selves about in front of that brick-red brick wall! Look at the brown and withered ghosts of departed flowers around, and see if you can gather one other flower of rainbow tint from the whole parterre. The snow has covered them for the last week, but since the frost is gone how bright are they! Yet bloom as they may, who gathers them? What fair foot will clog its shoe with gravel to obtain them, when they are to be seen nid-nid-nodding from the warm circle round the library fire?

Who brought you here and named you? If 't were not for your Greek title I would call you English flowers. Yet you seem out of your element; ante- or post-dated; a something still later than "the last rose of summer." You are a day after the fair. Behind pudding-time. The clerks and parsons of the burnt leaves of Mawe and Abercrombie. Hypercatalectics of botanical prosody. The paulo-post-futurum of Flora's syntax. You are emblems of old men's hopes,-of old maidens' last "great effort"—of the glory of ex-kings -of the farewell benefit of a second-rate "star."

How much of human life you reflect! How you are ever "shining on, shining on," to start fresh in the Spring Meeting! How you always break down ere you come to the starting-post, and how all the youngsters of the new year gallop by you! In vain you try to be a gobetween betwixt Autumn and Spring. Old Winter is too gruff for you. You will never marry, yourselves, nor help any one else to his mate. Ignorant, miscalculating creatures! while you pride yourselves on being the only gay flower in Winter's wreath, you never dream that from out those faded plants around you will spring up colours brighter-aye, ten thousand times more brilliant,-than the best you ever wore; yet happy in

your ignorance, if you are never made conscious of your own inferiority, nor live to know the blighting jealousy of contrast!

You are associated in my mind with hoops, and long waists, and chintz gowns, where you not unfrequently figured in the good days when half-a-dozen bunches of bold flowers were enough to figure a whole dress, and your modern Liliputian patterns were unknown in the regions of dimity. I see you now straggling in golden tracery over the black japanned cabinet, where my grandmother used to stow away her knitting when she was called out to superintend the tying-up of the new preserves. I never look upon you without thinking of my old maiden aunts and bachelor uncle,-of the tall outer gate wrought with iron foliage between the two red-brick pillars, crowned with round stone balls, which used to stand ten yards from my uncle's front door before my cousin made the new "drive" up to the house. How you bloomed, rudely tied as you were with bits of bass, under the parlour window,-a good high old-fashioned parlour window,-none of your modern French glass doors, which let in thieves and cold, and keep out warmth and comfort!

Fare ye well! May you stand your ground against the multitudinous importations of modern nurserymen, nor be seduced into the sickly atmosphere of your exotic brethren! I doubt not your politics: ye are none of the Whig sprouts, but old country gentlemen of right Tory mould. Conservatives though ye be, shun the conservatory, and avoid new lights. The splaw-flowered creatures of your kind that have been nurtured in glass-houses are forced artificial things, unworthy of your name and character. There is nothing

of the bluff yeoman about them, nothing that tells of old English fare and feeling. Fare ye well!

HYMN OF THE PROTESTANT MARTYRS.

We are doom'd! but the flame which we kindle to-day
Shall burn with a lustre that mocks at decay!

We are doom'd!—but that bright thought shall cheer our last breath,

And lead us rejoicing, triumphant to death!

We may weep, but no weakness gives birth to the tear;

We

may sigh, we may shudder,-but 'tis not from fear :We sigh for our country 'neath tyrants' controul,

We

weep for her blindness, her bondage of soul!

Yet, England! though now in the darkness of sin,
Strong Truth is yet slumb'ring thy bosom within :
She shall burst Superstition's and Bigotry's chain,
And lead to the paths of pure worship again!

Yes! triumph, stern daughter of merciless Rome;
Thine now is the vict'ry, but ours is to come!

When the creed thou hast spurn'd, from each glad lip shall sound

Where the sea hath an isle, or the earth hath a bound!

We have labour'd through slander, through peril, and pain, The faith of the Fathers unchanged to maintain ;

To that faith, which was left us on Calvary's brow

We have held fast as yet,-shall we swerve from it now?—

On, on to our glory! why linger ye still?

We shrink not, we faint not, if such be His will :-
Now the torturer flames on their victims may fly,
They can touch but our bodies, our souls are on high !

K.

HINTS FOR NONSENSE VERSES.

"Et quod tentabam scribere, versus erat.”

"'Twas verse I tried to write."

A LETTER from some of our friends among the Petties, who promise to be "Constant Readers," has induced us to bestow the following "Hints" for their guidance in the first step to Parnassus. We have certainly no intention of encroaching upon the province of those who are legally constituted our pastors in the Arcadian folds, but a request coming from such a quarter could not, as poets say who publish for the immediate circle of their acquaintance, be with courtesy refused.

And firstly, let no one be frightened at the Name: many are the verses with other names that don't sound as sweet. It shows great sincerity of purpose in those who adopt it. Here is no sham; no palming off one thing for another. They are what they profess to be, and they profess to be what they are. "If every dog

had its ain," we should oftener see books advertized under this title than we do at present; for it is certainly fully as applicable to nine-tenths of what comes into the world under the title of Poetry, as to the incipient aspirations of the Latin muse.

Rule I. Get a Gradus. Beg, borrow, or steal. Let it not be your own, or you may be thought no better than the parson, who could only read out of one book. Carefully select Dactyls and Spondees to the number of six.

II. Begin at the end. If you can find a spondee commencing with three consonants, so much the better;

* Our logical friends must excuse the transposition of the subject for the predicate.

it gives stability and firmness to the end of the versescriptum."

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III. Next find a Dactyl. If you have got a common-place one ready at hand, as "littore," "scribere," "ducere," "dicere," add it on-" littore scriptum."

IV. (And this is a most important rule). Take care that each word constitutes a foot by itself; it looks independent, and avoids confusion and "running in." As for Cæsura, cut it.

V. If one word ends with a vowel, let the next begin with another, on the principle of affinity or attraction. N.B. The same holds good of consonants. (There is a rule about Hiatus, but you can't be supposed to understand such hard words; and besides, your consonants make up in the long run.)

VI. It doesn't matter whether the first four feet are Dactyls or Spondees; but Spondees are preferable, because they are quicker written. For the same and other reasons begin with a Spondee nine times out of

ten.

VII. Always keep a stock of words ready at hand whose quantities you know, or fancy you do (which is all the same thing). Let them not be far-fetched or abstruse, it argues affectation,-"magnum," "longum,' ""nunquam," "felix," "quondam," &c. The first two, however, are much the best, as they admit of variety in the termination, and so may be useful four or five times in the same copy.-Q.E.D.

Magnum artibus longo armis littore scriptum."

As for the pentameter, some think it harder, but it can be shown you that it is not. Isn't its very name in its favour, a short verse?

The grand secret is,

I. Always make your long syllable a monosyllable;