Fire answers fire; and through their paly flames
Each battle sees the other's umber'd face.........
Proud of their numbers, and secure in soul,
The confident and over-lusty French
Do the low-rated English play at dice;
And chide the cripple tardy-gaited night,
Who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp

So tediously away. The poor condemned English,
Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires

Sit patiently, and inly ruminate

The morning's danger........

The royal captain of this ruin'd band

Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,

Let him cry-Praise and glory on his head!

For forth he goes and visits all his host;

Bids them good-morrow with a modest smile,

And calls them--brothers, friends, and countrymen.
Upon his royal face there is no note,

How dread an army hath enrounded him ;
Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour

Unto the weary and all watched night;
But freshly looks and overbears attaint
With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty ;
That every wretch, pining and pale before,
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks.”.

PUNCTUALITY.

If you desire to enjoy life, avoid unpunctual people. They impede business and poison pleasure. Make it your own rule not only to be punctual, but a little beforehand. Such a habit secures a composure which is essential to happiness. For want of it many people live in a constant fever, and put all about them into a fever too. To prevent the tediousness of waiting for others, carry with you some means of occupation—a Horace or Rochefoucault, for example-books which can be read by snatches, and which afford ample materials for thinking.

AGRICULTURE.

In looking into Coleridge's Table Talk the other day, I met with a passage in high commendation of the poet Cowley's Essays. It put me in mind of an extract I formerly made from the one in praise of agriculture, which I give below on account of its beauty. On some future occasion I mean to pursue the subject, with reference to its present state in this country.

EXTRACT FROM COWLEY.

The first wish of Virgil was to be a good philosopher-the second, a good husbandman; and God (whom he seemed to understand better than most of the most learned heathens) dealt with him just as he did with Solomon-because he prayed for wisdom in the first place, he added all things else, which were subordinately to be desired. He made him one of the best philosophers and best husbandmen; and to adorn and communicate both these faculties, the best poet. He made him, besides all this, a rich man, and a man who desired to be no richer. To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world as it is man's, into the world as it is God's.

But since Nature denies to most men the capacity or appetite, and Fortune allows but to a very few the opportunities or possibility of applying themselves wholly to philosophy, the best mixture of human affairs that we can make, is to be found in the employments of a country life. It is, as Columella calls it, "Res sine dubitatione proxima et quasi consanguinea sapientiæ," the nearest neighbour, or rather next in kindred, to philosophy. Varro says, the principles of it are the same which Ennius made to be the principles of all nature, earth, water, air, and the sun. It does certainly com

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prehend more parts of philosophy, than any one profession, art, or science, in the world besides; and therefore Cicero says, the pleasures of a husbandman, "mihi ad sapientis vitam proximè videntur accedere," come very nigh to those of a philosopher. There is no other sort of life that affords. so many branches of praise to a panegyrist :-the utility to a man's self; the usefulness or rather necessity of it to all the rest of mankind; the innocence, the pleasure, the antiquity, the dignity.

· .....

If great delights be joined with so much innocence, I think it is ill done of men not to take them here, where they are so tame and ready at hand, rather than hunt for them in courts and cities, where they are so wild, and the chace so troublesome and dangerous. We are here among the vast and noble scenes of nature; we are there among the pitiful shifts of policy: we work here in the light and open ways of the divine bounty; we group there in the dark and confused labyrinths of human malice: our senses are here feasted with the clear and genuine taste of their objects; which are all sophisticated there, and for the most part overwhelmed with their contraries: here is harmless and cheap plenty; there guilty and expensive luxury.

I shall only instance one delight more, the most natural and best-natured of all others, and a perpetual companion of the husbandman; and that is the satisfaction of looking round about him, and seeing nothing but the effects and improvements of his own art and diligence; to be always gathering some fruits of it, and at the same time to behold others ripening and others budding; to see all his fields and gardens. covered with the beauteous creatures of his own industry; and to see, like God, that all his works are good..

A man would think, when he is in a serious humour, that it were but a vain, irrational, and ridiculous thing for a great of men and company women to run up and down in a room together, in a hundred several postures and figures, to no

and with no design. Yet who is there among our purpose gentry, that does not entertain a dancing-master for his chil dren as soon as they are able to walk? But did ever any father provide a tutor for his son, to instruct him betimes in the nature and improvements of that land which he intended to leave him?

MOUNT VESUVIUS.

To have travelled has many advantages, and one is, that annoyances and dangers, in recollection, become sources of pleasure ;-add to which, in the language of scripture, "the affliction is but for a moment," whilst the recollection endures for years. I advise those who are beginning their travels to bear this in mind.

A few days after the eruption of Vesuvius, in February 1822, I ascended the mountain, in company with a friend, and attended by Salvatore, the well-known chief guide. It was night before we arrived at the crater, which at that time, we were told, was near three quarters of a mile in circumference. We lay down looking over the edge of this vast cauldron, whilst the lava sometimes boiled up as if it would overwhelm us, roaring like a stormy pent-up sea, and presenting the fiery appearance of molten iron obscured by smoke;-then it would sink down in silence, and leave us in total darkness. We forgot ourselves in the awfulness of the scene, till Salvatore reminded us that it was scarcely safe to remain. We had not left the place aboye two minutes, before we heard a crash. Salvatore went back to see whence it proceeded, and on his return informed us the very spot where we had been lying was precipitated into the crater. I thought he said so to enhance the interest of the expedition. When we arrived at the beginning of the descent, he shouted as loud as he could,

by way of signal, to a boy whom he had stationed at the foot of the cone, with orders to hold up a torch for us to steer by. No torch appeared, and fearing the boy had perished, we proceeded in darkness except where lighted by the very brilliant colours of the yet burning lava. Salvatore, notwithstanding his experience, missed his way, and became somewhat confused. He knew we were in danger of falling into hollow places, crusted over. We got knee deep into hot ashes, which burnt off a pair of very thick hose drawn over my feet and legs for their protection. A sulphureous smoke became so suffocating that we must have sunk under its effects, had not Salvatore suggested the expedient of breathing through two or three folds of our silk handkerchiefs, which to our surprise afforded instant and almost complete relief. At length, after repeated shoutings, the torch was raised; and when we reached the boy, we found he had been engaged in roasting eggs for us on the lava instead of listening for the signal. After sleeping at the Hermitage, a sort of inn upon the mountain, we re-ascended in the morning to see the sun rise; and we were then made fully sensible how narrowly we had escaped destruction, for the part where we had been lying had wholly disappeared.

Later in the spring I made two other ascents—the first with a party of thirty-five, including ladies and gentlemen, servants, and guides. Whilst we were resting on the summit of the mountain, one of the gentlemen proposed, in a sort of joke, to Salvatore, to descend into the crater, then in a state of repose. Salvatore took him at his word, and they immediately set off, followed by degrees by every male present, more after the manner of sheep than of rational beings. We arrived rapidly at the bottom, which was at a considerable depth. It was full of small fissures, through which issued short pale flames, and we were obliged to keep changing our places on account of the heat through our shoes. The stoop