sensuality take a turn of this kind, instead of putting on all those shapes of hypocrisy and injustice, by which gloomy systems double its guiltiness and its harm. La Fontaine's fables contain such excellent morality, cheerful and generous, that the most objectionable productions of such a temper must be better than the morals of some men. His style is delicious. It is made up of the most extraordinary and relishing mixture in the world, of shrewdness and simplicity, ease and surprise, irony and good-humour, archness and unconsciousness. The English reader may have some idea of it by fancying Peter Pindar turned graceful and goodnatured, with none of his insincerity, and twenty times his knowledge and genius. Literary Pocket Book.

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT-THE HOUSE OF WEEPING.

From the German of Richter.

SINCE the day when the town of Haslau first became the seat of a court, no man could remember that any one event in its annals (always excepting the birth of the hereditary prince) had been looked for with so anxious a curiosity as the opening of the last will and testament left by Van der Kabel. This Van der Kabel might be styled the Haslau Croesus; and his whole life might be termed, according to the pleasure of the wits, one long festival of God-sends, or a daily washing of golden sands, nightly impregnated by golden showers of Danae. Seven distant surviving relatives of seven distant relatives deceased, of the said Van der Kabel, entertained some little hopes of a place amongst his legatees, grounded upon an assurance which he had made, "that upon his oath he would not fail to remember them in his will." These hopes, however, were but faint and weakly; for they could not repose any

extraordinary confidence in his good faith-not only because, in all cases, he conducted his affairs in a disinterested spirit, and with a perverse obstinacy of moral principle, whereas his seven relatives were mere novices, and young beginners in the trade of morality, -but also because, in all these moral extravagances of his (so distressing to the feelings of the sincere rascal), he thought proper to be very satirical, and had his heart so full of odd caprices, tricks, and sneers, for unsuspicious scoundrels, that (as they all said) no man, who was but raw in the art of virtue, could deal with him, or place any reliance upon his intentions. Indeed the covert laughter which played about his temples, and the falsetto tones of his sneering voice, somewhat weakened the advantageous impression which was made by the noble composition of his face, and by a pair of large hands, from which were daily dropping favours little and great, benefit-nights, Christmas-boxes, and new-year's gifts: for this reason it was that, by the whole flock of birds who sought shelter in his boughs, and who fed and built their nests on him, as on any wild service-tree, he was, notwithstanding, reputed a secret magazine of springes; and they were scarce able to find eyes for the visible berries which fed them, in their scrutiny after the supposed gossamer snares.

In the interval between two apoplectic fits he had drawn up his will, and had deposited it with the magistrate. When he was just at the point of death, he transferred to the seven presumptive heirs the certificate of this deposit; and even then said, in his old tonehow far it was from his expectation, that by any such anticipation of his approaching decease he could at all depress the spirits of men so steady and sedate, whom, for his own part, he would much rather regard in the light of laughing than of weeping heirs: to which remark one only of the whole number, namely, Mr. Harprecht, inspector of police, replied as a cool ironist to a bitter one" that the total amount of concern and of interest, which might severally belong to them in

such a loss, was not (they were sincerely sorry it was not) in their power to determine."

At length the time is come when the seven heirs have made their appearance at the town-hall, with their certificate of deposit; videlicet, the ecclesiastical counsellor Glantz; Harprecht, the inspector of police; Neupeter, the court agent; the court fiscal, Knoll; Pasvogel, the bookseller; the reader of the morning lecture, Flacks; and Monsieur Flitte, from Alsace. Solemnly, and in due form, they demanded of the magistrate the schedule of effects consigned to him by the late Kabel, and the opening of his will. The principal executor of this will was Mr. Mayor himself: the sub-executors were the rest of the town council. Thereupon, without delay, the schedule and the will were fetched from the register-office of the council to the council-chamber: both were exhibited in rotation to the members of the council and the heirs, in order that they might see the privy seal of the town impressed upon them: the registry of consignment, indorsed upon the schedule, was read aloud to the seven heirs by the town-clerk and by that registry it was notified to them, that the deceased had actually consigned the schedule to the magistrate, and intrusted it to the corporation chest ; and that on the day of consignment he was still of sound mind;-finally, the seven seals, which he had himself affixed to the instrument, were found unbroken. These preliminaries gone through, it was now (but not until a brief registry of all these forms had been drawn up by the town-clerk) lawful in God's name, that the will should be opened and read aloud by Mr. Mayor, word for word as follows:

;

"I, Van der Kabel, on this 7th of May, 179-, being in my house, at Haslau, situate in Dog-street, deliver and make known this for my last will; and without many millions of words, notwithstanding I have been both a German notary and a Dutch schoolmaster. Howsoever I may disgrace my old professions by this parsimony of words, I believe myself to be so far at

home in the art and calling of a notary, that I am competent to act for myself as a testator in due form, and as a regular devisor of property.

"It is a custom with testators to premise the moving causes of their wills. These, in my case, as in most others, are regard for my happy departure, and for the disposal of the succession to my property-which, by the way, is the object of a tender passion in various quarters. To say any thing about my funeral, and all that would be absurd and stupid. This, and what shape my remains shall take, let the eternal sun settle above, not in any gloomy winter, but in some of his most verdant springs.

"As to those charitable foundations and memorial institutions of benevolence, about which notaries are so much occupied, in my case I appoint as follows: to three thousand of my poor townsmen, of every class, I assign just the same number of florins, which sum I will that, on the anniversary of my death, they shall spend jovially in feasting, upon the town common, where they are previously to pitch their camp, unless the military camp of his serene highness be already pitched there, in preparation for the reviews; and when the gala is ended, I would have them cut up the tents into clothes. Item, to all the schoolmasters in our principality I bequeath one golden Augustus. Item, to the Jews of this place I bequeath my pew in the high church. As I would wish that my will should be divided into clauses, this is to be considered the first.

CLAUSE II.

"Amongst the important offices of a will, it is universally agreed to be one, that from amongst the presumptive and presumptuous expectants, it should name those who are, and those who are not, to succeed to the inheritance; that it should create heirs, and should destroy them. In conformity to this notion, I give and bequeath to Mr. Glantz, the counsellor for ecclesiastical affairs; as also to Mr. Knoll, the exchequer

officer; likewise to Mr. Peter Neupeter, the court agent; item to Mr. Harprecht, director of police; furthermore to Mr. Flacks, the morning lecturer; in like manner to the court bookseller, Mr. Pasvogel; and finally, to Monsieur Flitte, nothing: not so much because they have no just claims upon me-standing as they do, in the remotest possible degree of consanguinity; nor again, because they are, for the most part, themselves rich enough to leave handsome inheritances; as because I am assured, indeed I have it from their own lips, that they entertain a far stronger regard for my insignificant person than for my splendid property; my body, therefore, or as large a share of it as they can get, I bequeath

to them.'

At this point, seven faces, like those of the seven sleepers, gradually elongated into preternatural extent. The ecclesiastical counsellor, a young man, but already famous throughout Germany for his sermons printed or preached, was especially aggrieved by such offensive personality; Monsieur Flitte rapped out a curse that rattled even in the ears of magistracy; the chin of Flacks, the morning lecturer, gravitated downwards into the dimensions of a patriarchal beard; and the town-council could distinguish an assortment of audible reproaches to the memory of Mr. Kabel, such as prig, rascal, profane wretch, &c. But the mayor motioned with his hand; and immediately the fiscal and the bookseller recomposed their features, and set their faces like so many traps, with springs and triggers, all at full cock, that they might catch every syllable; and then, with a gravity that cost him some efforts, his worship read as follows:

CLAUSE III.

Excepting always, and be it excepted, my present house in Dog-street: which house, by virtue of this third clause, is to descend and to pass in full property, just as it now stands, to that one of my seven relatives above-mentioned, who shall, within the space of one half hour (to be computed from the reciting of this