furnish a room," continues this lady, "is no longer a commonplace affair, shared with upholsterers and cabinet-makers; it is decorating a place where I am to meet a friend or lover. To order dinner is not merely arranging a meal with my cook; it is preparing refreshments for him whom I love. These necessary occupations, viewed in this light, by a person capable of strong attachments, are so many pleasures, and afford her far more delight than the fancies and shows which constitute the amusements of the world."

A well-ordered house has been fitly compared to a watch, all the wheels and springs of which are out of sight, and it is only known that they exist, and are in order, by the regularity by which their results are brought about.

THE SUNSET HOUR.

The western beams are fading now,
The golden-tinted clouds are gone;
The noble river seems to flow

More gently, in my fancy, on.

The deep repose so sweet and calm,

Which twilight's softening shades impart,
Might soothe, methinks, like Gilead's balm,
The weary or the wounded heart.

The sunset hour is dearer far
Than all the glare of noon;

I love to watch the first faint star,
And gaze upon the crescent moon.
Then thought flies high, and memory
Sleeps in the quiet scene,

'Till in the future far I see,

A desert isle forever green.

I know not why! but at this hour,
When sinks the glorious sun to rest,
I turn with strange, impelling power,
A searching glance within my breast;
And in the day's receding light,

The vail falls from my heart anew,
While all grows dim to human sight,
And but one eye its faults can view.

'Tis fancy, all! earth has no rest,
Life's busy throng, with restless air,
Press on, while, hidden in each breast,
Lie eager hope and anxious care:
"Till, worn with turbulent desires,
Which rise o'er disappointments past,
And spent with passion's fervered fires,
Life's sunset-hour is closed at last.

THE MODERNS may boast of their extraordinary achievements and discoveries, but what are they to compare with the works of the ancients. Ninevah was fifteen miles long, and forty round, with walls one hundred feet high: and thick enough for three chariots. Babylon was sixty miles within the walls, which were seventy-five feet thick, and three hundred high, with one hundred and sixty brazen gates. The temple of Diana at Ephesus was four hundred and twenty feet high. The largest of the pyramids is four hundred and eighty-one feet high, and seven hundred and ninty-three on the sides; its base covers thirteen acres. The stones are about thirty feet in length, and the layers are two hundred and six; one hundred thousand men were employed in its erection. About the fifteen hundred and nintieth part of the Great Pyramid of Egypt is occupied by chambers and passages; all the rest is solid masonry. The Labyrinth of Egypt contains three thousand chambers and twelve halls. Thebes, in Egypt, presents ruins twenty-seven miles round. It has one hundred gates. Carthage was twenty-five miles round. Athens was twenty-five miles round, and contained twenty-five thousand citizens and four hundred thousand slaves. The temple of Delphos was so rich in donations, that it was once plundered of £100,000,000, sterling; and Nero carried from it five hundred statues. The walls of Rome were thirteen miles in extent, and four hundred and eighty feet in height. In literature and art they surpassed us still more. Their works serve as our models, and though centuries have elapsed, they stand unequalled and unimproved -the admiration and envy of a world.

RABELAIS was a great wag, and even the fear of death could not rob him of this propensity. His last speech was a jest; he had just received extreme unction, and being asked if he was prepared for the next world, he exclaimed, "Yes, yes, I am ready for the journey now-they have just greased my boots!"

THE Duke of Guise was noted for his profusion and liberality; once, when his steward handed him a list of superfluous attendants to be discharged, he read it, and said, "It is true, I can do without all these people; but have you asked them if they can do without me?"

THE ASHLAR.

Vol. VI.

AUGUST, 1860.

No. 2.

THE LIVES OF BROWN, JONES AND ROBINSON.

II.-JONES, WHO COULD SWIM "A LITTLE."

CHAPTER I.

66

"WELL," said he to Jones, can you swim?"

"A little, sir."

A little!" said the master; "why you were in more danger than Brown, and might have been drowned, if you had ventured much further. Take him up," said he.

Such was the argument, such the command, of the schoolmaster, as shadowed forth in the immortal spelling-book of Daniel Fenning,-and the luckless Jones, because he could swim "a little," was taken up.

There is a season when the branding iron marks less than the birch. Throughout his life Jones was content to do only a little, that little leading to nothing save the self-exaltation of the doer, who was wont to stop half-way in his purpose, rub his hands, crow, and bless his stars that he had not ventured "much further."

We hasten to take Jones from school, and present him, a full-grown responsible biped, in the metropolis.

66

(And here, gentle reader, we intend to follow the example of that cunning master in his art, old-fashioned Ben Jonson, who does not, like two or three of his descendants, bring on his men and women to tell their histories to themselves, as thus-"I am a young man of an old family, very much in love with Elenora, who is about to elope with me this evening, if by any possibility I can raise the money to pay the post-boys; or, Hapless creature that I am! betrayed into a Fleet marriage three years ago with the heartless Edward Montgomery, who had at the time a wife and two fair pledges." No, no; Ben tells his history, exhibits his characters by incidents, not by soliloquies. That glorious brawl of Face, Subtle, and Doll Common, lets us at once into the secret of their compact -clamorously publishes the coming of the Alchymist. Thus, let an occurrence discover the inward history of Jones.)

Jones stood before t' mansion of Lord Loaves, the newly-appointed governor of an island, far away "amid the melancholy main.

4- VOL. VI. NO. II.

Jones