up with him, and kept him company all the time that he remained there. When he heard it buzzing about, he knew that it was day, and when the fly was silent, he knew that it was night. The fly boarded as well as lodged with him he was as careful as he could not to interrupt it while taking its share of his meal; when he touched it, it would fly away, buzzing as if offended, but soon return again. He often said afterwards, that the company of this fly had been a great consolation to him. More skilful persons than the poor labourers of the village of Champvert were soon engaged in the attempt to liberate Dufavel. The municipal authorities of Lyons procured the assistance of a band of military miners, who, under the direction of experienced officers, began to form a subterranean passage for the purpose of relieving him. Prayers for his safety were daily offered up in the churches of Lyons, and the most intense interest prevailed: it was found necessary to erect a barricade, and station a guard of soldiers round the scene of the accident, to keep off the flocking crowd from the neighbourhood, all eager to obtain news, and see what was being done.. The cavity at the bottom of the well, over which the wooden rafters had so providentially formed a sort of roof, was at first about seven feet in height; but owing to the sand constantly running through, and pressing down the roof from above, by the third day the space became so small, that the poor man could no longer stand, or even sit upright, but was crushed upon the ground in a peculiarly painful manner, his legs doubled under him, and his head pressed on one side against his left shoulder. His arms, however, were free, and he used his knife to cut away such parts of the wood work as particularly incommoded him, and to widen the hole the passage of the rope had made. Through this hole, by means of a small bottle, soup and wine were let down to him, and, after a few days, what was quite as important, a narrow bag to receive and bring to the surface the constantly accumulating sand, which must soon have smothered him, if this means of removing it had not been devised, and he had not had strength and energy for such a painful labour as the constantly filling and refilling the bag soon became. Of course, any pressure from above would have forced in the temporary roof, so that nothing could be attempted in the way of removing the mass of sand, &c., that had fallen in. They dared not to touch the surface above; but they contrived, by means of a tube, to speak to him. A cousin of his, himself a well-digger, was let down for this purpose. This man spoke to Dufavel, and assured him the miners were making progress, and would soon reach him he inquired after his wife and child, and charged his cousin to tell her from him, to be of good cheer, and not lose heart: at this time he had been a week in the well. and was able with his knife to assist in extricating himself. He was carefully conveyed along the horizontal gallery, and wrapped in blankets before he was drawn up into the open air. Several medical men were in attendance, and one of them had him conveyed to his house, and put to bed. We will not attempt to describe Dufavel's happy meeting with his wife, nor the tears of joy which he shed over his infant boy, who did not at first recognise him, muffled up as he was obliged to be to protect him from the cold, and his chin covered with a beard of more than a fortnight's growth. In the evening, he was so well, that Doctor Bienvenu consented to his being conveyed to his own home; and he was accordingly transported thither in a litter, attended by a great concourse of happy and thankful spectators. PALM LEAVES. Select Oriental Tales. I. THE PAIR OF SLIPPERS. THERE once lived in Bagdad a merchant, named Abu-Casem, who was quite notorious for his covetousness. Notwithstanding his great wealth, his clothes were all in rags and tatters. His turban was composed of a large cloth, whose colours were no longer distinguishable; but, above all the other articles of his dress, his slippers attracted everybody's attention. The soles of them were armed with huge nails; the upper leather was composed of as many pieces as a beggar's cloak; for, during the ten years they had been slippers, the cleverest cobblers of Bagdad had used all their skill in fastening the shreds together. Of necessity, therefore, they had become so weighty, that when people wanted to describe anything very heavy, they compared it to Casem's slippers. As this merchant was one day walking through the great bazaar of the city, a considerable stock of glass was offered to him a great bargain, and he very gladly agreed to purchase it. Some days afterwards, he heard that an unfortunate dealer in precious balms was reduced to sell only rose-water, as a last resource. He turned this poor man's misery to account, bought all his rose-water for half its value, and was consequently in the best of humours. It is the custom of Oriental merchants, when they have made a successful bargain, to give a feast Day succeeded day, and still the expectations of the He thought it more profitable to bestow a little of rejoicing; but this our niggard would not do. miners were deceived. They worked night and day, but such was the treacherous nature of the soil, that neither extra indulgence upon himself; and therefore he pickaxe nor shovel could be used: the foremost miner went to the bath, a luxury to which he had not for worked upon his knees, inserting cautiously a flat piece a long time treated himself. Whilst he was taking of wood into the ground, and afterwards gathering up off his clothes, one of his friends (so, at least, he with his hands, and passing to those behind him, the called him, but such niggards seldom have a friend) sand which he thus disturbed. On the twelfth day of said to him, that it was quite time for him to leave his imprisonment, they calculated they were only twelve off his slippers, which had made him quite a byeinches from him, and yet it took them two days longer word in the city, and buy a new pair. "I have before they were able to reach him. Every minute the been thinking of it for some time," answered Casem; ground was giving way; and it sometimes took them "but, when I look well at them, they are not so many hours to repair the damage that a single moment had produced. Besides, they felt it necessary to pro-vice." Speaking thus, he undressed, and went into very bad, but that they may do a little more serceed with the utmost caution, when they approached Dufavel; for there was great reason to fear, whenever the bath. an opening was made, the mass of sand above his head would fall down and suffocate him. At length, about two o'clock in the morning of Friday, 16th September, they made a small opening into the well, just above his shoulders. The poor man shouted for joy, Whilst he was there, the Cadi of Bagdad entered, and because Casem was ready before the Judge, he went out first. He dressed, but sought in vain for his slippers. Another pair stood where his own ought to have been, and our careful man soon per suaded himself that the friend who had given him such good advice while he was undressing, had made him a present of these new ones. He put them on with much satisfaction, and left the baths with the intention of thanking his friend for them. But, unhappily, the slippers belonged to the Cadi; and when he had finished bathing, his slaves sought in vain for them; they could only find in their stead a miserable pair, which were immediately recognised as Casem's. The porter soon ran after him, and brought him back to the Cadi, as detected in a theft. The Judge, provoked at the unblushing avarice of the old miser, immediately sent him to prison; and, in order to avoid the open shame due to a thief, he had to pay richly: the law condemned him to give the worth of a hundred pair of slippers if he would escape with a whole skin. As soon as he was safe out of gaol, he revenged himself upon the cause of his trouble. In his rage, he threw the slippers into the Tigris, which flowed beneath his window, so that he might never set eyes upon them again; but it was to be otherwise. A few days afterwards, some fishermen, on drawing up their net, found it unusually heavy: they thought they had gained a treasure; but, alas! nothing was there but Casem's slippers, the nails of which had torn the net so much, that it would take whole days to mend it. Full of indignation against Casem and his slippers, they threw them in at his window, which was just then open; and as, unluckily, all the flasks of beautiful rose-water which he had bought were neatly ranged beneath the window, those heavy iron foes fell upon them, the bottles were broken, and all the rose-water spilt upon the floor. slippers was taken into custody, and as this ap- "But," continued he, shaking them, "you are so soaked with mud and water, that I must first lay you to dry in the sun; but I will take good care you do not come into my house again." With these words he went up to the flat roof of the house, and laid them under the vertical rays of the sun. Yet had not misfortune tried all her powers against him; indeed, her latest stroke was to be the hardest of all. A neighbour's pet monkey saw the slippers, jumped from his master's roof on to Casem's, seized upon and dragged them about. While he thus played with them, the unlucky slippers fell down and alighted on the head of a woman who was standing in the street below. Her husband brought his grievance before the Judge, and Casem had to atone for this more heavily than for aught before, for his innocent slippers had nearly killed one of his fellow-creatures. "Just Judge," said Casem, with an earnestness which made even the Cadi smile, "I will endure and pay all and everything to which you have condemned me, only I ask your protection against those implacable enemies, which have been the agents of all my trouble and distress to this hour-I mean these miserable slippers. They have brought me to poverty, disgrace, ay, even to peril of my life; and who knows what else may follow? Be just, O noble Cadi, and make a determination that all misfortunes which can be clearly ascribed to the evil spirit which haunts these slippers, may be visited upon them, and not upon me.' Casem's horror, when he entered his apartment, may be better imagined than described. "Detestable slippers!" he exclaimed, tearing his beard, "you shall not do me any further mischief." He took a spade, and ran with them into his garden, where he hastily dug a hole to bury his slippers; when, unhappily, one of his neighbours, who had The Judge could not deny Casem's request: he long meditated some mischief against him, hap-kept those disturbers of public and private peace in pened to look through his window, and saw him his own possession, thinking he could give no better hard at work, digging this hole. Without delay, lesson to the miser than this which he had now learnt he ran to the Governor of the city, and told him, as at so much expense, namely, that it is better to a secret, that Casem had found a great treasure in buy a new pair of slippers when the old ones are his garden. This was quite enough to arouse the worn out! Governor's cupidity; and it was all in vain that our miser declared he had not found anything, but had only buried his old slippers. In vain he dug them up again, and brought them forth in presence of the Judge; the Governor had made up his mind to have money, and Casem was obliged to purchase his release with a large sum. In utter despair, he left the Governor's, carrying his expensive slippers in his hand, while in his heart he wished them far away. "Why," said he, "should I thus carry them in my hand to my own disgrace?" So he threw them into an aqueduct not far from the Governor's palace. "Now," said he, “I shall hear no more of you; you have cost me money enough-away with you from my sight!" But, alas! the slippers stuck fast in the mud of the aqueduct. This was enough; in a few hours the stream was stopped, the water overflowed; the watermen ran together, for the Governor's cellars were inundated, and for all this trouble and misfortune Casem's slippers were answerable! The watermen soon discovered the unlucky cause of the mischief, and as quickly made it known. The owner of the Poetry. [In Original Contributions under this head, the Name, real or assumed, of the Contributor. is printed in Small Capitals under the title; in Selections, it is printed in Italics at the end.] TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN. THOU blossom, bright with autumn dew, Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye I would that thus when I shall see Bryaut. THE ORIGIN OF THE MOSS-ROSE. (From the German.) BY MRS. ABDY. A SPIRIT of air gaily roamed o'er the flowers, The Spirit awakened, and eager to grant Some boon to the flower that had saved him from larm; "Oh! tell me," he murmured, "thy wish or thy want;" "I ask," said the rose, "one additional charm.".. The Spirit bewailed the fair flower's discontent; The Rose's vain sisters rejoiced in their pride, THE BEST EPITAPH. BY S. W. PARTRIDGE. IN yon wide churchyard's meanest nook, A lonely grave o'ershadowed lies No pompous stone records the name An osier-girded sod alone Yet oft at eve the village poor To that lone spot repair, And wear the grass that grows around, In vain proud urns and monuments As onward, to the nameless grave, Which Interest burns to Pride. Thine, grandeur, be the crested tomb, "The poor man's friend" my title be, Miscellaneous. "I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own, but the string that ties them."--Montaigne. SAGACITY OF A CART HORSE. DIRECTLY Opposite my residence a church is being erected, and during its progress temporary sheds have been put up for the use of the workmen, and one as a stable for a very fine cart horse, the property of the builder. The extreme docility of this animal attracted my attention to him, and since that some of his manoeuvres appear to me to border strongly on the sense and the powers of reflection. His stable was erected at one end of the church: on one occasion two poles had been fastened across his usual road to it, in order to strengthen the scaffolding; he went up, tried the strength of these first, then finding that he could neither get over nor under, he turned round, and, at a full trot, made the circuit of the church, and got to the other side of the poles by another path. Here was no straying about, and at last finding his way, but a fixed resolve to go round, as if an idea had at once flashed across his mind. Another day, a waggon had been put standing in the narrowest part of his road to the stable: he looked and tried each side, but found there was not space enough for him to pass; he took very little time for consideration, but put his breast against the back part of the waggon, and shoved it on to a wider part of the road, then deliberately passed on one side to his stable. Could human wisdom have done better? But to crown all his manoeuvres, I mention the following as being, I consider, very extraordinary. During the winter a large wide drain had been made, and over this strong planks had been placed for our friend, the cart horse, to pass over to his stable. It had snowed during the night, and froze very hard in the morning. How he passed over the planks on going out to work I know not, but on being turned loose from the cart at breakfast, he came up to them, and I saw his fore-feet slip; he drew back immediately, and seemed for a moment at a loss how to get on. Close to these planks a cart-load of sand had been placed; he put his fore-feet on this, and looked wistfully to the other side of the drain. The boy who attends this horse, and who had gone round by another path, seeing him stand there, called him. The horse immediately turned round, and set about scraping the sand most vigorously, first with one foot then the other. The boy, perhaps wondering what he would be at, waited to see. When the planks were completely covered with sand, the horse turned round again, and unhesitatingly walked over, and trotted up to his stable and driver. Sporting Magazine. EXCELLENCE OF THE BRITISH POLITICAL SYSTEM. OUR political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the State, in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete. By adhering in this manner, and on those principles, to our forefathers, we are guided not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance, we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; bending up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually-reflected charities, our State, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.- Burke. London Magazine: A JOURNAL OF ENTERTAINMENT AND INSTRUCTION THE CHANCES OF FORTUNE. "IT cannot be too often repeated," observes Madame de Staël, "that the experience, whether of individuals or of nations, furnishes to them but one favourable moment for securing good fortune or power; that moment must be seized as it flies; for the happy chance seldom returns a second time in the course of the same destiny; and, to him who has let it slip, there remains for the rest of his life only the bitter experience of continued reverses." These words are little more than a paraphrase of the well-known passage of Shakspeare, which we cannot doubt Madame de Staël had in her eye when she wrote them. "There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries." We should be sorry to acquiesce, without some reservation, in the view of our destiny exhibited either in the lady's prose or the poet's verses. We cannot think so hardly of our common lot, as to represent to ourselves the whole family of man as receiving, among the innumerable openings of fortune presented to each during his three score and ten years, but one that leads to happiness, and enjoying but one fleeting moment of opportunity to enter upon it. What fearful odds would there be against any man's escaping the shoals and miseries of so dubious a voyage! What hope could any of accidents of a changeful life, he should have the us reasonably entertain, that, among the numberless skill, or presence of mind, or good fortune, to seize upon the one right chance at the one right time? We must not, however, rashly impeach the philo sophy of our own matchless poet, or of the acute and ingenious Frenchwoman. Principles may be sufficiently true for all the purposes of a limited or occasional application, which become false and dangerous if held forth as universal laws. We may safely admit, that it would be false to lay it down as one of the fixed laws of our being, that, one chance of success suffered to pass unimproved, the shadows of disappointment and reverse sink down upon our fortunes, never to be lifted off or dispersed, for it would be contradictory of our daily experience; and that it would be, moreover, a most mischievous thing for any man to believe in as a general law, because tending to induce a fatalism of the most disheartening character, and to paralyse every effort to redeem the errors of youth and inexperience; and yet leave ourselves room for asserting, that, taken in a restricted sense, and applied to a special description of circumstances, it is a principle founded in sound philosophy, and susceptible of a most salutary application to the business of life, that an opportunity for securing any of fortune's great prizes, once presented and not taken advantage of, seldom or never returns a second time to the same man. The lines quoted from Shakspeare are placed by him in the mouth of Brutus, immediately before the battle of Philippi. The philosophic Roman employs them to vindicate his determination, in opposition to the advice of his friend and colleague Cassius, to peril the fate of his cause upon the issue of a decisive battle. The disastrous result would, appear to give rather a denial than a practical confirmation to the soundness of the application of the principle in that particular case. Indeed, it may be doubted, whether the main intention of the character of Brutus, as drawn by Shakspeare, was not to illustrate the inadequacy of mere theoretical wisdom, unsupported by practical experience, to grapple with the difficulties of a great emergency, and the danger of rashly applying the refined conclusions of philosophy, gained in the closet by mere study and reflection, and without a sufficient acquaintance with the qualities and powers of the material agents with which they are to be wrought out, to the actual business of life. He, most probably, meant us to infer, that the plain commonsense and military experience of Cassius, the practised soldier and man of the world, would have been a safer guide in a question of mere strategy, than the well-sounding speculations of his philosophic friend, who, with the characteristic dogmatism of a mere theorist, bearing down all opposition by the weight of his unrivalled moral character, and confident in the soundness of his judgment, not so much from overweening self-conceit as from absolute inexperience, assumed the guidance of affairs which he had not sufficient practical knowledge to direct. We may, therefore, with much likelihood, contend that, so far from asserting unqualifiedly, and to its extreme extent, the principle expressed in the passage quoted, it was part of Shakspeare's object to expose the danger of rashly or ignorantly applying such speculations to actual affairs. He rescues it from undue contempt, by putting it into the mouth of the wisest and most philosophic character he had ever drawn; but he makes the result show that it is not by acting upon nice quillets of philosophy, but by the skill derived from actual experience, that an important enterprise can be ccnducted to a successful issue. Madame de Staël unquestionably announces the principle broadly and unqualifiedly, as one that she herself fully believes in. The absence of qualification, however, may very fairly be taken for one of those artifices of rhetoric, proper to writings of the class to which the work belongs in which the passage in question is to be found, which are intended to give emphasis to a statement which, if guarded by all the reservations required by strict logic in works of pure reasoning, would fall coldly and ineffectually on the ear. In works of a declamatory character, one of the most effectual means of persuasion is the unhesitating confidence with which the writer commits himself to assertions which will not bear a very minute examination; it shows him to be in earnest; and we give him credit for having satisfied himself on better grounds than he is able to show to us; nay, the slight touch of paradox involved rather enlists our sympathies than shocks our reason. We must, therefore, not reject such a statement of a principle or philosophical law as unworthy of attention, because it will not bear a kind of criticism for which it was never intended. In the present instance, Madame de Staël is speaking of the errors committed by the Constituent Assembly, which gave its first form and body to the French Revolution. She represents it as having had the destiny of France placed in its hands, during the interval between the fall of the Bastile on the 14th of July, and the removal of the Royal Family and Legislature from Versailles to Paris, on the 6th October, 1789. That interval rightly used, she contends, would have enabled it to secure the liberties and future welfare of France; but, having been suffered to pass unimproved, its uses neglected or misunderstood, a second opportunity of saving their country, for the same men, was not within the range of reasonable probability. So applied and limited, we cannot refuse our assent to the proposition, or, at all events, brand it as false in principle or mischievous in practice. There is a kind of superstition in such matters, which most men have a tendency to cherish. The wisest of us has some hankering after a belief in lucky days, in favourable or unfavourable omens, in the existence of more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in our philosophy. We hold more firmly than we are often aware of, by the persuasion of some mysterious and unseen agency, undefined even to our own minds, and which we should not care to be asked to define,―some power whose seat is higher than earth, yet lower than heaven,-a fate-which gives a direction to our fortunes, and governs the results of our actions, on principles apparently capricious, or at least inexplicable to our reason. It is this which, in former days, gained for the reveries of judicial astrology, admission into minds at the same time fully imbued not merely with philosophy, but with sound religious truth; and which still, although, in these matter-of-fact times, every year clears away some of the not unpleasing twilight which used to hang over certain regions of our belief, leads many a devout Christian, in every walk of life, to mingle with his habitual reliance upon the good providence of God, a clinging belief in something else, as influencing his destiny-he does not well know what-which it would greatly disturb his religious feelings to be compelled to embody to his own mind by giving it a name. |