seen among the people of colour. We learnt that it was one of the peculiarities of our host not to suffer a male to inhabit his house. His attendants are all of the feminine gender, and, from their hands, both himself and guests receive the offerings of his bounty. His habits are social; but men are only admitted< as visitors.

Among the female property of M. Bercheych we saw an uncommonly fine family of Negroes, consist-ing of three generations, very strongly resembling each other in feature; from the grand-daughter of three years old, to the grandmother upwards of sixty. They were all of fine form, and in face very unlike the common race of negroes; having neither the thick lip, the large mouth, nor the wide flat nose. Their features were regular, their noses prominent, and somewhat aquiline, and their teeth and eyes peculiarly fine. The old woman was strong and healthy, of active, upright figure, and without any marks of advanced age. The daughter was the cottage cook, a tall neat-looking woman about thirty years old, whose face and person were strikingly handsome. Four of the grand-daughters were present, all pretty, and in feature the very. images of the mother and grandmother; the eldest. was about sixteen years of age, and both in face and form by far the loveliest nymph we had seen of colour. The whole family, indeed, were peculiarly neat and clean in their persons, and highly respectful in their behaviour towards others. Although slaves,

they were as respectable, and observed as much of propriety and decorum in their conduct, as the best regulated domestics in Europe: in fine, they do honour to the excellent regulations and discipline of their owner, whose home, and every thing about it is exemplary in point of neatness and order.

LOVE OF THE COUNTRY.

WELCOME Science! welcome peace!
O most welcome, holy shade!
Thus I prove as your years increase,
My heart and soul for quiet made.
Thus I fix my firm belief,

While rapture's gushing tears descend;
That every flower and every leaf
Is moral truth's unerring friend.
I would not for a world of gold,
That Nature's lovely face should tire ;
Fountain of blessings yet untold,

Pure source of intellectual fire!
Fancy's fair buds, the germs of song,.
Unquicken'd midst the world's wide strife,
Shall sweet retirement render strong,
And morning silence bring to life.

Then tell me not that I shall grow

Forlorn, that fields and woods will cloy;

From Nature and her changes flow
An everlasting tide of joy.

I grant that summer heats will burn,
That keen will come the frosty night;
But both shall please, and each in turn
Yield Reason's most supreme delight.
Build me a shrine, and I could kneel
To rural gods, or prostrate fall;
Did I not see, did I not feel,

That one GREAT SPIRIT governs all.
Oh, Heaven permit that I may lie

Where o'er my corse green branches wave;
And those who from life's tumult fly
With kindred feelings press my grave !

THE DESPOILER..

(4 Ballad.)

ON one parent stalk, two white roses were growing,
From buds just unfolded, and lovely to view; [ing,,
Together they bloom'd, with the same sunbeam glow-
And anointed at night by the same balmy dew.
A spoiler beheld the fair twins, and unsparing,
Tore one from the stem, like a gay victim drest,
Then left its companion-his prize proudly bearing,
To blush for an hour, ere it died on his breast.

But, ah! for the widow'd one-shrivell'd and yellow,
Its sleek silver leaves lost their delicate hue;
It sicken'd in thought-pin'd to death for its fellow,
Rejected the sunbeam, and shrank from the dew.

Then where, ruthless spoiler! ah, where is thy glory? Two flow'rs strewn in dust, that might sweetly

have bloom'd

A tomb is the record which tells thy proud story, Where beauty and love are untimely consum'd.

LEARNED PRODIGY.

"We, look on man, and wonder at such odds
'Twixt things that were the same by birth."

COWLEY,

AMONG the favorites of nature that have from timeto time appeared in the world, enriched with various. endowments and contrarieties of excellence, none seems to have been more exalted above the common race of humanity than the man known, about two centuries and a half ago, by the appellation of the admirable Crichton; of whose history, whatever may be rejected as surpassing credibility, yet I shall, upon respectable authority, relate enough to rank him in the number of the prodigies of the human race.

"Virtue, says Virgil, is better accepted when it comes in a pleasing form."-The person of Crichton was eminently beautiful; but his beauty was con,. sistent with such activity and strength, that, in fenc ing, he could spring at one bound the length of twenty feet upon his antagonist; and he used the sword in either hand with such force and dexterity, that scarcely any one had courage to engage him.

Having studied at St. Andrew's in Scotland, he went to Paris in his twenty-first year, and affixed on. the gate of the college of Navarre, a kind of challenge to the learned of that university, to dispute with them on a certain day; offering to his opponents, whoever they should be, the choice of ten languages, and of all the faculties and sciences. On the day appointed, three thousand auditors assembled: when four doctors of the church, and fifty ministers appeared against him; and one of his antagonists confesses, That the doctors were defeated; that he gave proofs of knowledge seemingly above the reach of man; and that a hundred years, passed without food or sleep, it was thought, would not be sufficient for the attainment of his learning.' After a disputation of nine hours, he was presented, by the president, and professors, with a diamond and a purse of gold, and dismissed with repeated acclamations.

From Paris he went to Rome; where he made. the same challenge; and had, in the presence of the Pope and the Cardinals, the same success. Afterwards he contracted at Venice an acquaintance with Aldus Manutius*, by whom he was introduced to the learned of that city. He then visited Padua, where he engaged in another public disputation; beginning his performance with an extempore poem

Mr. Pennant, in his tour to Scotland, quotes the accounts of Aldus Manutius, as likewise of Joannes Imperialis, a physician of Vicenza, who were both eye-witnesses of the extraordinary exhibitions of this learned prodigy.