dull meeting-house on Sunday evenings, listening to the chiming bells from the parish churches, must he have desired a wider, or at least a more intellectual, circle of hearers: he must have seemed like some isolated dweller in a country the language of which he knew not: and the illustration holds good in Foster's case especially, for, with all his deep insight into the mind, he was unable to find his way into understandings widely differing from his own. Foster, therefore, wanted that highest peculiarity of genius, the power of speaking to the hearts and intellects of all men. Finding himself thus isolated in populous Newcastle, he sought to find in the visible forms of nature that matter for his musing mind which his fellow-men were not able to afford, and often betook himself in quiet evenings, or the stillness of moonlight nights, to the quay between the ancient walls and the deep Tyne, where he pondered on the sights presented by the starlit heavens, or the varying aspects of the earth. But Newcastle was no place for Foster, and in about three months he left the place, returning to his native home in Yorkshire.

We next find him in Dublin, whither he had gone at the invitation of a small congregation, who perhaps expected great things from one of whose abilities they had heard, without inquiring minutely into the peculiarities of those powers they sought to gain. To Dublin he went, but the only result was, that his unfitness for a preacher's work became more manifest, a deficiency proved by the small audience becoming so much reduced, that to remain there was impossible. The place in which he preached in Dublin was situated in Swift's Alley, but this local name was the only thing pertaining to intellect connected with the spot, so that Foster was again a wanderer, and returned to England dispirited, and really grieved, that the sanguine expectations of his friends should be disappointed in him. Remedy there was none; as he could not alter the modes of thinking popular among his sect, nor materially modify the cast of his own intellect.

In 1797 we find him at Chichester, officiating as preacher to a congregation for whose benefit he appears to have exerted all his efforts; but, as he could not preach popularly, disappointment again ensued. The hearers dwindled away until the mere shadow of a congregation remained to listen to beautiful sentiments and profound thoughts-with which they could not sympathise. Something of this general unacceptability must be attributed to Foster's ECCENTRICITIES, which reached such a reprehensible point, that he even laid aside the dress generally worn by those who profess anything approaching to the character of religious teachers; and, if Foster had doubts respecting his right to exercise such an office, an instant resignation of the work would have been more suitable to his character as a Christian, than the adoption of practices which necessarily brought ridicule upon religion. He appeared in the pulpit attired in the common lay garb, having his hair bound up in a tie, and wearing a red waistcoat, which though not so startling then as it would be now, was sufficiently so to excite severe condemnation.

(To be concluded in next Number.)

THE LEGEND OF THE HOUSE OF THE DWARF,

IN THE ANCIENT MEXICAN CITY OF UXMAL.1 "THIS is called the Casa del Enano, or House of the Dwarf, and it is consecrated by a wild legend, which, as I sat in the doorway, I received from the lips of an Indian, as follows:"

There was an old woman who lived in a hut on the very spot now occupied by the structure on which this building is perched, and opposite the Casa del Gober

(1) From Stephen's Central America.

nador (which will be mentioned hereafter), who went mourning that she had no children. In her distress she took an egg, covered it with a cloth, and laid it away carefully in one corner of the hut. Every day she went to look at it, until one morning she found the e hatched, and a criatura, or creature, or baby born. The old woman was delighted, and called it her son, provided it with a nurse, took good care of it, so that in one year it walked and talked like a man, and then it stopped growing. The old woman was more delighted than ever, and said he would be a great lord, or king. One day she told him to go to the house of the grobe nador, and challenge him to a trial of strength. The dwarf tried to beg off, but the old woman insisted, and he went. The guard admitted him, and he flung his challenge at the gobernador. The latter smiled, and told him to lift a stone of three arrobas, or sevenfive pounds, at which the little fellow cried, and re turned to his mother, who sent him back to say, that if the gobernador lifted it first, he would afterward The gobernador lifted it, and the dwarf immediate did the same. The gobernador then tried him wit other feats of strength, and the dwarf regularly di whatever was done by the gobernador. At lengi indignant at being matched by a dwarf, the goberna. told him that, unless he made a house, in one nigh higher than any in the place, he would kill him. T poor dwarf again returned crying to his mother, wh bade him not to be disheartened, and the next morning he awoke, and found himself in this lofty building The gobernador, seeing it from the door of his palac was astonished, and sent for the dwarf, and told him to collect two bundles of cogviol, a wood of a very har species, with one of which he, the gobernador, werkd beat the dwarf over the head, and afterward the dwar should beat him with the other. The dwarf agai returned crying to his mother; but the latter told hi not to be afraid, and put on the crown of his head i tortillata de trigo, a small thin cake of wheat flower. The trial was made in the presence of all the great me in the city. The gobernador broke the whole of his bundle over the dwarf's head, without hurting the little fellow in the least. He then tried to avoid the trial ca his own head, but he had given his word in the pr sence of his officers, and was obliged to submit. The second blow of the dwarf broke his skull in pieces. and all the spectators hailed the victor as their new gobernador. The old woman then died; but at the Indian village of Mani, seventeen leagues distant, the is a deep well, from which opens a cave that leads under ground an immense distance to Merida. In this cave on the bank of a stream, under the shade of a lar tree, sits an old woman with a serpent by her side, wh sells water in small quantities, not for money, but en for a criatura, or baby, to give the serpent to cat; and this old woman is the mother of the dwarf.

And so ends the history of the first period of my acquaintance with Edith Kinnaird. A nervous fever was the natural result of that day of agitation; but it was neither long nor severe; and Owen classed it with the hysterics and fainting-fits which he believed that all young ladies were capable of summoning to their assistance at pleasure. When I resigned her to the charge of Lady Frances Moore, she had recovered her health, and, in some measure, her spirits; for she was of an elastic and energetic nature, and was now possessed by the one sole purpose of cherishing secretly the recollection of her lover, and endeavouring to employ the three years of separation in rendering herself more worthy of him. I knew how soon this enthusiasm would flag; how wearily the slow hours would struggle onward; but in very pity I would not disturb it. Like the eagerness of a young horse at the foot of a long steep ascent, though transient, it was real, and would carry her forward unconsciously over a portion of the way. But the toil must begin; and, alas! how would she bear it?

With her tacit engagement Owen could not interfere -about the state of her feelings he did not trouble himself; and the next thing I heard was that she had been presented at Court in white satin and diamonds, and all London was raving of her matchless beauty.

ROAD-SIDE SKETCHES OF GERMANY AND THE GERMANS.1

WHATEVER the future fortune of Germany may be, it is to be hoped that its children will never lose their present moral character. They are the most engaging people possible, meaning not sprightly and amusing, but people with whom you rapidly and easily feel your self at home. The first point in their character which strikes one, is the honest simplicity which distinguishes almost every one you meet; there is none of the vainglorious vapouring of the French, or the loquacious impudence of the Yankee, or the morose self sufficiency of the English, but a good-humoured and affectionate single-mindedness and probity of thought and action, which at once sets one at ease even in a company of perfect strangers. From the fat old fellows, with scarce any necks and enormous paunches, whose whole life seems devoted to smoking long pipes and drinking coffee, to the chubby cheeked, yellow haired, round sterned little damsels whose existence is divided between reading romances and knitting stockings, this charming simplicity is universally apparent. And, united to this, is a good humour and kindliness of disposition which renders it still more agreeable: one seldom sees a German in a passion; this may be attributed to their phlegmatic temperament; but then, one still more seldom sees one of a sulky sullen demeanour; on the contrary, they seem always to have a smile and a kind word for every one and everything. All those little inconveniences, which would set an Englishman fretting and fuming for a day, are disposed of with a laugh, or at most a long winded but most harmless execration, and an extra whiff; nor, as they grumble less, do they enjoy less; on the contrary, they not only delight in all the beauties, whether rural or urban, of their land, but always take pleasure in pointing out to strangers whatever may be of interest to them. In fact, I do not know how the Germans ever acquired that character for boorish rudeness and bluntness of bearing which, in former

(1) Continued from page 393.

times at least, was commonly attributed to them. Tə me it seems that the honest kindliness of their disposi tions has led them to exactly the right medium between our own surly reserve, and the chattering showy politeness of the French. The politeness of the French, from the peer to the meanest peasant, as contrasted with the demeanour, especially of our lower orders, has been conmented on with admiration from the days of Addison and Goldsmith to our own, till it has become proverbial; and I do not deny them all the merit which they are entitled to claim on this score; but yet the politeness a the French always seems to me to have too much glos and tinsel about it; the substratum of genuine kind feeling, which is the foundation of all true politeness, I cannot help thinking is generally wanting, or a any rate the outward froth and foam is so superaband ant as entirely to conceal the reality beneath. But with the Germans it is quite the contrary: all their politeness seems to spring from, as it is accompanied by, good i feeling and kindness of heart, so that, though there may be more homeliness and less finish about them thần with their French neighbours, there is a heartiness and be volence mingled with their courtesy, which makes it i more pleasing. Nor are these agreeable manners fined to the upper and middle classes. I remember, one morning rather early, in a somewhat out of the way place not far from the Rhine, being in want of breakfast, going into a small Gasthaus, or, as we should call P. road-side public house; the only provisions which e be produced without delay were brown bread and be and I sat down to discuss this breakfast at a talle ai which a labouring man was making his way through, repast composed of similar materials. He was ba working mason, and evidently very poor; but he make room for us, and proffered various little courtesies with as much politeness as if he had been a noblema Finding we were English, he entered into conversataa about the country, and so forth, and, telling us that several of his relations had emigrated to America, as our advice as to the expediency of his doing so hinsei, as to the best way of doing it, and various other matter, always apologizing for the liberty he was taking, uniting in his conversation a degree of simplicity and politeness which contrasted strangely with war would have been the bearing of a peasant in Suffolk e Yorkshire in similar circumstances. When he finished his breakfast, he rose with an apology and a regret that he was obliged to go, and, with a low b wished us good morning and a pleasant journey. N there was something very striking about all this to Englishman, who is accustomed to connect boorishres of address with lowness of station, especially as there was nothing cringing or servile in the man's demean but, on the contrary, a proper respect for himself, mingle with a sense of what was due to others. Then, upper ranks reciprocate the same politeness of behavi and no one can travel in Germany without seeing every where numerous instances of perfect affability amenst those highest towards those lowest in station. ( meets with very few of the Limkins class, very few d those superb personages who, feeling that

"Nature had but little clay

Like that of which she moulded them,"

are always afraid of the least communication with thes of common mould, for fear that the pure china of which they are composed, should suffer from contact with mere earthenware. On the contrary, princes and nobles su to put their patents of nobility into their pockets, an only to take them out with their passports. Our friend the Bavarian general was a capital instance of this of thing. Baron though he was, and knight of I don't know how many orders of merit, from the Black Eagle of Prussia to the Lion and Sun of Persia, he sat at a mailguards, and travelling pedlars, and conversed with common table in an inferior inn, with shopkeepers, them as comfortably as if they had all been titled guests.