There is a sweetness for the sorrowing heart, With the gray cadence of the evening hours. Our shadowy skies will please thy infant woes That lately lulled thy cradled head to sleep. Seek not blue skies where the horizons lie: Vapours, and mists, and thunder-clouds are given In grand confusion to our varied heaven, Tempering our beams; while to the gazer's eye, Those fleecy masses, hurried dark and fast, Assume the shape of wondrous billows vast Up from some world unknown impetuous driven. On our rough seas the winds for me exalt The thundering tubes columnar, air and sea; The Alhambra's frail and Moorish porticos Are mine; and mine the Grotto's haunted hall Startling the night with counterfeited dawn, My sisters bright shall be my servants all: My dwarfs and giants shall obey thy call: Thou, too, shalt see, amid his feudal halls, And lofty scutcheons blazoned on the walls; In gothic churches old our spells arouse, Thro' the weird aisles, the breezes loud or low, What soft enchantments dwell amid the West! Far sweeter than the country of his home. The wavering sprite, with less reluctant ear, Sudden he vanished in the upward sphere He caught a glimpse of Heaven, and he was gone! SONNET. TO THE WALL-FLOWER. Most fragrant flower !—The early born of Spring.- Art one amongst the first to deck the brow As above all, for this-Where thou dost chuse But, to the last, thy sweets o'er it distil. Yes! I do love thee most, that for the sake Of younger things, thou wilt not, in its ruin, leave The friend of other days, but to it, then, more fondly cleave. VOL. III. NO. XIX. W.D. A FRIEND IN NEED. Very good, sir, then I am perfectly at your service." The baronet stretched his hand to the young man, as he said, "my dear boy, you have saved me a world of trouble, and I thank you. Let the subject drop for ever; duty, and an unpleasant exercise of it too, would have urged me to speak; and now that you have so kindly forestalled me in the occasion, I am perfectly content. One more glass to our nearer and dearer connexion, and so to the ladies. What say you, Mr. Blake ?" "Why, to say the truth, sir," said Frank, "Mr. Blake is the person to whose advice I owe it, that I have pleased you in this matter, by anticipating your just remonstrance, and promising to you a different career.' "Then I am obliged to Mr. Blake, my The good baronet was disturbed; any-dear Frank, and I think it creditable to you thing approaching to an angry discussion to acknowledge so freely your having taken was alike foreign to his nature, and particu- his advice." larly repugnant to his habits of easy selfindulgence after dinner; still he felt that he should not shrink from the conveyance of advice, or even censure, upon a subject in which all that was dear to him was most interested, and after a momentary pause be commenced, "You see, my dear Frank, I- but after all I don't see why we should trouble Mr. Blake with our family discussions, so take your wine and call on me at twelve to morrow. "I should rather hear you now, sir, and as to my friend Blake, I have no objection to his presence if you have not, particularly as you opinions on the subject in hand happen to coincide." "Indeed!" "Indeed. You have heard reports, I am aware, sir, of my habits of play, which, though possibly exaggerated in the main, are, nevertheless, substantially true. Under the circumstance in which I am placed in your family, your anxiety is natural and just, and does you honor; I am the spoiled child, however, of fortune-unused to reproach to remonstrance even; but I say to you, upon my honor as a gentleman, that I have had serious thoughts of giving up the propensity to which you object before to-day, and that from this moment I do so for ever." "Nay, after all, Sir Jasper, I assure you the advice I gave was only accepted because he had previously made up his mind to follow the same course himself. Men as much in love as my friend Frank, seldom hesitate between the smiles of beauty and the charms of a pack of cards; and in this instance he only followed the example of an Irish friend of mine, who never failed to collect the separate opinions of his acquaintance, not with the idea of following their counsel, but by acting according to his own, to convince them of his understanding. No more wine, thank you." They proceeded to the drawing-room, and the evening ended happily. Shortly after midnight they separated, and Ulick having seen Frank and Miss Elton to their own home, proceeded on foot to his lodging. The night was fine, calm, and cool, and he loitered on from street to street, now thinking over the enjoyments of the day, now calculating on his own chances of being enabled to manufacture a large fortune out of a small one; giving himself up, in short, to those fancies and speculations which, let them commence as they will, it is the blessed privilege of youth and health to turn to its own advantage, when he was passed by a tall, slight figure, who seemed belated and anxious to gain home, and whose thoughts were evidently pleasant ones, for he hummed a gay air as he walked jaun· tily forward. He had passed Ulick some little way, when, on the opposite tack, and coming against him, three young men approached, arm-in-arm; as they passed him somewhat rudely, and without making way in the least for him on the flags, to prevent him from being obliged to step into the dirty street, he heard one endeavour to stop the others by a rough remonstrance, coupled with an oath, from doing something which his companions with equal vehemence insisted upon their right and pleasure to do. "Come along, I tell you, and be d- for a pair of riotous blackguards," expostulated the person who first spoke, "d'ye think I'm to have my bones as well as my sleep broken with your cursed skylarking? Come along, I bid you." "I won't Bill, that's plain, 'till I have it out of the chap. I say, my fancy, let me go. Let me go and be you'll tear my new waistcoat.' "Right, my son, quite right," hiccupped the third, "so let him go, Bill, and I'm the feller 'll back him. I say, now your up to claret and the next nob to champagne, Tom, so push right down, and if I'm not in your train call me sugarI'll not melt, my cosey." Meantime the pugnacious party had escaped from the grasp of his better-advised comrade, who seeing possibly that further remonstrance availed nothing, again took his arm, and thus arm-in-arm, as at first, they again brushed past Ulick, who, partly from curiosity and partly from dislike at their insolence, kept close upon them until after a brisk walk of a few minutes they again came up with the person who had shortly before passed Ulick. He was still walking rapidly forward, and still as he went he hummed his song. "I say, my man ?" The passenger stopped his song and turned briskly round. "I say, my fine feller, you're just after doing two most ungentlemanly things? and so as I took the trouble to come back and tell you, I expect you'll say how much obliged you are won't you ?" "What are those two things?" said the person addressed, in a somewhat contemp ing my leave-still worse and worse-isn't it ?" "Horrible, most horrible," again shouted his comrade. "Go home, sir, you are drunk, and sleep off your ill-manners," said the person stopped, with admirable coolness; "if you are what I scarcely expect to find you, you will see my address on this card, when you are sober enough to read it. May I ask, do you carry such things about you ?" "No, my son, I don't," said the rioter, "but here's my bill and a receipt in full for you," and as he spoke he struck his interrogator across the face with sufficient force to make him stagger. The person so rudely and wantonly assaulted recovered himself instantly, and throwing his cloak from his shoulders, placed a heavy and evidently an unexpected blow somewhere about the body of his opponent. He was a slight figure when uncloaked, but his hit was a palpable one, and given with such thorough good-will that, had the other not been urged on and seconded by the whoopings and yelling of his drunken friend, the lesson already given would have been sufficient. Both, however, now attacked the passenger, while the third, contrary to Ulick's expectations, never interfered in the least to draw off his friends or prevent them from the unmanly outrage they evidently contemplated. Nay, when Ulick commenced a remonstrance, he said insolently enough,— "I tell you what, my fine fellow, if you have a home, tramp for it; and until you reach it keep never minding any man's business but your own." In his present temper a word of insolence was, to our hero, what the sound of the bugle is to the war-horse, or the cry of the beagle to the thoroughbred. "A man's business, you scoundrel," he said, in high dudgeon, "and do you call this a man's business? or dare you call yourself a man, to stand by and look at it ?" And, without wasting more words, he struck the second of the stranger's assailants, repeating his blows until the fellow staggered and finally fell. "Fear nothing, sir," said he to the person he assisted, "the cowardly ruffians have looked for a beating, and they shall have it," and without further waste of time or speech, he again struck at and levelled his opponent, who had arisen and was staggering forward. Meantime, on looking round for the third or more peaceable of the "And then you sing in the streets with- gang, he observed him in. ull flight down out your music-master, or even without ask-the street, urged probab.v o that exercise tuous tone. Why, in the first place you touched my elbow as you passed me-d- -d ungentlemanly that was it not ?" "Horrible, by —," chimed in his riotous abettor." |