Sketches from the Life of an Irish Medical Student. 43 cannot precisely say; but if we were to decide by his vehement action, excited face, and prominent eyes, he was apparently in the last throes of a piece of panegyric on some nameless object, but punch, tobacco, and his own proverbial excitement, had so bewildered his imagination, that when I caught his last words, they were indeed rather unintelligible. "Were I, Mr. President, to proceed with this description, where private merit and supremest talent alike struggle into notice, above a mass of inferior but splendid accomplishments, I should be lost in the greatness of the picture I had createdlike that sculptor of old who remained in rapt extacy at the godlike features of his statue I should shrink trom the moral Frankenstein-my brain would refuse to grasp the immensity of the object-detail would be lost in infinity-incapable of receiving, even from inanimate nature, the vivid impressions of the glorious morn, or the resplendent sunset, I should fall overpowered by the comparison-in short, I should become a Sphynx!!" "Time for me to go," thought I, as I quietly left my seat, and slipped to the door. "There's an accident in the Hall, sir," whispered Jem, as I was cooling myself in one of the corridors. "Very well, Jem-bring me the water jug." I took off my cravat, and, according to custom, Jem poured a full stream of the cooling element over my head. "Now Jem, I'm as steady as a rock-where are the instruments?" It was seven o'clock-a winter's morning and I proceeded to my patient-fortunately a mere bruise. When I had done, I thought I would just see how affairs went on in the Theatre; and, with considerable caution, I proceeded to the room. To my astonishment, not a sound reached my ears. Were they all gone? No surely. I heard a voice-one voice. I was certain I heard one. I stole to the door, and peeped in. It was all before me in a moment. The guests had departed, with the exception of a few dead men under the table, and they were motionless. At the head of the table sat Harry-with pipe still in hand-but a rather vacant look had taken the place of his usual laughing expression. Around him were the ruins of the banquet;-broken glasses, decapitated bottles, fractured pipes, and dim candles with towering wicks, stretched in a long line before him to the other end of the table, where in the vicechair some wight had placed the skeleton, who sat in gloomy grandeur, with one hand on the table, and a pipe in his mouththe monarch of the deserted hall.. "Or-der, I say-Or-der," shouted Harry, and his eyes turned to the walls, where a plaster deformity seemed to be making faces at him. "I insist, sir,-you shall-keep-silence," as he glanced at the figure of the skeleton, whose hand, for a moment sliding from the table, rattled down on the chair by its own weight. "Then sir,-you shall-leave-the room;" and Harry, raising a bottle in his hand to give emphasis to the words, shivered it to pieces against the opposite wall. Perhaps overcome by the exertion, the President rolled under the table, leaving "King Death" to keep guard over the remains of the Hospital supper. LEONORA. "She sings the wild song of her dear native plains, Ah! little they think who delight in her strains, Moore. It was the evening of that welcome day, Whose close unto the child of toil brings rest; The setting sun had faded, ray by ray, Though spreading still his crimson o'er the west; Children, play-wearied, sought the mother's breast- The earth, all day with heavy heat opprest, Seemed grateful for relief so calm, so mild, And nature's self rejoiced, looked up, and thankful, smiled. 'Twas in this hour a gentle damsel took Her lonely way to where yon willows grow, And gaziug sadly on the "bubbling brook," Groaned lamentations o'er her wretched woe! "Ah me!" she sighed, "what human mind can know On you, ye streams, my 'plainings I bestow." And as the murmuring waters danced along, SONG. I remember, I remember, St. Valentine's Day. On my finger, on my finger, No wedding-ring there is, Then the treating, then the treating, Yet you'd wrangle-how you'd wrangle! I was silly, I was silly, When a courting thus you came, You were only making game. Now you leave me, now you leave me, If you e'er again deceive me, I wish I may be blowed! And having thus her bursting heart relieved, Of hope had passed ere yet its fruit was ripe; 45 CALENDAR OF MONTHLY FESTIVALS. No. I. ST. VALENTINE'S DAY. To us much meditating, (we use the phraseology of Lord Brougham) it humbly appears, that there is great reason to suspect, that St. Valentine was little better than a sinner. This anomaly is not so extraordinary as might at first be imagined. The sage Malvolio hath left it on record, that, while some people achieve greatness, others have it thrust upon them. It is pretty generally known, that an industrious relic-hunter of the dark ages once carried away the bones of a horsestealer, instead of those of a saint deposited in the same tomb-and scandalous people add, that the horse-stealer's bones served the purpose for which they were intended, quite as well as the others could have done, for the life of them. So it is no wonder, amid the scramble of saints for days-their number being so great, that, after 364 days of the year have been appropriated to one or other, a whole legion are obliged to club together, and be contented with All Saints' Day among them. It is strange, that in these days of economy, no Joseph Hume in the College of Cardinals, has ever thought of turning the 29th of February to account, by allowing some one of this hampered bevy to escape out of the black-hole of Calcutta sort of a day into which they have been squeezed, and appropriate a whole day to himself, once in every four years. But the ardour of our benevolence is diverting us from our more immediate subject. We repeat, that, under these circumstances, it is not so very much to be wondered at, that one saint, of perhaps equivocal character, should contrive to smuggle himself into the possession of a day. Slanderous tongues have hinted that he is not the only one; and muttered something about suspicions as to St. Nicholas being little more than an alias for Old Nick. But we don't believe a word of it. His St. Valentine, however, we must honestly confess, we are inclined, after mature inquiry, to suspect to have been a handsome young Grecian, of somewhat heathenish propensities, who, as a Syrian bishop, was once in great vogue among the heretics of the Gnostic persuasion. doctrines were rather of an erotic complexion; and, on this occasion, popular tradition seems to have hit the mark, nearer than grave divines. St. Valentine is much better fitted to occupy a niche in the calendar of those, who link returning seasons with legends of fairy-land, than in the more solemn calendar, in which he occupies a space. A more fitting bishop is he to wield his crozier, where Riquette of the Tuft, his own polished and gallant namesake Valentine, with his rough brother Orson, King Pepin, and King Arthur couch their spears, and wield their sceptres, than among the ponderous realities of history. Unchallenged and unrivalled prelate and patriarch of the misty moonlight realm of fairyland, long be his authority unquestioned! If he has been dealt with more tenderly than he deserves by popular tradition, it is no more than popular tradition owes to the side of mercy, for the strange liberties it has taken with high reputations. The dry caustic Buchanan, the stern co-mate of a Knox, has his grave dignity immortalised in Scottish legends as "the King's Fool;" and Virgil, in the traditions of the Italian peasantry, and indeed of the whole middle ages of Europe, has been fain to doff the laurel from his brow, and assume the relic of the necromancer. Some compunctious mood has probably induced this wayward power, to use one of its subjects, as much better than his deserts, as it has done others worse. But what is St. Valentine to us, more than the name, by which one of the pleasantest festivals of the year is known? Some sage meteorologists complain that it comes too soon; that it bears marks of its origin in a sunnier clime, where the period of winter's reign is more brief than with us; that " pairing time is anticipated" every year in Great Britain, by the precocious season of the year at which it is held. So much the better. St. Valentine is rather the herald of the coming |