were invaded by the Nottingham rioters, the alarm of which accelerated the death of Mrs. Musters. In his mind there was no link of affinity between Byron and the memory of Mary. His thoughts were with the real, mine with the ideal, and so we parted, never again to meet; for relentless causes set aside my second visit, and the green graves and ivied walls of Colwick church will never more be looked upon by me. ESSAY UPON A BROOMSTICK. FROM SO barren a subject as a broomstick, how many interesting and even important reflections may present themselves to an observant and considerate mind. The object before us, which now conveys to the careless observer, nothing but ideas of uselessness and contempt, may naturally be descanted upon in two different points of view. First, with regard to itself, as the handle of a useful domestic implement, that is to say, as a broom-stick; and secondly, in relation to its former companion, the broom-head. First, then, this broom-stick is the offspring of an aged oak, which "reared its broad arms against the thunderstroke," and under whose umbrageous covering, centuries upon centuries ago, were celebrated the mystic rites of the Druids, and whose parasytical dependant, the misletoe, formed the revered object of adoration to thousands of awe-struck and admiring worshippers. Often did its branches quiver in the blast, upon the wings of which these dark and benighted beings fancied they beheld the hovering shades of their departed friends; and often did the monarch of the forest tremble to its inmost fibres with the long pealing and enthusiastic shout, which rose from the stentorian voices of the assembled multitude. Generations upon generations of men have played their parts upon the theatre of life, and each in its turn has been gathered to the dust whence it sprung, while unyielding and unfailing, the mighty tree has withstood the united attacks of time and elemental war. What mighty changes have taken place! how many great and flourishing empires have risen, triumphed and sunk into oblivion, since this oak first swayed to every gale of heaven, a slender and pliant sapling! Such is the insignificance of that ambitious and incomprehensible being-man! He toils hard to raise himself a few steps higher than his fellow-worm, and conscious that "here he has no abiding city," he labours to produce some memorial, which, when his frame has again dissolved into the elements of which it is composed, may serve to uphold a little longer his name and memory upon earth. Alas! how few are wise or fortunate enough to erect for themselves the ære monumentum perennius of virtue and patriotism, which will endure while all regard for worth remains, and outlive all "works of wood or stone," which the power or ingenuity of man can produce. All sublunary things must, however, pass away. The oak yields at length to the woodman's axe-its vast and noble trunk, with the shady forest of arms and branches above, lies low and prostrate in the dust-its firm-grained and almost impenetrable substance is now transported to the yard of the shipwright, whence it issues a majestic vessel of war. It bears within its sides a crew of as dauntless spirits as ever set winds and waves at defiance-they ride upon the stormy deep "conquering and to conquer;" they are as much "hearts of oak" themselves as the vessel that bears them, and there is not one of them that would not give his heart's best blood before the "British Jack" should strike to the flag of any nation under heaven! Such is the destiny of the parent trunk! To what a fate is its offspring doomed! The favourite child of its old age- -the topmost branch of all-to be degraded into a mere broomstick! Who would have thought that the towering and graceful shoot, which, but a few hours gone by, seemed tending its upward path to hide itself among the clouds, would so soon be "fallen from its high estate," and doomed to so grovelling, so disgusting, an office! It is, indeed, a piteous, an unexpected falling off. But how often do we witness the same reverses among men! How often does the young and hopeful child of a virtuous and worthy parent, whom we see flourishing a goodly and healthful plant under the shadow of his father's care, when, robbed by death of that friendly voice which warned him from the snares of the destroyer, and taught him the way he should go, waver at the first temptation which he meets alone, till, by degrees rendered more venturesome and callous, he boldly launches upon the boisterous ocean of vice and intemperance, and sinks from one degree of baseness to another, till all sense of shame and decency being lost, he ends the life which opened with promises so fair, shunned and detested by every virtuous and upright man. Thus ends the eventful history of the broom-stick. It remains for us briefly to notice the equally striking reverses of fortune which have befallen the well-tried partner of its degradation, the broom-head. Some few short months ago, that unseemly bundle of short and stubley twigs was blooming on the skirts of an extensive moor, joying amidst its kindred heather, whose fragrant blossoms shed their odour around, and far as the eye could range, opened their pale beauties to the summer sun. Thousands of industrious bees drew the precious treasure from their honeyed cups, while the whirring muir fowl sheltered amidst the tangled roots. Dark was the day, and ill-omened the hour, when a tribe of tawny wanderers pitched their tents upon the heath, and converted the flowery shrub into this identical broom-head! And does not the sad lot of the beauteous heather, remind us of any similar melancholy change among the inhabitants of the animate and rational world? We need not look far for an object equally deserving of our sympathy. See you that lost, that wretched fair one, clothed in the tawdry trappings of sin, and flushed with intemperance? Turn not away with disgust or contempt-that girl was once her father's pride, her mother's joy-the morning of her life saw her embosomed in affection, surrounded by a number of gay and virtuous beings, beauteous and happy as herself-lightly did the winged moment pass, while thoughtless, but innocent mirth, dilated each fond heart with joy, and clad each blooming cheek with never-ceasing gladness. Under the mask of friendship and love; did the fell destroyer first intrude into this paradise of innocence and delight! By long and studied villainy did he acquire a power over his victim, till, laying aside the cloak of hypocrisy which had shrouded his infernal design, he robbed that lovely, that blooming flower, of its beauty and its worth, and left it a'sport and a prey to the world, to pine and to perish in sin. Such is the horrid fate of many a beauteous innocent; and such the inhuman means by which they are robbed of their virtue, and reduced to the lowest depths of misery and despair. "Is there in human form that bears a heart, Is there no pity, no relenting ruth, Points to the parents fondling o'er their child; Then paints the ruin'd maid and their distraction wild?" That such wretches, that such villains do exist, to the disgrace of human nature, and to the destruction of many an unsuspecting female, the crowds of forlorn beings that meet us at every step, and raise the blush of shame upon virtue's cheek, too truly prove. Oh! then, ye lovely innocents, shun the wiles of the destroyer; banish from your society every monster who has wronged the innocence, or taken foul and unmanly advantage of the frailty of a sister; repress with spirited and virtuous indignation the faintest semblance of insulting freedom-so may your innocence prove the happy means of rescuing others from temptation, and raise you in the scale of perfection, nearer and nearer to the purity of that Being, who sees, and who will surely reward your virtue. And can I leave you, sons of my country, to run the heedless way of folly, without offering one warning word to you, and snatching my country's future stay and fairest hope from the besetting perils that surround them? Be assured, ye youths of cheering promise, that the sad and untimely reverse which you mourn in the towering branch's doom, must inevitably befall yourselves, unless you unite with the sprightly recklessness of early life, a portion, at least, of the prudence of more matured age. "Ev'n thou who mourn'st the sapling's fate, That fate is thine-no distant date; Stern ruin's ploughshare drives elate Full on thy bloom, Till crush'd beneath the furrow's weight Learn, then, betimes, to check that dangerous exuberance of spirits which so often hurries the youthful votary of pleasure into excesses which countless days of pain, and nights of sorrow, will scarcely suffice to expiate. When the siren pleasure displays the most seducing aspect, and with her most alluring voice invites to the free indulgence of every passion, oh! let not your better judgment be perverted by the specious sophistry of the base and designing; pause while reason still.retains the helm, and reflect upon the inevitable sorrow and shame that must, of necessity, follow the unbounded indulgence of sensual and vicious habits. However exalted your rank, however bright your talents, however gifted you may be by nature or fortune, however "quick to learn and wise to know," if thoughtless folly, if vice and intemperance sully your reputation, or stain VOL. 8-No. 7-2 K. your fair name, you can never expect but, that like the sapling, you will be degraded from your station among men; and unless the frequent tear of sorrow, the deep-felt groan of repentance, and the sincere sigh of contrition, evince your return to the paths of wisdom and virtue, you will be doomed to merited and lasting disgrace, and end your days overwhelmed with contempt and derision. ON A WITHERED FLOWER. The two following poems, we are informed, are the compositions of a girl fourteen years of age, who has been blind seven years. They were sent to us by her father, John Hetherington, P. P. G. M., Nelson Lodge, Kendal. BEFORE I pluck'd this little flower, And said it on my heart should rest- I look'd again, but all was gone, Kendal. THE TEAR OF SYMPATHY. THERE is a gem more dear to me, More dear than wealth or power to me,- When misery and sickness come And shed one tear of sympathy! MARY JANE HETHERINGTON. THE beautiful tints that nature so lavishly bestows upon her offspring in the latter autumn, had given place to the more sombre colouring of early winter. The deep clustering leaves of the maple, the pale delicate leaf of the beech, the full umbrageous foliage of the horse chestnut-all had dropped away, nipped by the gusty, searching winds, that almost invariably usher in a Canadian winter. Around nothing was to be seen but the bare, rugged rocks, and barren earth, with the tall unsightly stems of the monarchs of the forest, which a few weeks previous were gracefully bending to the breeze, adding beauty to the landscape, and affording a delightful shade and retreat from the attacks of the myriads of gnats and buzzing insects, that at this particular season of the year are most active in their gyrations and gambols, and most troublesome to human and animal life. The transition from this state of things to that of nature's rougher mood, was, in a great measure, a welcome one. A hard frost had held its sway for the space of seven or eight weeks, only varied in its intensity by occasional heavy falls of snow that robed our mother earth in a deep unbroken covering of spotless white, spangled over with gems of the purest water, that sparkled in the morning sun in a manner so brilliant and dazzling, that the sight would become overpowered by gazing, and temporary, if not prolonged, blindness, be the result of a too protracted exposure to the refraction of its rays. The snow, alighting on the widely-spreading branches of the trees, and melting in the noon day sun, was intercepted in its downward course by the succeeding frost, and converted into icicles of every conceiveable shape and form, presenting to the traveller, through this densely wooded country, scenes of the most grotesque character, yet, when taken as a whole, and the eye suffered to range over the expansive landscape, he would feel that a sense of grand, though stern, sublimity was graven on his mind, possibly never to be eradicated. It is at such times as these that the worthy Canadian, shutting all ideas of business out of his head, alive only to anticipated pleasure, encases himself in a multidude of furs, and springing into his gaudily painted sleigh, or cariole, with its accompaniment of jingling bells, dashes away in company of a party of friends and neighbours, to visit some far famed locality, to drive a few miles up the river, and pic-nic at a rural inn on its banks, or drop in at some merry-making at a log house, twenty miles distant, whose owner is known far and wide for his hospitality, good cheer, and the breadth of his jokes and good humour. The return of the party, under the glare of a northern winter night, is a scene no "southron" can form an adequate idea of. The beautiful clear night, scarcely deriving an additional ray of light from the moon-the stillness of every thing around, broken only by the clatter of the numerous small bells that stud the harness, or the snatches of "song and revelry" that ever and anon burst forth, with now and then an upset, and one of the party buried up to his waist in snow, from having gone off the track, and another with his sleigh turned upside down, earnestly calling for his own liberation from beneath it. This, together with a certain lightness of spirits that usually accompanies a rarified atmosphere, tend to make them as happy as they can well be; equally disposed to laugh at others as to be laughed at, as serious accidents from sleighing seldom occur, a mouthful of snow, or a scratched face, being the ordinary penalty for the day's pleasure. Man can, at all times, and in all weathers, contrive to extract a share of enjoyment sufficient to compensate him for the troubles of life if his mind be properly formed, and he takes contentment as his rule of action. If the weather be warm, how many sources of enjoyment are open to him? On the contrary, if frost and wind preside over the seasons, can he not drive, shoot, skate, sit by the cheerful blaze listening to |