lovely landscape, in the midst of which we sat forgetful even of its beauties, wholly absorbed in the consideration of one another. I had whispered, and she had heard without reply, what is never whispered a second time. We might have been half an hour together, it was but a moment to my thought, when she recollected that she had left her aunt waiting for her in a butcher's shop where she was buying -how minutely love makes us recollect the merest trifles-buying a leg of pork, with a couple of pounds of sausages. I pressed her hand to my lips, and we returned to Clifton. Delightful day! Were my life prolonged to the day allotted to Methuselah, I never could forget a particle of what happened upon thee! It is the bright spot in the waste of my memory. When we parted, I put my hand mechanically and mournfully into my waistcoat pocket, and found that I had forgotten my cigar case. Love had so completely taken possession of my soul, that I knew not what I was doing, and, by mere instinct, walked into a tobacconist's shop, which, such was the absence of my mind, I was about to leave without paying for the cigars, until the tobacconist rather energetically reminded me of my insouciance. Captain Snickersnee and his skittles were quite out of my head, and I went across to a low-browed public house, where a portrait of Lord Nelson, more spirited in conception, than exact in likeness, or studied in composition, shone glittering in one-armed majesty in the evening sun. The room I went into why need I conceal that it was the tap-room?—was filled with the miscellaneous population of Bristol-men in general more noted for their candour than any other particularity in their manners. But I heeded them not. I was as much alone as if I was in the deserts of Tadmor, where the ruins of Palmyra tower towards the sky, or moulder upon the ground, filling the awe-struck traveller with melancholy musing on the instability of things. I lighted my cigar by the assistance of the pipe of a man sitting next me, who I have some reason to believe, but I shall not be positive, was a tailor. I puffed away-soft were my thoughts, delectable my visions. Every curl of smoke contained the countenance of my Cecilia-every twinkle from och surrounding pipe beamed upon me as if it was one of her celestial eyes. I had forgotten where I was, when the waiter came to me, and jogging my elbow, said, "Thee musn't lumber the room, if thee'll not drink zummat." In general, I have remarked, that the language of these persons is seldom marked by the refinements of elegance, and that perhaps you might travel from one end of the country to the other without finding a waiter at a public-house who combines the terseness of Addison with the magniloquence of Johnson! I replied to this rude man mildly, yet I think with sufficient dignity. "What have you in the house?" "Every thing," said he. In this the man's bad faith was evident, for, on scrutinizing the subject, I found that he had nothing but gin, a liquor I ever detested, and rum. “Rum, then," said I with a sigh, resigning myself to my fate, for I anticipated, in my ignorance, that I would dislike it. My mouth was full of the cigar-smoke-full, ay, full as my heart was of my Cecilia. Divine girl! when I think upon thy perfections, on thy charms, on the manner in which thou wert lost to me, by that fatal and mysterious circle of events, never to be anticipated-never to be repeated-But I'll think no more. There is a point of human endurance, beyond which it cannot go. Let me proceed. I was saturated with smoke, when, in the wildness of the delirium of my love, I did not perceive the water bottle standing by the bottom of rum, and swallowed the spirit, unalloyed, unmoistened, undiluted, uninjured. It permeated my whole mouth-it filled it with a species of solidity that seemed altogether to have destroyed the liquid character of the spirits; I felt it melting into my palate, my tongue, my fauces, my gums. It was an intense gush, a simple, original, indivisible idea of delight. It rose to my brain, as the vapour of the tedded meadow rises to the sky in the balminess of morning. It descended to the sole of my foot as the sky sends back that delicious vapour in the shape of the dews of evening. It was a joy to be felt once, and no more. I never felt it again. It was "Odour fled As soon as shed; 'Twas morning's wingéd dream, 'Twas a light that never shall shine again On life's dull stream!" I have tried it over and over, and it will not do. I smoke my cigar still in the evening, and frequently moisten with a quart or so of rum, naked, in grog, in punch, in flip-every way that can be thought of, but it will not return. That feeling of intense and transporting delight is over. Days of my youth! when every thing was innocence and peace-when my sorrows were light, and my joys unsophisticated-when I saw a glory in the sky, and a power on the earth which I shall never see again-how delightful, yet how sad is your recollection! Here's, then, to the days gone by-to the memory of my first love and my first libation of rum over a cigar! Some young heart is now going the same round as I was then-revelling in delights which he fondly fancies are to last for ever-anticipating joys which never are destined to exist. Light be his heart, buoyant his spirits-I shall not break in on his dreams by the croaking of experience. Farewell again, Cecilia! I never saw her after that day— in the evening she left Bristol with her aunt's butler-they were married three days after by the blacksmith at Gretna, and she is now, I understand, the mother of fourteen children, keeping, with her third husband, the sign of the Cat and Bagpipes somewhere about the Dock of Liverpool. I never could muster up courage to enter the house. The very sound of her voice saying, "Eightpence, sir," in reply to my question of what I had to pay, would inevitably overcome my feelings. I was born to be unhappy-but I shall not intrude my sorrows on a thoughtless world! The Crabstick.* Air-The Green Immortal Shamrock. THROUGH Britain's isle as Hymen strayed With Buller sage, in wig arrayed, To act as cicerone, To them full many a spouse forlorn Of visage torn and breeches worn, And thus his godship pondered — Oh, the Crabstick! the green immortal Crabstick! A lasting cure In Russia's native Crabstick! With magic wand he struck the earth, Oh, the Crabstick! the green immortal Crabstick! On jilt and jade Be Buller's magic Crabstick! The olive branch, Minerva's boon, Betokens peace and quiet, But 'tis sage Hymen's gift alone Can quell domestic riot; For 'tis a maxim long maintain'd By doctors and logicians, That peace is most securely gain'd By armed politicians. Oh, the Crabstick! the green immortal Crabstick! Its vigorous shoot Quells all dispute, The wonder-working Crabstick! * From Blackwood for November, 1824.-M. VOL. II.-14 In idleness and youthful hours, But spliced for life, and wiser grown, Oh, the Crabstick! the green immortal Crabstick! The useless rose, But Hymen gives the Crabstick!* Sonnet.t I STOOD upon St. Peter's battlement, And my eye wander'd o'er Imperial Rome, So shall all earthly fade! what wonder then, If neither genius, art, nor skill of men, Can e'en pretend his felon-hand to check, That this old coat, I've worn these three years past, *The hero of this song was Sir Francis Buller, an English Judge, and not the myth yclept "Buller of Brazenose." Sir Francis, who was so eminently henpecked at home that he never dared call his soul his own, stated, while presiding at Stafford Assizes, that, by the law of the land, a man might correct his wife with a stick "not thicker than his thumb." The incensed ladies of Stafford incontinently signed and sent in a round-robin, asking the learned judge to favour them with the dimension of his thumb.-M. + From the Literary Gazette.-M. |