who with many abusive epithets drove him into the road; telling him that he might thank himself that he did not arrest him on the spot.

In great dolor at this unhappy repulse, Israel trudged on in the moonlight some three miles to the house of another friend, who also had once succored him in extremity. This man proved a very sound sleeper. Instead of succeeding in rousing him by his knocking, Israel but succeeded in rousing his wife, a person not of the greatest amiability. Raising the sash, and seeing so shocking a pauper before her, the woman upbraided him with shameless impropriety in asking charity at dead of night, in a dress so improper too. Looking down at his deplorable velveteens, Israel discovered that his extensive travels had produced a great rent in one loin of the rotten old breeches, through which a whitish fragment protruded.

Remedying this oversight as well as he might, he again implored the woman to wake her husband.

"That I shan't!" said the woman morosely. "Quit the premises, or I'll throw something on ye.'

With that, she brought some earthenware to the window, and would have fulfilled her threat, had not Israel prudently retreated some paces. Here he entreated the woman to take mercy on his plight, and since she would not waken her husband, at least throw to him (Israel) her husband's breeches, and he would leave the price of them, with his own breeches to boot, on the sill of the door.

"You behold how sadly I need them," said he; "for heaven's sake befriend

me."

"Quit the premises !" reiterated the

woman.

"The breeches, the breeches! here is the money," cried Israel, half furious with anxiety.

66

Saucy cur," cried the woman, somehow misunderstanding him; "do you cunningly taunt me with wearing the breeches? begone!"

Once more, poor Israel decamped, and made for another friend. But here a monstrous bull-dog, indignant that the peace of a quiet family should be disturbed by so outrageous a tatterdemalion, flew at Israel's unfortunate coat, whose rotten skirts the brute tore completely off; leaving the coat razeed to a spencer, which barely came down to the wearer's waist. In attempting to drive

the monster away, Israel's hat fell off, upon which the dog pounced with the utmost fierceness, and thrusting both paws into it, rammed out the crown, and went snuffling the wreck before him. Recovering the wretched hat, Israel again beat a retreat, his wardrobe sorely the worse for his visits. Not only was his coat a mere rag, but his breeches, clawed by the dog, were slashed into yawning gaps, while his yellow hair waved over the top of the crownless beaver, like a lonely tuft of heather on the Highlands.

In this plight the morning discovered him dubiously skirmishing on the outskirts of a village.

Ah! what a true patriot gets for serving his country!" murmured Israel. But soon thinking a little better of his case, and seeing yet another house which had once furnished him with an asylum, he made bold to advance to the door. Luckily he this time met the man himself, just emerging from bed. At first the farmer did not recognize the fugitive; but upon another look, seconded by Israel's plaintive appeal, beckoned him into the barn, where directly our adventurer told him all he thought prudent to disclose of his story; ending by once more offering to negotiate for breeches and coat. Having ere this, emptied and thrown away the purse which had played him so scurvy a trick with the first farmer; he now produced three crownpieces.

"Three crown-pieces in your pocket, and no crown to your hat!" said the farmer.

"But I assure you, my friend, rejoined Israel," that a finer hat was never worn, until that confounded bull-dog ruined it."

(6 True," "said the farmer. "I forgot that part of your story. Well, I have a tolerable coat and breeches which I will sell you for your money.”

In ten minutes more, Israel was equipped in a grey coat of coarse cloth, not much improved by wear, and breeches to match. For half-a-crown more, he procured a highly respectable-looking hat.

"Now, my kind friend," said Israel, can you tell me where Horne Tooke, and John Bridges live ?"

Our adventurer thought it his best plan to seek out one or other of those gentlemen, both to report proceedings, and learn confirmatory tidings concerning Squire Woodcock, touching whose

fate he did not like to inquire of others.

"Horne Tooke? What do you want with Horne Tooke?" said the farmer: "He was Squire Woodcock's friend, wasn't he? The poor Squire! Who would have thought he'd have gone off so suddenly. But apoplexy comes like a bullet."

I was right, thought Israel to himself. "But where does Horne Tooke live?" he demanded again.

"He once ved in Brentford, and wore a cassock there. But I hear he's sold out his living, and gone in his surplice to study law in Lunnon."

This was all news to Israel, who, from various amiable remarks he had heard from Horne Tooke at the Squire's, little dreamed he was an ordained clergyman. Yet a good-natured English clergyman translated Lucian; another, equally goodnatured, wrote Tristam Shandy; and a third, an ill-natured appreciator of goodnatured Rabelais, died a dean; not to speak of others. Thus ingenious and ingenuous are some of the English clergy.

"You can't tell me, then, where to find Horne Tooke?" said Israel, in perplexity.

“You'll find him, I suppose, in Lunnon."

"What street and number?"

"Don't know. Needle in a haystack."

"Where does Mr. Bridges live?"

"Never heard of any Bridges, except Lunnon bridges, and one Molly Bridges in Bridewell."

So Israel departed; better clothed, but no wiser than before.

What to do next? He reckoned up his money, and concluded he had plenty to carry him back to Doctor Franklin in Paris. Accordingly, taking a turn to avoid the two nearest villages, he directed his steps towards London, where, again taking the post coach for Dover, he arrived on the channel shore just in time to learn that the very coach in which he rode brought the news to the authorities there that all intercourse between the two nations was indefinitely suspended. The characteristic taciturnity and formal stolidity of his fellow-travellers--all Englishmen, mutually unacquainted with each other, and occupying different positions in life-having prevented his sooner hearing the tidings.

Here was another accumulation of misfortunes. All visions but those of eventual imprisonment or starvation vanished VOL. IV-25

from before the present realities of poor Israel Potter. The Brentford gentleman had flattered him with the prospect of receiving something very handsome for his services as courier. That hope was no more. Doctor Franklin had promised him his good offices in procuring him a passage home to America. Quite out of the question now. The sage had likewise intimated that he might possibly see him some way remunerated for his sufferings in his country's cause. An idea no longer to be harbored. Then Israel recalled the mild man of wisdom's words" At the prospect of pleasure never be elated; but without depression respect the omens of ill." But he found it as difficult now to comply, in all respects, with the last section of the maxim, as before he had with the first.

While standing wrapped in afflictive reflections on the shore, gazing towards the unattainable coast of France, a pleasant-looking cousinly stranger, in seaman's dress, accosted him, and, after some pleasant conversation, very civilly invited him up a lane into a house of rather secret entertainment. Pleased to be befriended in this his strait, Israel yet looked inquisitively upon the man, not completely satisfied with his good intentions. But the other, with good-humored violence, hurried him up the lane into the inn, when, calling for some spirits, he and Israel very affectionately drank to each other's better health and prosperity.

"Take another glass," said the stranger, affably.

Israel, to drown his heavy-heartedness, complied. The liquor began to take effect.

"Ever at sea?" said the stranger, lightly.

Oh, yes; been a whaling." "Ah!" said the other, "happy to hear that, I assure you. Jim! Bill!" And beckoning very quietly to two brawny fellows, in a trice Israel found himself kidnapped into the naval service of the magnanimous old gentleman of Kew Gardens-his Royal Majesty, George III.

"Hands off!" said Israel, fiercely, as the two men pinioned him.

"Reglar game-cock," said the cousinlylooking man. "I must get three guineas for cribbing him. Pleasant_voyage to ye, my friend," and, leaving Israel a prisoner, the crimp, buttoning his coat, sauntered leisurely out of the inn.

"I'm no Englishman," roared Israel, in a foam.

"Oh! that's the old story," grinned his gaolers. "Come along. There's no Englishmen in the English fleet. All foreigners. You may take their own word for it."

To be short, in less than a week Israel found himself at Portsmouth, and, ere long, a fore-topman in his majesty's ship of the line, "Unprincipled," scudding before the wind down channel, in company with the "Undaunted," and the "Unconquerable;" all three haughty Dons bound to the East Indian waters as reinforcements to the fleet of Sir Edward Hughs.

And now, we might shortly have to record our adventurer's part in the famous engagement off the coast of Coromandel, between Admiral Suffrien's fleet and the English squadron, were it not that fate snatched him on the threshold of events, and, turning him short round whither he had come, sent him back congenially to war against England, instead of on her behalf. Thus repeatedly and rapidly were the fortunes of our wanderer planted, torn up, transplanted, and dropped again, hither and thither, according as the Supreme Disposer of sailors and soldiers saw fit to appoint.

WHAT are the true objects of history?

During the past twenty years the works of Guizot and Thierry, Niebuhr and Bunsen, Arnold and Carlyle, have awakened public attention to the subject, and all the thinking world now joins in the inquiry, How may the lessons that history professes to teach stand us in the stead of experience of our own?

We begin to perceive that all history does not consist in the domestic affairs of monarchs, in the battles they have fought, in the alliances that they contracted, in the meed of praise or censure that they won. The present object of historical inquiry is the people's history. We desire to know how the political changes carried on by intriguing court favorites, or kings at the head of armies, affected their condition; we would fain trace the formation of national character, the gradual rise of social institutions, and the growth of opinions popular in our own day. But all these subjects were of little interest in the eyes of contemporary chroniclers, or of subsequent compilers of history in the last century, and when we attempt to supply the deficiency, we discover, to our astonishment, that almost the only sources whence we can recover what is lacking of the spirit of history, are the legends of the people, and their laws.

The real condition of a population is exhibited without disguise in the civil remedies that have been framed to meet it; a fugitive slave law proves that the popular sentiment in favor of personal liberty is all-pervading at the North;

and popular ballads, superstitions and romances, give back to us the habits of thought, the interests and the feelings of the class from whence they sprung.

The glory and the beauty of AngloSaxon literature passed away with Alfred, in whom " the scholar and the man outshone the king." Before his time, the Anglo-Saxon seems to have been more rich in literature than any language in Europe. Into it flowed, as into an ocean, the tributary legends of the old Norse sea-kings, and the more fanciful legends of poetic Britanny which held Celtic superstitions in common with the remnants of that ancient British race, the traces of whose pagan creed still linger among the peasantry of England as if indigenous to the very soil.

The hoar old poem of Beowulf dates so far back that its real age is lost amongst the clouds and mists of traditionary antiquity. "It is," says Mr. Longfellow, "like a piece of ancient armor, rusty and battered, and yet strong. From within comes a voice, sepulchral as if the ancient armor spoke, telling a straight-forward narrative, with here and there the boastful speech of a rough old Dane, reminding one of those made by the heroes of Homer."

Cadmon, the monk of Whitby, died before the reign of Alfred. His poem (a paraphrase of Scripture) opens with the theme of Paradise Lost. The fallen angels hold council in "swart hell," where Satan harangues them, proposing to his companions in misfortune the conquest of the world. And the description

and conception of Lucifer bear so close a resemblance to the grandest of all poetical creations in the Paradise Lost, that we are not surprised to learn that the first translation of Monk Cadmon's poem was made into English by one of our earliest Anglo-Saxon scholars, who wrote under the name of "Junius," and lived in Milton's time.

A taste for literature seems to have expired under the rude rule of the Danish robber-kings. Canute, indeed, seems to have been willing to extend a scanty royal patronage to the verse of his conquered people, but the drunken Harolds and Hardicanutes who succeeded him set a fashion of excess and debauchery which found its way from the camp to the court, and from both into the cloister, corrupting the fountain-heads of learning, from whence, in times of turbulence, all literature sprung. "The Anglo Saxons,"

says William of Malmesbury, a man not likely to be prejudiced in favor of the conquering race, "had long before the coming of the Normans given up all study of letters or religion.' And another writer of that period tells us that a churchman who had learned his Latin grammar was a marvel."

It is, therefore, to her Norman rulers that England is indebted for a fresh infusion of vitality into her literature. Normandy had borrowed a taste for polite learning from her neighbor, the romantic Britanny; academies and ecclesiastical establishments flourished on the Seine, and the scholars who had been bred up in them took their share in the enthusiasm for erudition which succeeded the revival of letters on the continent-a revival which was consequent upon the opening of the treasures of Arabian literature-an introduction through the commentators to Aristotle and Plato -and the commencement of the great controversy between realists and nominalists in scholastic philosophy. Learned men were found in sufficient numbers in the cloisters of Normandy to fill all the chief offices in the church of the Saxons. We must own, in justice to the character of William, that his distribution of church patronage reflects lustre on his reign; and, under the guidance of such prelates as Lanfranc and Anselm, England began to share in the spirit which all classes of society on the continent at that period displayed.

Most wonderful monuments have been

left to us of the activity and energy of those times, in the Gothic structures -the pride of the Church of Englandwhich date their erection almost universally from the days of the Norman King.

So great was the enthusiasm for such pious works, during that period, that almost the entire population of Britanny became masons. Binding themselves by oath to bestow their time and skill upon no edifice that was not destined to the service of heaven, they spread themselves over the country in itinerant bands. It was a crusade of the lower classes against religious indifference and barbarism! It is not probable, however, that any of this enthusiasm had at that time found its way into the hearts and homes of the Saxon population. The five hundred and fifty-seven cathedrals and religious houses, which owe their origin to the reigns of the early Normans, added architectural embellishment to the rural beauties of England, but were erected by Norman workinen, and endowed by Norman funds. It is even to the pious liberality of the invaders, in providing such asylums for learning throughout the country, that England is indebted for that large body of contemporary history, compiled by Saxon chroniclers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, whose stores of interesting information are destined, during the present period of historical interest, to become more generally known.

The fairy mythologies of the North of Europe claim a common origin. As far as we can look into the mists of antiquity, and trace the literary or religious history of the Teutonic nations, we find an universal belief in the existence of familiar spirits, known amongst the peasantry of different countries by the names of nickers, brownies, poulpicans, hobgoblins, and elves. What the exact origin of these superstitions may have been, it is now impossible to ascertain with certainty. We may assign it to some original tradition (brought, it may be, from the gates of Babel) of days when the "millions of spiritual beings" who "walk the earth" were manifest to human senses-when Satan tempted our first mother in Paradise-and Adam was permitted to hold personal intercourse with God; or think with a modern writer* on these subjects, that the character and form of the unpremeditated