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with sparkling eye, into their inmost recesses, whilst the ethereal motions of its pinions, so rapid and so light, appear to fan and cool the flower, without injuring its fragile texture, and produce a delightful murmuring sound, well adapted for lulling the insects to repose. Then is the mo

ment for the Humming Bird to secure them. Its long delicate bill enters the cup of the flower, and the protruded double-tubed tongue, delicately sensible, and imbued with a 4 glutinous saliva, touches each insect in succession, and draws it from its lurking place, to be instantly swallowed. All this is done in a moment, and the bird, as it leaves the flower, sips so small a portion of its liquid honey, that the theft, we may suppose, is looked upon with a grateful feeling by the flower, which is thus kindly relieved from the attacks of her destroyers.

The prairies, the fields, the orchards, and gardens, nay, the deepest shades of the forest, are all visited in their turn, and every where the little bird meets with pleasure 5 and with food. Its gorgeous throat, in beauty and brilliancy, baffles all competition. Now it glows with a fiery hue, and again it is changed to the deepest velvety black. The upper parts of its delicate body are of resplendent changing green; and it throws itself through the air with a swiftness and vivacity hardly conceivable. It moves from one flower to another like a gleam of light, upwards, downwards, to the right and to the left. In this manner it searches the extreme portions of our country, following with great precaution the advances of the season, and retreats 6 with equal care at the approach of autumn.

I wish it were in my power at this moment to impart the pleasures which I have felt whilst watching the movements, and viewing the manifestation of feelings displayed by a single pair of these most favorite little creatures, when engaged in the demonstration of their love to each other :how the male swells his plumage and throat, and, dancing on the wing, whirls around the delicate female; how quickly he dives towards a flower, and returns with a loaded bill, which he offers to her to whom alone he feels 7 desirous of being united; how full of ecstasy he seems to be when his caresses are kindly received; how his little wings fan her, as they fan the flowers, and he transfers to her bill the insect and the honey, which he has procured.

with a view to please her; how these attentions are received with apparent satisfaction; how, soon after, the blissful compact is sealed; how, then, the courage and care of the male are redoubled; how he even dares to give chase to the tyrant flycatcher, hurries the blue-bird 8 and the martin to their boxes; and how, on sounding pinions, he joyously returns to the side of his lovely mate. Reader, all these proofs of the sincerity, fidelity, and courage with which the male assures his mate of the care he will take of her while sitting on her nest, may be seen, and have been seen, but cannot be portrayed or described.

Could you cast a momentary glance on the nest of the Humming Bird, and see, as I have seen, the newly hatched pair of young, little larger than humble-bees, naked, blind, and so feeble as scarcely to be able to raise their little bill 9 to receive food from the parents; and could you see those parents, full of anxiety and fear, passing and repassing within a few inches of your face, alighting on a twig not more than a yard from your body, waiting the result of your unwelcome visit in a state of the utmost despair,you could not fail to be impressed with the deepest pangs which parental affection feels on the unexpected death of a cherished child. Then how pleasing is it, on your leaving the spot, to see the returning hope of the parents, when, after examining the nest, they find their nurslings untouched! You might then judge how pleasing it is to a mother of another kind, to hear the physician, who has attended her sick child assure her that the crisis is over, and that her babe is saved.

LESSON XL,

The Old Cumberland Beggar.-Wordsworth.

THE aged man

Had placed his staff across the broad smooth stone
That overlays the pile, and from a bag

All white with flour, the dole of village dames,
He drew his scraps and fragments, one by one,
And scanned them with a fixed and serious look
Of idle computation.

Him from my childhood I have known, and then

He was so old, he seems not older now.
He travels on a solitary man :

2 So helpless in appearance, that for him

The sauntering horseman-traveller does not throw
With careless hand his alms upon the ground,
But stops, that he may safely lodge the coin
Within the old man's hat.

He travels on a solitary man;

His age has no companion. On the ground
His eyes are turned, and as he moves along
They move along the ground: and evermore,
Instead of common and habitual sight
3 Of fields with rural works, of hill and dale,
And the blue sky, one little span of earth
Is all his prospect. Thus from day to day,
Bow-bent, his eyes for ever on the ground,
He plies his weary journey, seeing still,

And seldom knowing that he sees some straw,
Some scattered leaf, or marks, which, in one track,
The nails of cart or chariot wheel have left
Impressed on the white road, in the same line,
At distance still the same. Poor traveller!
4 His staff trails with him-scarcely do his feet
Disturb the summer dust; he is so still

In look and motion, that the cottage curs
Ere he have passed the door, will turn away,
Weary of barking at him. Boys and girls,
The vacant and the busy maids and youths,
And urchins newly breeched-all pass
him by
Him even the slow-paced wagon leaves behind

Then let him pass, a blessing on his head!
And while in that vast solitude to which
5 The tide of things has borne him, he appears
To breathe and live, but for himself alone-
Unblamed, uninjured, let him bear about
The good which the benignant law of Heaven
Has hung around him; and while life is his,
Still let him prompt the unlettered villagers
To tender offices and pensive thoughts.
Then let him pass-a blessing on his head!
And long as he can wander, let him breathe

;

The freshness of the valleys; let his blood
6 Struggle with frosty air and winter snows;
And let the chartered wind that sweeps the heath
Beat his gray locks against his withered face.
Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness
Gives the last human interest to his heart.
May never House, misnamed of INDUSTRY,
Make him a captive; for that pent up din,
Those life-consuming sounds that clog the air,
Be his the natural silence of old age.
Let him be free of mountain solitudes,
7 And have around him, whether heard or not,
The pleasant melody of woodland birds.
Few are his pleasures; if his eyes have now
Been doomed so long to settle on the earth,
That not without some effort they behold
The countenance of the horizontal sun,
Rising or setting, let the light at least
Find a free entrance to those languid orbs;
And let him, where and when he will, sit down
Beneath the trees, or by the grassy bank

8 Of highway side, and with the little birds
Share his chance-gathered meal; and, finally,
As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
So in the eye of Nature let him die '

LESSON XLI.

The Moneyed Man.-NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

1 OLD Jacob Stock! The chimes of the clock were not more punctual in proclaiming the progress of time, than in marking the regularity of his visits at the temples of Plutus in Threadneedle-street, and Bartholomew-lane. His devotion to them was exemplary. In vain the wind and the rain, the hail and the sleet, battled against his rugged front. Not the slippery ice, nor the thick-falling snow, nor the whole artillery of elemental warfare, could check the plodding perseverance of the man of the world, or tempt him to lose the chance which the morning, however unpro2 pitious it seemed, in its external aspect, might yield him of profiting by the turn of a fraction.

He was a stout-built, round-shouldered, squab-looking man, of a bearish aspect. His features were hard, and his heart was harder. You could read the interest-table in the wrinkles of his brow; trace the rise and fall of stocks by the look of his countenance; while avarice, selfishness, and money-getting, glared from his gray, glassy eye. Nature had poured no balm into his breast: nor

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was his

gross and earthly mould" susceptible of pity. A single 3 look of his, would daunt the most importunate petitioner that ever attempted to extract hard coin by the soft rhetorick of a heart-moving tale.

The wife of one whom he had known in better days, pleaded before him for her sick husband, and famishing infants. Jacob, on occasions like these, was a man of few. words. He was as chary of them as of his money, and he let her come to the end of her tale without interruption, She paused for a reply; but he gave none. "Indeed, he is very ill, sir."-"Can't help it."" We are very dis4 tressed."- "Can't help it." "Our poor children, too

-"Can't help that neither."

The petitioner's eye looked a mournful reproach, which would have interpreted itself to any other heart but his, "Indeed, you can;" but she was silent. Jacob felt more

awkwardly than he had ever done in his life. His hand involuntary scrambled about his breeches' pocket. There was something like the weakness of human nature stirring within him. Some coin had unconsciously worked its way into his hand-his fingers insensibly closed; but, the effort 5 to draw them forth, and the impossibility of effecting it without unclosing them, roused the dormant selfishness of his nature, and restored his self-possession.

"He has been very extravagant."-" Ah, sir, he has been very unfortunate, not extravagant."- "Unfortunate! Ah! it's the same thing. Little odds, I fancy. For my part, I wonder how folks can be unfortunate. I was never unfortunate. Nobody need be unfortunate, if they look after the main chance. I always looked after the main chance." He has had a large family to maintain."6"Ah! married foolishly; no offence to you, ma'am. But when poor folks marry poor folks, what are they to look for? you know. Besides, he was so foolishly fond of assisting others. If a friend was sick, or in gaol, out came his

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