the pale widow-beggar still dragging her weak steps along. She met nothing but the blast which made her tatters shake. She staggered-I thought she must have fallen. There was no standing this: so I went back and gave her-something; no matter what, not much, nor too little; enough to satisfy both her and myself.-Some years have passed by since this happened; but I have often seen her in my fancy since. There she is-sad, drooping, shivering, her thin arms exposed to the frosty wind. I hear again her quick cry, (it brought tears into my eyes,) and that frightful burst and chuckle, scarcely speech, which filled her throat when she saw my gift. She trembled as though she had been palsy-struck, and looked All this I saw and heard in a moment, for in a moment I was gone. I could never meet her again.

O gay and gaudy time! and shall I ever grow too old for thee? Shall I ever hate thy mirth, and wish thee gone, thou bright land-mark of the year? Oh! thou art not like other feasts ending with the day; but thy merriment reacheth through the wakeful night. Thy mistress is the moon, and thou thyself art gaily mad, wisely unreasonable, lunatic. Other feasts are good, but thou artroyal! They have their chairmen, their jesters, their jacks in the green; but thou treadest on crowned heads; the phantasms of Momus are thy fellows: Wit whispereth in thine ear; Care boweth down before thee; and if Ill-humour for a moment come, he is quickly put to flight, and Sorrow is drowned in wine.

Wit

But of all the feasts and gay doings which I have known, none were like that one "Twelfth Night" which I passed at L- -'s house, some five or six years ago. That was a night! O Jupiter! O Bacchus! There was too much mirth. The muscles were stretched and strained by laughing. Our host was a right merry man, a man of humour, of good nature, of high animal spirits, fantastic. He could make "the table" ring and roar beyond any one I ever knew. His jokes would not bear a strict glance, sometimes; but they were better than wit, which is too serious. sets one thinking, but L- Idid not do this. He laughed; he talked; he told comical stories; he mimicked friend and foe, (good naturedly ;) he spoke burlesque in verse; he misplaced epithets; he reconciled contradictions; he tacked extremities to each other-the grave and the gay -sense and nonsense. He had drawn "the king,' and was as absolute as a Fate. He ordered things impossible. He insisted that black was white, and he insisted that others should think so too. Oh! there was no withstanding him, he was so pleasant a potentate:-he said something-nothing and looked round for the boisterous homage of his neighbours, and received it smiling and content.

That night we had songs, English and Italian; we had mistletoe, (there were ladies under it)we had coffee, and wines, and Twelfth Night characters. We had a supper, where joke and hospitality reigned. And there were cold meats and salads, and pies, and jellies, and wines of all

mon.

colours, mocking with their lustre the topaz and the ruby; and there were pyramids of fruit, and mountains of rich cake, all decked with sprigs of holly and laurel. And we had a huge "wassail bowl"-One? We had a dozen, brimming and steaming, and scented with cloves and cinnaWe ate, and we drank, and we shouted. One sang, and another spoke, (like a parliament orator,) and one gave an extravagant toast; and a fourth laughed out at nothing, and one cried, from very pain, that he could "laugh no more;" and instantly a fresh joke was started, and the sufferer screamed with delight, and almost rolled from his chair. The cup of mirth was brimming. It went round and round again, and every one had his fill. This was no meagre shadowy banquet, no Barmecide feast,—no card party, coldly decorous, (where you lose your money and pay for the candles.) It was a revel and a jollity. Though our mirth was becoming, it raged and was loud like thunder. It lasted from nine o'clock at night, till early breakfast, (eight o'clock,) in the morning, and it still lives in my recollection, as the brightest day, (or night,) of the calendar.

THE OLD MARGATE HOY.

I AM fond of passing my vacations, (I believe I have said so before,) at one or other of the Universities. Next to these my choice would fix me at some woody spot, such as the neighbourhood of Henley affords in abundance, upon the banks of my beloved Thames. But somehow or other my cousin contrives to wheedle me once in three or four seasons to a watering place. Old attachments cling to her in spite of experience. We have been dull at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourn a third, and are at this moment doing dreary penance at-Hastings!-and all because we were happy many years ago for a brief week at-Margate. That was our first sea-side experiment, and many circumstances combined to make it the most agreeable holyday of my life. We had neither of us seen the sea, and we had never been from home so long together in company.

Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy weather-beaten, sun-burnt captain, and his rough accommodations-ill exchanged for the foppery and fresh-water niceness of the modern steam packet? To the winds and waves thou

committedst thy goodly freightage, and didst ask no aid of magic fumes, and spells, and boiling cauldrons. With the gales of heaven thou wentest swimmingly; or, when it was their pleasure, stoodest still with sailor-like patience. Thy course was natural, not forced, as in a hot-bed; nor didst thou go poisoning the breath of ocean with sulphureous smoke-a great sea-chimæra, chimneying and furnacing the deep; or liker to that sea-god parching up Scamander.

Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their coy reluctant responses, (yet to the suppression of any thing like contempt,) to the raw questions, which we of the great city would be ever and anon putting to them, as to the uses of this or that strange naval implement. 'Specially can I forget thee, thou happy medium, thou shade of refuge between us and them, conciliating interpreter of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable ambassador between sea and land!-whose sailortrowsers did not more convincingly assure thee to be an adopted denizen of the former, than thy white cap, and whiter apron over them, with thy neat-fingered practice in thy culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have been of inland nurture heretofore-a master cook of Eastcheap? How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain; here, there, like another Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of the deck, yet with kindlier ministrations-not to assist the tempest, but, as if touched with a kindred sense of our infirmities, to soothe the qualms which that untried motion might haply