in the park? Smiling, she answered

me:

"I wist, all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas! good-folk, they never felt what true pleasure meant.'

"And how came you, madam,' quoth I, 'to this deep knowledge of pleasure? And what did chiefly allure you unto it, seeing not many women, but very few men, have attained thereunto?'

"I will tell you,' quoth she, and tell you a truth, which perchance you will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever God gave me, is, that he sent me so sharp and severe parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing any thing else, I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs, and other ways (which I will not name for the honour I bear them)

so without measure misordered, that ! think myself in hell, till time come that I must go to Mr. Elmer; who teachet me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing, while I am with him : and when I am called from him, I fall on weeping, because whatsoever I do else, but learning, is full of grief, trouble, fear. and whole misliking unto me: and thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures in very deed, be but trifles and troubles unto me.""

Surely this innocent creature's confession, that she was won to the love of learning and her teacher by his gentleness, and the disclosure of her affliction under the severe discipline of her parents, are positive testimony to the fact, that our children are to be governed and taught by the law of kindness: nor let it detract from the force of the remark, that in connection with her artless feelings and blameless deportment, if her hard fate call forth a versified effusion

:

1815. On the 4th of January, died Alexander Macdonald, Esq., who is no other way remarkable, than for a chivalrous devotion to the family of Stuart. He raised a monument in the vale of Glenfinnyn, at the head of Lochshiel, in the county of Inverness, with a Latin, Gaelic, and English inscription, to commemorate the last open efforts of that family, for the recovery of a crown they had forfeited by innumerable breaches of the laws, and whose aggressions on life and property being suffered, till

"Non-resistance could no further go,"

they were excluded from the throne of the people, by the aristocracy and commonalty of England in parliament assembled. As evidence of the spirit that dictated such a memorial, and of the proper feeling which permits that spirit to be expressed, in spite of its hostility to the principles that deposited and continued the diadem of the commonwealth in the custody of the house of Hanover, the inscription on the monument is placed in the next column. It stands in English in these words:

Also become the Monument

Of its amiable and accomplished Founder, Who,

Before it was finished,

Died in Edinburgh on the 4th day of January,
MDCCCXV.

The "right line" of the Stuart race terminated in the late cardinal York. He

was the second son of "the Pretender," and

was born at Rome on the 26th of March 1725; where he was baptized by the name of Henry Benedict Maria Clemens: he died there in 1807, in the 83d year of his

age. In 1745 he went to France to head an army of fifteen thousand men, assembled at Dunkirk for the invasion of England. The battle of Culloden settled "the arduous and unfortunate enterprise," which the "amiable and accomplished founder" of the monument commemorates, and not a single transport left Dunkirk roads. As soon as Henry Benedict heard of the affair at Culloden, he returned to Rome, entered into priest's orders, and in 1747 was made a cardinal by pope Benedict XIV. It was taunted by a former pope upon James II. that he lost his kingdom for a mass ;" and it is certain that Henry Benedict was better qualified to take a red-hat and pull on and off red stockings, than to attempt the conquest of a free protestant nation.

After the expulsion of pope Pius VI. from "the chair of St. Peter," by the French, he fled from his splendid residences at Rome and Frascati to Venice, infirm in health, distressed in circumstances, and at the age of seventyfive. He subsisted for awhile on the produce of some silver plate, which he had saved from the ruin of his property. By the friendly interference of sir John Cox Hippisley, the cardinal's situation was made known to his late majesty, and lord Minto had orders to remit him a present of 2000l., which he received in February 1800, with an intimation that he might draw for the same amount in the July following; and sir J. C. Hippisof 4000l. would be at his service, so long ley communicated to him, that an annuity as his circumstances might require it. ledged by the cardinal in terms of gratiThis liberality was received and acknowtude, and made a considerable impression on the reigning pope and his court. tleman's Magazine, (vols. 74 and 77,) These facts are extracted from the Genwhich also observes, that " from the time he devoted himself to ecclesiastical func. tions he seemed to have laid aside all

worldly views, till his father's death in 1788, when he had medals struck, bearing on their face his head, with HENRICUS NONUS ANGLIA REX;' on the reverse, a city, with 'GRATIA DEI, SED NON VOJUNTATE HOMINUM' if we are not misinformed, our sovereign has one of these medals." From one in the possession of the compiler of this work, he is enabled to present an engraving of it

to his readers.

January 5.

St. Simeon Stylites. St. Telesphoru St. Syncletia.

St. Simeon Stylites.

Alban Butler declares, that St. Simeon astonished the whole Roman empire by

his mortifications. In the monastery of Heliodorus, a man sixty-five years of age, who had spent sixty-two years so abstracted from the world, that he was ignorant of the most obvious things in it; the monks ate but once a day: Simeon joined the community, and ate but once a

week. Heliodorus required Simeon to be more private in his mortifications; "with this view," says Butler," judging the rough rope of the well, made of twisted palm-tree leaves, a proper instrument of penance, Simeon tied it close about his naked body, where it remained unknown both to the community and his superior, till such time as it having ate into his flesh, what he had privately done was discovered by the effluvia proceeding from the wound." Butler says, that it took three days to disengage the saint's clothes, and that "the incisions of the physician, to cut the cord out of his body, were attended with such anguish and pain, that he lay for some time as dead." After this he determined to pass the whole forty days of Lent in total abstinence, and retired to a hermitage for that purpose. Bassus, an abbot, left with him ten loaves and water, and coming to visit him at the end of the forty days, found both loaves and water untouched, and the saint stretched on the ground without signs of life. Bassus dipped a sponge in water, moistened his lips, gave him the eucharist, and Simeon by degrees swallowed a few lettuce leaves and other herbs. He passed twenty-six Lents in the same manner. In the first part of a Lent he prayed standing; growing weaker he prayed sitting; and towards the end, being almost exhausted, he prayed lying on the ground. At the end of three years he left his hermitage for the top of a mountain, made an enclosure of loose stones, without a roof, and having resolved to live exposed to the inclemencies of the weather, he fixed his resolution by fastening his right leg to a rock with a great iron chain. Multitudes thronged to the mountain to receive his benediction, and many of the sick recovered their health; But as some were not satisfied unless they touched him in his enclosure, and Simeon desired retirement from the daily concourse, he projected a new and unprecedented manner of life. He erected a pillar six cubits high, (each cubit being eighteen inches,) and dwelt on it four years; on a second of twelve cubits high he lived three years; on a third of twentytwo cubits high ten years; and on a fourth of forty cubits, or sixty feet high, which the people built for him, he spent the last twenty years of his life. This occasioned him to be called stylites, from the Greek word stylos, a pillar. This pillar did not exceed three feet in diame

ter at the top, so that he could not lie extended on it: he had no seat with him; he only stooped or leaned to take a little rest, and bowed his body in prayer so often, that a certain person who counted these positions, found that he made one thousand two hundred and forty-four reverences in one day, which if he began at four o'clock in the morning and finished at eight o'clock at night, gives a bow to every three-quarters of a minute; besides which he exhorted the people twice a day. His garments were the skins of beasts, he wore an iron collar round his neck, and had a horrible ulcer in his foot. During his forty days' abstinence throughout Lent, he tied himself to a pole. He treated himself as the outcast of the world and the worst of sinners, worked miracles, delivered prophecies, had the sacrament delivered to him on the pillar, and died bowing upon it,in the sixty-ninth of his age, after having lived upon pillars for six and thirty years. His corpse was carried to Antioch attended by the bishops and the whole country, and worked miracles on its way. So far this account is from Alban Butler.

Without mentioning circumstances and miracles in the Golden Legend, which are too numerous, and some not fit to be related, it may be observed that it is there affirmed of him, that after his residence on the pillars, one of his thighs rotted a whole year, during which time he stood on one leg only. Near Simeon's pillar was the dwelling of a dragon, so very venomous, that nothing grew near his cave. This dragon met with an accident; he had a stake in his eye, and coming all blind to the saint's pillar, and placing his eye upon it for three days without doing harm to any one, Simeon ordered earth and water to be placed on the dragon's eye, which being done, out came the stake, a cubit in length; when the people saw this miracle, they glorified God, and ran away for fear of the dragon, whe arose and adored for two hours, and returned to his cave. A woman swallowed a little serpent, which tormented her for many years, til she came to Simeon, who causing earth and water to be laid on her mouth, the little serpent came out four feet and a half long. It is affirmed by the Golden Legend, that when Simeon died, Anthony smelt a precious odour proceeding from his body; that the birds cried so much, that both men and beasts credi that an angel came down in a cloud that

the patriarch of Antioch taking Simeon's beard to put among his relics, his hand withered, and remained so till multitudes of prayers were said for him, and it was healed: and that more miracles were worked at and after Simeon's sepulture, than he had wrought all his life.

LONGEVITY.

1724. Jan. 5. An extraordinary instance of longevity is contained in a letter dated the 29th of January, 1724, from M. Hamelbranix, the Dutch envoy at Vienna, to their high mightinesses the states general, and published in a Dutch dictionary, "Het Algemeen historisch, geographisch en genealogisch Woordenbock," by Luiscius. It relates to an individual who had attained the extraordinary age of one hundred and eighty-five years.

"Czartan Petrarch, by religion a Greek, was born in the year 1539, and died on the 5th of January, 1724, at Kofrosch, a village four miles from Temeswar, on the road leading to Karansebes. He had lived, therefore, a hundred and eightyfive years. At the time when the Turks took Temeswar from the Christians, he was employed in keeping his father's cattle. A few days before his death he had walked, with the help of a stick, to the post-house at Kofrosch, to ask charity from the travellers. His eyes were much inflamed, but he still enjoyed a little sight. His hair and beard were of a greenish, white colour, like mouldy bread; and he had a few of his teeth remaining. His son, who was ninety-seven years of age, declared his father had once been the head taller; that at a great age he married

for the third timc; and that he was born in this last marriage. He was accustomed, agreeably to the rules of his religion, to observe fast days with great strictness, and never to use any other food than milk, and certain cakes, called by the Hungarians kollatschen, together with a good glass of brandy, such as is made in the country. He had descendants in the fifth generation, with whom he sometimes sported, carrying them in his arms. His son, though ninety-seven, was still fresh and vigorous. When field marshal count Wallis, the commandant of Temeswar, heard that this old man was taken sick, he caused a portrait of him to be painted, and when it was almost finished he expired."

1808. Early in January, this year, the shaft of death supplied another case of longevity. At the advanced age of 110 years, died Dennis Hampson, the blind bard of Maggiligan, of whom an interesting account has been given by lady Morgan, in "The Wild Irish Girl." The "Athenæum," from whence this notice is extracted, relates, that only a few hours before his decease he tuned his harp, that he might have it in readiness to entertain sir H. Bruce's family, who were expected to pass that way in a few days, and who were in the habit of stopping to hear his music; suddenly, however, he felt the approach of death, and calling his family around him resigned his breath without a struggle, and in perfect possession of his faculties to the last moment. A kindred spirit produced the following tribute to the memory of this "aged son of song." He was the oldest of the Irish bards.