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bars of our window, reminded us that the cool hour of the day was at hand, when it was our custom to walk in the outer court. As we went forth, there was that eloquently sad silence, with which even the most thoughtless engage in an habitual employment for the last time. No one anticipated me in securing the companionship of the sweet child of nature, whose beauty and gentleness had brightened to us all so many days of pilgrimage and confinement; and I determined to improve it, by ascertaining, if possible, the probable success of my poor friend. I spoke of the many pleasant hours we had passed together, of that social sympathy which had cheered and consoled, and asked her if even those narrow walls would not be left with regret. “Consider,' said I, 'you will no more be charmed with the exquisite elegance of Monsieur Jacques' — she looked up as if to see if I really thought her capable of being interested by such conventional graces —'

or be enlivened,' I continued, by the enthusiastic converse of Don Carlo' - she smiled —'or know,' I added, with a more serious and searching glance, 'the affectionate and gifted society of Delano' - a tear filled her eye, but the smile assumed a brighter meaning. I looked up, and he was before us, gazing from one to the other, with an expression of joyful inquiry, which flashed the happiest conviction on my mind. The passionate Neapolitan had flattered, and the genteel Frenchman had amused, but the faithful Yankee had won the heart of Angelica De Falco.

H. T. T.

WRITTEN AT THE SIDE OF THE CORPSE OP A FOREIGNER, WHO DIED SINGING A NATIONAL BALLAD.

Her soft notes floated on the air,

Like the filmy ibread of a spider's woof,

Hung from the frieze of a fretted roof
Dreamy and indistinct they were.

Ah! there was wo in its silver tone,

And the living fingers that touch'd the string,

Were wan and thin with suffering;
She sang of herself - she was all alone!

As she sang of home, in another land,

Her dark eye filled with a burning tear;

She sang of loved ones lingering there,
And the lule shook fast in her trembling hand.

She sang of home. Her tears fell fast;

Father and mother were far away!

She had left her horne, in an evil day,
To die in a stranger-land, ai last.

It was a song of her early days;

Ah! there was wo in that murmured strain!

The brother she ne'er would see again,
Had loved that simple roundelay.
The song was hushed. The voice that sung

Grew faint and still in that dim old hall,

The notes of the lute from her fingers fall,

But her spirit had fled, ere their echo rung.
Kingston, Nov., 1838.

J. C. 1.

OR STRAY LEAVES FROM THE PORT-FOLIO OF A GEORGIA LAWYER.

NUMBER TWO.

AFTER all, there is no life so exciting as that of a lawyer. True, it is not mixed up with blood and battle. The cannon's roar and trumpet's tongue rouse him not up from his bed of earth, that he may slay or be slain; nor is he called to be a witness of the intense and heart-rending misery of a sick room, or a bed of death; to hear the dying wretch, in the bitterness of despair, invoking curses upon his Maker, and defying his vengeance, and then, his stern soul, quivering before the uplifted hand of the tyrant Death, imploring, in the wildest tones, for a few seconds of time, ere he should be hurled into an eternal hell; nor yet is the lawyer called upon to cheer the desponding sinner; to impart comfort to the weary and heavy laden; to view with delight the stray sheep returning to the heavenly fold of their master, God! None of this falls to his lot; at all events, not as a part of his vocation; for though he may mingle incidentally in such scenes, they are not the business of his day. Still is his life a series of intense excitements. Fame, ambition, the love of gain, each and all spur him on with their sharp goads. The court-room is a wrestling-ground, where mental strength is ever struggling to get the 'under hold' of the physical giant, and Genius and Knowledge are the moral bottle-holders, who aid the feeble and sinking energies, in the fearful combat with unfeeling knavery, and avaricious insensibility. It is a theatre, too, where each man in his time plays many

parts;' and many and various are the scenes and characters that

pass before the gaze of the practising attorney. Here may he study all the shades and varieties of the human character; its evil traits, its good affections ; here may be view the hell of the human heart, the debased and debasing passions, that rush like demons through it, blighting every honorable feeling, and extinguishing every noble impulse; here too, may be see the modest and shrinking mind of virtue, speaking the whole truth, albeit the utterance of it may bring infamy to those who are dearer than its own existence; in short, here may he see, the tragedy, comedy, and farce of life.

general

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What a strange thing character is! Of how many myriad shades is it composed; how nice the line of demarcation between the honest scoundrel, and the man whose character is divided by a hair's breadth from the confines of roguery! Every thing has a character. Men, trees, stones, all have characters peculiar to their kind; and then, again, each individual man, tree, and stone, has his or its peculiar character, totally distinct from, and unconnected with, the character of the genus to which he or it belongs. For example: the laurel is the dandy, the exquisite of the tree kind; the cypress and the yew are the mourners of the vegetable race. Then, there is the sensitive touch-me-not,' retiring with maiden modesty from the rude touch of the bold and reckless profligate; and the go-to-the-devil look of the old bachelor,' which imitates, with a perfection worthy of a better cause, the ugliness, selfishness, and uselessness of the unfledged drone after whom it is so appropriately called. This is the general character; but there is also the individual disposition. Who has not seen a melancholy laurel, looking as if it had been crossed in love? Or a sprightly cypress tree, like a lively young widow, arrayed in her second mourning, and seeming, in her semi-gay and demi-mournful apparel, as if she were ready to dance a jig on the tomb-stone of her half-lamented husband; or a rakish-looking sensitive plant', or a modest and graceful-looking

old bachelor!' (I speak of the vegetable species; I charge no man with the absurdity of believing that he has ever seen one of the animal kind, that had any thing good-looking or good-feeling about it.) What observer of nature or nature's works has not seen each or all of these things ? I, who love to pry into the inmost recesses of the bona dea, have often beheld, and been struck with it. Let him who doubts, plant two parallel lines of any species of tree ; let him fix them as perpendicularly as he pleases, and after a few years shall have passed away, let him come back and mark the development of their different dispositions. He will see some buckish-looking scions of the forest, inclining gracefully toward their opposite neighbors, who in their turn, according to their respective characters, will either meet their complaisant fellows half way, or will have receded as the others have advanced. He will see the passions and vices of the man, developed in a slighter degree in the tree. Look at that fellow with the upright trunk, who has not swerved to the right or the left since the day he was transplanted, and who has carefully kept his branches from all contact with the plebeians, who are placed • 'twixt

the wind and his nobility. His vice is pride. He is aping the walking vegetables, who occasionally strut beneath him, and who imagine that a broad-cloth coat and a well-filled purse constitute them gentlemen, when it is apparent to everyone else, that it would require a force of forty-miracle power, to give them one sensible thought, or one generous feeling. Now turn your eye to the tree that stands the third from the one we have just been examining; there, to the right; see, how he bows, when the slightest zephyr plays amid his branches, as if he were paying his respects to all with whom chance had associated him. He is the politician of the set. And so I might go on, pointing out to you the various passions, and vices, and follies, which we so commonly see in man; but it would be tiring you, gentle reader, and the next time you walk into a forest, look and judge for yourself. It has been said by an eminent poet,

' Just as the twig is bent, the tree 's inclined ;' But it is not so. This is one of those popular fallacies, which, first asserted by some master spirit, are taken for granted by the commune vulgus, without farther examination. If the poet had said,

Just as the twig's inclined, the tree is bent,'

I would concede the correctness of the assertion. If it be true that 'the boy is the father of the man,' that the dispositions and passions of our youth still continue to exercise their influence over us in manhood's years, then, reasoning as our friend of the Dr. Johnson school did, 'analogically and progressively,' we may suppose, that the twig is the father of the tree, and that the inclinations of the one continue to actuate the other, until they •fool it to the top of its bent.'

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But let us leave the vegetable and return to the animal creation. If

you would see the true character of an individual, look at him when he is placed on a stand, that he may be insulted with impunity,' which I believe is the latest and the most correct definition of a witnėss. Regard him, as he calls upon his Maker to witness, that he will reveal the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Ah, how few there are among us, who feel the solemnity of the occasion, who hear the voice of God, and see bis almighty frown, admonishing us, 'not to take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain!' If these were seen and felt, should we view the disgusting prevarication of every-day occurrence in our court rooms ? Should we so often turn away with loathing and contempt from the exhibitions which the frequenters of halls of justice are compelled to observe ? Better, far better, would it be, to abolish all judicial oaths, and to trust to the mere ipse dixit of those who are cognizant of the facts of the case, than to continue the worse than blasphemy, which hourly degrades our courts of justice. If human wisdom cannot devise some form to make the witness feel and reverence the name he is invoking, let human wisdom abolish the idle, the blasphemous ceremony. To see (as I have seen) a drunken magistrate qualifying' a still more

a

drunken witness, and having made him keep his right hand upraised for a quarter of an hour, while he was stuttering and bickupping through the legal formula, then concluding, 'Here you would kiss the book, if some d - d scoundrel had not stolen the only Bible in the office; but as I've got no Bible, please to kiss your hand ;' to see this, and then to hear men prate of the obligations of a judicial oath, is enough to sicken any being who has any religious or moral scruples.

but to return. I can tell a man's character at a glance, if I see him sworn in as a witness. I can read him through, as he kisses the book. There are various kinds of judicial swearers. First, there is the reckless, devil-may-care oath-taker, who smacks the Bible as if it were the lips of the prettiest girl in Christendom. Put that fellow down as a liar; do n't believe a word of his story, however plausible it may be. Then, there is the sanctified swearer, who rolls bis eyes toward heaven, and bows his head half way to the ground, as he invokes his Creator's name. Put him down as both liar and hypocrite: a truly religious man would not make so much outward show of his heart-felt reverence. Then, there is the man who tries to kiss clear of the cross, or salutes the thumb, which he has dexterously interposed between the book and his lips; set him down in your mind's tablet, as liar, hypocrite, and fool. He is trying to deceive his fellow man by a cunningly.devised fable; ergo, he is a liar: be is assuming a virtue, when he has it not ; ergo, he is a hypocrite; and he is idiot enough to imagine that by kissing his thumb, or not kissing the cross, he has cheated the Omniscient being, and entitled himself to perjure his soul, as it suits his interest. But the godly man, who feels the obligation he is incurring by the invocation of the Holy One of Israel, speaks his feelings so visibly by his countenance and involuntary demeanor, that the practised eye at once perceives and appreciates his character.

a

I have not much faith in phrenology, but I am forced to confess, that there are some characters, which, if they cannot be explained by the principles of the science I have adverted to, must for ever remain riddles to me. I have seen men, who, if they were bribed to speak the truth; who, if convinced that the plain statement of a fact as it had occurred, would be as conducive to their interests as any prevarication or exaggeration concerning it; would yet equivocate and lie, in a manner truly astonishing. I will give you an example of this class, which will also serve me to illustrate the free-and-easy manner that prevails in such of our courts as are, with considerable pleasantry, denominated Justice' Courts,' (lucus a non lucendo.) Old Joshua BANES, familiarly called “Uncle Josh.,' by the youngsters of the neighborhood, and Epitaph Josh.,' (from the fact of his lying like a tomb-stone,) by the legal wags of the vicinity, is the person to whom I refer. One day, at one of these courts, it became necessary, for the identification of an individual, to ascertain whether, at a certain place, he had turned to the right or the left, and as the point had arisen incidentally, it was unavoidable to swear the only individual present in court, who was known to be acquainted with the circumstances, and that person was Epitaph Josh.' With

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