their monarchs became impressed with the urgent necessity that existed, for the adoption of national measures calculated to improve the intellectual and social condition of their subjects, and for the establishment of the political institutions of their kingdoms upon a wiser and broader foundation. Influenced by the great commercial interests which the confederacy had so wisely dissemminated, and which had become of the deepest importance in promoting the advancement of national wealth and power, more enlightened and beneficial systems of law were enacted and promulgated. The gloomy and illiberal usages which had prevailed under the influence of feudal government, were every where disappearing before the onward strides of civilization and refinement.

The arts and sciences began to be appreciated and cultivated, and the prevalence of civil order and beneficial laws was experienced, where intestine commotions, discord, and despotism, had before reigned. The inhabitants of the countries amongst which the confederated cities were situated, saw the immense advantages which commerce bestowed, and although eager to participate in their enjoyment, the superior privileges and immunities possessed by the members of he confederacy, and of which they were deprived, offered an almost insuperble barrier to ultimate success and prosperity. As the naval strength of the League formed the principal elements by which its influence and power abroad were preserved, and its ascendency upon the seas maintained, the maritime naions of Europe perceived, that they must rival and even overpower it in this respect, before their subjects would be able to compete with its citizens in commerial enterprises: and the most strenuous exertions were made to accomplish this bject.

The countries of Zealand and Holland, by uniting their fleets, were at length ufficiently powerful at sea to vindicate their right to the free navigation of he Baltic, which, after many struggles, they succeeded in establishing; and fromthat time the downfall of the League rapidly advanced.

Many its richest cities withdrew the moment that they no longer stood in need of it support, and those that had joined it through fear of being otherwise shut at from all intercourse with foreign countries, immediately seceded ; and no soor had the ships of the English and Dutch commenced trading with the Prusian and Polish towns, than these also separated from the confederacy.

In 1552, to English merchants, indignant that a company of foreigners should enjoy livileges of which they were deprived, presented a petition praying for their a,lishment, by which it appeared that the company had so engrossed the clot trade the preceding year, that they had exported fifty thousand pieces, whi all the English together had exported but one thousand one hundred. As th power of the confederacy had dwindled away, leaving but the mere shadowf its former greatness, the English parliament no longer feared its vengean, and an act was passed entirely abrogating the numerous franchises which it ad enjoyed, and thus was its influence in England for ever destroyed.

In the middle of e seventeenth century, the only cities composing it were Lubec, Hamburgh, at Bremen, and even these retained little besides the name to distinguish their soreignty.

A development of e commercial resources possessed by the nations of Europe had been accolished by the League; the purposes of its organiza

tion had been effected; and when its power was no longer necessary for the continuance of commercial prosperity, when the spirit of rude barbarism had been expelled by the introduction of civilization and refinement, and social order and political subordination had triumphed over the tyranny, oppression, and anarchy which had so long prevailed, the mighty agent which had produced these changes passed silently away from among the sovereignties of the earth, leaving the impress of its former commercial grandeur deeply stamped upon every enlightened country in Europe.

BIOGRAPHY OF A BROOMSTICK.

When I considered these things, I sighed and said within myself, "Surely man is a broomstick!" Swift's Meditations on a Broomstick.

DOCTOR JOHNSON is known to have said he could make a capital book of the Life of a Broomstick. It is astonishing the book-making tribe have never taken this hint; for nobody has ever written such a work, notwithstanding the fruitfulness of the subject. Writers have given us the lives of innumerabl dunces, old grannies, fops, bores and do-littles. All sorts of nobodies ar good-for-nothing two-legged creatures have had their memories embalmed.n bad English and balderdash eloquence; but hitherto no one except the Grat Moralist seems to have been aware of the biographical capabilities of bromsticks. As I have the honour, therefore, of being born a broomstick, I hall proceed to relate the events of my life according to the most approved models of biographical composition.

Broomsticks, dear reader, are important things; your wife has dabtless given you a hint of this before. The life of a broomstick must, in consquence, abound in striking events, and furnish the speculative philosopher win topics for profound reflection. My family is ancient, for the pedigree can be raced to Noah, who, it is pretty certain, took a supply of broomsticks in the ark, well knowing he should have plenty of sweeping to do. This being settld, let none hereafter deny the antiquity of broomsticks. See the treatise of Naimonides; De Broomstickorum vetere prosapia, cum notis Johannis Bamouzelbergii, edit. Lugduni Batav. 1662.

But to make a slight transition from Noah's ark to the county f Worcester, in which place I first became a broomstick, I must begin my life by saying that I owe existence to a celebrated manufacturer of birchen commodties, who lacking timber of his own, stole me in the shape of a sapling from the woods of one of his neighbours. After proper metamorphosis into the rgular form of a household implement, I passed somewhat surreptitiously into the hands of a Connecticut pedler. To speak more distinctly, I was first solen as stuff for making, and then stolen ready made. My readers, I dare sa, have heard loose reports of this circumstance before. The fact is indubitable, and shows the strange vicissitudes to which pedlers and broomsticks are liable in this uncertain life.

The pedler carried me to Boston, where he sold me with all his load to a grocer at the South End; here I remained on hand several weeks, till at length I was bought by the housemaid of a gentleman in ......... Street, and taken regularly into service. I blush to say that at my first entrance into public

life, I was employed in all sorts of dirty work. I should certainly have suppressed this particular, were it not that it offers a surprising coincidence with the career of so many great men of the present day.

Such an outset, I need hardly say, did not please me at all. I was up betimes in the morning, travelled briskly through the entry, kitchen, yard, and cellar, and then poked behind a door to rest. Day after day the same dull routine was repeated, and I began to think I should never know an adventure, or see anything of high life. Three months elapsed before I even got a peep into the parlour. But an unlooked-for accident brought me to play a more important part in the domestic concerns of the house.

The gentleman to whom I had the honour of belonging, was a young man who had met with great good luck, that is to say, he had married a fortune. His spouse was a lady of no great personal charms and considerably his superior in years. My gentleman, however, having an empty purse and a fine figure, very generously overlooked all objections arising from the disparity of their ages, and married the lady for love,—so he said, and nobody contradicted him. The honey-moon passed delightfully, and all parties proclaimed it a blessed match. The lady was happy that she had such a fine, gay, pleasant, sensible, good-natured husband. The husband was happy that he had so many bank shares and brick houses. This was surely a delightful prospect in life, but like many other delightful prospects, it came to nothing, to the utter astonishment of all concerned.

One evening rather late, I was standing in a dark corner of the kitchen, in company with my two friends, the mop and the warming-pan, when I heard the front door shut with more than common emphasis. About a quarter of an hour after this, Dolly the housemaid came running into the kitchen, and seizing hold of me, glided off on tiptoe through the entry. I had not time to conjecture what could be the occasion of this extraordinary movement, before I heard voices in a pretty exalted pitch in the adjoining room. Something had evidently taken place to disturb the domestic tranquillity of those sweet turtledoves, our master and mistress, and Dolly having overheard enough to excite her curiosity, had crept to the parlour door to listen, taking me with her as a sham, that she might pretend being about work, in case she should be caught eaves-dropping. So putting her ear to the door and holding her breath, she heard every syllable of what passed.

My gentleman, it seems, had come home several hours later than he was expected, greatly to the disappointment of his better half, who, on the moment of his appearance, set upon him with reproaches for neglecting her. To my surprise, though probably not to hers, he replied in a manner that showed a very recent familiarity with the good creature Champaigne. He was very talkative and dogmatical, and threw off all reserve.

"Really, sir," said his wife, with as much sullenness in her looks as she had been able to call up in the three hours she had been brooding over her wrongs, "Really, sir, this is too bad."

"Too bad! my dear?" answered the gentleman with a show of the greatest amazement, "too bad, my dear, what do you mean, my dear?"

66

Mean, sir?" that is a pretty question, a very pretty question, hah!” returned she, pretending to make believe laugh.. A pretty question, what it means when folks complain of such treatment. But you grow worse and worse, sir; 't is the twentieth time, sir,—the fortieth time—the hundredth time that

you have neglected me so, and affronted me so, and mortified me so!” she put her handkerchief to her eyes.

Here

"My dear soul," returned he in a very soothing tone, you are crazy! How can you say I neglect you? Don't I come home every day to dinner, except now and then ?"

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Crazy!" exclaimed the offended fair one," it would not be surprising if such doings should drive a woman crazy. Sir, you neglect me shamefully; you neglect your family, sir, let me tell you that! and people know it, sir; I am ashamed of you, sir."

"You don't say so, my dear," retorted he with pretended earnestness: "ashamed of me? Why, I am not ashamed of you."

"Ashamed of me!" interrupted his wife, and reddening at the insinuation, "what do you mean? But I see you care nothing about me; no, you care for nothing but to spend my money with a pack of low fellows."

"Please to spare your reflections upon the gentlemen of my acquaintance; you are no judge of character, sweet woman."

"Sir, I tell you I will bear it no longer,” replied the spouse, growing more and more passionate; "you are an unfeeling creature and an ungrateful creature. I think I am entitled to some respect, sir-consider your obligations

to me."

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Obligations forsooth!" said the husband, beginning to feel his temper disturbed at this fling from his wife. "Heyday! consider your obligations to me too."

"What sir, obligations! pray what obligations! Didn't I marry you, sir, when you hadn't a cent in your pocket? Did n't I make a gentleman of you, sir? answer me that."

"And didn't I marry you, ma'am," returned the gentleman raising his voice, and growing more and more snuffled, " didn't I marry you when you was at the last point of desperation, with all the horrors of single blessedness staring you in the face!"

"'Tis false, sir!" exclaimed his lady with great violence. "I had a dozen offers-good offers, sir; but I was fool enough to marry you, sir. I saved you

from the deputy sheriff;-you may thank me, sir, that you are not at this moment boarding at free cost in Ward No. 5."

"Oho! since you are come to that," said the gentleman, in a very firm tone, and pretending the greatest nonchalance, "I think quite as much might be said on the other side; for let me tell you, old lady, a young fellow that has prospects, can't be expected to throw himself away for nothing."

To call a lady old, is an offence, says Cervantes, that none of the sex can forgive. It is the last thing indeed, which a middle-aged belle wishes to be reminded of. Our lady was very touchy upon this point, and she burst out

"You are an ill-mannered fellow, sir; you are a brute and a barbarian! You mean to kill me with your vile behaviour. I wish I may live a thousand years to vex you. I won't stay another moment in your company. Oh! fie! you wretch!"

With this explosion of rage, she sprang from her seat, and seizing the door with a most tremendous jerk, threw it open. Now all this was done so instantaneously that Dolly, who was standing in breathless immobility, leaning against the outside, had not above three quarters of a second's warning of her approach, so that the door was flying open in an instant, the mistress and maid

came slap together with a momentum not much inferior to that of two locomotives on a railway. The awkwardness of the collision need not be described, but this was not the worst part of the affair. The lady's temper was none of the sweetest, and the quarrel with her husband had made her a hundred times more irritable than common. Enraged at the thought of having her family quarrels discovered, for she had pride as well as temper, she flew upon the luckless listener, and snatching me from her hands before she could think of a word to say in her defence, gave her such a beating, that poor Dolly roared for help and bestowed internally ten thousand maledictions on that evil spirit of curiosity that had prompted her to busy herself with the conjugal endearments of her betters. The husband was not displeased to find the storm diverted from himself to another object, but was at length obliged to interfere, lest the punishment should exceed the offence. He snatched me from the hands of his wife, and bade the luckless maid go about her business, and forbear eaves-dropping in future. But Dolly was not so easily pacified. would'nt stay another moment in the house, not she. Folks needn't think they was to treat their helps like dogs, that they mustn't. She was as good flesh and blood as anybody, shed'd have 'em to know. Off she'd go that instant, bag and baggage, and she'd have the law on them for all their gentility." With these protestations, and a thousand others just like them, accompanied with divers tossings of the head and twistings of the nose, she left the house.

"She

The next morning beheld me travelling to Court-street, where Dolly told her piteous tale to a lawyer, and exhibited me in evidence. "Here is the very broomstick to prove it, sir; every word of it is true, and if you won't believe me, you must believe the broomstick: two witnesses will hang anybody. If there's law in the land, I'll have justice done for me and the broomstick.""No doubt on't,” replied the learned gentleman; "leave the broomstick with me, and I'll make a flourish with it to some purpose; but hark'ee, don't say anything of this affair to anybody else. You shall have justice done you, but leave it to me." Dolly went her way and the lawyer ran to my gentleman. "Mr. -," said he, "this is an ngly affair of yours; couldn't you make it up? The girl swears she'll have it in the newspapers to-morrow. Now, as a friend to you, I should be horrified to see snch a scandal get abroad about a respectable family like yours! I would not for a thousand dollars that the affair should get wind." These alarms had a great effect upon my master and mistress, who by this time had begun to entertain some cool reflections upon the doings of the last evening, and they inquired with great anxiety whether the matter could not be hushed up. "Tis the very thing I have to propose," said the attorney, "the complainant has offered to compound for a consideration."- "How much?" asked the husband.-"Five hundred dollars," replied the man of law. "Five hundred !" exclaimed the loving couple at once, in the most dismal tone of astonishment. 66 Ay," returned the peacemaker, "but I beat her down to two hundred, for I told her she must be reasonable." "The devil confound such reason!" exclaimed the gentleman; "what, two hundred dollars for half a dozen thumps with a broomstick!-I won't pay it." "Why then, there's nothing more to be said,” replied the lawyer gravely, " and the matter must go before the court." This was an ugly thought to my gentleman. "Say a hundred and fifty," said he, "and done." My honest friend, the attorney, took a pinch of snuff, and after a few seconds' hesitation