"In a few days I discharged the doctor, and on reaching home, found my cottage a heap of cinders."

"My dear Dick!" said Somers, "why recall that shocking cata. strophe ?"

"Catastrophe! fiddle-faddle!" cried Briggs; "the most unparalleled piece of good luck! Having no dwelling, I took lodgings at Priory Farm." Here Dick smiled till it almost amounted to an incipient giggle. "You know that Topps and Lopps's bank suspended pay.

ment?"

"And you experienced a loss of three hundred pounds," said Somers.

"No such thing, my dear Jack! that stoppage was only a continua. tion of luck. I may truly congratulate myself on that event. Their breaking was my making in common parlance, their loss was my gain."

"Astonishing!" exclaimed Somers.

"Mr. Rutherford had a considerable balance in the hands of Topps and Lopps," said Dick very knowingly; "so he came down to look after matters, and, as Fate would have it, took apartments for himself and daughter at Priory Farm. Now you see-eh?"

"Can't say I do," replicd Somers.
"Dear Jack, how dull you are!"
"Nay, 'tis you have become so lively!"
"Well, we were under the same roof.

Young Love lived once in

a humble shed,' and all that sort of thing: it was natural to renew our acquaintance, when the scars on my face reminded them of my sufferings, and their debt of gratitude.

"What!" said Somers; "you don't mean

"Yes, but I do though! In Mr. Rutherford and his daughter I discovered my companions who had shared my perils in 'flood and field :" -not exactly shared, but you know what I mean. In a word, I am the happiest fellow alive, and the luckiest dog in the universe."

"Let me hear that word again," said Jack: "did you say lucky?” "Not lucky, -the luckiest mortal breathing."

"That is, you are beyond all comparison superlatively happy ?'" "The stoppage of the mail was of no consequence, for my uncle left me minus merely to bestow his property on my future wife, the only child of his old friend Rutherford."

"Then your intended wife is the same 'artful, specious hussy who gained his affections?'-is it so?"

"The same," said Dick. "Henceforth I renounce grumbling, and believe that all is for the best.' Had I not been on board the steam. boat, nearly drowned, and afterwards stoned to death, my suit might have been pressed in vain,-for gratitude is an extensive feeling, and opens the heart, Jack. But for the burning of my cottage, I should have wanted the opportunities that Priory Farm afforded; and Topps and Lopps's business crowned all, by bringing the Rutherfords hither."

"And you have become a convert?"

"Most decidedly," said Dick: “ your words have been realized; matters have mended-Time has brought things round. Even my garden flourishes, for I can exhibit a pot of sweet peas of my own setting; and, among my other cures, I also cure my own bacon,-pigs thrive wonderfully."

"Bravo!" exclaimed Somers; "I congratulate you on the moral victory achieved, and the important lesson that you have learned. Yet there is one thing

"What can that possibly be ?" said Dick impatiently.

"Why, a circulating medium' for those indefinite articles' which were to have illumed and astonished mankind through the pages of the County Magazine."

"A fig for the County Magazine!" said Dick; "it was only supported, like other refuges for the poor and destitute, by voluntary contributions.' I am enrolled among the elect in Bentley's Miscel lany."

"Famous! Then your misfortunes are really at an end?" said Jack Somers.

"I trust, for ever," replied Richard Briggs; "and I have arrived at the conclusion,

WHATEVER IS-IS RIGHT!"

ΤΟ

THOU hast said it,-'tis better, far better to part,
Than suffer the last chill to creep o'er the heart;
Far better at once to rend spirit away,

Than feel the life ebb on, in sick'ning decay.
I could still cherish mem'ry of past hours of joy,
That no cold look nor cold word of thine could destroy.

What to me were the glance of thy dark, speaking eye,
If no fervor of love I could in it descry?'

'Tis not for her beauty the Rose is caress'd

By the Bulbul, and sought for his pillow of rest ;-
'Tis the incense that nightly around her she throws,

And the fragrance she breathes o'er his place of repose!

Thou mayst think to forget me. It never can be!
E'en the future will teem with remembrance to thee:
In the visions of day I shall still have a place,
In the slumbers of night scenes our bliss thou 'lt retrace;
Thou wilt think how I loved thee, what perils I dared,
To prove my devotion,-Ah! how have I fared!

I have seen thy bright smile, I have felt its control
As a faëry spell wreathing its charm round my soul;
To thy bosom in rapturous love I 've been press'd,-
Thine eyes have beheld me, thine arms have caress'd:-
Must I lose thee for ever? 'tis thine own stern decree;
Thou art breaking a heart that beats only for thee!

But 'tis over, and not for what worlds could bestow
Would I cast o'er thy spirit a shadow of wo!-
Mayst thou learn to forget me, if mem'ry be fraught
With grief to thy soul,-with one painful thought!-
May the halcyon of peace make her home in thy breast!
My first love, my only love, still be thou blest!

A CHAPTER ON SEALS, ETC.

A LETTER without a seal is an impertinent and imperfect thing. It is

as Beaumont says.

"Like a ring without a finger;
Like a bell without a ringer;
Like a fort with none to win it;
Or the moon with no man in it;"

It is a planchet wanting the stamp which confers a value on the coin: I would not give the price of a rush for it. Who can tell how many may have read it before it reaches your eyes? It is no longer, or it may be no longer (which amounts to the same), a pure and unsullied thing: you can put no faith in it; it is an arrant jilt. Its beauties, such as they may happen to be, have not been reserved for one alone: its intactness has had no other safeguard than the discretion of the world-and the world is naturally indiscreet. It is as a peach which has no bloom upon it: whether the bloom has been brushed off, or never was there, matters little; the bee no longer loves to rest upon it, but leaves it to the slimy passage of the snail.

I would divide seals into five classes; the seal of pride, the pious seal, the seal initiative, the common and every-day seal of him who scorns a wafer, and the sentimental seal.

The first is much used by those "who draw a long nobility"

"From hieroglyphick proofs of heraldry."

It is habitually offensive, a puked-up thing: it sometimes has supporters, occasionally a coronet; it bears the motto (often unrighteously assumed) of an ancient house,-unlike its synonyme, the older the coat the more honorable. Even the "three white luces" are to

it no disgrace. It is tricked out in the fanciful impertinence of a griffin or a sphynx's head: you are expected to do it courtesy: sometimes it has a punning legend," Ne vile velis," or the like; but this is a condescension you must not always look for; to excite a smile is not its office, it is rather intended to inspire you with a wholesome awe. Like the banner of Enguerrand VII, Sire de Couci, which in the fourteenth century flouted the admiring world, telling them,

"Je ne suis roi, ni prince aussi,—

Je suis Sire de Couci ;"

or, like the still haughtier device of Rohan Soubise,

"Rois je ne puis,
Prince je ne daigne,
Rohan je suis,"

it grasps at everything. No quarry is too lofty for its swoop; and yet at times it will put off its 46 arrogance, quenching with a familiar smile its austere regard of control," and veiling itself in an affected sanctity and humility, which, however, savors little of holy Church. Plain speaking is not its forte: there is a glimmering obscurity which

it dearly loves, as showing that the dust of ages rests upon it,-Welsh or Celtic, Latin or old Norman-French-only Greek it carefully eschews.

The pious seal is one little in use: it may be because the really righteous shrink from making a parade of their religion, or it may be because the multitude have very little religion to parade: but in the olden time it was in great request. We have many instances of it, handed down to us by the elder poets; Wither and George Herbert not among the worst. The latter, in a pleasing little poem called

"The Posy," says,

The seal initiative is of the simplest sort; by it I mean that which bears merely a cypher or a name. It is chiefly employed by the plain, unaffected man, who takes no merit from a parchment scroll, and who at the same time has nothing to conceal. Sometimes a crest

will rise above it; but in that case it is no longer proper, but trenches on the seal of pride. You will see the seal initiative with "Tom" upon it, and you may be sure that Tom is a true man. There are circumstances under which it treads on the kibe of the seal sentimental, as when it is impressed with a pretty name, say Julia, Carry (quasi Caroline), or Mary: but then, it is but fancy which lends to it a charm, and albeit one man may gaze on it with a dreamy sensation of pleasure, as being in some manner a portraiture or expression of its fair owner, to the rest of the world it remains simply illustrative as before.

The common and every day seal of the man of business exhibits a head, sometimes a whole figure clothed in flowing drapery, and bearing in its hand a classic wreath, or it may be a torch. Your grave literary man will affect the effigies of some bearded sage of antiquity, as Socrates, Demosthenes, or the like; while your more lively scribbler stamps his wax from the graceful carving of an Italian gem. Not entirely remote from this class of seals is the silver thimble of the sempstress, the pin-dotted signaculum of the valentine-delivered housemaid, or the watch-key of the lad from school.

There is generally some shade of character to be deduced from this seal. I knew a man once who habitually wore and used an iron seal, with the image of a skull: probably he had at first purchased it in a ghastly jest, but the moral of it fitting with a certain gloomi. ness which tinctured his mind, he had stuck by it; thus casting his own memento mori in the teeth of all his friends, preaching to them of their latter end as openly, and almost as unwelcomely, as the stars

in the triumphal chariot preached of mortality to the Roman conqueror of old.*

The sentimental seal is the most comprehensive; it is polyglot, or speaketh all tongues; from the no-meaning attachment of the boarding-school Miss, to the strong language of real love, every. thing is within its range. It is sometimes ingenious, but that not much. It is simple and straight-forward in its natural form. Like the posy of a ring, it should be short, but at the same time pithy. It is fond of deprecating forgetfulness, and harping upon the pain of ab. sence. The Portuguese have furnished one of its most touching expressions, "sandades," an uncouth word, but which, like the Ger. man "sehnsecht," breathes a longing, lingering regret, a "painting for the waters," a struggle of the heart to attain a happiness desired.

The setting of this class of seal is perhaps not altogether unimportant, neither is the substance on which the legend shall be engraved. Like as in the olden time knights assumed various colors for the field on which their arms should be emblazoned; he choosing black who would express his constancy; blue, who would assert his claim to loyalty; or white, who would show his purity of soul: so might we fancifully wish that the seal affectionate might be carved upon a diamond, the inquisitive on an emerald, the supplicatory on a sapphire, leaving the cornelian and green bloodstone to the ordinary uses of the study and the desk.

Some seals which originally spoke a gentle sentiment have dege. nerated by being profaned: like the Marseillaise Hymn, or the Duke de Reichstadt's Waltz, from which the ear turns away since they have been ground on every organ in the land, so have we ceased to feel the beauty of certain types. It has happened to me to see a letter containing a demand for money whose seal bore the impress of a leaf-the motto, "Je ne change qu'en mourant;" a sorry jest, if you apply a meaning to it; an empty mockery, if you give it none.

It was an old custom with our forefathers to bear devices not alone upon their signet-rings, but upon the other ornaments of their dress some would have them on the blade, others upon the pommel of their sword, and the fair dames of the period were not slow to follow their example. It must have been a pretty sight to have seen the blonde Alix de Preuilli wearing at her girdle an "aumonière représentant, au milieu d'une forêt d'arabesqres, deux jeunes filles, qui sciaient un cœur;" as also to have turned over the rings and amulets which lay upon her toilet-table, among which we are informed was une bague sur laquelle était gravée la figure du Bêlier, avec le signe de Mars, et oú était écrit, Bon pour guérir les vapeurs d'une blonde de vingt ans. In those days the cherry blossom and the giroflée de Mahon were types in themselves, saying, " Ayez de moi souvenance, et ne m'oubliez pas.' We have altered the flower to which this signification attaches, but the sentiment remains with us still.

66

One of the commonest, but not the least pleasing of our modern devices, is the ivy clinging round the oak,-"Je meurs où je m'attache." I can conceive circumstances under which this seal might have great potency; it bespeaks a helplessness which is always interesting: a faithful and implicit trust. The same plant (parasite, as some have

"Hominem se esse etiam triumphans, in illo sublimissimo curru admonetur; suggeritur enim ei a tergo respice post te-homimem memento te." TERTULLIAN in Apologet. cap. 33.