The style of Cervantes possesses a beauty, which no translation can approach. It exhibits the nobleness, the candour, and the simplicity of the ancient romances of chivalry, together with a liveliness of colouring, a precision of expression, and a harmony in its periods which have never been equalled by any other writer. His earliest production, "La Galetea," published in 1584, is a sweet and elegant pastoral, which, while recalling to the mind the feelings of childhood, accords admirably with the indolence of the South. It has been imputed as a fault that in these pastorals Cervantes is almost cloying with the sweetness and languor of his love scenes. "In reading them we imagine ourselves bathing in milk and honey." Notwithstanding this, the poetical charm, the richness of invention, and the purity of morals of the Galetea ensure to it an honourable place in the list of Spanish classics. "God grant," says the author, at the commencement, to the reader, "that thou mayest enjoy much pleasure in the perusal, thou especially who makest it thy pleasure to live for the dear country, and you, feeling souls, who at the sight of an expanse of meadow, at the murmur of a leaping stream, experience delight almost as sweet as that which flows from a meritorious action!"

When Cervantes had reached his fifty sixth year, he published twelve beautiful romances, which are not generally known. I shall conclude this short notice with the translation of a few sentences from one of them, "La Gitanilla," or, The Gipsey Girl.*

"We gipseys are lords of the fields and of the flowery meadows, of the woods and of the mountains, of the streams and of the rivers. The woods offer us fuel for nothing; the trees, fruit; the vines, grapes; the garden, herbs; the streams, water; the river, fish; and the plains, game: a shadow, the mountains; fresh air, the rifts in the rocks; and the caves, habitations. For us, the inclemencies of the heavens are pleasant airings; the snows are refreshing, the showers are baths, the thunder is music, and our flambeau is the lightning-flash. To us, the hard ground is pleasant as the softest feathers, and the tanned skin of our bodies is an impenetrable armour that defends us. Our light limbs are at liberty, and neither rugged path nor barrier repel us.

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Honour, ambition, and factions disturb not our repose. Dearer to us than gilded ceilings and sumptuous palaces are our moveable tents. Instead of Flemish paintings in gilded frames, we have those given us by Nature in these lofty mountains and snowcrowned rocks, extended plains, and thick woods, which meet our eyes in every direction. In a word, we have all that we desire, and are content with what we have.

"We sing in the prison, and are silent on the rock.

"We are rustic astrologers, sleeping in the open air, we know the hours of night, for the stars are our time-piece. We turn the same face to the sun and to the storm, to barrenness and abundance."

*Novelas de Cervantes: La Gitanilla. Tomo 1., p. 87.

MANOLOGY;

OR, A LECTURE OVER A SKEIN OF SILK.

BY SHAGGYQUILL.

(WRITTEN SHORTLY AFTER HIS ESCAPE FROM THE HOSPITABLE WALLS OF-BEDLAM.)

"O, gentle lady! I did hear you talk
Far above singing."

"ONCE upon a time," as the old tale-tellers say, we were on our knees before a lady. Well, we needn't have said that. But it is written let it stand. We were on our knees, holding a skein of silk. Now, albeit that position is not one the most calculated to show off the dignity of a lord of the creation, yet, it being an evening in June, and the breeze, that stole through the open French window, coming in as fragrant as if all the scents of the flowers had played truant and were riding on its back-and the sun, which had been "so precious hat" during the day, having just died behind the horizon, in a pool of red light which suggested the idea that he had burst a blood-vessel-and the attitude that we were in giving us a full and a luxurious stare into a face shaded with the richest brown ringlets that ever were fastened with a comb or fettered in curl paper-and the face which they shaded being such a face-and ever and anon a pair of eyes of that neutral tint between brown and grey, which is the fullest of mind and expression, giving back to us a mild edition of our own stare-and a hand so white and so delicate brushing now and then against our own in the managing of the silk -and-and-in fact, reader, call that situation of ours unmanly, if you will call it spooney-call it degrading, truckling, whatever you like-but we must confess, hiding our blushes in cur robe-dechambre, that it was very, very delightful!

It has been said that our eyes met. Well; when eyes meet, some how or other, something, either a word, or a smile, or a blush, or other matter equally momentous, is perpetrated before they are dropped again. Well; our eyes met, and the lady spoke.-(Poor muffs that we are! when ever was a gentleman known to speak first? Never, we believe! Not even our father, Adam, when introduced to his Eve-the apple of his eye-his ribstone pippin!)

But really, reader, this style of going on is very vagrant and very rambling, and at the same time very much like the gait of an elderly gentleman across a frozen pool-exceedingly shuffling-and not at all respectable: so we will at once return from the Paradise which touched upon Messopotamia, unto the Paradise of the English sitting-room.

"Well," said the lady, "I suppose you gentlemen fancy yourselves far superior to us, poor feminine bodies, don't you now ?"

Reader, what could we do, but show our teeth prodigiously, bow our lordly head preposterously, and, forgetting all about the silk, lay our hand on the place where tradition places the heart, and

shake our curls in mild deprecation, to the woeful entanglement of the skein.

"There, see how you've entangled my silk!"

Well, the silk was disentangled, but the process of liberating it—what with the approximation of the curls, and the eyes, and the hands-only served to entangle far more irreparably, far more hopelessly, one heart which had already "put its foot in it."

"But to return to my question," said the lady; "do not you gentlemen, over your nasty cigars and your-your-what you do drink I don't know-don't you think yourselves-O, miles above us poor insignificant female creatures ?”

Some stupid observation being sputtered out by us, to the effect that neither of the sexes would get on remarkably well without the other, the lady pounced on us sharply, like a beautiful trout rising to a hook, and said

to take hold of it?

"Nay, there you're wrong. I grant you that ladies might endure the loss of your sex, and not feel any the worse for it: but fancy a community of males with none of us-fancy a nation of Adams without an Eve! Now only look at that gentleman, for instance," said she, nodding her head towards a man of "ours" who was sauntering languidly past the carriage-gate-one of that unhappy race of beings commonly called "swells"-"look at him; how lonely he looks; how useless his arms are to him. Do you know, I verily believe that a gentleman's arms were made solely for a lady to rest on. Look; does not his left seem to invite one of us And does not his right hand seem to thirst for a parasol to carry? Ah! he has turned the corner, so I can't have him for a model. But it doesn't matter; you are all alike. What is the use of gentlemen without us? What are your enjoyments without us? To be sure, you lounge against a pillar, or a doorway, for some three hour's together, one hand in the pocket and the other curling your moustaches, with half-shut eyes looking at the passers by. I suppose that is enjoyment! It must be, or you would not do it so often. Then you walk into a billiard-r -room and fritter away another hour or so, in playing at marbles on a large scale, but with a green cloth for the ground and the cues for your fingers. Or, if you don't play yourselves, then you are still lounging and looking at them that do, and losing sums of money by the merest slip of their fingers-sums of money that would have bought such loads of everything that is pretty, if it had been properly laid out. Well; that, again, is enjoyment, I suppose! Then there is Tattersall's, where you again lounge and criticise the legs of horses and speculate as to what those legs could do. Then there is the Park-but that is to look at us, so I will be quiet about that. Well; there is the "Derby," that every body goes mad about every spring: there you go and excite yourselves into a set of savages, roll yourselves in dust, saturate yourselves with champagne, and on the length of a horse's neck get rid of money which would have made your wives or your sisters very, very happy, spent in a quiet water-party or a fete champetre for their benefit, poor things! Then, when night comes

and there is nothing left to bet on, you roll home in a broken dogcart, with, perhaps, a broken nose, minus cravat and senses, to wake the next morning, yelling for an ocean of soda-water. This is the acme of your enjoyment!

"Look at the difference when one of us condescends to take

pity on you! The blasé spirit flies on the instant. There is no more lounging and curling of moustaches. But there are rambles in the moonlight, and lingerings in conservatories, and leanings over pianos and the sides of opera-boxes. And then, and only then, you male creatures look in the slightest degree graceful, or poetical, or interesting, or even tolerable-Ah! Mr. Shaggyquill, I do declare the skein is out!"

And so it was.

And when we rose from our knees is it to be wondered at that we threw ourself into a 66 graceful, poetical, and interesting" position by the side of our fair lecturer ? Reader, would you not have done likewise?

FLOWERS.

WHAT speak ye of, in your wond'rous birth,
Ye sparkling eyes of the teeming earth,
As ye open, besprent with the morning's dew,
And with radiant light our path bestrew?
O, ye tell of the world in its early prime-
Ye tell of the glories of Eden-time-
Ye tell of the loveliness all things wore,

Ere the tempest of sin had our earth pass'd o'er.

And what is the perfume around you spread-
The spicy breath on the winds you shed-
The odour to which all your pores give vent,
Embalming the air by the tempest rent?
'Tis the incense ye send to the throne above,
And should teach erring man that His name is Love
Who to you hath such beauty and fragrance given
As to render the earth a bright path to heaven.

Gems of delight by the Godhead sent,
Stars of our own green firmament,
Spangles that glisten on nature's vest
When in bridal garments of spring-time drest,
O! what is your language but grateful praise
TO HIM who enkindles your gladdening rays!
You tell of His kindly and constant aid,
Who you hath in garments of light arrayed.

And, O! ever such may your language be
When, sick with earth's troubles, I gaze on ye;
Refreshing the spirit that 's tired and worn,
Or by the rude blasts of life's conflicts torn.
O! speak to me still of that Father's care
From whom ye received the gay robes ye wear;
And bid me confide in His kindly power,
Whose pencil hath painted the opening flower.

THOMAS RAGE.

SHROVE TUESDAY NIGHT;

OR, "PENNILESS BENCH."

Slowly and deliberately, from the old tower of my College in the University of N, tolled forth the strokes of midnight. A noisy circle of intimates, whom the tedious sameness of an University life ever brings together to while away those hours that are only too hasty on the wing when a fair face and a sweet gentle voice are near, left one by one my rooms, called on by the dead silence reigning without them to join the general troop of sleepers. The sound of their "Good night, old fellow," fell upon my heart almost as heavily as the warning from the iron throat of the old bell above me -upon a heart, I may mention, always too predisposed to dwell on the gloomy side of most events. Such a temperament, if it had not been at intervals checked by an elasticity of spirits peculiar to the opening years of life, might have assumed a serious aspect; but, if every possessor of such were only aware of it, there are many infallible sources of cure for such a malady. A fretful, moody temper followed, as the last friend sported my oak, leaving a restlessness of purpose scarcely consonant with the lateness of the hour. Manley, whose retreating footsteps were the last I heard, was in a peculiar sense the chosen friend of my heart. Our respective families occupied lands adjacent to each other. Time, moreover, which has witnessed the unbroken descent of our respective properties from father to son, had linked our families to each other by the ties of relationship as well as of neighbourhood. There is an old oaken high-backed chair in our possession, rich to overflowing in its store of antiquated memories, whence, up to the period of my matriculation, my dear old grandmother used to open her budget of ancestral stories—some of which spoke of intermarriages in old feudal times between the houses of Manley and Tapperton. These, however, as, in public interest, they step not out of the routine of ordinary unions, shall not claim my reader's attention. I have now for his consideration what, I trust, may prove more attractive.

Left to myself, unwilling to become the captive of " tired nature's sweet restorer," I wheeled a lounging chair in front of a bright coal fire, and began, more like some perturbed spirit than a rational creature of flesh and blood, to devise employment to my liking. Thus, pensively engaged in trying to bring my thoughts to mould themselves into a purpose-in the midst of burning cities, rocks, waves, ships, and their associations, which seemed imaged forth in the element before me, I became more and more the victim of petty irresolution. Silence is, for the most part, a prolific source of thought. My long desire of emancipation from the almost monastic life I was leading, formed, among many others, one topic for reflection. I had been, till the dear old gentleman died, a source of no little solicitude to a paternal uncle. A certain ill-natured