value the tough, the useful, the highly picturesque‘Ash Plant.' Its still and gentlemanly color; its peculiar property of bending round the shoulders of a man, without breaking (in the event of our using it that way); the economy of the thing, as economy is the order of the day (at least in minor concerns); its being the best substitute for the old-fashioned horse-whip in a morningride, and now so generally used in lieu of the long hunting-whip in the sports of the chase; answering every purpose for gates, &c., without offering any temptation to do the work of a whipper-in; all this, and much more, might be said of the neglected Ground Ash."

We must cry mercy on the estimable stick here referred to, and indeed on several other sorts of wood, unjustly omitted in our former article. We also neglected to notice those ingenious and pregnant walking-sticks, which contain swords, inkstands, garden-seats, &c., and sometimes surprise us with playing a tune. As the ancient poets wrote stories of gods visiting people in human shapes, in order to teach a considerate behavior to strangers; so an abstract regard ought to be shown to all sticks, inasmuch as the irreverent spectator may not know what sort of staff he is encountering. If he does not take care, a man may beat him and "write him down an ass" with the same accomplished implement; or sit down upon it before his face, where there is no chair to be had; or follow up his chastisement with a victorious tune on the flute. As to the ash, to which we would do especial honor, for the sake of our injured, yet at the same time polite and forgiving, Correspondent, we have the satisfaction of stating that it hath been reputed the very next wood, in point of utility, to the oak; and hath been famous, time immemorial, for its staffian qualities. Infinite are the spears with which it has supplied the warlike, the sticks it has put into the hands of a less sanguinary courage, the poles it has furnished for hops, vines, &c., and the arbors which it has run up for lovThe Greek name for it was Melia, or the Honied; from a juice or manna which it drops, and which has been much used in medicine and dyeing. There are, or were, about forty years back, when Count Ginnani wrote his History of the Ravenna Pine Forest, large ash woods in Tuscany, which used to he

ers.

tapped for those purposes. Virgil calls it the handsomest tree in the forest; Chaucer, "the hardie ashe ;" and Spenser, "the ash for nothing ill." The ground-ash flourishes the better, the more it is cut and slashed ;--a sort of improvement, which it sometimes bestows in return upon human kind.

CHAPTER XLII.

The Daughter of Hippocrates

IN the time of the Norman reign in Sicily, a vessel bound from that island for Smyrna was driven by a westerly wind upon the island of Cos. The crew did not know where they were, though they had often visited the island; for the trading towns lay in other quarters, and they saw nothing before them but woods and solitudes. They found however a comfortable harbor; and the wind having fallen in the night, they went on shore next morning for water. The country proved as solitary as they thought it; which was the more extraordinary, inasmuch as it was very luxuriant, full of wild figs and grapes, with a rich uneven ground, and stocked with goats and other animals, who fled whenever they appeared. The bees were remarkably numerous; so that the wild honey, fruits, and delicious water, especially one spring which fell into a beautiful marble basin, made them more and more wonder, at every step, that they could see no human inhabitants.

Thus idling about and wondering, stretching themselves now and then among the wild thyme and grass, and now getting up to look at some specially fertile place which another called them to see, and which they thought might be turned to fine trading purpose, they came upon a mound covered with trees, which looked into a flat wide lawn of rank grass, with a house at the end of it. They crept nearer towards the house along the mound, still continuing among the trees, for fear they were trespassing at last upon somebody's property. It had a large garden wall at the back, as much covered with ivy as if it had been built of it. Fruit-trees looked over the wall with an unpruned thickness; and neither at the back nor front of the house were there any signs of humanity. It was an ancient marble building, where glass was not to be expected in the windows; but it was much dilapidated, and the grass grew up over the steps. They

listened again and again; but nothing was to be heard like a sound of men; nor scarcely of anything else. There was an intense noonday silence. Only the hares made a rustling noise as they ran about the long hiding grass. The house looked like the tomb of human nature, amidst the vitality of earth.

"Did you see?" said one of the crew, turning pale, and hastening to go. "See what?" said the others. "What looked out of window." They all turned their faces towards the house, but saw nothing. Upon this they laughed at their companion, wno persisted however with great earnestness, and with great reluctance at stopping, to say that he saw a strange hideous kind of face look out of window. "Let us go, Sir," said he, to the Captain ;-" for I tell ye what: I know this place now: and you, Signor Gualtier," continued he, turning to a young man, "may now follow that adventure I have often heard you wish to be engaged in." The crew turned pale, and Gualtier among them. Yes," added the man, 66 we are fallen upon the enchanted part of the island of Cos, where the daughter of Hush! Look there!" They turned their faces again, and beheld the head of a large serpent looking out of window. Its eyes were direct upon them; and stretching out of window, it lifted back its head with little sharp jerks like a fowl; and so stood keenly gazing.

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The terrified sailors would have begun to depart quicklier than they did, had not fear itself made them move slowly. Their legs seemed melting from under them. Gualtier tried to rally his voice. 66 'They say," said he, "it is a gentle creature. The hares that feed right in front of the house are a proof of it :—let us all stay." The others shook their heads, and spoke in whispers, still continuing to descend the mound as well as they could. "There is something unnatural in that very thing," said the aptain: "but we will wait for you in the vessel, if you stay. We will, by St. Ermo." The Captain had not supposed that Gualtier would stay an instant; but seeing him linger more than the rest, he added the oath in question, and in the mean time was hastening with the others to get away. The truth is, Gualtier was, in one respect, more frightened than any of them. His legs were more rooted to the spot. But the same force of imagination that helped to detain him, enabled him to muster up

courage beyond those who found their will more powerful and in the midst of his terror he could not help thinking what a fine adventure this would be to tell in Salerno, even if he did but conceal himself a little, and stay a few minutes longer than the rest. The thought, however, had hardly come upon him, when it was succeeded by a fear still more lively; and he was preparing to follow the others with all the expedition he could contrive, when a fierce rustling took place in the trees behind him, and in an instant the serpent's head was at his feet. Gualtier's

brain as well as heart seemed to sicken, as he thought the monstrous object scented him like a bear; but despair coming in aid of a courage naturally fanciful and chivalrous, he bent his eyes more steadily, and found the huge jaws and fangs not only ab. staining from hurting him, but crouching and fawning at his feet like a spaniel. At the same time, he called to mind the old lsgend respecting the creature, and, corroborated as he now saw it, he ejaculated with good firmness, "In the name of God and his saints, what art thou?"

"Hast thou not heard of me?" answered the serpent in a voice whose singular human slenderness made it seem the more horrible. "I guess who thou art," answered Gualtier;" the fearful thing in the island of Cos."

So."

"I am that loathly thing," replied the serpent; 66 once not And Gualtier thought that its voice trembled sorrowfully. The monster told Gualtier that what was said of her was true; that she had been a serpent hundreds of years, feeling old age and renewing her youth at the end of each century; that it was a curse of Diana's which had changed her; and that she was never to resume a human form, till somebody was found kind and bold enough to kiss her on the mouth. As she spoke this word, she raised her crest, and sparkled so with her fiery green eyes, dilating at the same time the corners of her jaws, that the young man thrilled through his very scalp. He stept back, with a look of the utmost horror and loathing. The creature gave a sharp groan inwardly, and after rolling her neck franticly on the ground, withdrew a little back likewise, and seemed to be looking another way. Gualtier heard two or three little sounds as of a person weeping piteously, yet trying to subdue its voice;