may

firmer he is bound, according to the dynamics of the true-lover'sknot. He sighs to tie himself up with Hymen's halter, would gibbet himself on his mistress's neck, and burns to become a martyr, that he flare up like a Guy on the fifth of November, in spite of the police and Puseyites. His heart bumps and cracks with the impetuosity of a burning chestnut, and he pops, fumes, and sputters like an apple roasting, or a bedeviled kidney. The measure of heat stands in him at the point of Wedgewood's thermometer at which brass is fuzed, or flint melts, and all his sensibilities are amalmagated as in a "Papin's digester." He feels himself half real, half ideal, with a dash of the metaphysical, and is uncertain whether he is in the body or out of it. He resembles the countryman's horse, with his head where his tail should be. His faculties are at sixes and sevens, higglede-pigglede, like a drove of porkers, up all manner of streets. His ideas run into each other, like the colours of a fourpenny chintz, warranted to wash. His head is all fuzzy, and muzzy, and buzzy, like "the devil in a bush," or a mouldy Norfolk dumpling; and

he-is

By day and by night in a quandary,
Concerning his Patty, or Dolly, or Mary;
And he either sits mumbling,

By daylight still grumbling,

Or on the bed tumbling

Throughout the dull night so long:

He is dreaming and scheming,
And wondering and blundering,
And tattling and prattling
Of blisses and kisses,
Of blossoms and bosoms,
Of wooing and cooing,
Of billing and killing,
Purse-filling, blood-spilling,
Of dashing and flashing,
And thrashing and smashing,
Of routing and spouting,
Of meeting and treating,
Of bowing and vowing,
Kneeling, appealing,
And coaxing and hoaxing,
Adoring, imploring,

For ever still boring

The maid with his passion strong;

And sidling and bridling,

And hurrying and scurrying,
And worrying and flurrying,
And craving and raving,
And quivering and shivering,
And shaking and quaking,
And groaning and moaning,
And twining and whining,
And squeezing and wheezing,
And carneying and blarneying,
Gammoning, soft sowdering,
Protesting and jesting,

And still never resting,

In the confines below, or the regions above;
But, advancing, and prancing, and dancing,
Confessing, caressing, and pressing,

And driving, and riving, and striving,
And panting, and canting, and ranting,
And cramming, and ramming, and shamming,
And sighing, and dying, and lying,

And swearing, and daring, and tearing,
Delaying, and praying, and yeaing and naying,
Amusing, confusing, abusing, and choosing,
Confiding, and siding, deriding, and chiding,
Snickering, and snivelling, and puckering, and drivelling,
And fluttering, and sputtering, and stuttering, and muttering,
And hugging, and mugging, and lugging, and tugging,
And rumpling and crumpling, and crumpling and rumpling,
And mauling, and hauling, and still caterwauling,

Oh! this is the state of a man when in love!

Such is love in the individual appertaining to man only, as man in the abstract; but, taking this "monster passion" in general, it is far more appalling to every right-minded economist, who wishes to see his beloved country retain her proud station among the nations of the earth. Let us, therefore, look at the subject with a mercantile or commercial eye. Take the professions. The divine, overcome, or overtaken, or overshot, or overdone, or done over, with love, thinks his flame an angel, and worships his doxy instead of orthodoxy. If a limb of the law be served with a "writ" in the shape of a Valentine, it leads direct to the filing of a "declaration," and the pressing of a suit, and a court in the wrong court; judgment is suspended, for his brains are addled, and an "attachment" of the wrong sort is served. His heart has bilked his bail, the head, and is non est inventus. He is himself "non compos," and looks for unibus in celibas, and for issue to be joined by matrimonial, instead of legal, machinery. If Cupid shoots at your man of war, your 66 soger bold," he no longer "stands at ease," but fires himself instead of a musket; and goes to be drilled with a black eye instead of his sergeant; is for ever thinking of his baggage, and puts his best leg, instead of his right shoulder, forward. Then there is your merchant. Is he a drysalter ?-he soon finds himself as hot as pepper, and in a pretty pickle. And for your handicrafts, or tradesmen; tallow-chandlers are absorbed in " melting moments out of trade, and love brings on a rising of the lights! Cooks are "done brown" before their gravy meat, and put themselves into a stew, instead of their onions. Cobblers are no longer lads of wax; but wax foolish, and lose their soles. Carpenters are chisseled out of themselves. Bakers get heated before their ovens; and are brown in lieu of their rolls. Cabmen and jarveys set their souls on busses. And, in short, the whole of an enlightened, free, and happy community are mystified, transmogrified, turned topsy-turvy, inside out, and mesmerised!

Such being the unquestionable fact, and "Cupid" thus being inimical to the praiseworthy cupidity which should influence every member of a great and thriving nation, it becomes a serious question for the legislature, to consider the best means of repressing, or extinguishing, or destroying, so great a national grievance. It was a great blunder on the part of Sir Robert Peel to let loose upon the tender susceptibilities of cooks, scullions, housemaids, ladies'-maids, servants-of-all-work, milliners, dress-makers, nursemaids, governesses, and other menials, the sum-total of ten thousand

VOL. XIII.

M

policemen, to pace before doors, and behind walls, and under palings, at all hours of the day and night, slinking, and peeping, and leering about, like so many tom-cats arter their kine. It is true, a mandate has been issued to rectify this great political blunder, viz., "That the privates do have their whiskers shaved off." A good measure, so far as it goes; but it does not go far enough, and ought to have extended to their noses, on the precedent of the nuns of St. Kilda; for, alas! the police nose all the secrets of every girl in the kingdom.

But what is the remedy for this great blot in the national escutcheon? It is not to be found in the letting in of horned cattle at a low duty. It is not to be discovered in the importation of foreign asses. It is not to be cured by a Russell-purge dietary, although such might be palliative; nor by a Yankee model-prison, which would only drive out of one madness into another; nor would the "plague be stayed" by a repeal of the Jump-over-" The-Broomstick MarriageAct;" nor by the passing of a bill against the billing-system. No, indeed! such would be but futile experiments, not reaching the seat of the disease, which is to be found primarily to be concentrated in the horrible profanation of the sacred edifice of a post-office, established solely for grave commercial purposes, by making it the vehicle of communication between love-stricken swains and damsels on the fourteenth of this identical month; thus perpetuating a “lovefever" through the length and breadth of the land, from one generation to another, to the loss of the revenue, and injury of the manufacturing and mercantile interests.

We call, then, upon you, legislators, to arrest this desecration, to withstand this mighty tide, which must eventually sweep commerce from the face of the earth. We call upon you, as friends to freedom and foes to slavery, to strike from the hands and hearts of twenty millions of your fellow-creatures the fetters of that little tyrant, Cupid. We call upon you to direct the energies of a people, who would adore you, into the legitimate channel, that is, of working double hours to pay the income-tax. We call upon you to suffer the important and stupendous truth,-that

"Love's an ague that 's reversed,

Whose hot fit takes the patient first,
And after burns with cold as much

As even in Greenland does the touch!"—

to go forth to an astonished and admiring world as a motto for all seasons, and all ages, and all times. We call upon you, by example, as well as precept, to inspire our young men with a spiritual abhorrence of young women, as a part of national virtue; and to teach young women to turn up their noses at young men, as the surest mark of political independence, and as the high road to wealth and a mayoralty.

But how shall this be done? Shut up the post-office from the tenth to the eighteenth of this month! Pass an act, and appoint commissioners (with good salaries) in every district, to open and overhaul all letters, with power to commit to the flames all those addressed to new or old "flames." The commissioners will be numerous, and may become a political staff in every town and village in the

kingdom. Pass another act to prevent dying (the hair or whiskers) for love; and another to suppress the works of "Basia," "Little's Poems," "Ovid," and "Cupid's Calendar." Cut off the eyebrows, ears, and whiskers, and slit the noses and lips of all policemen. Make it high-treason to put the hair in papers, or to curl it by irons. Render sighing a penal offence. Subject amatory transports to transportation; make it felony for a butcher to "cast a sheep's eye;" and append the crime of arson to black eyes generally. Let the terrors of the law be set forth against" winking," and fulminate the thunders of St. Stephen against kissing, above all things, as the great head and front of the offending. Let the writer, the inditor, the vendor, or the sender, the believer, or the receiver of a Valentine, be punished with the horrid ceremony of

MARRIAGE!

CHILDHOOD.

BY WILLIAM JONES.

How beautiful is Childhood! with its free and buoyant air,
With joy upon each dimpled brow, and tresses light and fair;
How smilingly they trip along! how fairy-like they move!
And gain upon our soften'd hearts to bless us with their love!

How beautiful is Childhood! so guileless and unstain'd!
Methinks, to see them at our side is Paradise regain'd!
To listen to their spirit's flow, to hearken to their mirth,
And clasp unto our loving breast the little ones of earth!

How beautiful is Childhood! when calling by the name
Of mother, father, or the ties that Nature bids them claim;
When lisping forth so touchingly a language all their own,
Unfetter'd by the worldly chain that chills our years like stone!

How beautiful is Childhood! when the fondlings kneel to pray,
And when, with hand in hand entwined, some broken words they say!
With beaming eyes of innocence to yonder land upraised,

They prattle out their artless theme!-Could Heav'n be better praised?

How beautiful is Childhood!-how endearingly they seem
To cling to those who over them with looks of fondness beam!
To share the kindly smile and nod, how anxious they will be!
How hard the struggle to obtain a place upon the knee!

How beautiful is Childhood! and how saintly is the charm
That takes from man his bitter cares, and makes his feelings warm!
That gladdens him with happiness, and cheers his lonely hours!
How beautiful is Childhood! with its coronal of flowers!

LEGENDS OF LUNE.

BY HENRY H. DAVIS.

PERHAPS, no portion of " Merrie Englonde" is less known, or more beautiful, than that tract of land extending for thirty miles north of the palatine town of Lancaster, known by the name of Lunesdale, or the Vale of Lune.

Magnificent, but not sublime; mountainous, but not sterile; pastoral, but not tame; we know of no district that can vie with it in beauty of landscape, or variety of detail. Its charming straths, its wooded eminences, its romantic glades, its rocky dells, but, above all, its beautiful river, clear as crystal-now a mountain-stream, rushing and foaming over crag and through crevice, then a reach of still water, like a summer lake, all these form a succession of delightful objects, upon which the eye rests with never-fading pleasure.

It has its castle, too, famed in song and story; its ancient halls crumbling into dust, the scenes of innumerable legends; its remains of British and Roman antiquities, the delight of the antiquary, and the wonder of the ignorant: and its guardian hills contain amongst their lonely recesses, awful caverns, and tremendous chasms, which, even in the present age of philosophical enlightenment, are peopled by beings of more than mortal mould, whom the dwellers in the mountains as firmly believe in as in Divine revelation.

Before summer-tours became so common, and the modes of conveyance so cheap, the Lake district was the British Utopia; but that cloud land is now transferred to the Vale of Lune, whose traditions are yet unknown beyond its own limits, and the knowledge of which is confined to a favoured few.

It was my fortune, in early youth, to be thrown much in the society of old people,-grandpapas and grandmammas, both paternal and maternal,-who were well acquainted with the wild and marvellous legends of the valley; and there is scarcely a hall, a manor-house, a spring in the rock, or a deep pool in the river, that is not the scene of some tale of murder, love, or faëry. I had an old friend, too, who resided at the head of the valley, and with whom I was wont to spend a few months of each year, who used to horrify me with the narrations of ghosts and dobbies, till I dared not to pass a lonely bridge or solitary barn; for, strange to say, such were the places where, in the imagination of the people, the spirits were confined when "laid by the priests. Although the supernatural has now given place to the natural, and the ideal to the real, yet the following legends will show, in a striking point of view, the credulity of our forefathers, even to the last age, and furnish, also, a tolerably correct picture of the manners, customs, scenery, and general features of the Vale of Lune:

KIRKBY-LONSDALE BRIDGE.

Of this very ancient romantic structure no authentic records have ever been traced, either as to its founder or the time of its erection. The only account of it is found in Burn and Nicholson's "History of Westmorland," where it is stated that, in. the third year of the reign