Little by little he grew to be rich,
By saving of candle-ends and "sich,"
Till he reached at last an opulent niche-
No very uncommon affair;
For history quite confirms the law,
Expressed in the ancient Scottish saw,
A mickle may come to be may'r.

A rich tobacconist comes and sues,
And, thinking the lady would scarce refuse
A man of his wealth and liberal views,
Began at once with "If you choose—

And could you really love him."
But the lady spoiled his speech in a huff,
With an answer rough and ready enough,
To let him know she was up to snuff,
And altogether above him.

A young attorney of winning grace
Was scarce allowed to "open his face,"
Ere Miss MacBride had closed his case
With true judicial celerity.

For the lawyer was poor and "seedy" to boot;
And to say the lady discarded his suit,

Is merely a double verity.

A crime by no means flagrant

In one who wears an elegant coat,

But the very point on which they vote
A ragged fellow " a vagrant."

A courtly fellow was dapper Jim—
Sleek and supple, and tall and trim,
And smooth of tongue as neat of limb;

And, maugre his meagre pocket,
You'd say, from the glittering tales he told,
That Jim had slept in a cradle of gold,
With Fortunatus to rock it.

Now dapper Jim his courtship plied
(I wish the fact could be denied)
With an eye to the purse of old MacBride,
And really "nothing shorter."
For he said to himself, in his greedy lust,
"Whenever he dies-as die he must-
And yields to Heaven his vital trust,
He's very sure to 'come down with his dust'
In behalf of his only daughter."

And the very magnificent Miss MacBride, Half in love, and half in pride,

Quite graciously relented;

And tossing her head, and turning her back,
In token of proper pride to tack—

To be a Bride without the "Mac,"
With much disdain, consented.

Alas! that people who've got their box
Of cash beneath the best of locks,
Secure from all financial shocks,

Should stock their fancy with fancy stocks,
And madly rush upon Wall Street rocks,
Without the least apology.

Alas! that people whose money-affairs
Are sound beyond all need of repairs,
Should ever tempt the bulls and bears
Of Mammon's fierce zoology.

Old John MacBride, one fatal day,
Became the unresisting prey

Of Fortune's undertakers;
And staking all on a single die,
His foundered bark went high and dry
Among the brokers and breakers.

At his trade again, in the very shop
Where, years before, he let it drop,

He follows his ancient calling-
Cheerily, too, in poverty's spite,
And sleeping quite as sound at night
As when, at fortune's giddy height,
He used to wake with a dizzy fright,
From a dismal dream of falling.

But alas! for the haughty Miss MacBride'Twas such a shock to her precious pride, She couldn't recover, although she tried

Her jaded spirits to rally.

'Twas a dreadful change in human affairs, From a Place" up town" to a nook "up-stairs," From an avenue down to an alley.

'Twas little condolence she had, God wot, From her "troops of friends," who hadn't forgot The airs she used to borrow;

They had civil phrases enough, but yet
"Twas plain to see that their "deepest regret"
Was a different thing from sorrow.

They owned it couldn't have well been worse,
To go from a full to an empty purse,
To expect a "reversion," and get a reverse,
Was truly a dismal feature;
But wasn't strange, they whispered, at all!
That the summer of pride should have its fall
Was truly according to Nature!

And one of those chaps who make a puu,
As if it were quite a legitimate fun

To be blazing away at every one
With a regular double-loaded gun,
Remarked that moral transgression
Always brings retributive stings
To candle-makers as well as kings,
For "making light of cereous things"
Was a very wick-ed profession.

And vulgar people-the saucy churls-
Inquired about "the price of pearls,"

And mocked at her situation:

"She wasn't ruined," they ventured to hope;

"Because she was poor, she needn't mopeFew people were better off for soap

And there was a consolation."

And, to make her cup of woe run over,
Her elegant, ardent, plighted lover

Was the very first to forsake her. "He quite regretted the step, 'twas true

The lady had pride enough for two,
But that alone would never do

To quiet the butcher and baker."

And now the unhappy Miss MacBride-
The merest ghost of her early pride-
Bewails her lonely position;

Cramped in the very narrowest niche
Above the poor and below the rich-
Was ever a worse condition ?

MORAL.

Because you flourish in worldly affairs, Don't be haughty, and put on airs,

407

With insolent pride of station. Don't be proud, and turn up your nose At poorer people in plainer clothes; But learn, for the sake of your mind's repose, That wealth's a bubble, that comes-and goes! And that all proud flesh, wherever it grows, Is subject to irritation!

HAVE mentioned the squire's fondness for the marvellous, and his predilection for legends and romances. His library contains a curious collection of old works of this kind, which bear evident marks of having been much read. In his great love for all that is antiquated, he cherishes popular superstitions, and listens with very grave attention to every tale, however strange; so that, through his countenance, the household, and, indeed, the whole neighbourhood, is well stocked with wonderful stories; and if ever a doubt is expressed of any one of them, the narrator will generally observe that the "squire thinks there's something in it."

The Hall, of course, comes in for its share, the common people having always a propensity to furnish a great superannuated building of the kind with supernatural inhabitants. The gloomy galleries of such old family mansions, the stately chambers adorned with grotesque carvings and faded paintings, the sounds that vaguely echo about them, the moaning of the wind; the cries of rooks and ravens from the trees and chimneytops-all produce a state of mind favourable to superstitious fancies.

In one chamber of the Hall, just opposite a door which opens upon a dusky passage, there is a full-length portrait of a warrior in armour.

When, on suddenly turning into the passage, I have caught a sight of the portrait, thrown into strong relief by the dark pannelling against which it hangs, I have more than once been startled, as though it were a figure advancing towards me.

To superstitious minds, therefore, predisposed by the strange and melancholy stories that are connected with family paintings, it needs but little stretch of fancy, on a moonlight night, or by the flickering light of a candle, to set the old pictures on the walls in motion, sweeping in their robes and trains about the galleries.

To tell the truth, the squire confessed that he used to take a pleasure in his younger days in setting marvellous stories afloat, and connecting them with the lonely and peculiar places of the neighbourhood. Whenever he read any legend of a striking nature, he endeavoured to transplant it, and give it a local habitation among the scenes of his boyhood. Many of these stories took root, and he says he is often amused with the odd shapes in which they come back to him in some old woman's narrative, after they have been circulating for years among the peasantry, and undergoing rustic additions and amendments. Among these may doubtless be numbered that of the crusader's ghost, which I have mentioned in the account of my Christmas visit; and another about the hard-riding squire of yore, the family Nimrod; who is sometimes heard on stormy winter nights, galloping, with hound and horn,

over a wild moor a few miles distant from the Hall. This I apprehend to have had its origin in the famous story of the wild huntsman, the favourite goblin in German tales; though, by-thebye, as I was talking on the subject with Master Simon the other evening in the dark avenue, he hinted that he had himself once or twice heard odd sounds at night, very like a pack of hounds in cry; and that once, as he was returning rather late from a hunting-dinner, he had seen a strange figure galloping along this same moor; but as he was riding rather fast at the time, and in a hurry to get home, he did not stop to ascertain what it was. Popular superstitions are fast fading away in England, owing to the general diffusion of knowledge, and the bustling intercourse kept up throughout the country; still they have their strongholds and lingering places, and a retired neighbourhood like this is apt to be one of them. The parson tells me that he meets with many traditional beliefs and notions among the common people, which he has been able to draw from them in the course of familiar conversation, though they are rather shy of avowing them to strangers, and particularly to "the gentry," who are apt to laugh at them. He says there are several of his old parishioners who remember when the village had its bar-guest, or bar-ghost; a spirit supposed to belong to a town or village, and to predict any impending misfortune by midnight shricks and wailings. The last time it was heard was just before the death of Mr. Bracebridge's father, who was much beloved throughout the neighbourhood; though there are not wanting some obstinate unbelievers, who insisted that it was nothing but the howling of a watch-dog. I have been greatly delighted, however, at meeting with some traces of my old favourite, Robin Goodfellow, though under a different appellation from any of those by which I have heretofore heard him called. The parson assures me that many of the peasantry believe in household goblins, called Dobbies, which live about particular farms and houses, in the same way that Robin Goodfellow did of old.

There is a large, old-fashioned fire-place in the farm-house, which affords fine quarters for a chimney-corner sprite that likes to lie warm; especially as Ready-Money Jack keeps up rousing fires in the winter time. The old people of the village recollect many stories about this goblin that were current in their young days. It was thought to have brought good luck to the house, and to be the reason why the Tibbets were always beforehand in the world, and why their farm was always in better order, their hay got in sooner, and their corn better stacked than that of their neighbours. The present Mrs. Tibbets, at the time of her courtship, had a number of these stories told her by the country gossips; and when

married, was a little fearful about living in a house where such a hobgoblin was said to haunt. Jack, however, who has always treated this story with great contempt, assured her that there was no sprite kept about his house that he could not at any time lay in the Red Sea with one flourish of his cudgel. Still his wife has never got completely over her notions on the subject, but has a horseshoe nailed on the threshold, and keeps a branch of rauntry, or mountain-ash, with its red berries, suspended from one of the great beams in the parlour-a sure protection from all evil spirits.

These fairy superstitions seem to me to accord with the nature of English scenery. They suit these small landscapes, which are divided by honeysuckled hedges into sheltered fields and meadows, where the grass is mingled with daisies, buttercups, and hare-bells. When I first found myself among English scenery, I was continually reminded of the sweet pastoral images which distinguish their fairy mythology; and when for the first time a circle in the grass was pointed out to me as one of the rings where they were formerly supposed to have held their moonlight revels, it appeared for a moment as if fairy-land were no longer a fable.

It seems to me that the older British poets, with that true feeling for nature which distinguishes them, have closely adhered to the simple and familiar imagery which they found in these popular superstitions, and have thus given to their fairy mythology those continual allusions to the farm-house and the dairy, the green meadow and the fountain-head, that fill our minds with the delightful associations of rural life. It is curious to observe how the most delightful fictions have their origin among the rude and ignorant. There is an indescribable charm about the illusions with which chimerical ignorance once clothed every subject. These twilight views of nature are often more captivating than any which are revealed by the rays of enlightened philosophy. The most accomplished and poetical minds, therefore, have been fain to search back into these accidental conceptions of what are termed barbarous ages, and to draw from them their finest imagery and machinery. If we look through our most admired poets, we shall find that their minds have been impregnated by these popular fancies, and that those have succeeded best who have adhered closest to the simplicity of their rustic originals. It is thus that poetry in England has echoed back every rustic note, softened into perfect melody; it is thus that it has spread its charms over everyday life, displacing nothing, taking things as it found them, but tinting them up with its own magical hues, until every green hill and fountainhead, every fresh meadow, nay, every humble flower, is full of song and story.

My brother Jack was nine in May,

And I was eight on New Year's Day;

So in Kate Wilson's shop

Papa (he's my papa and Jack's)

Bought me last week a doll of wax,
And brother Jack a top.

Jack's in the pouts, and this it is-
He thinks mine came to more than his;
So to my drawer he goes,
Takes out the doll, and, O my stars!
He pokes her head between the bars,
And melts off half her nose!

Quite cross, a bit of string I beg,
And tie it to his peg-top's peg,

And bang with might and main
Its head against the parlour-door:
Off flies the head, and hits the floor,

And breaks a window-pane.

This made him cry with rage and spite:
Well, let him cry, it serves him right.
A pretty thing, forsooth!
If he's to melt, all scalding hot,
Half my doll's nose, and I am not

To draw his peg-top's tooth!
52-VOL. I.

Aunt Hannah heard the window break,
And cried, "Oh, naughty Nancy Lake,
Thus to distress your aunt:
No Drury Lane for you to-day!"
And while papa said, "Pooh, she may!"
Mamma said, “No, she shan't!"

Well, after many a sad reproach,
They got into a hackney coach,

And trotted down the street.

I saw them go: one horse was blind,
The tails of both hung down behind,
Their shoes were on their feet.

The chaise in which poor brother Bill
Used to be drawn to Pentonville,
Stood in the lumber-room:

I wiped the dust from off the top,
While Molly mopped it with a mop,

And brushed it with a broom.
My uncle's porter, Samuel Hughes,
Came in at six to black the shoes

(I always talk to Sam): So what does he, but takes and drags Me in the chaise along the flags,

And leaves me where I am.