named him Kit Corkscrew; but that I don't mind. Mr. Withers is a great favourite of mine-such a man for anticipating all one's wants ! Last Tuesday he bought for me, at Stefanoni's, a blue glass monkey with emerald eyes. His acquaintance here is quite among the tip-tops. He knows a Polishing lancer who wears a cap at the top of his helmet, that he may use one if he loses the other. My brother Bob, who affects the military, ventured to hint that a Lancer could not be of much service in modern warfare: but Withers set him right in that particular, exclaiming," My dear sir, you may depend upon it that a lancer with that long instrument, would poke you about and make you very unhappy!" This settled the controversy, and Withers, Bob, Selina, and I, were just turning to go back along the pier, when who should I see approaching but Jack Appleby, with that horrid vulgar mother and sister of his. You might have knocked me down with a feather. We hurried into one of the little recess shops to avoid them, and stood with our noses touching the wall, fearing to look round, and half stifled with the smell of radishes and cucumbers, until we concluded that they must have passed, when on peeping abroad to see if the coast was clear, we came plump upon them. It seems the wretches had halted to regale themselves at the adjoining recess, as Jack Appleby roared. out-"Oho! been doing like us, I see; fantiguing the spruce." Was there ever such a hound! That's the only objection I have to Brighton; you are sure to meet so many people you wish at Jericho. One thinks of nothing but cutting from morning to night. Bob calls it leading the life of a dragoon-I don't see the wit. Only fancy Nancy Appleby; nankeen pelisse, cotton stockings, black shoes, green veil, and sand-coloured hair, crossed on the forehead, and fastened with a yellow brooch, looking for all the world like a lump of sucked barleysugar; talking of coming down by Crosweller's coach, and being frightened as they drove through the tunnel at Reigate, and a parcel of such-like trumpery, and all in the hearing of young Withers. I cannot express how I felt-somehow quite no how!

I had flattered myself with the hope of seeing your brother Frederick here, thinking that the recent strike among the haberdashers' apprentices, to enable them to improve their minds, would have given poor Frederick an opportunity of coming again to the York hotel, and playing billiards with the waiter. Your letter of yesterday, which I received this morning at breakfast, dissipated the flattering illusion. I was upon the point of carrying my tea to my mouth when I read the fatal paragraph; I could not help exclaiming-" My cup is indeed a bitter one," upon which that civil smirking toad-eating Mrs. Anderson said," Is it, my love? then why not take another lump of sugar?" Papa asked young Withers to dine with us to-day. We had some music before dinner. But only think how unlucky: you know I have two music-books, one for show, and one for use. The first consists of Beethoven, Rossini, Mozart, and all that sort of unattainable stuff. The other is for every-day use. I had put the show-book at top, but young Withers most unaccountably opened the wrong book, and to my infinite confusion pored for at least twenty minutes over "The Hours of Love," "Tom Bowling," "When you tell me your heart is another's," ," "Whistle, and I will come to you, my Love," "God save the King," and "Won't you, Mr. Mugg." Withers drove up in

such a dashing fly! The dinner was very bad. A sprawling bit of bacon upon a tumbled bed of greens. Two gigantic antediluvian fowls, bedaubed with parsley and butter, a brace of soles, that perished from original inability to flounder into the ark, and the fossil remains of a dead sirloin of beef. I had no appetite, and had just impressed our visitor with a notion of the delicacy of my stomach, when Mrs. Anderson bawled out from the bottom of the table" Sir, you should have seen her at luncheon peg away at the prawns!" If this is not hanging matter, it is high time for Mr. Martin to bring in a bill to make it so. You should see Kemp-town. It is built by the Reverend Mr. Kemp,— they say he is a seceder. I don't know why they call him so. Papa says it is because you see the sea from his new buildings. For my part I don't like the place. It is a terrible long way off: half way to Rottingdean; a sad drag when you want to go to Lucombe's to take out what you have won at loo. At present it is at a stand-still. A parcel of carcases of houses,-like the living skeleton, only people don't pay three shillings a-head for looking at them. Here are those eternal Applebys coming down the street with the addition of their horrid father in his gamboge-coloured slippers, which he walks all about the town in-I must run to tell Mary to say we are not at home. So in haste I subscribe myself unalterably yours.

LOUISA THOMPSON.

P. S. The bloom of health which the sea bestows will, I hope, soon subside into its proper lodgings, my cheeks. At present it resides in my nose.

DRINKING SONG.

By Maitre Adam.*

WHETHER the sun sinks in the wave,
Or high careers above,

I always troll the lusty bowl,

For wine is all my love.

In jolly Bacchus' corps enroll'd,

No other grief is mine,

Than when my paunch thinks fit to scold

For want of generous wine.

As soon as in the morning beam
Our world begins to bask,
In quest of the delicious stream
I haste t' embrace the cask.

With glass in hand, the god of day
Enraptured I bespeak:

Ye mines, can all your wealth display

More rubies than my beak?

If Fate some day should stop my breath,

While tipsy o'er the cup,

I would not such a charming death,
For life renew'd, give up.

In Orcus' self, 'neath floods of wine,
I'd make Alecto fall,

And hoist a tavern's thirsty sign,

Ay, e'en in Pluto's Hall!

See N. M. M. vol. iv. p. 139.

A SHORT MYSTERY.

From the German.

(The following narrative is founded on fact.)

IN the village of Rubeland (which is situate in the Lower Hartz, in the county of Reinstein) there are superstitions enough to satisfy a poet or a monk. There is not an old man who has not a goblin story to tell for every white hair that is left on his foolish head: and there is not a village girl who will go to sleep, on any night between Michaelmas and Easter, without mumbling a prayer for protection against the elves and dwarfs of the country.

I am ashamed to say it, (for it is my native place)-but there is not perhaps a more ignorant and idle set of people than is to be found in this same village of Rubeiand. It is like a spot on which the light of Heaven has never shone; dark, melancholy, and superstitious. The inhabitants work a little (and lazily) in the morning, in order to earn a miserable meal, and at night they bewilder their weak brains with telling and listening to stories about goblins and fairies, which would make a man of the world absolutely die with laughter to hear. The only excuse for them is, that their fathers and grandfathers up to the flood have been all as foolish as themselves. I never heard of a philosopher having been born in Rubeland; no, not one. One fellow, indeed, who called himself an orator, and who had tolerable success as a travelling tinker and mountebank, claimed it as his native place; and a poor youth, who slept all day for the purpose of writing nonsense-verses at night, was certainly born there: but no one else who can be called even remarkable.

It is a singular fact that my great uncle Wilhelm should have chosen the neighbourhood of this village to live in but so it was. My uncle Wilhelm-(the reader doubtless has often studied his learned productions) was professor of medicine in the colleges of Gottingen. It was he who made such a noise throughout all Germany, twenty years ago, by his famous papers on the disease hypochondriasis, as every body knows. During the winter months, and indeed during those parts of spring and autumn which verge upon winter, he dwelt at Gottingen in quality of professor; but in the full summer season he shut up his laboratory, and came to enjoy quiet and breath the fresh air of the country, in the neighbourhood of our village of Rubeland.

My uncle was a sad sceptical fellow in some things. He laughed at the great ghost of the Hartz mountains-the magic tower of Scharzfeld -the dwarf-holes of Walkenried-the dancing pool-the devil's wallthe copper kettles of the elves, and all the rest of the infernal machinery of the little spirits; and positively roared himself into an asthma, and affronted three of the richest burghers of Blankenburg by the ridicule which he cast upon the idol Pustrich or Spit-fire to their faces. My uncle, moreover, cared nothing for the people only two inches and a half high. He had enough to do, he protested, with the larger race of fools: the little ones he left to the pigmy doctors, of whom he had no doubt but that there was a large number. It was natural, he said, that it should be so it was as natural that there should be found doctors where there was plenty of patients, as that in places where there was a

multitude of cabbages and fruit, there should be (as there always is) a plentiful stock of caterpillars and grubs.

But my purpose is not, at present, to give a detail of my uncle Wilhelm's opinions, some of which might shock the tender-minded reader; but simply to rescue an anecdote, which I have heard him relate, from unmerited oblivion. "I was going," said he-but I believe I must still keep him as a third person singular. I can manage the matter better in that way, and the reader will excuse me.

It was on a wet evening, then, in the month of September 17—, that an elderly man, respectably dressed, stopped at the little inn of the village of Rubeland. On dismounting he gave particular directions to the ostler to be careful of his nag (a stout little roadster), and proceeded straight to the kitchen-fire, where he disencumbered himself of his outer coat and boots, and ordered the private room to be made ready for his reception. The landlady bustled about to do his bidding, while the stranger sat down quietly among the boors who crowded round the great kitchen-fire, some of whom offered him the civility of the better seats, but he rejected all with a silent shake of the head, and in fact appeared to be occupied with any thing but what was going on around him. At last, his valise having been unstrapped and brought in, some idea or other occurred to his recollection, and he opened one of the ends of the "leathern convenience," and took thereout a bulky object, containing a variety of curious instruments. These he examined, wiping some and breathing upon others, and displaying all to the wondering eyes of the peasants, who were not long in coming to the conclusion that he was a conjuror of no common acquirements. The stranger, however, did not observe their astonishment. Indeed it is very doubtful whether he remembered that any one was near him ; for he quoted once or twice a Latin sentence, pressed a concealed spring or two in some of the instruments, which shot out their steel talons at his touch, and in a word performed such other marvels, as occasioned a considerable sensation among his spectators. If the truth must be told, they all huddled together more closely than before, and avoided coming in contact even with the tail of his coat.

All this could not last long, the more especially as the little busy landlady had done her best in the mean time to get the stranger's room in order, and which she announced as being ready at the very moment that he was in the midst of a Latin soliloquy. This he cut short without ceremony on hearing the news, took up his valise, instruments, &c. and quitted the kitchen for the parlour.

And now came the time for conjecture. What could the stranger be?-a magician? an ogre? a- -' but they waited to see whether or not he would order two or three little children to be roasted for supper before they resolved upon their conclusions. In the course of a minute or two he rang his bell, and, to their great disappointment, ordered a fowl and a bottle of wine to be got ready ;-absolutely nothing more. This perplexed the Rubelanders almost as much as the curious instruments which he had exhibited. On consideration, however, they thought that the stranger's caution had probably put a rein upon his appetite, and that he had contented himself for once with vulgar fare.

But it is not my intention to speculate on all the speculations which entered into the heads of the villagers of Rubeland. It is sufficient for

my present purpose to state, that by a natural turn of conversation the villagers began to consider how they might best turn the visit of the stranger to account. Some proposed that he should sow the great common with florins, another that he should disclose where the great pots of money lay that were hid by the elves, when a band of those malicious wretches was dispersed by Saint Somebody during the time of Henry the Fowler. At last old Schwartz, the only man who had a glimmering of common sense in the room, suggested that he should be requested to visit the cottage of young Rudolph, who lay tormented with visions and spirits, about a mile off the village. And the reason why Schwartz proposed this was, as he said, "because he observed the old gentleman put his hand upon the pulse of the landlady's daughter, and keep it there as though he were in count, at the time he left the kitchen." Although this was a sad descent from the florins and pots of gold, the influence of Schwartz was considerable among his fellows, and he finally prevailed. The stranger was petitioned to visit the pillow of Rudolph, and the sick man's state described to him. He immediately and almost joyfully consented. He only stipulated for the two wings and breast of the chicken, and half a dozen glasses of Grafenburg, and then he said "he should be ready.".

I must now transport the reader from the little inn of Rubeland to the cottage of Rudolph, the patient. He will imagine the stranger recruited by a good supper and some excellent Grafenburg wine, and see him seated by the bedside of the young peasant, holding his wrist gently in one hand, and inquiring cheerfully into the nature of his ailment. Although he could get no definite answer on this point, Rudolph was ready enough to tell his story, and the stranger very wisely let him proceed. If the reader can summon up as much patience as the stranger did, he may listen to the present narrative. These are the very words, (for the stranger, being a plain-spoken man, thought it well to note down the particular words of the sufferer, in order to show the strength of the impressions which had been made upon his brain) :— "It was a stormy night on which I married Elfrid, the widow's child. We had been made one by the priest at the neighbouring church, just before twilight; and during the ceremony my bride shivered and turned aside from the holy water, and her eyes glistened like the lights of the glowworm, and when it was ended she laughed aloud. The priest crossed himself; and I, while my heart sank within me, took home the beauty of the village.

"No one knew how the mother of Elfrid had lived. She dwelt in a fair cottage, round which wild flowers blossomed, and the grapevines ran curling like green serpents. She was waited on by an old. Spanish woman, but never went abroad. She paid regularly for every article which she bought, and spent freely, though not prodigally. Some said that she received a pension from the Elector of others that strange noises were heard on the quarter days in her house, and that her money was paid at midnight!

;

"She had only one child,-Elfrid; a pale and melancholy girl, whose eyes were terribly lustrous, and whose hair was dark as the plumage of the raven. She walked with a slow majestic pace: she seldom spoke; but when she spoke, it was sweetly though gravely; and she sang sometimes, when the tempest was loudest, in strange tones