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"What's the matter, sir?" said I.

"The matter! Och! by the howly powker, you've squazed the corn on my little toe, what was as big as a pratee-as flat as a tinpenny."

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I beg your pardon, sir," said I; "I thought I was standing upon the boot." "Upon the boot!" groaned Pat. "Och! botheration !--the divil a boot was it it was my shoe-and was'nt my own tinder foot in it, under your hard hoof and great guts! Och! you've spoiled my dancing for the next tin years."

Finding I could not pacify either Pat or Mrs. Wallop, I sat in silence— and we proceeded for some distance in this unsociable state. At last, ill humour wore off, and before we got to Hounslow we began to chat a little, and to forget our disasters. Nothing occurred to interrupt our good humour, except a little ill-timed facetiousness of Pipkin's, who likened Mrs. Wallop, and her ornament of eggs, to the " Golden Bull,"-and now and then, she was assailed with coarser comparisons and jokes from the urchins on the road. We were, however, a little disconcerted at Hounslow; for, on changing horses, it was found that the eggs, drying, had cemented Mrs. Wallop's gown to my coat, and also her nether garments to the coach-seat. However, after a few efforts we disengaged her, though not without some damage to her habiliments, and still more, of her temper.

Once more we started, and as we advanced over Hounslow Heath, the facetiousness of our party began to revive, particularly that of the Irishman. "Yonder," said Pipkin-pointing to a building-" yonder is one of them there houses, vot they call powder mills."

"Powther mills," cries Pat, aloud, "now I'll be telling you what happened to my uncle Dennis O'Shaughnessy, in one of these same powther mills. It blowed up. Would ye be liking to hear the story?"

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Certainly," ," said Pipkin; and by way of preparing himself as a listener, pulled out of his basket, to my horror, one of those detestable cigars.

I lifted up the capes of my Benjamin and shrunk from him, but he payed no heed. He lighted his cigar, and Pat began his story.

"My uncle Dennis, d'ye see, loved a joke and a drop of the cratur as well as any Tipperary lad as ever stepped in brogues. Well, he'd been after coming to London to look out for a little job or so-and it fell out that his ould frind Larry Magrone, the ostler, chose to die just at that place, where we changed horses-and Dennis was invited down to wake his ould frindand a very pretty wake it was, as all the family can tell. There was half a gallon more whiskey and the like drinkt there, nor there was drinkt at ould O'Dwyer's wake. Uncle Dennis did his part-nobody was fonder of Larry nor grieved more for him nor he did. So he was determined to shew his grief as a frind ought to do-and, by the powers, when the morning broke every body was blind drunk except uncle Dennis-he sat like a rale Irishman and a loving frind; and emptied the last bottle of whiskey; and then, peeping into the coffin, to wish Larry good-bye, he took his shilelagh under his arm and his pipe in his mouth, and came to take his walk upon this heath. Well, what should he come to but one of these what-do'ye-callums→→ the powther mills. He was'nt drunk, d'ye see, but just a wee bit fuzzy or so; so he meets a country chap, and says he Arrah, honey, what d'ye call this house all alone?' Its a powther mill,' says the man. A powther mill,' says my uncle, I never saw a powther mill in all my life-by my soul, I must be after seeing this. You must'nt,' says Hodge. Must not!— Arrah, my jewel-Mustn't! but I will,' cried uncle Dennis, so good luck and good day to ye.' So Hodge stared and grinned, and uncle Dennis went to the house. As I tould ye before, he'd his pipe in his mouth and his shilelagh under his arm-so he finds the gates open, and walks in some way -when a chap comes running up to him and says, what's that ye'd be after-where are you going frind?' 'What's that to you,' says Dennis.———

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It is something to me,' says the other. So what's your business?' Is it my business ye'd want to know-my pleasure's my business. I am going to see the powther mill,' says Dennis. Then you can't go,' says the other. "Can't,' says Dennis, who says can't to Dennis O'Shaughnessy?' • Get out, you vagabone,' says the chap, or I'll turn you out.' Vagabone,' cries uncle, is it vagabone, ye'd say? Arrah my jewel, nobody says an uncivil thing to Dennis O'Shaughnessy twice.' So he gives him a tap with the tip of the shilelagh and down the fellow goes. Dennis marches right on into the powther mill-when he hears the chap, he knocked down, bawling out 'run for your lives there is a mad drunken Irishman walked into the corning house with a lighted pipe in his mouth-run, run, for your lives!' So uncle Dennis looked round, and he saw all the work-people running as if they had a wild baste at their heels. 6 'Mad,' says he, mad and drunk! would

any body but mad people run at that rate? what are the fools scampering for-have ye never seen an Irishman before, my jewels?' So uncle, after laughing at the people as was running away, turned round, and taking the pipe from his mouth, knocked out the ashes, when

Here Pipkin pulled the cigar out of his mouth, and in expectation of the dreadful catastrophe, dropped his trembling hand lump down on his basket. "Blood and ouns!" suddenly roared Paddy. Fluff!-whiz-flashı !— bang!-smoke! went the basket in Pipkin's lap.

"Blood and ouns!" roared Paddy, "where are we? Here's the ghost of uncle Dennis-the rale powther mill has blowed up!"

Mrs. Wallop screamed: I started up almost suffocated, and feeling a most furious dab in my eye, from something that slipped down into the bosom of my waistcoat. Pipkin fell back flat upon the roof of the coach. "Hilloa!" cried Scarborough, with great difficulty pulling up his startled horses-" confound you what's the matter ?"

"Och! bother!" shouted Paddy-"we are all blowed up and kilt by the ghost of uncle Dennis."

"Uncle devil," says Scarborough-"What's the matter?"

"Och! here is poor Mr. Pipkin clane kilt," says Paddy. "Here's all the blood running down his breeches like the gutter of a slaughter-house; and here's a great bit of his brains sticking out of his poor head! Och hone! Poor Mr. Pipkin!"

Scarborough was greatly alarmed at this intelligence, and giving the reins to a passenger, he scrambled over the roof to help Pipkin.

"Come," says he, "the gentleman is not quite kilt yet. The blood smells rather like port wine. I do not know whether he has any brains inside his head, but certainly there are none sticking out.' It's only a bit of sausage meat, and some gravy of a meat pie."

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By this time I had mustered courage to feel what it was that had hit me in the eye, and slipt into my bosom. Upon fishing it up, it turned out to be a fragment of a veal pie.

The mystery of uncle Dennis's ghost now came out. Pipkin had some loose cartridges which he had picked up after a review; and a little powder in a powder-flask at the bottom of his basket. On his being in trembling expectation of Dennis O'Shaughnessy's catastrophe, he had dropped his hand heavily on the basket, and shaking the sparks of his cigar through the interstices of the wicker-work, produced the explosion which blew it up, with the fragments of his veal pie, sausage meat, and a phial of port wine and water, prepared to sustain him under the fatigues of shooting,

Pipkin soon recovered from his swoon, and was found to be only slightly scorched but what with the eggs, the smoke, the blaze, and the gravy of the veal-pie, my new Benjamin is completely spoiled, and you may offer it to any of your customers as a bargain. It is to be sold for half price.

But, Mr. Oldcastle, it is very hard that these detestable. cigars are to be allowed to do so much mischief. They manage these things better in Bokhara, as the subjoined extract from the Times will prove

PUNISHMENT FOR SMOKING IN THE STREETS.-Burnes, in his travels in Central Asia, in his description of Bokhara, a large city, states-" You may openly purchase tobacco, and all the most approved apparatus for inhaling it; yet if seen smoking in public, you are straightway dragged before the Cazee, punished by stripes, or paraded on a donkey, with a blackened face, as a warning to others." This is a good hint to Europeans, for the prevalence of smoking in the streets of our town is a great nuisance. Matthews, in his recent budget, has a hit at the common practice, and says, "The dandies darken London by smoking cigars in

the streets."

I hope you will direct Lord Althorp's attention to this. It will give him a nice opportunity for another of those jobs he is so fond of-the appointment of a travelling commission," with proper salaries, &c., to inquire into the state of cigar smoking outside coaches, and the incomes of the people who presume to smoke them, and how much they spend in that SAMPSON SQUASH.

way.

We suppose our friend Squash is a friend to the « Corporation" commission, though he does not say that they have attempted to inquire into his corporation; or how it has grown and been sustained.-G. O.]

HOPE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE NORTHMEN."

E'en as the light, whose evening splendour rests,
On myriad rain-drops falling from on high,
While, far away, the dim and shadowy crests
Of lightning clouds, o'erlook the troubled sky,
Painting the rainbow there most gloriously,
So art thou-HOPE! most beautiful and bright,
When tears and sadness canker in the mind;
Piercing grief's darkness with thy pure delight,
And finding good, where none might think to find.
The universal comforter, whose hand

Directs the wanderer o'er life's thorny way;

Luring him on with visions traced on sand,

Oft-times deceiving, yet believed, for

aye,

The fairest, holiest boon that soul has given to clay.

Thou art an iris, visionary form!

Baseless on earth, yet rising far to Heaven.
Tracing thy beauties on approaching storm,
As, from the dim horizon's verge, are driven

The white topped clouds, like mountains thunder-riven:
Beauteous to look on, yet a transient thing,
Showing how quick the loveliest pass away.
Thus do the fancies of the soul take wing,
As fairest flowers the soonest meet decay.
Chaining the sense, alluring all the soul,
Mocking the grasp, and fleeting from the sight,
While onward, onward, Fate's dim vapours roll;
Though still the memory of that rainbow light,

May cheer the saddened heart, and lead its thoughts aright.

Thou art a river, bursting from a spring

Whose hidden fountain is supplied by tears,
And, at thine outset, often men will bring,

To check thy current, their own soul-born fears;
The cynic thoughts of uncompanioned years.
Becoming, as thou rollest along thy way
A charmer of the sorrows, which behold
The earliest sunshine of thy natal day;
Soothing the sadness which cannot be told,
Nor ever all-forgotten: to thy wave
At Adam's fall, celestial hues were given :
Earth is thy course, and through the silent grave

Swiftly and surely are thy waters driven,

Leading through life and death, the guide from earth to Heaven.

Men are the bubbles on thy surface borne,
Many and various. Sometimes, one will stand
Brighter than those around him, and will mourn
All are not like himself, and then expand
His own existence with magician's hand,
Until the o'erstretched fibre rends away,
Sinking to nothingness; and quickly come,
To drive remembrance from his transient day,
Thick fetid shoals of congregated scum
Darkening the loathing river; and meanwhile,
Will lowly mortals keep their peaceful course,
Whose humble fame not slander can defile,
All noiseless gliding from the streamlet's source
Shunning ambition's crags, and rocks of dark remorse.
Eternity's the ocean, where thy wave

To scenes without horizon, gently flows,
Lost, in that boundlessness beyond the grave,
That dark existence, which no mortal knows,
And the dumb soul is powerless to disclose;
A realm of joys o'erhung with joyless cloud,
Pierced with one entrance, where thy far-off stream,
With purest radiance gilds the misty shroud:
Alluring with that ever silvery beam

The aery things that skim thy beauteous tide,
Till, on the surface of that heavenly sea,
Where, through all time, thy limpid waters glide,
Each storm forgotten, and each sail set free,
Shall rest the barks of Life in peace eternally.

DR. ROBERTSON YOU MAY GO TO YOUR STUDIES.

(An original Anecdote of the Historian of Charles V.)

RESPECTED MR. OLDCASTLE.-The following anecdote, if it deserve the name, of the celebrated Dr. Robertson, was told me by the late Reverend Andrew Philip Poston, vicar of East Tilbury. He had it from Dr. Edward Harwood, the author of " an Introduction to the Study of the New Testament." Harwood was "under very great obligations" to Dr. Robertson, and for aught I know to the contrary, might have been told it by the Doctor himself. Be this as it may, as all parties have been some years dead, and the anecdote has never been published, you may, if you will, send it forth to the world through your Magazine.

When Robertson was at his little cure in the country, immediately after dinner he retired to his study, to work at his great historical undertaking. Mrs. Robertson, who felt the loneliness of her situation, seeing him rise from the table one day much earlier than usual, said," Really, Dr. Robertson, dull as the place is, you determine to make it worse, by giving me as little of your society as possible." "My dear Mrs. Robertson," answered the Doctor, "I must go to my studies." He went.

Shortly after this, the work being completed, Robertson journeyed to London, and disposed of the MS. to that very liberal house, the Cadells, for a sum of money at that time considerable to a Scotch author. On his return home, elated with success, and telling the story to his wife, he sat at the table much longer than usual. At length the old habit growing strong, he turned his eyes wistfully towards the door of the study. The wife, forgetting the want of his society in the profit of the labour, reading the wish of her husband, rose from the chair, and said, "Dr. Robertson, you may go to your studies."

Hythe, October 7, 1834.

CLERICUS.

GABRIEL LINDSAY.

BY GEOFFREY OLDCASTLE.

In the summer of 1670 Mr. Pemberton went to reside with his family at the then rural and distant village of Hackney, in a mansion that had formerly belonged to a brother of the gallant Sir Edmund Varney, who was slain at the battle of Edgehill, nobly refusing to shun death by the surrender of the royal standard. "My life," said he, " is my own, and I can dispose of it; but this standard is mine and your sovereign's, and while I live will not yield it."

Mr. Pemberton was a merchant; and his dealings, which lay chiefly in the Levant trade, had been carried on extensively and prosperously. In the pleasant retirement of his new abode, he found relief from the toils of business; in its purer air, a restorative to his somewhat impaired health.

One sabbath morning, strolling through the fields in the direction of the Lea river, he saw a man, dressed in a suit of coarse gray cloth, approaching, whom he thought he knew. As they came nearer to each other, he found he was not mistaken. He accosted him by his name; but the man started aside, looked wildly at him, hurried past, and exclaimed, in a strangely sad and melancholy voice, "Oh, the great and the dreadful God!"

These words carried with them fearful recollections. During the awful visitation of the plague five years before (or rather at the time when people were filled with feverish apprehensions of its coming), a poor crazed creature, as he was considered, ran about the streets night and day (like the man Josephus mentions, who denounced "woe to Jerusalem !" a little before the destruction of that city), crying aloud, "Oh, the great and the dreadful God!" These were the only words he uttered; but he uttered them incessantly, and with a countenance full of horror. He passed swiftly along from street to street. No one ever saw him stop to take rest or food; none held discourse with him; but thousands heard his dire and dismal cry. When Mr. Pemberton returned home he mentioned to his wife what had occurred.

"Do you remember," said he, " our poor friend Gabriel Lindsay?" "Yes!” replied Mrs. Pemberton, with a deep sigh. "There was not, in all that time of general misery, a case more sad and terrible than his." "I met him this morning."

"Good Heavens !" interrupted his wife, "what do you mean?"

"I am as sure it was he, my dear, as that I am now speaking. I know it was generally supposed he was one of the tens of thousands who, during the fiercest ravages of the pestilence, were flung by night into the common receptacles of the dead; but assuredly it was not so; for if ever Gabriel Lindsay lived, he crossed my path this morning, and I spoke to him." Spoke to him!"

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"Yes."

"Then he knew and answered ?"?

you

"Neither," said Mr. Pemberton. “ I called him by his name; but he hurried on, ejaculating as he passed, in a tone that thrilled to my very soul, "Oh, the great and the dreadful God !'"

"Did you follow him?"

"No; believing him dead, seeing him thus unexpectedly, and hearing from him only those memorable words, I felt, as it were, transfixed to the spot; and before I could rouse me from my sudden distraction, he was out of sight."

"You must be mistaken, my love."

"We shall see that. He doubtless lives in this neighbourhood; and, if

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