Appropriate to her late task, she still wears her neat apron, edged with blue trimming, and from the front of which perk out two smart provoking-looking pockets, which gush over with all kinds of female paraphernalia, such as scissors, cotton-balls, and knitting-wires. You enter, and, being a friend of the family, she is so glad to see you. In five minutes you know all about the accomplishments of her canaries, the late behaviour of Bob the spaniel, an accident which happened that morning to her best frock, and the annual which she has received as a present "from a friend," as the inscription has it-and here she evidently wishes you rather to look into the inside of the book than dwell on the initial pages. She has also a few of the nothings called "ladies' work," light visionary fabrics of card and wafers, which she has been executing for a charity sale that is soon to take place: these are all brought out and displayed before you. Then there is her album, with holograph poems by three authors of reputation, and a thousand contributions, both original and selected, from less distinguished persons-the whole being garnished by her own drawings. All these things you must inspect, for she only shows them in the hope of entertaining you; and then she turns to music. She has had selections from the last opera sent to her, and these she runs over, for your amusement, on the pianoforte; carefully taking you bound, however, to observe that she has not yet sufficiently practised them to be quite perfect in their execution. In truth, you little need such apologies for her deficiencies. It is not for her external accomplishments-though these are considerable-that you value this fair specimen of humanity. You appreciate her for her beauty, which nature. could never have conferred if it had not been intended as a reverencecompelling merit-for her gentle and artless nature so well enshrined in that form of native and indefeasible grace-and because, by dwelling on the contemplation of such a being, your estimation of your kind is elevated; a gratification in itself, and one of the highest order.

Such is the "English girl," as she still exists in many of the happy homes throughout this pleasant land. She is one of the creations of

nature, which, though decaying in generations, live nevertheless for ever as a race. It would be as absurd to expect that the next spring should fail to prank the sod of England with primroses, as to suppose that there will ever be a time with us when the cheeks of girls shall not bloom, and their hearts cease to be stored with those blessed influences which tend so much to cheer the rest of their kind. We may be ruined twice over-in the newspapers-but there will never be a time when the lover of nature shall want objects to solace himself withal. For him shall the ground year after year be covered with a new robe of green, the trees redress their dishevelled locks, the flowers once more put on their bloom; and for him there shall never be wanting sweet faces decked with maiden smiles, and painted with perennial roses, to assure him that England is still "right at the heart."

HOPE.

(Campbell)

RIMEVAL Hope, the Aönian muses say,

When Man and Nature mourn'd their first decay;

When every form of death, and every woe,
Shot from malignant stars to earth below;
When Murder bared her arm, and rampant War
Yoked the red dragons of her iron car;
When Peace and Mercy, banish'd from the plain,
Sprung on the viewless winds to Heaven again;
All, all forsook the friendless guilty mind,
But Hope, the charmer, linger'd still behind.

Eternal Hope! when yonder spheres sublime Peal'd their first notes to sound the march of time,

Thy joyous youth began-but not to fade.

When all the sister planets have decay'd,

When wrapp'd in fire the realms of ether glow,

And Heaven's last thunder shakes the world below,

Thou undismay'd shalt o'er the ruins smile,

And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile.

PROSE.

(Moliere.)

Professor. Very good. Do you think of addressing her in verse? Monsieur Jourdain. No, no;-not in verse.

Prof. You wish it merely prose.

Mons. J. No; neither prose nor verse.

Prof. It must be one or the other.

Mons. 7. Why?

Prof. Because, Monsieur, we can only express ourselves in prose or in verse.

Mons. J. Only in prose or in verse?

Prof. No, Monsieur. All that is not prose is verse; and all that is not verse is prose.

Mons. J. And what we're talking now:-what's that?

Prof. That's prose.

Mons. J. What! When I say "Nicole, bring me my slippers, and give me my night-cap,"-that's prose?

Prof. Yes, Monsieur.

Mons. J. Only think! Here's more than forty years I've been talking prose without knowing it!

Where rougher climes a nobler race display;
Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread,
And force a churlish soil for scanty bread.
No product here the barren hills afford,
But man and steel, the soldier and his sword;
No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
But Winter, lingering, chills the lap of May;
No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast,
But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.
Yet still even here content can spread a charm,
Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm.
Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small,
He sees his little lot the lot of all;

Sees no contiguous palace rear its head,

To shame the meanness of his humble shed.
Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,
And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms;
And as a child, when scaring sounds molest,
Clings close and closer to the mother's breast,
So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar
But bind him to his native mountains more.