having got some distance from home, his black companion, who probably had from the first suspected the farmer's intentions, suddenly faced about, closed with him, and wrenched the gun from his grasp.

Ward uttered a cry of alarm as the negro cocked the gun and raised it to his shoulder, but fortunately the triggers were not set, and the farmer rushed behind a tree at a few yards distant. Here he waited until the negro had fired; and as the contents of the second barrel rattled against the tree, the farmer drew his hunting hatchet and rushed upon his antagonist.

The black was not unprepared:-he had concealed about him a large butcher's knife, which he quickly produced, and a fierce struggle immediately ensued. Both were powerful men, and the combat was for life or death. As they closed on each other, Ward's dog sprung upon the negro, who had not perhaps calculated on this addition to his antagonist's strength; but he resolutely continued the combat, and at length dispatched the faithful animal by a skilful stroke on the neck.

The negro had freed himself from one of his enemies; but Ward, enraged at the loss of his faithful dog, fought with still greater desperation, and several blows and stabs were exchanged. The farmer received a deep, though not dangerous, gash on the breast, and the blood of his adversary welled from several wounds: still each grasped his weapon, and the result of the struggle remained doubtful.

Much has been said and written upon the valour of men, who, locked up in armour, endeavoured to thrust each other from their war steeds, or with mace and battle-axe battered each others heads for an hour together. Now-adays, a man is considered brave if he possess nerve enough to stand and receive his antagonist's fire at twelve paces, without flinching. It is difficult to define true courage, but old Quarles himself would not have hesitated to acknowledge that it was conspicuous in the combatants, whose desperate struggle we are endeavouring to describe.

The horrible fray still continued. With such weapons, scarcely a blow could have been struck without inflicting a ghastly, if not a dangerous, wound. At length, exhausted and faint with loss of blood, the negro sunk upon the greensward, covered with innumerable wounds and drenched in gore.

To the eternal honour of the Yankee farmer, he did not take advantage of his mutilated adversary as he lay on the ground bleeding and helpless. His foe was at his feet, and a single blow of his hatchet might have inflicted the coup de grace, and revenged the death of his faithful dog; but Ward was a brave man-he made the poor wretch, whom he had overpowered, promise not to quit the spot, and then hastened in search of assistance. When he returned, the negro was gone; but the carcass of his trusty dog, the ground torn up as though it had been the scene of a bull fight, and the bushes besprinkled with blood, attested the violence of the struggle.

"There was as much blood on the ground," said those who visited the spot, "as if some animal had been butchered." B. Q. T.

"THE English," says the Quarterly Review, "flatter themselves by a pretence that Shakspeare and Milton are popular in England. It is good taste, indeed, to wish to have it believed that those poets are popular. Their names are so; but if it be said that the works of Shakspeare and Milton are popularthat is, liked and studied-among the wide circle whom it is now the fashion to talk of as enlightened, we are obliged to express our doubts whether a grosser delusion was ever promulgated. Not a play of Shakspeare's can be ventured on the London stage without mutilation-and without the most revolting balderdash foistered into the rents made by managers in his divine dramas; nay, it is only some three or four of his pieces that can be borne at all by our all-intelligent public, unless

As

the burthen be lightened by dancing, singing, or processioning. This for the stage. But is it otherwise with the reading public? We believe it is worse; we think, verily, that the apprentice or his master who sits out Othello, or Richard at the theatre, gets a sort of glimpse, a touch, and atmosphere of intellectual grandeur; but he could not keep himself awake during the perusal of that which he admires—or fancies he admires-in scenic representation. to understanding Shakspeare-as to entering into all Shakspeare's thoughts and feelings as to seeing the idea of Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello, as Shakspeare saw it this we believe falls, and can only fall, to the lot of the really cultivated few, and of those who may have so much of the temperament of genius in themselves, as to comprehend and sympathise with the criticism of men of genius. Shakspeare is now popular by name, because, in the first place, great men, more on a level with the rest of mankind, have said that he is admirable; and also because, in the absolute universality of his genius, he has presented points to all. Every man, woman, and child, may pick at least one flower from his garden, the name and scent of which are familiar. To all which must of course be added the effect of theatrical representation, be that representation what it may. There are tens of thousands of persons in this country, whose only acquaintance, much as it is, is through the stage.'

[We have been much pleased with the foregoing remarks, and yet, after all, they are but a bundle of truisms. Every body knows that a certain standard author is the fashion for a time, just because some Sir Oracle of the day has thought fit to call him "divine" or "delightful." There is no library, scarcely indeed a two-shelved book-rack, without its Shakspeare, the players now and then giving us a travesty of one of his plays, and the Germans having made the wonderful discovery that he was a mighty genius! That Shakspeare is not justly appreciated, even by many of those whom we are taught to look upon as, in some degree, enlightened, may be inferred from the strange opinions of his commentators. We have, too, essays without number on the chief characters of Shakspeare, but who shall give us a dissertation on the subordinate personages that figure among his numerous and beautiful creations?]

I like a quotation; especially if it be from the classics, or poetical, and at the commencement of an article. It gives to one's production an easy, dashing appearance, and tells much of one's acquirements, of one's reading and memory. A quotation, in short, is decidedly a good thing.

It has been a matter of much regret to me, that while poets have sung the "Pleasures of Hope," the "Pleasures of Memory," and the "Pleasures of the Imagination," no patriot member of my profession has yet been found to trumpet forth the Pleasures of an Attorney. The loves, also, of all living things, from “The loves of the angels" to "The loves of the shell fishes,” have been celebrated in sweet sounding rhyme, while the effects of the grand passion on an attorney have not yet found an historian, even in honest and unpretending prose. Mine, then, shall be the task to portray them, and mine own, the loves that form the subject of this great effort.

I was a remarkably enterprising boy, and made out to work myself, at the age of twelve, into a huge passion for a very demure little infant, who had numbered

about as many years. But, as my heart was first caught by a chinchilla hat, and my affections were withdrawn from their object on account of a conceived slight from her, in playing "scorn," I will pass from this, "my first love," with the single remark, that at this early period I formed an attachment for moonlight nights, and learned several lines of Moore's,

"When at eve thou rovest,

By the star thou lovest," &c. Several flames of a similar character, in the course of the three or four following years, blazed up in my susceptible bosom, burned brilliantly for a short period flickered-and went out. The next great epoch in the history of my affections was my sixteenth year.

I have before me (only in imagination, dear reader!) a face that utterly baffles my skill in portraiture. I might say that it was sweet-that it was beautiful -angelic-intellectual; I might use a thousand such generally descriptive terms, but I should convey no idea of the young girl my memory has conjured up, and who sits smiling before me, as if

in mockery of my vain efforts. What shall I do? Shall I commence an inventory of her charms, classify and combine them, add beauty to beauty, grace to grace, perfection to perfection, until I have worked up the portrait into loveliness equal to the original? Or shall I try comparisons and similes, and describe her in a rhetorical figure? I like the latter idea best. It is soonest accomplished, and will display the brilliancy of my fancy. Flowers, it is said, are the language of love-I will make them the vehicle of my description of a lovely woman. There is something in their light, delicate, and transient beauty, so like her of whom I write, and withal, so like her love for me, that they are admirably to my present purpose. Once more, then, let me address myself to thee, dear reader, and ask thee if thou hast ever seen a water-lily-a young, tall, slender, graceful water-lily? hast, thou hast seen something as young, perhaps half as tall, and probably even more slender; but certainly not half as graceful as Helen G., when in her fifteenth year. After all, I do not think water-lilies are perfectly adapted to the description of female beauty. They answer well enough as long as we confine our observations to the figure, face, complexion, &c., and are even useful when writing about eyes, as, for in

stance:

If thou

"Her floating eyes-oh! they resemble Blue water-lilies, when the breeze Is making the stream around them tremble." But when we come to the expression of the countenance, water-lilies, and all other flowers, are dead letter. There are a thousand beauties which they have no language to convey.

Since writing the above quotation, it has occurred to me that a poetical would be better even than a flowery description of my Helen. There is something in the very softness of poetry, its refinement, its elevation, its enthusiasm, so congenial with the female character-so allied to feminine loveliness, that it is singular the idea should not have entered my pericranium before. But, alas! I am an attorney, and there is a manifest incongruity between poetry and law. But if I cannot write, I can quote it; and with a proper admixture of poetical quotations and prose writing, I think I shall be able to convey to the reader some idea of one who exercised a controlling influence over my early, very early life.

When I first knew Helen G., she was

not fifteen; half-woman, half-childuniting the light-hearted gaiety and playfulness of the one with the intelligence and accomplishments of the other. "Oh, she was beautiful! her flowing hair Hung in profusion round her neck of snow, And oft, in maiden glee and sportiveness, Her gentle hand would catch her clustering curls,

And bind them in a braid around her brow. Oh, she was beautiful! her graceful form Moved upon earth so lightly and so freeShe seemed a seraph-wanderer of the sky, Too bright, too pure, too glorious for earth."

Oh, she was beautiful! and my eyes told her so; and a stifling, choking sensation I experienced on taking her hand to bid her farewell, some months after my first acquaintance, told me--what a sudden gush of tears a moment afterwards told her, that I-sweet youth-was in love with her! Was it sympathy that for a moment dimmed her laughing eye? Was it with feeling that her voice trembled and her lip quivered, as she expressed the hope that she should see me again? Was it with anger that her cheek crimsoned, as I, for the first time, stole a kiss from her lips? I know not, for I hastened from her presence, wildered, amazed, sobbing, happy, foolish! She went to school, and I was desolate. I continued my accustomed pursuits, but they no longer possessed interest for me. I resorted to my old amusements, but the lightness of spirit that once gave zest to them was with me no longer. My eyes would wander over

be

the pages of my books; but they might

as well have rested on vacancy, for my heart was with its owner, and my fancy was busy in scenes enlivened by her presence. For four months I thus remained, partly happy and partly miserable, but always idle. This dreaming life was interrupted by the actual presence of her who was the spirit of it. I did not let "concealment prey on my damask cheek," but told my love, and was happy-happy for one short month, which being the utmost limit of a boarding-school vacation, I was more separated from the object of my idolatry.

once

Years passed before I saw her again, and I had become an actor on the busy stage of life; a whirlwind of human passions and cares had swept over the heart once occupied with her image; but through all changes and through all temptations I had garnered up in it the recollection of my early affection, and with an unwavering devotion had guarded it from the grosser and more selfish feelings that began to find entrance there.

"We met-'t was in a crowd," at a large party. She was a gay, dashing, fashionable woman, surrounded by admirers and flatterers, to whom she was dispensing, with wonderful ease and grace, the words and nods and smiles, without which they assured her they could not exist. I think I observed a slight fluttering in her manner as proached. I think the hue of her cheek was a little less brilliant, and that her voice was a little tremulous, as she answered my congratulations on her arrival at

ap

But it must have been fancy, for the last word of her reply had hardly died upon her lips, before she was engaged in a spirited conversation with a gentleman standing near her. One moment convinced me that the school-girl's love was forgotten. The demon of fashion had taken possession of the heart I had for years foolishly thought mine, and the love of admiration had distorted a sweet, unaffected girl into a coquette. From the time I made this discovery, I gave up all hope of further experience of the "grand passion," and determined, inasmuch as a wife appeared indispensable to my reputable standing in society, to make what is called "a prudent marriage"that is, to marry, what I had not, a plenty of this world's gear. "Hereafter," I exclaimed, "the shaft of Cupid must be gilded to pierce me. It is impossible for me to conceive a passion for merit and beauty alone. I would as soon think of coveting an empty coffer, as falling in love with a girl without the necessary attaché of fortune. Yes-my

"Tender sigh and trickling tear, Long for a thousand pounds a year," not the requisites for love in a cottage; for the money itself-not for assistance in hastening the departure of my own few straggling farthings. Unfortunately for my matrimonial prospects, the warmth of my new determination carried me into extremes, and instead of selecting for my future partner in life a moderately ugly woman, with a moderately large fortune, I opened my batteries upon a positive fright, with an estate larger than the domains of a score of German princes. Alas! she was the child of misfortune, and my heart was, from the first, drawn towards her by the holy and blessed sympathy we feel for those on whom the hand of affliction presses. She had been bereaved of a father, who I presume was affectionate, and deserving of her love, and was the only child of her mother, and she (to wit, her mother) was a widow

a rich widow--very rich by her dower out of the estate, of which her daughter was the heiress. Poor girl! was she not to be pitied?

It was an afternoon in June. I was most romanticly taking a sociable cup of tea with my proposed spouse, under an old oak, at her country-seat on the river I was drafting a declaration of my feelings, and had, with great care, framed one, to which I thought she could not possibly demur; when, on raising my eyes from the green turf, to open my suit, my attention was arrested by the surpassing beauty of the view before me. I am not an enthusiastic admirer of scenery of any description, and, with the exception of that dear little animate production, the fairest of all, the works of nature are unheeded by me, or passed with an acknowledgment merely, not a feeling that they are beautiful and glorious. But when I looked upon the noble river before me, winding its way through a rich and blooming country, decked with islands, and bordered with green; and, above all, when the setting sun, collecting, as it were, all his glory in a dying effort, threw his golden light over the scene, giving his own hue to the sails, which here and there were spread to receive the faint breath of expiring day, and increasing the splendour of the distant view, I felt for once that the works of nature were beautiful; and that this world, notwithstanding the assertions of interesting young admirers of Byron, who with hanging heads, bare throats, and black neck-kerchiefs, bewail their blighted hopes, and rail against their lot in having been created mortals, was one in which I might content myself to live-to live, and live happyhappy even without the assistance of my co-teadrinker.

I gave up the idea of a prudent marriage, and my affections were once more afloat. But love had become a disease with me. Like the stimulant of the opium-eater, or the potations of the confirmed drunkard, it became essential to my existence. My next flame had but one fault, which, unfortunately, I did not discover until my affections were almost irrecoverably fixed upon her. She was the most brilliantly beautiful girl I ever beheld. In form, feature, and complexion, she was unequalled; and the dazzling brightness of her eyes, the fine classic structure of her head, and the air of easy grace which pervaded all her movements, made her attractive in the highest degree. I was a lover at sight. My imagination, ardent as usual, made

her in mind all I could wish. I was delighted on a first acquaintance, with the piquancy of her remarks and her powers of conversation. I adored her. I opened to her the inmost recesses of my heart; I gave vent to the romance, the enthusiasm, the poetry of my nature. In a voice musical as the waterfall that murmured near my feet, soft and sweet as the summer night-wind that gently lifted my hair, I spoke to her of love, of the passion of love, of love in the abstract, its hopes, its fears, its joys, its sorrows, and, at last, I spoke to her of my love! As with a trembling hand I took hers, and with a voice inarticulate with emotion, I proceeded with my tale-she suddenly turned around to me, and said, "Now, you needn't think to cheat me. I know what you want. You want to flirt with me, and I won't!"

She was a stick, a stone, a warmed and walking piece of marble, without a particle of feeling or sentiment; beautiful as the finest productions of the statuary; glowing, to appearance, as the emanations of the painter, but, in fact, as dead and insensible as either.

Interesting as these recollections are to me, I fear to dwell longer on them, and will therefore hasten to a close. Repeated disappointment did not discourage me. Rejections were often a relief; for like the "two third act" to a bankrupt, they cleared off old scores, and enabled me to commence anew. Long and perseveringly did I struggle against my fate. But I was obliged to yield at length, and submit to my present life of single blessedness. Other causes than those to which I have here alluded, have contributed to my present destiny, but they have also tended to make me satisfied with it. My life, since all hope of change has departed, and the fire and impetuosity of youth have given place to the moderation and love of quietude, which come with the increase of years, is not unpleasing to me. It is agitated but by gentle hopes and fears, by_chastened joys and meek sorrows. The ruder storms rage not over it-sun and cloud still, in their turn, light and darken its horizon, and the coming breeze is not ungrateful; for while it changes its hue, its gives variety and freshness to its form. The pleasures of the domestic circle, and the endearments of reciprocated love, it is true, are denied me, but my heart has found other objects to which it has attached itself; and the tenderness that, prodigal-like, I would have lavished upon one, now finds an outpouring in benevolence to my fellow-creatures.