lisher of the Mirror newspaper, as I want him to send eighteen newspapers to the Isle of Mann for it; and so I beg you will let Mr. Stokes have that balance when he calls or sends; and so, wishing you every blessing for ever and ever, for our Lord Jesus Christ, his blessed, his holy blessed sake, I am, dear Mr. Warner, your entire, and eternal true honest friend,

"E. T. HADWEN, Engineer.

"I could like to have a share of No. 103,

one-sixteenth of it. If you have it, I beg you will save one-sixteenth of it for me, as I expect to be in London before the drawing is over, and I will take it when I come. You need not write to me about it, as I actually mean to call when I come, &c. And so I wish you a good farewell at the present time."

OLD LETTERS

I know of nothing more calculated to bring back the nearly-faded dreams of our youth, the almost-obliterated scenes and passions of our boyhood, and to recal the brightest and best associations of those days

When the young blood ran riot in the veins, and

Boyhood made us sanguine— nothing more readily conjures up the alternate joys and sorrows of maturer years, the fluctuating visions that have floated before the restless imagination in times gone by, and the breathing forms and inanimate objects that wound themselves around our hearts and became almost necessary to our existence, than the perusal of old letters. They are the memorials of attachment, the records of affection, the speaking-trumpets through which those whom we esteem hail us from afar; they seem hallowed by the brother's grasp, the sister's kiss, the father's blessing, and the mother's love. When we look on them, the friends, whom dreary seas and distant leagues divide from us, are again in our presence; we see their cordial looks, and hear their gladdening voices once more. The paper has a tongue in every character, it contains a language in its very silentness. They speak to the souls of men like a voice from the grave, and are the links of that chain which connects with the hearts and sympathies of the living an evergreen remenibrance of the dead. I have one at this moment before me, which (although time has in a

degree softened the regret I felt at the loss of him who penned it) I dare scarcely look upon. It calls back too forcibly to my remembrance its noble-minded author-the treasured friend of my earliest and happiest days-the sharer of my puerle but innocent joys. I think of him as he then was, the free-the spiritedthe gay-the welcome guest in every circle where kind feeling had its weight, or frankness and honesty had influence; what he now is, and pale and ghastly and in an instant comes the thought of images of death are hovering round me. I see him whom I loved, and prized, and honored, shrunk into poor and wasting ashes. I mark a stranger closing his lids and I cannot trust myself again to oper -a stranger following him to the gravehis last letter. It was written but a short time before he fell a victim to the yellow fever, in the West Indies, and told me, in the feeling language of Moore, that

Far beyond the western sea
Was one whose heart remember'd me.

On hearing of his death I wrote some stanzas which I have preserved-not out of any pride in the verses themselves, but as a token of esteem for him to whom they were addressed, and as a true transcript of my feelings at the time they were composed. To those who have never loved nor lost a friend, they will appear trivial and of little worth; but those who have cherished and been bereft of some

object of tenderness will recur to their own feelings; and, although they may not be able to praise the poetry, will sympathise with and do justice to the sincerity of my attachment and affliction.

Stanzas.

Farewell! farewell! for thee arise

The bitter thoughts that pass not o'er ;
And friendship's tears, and friendship's sighs,
Can never reach thee more;
For thou art dead, and all are vain
To call thee back to earth again;
And thou hast died where stranger's feet
Alone towards thy grave could bend;
And that last duty, sad, but sweet,

Has not been destined for thy friend:
He was not near to calm thy smart,
And press thee to his bleeding heart.
He was not near, in that dark hour

When Reason fled her ruined shrive,
To soothe with Pity's gentle power,

And mingle his faint sighs with thin,
And pour the parting tear to thee,
As pledge of his fidelity.

He was not near when thou wert borne
By others to thy parent earth,
To think of former days, and mourn,
In silence, o'er departed worth;
And seek thy cold and cheerless bed,
And breathe a blessing for the dead.
Destroying Death! thou hast one link

That bound me in this world's frail chain : And now I stand on life's rough brink,

Like one whose heart is cleft in twain ;
Save that, at times, a thought will steal
To tell me that it still can feel.

Oh! what delights, what pleasant hours
In which all joys were wont to blend,
Have faded now-and all Hope's flowers

Have withered with my youthful friend.
Thou feel'st no pain within the tomb-
'Tis theirs alone who weep thy doom.
Long wilt thou be the cherished theme

Of all their fondness-all their praise;
In daily thought and nightly dream,

In crowded halls and lonely ways; And they will hallow every scene Where thou in joyous youth hast been. Theirs is the grief that cannot die,

And in their heart will be the strife That must remain with memory,

Uncancelled from the book of life. Their breasts will be the mournful urns Where sorrow's incense ever burns.

But there are other letters, the perusal of which makes us feel as if reverting from the winter of the present to the spring-time of the past. These are from friends whom we have long known and whose society we still enjoy. There is a charm in contrasting the sentiments of their youth with those of a riper age, or, rather, in tracing the course of their ideas to their full development; for it is seldom that the feelings we entertain in the early part of our lives entirely change -they merely expand, as the full-grown tree proceeds from the shoot, or the flower from the bud. We love to turn from the formalities and cold politeness of the world to the "Dear Tom" or "Dear Dick" at the head of such ietters. There is something touching about it-something that awakens a friendly warmth in the heart. It is shaking the hand by proxy-a vicarious "good morrow.' have a whole packet of letters from my friend G- , and there is scarcely a dash or a comma in them that is not characteristic of the man. Every word bears the impress of freedom-the true currente calamo stamp. He is the most convivial of letter-writers-the heartiest of epistlers. Then there is N- who always seems

to bear in mind that it is "better to be brief than tedious;" for it must indeed be an important subject that would elicit from him more than three lines: nor hath his rib a whit more of the cacoethes scribendi about her-one would almost suppose they were the hero and heroine of an anecdote I remember somewhere to have heard, of a gentleman who, by mere chance, strolled into a coffee-house, where he met with a captain of his acquaintance on the point of sailing to New York, and from whom he received an invitation to accompany him. This he accepted, taking care, however, to inform his wife of it, which he did in these terms:

In looking over the drawings of Mr. Chatfield, the artist, I found a fine fullsized portrait of Phebe Hassel, which that gentleman sketched at Brighton in her lifetime, and has obligingly copied for the engraving before the reader.

This remarkable female was well known in Brighton, where she sold fruit at a stall in the street, and, when more than a century old, frequently afforded proof, to any who offended her, of the determined spirit which animated her to extraordinary adventures in youth. The annexed extract from a private MS. Journal relates an interesting interview with her in her last illness.

"Brighton, Sep. 22, 1821. I have seen to-day an extraordinary character in the

No. 66, Judd Street, Brunswick Square

She

person of Phebe Hassel, a poo woman stated to be 106 years of age. It appears that she was born in March 1715, and, at fifteen, formed a strong attachment to Samuel Golding, a private in the regiment called Kirk's Lambs, which was ordered to the West Indies. She determined to follow her lover, enlisted into the 5th regiment foot, commanded by general Pearce, and embarked after him. served there five years without discovering herself to any one. At length they were ordered to Gibraltar. She was likewise at Montserrat, and would have been in action, but her regiment did not reach the place till the battle was decided.-Her lover was wounded at Gibraltar and sen' to Plymouth; she then waited on the ge neral's lady at Gibraltar, disclosed her sex, told her story, and was immediately sent home. On her arrival, Phebe went

to Samuel Golding in the hospital, nursed him there, and, when he came out, married and lived with him for twenty years: he had a pension from Chelsea. After Golding's death, she married Hassel, has had many children, and has been many years a widow. Her eldest son was a sailor with admiral Norris: he afterwards went to the East Indies, and, if he is now alive, must be nearly seventy years of age. The rest of her family are dead. At an advanced age she earned a scanty livelihood at Brighton by selling apples and gingerbread on the Marine Parade.

"I saw this woman to-day in her bed, to which she is confined from having lost the use of her limbs. She has even now, old and withered as she is, a fine character of countenance, and I should judge, from her present appearance, must have had a fine though perhaps a masculine style of head when young. I have seen many a woman, at the age of sixty or seventy, look oider than she does under the load of 106 years of human life. Her cheeks are round and seem firm, though ploughed with many a small wrinkle. Her eyes, though their sight is gone, are large and wellformed. As soon as it was announced that somebody had come to see her, she broke the silence of her solitary thoughts and spoke. She began in a complaining tone, as if the remains of a strong and restless spirit were impatient of the prison of a decaying and weak body. "Other people die and I cannot," she said. Upon exciting the recollection of her former days, her energy seemed roused, and she spoke with emphasis. Her voice was strong for an old person; and I could easily believe her when, upon being asked if her sex was not in danger of being detected by her voice, she replied that she always had a strong and manly voice. She appeared to take a pride in having kept her secret, declaring that she told it to no man, woman, or child, during the time she was in the army; "for you know, Sir, a drunken man and a child always tell the truth. But," said she, "I told my secret to the ground. I dug a hole that would hold a gallon, and whispered it there." While I was with her the flies annoyed her extremely: she drove them away with a fan, and said they seemed to smell her out as one that was going to the grave. She showed me a wound she had received in her elbow by a bayonet. She lamented the error of her former ways, but excused it by saying, "when you are

at Rome, you must do as Rome does." When she could not distinctly hear what was said, she raised herself in the bed and thrust her head forward with impatient energy. She said, when the king saw her, he called her "a jolly old fellow." Though blind, she could discern a glimmering light, and I was told would frequently state the time of day by the effect of light."

It was the late king, George IV., who spoke of her as "a jolly old fellow." Phebe was one of his Brighton favorites, he allowed her eighteen pounds a-year, and at her death he ordered a stone inscribed to her memory to be placed at her grave in Brighton church-yard. She was well known to all the inhabitants of the town, and by most visitors. Many of these testify that she did not always conform to the rules laid down in an old didactic treatise, "On the Government of the Tongue," and that she sometimes indulged in unlicensed potations afforded by licensed houses. In truth, Phebe Hassel's manners and mind were masculine. She had good natural sense and wit, and was what is commonly called "a character."

February 16.

1754. Feb. 16. Died, at the age of 81, Dr. Richard Mead, the medical rival of Dr. Ratcliffe, and pre-eminently his superior in manners; for Mead was well-bred and elegant, and Ratcliffe capricious and surly. Dr. Mead introduced the practice of inoculation for the small-pox, and, to prove its efficacy, caused seven criminals to be inoculated. He was a man of taste, and formed expensive collections of coins, medals, sculpture, pictures, prints, and drawings, with a fine library of choice books, which were sold after his decease. The catalogue of his pictures, with the prices they produced, is in the British Museum.

PHYSICIANS.

Montaigne says it was an Egyptian law, that the physician, for the first three days, should take charge of his patient at the patient's own peril; but afterwards at his own.

He mentions that, in his time, physicians gave their pills in odd numbers, appointed remarkable days in the year for taking medicine, gathered their simples at certain hours, assurned austere, and even

The leaves of daffodils, narcissi, and

February 18.

1546. Feb. 18. Martin Luther died, at the age of 63. His life is the history of the age in which he lived; for his career shook the papacy, and agitated every state in Europe. The date of his decease is mentioned, merely to introduce a passage concerning the immutability of truth, which should be for ever kept in the memory, as "a nail in a sure place."— "The important point which Luther in

February 17.

1758. Feb. 17. Died, at Bristol, aged 78, John Watkins, commonly called Black John. He had supported himself by begging, and frequently lodged at night in a glass-house, although he had a room at a house in Temple Street, where, after his death, was found upwards of two hundred weight of halfpence and silver, besides a quantity of gold, which he had amassed as a public beggar. He came from a respectable family in Gloucestershire, and was said to have been heir to a considerable estate, but, the possession of it being denied to him, he vowed he would never shave till he enjoyed it, and kept his promise to the day of his death. It was easier to keep such a vow, than the resolution of that spendthrift, who, after dissipating his paternal estate, resolved, in the depth of poverty, to regain it; and, by unaided efforts of industry, accomplished his purpose. The story is in Mr. Foster's essay "On decision of character," from which an irresolute person may derive large profit.

A person of undecisive character wonders how all the embarrassments in the world happened to meet exactly in his way. He thinks what a determined course he would have run, if his talents, his health, his age, had been different: thus he is occupied, instead of catching with a vigilant eye, and seizing with a strong hand, all the possibilities of his situation. Foster's Essays.

right of private judgment in matters of faith. To the defence of this proposition, he was at all times ready to devote his learning, his talents, his repose, his cha

racter, and his life; and the great and imperishable merit of this reformer consists in his having demonstrated it by such arguments as neither the efforts of his adversaries, nor his own subsequent conduct, have been able either to refute

or invalidate."

1639. Feb. 18. Died, at 50 years of age, Thomas Carew, a distinguished poet. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, afterwards greatly improved himself by travel, and Charles I. appointed him gentleman of the privy chamber, and sewer in ordinary. He lived in intimacy with most of the poets and wits of his day, particularly with Jonson, Donne, and Suckling. One of his poems immediately follows, as a specimen of his

manner :

PERSUASIONS TO LOVE. Think not, 'cause men flattering say, Y'are fresh as Aprill, sweet as May, Bright as is the morning-starre, That you are so; or, though you are, Be not therefore proud, and deeme All men unworthy your esteeme : Nor let brittle beauty make You your wiser thoughts forsake; For that lovely face will faile; Beauty's sweet, but beauty's fraile,'Tis sooner past, 'tis sooner done, Than summer's rain, or winter's sun Most fleeting when it is most deare; "Tis gone while we but say 'tis here. These curious locks, so aptly twin'd, Whose hair a soul doth bind, every Will change their abroun hue, and grow White with cold as winter's snow. That eye, which now is Cupid's nest, Will prove his grave, and aii the rest

* Roscoe's Loc X., 4tc, iv. 47.