occasions; which done, he put himself at their head, ordered the pine-planks, which served as a drawbridge, to be laid down, and issued forth from his castle, like a mighty giant, just refreshed with wine.

But when the two heroes met, then began a scene of warlike parade and chivalric courtesy, that beggars all description. Risingh, who was a shrewd, cunning politician, and had grown grey much before his time, in consequence of his craftiness, saw, at once, the ruling passion of the great Von Poffenburgh, and humoured him in all his valorous fantasies.

Their detachments were accordingly drawn up in front of each other: they carried arms, and they presented arms; they gave the standing salute;- they rolled their drums, they flourished their fifes, and they waved their colors; they faced to the left, and they faced to the right, and they faced to the right about; they wheeled forward, and they wheeled backward, and they wheeled into échellon ; — they marched and they counter-marched, by grand divisions, by single divisions, and by subdivisions, by platoons, by sections, and by files, -in quick time, in slow time, and in no time at all; for, having gone through all the evolutions of two great armies, including the eighteen manœuvres of Dundas; having exhausted all that they could recollect or imagine of military tactics, including sundry strange and irregular evolutions, the like of which were never seen before or since, excepting among certain of our newly-raised militia;- the two great captains and their respective troops came, at length, to a dead halt, completely exhausted by the toils of war.

Never did two valiant train-band captains, or two buskined theatric heroes, in the renowned tragedies of Pizarro, Tom Thumb, or any other heroical and fighting tragedy, marshal their gallows-looking, duck-legged, heavy-heeled myrmidons, with more glory and self-admiration.

RULE FOR THE READING OF HUMOROUS DESCRIPTIONS.

Passages of HUMOROUS DESCRIPTION, should be read with FULL LIVELINESS of feeling, GREAT BREADTH of tone, and PLAYFUL EXAGGERATION of effect.

EXERCISE CXV.

THE QUAKER'S SON. - N. Hawthorne.

On the evening of an autumn day, that had witnessed the martyrdom of two men of the Quaker persuasion, a Puritan settler was returning from the metropolis to the neighboring country town, in which he resided. The air was cool, the sky clear; and the lingering twilight was made brighter by the rays of a young moon, which had now nearly reached the verge of the horizon. The traveller, a man of middle age, wrapped in a gray friese cloak, quickened his pace when he had reached the outskirts of the town; for a gloomy extent of nearly four miles, lay between him and his home.

The low, straw-thatched houses were scattered at considerable intervals along the road; and the country having been settled but about thirty years, the tracts of original forest still bore no small proportion to the cultivated ground. The autumn winds wandered among the branches, whirling away the leaves from all except the pine-trees, and moaning as if it lamented the desolation of which it was the instrument.

The road had penetrated the mass of woods that lay nearest to the town, and was just emerging into an open space, when the traveller's ears were saluted by a sound more mournful than even that of the wind. It was like the wailing of some one in distress; and it seemed to proceed from beneath a tall and lonely fir-tree, in the centre of a cleared, but unenclosed and uncultivated field. The Puritan could not but remember that this was the very spot which had been made accursed, a few hours before, by the execution of the Quakers, whose bodies had been thrown together into one hasty grave, beneath the tree on which they suffered. He struggled, however, against the superstitious fears which belonged to the age, and compelled himself to pause and listen.

'The voice is, most likely, mortal; nor have I cause to tremble, if it be otherwise,' thought he; straining his eyes through the dim moonlight. 'Methinks it is like the wailing of a child: some infant, it may be, which has strayed from its mother, and chanced upon this place of death. For the ease of mine own conscience, I must search this matter out.'

He therefore left the path, and walked somewhat fearfully across the field. Though now so desolate, its soil was pressed down and trampled by the thousand footsteps of those who

had witnessed the spectacle of that day; all of whom had now retired, leaving the dead to their loneliness.

The traveller at length reached the fir-tree, which, from the middle upward, was covered with living branches; although a scaffold had been erected beneath, and other preparations made for the work of death. Under this unhappy tree, which, in after times, was believed to drop poison with its lew, sat the one solitary mourner for innocent blood. It was a slender and light-clad little boy, who leaned his face upon a hillock of fresh-turned and half-frozen earth, and wailed bitterly, yet in a suppressed tone, as if his grief might receive the punishment of crime. The Puritan, whose approach had been unperceived, laid his hand upon the child's shoulder, and addressed him compassionately.

'You have chosen a dreary lodging, my poor boy; and no wonder that you weep,' said he. But dry your eyes, and tell me where your mother dwells. I promise you, if the journey be not too far, I will leave you in her arms to-night!'

The boy had hushed his wailing at once, and turned his face upward to the stranger. It was a pale, bright-eyed countenance, certainly not more than six years old; but sorrow, fear, and want had destroyed much of its infantile expression. The Puritan, seeing the boy's frightened gaze, and feeling that he trembled under his hand, endeavored to reassure him.

'Nay, if I intended to do you harm, little lad, the readiest way were to leave you here. What! you do not fear to sit beneath the gallows, on a new-made grave, and yet you tremble at a friend's touch? Take heart, child, and tell me what is your name, and where is your home.'

'Friend,' replied the little boy, in a sweet, though faltering voice, 'they call me Ilbrahim; and my home is here.'

'Was every door in the land shut against you, my child,' said the Puritan, 'that you have wandered to this unhallowed spot?' "They drove me forth from the prison, when they took my father thence,' said the boy; 'and I stood afar off, watching the crowd of people; and when they were gone, I came hither, and found only this grave. I knew that my father was sleeping here; and I said, this shall be my home.'

'No, child, no; not while I have a roof over my head, or a morsel to share with you!' exclaimed the Puritan, whose sympathies were now fully excited. 'Rise up; and come with me; and fear not any harm.'

We call ourselves a polite people; and, comparatively speaking, perhaps we are so. It is allowed, I believe, that Americans, both at home and abroad, are remarkably attentive to women, though Capt. Hall thinks otherwise. Still we commit some offences against good breeding. We have a bad trick of staring at strangers, as any one must have noticed, who has been in a country church when any one entered. And then we ask a great many idle, and not a few impertinent questions.

The habit we have of cutting and defacing every fixture that is penetrable to steel, is so universal and so abominable, that it deserves to be scourged out of us by a pestilence or a famine. The manners, too, of our common people towards each other, are marked by great roughness, and an entire inattention to all the little courtesies of life. Perhaps we owe this to our English descent; for John Bull thinks that if a man is polite to him, he has a design upon his purse.

There are a great many little offences committed against good manners, which people are hardly aware of at the time. It is not polite, for instance, to tease a person to do what he has once declined; and it is equally impolite to refuse a request or an invitation in order to be urged, and accept afterwards. Comply at once: if your friend be sincere, you will gratify him; if not, you will punish him, as he deserves to be. It is not polite, when asked what part of a dish you will have, to say, 'any part, it is quite indifferent to me;' it is hard enough to carve for one's friends, without choosing for them.

It is not polite to entertain our visiters with our own family history, and the events of our own household. It is not polite for married ladies, to talk in the presence of gentlemen, of the difficulty they have in procuring domestics, and how good-for-nothing they are when procured. It is not polite to put food upon the plate of your guest, without asking his leave, nor to press him to eat more than he wants. It is not polite to stare under ladies' bonnets, as if you suspected they had stolen the linings from you. It is but let me remem. ber it is not polite to be a bore, especially in print.

I am an admirer of the old school of manners, as it is commonly called. I like the minute attentions, the uniform, though formal courtesy, and the mingled dignity and benevolence of manner which characterize it. The few specimens of it that are left among us, appear like Corinthian columns, to which time has lent a touching grace, independent of their intrinsic beauty. They connect us with an age, in which far more stress was laid upon dress and manner, and all external things, than now; to an age of wigs and knee-buckles, of flowered waistcoats and hooped petticoats, of low bows and stately courtesies: and I shall be sorry when they are all gone.

Let no man imagine that his rank, or station, or talents, excuse him from an attention to those rules of good breeding, which cost nothing but a little care, and which make a great deal of difference in the sum total of human happiness. They are as imperative as the rules of morality; and there is no one, however great or high, that does not owe to society a liberal recompense for what he receives from it.

There is, now and then, a man so weak as to affect to be rough, or forgetful, or absent, from a notion that his deficiencies, in these little things, will be ascribed to the largeness of the objects with which he is habitually conversant, and that his mind will be supposed unable to come down from the airy regions of contemplation, to such low matters. But such a one should be put into the same state-room of the great Ship of Fools, with those who twisted their necks to look like Alexander, or 'spoke thick' to resemble Hotspur. A man that can do great things, and not little ones, is an imperfect man; and there is no more inconsistency between the two, than there is in a great poet's being able to write a promissory note, or a great orator's having the power to talk about the weather.

I will only remark, in conclusion, that good-breeding should. form a part of every system of education. Not that children should be made to barter their native simplicity for a set of artificial airs and graces, but that they should be early impressed with the deformity of selfishness, and the necessity of