all her virtues, of her meek and gentle disposition, her playful fancy, her deep sorrows, so silent yet so hopeless, her blasted love and untimely end. As this last suggestion arose in his mind, he looked up to heaven, and a sneer of determined scepticism spoke the natural feeling of his heart.

At night-fall he returned, to gaze once more on the pallid form of Elinor. There she lay, the same sweet smile, the same sweet expression that had characterized her countenance in life, preserved unaltered its interest in death. She appeared hushed in slumber, and the minstrel bent over in breathless silence, as if he feared to disturb her repose. A single lock of hair hung down upon her face. One bitter scalding tear fell on it, but the mourner dried it in his heart-When his last hour arrived, he ordered himself to be carried to the greenwood. The season was spring, and the trees were putting forth their green leaves. was carolling among them, and minstrel listened to its wood notes,

A nightingale as the dying a faint stream

of pleasure sparkled in his dim eye. A few evenings afterwards the same bird was heard singing upon his grave.

Years and years have rolled; the outlaw and his bride, Glendower and his clansmen, the Abbot and his monks are low in the narrow house, and

their very name is fast sinking into oblivion. Such is the perishable nature of human reputation. In the spring of our life, we sow the seeds of fame, that posterity may reap the harvest; but the autumn blight comes, and the labourer and his produce are neglected. The greenwood recess still exists, and is often frequented by strangers, who come from afar to survey its wild and romantic scenery. The Towy winds as of yore, through the glen, though it no longer wafts along its tide the hunter's horn or the outlaw's bugle. But the rock better known as "Twm John Catty's Cave," is the principal object of attraction, and when the present writer was last in the neighbourhood, was tenanted by an unassuming misanthropist, who from some pecuniary or amorous discomfitures had foresworn the society of mankind.*

* The reader of this idle tale will, I trust, pardon the orthography of the different Welch places alluded to in it, when I assure him that I have been nearly put to death in a vain attempt to pronounce them after the most approved fashion. Wales is as famous for the length and toughness of its words as of its pedigrees, and many of its villages have more consonants than houses. One, in particular, has a name long enough to rival the famous cook's bill at Cambridge, which was thirty-six feet long, by one and a half broad.

PHYSIC FOR THE CRITICS,

OR,

Poetical Anodynes from the Album.

Dum relego scripsisse pudet.

N.B. When at the instigation of mine host of Llanwrda, I first undertook the editorship of his Album, I expressly stipulated that it should contain no verses; for after my conversion to the true faith, under the guidance of that spiritual and spirituous pastor, Mr. Damon Damn'emall, Field Preacher and Brandy Merchant, I rightly opined that the cultivation of poesy was nothing more or less than the cultivation of an acquaintance with Sathanas. "Verses; Sir," said Mr. Damn'emall, in his usual blunt manner, "are all lies, and Beelzebub being the father of falsehoods, must of

of necessity be the patron of Poets." No reasoning could be more logically acute than this; so I returned to my landlord of the Nanny Goat and Nine-Pins, with the devout stipulation that I have mentioned above.

But what are the good intentions of man? The Inn-keeper on my hinting the proviso, cunningly allured me into his little back parlour, where he placed before my optics, a most seductive jug of Welch ale, and after divers touching enquiries concerning my wife and eleven babes, (the handsomest of whom, he had heard was as like his father as he could stare,) argued with me on the folly of such a stipulation, and concluded by reading a line or two from a vituperative ode to the Devil. This quieted my scruples, for the man, thought I, who bruises the head of the serpent, will run no risk of bruising the holiness of devotion, and I forthwith conceded to his request, after finishing another jug in compliment to my sagacity.

When the matter was thus definitively settled, the poesy was put into my hands, and I have here arranged it for publication. It is evidently the work of many writers, as indeed the original MSS. in the Album betokens. The lines alluding to local topics, appear noted down from the impulse of the moment, which I am grieved to assert is their

Y

sole claim to popularity. This opinion, however, (for by the blessing of God, I am as far removed from being a poet as I am from heaven,) was given to me by an old fat gentleman in a tie-wig, whom I have sometimes met at the Nanny Goat and Nine-Pins, and with whom I have held logical ratiocination on the subject. He informed me that on perusing the Album MSS. he had not found a single stop, and that poetry and punctuation both beginning with a P. must consequently belong to the same family. From this, he very acutely observed, that where there were no stops, there could be no poetry; and then shook his head in a way which proved that he knew more about the matter, than he chose to communicate. "The Village Girl" he called execrable, and indeed I am pretty much of the same opinion, for on an accurate inspection of the MSS. I found that all the t's were left uncrossed; that the i's were without a night cap on their heads, and the I's were sometimes unlooped, and sometimes looked as if fattened with the corpulence of parturition. Bad, however, as it is, I am compelled to publish it ; instigated thereto by the minaceous exhortations of the Inn-keeper, in whose books I am five fathom deep. Should the reader, therefore, find fault with the poetical portion, or indeed with any other of the manifold wickednesses