heart in flames through it. He told me, in agony and despair, that it burnt for ever, and went his way. My guide now joined me, and having asked if I was satisfied, we quitted the accursed place, and I awoke.'"

Such was the dream as related by our Welsh servant; such, exactly, is Mr. Beckford's inimitable idea of eternal anguish in his admirable "History of the Caliph Vathek." The unfortunate beings deluded by the Dives and wicked Genii, are, in the subterraneous palace of fire, (where Eblis sits on a red-hot globe as king,) tortured with the heart-burning eternally, and are represented as walking about in silent agony, each carrying his right hand upon his breast, for ever!

This allows us to inquire, had Mr. Beckford heard of this dream before he wrote his romance? or is it one of those

strange coincidences which are ever occurring, but for which there is no accounting? In conclusion, if I may be allowed to deviate a little from my subject, 1 would observe, that the celebrated Christian poets who have permitted their imaginations to revel in the terrors and horrors of the infernal world, are Dante, Milton, and Klopstock; but terrific as the ideas of these fine writers are upon this subject, perhaps the palm for the best image of eternal torture is due to Southey. In "The Curse of Kehama," he who seizes on the arwreeta, or cup of immortality, to procure which he has committed unheard-of crimes, instead of partaking of the beatification it confers upon the good, is, immediately after drinking from it, transmuted into a being of fire, like unto a statue of red-hot iron, and, in this state, helps, with three others in like situation, to support the throne of Eblis for ever! M. L.B.

BREAD.

IT is singular, that though bread is the most simple article of diet, and that on which the human race has most subsisted, yet very little is known of its history, and that little only shows that but small improvement has been made during the lapse of ages in preparing this essential article of food. The graddened corn still in use in the Highlands, which is corn burnt out of the ear instead of being thrashed, is probably the same as the parched corn which Boaz presented to Ruth; and an ephah of which Jesse sent, by David, to his sons who were in the camp of Saul. The barley bread which is now generally eaten by the peasantry in Cumberland, differs but little, it is probable, from those five barley loaves of which our blessed Lord himself partook, with no other addition than a piece of broiled fish. And in what does the cake baken on the coals, which Elijah found under the juniper-tree in the wilderness, appear to differ from the cakes of Scotland, or bannocks, excepting that it was miraculously provided?

Different ages and countries, however, do afford some variety of information as to this article. The Scotch have immemorially been famous for the use of oat-flour in the composition of their bread or cakes, as appears from various passages in old writers. Moryson, who wrote in the reign of Elizabeth, tells us, "they vulgarly eate hearth-cakes of oates; but in cities have also wheaten bread, which for the most part was bought by courtiers, gentlemen, and the best sort of citizens ;" and adds, "they, (the Scotch,) when