which the Norman peasants smoke tobacco, and with a furious blow struck it into the side of his old father, who fell dead at his feet. Terrified at what he had done, the parricide rushed out of the house, and fled to the sea shore.

His sister, who had been busy in the next room, and had heard the dispute without apprehending fatal consequences, was now alarmed at the looks of horror with which Pierre rushed out of the house. She went into the litttle room, raised her father, thinking he had only been stricken with a fit, she bathed his temples, and rubbed his hands, at last she saw blood, and found how he had been murdered.

Marianne, like most of the women of her class in that country, possessed great strength of mind, she sent forth no cries, she shed no tears, but she shut the door of the inner room on the body, locked it, and put the key in her pocket; she then seated herself on the threshold of the cottage, and awaited the return of her elder brother, who soon appeared with Philippe bending under a great load of fish. Marianne took Jacques on one side, and told him briefly all she had heard and seen. Jacques replied not a word, but walked apart some minutes for refreshment, he then said,

"I will come into the house and help you, sister;" he then told Philippe in a few words the calamity that had fallen upon them, and charged the boy to keep silence.

All three entered the house of death, they undressed the body, and laid it in proper order on the bed. And when all was arranged with the usual decorum, Jacques went round to all the neighbours and relatives to tell them that his father had died suddenly in a fit of apoplexy.

In the dusk of the evening Pierre came home; as he was lurking about the garden Jacques met him, and said very composedly,

We bury our father to-morrow, thou wilt be at the funeral." Pierre attended as if nothing extraordinary had happened.

Some days passed away, Pierre got up betimes, went a fishing, returned at sunset, ate his meals without saying a word, and went to bed.

After leading this life for about a week, one night Jacques came to his bedside and said,

"Rise immediately."

Pierre got up and dressed himself.

"In this bag" said the eldest, "is the sum to which you are entitled as your share of the goods of both father and mother. Count it, and see if it is right."

After a quarter of an hour's calculation and counting, Pierre declared himself satisfied. Jacques waited patiently, his arms crossed on his breast, while a sea lamp on the mantelpiece shed a light on this scene. He then spoke,

"You will leave this house to night, and you must never more set foot

on French ground; you prate when you are in your cups, we have never had the gallows cross our pedigree, and never shall.'

"Fascinated by the fearful calm and powerful energy of his elder brother, Pierre made his preparations and followed Jacques down to the beach, where Philippe, who had received previous orders, had got the bark ready for sea.

"The night was thick-earth, sea, and air, seemed confounded together, in the livid obscurity of a fog and young moon. They heard in the distance the challenge of the coast guards, mixed with the heavy murmur of the surf, and the cries of the gull and sea-mew.

"The three fishers put off unperceived; after they had rowed some way into deep water, the rising breeze swept the fog partially from the moon. Jacques bade the youngest brother, who was at the elm, steer direct for Jersey. Philippe seemed struggling with some strong emotion, but he put the helm as required. Pierre lent all his strength to the oars, he had the air of a convict making his escape from the galleys.

66

They had thus proceeded for about an hour, when Jacques gazing round and seeing there was nothing but themselves on the open sea, laid one of his large hands on Pierre's collar, and grasping the other on his belt, flung the parricide into the sea with as little effect as if he had been a dog; then with one stroke of his foot he kicked after him his packet of goods, and began to row away. In an instant after, Pierre rose to the surface of the sea, and swam after the boat with imprecations. Jacques took up the bag of crowns which had been left in the boat, and hurled it in his face. The wretched man suvk once more; and as Jacques pulled lustily, and the boat made rapid way, he believed the unhappy parricide would rise no more, when, lo, he appeared swimming strongly close by helm; his two hands now grasped the boat, a minute after he seized on young Philippe, and would have dragged him into the sea if Jacques had not aimed a deadly blow at his head with one of the oars.

sunk, and never rose again.

Pierre then

"As soon as he was freed from the death struggle with his brother, young Philippe fell forward without motion across the bench; it was in vain that Jacques tried to rouse him and make him take the oars; the boy was sunk in an idiotic stupor. This long and horrible execution had wrung his brain with terror and agony.

Jacques got home to St. Germains as he could, moored his boat, carried Philippe home in his arms and laid him on his bed. He then called his sister and told her all that had happened.

"It is well,' said Marianne, 'justice has been done on the murderer of our poor old father, and his name has not been stained by the public execution of one of his sous. The honour of the family is saved.'

Philippe lay for a week in the delirium of a brain fever; his youth and strong constitution got the better of the disease, but reason never returned. He is the idiot you saw. The absence of Pierre was not

noticed in the village; it was supposed he had taken his portion, and terminated his vicious career in some distant town.

"Marianne a year after married a neighbouring fisher, who has lately left her a widow with the children you saw about her.

"Fifteen years after the murder of the old man, and the execution, if it may be so called, of his parricidal son by Jacques, the hardy Norman fisher was seized with an autumnal fever; and during his illness he thought it right to unburden his mind of these fearful secrets to some one on whom he could rely. Although a magistrate, he chose me as his confidant for this piece of family history; and after considering the whole circumstances of the case, I think it is best to let the matter rest as it is. you alone have I confided the dilemma, what do you say ?"

Το

"I think you are right;" I replied, "Jacques, though culpable in the eye of the law for taking the law into his own hands, must not be considered a felon."

My friend and Jacques have both paid the debt of nature, and there is no reason for longer concealing this anecdote of Norman family

honour.

Sonnet.

EARLY SPRING.

O! LOOK, and listen!-'tis the awakening Spring!
How mildly-blue the skies-the fields how green!
And countless birds their varied wild notes bring
Exultantly to hail the glorious scene!

Loud shout the floods for joy! and, though unseen
The dingle-brooks, they warble pleasant strains,
And vegetation bursts where it has been
Long 'prison'd in the winter-woods and lanes:-
The young flocks merrily gambol on the plains,
Wild with delight, beneath the kindling sun
That cloudless o'er the laughing landscape reigns;
While Nature triumphs o'er her victory won,
And calls to Man, with music in her voice,
Bidding him come and in her joy rejoice!
Sutton-in-Ashfield.

SPENCER T. HALL

CHAPTERS ON POETRY AND POETS.

No. 5.

ON THE FRAGMENTS OF THE LOST POETS OF GREECE.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON, when he lived over the great gateway at Trinity, had a little dog named Diamond. One morning the philosopher was aroused from intense study by the ceasing of the chapel bell. It was winter and dark-he left his candle and his dog. He returned from chapel-but it was to rescue some pitiful fragments from the wreck of his papers. 'Oh Diamond, Diamond, thou little knowest what mischief thou hast done!' A mild speech-but it drove the philosopher mad.

Yet the loss was not irreparable. Nature and nature's laws change not. The mind of man grapples with them and binds them, and if the fetter be broken, it may be knit again. The tools are still preserved— the workmen are able and many-it is only one fair fabric that is crushed -many may be hereafter wrought. But now to a deeper calamity in the history of our kind.

There was a saint-a patriarch of Constantinople, named Gregory Nazianzen. The saint was also a poet, such as the world then bred, in the poisoned death-chamber of the Roman Empire. He was a poet

without love. The sky, the fields, the waters, the myriads of creation, -the wonderful heart of man-all these entered not into his poetic account. Alas for the man-for he knew not of the secret droppings on the soul of the grateful and nourishing dews of Poësy-he knew not the wonders and the joys revealed by communion with the humblest things- he knew not that the lifetime of the world has been an education, a progressthat the bright and burning thoughts of one generation have been woven into the minds and every day lives of the next-he had never felt that every work of art is sacred—is a creation-is an aiming at and reaching after the first great Creator. Alas for the saint- for he was not aware that the mighty struggles of human intellect and genius before the true Light' arose were part of the counsels of Providence, given to mankind to teach, to exalt, to humble by exalting. All this he knew not-his Faith possessed his soul, but that soul was narrow :-there was no room for his Faith to spread over and hallow the beautiful and lovely creations of the Past-but it must cast them out, or it could not dwell there.