"What's all this?" exclaimed Mr. Swipes-"you don't mean that we're humbugged?-In trust ?-how does that appear ?--where is it?"---Mr. Drawl depositing his spectacles, looking up at the ceiling, and scratching the underneath part of his chin, pointed to the two fatal words, which towered conspicuously above the multitude of their companions, and the brewer's nether jaw gradually fell down till it crumpled and crushed the frill of his shirt. Mr. Currie, with a pale face and goggle eyes, stood staring at his co-trustee, not exactly understanding what it all meant, though he saw by his countenance that there was some sudden extinction of their hopes. As the will was dated several years back, Frank only wanted three weeks of the stipulated period of possession, and as he hastily revolved in his mind all the annoyances he had occasioned his aunt, and the kind generosity with which she had treated him, his eyes, remained fixed upon the carpet, and the tears fell fast upon the backs of his crossed hands. H.

THE MOUSE TURNED HERMIT.

"O beata solitudo!"

FROM PIGNOTTI.

In winter when my grandmother sat spinning,
Close in the corner by the chimney-side,
To many a tale, still ending, still beginning,

She made me list with eyes and mouth full wide,
Wondering at all the monstrous things she told,
Things quite as monstrous as herself was old.

She told me how the frogs and mice went fighting,
And every word and deed of wolves and foxes,
Of ghosts and witches in dead night delighting,
Of fairy spirits rummaging in boxes;

And this in her own strain of fearful joy,
While I stood by, a happy frightened boy.

One night, quite sulky, not a word she utter'd,
Spinning away as mute as any fish,

Except that now and then she growl'd and mutter'd;

At last I begged and prayed, till, to my wish,
She cleared her pipes, spat thrice, coughed for a while,
And thus began with something like a smile :-

"Once on a time there was a mouse," quoth she,
Who, sick of worldly tears and laughter, grew

Enamour'd of a sainted privacy;

To all terrestrial things he bade adieu,
And entered, far from mouse, or cat, or man,
A thick-wall'd cheese, the best of Parmesan.

And, good soul! knowing that the root of evil
Is idleness, that bane of heavenly grace,
Our hermit laboured hard against the devil,
Unweariedly, in that same sacred place,
Where further in he toiled, and further yet,
With teeth for holy nibbling sharply set.

His fur-skin jacket soon became distended,
And his plump sides could vie with any friar's:
Happy the pious who, by Heaven befriended,
Reap the full harvest of their just desires!
And happier they, whom an eternal vow

Shuts from the world, who live we know not how!

Just at that time, driven to the very brink

Of dire destruction, was the mousal nation;
Corn was 'lock'd up, fast, close, without a chink,
No hope appeared to save them from starvation,
For who could dare grimalkin's whisker'd chaps,
And long-clawed paws, in search of random scraps?
Then was a solemn deputation sent

From one and all to every neighbouring house,
Each with a bag upon his shoulder went,

And last they came unto our hermit-mouse,
Where, squeaking out a chorus at his door,
They begg'd him to take pity on the poor.

"O my dear children," said the anchorite,
"On mortal happiness and transient cares
No more I bend my thoughts, no more delight
In sublunary, worldly, vain affairs;

These things have I forsworn, and must, though loth,
Reprove your striving thus against my oath.

"Poor, helpless as I am, what can I do?
A solitary tenant of these walls;

What can I more than breathe my prayers for you?
And Heaven oft listens when the pious calls!

Go, my dear children, leave me here to pray,

Go, go, and take your empty bags away."

"Ho! grandmother," cried I,

"this matches well,

This mouse of yours so snug within his cheese, With many a monk as snug within his cell, Swollen up with plenty and a life of ease,

Who takes but cannot give to a poor sinner,

Proclaims a fast and hurries home to dinner."

Ah, hold your tongue!" the good old dame screamed out, "You jackanapes! who taught you thus to prate?

How is 't you dare to slander the devout?

Men in so blessed, so sanctified a state!

Oh, wretched world!-Ah, hold your wicked tongue !—
Alas! that sin should be in one so young!

"If e'er you talk so naughtily again,
I promise you 'twill be a bitter day!"

So spoke my grandmother, nor spoke in vain
She look'd so fierce I'd not a word to say;
And still I'm silent as I hope to thrive,
For many grandmothers are yet alive.

S. Y.

MISS HEBE HOGGINS'S ACCOUNT OF A LITERARY SOCIETY

IN HOUNDSDITCH.

LETTER I.

SIR,-You will please to consider the red ink in which the commencement of this letter is indited, as emblematic of my blushes when I make the confession that my father is a cooper in Houndsditch; and not that there is any thing degrading in the profession, for we have poets who have started into celebrity from the inferior stations of cowherds, ploughmen, and shoemakers,-but, alas! my poor father is not likely to achieve greatness, still less to have it thrust upon him, for he understands nothing whatever but his business. Determined that his own defect of education should not be entailed upon his daughter, he sent me to a genteel boarding-school at Kensington, where my associates, in the petulancy of youthful pride, presently assailed me with every species of ridicule on account of my parent's vulgar occupation. One christened him Diogenes, and with an air of mock-gravity enquired after his tub; another told me I resembled him, inasmuch as I carried a hogs-head upon my shoulders, (which was a gross libel upon my physiognomy); a third, quoting Addison, exclaimed

Why does he load with darts

His trembling hands, and crush beneath a casque

His wrinkled brows ?"

while a fourth, whenever I ventured to sing, observed that I was then in my proper element, as I was favouring them with a few staves. Nothing reconciled me to this spiteful persecution but the superior success with which I prosecuted my studies. Mortified vanity stimulated me to aspire to a higher rank of intellect as some atonement for inferiority of station; and my object was so far attained that I was enabled to retaliate upon fashionable dunces the sneers and taunts which they levelled against city minxes and upstart vulgarians. Among my schoolfellows there were several who feared me, and many who refrained from open quizzing; but they all held themselves aloof from any intimacy, and I found the pride of surpassing some in their studies and of inflicting pain upon the feelings of others whenever my own were attacked, but a poor compensation for the unsociableness to which I was condemned by their open or suppressed contempt.

Even this miserable comfort was denied me when I left school and was taken home to Houndsditch, for my own acquirements only served to render more striking, and infinitely more galling, the wretched illiterateness of my parents. Conceive, my dear Mr. Editor, the horror of hearing my father, who had yielded to my mother's wishes in the selection of a polite seminary for my studies, enquire whether I had larnt to darn stockings and make a pudding! But even this Vandalism was less grating to my soul than the letter which my mother wrote a few days after my return, to the parent of one of my schoolfellows, enquiring the character of a cock, which she thus commenced: "Mrs. Hoggins presents her compliments to the Honourable Mrs. Hartopp, as I understand Betty Butter lived in your family as cook, Mrs. Hbegs Mrs. H- will inform her whether she understands her business, and I hope Mrs. H— will be particular in stating to Mrs. H-," &c. -and thus she continued for a whole page confounding first, second,

and third persons, and bepuzzling Mrs. H-'s in a most astounding commutation of initials and individualities. At my earnest solicitation this letter was condemned, and a second composed, which started with this inauspicious exordium :--" Betty Butter, whom, according to her own account, lived two years with you as cook,"--and proceeded in a similar strain of verbs without nominatives, and relatives without antecedents. This also she consented to cancel, not without sundry peevish exclamations against the newfangled English and nonsensical pedantry taught at the schools nowadays, none of which were heard of in her time, although the world went on quite as well then as it did now. Having tartly reprimanded me for my saucy offer of inditing a proper note, she took out a new crow-pen, reflected for some minutes upon the best method of arranging her ideas, and finally recommenced thus: Madam, Understanding Betty Butter lived with you as cook, has induced me to write you these few lines," &c.: and this horrific epistle, terminating as awfully as it began, was actually despatched!-O Sir! imagine the abomination to all my grammatical nerves and philological sympathies !

From such gothic society I found it absolutely necessary to emancipate myself, and I have the pleasure to inform you, that after innumerable difficulties and delays, from the ignorance of some and the ridicule of others, I have succeeded in establishing a Blue-stocking Society in Houndsditch, which, if I am not much mistaken, will eventually rival the most celebrated literary associations that have been formed from the days of Pericles down to those of Lorenzo de' Medici and Dr. Johnson. Considering the soul to be of no sex, I have admitted males of undoubted genius into our club, and we can already boast of several names that only want the means and opportunity to become immortal. The hitherto Boeotian realm of Houndsditch begins to be fertile in classical and Attic associations. The Sugar-baker's upon Tower Hill we have consecrated to Grecian reminiscences as the Acropolis, and the Smokingroom upon its roof is hallowed to our eyes as the Parthenon; the Tower is our Piræus, and the houses on each side of the Minories are the long walls; Aldgate Pump is the Grotto of Pan; Whitechapel Church is the Ceramicus; the East India Company's Warehouses in Leadenhallstreet are the Temple of Theseus; the extremities of Fenchurch-street are the Propylæa; and the Synagogue in Duke's Place the Odeum. Thus, you see, Sir, we are upon classic ground in whatever direction we move; while, to complete the illusion, we have named the great kennel leading to Tower Hill the Ilyssus, and I am credibly assured it is quite as large as the original. Our Academus, a room which we have hired in Houndsditch, is planted with pots of geranium and myrtle, to imitate the celebrated garden of the original; and one of our members who is a stationer, having made us a present of a thick new commercial ledger, that odious endorsement has been expunged, and the word ALBUM substituted in large letters of gold. From this sacred volume, destined to preserve the contributions of our associates, I propose occasionally to select such articles as may stamp a value upon your Miscellany, and at the same time awaken the public to a due sense of the transcendant talents which have been coalesced, principally by the writer of this article, in the composition of the Houndsditch Literary Society.

Young as our establishment is, it is so opulent in articles, that the very fertility renders selection impossible, and I must, after all, open the volume at random, and trust to the Sortes Hounditchianæ. It expands at a sonnet by Mr. Mc Quill, a lawyer's clerk, possessing, as you will observe, a perfect knowledge of Latin; and though the subject be not very dignified, it is redeemed, by his delicacy of handling and felicity of diction, from that common-place homeliness with which a less gifted bard would have been apt to invest it. He catches ideas from his subject by letting it go, and in a vein at once facetious and pathetic-but I will detain you no longer from his beautiful

SONNET

To a Flea, on suffering it to escape.

THOU lightly-leaping, flitting Flea! who knows if
Thou art descended from that sire who fell
Into the boiling water when Sir Joseph

Banks maintain'd it had a lobster's shell ?—

Here, Jemmy Jumps, thou mak'st no stay; so fly;
Shouldst thou re-bite-thy grandsire's ghost may rise,

Peep through the blanket of the dark, and cry

"Hold, hold," in vain :-thou fall'st a sacrifice!The bard will weep; yes, fle-bit, he will weep, Backbiter as thou art, to make thy sleep

Eternal, thou who skippest now so gaily;

But thou 'rt already old if the amount

Of thine intercalary days we count,

For every year with thee is Leap-year.-Vale!

The next unfolding of our richly-stored repertory developes the most important communication we have hitherto received, being a seriocomic poem by Mr. Schweitzkoffer, (son of the great sugar-baker who owns the Acropolis,) entitled "The Apotheosis of Snip." Its hero is a tailor, (there's an original idea!)-its unity is preserved by dividing it into nine cantos, the supernatural machinery is conducted by Atropos, who holds the fatal shears, and Vertumnus, the god of cabbage; and the victim of Michaelmas-day, instead of the bird of Minerva, is invoked to shed a quill from its pinion, and inspire the imagination of the poet. Mr. Schweitzkoffer appears to me destined to assume a rank superior to Rabelais, and at least equal to Butler; but, as I propose to make copious selections from his facetious epic, I leave your readers to decide what niche he ought to occupy in the temple of Immortality. In the following description of morning in London, he appears to have had Marmion in his eye; but without any servile imitation, he has contrived to unite an equally graphic fidelity of delineation, with a more sustained illustration and impressive sentimentality than are to be found in the admired original :—

DAY rose o'er Norton Falgate high,
And Sol, like Tom of Coventry,
On many a nude was peeding;-
The chimneys smokeless and erect,
And garret windows patch'd and check'd,
The prentice-rousing ray reflect,

While those within the sleeping