title, but who resented the indignity so highly that he threatened to complain to his diocesan, the Bishop of Ely. "Do so," says the Doctor, "and he will confirm you."

AGE OF A TREE.-A yew tree, at Peronne, Picardy, which flourished in the year 634, was in existence in 1790; 1156 years, during which it is known to have existed.

THE SNOW-DROP.

THE snow-drop! 'tis an English flower,
And grows beneath our garden trees;
For every heart it has a dower

Of old and dear remembrances;

All look upon it, and straightway

Recall their youth, like yesterday!

Their sunny years, when forth they went
Wandering in weariless content;
Their little plot of garden ground,
The pleasant orchard's quiet bound;

Their father's home, so free from care,

And the familiar faces there:

The household voices, kind and sweet,
That knew no feigning-hushed and gone!
The mother that was sure to greet
Their coming with a welcome tone;
The brothers, that were children then,
Now anxious, thoughtful, toiling men ;
And the kind sisters, whose glad mirth
Was like a sun-shine on the earth;-
These come back to the heart supine,
Flower of our youth! at look of thine;
And thou, among the dimmed and gone,
Art an unaltered thing alone!
Unchanged, unchanged-the very flower
That grew in Eden droopingly,
Which now beside the peasant's door
Awakes his merry children's glee,
Even as it filled his heart with joy

Beside his mother's door-a boy;

The same, and to his heart it brings

The freshness of those vanished springs.

Bloom, then, fair flower! in sun and shade,

For deep thought in thy cup is laid,

And careless children in their glee

A sacred memory make of thee.-MARY HOWITT.

EXECUTION AT ROME.-The following characteristic account of an execution at Rome occurs in one of Byron's, letters to Mr. Murray :-" The day before I left Rome I sav

three robbers guillotined. The ceremony-including the masqued priests; the half-naked executioners; the bandaged criminals; the black Christ and his banner, the scaffold; the soldiery, the slow proceesion, and the quick rattle and heavy fall of the axe; the splash of the blood, and the ghastliness of the exposed heads-is altogether more impressive than the vulgar and ungentlemanly dirty 'new drop,' and doglike agony of infliction upon the sufferers of the English sentence. Two of these men behaved calmly enough, but the first of the three died with great terror and reluctance. What was very horrible, he would not lie down; then his neck was too large for the aperture, and the priest was obliged to drown his exclamations by still louder exhortations. The head was off before the eye could trace the blow; but from an attempt to draw back the head, notwithstanding it was held forward by the hair, the first head was cut off close to the ears; the other two were taken off more cleanly. It is better than the oriental way, and (I should think) than the axe of our ancestors. The pain seems little, and yet the effect to the spectator, and the preparation to the criminal is very striking and chilling. The first turned me quite hot and thirsty, and made me shake so that I could hardly hold the opera-glass (I was close, but was determined to as we should see every thing once, with attention); the second and third (which shows how dreadfully soon things grow indifferent), I am ashamed to say, had no effect on me as a horror, though I would have saved them if I could."

see,

ORIGIN OF LITERARY MEN.-It has been remarked that several of the most eminent writers of the present day have arisen into fame from very humble conditions in life; but this circumstance is far from reflecting discredit on them, or of lessening the admiration due to their talents. Tom Moore, the most beautiful Poet now living, is said to be the son of a small cheesemonger; James Hogg, it is well known, was literally a shepherd; Allan Cunningham is stated to have been a journeyman stone mason; the late Mr. Gifford was apprenticed to a shoemaker; the sire of Mr. Jeffrey, the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, is reported to have been a professor of the tonsorial art; the late Mr. Keats, the author of Endymion, was an apothecary; and many other names of distinction in the republic of letters, whose owners have risen from a low station, might be added to the above brief list.

A Frenchman.—The present French is nothing but old Gaule moulded into a new name; as rash as he is, as headstrong, and as hair-brained. A nation whom you shall

winne with a feather and loose with a straw: upon the first sight of him, you shall have him as familiar as your sleep, or the necessity of breathing: in one hour's confidence you may endear him to you, in the second unbutton him, the third pumps him dry of all his secrets, and he gives them you as faithfully as if you were his ghostly father, and bound to conceal them sub sigillo confessionis; when you have learnt this, you may lay him aside, for he is no longer serviceable. If you have any honour in holding him in a further acquaintance (a favour which he confesseth, and I believe him, he is unworthy of), himself will make the first separation he hath said over his lesson now unto you, and now must find out somebody else to whom to repeat it. Fare him well; he is a garment whom I would be loath to wear above two days together, for in that time he will be threadbare. Fumiliare est hominis omnia sibi remittere, saith Velleius of all; it holdeth most properly in this people. He is very kind hearted to himself, and thinketh himself as free from wants as he is full; so much he hath in him the nature of a Chynoise, that he thinketh all men blind but himself. In this private self-conceitedness, he hateth the Spaniard, loveth not the English, and contemneth the German; himself is the only courtier and complete gentleman; but it is his own glass which he seeth in. Out of this conceit of his own excellency, and partly out of a shallowness of brain, he is very liable to exceptions; the least distaste that can be draweth his sword, and minute's pause sheatheth it to your hand: afterwards, if you beat him into better manners, he shall take it kindly and cry Serviteur. In this one thing they are wonderfully like the devil; meekness or submission makes them insolent, a little resistance putteth them to their heels, or makes them your spaniels. In a word (for I have held him too long) he is a walking vanity in a new fashion. FORCE OF LOVE.-Among other anecdotes connected with the lives of the early painters is that of Antonio Sogliani, the son of a poor mechanic, called Il Zingaro (the Gipsey), from his wandering habits. Engaged in some servile task in the house of a celebrated painter, Antonio saw and loved his only daughter. Being informed that no one should obtain her hand but a man ranking high in the art, the young lover, with rare devotion, became a painter; and in ten years, returning crowned with fame to the beloved spot, whence he had been driven by an indignant father, he claimed and enjoyed the object of all his painful toils and pilgrimages.

SINGULAR CUSTOM IN THE ISLE OF MAN.-If a single young woman prosecutes a single man for a rape, the ec

clesiastical judges impanel a jury; and if this jury find him guilty, the judge delivers to the woman a rope, a sword, and a ring, and she has it in her choice to have him hanged, beheaded or married.

DISADVANTAGES OF BEAUTY.-In the first attempt made by Mary Queen of Scots to escape from her imprisonment in Lochleven Castle, she disguised herself as a laundress, with whom she had changed clothes, and when seated in the boat, and putting off from the shore, she was discovered by lifting her hand to her head; the extreme beauty of her hand, with its whiteness, discovered her at once, and she was carried back to her chamber in bitterness and tears.

THE FOREST BEAUTY.

UNNUMBER'D lays had sung her praise,
Her sparkling eye and rosy tint!
Each varied grace of form and face,
But never told the roguery in't!
All wooed the dame: for never came
A brighter form from beauty's mint!
Graf, ritter, squire, were all on fire,

But sigh'd at last, there's roguery in't!
"Now mark me well," said Blumenzell,
"Full well I know to fire a flint!"
Ah, luckless spark, he miss'd his mark!
Then sternly swore, there's roguery in't!

A forest bard, unhelm'd, unstarr'd,
Of music softly tried the dint;
"I scorn," said she, "thy minstrelsy,
For well I know there's roguery in't!"

The chord he smote, a thrilling note

Dissolved her snow, she took the hint:

A murmur slips her rosy lips

"That song," she sigh'd, "has roguery in't!"

The song was sung, the harp was hung

With garland wreaths of richest tint;

The priest is there to bless the pair,

And whispers me, "there's marriage in't."—

W. BEATTIE.

STATE OF SOCIETY IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.The thirteenth century may probably be considered as a period of as great, though not so visible, a stride of the human understanding in Europe, as many of the brighter and more brilliant ages which issued from it, in which greater

multitudes of inen reached a more advanced stage in the path to the greatest improvement of society and of reason. At the head of these may be placed the reforms of religious in-. struction, not only for their own importance, but as then the sole means of rousing and invigorating the human faculties, both intellectual and moral. As the Benedictines, the first reformers of the Catholic clergy, had in their turn become rich and lazy, the Dominicans and Franciscans now arose in their stead, and grew with a rapidity perhaps unparalleled either by the order of the Jesuits among Catholics, or by the followers of Wesley and Whitfield among Protestants. They renounced not only separate but corporate property, and threw themselves, for the bare means of subsistence, upon the alms of the pious and benevolent.

Excited by the example of the Vaudois, who had become popular by a severely literal adherence to some texts of the Gospel, these mendicant orders embraced the same voluntary and absolute poverty, and gained that general ascendant which is naturally yielded to a life of self-sacrifice. The scholastic philosophy, that great sharpener and methodiser of intellect, of which the cultivation prepared the soil for all the rich produce of after times, attained the utmost vigour and splendour. The vernacular languages began to be cultivated, and a native literature showed its early blossoms in Sicily, in Tuscany, in Suabia, in the separate countries of southern and northern France, in England, first, as the Anglo-Norman, under Henry II., afterwards the English, under Edward I. The seed was so far scattered that some poetical flowers began feebly to bloom in remote, distracted, and barbarous Scotland. The more active and diffuse study of the Roman law contributed to a greater precision in all moral opinions, raised up competitors to the theologians, and was actually denounced, and sometimes suppressed, by the most sagacious of that powerful body, while it brought home to all men of moderate education the wisest system of law then known, which was adopted into the codes of most nations, and influenced the legislation of the communities who rejected its authority. Religious chivalry, which broke out in the crusades, probably guarded Christendom from the fanatical ambition inculcated by the Mussulman religion. Festive chivalry-consisting of jousts, tilts, and tournaments; scenic representations of chivalrous enterprise ; a mimic warfare fitted to amuse a military age, may be considered as the gorgeous vesture of ornament and parade in which the feudal chiefs arrrayed themselves, to remind men of their prowess, and to display at once their skill and their