toid us by a grave, though sometimes a romancing histo

rian.

"Matilda was married, very young, to a Neapolitan nobleman of the first quality, and found herself a widow and a mother at the age of fifteen. As she stood one day caressing her infant son in the open window of an apartment which hung over the river Volturnus, the child, with a sudden spring, leaped from her arms into the flood below, and disappeared in a moment.

"The mother, struck with instant surprise, and making an effort to save him, plunged in after; but, far from being able to assist the infant, she herself, with great difficulty, escaped to the opposite shore, just when some French soldiers were plundering the country on that side, who immediately made her their prisoner.

"As the war was then carried on between the French and Italians with the utmost inhumanity, they were going at once to perpetrate those two extremes suggested by ap petite and cruelty. This base resolution, however, was opposed by a young officer, who, though their retreat required the utmost expedition, placed her behind him, and brought her in safety to his native city.

"Her beauty at first caught his eye, her merit, soon after, his heart. They were married: he rose to the highest posts: they lived long together, and were happy. But the felicity of a soldier can never be called permanent. After an interval of several years, the troops which he commanded having met with a repulse, he was obliged to take shelter in the city where he had lived with his wife. Here they suffered a siege, and the city at length was taken.

"Few histories can produce more various instances of cruelty, than those which the French and Italians, at that time, exercised upon each other. It was resolved by the victors, upon this occasion, to put all the French prisoners to death; but particularly the husband of the unfortunate Matilda, as he was principally instrumental in protracting the siege. Their determinations were, in general, executed almost as soon as resolved upon.

"The captive soldier was led forth, and the executioner with his sword stood ready, while the spectators in gloomy silence awaited the fatal blow, which was only suspended till the general, who presided as judge, should give the signal. It was in this interval of anguish and expectation, that Matilda came to take her last farewell of her husband and

deliverer, deploring her wretched situation, and the cruelty of fate, that had saved her from perishing by a premature death in the river Volturnus, to be the spectator of still greater calamities.

"The general, who was a young man, was struck with surprise at her beauty, and pity at her distress; but with still stronger emotions, when he heard her mention her former dangers. He was her son-the infant, for whom she had encountered so much danger. He acknowledged her at once as his mother, and fell at her feet. The rest may be easily supposed: the captive was set free, and all the happiness that love, friendship, and duty, could confer on each, was enjoyed."

LESSON LXVI.

The Man of Ross.-POPE.

BUT all our praises why should lords engrōss?
Rise, honest muse! and sing the man of Ross;
Pleased Vaga echoes through her winding bounds,
And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds.
Who hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow?
From the dry rock who både the waters flow?
Not to the skies in useless columns tossed,
Or in proud falls magnificently lost,

But clear and artless, pouring through the plain
Health to the sick, and solace to the swain.

Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows?
Whose seats the weary traveller repose?

Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?
"The man of Ross," each lisping babe replies.
Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread!
The man of Ross divides the weekly bread:
He feeds yon alms-house, neat, but void of state,
Where age and want sit smiling at the gate:
Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans blessed,
The young who labour, and the old who rest.
Is any sick? The man of Ross relieves,
Prescribes, attends, the medicine makes, and gives.
Is there a variance? Enter but his door,

Balked are the courts, and contest is no more.

Despairing quacks with curses fled the place,
And vile attorneys, now a useless race.

Thrice happy man! enabled to pursue
What all so wish, but want the power to do!
O say, what sums that generous hand supply?
What mines to swell that boundless charity?—
Of debts, and taxes, wife, and children clear,
This man possessed five hundred pounds a year.
Blush, grandeur, blush! proud courts, withdraw your blaze
Ye little stars, hide your diminished rays!

And what! no monument, inscription, stone!
His race, his form, his name, almost unknown!-
Who builds a church to God, and not to fame,
Will never mark the marble with his name.
Go search it there, where to be born and die,
Of rich and poor, makes all the history;
Enough, that virtue filled the space between;
Proved by the ends of being to have been.

LESSON LXVII.

Early Recollections.-NEW MONTHly Magazine.

It is delightful to fling a glance back to our early years, and recall our boyish actions, glittering with the light of h pe and the sanguine expectations of incipient being. But the remembrance of our sensations when we were full of elasticity, when life was new, and every sense and relish keen, when the eye saw nothing but a world of beauty and glory around, every object glittering in golden resplendency-is the most agreeable thing of all.

The recollection of boyish actions gives small gratification to persons of mature years, except for what may, perchance, be associated with them. But youthful sensations, experienced when the edge of enjoyment was most keen, and the senses exquisitely susceptible, furnish delightful recollections, that cling around some of us, in the last stage of life, like the principle of being itself. How do we recollect the exquisite taste of a particular fruit or dish to have been then! how delicious a cool draught from the running stream! A landscape, a particular tree, a field, how much better defined and delightfully coloured then, than they ever appeared afterwards!

There was a single tree opposite the door of my father's house: I remember, even now, how every limb branched off, and tist i thought no tree could be finer or larger. I loved its shade; I played under it for years; but when I visited it, after my first absence for a few months from home, though I recognised it with intense interest, it appeared lessened in size; it was an object I loved, but as a tree it no longer attracted wonder at its dimensions. During my absence I had travelled in a forest of much larger trees, and the pleasure and well-defined image in my mind's eye, which I owed to the singleness of this object, I never again experienced in observing another.

Can I ever forget the sunny side of the wood, where I used to linger away my hol'ydays among the falling leaves of the trees in autumn! I can recall the very smell of the rere foliage to recollection; and the sound of the dashing water is even now in my ear. The rustling of the boughs, the sparkling of the stream, the gnarled trunks of the old oaks around, long since levelled by the axe, left impressions only to be obliterated by death. The pleasure I then felt was undefinable; but I was satisfied to enjoy without caring whence my enjoyment arose.

The old church-yard and its yew-trees, where I sacrilegiously enjoyed my pastimes among the dead,-and the ivied tower, the belfry of which I frequently ascended, and wondered at the skill, which could form such ponderous masses as the bells, and lift them so high, these were objects that, on Sundays particularly, often filled my mind, upon viewing them, with a sensation that cannot be put into lan guage.

It was not joy, but a soothing, tranquil delight, that made me forget, for an instant, that I had any desire in the world unsatisfied. I have often thought since, that this state of mind must have approached pretty closely to happiness. As we passed the church-way path to the old Gothic porch on Sundays, I used to spell the inscriptions on the tombs, and wonder at the length of a life that exceeded sixty or seventy years; for days then passed slower than weeks pass now.

I visited, the other day, the school-room where I had been once the drudge of a system of learning, the end of which I could not understand, and where, as was then the fashion, every method taken seemed intended to disgust the scholar with those studies he should be taught to love. I saw my name cut in the desk; I looked again on my old

seat; but my youthful recollections of the worse than eastern slavery I there endured, made me regard what I saw with a feeling of peculiar distaste.

If one thing more than another prevent my desiring the days of my youth to return, it is the horror I feel for the despotism of the pedagogue. For years after I left school, I looked at the classics with disgust. I remembered the heart-burnings, the tears, and the pains, the monkish method of teaching-now almost wholly confined to our public schools-had caused me. It was long before I could take up a Horace, much less enjoy its perusal.

space

It was not thus with the places I visited during the short of cessation from task and toil that the week allowed. The meadow, where, in true jovialness of heart, I had leaped, and raced, and played-this recalled the contentedness of mind, and the overflowing tide of delight I once experienced, when, climbing the stile which led into it, I left behind me the book and the task. How the sunshine of the youthful breast burst forth upon me, and the gushing spirit of unreined and innocent exhilaration braced every fibre, and rushed through every vein !

The sun has never shone so brilliantly since. How fragrant were the flowers! How deep the azure of the sky! How vivid were the hues of nature! How intense the shortlived sensations of pain and pleasure! How generous were all impulses! How confiding, open, and upright, all actions! "Inhumanity to the distressed, and insolence to the fallen," those besetting sins of manhood, how utterly strangers to the heart! How little of sordid interests, and how much of intrepid honesty, was then displayed!

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The sensations peculiar to youth, being the result of impulse rather than reflection, have the advantage over those of manhood, however the pride of reason may give the lat⚫ter the superiority. In manhood there is always a burden of thought bearing on the wheels of enjoyment. In man hood, too, we have the misfortune of seeing the wrecks of early associations scattered every where around us. Youth can see nothing of this. It can take no review of antecedent pleasures or pains that become such a source of melancholy emotion in mature years. It has never sauntered through the rooms of a building, and recalled early days spent under its roof.

I remember my feelings on an occasion of this sort, when was like a traveller on the plain of Babylon, wondering