shattered remnant of other and happier times: left in a noisy and a crowding world. Truly it is-" vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

But see, here comes a boy driving his hoop. He bounds over the very ground, past the very stone which has conjured up in the old man's heart such a host of sad thoughts. But none of them come to him. To him all is new; the world is fair; the present is Paradise. He scarcely looks around him, and yet he enjoys all nature. The sunshine plays upon his head; the air visits his cheek; the earth is green beneath him. He thinks not of the dead under his feet; of the awful stones around him. He does not even see the old man himself,-a more striking memorial of mortality and the vanity of life, than all the rest. This is true human life: age, sad and observant of every solemn memento; youth, in the reckless happiness of its own charmed existence.

There is but a slight step and hardly that, from his satire to his humour, for one commonly partakes of the other. But in humorous incidents he abounds. Here is a good woman hanging out her clothes. A gipsy-like beggar-woman, with a child at her back, is going out of the garden, and in true beggar recklessness leaves the gate open. While the unconscious dame is busy at her line, in come the hens. One of them is already strutting across her clean white linen, that lies on the grass-plot, and leaving conspicuous marks of her dirty feet; and in are marching a whole drove of young pigs, with the old sow at their heels. In another place is seen the snug garden of some curious florist, with auriculas blooming in pots, and some choice plant under a large glass;

and here too a mischievous sow has conducted her brood; and some of them have made their way through the paling, and are in full career towards the auriculas. Another moment, and glass, flowers, all will be one piece of destruction. The old sow, shut out by her bulk, and a yoke upon her neck, the token of her propensities, stands watching from beneath her huge slouch ears, with the utmost satisfaction, this scene of devastation.

mean.

Here again, is a country lad mounted on a shaggy pony, and doubtless sent on some important errand; but a flight of birds has captivated his attention, and so engaged is he in watching, that the pony has wandered out of the way, and has reached the precipitous brink of a river. The lad still gazing after the birds, finding the pony halt, bangs him with his cudgel; the pony hangs back, and the little dog behind with uplifted foot wonders what the lad can There are two men fetching a tub of water from a water-cask, but they are so lost in gossip, that the water is running all away. A countryman to avoid paying toll at a bridge, is fording the river below, holding the tail of his cow. But his hat is blown off, and he dare not let go his hold to save it. He will get a good wetting, and suffer greater loss than the toll; while the tollman and a traveller on the bridge witness and enjoy his dilemma. Another countryman is crossing a river in a style grotesque enough. The old man is wading; on his back is his wife, on her's a child; and on her head a loaded basket. If the old man's foot slip, what a catastrophe! In one place is an old dame going to the village spring, and finding a whole flock of geese frolicing in it. Her looks of

execration and her uplifted stick, are infinitely amusing. In another, is an old dame about to mount a stile, and a tremendous bull presenting himself on the other side. Notwithstanding the bold bearing and protruded cudgel of the old dame, one knows not whether it be most dangerous to fight or flee. And here is the string of a kite, caught on the hat of a countryman crossing a stream on horseback. It would be difficult to decide whether the distress of the man, or that of the boys is the greater. On goes the horse, and the rider tries in vain to get rid of the string. His fate is to be pulled backward off the horse, or that of the boys to be dragged into the stream, or to lose their kite.

There is another class of vignettes, in which cruelty to animals is held up to abhorrence. There is the man with his cart, striking his horse on the head with a bludgeon; his hat has fallen off in his passion. Ragged lads are belabouring an ass with a gorse bush. A hardened lad has a cat and dog harnessed to a little cart in which is a child; the cat is nearly terrified to death at the dog, the child is crying amain; and the lad is trying to force the whole team into the water. In most of these cuts a gallows is seen in the distance, as the probable goal of the career.

Another class is that of country accidents, full of appropriate spirit; men crossing streams by means of the long boughs of trees, which are breaking and letting them fall. A blind man led by his dog, crossing a narrow foot-bridge, where the hand-rail is broken down, and his hat is blown away by the wind. Old people caught in storms on wide, open heaths; old, weary people far away from any town, as indi

cated by a mile-stone marked XI. miles on one side, and XV. on the other. But they are endless, and of endless variety. There are some, as I have said, truly sublime. A shipwrecked man on a rock in mid ocean, praying; the waves leaping and thundering around him; no single vessel in view, his only hope in God. The hull of a vessel lying stranded on a solitary coast. It is evident that it has been there for years; for its ribbed timbers are laid bare, and it speaks both of human catastrophe, and solitude, and decay. A fine contrast-a circle of men on a village green witnessing a fight, all vulgar eagerness and tumultuous passion; the rainbow, that circle of heaven, spanning the sky beyond them in such pure beauty – in the profound calm and holiness of nature.

Through all these representations, the spirit of the picturesque is poured without measure. Such winter scenes! such summer scenes! all the occupations and figures of rustic existence; fishermen, hunters, shooters, ploughmen, all in their peculiar scenery and costume. There are anglers in such delicious places, by such clear, rapid, winding waters, with such overhanging rocks and foliage, that one longs instantaneously to be an angler. We have all the spirit of Izaak Walton's book, in two square inches of wood-engraving : his descriptions of natural beauty, his deep feeling of country enjoyment, and his single and thankful contentment in his art. There are men and boys sleeping on sunny grass, or beneath the shade of summer trees. O! so luxuriously, that we long to be sleeping there too. There are such wild sea-shores, and caverned rocks, with boys climbing up to get at the sea-fowls' eggs, and such stormy waters, that we

are wild with desire to wander by those rocks and waves. The sedgy water-sides, such as are found on moors where the wild ducks, and snipes, and herons haunt, are inimitable. Nature is everywhere so gloriously, yet so unostentatiously portrayed, as none but the most ardent and devoted of her lovers can portray her. There is nothing gaudy, shewy, or ambitious; she is most simple, and therefore most beautiful.