THE MIRACULOUS CANDLE.*

AT Amiens famed for treaty-making
Meant to be kept by neither party,
There dwelt a carpenter, asleep or waking
Honest, and of a constitution hearty,
Purchased by early hours and labours sweet,
And healthy meals on unadulterate meat.
Hight Christopher, or Kit for shortness' sake,
Moral, nay pious, for he went to mass,
Heard oft the priest a doleful mention make

Of folks that sold themselves for gold and brass,
And worldly luxuries, to the grand deceiver-
Heirlooms to Hell's black autocrat for ever!

Kit took the hint and would not be deterr'd
(Thinking he'd have, at least, good company)
From following their example-'twas absurd
To toil and labour, when in riches he
Might rival Croesus-for a distant evil,
And finally perhaps, outwit the Devil.
The sire of sin mark 'd his unholy craving,
Assumed a monkey's shape to tempt the man,
Gave him a lease of thirty years-on leaving,
Told him that when the term expired a plan
Should be matured, promoting him direct
Of the infernal palace architect.

Now thirty years of life and riches sounded

To Christopher a time that ne'er could end:
He lived accordingly-in wealth abounded-

Like rich men lived, to eat, and sleep, and spend,
Drink, wench, game, idle, trample on inferiors,
And think no mortal beings his superiors.

This course for fifteen years he ran-just half

The term that Satan granted, when one day
While feasting with his friends on cow and calf,
Cook'd in Beauvilliers' famed and savory way,
And wondering how a mortal could be poor-
Three loud raps shook the distant entry-door.
A servant from the cellar, whom he'd sent
To fetch a luscious bottle of the best,

Enter'd and told him, full of discontent,

That a stout man below would be his guest ;

Kit fear'd it was his friend from Acheron,

Search'd out his lease and down to meet him ran.

Satan meantime shewn in a room aside

Seated himself-his tail that coil'd up lay

Beneath his coatskirt, now took freedom wide,

Curl'd round the chair, or switch'd like cat's at play;

His breath smelt strong of brimstone; for the rest

He look'd a parson in black broad-cloth drest.

* In Vol. I. Lett. 32, of the Jewish Spy, there is an account of an everlasting candle at Amiens which never wasted or burnt out, and by which the church obtained large sums from devotees. It was unfortunately extinguished at the French revolution! From this, perhaps, it is said that the Amiennois light their candles at both ends-"Ils brûlent leurs chandelles par les deux bouts."

He told our carpenter to come his way:
The latter shew'd his lease and grumbled well :
Satan said fifteen years of night and day

Made thirty, for they reckon'd so in hell,
And that they could not change the reckoning
Of their infernal years for mortal thing.
Poor Christopher look'd sorrowful; requiring
Just to his guests above to say good b'ye :
Satan consented, at the time desiring

His utmost haste, for he must call hard nigh
To take with him a lawyer's sinful soul,
Just then resign'd, past hope, to his control.

Kit told his friends the secret of his fate

"Go, take that candle," said a half-drunk priest,
""Tis nearly burnt, ask Satan but to wait

Till it be out, and leave to me the rest."-
Kit was the Devil's favourite, and a minute
Was not so long-there was a secret in it.
The carpenter took back the candle-end,

While Boniface some holy water brought
And then baptized it, saved his anxious friend,
And in a trap the thoughtless Devil caught,
Who hell-ward flew, cozen'd in his endeavour-
As this same candle-snuff burnt on for ever!

Ω.

ON BEING SHEWN SOME BEAUTIFUL SPECIMENS OF ORNAMENTAL PORCELAIN.

SINCE to clay we must turn, 'tis consoling to know

That to objects as lovely as these they can mould us ;

And, wherever this frame may be destined to go,

In its relics our friends need not fear to behold us.

This rose we may fancy, its delicate hues

So faithful to nature, when living composed
The bosom of beauty adored by the Muse,

Where tenderness sigh'd or affection reposed.
The form that so gracefully plays with the dart
Which the blind little god in his archery uses,
Was one of those nymphs who imagine the heart
May be play'd with unhurt till the moment she chooses.
Yon shell was a poet; but where is his fame ?

The verses he destined to live are unknown;
Yet he dreamt in his time he was leaving a name,
And as idly are dreaming the bards of our own.

That gardener smilingly gazing on flowers

Which seem as if breathing their odours around,
Was a lover of nature that dwelt in her bowers,

And rear'd her young sweets as they sprang from the ground.

For me, when I've pass'd through the change that gives birth
To a substance like this, and again see the light,

May the artist thus gracefully form from my earth

The lamp that some nymph loves to read by at night!

For then I may watch the emotion that plays

In her eyes, as the lines of the minstrel they trace,

And receive, ere in slumber she closes their rays,
The last parting beams of expression and grace.

T.

CHURCH-YARD WANDERINGS.

"Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs." SHAKSPEARE.

SOBER subjects, Mr. Editor, but yet of universal concernment, and on that account, perhaps, adapted for a magazine. What individual gazes upon the most obscure cemetery without feeling the uncertain tenure of human existence-without a thought respecting the time when "dusty death" shall number him with those that lie low !-the period when the warm tide of life shall cease to career through his veins, and the glories of nature no more expand themselves before his delighted vision! Even the callous-hearted sexton, who sings at grave-digging, and with whom "custom hath made it a matter of easiness" he who tosses about the jowls of many who were his potcompanions forty years ago, in the days of his youth; this white-haired, hard-featured man is sometimes visited while at his vocation with an unbidden thought, as to who the trusty brother of the trade may be that will do for him what he has done for thousands." The soldier, apprenticed to carnage, has also felt forebodings of his own doom steal across his mind, however careless he may appear on the subject ;-in short, who has not?

:

For my own part, I am fond of communing with the dead they have the start of me a little while; are more advanced in knowledge than the living; and if they had the gift of utterance, would, probably, testify to me how little knowledge is, after all, really worth. There are times when their speaking silence communicates unutterable feelings to the heart-feelings that flow back to the very sources of existence, prompting strange thoughts and imaginings. Though in the full flush of health and manhood, I can find pleasure in visiting the last abodes of mortality, and in conning over the "hoary text," that "teaches the rustic moralist to die." The habitations of the dead, though forsaken by the world in general, are not wholly so I am accustomed to visit them often, and to regard them as the dwellings of friends with whom I must soon abide. I have a great admiration for beautiful church-yards, and a fastidious taste in choosing situations for sepulchres; oftentimes setting at nought certain ceremonies of consecration, and other common-place essentials to the quiet repose of the defunct in the view of mother church. My taste for a place of sepulture is like his who exclaims

"Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down;
Where a green grassy turf is all I crave;
With here and there a violet bestrown,

Fast by a brook, or fountain's murmuring wave,

And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave."

or the wild and picturesque grave-ground of Ossian, even more congenial than that of the "Minstrel" to one of my disposition-"A rock with its head of heath; three aged pines bend from its base; green is the narrow plain at its feet; there the flower of the mountain grows and shakes its white head in the breeze. The thistle is there alone shedding its aged beard. Two stones half sunk in the ground shew their heads of moss."

The mouldy vaults of Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's may be occupied for me in all their "night and desolation," until they are

themselves entombed in the ruins of their superstructures, leave me undisturbed but a few feet of ground on such a spot as is described above. I have no freehold of my own that will answer my views for a burial-place, nor shall I be able to spare 500l. from my family, like Lord Camelford, to be buried on the shores of the Leman or the banks of the Arno. I am, therefore, fond of visiting the church-yards in the vicinity of the metropolis, in one of which I may by and by "set up my everlasting rest;" for I wish to repose out of the authority of city churchwardens, who would speedily retake the little space I might occupy in their smoky domains to accommodate a new tenant, and gather a fresh fee by scattering my half-decayed members to the winds. In London, where I see

"Much that I love, and more that I admire,

And all that I abhor"

in London, people are more regardless and negligent of their places of interment than in any other great city of the civilized world. With reason and philosophy, strictly speaking, the feeling of respect for a lifeless body amounts to little; it is but ashes and dust. Still there are associations connected with the resting-places of the dead, pleasing melancholy associations, ranking with those sensations that fling the richest colouring over our existence, and are too amiable and virtuous to perish. It seems a sort of sacrilege to treat the dead with disrespect, and regard them as sources of profit. Purse-pride, sordid purse-pride is the presiding deity in this vast city. Here it literally nods in sable plumes,

Adorns our hearse, and flatters on our tombs." From the Lord Mayor to the sexton-from the Gog and Magog of the Guildhall to the remotest corner of the charnel-house, where mortality is corrupting and the fungus springs loathsome from the festering carcase-it pervades, directs, and governs. Can they have time to consider the dead, who are absorbed in trafficking with the living, in overreaching each other, calculating profit and loss, and worshipping Mammon with soul-destroying idolatry? Hence death has become a source of public and private revenue, as well as every thing besides; and relatives, too often friends, undertakers, attorneys, sextons, and the government, share in the spoils of the destroyer. The poor man in his decease and interment exhibits the same picture every where; and the few tears shed for him who had no means of purchasing them, may be safely pronounced genuine. The noble is conveyed to the mausoleum of his ancestors with indifference; for the mimic mourning which attends him may be bought in every street, and the heir is already exulting in the possessions of the individual to whom, perhaps, he owes his being. But the decease of the majority of substantial people, as they are called, or persons of some property, is in London, more than in other places, linked with long-cherished hopes dependant upon the event. Scarcely is life extinct, when dutiful friends and relatives hasten to satisfy the cravings of curiosity, and realize the thirst of profit. The group assembles near the chamber of death, in which some solitary individual may now and then be found with anguish at the heart's core, while the rest only keep up a decent solemnity to sanctify appearances. The officious attorney, who, in these days,

viper-like, worms himself into the most secret recesses of families, opens and reads the will with a grave and important air. A visible grief begins to shew itself in the legatees, in proportion to the accomplishment of their pecuniary expectations. Those who are disappointed look sullen, and soon steal off. The undertakers and their hirelings, the gouls of a christian land, are ordered to make an ostentatious display, which may save trouble by shewing in open day the sorrow of surviving friends, the virtues of the deceased, and, above all, the wealth he has left behind him. Plumes are multiplied on plumes, and escutcheon upon escutcheon, and mourners hired to "bear about the mockery of woe." To some obscure and dingy spot, partly surrounded by dwellings, or walls easy of access to the resurrection-men, (who do their best, like carrion-flies, to remove the causes of fœtid exhalations,) the body is conveyed in theatrical state-feathers, tinsel, and gold leaf, waving and glittering among the sables. In the mean time the sexton issues orders to his deputies; for he himself is not the "Goodman Delver" of Shakspeare, bearing the image and superscription of his art about him, but a man of importance in his parish; he points out the spot where the strata of coffins is supposed to be most decayed. Their actual state is ascertained by an iron rod, which is thrust into the earth as a grocer uses a "cheesetaster." There, deep or shallow, in proportion to the decay of the former possessors, the employés dig the grave. The procession arrives at the same moment with half a dozen others, and the minister consigns them to the soil, with a hurried repetition of the authorized service. If the executors omit to place a hic jacet over the body, it rests for a year, or perhaps two, till the progress of decomposition, which is said to be rapid in the plethoric corses of well-fed citizens, allows it to be turned up to make room for one who was once a next-door neighbour. Such are the ceremonies of a London interment. Who would not declare for an undisturbed rest on "the breezy hill that skirts the down," or on "the rock with its head of heath?"

Fortunately, in this climate the summer heat rarely endures long enough to concoct fevers from the putrid exhalations of crowded burying-grounds. A lady of strong good sense and high family, who died some years ago, desired that her remains might be burned and her ashes placed in her tomb, as an example to lead the way in this salutary reform. Her monument recording her motives for so acting, may be seen in the burying-ground of St. George's, Hanover-square. Nothing but a legislative enactment, forced by some horrible evidence of its effects, will change the present mode of burying almost in the houses of a crowded city. The dread of iron coffins, lately exhibited by certain parish officials, is easily accounted for-they keep corruption close, and retard the exhumation of the bodies for fresh interments; thus, by using them generally, a means of supporting an extra-parochial dinner now and then would be lost, and larger and more decent receptacles for the dead must be provided. We therefore despair of seeing extensive cemeteries formed at a distance from its crowded dwellings until a plague has once more devastated the capital.†

* Beings supposed in Eastern romance to feed on dead corpses.

+ The burying-place of the Innocents in Paris was, like those of London, situated in the midst of a crowded neighbourhood. Fevers broke out around it, and were