She had not been long in the neighbourhood, when the devotional appearance of Old Surly, as he sate among his pupils at church, excited her attention. She accordingly requested an introduction, and appeared to take much interest in the serious tendency of his conversation. He seemed equally interested; indeed how could he help being smitten by so much goodness? The first symptom he gave of a tender nature, was in the clemency of his scholastic punishments. His visits too to the Three Cups were gradually discontinued, his pantaloons were observed to fit with singular gentility, and his coat, so long an anomaly in dress, betokened a radical reform. Enamoured Solomon! like as the hart panteth for the water-brooks, even so my bowels yearn with compassion towards thee. Five good years and fifty hast thou passed in this wicked world, without one sinful desire; but now, indignant at thy long neglect, the amorous god wresteth thee to his purposes, even as Sampson was tempted of Dalilah.

From the period of his introduction to Miss Kenedy, the moroseness of our hero slowly but surely abated. He grew more thoughtful than ever, and looked both bilious and interesting. He rambled about the copse early in the morning and late at night, and relaxed in his wonted attention to the

school. Oh! love, love! thou art a devil of an affliction! But was this love real, or was it only. feigned in order to work upon the sensitive feelings of our lady fair? In sooth I know not; certain it was that she heard of it, and pitied accordingly.

But it was in school-time that the amorous symptoms of Old Surly displayed themselves in the strongest light. By the perpetual recurrence of his thoughts to Miss Deborah, her name was ever on his lips, and produced strange blunders-so much so, indeed, that on reading with his boys the first ode of Horace, he unwittingly commenced, "Deborah atavis edita regibus;" a mistake which covered him with blushes, and elicited a sly grin from his pupils. His affection now increased in a prodigious ratio; and when he reflected on the wellstocked farm of Kenedy, he indulged himself in the most delicious fantasies. With love comes poetry; and, strange to say, our hero no sooner became a lover, than he felt certain poetical qualms, and in the impetuosity of his transports commenced a thundering copy of hexameters to his flame, of which only the first line is extant :

Deborah cara mihi, carissima Deborah, salve.

Each succeeding day now increased the combustible vigor of his affection. He was like a man

in a slough; the further he proceeded, the deeper he plunged, till from a slight immersion he gradually fell head over ears in love. He first lost his appetite, then his temper, then his wits, and lastly his scholars, who, as may naturally be surmised, were but ill educated under the guidance of so enamoured a preceptor. Alas! that rogue Cupid had effectually bewitched him, and there was no expelling the urchin. He manifested himself in divers sonnets, acrostics, anagrams, all of which began with a D, but chiefly in an elegy, which he applied sometimes to purposes of sentiment, and sometimes as a stiffener to his cravat. Nay, I have even heard it reported, that he was one time discovered setting bolt upright in his bed, with a silk handkerchief tied round his head for a night-cap, and a lamp by his side, in busy perusal of Ovid's Art of Love-and that, had it not been for the abrupt entrance of his friend and neighbour, Master Oliver, the parish apothecary, he would have had a fair chance of terminating love, life, and chattels, like Dido, upon a funeral pile. All these symptoms, together with others which I cannot stop to enumerate, naturally betokened some great event, the crisis of which was at hand.

As he was seated one morning at his desk, revenging on his pupils some fancied slight of his

mistress, a hurried messenger announced that farmer Kenedy had left home, and that Miss Deborah was anxious to have a little spiritual conversation with him. His eyes brightened at the intelligence, and in the warmth of the moment he indulged his boys in a whole holiday, while he himself retired to adonize for the occasion.

To have seen him, as "dressed all in his best" he wound along the banks of the lake that skirted the farm of Kenedy, would have extracted a smile from the face of misanthropy itself. He had brushed up his wig with studied neatness, and, in order to augment the fleecy whiteness of the locks, sprinkled them with the contents of a pounce-box. On the summit appeared a hat, which, compared with the immensity of the wig on which it was placed, gave the idea of a fly perched upon the apex of a poached egg. The remainder of his garments were equally singular; and, from the way in which he caught the wind as he passed, he might be denominated a walking ventilator.

After a hurried excursion he arrived, and was ushered into the drawing-room of his fair religionist, who was dressed with starched tawdriness, in a cap gay as the leaves of a red cabbage, and fastened under the chin with ribands of a similar complexion. Her arms and neck were bare, (for, after the

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fashion of the day she was in full dress,) and an enormous bracelet encircled each wrist, leaving the spectator in doubt whether she was tied to the bracelet, or the bracelet to her. Her thin angular figure shone conspicuous through all these gay accoutrements, like a May-pole bedizened with flowers; and if height be a requisite to female fascination, Miss Deborah was the summit of perfection. As the pedagogue entered the room, a slight blush crimsoned her countenance, and she laid aside a bible which she had been reading, after carefully turning down the leaf that depicts the loves of David and Bathsheba. She soon, however recovered her confusion; and commenced a sportive conversation, which, after few sly divergings, settled into a dispute upon Platonic affection. The lady was here in her element; she harangued very sensibly on the pleasures of love unconnected with sinfulness, while the nervous agitation of Old Surly gave the denial to her assertions. Several times in the course of the discussion he rose and resumed his seat--until, unable any longer to suppress his emotions, he fell on his knees and made a formal declaration of love. Heavens and earth! what did he not utter? He raved about her charms, swore by her two eyes, (she had but one,) and concluded by offering to fling his wig and