struggling to obtain by force, will so use their liberty, that the rest of the world, who are not so happy, may think it an object worth contending for, and quote our peace and our prosperity as the best proofs existing of its real value.

Whilst my thoughts have been thus employed in reflecting upon the last day of an ever memorable year, I have composed a few elegiac lines to be thrown into the grave which time is now opening to receive his reliques.

:

The year's gay verdure, all its charms are gone,
And now comes old December chill and drear,
Dragging a darkling length of evening on,
Whilst all things droop, as Nature's death were near.

Time flies amain with broad expanded wings,
Whence never yet a single feather fell,
But holds his speed, and through the welkin rings
Of all that breathe the inexorable knell.

Oh! for a moment stop-a moment's space
For recollection mercy might concede,
A little pause for man's unthinking race
To ponder on that world, to which they speed.

But 'tis in vain; old Time disdains to rest,
And moment after moment flits along,
Each with a sting to pierce the idler's breast,
And vindicate its predecessor's wrong.

Though the new dawning year in its advance
With hope's gay promise may entrap the mind,
Let memory give one retrospective glance
Through the bright period which it leaves behind.

Era of mercies! my wrapt bosom springs
To meet the transport recollection gives:
Heaven's angel comes with healing on his wings;
He shakes his plumes-my country's father lives,

The joyful tidings o'er the distant round
Of Britain's empire the four winds proclaim,
Her sunburnt islands swell the exulting sound,
And farthest Gauges echoes George's name.

Period of bliss! can any British muse
Bid thee farewell without a parting tear?
Shall the historian's gratitude refuse
His brightest page to this recorded year?

Thou Freedom's nursing mother shall be styled
The glories of its birth are all thine own,
Upon thy breasts hung the Herculean child,
And tyrants trembled at its baby frown.

A sanguine mantle the dread infant wore,
Before it roll'd a stream of human blood:
Smiling it stood, and, pointing to the shore,
Beckon'd the nations from across the flood.

Then at that awful sight, as with a spell,
The everlasting doors of Death gave way,
Prone to the dust Oppression's fortress fell,
And rescued captives hail'd the light of day.

Meanwhile Ambition chased its fairy prize
With moonstruck madness down the Danube's stream,
The Turkish crescent glittering in its eyes,
And lost an empire to pursue a dream.

The trampled serpent (Superstition) wreath'd
Her festering scales with anguish to and fro,
Torpid she lay, then darting forward sheath'd
Her deadly fangs in the unguarded foe.

Oh Austria! why so prompt to venture forth,
When fate now hurries thee to life's last goal?
Thee too, thou crowned eagle of the north,
Death's dart arrests, though towering to the pole.

Down then, Ambition; drop into the grave!
And by thy follies be this maxim shown-
'Tis not the monarch's glory to enslave
His neighbour's empire, but to bless his own.

Come then, sweet Peace! in Britain fix thy reign,
Bid Plenty smile, and Commerce crowd her coast:
And may this ever blessed year remain
Her king's, her people's, and her nuse's boast.

Y2

No. LXXXVIII.

NICOLAS Pedrosa, a busy little being, who followed the trades of shaver, surgeon, and man-midwife in the town of Madrid, mounted his mule at the door of his shop in the Plazuela de los Affligidos, and pushed through the gate of San Bernardino, being called to a patient in the neighbouring village of Foncarral, upon a pressing occasion. Every body knows that the ladies in Spain in certain cases do not give long warning to practitioners of a certain description, and nobody knew it better than Nicolas, who was resolved not to lose an inch of his way, nor of his mule's best speed by the way, if cudgeling could beat it out of her. It was plain to Nicolas's conviction, as plain could be, that his road laid straight forward to the little convent in front; the mule was of opinion, that the turning on the left down the hill towards the Prado was the road of all roads most familiar and agreeable to herself, and accordingly began to dispute the point of topography with Nicolas by fixing her four feet resolutely in the ground, dipping her head at the same time between them, and launching heels and crupper furiously into the air in the way of argument. Little Pedrosa, who was armed at heel with one massy silver spur of stout, though ancient workmanship, resolutely applied the rusty rowel to the shoulder of his beast, driving it with all the good will in the world to the very butt, and at the same time adroitly tucking his blue cloth capa under his right arm, and flinging the skirt over the left shoulder en cavalier,

began to lay about him with a stout ashen sapling upon the ears, poll, and cheeks of the recreant mule. The fire now flashed from a pair of Andalusian eyes as black as charcoal and not less inflammable, and taking the segara from his mouth, with which he had vainly hoped to have regaled his nostrils in a sharp winter's evening by the way, raised such a thundering troop of angels, saints and martyrs, from St. Michael downwards, not forgetting his own namesake Saint Nicolas de Tolentino by the way, that if curses could have made the mule to go, the dispute would have been soon ended, but not a saint could make her stir any other ways than upwards and downwards at a stand. A small troop of mendicant friars were at this moment conducting the host to a dying man. --" Nicolas Pedrosa," says an old friar," be patient with your beast, and spare your blasphemies; remember Balaam."-" Ah father," replied Pedrosa, "Balaam cudgeled his beast till she spoke, so will I mine till she roars."" Fie, fie, profane fellow," cries another of the fraternity. "Go about your work, friend," quoth Nicolas, " and let me go about mine; I warrant it is the more pressing of the two; your patient is going out of the world, mine is coming into it."-" Hear him," cries a third, " hear the vile wretch, how he blasphemes the body of God."-And then the troop passed slowly on to the tinkling of the bell.

A man must know nothing of a mule's ears who does not know what a passion they have for the tinkling of a bell, and no sooner had the jingling cords vibrated in the sympathetic organs of Pedrosa's beast, than bolting forward with a sudden spring she ran roaring into the throng of friars, trampling on some and shouldering others at a most profane rate; when Nicolas, availing himself of the impetus, and perhaps not able to control it, broke

away, and was out of sight in a moment. "All the devils in hell blow fire into thy tail, thou beast of Babylon," muttered Nicolas to himself as he scampered along, never once looking behind him or stopping to apologize for the mischief he had done to the bare feet and shirtless ribs of the holy brotherhood.

Whether Nicolas saved his distance, as likewise, if he did, whether it was a male or female Castilian he ushered into the world, we will not just now inquire, contented to wait his return in the first of the morning next day, when he had no sooner dismounted at his shop and delivered his mule to a sturdy Arragonese wench, than Don Ignacio de Santos Aparicio, alguazil mayor of the supreme and general inquisition, put an order into his hand, signed and sealed by the Inquisidor general, for the conveying his body to the Casa, whose formidable door presents itself in the street adjoining to the square in which Nicolas's brazen basin hung forth the emblem of his trade.

The poor little fellow, trembling in every joint, and with a face as yellow as saffron, dropped a knee to the altar, which fronts the entrance, and crossed himself most devoutly; as soon as he had ascended the first flight of stairs, a porter habited in black opened the tremendous barricade, and Nicolas with horror heard the grating of the heavy bolts that shut him in. He was led through passages and vaults and melancholy cells till he was delivered into the dungeon, where he was finally left to his solitary meditations. Hapless being! what a scene of horror. Nicolas felt all the terrors of his condition, but being an Andalusian, and like his countrymen of a lively imagination, he began to turn over all the resources of his invention for some happy fetch, if any such might occur, for helping him out of the dismal limbo he was in: he was not long to seek for the