with that quantity of indolence which is necessary to prevent a waste of the animal juices, requires a combination of skill and refinement, that, otherwise applied, might serve to discover the longitude. Yet I am told that it cost a celebrated beauty twenty years of steady application to bring her person to the vast developement necessary for effecting her object. My design, however, in the present article is merely to announce the discovery,-not to demonstrate its details; and I refer such of your readers, as are curious either for physiological facts or mechanical illustrations of the system, to the professors themselves, who are to be heard of at the stage-door of the Opera House, and at the principal "genteel boarding-schools," and fashionable dress-makers, west of Temple Bar. In the mean time, I have the honour to remain, &c. &c.

PROVINCIAL BALLADS.-NO. I.

The Children in the Snow.

The incident upon which these lines are founded, is that, during the winter of 1819-20, two apprentice boys were lost in a snow-storm, in that part of Dartmoor, in which the scene of the ballad is laid.

Ya, who in childhood e'er have wept
To hear the tale of melting power,
Of that young orphan pair* who slept
The sleep of death in greenwood bower,
Oh, list my lay-though over them

Far sweeter dirge the redbreast sung-
And be my meed the diamond gem

From Pity's sacred fountain sprung!

Where over Devon's vales and woods

Bleak Dartmoor lifts her summits stern,

And rivers pour their infant floods

Through granite wastes of furze and fern,

Deep in a rudely cultured nook

(Hard by where Dart's red waters boil) A peasant dwelt-in heart and look

Well sorted with that savage soil.

Beneath his roof two pauper boys
Were bound to earn their daily bread-

Poor exiles from domestic joys,

Who scarce had where to lay their head.

No parent's eye long, long had smiled

On them, to own affection's claim :

One was a homeless orphan child,

And one the nameless pledge of shame.

(Call it not love, that dark desire,

Nor dream that shame can spring from love

The hallow'd and immortal fire

That lights the shrine of bliss above!
Love ne'er exhaled the meteor flame

That gleams on buried virtue's grave;
It never sear'd the loved one's name,
Or brook'd to curse the life it gave.)

*The babes in the wood.

In cloudless gold the morning shone
On Widdecombe's* dark belt of hills,
And gilt her tower the winter šun,

And sparkled in her frozen rills;
The holy peal of Sabbath bells

Proclaim'd the solemn hour of prayer,
And, echoing o'er the moorland dells,
Aroused the straggling hamlets there.

And with the rest those children join'dt
The sacred work of praise and prayer,
Nor dream'd how few brief days might find
Their limbs beneath that cold turf there.-
As home they turn'd, at evening fall,

The heaven, erewhile so fair, grew brown,
And, glimmering through a misty pall,
The moon in sickly white shone down,

That night some sheep forsook the fold,
O'er the broad heath at large to roam;
And they must search the weary wold

At morn, to bring the wanderers home :
Their tatter'd garb they round them flung,
Their stinted meal in haste they took,
And o'er that gloomy threshold sprung,
Nor cast behind one parting look.

Even then some dense and drizzling flakes
Fell sullen from the swarthy sky,
And strange dead silence lull'd the brakes,
Prophetic of the snow-fall nigh:

Yet forth they fared-for well they knew

The wretch who bade them search the wold-
Though dun with plumes the throng'd air grew,
And numb'd their limbs and hearts with cold.

Vain was their search-yet on they past,

Though heavier still the storm closed round,
And, though the dizzy air shower'd fast,

The white fleece piled the wildering ground.→→
Too late they seek the homeward way—
They blindly roam the waste forlorn!
Still side by side the pale boys stray,
With terror mute, with suffering worn.

With faint slow steps, the weary hour,

They toil'd through snows o'er down and dell,
While round them still the wavery shower,
Shaddowing the air, incessant fell.

It cover'd all the mountain floods,

It ermined all the dark-brown moor;

Soon choked were Spitchweek's‡ massive woods,
And soar'd in snow the Hazle Torr.§

At length, less dense the darkening cloud
Hangs, and the flakes relenting fall,
While burning through his western shroud,
The blood-red sun illumines all.

* Widdecombe-in-the-Moor, a few miles distant from the town of Ashburton. The day before their last they attended divine service at Ashburton. Spitchweek Park, a beautiful property of the Ashburton family, on the banks

of the Dart.

One of the Torrs in the district of the Moor.

*Few will need to be informed that the mountainous masses which rise along this extensive platform of moorland, are denominated Torrs.

+ Widdecombe, i. e. wide valley. The boys were really buried at Ashburton; but, as the author was desirous to confine his tale to the limits of the Moor, he has represented the interment as having taken place at Widdecombe.

A party of twelve men carried the coffins over the snow, relieving each other by turns. At Hazle Torr they were met by another party from Ashburton, who bore the poor children to their last earthly home.

BENEVOLENCE loses much, not only of its charm, but of its intrinsic merit, when it comes forth with ostentatious publicity; the character of true charity, more especially when exercised by women, ought ever to be qualified by humility. In vain do they tell us how much they regret obscurity, what sacrifices they are making for the welfare of mankind, in thus consenting to stand forth in the face of the world. All these phrases, worn and hackneyed as they are by the female professors of philanthropy of the present day, convince us not a whit the more for their frequent repetition. The world cannot be duped for any length of time; for, however a plausible show or loud profession may gain its point for a season, truth, and truth only, is ultimately persuasive; truth alone can aspire to that noblest and most precious of all recompense-public approbation. In proportion as we blame those females who borrow the language of humility as a cloak for their vanity, are we ready to render the homage of justice and of admiration to those, who, contenting themselves with the exercise of domestic virtue, labour to promote the happiness of all around them, and who do not neglect their first duties-those of wife and mother-under the extravagant pretence of reforming society. Error concealed beneath the mask of religion, becomes doubly dangerous, making numerous proselytes, and spreading rapidly; while those who would endeavour to arrest its progress, are exclaimed against for its impiety. Its supporters appeal to their divine missions, to their inspirations, and even to passages from the holy scriptures, which they have either purposely distorted, or ill understood; religion, in short, is no more than a mask to cover the designs of ambitious dissemblers or converted sinners, to whom the excitement of intrigue and agitation is still necessary, and who think an ostentatious confession a full atonement for their former sins. Madame de Krudner is in the latter class. After having passed through the vicissitudes of a wild and irregular youth, a fancy to become inspired took possession of her; and she resolved to offer up, in sacrifice and expiation for her own faults, the reason of credulous multitudes, whom she would soon have driven as mad as herself, had she continued her pretended mission. Madame de Krudner having been much spoken of, although in reality little known, the following is a sketch of her life.

Vol. IX. No. 49.-1826.

Juliana de Wittinghoff was born in the year 1766 at Riga, in Courland. She was daughter of the Baron de Wittinghoff, one of the wealthiest nobles of that country. At nine years old her father brought her to Paris, where his house was a rendezvous for all the celebrated men of that capital, so that the young Baroness found herself thus early thrown into the society of Diderot, Helvetius, D'Alembert, Grim, &c. At nine years of age, with a very lively imagination left to its own guidance, without a single given principle whereby to direct its im pulses, delivered up, in short, entirely to itself, it could only take its bias from what it saw and heard, destitute of all means of discriminating between good and evil. The philosophers of the eighteenth century were not precisely the most unexceptionable guides and instructers of youth of either sex, and ill indeed were they adapted to fulfil that office for a female. The cynicism of some, the immorality of most, were so much the more to be feared, as these men expressed their opinions with much eloquence, and directed their ridicule with so much address against all that opposed their opinions in society, that to combat them with success required very deeply rooted religious principles and much strength of mind. At the period of which we speak, such was the universal corruption of morals, and disorder had risen to such a height, that a strong crisis was become necessary, it was then already foreseen that an explosion was inevitable, and the Revolution of 1793 was the appointed catastrophe, and, as it were, the detonation of the accumulated vices of many preceding years. Assuredly Mademoiselle de Wittinghoff had never heard marriage spoken of otherwise than as a convenient ceremony, by means of which a female procures full liberty, with the privilege of entertaining her lovers, becoming thereby no longer amenable to any tie or duty. At fourteen she married the Baron de Krudner, of Liefland, then thirty-six years of age, a man of good fortune, and well informed. Madame de Krudner from her infancy had discovered a disposition to melancholy and meditation, which temperament, had she been early well directed, would undoubtedly have been gradually developed and regulated, and that ardent and restless imagination might have applied itself to the working of some essential good; but, plunged into the vortex of the world, surrounded by seductions, she had no refuge from her passions, but became their unresisting slave. Nothing, perhaps, can be more dangerous than the irregularities of people of genius; for the intellectual faculties double the strength and energy of man; and when they are not employed to restrain and moderate, they never fail to stimulate and impel; the physical passions are reinforced by the passions of the imagination, if we may be permitted the expression, and from thenceforth excess alone can satisfy; and a corruption often takes possession, no less of the intellectual than of the moral being.

Mons. de Krudner, having in vain endeavoured to restore his wife to virtue, demanded and obtained a divorce in 1791. After this event Madame de Krudner, resided at Riga, where her style of living was brilliant, and where she enjoyed the homage of no inconsiderable number of adorers: nevertheless, becoming weary of a society so limited, she sought in Paris, whither she returned in 1798, a wider scope of gratification. Being captivated by a young Frenchman, she afterwards