inquiry, his suspicions respecting the sanity of the lady's intellect were confirmed. He learnt from his landlord that the grounds were attached to an establishment for the reception of insane persons, and, though ample, the more quiet and inoffensive of the patients were permitted to ramble, unattended, through them. This information did not prevent Frank from returning on the following day. He found the fair mauiac sitting in the same spot, and she said she had been singing for a long time before, in hopes to attract his attention again. He now endeavoured to find out her story, or the cause of her derangement, but his efforts were unavailing, or her words so incoherent as to convey no connected meaning. She was, however, more staid and melancholy while he remained with her, and smiled and sighed, and wept and sang, by turns, till it was time for him to again bid her adieu. With the exception of those child-like wanderings, she betrayed no other marks of insanity; her aberrations were merely playful and innocent: she was often sad and melancholy, but oftener lively and light-spirited.

Frank felt an excitement in her presence which he had never known before; she appeared to him a pure child of nature, in the extreme of nature's loveliness. She seemed not as one whom reason had deserted, but as a being who had never mingled with the world, and dwelt in the midst of its vice and deformity in primeval beauty and uncontaminated innocence and affection.

His visits were now anxiously repeated and as eagerly anticipated by his interesting companion, to whom he found himself, almost involuntarily, deeply attached; the more so, perhaps, from the romantic circumstances of the case, and the secrecy which it was absolutely necessary to maintain of the whole affair, so that no ear was privy to his visits, and no eye had marked their meetings. At length, however, the matter began to effect a singular change in the mind of the lady, which became every day more and more composed, though still subject to wanderings and abstraction; but the new passion, which was daily taking possession of her mind, seemed

to be eradicating the cause, or, at least, counteracting the effects of her malady.

This alteration was soon visible to the inmates of the house, and the progress of her recovery was so rapid as to induce them to seek for some latent cause, and to watch her frequent and prolonged visits to the garden; the consequence was, that at their next meeting an eye was on them which reported the circumstance of Frank's visit to the superior of the establishment; an immediate stop was then put to his return, and the lady's walks confined to another portion of the grounds. The consequences were soon obvious; her regret and anxiety served to recall her disorder with redoubled vigour, and in the paroxysms of her delirium she eagerly demanded to be again permitted to see him.

A communication was now made to her parents, containing a detail of all the circumstances,-her quick recovery, her relapse, and the apparent cause of both; and, after some conferences, it was resolved that Frank should be invited to renew his visits, and the affair be permitted to take its natural course. He accordingly repaired to the usual rendezvous, where she met him with the most impassioned eagerness, affectionately reproached his absence, and welcomed him with fond and innocent caresses. He now saw her as frequently as before, and a second time her recovery was rapidly progressing, till at length she was so far restored that her parents resolved on removing her to her own home, and she accordingly bade adieu to the asylum.

Frank had almost forgotten his law books; the lady of the asylum wholly filled his thoughts, and as her friends felt the utmost gratitude for the benefits his love had produced, they willingly permitted his visits in the formal capacity of a suitor. The day for their marriage was appointed, but before it arrived the bride fell suddenly ill her recovery was tedious, and, as her frame acquired strength, her memory decayed; when quite well she could recall nothing of the past: she could not be persuaded that she had ever been ill, and, what was still more strange, she had forgotten my friend. He

eagerly sought an interview, but she met him with calm and cold politeness, and could ill conceal her astonishment at the agitation and despair of his manner, when he found too truly that he was no longer remembered with the fond affection he had anticipated. He could not repress his anxiety to remind her of their late attachment, but she only heard his distant hints with astonishment and haughty surprise. He now found that the only step which remained for him was to endeavour to make a second impression on her renovated heart; but he failed. There was still some mysterious influence which attached their minds, but the alliance on her part had totally changed its former tone, and when she did permit her thoughts to dwell upon him, it was rather with aversion than esteem; and her family, after long encouraging his addresses, at length persuaded him to forego his suit, which with a heavy and a hopeless heart he assented to, and bade her adieu for ever.

Frank, for the first time in his life, believed that a man might be miserable without any fault of his own. He was a living instance of the truth of this conclusion, which he had so long resisted; and in the hope of escaping from the anguish of his own mind, he determined to visit the continent; but wherever we travel our thoughts accompany us, and my poor friend was quite as unhappy at Naples as in London. He mixed, however, in the English society of the place, and derived a melancholy pleasure in detailing to others the little history of his ill-starred passion. One lady, young, beautiful, but married, sympathized with him; she took an interest in his misfortune, and, without the remotest idea of doing what was wrong, she delighted to listen to his story. Her husband, however, became alarmed, or affected to be so, and the most innocent acts were quickly tortured into proofs of criminality. Frank was congratulated by young libertines on what they called his conquest, and, before he had recovered from his surprise, legal proceedings were instituted. The verdict was against him, and his own misery

was aggravated from a conviction that the lady was rendered unhappy for ever. To avoid the consequences of the suit, he had been persuaded to make over his property to a brother-but that brother deceived him, and, in his twenty-fifth year, Frank was a ruined-a marked man.

His misanthropy daily increased, and as a hatred of our fellow men leads directly to blasphemous doubts of the goodness of Providence, Frank found himself in a situation the most distressing: he could not-he dare not-impuga almighty wisdom, and he could not be reconciled to the world. In this mental conflict he spent hours, and days, and weeks: his habit was to sit on his sofa, fold his arms, and fix his eyes, as it were, on vacancy. His books lay untouched on the table beside him; they could not administer to a mind diseased, and he derived no pleasure from social intercourse. He saw hardly any one, and even I could never obtain admission but by stealth.

As yet his mind has undergone no change, and his case appears not to admit of remedy. Had he not originally thought so highly of mankind, he had perhaps never been a misanthrope. Z. X.

EXTRACTS FROM THE COMMON-PLACE BOOK OF A LITERARY LOUNGER.-NO. V.

PORK.

'PORK, or swine's flesh in any shape,' says Sir Walter Scott, in a note to his new edition of Waverly,'' was, till of late years, much abominated by the Scotch, nor is it yet a favourite food amongst them. King Jamie carried this prejudice to England, and is known to have abhorred pork almost as much as he did tobacco. Ben Jonson has recorded this peculiarity, when a gipsy in a masque, examining the king's hand, says :-

You should by this line

Love a horse, and a hound, but no part of swine James's own proposed banquet for the devil was a loin of pork and a poll of ling, with a pipe of tobacoo for digestion.

BARTHOLOMEW FAIR.

Stow says, that to the priory of St. Bartholomew, king Henry II. granted the priviledge of a faire to bee kept yeerly at Bartholomew-tide, for three daies, to wit, the eve, the day, and the next morrow, to which the clothiers of England, and drapers of London, repaired, and had their boothes and standings within the churchyard of this priory, closed in with walls and gates locked every night, and watched for safety of men's goods and wares; a court of piepoudres was daily during the faire holden, for debts and contracts. But,' continues Stow, notwithstanding all proclamations of the prince, and also the act of parliament, in place of booths within this churchyard (only letten out in the faire time, and closed up all the yeere after), bee many large houses builded, and the north wal towards Long Lane taken downe, a number of tenements are there erected, for such as will give great rents. The forrainers,' he adds, 'were licenced for three daies, the freemen so long as they would, which was sixe or seven daies.'

SKULL.

A modern Irish antiquary says: 'It appears, from a passage in the works of Cox and Campion, that the Scythian custom of drinking out of a human skull was practised by some of the higher orders (in Ireland) so late as the sixteenth century. Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, in answer to a speech of Cardinal Wolsey, concluded with these words: I slumber in a hard cabin, when you lie soft in a bed of downe. I drinke water out of a skull when you drink out of golden cupps, &c.' The author of the Popular History of Ireland' proves this conclusion to be erroneous. 'Skull,' he says, 'was the Gothic term for a drinking cup, and the peculiarity of the name appears to have given rise to the charge of barbarism so often urged against the Scandinavians, who are accused of drinking meath out of the skulls of their enemies. Dr. Jamieson has discussed the question with great critical candour: his illustrations of the once prevalent use of the term skull, in Scotland and England, for a drinking cup, are numerous and amusing.'