Swipes. Am I not named first in her will? and did I not furnish her with my best small beer, for more than six months? and who knows

Frank. Gentlemen, I must leave you. [Going.]

'Squire. [Putting on his spectacles very deliberately.] Pray, gentlemen, keep your seats, I have not done yet. Let me see; where was I? Ay, "All my property, both personal and real, to my dear cousins, Samuel Swipes, of Malt-Street, brewer, "

Swipes. Yes!

'Squire. "And Christopher Currie, of Fly-Court, saddler," Cur. Yes!

'Squire. "To have and to hold, IN TRUST, for the sole and exclusive benefit of my nephew, Francis Millington, until he shall have attained the age of twenty-one years, by which time, I hope he will have so far reformed his evil habits, as that he may safely be intrusted with the large fortune which I hereby +bequeath to him."

Swipes. What is all this? You don't mean that we are humbugged? In trust! How does that appear? Where is it?

'Squire. There; in two words of as good old English as I ever penned.

Cur. Pretty well too, Mr. 'Squire, if we must be sent for, to be made a laughing stock of. She shall pay for every ride she has had out of my chaise, I promise you.

Swipes. And for every drop of my beer. Fine times, if two sober, hard-working citizens are to be brought here, to be made the sport of a graceless +profligate. But we will manage his property for him, Mr. Currie; we will make him feel that trustees are not to be trifled with.

Cur. That we will.

'Squire. Not so fast, gentlemen; for the +instrument is dated three years ago; and the young gentleman must be already of age, and able to take care of himself. Is it not so, Francis?

Frank. It is, your worship.

'Squire. Then, gentlemen, having attended to the breaking of the seal, according to law, you are released from any further trouble about the business.

CLI. THE NATURAL AND MORAL WORLDS.

FROM GRIMKE.

1. MAN, the noblest work of God in this lower world, walks abroad through its +labyrinths of grandeur and beauty, amid countless manifestations of creative power and providential wisdom. He acknowledges, in all that he beholds, the might that called them into being; the skill which perfected the harmony of the parts, and the benevolence which *consecrated all to the glory of God and the welfare of his fellow creatures. He stands entranced on the peak of +Ætna, or +Teneriffe, or +Montserrat, and looks down upon the far distant ocean, silent to his ear, and tranquil to his eye, amid the rushing of tempestuous winds, and the fierce conflict of stormy billows. He sits enraptured on the mountain summit, and beholds, as far as the eye can reach, a forest robe, flowing in all the varieties of graceful undulations, over declivity after declivity, as though the fabulous river of the skies were pouring its azure waves over all the landscape.

2. He hangs over the precipice, and gazes with awful delight on the savage glen, rent open as it were, by the earthquake, and black with lightning-shattered rocks; its only music the echoing thunder, the scream of the lonely eagle, and the tumultuous waters of the mountain torrent. He reclines, in pensive mood, on the hill-top, and sees around and beneath him, all the luxuriant beauties of field and meadow, of olive yard and vineyard, of wandering stream and grove-encircled lake.

3. He descends to the plain, and amid waving harvests, verdant tavenues, and luxuriant orchards, sees between garden and grass-plat, the farm-house, embosomed in copse-wood or "tall ancestral trees." He walks through the valley, fenced in by barrier cliffs, to contemplate, with mild enthusiasm, its scenes of pastoral beauty; the cottage and its blossomed arbor, the shepherd and his flock, the clumps of oaks or the solitary willow. He enters the caverns buried far beneath the surface, and is struck with amazement at the grandeur and magnificence of a subterranean palace, hewn out as it were, by the power of the +Genii, and *decorated by the taste of Armida, or of the Queen of the Fairies.

4. Such is the natural world; and such, for the most part,

has it ever been, since men began to subdue the wilderness, to scatter the ornaments of civilization amid the rural scenery of nature, and to plant the lily on the margin of the deep, the village on the hillside, and martial +battlements in the +defiles of the mountains. Such has been the natural world, whether beheld by the eye of savage or barbarian, of the civilized or the refined. Such has it been, for the most part, whether contemplated by the harpers of Greece, the bards of Northern Europe, or the *voluptuous minstrels of the Troubadour age. Such it was, when its beauties, like scattered stars, beamed on the page of classic lore; and such, when its "sunshine of picture" poured a flood of meridian splendor on modern literature. Such is the natural world to the ancient and the modern, the pagan and the Christian.

5. Admirable as the natural world is for its sublimity and beauty, who would compare it, even for an instant, with the sublimity and beauty of the moral world? Is not the soul, with its glorious destiny and its capacities for eternal happiness, more awful and majestic than the boundless Pacific or the tinterminable Andes? Is not the mind, with its thoughts that wander through eternity, and its wealth of intellectual power, an object of more intense interest, than forest, or *cataract, or precipice? And the heart, so eloquent in the depth, purity, and pathos of its affections, can the richest scenery of hill and dale, can the melody of breeze, and brook, and bird, rival it in loveliness?

6. The same God is the author of the invisible and visible world. The moral grandeur and beauty of the world of man, are equally the production of his wisdom and goodness, with the fair, the sublime, the wonderful in the physical creation. What, indeed, are these, but the outward manifestations of his might, skill, and benevolence? What are they but a glorious volume, forever speaking to the eye and ear of man, in the language of sight and sound, the praises of its author? And what are those but images, faint and imperfect as they are, of his own incomprehensible attributes? What are

they, the soul, the mind, the heart of an immortal being, but the temple of the holy Spirit; the dwelling place of him whom the Heaven of Heavens can not contain, who inhabiteth eternity? How then can we compare, even for a moment, the world of nature with the world of man?

1. THE pleasant rain! the pleasant rain!
By fits it plashing falls;

On +twangling leaf, and dimpling +pool;
How sweet its warning calls!
They know it, all the blooming vales,
High slopes and verdant *meads;
The queenly elms and princely oaks,
Bow down their grateful heads.

2. The withering grass, and fading flowers,
And drooping shrubs look gay;

The bubbling brook, with gladlier song,
+Hies on its endless way;

All things of earth, the grateful things,
Put on their robes of cheer;

They hear the sound of the warning burst,
And know the rain is near.

3. It comes! it comes! the pleasant rain !
I drink its cooler breath;

It is rich with sighs of fainting flowers,
And roses' fragrant death;

It hath kiss'd the tomb of the lily pale,
The beds where violets die;

And it bears their life on its living wings;
I feel it wandering by.

4. And yet it comes! The lightning's flash
Hath torn the lowering clouds!

With a distant roar and a nearer crash,
Out bursts the thunder loud.

It comes, with the rush of a god's descent,
On the hush'd and trembling earth,
To visit the shrines of the hallow'd groves,
Where a poet's soul had birth.

5. With a rush, as of a thousand steeds,
Is its swift and glad descent;
Beneath the weight of its passing tread,

The conscious groves are bent;

Its heavy tread, it is lighter now,
And yet, it passeth on;

And now it is up, with a sudden lift,

The pleasant rain hath gone.

6. The pleasant rain! the pleasant rain!
It hath pass'd above the earth:

I see the smile of the opening cloud,
Like the parted lips of mirth.
The golden joy is spreading wide
Along the blushing west,

And the happy earth gives back her smiles,
Like the flow of a grateful breast,

7. As a blessing sinks in a grateful heart,
That knoweth all its need,

So came the good of the pleasant rain,
O'er hill and verdant +mead.

It shall breathe this truth on the human ear,
In hall and cotter's home,

That to bring the gift of a bounteous heaven,
The pleasant rain hath come.

HANNAH F. GOULD was born in Lancashire, Vermont, in 1792. Her poems are full of beauty and sprightliness, and are always instructive.

IRIS; the rainbow.

1. "Now if I fall, will it be my lot

To be cast in some low and cruel spot?
To melt or sink unseen or forgot?

And then will my course be ended?"
'T was thus a feathery Snow-Flake said,

As down through the measureless space it stray'd,
Or, as half by +dalliance, half afraid,
It seem'd in mid air suspended.

2. "Oh, no," said the Earth, "thou shalt not lie,
Neglected and lone, on my lap to die,
Thou fine and delicate child of the sky:

For thou wilt be safe in my keeping;
But then, I must give thee a lovelier form;
Thou 'lt not be a part of the wintry storm,

But revive when the sunbeams are yellow and warm,
And flowers from my bosom are peeping.

3. "And then thou shalt have thy choice to be

Restor❜d in the lily that decks the flea,