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be cultivated with advantage; that, were I to set about collecting synonymes, you would run the risk of seeing a term used by my father's boatswain placed next to a word chosen by Rogers:-no, your castle would never do for me.

SUSAN. Well then, if you won't build upon my foundation, suppose we amuse ourselves with tracing the different meanings of a single word.

MARIA. With all my heart!-But what shall it be?-Stay; you used a favourite word of mine when you wanted me to walk.

SUSAN. And what is it?

MARIA.-Fresh : you said the breeze was fresh and now I want to take a fresh seat; for the sun has reached us here.

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SUSAN. And by going to the other side of the rock, we shall have Milton's "Fountain and fresh shade," and look! to help you with your word, there comes the ship's boat for fresh water and fresh beef.

MARIA. Yes! and I hope the man is in the boat, who is to stretch the children's tent-ropes afresh, because they were loosened by the gale last night.

SUSAN. True ;-it blew very fresh.

MARIA.-And that is the reason we had no fresh fish to-day. Now here are eight freshes ; and yet no two of them used in precisely the

same sense.

SUSAN. And here comes a ninth! Look at the boatswain! he is, evidently, what he would call pretty fresh with liquor, or he would not have been guilty of so fresh a trick as to steer the boat so close into the bathing-house bay: however, we will not see him; and I trust he will refresh himself by a nap, before my father must know he is ashore.

MARIA. I hope so too: you see the uses of fresh come fast and fresh upon us. Pray have you observed how constantly critics. are refreshed, according to reviews and magazines, and weekly pamphlets, by the novelty, va

riety, good sense, originality, or any other quality, of the authors they please to honour? and how they praise A. and Z., and B. and W., for the freshness of their dialogue or dialect, or any thing, in short, to which they can tack the word?

SUSAN.-Yes; and, so applied, the choice of the term seemed to me eminently happy, until they overdid it, and tired me of it: at first, it put me in mind of what I have often said over to myself, when I saw my boys at play,—

The fresh blood grows lively,

Brisk as the April buds in primrose time.

MARIA. That poetical freshness is delightful: I will quote a French sentence, in which you will allow the moral freshness to be as true :“Une bonne action rafraîchit le sang."

SUSAN.-Charming! it ought to be English. In the freshness that the sea-breeze brings to my feelings, I experience something analogous to it and look there at those fisher-boys dabbling in the sea-foam! how fresh they look,

with the drops hanging like pearls in their black hair! 'tis the freshness of youth and health.

MARIA. I do not know that the words fresh and freshet are now ever used for stream and streamlet, as in poor Caliban's time; who threatened not to show Trinculo "where the quick freshes are." But I remember that when the great monsoon floods pour down through the many-mouthed Ganges to the sea, they are called the freshes; meaning, of course, the fresh waters running off from the mountains to the North, in the rainy season, to distinguish them from the salt tides, which they drive out to sea far before them, causing most dangerous eddies.

SUSAN. That is a tremendous meaning of the word, indeed! but I could almost wish for a shower, such as causes your freshes to refresh the earth the kitchen-garden is withered for want of refreshment; and, unless some of Shakspeare's "honey drops, refreshing showers" fall this very evening, you will have but

few fresh roses for your garlands to-morrow. The poor gardener has left off calling the children to smell the wholesome fresh-turned earth, which, he maintains, beats all the medicines in Christendom.

MARIA.-Good old man! he is an extraordinary example of freshness and vigour of mind, at such an advanced age!

SUSAN.-Now, if you can take your eyes off

the sea, look at the copse behind the garden cottage see the gleam of sun-light that is crossing it, and observe the fresh green of the young shoots sparkling in the ray.

MARIA. Beautiful! that freshness I love : and I could be well content without the housewifely freshness of fish and flesh, the jockey freshness of an untired horse, the college freshness of an uninitiated scholar, or even the critical freshness of a writer on old parchment: but the freshness of nature and poetry are ever charming. The best poets have loved our word: you have quoted it twice, already, from

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