FALLEN STARS.

BY THE LADY EMMELINE STUART WORTLEY.

A host of stars once lost their way,

And fell, in dazzling showers of glory, To earth, upon a bright spring-day,

And there took root-so runs the story.

Soon hushed their plaints and calmed their grief
The rich, luxuriant, laughing season;
They put forth stem, and bud, and leaf—
Thus to the skies committing treason!

Round them they flushed the quiv'ring air;
While through their radiant veins ran streaming
The soul of perfume rich and rare--

They breathed the light they once were beaming!

Each Spring, that Earth's glad feast prepares,
This lovely truant host discovers
With kindred stars-and birds and airs,
Sunbeams and butterflies, for lovers!

Yet, though through air glad song-notes thrill,
At times, 'midst leaves that twine beside them,
Sweetly ashamed to be here still,

They hang their lustrous heads, and hide them.

And when the night-damp, chill and soft,

Their gracious chalices is steeping, Bathed in those glittering tears, how oft They droop and shrink, as they were weeping!

Still, each red Summer, bright and clear,

That truant host anew discloses, Bashful as when they first bloomed here,

And blushed-and blushed themselves-to roses!

Roses! if once ye shone on high,

Perchance, in lonely, dreary splendour, Ah! should ye blush, and should ye sigh, To change to things so sweet and tender? If once from your bright urns might pour A thousand glories, proudly beaming, Are ye not blest on earth far more

Than when as stars ye thus were gleaming? Crowned flowers of Poetry and Love!

Their soul-light on your brows reposesSay! were ye e'er as blest above

As blushing, blushing, thus to roses?

MARIAN.-A SONG.

BY FRANCIS BENNOCH.

Bloom, bloom, beautiful flowers,
And fling your scent on the wavy air;
Bear it ye winds to Marian's bowers,

And tell her my spirit in love is there : Tell her of honour and faith excelling,

Tell her that love is the light of life, The cloudy shadows of grief dispelling; And win-0 win her to be my wife, Fall, fall, perishing flowers!

Odour, and beauty, and life, are gone: When leaves were falling in silent showers, Then Marian fell, and I am alone: The gloomiest night, still brings a morrow Of hope, to banish our fear away:— My hour of peril, my night of sorrow;Was beautiful Marian's dawning day. Blackheath Park, Dec., 1852,

THE WITCH:

AN EPISODE IN MOORLAND LIFE.

BY CALDER CAMPBELL.

(The following verses were suggested by an incident which occurred not twenty years ago in a wild district in the north of Scotland.)

Far in the windings of a lonesome moor

There stood a hut, low, dismal, and obscure;
The dwelling of an aged Crone, who bore
No good-will guerdon from the peasant's door:
For why? in sooth I cannot tell-but poor

And frail, and ugly, and unknown was she;
Hated and shunned by even the roughest boor,
For she was deemed by weak credulity
A weird assistant fit for darkest sorcery.
I've said she was a stranger, all unknown,
And mystery darken'd all her early day;
For many a year had pass'd since, quite alone,
People had mark'd her on the wold, as they
Went home at twilight. On the headlands grey
They saw her loiter, muttering mystic words;

Or picking up the weeds that round her lay, Or the wild fruits the moss or moor affords: "Such lonely life," quoth they, "with secret crime accords."

And from that day the neighbouring peasants found
A subject for amazement and dismay;
Yet fear forbade that to the haunted ground
On which the Hag's dismantled cabin lay

A foot should tread. Long had Death snatch'd away

Its former occupant, a shepherd. Soon

They dared not pass it, when its farewell ray The sun had shed; for them by star or moon To stir near that drear spot, it were no pleasant boon!

And if, at fall of eve, the country lass

But chanced to meet that haggard Beldame old, She trembling stood, nor deemed it safe to pass, Fearing to move, and shuddering to behold: More bent on ill, and cruel, rough and bold, The schoolboy, mindless of his mother's prayer, Taunted the dame with many a gibe sharp-told, Whilst oft the threatening pebble clove the air, And snarling village-cur assail'd her lame feet bare. Yet she was never heard to curse or scoff,

But, silent, shook her head and slow withdrew; And tho' her wasted form and hollow cough Should have aroused kind acts to pity due, Black Superstition from their bosoms drew Each tender feeling; and tho' still they gave With hasty hand, to Charity untrue, Such humble morsels as she came to crave, 'Twas coward Dread, not Pity, saved her from the grave.

Then ah! what horror thrill'd thro' every breastThe aged Dame a withering corse they found! Extended on the loamy floor at rest,

Her death-bed and her pillow the damp ground. Th' affrighted group sprang outwards with a bound,

Nor glanced behind them till arrived at home.

For her was dug no grave, was raised no mound; Her bones unburied lay; their only tomb That ruined hut, fit shrine for such a woful doom!

Yet after-days proclaim'd a wondrous tale

That unknown Crone had witnessed happiness; Had lived the wreck of friends and wealth to hailHad sought in Vice relief from sore Distress: But soon, betray'd, debas'd-without the rays Of Reason now to point her darkling road,

By chance conducted to that moorland maze She in that ruin'd hut made her abode- « Now crazed-now penitent, and asking aid of God! And ah! too sure her sins-for such they wereReceived a punishment severe and dread; For, though a stranger, still dislike and fear Follow'd where'er her feeble footsteps led! But tho' no human help was near the bed Of earth where she lay dying, who dare say That Pardoning Mercy did not o'er her shed A Heaven-sent light, to cheer her as she luy Repentant on her bier, passing from life away!

THE FLOWER-GIRL'S SONG.

BY LUCINDA ELLIOTT.

I've wandered through fair gardens, All wet with the morning dew; And my basket's fill'd with blossoms, Of every scent and hue.

I've red rose-buds for the Maiden-
Like her laughing lips they glow;
I've wreaths, through halls of revelry
A crimson flush to throw.

I've blue violets fresh and sweet;
And, for Childhood's merry train,
The daisy and amber cowslip,
To weave in many a chain.

I've branches of the orange-tree,
And radiant things beside;
To scatter, with glad rejoicing,
In the pathway of the Bride.
I've wandered through fair gardens,
And my basket's fill'd with flow'rs;
I've laid them all on dewy moss,

From the cool, green forest-bowers.
I've myrtle-boughs for the Lover,
A perfumed gift and fair;
To twine, in starry coronals,
For his chosen one's bright hair.
I've moss-roses for the Mourner,
In a chaplet rich to bloom;
With eglantine and lilies pale,
On the low and early tomb.
And for the gifted Poet's brow,
Or the Ilero's stately head,
I have leaves of bay and laurel
That a gleaming brightness shed.

I've passed through shining gardens All wet with the morning dew, And my basket's fill'd with blossoms Of every scent and hue.

A RHAPSODY

(CONCERNING SHAKSPEARE).

BY A BIGOT.

Blithe Summer brings no smile to me,
Grim Winter hath no frown;
My lamp of life burns inwardly

Till Death the light strike down.
Within my study cloistered, I
Both heat and cold alike defy,
And nurse me to my soul's desire
By Wit's cold streams or Fancy's fire.
Shakespeare my Phoebus is; the full

Perfection of all warmth and light;
His glorious splendour ne'er grows dull,
Come cold or heat, be 't day or night.
In Arden's wood I mark the leaves-
By Prospero's masque I count the sheaves,
And feel my Winter sharp and hoar
On thy dread platform, Elsinore.

Spring flowers I seek not near my home-
I ask not where they bud or blow-
On banks near Athens so they bloom

And wreath fair Hermia's brows of snow.
Leontes' child and I do share
Spring's roseate gems and posies rare;
Yea, through the long year's lapsing hours,
Love-lorn Ophelia culls me flowers.

And for companions; where be they

Like these our Shakespeare's fancies bring? Which, be my humours grave or gay,

With me do mourn, with me do sing-
Mercutio for my merriest mood-
Jaques beside the pregnant flood;
And, when my hopes deferred grow old,
The maid whose love was never told.

Thrice rich am I; no penury e'er

Can strip me of the wealth I hold-
Of Shakespeare's lines a plenteous store
I hoard like coins of purest gold.
To high resolves my soul he strings-
He bears me fainting on his wings-

I swear I find in him alone,

Light, warmth, wealth, friends, combined in one.

SONNET.

The Sabbath day is dying; one by one

The hand of Time has plucked the peaceful hours And bound them in his garland, until none

Remains of all this morning's unblown flowers; Each had a fragrance for me, and from each My spirit and my heart drank in delight, But, O my Father, to thine ear what speech Of me do those bright blossoms bear to-night? Pardon the withering touch my hand has laid Upon their lovely and celestial leaves; Forgive me too, that when these chaplets fade, Half unsubmissive, my frail spirit grieves, And longs for amaranthine bowers on high, Where bloom the nobler buds that never die. Sunday, Oct. 31, 1852. MARIA NORRIS.

From the first records of antique history, down to the current chapter of to-day's, in all nations, ancient and modern, civilized or barbaric, feasts have made an important feature of human intercourse and social progress. As a medium of religious thanksgiving, of friendly feeling, of political policy, we find them. anciently in vogue with the Hebrew, Chaldean, and Persian people, and subsequently not less so with the Greeks and Romans.

It remained for Christian times to invest with the gracious spirit of charity "Symposi which, at the first sight, appear to have no higher purpose than the social pleasure of gratifying appetite in company; and from that Feast in allegory with which parental love welcomed back the penitent son, to the last subscription dinner at the Freemason's Tavern, in aid of the Widow or the Fatherless, modern feasts have occasionally been made the medium of a more refined and grateful purpose than even the intellectual "Convivii" of the classic ancients, at which, Cicero tells us, the mind was exercised and instructed, while the body was refreshed by the discussion of moral subjects, reading, and elegant conversation.

The Levitical law enjoined hospitality to strangers; but we find the patriarchs anticipating its practice, and while they spread the feast for seeming wayfarers, entertaining angels

unawares.

Nothing can be more magnificent than the descriptions of royal feasts amongst the ancient eastern nations which the Scripture gives us, except the vastness of the hospitality, for both Ahasuerus and Belshazzar are represented as feasting the one, all the people, great and small, within the precincts of Shusan, and the other a thousand of his lords. Let us recall, for instance, that of the first-named monarch, a fete champêtre for it was kept in the court of the garden of the palace of extraordinary splendour. A court paved with porphyry and alabaster, and screened with rich hangings, suspended between marble pillars by silver rings, on cords of purple. The beds or divans on which the guests rested (as at the present day in Eastern countries) were of gold and silver, and so were the vessels "diverse from one another," out of which they drank the regal wine.

In the other particulars of this royal feast, we find the hospitality of that ancient period of a more rational description than modern civilization exhibited but a short time back; for we read that the drinking was according to the law, that none did compel, but that every man did according to his pleasure.

Feasts in private life (as we may gather from the various allusions to them in the New Testament) were common with the Jews; but it is a curious exception to the universality of the

usage, that when the old physician Aristotle wrote, more than three hundred years before the birth of Christ, he accuses the Egyptians of a breach of the social principle in eating apart; so that it was probably not until the Ptolemaic period, that the festive spirit which Cleopatra afterwards made famous by the excess of her prodigality, was introduced amongst them.

Amongst the first acts of Minos and Lycurgus, those celebrated lawgivers of antiquity, was the establishment of convivial repasts as a means of elevating and improving the character of the Cretan and Spartan people, well knowing how forcibly the equality of nature makes itself felt on these occasions, and how true a sacrament between man and man is the simple act of breaking bread and drinking wine together.

In the rudest state of society, it makes a covenant more binding than an oath; and from the wild Arab of the desert to the Red Indians of the prairie, there is a sanctity in ministering hospitality which imposes friendship to the stranger, and safety even to an enemy.

With people more civilized, the festal table brings them together as one family; variance becomes absorbed in a common want, and the sense of past evils in the grateful feeling of present enjoyment.

The conjunction of mind and body expressed so happily in the Roman phrase "Convivium" the feast of reason and the flow of soul which modern diners-out are so prone to vaunt of, appears to have mingled in the feasts of far anterior times. Some mental amusement must have been intended by Samson when he put forth his riddle to his guests, on the occasion of his marriage feast at Timnath; and another similar instance occurs in Maccabees, proving that the carousals of those antique times were not wholly sensual.

In the golden ages of Greece and Rome, before refinement had degenerated into luxury, it was usual for men of rank to keep a domestic, whose office was to entertain them by reading during their meals, and at their feasts.

Occasionally the master of the house himself undertook this task; and history informs us that the Emperor Severus often read while his family ate. Supper was the usual time for this addition to festivity, and guests were invited to a reading as commonly as they have since been to a game of cards.

Plutarch has preserved a collection of subjects discussed by the Greeks at their " compolatios," who (to use their own phrase) were careful not to profane the holiness of the table, but to adorn it with improving and elegant discourse. Feasting as a mere act of sensualism could never be indulged in by a refined and intellectual people; hence the lights, and flowers, and bacchanalian songs, many of them

gems of poetry and sentiment, that from the times of the Ionian Anacreon to those of Ireland's Anacreon, Moore, have cast the spells of their brilliancy, their beauty, and exhilaration, around the festal board, elevating into a mental pleasure that which without them would have been a mere animal indulgence.

If we watch the enervating tide of luxury stealing in on the old classic people, we shall find, as it advances, a material difference in the character of their feasts-those charming discussions, those graceful exercises of the wit and judgment; this hearkening to the written wisdom of the living and the dead (which even the sage and virtuous Cicero eulogised), is set aside to give place to dancers, and jugglers, stageplayers, and hired tellers of tales more pleasant than profitable; till at length, when Seneca wrote, the intellectual had become absorbed in the sensual, and the table extravagances of the Romans a thing to be wondered at. They no longer supped in their vestibules, "that a more retired part of the house should not encourage licentiousness and excess, but had supurb halls for their entertainments;" and Lucullus, whose magnificence had at least the grace of extending the arts, and encouraging them amongst the Roman people, had several, each of which bore the name of a divinity, that of Apollo being made memorable by the cost of a supper which this great general, the victor of Mithridates, gave there, and which amounted to 50,000 drachmas. Seneca tells us that Caligula, who was born to show the world what mischief might be done by the concurrence of great wickedness and a great fortune, spent near £10,000 upon a supper; and other instances are not wanting to show that small fortunes have been spent upon this single meal.

In the pages of Sir Lytton Bulwer's novel of Pompeii," the reader may remember a description of one of those banquets of antiquity exquisitely poetical in its details, and yet with nothing added to the outlines grave writers of the period have left us, but the beauty of the author's style.

The recumbent attitudes, the sumptuous dresses, the rich ornaments, the rose-wreathed bowls, the goblets and cups of gold and silver, the flowers, the perfume, the singing slave-these were the realities of a Roman feast, or rather the adjuncts of the festival; over all which the flood came, in the shape of overflowing bands of Goths and Vandals, to take in their turn lessons of luxury, and soften down the fierce spirit which pervaded the coarse orgies of the Northmen, but without, as in the case of Southern nations, subduing them.

Besides the celebrating of religious feasts, the Romans made all public rejoicings, all private fete days, an occasion for them; weddings, and birthdays, and deaths, were alike honoured with a feast; but this latter was a very different entertainment from those huge gatherings of persons which in Ireland and Scotland are still brought together, and feasted on such occur

rences.

"Previous to this repast," says the writer from whom we quote, "the worth of the deceased was extolled, and his or her departure from this world lamented. The mourners were clad in white: wine was given them, but their meal was frugal, and according to some opinions, only three persons sat down to eat."

At their general feasts the Romans made use of two tables; the first for the service of animal food, which was afterwards removed, and replaced with one redolent of flowers and fruit, at which they sang, and poured out their libations. Virgil alludes to this custom, in the description of the feast with which the Carthagenian Queen receives Eneas--

"Now, when the rage of hunger was appeased, The meat removed and every guest was pleased, The golden bowls with sparkling wine are crown'd, And through the palace cheerful cries resound.

"A golden bowl that shone with gems divine,
The Queen commanded to be crowned with wine:
The goblet then she took with nectar crown'd,
Sprinkling the first libations on the ground,
And raised it to her mouth with sober grace,
Then sipping, offered to the next in place."

The Greeks, who, as we before said, considered the table as the altar of friendship and feasting almost as a sacred rite, never partook of the feast till they had offered part of it to the gods. The Jews, at their solemn feasts and sacrifices, and other eastern nations, had the same custom; and the former prefixed their ordinary meals with prayers-a practice followed by the primitive Christians, and continued in the grace of our own times. Another usage of the Romans on convivial occasions, and which appears to have concentrated itself in the comparatively modern practice ("more honoured in the breach than the observance") of toasting one's mistress, was the drinking out a large cup as many times as there were letters in her name.

Health-drinking, though in vogue amongst the ancients 1134 years before the birth of Christ, is said to have originated with us in the very fear of treachery. The Scotch Highlanders, according to Mirabeau, were the first who used it, and they still retain the custom in its purity. The state of feud in which those people lived, making the quarrels of their chiefs their own, induced enmities which were perpetuated from father to son, and productive of disputes and differences, even when in a state of peace. At the feasts which followed their temporary unions, "drinking to a persons' health meant that you requested him to guard you while you were drinking;" whereupon the person drank to replied, "I will pledge you, or I will answer for it," at the same time placing his dagger on the table, and continuing on the watch till the cup was drained.

The same custom obtained in France, "if we may judge," continues Mirabeau, "from the ancient expression, 'Je vous pleige,' made use of by our ancestors in returning this health." And he adds, that during the wars between the Burgundians and Armagnacs, and at other un

abundance, it was no unusual thing for the nobility to spend the greater part of their revenues in giving them: nor were the Anglo-Normans less expensive in their hospitality. An author of those days, who sometimes feasted at great men's tables, tells us that he was present at an entertainment which lasted from three o'clock in the afternoon till midnight, and at which delicacies were served which had been brought from Constantinople, Babylon, Alexandria, Palestine, Syria, and Phoenicia. At present, for the supply of our ordinary tables, half the world has been visited and ransacked.

As for the Scythians, their feasts on earth anticipated the goblets of the Saxon's heaven; for they drank the blood of their slaughtered prisoners out of cups of that ghastly fashion, and dreamed of the joy afterwards, wrapped in skins flayed from the slain.

The ancient Britons themselves appear to have been as fond of feasting as any of their continental invaders; nor were their entertainments devoid of the grace of courtesy, or wanting in a certain rude magnificence-we are speaking of a period subsequent to the introduction of commerce, when the Phoenicians and Greeks had imported furniture, drinking-glasses, and cups of silver and amber. Previously the feast had been spread on the ground, on which the guests arranged themselves, and taking in their hands the meat set before them, fed upon it in the best way they could. But this primitive order of things had gone by; knives and forks had exploded the use of the dagger, or the one knife, which, in cases of great difficulty, was at the disposal of the several guests; and each, under the new regime, was expected to bring his own-a rule likewise insisted on at a comparatively modern period of history, by the Russian Empress Catherine, in her code of etiquette to the ladies and nobles of her court.

Amongst other coincidental circumstances in the history of our subject, past and present, was the strong prejudice (even in those times of unsophisticated appetite and manners) on the part of the diners-out, in favour of those who gave the best entertainments. Chieftains, and great men, we are told, took this means of winning the affections of their followers, and rewarding their services so that we could almost imagine the elements of sociability, like those of Nature, to have been the same from the beginning.

In the time of the Anglo-Saxons, whose feasts

kitchen, 3,405 pounds; for 369 pipes of red wine, and two of white, 104 pounds, &c.; the whole 7,309 pounds, that is, near 22,000 pounds of our present money; and making allowance for the cheapness of commodities, near a hun. dred thousand pounds!

In the following reign the love of feasting and luxury had so much increased, that a law was passed to restrain it; and people were limited to two courses of three dishes each, with a declaration that soused meat was to count for one of the dishes. The king, however, does not appear to have given the force of his example to this absurd law; for, on the occasion of the marriage of his son (Lionel of Clarence) with Violentes, of Milan, there were thirty courses, and the fragments of the table fed one thousand persons. Nor does the law appear to have had much, or any effect, upon the hospitality of our ancestors. In Henry the Fifth's reign it was more remarkable than ever: and the link between feasting and friendship appears very strong in Stowe's expression, that Neville Earl of Warwick "was ever held in great favour by the commons of all the land, on account of his hospitality, in all places wherever he went; and when he came to London he kept such a house, that six oxen were eaten at a breakfast, and every tavern was full of his meat."

The pomp of feasting in England appears to have reached its climax, during the reigns of Henry the Eighth and his daughter Elizabeth. At Cardinal Wolsey's entertainment of the French ambassadors, the company was summoned by trumpet to supper, and the courses were announced by a prelude of music-a style of splendour highly agreeable to his royal master, whose extravagance he encouraged by his own taste for magnificence, and the sumptuous entertainments he created for his amusement.

Elizabeth, who inherited all her father's love of regal grandeur, was entertained by the nobility, wherever she went, with masks and feasting; but that wondrous fête champêtre of the favourite's, at Kenilworth, which lasted ten days,