Chronicle, where the following announcement met my

eyes:

"On the 29th October, in London, Edwin Fenton, Esq., of Ravenswood, to Mary Anne, only daughter of Frederic Crompton, Esq., of that city."

"On the 30th, at Bishopsgate Church, Ensign Lavington, to Caroline, younger daughter of the late John Russell, Esq., of that place."

So I was quite out in my guesses; but I cannot think how Miss Crompton came to prefer Edwin to the Ensign. Ann Russell, who is staying with me, says," he asserted to her sister, that he never made Miss C. an offer at all; but just wanted to amuse himself, and vex the Poet at her expense." L.

THE LABOURER.1

VERY great pains have been taken lately to disabuse the agricultural poor of the notion that they have a certain right in the land. Argument and legislation have both been used. "You are not the landlords," has been repeated a thousand times, and impressed on the imagination by the vivid image of a union workhouse, which seems to say, "Whether you are the landlord or not, you shall not be." The poor have been told they have their labour, the farmer his labour and stock, the gentleman his land. Now a belief so often denied must have a certain universality, and something of a foundation in human nature and in the visible order of things. And in fact we do really think it is not altogether such an absurd and preposterous belief-such a mere chimera -that the poor have a certain sort of right and property in the land. It is always held as natural that what men have made, they should, in some sense, consider their own; and that they should be allowed a certain right of makership, paternity, and ownership, in every thing they have helped to create, or reclaim, or improve. If a man has added to the public stock, surely he has a claim upon it, unless he has done something to forfeit that claim; surely he has the world in his debt, unless the world can prove the balance of debt is against

him.

land.

Let us now see how this matter stands with regard to The labourer has helped to make it what it is; he has watered it with his sweat, and, it may be said, his very blood; he has sunk thereon his whole capital, and devoted to it his little all. He knows the land is now more valuable for his labour; how should he not, then, think he has a right in it? Surely it is no idle dream. No, it is founded in truth and justice; and were it not so, it would not be so inveterate an opinion, so

deep-rooted a sentiment. Let us endeavour to express this sentiment in words and images though words cannot reach what is so deep and heartfelt. Here is an aged labourer, whom Providence has suffered to survive his strength. He was born in the parish, and there was brought up; or perhaps, without being under that obligation to it, he yet gave to it the first-fruits of his labour. His whole life has been one of use and service to the parish. As far as he or any mortal man can strike the balance, he has given vastly more than he has received, and thereby has deserved a blessing. All that he sees or hears tells him of his work, a work which, in the case of most labourers, is a work of love. He knows that he has added to the productiveness of the soil. He sees a present triumph, which is the result of fifty hard-fought battles with Nature. It is no barren victory, but an actual conquest, producing sterling fruits. It is written on the face of Nature, which as the veteran contemplates, he feels that he is the chief part of the tale; he helped to redeem that bog from barrenness; he helped to overcome the obstinate sterility of the moor, and the lean hill side; those fields of wheat which now present such

(1) From an article on Agricultural Labour and Wages, in a recent Periodical.

an uniform though undulating surface of golden ears, rising shoulder high, once would only produce in alternate stripes; half the crop was drowned or starved by standing water, he under-drained it; he has seen the flock of sheep that feed upon that down gradually increase from five to seven or eight hundred; many a winter month has he toiled knee-deep in mud at those dykes and entrenchments, and assisted to give its present useful direction to that stream, which, in the reeds and willows that now fringe its bed, seems to forget the violence once done to it; he tempered with mar that field of hungry sand; he, when plough and harrow and hoe had failed, dug up with his pick-axe, and tore up with his hands one by one, the myriads of matted and ropy weeds that once incurably infested that northward slope; in some one or other of the numerous processes of modern agriculture, he has traversed a hundred times every square foot of the parish, till he knows every mark and character, natural or artificial, as if it were in his own cottage garden; he first set, and has five times trimmed down to the stocks, those ancient hedges; he helped to plant that belt of forest trees, now grown enough to adorn and shelter the country, and supply both fuel and timber; he helped to make and maintain the roads and the bridges; he has contributed his labour to every improvement, everything that has increased the productive value, the comfort, the beauty of the village and the parish.

What closer connexion can there be than this? It

are not nearer to it.

is all in a manner the work of his own hands; the village, the parish, the land, the fields and meadows, the woods, the streams, are part of himself. He is indeed, as he is sometimes insolently called, a clod of the soil; well may he be so called; the trees that grow on the land The mere connexion of ownership is nothing to this. Though he, who has thus helped to itself, and the permanent natural qualities and features make not only the yearly produce, but the very soil of the country, should be separated ever so far, it seems as if something must come of it. So infinitely nearer and dearer a tie is it, than a mere right by title-deed to enjoy the produce.

Yet is not all told. This relation of makership, this long partnership with the very powers of Nature, is cemented by suffering, and endeared by the most sailor that the spirits of his fathers start from every affecting associations. The poet who tells the British wave, would only speak the unborn poetry of every rustic breast, if he said the same here. The labourer's

fathers, brothers, friends, have all died in this bloodless, though not painless warfare. Perhaps he is the last of a gallant band of companions, the last to tell their of many. As for himself, he is not without honourable deserts, the last to receive in his one person the rewards wounds: his body remembers the elemental strife: his sprained sinews, his aching joints, his blunted organs, recal continually this or that tempestuous scene; many a winter day on the bleak hill side, many a night-watch, Above all does he many a surprise of flood and storm. remember the last time he forgot he was old, and, after a useless bravado of endurance, crept home late one terrible day, from the scene of half a century's labours, never to return to it again. Of his children, some died in their infancy, yet not too young to have tasted the hardships of their condition; a daughter caught a chill in the fields at fourteen, was never strong after, and died at twenty; a son, who had roughed it well enough so far, returned to work too soon after the scarlet fever, and-twenty. His surviving kindred and offspring live as and lived an ailing but still a working man, till fivehe lived, labour as he laboured, suffer as he suffered. He still serves his generation through them, and looks for a portion in the fruits of theirs, that is, of his labour.

We are justly proud-too proud, our neighbours sayof our Greenwich and our Chelsea; and take care that all nations shall see, as they come up our noble river,

how we house and maintain the wounded or worn-out soldier and sailor. But in what buildings, and with what uniform, and with what fare, and in what company, and with what terms of designation, are we preparing to treat those equally stout-hearted patriots, who devoted the flower and strength of their days to preserve us from famine and death?

Poetry.

[In Original Poetry, the Name, real or assumed, of the Author, is printed in Small Capitals under the title; in Selections, it is printed in Italics at the end. ]

STANZAS.

REV. H. THOMPSON.

WHEN Hope, in Possession's proud noon riding high,
Sets quench'd in eternal eclipse,
And, like fruits of Asphaltus, the pleasures we try
Turn ashes and dust on the lips;

When the joys we have nurs'd into bitterness burst,
And the forms we have follow'd are fled,

Oh where shall we find a repose for the mind
That dwells with the wreck'd and the dead?

Oh why was Youth's pathway so gallantly strewn
With flowers of each perfume and hue,

If their beauty and fragrance must waste in the noon
Where fresh in the morning it grew?

Oh why is the scene of existence serene,

As to ardour's young eye it appears,

If its sunshine be warm but to nurture the storm,
That bursts into ruin and tears?

Nay, murmur not, mortal! the fraud is thine own;
Who bade thee a shadow adore?

Earth's blessings were given for thy solace alone;
Thy hopes and affections for more.

Then turn thee from earth to the rights of thy birth,
To the armies of glory on high,

And seek above those the unbroken repose,
The garland that never must die.

Nay, murmur not, man! like Halcyone, thou
Thy nest on the billow hast made;

Thou hast trusted the calm of the summer, and now
The tempest thy trust hast betray'd;

Go, bind on the Rock that looks down on the shock

Of elements combating free,

Where no clouds part thine eye and the ever bright skyNo woes thy Creator and thee!

Miscellaneous.

"I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own, but the string that ties them."-Montaigne.

A WONDERFUL CIRCUMSTANCE.

In the small village of Herne Hill, near Canterbury, there is a postman, who is stone blind, yet still, unaccompanied by any dog or companion, he goes his daily round, never omitting a single letter, or giving a wrong letter to any one. The only thing which affects him is snow, after a fall of which he is prevented going his usual round.

Ir is in the relaxation of security, it is in the expansion of prosperity, it is in the hour of dilatation of the heart, and of its softening into festivity and pleasure, that the real character of men is discerned. If there is any good in them, it appears then or never. Even wolves and tigers, when gorged with their prey, arc safe

and gentle. It is at such times that noble minds give all the reins to their good nature. They indulge their genius even to intemperance, in kindness to the afflicted, in generosity to the conquered; forbearing insults, forgiving injuries, overpaying benefits. Full of dignity themselves, they respect dignity in all, but they feel it sacred in the unhappy. But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendour, and shine out in the full lustre of their native villany and baseness.Burke.

BEFORE an affliction is digested, consolation ever comes too soon ;-and after it is digested, it comes too late there is but a mark between these two, as fine almost as an hair, for a comforter to take aim at.Sterne.

Ir is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind, and what incredible weight they have in forming and governing our opinions, both of men and things that trifles light as air shall waft a belief into the soul, and plant it so immoveable within it, that Euclid's demonstrations, could they be brought to batter it in breach, should not all have power to overthrow it.-Sterne.

Ir appears by a calculation made by the printer of Stevens's edition of Shakspeare, that every octavo page of that work, text and notes, contains 2,680 distinct pieces of metal, which, in a sheet, amount to 42,880, the misplacing of any one of which would inevitably cause a blunder! With this curious fact before us, the accurate state of our printing, in general, is to be admired, and errata ought more freely to be pardoned than the fastidious minuteness of the insect eye of certain critics has allowed.-Curiosities of Literature.

THE Abbé Olivet has described an amusement of Pelisson, during his confinement in the Bastile, which consisted in feeding a spider, which he had discovered forming its web in the corner of the small window. For some time he placed his flies at the edge, while his valet, who was with him, played on a bag-pipe; little by little, the spider used itself to distinguish the sound of the instrument, and issued from its hole to run and catch its prey. Thus calling it always by the same sound, and placing the flies at a still greater distance, he succeeded, after several months, to drill the spider by regular exercise, so that at length it never failed appearing at the first sound to seize on the fly provided for it, even on the knees of the prisoner.-Ibid.

THE brave only know how to forgive;-it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at. Cowards have done good and kind actions,cowards have even fought-nay, sometimes even conquered; but a coward never forgave: it is not in his nature; the power of doing it flows only from a strength and greatness of soul, conscious of its own force and security, and above the little temptations of resenting every fruitless attempt to interrupt its happiness.

THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN.

THERE are none, even of the most imperfectly instructed in the history of this country, who do not know generally, as a historical fact, that, a long while ago, Britain was a Roman province; and any boy of ordinary attainments can tell us, that the Romans first landed here under Julius Cæsar, and that they continued in possession of the country until the Emperor Honorius recalled his troops to Italy, to defend the heart of the empire against the incursions of the barbarians, and so surrendered a sovereignty which he was no longer able to retain. The fact, in this naked outline, most people know, that the Romans came, and that they departed; but not one in a hundred-perhaps not one in a thousand -knows much more. The accounts given to us of the Roman occupation of the country form the first and the shortest chapter in every history of England, and the most barren of all detail. There is seldom any attempt to weave it into the general thread of the story, or to trace what influence it may have exercised upon the character or fortunes of the country. We satisfy ourselves with knowing that such a thing once did happen, and there we leave it.

extended

It is when we begin to look into dates, and by their help to measure, with some degree of accuracy, the magnitude of the event in question, that the meagreness of our information, and the languor of our curiosity, respecting this period of the history of the island in which we live, strikes us as remarkable. The date of Caesar's landing was fifty-five years before the commencement of the Christian era; and Honorius's renunciation of the sovereignty of Britain took place about the year 420. The occupation of Britain by the Romans thus over a period of nearly 480 years no inconsiderable proportion of the age of the world, and an entire fourth of the time which has elapsed since the island of Britain became known to history. But it is when we compare it with some other period, regarding the extent of which we have a comparatively definite impression-for example, the most recent one of equal duration--that we become still more fully sensible how large a portion of the average life of a nation is comprehended in a period which we are accustomed to regard as a mere point, scarcely discernible, in the distant horizon by which our view is bounded. Looking back 480 years from the present time, we find ourselves at the year 1366, about the latter part of the reign of Edward III., and at a point considerably more than a century anterior to the Reformation; a time, the interval between which and the present day embraces almost all that we are accustomed to consider of much interest in relation to the constitution or government, the wealth, greatness, religion, or literature of the country. To the Romans of the time of Honorius, then, the landing of Cæsar must have been something like what the achievements of the Black Prince are to us; to the mass of the people a mere tradition, and known only in any of its details to the learned, and even to them as remote from present personal interest, and as deeply buried in the mists of antiquity, as are to us the battles of Cressy and Poitiers, or any of the narratives in the pages of Froissart. The memorials of their presence which the first invaders had left, had most of them, by that time, been long obliterated; those of which any traces remained had become grey time-worn ruins; their places of encampment, subjects of antiquarian controversy; their armour, their coins, their dress, their mode of life, subjects of antiquarian curiosity, pretty much as they are even at

the present day. For so long a period, embracing so many successive generations of men, cannot have and physical change;-in the case of a civilized run its course without having produced much moral people like the Romans, much mental progress. The acorns which were shaken to the ground by the wind which filled the sails of Cæsar's galleys, and bore him to the then unconquered shores of Britain, had become, ere his successors took their departure, aged moss-covered giants of the forest, and furnished, for anything we can tell, the timber of which were built the ships which carried them away. And during the long roll of years in which these were advancing through all the stages of growth, maturity, and decay, with a progress so slow that its perceptible steps are to be marked, not by years, but by decades of years-how much change how how entire a revolution in feelings, habits, and assomuch decay of old things and growth of newciations must have taken place in the living denizens of the soil! To many of the Romans (for it would be violating all probability to suppose a continued succession of legions merely occupying fortified posts for so many hundreds of years, without some, at least, spreading themselves over and into the country, cultivating the soil, and acquiring rights of ownership in it, and its fruits,) Britain must have been much more a home than Italy. The ashes of their fathers and brothers rested in it; their own fondest associations were connected with its scenes, with which all their recollections of infancy and youth were entwined. They must have formed connexions, more or less inall probability, leading to the necessary consequence timate, with the native inhabitants-intermarriages, in of families of mixed blood. With this there cannot fail to have been a partial fusion of feelings, prejudices, and superstitions; a gradual wearing down of the most salient points of difference; an approach to the formation of a mixed dialect, in which the necessary intercourse something like the growth of a new race, neither altoof the two races could be conducted; and, probably, gether Britons, nor altogether Romans, but combining the distinctive characters of both. A mere military occupation for a short period-for half, nay, for a whole century-might, perhaps, have consisted with the preservation of an entire separation between the governors and the governed; the former might, for all that period, have continued to be in the country, but not of it; but for nearly five centuries it is scarcely conceivable that any offshoot of a foreign stock should have been in contact with the soil of the country, and not taken root in it, should have remained so entirely distinct, and free from all entanglement of interest, alliance, and affection, that they should be able to take flight in a body on a sudden call, like swallows at the approach of cold weather, and leave nothing to recall the memory of their presence but a few deserted and mouldering nests; not to mention the other and greater wonder, that, after five hundred years' occupation, they should not have preferred remaining in Britain, and leaving Italy to its fate, to encountering the scarcely doubtful chances of a conflict with the countless swarms which were pouring upon the empire from the inexhaustible hordes of the north. When we reflect upon the actual state of matters, upon the length of time during which the Romans occupied Britain as one of the outposts of their empire, and the consequences which, in conformity to all experience in similar circumstances, must have followed upon that occupation, we cannot help feeling, that to talk of their leaving Britain at the time of Honorius, appears little less marvellous than if we should now talk of the Saxons or Normans leaving it, and returning whence they came at the period of their respective conquests.

And yet this, inconceivable as it is, is the idea we generally entertain. We think of the Romans as having paid this country a passing visit, and, when they