have ventured to visit his patients in his gig, and the certainty that Lady Green's new house-maid would come from London on the outside of the coach.

With all this intolerable prosing, she is actually reckoned a pleasant woman! Her acquaintance in the great manufacturing town where she usually resides is very large, which may partly account for the misnomer. Her conversation is of a sort to bear dividing. Besides, there is, in all large societies, an instinctive sympathy which directs each individual to the companion most congenial to his humour. Doubtless, her associates deserve the old French compliment, "Ils ont tous un grand talent pour le silence." Parcelled out amongst some seventy or eighty, there may even be some savour in her talk. It is the tete-atete that kills, or the small fire-side circle of three or four, where only one can speak, and all the rest must seem to listen-seem did I say?-must listen in good earnest. Hotspur's expedient in a similar situation of crying "Hem! Go to," and marking not a word, will not do here; compared to her, Owen Glendower was no conjurer. She has the eye of a hawk, and detects a wandering glance, an incipient yawn, the slightest movement of impatience. The very needle must be quiet. If a pair of scissors do but wag, she is affronted, draws herself up, breaks off in the middle of a story, of a sentence, of a word, and the unlucky culprit must, for civility's sake, summon a more than Spartan fortitude, and beg the torturer to

resume her torments

"That, that is the unkindest cut of all!" I wonder, if she had happened to have married, how many husbands she would have talked to death. It is certain that none of her relations are longlived after she comes to reside with them. Father, mother, uncle, sister, brother, two nephews, and one niece, all these have successively passed away, though a healthy race, and with no visible disorder except but we must not be uncharitable. They might have died, though she had been born dumb : "It is an accident that happens every day." Since the disease of her last nephew, she attempted to form an establishment with a widow lady, for the sake, as they both said, of the comfort of society. But— strange miscalculation! she was a talker too! They parted in a week.

And we have also parted. I am just returning from escorting her to the coach, which is to convey her two hundred miles westward; and I have still the murmur of her adieux resounding in my ears, like the indistinct hum of the air on a frosty night. It was curious to see how, almost simultaneously, these mournful adieux shaded into cheerful salutations of her new comrades, the passengers in the mail. Poor souls! Little does the civil young lad who made way for her, or the fat lady, his mamma, who with pains and inconvenience made room for her, or the grumpy gentleman in the opposite corner, who, after some dis. pute, was at length won to admit her dressing box,

little do they suspect what is to befal them. Two hundred miles! and she never sleeps in a carriage! Well, patience be with them, and comfort and peace! A pleasant journey to them! And to her all happiness! She is a most kind and excellent person, one for whom I would do anything in my poor power-ah, even were it to listen to her another four days.

SHAKSPEARE.

BY LAMAN BLANCHARD.

Deeply reverent as are now the countless worshippers of Shakspeare, there breathed not one, perhaps who worshipped the bard with a more ardent and purer feeling, than Laman Blanchard; in proof of which let these lines testify, which were written-On the first page of a volume intended for the reception of essays and drawings illustrative of Shakspeare.

LIKE one who stands

On the bright verge of some enchanted shore,
Where notes from airy harps, and hidden hands,
Are, from the green grass and golden sands,
Far echoed, o'er and o'er,

As if the tranced listener to invite

Into that world of light.

Thus stood I here,

Musing awhile on these unblotted leaves,
Till the blank pages brighten'd, and mine ear
Found music in their rustling, sweet and clear,
And wreathes that fancy weaves,

Entwined the volume-fill'd with grateful lays,
And songs of rapturous praise.

No sound I heard,

But echoed o'er and o'er our Shakspeare's name,
One lingering note of love, link'd word to word,
Till every leaf was as a fairy bird,

Whose song is still the same;

Or each was as a flower, with folded cells
For Plucks and Ariels!

And visions grew —

Visions not brief, though bright, which frosted age Hath failed to rob of one diviner hue,

Making them more familiar, yet more new

These flashed into the page;

A group of crowned things-the radiant themes
Of Shakspeare's Avon dreams.

Of crowned things—

(Rare crowns of living gems and lasting flowers),
Some in the human likeness, some with wings —
Dyed in the beauty of ethereal springs-
Some shedding piteous showers

Of natural tears, and some in smiles that fell
Like sunshine on a dell.

Here Art had caught

The perfect mould of Hamlet's princely form -
The frantic Thane, fiend-cheated, lived, methought;
Here Timon howl'd; anon, sublimely wrought,
Stood Lear amid the storm;

There Romeo droop'd, or soared, while Jacques, here,
Still watched the weeping deer.