you. You have every claim to compassion that can arise from misery and distress. The condition you are reduced to, would disarm a private enemy of his resentment, and leave no consolation to the most vindictive spirit, but that such an object as you are would disgrace the dignity of revenge. But in the relation you have borne to this country, you have no title to indulgence; and, if I had followed the dictates of my own opinion, I should never have allowed you the respite of a moment. I should scorn to keep terms with a man who preserves no measures with the public. Neither the abject submission of deserting his post in the hour of danger, nor even the sacred shield of cowardice, should protect him. I pursue him through life, and try the last exertion of my abilities to preserve the perishable infamy of his name, and make it immortal!

XIV.-REYNO AND ALPIN.-
-Ossian.

Reyno. The wind and rain are over; calm is the noon of day. The clouds are divided in heaven; over the green hill, flies the inconstant sun; red, through the stony vale, comes down the stream of the hill. Sweet are thy murmurs, O stream! but more sweet is the voice I hear. It is the voice of Alpin, the son of song, mourning for the dead. Bent is his head of age, and red his tearful eye.-Alpin, thou son of song, why alone on the silent hill? Why complainest thou, as a blast in the wood-as a wave on the lonely shore?

Alpin. My tears, O Reyno! are for the dead-my voice for the inhabitants of the grave. Tall thou art on the hill, fair among the sons of the plain; but thou shalt fall like Morar, and the mourner shall sit on thy tomb. The hills shall know thee no more; thy bow shall lie in the hall unstrung. Thou wert swift, O Morar! as a roe on the hill-terrible as a meteor of fire. Thy wrath was as the storm-thy sword in battle, as lightning in the field. Thy voice was like a stream after rain-like thunder on distant hills. Many fell by thy arm-they were consumed in the flames of thy wrath. But when thou didst return from war, how peaceful was thy brow! Thy face was like the sun after rain; like the moon in the silence of night; calm as the breast of the lake, when the loud wind is hushed into repose. Narrow is thy dwelling nowdark the place of thine abode. With three steps I compass thy grave, oh, thou who wast so great before! Four stones with their heads of moss are the only memorial of thee. A tree

with scarce a leaf-long grass whistling in the wind-mark, to the hunter's eye, the grave of the mighty Morar.-Morar! thou art low indeed: thou hast no mother to mourn thee; no maid with her tears of love: dead is she that brought thee forth; fallen is the daughter of Morglan. . . . Who, on his staff, is this? Who this, whose head is white with age, whose eyes are galled with tears, who quakes at every step? It is thy father, O Morar! the father of no son, but thee.-Weep, thou father of Morar! weep! but thy son heareth thee not. Deep is the sleep of the dead-low their pillow of dust. No more shall he hear thy voice-no more awake at the call.-When shall it be morn in the grave, to bid the slumberer awake?— Farewell, thou bravest of men, thou conqueror in the field: but the field shall see thee no more, nor the gloomy wood be lightened with the splendour of thy steel. Thou hast left no son, but the song shall preserve thy name.

XV.-DEATH AND FUNERAL OF A PAUPER.

THERE was neither knocker nor bell-handle at the open door where Oliver and his master stopped; so, groping his way cautiously through the dark passage, and bidding Oliver keep close to him, and not be afraid, the undertaker mounted to the top of the first flight of stairs, and, stumbling against a door on the landing, rapped at it with his knuckles.

It was opened by a young girl of thirteen or fourteen. The undertaker at once saw enough of what the room contained, to know it was the apartment to which he had been directed. He stepped in, and Oliver followed him.

There was no fire in the room; but a man was crouching mechanically over the empty stove. An old woman, too, had drawn a low stool to the cold hearth, and was sitting beside him. There were some ragged children in another corner; and, in a small recess, opposite the door, there lay upon the ground something covered with an old blanket. Oliver shuddered as he cast his eyes towards the place, and crept involuntarily closer to his master; for, though it was covered up, the boy felt that it was a corpse.

The man's face was thin and very pale; his hair and beard were grizzly, and his eyes were bloodshot. The old woman's face was wrinkled, her two remaining teeth protruded over her under-lip, and her eyes were bright and piercing. Oliver was afraid to look at either her or the man; they seemed so like the rats he had seen outside!

"Nobody shall go near her," said the man, starting fiercely up, as the undertaker approached the recess. "Keep back! keep back, if you've a life to lose."

"Nonsense, my good man," said the undertaker, who was pretty well used to misery in all its shapes;-"nonsense!"

"I tell you," said the man, clenching his hands, and stamping furiously on the floor-"I tell you, I won't have her put into the ground! She couldn't rest there. The worms would worry-not eat her, she is so worn away."

The undertaker offered no reply to this raving; but, producing a tape from his pocket, knelt down for a moment by the side of the body.

"Ah," said the man, bursting into tears, and sinking on his knees at the feet of the dead woman; "kneel down, kneel down; kneel round her, every one of you, and mark my words. I say, she starved to death. I never knew how bad she was, till the fever came upon her, and then her bones were starting through the skin. There was neither fire nor candle; she died in the dark-in the dark! She couldn't even see her children's faces, though we heard her gasping out their names. I begged for her in the streets-and they sent me to prison! When I came back, she was dying; and all the blood in my heart has dried up, for they starved her to death! I swear it, before Heaven that saw it-they starved her!" He twined his hands in his hair, and, with a loud scream, rolled grovelling upon the floor; his eyes fixed, and the foam gushing from his lips.

The terrified children cried bitterly; but the old woman, who had hitherto remained as quiet as if she had been wholly deaf to all that passed, menaced them into silence; and, having unloosened the man's cravat, as he still remained extended on the ground, tottered towards the undertaker.

"She was my daughter," said the old woman, nodding her head in the direction of the corpse, and speaking with an idiotic leer, more ghastly than even the presence of death itself. "Ah! ah! Well it is strange that I, who gave birth to her, and was a woman then, should be alive and merry now, and she lying there so cold and stiff! Ah! to think of it; it's as good as a play, as good as a play!"

As the wretched creature mumbled and chuckled in her hideous merriment, the undertaker turned to go away. "Stop, stop!" said the old woman in a loud whisper; "" will she be buried to-morrow, or next day, or to-night? I laid her out, and I must walk, you know. Send me a large cloak; a

good warm one, for it is bitter cold. We should have cake and wine, too, before we go! Never mind: send some bread; only a loaf of bread and a cup of water. Shall we have some bread ?" she said eagerly, catching at the undertaker's coat as he once more moved towards the door.

"Yes, yes," said the undertaker, "of course; any thing, every thing." He disengaged himself from the old woman's grasp, and, dragging Oliver after him, hurried away.

The next day (the family having been meanwhile relieved with a half-quartern loaf and a piece of cheese,) Oliver and his master returned to the miserable abode; where Mr. Bumble had already arrived, accompanied by four men from the workhouse, who were to act as bearers. An old black cloak had been thrown over the rags of the old woman and the man; the bare coffin having been screwed down, was then hoisted on the shoulders of the bearers, and carried down stairs into the street.

When they reached the obscure corner of the churchyard, in which the nettles grew and the parish graves were made, the Clergyman had not arrived; and the Clerk, who was sitting by the vestry-room fire, seemed to think it by no means improbable that it might be an hour or so before he came. So they set the bier down on the brink of the grave; and the two mourners waited patiently in the damp clay, with a cold rain drizzling down: while the ragged boys, whom the spectacle had attracted into the churchyard, played a noisy game at hide-and-seek among the tombstones, or varied their amusements by jumping backwards and forwards over the coffin.

At length, after the lapse of something more than an hour, Mr. Bumble and Sowerberry, and the Clerk, were seen running towards the grave; and immediately afterwards the Clergyman appeared, putting on his surplice as he came along. Mr. Bumble then thrashed a boy or two to keep up appearances; and the reverend gentleman, having read as much of the burial-service as could be compressed into four minutes, gave his surplice to the clerk, and ran away again.

The grave-digger shovelled in the earth, stamped it loosely down with his feet, shouldered his spade, and walked off; followed by the boys, who murmured very loud complaints at the fun being over so soon.

"Come, my good fellow," said Bumble, tapping the man on the back; "they want to shut up the yard.'

The man, who had never once moved since he had taken his station by the grave-side, started, raised his head, stared

at the person who had addressed him, walked forward for a few paces, and then fell down in a fit. The crazy old woman was too much occupied in bewailing the loss of her cloak (which the undertaker had taken off) to pay him any attention; so they threw a can of cold water over him, and, when he came to, saw him safely out of the churchyard, locked the gate, and departed on their different ways.

XVI.-INSIGNIFICANCE OF THIS WORLD.-Dr. Chalmers.

THOUGH the earth were to be burned up, though the trumpet of its dissolution were sounded, though yon sky were to pass away as a scroll, and every visible glory which the finger of the Divinity has inscribed on it, were extinguished for everan event, so awful to us, and to every world in our vicinity, by which so many suns would be extinguished, and so many varied scenes of life and population would rush into forgetfulness,-what is it in the high scale of the Almighty's workmanship? A mere shred, which, though scattered into nothing, would leave the universe one entire scene of greatness and of majesty. Though the earth and the heavens were to disappear, there are other worlds which roll afar; the light of other suns shines upon them, and the sky which mantles them is garnished with other stars. Is it presumption to say, that the moral world extends to these distant and unknown regions? that they are occupied with people? that the charities of home and of neighbourhood flourish there? that the praises of God are there lifted up, and His goodness rejoiced in? that there piety has its temples and its offerings; and the richness of the divine attributes is there felt and admired by intelligent worshippers?

And what is this world, in the immensity which teems with them? and what are they who occupy it? The universe at large would suffer as little in its splendour and variety, by the destruction of our planet, as the verdure and sublime magnitude of a forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf. The leaf quivers on the branch which supports it. It lies at the mercy of the slightest accident. A breath of wind tears it from its stem, and it lights on the stream of water which passes underneath. In a moment of time, the life, which we know by the microscope it teems with, is extinguished; and an occurrence, so insignificant in the eye of man and on the scale of his observation, carries in it, to the myriads which people this little leaf, an event as terrible and as decisive as the destruction of a world. Now, on the