association, and of the society for discountenancing vice. Good reason, therefore, had Mr. Horner to call upon conscience to re-echo the cry of " "What a good boy am I !"

It follows, of course, that by virtue of his golden spoon, he escaped all those disagreeable inquiries to which inferior practitioners are occasionally exposed, and in which so much depends on the caprices and humours of twelve good men and true. With the criminal justice of his country he had never been at issue. The principal legal danger he had to encounter in the station of life to which it had pleased heaven to call him, was connected with the election laws; and in his days, these had not arrived at that vicious excess of stringency, which exposed a candidate to any very great risk from a critical investigation. Once, indeed, he had placed himself in some danger by what in those times was called a vigour beyond the law, which even magisterial sanctity, and the difficulty of proving malice would not have justified. But the gold spoon preserved its ascendancy even here; and the plaintiff (though one of the most flaming patriots of the day), for some reason or other but known to himself, did not prosecute, and so the matter dropped.

Nor was this all: Mr. Horner was a regular attendant on divine service on Sundays when he was in the country;-and then he asked the curate home to dinner, when he had none of his ministerial masters staying in the house. He had added a picturesque turret to the parish church, which faced his windows; and had once, on the eve of an election, built a wing to the county hospital; and further, he had proved his zeal for religion, by obtaining a writership in India, for the fourth son of his pluralist rector. Mr. Horner, it must be admitted, improved the opportunities of his destiny; so that he did not, as in his untaught infancy, wholly retire into holes and corners, to pick the plums out of his pie, but piously gave a share out of his superfluity on all occasions, in which it was creditable and profitable to be generous.

It will not surprise the intelligent reader, that Horner finding the practice of every virtue under the sun thus easy (shall we say, or so impossible to avoid), should, like his fellows in fortune, have considered the rest of the world exceeding unreasonable, in not placing themselves on his own moral level. He could not conceive the perversity which made his tenants such invincible poachers, nor understand the obliquity of intellect, that made peasants so given to sheep-stealing. He believed it no more than right and fit that the labourer, should dislike the shelter of a workhouse, but he thought it singularly bad taste in him to complain of low wages, or to murmur when employment was not to be had, and bread very dear. So, too, he deemed it innate wickedness in the tax-paying part of the community to show an inapprehensive insensibility to the beauties of the budget, and to manifest distrust of ministers; but, to exhibit a desire for reforms, he considered as nothing short of an unnatural debasement. He had little pity, moreover, for such frailties as were chargeable on the parish; and he did all in his power to preserve the morals of the poor and promote content, by shutting up every place of low amusement, except beer-houses and gin-palaces. Fiddles were to him only tolerable in the hands of well-paid professors; and fairs and statutes were relics of feudal barbarism, worthy of the scantiest toleration. It was further asserted that

he was the original projector of the six acts; but as we should be loath to deprive any of praise to whom praise is due, we must, on the best authority declare, that such was not the case.

Mr. Horner, blessed as he was by fortune's choicest gifts, did not content himself with the discharge of his legislative and official duties. He contributed to the progress of the age by frequent pamphlets, printed speeches, and "Letters to a Cabinet Minister," or "Hints to a Member of Parliament;" he was also the author of some religious eclogues, a "Whole Duty of Operative Man," and one or two tragedies, not intended for the stage. Such, however, was the eagerness with which these effusions of a great mind were bought up, that they have totally disappeared from the market; and after much research we have been unable to procure any copies for the purpose of extract. We can, however, state that he generally advocated, with great force, the unpopular side of his subjects; and that in the event he might, with much justice, have applied to himself, the motto

Sed victa Catoni.

After this notice, however, may we not presume that the class of literature in question will, hereafter, be known as the Jack Horner school, just as Byron and Wordsworth have lent their names to the productions of their imitators. We are not also without some hope, that we shall hear of Jack Horner legislation, Jack Horner principles, and Jack Horner dietaries for workhouses; and we put it to the Oxford tractarians, whether they would not do well to ensconce their suspicious doctrines behind an alias, and call their very equivocal but very aristocratic creed, the Jack Horner religion.

Perhaps, however, the most singular and astounding influence of the gold spoon over the fortunes of Mr. Horner is yet to be narrated. By the talisman of the spoon, he was enabled to bring to a successful issue a chancery suit which had occupied two generations of litigation. Two ordinary fortunes had been spent in the contest with his family; and the bills filed and interrogatories answered, were said to have been in length sufficient to have gone round the world. But Horner's purse held out against all opposition; and when the adverse parties retreated, baffled and ruined from the field, even chancellors doubted no longer of the merits of the case; while applauding attornies loudly re-echoed the victor's complacent exclamation of "What a good boy am I?"

It might, perhaps, be attributed to the gold spoon, that under this accumulation of favourable circumstances, Mr. Horner escaped the then prevalent and almost epidemic infliction of an Irish peerage. But the truth is, that he was too useful in an humbler department, to admit of his being disqualified by such elevation. At his death, however, his services were not forgotten. For, whether the spoon was inherited by his son, or its virtues only survived in remembrance, that son, contrary to all usage of ministerial gratitude for past favours, was made a peer of the United Kingdom, by the style and title of Baron Leatherhead.

μ.

SPRING.

HARK! is there not a voice that loudly cries,
To life! to life! ye hidden things arise!
Look up! sees't thou no all-pervading glance,
That darts lifegiving beams thro' earth's expanse?
There is a voice-a voice thou cans't not hear,
A glance, beyond thine eyesight's bounded sphere;
That wakes each beauty from its wintry sleep,
As morn revives the hearts that slumbering weep.
And all rise forth-bare skeletons of trees
Spread wide their arms to woo each passing breeze,
Till robed in folds of variegated green,

Each modest shrub, and forest lord is seen.

In sprouting copse, where twittering cry is heard
Of half-fledged nestlings for their mother bird,
The hazel bough with dancing catkins bends,
And silver birch its graceful leaflets sends;
While by the brooks, the willow droops forlorn,
As tho' she loved mysteriously to mourn :
Like broken heart that silently conceals
The bitter sorrows it too deeply feels.

Ah! lead me hence, thou ever kindly muse,
Where fall, on gayer things, the sweet May dews;
Lest on her branch I hang my harp unstrung,
Its spirit fled;-its Springtime lay unsung.

Yet ere I go, let soft consoling strain
Say, "When I'm sad, I'll visit thee again."
Then lead—but whither? this fair land so wide,
Displays her countless gems on every side.
Here, where the hillock turns her blooming cheek,
Anon so brown and wrinkled, now so sleek,
While shadows glide in swift phantastic chase,
Like partial clouds on woman's beauteous face!
Or yonder, where a thousand sounds unite
To swell the voice of rapturous delight!
Rock-bedded stream, and trickling silvery rill;
The wren's sweet note; the throstle's peerless trill :

The low of kine, the frisking lambkins bleat,
All these vibrate in harmonies complete.

But lo! that speckled bank, on whose green bed,
Her first maternal tears, Spring fondly shed;
Where, with the perfume of fast fading flow'rs,
Rise mystic phantoms of departed hours ;
Be this our resting-place, while Memory
Throws o'er the past her veil of mystery,
That gilds all pleasures, but conceals the pain
"Twould break our hearts to realize again.
Here, we can muse on earth, that deep huge nest
Where man, its noblest bird, finds not his rest:
But soon as he can flap his wings, he soars
For higher nourishment from Heaven's own stores.
Oh, Queen! to whom an emerald crown is given
Spangled with dewy pearls just dropp'd from Heav'n!
Fair first-born of the Sun! Most glorious Spring!

How dare I, one by one, thy treasures sing,
When He, the laureate of thy warbling throng,

Can tell them all in one spontaneous song,

And pour to God, his gratitude for thee,
In full, melodious bursts of extasy?
For thou engenderest love-and love uplifts
The soul unto the Fountain of all gifts.

But ah! how like an arrow dost thou fly,

Lest on thy charms too deep a shade should lie!
Pitching thy royal tent from clime to clime,
Ungrasped by death, unblemish'd still by Time!
Would thou couldst bring us when thou'rt here again,
Those, who oft vanish in thy flowery train!
The friend of years-the holy and the sweet,
Whom only now in dreams of Heav'n we greet!
But since my wish is vain, oh, leave us those,
On whom, to-day, thy quickening zephyr blows;
That, year by year, with hearts as warm as ever,
They still may hail thee Queen, that dieth never!

THE BARNABYS IN AMERICA.

BY MRS. TROLLOPE.

CHAP. XLI.

THERE certainly are some people, who either from fortune, or temper, or the influence of both united, seem to swim down the stream of life more gaily than others. Such persons, it is true, will often keep their colours flying, long after fainter spirits would strike, which may often perhaps give them the appearance of being more triumphant than they really are; but if this be sometimes delusive, at any rate it has often the effect of imposing upon the parties themselves, and may perhaps not unfrequently produce that mad sort of luxury which, as the poet tells us, none but madmen know.

Considering the nature of the adventures through which the Barnaby race had passed since their arrival in the United States of America, and the species of catastrophe with which nearly every adventure had concluded, they could scarcely have enjoyed themselves so vehemently as they certainly did at the Franklin Hotel upon Lake Erie, had not their spirits been excited by some portion of the sort of laughing gas above alluded to. The supper at the Washington had been delightfully full of fun, frolic, triumph, and glee; and the dinner at the Franklin was, if possible, more brilliant still. Nobody, unless it had been Asmodeus himself, could have looked upon the group there assembled, and have doubted their being in the possession of some especial cause for rejoicing and merriment.

The harmony that reigned among them seemed as perfect as the contentment; and in short, a merrier party could not easily have been found. Patty, indeed, was a little in the dark as to the nature of the scrape from which her "pap" had just escaped; but this only added to the jocularity of the rest, as she never alluded to the cleverness of her mamma, in managing so beautifully to prevent her papa's being hanged, without eliciting a most cordial burst of laughter from the major and his lady, and a charming simper of answering applause from her Don. But time wore away, and as the hours rolled on towards nine o'clock, Major Allen Barnaby hinted, with an amiable apology to the family group, for marring their mirth by drawing their attention to business, that it would be necessary, or at least prudent, to decide upon where they were to go, and what they were to do next, before going on board.

As he said this very gravely, the effect of it was rather to increase than mar their mirth, for Patty laughed immoderately, and declared that when "pap" put on a preaching face, in addition to his preaching garments, the fun was just perfect.

Whereupon the major, in order to prove his unabated goodhumour, and the reality of his reluctance to substitute business for fun, stood up, and placing the back of his chair before him to represent the front of a pulpit, he began, amidst shouts of applause from Patty and her mamma, to show them how he intended to preach. After devoting a