GOOD-NATURE IN WOMEN. Good-hearted women never begrudge others anything-but fine clothes and husbands. SYMPATHY OF MEN AND WOMEN. Men have more sympathy with others' prosperity-women with their adversity. RECIPROCITY OF FEELING. What Gustavus admired in Beata was simply that he fancied she liked him, and had the five hundred millions of women who adorn the face of the earth done the same, he would have felt bound to reciprocate the feeling to all. Those whom one sees constantly, are the best judges of one's temper; those whom one sees rarely, of one's talents. There are few persons who would not rather be loved than respected. commendable: always, indeed, excepting such doctrines as affect the feelings and sentiments, which he should ever keep "garner'd up" in his "heart of hearts;" and also, always excepting the swallowing of certain substances, so very peculiar in themselves, and so strictly national, that the undisciplined palate of the foreigner instinctively and utterly rejects them, such as the frog of your Frenchman—the garlic of your Spaniard the compounds termed sausages of your Cockney-the haggis of your Scotchman-the train oil of your Russian. He has but little of the ardent spirit of boyhood, or the mounting spirit of manhood in him, who can quietly seat himself by his father's hearth, dear though it be, until that hearth, by virtue of inheritance becomes his own, without a THOUGHTS ON TRAVELLING, wish to see how the world wags beyond MENTAL AND BODILY. Ir is a wholesome thing to be what is commonly termed "kicked about the world." Not literally "kicked"-not forcibly propelled by innumerable feet from village to village, from town to town, or from country to country, which can be neither wholesome nor agreeable; but knocked about, tossed about, irregularly jostled over the principal portions of the two hemispheres; sleeping hard and soft, living well when you can, and learning to take what is barely edible and portable ungrumblingly when there is no help for it. Certes, the departure from home and old usages is any thing but pleasant, especially at the outset. It is a sort of secondary "weaning" which the juvenile has to undergo; but like the first process he is all the healthier and hardier when it is over. In this way, it is a wholesome thing to be tossed about the world. To form odd acquaintance in ships, on the decks of steam boats and tops of coaches; to pick up temporary companions on turnpikes, or by hedge-sides; to see humanity in the rough, and learn what stuff life is made of in different places; to mark the shades and points of distinction in men, manners, customs, cookery, and other important matters as you stroll along. What an universal toleration it begets! How it improves and enlarges a man's physical and intellectual tastes and capacities! How diminutively local and ridiculously lilliputian seem his former experiences! He is now no longer bigoted to a doctrine or a dish, but can fall in with one, or eat of the other, however strange and foreign, with a facility that is truly comfortable and the walls of his native town. How mulish and uncompromising he groweth up! How very indocile and incredulous he becometh! To him localities are truths-right is wrong and wrong is right, just as they fall in with or differ from the customs of his district; and all that is rare or curious, or strange or wonderful, or different from what he has been accustomed to, is measured by the petty standard of his own experience, and dogmatically censured or praised accordingly. Such men are incurable, and what is worse, legal nuisances-they can neither be abated by law nor logic. I like human nature of quite a different pattern. A boy, especially, is all the better for a strong infusion of credulity in his composition. He should swallow an hyperbole unhesitatingly, and digest it without difficulty. It is better for a juvenile to be ingenuous than ingenious. It is better for him to study Baron Munchausen than Poor Richard's Maxims. The Baron's inventions fertilize his imagination without injuring his love of truth; Poor Richard's truisms teach him nothing but that cold worldly wisdom he is almost sure to learn, and learn too soon. Strong drink is not for babes and sucklings; neither is miserly, hardhearted proverbs-" a penny saved is a penny earned"-a groat a day is a pound a year," and such-like arithmetical wisdom. Keep it from them: it takes the edge off their young sensibilities, and sets them calculating their charities. They will learn selfishness soon enough without taking regular lessons. The good Samaritan, honest man, cared not a fig-leaf for such axioms, or he too would have " passed by on the other side." Not that I mean to question the utility of arithmetical studies for children, or inculcate the neglect of worthy proficients or professors therein. Hutton, Tinwell, Bonnycastle, or more ancient Cocker ;far from it, I have too severely ere now experienced the ill-effects of slighting the multiplication table and the other loftier branches of arithmetic; but I could not then help it. I was a great traveller when a boy, though not in the body; in imagination I had circumnavigated the globe. A book of voyages and travels was to me better than a holiday; and I devoured the pages of Wallis, Cartwright, Byron, and other navigators with an appetite that now seems to me to have been really preternatural. How I used to trudge away, not unwillingly to school, if I had only Robinson Crusoe (which was then a most veritable and authentic document) smuggled away in my satchel amidst grammars, dictionaries, and other necessary and disagreeable productions. Then Cook's Voyages! What an ocean of pleasure to me were his ocean wanderings! How did they divide, or rather completely abstract my faculties from subtraction, multiplication, or division (short or long)! I was sailing far away, in the good ship Endeavour, over the illimitable Pacific,-what were vulgar fractions to me? I coasted through the Friendly Islands and took no heed of decimals; and, as far at least as I was concerned, arithmetical progression be. came stationary. I might be ostensibly in practice; but my practice was to go on indulging in stolen sweets "from morn till noon, from noon till dewy eve," until the awful hour of retribution arrived, and I was called upon to exhibit the sum total of my day's industry. This generally consisted of one or more questions "cabbaged" or stolen from some of my precursors in those difficulties. Sometimes they passed muster; but oh! the opaque darkness-the cheerless, hopeless, mental blindness in which I found myself enveloped whenever my worthy teacher requested me to "shew how F came by the answer." How I came by it in one sense-how improperly and feloniously I came by it, I knew full well; but as for establishing any legitimate claim to the product, as for shewing by any given process how the answer could be correctly deduced from the premises, it was only a waste of his time and mine to request such a thing. Then poor left hand, came thy trial-"not for thine own demerits but for mine," fell blows from supple cane or leathern thong right was I ever called upon, like other boys, heavily on thee! Many a blush and bruise La Perouse and Captain Cook cost thee-ill-used member-unfortunate extremity. But I was incorrigible, Blows and admonitions were equally unavailable. I did not see or feel the moral justice of either one or the other; they were to me things of course-necessities, not judicious punishments; inevitable consequences, which must be endured and could not be avoided; and the next day I was again amongst my old friends the islanders, tattooing warriors, roasting dogs, and marvelling how such "strange flesh" would eat when cooked, or performing any other equally curious or ingenious operations. When not reading I was dreaming. From the hubbub of the school I could transport myself in a twinkling to some fair Otaheitan isle— some speck of verdure that "lit the ocean with a smile," where summer, and gentle gales, and beauteous flowers, and odoriferous spices were perpetual; and there, where "feathery cocoas fringed the bay," would I lay myself down and watch the breaking of the waves upon the sparkling shore, until the tumbling of a slate or book, or the harsh growl of the master, startled me from my day-dream and brought me to a sense of things more immediate and material. But I possessed in a high degree the happy faculty of abstraction-a faculty that can transplant you in an instant from the dullest scenes and company to the brightest and gayest and in a few moments I was again "all abroad "-listening to the roar of Niagara-scrambling over the blue mountains of Jamaica-lolling in the orange groves of the Indies, until, after years of wandering I would fancy myself returning to anxious friends and old companions; "When the flower was in the bud, and the countree." What was the petty pain of a few blows (I never felt the disgrace) to such visions of delight? Nothing. And so I continued-a boy inured to stripes, and utterly destitute of all marks or orders of merit-the tail of my class-the superlative degree of comparison for idleness and inability. No "specimen" of my proficiency in the heart of chirography was ever exhibited before company in the parlour of my parents; nor "When friends were met, and goblets crown'd," to exemplify the beauties of the British Poets by my juvenile powers of recitation. I have travelled much in reality since then, and beheld with the corporeal eye many of the scenes and places that looked so surpassingly fair to my inward vision in former times. I have become "familiar with strange faces," and have made friends and acquaintances in far-off countries. But time and the world have done their usual work with me as with others. I am changed-vilely sophisticated; the smoke of cities is upon my soul, and innumerable trivial sensualities have imperceptibly clogged the elastic spring of the spirit within me. To enjoy the company of old mother nature now, I must have "all appliances and means to boot"-be easy and comfortable, neither hungry nor athirst, instead of seeking her in every form and mood as of yore. But this is the way, more or less, with us all. As we grow up, we acquire an unconscious preference for art above nature-we love the country less and the town more, and shady walks and "hedge rows green are forsaken for well-paved streets and public promenades. We muddle our brains with politics and political economy, and form attachments to newspapers and distilled and fermented liquors that it is often difficult to shake off. Oh the lamentable deterioration of human nature! We are the antipodes (to our disadvantage) of even the despised caterpillar tribe. We do not expand from the grub into the butterfly, but degenerate from the butterfly into the grub. When boys-or wingless butterflies we disport, in the free air and sunshine, clad in the hues of health, and as free from care or trouble as the lilies of the field. Every returning day brings animation and enjoyment "Flowers in the valley, splendour in the beam, Health in the gale, and freshness in the stream.' until the remorseless usages of the world apprentice us to doctors, tailors, lawyers, merchants, shipwrights, sugar-bakers, &c. to be initiated into their respective mysteries; we grow up to be sallow, bearded men-we herd together in cities -we monotonously slink day after day from the dull obscurity of our dwellings through dirty lanes and dusky alleys to our strange occupations, and then crawl back again-we snarl at and undermine each other-we play with unbecoming zeal "much ado about nothing" for a few years-we die some day just when we did not want to do so-the living clod is re solved into the lifeless one, and we be`come-a dream, a recollection, a dimlyremembered thing, of whom perchance, some singular custom or odd saying is recorded, at intervals, for a brief space of time, and then (to all worldly intents and purposes) we are as if we had never been! There is, however, to counterbalance the many pleasures and advantages of travelling, one peculiar, unpleasant sensation, which nearly all who have journeyed must have felt. It is, in passing away from any place where you have been warmly welcomed and hospitably treated, where you have interchanged good offices, and eat and drank and held pleasant communion with kindly pieces of humanity the thought that you pass away for ever that you will see them no more! Their joys or sorrows, their smiles or tears, are thenceforward nothing to you you have no further portion in them-you will know them no more! It is, in truth, a most unpleasant feeling; but a man had better suffer from it, than be without it. I do not, however, relish that easily excited, indiscriminating kindness, awakened on every occasion; that unvarying civility that ready-made sympathy so common in this world of ours. I dislike your polite smilers, on first acquaintance; fellows who will shake you by the hand, bow, and smile at meeting; and shake you by the hand, bow, and smile at parting, with equal indifference. Though not altogether to be commended, I rather prefer their opposites -the race of unapproachables; persons of cloudy and uninviting aspects, who station themselves in the less frequented parts of steam-boats, and odd corners of stage coaches; who speak when they cannot help it, and with whom a civil sentence seems the prelude to suffocation. When the ice is once broken, when you do get acquainted with them, there is often much good fruit under the rough rind; and when the time for separating arrives, they look half sulky, half sorrowful, as they give you their hand-as much as to say, we might have been better friends, but your road lies that way-and mine this, and so-good-bye. I would be bail for one of those personages; would put my hand to a bond for him, (which I look upon to be the extreme test of human confidence), but for your ever-ready smilers, they have, in general, no more heart than an infantile cabbage all leaves and husk, husk and leaves"let no such men be trusted." WILLIAM. Cox.*** I LONDON: Published by Effingham Wilson, Junior, 16, King William Street, London Bridge, Where communications for the Editor (post paid) will be received. [Printed by Manning and Smithson, Ivy Lane.] OF FICTION, POETRY, HISTORY, AND GENERAL LITERATURE. THE HAUNTED LAKE. BY THOMAS MILLER, AUTHOR OF "A DAY IN THE WOODS." (For the Parterre.) There is a wood which few dare tread, Within its centre stands a lake, Which over-hanging umbrage darkens, No deep-voiced wind those boughs can shake, Ruffle the water's face, or break The stillness there, that ever hearkens. No flowers within its deep dells grow; The black snake also feedeth there. Few are the spots so deathly still, The air around that liquid tomb. Along the arching boughs that meet, The fir and dark-leaved misletoe Hang o'er the holly and wild-sloe, In blackness that can ne'er retreat. For there the sunbeams never shine, That sullen lake beholds no sky; No moonbeam drops its silvery line, No star looks there with eye benign, The hooting white owl hurries by. The huntsman passes on with speed, The hounds howl low and seem to fear it, The fox makes for the open mead, Full in the front of man and steed, He will not dare to shelter near it. No woodman's axe is heard to sound For shrieks are heard there in the night, For there hath human blood been shed, They say, she is a lady fair, In silken robes superbly dress'd; With large bright eyes that wildly glare, While clotted locks of long black hair, Fall o'er the infant at her breast. She speaks not, but her white hand raises, And to the lake with pointed finger Beckons the step of him who gazes; Then shrieking seeks the leafy mazes, Leaving a lurid light to linger. But who she is no one can tell, Nor who her murderer may beBut one beside that wood does dwell, On whom suspicion lately fell, A rich unhappy lord is he. In a large hall he lives alone, No servant with him dares to stay; For shriek, and yell, and piercing groan, And infant's cry, and woman's moan, Ring through those chambers night and day. He is indeed a wretched man! And wrings his hands, and beats his His cheeks are sunken, thin and wan, Across his brow-he cannot rest. He sometimes wanders round the wood, With which his hands seem ever dyed. He speaks not unto living soul: Oh! how an infant makes him quake, For then his eye-balls wildly roll, As though they would his thoughts controul, They say he knows the Haunted Lake. There is a pleasure in tender sensations, which far surpasses any that ill-natured ones are capable of creating. He that would act steadily, must think solidly. THE ROMANCE OF FRENCH HISTORY. THE period of French history to which the following sketch relates, is rendered memorable by the following incidents:— Charles the sixth fell suddenly into a state of phrenzy, which rendered him incapable of exercising his authority; and, though he recovered from this disorder, he was so subject to relapses, that his judgment was gradually, but sensibly impaired. The administration of affairs was disputed between his brother Louis, duke of Orleans, and his cousin John, duke of Burgundy. The latter procured his rival to be assassinated in the streets of Paris. The Count d'Armagnac, brother-in-law of the murdered prince, seized great treasures which queen Isabelle had amassed, and when she expressed her displeasure at this injury, he inspired into the weak mind of the king some jealousies concerning her conduct, and induced him to seize, put to the torture, and afterward throw into the Seine, Bois Bourdon, her favourite, whom he accused of a commerce of gallantry with that princess. During these internal dissensions, the invasion by England, the victory at Agincourt, the disinheritance of the dauphin, and the marriage of his sister to Henry the fifth, occurred. After that monarch's demise, she married Owen Tudor (the father of Henry the seventh) king of England by the extinction of the line of York in the person of Richard the third. [For far.. ther particulars respecting these events, the reader is referred to Brantome, and the Chronicles of Monstrelet.] A KING OF FRANCE. [1422.] THERE was a crowd before the great gate of the Hotel Saint Paul. It was evening, and by the lurid light of torches and flambeaux was seen a litter deposited upon the ground, surrounded by pages, yeomen and domestics, wearing violetcoloured robes, with the arms of France and England emblazoned on them, they whispered to each other beneath the vestibule, while around the litter were grouped some stout English men-at-arms, who, with sad and mournful visages, sat motionless upon their well-trained destriers. No noise or disorder was witnessed in the vast crowd, which was ranged under the wall opposite the gate of the palace. When any passenger, attracted by the sight, turned out of the |