tion, and what have I done for you? I have made you a woman of fashion, of fortune, of rank; in short, I have made you my wife. LADY TEAZ. Well, then, and there is but one thing more you can make me to add to the obligation that is SIR PET. My widow, I suppose? SIR PET. I thank you, madam! But don't madam! But don't flatter yourself; for, though your ill-conduct may disturb my peace of mind, it shall never break my heart, I promise you. However, I am equally obliged to you for the hint. LADY TEAZ. Nay, Sir Peter; they are all people of rank and fortune, and remarkably tenacious of reputation. SIR PET. Yes, they are tenacious of reputation with a vengeance, for they don't choose anybody should have a character but themselves. Such a crew! Ah! many a wretch has rid on a hurdle who has done less mischief than these utterers of forged tales, coiners of scandal and clippers of reputation. LADY TEAZ. What! would you restrain the freedom of speech? SIR PET. Ah! they have made you just as bad as any one of the society. LADY TEAZ. Why, I believe I do bear a part with a tolerable grace. SIR PET. Grace, indeed! LADY TEAZ. But I vow I bear no malice against the people I abuse: when I say an ill-natured thing, 'tis out of pure humor; LADY TEAZ. Then why will you endeavor to make yourself so disagreeable to me and thwart me in every little elegant expense? SIR PET. Madam, I say, had you any of these little elegant expenses when you married me? LADY TEAZ. Sir Peter, would you have and I take it for granted they deal exactly me be out of the fashion? in the same manner with me. But, Sir Peter, you know you promised to come to Lady Sneerwell's too. SIR PET. The fashion, indeed! What had you to do with the fashion before you married me? LADY TEAZ. For my part, I should think you would like to have your wife thought a woman of taste. SIR PET. Ay, there again! Taste! Zounds, madam! you had no taste when you married me. LADY TEAZ. That's very true indeed, Sir Peter; and, after having married you, I should never pretend to taste again, I allow. But now, Sir Peter, since we have finished our daily jangle, I presume I may go to my engagement at Lady Sneerwell's? SIR PET. Ay, there's another precious circumstance: a charming set of acquaintance you have made there. SIR PET. Well, well, I'll call in, just to look after my own character. LADY TEAZ. Then, indeed, you must make haste after me, or you'll be too late. So good-bye to ye. [Exit. SIR PET. So I have gained much by my intended expostulation! Yet with what a charming air she contradicts everything I say, and how pleasantly she shows her contempt for my authority! Well, though I can't make her love me, there is great satisfaction in quarrelling with her; and I think she never appears to such advantage as when she is doing everything in her power to plague me. RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. CHEAP JACKS AND DEAR JACKS. only get it well into its mouth when its IAM a Cheap Jack. Now, I'll tell you teeth is coming, and rub the gums once what I mean to go down into my grave declaring that, of all the callings ill-used in Great Britain, the Cheap-Jack calling is the worst used. Why ain't we a profession? Why ain't we endowed with privileges? Why are we forced to take out a hawker's license, when no such thing is expected of the political hawkers? Where's the difference betwixt us? Except that we are Cheap Jacks and they are Dear Jacks, I don't see any difference but what's in our favor. For look here! Say it's election-time. I am on the foot-board of my cart in the market-place on a Saturday night. I put up a general miscellaneous lot. I say "Now, here, my free and independent woters, I'm a-going to give you such a chance as you never had in all your born days, nor yet the days preceding. Now I'll show you what I am a-going to do with you. Here's a pair of razors that'll shave you closer than the Board of Guardians; here's a flat-iron worth its weight in gold; here's a fryingpan artificially flavored with essence of beef-steaks to that degree that you've only got for the rest of your lives to fry bread and dripping in it, and there you are replete replete with animal food; here's a genuine chronometer watch in such a solid silver case that you may knock at the door with it when you come home late from a social meeting and rouse your wife and family, and save up your knocker for the postman; and here's half a dozen dinner-plates that you may play the cymbals with to charm the baby when it's fractious. Stop! I'll throw you in another article, and I'll give you that, and it's a rolling-pin; and if the baby can with it, they'll come through double in a fit of laughter equal to being tickled. Stop again! I'll throw you in another article, because I don't like the looks of you, for you haven't the appearance of buyers unless I lose by you, and because I'd rather lose than not take money to-night; and that article's a looking-glass in which you may see how ugly you look when you don't bid. What do you say now? Come! Do you say a pound?-Not you, for you haven't got it. Do you say ten shillings?-Not you, for you owe more to the tally-man.Well, then, I'll tell you what I'll do with you I'll heap 'em all on the foot-board of the cart. There they are-razors, flat-iron, frying-pan, chronometer watch, dinner-plates, rolling-pin and looking-glass. Take 'em all away for four shillings, and I'll give you sixpence for your trouble." This is me, the Cheap Jack. But on the Monday morning, in the same market-place, comes the Dear Jack on the hustings his cart-and what does he say? Now, my free and independent woters, I am a-going to give you such a chance" (he begins just like me) "as you never had in all your born days, and that's the chance of sending myself to Parliament. Now I'll tell you what I am a-going to do for you. Here's the interests of this magnificent town promoted above all the rest of the civilized and uncivilized earth. Here's your railways carried, and your neighbors' railways jockeyed. Here's all your sons in the post-office. Here's Brittania smiling on you. Here's the eyes Europe on you. Here's universal prosperity for you, repletion of animal food, golden corn of fields, gladsome homesteads and rounds of applause from your own hearts, all in one lot, and that's myself. Will you take me as I stand? You won't? Well, then, I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Come, now! I'll throw you in anything you ask for. There! Church-rates, abolition of church-rates; more malt-tax, no malt-tax; uniwersal education to the highest mark, or uniwersal ignorance to the lowest; total abolition of flogging in the army, or a dozen for every private once a month all round; Wrongs of Men, or Rights of Women,-only say which it shall be, take 'em or leave 'em, and I'm of your opinion altogether, and the lot's your own on your I'll tell own terms. There! You won't take it yet? Well, then, I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Come! Come! You are such free and independent woters, and I am so proud of you—you are such a noble and enlightened constituency, and I am so ambitious of the honor and dignity of being your member, which is by far the highest level to which the wings of the human mind can soar-that you what I'll do with you: I'll throw you in all the public-houses in your magnificent town for nothing. Will that content you? It won't? You won't take the lot yet? Well, then, before I put the horse in and drive away, and make the offer to the next most magnificent town that can be discovered, I'll tell you what I'll do: take the lot, and I'll drop two thousand pound in the streets of your magnificent town for them to pick up that can. Not enough? Now, look here. This is the very furthest that I'm a-going to. I'll make it two thousand five hundred. And still you won't?-Here, missis! Put the horse- No, stop half a moment. I shouldn't like to turn my back upon you, neither, for a trifle. I'll make it two thousand seven hundred and fifty pound. There! Take the lot on your own terms, and I'll count out two thousand seven hundred and fifty pound on the foot-board of the cart, to be dropped in the streets of your magnificent town for them to pick up that can. What do you say? Come, now! You won't do better, and you may do worse. You take it? Hooray! Sold again, and got the seat!" THE CHARLES DICKENS. VICISSITUDES OF LIFE. HERE is no unmixed good in human affairs; the best principles, if pushed to excess, degenerate into fatal vices. Generosity is nearly allied to extravagance; charity itself may lead to ruin; the sternness of justice is but one step removed from the severity of oppression. It is the same in the political world: the tranquillity of despotism resembles the stagnation of the Dead Sea: the fever of innovation, the tempests of the It would seem as if at particular ocean. periods, from causes inscrutable to human wisdom, a universal frenzy seizes mankind; reason, experience, prudence, are alike blinded, and the very classes who are to perish in the storm are the first to raise its fury. ISAIAH. ISAIAH THE MESSIAH. FROM THE HEBREW OF ISAIAH. Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief. KING JAMES'S TRANSLATION. PRINCES. FROM THE FRENCH OF JEAN MESCHINOT. Even like the meanest serf, shall fall. All shall return from whence it came! Translation of LOUISA STUART COSTELLO. TRIBUTE TO WEBSTER. THEY say he was ambitious. Yes, as afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath Ames said of Hamilton, "there is no laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was doubt that he desired glory, and that, feeling oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened his own force, he longed to deck his brow not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the with the wreath of immortality." But I slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers believe he would have yielded his arm, his is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. He frame to be burned, before he would have was taken from prison and from judgment: sought to grasp the highest prize of earth by and who shall declare his generation? for he any means, by any organization, by any tacwas cut off out of the land of the living: for tics, by any speech, which in the least dethe transgression of my people was he strick-gree endangered the harmony of the system. en. And he made his grave with the wicked, They say, too, he loved New England. 202 NERO'S PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS. RUFUS CHOATE. He did love New Hampshire, that old gran- | ican feeling, one more farewell address!" ite world-the crystal hills, gray and cloud- And then might he ascend unhindered to topped, the river whose murmur lulled his the bosom of his Father and his God. cradle, the old hearthstone, the grave of father and mother. He loved Massachusetts, which adopted and honored himthat sounding seashore, that charmed elmtree sea, that reclaimed farm, that choice herd, that smell of earth, that dear library, those dearer friends; but the "sphere of his NERO'S PERSECUTION OF THE FROM THE LATIN HISTORIAN CAIUS CORNELIUS duties was his true country." Dearly he NEITHER religious ceremonies nor the loved you, for he was grateful for the open arms with which you welcomed the stranger and sent him onward and upward. But when the crisis came and the winds were let loose, and that sea of March wrought and was tempestuous," then you saw that he knew even you only as you were, American citizens; then you saw him rise to the true nature and stature of American citizenship; then you read on his brow only what he thought of the whole republic; then you saw him fold the robes of his habitual patriotism around him and counsel for all for all. So, then, he served you: "to be pleased with his service was your affair, not his." And now what would he do, what would he be, if he were here to-day? I do not presume to know. But what a loss we have in him! liberal donations of the prince could efface from the minds of men the prevailing opinion that Rome was set on fire by his own orders. The infamy of that horrible transaction still adhered to him. In order, if possible, to remove the imputation, he determined to transfer the guilt to others. For this purpose he punished with exquisite torture a race of men detested for their evil practices by vulgar appellation commonly called Christians. The name was derived from Christ, who in the reign of Tiberius suffered under Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea. By that event the sect of which he was the founder received a blow which for a time checked the growth of a dangerous superstition; but it revived soon after, and spread with recruited vigor, not only in Judea, the soil that gave it birth, but even in the city of Rome, the common sink into which everything infamous and abominable flows like a torrent from all quarters of the world. I have read that in some hard battle, when the tide was running against him and his ranks were breaking, some one in the agony of a need of generalship exclaimed, "Oh for Nero proceeded with his usual artifice. an hour of Dundee !" So say I, "Oh for an He found a set of profligate and abandoned hour of Webster now! oh for one more roll wretches who were induced to confess themof that thunder inimitable, one more peal of selves guilty, and on the evidence of such that clarion, one more grave and bold coun- men a number of Christians were convicted sel of moderation, one more throb of Amer--not, indeed, on clear evidence of their |