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LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 55.-31 MAY, 1845.

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SCRAPS.-Income Tax, 405-Chess by Telegraph, 408-Punch in the Country; The Mystery of Medicine, 416-Dr. Anthon's Eneid; Father Mathew's Embarrassments, 440.

From Punch.

THE POSITION OF THE PREMIER.

THE position of Peel between the Maynooth and Anti-Maynooth parties-the former applauding him on the one hand, while the latter are condemning him on the other-may be compared to the situation of the heroes in the Greek tragedies, whose proceedings were the subject of alternate abuse and praise from the chorus; the right of a chorus to criticise is founded on the old constitutional doctrine that the people may give their opinion, and there can be no doubt that this mode of giving votes in a song has some affinity to the vote by ballot, or vote by ballad, as some have been in the habit of calling it. The Maynooth and AntiMaynooth expressions of opinion may be likened to the strophe and anti-strophe of the chorus, of which we furnish a specimen.

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MAYNOOTH STROPHE,

Go on, great premier, in thy way,
No matter what the tories say;
It surely can be no disgrace
For you to try and keep your place.
They say that, by the Maynooth Grant,
To keep your place is all you want;
It is a wise and cunning plan―
The premier is a wondrous man!

ANTI-MAYNOOTH ANTI-STROPHE.
How wonderful is Peel!

He changes with the time;
Turning and twisting like the eel,
Ascending through the slime.
He gives whate'er they want
To those who ask with zeal,
He yields the Maynooth Grant
To the clamor for repeal.

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That each idea of tory mould
Must stay where obstinacy plac'd it.
Oh, my premier's coat for me,

Mov'd by agitation's breezes,
Leaving every action free

To twist and turn where'er he pleases.
Yes, my tory premier dear,

My artful dodging tory premier;
Nature's views

Have different hues,

And so have yours, my tory premier.

Inglis has a specch refin'd,

But when its sounds are o'er us creeping, Who can tell if it's designed

To wake us up, or set us sleeping?
Mesmerized by Robert's art,

Poor Britannia drowsy waxes,
Eyes sealed up-the horrid part-
Is but the paying of the taxes.
Oh, my tory premier dear,
My cool, my crafty tory premier ;
Whigs, who 'd learn

The time to turn,

Should ask of you, my tory premier.

PUNCH FOR HEAD PACIFICATOR.

stand her case.

DURING centuries Ireland, to speak metaphorically, has been in a perpetual broil; though per haps we might more happily compare the state of things Irish to a stew. Peel confessed that Ireland was his chief difficulty; and he might also have confessed that he did not know what to do with her. It is quite clear that he does not underHe began by antiphlogistic treatment to wit, the state prosecutions-and now he is trying the Maynooth Soothing Syrup, which some call Bobby's Elixir. This is mere empiricism; no better than what might be expected from Holloway or Old Parr. Let the premier practise on principle, if he knows what that is. But in fact, the case of Ireland would puzzle any statedoctor but Punch, who, amongst many other notions, has one for her pacification, which he hereby offers to the conservatives and all others whom it may concern, if they will have it. His suggestion is as follows:

1. The Curiosities of Literature, chiefly selected from intercepted correspondence. By Sir James Graham.

2. How to live on Fourteen Thousand a year. By the Lord Chancellor.

3. Three Experiments of Living; or, Three Livings at Once, by way of Experiment. By the Bishop of Exeter.

4. The Outcast; The Exile's Return; and other Poems. By Lord Ellenborough.

5. Natural Magic, including several new tricks ; with an Essay on Gammon and Backgammon. By Sir R. Peel.

6. Miscellaneous Essays. By Lord Brougham. 7. The Pauper's Cookery Book; including ten thousand economical recipes, amongst which will be found five hundred different modes of dressing oatmeal, and a plan for roasting a fowl before the fire, in such a way as to make chicken-broth of the shadow. By the Poor Law Commissioners.

8. Confessions of an English Opium Eater. By One who has swallowed all the dull speeches that have been spoken in the House of Commons for the last ten years.

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Poor Dr. Dealtry! We feel for him deeply. How will he ever get through the work which he four several offices in the church, and saddled with will now have to do? He was already laden with the obligation of being in three different places at once. He had to pray, preach, exhort, console, convert, and go about visiting the sick and doing good at Winchester, Southwell, and Clapham; besides all which, he had his chancellor's business to attend to. And now, in addition, an archdeaconry is clapped upon his shoulders.

will be.

Really, this is working a willing horse to death. There is not, we are persuaded, a negro in all Kentucky fagged to the extent that Dr. Dealtry deserve such treatment? How, we would wish to What has the poor clergyman done to know, would the Bishop of Winchester like it himself? It is much more like a Turk than a We say it is a great deal too bad of his lordship, bishop to make a fellow-creature toil in this way.

He would advise them to get up a Joint Stock Company, for the purpose of negotiating with Mr. Daniel O'Connell, a sale of the whole Irish people. As the repeal agitation cannot last forever, and as it may be difficult to get up any other humbug, a good round sum in the lump may prove an adequate temptation. Instead, therefore, of voting noney to Maynooth, vote a "consideration" to and recommend him to be more considerate in Daniel O'Connell. So sure will this plan for the future. We shall be told that Dr. Dealtry will tranquillization of Ireland be to answer, that Punch be well paid for his labor. Yes: but what has considers that by merely proposing it, he has cut that to do with the matter? What pay can comTom Steele out, and will therefore trouble that gentleman to return to him the title of "Head Paci-pensate a man for exertions which must necessarily .ficator of Ireland."

A NEW CABINET LIBRARY.

kill him?

among the earliest elevations:

LITERARY PEERS.-It is, we believe, in contemplation by the English government to follow the example of France, and raise a few writers to the MINISTERS intend shortly, we understand, issu-peerage. The following will, we are told, be ing a series of volumes on various subjects, for the purpose of enlightening the people, to be called the New Cabinet Library. The work will be written chiefly by the ministers themselves, so that there will be great variety in the style, and in the mode of treating the various topics handled. The following will be a few of the volumes that will shortly appear :

Mr. W. H. Ainsworth, to be Baron of Blueskin. Mr. Benjamin D'Israeli, to be Marquis of Coningshy. Mr. James Grant, to be Earl of Cornhill, in the Great Metropolis, and Baron of Heydown-hey-down-derry, in Ireland. Other titles will, it is expected, be soon conferred, but the above are all at present decided on.

From Fraser's Magazine.

THE WOLVES OF ESTHONIA.

After spending some time in this occupation, and having at length marked out the summer garden to their satisfaction, the party turned their steps towards the house, where some beds, close under the windows, had been planted the preceding evening.

twigs the beautiful flowers which had been, or were to be, and shifting and reshifting their places on the fresh bare earth till they assumed that THERE is a kind of savage luxury, however position which her taste or fancy approved-just gorgeous and costly, which perfectly assimilates as a fine London or Paris lady may be seen in a with savage life, and where the eye may pass at jeweller's shop shifting her loose diamonds upon one glance, from the pampered inmate of the a ground of purple velvet into the order in which palace to the wild beast in the woods, without any they are to be finally set. A younger lady was sense of inconsistency to the mind. This may be with her-a cousin by birth and a companion by remarked, more or less, with all Oriental nations. choice-one of those friends who sticketh closer The Indian prince is in keeping with the tiger in than a brother," and who had recently joined her, his jungle, the Russian noble with the bear in his after a long separation, in a home foreign to each. forests. But it is a different and very strange Her two children were there also, beautiful and sensation to find yourself in a country where in-happy creatures; the elder one glad to be of use, ward and outward life are at variance; where the the younger one delighted to think herself so; social habits of the one by no means prepare you while Lion, an enormous dog, the living image, in for the rude elements of the other; where nature size, color, and gentleness, of Vandyke's splendid is wild, and man tame. This is conspicuously the mastiff in his picture of the children of Charles I., case in the northwestern part of Russia, where a lazily followed their steps, putting up his huge German colony, although lords of the soil for hun-head whenever a child stooped hers, and laying dreds of years, are still as foreign to it as they himself invariably down exactly where a flower were at first; having originally brought a weak was to be planted. offset of civilized life into a country for which only the lineal descendants of the savage were fitted, and having since then rather vegetated upon the gradually impoverishing elements they transplanted with them than taken root in the gradually improving soil around them. Life, therefore, in this part of the world passes with a monotony and security which remind you of what, in point of fact, it really is, viz., a remote and provincial state of German society of the present day. Both the inclinations and occupations of the colonists confine them to a narrow range of activity and idea. The country is too wild, the population too scattered, the distances too great, the impediments, both of soil and season, too many for them to become acquainted with the secrets of the wild nature around them; or rather, not without a trouble which no one is sufficiently interested to overcome. They travel much, from place to place, upon roads bad enough, it is true, but always beaten; they have no pursuit but mere business or mere pleasure, and no interest except in what promotes the one or the other; and, in | short, know as little of what goes on in the huts of the native peasantry, or in the forest and morass haunts of the native animals, as if they were strangers in the land, instead of its proprietors. It is, therefore, as we before remarked, a strange and most unpleasant feeling, while spending your days in a state of society which partakes of the security and ease of the present day, to be suddenly reminded by some accidental circumstance of a state of nature which recalls the danger and adventure of centuries back.

It was early in the spring, after a long and very severe winter, when the earth was just sufficiently softened to admit its stock of summer flowers, though not sufficiently warmed to vivify them, that the garden belonging to a country-house situated in this part of Russia had become the scene of great activity. Hundreds of leafless plants and shrubs, which had passed their winter in the darkness and warmth of the house-cellar, were now brought out to resume their short summer station, and lay strewed about in various groups, roughly showing the shape of the bed or border they were to occupy. The balmy air had also summoned forth the lovely mistress of the mansion, a delicate flower, more unsuited to this wintry land even than those which lay around her, who went from one plant to another, recognizing in the leafless

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Lion, Lion!" exclaimed the eldest child, "you should know better than to come across the fresh-raked beds," showing us a track of large, clumsy footmarks, which had gone directly over it. "Yes, look at the mischief you have done, old dog, and be ashamed of yourself; but keep off now! keep off!" for Lion was pressing forward with all his weight, snuffing at the prints with quick-moving nostrils. The lady stooped eagerly over the animal.

"These are no dog's footprints," she said; and then, pointing to more distant traces further on, No, no. Oh, this is horrible! And so fresh, too. A wolf has been here!"

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She was right; the footmarks were very different from a dog's-larger and coarser even than the largest dog's, longer in shape, and with a deeper indentation of the ball of the foot. It was truly a painful and a fearful feeling to look at that bed, on which the hand of man had been so recently employed, now tracked over by the feet of one of the most savage animals that exist; and the lady drew back shuddering. And Louisa, for that was the cousin's name, shuddered too, if not with so real a sense of fear, yet with a much more unlimited impression of terror. She was a stranger as much to the idea as to the sight, and, as she looked up at the window just above-her own bedroom window-with its peaceful white curtains and swallow's nest at the corner, and remembered that she had been sleeping within while the wildbeast was trampling beneath, she felt as if she should never rest easily there again. As for the children, they both looked terrified at first, chiefly because their elders did, and then each acted according to the character within her-Olga, the elder, holding quietly by her mother's hand, and afraid even to look at the footprints, though approaching them docilely when she was bidden; while little Miss Constance, unscrewing her rosy face from its momentary alarm, trotted with great glee over the fresh-raked bed, delighted to make the most of a privilege usually forbidden her, and discovered new wolf's steps in all directions as fast as Lion made them.

They now called some of the workmen, who instantly confirmed their verdict.

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"This is an old wolf, Prauer," said a rough, long-haired shrewd-looking old peasant, scrutinizing the tracks with Indian-like closeness and sagacity"this is an old wolf, he walked so heavily; and here's a wound he has got to this paw, who knows when, from some other wolf, or maybe from Lion-I dare say they are acquainted," pointing out to the party a slight irregularity in the print of one of the hind feet, as if from a distorted claw. "He was here the beginning of the morning, that I can see. "But where was Lion ?" said the lady, eagerly. "I went to the mill, Prauer, at sunrise, and took Lion with me, and by the time we got back the beast must have been off. I saw the old dog snuffing about, but the heavy dew would stop any scent. The wolves are hungry now; the waters have driven them up together, and the cattle are not let out yet. He is not far off, either; we must keep a sharp look-out. An old wolf like this will prowl about for days together round the same place till he picks up something."

"Heavens how dreadful! Constance, come back this moment," said the young mother, with an expression of anxiety which would have touched the roughest heart. "Who knows where the creature may be now?"

"Never fear, Prauer; he 's off to the woods by this time-plenty of his footmarks to be found there, I warrant," pointing to a low, dismal-looking tract of brushwood, which formed the frontier to an immense morass, about a werst off."Never fear, old Pertel and old Lion will take care of the little Preilns. Polle üchtige' nothing at all, not a hair on their heads, shall be hurt, bless them!"

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Yes, yes, good Pertel," said the lady, with a nod and a smile, to the rough creature, "I know that. But under our very windows!-I never knew them come so near before."

"Dreist wie ein wolf-bold as a wolf," said the phlegmatic head-gardener, a German; "that 's an old proverb."

They now returned to the house with minds ready to take alarm at any sight or sound. The cousin knew not how much there was or was not to fear; and, though the lady did, the voice of her maternal anxiety amply made up for all the silence of her imagination. The children, of course, were not slow in catching the infection; and, what with fear and what with fun, there was no end to the wolves that were seen in the course of the next four-and-twenty hours. Any and every object served their turn sheep, foals, and calves; old men and old women; stunted trees in the distance, and round grey stones near; not to mention innumerable articles of furniture in various corners of the house, all stood for wolves; not only successively, but over and over again. Lion, however, was the greatest bugbear of all, and the good old dog could not push open the door, and come lazily in, with all his claws rattling on the smooth parquête floor, without setting the children screaming, and startling the two ladies much more than they liked to confess.

But this state of things was too inconvenient to last. A succession of false alarms is the surest cure for false fears; and, to quote the fable for once in its literal sense, they were weary of hearing "Wolf!" called. Nevertheless, they did not undertake long walks without protection, and

never at all in the direction of the morass; the children were not allowed to wander a step alone; doors and windows, which otherwise, at this time of the year, are very much left to please themselves by night as well as by day, were now every evening punctiliously closed; and one door especially, next Louisa's bedroom, at the end of a long corridor which communicated with an unfinished addition to the house then in progress, was always eyed with great distrust. It had no means of shutting whatsoever. Nightly a bar was talked of, and daily forgotten; but "Dreist wie ein wolf!" sounded in Louisa's ears, and she pushed a heavy box firmly against it.

Several days passed away, and the episode of the wolf's footprints was almost forgotten, when suddenly a scream and a shout were heard from a kind of baking-house within view of the windows. Lion started up from the cool drawing-room floor, where he lay stretched at full length, and leaped out of the open window. Workmen from the new building rushed across the lawn, each with such implements in their hands as they had been working with; and out of the baking-house, followed by a lad, sprung an immense wolf. At first, he bounded heavily away, and was evidently making for the wood; but Lion came close upon him, overtook him in a few seconds, and attacked him with fury, The wolf turned, and a struggle began. For awhile the brave dog was alone: each alternately seemed to hang with deadly gripe upon the other, and yells, and snorts, and sharp howls, filled the air. But now the foremost of the pursuers reached the spot; dog and wolf were so rolled together, that at first he stayed his blows; but soon a terrible stroke with the hatchet was given-another, and another. The animal relinquished the dog, tried to turn upon the man, and soon lay dead at his feet.

Meanwhile, the ladies from the mansion were also hurrying forward, full of horror for the scene, and of anxiety for Lion, but unable, in the excitement of the moment, to keep back. There lay the animal, the ground ploughed up violently around it, a monstrous and terrific sight. Death had caught it in the most savage posture-the claws all extended-the hind feet drawn up, the fore ones stretched forward-the head turned sharp round, and the enormous jaws, which seemed as if they would split the skull asunder, wide open. Nature could hardly show a more repulsive-looking creature-one which breathed more of the ferocity of the wild beast, or excited less of the humanity of man; and, as Louisa looked down at the lifeless carcass, all lean, starved, and timeworn, with ghastly gashes, where late every nerve had been strained in defence of that life which God had given it, entangling doubts came over her mind of the justice of that Power which could make an animal to be hated for that which His Will alone had appointed it to be. But, fortunately for her, she came from a land where, with all its faults, the stone of sophistry is not given for the bread of faith; quickly, therefore, came that antidote thought, which all who seek will find— the sole key to all we understand not in the moral world-leaving only a pardonable pity for a creature born to hunt and be hunted, ordained neither to give nor to find quarter, and to whom life had apparently been as hard as death had been cruel. Poor beast! It was a savage wolf all over; rough, coarse, clumsy, and strong; the hair, or rather bristles, dusky, wiry, and thin; and not one

beauty about it, except, perhaps, those long, white, with the hot bread in his jaws. "I have heard the sharp teeth, which had drawn so much blood, and old woman often tell the tale," said the speaker; were now tinged with that of the fine old dog." and she invariably added, And so I lost my Lion lay panting beside his dead enemy, the blood biggest loaf, but never was there a guest more weltrickling down his throat, on which the wolf had come to it.' fixed a gripe which life could not long have sustained.

The whole history was now heard from the lad. There had been baking that morning in the outhouse, and he went in to light his pipe. As he blew up the ashes, he saw a great animal close beside him. In the dark, he mistook it for Lion, and put out his hand; but it rose at once against him with an action not to be mistaken by a native of these climes, on which he screamed as loud as he could, for his breath stood still, the poor boy assured them, with fright; and the creature, taking alarm, rushed out of the door.

Another time, a kitchen-maid, whose office it is to bake the common rye bread, was carrying the hot loaves, towards night, across the court, when she met a large animal whom she mistook in the dark for one of the huge cattle-dogs. But it rose upon her, and she felt the claws upon her bare arm, ready, at the next moment, to slit the skin, as is their wont, and rend her down. In her terror, she crammed a loaf into the creature's jaws, and he made off with the sop, perfectly content.

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Upon the whole, it is very difficult to procure information about the wolf's habits, or even tidings of its depredations. The common peasant, "The Prauer may let the little ladies run about who alone knows anything about the animal, is now," said old Pertel. "That's the same wolf withheld by superstition from even mentioning the that crossed the bed last Thursday; I know him name of wolf; and, if he mentions him at all, deby this left hind foot;" and he held up a grimsignates him only as the "old one," or the " grey limb where an old wound had turned the claw one,' or the " great dog," feeling, as was also aside. "He got this in some of his battles; many the case in parts of Great Britain with regard to a foal yet unborn would have felt it this summer. "the fairies, that to call these animals by their true And the old man stroked the dead animal with sat- name is a sure way to exasperate them. This isfaction. caution may be chiefly attributed, however, to the popular and very ancient belief in the "wär wolf;"* not a straightforward, open-mouthed, plain spoken beast, against which the cattle may plunge, and fight, and defend themselves as best they may, and which either wounds or kills its prey in a fair and ferocious way; but that odious combination of human weakness and decrepitude, with demoniacal power and will, which all nations who have believed in have most unjustly persecuted and most naturally hated-in other words, a bad, miserable old woman leagued body and soul with Satan, who, under the form of a wär wolf, paralyzes the cattle with her eye, and from whom the slightest wound is death. Be this as it may, the superior intelligence of the upper classes is to this day occasionally puzzled to account for the fate of a fine young ox, who will be found in the morning breathing hard, his hide bathed in foam, and with every sign of fright and exhaustion, while, perhaps, only one trifling wound will be discovered on the whole body, which swells and inflames as if poison had been infused, the animal generally dying before night. Nor does the mystery end here; for, on examining the body, the intestines will be found to be torn as with the claws of a wolf, and the whole animal in a state of inflammation, which sufficiently accounts for death.

They now all left the scene of battle, and refreshments were given to those who had assisted at it. Olga proposed giving the boy, who was still all trembling with fright, a glass of sugar and water, this being what the ladies of this country invariably take when their nerves are shaken; but her mother suggested that a glass of brandy would be much more to his taste; and accordingly he received a dose, which not only restored the courage he had lost, but lent him a large temporary stock in addition. Lion, too, was well cared for, and immensely pitied. The wound on his throat, which was too close under his own long tongue to be reached by it, was washed with certain balsams with which this country abounds; after which, the old dog employed himself in slobbering over various rents and scratches in more accessible parts of his body, and finally went fast asleep, which the children hoped would do him much good, and, for about two minutes, spoke over him in whispers, and went round him on tiptoe.

Since the day of the footprints, the lady and her cousin had carefully refrained from any subject connected with wolves, or wild beasts in general; for the children's imaginations required to be studiously tranquillized, and even their own were quite lively enough without additional stimulus. But now nothing else was discussed; everything was ùpropos of wolves; and some acquaintances from a distant part of the country, coming in for the evening, the whole time was passed in telling wolf anecdotes.

This same superstition also favors the increase of this dreadful animal, for the peasant has a strong feeling against destroying a wolf; says that, if you disturb them, they will disturb you, and generally attributes the loss of his foal, or of foal and mother together, (a too frequent occurrence,) to the plunder of a wolf's nest by his less superstitious neighbor. Nevertheless, the destruction of their young is the only way in which an efficient warfare with the wolf can be carried on, and the

The fact of the animal being discovered in the baking-house was soon explained; for it appeared that the wolf, like the bear, is excessively fond of bread, and that after the smell of fresh blood, that of fresh baking is surest to attract him. A peasant woman, who had drawn her hot rye loaves out of the oven, quitted her cottage for a few minutes, the ware wolf of England, the loup garron of France-was "This mysterious and widely spread superstition-leaving her two young children playing at the same especially current in Germany, where many tales of its bench on which the smoking bread was laid. terror still exist. Two warlocks were executed in the Scarcely had she turned her back, when an enor-year 1810, at Liege, for having, under the form of ware mous wolf sprang in, took no notice of the scream-wolves, killed several children. They had a boy of twelve ing children, but snatched a loaf from the bench. years of age with them, who completed the Satanic trio, and, under the form of a raven, consumed those portions of The mother, hearing screams, hastened back, and the prey which the warlocks left."-GRIMM's Deutsche as she reached the door the wolf bounded out of it Sagen.

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