that one whose name began with G, should succeed him; a prophecy which cost the life of George, Duke of Clarence, but which was considered equally well fulfilled by the usurpation of Gloster.

A LEGEND OF EAST ROCK.

Ir is many years since an individual of singular appearance took up his abode in the vicinity of a populous town-an unusual choice of place for one whom misfortune or misanthropy seemed to have rendered averse to human society, but not an injudicious one in this case, since the spot afforded the solitude of the desert without its remoteness from succor.

His humble dwelling, constructed with little skill or care, and scarcely discernible in the tangled thicket, was situated upon a rough hill that rose with picturesque abruptness from the level plain; toward the town rocky and precipitous, but descending on the opposite side with a softer outline. The gray rock was in some places naked to the sun; in others, covered with soil for the most part closely wooded. One spot, in the very midst of the deep shade, was susceptible of cultivation. It was but a strip, but it repaid the rude culture of the recluse with food sufficient for him, and served also to pasture two or three sheep -not doomed to bleed for their master's gratification, but to be harnessed with strips of bark to a little cart, which served him many useful purposes during the Summer, and when Autumn blasts began to lay bare the branches, bore his few movables toward the pleasant south. No one knew where he made his winter abode; but the flitting was regular as that of the

birds, and when they and the flowers returned, back came our hermit to his hovel on the rock.

When we first heard of his existence, he was seldom disturbed or intruded upon. Curiosity had subsided, and the determined silence of the recluse was not calculated to induce a chance visiter to repeat his visit. Strangers were sometimes taken to the hermitage, but to those who had associated the flowing beard, staff, cross and rosary with the idea of a hermit, our recluse seemed but a poor representation of the class. He was a coarse, rough-looking person, clothed in a sort of Robinson Crusoe style; and his whole air was one which the most romantic imagination would have found it difficult to invest with the character of saintly repose which always marks the hermit of story. A student would sometimes terminate his ramble by a short rest in the bough-roofed hovel, or a schoolboy spend his Saturday afternoon in its neighborhood, for the sake of sharing the contents of his basket with the lonely tenant; and in such cases the reception offered by the recluse was quiet but kind, and the offered dainties usually repaid by the gift of some of nature's treasures, which an out-door life enabled him to procure. He would heat his rude oven, and bake apples and potatoes for his guests, while they gathered berries or rambled through the craggy solitudes. But he scarcely ever spoke, and most of his days were passed in absolute solitude.

The accounts I had heard aroused no little interest or curiosity respecting this strange being, when I was one day informed that the hermit was in the kitchen, and had asked leave to take -not exactly "the husks that the swine did eat”—but a piece of white bread which had been consigned to that base use by an unthrifty maid, and which had caught his eye as he passed

her territory, driven from his wretched home by the pangs of hunger. I had heard that he sometimes asked alms in the kitchens of his young visiters, when from want of foresight he found himself without provisions; I was, therefore, not surprised when I heard of his coming. Quite curious, however, I followed my informant immediately, and found a tall, meagre figure, clad in a sort of wrapper of the coarsest kind of blanketing, confined at the waist with a piece of rope. His hair was "sable-silvered," and seemed utterly unconscious of comb or scissors; and his beard not "descending" but full and bushy, concealed completely the mouth and chin, to which I usually look for the expression of character. So much of his face as could be seen showed little trace of refined sensibility. His eye was cold and stern, and one found it difficult to believe it had ever been otherwise; yet I fancied-who could forbear fancying something, of an individual so singular in his appearance and habits!-that the deep furrows of his brow were not the gradual work of time, but the more severe scoopings of remorse or regret, and that they spoke of pangs such as only the strong mind can suffer.

My gaze offended or disconcerted him, for he stepped without the door, so as to screen himself from further scrutiny. I hastened to repair the involuntary fault by addressing him courteously, and inviting him to come in. He neither spoke nor raised his eyes from the ground; so, directing apart that food should be set before him, I left him to dispose of it at his pleasure, for it was evident that he was painfully shy, and that my presence was both unexpected and unwelcome.

I heard of him occasionally through the Summer, but nothing of novelty or interest until the hoarse voice of Autumn

was heard on the hill, and the strides of approaching Winter rustled among the dry leaves of the forest, when it was ascertained that the recluse still occupied his airy summer bower, being too unwell to commence his usual migration. Preparing a few of the little comforts of the sick room, I accompanied his young friends to the rock, in hopes of discovering the nature of his illness and being able to contribute to its cure.

Forlorn and desolate indeed was the situation of the poor solitary. He had been unable to gather in the produce of his little plantation, and the corn was yet on the stalk, and the potatoes in the ground. The trees, stripped of their covering, no longer afforded shelter to the miserable hovel, and the hermit lay exposed to the chilling wind, warmed only by the poor sheep which huddled round him, having followed him to his retreat for protection from the blast, or for the food which the bare and frozen banks now denied them.

He received thankfully the provisions we offered, but resisted every proposal for removing him to a more comfortable asylum, or even for improving the miserable pallet on which he lay. He showed no symptoms of any particular disease, but a general decline of the powers of life. His appearance was much altered, and his face of a transparent paleness; but this might well have been occasioned by the want of such food as his feeble appetite required. He felt quite sure he should be better now, and said he had lain in bed only to keep himself warm. Finding him resolute in rejecting further aid, the young people gathered a supply of fuel, and filled his kettle and hung it over a good fire, and arranged the few comforts we had brought on a rude shelf by the bedside, and we left him. to himself, feeling that however grateful he might be for