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"IF matchless talents, boundless stretch of To deathless laurels and immortal fame,

thought,

If Science at the sacred fountain sought;
A spirit kindling with that fervid glow
Whence only great and daring actions flow;
If friendship, ardent, springing from the soul,
That ne'er knew guile, nor interest's base control;
Philanthropy that burn'd tow'rds all mankind,
By wide-spread seas or continents disjoined,
Wherever Phoebus' glowing axle rolls,
Flames at the line, or glimmers at the poles;
But chief on fire, beyond th' Atlantic wave
To rend the fetters of the groaning slave:
If these if heaven-born genius give the claim

That meed is thine-eternally enshrined
In every generous Briton's patriot mind.
Virtues like these above yon azure vault
Of blazing orbs our grovelling race exalt:
Virtues like these make trivial faults appear
As the faint spots on day's refulgent sphere!
Yet not for these the muse resounds thy praise,
Not that thy genius poured the living lays:
But that with fervid and electric strain,
That warm'd the raptur'd hearer's throbbing vein,
Thy powerful voice that rival's glory spread,

*Mr. Pitt.

And gave due honours to the mighty dead.
No more your thunders strike th" admiring ear,
But close by his is laid thy laurell'd bier;
Extinguish'd high ambition's glorious thirst,
Together mingled your distinguished dust.
In peace repose, where yon imperial dome
O'er shrouded grandeur throws its awful gloom-
Where kings and heroes strew the hallow'd floor,
'And York and Lancaster are foes no more!'"

THE above engraving represents the monument to Fox, to which reference was made in the notice of Westminster Abbey contained in our last. It was exe

cuted by Westmacott, and was not erected until a considerable time after his death. It is not our intention, on this occasion, to present our readers with a life of this distinguished man; it has already been executed by many hands, and is too closely interwoven with the political history of the times in which he lived to admit of our comprehending, within such limits as ours, anything but a meagre and uninteresting detail. We have, therefore, thought it better to record one or two anecdotes and general notices of his cha

racter.

The distinguishing feature of Mr. Fox's intellectual character appears to us to have been imagination and sensibility. These were the traits which showed themselves most prominently both in his public and private life. In the former, their predominance, and the defects with

neglected affluence in his mental tem-
perament the very opposite of the rigid
correctness of his great rival.

His animation was unequal, and there were periods when a stranger might have pronounced him even taciturn. But those times were generally brief; a sudden influx of ideas would seem to fertilize his mind, and he then overbore every thing with the richness and

strikingly indicative of his high regard for Mr. Fox, and at the same time exceedingly characteristic. It was related by one of his pupils in the New Monthly Magazine.

It is much to be lamented that we are so scantily furnished either with descriptions or specimens of the conversational "He occasionally sent me," said the pupil, talents of Mr. Fox. The following, how-to Grove Park, on an embassy to obtain the ever, will be read with interest, from the Courier newspaper; and, upon my return, pen of a recent historian of his times :-- made me read to him the parliamentary debates, which were at that time full of interest. times took a malicious pleasure in giving the In the delivery of Mr. Pitt's speeches, I someutmost possible effect to the brilliant passages; upon which the doctor would exclaim, Why, you noodle, do you dwell with such energy upon Pitt's empty declamation? Don't you would say, "That is powerful!--but Fox willsee it is all sophistry? At other moments he answer it!' When I pronounced the words, 'Mr. Fox rose,' Parr would roar out, 'Stop!' and after shaking the ashes out of his pipe and filling it afresh, he would add, Now, In the course of the you dog, do your best!'

variety of his conceptions.

Gibbon, one of the most fastidious of men, and disposed by neither party nor personal recollections to be enamoured of Fox, describes his conversation as admirable. They met at Lausanne, spent a day without other company, "and talked the whole day;" the test was sufficiently long under any circumstances, but

which it is almost necessarily associa- Gibbon declares that Fox never flagged; his speech he would often interrupt me, in a tone

ted, may account for the compara- animation and variety of topic were inex-
tively awkward and uninteresting man-haustible.
ner in which he commenced the most One evening, at Devonshire House, some
brilliant efforts of his oratory. While remark happening to be made on the skill
getting over preliminary details, and of the French in emblems, the Duchess play-
clearing the way to the great principles to fully said that it would be impossible to
find an emblem for her. Several attempts
which, on every question, he naturally
were made, with various success. The Duchess
tended, and the development of which still declared herself dissatisfied. At length
called forth all his powers of fascination Fox took up a bunch of grapes, and presented
and conviction, he was generally slow, it to her, with the motto, "Je plais jusqu'à
constrained, and infelicitous. He inva-'ivresse."* His superiority was acknowledged
riably kindled with his subject, and only by acclamation.
exhibited that animation for which he
was so remarkable under the influence
of the great moral principles on which
his subject turned. The necessary con-
sequence of this habit of thinking and
speaking was, that his auditory sympa-
thized with him, were carried passively
along under the same impressions, and
kept at a temperature corresponding with

his own.

In private life, the effect of these characteristics was equally evident. No man was more alive to the beauties of natural scenery, and the relish for them lasted in undiminished intensity to the day of his death. In perfect accordance with this unsophisticated taste was his delight in poetry, to which his partiality amounted to enthusiasm, and which perpetually afforded him a relaxation from his political cares and fatigues. His taste in this, as in all other respects, was remarkably pure, and his memory so exceedingly retentive and ready that he had the finest passages of all the best poets in several languages entirely at his command.

But it was in his social character that these distinctions were most conspicuous. To them were principally owing the charm of his society, which those who were privileged with his friendship represent as irresistibly fascinating. The wit, the elegance, the spontaneity, and copiousness which distinguished his conversation may all be recognized as the dependent graces of his fancy-all betoken a geniality and

On another occasion, Burke was contending,

in his usual enthusiastic manner, for the possi-
bility of raising Italy to her former rank, and
instanced that several nations which had sunk
under the sword had risen again. Fox argued
that her ruin was irretrievable, and that the
very tardiness and tranquillity of her decay
made restoration hopeless. "The man," said he,
"who breaks his bones by falling from a pre-
cipice, may have them mended by his surgeon.
But what hope is there when they have dis-
solved away in the grave?"

A high official personage, since dead, noto-
rious for his parsimony, and peculiarly for his
reluctance to contribute to charitable institu-
which Sheridan and Fox happened to be in-
tions, was seen at a sermon for a charity, in
terested. How far the sermon acted on this
noble person's liberality became a question over
the table. "I think he gave his pound," said
Sheridan. Impossible!" said Fox; "the
rack could not have forced such a sum from
him, or he must think that he is going to die,"
much; even Judas threw away twice the
"Pol!" said Sheridan; "the sum is not
money." Yes," returned Fox, "but how
long was it before he was hanged ?"

66

66

When at Paris, Fox was one day dining
with Napoleon, then First Consul of France,
and the conversation turned upon the trial by
jury, of which Buonaparte, as might be ex-
pected, expressed his disapprobation. "It
was," he said,
might be so inconvenient to a government;"
so Gothic, so cumbrous, and
upon which Fox, with characteristic frankness,
replied that "the inconvenience was the very
thing for which he liked it."

66

We cannot here refrain from introducing an anecdote of Dr. Parr, which is

* "I please to intoxication."

such as the following:- Capital !-answer of triumphant exultation, with exclamations that if you can, Master Pitt!' and, at the conclusion, That is the speech of the orator and the statesman; Pitt is a mere rhetorician,' adding, after a pause, a very able one, I

admit.'"

We will now proceed to notice somewhat more generally the character of Mr. Fox, and we cannot better do this than by making a selection from the numerous delineations of it by the hands of his most intimate and most distinguished friends, which appeared after his death. The first we shall give was contained in the characters of Fox by Dr. Parr, under the name of Philopatris Varvicensis, and is confidently attributed by him to his illustrious friend, Sir James Mackintosh. It first appeared in a Bombay newspaper, during Sir James's recordership there.

Mr. Fox united, in a most remarkable degree, the seemingly repugnant characters of the mildest of men, and the most vehement of orators. In private life he was gentle, modest, placable, kind, of simple manners, and so not only unostentatious, but even somewhat averse from parade and dogmatism as to be inactive in conversation. His superiority was never felt but in the instruction which he imparted, or in the attention which his generous preference usually directed to the more obscure members of the company. The simplicity of his manners was far from excluding that permore from the mildness of his nature than fect urbanity and amenity which flowed still from familiar intercourse with the most polished society of Europe. His conversation, when it was not repressed by modesty or indolence, was delightful. The pleasantry perhaps of no man of wit had so unlaboured an appearance. It seemed rather to escape from his mind than to be produced by it. He had lived on the most distinguished by wit, politeness, or philosophy, intimate terms with all his contemporaries or learning, or the talents of public life. In the course of thirty years, he had known almost every man in Europe whose intercourse could strengthen, or enrich, or polish the mind. In classical erudition, which, by the custom His own literature was various and elegant. of England, is more peculiarly called learning, he was inferior to few professed scholars, Like

all men of genius, he delighted to take refuge in poetry from the vulgarity and irritation of business. His own verses were easy and pleasing, and might have claimed no low place among those which the French call vers de société. The poetical character of his mind was displayed in his extraordinary partiality for the poetry of the two most poetical nations —or, at least, languages-of the west, those of the Greeks and of the Italians. He disliked political conversation, and never willingly took any part in it.

To speak of him justly as an orator would require a long essay. Every where natural, he carried into public something of that simple and negligent exterior which belonged to him in private. When he began to speak, a common observer might have thought him awkward; and even a consummate judge could only have been struck with the exquisite justness of his ideas and the transparent simplicity of his manners. But no sooner had he spoken for some time than he was changed into another being. He forgot himself and every thing around him. He thought only of his subject. His genius warned and kindled as he went on. He darted fire into his audience. Torrents of impetuous and irresistible eloquence swept along their feelings and conviction. He certainly possessed, above all moderns, that union of reason, simplicity, and vehemence, which formed the prince of orators. He was the most Demosthenean speaker since Demosthenes. "I knew him," says Mr. Burke, in a pamphlet written after their unhappy difference," when he was nineteen; since which time he has risen, by slow degrees, to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw." The quiet dignity of a mind roused only by great objects, the absence of petty bustle, the contempt of show, the abhorrence of intrigue, the plainness, and downrightness, and the thorough good nature which distinguished Mr. Fox, seem to render him no very unfit representative of that old English national character, which, if it ever changed, we should be sanguine indeed to expect to see succeeded by a better.

The simplicity of his character inspired confidence, the ardour of his eloquence roused enthusiasm, and the gentleness of his manners invited friendship. "I admired," says Gibbon, "the powers of a superior man as they are blended, in his attractive character, with all the softness and simplicity of a child; no human being was ever more free from taint of malignity, vanity, and falsehood." From these qualities of his public and private character, it probably arose, that no English statesman ever preserved, during so long a period of adverse fortunes, so many affectionate friends and so many zealous adherents.

any

The following very vivid delineation of his powers as an orator is from the pen of his friend Lord Erskine :

This extraordinary person, generally, in rising to speak, had evidently no more premeditated the particular language he should employ, nor, frequently, the illustrations and images by which he should discuss and enforce his subject, than he had contemplated the hour he was to die. And his exalted merit as a debater in parliament did not, therefore, consist in the length, variety, or roundness of his periods, but in the truth and vigour of his conceptions; in the depth and extent of his information; in the retentive powers of his memory, which enabled him to keep in constant view, not only all that he had formerly read and reflected on, but every thing said

the moment, and even at other times, by the various persons whose arguments he was to answer; in the faculty of spreading out his matter so clearly to the grasp of his own mind, as to render it impossible he should ever fail in the utmost clearness and distinctness to others; in the exuberant fertility of his imagination, which spontaneously brought forth his ideas at the moment, in every possible shape in which the understanding might sit in judgment on them; whilst, instead of seeking afterwards to enforce them by cold premeditated illustrations or by episodes, which, however beautiful, only distract attention, he was accustomed to repass his subject, not methodically, but in the most unforeseen and fascinating review, enlightening every part of it; and binding even his adversaries in a kind of spell of involuntary assent for the time.

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to it, without the very care which his habits and his talents equally rejected.

He undoubtedly attached as little to the musical intonation of his speeches as to the language in which they were expressed. His emphases were the unstudied effusions of nature-the vents of a mind burning intensely with the generous flame of public spirit and benevolence, beyond all control or management when impassioned, and above the rules to which inferior things are properly subjected; his sentences often rapidly succeeded, and almost mixed themselves with one another-as the lava rises in bursts from the mouth of a volcano, when the resistless energies of the subterranean world are at their height.

We can only cursorily allude, in closing, to the last and greatest political achievement of Mr. Fox, to which an allusion is contained in the monument represented at the commencement of this article. It is commemorated in the following spirited passage from the pen of the Rev. G. Croly:

This will be found more particularly to apply to his speeches upon sudden and unforeseen occasions, when certainly nothing could be more interesting and extraordinary than to witness, as I have often done, the mighty and unprepared efforts of his mind, when he had Fox's politics may now be obsolete; his parto encounter the arguments of some profound liamentary triumphs may be air; his eloreasoner, who had deeply considered his sub-quence may be rivalled, or shorn of its beams ject, and arranged it with all possible art, to by time; but one source of glory cannot be preserve its parts unbroken. To hear him extinguished-the abolition of the slave-trade. begin, on such occasions, without method, This victory no man can take from him. without any kind of exertion, without the Whatever variety of opinion may be formed on smallest impulse from the desire of distinction his public principles, whatever condemnation or triumph, and animated only by the honest may be found for his personal career, whatsense of duty, an audience who knew him not ever doubts of his great faculties: on this one would have expected little success from the subject all voices will be raised in his honour, conflict-as little as a traveller in the east, and the hand of every man of English feeling whilst trembling at a buffalo in the wild vigour will add a stone to the monument that perpeof its well-protected strength, would have tuates his name. On the 10th of June, 1806, looked to its immediate destruction, when he Fox brought forward his motion, in a speech saw the boa moving slowly and inertly towards brief but decided. "So fully," said he, “am him in the grass. But Fox, unlike the serpent I impressed with the vast importance and necesin every thing but his strength, always taking sity of attaining what will be the object of my his station in some fixed, invulnerable princi- motion to-night, that if, during the forty years ples, soon surrounded and entangled his adver- that I have had the honour of a seat in parlia sary, disjointing every member of his discourse, ment, I should have been so fortunate as to acand strangling him in the irresistible folds of complish that, and that only, I should think truth. I had done enough, and should retire from public life with comfort, and the conscious satisfaction that I had done my duty."

Intel

This intellectual superiority, by which my illustrious friend was so eminently distinguished, might nevertheless have existed in all its strength, without raising him to the exalted station he held as a public speaker. The powers of the understanding are not of themselves sufficient for this high purpose. lect alone, however exalted, without strong would be only like an immense magazine of feelings, without even irritable sensibility, gunpowder, if there were no such element as fire in the natural world. It is the heart which is the spring and fountain of eloquence. A cold-blooded, learned man, might, for any thing I know, compose in his closet an eloquent book; but in public discourse, arising out of sudden occasions, he could, by no possibility, be eloquent.

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It has been said, that he was frequently careless of the language in which he expressed himself; but I can neither agree to the justice, nor even comprehend the meaning, of that criticism. He could not be incorrect from carelessness; because, having lived from his youth in the great world, and having been familiarly conversant with the classics of all nations, his most unprepared speaking (or, if critics will have it so, his most negligent) must have been at least grammatical, which it not only uniformly was, but distinguished by its taste: more than that could not have belonged

His speech concluded with the immortal resolution:-"THAT THIS HOUSE, CONCEIVING THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE TO BE CONTRARY TO THE PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE, HUMANITY, AND SOUND POLICY, WILL, WITH ALL PRACTI➡ CABLE EXPEDITION, PROCEED TO TAKE EFFEC

TRADE, IN SUCH MANNER AND AT SUCH PERIOD TUAL MEASURES FOR ABOLISHING The Slave

AS MAY BE DEEMED ADVISABLE."

On the division, one hundred and fourteen voted for the measure, against it only fifteen! This was the last effort made by Fox. In a few days after, he was taken ill of his mortal disease. No orator, no philosopher, no patriot, could have wished for a nobler close to his

labours.

SLAVERY.

OH, SLAVERY! "thou art a bitter draught!"
And twice accursed is thy poison'd bowl,
Which taints with leprosy the white man's soul,
Not less than his by whom its dregs are quaff'd :
The Slave sinks down, o'ercome by cruel craft,
Like beast of burden on the earth to roll;
The Master, though in luxury's lap he loll,
Feels the foul venom, like a rankling shaft,
Strike through his reins. As if a demon laugh'd,
He, laughing, treads his victim in the dust-
The victim of his avarice, rage, or lust:
But the poor prisoner's moan the whirlwinds waft
To Heaven-not unavenged: the oppressor quakes
With secret dread, and shares the hell he makes!

T. P.

THE TOURIST.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1833.

IMMEDIATE EMANCIPATION. We copy the following very able article from a recent number of The Patriot." It contains some of the most original and forcible arguments which we have seen advanced on this subject. The book which it so strongly commends to notice is the Anti-Slavery Reporter, No. 104.

If we have any readers in whose mind there lurks the shadow of a doubt as to the safety, the expediency, or the duty of immediately abolishing the condition of slavery, they owe it to themselves, and to the cause of humanity, to procure and make themselves thoroughly acquainted with this important document.

The main parts of the inquiry referred to the committee embraced the following two propositions: 1. That the slaves, if emancipated, will adequately maintain themselves by their own labour; and, 2. That the danger of withholding freedom from the slaves is greater than that of granting it. The "fair and equitable consideration of the interests of private property, as connected with emancipation," was not investigated by the Committee. In fact, this consideration ought not to be allowed for one moment to embarrass the settlement of the question, for three obvious reasons: First, the negro, at least, as Mr. Alers Hankey very properly observed, owes nothing to the planter, and the victims of our national guilt ought not to continue to suffer "while we are haggling about the pounds, shillings, and pence." Secondly, when it is finally determined that slavery shall cease, it will be quite time enough to go into the consideration of those special cases of hardship which may possibly require an equitable remedy. The claim to compensation is at present urged only as an argument ad terrorem, as it was during the agitation of the slave-trade question; the justice and the impracticability of compensation being insisted upon in the same breath. But for what is the slave-holder to be compensated? For the loss of his power over the person of the negro? or for the loss of his command over the labour of the negro? If for the former, he may just as reasonably claim compensation for every abridgment of his arbitrary power by humane enactments. If for the latter, he has to prove that his command over that labour will be taken away, or even diminished, by the abolition of slavery. Thirdly, let it be but admitted, what the evidence condensed in this pamphlet triumphantly establishes, that the slaves will, if emancipated, maintain themselves by their labour, and that no danger would result from granting them freedom; it follows that the abolition of slavery would be in two respects a boon to the planter: first, by cheapening labour (free labour being always cheapest); and, secondly, by extinguishing the element of danger which is always generated by slavery, and with it, both the conscious feeling of insecurity and the cost of protection. Should it appear that the interests of private property, the value of all legitimate property, are enhanced by the change in the condition of the slave (which it is our firm belief that, ultimately at least, they would be), the claim for equitable and reasonable com

pensation would be brought within very narrow limits.

That is, delay, upon a double pretext, ad infinitum. We say, Now. Our opponents mean, Never.

but the supineness or mistakes of the friends to emancipation. We entreat our readers to be West Indians, and many persons who are on their guard against delusions. The followless excusable for the prejudice, have so longing has been announced, among "the political been in the habit of considering the negroes principles of the Conservatives," as the specific as so much stock, that they consider the pro- pretext upon which the abolition of slavery is posal to raise them to the social level of men, now to be resisted by the pro-slavery party :as tantamount to robbing them of so many "To promote, after a just and full compenhead of cattle. They forget this trifling differ- sation shall have been secured to the proprieence between the human herd employed upon tor of each slave, the abolition of slavery their plantations, and the live-stock of a farm; throughout the British dominions, at such the negro is of no use except for his labour. time, in each colony, as it can be effected with He cannot now, in the British islands at least, advantage to the slaves, safety to the colonies, be bred for a foreign market. He yields and security to the shipping and commercial neither milk, flesh, wool, horn, nor hides. An interests of the empire!" old negro is a burden to the proprietor. A dead negro is worth something less than nothing. His muscles and sinews alone are valuable, when set to work by the cart-whip and other apparatus. Now, as the property in the person of the negro is valuable, simply as giving a command over his physical labour, if that command can be secured without the proprietorship, which is in itself a burden, what does the slave-holder lose by giving up his whole stock? What more than a gentleman who should give up his carriage-horses, on condition of being furnished with the use of horses by the jobber, on cheaper terms than he could maintain his own in the livery-stable, taking into account the chances of loss by death, the veterinary surgeon's and farrier's bills, and the other attendant expenses?

Or, let us suppose that the gentleman's horses had died, or that they were found to be stolen property, to which he could not make a valid or legitimate claim;-he loses, it is true, the market price of the horse, but he saves the amount, perhaps, in the first or second year of his adopting the cheaper, though less dignified, method of hiring. Is he greatly to be pitied?

But if to hold men in slavery be a crime,call it a national crime or an individual crime, the only preliminary question ought to be, Can it be abolished without injury to the great sufferers by that crime, or without a disproportionate punishment falling upon the guilty principals in that crime? Admitting that the whole nation participates in the guilt, as originally an accessary; that it has, in former times, sanctioned and encouraged slavery, and the slave-trade too; that the feeling of its moral turpitude is a feeling of modern growth; for this its sin, greatly a sin of ignorance, this nation has been punished in various ways,has been mulcted, and taxed, and injured in its best interests; has been deprived of its American colonies, which, in retaining that fatal legacy of slavery, have clung to a curse that is now beginning to work upon the vitals of the States. But what punishment is not due from God and man to those guiltier principals in the crime, who-when a whole nation has at length waked to repentance, deaf to all remonstrance, after] forty years' warning-persist in heaping fresh wrongs and injuries upon the victims of their oppression, stigmatizing the sentiments of common humanity as cant and hypocrisy, persecuting the ministers of religion, and defying the very government that protects them in their crimes? We invoke no human vengeance upon Jamaica, but we know WHO has said, "I will repay." Our anxiety is, that England should not continue to be involved in the guilt of tolerating the continuance of the wrong.

The time is come for the settlement of the question. If slavery is not now abolished, it will be the fault of Christians in this country. Nothing can much longer delay the abolition,

Again, we say, let every friend to the cause be on his guard; and, in order to this, let him arm himself at all points against delusion, by distinct, clear, thorough information. It is placed within his reach at so small a cost of money or labour, that he will be inexcusable if he neglect to furnish himself with it. This single number of the Reporter will supply him with a mass of evidence, which will probably satisfy him as to the expediency as well as the justice of an early, not to say immediate, emancipation. If not, let him not rest till he has obtained complete satisfaction; and then, let him not rest till he has followed out his convictions by every constitutional means of giving effect to the decisions of his conscience and the feelings of his heart.

SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS,

THE JEWISH HISTORIAN. JOSEPHUS, whose "History of the Wars of the Jews" is too well known to need any description, was, by his father, of the race of the priests, and of the first of the twenty-four courses; and by his mother he was descended from the Asmonan family, in which the royal power was united with that of the high-priesthood. He was born at Jerusalem, in the first year of Caius Caligula. At sixteen years, he began to inquire into the sentiments of the different sects among the Jews,-the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. At twenty-six he went to Rome, to petition the emperor Nero in behalf of several priests of his acquaintance, whom Felix had sent bound to Rome. At Puteoli he became acquainted with Aliturus, a Jewish comedian, who had ingratiated himself with Nero. Through this man he was introduced to Poppaa, the wife of Nero, by whose interest he succeeded in obtaining liberty for his friends, and from whom he also obtained many considerable presents. following year he returned into Judea, when he saw every thing tending to a revolt under Gessius Florus. In the beginning of the Jewish war, he commanded in Galilee. When Vespasian, who was a general of the Roman army under the reign of Nero, had conquered that country, Josephus was taken at Jotapata. He and forty more Jews had concealed themselves in a subterraneous cavern, where they formed the desperate resolution of killing each other rather than surrender themselves to the Romans. Josephus, having been governor of the place, and therefore entitled to priority in point of rank, it was at first proposed by the rest to yield it to him as an honour, to become the first victim. He, however, contrived to divert their minds from this, by proposing to cast lots for the precedency; and after thirty-nine

The

had ballotted and killed one another, he, and the other who survived, agreed not to lay vio lent hands upon themselves, nor to imbrue their hands in one another's blood, but deliver themselves up to the Romans. Upon this, Josephus surrendered himself up to Nicanor, who conducted him to Vespasian. When brought into the presence of the latter, Josephus told him that he had something to communicate to him which would probably strike him with much surprise, and perhaps not obtain his immediate credit-it was that he, Vespasian, should become Emperor of Rome, in less than three years. Aware that the general might think this was merely a stratagem on the part of Josephus to save his life, the latter told him that he did not ask for his liberty, he was content to be kept as a close prisoner during the interval; and that, should his prediction not be realized, he was content to be then put to death. Vespasian yielded to his request, although he, at first, placed no credit in what Josephus had said. He, however, kept the latter with him, as a prisoner, while he himself continued in these parts; but when he heard that he had been elected Emperor at Rome, he gave him his liberty, and raised him to his confidence and favour. Josephus con

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Ir is a fact not much known, that the eel, though it lives in an element that seems to place it beyond the reach of atmospheric changes, is yet singularly affected by high winds. This is well known to the inhabitants of Linlithgow, who have an excellent opportunity of observing the habits of that animal in the loch adjoining the town. The stream which flows out of the loch at the west end, passes through a sluice, and falls into an arti ficial stone reservoir, from which it escapes by a number of holes at the sides and bottom. These holes are too small to let eels of a common size pass, and hence this reservoir answers the purpose of an eel trap or cruive.

The fish, however, are rarely found in it in calm weather; but when strong winds blow, especially from the west, these tenants of the waters seem to be seized with a general panic, and hurry from their lodgings like rats from a conflagration. At these times they rush through the outlet in crowds, and fall pellmell into the reservoir, from which they are speedily transferred to the frying-pans of the burgesses.-Scotsman.

SONNET TO AFFLICTION.

O THOU! with wakening step and withering eye,
And chalice drugg'd with wormwood to the brim,
Who com'st to prove the nerve and rack the limb,
And wring from bruised hearts the bursting sigh-
From thee in vain affrighted mortals fly!
Thou breath'st upon them, and their senses swim
In giddy horror-while thy comrades grim,
Anguish and dread, their snaky scourges ply.
Affliction! though I fear and hate thy hand,
And fain would shun the bitter cup thou bear'st,
Physician harsh! thy merits, too, I own;
For thou dispell'st illusions that withstand
Milder coercion-and the roots uptear'st
Of cancerous ills that have the heart o'ergrown.

G.

[graphic]

WOBURN ABBEY.

of the Ionic order, and the general cha-
racter of the edifice conveys ideas of soli-
dity and dignity. The fine arts have li-
berally contributed to the embellishment
of the interior. Nearly the whole of the
principal apartments are adorned with
paintings, uniformly interesting, and, in
many instances, affording select speci-
mens of the most distinguished masters.

WOBURN ABBEY, the principal seat of the Duke of Bedford, is a spacious and superb pile of building, erected on the site of a religious house, founded in the year 1145, for monks of the Cistercian order. In the reign of Edward the Sixth the property of Woburn, together with many other ecclesiastical estates, was granted to the Russel family; and the present mansion was constructed on the This noble mansion is situated in the domain thus easily acquired, by John, midst of an extensive park, finely unequal the fourth Duke of Bedford. The ground-in surface, and richly clothed with wood. plan of the building forms a square of more than two hundred feet, having a quadrangular court in the centre. Many improvements have been effected at different times, particularly under the direction of the late Duke. The west front is

But the chief object of attraction in the
attached grounds is of a more homely de-
scription, and consists in those experi-
mental farms which were instituted by
the late Duke, with an admirable zeal and
patriotic spirit. It has been correctly

observed "that what is generally done by a united society, was here effected by an individual; his grace rewarded invention, fostered ingenuity, and gave a fair practical trial to every new theory in the invaluable science of agriculture." The example of this patriotic nobleman has operated beneficially on the country at large; and has, in no instance, met with more judicious imitation than in the person of his successor.

Queen Elizabeth made a journey to Woburn in 1572; and when Charles I. visited Woburn, in 1645, notwithstanding the Earl of Bedford was then in the service of the parliament, the monarch slept at the Abbey.

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