with the severe exercise, and were glad by a little rest, within the cool walls of our domicile, to refresh ourselves from the heat with which we were suffused. The process of recruiting our strength by repose, will partly account for the peace that prevailed until about twelve o'clock, although it is but right to mention that the literary tastes of my two brothers and self were so strong, and therefore of the whole school, (for our sway extended even to such matters,) that we applied ourselves to our tasks with the utmost ardour, the restraint enhancing, no doubt, the learned leisure which we purposed to enjoy before many hours should elapse. Accordingly from ten until twelve o'clock a halcyon calm characterised the scene, only animated, not disturbed, by such sights and sounds as distinguish every where a village school in full business; and many a time and oft as, with due permission, beneath the fir trees in the green conning over my lesson, or stretched out on my back, with capcovered eyes, enjoying the tempered and dreamy sunshine, have the sounds that crept into my ear brought back in full life the sensations of the last Sunday morning's ramble, when starting up at six o'clock I was off and away, amid all the luxury of dim and wandering thought, over the heath-purpled hill side, all a-hum as it was with the mountain bee, as the delighted little being glinted from flower-bell to flower-bell over the sun-flooded surface. But these wanderings are long since over, nor are they to be regretted, if with them be departed that frame of mind which permitted them to act I fear with such unprofitable sweetness.-But I am forgetting. To a practised eye however there would now and then appear symptoms of preparation for other and less peaceful scenes. While every urchin's eye was intent upon his book, the hands beneath the desk might be observed constructing those conical paper-shells of dust, to which I have before alluded as the instruments of war at which my brother Tom was so skillful; caps would be stealthily seen to disappear from their pegs, all in good time to be likewise employed as missiles, while every little whipster, by the articles of war, was obliged to furnish himself with amunition in the shape of small gravel stones, to be collected as often as he had per

mission to leave the house or could steal therefrom. Yet this was all but mere preparation. The general officers-my brothers and self, as usual, were still in consultation, and any anticipation on the part of the rank and file would have been justly punished as mutiny on the first opportunity. To be sure the impatience of the more ardent spirits would display itself by stretching out the neck, and endeavouring thereby to collect from the direction of our eyes how far we were advanced in our legitimate business, as they were aware that until we had completed the thorough perusal of the entire page, there was no remedy for their impatienee. Meanwhile our good lord and sovereign turned over the tasks of reading, for he knew full well the brief and precarious nature of the calm, considerately husbanding his best energies for the coming storm, against which he would soon be called to battle for three hours or

more.

The period of mid-day is announced to the inhabitants of Constantinople by a salvo of artillery from the batteries of the seraglio. The same point of time

allowing for the difference of longtitudes-was marked in the session-house by a tremendous brattle of simultaneous kicks from Tom, John, and myself, (we generally sat together,) against a press which stood just opposite to our desk, and which by dint of a little stretching, we could command with our feet. What's that I hear? What is it? exclaimed he of the ferula, with a vehemence of intonation expressive of such astonishment as suits a miracle, and which I presume was ultimately mechanical, the phenomenon to which it referred having now settled into a regular law of nature. He forthwith determined, like Bonaparte, to open at least the campaign with vigor, leaped from his chair and began applying the rod to the first of the trio he could reach, generally myself, particularly as, sitting on the outside, my shoulders presented the fairest mark. It was but the work of a moment for me to leap up on the desk-perform a sort of somerset over my castigator's head, so that if in my transit he was anxious to secure a blow, he was obliged to shift his tactics to something of duck-shooting on wing, and forthwith on the instant of my descent to earth to rush to the lower room-a

the junior and unthinking branches of the family, they would continue absorbed in geological researches, until roused, like the brutes in St. Patrick's time, to a "sense of their situation," by finding one, if not two, human beings astride on their backs or the parts adjoining, the appropriate stimulus to motion being supplied at the same instant, in the shape of kicks and blows, and "hoc genus omne." Then-shade of Mazeppa! Spirit of John Gilpin! thou, that stretched out in agonised flight, didst sweep on the "desartborn with the fury of the thunderghost, through flood, forest, and field; and thou, the glory to this day of all Cockneydom, that on thy friend Tom Callander's barb "stooping down, for who could sit upright," didst bump, bump away, a thousand bumps to a minute, along paved street and wideopened turnpike; ye, as ye sat, your earthly pilgrimage being past, reposing on the cool, fleecy, and most welcome softness of your clouds, how must your generous hearts have dilated, your sympathising eyes brightened up at that moment, as, bending over the cloudedge, you beheld miles beneath you, the magnificent piece of pigmanship exhibited on such a day on the meetinghouse green of Clonsill! "Make way there-keep clear"-" Robinson don't hit in the eye"-Who's that pulling at the tail?What a host of emotions? What a combination of variously tinted feelings? What a congeries of sensations, were the lot of the lucky being who enacted the Automedon of the hour? The physical delight at tending the rapidity of the progression, varying in its direction and character every instant-the proud and heartexpanding thought that you were at that moment furnishing, in your own person, a decided example of animal strength applied to human locomotion, in a manner rarely calculated on before, with the glorious vista to be there by opened up in the Arts and Sciences gleaming by fits upon you, (pig-back not allowing concatenated processes of reasoning the ennobling conviction of well established power, in spite of the noisy remonstrances poured incessantly forth by the subject of its exertion against such a display-this, and far more than this, it was, that concentrated in that exquisite hour, in one individual consciousness, the very quin

tescence of all human existence !— "Life," said the great English Lexicographer, as in a light-springed calash he rolled over the shaven surface of Hyde-Park, "life, amid its minor enjoyments, has few equal to this." As contrasted with the sources of pleasure to which I have referred, this dogma may at once be put down to a limited experience, and proverbially a slave to prejudice as he was, I admire his character too sincerely to doubt of his candid retraction of the sentiment he has left behind him, if it could be, ascertained; but Boswell is absolutely silent on the point, whether, up to the latest period of his life, DR. JOHNSON

EVER RODE A PIG.

It is not to be supposed, however, that this triumph was allowed to hold its course without any opposition; on the contrary, the owner of the pig, generally a female, would, on missing the animal from its house, as she stole in a quiet pilgrimage of affection after "her wandering love to bring it back,” meet our procession just as it wheeled round the portals in full swing-the insult thus offered to herself in this abuse of her property, awoke, as was to be expected, all her natural sensibilities, which we may suppose were of full power, as well at the same time as her tongue, which was generally as potent in its kind, as the emotions of her bosom.

Ye ill-faured loon-on the puir beast's very back-by my sang, deil hae me if I dinna brain you wi' a stane. Get aff the pig, I say-oh! feth my man, jeest wait till I catch you. Is that a' the use of your schuling to mak you ride, you hellicat ne'er-doweel, on a puir body's bit pig up and: down, as if it were for a' the wurl a cadger's powney. But I'll be aff to your maister, my bonny man, and see if he disna lay the tawse het and hard

that will he." With these words, she would break through the encircling band of matrons of the village, who had collected to "speer about a' this stir and clanjaumfrey ;" while the object of her reproaches and threats as well as of her distressed love, was far away, in full career towards the pigstye. What her success was with Mr. P., who was enjoying an unwonted tranquillity in the school-room, patiently waiting our return, I need not detail, but permit the curtain of history to close over the scene.

I will not have room to refer at present to any more of the incidents which served to diversify, for they could not animate, the day; and therefore must defer, until another opportunity, should circumstances permit, a whole, true, and particular account of Nell Maclean's marriage with Billy Jamfray; she being a widow of dashing fifty-six, with a fortune of eight hundred guineas vested in a noggin-such was the village tradition from time immemorial-and which noggin was curiously concealed under one of the bedposts. The groom was a young genius of about twenty, and whose character for temperance among his acquaintainces, had a decided reference to the physical impossibility of committing the opposite vice, resembling therein that of the laird of Balmawhapples, who was "unco sober aneuch, always provided you kept brandy frae him, and him frae brandy ;"-and how, when the marriage feast was in celebration, the bridegroom's own hay stack, before the door, expressed its share in the general congratulation, by bursting into a blaze of its own accord, as Jamie Muckleworth, who is now in Botany Bay, is ready to assure the sceptical reader, should either his own or his country's convenience bring such in personal contact with this Clonsill hero. On the occasion itself, Jamie, who was found there along with some of his respectable compeers, when the astonished company rushed out, failed not to protest that "he and twa three others were jeest couping owre a sma' dribble o' drink, in Nansie Duffans, when, seein' the bleeze, he daundered up ae minute afore Mrs. Jamfrey, (and sweetly at that hour on her young ear fell the sound,) fair fa' her sonsie face, ha ha ha!-had hersel com oot wi' a' her bonny top knots"-and how none enjoyed the bonfire more heartily than the bridegroom himself, undisturbed by any selfish ideas of property, which, to be sure, were rather new to him; and how, in his fits of inspiration-"the madness of the bowl"-he used to eject her "oot o' hoose and ha', most unceremoniously, by the shoulders, which was a signal for a holiday to our selves-although I never could discover how this understanding arose as to the circumstance of Nell Jamfrey being out, as was the phrase, having a connection with our relaxations from study, unless, indeed, it was intended

to improve our rhetoric, by studying it at the fountain-head of nature; for be it understood that Nell allowed not a secret sorrow to prey upon her cheek, but, on the contrary, poured it forth in one continued volley of reproaches and scoldings, herself pacing backwards and forwards before the house, reserving, however, her most energetic fire until she came opposite the window, wherein her very unconcerned husband was dozing, continually giving, as I observed, a salute as she passed. In all these oscillations she was accompanied to and fro by our whole troop, applauding to the echo every fresh burst of eloquenc.

Even supposing that I were not coming to a close, I am not sure that it would be appropriate in a paper devoted to mere literary recollections, should I bring forward on the tapis the character of the greatest among the village great men, of which Clonsill had its full share, who, on being appointed to the office of weigh-master he having previously presided over a huxtery-indicated first a sense of his own elevation, by intimating his command and expectation that his daughters should not drink tea with any of lower grade than the master of the Lancasterian poor-school, and with which the Misses Weighmaster very properly complied. Were I to enter into detail, I would be obliged, as an impartial historian, to recount some rather unpleasant circumstances, the fact being that this becoming attachment to his order on the part of this new public functionary was not at all relished or understood by his former associates. "The bit buddy" (this was an allusion to his height, which was not that of Goliah) "wi' his twa' legs like twa water stoups turned upside-down," (and which, by-the-bye, was a satirical illustration of a curious fact in the weighmaster's development). Hech, sirs! but we are gran' noo, wi' our bit measures and scales! Gude preserve us! what a lang tail our cat has got!" These and other expressions of a like nature, indicating the existence of very unworthy feelings in my own native Clonsill, will often, I foresee, should I resume the pen, force from me a wish that I too, like the Recording Angel, could drop a tear upon the words, and blot them out for ever! Ever yours, College, 12th Dec., 1832.

L. S.

"Here," said my reverend guide, "you have before you a memorial of the calamities which followed in the train of that glorious agitation, to which you hastily attribute good. Strangers to this unhappy land can seldom judge what evil, moral and physical, has been brought amongst us by practices, in which the excitement of the times did not permit even the agents, or the victims, to discern the enormity of the offences in which they were engaged. Here indeed the spirit of evil could triumph. Never, in humble life, very rarely in exalted, have I known a group of equal interest or a home of more felicity, than this desolate place and those broken and roofless walls bring to my remembrance. You shall hear their sorrowful story."

We seated ourselves on a rising ground, immediately above what had once been evidently a larger and more commodious dwelling than the farming classes in Ireland usually enjoy, and my friend proceeded. "One might have thought, that the widow Cormac and her family were chosen to furnish an example of the felicity which may be enjoyed by the humble, and of the extreme misery to which they may be reduced. Calamity is visited, in some instances, on whole families, under circumstances calculated to excite our especial wonder. Causes seemingly disproportioned to the effects which ensued on them; events which appeared wholly unconnected with each other, follow in rapid succession or occur in casual concert, and all individuals in a family, shall become each so occupied by a separate and peculiar sorrow or embarrassment, as to have no power of succouring the beloved friends who are in the same moment smitten down. In ordinary cases, merciful power interferes to arrest the progress of calamity, so as that griefs too numerous do not crush the heart; but, sometimes, in His inscrutable wisdom and benevolence, God dries up and withers all comforts here, and constrains the miserable to feel that they are in a desert and to look upwards for consolation. VOL. I.

It may be also observed, that in many instances, it is upon those whose habits and dispositions are more than commonly amiable, the chastening hand is most heavily laid. The world loves its own, and will not surely molest them, while those who are desirous of something better than the world, are often brought, through tears and painful trials, to a thorough understanding of things not earthly; and to a wisdom from above, pure and peaceful, and which recompenses for all the afflictions through which its precious lessons were communicated.

The Widow Cormac had passed her early years in the patient endurance of much hardship and affliction. Educated in decent, though very frugal habits, and familiar with upright and honorable sentiments, when, in her sixteenth year, she became the wife of a rude and riotous mate, she was ill prepared for the scenes of discomfort and excess which she was condemned to witness, almost daily. The alternations of want in very squalid forms, and riot with its most brutal accompaniments, would in time have brought down her fragile frame to the grave-but, youth is strong, and she had scarcely attained her twentysecond year, when the consequences of his intemperance became visible in her husband's declining health, and after some months of painful and unremitting attention at his sick bed, she was left, with the burden of three infant children, a daughter and two sons, a poor, and it was thought, a helpless widow.

There are powers within us, of which we are never conscious, until some emergency requiring their activity, discovers their presence. So it was in the case of the poor widow Cormac. While stunned and beaten down by the boisterous and uncongenial temper of her husband, and the distresses to which his misconduct reduced her, she had appeared destitute of spirit and understanding, unable to guide herself aright through any perplexing circumstances, and quite incapable of sustaining the inclemencies to which she might