the roads are precipices; our horses got on with much difficulty; my companion went first; a path which appeared to him shorter and more practicable led us astray. It was my fault. Ought I to have trusted to a head only twenty years old? Whilst daylight lasted we tried to find our way through the wood, but the more we tried, the more bewildered we became, and it was pitch dark when we arrived at a very black-looking house. We entered, not without fear; but, what could we do? We found a whole family of colliers at table; they immediately invited us to join them; my young man did not wait to be pressed: there we were eating and drinking, he at least, for I was examining the place and the appearance of our hosts. Our hosts had quite the look of colliers, but the house you would have taken for an arsenal; there was nothing but guns, pistols, swords, knives, and cutlasses. Everything displeased me, and I saw very well that I displeased them. My companion, on the contrary, was quite one of the family; he laughed and talked with them, and with an imprudence that I ought to have foreseen (but to what purpose, if it was decreed), he told at once where we came from, where we were going, and that we were Frenchmen. Just imagine! amongst our most mortal enemies, alone, out of our road, so far from all human succour! and then, to omit nothing that might ruin us, he played the rich man, promised to give the next morning, as a remuneration to these people and to our guides, whatever they wished. Then he spoke of his portmanteau, begging them to take care of it, and to put it at the head of his bed; he did not wish, he said, for any other pillow. Oh, youth, youth! you are to be pitied! Cousin, one would have thought we carried the crown diamonds. What caused him so much solicitude about this portmanteau was his mistress's letters. Supper over, they left us. Our hosts slept below, we in the upper room, where we had supped. A loft raised some seven or eight feet, which was reached by a ladder, was the resting place that awaited us; a sort of nest, into which we were to introduce ourselves by creeping under joists loaded with provisions for the year. My companion climbed up alone, and, already nearly asleep, laid himself down with his head upon the precious portmanteau. Having determined to sit up, I made a good fire, and seated myself by the side of it. The night, which had been undisturbed, was nearly over, and I began to reassure myself; when, about the time that I thought the break of day could not be very far off, I heard our host and his wife talking and disputing below; and putting my ear to the chimney which communicated with the one in the lower room, I perfectly distinguished these words spoken by the husband: "Well, let us see, must they both be killed?" To which the wife replied, "Yes;" and I heard no more. How shall I go on? I stood scarcely breathing, my body cold as marble; to have seen me, you could hardly have known if I were alive or dead. Good Heavens! when I

think of it now!-We two, almost without weapons, against twelve or fifteen who had so many! and my companion dead with sleep and fatigue! To call him, or make a noise, I dared not: to escape alone was impossible; the window was not high, but below were two great dogs howling like wolves. In what an agony I was, imagine if you can. At the end of a long quarter of an hour I heard some one on the stairs, and, through the crack of the door, I saw the father, his lamp in one hand, and in the other one of his large knives. He came up, his wife after him, I was behind the door; he opened it, but before he came in he put down the lamp which his wife took. He then entered, barefoot, and from outside the woman said to him, in a low voice, shading the light of the lamp with her hand, "Softly, go softly." When he got to the

ladder, he mounted it, his knife between his teeth, and getting up as high as the bed-the poor young man lying with his throat bare-with one hand he took his knife, and with the other-Oh! cousin-he seized a ham, which hung from the ceiling, cut a slice from it, and retired as he had come. The door was closed again, the lamp disappeared, and I was left alone with my reflections.

As soon as day appeared, all the family, making a great noise, came to awaken us as we had requested. They brought us something to eat, and gave us a very clean and a very good breakfast, I assure you. Two capons formed part of it, of which we must, said our hostess, take away one and eat the other. When I saw them I understood the meaning of those terrible words, "Must they both be killed?" and I think, cousin, you have enough penetration to guess now what they signified.

6. THE OPENING YEAR.

THE year of the Calendar and the year of the Poets might well have different starting points. The poets would welcome a new year with spring-garlands of the tenderest green, and go forth into the fields to find the first violet giving out its perfume as an offering to the reproductive power which fills the earth with gladBut the Calendar offers us only the slow lengthening of the days to mark the progress of change; and we have little joy in the lengthening when the old saw tells us

ness.

"The

The poets, however, have their resources, drawn out of the compensations that
belong to the condition of us all. Hope with them becomes prophetic.
Dirge for the Old Year" swells and dances into a bridal song for the New:-
As an earthquake rocks a corse
In its coffin in the clay,
So white Winter, that rough nurse,

Orphan hours, the year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry hours, smile instead,

For the year is but asleep:
See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.

Rocks the dead-cold here to-day; Solemn hours! wail aloud

For your mother in her shroud.

As the wild air stirs and sways

The tree-swung cradle of a child,
So the breath of these rude days

Rocks the year:-be calm and mild,
Trembling hours; she will arise
With new love within her eyes.

January grey is here,

Like a sexton by her grave:
February bears the bier,

March with grief doth howl and rave, And April weeps-but, O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers. SHELLEY.

Our ancestors assuredly had a more fervent love of Nature than we have, when they filled their houses with evergreens while the snow blocked up their doorways, and replaced them with new emblems of the freshness which is never wholly dead whilst the rains of February and the winds of March were doing their nursingwork. The song for Candlemas-day (February 2) was as true a herald of the Spring as the cuckoo and the swallow:

Down with rosemary and bays,
Down with the mistletoe;
Instead of holly, now upraise
The greener box for show.
The holly hitherto did sway;
Let box now domineer,
Until the dancing Easter-day,

Or Easter's eve appear.

Then youthful box, which now hath grace

Your houses to renew,

Grown old, surrender must his place
Unto the crisped yew.

When yew is out, then birch comes in,

And many flowers beside,

Both of a fresh and fragrant kin,

To honour Whitsuntide.

Green rushes then, and sweetest bents,
With cooler oaken boughs,
Come in for comely ornaments,

To re-adorn the house.

Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;

New things succeed as former things

grow old.

HERRICK.

WORDSWORTH, in one of his charming lyrics of the Spring, makes "the opening

of the year" begin with "the first mild day of March:"

It is the first mild day of March:

Each minute sweeter than before,
The redbreast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.
There is a blessing in the air,

Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field.
My sister! (t is a wish of mine)

Now that our morning meal is done,
Make haste, your morning task resign;

Come forth and feel the sun.
Edward will come with you; and pray
Put on with speed your woodland dress:
And bring no book; for this one day
We 'll give to idleness.

No joyless forms shall regulate
Our living Calendar:

We from to-day, my friend, will date
The opening of the year.

Love, now an universal birth,

From heart to heart is stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth;
-It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more
Than fifty years of reason:
Our minds will drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.

Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey:
We for the year to come may take

Our temper from to-day.

And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,

We'll frame the measure of our souls:
They shall be tuned to love.
Then come, my sister! come, I pray,
With speed put on your woodland dress:
And bring no book; for this one day
We'll give to idleness.

WORDSWORTH.

essing in the air" is one of the beautiful indications of the awakening of from its winter sleep. It may proclaim the waking hour in March-the cola north-east wind may permit no "sense of joy" till April. But the opening of the year comes to the Poet when he first hears the voice of gladness in the song of birds, or sees the humblest flower putting on its livery of glory. It opened to the Ayrshire ploughman, when he heard "a Thrush sing in a Morning Walk in January;" and that song filled his heart with thankfulness and contentment:I thank thee, Author of this opening day! Thou whose bright sun now gilds the

Sing on, sweet Thrush, upon the leafless bough,

Sing on, sweet bird, I listen to thy

orient skies!

Riches denied, thy boon was purer joys,

What wealth could never give nor take away!

Yet come, thou child of poverty and

care;

The mite high Heav'n bestowed, that mite with thee I 'll share.

BURNS.

Spring in the lap of Winter is very beautiful. February smiles and pouts like a self-willed child. We are gladdened by the flower-buds of the elder and the long flowers of the hazel. The crocus and the snow-drop timidly lift up their heads. Mosses, the verdure of winter, that rejoice in moisture and defy cold, luxuriate amidst the general barrenness. The mole is busy in his burrowed galleries. There are clear mornings, not unmusical with the voices of more birds than the thrush of Burns. Spenser, the most imaginative of poets, has painted the March of rough winds the "sturdy March"-the March of the bent brow,-with weapon and armour. But he is also the March of gifts and of hope, in whose "sternest frown" there is "a look of kindly promise." So he is described by one of a band of poets, whose native voice is heard over that mighty continent which our forefathers peopled. The cultivation of the same literature-for that literature is the common property of all "who speak the tongue which Shakspere spake "-ought, amongst other influences, to bind America and England in eternal peace and good fellowship:

The stormy March is come at last,
With wind, and cloud, and changing
skies;

I hear the rushing of the blast,

That through the snowy valley flies. Ah, passing few are they who speak, Wild stormy month! in praise of thee;

Yet, though thy winds are loud and bleak,

Thou art a welcome month to me. For thou to northern lands again

The glad and glorious sun dost bring, And thou hast joined the gentle train

And wear'st the gentle name of Spring.

And, in thy reign of blast and storm,

Smiles many a long, bright, sunny

day,

When the changed winds are soft and warm,

And heaven puts on the blue of May.

Then sing along the gushing rills,

And the full springs, from frost set free, That, brightly leaping down the hills, Are just set out to meet the sea

The year's departing beauty hides

Of wintry storms the sullen threat; But in thy sternest frown abides

A look of kindly promise yet.

BISHOP HALL. [JOSEPH HALL, Bishop of Norwich, was born at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in Leicestershire, on the 1st July, 1574. He received his academical education at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 1597, he published a volume of Satires, which gave great offence, but which remain to the student of English poetry as amongst the most masterly productions of their class. Pope held them to be the best poetry and the truest satire in the English language. In 1617, he was preferred to the Deanery of Worcester; in 1627, was made Bishop of Exeter; and in 1641, was translated to Norwich. His earnest piety and professional zeal rendered him obnoxious to the charge of puritanism, but he was a vigorous defender of the Church in its times of tribulation and danger, and was a sufferer for his conscientious opinions. The revenues of his bishopric were sequestrated in 1642, and he spent the remainder of his life in great poverty, residing at Higham, near Norwich, where he died in 1656. His theological works are very numerous; and though many of them are controversial, others will remain as durable monuments of masterly reasoning, eloquent