"'It would indeed,' said the lady, 'be un-lane Ghost," which kept the town in agitation for just to condemn you. My poor friend himself months, and baffled the penetration of multitudes in his reasonable moments acknowledged all that he owed you. But his passion and his malady overcame him, and your refusal to see him hastened his last moments. He was counting the minutes, when at half-past ten, his servant came to tell him that decidedly you would not come. After a moment's silence, he took me by the hand with a frightful expression of despair. Barbarous woman! he cried; but she will gain nothing by her cruelty. As I have followed her in life, I shall follow her in death! I endeavored to calm him; he was dead.' "I need scarcely tell you, my dear friend, what effect these last words had upon me. Their analogy to all my apparitions filled me with terror, but time and reflection calmed my feelings. The consideration that I was neither the better nor the worse for all that had happened to me, has led me to ascribe it all to chance. I do not, indeed, know what chance is; but it can not be denied that the something which goes by that name has a great influence on all that passes in the world. "Such is my story; do with it what you will. If you intend to make it public, I beg you to suppress the initial letter of the name, and the name of the province." This last injunction was not, as we see, strictly complied with; but, at the distance of half a century, the suppression of a name was probably of little consequence. of the divines, philosophers, and literati of the day, was a young girl of some eleven or twelve years old, whose mysterious knockings were produced by such simple means, that their remaining so long undetected is the most marvelous part of the story. This child was the agent of a conspiracy formed by her father, with some confederates, to ruin the reputation of a gentleman by means of pretended revelations from the dead. For this conspiracy these persons were tried, and the father, the most guilty party, underwent the punishment of the pillory. A more recent story is that of the "Stockwell Ghost," which forms the subject of a volume published in 1772, and is shortly told by Mr. Hone in the first volume of his "Every Day Book." Mrs. Golding, an elderly lady residing at Stockwell, in Surrey, had her house disturbed by portents, which not only terrified her and her family, but spread alarm through the vicinity. Strange noises were heard proceeding from empty parts of the house, and heavy articles of furniture, glass, and earthenware, were thrown down and broken in pieces before the eyes of the family and neighbors. Mrs. Golding, driven by terror from her own dwelling, took refuge, first in one neighboring house, and then in another, and thither the prodigies followed her. It was observed that her maid-servant, Ann Robinson, was always present when these things took place, either in Mrs. Golding's own house, or in those of the neighbors. This girl, who had lived only about There is no reason to doubt the entire truth a week with her mistress, became the subject of of Mademoiselle Clairon's narrative. The inci- mistrust and was dismissed, after which the disdents which she relates made such a deep and turbances entirely ceased. But the matter restenduring impression on her mind, that it remain-ed on mere suspicion. "Scarcely any one," says ed uneffaced during the whole course of her brilliant career, and, almost at the close of a long life spent in the bustle and business of the world, inspired her with solemn and religious thoughts. Those incidents can scarcely be ascribed to delusions of her imagination; for she had a strong and cultivated mind, not likely to be influenced by superstitious credulity; and besides, the mysterious sounds were heard by others as well as herself, and had become the subject of general conversation in Paris. The suspicion of a trick or conspiracy never seems to have occurred to her, though such a supposition is the only way in which the circumstances can be explained; and we are convinced that this explanation, though not quite satisfactory in every particular, is the real one. Several portentous occurrences, equally or more marvelous, have thus been accounted for. Our readers remember the history of the Commissioners of the Roundhead Parliament for the sequestration of the royal domains, who were terrified to death, and at last fairly driven out of the Palace of Woodstock, by a series of diabolical sounds and sights, which were long afterward discovered to be the work of one of their own servants, Joe Tomkins by name, a loyalist in the disguise of a puritan. The famous "Cock Mr. Hone, "who lived at that time listened patiently to the presumption, or without attributing the whole to witchcraft." At length Mr. Hone himself obtained a solution of the mystery from a gentleman who had become acquainted with Ann Robinson many years after the affair happened, and to whom she had confessed that she alone had produced all these supernatural horrors, by fixing wires or horse-hairs to different articles, according as they were heavy or light, and thus throwing them down, with other devices equally simple, which the terror and confusion of the spectators prevented them from detecting. The girl began these tricks to forward some love affair, and continued them for amusement when she saw the effect they produced. Remembering these cases, we can have little doubt that Mademoiselle Clairon's maid was the author of the noises which threw her mistress and her friends into such consternation. Her own house was generally the place where these things happened; and on the most remarkable occasions where they happened elsewhere, is is expressly mentioned that the maid was present. At St. Cloud it was to the maid, who was her bed-fellow, that Clairon was congratulating herself on being out of the way of the cry, when it suddenly was heard in the very room. She had her maid in the carriage with her on the Boulevards, and it was immediately after the girl had asked her a question about the death of M. de S that the gun-shot was heard, which seemed to traverse the carriage. Had the maid a confederate-perhaps her fellow-servant on the box-to whom she might have given the signal? When Mademoiselle Clairon went a-shopping to the Rue St. Honoré, she probably had her maid with her, either in or outside the carriage; and, indeed, in every instance the noises took place when the maid would most probably have been present, or close at hand. In regard to the unearthly cry, she might easily have produced it herself without any great skill in ventriloquism, or the art of imitating sounds; a supposition which is rendered the more probable, as its realization was rendered the more easy, by the fact of no words having been uttered-merely a wild cry. Most of the common itinerant ventriloquists on our public race-courses can utter speeches for an imaginary person without any perceptible motion of the lips; the utterance of a mere sound in this way would be infinitely less difficult. The noises resembling the report of fire-arms (very likely to have been unconsciously, and in perfect good faith, exaggerated by the terror of the hearers) may have been produced by a confederate fellow-servant, or a lover. It is to be observed, that the first time this seeming report was heard, the houses opposite were guarded by the police, and spies were placed in the street, but Mademoiselle Clairon's own house was merely "examined." It is evident that these precautions, however effectual against a plot conducted from without, could have no effect whatever against tricks played within her house by one or more of her own servants. sons just mentioned, though continued at an immense cost of trouble, resolution, and self-denial in all other respects, are familiar to most readers of strange transactions, medical and otherwise. There seem to be strong grounds for the conclusion that the maid was the principal, if not the sole agent in this otherwise supernatural part of this remarkable story. THE REV. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES. WE E must not allow a poet of the tender and manly feeling of Mr. Bowles to pass away from among us with a mere notice of his death amid the common gossip of the week. The peculiar excellence of his Sonnets and his influence on English poetry deserve a further notice at our hands. The Rev. William Lisle Bowles, of an ancient family in the county of Wilts, was born in the village of King's Sutton, in Northamptonshire— a parish of which his father was vicar-on the 24th of September, 1762. His mother was the daughter of Dr. Richard Gray, chaplain to Nathaniel Crew, bishop of Durham. He was educated at Winchester School, under Dr. Joseph Warton, and rose to be the senior boy. Warton took much notice of him; and, on his removal to Oxford, in 1782, was the means, we have heard, of inducing him to enter at Trinity College, of which Tom Warton was then the senior Fellow. "Among my contemporaries at Trinity," he says, were several young men of talents and literature-Headley, Kett, Benwell, Dallaway, Richards, Dornford." Of these Headley is still remembered by some beautiful pieces of poetry, distinguished for imagery, pathos, and simplicity. Mr. Bowles became a poet in print in his twenty-seventh year—publishing in 1789 a very As to the maid-servant's motives for engaging small volume in quarto, with the very modest in this series of deceptions, many may have ex- title of "Fourteen Sonnets." His excellencies isted and been sufficiently strong; the lightest, were not lost on the public; and in the same which we shall state last, would probably be the year appeared a second edition, with seven adstrongest. She may have been in communication ditional sonnets. "I had just entered on my with M. de S's relations for some hidden seventeenth year," says Coleridge, in his "Biopurpose which never was effected. How far this graphia Literaria," " "when the Sonnets of Mr. circumstance may be connected with the date of Bowles, twenty-one in number, and just then the first portent, the very night of the young published in a quarto pamphlet, were first made man's death, or whether that coincidence was known and presented to me by a schoolfellow simply accidental, is matter for conjecture. [at Christ's Hospital] who had quitted us for The old lady, his relative, who afterward visit- the University. As my school finances did not ed Clairon, and told her a tale calculated to fill permit me to purchase copies, I made, within her with superstitious dread, may herself have less than a year and a half, more than forty been the maid-servant's employer for some simi- transcriptions-as the best presents I could offer lar purpose; or (which is at least equally prob- to those who had in any way won my regard. able) the tale may have had nothing whatever to And with almost equal delight did I receive the do with the sound, and may have been perfectly three or four following publications of the same But all experience in such cases assures author." Coleridge was always consistent in us that the love of mischief, or the love of pow- his admiration of Mr. Bowles. Charlotte Smith er, and the desire of being important, would be and Bowles, he says-writing in 1797-are they sufficient motives to the maid for such a decep- who first made the sonnet popular among the tion. The more frightened Clairon was, the present generation of English readers; and in more necessary and valuable her maid became the same year in which this encomium was to her, naturally. A thousand instances of long printed, his own volume of poetry contains continued deception on the part of young women, "Sonnets attempted in the manner of Mr. begun in mere folly, and continued for the rea- Bowles." "My obligations to Mr. Bowles," true. he adds in another place, "were indeed important, and for radical good:" and that his approbation might not be confined to prose, he has said in verse: "My heart has thanked thee, Bowles, for those soft strains Whose sadness soothes me, like the murmuring Of wild bees in the sunny showers of spring." Mr. Bowles's sonnets were descriptive of his personal feelings; and the manly tenderness which pervades them was occasioned, he tells us, by the sudden death of a deserving young woman with whom "Sperabat longos, heu! ducere soles, An eighth edition appeared in 1802; and a ninth and a tenth have since been demanded. While at Trinity-where he took his degree in 1792-Mr. Bowles obtained the Chancellor's prize for a Latin poem. On leaving the University he entered into holy orders, and was appointed to a curacy in Wiltshire; from which he was preferred to a living in Gloucestershireand in 1803 to a canonry in Salisbury Cathedral. His next step was to the rectory of Bremhill in Wiltshire-to which he was presented by Archbishop Moore. Here he remained till his death -beloved by his parishioners and by all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance. A volume of his sermons ("Paulus Parochialis"), designed for country congregations, was published in 1826. The Sonnets were followed, at an Horatian interval, by other poems hardly of an inferior quality such, for instance, as his "Hope, an Allegorical Sketch"-"St. Michael's Mount" -"Coombe Ellen" and "Grave of Howard." His "Spirit of Discovery by Sea," the longest of his productions, was published in 1804, and is now chiefly remembered by the unhappy notoriety which Lord Byron obtained for it by asserting in his "English Bards" that the poet had made the woods of Madeira tremble to a kiss. Lord Byron subsequently acknowledged that he had mistaken Mr. Bowles's meaning: too, late, however, to remove the injurious impression which his hasty reading had occasioned. Generally, Mr. Bowles's more ambitious works may be ranked as superior to the poems of Crowe and Carrington-both of which in their day commanded a certain reputation-and as higher in academical elegance than the verse of Mr. James Montgomery; while they have neither the nerve and occasional nobility of Cowper, nor that intimate mixture of fancy, feeling, lofty contemplations, and simple themes and images which have placed Wordsworth at the head of a school. The school of the Wartons was not the school of Pope; and the comparatively low appreciation of the great poetical satirist, which Mr. Bowles entertained and asserted in print, was no doubt imbibed at Winchester under Joseph Warton, and strengthened at Oxford under Tom. Mr. Bowles's edition of Pope is a very poor performance. He had little diligence, and few indeed of the requirements of an editor. He undertook to traduce the moral character of Pope; and the line in which Lord Byron refers to him on that account "To do for hate what Mallet did for hire" will long be remembered to his prejudice. His so-called "invariable principles of poetry" maintained in his Pope and in his controversy with Byron and Campbell, are better based than critics hitherto have been willing to admit. Considering how sharply the reverend Pamphleteer was hit by the Peer's ridicule, it must be always remembered, to the credit of his Christianity, that possibly the most popular of all the dirges written on Lord Byron's death came from Mr. Bowles's pen; and the following tributary stanza is deepened in its music by the memory of the former war. "I will not ask sad Pity to deplore His wayward errors who thus sadly died; Still less, CHILDE HAROLD, now thou art no more, Will I say aught of Genius misapplied; Of the past shadows of thy spleen or pride: But I will bid th' Arcadian cypress wave, Pluck the green laurel from the Perseus's side, And pray thy spirit may such quiet have That not one thought unkind be murmured o'er thy grave." It only remains for us to add, that Mr. Bowles wrote a somewhat poor life of Bishop Ken-that he was famous for his Parson Adams-like forgetfulness-that his wife died in 1844, at the age of 72-and that he himself at the time of his death was in his eighty-eighth year.-London Athenæum. MORNING IN SPRING. (FROM THE GERMAN OF GUSTAV SOLLING.) FROM the morning mists arise; ROM the valleys to the hills And the early dew distills Balmy incense to the skies. Purple clouds, with vapory grace, Round the sun their soft vail fling; Now they fade-and from his face Beams the new-born bliss of Spring! From the cool grass glitter bright Myriad drops of diamond dew; Bending 'neath their pressure light, Waves the green corn, springing new. Ope their buds of varied hue: Streams through every limb and vein: [From Household Words.] WORK! AN ANECDOTE. tempted away from me-and I am a lone man. As I have nobody to live for, and have become quite tired of my life, I came out this morning, A CAVALRY OFFICER of large fortune, who intending to drown myself. But as the fresh had distinguished himself in several actions, having been quartered for a long time in a foreign city, gradually fell into a life of extreme and incessant dissipation. He soon found himself so indisposed to any active military service, that even the ordinary routine became irksome and unbearable. He accordingly solicited and obtained leave of absence from his regiment for six months. But, instead of immediately engaging in some occupation of mind and body, as a curative process for his morbid condition, he hastened to London, and gave himself up entirely to greater luxuries than ever, and plunged into every kind of sensuality. The consequence was a disgust of life and all its healthy offices. He became unable to read half a page of a book, or to write the shortest note; mounting his horse was too much trouble; to lounge down the street was a hateful effort. His appetite failed, or every thing disagreed with him; and he could seldom sleep. Existence became an intolerable burden; he therefore determined on suicide. With this intention he loaded his pistols, and, influenced by early associations, dressed himself in his regimental frock-coat and crimson sash, and entered St. James's Park a little before sunrise. He felt as if he was mounting guard for the last time; listened to each sound, and looked with miserable affection across the misty green toward the Horse Guards, faintly seen in the distance. A few minutes after the officer had entered the park, there passed through the same gate a poor mechanic, who leisurely followed in the same direction. He was a gaunt, half-famished looking man, and walked with a sad air, his eyes bent thoughtfully on the ground, and his large bony hands dangling at his sides. The officer, absorbed in the act he meditated, walked on without being aware of the presence of another person. Arriving about the middle of a wide open space, he suddenly stopped, and drawing forth both pistols, exclaimed, "Oh, most unfortunate and most wretched man that I am! Wealth, station, honor, prospects, are of no avail! Existence has become a heavy torment to me! I have not strength-I have not courage to endure or face it a moment longer!" With these words he cocked the pistols, and was raising both of them to his head, when his arms were seized from behind, and the pistols twisted out of his fingers. He reeled round, and beheld the gaunt scarecrow of a man who had followed him. "What are you?" stammered the officer, with a painful air; "How dare you to step between me and death ?" air of the park came over my face, the sickness of life gave way to shame at my own want of strength and courage, and I determined to walk onward and live my allotted time. But what are you? Have you encountered cannon-balls and death in all shapes, and now want the strength and courage to meet the curse of idleness?" The officer was moving off with some confused words, but the mechanic took him by the arm, and threatening to hand him over to the police if he resisted, led him droopingly away. This mechanic's work was that of a turner, and he lived in a dark cellar, where he toiled at his lathe from morning to night. Hearing that the officer had amused himself with a little turnery in his youth, the poor artisan proposed to take him down into his work-shop. The officer offered him money; and was anxious to escape; but the mechanic refused it, and persisted. He accordingly took the morbid gentleman down into his dark cellar, and set him to work at his lathe. The officer began very languidly, and soon rose to depart. Whereupon, the mechanic forced him down again on the hard bench, and swore that if he did not do an hour's work for him, in return for saving his life, he would instantly consign him to a policeman, and denounce him for attempting to commit suicide. At this threat the officer was so confounded, that he at once consented to do the work. When the hour was over, the mechanic insisted on a second hour, in consequence of the slowness of the work-it had not been a fair hour's labor. In vain the officer protested, was angry, and exhausted-had the heartburn-pains in his back and limbs-and declared it would kill him. The mechanic was inexorable. "If it does kill you," said he, "then you will only be where you would have been if I had not stopped you." So the officer was compelled to continue his work with an inflamed face, and the perspiration pouring down over his cheeks and chin. At last he could proceed no longer, come what would of it, and sank back in the arms of his persecuting preserver. The mechanic now placed before him his own breakfast, composed of a twopenny loaf of brown bread, and a pint of small beer; the whole of which the officer disposed of in no time, and then sent out for more. Before the boy who was dispatched on this errand returned, a little conversation had ensued; and as the officer rose to go, he smilingly placed his purse, with his card, in the hands of the mechanic. The poor, ragged man received them with all the composure of a physician, and with a sort of dry, grim humor which appeared "I am a poor, hungry mechanic;" answered peculiar to him, and the only relief of his otherthe man, one who works from fourteen to six-wise rough and rigid character, made sombre by the constant shadows and troubles of life. But the moment he read the name on the card, teen hours a day, and yet finds it hard to earn a living. My wife is dead-my daughter was all the hard lines in his deeply-marked face underwent a sudden contortion. Thrusting back the purse and card into the officer's hand, he seized him with a fierce grip by one armhurried him, wondering, up the dark broken stairs, along the narrow passage-then pushed him out at the door! "You are the fine gentleman who tempted my Jaughter away!" said he. "I-your daughter!" exclaimed the officer. "Yes, my daughter; Ellen Brentwood!" said the mechanic. "Are there so many men's daughters in the list, that you forget her name ?" "I implore you," said the officer, "to take this purse. Pray, take this purse! If you will not accept it for yourself, I entreat you to send it to her !" "Go and buy a lathe with it," said the mechanic. "Work, man! and repent of your past life!" So saying, he closed the door in the officer's face, and descended the stairs to his daily labor. [From The Ladies' Companion.] MEN AND WOMEN. A WOMAN is naturally gratified when a man singles her out, and addresses his conversation to her. She takes pains to appear to the best advantage, but without any thought of willfully misleading. How different is it with men! At least it is thus that women in general think of men. The mask with them is deliberately put on and worn as a mask, and wo betide the silly girl who is too weak or too unsuspicious, not to appear displeased with the well-turned compliments and flattering attentions so lavishly bestowed upon her by her partner at the ball. If a girl has brothers she sees a little behind the scenes, and is saved much mortification and disappointment. She discovers how little men mean by attentions they so freely bestow upon the last new face which takes their fancy. Men are singularly wanting in good feeling upon this subject; they pay a girl marked attention, flatter her in every way, and then, perhaps, when warned by some judicious friend that they are going too far, “can hardly believe the girl could be so foolish as to fancy that any thing was meant." The fault which strikes women most forcibly in men is selfishness. They expect too much in every way, and become impatient if their comforts and peculiarities are interfered with. If the men of the present day were less selfish and self-indulgent, and more willing to be contented and happy upon moderate means, there would be fewer causes of complaint against young women undertaking situations as governesses when they were wholly unfit for so responsible an office. I feel the deepest interest in the present movement for the improvement of the female sex; and most cordially do I concur in the schemes for this desirable purpose laid down in "The Ladies' Companion;" but I could not resist the temptation of lifting up my voice in testimony against some of the every-day faults of men, to which I think many of the follies and weaknesses of women are mainly to be attributed. IGNORANCE IN ENGLAND.-Taking the whole of northern Europe-including Scotland, and France and Belgium (where education is at a low ebb), we find that to every 2 of the population, there is one child acquiring the rudiments of knowledge; while in England there is only one such pupil to every fourteen inhabitants. It has been calculated that there are at the present day in England and Wales nearly 8,000,000 persons who can neither read nor write that is to say, nearly one quarter of the population. Also, that of all the children between five and fourteen, more than one half attend no place of instruction. These statements would be hard to believe, if we had not to encounter in our every-day life degrees of illiteracy which would be startling, if we were not thoroughly used to it. Wherever we turn, ignorance, not always allied to poverty, stares us in the face. If we look in the Gazette, at the list of partnerships dissolved, not a month passes but some unhappy man, rolling, perhaps, in wealth, but wallowing in ignorance, is put to the experimentum crucis of "his mark." The number of petty jurors-in rural districts especially-who can only sign with a cross, is enormous. It is not unusual to see parish documents of great local importance defaced with the same humiliating symbol by persons whose office shows them to be not only "men of mark," but men of substance. A housewife in humble life need only turn to the file of her tradesmen's bills to discover hieroglyphics which render them so many arithmetical puzzles. In short, the practical evidences of the low ebb to which the plainest rudiments of education in this country have fallen, are too common to bear repetition. We can not pass through the streets, we can not enter a place of public assembly, or ramble in the fields, without the gloomy shadow of Ignorance sweeping over us.-Dickens's for themselves. "Household Words." Mr. Thackeray is the only writer of the present day who touches, with any severity, upon the faults of his own sex. He has shown us the style of women that he thinks men most admire, in "Amelia," and "Mrs. Pendennis." Certainly, my own experience agrees with his opinion; and until men are sufficiently improved to be able to appreciate higher qualities in women, and to choose their wives among women who possess such qualities, I do not expect that the present desirable movement will make much progress. The improvement of both sexes must be simultaneous. A gentleman's horror" is still a "blue stocking," which unpleasing epithet is invariably bestowed upon all women who have read much, and who are able to think and act A YOUNG WIFE |