without power of computation,—the other half appeared an age. When it ceased, I became gradually more quiet, but a new fear retained me. I knew that five minutes would pass without ringing, but, at the end of that short time, the bell would be rung a second time, for five minutes more. I could not calculate time. A minute and an hour were of equal duration. I feared to rise, lest the five minutes should have elapsed, and the ringing be again commenced, in which case I should be crushed, before I could escape, against the walls or framework of the bell. I therefore still continued to lie down, cautiously shifting myself, however, with a careful gliding, so that my eye no longer looked into the hollow. This was of itself a considerable relief. The cessation of the noise had, in a great measure, the effect of stupifying me, for my attention, being no longer occupied by the chimeras I had conjured up, began to flag. All that now distressed me was the constant expectation of the second ringing, for which, however, I settled myself with a kind of stupid resolution. I closed my eyes, and clenched my teeth as firmly as if they were screwed in a vice. At last the dreaded moment came, and the first swing of the bell extorted a groan from me, as they say the most resolute victim screams at the sight of the rack, to which he is for a second time destined. this, however, I lay silent and lethargic, without a thought. Wrapt in the defensive armour of stupidity, I defied the bell and its intonations. When it ceased, I was roused a little by the hope of escape, I did not, however, decide on this step hastily, but, putting up my hand with the utmost caution, I touched the rim. Though the ringing had ceased, it still was tremulous from the sound, and shook under my hand, which instantly recoiled as from an electric jar. A quarter of an hour probably elapsed before I again dared to make the experiment, and then I found it at rest. I determined to lose no time, fearing that I might have lain then already too long, and that the bell for evening service would catch me. This dread stimulated me, and I slipped out with the utmost rapidity, and arose. I stood, I suppose, for a minute, looking with silly wonder on the place of my imprisonment, penetrated with joy at escaping, After but then rushed down the stony and irregular stair with the velocity of lightning, and arrived in the bell-ringer's room. This was the last act I had power to accomplish. I leant against the wall, motionless and deprived of thought, in which posture my companions found me, when, in the course of a couple of hours, they returned to their occupation. They were shocked, as well they might, at the figure before them. The wind of the bell had excoriated my face, and my dim and stupified eyes were fixed with a lack-lustre gaze in my raw eye-lids. My hands were torn and bleeding; my hair dishevelled; and my clothes tattered. They spoke to me, but I gave no answer. They shook me, but I remained insensible. They then became alarmed, and hastened to remove me. He who had first gone up with me in the forenoon, met them as they carried me through the church-yard,and through him, who was shocked at having, in some measure, occasioned the accident, the cause of my misfortune was discovered. I was put to bed at home, and remained three days delirious, but gradually recovered my senses. You may be sure the bell formed a prominent topic of my ravings, and if I heard a peal, they were instantly increased to the utmost violence. Even when the delirium abated, my sleep was continually disturbed by imagined ringings, and my dreams were haunted by the fancies which almost maddened me while in the steeple. My friends removed me to a house in the country, which was sufficiently distant from any place of worship, to save me from the apprehensions of hearing the churchgoing bell; for what Alexander Selkirk, in Cowper's Poems, complained of as a misfortune, was then to me as a blessing. Here I recovered; but, even long after recovery, if a gale wafted the notes of a peal towards me, I started with nervous apprehension. I felt a Mahometan hatred to all the bell tribe, and envied the subjects of the Commander of the Faithful the sonorous voice of their Muezzin. Time cured this; as it does the most of our follies; but, even at the present day, if, by chance, my nerves be unstrung, some particular tones of the cathedral-bell have power to surprise me into a mo mentary start.-(Blackwood's Mag :) EPITAPHS. To the Editor. SIR, It is generally asserted that beauty is best seen to advantage when decked in the plainest garb, and under the same rule, I have often thought the better maxims are clothed in the fewest words. Amongst the various kinds of Poetry which we read for the pastime of a vacant hour, and which as it entertains, instils in our minds instruction from the mandates of departed worth! - none more deservedly call our attention than those poetical effusions denominated Epitaphs. The lessons of morality interwoven in their simple and contracted form, and which are more forcibly inculcated from the example they set before us, have often the effect of reverting a depraved mind, when more elaborate admonitions have failed. -Experiar quid concedatur in illos, But to say little of their efficacy on this point, we invariably find pleasure in the perusal of them; I have therefore transcribed a few, which as they appear new and interesting, may have a tendency to dispel from the minds of some of your readers the gloom of a few leasure moments:-as such they are at your service. The following simple but affecting Epitaph proves to the reader the uncertainty of life. It is written on the tombstone of a young man at Chichester:Art thou in health and spirits gay: I too was so the other day; And thought myself of life as safe As thou who read'st my epitaph. Also: --- Life is uncertain, death is sure, Sin is the wound, and Christ the cure, On a tomb-stone at Pentonville :Death takes the good-too good on earth to stay And leaves the bad-too bad to take away. We seldom read Epitaphs that do not in some sense confer the meed of praise on the virtues of the entombed:-the following, however, from the pen of a Manchester bard will be excepted: Here lies John Hill A man of skill, His age was five times ten. Nor never would Had he lived as long again: The following injunction is found in Kingston Church-yard, Surry. Live well, die never, Die well and live for ever. This on a child of two years old, cannot fail to please: Rest soft thy dust, wait the Almighty's will, Rise with the just, and be an angel still. The next also, though simple, is affecting and expresses much: Nineteen years a maiden, One hour a mother, And so I lost my live. His net old fisher George long drew No fish or fisherman escapes, Thus, Sir, I have handed to you several specimens of this much-admired Poetry, and hope it will prove a stimulus to your correspondents to select out such as are equally good :-but I cannot conclude without adding the following inscription found in Kingston churchyard, Surrey:- For brevity is very good, ANDRE'S GRAVE. Thy Grave was on a foreign shore, She knew the unfeeling world would blame, Tho' by a father's stern command, And on her cheek the crimson bloom, The herald of an early tomb. She died upon a summer eve, When flowers their fairy wreaths did weave Miss Seward, who assumed that name in her correspondence with Major Andies. T In fragrance round her; and she past, Amidst the princely and the brave, THE ORPHAN. Ianthe. My mother's in her narrow bed, Ere yet my breast was taught to know The languid grief, or pining woe, And ere the cares of life combined But now I'am cast upon the world, On me stern Misery's storms are hurled, Bright Fashion's pomp and Beauty's beam On every side I see, Pass by me, like a fairy dream, And sailing down sweet Pleasure's stream, But weep not for me, ye who've felt Ye who to kind compassion melt, For though my parents both have gone And what is life?--'tis but a day, From which I soon must pass away, Be as I ne'er had been. And though to mark my narrow bed See, Laura, the frost begirt winter has past, And the gale gently sighs through the whispering trees, And the summer believe me will vanish as fast; Ere youth can enliven or fancy can please. Then delay not the moments of rapture my love, Fortune, like affection, is chequer'd by woe, 'Tis Plato who teaches us love is a vision, As transient and light as the foam in the wave, Give me but that dream with its object Elysian, As sweet as the breath in Deity's cave. Let me sink, on my pillow and dream of my Lura, And think that she pants with delight on my breast, Let me tell with a kiss how I love and adore her, And if dreams, as philosophy argues, are ever, vour Tosal, at thy shrine the enjoyments of youth. CHRISTMAS-KEEPING. AMIDST the wintry desolation of the present month, the remembrance of a season once anticipated in joyous hope by all ranks of people, recurs to the lovers of "Auld lang syne"-to those who remember with what pleasure they once welcomed its chill atmosphere and snow storms with the vivid rapture of youth. Even in this huge city, the memory of its festivities is not yet wholly extinguished. But in the remote parts of the island it is still hailed as the period of enjoyment-it is still marked by genial appearances; and round the social hearth on Christmas-eve, the less artificial inhabitants of the country will be found as Burns describes them : The lasses feat. an' claanly neat, More braw than when they're fine; Christmas is supposed by some to be founded on the Saturnalia of the Romans, and was distinguished a century or two ago by its "festival of fools." The mummeries practised at that season were performed in disguises made with the skins of animals; and the lower orders who could not afford masques and dresses, daubed their faces with soot, the sexes changing clothes. The Saturnalia were celebrated in a similar manner. Such a resemblance, and the obvious policy of transmuting the heathen festivities into rejoicings of some kind, after the introduction of Christianity, that the people might not be deprived of their customary pleasures, gives a plausible ground for supposing that the early Christians availed themselves of the opportunity to establish a fete in honour of the birth of their founder. But this can only be conjecture, like a thousand other opinions we read of the same nature, and must for ever remain so. decision of the question, indeed, might gratify curiosity, but could be of no utility to the interests of mankind It is a more pleasing occupation to dwell on the celebration of Christmas at later The periods among ourselves, to go over ground that is interesting from its proximity to our own, and to realize the agreeable feeling always excited in the human bosom at the contemplation of every thing, however insignificaut, which is tinged with the grey melancholy of age. In London, as in all great cities, particularly in those which are commercial, where strangers continually arrive, and new customs are daily introduced, observances of a nature similar to those formerly kept at Christmas must soon be lost. That season is accordingly marked here by few of the pleasantries and simple enjoyments with which it is even now characterized in the country. The merchant and shopkeeper are absorbed in trafic and the closing up of their accounts: and but a short space is devoted to that drunkenness and gluttony among the lower orders, which are the besetting sins of the time. The genuine cockney, however, though on the verge of bankruptcy, considers it a moral duty to spend his creditors' guinea for a fat turkey on Christmasday: which, with a plenary potation of some kind of liquor, a minute fraction within the quantity necessary to produce ebriety, among the more sober citizens, and a fraction beyond it, among those less concerned as to outward deportment, completes the annual memorial of the time. The canaille may be seen, as usual when rejoicing, in all the sty-grovelling stupidity of the most inexcusable sensuality, reeling from lamp-post to lamp-post. The ginshops overflow with ragged visitants and the bloated porter-drinkers, saturating themselves with doses of coculus indicus, and divers adulterating narcotics, which muddle the brain and clog the circulation, fill every pot-house. Intoxicated draymen, dustmen, and butchers' attendants, hie to the suburbs to fight their dogs; and, finally, to fight among themselves. St. Giles's vomits forth its mass of vice and contamination, mingled with the filth and vociferations of drunken Irish barrow-women and wretches squalid and hectic from dramdringing. Such is a London Christmas-keeping. -Among viands once common there at this season, plumb-puddings and mincepies are still found, and most probably will long remain, on the score of their intrinsic value to gastronomists. Pantomimic representations are proffered at that time in theatrical entertainments, to attract such little children and their parents as can afford to laugh at them but once a-year. In London no yulelog now blazes in the contracted chimneys as in days of yore on its once ample hearths, no yule-songs are sung, and the wassail-bowl, as in most parts of the country, is quite forgotten. The hearty, but natural and simple merriment of the rustic, has no parallel in such overgrown congregations of men; and the festive activity of the Christmas halldance, where Jest and youthful jollity, Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods and becks, and wreathed smiles, once abounded, has taken its flight, and left nothing half so heart-cheering behind. Thus mortal customs perish like those who were observers of them, but only with a little less rapidity. But the celebration of Christmas in London was formerly marked with pomp and feast, and revelry, With masque and antique pageantry. The Lord of Misrule, a personage whose origin is lost in the obscnrity of years, superintended the sports in every nonobleman's and gentleman's house. Each parish had also a ruler of sports with the same title. The Lord Mayor of London and the Sheriffs were not behind-hand in these jocularities, and, besides a fool, they had each a sovereign of mummeries on their establishments. His reign began on All-hallows eve. Even royal authority afterwards sanctioned the use of these officers, whose post always continued until the eve of the Purification. During the entire period of his sway, Stow says, "there were fine and subtle disguisings, masks, and mummeries." King Edward the Sixth appointed one George Ferrers to hold the office. This man was a " poet, lawyer, and historian," and was the first styled "Lord of the Pastimes." Even the grave lawyers of Lincoln's Inn doffed their sober habits at Christmas; they, too, had a King of Christmas-day with his attendants, who presided in their hall; and so earnest were they in these matters, that on Childermass-day, they elected another officer, who presided with attendants in a similar manner, and was styled "King of the Cockneys." The gentlemen of |