who came running up to me, desiring me to save their lives. I then hastened to pay my respects to the king and queen; when, falling upon my knees, I requested them to spare the lives of these gentlemen; with which request at last they complied."

THE LOCK OF HAIR.

The course of true love never did run smooth.-SHAKSPEARE.

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"WELL, take it, Henry!" said a lovely girl, as she cut a tress of hair from her amber locks, and which, as she twined it around her ivory fingers, appeared like gold contending for beauty with alabaster But how long will thy love for her who once owned it continue?" and she faintly smiled, as Friendship does when smoothing the pillow of suffering, while her heart whispers, it is in vain. Nay, nay, Ellen, has not that love been the orb which has cheered my morning of life; and think you that I will forsake its beams amidst the difficulties which may impede my noon-day path? Ah no! on the bright current of pleasure, and on the storm-tossed waves of adversity, thou shalt be the polar star to guide me from destruction."" Be it so, Henry, and remember that death must arrest the pulsations of faithful woman's heart, ere it will cease to love!"

Months rolled on, and saw Henry established in a subordinate mercantile situation, exposed to the temptations of a dissolute metropolis, and far from the scenes consecrated by the pure feelings of a first affection. Still Ellen was gladdened by the continuance of his love, still she perused with delight the repeated, the ardent declarations of his affection. But, alas! too soon did those declarations become less and less frequent; too soon was their tone chilled by estrangement; too soon did their total discontinuance dash into a thousand atoms the defences erected by hope for the preservation

of the heart's peace of Ellen: happily for her, she knew not the cause. The infatuated votary of dissipation, for this phantom Henry had sacrificed every virtuous principle; at the gaming-table time, fame, fortune, all were squandered; and finding his resources unequal to his wants, he had determined to forge a draft in his father's name, hoping to replace the money before the act was discovered. To imitate the signature with exactness, he had recourse to one of his father's letters; it was the first which Henry had received on his arrival in the capital, and contained all the admonitions to virtue, all the dissuasives from vice, which a parent's heart could dictate. Though buried in the silence of night, and in the solitude of his chamber, still the consciousness of his purpose paralysed his hand he falteringly opened it, but started on discovering that it held his still-loved Ellen's tress of amber hair. The sight of it revived all the recollections of joy and innocence connected with her image: he paused even upon the threshold of crime; he perused the admonitions of his father, and virtue conquered. But too transient, alas! was her empire: Henry, impelled by vanity, and lured by the fascinations of a beauty who, bound to no authority but that of passion, prepared to fly from a husband only too indulgent, from children whose only fault was, that their helplessness and innocence reproached their mother. The day previous to that had arrived on which Henry had resolved to separate from innocence for ever; the arrangements for his departure were completed, except packing the few valuables he possessed, which were contained in an antique cabinet; and he proceeded with hurried abstraction to remove them into a small casket. One ring only, and that the most valuable, was missing; there still remained a small box unexamined with a mind absorbed in the contemplation of one idea, he mechanically opened it; the ring was indeed there, but with it was the hair of that onceloved one, whose image had gradually faded from his soul, as the bright rainbow of heaven retires from the approach of the whirlwind and the storm. He remained

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for a few minutes riveted to the spot; but in those minutes the electric spark had flown through memory, and the pictures of early happiness and love appeared glowing as the sea when it blushes a welcome to the morning. Distracted by remorse, he instantly resolved to abandon his present design, and wrote an eternal farewell to her whose loveliness had seduced him from the path of honour. He then remembered with agony the time which had elapsed since he had last written to Ellen; and resolving to tell his tale of penitence in person, he trusted the persuasions of love would obtain his pardon. On arriving at her cottage, he found the roses blooming as when he left it, and the brightness of a summer's day diffusing loveliness and animation over nature. With a heart vibrating between hope and fear he entered the cottage, and there found all that remained of Ellen. Exhausted by disease, she was reclining on a sofa, pale as the snow-drop, which, rearing its gentle head to meet the sunbeam which it loves, is withered by the winter's blast, then droops and dies. After recovering the shock which Henry's presence gave her, she calmly listened to the recital of his errors and his repentance; then fixing her mild eyes upon him, Henry," she said, "I feel that my very hours are numbered. Believing that you had trampled on a heart which only beat for you, death has long appeared as the best gift of Heaven. How much, how dearly I have loved, my grave will tell you! May God bless you for soothing with your presence my dying moments! and oh! may he doubly bless you, for cheering me with the hope that we shall meet in a better world: that has extracted the last thorn from my death-pillow: that has"-she clasped her hands as if in prayer,—she looked up to heaven, and expired! European Magazine.

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POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.

THE feathers of a dove are supposed to possess a very particular power of resisting death; a person laying his head upon a pillow stuffed with them cannot die, but continues struggling with the agonies of death till it is removed. On this account the pillows of dying persons are frequently taken away lest they should contain pigeon's feathers.

Fern-seed is imbued with very important magical properties, and the spirits are so very tenacious of it, that they will not suffer any person to gather it in quiet. A woman, who was sent to gather some, reported that the spirits whisked by her ears, and sometimes struck her hat, and different parts of her body; and when, at length, she had collected a considerable quantity, and, as she thought, secured it, the box proved to be empty.

Many people destroy the egg-shells after they have eaten the meat: this custom originated from a desire of preventing witches from using them as boats. A Manuscript in the Cotton Library, marked Julius, f. 6. has the following superstitions, practised in the Lordship of Gasborough, in Cleveland, Yorkshire.

'Any one whistling after it is dark, or day-light is closed, must go thrice about the house by way of penance. How this whistling becomes criminal is not said.

"When any one dieth, certain women sing a song to the dead body, reciting the journey the deceased must go.

They esteem it necessary to give, once in their lives, a pair of new shoes to a poor person; believing that, after their decease, they shall be obliged to pass barefoot over a great space of ground, or heath, overgrown with thorns and furzes, unless, by such a gift, they have redeemed this obligation; in which case, when they come to the edge of this heath, an old man will meet them, with the self-same pair of shoes they had given, by the help of which they will pass over

unhurt; that is, provided the shoes have no holes in them; a circumstance the fabricator of the tale forgot to stipulate.

"Between the towns of Aten and Newton, near the foot of Rosberrye Toppinge, there is a well, dedicated to St. Oswald. The neighbours have an opinion that a shirt, or shift, taken off a sick person, and thrown into that well, will show whether the person will recover or die; for if it floated, it denoted the recovery of the party; if it sunk, there remained no hope of their life: and to reward the saint for his intelligence, they tear off a rag of the shirt, and leave it hanging on the briars thereabout." These wells, called rag-wells, were formerly not uncommon. Something like them is mentioned by Mr. Hanway, in his Travels in Persia, vol. i. p. 177; where he says, "After ten days' journey we arrived at a desolate caravansera, where we found nothing but water. I observed a tree covered with rags tied to the branches; these were so many charms, which passengers coming from Ghilan, a province remarkable for agues, had left there, in a fond expectation of leaving this disease also on the same spot."

A WITCH.

A Witch is almost universally a poor, decrepit, superannuated, old woman; who being in great distress, is tempted by a man clothed in a black coat or gown; sometimes, as in Scotland, wearing also a bluish band and hand-cuffs, that is, a kind of turn-up linen sleeve. This man promises her, if she will sign a contract to become his, both soul and body, she shall want for nothing, and that he will revenge her upon all her enemies. The agreement being concluded, he gives her some trifling sum of money, from half-a-crown to fourpence, to bind the bargain; then cutting or pricking her finger, causes her to sign her name, or make a cross as her mark, with her blood, on a piece of parchment: what is the form of these contracts is nowhere mentioned. In addition to this signature, in Scotland, the devil made the witches put one hand to the sole of