There she lay, rently and modestly down upon her cross. waiting for her hour, calm and serene as if pillowed on an angel's bosom, until at leugth some of the spectators, induced partly by a bribe offered by the executioner, but chiefly by a bigoted hatred of her religion, bound her, and lifted up her cross, and then struck her blow after blow, until beneath their rude and unaccustomed hands she painfully expired. 6. For a year and a day the bodies were left to hang upou their crosses, as a terror to all others of the same religion, but Christians were not wanting to watch the blackening corpses, and, with a love like that of Respha, the mother of the sons of Saul, to drive from thence the fowls of the air by day, and the beasts of the field by night; and finally, when the period of prohibition was expired, reverently to gather the hailowed bones to their last resting-place in the church of Nangasaki. 160. BOYHOOD'S YEARS. MEXHAN. RE. CHARLES MEERAN, a gifted Irish priest, who has contributed some valuable works to the literare of his country. His "Confederation of Kilkenny," and "Histry of the Geraldines," are the best known. He has also written some very good poetry scattered here and there through the Irish periodicals. 1 AH! why should I recall them-the gay, the joyous years, Ere hope was cross'd or pleasure dimm'd by sorrow and by tears? Or why should memory love to trace youth's glad and sunlit way, When those who made its charms so sweet are gather'd to decay? The summer's sun shall come again to brighten hill and bower The teeming earth its fragrance bring beneath the balmy shower But all in vain will memory strive, in vain we shed our tears They're gone away and can't return-the friends of boyhood's years! 2. Ah! why then wake my sorrow, and bid me now count o'er The vanish'd friends so dearly prized-the days to come no more The happy days of infancy, when no guile our bosoms knew, Nor reck'd we of the pleasures that with each moment flew ? 'Tis all in vain to weep for them-the past a dream ap pears: And where are they-the loved, the young, the friends of boyhood's years? B Go seek them in the cold churchyard-they long have stol'n to rest; But do not weep, for their young cheeks by woe were ne'er oppress'd; Life's sun for them in splendor set-no cloud came o'er the ray That lit them from this gloomy world upon their joyous way. No tears about their graves be shed-but sweetest flowers be flung, The fittest offering thou canst make to hearts that perish young To hearts this world has never torn with racking hopes and fears; For bless'd are they who pass away in boyhood's happy years! 830. 161. ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. HAZLITT. WII LIAM HAZLITT, born in Maidstone, Ken, England, in 1778; died in As an essayist and a critic, Hazlitt holds a high place among Engish authors. He is especially esteemed for the philosophical spirit of his riticisms. His largest work is the "Life of Napoleon;" but his fame thiefly rests on his essays and reviews. He was also distinguished as journalist. 1. WHAT it is that constitutes the look of a gentleman is more easily felt than described. We all know it when we see it; but we do not know how to account for it, or to explain in what it consists. Ease, grace, dignity, have been given as the exponents and expressive symbols of this look; but I would rather say, that an habitual self-possession determines the appearance of a gentleman. He should have the complete command not only over his countenance, but over his limbs and motions. In other words, he should discover in his air and manner a voluntary power over his whole body, which, with every inflexion of it, should be under the control of his will. 2 It must be evident that he looks and does as he likes, without any restraint, confusion, or awkwardness. He is, in . fact, master of his person, as the professor of an art or science is of a particular instrument; he directs it to what use he pleases and intends. Wherever this power and facility appear, we recognize the look and deportment of the gentleman, that is, of a person who by his habits and situation in life, and in his ordinary intercourse with society, has had little else to do than to study those movements, and that carriage of the body, which were accompanied with most satisfaction to himself, and were calculated to excite the approbation of the beholder. 3. Ease, it might be observed, is not enough; dignity is too much There must be a certain retenu, a conscious decorum added to the first, and a certain "familiarity of regard, quenching the austere countenance of control," in the second, to answer to our conception of this character. Perhaps, propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman; elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman; dig nity is proper to noblemen; and majesty to kings! 4. Wherever this constant and decent subjection of the body to the mind is visible in the customary actions of walking, sitting, riding, standing, speaking, &c., we draw the same conclusion as to the individual-whatever may be the impediments or unavoidable defects in the machine, of which he has the management. A man may have a mean or disagreeable exterior, may halt in his gait, or have lost the use of half his limbs; and yet he may show this habitual attention to what is graceful and becoming in the use he makes of all the power he has left in the "nice conduct" of the most unpromising and impracticable figure. 5. A humpbacked or deformed man does not necessarily look like a clown or a mechanic; on the contrary, from his care in the adjustment of his appearance, and his desire to remedy his defects, he for the most part acquires something of the look of a gentleman. The common nickname of My Lord, applied to such persons, has allusion to this-to their circumspect deportment, and tacit resistance to vulgar prejudice. Lord Ogleby, in the "Clandestine Marriage," is as crazy a piece of elegance and refinement, even after he is “wound up for the day," as can well be imagined; yet in the hands of a genuine actor, his tottering step, his twitches of the gout, his unsuccessful attempts at youth and gayety, take nothing from the nobleman. 6. He has the ideal model in his mind, resents his deviations from it with proper horror, recovers himself from any ungraceful action as soon as possible: does all he can with his limited means, and fails in his just pretensions not from inadvertence, but necessity. Sir Joseph Banks, who was almost bent double, retained to the last the look of a privy-counsellor. There was all the firmness and dignity that could be given by the sease of his own importance to so distorted and disabled a trunk. 7. Sir Charles Bunbury, as he saunters down St. James's street, with a large slouched hat, a lack-lustre eye and aquiline nose, an old shabby drab-colored coat, buttoned across his breast without a cape-with old top-boots, and his hands in his waistcoat or breeches' pockets, as if he were strolling along his own garden-walks, or over the turf at Newmarket, after having made his bets secure-presents nothing very dazzling, or graceful, or dignified to the imagination; though you can tell infallibly at the first glance, or even a bowshot off, that he is a gentleman of the first water. 8. What is the clue to this mystery? It is evident that his person costs him no more trouble than an old glove. His limbs are, from long practice, left to take care of themselves; they move of their own accord; he does not strut or stand on tip-toe to show "how tall His person is above them all :”. but he seems to find his own level, and wherever he is, to slide into his place, naturally; he is equally at home among lords or gamblers; nothing can discompose his fixed serenity of look and purpose; there is no mark of superciliousness about him, nor does it appear as if any thing could meet his eye to startle or throw him off his guard; he neither avoids nor courts notice but the archaism of his dress may be understood to denote a lingering partiality for the costume of the last age, and 30mething like a prescriptive contempt for the finery of this 162. SOCIAL CHARACTERS. CHATEAUBRIAND. 1. THOSE Characters which we have denominated social, are reduced by the poet to two-the priest and the soldier. Had we not set apart the fourth division of our work for the history of the clergy and the benefits which they confer, it would be an easy task to show here how far superior, in point of variety and grandeur, is the character of the Christian priest to that of the priest of polytheism. 2. What exquisite pictures might be drawn, from the pas tor of the rustic hamlet to the pontiff whose brows are encir |