of the Shirt" pattern, so freely-are to be invited to turn their attention to the Colonies: and especially, the American market! The names of the parties to whom the monopoly of the dramatic department is to be confided, are not yet decided: but all save the elect are to be bound under the heavy penalty of being pelted in the pillory with one anothers' wares to abstain from interference either tragic, comic, melodramatic, or farcical. For you perceive, Sir, (or the fault is your own-seeing how perpetually it is proved to us) that it is Free Trade which has brought on this crisis: ergo, that a return to the prohibitive system is imperative: or we shall have cruel necessity !- as a class, not so much to make-as to save-fortunes.

What between this unprecedented diffusion of every privilege and pastime, wrought by Time and Change-tending to an entire confusion of all ranks and classes and the measures called for to restrict over-production pure Philanthropists, Sir, seem, indeed, likely to lose themselves in the fog; if they do not carry particularly good lanterns about with them! It would be in vain were I to forbid my Mrs. Bell to go a-shopping with Mrs. Holdshaw-fruitless, were I to ask her, how she could bear to carpet our bed-room with the sighs and sleepless groans of the bankrupt-or to wipe her eyes, when she goes to the play, on the tears of the cambric manufacturer, and of the embroideress, whom his "newly patented tambour jenny" has thrown upon the town!-She would fly in my face, there and then, with the books I am so fond of buying at the stalls-with the cheap editions of the classics, which make such a famous show on our shelves-many of them remainder editions, picked up by one who knows a book-auction pretty well. To try to make people do without what is within their reach, for the sake of benefiting society, is a tolerably useless endeavour, I take it: save in such a peculiar matter, so peculiarly enforced as the Temperance fanaticism (I must so call it) spread amongst superstitious people by a fervent and single-hearted apostle. Howto return on my argument, for an example-should we authors be benefited, supposing that people took a pledge to read fewer books? Or supposing that we really-to let my irony enter the very soul of the subject-bound ourselves to write in smaller quantities, by way of increasing our revenues; to the great joy of the reading public-are we so very sure of prosperity as the consequence? Nor let any one affront my parallel, as one which

has no parallelism. Literature is now just as much a manufacture as carpet or calico weaving. We will have our rewards-our returns our fair profits-compete and struggle, and undersell each other, as busily indifferent to the vow of Poverty, as if we were so many Monks, who, having taken it, know the best how intolerable it is for gentlemen to endure.

What, then, is to be said? How are these fluctuations, belonging to high civilisation, to be averted?-how met, with all their train of secondary evils? Perhaps, not to be averted at all. Every century has its epidemies-these epilepsies may be ours: inseparable from the grand and noble changes which are taking place in society; and the immense discoveries which, ever and anon, send the tide of wealth from a known bed, to make itself seek new channels, leaving behind it barrenness and destitution. They are less of a misery at worst,-Progress be thanked!-than the war-fevers of our ancestors, under which both their minds and bodies paid hideous tribute ! But some alternative might still be offered, methinks, were more enlightened views encouraged; were it not considered the "end-all" and "be-all" of every man to grow rich, as fast as possible: with a corresponding exclusion of higher motives :-were less of show exacted from us, by our friends, and our wives, and ourselves! I have laughed in my place, at the sumptuary presumptions recommended by the " Post," as an impudent attempt to control individual fancy and a free man's use of his own and when I would fain see Fancy's current, like the Thames in "The Critic," kept between its banks, and persuade the free man to another form of investment-my counsel is not a breathing of that despotic, meddling spirit, which longs to force the Teacher's personal code of sympathies and antipathies on Society in general. But if overtrading be not, in part, encouraged by fast living, its consequences, at least, are rendered doubly fatal by the domestic habits of the time present. We cannot-as the Honourable Mrs. Skewton so perpetually and pathetically desired -return to Nature: retrograde towards that pict-orial state, when black and blue paint was our Sunday garb, and a hole in the rock our best bed-room. We ought not to sigh for the simplicity of noisome chambers, for hardy courage studied on bad roads, infested with highwaymen for such heroic candour as gave singleness of blow to the Williams of Deloraine; not one of whom knew his A. B. C. -and Heaven forbid that we should believe that any Father, New-or Wise-man,-any priestly Robert of Montgomery

-or Hugo the son of O'Neil, should be able to lock our friends out of Paradise, or our enemies in the place not to be named, and laid out in lots for those we know, even on the approaching anniversary of the Gunpowder Treason! But if we occupied ourselves more in caring for those who are less rich than ourselves, we should be better provided, methinks, to breast the storm, should it fall upon our own dwellings. If we increased our intellectual pleasures, which are permanent, and less eagerly cherished our sensual tastes, which are ephemeral

Here my Mrs. Bell interrupted me-like the foolish woman she is clamouring about yet another Great House which has just gone! More bargains for the Holdshaws! . . . . As my wife knows the family, she is satisfied, according to fond Woman's logic, that never has case been so cruel as theirs :-old people, for whom a home can no longer be made: girls, totally unfitted for the task, who must go out as governesses, or

scour floors. And when I look over what I have written, it seems as if the fog had got into my pen, or my pen into the fog; as if, in place of being merry, which every one stands in need of just now, I had been wise, which no one wants at any time; seeing that every man is his own Morison, and possesses his own nostrum fit for all emergencies. Let me stop, then, with a warning to producers of all sorts and conditions, to study quality rather than quantity in their wares, and solidity more than show in their transactions and with an exhortation to purchasers to hold themselves so clear of the necessity of purchasing to please their neighbours; that if downfall should come, they may not be scared, degraded, or prevented from exercising their faculties or their affections, by the absence of those luxuries, which no neighbour can or will supply to the fallen. And Heaven send, as Mr. Croaker says in the play, that we be all better for these troubles, and P. Bell's annotations thereupon-this first of November twelvemonth!

421

TO A LOCKET.

Он, casket of dear fancies-
Óh, little case of gold-
What rarest wealth of memories
Thy tiny round will hold !
With this first curl of baby's
In thy small charge will live
All thoughts that all her little life
To memory can give.

Oh, prize its silken softness;
Within its amber round

What worlds of sweet rememberings
Will still by us be found!
The weak shrill cry so blessing,
The curtained room of pain,
With every since-felt feeling,
To us 'twill bring again.

'Twill mind us of her lying

In rest soft-pillowed deep,
While, hands the candle shading,
We stole upon her sleep—
Of many a blessed moment
Her little rest above

We hung in marvelling stillness――
In ecstacy of love.

'Twill mind us-radiant sunshine

For all our shadowed days

Of all her baby wonderings,
Of all her little ways,

Of all her tiny shoutings,

Of all her starts and fears,
And sudden mirths outgleaming
Through eyes yet hung with tears,
There's not a care-a watching-
A hope-a laugh-a fear
Of all her little bringing
But we shall find it here:
Then tiny golden warder,
Oh safely ever hold
This glossy silken memory,
This little curl of gold.

Osborne Place, Blackheath.

W. C. BENNETT.

THE CARVED CHESTS OF THE CHANNEL ISLANDS.

A SLIGHTLY COLOURED SKETCH.

"An oaken chest, half eaten by the worm,

But richly carved by Anthony of Trent,

With Scripture stories from the life of Christ;
A chest that came from Venice, and had held
The ducal robes of some old ancestor.

That by the way-it may be true or false."

ROGERS' ITALY.

SOON after De Rullecourt's invasion of Jersey, in 1781, gallantly repulsed by the heroic Major Pierson, at the head of a small body of troops of the line, supported by the insular militia, the Channel Islands were strongly garrisoned by British regiments co-operating with the native levies, for the defence of these important military outposts, which had been annexed to England by her Norman conqueror, as part of his original dominions—as a needy bridegroom, with all his worldly goods, endows his heiress bride.

The allegiance of insular Normandy, as this cluster of isles was called, to its hereditary lords, continued after the ducal coronet had been transformed into a regal crown, and ceased not, even when continental Normandy was wrested from the feeble grasp of the Conqueror's successors. * This fidelity to the sovereigns of England was rewarded from time to time by testimonials of esteem and gratitude, in the tangible form of immunities, franchises, and other constitutional comforts, as recorded in still existing charters. A union formed by ties of protection on the one part, and

Old Peter Heylin, who accompanied the Earl of Danby, in 1629, writes as follows, in his "Survey of the Estate of Guernzey and Jarsey:"-" The sentence or arrest of confiscation given by the parliament of France against King John, nor the surprisall of Normandy by the French forces, could be no perswasion unto them to change their masters. Nay, when the French had twice seized on them, during the reign of that unhappy Prince, and the state of England was embroyled at home, the people valiantly made good their own, and faithfully returned unto their first obedience. In aftertimes, as any war grew hot between the English and the French, these islands were principally aimed at by the enemy, and sometimes also were attempted by them, but with ill successe."