But, ah! still round the corner creeps,
That treach'rous wind! and still it sweeps
Too clean the path I tread:
Arm'd as with numerous needle points,
Its painful searchings pierce my joints,
And then capsize my head!

So home again full trot I speed,
As, after wound, the warrior's steed;
And sit me down, and sigh
O'er the hard-hearted fate of those
Who feel like me these east-wind woes
That brain and marrow try!

Again upon the sea I look,
Of nature that exhaustless book

With endless wonder fraught :-
How oft upon that sea I've gazed,
Whose world of waters has amazed
Man-social or untaught.

And, spite of all that some may say,
It is the place from day to day,

Whereon the soul can dwell!

My soul enkindles at the sight
Of such accumulated might;

And loves such grandeur well!

almanacs on this day, but he stands in the Romish calendar, on the 22d of the month.

St. Alban was born at Verulam, in Hertfordshire, in the third century, and went to Rome, where he served seven years as a soldier under Dioclesian. He afterwards returned to England, became a Christian, and suffered martyrdom in 303, during the dreadful persecution raised by Dioclesian. Several miracles are said by Bede to have been wrought at his martyrdom.*

The fame of Alban, recorded as it was by Bede, made a deep impression on the minds of the superstitious. “The Ecclesiastical History" of that author, was published in 731; and in the year 795, Offa, king of the Mercians, built a monastery to the honour of Alban, on the place where he had suffered, then called by the Anglo-Saxons, Holmhurst, but since, in honour of the martyr, named St. Alban's. The town built near the abbey still retains the latter appellation; and the abbeychurch is even yet in existence, having, at the suppression of the monasteries by Henry the Eighth, been purchased by a rich clothier of the name of Stump, for 4001., and converted by him into a parochial church,for the use of the inhabitants. In the year 1257, some workmen repairing this ancient church, found the remains of some sheets of lead, containing relics, with a thick plate of lead over them, upon which was cut the following inscription :"In hoc Mausoleo inventum est Venerabile corpus SANCTI ALBANI, Proto Martyris Anglorum.”†

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

J. S.

Monkey Flower. Mimulus luteus Dedicated to St. Nicandeo.

June 17.

Sts. Nicandeo and Marcian, about A. D.

303.

June 18.

St. Alban.

St. Marina, 8th. Cent. St. Elizabeth of Sconage, Abbess, A.D. 1165. St Amand, Bp. of Bourdeaux.

CHRONOLOGY.

1815. The battle of Waterloo, which

Wellington-crescent.

↑ Albion-place.

Audley. Brady's Clavie.

These girls are Flemings. They come to England from the Netherlands in the spring, and take their departure with the summer. They have only one low, shrill, twittering note," Buy a broom?" sometimes varying into the singular plural, "Buy a brooms?" It is a domestic cry; two or three go together, and utter it in company with each other; not in concert, nor to a neighbourhood, and scarcely louder than will attract the notice of an inmate seen at a parlour window, or an open street-door, or a lady or two passing in the street. Their hair is tightened up in front, and at the sides, and behind, and the ends brought together, and so secured, or skewered, at the top of the head, as if it were constricted by a tourniquet: the little close cap, not larger than an infant's, seems to be put on and tied down by strings fastened beneath the chin, merely as a concealment of the machinery. Without a single inflexion of the body, and for any thing that appears to the contrary, it may be incased in tin. From the waist, the form abruptly and boldly bows out like a large beehive, or an arch of carpentry, built downward from above the hips, for the purpose of opening and distending the enormous petticoat into numerous plaits and folds, and thereby allowing the legs to walk without incumbrance. Their figures are exactly miniatured in an unpainted penny doll of turnery ware, made all round, before and behind, and sold in the toyshops for the amusement of infancy.

These Flemish girls are of low stature, with features as forma. and old fashioned as their dress. Their gait and manner answer to both. They carry their brooms, not under the left arm, but upon it, as they would children, upright between the arm and the side, with the heads in front of the shoulder. One, and one only, of the brooms is invariably held in the right hand, and this is elevated with the sharp cry "Buy a broom?" or "Buy a brooms?" to any one likely to become a purchaser, till it is either bought or wholly declined. The sale of their brooms is the sole purpose for which they cross the seas to us; and they suffer nothing to divert them from their avocation. A broom girl's countenance, so wearisomely indicates unwea¡ried attention to the "main chance," and is so inflexibly solemn, that you doubt whether she ever did or can smile; yet when she does, you are astonished that

she does not always: her face does not relax by degrees, but breaks suddenly into an arch laugh. This appearance may be extorted by a joke, while driving a bargain, but not afterwards: she assumes it, perhaps, as a sort of "turn" to hasten the "business transaction;" for when that is concluded, the intercourse ends immediately. Neither lingering nor loitering, they keep constantly walking on, and looking out for customers. They seldom speak to each other; nor when their brooms are disposed of, do they stop and rejoice upon it as an end to their labours; but go homewards reflectively, with the hand every now and then dipping into the pocket of the huge petiicoat, and remaining there for a while, as if counting the receipts of the day while they walk, and reckoning what the before accumulated riches will total to, with the new addition. They seem influenced by this admonition, "get all you can, and keep all you get."

Rather late in an autumn afternoon, in Battersea-fields, I saw one of these girls by herself; she was seated, with her brooms on her lap, in a bit of scenery, which, from Weirotter's etchings and other prints, I have always fancied resembled a view in the Low Countries: it is an old windmill, near the "Red-house," with some low buildings among willows, on the bank of the Thames, thrown up to keep the river from overflowing a marshy flat. To my imagination, she was fixed to that spot in a reverie on her "vaderland." She gazed on the strait line of stunted trees, as if it were the line of beauty; and from the motion of her lips, and the enthusiasm of her look, I deemed she was reciting a passage from a poet of her native country. Elevation of feeling, in one of these poor girls, was hardly to be looked for; and yet I know not why I should have excluded it, as not appertaining to their character, except from their seeming intentness on thrift alone. They are cleanly, frugal, and no wasters of time; and that they are capable of sentiment, I state on the authority of my imagining concerning this poor girl; whereon, too, I pledge myself not to have been mistaken, for the language of the heart is universal- and hers discoursed to mine; though from the situation wherein

* Vader-land, a word signifying country, but in finitely more expressive; it was first adopted by Lord Byron into our language; he englishes in “big. therland."

I stood, she saw me not. I was not, nor could I be, in love with her-I was in love with human nature.

The "brooms are one entire piece of wood; the sweeping part being slivered from the handle, and the shavings neatly turned over and bound round into the form of a besom. They are bought to dust curtains and hangings with; but good housewives have another use for them; one of them dipt in fair water, sprinkles the dried clothes in the laundry, for the process of ironing, infinitely better than the hand; it distributes the water more equally and more quickly.

"Buy a Broom? ! !”

There is a print with this inscription. It is a caricature representation of Mr. Brougham, with his barrister's wig, in the dress of a broom girl, and for its likeness of that gentleman, and the play on his name, it is amazingly popular; especially since he contended for a man's right to his own personal appearance, in the case of Abernethy v. The Lancet, before the chancellor. Mr. Brougham's goodhumoured allusion to his own countenance, was taken by the auditors in court, to relate particularly to his portrait in this print, called "Buy a Broom?" It is certainly as good as "The Great Bell of Lincoln's-inn," and two or three other prints of gentlemen eminent at the chancery-bar, sketched and etched, apparently, by the same happy hand at a thorough likeness.

The Summer Midnight.
The breeze of night has sunk to rest,
Upon the river's tranquil breast,
And every bird has sought her nest,
Where silent is her minstrelsy;
The queen of heaven is sailing high,
A pale bark on the azure sky,
Where not a breath is heard to sigh-
So deep the soft tranquillity.

Forgotten now the heat of day
That on the burning waters lay,
The noon of night her mantle gray,

Spreads, from the sun's high blazonry;
But glittering in that gentle night
There gleams a line of silvery light,
As tremulous on the shores of white
It hovers sweet and playfully.
At peace the distant shallop rides;
Not as when dashing o'er her sides
The roaring bay's unruly tides

Were beating round her gloriously; But every sail is furl'd and still, Silent the seaman's whistle shrill, While dreamy slumbers seem to thrill With parted hours of ecstacy. Stars of the many spangled heaven! Faintly this night your beams are given, Tho' proudly where your hosts are driven Ye rear your dazzling galaxy; Since far and wide a softer hue Is spread across the plains of blue, Where in bright chorus ever true

For ever swells your harmony. O! for some sadly dying note Upon this silent hour to float, Where from the bustling world remote,

The lyre might wake its melody;
One feeble strain is all can swell
From mine almost deserted shell,
In mournful accents yet to tell

That slumbers not its minstrelsy.
There is an hour of deep repose
That yet upon my heart shall close,
When all that nature dreads and know
Shall burst upon me wond'rously;
O may, I then awake for ever
My harp to rapture's high endeavour,
And as from earth's vain scene I sever,
Be lost in Immortality!

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

La Julienne de Nuit. Hesperis tristis. Dedicated to St. Juliana.

June 20.

St. Silverius, Pope, A. D. 538. St. Gobran, Priest and Martyr, about 656. St. Ido