religion, were emulous to aggrandize, and the vast and gloomy Lake Mareotis, where the solitary gliding sail rarely appears, and on whose barren shores the sun rises and sets in sadness, never inspiring joy or serenity, as when he plays aslant upon fertile and inhabited lands. There, in that dreary region, unblest by life or verdure, where the human voice, which we hear in society with indifference and impatience, would be found to breathe touching and exquisite melody, and where jealous and vindictive rivals, subdued to amity by a sense of the weakness and mutual dependence of mankind, would gladly meet in friendship-there, that time-defying column stands amidst desolation, emblem of fortitude in adversity, contrasting its stability with the parched and drifting sands of the desert, the ashes as it were of a consumed creation, whilst battles, sieges, inundations, and a thousand other recollections, on which history and poetry dwell, are united with the solemn scene. Overpowered by these awful impressions, the mind of the spectator is penetrated by a deep sense of the visionary nature of human pursuits; he turns, with a sweet and mournful feeling, to this relic of antiquity, as to the altar of the spirits of the just made perfect," whose splendid actions, and exalted thoughts, it will, through time, commemorate; it seems, to him, to stand upon "the bank and shoal of time," connecting the eternity of the past, with that which is coming; and inspires him, through the influence of those grand and solemn associations, with a veneration that has, I firmly believe, preserved this column from the savage and the fanatic, through a long succession of ages! But, without those awful impressions, created by the solemnity and association of the solitary scene, the column itself would not inspire any awe, and but little admiration, or at all enlarge our conceptions.

We may, therefore, conclude, that all the sensations, which can be excited by an isolated column, surmounted by a statue or emblem, and, either with or without sculpture, standing in a crowded city, must be not merely less sublimated, but the very reverse of the high and pure emotions of a secluded spectator of the enshrined representative of a hero, patriot, or genius, whom we wish to make triumph over time.

J. M.

THE FRIARS OF DIJON. A TALE.

BY T. CAMPBELL.

WHEN honest men confess'd their sins,
And paid the church genteelly—
In Burgundy two Capuchins

Lived jovially and freely.

They march'd about from place to place,

With shrift and dispensation;
And mended broken consciences,
Soul-tinkers by vocation.

One friar was Father Boniface,
And he ne'er knew disquiet,
Save when condemn'd to saying grace
O'er mortifying diet.

The other was lean Dominick,

Whose slender form, and sallow,

Would scarce have made a candlewick
For Boniface's tallow.

Albeit, he tippled like a fish,

Though not the same potation;

And mortal man ne'er clear'd a dish
With nimbler mastication.

Those saints without the shirts arrived,

One evening late, to pigeon
A country pair for alms, that lived
About a league from Dijon--

Whose supper-pot was set to boil,
On faggots briskly crackling :

The friars enter'd, with a smile

To Jacquez and to Jacqueline.

They bow'd, and bless'd the dame, and then
In pious terms besought her,

To give two holy-minded men
A meal of bread and water.

The room was high, the host's was nigh— Had wife or he suspicion,

That monks would make a raree-show

Of chinks in the partition?

Or that two Confessors would come,
Their holy ears out-reaching
To conversations as hum-drum
Almost as their own preaching?

Shame on you, Friars of orders gray, That peeping knelt, and wriggling, And when ye should have gone to pray, Betook yourselves to giggling!

But every deed will have its meed:
And hark! what information
Has made the sinners, in a trice,
Look black with consternation.

The farmer on a hone prepares

His knife, a long and keen one; And talks of killing both the Frères, The fat one, and the lean one.

To-morrow, by the break of day,
He orders too, salt-petre,

And pickling-tubs; but, reader, stay,
Our host was no man-eater.

The priests knew not that country-folk
Gave pigs the name of friars;
But startled, witless of the joke,
As if they'd trod on briars.

Meanwhile, as they perspired with dread, The hair of either craven

Had stood erect upon his head,

But that their heads were shaven.

What, pickle and smoke us limb by limb!

God curse him and his lardners! St. Peter will bedevil him,

If he salt-petres Friars.

Yet, Dominick, to die!-the bare
Idea shakes one oddly;
Yes, Boniface, 'tis time we were
Beginning to be godly.

Would that, for absolution's sake
Of all our sins and cogging,
We had a whip to give and take
A last kind mutual flogging.

O Dominick, thy nether end
Should bleed for expiation,

And thou shouldst have, my dear fat friend,
A glorious flagellation.

But having ne'er a switch, poor souls,

They bow'd like weeping willows, And told the Saints long rigmaroles Of all their peccadillos.

Yet midst this penitential plight

A thought their fancies tickled, "Twere better brave the window's height Than be at morning pickled.

And so they girt themselves to leap,

Both under breath imploring

A regiment of Saints to keep

Their host and hostess snoring.

The lean one lighted like a cat,
Then scamper'd off like Jehu,

Nor stopp'd to help the man of fat,
Whose cheek was of a clay hue-