and the box, mounted to the shrine, before which the priestesses were still performing their respective offices. The most exact and satisfactory orders were then giving respecting the court-dress of Lady Susan Deerwell; with a hint, in conclusion, that her ladyship did not wish her ladyship's bill to be sent in to her ladyship till Christmas, at which season her ladyship always settled all her ladyship's accounts.

"Good gracious, mamma!" whispered Patty, as they descended the stairs," how frightened the old woman will be when the bill is sent in! I thought you were going to make her a present of it all, and I am sure she thought so too."

"I dare say she did, my dear," replied Mrs. O'Donagough," and I had my suspicions that you might fall into the same mistake, and it was just for that reason that I made you come up, and left the Perkinses in the carriage, because I hope it will be a useful lesson to you, Patty. When people have a great object in view, my dear, and your papa says our going to court is a very great object, they should alway make use of every means in their power to bring it about. But when it is done, Patty, they of course owe it to themselves to take care that the sacrifices they have made to obtain it should become as little injurious to them as possible. This is the principle upon which I have just acted, and you may depend upon it, my dear child, that without firm and steadfast principles of action, no one will ever get honourably and prosperously through life."

"That's all very well, mamma," replied Patty, "but I'll bet you five pounds the old lady will never speak to you again after she finds out the trick you have played her."

"Well, my dear," returned her mother, with great dignity and composure, "and what difference will it make to me, whether she does or no? I choose to have a person of title to introduce me at St. James's: to obtain this, I submit to endure considerable annoyance, and to suffer many inconveniences. Good-I ought to do this, I should be unwise if I did not. But the object once obtained, should I be wise to submit still to these annoyances? No, Patty; what was wise before, would be folly after, and render me totally unworthy of the confidence your father reposes in me. Remember all this, my dear girl, and always act, as much as possible, in conformity to my example."

At this moment Mrs. O'Donagough's carriage, which had been obliged to make way for another, recovered its place before the door, and the mother and daughter entered it, the happier, and the better, for the delay; for the young lady felt that she had listened to what might be very useful to her, one day or other, while the elder one enjoyed the most delightful satisfaction that can warm a parent's heart,— namely, the consciousness of having established an excellent principle in the breast of a child.

(To be continued.)

Apollo said, "his head was light,"

But Pallas called him "mad:"

A little sylphid, hiding near,

Flew out from some blue-bells,

And whisper'd in the pale youth's ear, "Pray try our Bagatelles !

"You've ponder'd o'er those musty books

Till half your locks are gray ;—

You've dimm'd your eyes-you've spoil'd your looksYou've worn yourself away!

Leave Wisdom's leaden page a while,

And take your lute again,

And Beauty's eyes shall round you smile,

And Love's repay the strain :

Leave politics to dull M.P.s,

Philosophy to cells,

Good youth!-you'll ne'er succeed in these,

So-try our Bagatelles !"

"We've cures in these enchanted bowers,

For every sort of ill,

Our only medicines are flowers,

Sweet flowers that never kill!

Our leeches, too, are wondrous wise

In mixing simples up,

We've frozen dew-drops from the skies,

For the fever'd lover's cup;

We've moonbeams gathered on the hills,

And star-drops in the dells;

And we never send you in our bills

Pray, try our Bagatelles!"

"And youths from every coast and clime,
Come here to seek advice,

And maids who have misspent their time
Are kept preserved-in ice!.
Bright fountains in our gardens play,
And each has magic in it,—
We cure blue devils every day,

Blue-stockings every minute :

And heartaches, when they're worst, and when
No other medicine tells,

In maids or matrons-youths or men,
Yield to our-Bagatelles !"

"Last week a statesman came, whose eyes
Scarce knew what sweet repose is,
We gave one draft of Beauty's sighs-
Look there!-how calm he dozes!
A lawyer called the week before,

Who talk'd of nought but Blackstone,
We took him to our sylphid store,

And a pair of wings we wax'd on : And if you'll look up yonder grove, -Just by that grot of shellsYou'll find him making shocking love, And talking-Bagatelles!"

The sick youth raised his drooping head

As the sylphid ceased to speak,

Hush, hush," she cried, "you must to bed,"

"And be quiet for a week !”

And soon a muse with rainbow wings,

And looks of laughing joy,

Came, with a lute of silver strings,

And she sat beside the boy;

And when I saw them last, they lay

Far up those flowery dells,

And the boy was growing glad and gay,
As she sung him-Bagatelles !

TANGIBLE IMMORTALITY.

Entre les dons, graces, et prérogatives, desquelles le souverain plasmateur Dieu tout Puissant, ha endoüairé et avoué l'humaine nature, à son commencement, celle me semble singulière et excellente, par la quelle elle peult en estat mortel, acquérir espèce d' immortalité.-RABELAIS.

If there is a piece of rhetorical sleight-of-hand, a dialectic juggle, a logical sophism, more detestable and unworthy of a true, straightforward, Christian, and English disputant than all the rest, it is that practice, so common among contentious writers, of extracting just so much of an authority as serves their turn, and leaving unquoted some context which gives an evidently different meaning to the entire passage. It is a matter of sufficient reproach to persuasion, as an art, that, on principle, it aims only at taking a dirty advantage of defects in the popular intelligence, and making (as Aristophanes tells us) "the little words prevail over the big." Eloquence is only a polite name for mystification, and oratory the mere cajoling an audience out of the use of their common sense; and if any one, reckoning upon the speeches of his favourite county member, the leading articles of his favourite newspaper, or the harangues of the favourite barrister on his circuit, should be tempted to dispute the truth of this proposition, we beg just to stop his mouth with one single question, "Did ever he, or any one else, hear of eloquence being pressed into the service of a rigorous demonstration?" No, good sir, there is not a single trope, metaphor, figure of speech, flourish-nay, not so much as a poor argumentum ad hominem, in all the books of Euclid. Sir Isaac Newton never convulsed his readers with laughter, by a reductio ad absurdum, altogether personal. Cocker never shook the counting-house to its centre, by an eloquent denunciation of the consequences which must follow from denying this veracious proposition that twice two make four (though, Heaven knows, those consequences are often terrible enough to some of the parties concerned). Nay, from Demosthenes to the last chartist missionary, debating has ever been a mere attempt to pass false coin; and the effect has uniformly been in the ratio of the sum of humbug to be established. Pope (who, let the boys say what they will, was a poet, and, therefore, something of a judge in such matters) says, or sings, to the great lawyer and orator of his day,

"Plain truth, dear Murray, needs no flower of speech;" and there never yet was a good reason that could not be stated in ten

minutes.

The consequence is as plain as the nose on your face (if you have one), that falsehood alone is the raw material of oratory; which jumps at a single bound to our conclusion, that public speaking (and public writing too, when it presumes to be didactic), are a mere concio ud stultitiam, an instrument for calling into activity all the latent nonsense, prejudice, inconsequence, and fanaticism of an admiring public.

This being premised, we recur to our starting-point; and affirm that if oratory is an attack on the rational faculty, the abuse must be very great which adds the surreptitious knavery of making it also a trap for

the memory. Troppo, as the Italians say, è troppo, which, for the nonce, may be translated, trope upon trope, is false heraldry. Mystification and positive lying, therefore, should not be mixed together. On such an occasion, a misquotation is a plain confession of defeat, for no man forges when his own draft is good with his banker. Besides, if the reader must pause at every turn to refer to authorities, the shortestwinded writer can never hope to be read through. To tamper, then, with the public habit of confidence in the good faith of a citation, is not merely a horrible crime, it is a fault; and worse cannot be said of it.

It is this conviction which compels us to begin by making a clear breast, in the matter of the quotation which stands at the head of our article, and to forewarn the reader that Rabelais had another meaning attached to the word immortality, than that which we chose to give to it on the present occasion. If any one wishes to know in what Rabelais' immortality consists, we must in all courtesy and civility reply to him, -Go look. That author is notoriously apt to "discuss more matters than are to be found in a grocer's shop," and we do not choose to commit ourselves with a prudish age, by answering indiscreet questions. Suffice it, therefore, that all and singular to whom these presents shall come, do know, understand, comprehend, and bear in mind, that the sort of immortality of which we propose to treat, is that customary and common immortality, which awaits great deeds in the grateful memory of mankind, the immortality to be won by falling in battle with a pirate in the Indian seas; by tumbling overboard in the service of your country; breaking your neck with a parachute; or taking the benefit of a copyright act for a spelling-book, or a "Housewife's guide, and complete companion to the kitchen."

Now, as far as this immortality is concerned, no one in these enlightened days will deny that it is a gift, grace, and prerogative, singularly excellent," and worthy of all admiration. A good deal of what has hitherto been urged against it (on insufficient grounds, as we shall presently show), may be referred to two heads, the temporary and transient duration of the immortality, and the small use it is to a man when he is once dead and buried. And, as touching the first, it is usually objected that the world is not many thousand years old, yet that notwithstanding this, the date of many immortalities is already out. Where, we are asked, are the immortal poets, the historians of the preHelenic wars? Where the still older immortalities washed away in the great flood? not to speak of the preadamite worthies, of whom no remains have been found in the lias or the coal formations: their horns (however high they were once exalted) have no place in the Mantelian collection.

To this objection we might answer by denying the facts. Horace tells us expressly that the antehomeric heroes were not immortal; and that, too, precisely because there was no poet to sing them. As for the antediluvians, it is true that the book of Enoch has lately been brought to light, and may be tendered in evidence, as proof of the reality of those mighty men of old. But if, logically speaking, a man must have lived in order to write a book, we answer, why then hath he

* Di quelle cose che non ven de lo speziale.”—Benv: Cellini.