commands a fine view of the city of Tours and its delightful environs. But the scene was shrouded by the heavy drifting mist, through which I could trace but indistinctly the graceful sweep of the Loire, and the spires and roofs of the city far below me.

It

The city of Tours and the delicious plain in which it lies have been too often described by other travellers to render a new description, from so listless a pen as mine, either necessary or desirable. After a sojourn of two cloudy and melancholy days I set out on my return to Paris, by the way of Vendôme and Chartres. I stopped a few hours at the former place, to examine the ruins of a château built by Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henry the Fourth. stands upon the summit of a high and precipitous hill, and almost overhangs the town beneath. The French revolution has completed the ruin that time had already begun; and nothing now remains but a broken and crumbling bastion, and here and there a solitary tower, dropping slowly to decay. In one of these is the grave of Jeanne d'Albret. Α marble entablature in the wall above contains the inscription, which is nearly effaced, though enough still remains to tell the curious traveller that there lies buried the mother of the "Bon Henri." To this is added a prayer that the repose of the dead may be respected.

Here ended my foot excursion. The object of my journey was accomplished; and delighted with this short ramble through the valley of the Loire, I took my seat in the diligence for Paris, and on the following day was again swallowed up in the crowds of the metropolis, like a drop in the bosom of the sea.-Outre Mer.

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.

BY ROBERT SOUTHEY.

It was a summer evening,
Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage-door
Was sitting in the sun,
And by him sported on the green
His little grand-child Wilhelmine.
She saw her brother Peterkin

Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet

In playing there had found; He came to ask what he had found, That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by;

And then the old man shook his head,
And with a natural sigh,

"Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he, "Who fell in the great victory.

"I find them in the garden, for

There's many here about; And often when I go to plough,

The ploughshare turns them out! For many thousand men," said he, "Were slain in that great victory."

"Now tell us what 'twas all about,"
Young Peterkin he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;
"Now tell us all about the war,

And what they fought each other for."

"It was the English," Kaspar cried, "Who put the French to rout; But what they fought each other for, I could not well make out; But everybody said," quoth he "That 'twas a famous victory.

"My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by;
They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;

So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

"With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide,

And many a childing mother then,
And new born baby died;

But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

"They say it was a shocking sight After the field was won,

For many thousand bodies here

Lay rotting in the sun;

But things like that, you know, must be After a famous victory.

"Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won, And our good Prince Eugene." "Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!" Said little Wilhelmine. "Nay-nay-my little girl," quoth he, "It was a famous victory.

"And everybody prais'd the duke,, Who such a fight did win." "But what good came of it at last?" Quoth little Peterkin.

"Why, that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory."

BULLS AND WIT.

nent, the English gentleman thought proper to reprove the Hibernian, if not with delicacy, at least with poetical justice. He concluded

1771; died in London, 22d February, 1845

Educated

at Winchester and Oxford. He resided five years in Edinburgh, as minister of the Charlotte Episcopal Chapel, and formed one of the group of daring youths who founded the Edinburgh Review, the first number of which was prepared under his editorship. After holding various church livings, he became canon residentiary of St. Paul's in 1831. He was even more famous as a conversational wit than as a preacher or reviewer. His works (Longmans & Co.) consist of reviews, sermons and lectures. His Peter Plymley's Letters had a large share in promoting Catholic Emancipation. Macaulay says: "He is universally admitted to have been a great reasoner, and the greatest master of ridicule that has appeared among us since Swift." Edward Everett says: -If he had not been known as the wittiest man of his day, he would have been accounted one of the wisest." The following is from a review of the work on Irish Bulls by Miss Edgeworth and her father.]

Though the question is not a very easy one, we shall venture to say, that a bull is an apparent congruity and real incongruity of ideas suddenly discovered. And if this account of bulls be just, they are (as might have been supposed) the very reverse of wit; for as wit discovers real relations that are not apparent, bulls admit apparent relations that are not real. The pleasure arising from wit proceeds from our surprise at suddenly discovering two things to be similar in which we suspected no similarity. The pleasure arising from bulls proceeds from our discovering two things to be dissimilar in which a resemblance might have been suspected. The same doctrine will apply

to wit and to bulls in action. Practical wit discovers connection or relation between actions, in which duller understandings discover none; and practical bulls originate from an apparent relation between two actions, which more correct understandings immediately perceive to have no relation at all.

Louis XIV., being extremely harassed by the repeated solicitations of a veteran officer for promotion, said one day, loud enough to be heard, "That gentleman is the most troublesome officer I have in my service." "That is precisely the charge (said the old man) which your Majesty's enemies bring against me."

more, but a damned tall Irishman is reading over my shoulder every word I write.'

"You lie, you scoundrel,' said the selfconvicted Hibernian."

The pleasure derived from the first of these stories proceeds from the discovery of the relation that subsists between the object he had in view, and the assent of the officer to an observation so unfriendly to that end. In the first rapid glance which the mind throws upon his words, he appears, by his acquiescence, to be pleading against himself. There seems to be no relation between what he says and what he wishes to effect by speaking.

In the second story, the pleasure is directly the reverse. The lie given was apparently the readiest means of proving his innocence, and really the most effectual way of establishing his guilt. There seems for a moment to be a strong relation between the means and the object; while, in fact, no irrelation can be so complete.

But

What connection is there between pelting stones at monkeys and gathering cocoa-nuts from lofty trees? Apparently none. monkeys sit upon cocoa-nut trees; monkeys are imitative animals; and if you pelt a monkey with a stone, he pelts you with a cocoa-nut in return. This scheme of gathering cocoa-nuts is very witty, and would be more so, if it did not appear useful: for the idea of utility is always inimical to the idea of wit.1 There appears, on the contrary, to be some relation between the revenge of the Irish rebels against a banker, and the means which they took to gratify it, by burning all his notes

1 It must be observed, that all the great passions, and many other feelings, extinguish the relish for wit. Thus lympha pudica Deum vidit et erubuit, would be witty, were it not bordering on the sublime. The resemblance between the sandal tree imparting (while it falls) its aromatic flavour to the edge of the axe, and the benevolent man rewarding evil with good, would be witty, did it not excite virtuous emotions. There are many mechanical contrivances which excite sensations very similar to wit; but the attention is absorbed by their utility. Some of Merlin's machines, which have no utility at all, are quite similar to wit. A small model of a steam engine, or mere squirt, is wit to a child. A man speculates on the causes of the first, or on its consequences, and so loses the feelings of wit: with the latter, he is too familiar to be surprised. In short, the essence of every species of wit is surprise; which, ri termini, must be sudden; and the sensations which wit has a tendency to excite, are impaired or destroyed, as often as they are mingled with much thought or passion.

wherever they found them; whereas, they could not have rendered him a more essential service. In both these cases of bulls, the one verbal, the other practical, there is an apparent congruity and real incongruity of ideas. both the cases of wit, there is an apparent incongruity and a real relation.

In

It is clear that a bull cannot depend upon mere incongruity alone; for if a man were to say that he would ride to London upon a cocked hat, or that he would cut his throat with a pound of pickled salmon, this, though completely incongruous, would not be to make bulls, but to talk nonsense. The stronger the apparent connection, and the more complete the real disconnection of the ideas, the greater the surprise and the better the bull. The less apparent, and the more complete the relations established by wit, the higher gratification does it afford. A great deal of the pleasure experienced from bulls proceeds from the sense of superiority in ourselves. Bulls which we invented, or knew to be invented, might please, but in a less degree, for want of this additional zest.

As there must be apparent connection, and real incongruity, it is seldom that a man of sense and education finds any form of words by which he is conscious that he might have been deceived into a bull. To conceive how the person has been deceived, he must suppose a degree of information very different from, and a species of character very heterogeneous to, his own; a process which diminishes surprise, and consequently pleasure. In the abovementioned story of the Irishman overlooking the man writing, no person of ordinary sagacity can suppose himself betrayed into such a mistake; but he can easily represent to himself a kind of character that might have been so betrayed. There are some bulls so extremely fallacious, that any man may imagine himself to have been betrayed into them; but these are rare: and, in general, it is a poor contemptible species of amusement; a delight in which evinces a very bad taste in wit.

LOVE'S GROWTH.
They err who tell us there is need
Of time for Love to grow;
Ah! no, the love that kills indeed,
Despatches at a blow.

And that which but by slow degrees
Is nursed into a flame,

Is friendship, habit,-what you please But Love is not the name.

THE MINSTREL

Of chance or change O let not man complain,
Else shall he never, never cease to wail:
For, from the imperial dome, to where the swain
Rears the lone cottage in the silent dale,

All feel th' assault of fortune's fickle gale;
Art, empire, earth itself, to change are doomed;
Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vale,
And gulfs the mountain's mighty mass entombed,
And where th' Atlantic rolls wide continents have
bloomed,2

But sure to foreign climes we need not range,
Nor search the ancient records of our race,
To learn the dire effects of time and change,
Which in ourselves, alas! we daily trace,
Yet at the darkened eye, the withered face,
Or hoary hair, I never will repine:

But spare, O Time, whate'er of mental grace,
Of candour, love, or sympathy divine,
Whate'er of fancy's ray, or friendship's flame is mine.

1 In a letter to Dr. Blacklock, dated Aberdeen, 20th May, 1767, Beattie explains the design of his poem: "The subject was suggested by a dissertation on the old minstrels, which is prefixed to a collection of ballads lately published by Dodsley in three volumes. I pro

pose to give an account of the birth, education, and adventures of one of those bards; in which I shall have full scope for description, sentiment, satire, and even a certain species of humour and of pathos, which, in the opinion of my great master, are by no means inconsistent, as is evident from his works. My hero is to be born in the South of Scotland; which you know was the native land of the English minstrels; I mean, of those minstrels who travelled into England, and supported themselves there by singing their ballads to the harp. His father is a shepherd. The son will have a natural taste for music and the beauties of nature; which, however, languishes for want of culture, till in due time he meets with a hermit, who gives him some instruction; but endeavours to check his genius for poetry and adventures, by representing the happiness of obscurity and solitude, and the bad reception which poetry has met with in almost every age. The poor swain acquiesces in this advice, and resolves to follow his father's employment."

2 See Plato's Timous.

"The gusts of appetite, the clouds of care,
And storms of disappointment, all o'erpast,
Henceforth no earthly hope with Heaven shall share
This heart, where peace serenely shines at last.
And if for me no treasure be amassed,
And if no future age shall hear my name,

I lurk the more secure from fortune's blast,

And with more leisure feed this pious flame,

Whose rapture far transcends the fairest hopes of fame.

"The end and the reward of toil is rest.

Be all my prayer for virtue and for peace.

Of wealth and fame, of pomp and power possessed, Who ever felt his weight of woe decrease? Ah! what avails the lore of Rome and Greece, The lay heaven-prompted, and harmonious string, The dust of Ophir, or the Tyrian fleece, All that art, fortune, enterprise, can bring, If envy, scorn, remorse, or pride the bosom wring.

"Let Vanity adorn the marble tomb

With trophies, rhymes, and scutcheons of renown, In the deep dungeon of some Gothic dome, Where night and desolation ever frown. Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down; Where a green grassy turf is all I crave, With here and there a violet bestrown, Fast by a brook or fountain's murmuring wave; And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave.

"And thither let the village swain repair:
And, light of heart, the village maiden gay,
To deck with flowers her half-dishevelled hair,
And celebrate the merry morn of May.
There let the shepherd's pipe the live-long day
Fill all the grove with love's bewitching woe;
And when mild Evening comes in mantle gray,
Let not the blooming band make haste to go;

No ghost, nor spell, my long and last abode shall know.

"For though I fly to 'scape from Fortune's rage,
And bear the scars of envy, spite, and scorn,
Yet with mankind no horrid war I wage,
Yet with no impious spleen my breast is torn:
For virtue lost, and ruined man, I mourn.
O man! creation's pride, Heaven's darling child,
Whom Nature's best, divinest gifts adorn,
Why from thy home are truth and joy exiled,
And all thy favourite haunts with blood and tears
defiled?

Along yon glittering sky what glory streams!
What majesty attends Night's lovely queen!
Fair laugh our valleys in the vernal beams;
And mountains rise, and oceans roll between,
And all conspire to beautify the scene.
But, in the mental world, what chaos drear!
What forms of mournful, loathsome, furious mien !
O when shall that eternal morn appear,

These dreadful forms to chase, this chaos dark to clear?

"O Thou, at whose creative smile yon heaven,
In all the pomp of beauty, life, and light,
Rose from th' abyss; when dark confusion, driven
Down down the bottomless profound of night,
Fled, where he ever flies Thy piercing sight!
O glance on these sad shades one pitying ray,
To blast the fury of oppressive might,

Melt the hard heart to love and mercy's sway, And cheer the wandering soul, and light him on the way!"

Silence ensued: and Edwin raised his eyes

In tears, for grief lay heavy at his heart. "And is it thus in courtly life," he cries, "That man to man acts a betrayer's part? And dares he thus the gifts of Heaven pervert, Each social instinct, and sublime desire? Hail Poverty, if honour, wealth, and art, If what the great pursue, and learned admire, Thus dissipate and quench the soul's ethereal fire!'' He said, and turned away; nor did the sage O'erhear, in silent orisons employed. The youth, his rising sorrow to assuage, Home as he hied, the evening scene enjoyed: For now no cloud obscures the starry void; The yellow moonlight sleeps on all the hills;' Nor is the mind with startling sounds annoyed, A soothing murmur the lone region fills, Of groves, and dying gales, and melancholy rills.

OH FAIREST OF THE RURAL MAIDS.
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Oh fairest of the rural maids!
Thy birth was in the forest shades;
Green boughs and glimpses of the sky
Were all that met thine infant eye.

Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child,
Were ever in the sylvan wild;
And all the beauty of the place
Is in thy heart and on thy face.

The twilight of the trees and rocks
Is in the light shade of thy locks;
Thy step is as the wind that weaves
Its playful way among the leaves.

Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen;
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.

The forest depths by foot unpressed,
Are not more sinless than thy breast;
The holy peace, that fills the air
Of those calm solitudes, is there.

1 How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank. -Shakspeare.