them. Now with the clattering of hoofs and striking out of fiery sparks, across the old stone bridge, and down again into the shadowy road, and through the open gate, and far away, away, into the wold. Yoho! See the bright moon! High up before we know it: making the earth reflect the objects on its breast like water. Hedges, trees, low cottages, church steeples, blighted stumps and flourishing young slips, have all grown vain upon the sudden, and mean to contemplate their own fair images till morning. The poplars yonder rustle, that their quivering leaves may see themselves upon the ground. Not so the oak; trembling does not become him; and he watches himself in his stout old burly steadfastness, without the motion of a twig. The moss-grown gate, ill-poised upon its creaking hinges, crippled and decayed, swings to and fro before its glass, like some fantastic dowager; while our own ghostly likeness travels on, Yoho! Yoho! through ditch and brake, upon the ploughed land and the smooth, along the steep hill-side and steeper wall, as if it were a phantom-hunter. Clouds too! And a mist upon the hollow! Not a dull fog that hides it, but a light airy gauze-like mist, which in our eyes of modest admiration gives a new charm to the beauties it is spread before: as real gauze has done ere now, and would again, so please you, though we were the Pope. Yoho! Why now we travel like the moon herself. Hiding this minute in a grove of trees; next minute in a patch of vapour; emerging now upon our broad clear course; withdrawing now, but always dashing on, our journey is a counterpart of hers. Yoho! A match against the moon. Yoho, yoho! The beauty of the night is hardly felt, when day comes leaping up. Yoho! Two stages, and the country roads are almost changed to a continuous street. Yoho, past marketgardens, rows of houses, villas, crescents, terraces, and squares; past waggons, coaches, carts; past early workmen, late stragglers, drunken men, and sober carriers of loads ; past brick and mortar in its every shape; and in among the rattling pavements, where a jaunty-seat upon a coach is not so easy to preserve! Yoho, down countless turnings, and through countless mazy ways, until an old inn-yard is gained and Tom Pinch, getting down, quite stunned and giddy, is in London! DAMON AND PHINTIAS. 55 IX.-DAMON AND PHINTIAS. (BROOKE.) Dionysius the Elder was ruler of Syracuse, in Sicily, from 405 till 367 B.C. Damon had been condemned to death for engaging in a plot to overthrow the tyrant. The friend of Damon was called Phintias, not Pythias. WHEN Damon was sentenced by Dionysius of Syracuse to die on a certain day, he begged permission, in the interim, to retire to his own country, to set the affairs of his disconsolate family in order. This the king intended peremptorily to refuse, by granting it, as he conceived, on the impossible condition of his procuring some one to remain as hostage for his return, under equal forfeiture of life. Phintias heard the conditions, and did not wait for an application upon the part of Damon. He instantly offered himself as security for his friend, which being accepted, Damon was immediately set at liberty. The king and all the courtiers were astonished at this action; and therefore, when the day of execution drew near, his majesty had the curiosity to visit Phintias in his confinement. After some conversation on the subject of friendship, in which the king delivered it as his opinion, that self-interest was the sole mover of human actions; as for virtue, friendship, benevolence, love of one's country, and the like, he looked upon them as terms invented by the wise to keep in awe and impose upon the weak. My lord," said Phintias, with a firm voice and noble aspect, “I would it were possible that I might suffer a thousand deaths, rather than my friend should fail in any article of his honour. He cannot fail therein, my lord. I am as confident of his virtue as I am of my own existence. But I pray, I beseech the gods, to preserve the life and integrity of my Damon together. Oppose him, ye winds! prevent the eagerness and impatience of his honourable endeavours, and suffer him not to arrive till, by my death, I shall have redeemed a life a thousand times of more consequence, of more value, than my own; more estimable to his lovely wife, to his precious little innocents, to his friends, to his country. Oh, leave me not to die the worst of deaths in my Damon!" Dionysius was 66 awed and confounded by the dignity of these sentiments, and by the manner in which they were uttered; he felt his heart struck by a slight sense of invading truth, but it served rather to perplex than undeceive him. The fatal day arrived. Phintias was brought forth, and walked amidst the guards with a serious, but satisfied air, to the place of execution. Dionysius was already there; he was exalted on a moving throne, that was drawn by six white horses, and sat pensive, and attentive to the prisoner. Phintias came; he vaulted lightly on the scaffold, and beholding for some time the apparatus of death, he turned with a placid countenance, and addressed the spectators :"My prayers are heard," he cried, "the gods are propitious! You know, my friends, that the winds have been contrary till yesterday. Damon could not come, he could not conquer impossibilities; he will be here to-morrow, and the blood which is shed to-day shall have ransomed the life of my friend. Oh, could I erase from your bosom every doubt, every mean suspicion, of the honour of the man for whom I am about to suffer, I should go to my death even as I would to my bridal. Be it sufficient, in the meantime, that my friend will be found noble; that his truth is unimpeachable; that he will speedily prove it; that he is now on his way hurrying on, accusing himself, the adverse elements, and the gods; but I hasten to prevent his speed. Executioner, do your office." As he pronounced the last words, a buzz began to rise among the remotest of the people-a distant voice was heard-the crowd caught the words, and, “Stop, stop the execution," was repeated by the whole assembly. A man came at full speed-the throng gave way to his approach; he was mounted on a steed of foam; in an instant he was off his horse, on the scaffold, and held Phintias straitly embraced. "You are safe," he cried, "you are safe. My friend, my beloved friend, the gods be praised, you are safe! I now have nothing but death to suffer, and am delivered from the anguish of those reproaches which I gave myself, for having endangered a life so much dearer than my own." Pale, cold, and half-speechless, in the arms of his Damon, Phintias replied, in broken accents, "Fatal haste! Cruel impatience! What envious powers have wrought impossibilities in your favour? But I will not be wholly disappointed. Since I cannot die to save, I will not survive you." Dionysius heard, beheld, and considered all with astonishment. His heart was touched; he wept; and leaving his throne, he ascended the scaffold. Live, live, ye incomparable pair!" he cried; "ye have borne unquestionable testimony to the existence of virtue! and that virtue equally evinces the existence of a God to reward it. Live happy, live renowned; and oh! form me by your precepts, as ye have invited me by your example, to be worthy the participation of so sacred a friendship." X.-THE MONK. (REV. LAURENCE STERNE.) The Rev. Laurence Sterne was born at Clonmel, Ireland, in 1713. A POOR monk of the order of St. Francis came into the room to beg something for his convent. The moment I cast my eyes upon him, I was determined not to give him a single sous; and accordingly I put my purse into my pocket, buttoned it up, set myself a little more upon my centre, and advanced up gravely to him. There was something, I fear, forbidding in my look; I have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which deserved better, The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure-a few scattered white hairs upon his temples being all that remained of it-might be about seventy; but from his eyes, and that sort of fire which was in them-which seemed more tempered by courtesy than years-could be no more than sixty. Truth might lie between-he was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance-notwithstanding something seemed to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time-agreed to the account. It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted -mild, pale, penetrating; free from all common-place ideas of fat-contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth: it looked forwards; but looked, as if it looked at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, Heaven above, who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders, best knows; but it would have suited a Brahmin ; and had I met it upon the plains of Indostan, I had reverenced it. The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes ; one might put it into the hands of any one to design; for it was neither elegant nor otherwise, but as character and expression made it so. It was a thin, spare form, something above the common size-if it lost not the distinction by a bend forwards in the figure-but it was the attitude of entreaty; and, as it now stands present in my imagination, it gained more than it lost by it. When he had entered the room three paces, he stood still; and laying his left hand upon his breast, a slender white staff with which he journeyed being in his right, when I had got close up to him, he introduced himself with the little story of the wants of his convent, and the poverty of his order-and did it with so simple a grace, and such an air of deprecation was there in the whole cast of his look and figure, I was bewitched not to have been struck with it. – A better reason was, I had predetermined not to give him a single sous. ""Tis very true," said I, replying to a cast upwards with his eyes, with which he had concluded his address," 'tis very true; and Heaven be their resource who have no other than the charity of the world,—the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it." As I pronounced the words, "great claims," he gave a slight glance with his eyes downwards upon the sleeve of his tunic; I felt the full force of the appeal. "I acknowledge it," said I; "a coarse habit, and that but once in three years, with meagre diet, are no great matters; but the true point of pity is, as they can be earned in the world with so little industry, that your order should wish to procure them by pressing upon a fund which is the property of the lame, the blind, the aged, and the infirm. The captive who lies down |