if he would lend his plate that evening. The counsellor, surprised at the application, well knowing his sister's frugal life, began to suspect that she was enamored of some fortune hunter who might marry her, and thus deprive his family of what he expected at his sister's death. He therefore positively refused to send the plate, unless the maid would tell him what guests were expected. The girl, alarmed for her mistress's honor, declared that her pious lady had no thought of a husband, but St. Paul having sent her a letter from heaven promising he and the angel Gabriel would sup with her, she wanted to make the entertainment as elegant as possible. The counsellor immediately suspected that some villains had imposed on her, and sending the maid with the plate had proceeded directly to the commis. sary of that quarter. On the magistrate's going with him to a house adjoining they saw just before eight o'clock, a tall man dressed in long vestments with a white beard, and a young man in white with large wings at his shoulders, alight from a hackney coach and go up to his sister's apartment. The commissary immediately ordered twelve of the police guards to post themselves on the stairs, while he knocked at the door and desired admittance. The lady replied that she had company and could not speak to any one. But the commissary answered that he must come in, for that he was St. Peter, and had come to ask St. Paul and the angel Gabriel how they came out of heaven without his knowledge. The divine visitors were astonished at this, not expecting any more saints to join them; but the lady overjoyed at having so great an apostle with her ran eagerly to the door, when the commissary, her brother, and police guards rushed in, presented their muskets, seized her guests, and conducted them to prison. On searching the criminals, two cords, a razor, and a pistol, were found in St. Paul's pocket, and a gag in that of Gabriel. Three days after, the trial came on; when they pleaded in their defence, that one was a soldier in the French infantry, and the other a barber's apprenticethat they had no other design than to procure a good supper at the widow's expense-that it being carnival time, they had borrowed these dresses, and the soldier having picked up the cords put them into his pocketthat the razor was that with which he had constantly shaved himself that the pistol was to defend them from any insult to which their strange habits might expose them in going home-and that the apprentice, whose master was a tooth drawer, merely had the gag, which they sometimes use in their business. These excuses, frivolous as they were,proved of some avail, and they were both acquitted. But the counsellor, who foresaw what might hap pen, through the defect of evidence, had provided another stroke for them. No sooner, therefore, were they discharged from the civil powers, than the apparitor of the archbishop of Paris immediately seized them and conveyed them to the ecclesiastical prison. In three days more they were tried and convicted of a most scandalous profanation by assuming to themselves the names, characters, and appearance of a holy apostle and a blessed angel, with an intent to deceive a pious and well meaning woman to the scandal of religion. They were accordingly condemned to be publicly whipped, burnt on the shoulder with a red hot iron, and sent to the gallies for fifteen years; a sentence which was in a few days faithfully put in execution.. FLUENT ORATORS. It was a notion of Dean Swift's that a man with a multitude of ideas, could never speak well, whilst one with a limited number could address an audience without interruption. Ideas, he used pleasantly to say, were like a congregation in a church, the thinner they were, the less difficulty there was in emptying the church.. For the Saturday Evening Post. In answer to his "Reflections of Fifty-nine.” She who was far more dear to thee, LELIA. SAILORS.-No race of beings so decidely differ from every other in the world as sailors-no matter whether they belong to a king's ship, to a smuggler, or a merchantman. Though there may be shades among them, yet from the grand distinction between men of the sea and men of the land, it is impossible to confound them together. A seaman is ever so easily amused, so reckless of consequences, so cheerful amid difficulties, so patient under privations. His blue jacket is a symbol of enterprise and good humour. Even his nondescript hat-black, small and shining as a japaned button, adhering to his head by a kind of supernatural agency, with which landsmen are unacquainted-can never be seen by a true born Englishman without feelings of gratitude and affection, which, at all events, no other hat in the world can command.—Mrs. Hall's Bucc. Never praise or talk of your children to other peo.. ple; for depend upon it, no person except yourself cares. a single farthing about them. THE CAPTIVE'S DREAM. Written for the Casket. FROM THE PAPERS OF A STUDENT. -We are such stuff As dreams are made of; and our little life 493 hours-cherished, even beyond my beau ideal THE CAPTIVE'S DREAM. of Hebe or the Venus de Medici. Sweet Florence Howard! I have seen many of thy sex, but none like thee! How often have I sat and watched the brightness of thy brow-the soft expression of thy dark blue eyes-the smile of innocent affection which parted thy ripe, thy I scarcely know of a more delicious sensation blushing lips, only to disclose the radiant pearls than that which is experienced by a contemplative between the blush which mantled over thy young man at college, when he has completed peach-like cheek, until it seemed to think thy his afternoon lesson, and, after an early tea, thoughts, and to portray every change of thy takes his seat by a window of his room, com- guileless spirit. Perhaps I may be thought a manding some mingled view of town and coun-rhapsodist by the world: I can only say, I am try, in the garniture of summer. Such a scene writing of thee; and as my pen, moved by my as is afforded at this hour, in a majority of those heart, courses over the page which records thy larger institutions of learning which are scat- loveliness, I fell alone in a world which my tered through this country, and are for the most thoughts cannot move, and where my memories part placed in romantic situations, cannot be are of little value, for sadness or for sympathy! overpraised. The slanting sunlight, poured I have said my window looked down upon the upon the distant hills, and illuminating with the garden of the Howards. It was an Eden-like radiance of departing day some intervening lake spot; filled with every thing, in the summer, that or river; the tranquilizing feeling which fills the could delight the eye or the sense; pleasant mind on such occasions and the calmness of walks, sparkling fountains, delicious fruits. nature, which then approaches as if in unison- Thither, in the cool of the day, as twilight was all conspire to make the scene pleasant, and to drawing in, it was the custom of Florence to fill the spirit, when waking, with imaginations of walk with her little sister, and instruct her in peace. her early botanical studies. At such times I caught her glance of recognition, as she looked up brightly towards my casement, and made the scene-like the "beautious ladie," in Spencer's Fairy Poem-more beautiful as she smiled amidst its enchantments. On this occasion, her salutation, as our eyes met, appeared to me more fascinating than ever. Inimitable grace seemed to breathe in her every movement. She was dressed in simple white; one of those large red roses which you find sometimes in June, was placed carelessly in the braid of her rich auburn hair; and I felt a safety as I gazed upon her, that I was distant; for I thought, were I walking with her, in that sweet recess, I could scarcely refrain from stealing the rose, or from clasping the wearer to my bosom. On such an evening as this, many years ago, I was leaning in dim abstraction by my casement, in the pleasant seminary of H- one of the most delightful towns in our country. Before me, was extended a scene of surpassing beauty. A glittering bay spread its blue waste of waters in the distance, to the south; over which, like winged spirits, just on the verge of the horizon, inoved a number of ships, their sails brightened in the evening sun. To the east, swelled up a delightsome scene of mountains, broken precipitously, in some places bare with masses of dark rock; in others, clothed with heavy verdure to their summits, which waved with every breath of the refreshing wind that fanned their long array. Beneath me, lay a city of gardens, and of houses within them; an urbs in rure, whose streets were every where beautified with trees, and filled with aspects of neatness and quietude. Of ten as I had looked from that point upon the same objects, they never before had appeared to me so supremely charming. I looked, and mused; I hummed over the earliest songs that I had learned in my childhood, as one is apt to do when alone, until I became at last rapt in a complete reverie. Now and then, the landscape and the water would seem dim to my vision; anon it would brighten upon my view like a sunburst. At such an hour, however, the sweetest impressions are too vague to linger; the thoughts of the heart come and go like the clouds of the summer or the dews of the morning; as pleasing to the eye and as grateful to the bosom, but as fitful as they. My thoughts, as they rose languidly and passed imperceptibly, for a few moments in my mind, at that time, I cannot describe. They came indolently, and their exit was tranquil. But this trance was destined to be of short duration. A garden, of which my window commanded a direct and delectable view, lay beneath my eye. It was attached to the residence of my first and only love; the divinity of my college I was still lingering and gazing, when a turn in the walk bid Florence from my view. At that moment, I saw a dark form stealing down the avenue. When I caught a fair glimpse of the person, I discerned the features of a young man, a fellow student, a classmate, who had always regarded me with enmity, because, as he declared, I had usurped the affections of Florence Howard, which were likely, at one time, to have been bestowed upon him. This assertion, as I learned, he had trumpeted through the town; but I had been authorized by Florence to give it the fullest contradiction. We were both in our senior year; and the jar between us made much talk in the community; I had kept aloof from him, however; always deeming, that where we meet with the malignant or unworthy, the only course, after discovering them, is to let them go their own ways, consoling ourselves with the self-respectful sentiment that the world is large enough for us and them. Such were my thoughts towards Reginald Burnham. They were awakened, how beit, in a different train, as I saw him in the garden, and haunting the footsteps of Florence Howard. What could he desire there, from one whom he had slandered unjustly with the name of coquette? While these fancies were revolving in my derous strife, could give no account of what afmind, Florence emerged from the grove of fruit terwards befel. I was left without mercy-a trees through which the walk led, and was pro-criminal, and alone. ceeding alone to the furthermost extremity of One day, as the faint light of the sunset rethe garden, where were clustered together a flected from the opening corridor upon the gratfew sprays of moss-roses, that received and re-ed window of my apartment, I heard the sweet payed her peculiar care. Presently, Reginald's sound of the city bells. What a throng of halform also appeared from beneath the trees. My lowed recollections did they awaken in my soul! heart was in my eyes. I watched him intently, I pictured to my fancy the throngs that were and observed, beneath the folds of his vest, the then pressing to the porch of the sanctuary over glittering barrel of a pistol. I sprang from the the fresh green which spread before it; and window in a moment: and swinging from the among them, perhaps, iny Florence Howard. shutter, rested my foot upon the key-stone of the It was my last Sunday. The next Friday, I knew casement below: then grasping strongly the two was the day on which I was to suffer. My heart fastening hooks of the blinds beneath, I was on was moved with a strange mixture of imagina the ground in the quickness of thought. I sped tion and reality. I began to doubt my sanity. like a Centaur over the few yards between the As the music of the bells continued to come, college and the garden wall, over which I leaped mildly and softly, to my ear, my heart melted, with the ease of a practised voltigieur. Fear, and I sobbed like a child. I was the the inmate and love for the object whose danger had awak- of a dungeon-branded as a murderer, and ened it, lent me wings. I rushed over flower about to die with a stain upon my name. I beds and tender plants, without a care for their leaned my head upon my hands, and sat down safety, and swiftly, though cautiously, approach- upon my low, damp bench, with an agony which ed the insidious Reginald. He was within a few was indescribable. paces of Florence, who had not observed him. I have since wondered how I had the presence of mind not to utter some exclamation of terror or indignation. Horror, perhaps, kept me silent. My approach to Burnham was unheard. Just as I thought I had neared him so closely as to place my arm upon his shoulder, he drew the pistol, which he was in the act of firing at the innocent and unsuspecting Florence. "Wretch!" I exclaimed, as I caught his desperate arm. He turned; his face was livid with passion. "D-n!" said he, sternly; "unhand me!" I held his arm with the fierceness of the tiger; he turned the pistol towards me; but with my left hand I warded it off, and it was discharged full in his temples; the blood coursed down over his neck and breast; I heard a faint shriek of horror: I saw him falling at my feet-I caught the deadly weapon from his hand as he fell-I knew no more. At this heavy moment, which seemed steeped with winters of sorrow," I heard a light step approaching the door of my cell. In a twinkling it was opened, and I found myself in the presence of Florence Howard! Never had I beheld her look so lovely. She had come to release me. She had prevailed upon the jailer to favour her plans, so far as to permit her to visit my dungeon. Oh, God! who can describe the grateful surprise of that delightful interview! She had a key to unlock the door at the end of the corridor which opened into an obscure street, in the rear of the prison. All the town was at church; the street was dark, and the time propitious. Our design admitted of no delay. With the quickness of a breath, I drew my lacerated hand through the shackle which held me to the "lengthened chain" of my cell: and, in an instant, noiseless as the night, the door at the end of the corridor was openedlocked without-and I found myself in the open air of heaven, with the dearest object of my earthly affection! If I possessed the inspiration of that great apostle who was "in perils often," and always delivered, I could not describe my transport-my agony of delight-at that heavenThe quick succession of these dreadful inci-ly moment. I pressed my deliverer to my heart. dents stupified my mind, and made every thing We hastened towards the bay-a faithful serabout me seem shadowy and unreal. A horrid vant with a carriage soon conveyed us to the torpor seemed to rest upon my intellectual fac- boat, by the shore; and before I could indulge ulties; my face grew pale and leaden-eyed; and my feelings in words, we were on board a ship, as some melancholy bat would come flittering that moved rapidly over the dancing waves, at nightfall into my cell, and thousands of gloomy from the land. As we waved our adieu to the associations disturbed my languid senses; I felt returning domestic, and saw the town and the like a condemned spirit, in its place of prelimi- mountains recede, we wept like children. The nary punishment. moon had arisen like a lamp of gold into the sky; the stars were burning along the blue abyss of heaven, as the Queen of Night careered among them, and threw her radiance upon the waters; the spicy airs from the shore breathed fragrance around us; and the distant verdure of the trees appeared waving, and smiling in joy at our freedom. When I was again restored to consciousness, I found myself in the office of the city magistrate. A coroner's inquest had been convened, and a verdict of wilful murder had been return ed against me. In a few hours I was in prison; in a few days I was condemned to die. At last, the time of my execution drew nigh. I counted the long, long hours, as they passed, and mingled into days—and the days as they blended into an aggregate of weeks, until my heart sunk within me. Every circumstance was against me, and I had no reason to hope for pardon. I had been found with the pistol in my hand; Reginald Burnham was known to be my It seemed a brief interval, indeed, in which we rival, by his own declaration; and poor Florence, stood at the prow, gazing upon the scene around who fainted as soon as she turned to see us in mur-us. Florence was standing with me; her white AVERAGE DURATION Of Life. hand was in mine, and with no one near us, Her tears were on my brow." 495 mother, both of which I wore. I gave them into the possession of the sheriff, with a request that they might be conveyed, by Mr. Howard, to the beloved givers-one of whom was far distant, on a bed of sickness; the other, in the same condition, though nearer at hand. A prayer was now uttered; and the officer approached to bind my eyes. "No!" 1 exclaimed, Suddenly, a low cloud, which had hung in the with a voice tremulous from emotion--"I will southern horizon, came upward into the zenith, die like a man, who knows his blamelessness, murmuring as it rose: the winds freshened into and is prepared to taste of death, with an unfala gale, and soon the lightnings began to cast tering lip, and with a steadfast eye." I knelt their livid gleam upon the high and booming upon the platform; I looked around, with unutsurges, that seemed to echo to the bellowing terable sensations; for my bosom laboured as thunders, as they rolled over the turbulent waste with the compressed agonies of a century of of foam and darkness. The waves rose higher pain. To every one,life is dear; we shrink from and higher-the ship reeled and plunged in the the dark valley, even when we are most assured tempest-the waters rushed over the deck-I│“what shadows we are, and what shadows we saw Florence swept from my grasp, without the pursue." I now bent my glance earnestly, and power to save her-I attempted to follow, and without wavering, upon the soldiers; the prepaawoke in my cell. ratory order of "ready!" and "aim!" tingled upon my ear, and sent the blood chill and curMy deliverance was but the dream of a cap-dling to my heart. "Fire!" I heard; then a tive-and, with a sick and heavy heart, fawaited the time of my execution. * * * * It came at last. I was placed amidst a crowd, to be conveyed to the place where I was to suffer. I recollect seeing many friends among the multitude; and I heard from many lips, expressions of pity. My fellow students had collected in a band together; and I was informed by the officer, that they had prevailed upon the authorities to have me shot, instead of hanged.A remnant of proud gratitude lingered in my bosom, that I was not to suffer the ignominy of being suspended between earth and heaven, as if unworthy of either. The long procession came at length to a rising upland, at the distance of about half a mile from the town. I was removed from the carriage in which I had been placed, and which was followed by a hearse, and was led by the sheriff to a low platform, on the apex of a mound, in front of which, at the distance of a few yards, a file of soldiers, six in number, were drawn up in murderous array. Here I was requested to take a last look of the earth, before I knelt to have my eyes blindfolded upon the platform. I stood up, with a feeling as if "a thousand hearts were swelling" within me. It was about mid day: the glorious summer sun was unobscured by a cloud; and as I looked beyond the vast multitude about me, upon the distant hills, the mountains with the peaceful vales between them-the bay, sleeping in its calm beauty, a waste of blue so etherial in its aspect as to seem another sky-I felt an elevated sentiment of conscious blood guiltlessness, and an assurance of mental strength which I cannot describe. I repeated to the crowd the facts of Burnham's death; I described how the deadly weapon had been turned upon himself in our struggle; and I concluded with these solemn words-they were expressed from the bottom of my heart: I call heaven and God to witness that I am pure from any man's blood; I have made my life the forfeit of my duty; I die innocent." As I said this, I saw, in a carriage near at hand, the father of Florence Howard. I drew from my finger a ring, which she had given me, and one from my peal of thunder burst upon my hearing; I saw with a dimming eye, the purple current of life gushing over my hands, which were folded on my breast-I attempted to speak-1 struggled with the grim monster-I awoke! * * * Yes, render, it was a summer vision, by my college window-a dream within a dream, which I cannot recal to my mind, even after the lapse of many years, without a shaking soul. It was all ideal, but the picture of Florence Howard, and the sketch of Burnham, who was afterward fain to ask my pardon for his original offences. The bells which I heard in my visionary prison, were those of the chapel for evening prayers; they fell upon my dreaming ear, and increased the trouble of my slumbers. I awoke to see the garden in reality, by a lovely moonlight; I have since lived to possess its fair tenant-to find her all that heart can desire; to enjoy an estate adjoining that beautiful enclosure; and to relate to a charming daughter, as she sits upon my lap, in the presence of her chastened and kind mother, the details of" The Captive's Dream." AVERAGE DURATION OF LIFE-Nothing is more proverbally uncertain than the duration of human life, are few things less subject to fluctuation than the avewhere the maxim is applied to an individual: yet there rage duration of a multitude of individuals. The number of deaths happening amongst persons of our own acquaintance is frequently very different in different years; and it is not an uncommon event that this number shall be double, treble, or even many times larger in one year than in the next succeeding. If we consider larger societies of individuals, as the inha. bitants of a village or small town, the number of deaths is more uniform: and in still larger bodies, as among the inhabitants of a kingdom, the uniformity is such, that the excess of deaths in any year above the ave rage number, seldom exceeds a small fractional part of the whole. In the two periods, each of fifteen years, beginning at 1780, the number of deaths occurring in England and Wales in any year did not fall short of, or exceed, the average number one-thirteenth part of the whole; nor did the number dying in any year dif fer from 'the number of those dying in the next by a a tenth part.-Babbage on the Assurance of Lives. EXTRACTS From a new work, lately re-published in America, entitled "England in 1833," by the BARON D'HAUSSEZ, Ex-Minister of Charles X. THE DRAWING-ROOM. order. Among a dozen chairs and fauteuils there are not two alike in height, size, and destination. The greater part of them are so low, that one falls down rather than sits: and a disagreeable effort is necessary to rise from this position. The posture of the body is accordingly ungraceful, Ten o'clock has already struck: the ladies, and it provokes a negligence of manner which who have been more than an hour in the drawing- extends into the usages of society. A disuse of room, await, round the tea table, the end of the those immense and heavy fauteuils, which apconversation which is still prolonged in the din-pear calculated to produce sleep rather than ing-room. Some strangers arrive; shake the conversation, and the substitution of furniture hand of the mistress of the house, and exhibit a better adapted to elegant society, would be a like politeness to such of the ladies present as step made towards a nobler carriage. The disthey are acquainted with. They group them- tinctions heretofore established by the hierarchy selves afterwards round the fire-place, to chat of ranks are now hardly remarked. It is only together if they are intimate, or if they have in set parties that pretensions of this kind can be been introduced; that is to say, if their names gratified; in the ordinary intercouse of English have been interchanged by the friendly agency life they are not remarked. of a third person. Without this formality, cus- French is spoken with much grace, and with tom does not sanction any intercourse between evident complaisance towards foreigners, in alstrangers. The dinner-guests enter the draw-most all distinguished families. The English ing-room one after another; they approach the ladies, above all, speak it as their maternal lanladies; they take coffee or tea, and sometimes guage. queurs; they then form groups, and return to the eternal subject of politics, always, it must be admitted, discussed without violence or warmth, and with much forbearance towards opposite opinions. Some form parties to play at cards. Others approach the piano to hear a somata coldly executed; or romances sung by voices often agreeable, but rarely animated; for in England music is not a passion nor even a taste. It is but an affair of ton and convenience, a means of killing time. Some of the ladies range themselves round a table covered with knick-knacks, which are passed from hand to hand with a lazy euriosity, and have no other merit than their exorbitant cost. How much better had the money quandered on them been applied to the purchase of clocks, wanting in all the English apartments, or to a more elegant species of furniture than that covered with printed calico, which one sees in the greater part of the best furnished salons of the capital. There is one English custom which makes a disagreeable impression upon a stranger on his admission to English society. He is not conducted down stairs; the master of the house, who scarcely comes forward to receive him when he enters, dispenses with the ceremony of accompanying him when he withdraws. English politeness confines its duties on this occasion to a pull of the bell, as a notice to the servant who is intrusted with the duty of doing the honours of the antechamber. In a word, if the saloons of London present less gaiety, noise, and bustle, than those of Paris, they exhibit a higher degree of courtesy towards social superiorities, and particularly towards foreigners, who are received with cordiality and treated with distinction. A BALL. Great importance is attached to a ball in England; a long time before it takes place the newspapers announce it, and they entertain their readers with it after it is over. No detail esAlbums, chiefly composed of engravings and capes them, and the most pompous terms are coloured lithographs, as well as caricatures, are employed to describe the most uninteresting cirturned over, till the moment when the sated ap- cumstances-"Lady N." say they, "gave on petite is again stimulated by the display of cold such a day, at her magnificent mansion in Berkemeats, confectionary, and fruits, in an adjoiningly square, one of the most brilliant balls we reroom. Sometimes the sound of the piano pro- member to have witnessed. Her ladyship's long vokes a country-dance, wherein figure those pret-suite of superbly furnished apartments were ty persons who have at least borrowed from France the graces which have always distinguished her dancers. The dress of English women differs very little from that of the French. Some additions of finery, some jewels of an equivocal taste, alone protest against the invasion of our fashions; but these exceptions cause the elegant recherche of the toilet, which distinguishes the ladies of the higher ranks of society to be more highly appreciated. An English saloon presents in its ensemble and arrangement, a coup d'œil quite different from a French one, and without partiality it may be averred, that the comparison is quite in favour of the latter. The cause of this is owing to the grouping and incongruity of the English furniture; you seldom see the furniture of an English room uniform, rarer still is it to find it ranged in thrown open on this occasion. In one of the rooms, the choisest refreshments were served with a profusion which did honour to the generosity and good taste of the noble hostess. The guests began to arrive at ten o'clock; at eleven o'clock the saloons were full. An hour elapsed ere the curiosity of the assembly had sated itself in admiring the splendour of the decorations. At length Collinet's band was heard, and a great part of the company flocked towards the ball room. "The seductive Miss —, wearing in her hair a garland of roses, and dressed in white satin; the graceful Miss Helen, in a robe of scarlet crage; the exquisitely shaped Miss Adelaide in a robe of black satin, and the lofty Lady in a robe lamee, in silver and gold, opened the ball with Lord -, Lord Sir William -, and Sir |