Read works of fancy, it is said,

And cultivated the Belles Lettres.

And why should this be thought so odd?
Can't men have taste to cure a phthisic?
Of poetry though patron god,

Apollo patronizes physic.

Bolus loved verse, and took so much delight in't. That his prescriptions he resolved to write in't.

No opportunity he e'er let pass

Of writing the directions on his labels, In dapper couplets-like Gay's Fables, Or rather like the lines in Hudibras.

Apothecary's verse!-and where's the trea

son;

'Tis simply honest dealing-not a crime; When patients swallow physic without reason, It is but fair to give a little rhyme.

He had a patient lying at death's door,
Some three miles from the town-it might be
four;

To whom one evening Bolus sent an article
In pharmacy, that's called cathartical,

And, on the label of the stuff,

He wrote this verse,

Which one would think was clear enough,
And terse:

"When taken,

To be well shaken."

Next morning, early, Bolus rose,
And to the patient's house he goes

Upon his pad,

Who a vile trick of stumbling had :
It was indeed a very sorry hack;
But that's of course,

For what's expected from a horse,
With an apothecary on his back?
Bolus arrived, and gave a loudish tap,
Between a single and a double rap.

The servant lets him in with dismal face,
Long as a courtier 's out of place,

Portending some disaster;

John's countenance as rueful looked and grim,
As if the apothecary had physicked him,
And not his master.
"Well, how's the patient?" Bolus said.
John shook his head.

"Indeed!-hum !-ha!-that's very odd! He took the draught?"-John gave a nod. "Well?-how?-what then?-speak out, you dunce."

"Why, then," says John," we shook him once." "Shook him!-how?" Bolus stammered out.. "We jolted him about."

"Zounds! shake a patient, man-a shake won't do."

"No, sir-and so we gave him two." "Two shakes!-odds curse!

"Twould make the patient worse."

"It did so, sir-and so a third we tried." "Well, and what then?"" Then, sir, my master died."

XXXVII.

The Monk and the Jew, or the Catholic Convert.-ANONYMOUS.

To make new converts truly blest,
A recipe-Probatum est.

Stern winter, clad in frost and snow,
Had now forbade the streams to flow;
And skating peasants swiftly glide
Like swallows o'er the slippery tide;
When Mordecai-upon whose face
The synagogue you plain might trace-
Fortune, with smiles deceitful, bore,
To a cursed hole, but late skinned o'er;
Down plumps the Jew; but in a trice,
Rising, he caught the friendly ice :
He gasped; he yelled a hideous cry;
No friendly help, alas! was nigh,
Save a poor monk, who quickly ran
To snatch from death the drowning man:
But when the holy father saw

A limb of the Mosaic law,

His outstretched hand he quick withdrew. "For Heaven's sake, help!" exclaims the Jew.

"Turn Christian first!" the father cries. "I'm frozen to death!" the Jew replies. "Frozen!" quoth the Monk, "too soon you'll

know,

There's fire enough for Jews below;
Renounce your unbelieving crew,

And help is near."

"I do! I do!"

"Damn all your brethren, great and small." "With all my heart: Oh! damn 'em all!

"'Tis well;

Now help me out." "There's one thing more:
Salute this cross, and Christ adore!"
"There! there! I Christ adore !"
Thus armed, defiance bid to hell!-
And yet, another thing remains,
To guard against eternal pains,
Do you our papal father hold
Heaven's vicar, and believe all told
By holy church?"-" I do, by fate!".
One moment more will be too late!
Drag, draw me out-I freeze! 1 die !"
"Your peace, my friend, is made on high;
Full absolution here I give ;

Saint Peter will your soul receive.
Washed clean from sin, and duly shriven;
New converts always go to heaven.
No hour for death so fit as this;

Thus, thus, I launch you into bliss."
So said, the father, in a trice,

His convert launched beneath the ice!

XXXVIII.

The Patriot's Hope.*-EWING.

SIR, our republic has long been a theme of speculation among the savans of Europe. They profess to have cast its horoscope, and fifty years was fixed upon by many as the utmost limit of its duration. But those years passed by, and beheld us a united and happy people; our political atmosphere, agitated by no storm, and scarce a cloud to obscure the serenity

*Extract from a speech delivered in the United States senate by the Hon. Thomas Ewing, senator from Ohio, at a period of much excitement.

of our horizon: all of the present was prosperity; all of the future, hope.-True, upon the day of that anniversary two venerated fathers of our freedom and of our country fell; but they sunk calmly to rest, in the maturity of years and in the fulness of time; and their simultaneous departure on that day of jubilee, for another and a better world, was hailed by our nation as a propitious sign, sent to us from heaven. Wandering the other day in the alcoves of the library, I accidentally opened a volume containing the orations delivered by many distinguished men on that solemn occasion, and I noted some expressions of a few who now sit in this hall, which are deep fraught with the then prevailing, I may say, universal feeling. It is inquired by one, "Is this the effect of accident or blind chance, or has that God, who holds in his hand the destiny of nations and of men, designed these things as an evidence of the permanence and perpetuity of our institutions?" Another says,

יי?

Is it not stamped with the seal of divinity And a third, descanting on the prospects, bright and glorious, which opened on our beloved country, says, " Auspicious omens cheer us.”

Yet it would have required but a tinge of superstitious gloom, to have drawn from that event darker forebodings of that which was to come. In our primitive wilds, where the order of nature is unbroken by the hand of man; there, where majestic trees arise, spread forth their branches, live out their age, and decline; sometimes will a patriarchal plant, which has stood for centuries the winds and storms, fall when no breeze agitates a leaf of the trees that surround it. And when, in the calm stillness of a summer's noon, the solitary woods