Be Twelfth-day queen for the night here. Which known, let us make And let not a man then be seen here, To the base from the brink, A health to the king and the queen here. Next, crown the bowl full Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger, With store of ale too; And thus ye must do Give them to the king And queen wassailing; And though with ale ye be wet, here, Yet part ye from hence, As free from offence, As when ye innocent met here. HERRICK. END OF CHRISTMAS. Partly work, and partly play Ye must on St. Distaff's day; From the plough soon free your team, Then bid Christmas sport good night; And next morrow, every one To his own vocation. Down with the rosemary, and so Wherewith ye dressed the Christmas hall; That so the superstitious find No one least branch there left behind; ST. AGNES' EVE. St. Agnes' Eve-Ah, bitter chill it was! HERRICK. HERRICK. The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, Numb were the beadsman's fingers while he told Seem'd taking flight for heaven without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith. They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve, And couch supine their beauties, lily white; Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire. FAIRIES. Farewell rewards and Fairies! Good housewives now may say; For now foul sluts in dairies, Do fare as well as they: And, though they sweep their hearths no less Yet who of late, for cleanliness, Finds sixpence in her shoe? Lament, lament, old abbies, The fairies' lost command; But some have changed your land : For love of your domains. At morning and at evening both, When Tom came home from labour, Or Ciss to milking rose, Then merrily went their tabour, And nimbly went their toes. KEATS. Witness, those rings and roundelays By which we note the fairies A tell-tale in their company Their mirth, was punished sure: Now they have left our quarters; Who can preserve their charters ; A man both wise and grave. By one that I could name, Are kept in store; con twenty thanks To William Churne of Staffordshire Who every meal can mend your cheer To William all give audience, And pray ye for his noddle, CORBET. 362.-THE VOLUBLE LADY. JANE AUSTEN. [OF the hundreds of Novels that have been published since the beginning of the present century, who can remember even the names of a twentieth part? The larger number are quietly sleeping on the shelves of the circulating libraries of the country towns, destined only to see the light when some voracious spinster has exhausted all that is new of a teeming press, and in desperation plunges into the antiquities of a past generation. But there are six novels that can never be old-the works of the inimitable Jane Austen. No dust will ever settle on them, even in the libraries of the least tasteful of communities. Old and young, learned and unlearned, equally delight in the productions of the marvellous young woman, who drew the commonest incidents and characters of the most ordinary domestic life, with a skilfulness that manifests, more than anything we know, the surpassing power of that Art which makes realities more true than the thing itself beheld through a common medium. This is, indeed, genius. Jane Austen, the daughter of the rector of Steventon, in Hampshire, was born in 1775; died 1817.] Miss Bates and Miss Fairfax, escorted by the two gentlemen, walked into the room. Everybody words were soon lost under the incessant flow of Miss Bates, who came in talking, and had not finished her speech under many minutes after her being admitted into the circle at the fire. As the door opened she was heard,"So very obliging of you!-No rain at all. Nothing to signify. I do not care for myself. Quite thick shoes. And Jane declaresWell ! (as soon as she was within the door), well ! This is brilliant indeed! This is admirable. Excellently contrived, upon my word. Nothing wanting. Could not have imagined it. So well lighted up! Jane, Jane, look! did you ever see anything? Oh! Mr. Weston, you must really have had Aladdin's lamp. Good Mrs. Stokes would not VOL. IV. 00 |