But when the screens were left unclosed by chance,
The blinds not down, as if Miss B. were dead,
Each upper window to a passing glance
Revealed a little dimity white bed;

Each lower one a cropped or curly head;
And thrice a week, for soul's and health's economies,
Along the road the twenty-four were led,

Like coupled hounds, whipped in by two she-dominies
With faces rather graver than Melpomene's.

And thus their studies they pursued :-On Sunday,
Beef, collects, batter, texts from Dr. Price;
Mutton, French, pancakes, grammar-of a Monday;
Tuesday-hard dumplings, globes, Chapone's Advice;
Wednesday-fancy-work, rice-milk (no spice);
Thursday-pork, dancing, currant-bolsters, reading;
Friday-beef, Mr. Butler, and plain rice;
Saturday-scraps, short lessons and short feeding,
Stocks, back-boards, hash, steel-collars, and good breeding.

From this repertory of female learning

Came Ellen once a quarter, always fatter!

To gratify the eyes of parents yearning.

'T was evident in bolsters, beef, and batter,

Hard dumplings, and rice-milk, she did not smatter, But heartily, as Jenkins says, "demollidge;"

But as for any learning, not to flatter,

As often happens when girls leave their college,
She had done nothing but grow out of knowledge.

At Long Division sums she had no chance,
And History was quite as bad a balk;
Her French it was too small for Petty France,

And Priscian suffered in her English talk:

Her drawing might be done with cheese or chalk;
As for the globes-the use of the terrestrial
She knew when she went out to take a walk,
Or take a ride; but, touching the celestial,
Her knowledge hardly soared above the bestial.

Nothing she learned of Juno, Pallas, Mars;
Georgium, for what she knew, might stand for Burgo,
Sidus, for Master: then, for northern stars,
The Bear she fancied did in sable fur go,
The Bull was Farmer Giles's bull, and, ergo,
The Ram the same that butted at her brother

As for the Twins, she only guessed that Virgo,
From coming after them, must be their mother;
The Scales weighed soap, tea, figs, like any other.
As ignorant as donkeys in Gallicia,

She thought that Saturn, with his Belt, was but
A private, may be, in the Kent Militia;

That Charles's Wain would stick in a deep rut,
That Venus was a real West End slut-
Oh, gods and goddesses of Greek Theogony!
That Berenice's Hair would curl and cut,
That Cassiopeia's Chair was good Mahogany,
Nicely French-polished-such was her cosmogony!
Judge, then, how puzzled by the scientifics
Lorenzo's letter came now to dispense;
A lizard, crawling over hieroglyphics,

Knows quite as much of their Egyptian sense;
A sort of London fog, opaque and dense,
Hung over verbs, nouns, genitives, and datives.
In vain she pored and pored, with eyes intenco,
As well is known to oyster-operatives,
Mere looking at the shells won't open natives.

Yet mixed with the hard words, so called, she found
Some easy ones that gave her heart the staggers;
Words giving tongue against her, like a hound
At picking out a fault-words speaking daggers.
The very letters seemed, in hostile swaggers,
To lash their tails, but not as horses do,

Nor like the tails of spaniels, gentle waggers,
But like a lion's, ere he tears in two
A black, to see if he is black all through.

With open mouth, and eyeballs at full stretch,
She gazed upon the paper sad and sorry,
No sound-no stir-quite petrified, poor wretch!
As when Apollo, in old allegory,

Down-stooping like a falcon, made his quarry
Of Niobe, just turned to Purbeck stone;

In fact, since Cupid got into a worry,

Judge if a suing lover, let alone

A lawyer, ever wrote in such a tone.

"Ellen, I will no longer call you mine,

That time is past, and ne'er can come again;
However other lights undimmed may shine,
And undiminishing, one truth is plain,
Which I, alas! have learned-that love can wane.
The dream is passed away, the veil is rent,
Your heart was not intended for my reign;
A sphere so full, I feel, was never meant
With one poor man in it to be content.

"It must, no doubt, be pleasant beyond measure,
To wander underneath the whispering bough
With Dian, a perpetual round of pleasure.
Nay, fear not I absolve of every vow- -

Use-use your own celestial pleasure now, Your apogee and perigee arrange.

Herschel might aptly stare and wonder how,
To me that constant disk has nothing strange-
A counterfeit is someting hard to change.

"Oh Ellen! I once little thought to write
Such words unto you, with so hard a pen;
Yet outraged love will change its nature quite,
And turn like tiger hunted to its den-
How Falsehood trips in her deceits on men!
And stands abashed, discovered, and forlorn!

Had it been only cusped-but gibbous—then
It had gone down-but Faith drew back in scorn,
And would not swallow it—without a horn!
"I am in occultation-that is plain :

My culmination's past-that's quite as clear.
But think not I will suffer your disdain
To hang a lunar rainbow on a tear.

Whate'er my pangs, they shall be buried here; No murmur-not a sigh-shall thence exhale : Smile on-and for your own peculiar sphere Choose some eccentric path-you can not fail, And pray stick on a most portentous tail!

"Farewell! I hope you are in health and gay;
For me, I never felt so well and merry—
As for the bran-new idol of the day,

Monkey or man, I am indifferent-very!
Nor even will ask who is the Happy Jerry;

My jealousy is dead, or gone to sleep,

But let me hint that you will want a wherry, Three weeks spring-tide, and not a chance of neap, Your parlors will be flooded six feet deep!

"Oh Ellen! how delicious was that light Wherein our plighted shadows used to blend, Meanwhile the melancholy bird of night—

No more of that-the lover's at an end.
Yet if I may advise you, as a friend,
Before you next pen sentiments so fond,
Study your cycles-I would recommend
Our Airy—and let South be duly conned,
And take a dip, I beg, in the great Pond.

"Farewell again! it is farewell for ever!
Before your lamp of night be lit up thrice,
I shall be sailing, haply, for Swan River,
Jamaica, or the Indian land of rice,
Or Boothia Felix-happy clime of ice!
For Trebizond, or distant Scanderoon,
Ceylon, or Java redolent of spice,

Or settling, neighbor of the Cape baboon,
Or roaming o'er-The Mountains of the Moon!

"What matters where? my world no longer owns
That dear meridian spot from which I dated
Degrees of distance, hemispheres, and zones,
A globe all blank and barren and belated.
What matters where my future life be fated?
With Lapland hordes, or Koords or Afric peasant,
A squatter in the western woods located,
What matters where? My bias, at the present,
Leans to the country that reveres the Crescent!

"Farewell! and if for ever, fare thee well!
As wrote another of my fellow-martyrs:
I ask no sexton for his passing-bell,

I do not ask your tear-drops to be starters,