spectre, and the master and mistress of the house the bedroom of the lady's maid. The closet was opened, which contained, not exactly what Schroeder pretended to have seen, jewels, gold, and silver, but still several pretty articles of plate, some ornaments, and a few rolls of money. It was now advised to call the pretty inhabitant of the room to an account, both concerning the treasure and the apparitions; but it was soon discovered that both she and the colonel's game-keeper, had, during the bustle, quietly retreated together."

The game-keeper!" repeated poor Barmann, quite thunderstruck, "the game-keeper did you say?"-"Yes, the gamekeeper of the manor, Augustus Leisegang," insisted Wermuth.

Was the rogue's name really Augustus?" again interrupted Barmann very earnestly, "are you certain of that?"

Α

"To be sure I am," answered Wermuth pettishly, "have I not just examined him and his fair one? why does the name strike you as singular?"" Oh not at all, not in the least singular," muttered Barmann peevishly, jerking up his cravat," he is only my namesake, that's all-but pray go on with your story."" Well, the rest you may easily guess,' continued Wermuth; "the moving wainscot, which might in ancient times have been of service to the lords of the mansion, had been forgotten, and was lately discovered by the loving couple. Schroeder, in his sleep must have pressed against the spring, and the slide opening, made the noise which awoke him; the damsel, when instead of the game-keeper she found a stranger in the bed, screamed out and let the slide suddenly drop, and this was the fall which Schroeder had so distinctly heard thus every thing was explained naturally enough. A description of the pair was sent about the country, and yesterday they were brought in by our police officers, and I have passed this whole morning in attending to their examination. But the highest sport was, that Schroeder came in by accident, and was ready to cut his throat when he saw the pretty, rosy-cheeked, black-eyed girl, against whose beauties he had shut his eyes in the night, believing her to be the ghastly corps of the miser: It shall not happen again to me, however,' said he, and he endeavoured to make up for one of the kisses which he had lost; but the little black-eyed rogue turned herself about so quickly, that Schroeder's lips exactly fixed themselves upon the red nose of the magistrate's clerk. Take care,' sir, said she, the first of April comes back every year, and always has its due.'"

6

"The little rogue," said Barmann, laughing, and who now good-naturedly gave his adventure, for the further amusement of the party" but," continued he, when he had finished, and we had ceased our mirth," if I have given up my black cham

ber to you, there still remains the ghost of the grey-you cannot dispute all marvels out of the world. And now for our task."

He took up The Liberal and began to read "The Grey Chamber," but before he had got through half a dozen sentences, he dashed the paper violently upon the table; for it contained an explanation, as clear as the sun, of the cele brated goblin of the grey chamber!

"Alack-a-day," said he despondingly, "we live in villanous times; every thing venerable is going to decay,—not even á respectable ghost can remain undisturbed in his own territories, but somebody will arise to disprove and displace him. Let nobody come to me again with a story of a spectre."

"And why not," replied Wermuth, "it is not till the period when ghosts are banished, that men begin to tell their histories; but through all those stories that appear wanting in probability, the reader, if he be either lucky or witty, will readily discover the truth."

A. F.

THE FIRST SONGSTRESSES IN TOWN.

PRAY, said Lady Mary to me, the other day, (and pray, Sir, who are you? Why, Madam, I am Edmund Bruce, at your service, whose name you may find in the list of Lady Mary's very devoted and humble servants)-Pray, said Lady Mary to me (during a most graciously vouchsafed private audience) what is your opinion of all the best singers now in town?

Your ladyship, I replied, is so comprehensive in the form of your question, that I must despair of obliging you by an answer, unless you will be so kind as to descend a little more to particulars.

Well, returned her ladyship, what think you of a dialogue upon the separate merits of our vocalists; and if you can remember it afterwards, you may, you know, send it to the Magazine, and have it printed.

With all my heart, I replied; I was just racking my brains for a subject for contribution. But to which of our songstresses (for songsters are out of the question-I never could abide a man's voice) shall we give the palm of precedence? Do I not run an equal hazard with unhappy Paris, in his allotment of the golden apple? To begin with our native warblers, there are three, Salmon, Stephens, and Tree, or Tree, Stephens, and Salmon; or Stephens, Tree, and Salmon, all as eager as any baronet's wife to be allowed the premier pas on every occasion, and insisting most imperatively to have

their very names printed in letters of precisely the same magnitude, and the same notable red ink.

I take upon myself, replied her ladyship, (as among my various styles and titles, I am denoted mistress of all harmony,) to bestow the golden apple with my own hand; and, "without one if, or but," I assign it to the nightingale of our London parterres-Salmon.

Agreed, I replied, and on this hint will I speak; for, as you have given Salmon the appellation of "sweetest of birds, sweet Philomela," so will I undertake to find ornithological resemblances for others of our fair songstresses. I will call Stephens, the blackbird, pathetically mellow; Catalani, the thrush, brilliantly harsh; Carew, the linnet, warblingly tender; Caradori, the canary-bird, ringingly clear, &c. &c.; and demonstrate most irrefragably the why and the wherefore, for each of my fanciful aliases.

Pray begin then, said her ladyship; I am all impatience.

ED. BR. When I speak of Mrs. Salmon, my only fear is lest I satirize her with the hyperbole of my praise. It is too much the fashion to consider her in the light of a merely scientific performer, as if to her knowledge of the art she owed her musical. supremacy. Her powers are certainly cultivated to their highest point of perfection, but I contend for the unrivalled excellence of her native endowments. Nature has bestowed on her an organ of voice, as wonderful as it is beautiful. There is more what is technically called body in the tone of her voice, and richness more equally diffused over the whole of its scale, even from the very lowest note to the top of her compass, than is to be met with in any other performer. There is a peculiar metallic tone, like the reverberation that a golden chord might be supposed to yield; there is a lusciousness like the honey of Hybla, yet a clearness, pure as that honey's very purest drops.

.

LADY M. Oh stop, stop! You will surfeit me with sweets, and (as I read the other day in some modern poet or poetess) "smother my soul in richness."

ED. BR. I beseech your ladyship not to interrupt the flow of a poet's feeling. When I have heard Mrs. Salmon sing "There were shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night," immediately after that aërial symphony which "brings all heaven before our eyes," I have hung upon every pure and melting note with an intensity which seemed to dissolve every sense into that of hearing.

LADY M. Then if, at that blest moment, some complimenting old dowager should be bustling to her seat, or some wretch," who hath no music in his soul," should raise his voice, and your wrath, in too audible a whisper

- ED. BR. O cease! You touch upon remembrances too maddening. The milkiness of my nature has at those moments been so turned to gall, that I have been tempted to a wish akin to the Roman emperors, viz., that all such insensibles had but one pair of lips, that I might clap a padlock thereon forthwith. What think you of hearing a bet proposed, discussed, and concluded, during Mrs. Salmon's exquisite performance of "I know that my Redeemer liveth?" And scarcely less odious are they, who supply a running comment to the musical text, with interlarded" charmings!" and "bravos!" Silence, silence is the only true commendation.

LADY M. Or such an involuntary exclamation of real feeling as I once myself heard Catalani utter, after a song of Mrs. Salmon's, "Vraiment elle a une voix de Cherubin !" Such an energetic tribute of admiration was at once honourable to the heart of the rival who uttered it, and to the powers of the songstress who could suspend even uneasy sensations of rivalship.

ED. BR. Nor is Mrs. Salmon only delightful in the sweet and solemn department of melody; she has given a new charm to the rapidity of its most difficult execution. She alone, as it appears to me, can claim, as perfectly descriptive of her powers, those noble lines of Milton :

"In notes with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony."

Who, that has heard the sweet strife between the voice and the instrument, when she has been accompanied by Drouet on the flute, in Handel's " Sweet bird;" the echo of the liquid shake, the gradual swelling of a note that, from the slenderest, smallest tone, grows into a volume of sound that makes the whole air thrill with harmony;-or the subdued, yet distinct warbling, which robs the voice of more than half its power, to repay it with an usury of more than double sweetness-but must be reminded of the fabled contest between the musician and the nightingale, (LADY M. If they ever heard of it,) and confess that Mrs. Salmon is as much the queen of songstresses among mortals as Philomel among birds.

6

LADY M. Q. E. D.' as I have heard you Cambridge men say, and I believe I know what it means; for, to confess the truth, I have gone through some of the first propositions in Euclid myself. (Her ladyship sighed. Some tender recollection, doubtless. I have known young ladies ask young

gentlemen to teach them mathematics, for which they betrayed a predilection no less sudden than unaccountable.)

ED. BR. If your ladyship will allow me, I will repeat some lines, which I met with the other day in an old neglected poet, Crashaw. They seemed to me wonderfully beautiful, though somewhat of the quaintest.

LADY M. But are they to the purpose?

ED. BR. You shall hear. They are taken from a piece called "Music's Duel." The contest is between "a sweet lute's master" and "the harmless siren of the woods."

"He lightly skirmishes on every string,

Charged with a flying touch; and straightway she
Carves out her dainty notes as readily

Into a thousand sweet distinguished tones,
And reckons up, in soft divisions,

Quick volumes of wild notes.....

Now negligently rash,

He throws his arm, and with a long-drawn dash,
Blends all together; then distinctly trips
From this to that; then quick returning skips,
And snatches this again, and pauses there.
She measures every measure, every where
Meets art with art: sometimes, as if in doubt,
Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out,
Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note
Through the sleek passage of her open throat.
-He, amazed

That, from so small a channel, should be raised
The torrent of a voice, whose melody
Could melt into such sweet variety,
Strains higher yet; as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to th' harvest of Death's field, and woo
Men's hearts into their hands ;-This lesson too
She gives him back. Her supple breast thrills out
Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetness; hovers o'er her skill,
And folds, in waved notes, with a trembling bill,
The pliant series of her slippery song ;
Then starts she suddenly into a throng
Of panting murmurs, stilled out of her breast,
That ever-bubbling spring; the sugar'd nest
Of her delicious soul, that there doth lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody.
Her voice now kindling seems a holy quire
Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre,
Of sweet-lipp'd angels, ever murmuring

That men can sleep, while they their matins sing,
(Most divine service) whose so early lay
Prevents the eyelids of the blushing day.

Shame now, and anger, mixt a double stain
In the musician's face; yet once again,
From this to that, from that to this he flies,
Feels music's pulse in all her arteries.