to say he verily believed that the ravens must have had

the candles at hand

in their holt, to be so ready with Next day he went back to quarry

them as they were. to his work, and he always used to say it was as true as a proverb: there the tools were all buried deep out of sight, for the craig above had given way and fallen down, and if he had tarried only one hour longer he must have been crushed to death! So you see, sir, what knowledge those ravens must have had; how well they knew the old man, and how fond he was of wreck; how crafty they were to hit upon the only plan that would ever have slocked him away: and the birds, moreover, must have been kind creatures, and willing to save a poor fellow's life. There is nothing on airth so knowing as a bird is, unless it may be a snake. Did you ever hear, sir, how I heal an adder's bite? You cut a piece of hazelwood, sir, and you fasten a long bit and a short one together into the form of a cross; then you lay it softly upon the wound, and you say, thrice, blowing out the words aloud like one of the commandiments

'Underneath this hazelin mote

There's a Braggoty worm with a speckled throat,
Nine double is he :

Now from nine double to eight double,
And from eight double to seven double,
And from seven double to six double,
And from six double to five double,
And from five double to four double,
And from four double to three double,
And from three double to two double,
And from two double to one double,
And from one double to no double,
No double hath he !'

"There, sir," said Uncle Tony, "if David had known

that charm he never would have wrote the verse in the Psalms about the adder that was so deaf that she would not hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely. I never knew that charm fail in all my life!" Tony added, after a pause-"Fail! of course, sometimes a body may fail, but then 'tis always from people's obstinacy and ignorance. I daresay, sir, you've heard the story of Farmer Colly's mare, how she bled herself to death; and they say he puts the blame on me. But what's the true case? His man came rapping at my door after I was in bed. I got up and opened the casement and looked out, and I asked what was amiss? 'O Tony,' says he, 'master's mare is blooding streams, and I be sent over to you to beg you to stop it.' 'Very well,' I said, 'I can do it just as well here as if I came down and opened the door: only just tell me the name of the beast, and I'll proceed.' 'Name,' says he, 'why, there's no name that I know by; we allus call her the black mare.' 'No name?' says I; 'then how ever can I charm her? Why, the name's the principal thing! Fools! never to give her a name to rule the charm by. Be off! be off! I can't save her.' So the poor old thing died in course." "And what may your charm be, Tony?" said I. "Just one verse in Ezekiel, sir, beginning, ‘I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.' And so on. I say it only twice, with an outblow between each time. But the finest by-word that I know, sir, is for the prick of a thorn." And here it follows from my diary in the antique phraseology which Uncle Tony had received from his forefathers through descending generations :

"Happy man that Christ was born!

He was crowned with a thorn:

He was pierced through the skin,
For to let the poison in;

But His five wounds, so they say,
Closed before He passed away.
In with healing, out with thorn :
Happy man that Christ was born!"

Another time Uncle Tony said to me, "Sir, there is one thing I want to ask you, if I may be so free, and it is this, Why should a merry-maid" (the local name for mermaid), "that will ride about upon the waters in such terrible storms, and toss from sea to sea in such ruxles as there be upon the coast-why should she never lose her looking-glass and comb?" "Well, I suppose," said I, "that if there are such creatures, Tony, they must wear their looking-glasses and combs fastened on somehow-like fins to a fish." "See!" said Tony, chuckling with delight; "what a thing it is to know the Scriptures like your reverence. I never should have found it out. But there's another point, sir, I should like to know, if you please; I've been bothered about it in my mind hundreds of times. Here be I, that have gone up and down Holacombe cliffs and streams fifty years come next Candlemas, and I've gone and watched the water by moonlight and sunlight, days and nights, on purpose, in rough weather and smooth (even Sundays too, saving your presence), and my sight as good as most men's, and yet I never could come to see a merrymaid in all my life! How's that, sir?" "Are you sure, Tony," I rejoined, "that there are such things in existence at all?" "Oh, sir, my old father seen her twice! He was out once by night for wreck (my father watched the coast like most of the old people formerly), and it came to pass that he was down by the duck-pool on the sand at low-water tide, and all at once he heard

music in the sea. Well, he croped on behind a rock, like a coastguard-man watching a boat, and got very near the noise. He couldn't make out the words, but the sound was exactly like Bill Martin's voice, that singed second counter in church. At last he got very near, and there was the merry-maid very plain to be seen, swimming about upon the waves like a woman bathing and singing away. But my father said it was very sad and solemn to hear-more like the tune of a funeral hymn than a Christmas carol by far-but it was so sweet that it was as much as he could do to hold back from plunging into the tide after her. And he an old man of sixty-seven, with a wife and a houseful of children at home! The second time was down here by Holacombe Pits. He had been looking out for spars: there was a ship breaking up in the Channel, and he saw some one move just at half-tide mark. So he went on very softly, step and step, till he got nigh the place, and there was the merry-maid sitting on a rock, the bootifullest merry-maid that eye could behold, and she was twisting about her long hair, and dressing it just like one of our girls getting ready for her sweetheart on the Sabbath-day. The old man made sure he should greep hold of her before ever she found him out, and he had got so near that a couple of paces more and he would have caught her by the hair as sure as tithe or tax, when, lo and behold! she looked back and glimpsed him. So in one moment she dived headforemost off the rock, and then tumbled herself topsyturvy about in the waters, and cast a look at my poor father, and grinned like a seal!”

HUMPHREY VIVIAN.

A

MONG the changes that have passed over the face of our land with such torrent-like rapidity in this wondrous nineteenth century of marvel and miracle, none are more striking and complete than that which has transformed the torpid clergy of past periods into the active and energetic ministers of our own Church and time. The country incumbent of Macaulay's History, the guests at the second table of the patron and the squire-the Trullibers and the Parson Adams of Fielding and Smollett-would find no deuterotype in the present day. But in the transition period of our ecclesiastical history there are here and there fossil memorials of the former men that would enable a thoughtful mind to construct singular specimens of character which, while embodying the past, would also indicate the future lineaments of gradual change and improvement. Among these is one, a personal friend of the writer when he first entered the ministry, whose kindliness of heart and originality of character may supply sundry graphic and interesting reminiscences.