youth and comeliness, when dimples graced the cheek now usurped by furrows, and love shone triumphant in the eye which now is lustreless and She reminds me of some fair vision of Eld, until absorbed in imagination I forget that she is an antique, and see her in my "mind's eye" as she was seen twenty years since, the delight of her friends, the admiration of society.

But while thus enlarging on the prolific subject of "falling in love," I think it but right to offer a preventive for the benefit of those who, from constitution or habit, are ever afflicted with the heart-ache. The recipe I would propose is simple, and was successfully administered to a friend of mine in the most desperate extremities of the case. When I found that his fits of melancholy were the most violent, I took him with me to Doctors' Commons, where the sight of a licence calmed him with miraculous expedition. In the evening, when he complained of a palpitation of the heart, I administered two ounces of common sense, as a soft emulsion, beaten up with a sarcasm from Don Juan. Finding however that his disorder was still dangerous, I called in further aid, and it was resolved, by way of a kill-or-cure anodyne, that he should be married. The shock was electric-his disorder left him-and he has never since been in

love, but has often told me with tears in his eyes, that the remedy was worse than the disease. In all cases of similar danger, I would recommend a large dose of matrimony as an infallible preventive.

But a truce to this rhapsody; midnight has caught me at my study, and instead of falling in love I ought rather to be falling asleep. Should a lady condescend to peruse these straggling lucubrations, let her gentle heart forgive my rudeness, and attribute it to folly, insanity, ignorance, to any thing, in short, but disrespect. Indeed, when an author rambles on heedlessly through a desultory egotistical essay, he is too apt to stray from the right track, as a traveller in a strange country entangles himself amongst briars. But should she feel offended at the inadvertent sarcasms I have ventured upon her sex, let her remember that a general rule is never without its exception, and she is one that I fully resolved to make.

THE SCHOOLMASTER.

"Hic, hæc, hoc,
Lay him on the block."

OLD SCHOOL SONG.

THE village of Carisbroke is one of the most picturesque spots in the Isle of Wight. Bounded by a range of hills on the one side, and the dark blue waters of the Medina on the other, it seems totally secluded from the world. A little stream flows through it, and gives a romantic wildness to the neighbourhood, the effect of which is enhanced by the ruins of Carisbroke Castle, frowning in awful magnificence upon the landscape. On quitting the village to the right, the eye of the passing stranger is perhaps directed to a little pathway intersected by heath-broom, and winding round the brow of the slope on which these celebrated ruins are situated. Here on an autumnal evening, when the last

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traces of day are saddening into twilight, and the wood-pigeon is cooing her farewell, the whole scene assumes the most luxuriant appearance. From the declivity of the hill the spire of the village church is seen peeping forth from its dusky coverlid of brushwood, and beyond, in the faintness of distance, appear the light craft gliding like shadows along the ocean.

About a mile from this sequestered hamlet, in a copse environed by nut-trees, stands an old-fashioned ruin, on the front of which was once inscribed, in gilt characters, the academical notice

SEMINARY FOR YOUNG GENTLEMEN.

It was kept by one Laurence Crabtree, who, from the moroseness of his temper, was appropriately nick-named "Old Surly." He had once been a tailor in the village, but having accumulated a sufficiency in the exercise of his vocation, determined to quit the scene, and enlighten his faculties by travel. He was absent about two years, and his memory was already on the wane, when he returned home, like the monkey who had seen the world, pompous, self-conceited, and egotistical. egotistical. His neighbours, who had always feared, now surveyed him with increased reverence; for every trace of the tradesman had vanished, and he seemed to have

acquired the additional eight parts, which from the tailor are considered as "both requisite and necessary" to constitute the man.

He had been however but a short time returned, when on a minute examination into the state of his abilities, it suddenly occurred to him that they were in the highest possible preservation. To prevent their rotting by neglect, he proposed a system of education, and volunteered the instruction of the village children on all subjects, or, as he himself expressed it, "de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis." For the office of schoolmaster circumstances had eminently qualified him, and indeed the elements were so mixed up in him, that nature might stand boldly forth and say this was pedagogue. His learning was of that peculiar stamp denominated rigmarole, and consisted of a mere smattering of the Classics. His Grecian erudition was confined to the first half of the alphabet; Hebrew he knew by sight, while his knowledge of French was bounded by the title-page of Palairet's Grammar. And now if I am asked by the sceptic how a tailor could inherit such miscellaneous information, I can merely reply that he was reported to have picked it up together with an old coat, in his travels, and to have rendered them equally subservient to his interests.