have this money, wont you buy some clothes, and a shirt with some of it?"

"Yes,' clothes."

33

said I; "I would buy some

"And what will you do with the rest?"
"I can't tell," said I, and cried.
"What do'st cry for, Jack?" said he.
"I am afraid," said I, and cried still.
"What art afraid of?"

"They will know I have the money."
"Well, and what then?"

"Then I must sleep no more in the warm glass-house, and I shall be starved with cold; they will take away my money."

But why must you sleep there no more?" Here the gentlemen observed to one another, how naturally anxiety and perplexity attend those that have money. "I warrant you," says the clerk, "when this poor boy had no money, he slept all night in the straw, or on the warm ashes, in the glass-house, as soundly and as void of care as it would be possible for any creature to do; but now, as soon as he has gotten money, the care of preserving it brings tears into his eyes, and fear into his heart."

They asked me a great many questions more, to which I answered in my childish way as well as I could, but so as pleased them well enough; at last I was going away with a heavy pocket, and I assure you not a light heart, for I was so frighted with having so much money, that I knew not what in the earth to do with myself; I went away, however, and walked a little way, but I could not tell what to do; so, after rambling two hours or thereabout, I went back again, and sat down at the gentleman's door, and there I cried as long as I had any moisture in my head to make tears of, but never knocked at the door.

Who has read this extract without having the vision of Charles Dickens rise before his eyes?

Of "Robinson Crusoe" what necessity is there to speak? Who is not familiar with its pages? What schoolboy has not undergone a whipping for leaving his lessons unstudied while he has been sitting in the Solitary's hut, or spending an afternoon with "man Friday?" How many in the decline of life have over the leaves of that wonderful book grown young again! Charles Lamb says, "next to the Holy Scriptures, it may be safely asserted that this delightful romance has, ever since it was written, excited the first and most powerful influence upon the juvenile mind of England, nor has its popularity been much less among any of the other nations of Christendom." He might have added. “and out of Christendom

too." It has been translated into Ara bic; and Burckhart "heard it read aloud among the wandering tribes in the cool hours of evening." "That

island," a beautiful writer has observed, "placed 'far amidst the melancholy main,' and remote from the track of human wanderings, remains to the last the greenest spot in memory. At whatever distance of time, the scene expands before us as clearly and distinctly as when we first beheld it; we still see the green savannahs and silent woods, which mortal footstep had never disturbed; its birds of strange wing, that had never heard the report of a gun; its goats browsing securely in the vale, or peeping over the heights, in alarm at the first sight of man. We can yet follow its forlorn inhabitant on tiptoe with suspended breath, prying curiously into every recess, glancing fearfully at every shade, starting at every sound, and then look forth with him upon the lone and boisterous ocean with the sickening feeling of an exile cut off for ever from all human intercourse. Our sympathy is more truly engaged by the poor shipwrecked mariner, than by the great, the lovely, and the illustrious of the earth. We find a more effectual wisdom in its homely reflections than is to be derived from the discourses of the learned and eloquent. The interest with which we converse with him in the retirement of his cave, or go abroad with him on the business of the day, is as various and powerful as the means by which it is kept up are simple and inartificial. true is everything to nature, and such reality is there in every particular, that the slightest circumstance creates a sensation, and the print of a man's foot or shoe is the source of more genuine terror than all the strange sights and odd noises in the romances of Mrs. Radcliffe."

So

Children are charmed with the story of "Robinson Crusoe ;" men of thought are not less delighted with the narrative, but they have recourse to it also as a book instructing them in some of the most valuable truths of philosophy. He must possess a far lower than a merely ordinary mind who leaves the perusal of this wonderful book without having acquired from it a new insight into his own

nature the maana of avidin the

evil, and attaining to the good,without having perceived how many infant faculties of his being might by training be made to assume grand proportions, and be endowed with vast strength. It is a great religious poem. It is "the drama of solitude," the object of which is to show that in the most wretched state of desertion there still remains within the human breast a power of life independent of external circumstances; and that where man is not, there God especially abides.

Why did not Defoe, with such an unexampled capability as a writer of fiction, occupy himself earnestly in his art? Why did he not expend thought, toil, and long years in elaborating two such works as "Robinson Crusoe," or the commencement of "Colonel Jack," instead of scribbling page after page, without consideration enough to avoid dulness, stories replete with obscenities he must have disapproved, and nonsense that he must have grinned at with contempt even while the pen was in his hand? Foster, in his graphic and fascinating sketch of Defoe and his times, bids us remember, when judging of "Moll Flanders" and "Roxana," the tone of society at the time of their appearance. Without a doubt, measured by the standard of the vicious literature of the Restoration and the two succeeding ages, they do not especially sin against purity of morals. But in this we cannot find a valid apology for Defoe, who, in composing them, put his hand to works that all serious men of his own religious views must have regarded with warm disapproval. Defoe was not by profession amongst the frivolous or godless of his generation; he was loud in his condemnation of the stage, of gambling, and of debauchery; he not only knew that voluptuous excess was criminal, but he raised his voice to shame it out of society, and yet he exercised his talents in depicting scenes of sensual enjoyment, which no virtuous nature can dwell on without pain, no vicious one without pleasure. What was his motive ? Money.

Drelincourt's book of "Consolations against the fears of Death,"one of the heaviest pieces of literature religion has given to the world,

littlel bung

on hand, so that the publisher, much downcast, informed Defoe he should lose a considerable sum. "Don't fear! I'll make the edition go off," said Defoe; and sitting down he wrote "A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal, the next day after her death, to one Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury, the 8th of September, 1705, which apparition recommends the perusal of Drelincourt's book of Consolations against the fears of Death.'" The ghost story startled and took captive the silly people the author intended, and knew so well how to hoax. A true, bond fide ghost of a respectable Mrs. Veal had urged on mankind the study of Drelincourt, Forthwith the publisher's shop was crowded with purchasers, and the edition rapidly left his shelves. It is strange to me how Defoe's biographers and admirers delight in this story. It may show Defoe to advantage in an intellectual point of view, leading a crowd of John Bulls astray and all the while laughing at them; but as a proof of his mental power such testimony is valueless because unnecessary. That Mrs. Veal's apparition was ingeniously told, no one will deny; but then it was a wilful falsehood, all the same for its cunning construction, and was framed to puff a bad book. Such a deed would aid the "Woolly Horse" and "Feejee Mermaid" in giving grace to a Barnum's life; but to think that Defoe could tell lies for a trade purpose, is more than a common pain.

And here we find the secret of this great man's shame. He was a man of somewhat expensive habits, continually entering into rash monetary speculations, and burdened with debts which in honour he felt himself bound to discharge. Of all men he was just the one to be called upon for large sums of wealth, and to have little in hand to meet such demands. His pen was a ready one at earning money; he could turn off any composition with facility and as, just then, tales (highly seasoned) met with the best prices in the market, he wrote them as fast as his pen could run over the paper, and spiced them up to the palates of his employers. And what trash (dishonest quack gibberish to get pennies from the crowd) poured in ur easing flow from him. it grieves

:

one to reflect. "The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell; a gentleman who, though deaf and dumb, writes down any stranger's name at first sight; with their future contingencies of fortune. Now living in Exeter-Court, over against the Savoy in the Strand." Mr. Duncan Campbell was the archimposter in the magic line of his day. All that table-turning, hat-spinning, spirit-rapping, and Mormonism are to us, was Mr. Duncan Campbell to the addled-pates of his generation. At every drum in the fashionable world ladies spoke in ecstacies of "that duck of a Mr. Duncan Campbell," how he knew every thing, was a medium, and a gentleman by birth, and how no one of ordinary sagacity doubted his powers. Defoe, in his "Life and Adventures," of course declared his belief in the fellow; a book exposing the man's tricks would not have sold. Steele mentioned this Campbell in the Tatler; and Eliza Heywood, (the authoress of "Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy," "The Fruitless Enquiry," and "Betsey Thoughtless,") wrote a work similar to Defoe's, called "A Spy on the Conjurer; Memoirs of the Famous Mr. Duncan Campbell." Have any of the readers of these pages perused Eliza Heywood's other works-her "Letters on all occasions lately passed between persons of distinction," of which Letter IV. is entitled "Sarpedon to the ever-upbraiding Myrtilla," and XI. "The repenting Aristus to the cruel, but most adorable Panthea," and XLIV. "Bellisa to Philemon, on perceiving a decay of his affection ?" It the ladies are ignorant of this literature, let them be advised and remain in their ignorance.

Smollett pursued a better course with regard to the "famous Mr. Campbell," in making him the object of laughter and the source of instruction to the town under the name of Cadwallader. But then Smollett was a long age posterior to Defoe.

Similar to the "Life of Duncan Campbell," was Defoe's sketch of "Dickory Crouke, The Dumb Philosopher," &c. &c. Alas! alas! and it was only for a morsel of bread.

We have stated our thanks are due to Defoe for giving the English novel, graphic descriptions, and quick, pointed conversations. In one of the

qualities of a novelist he was unaccountably deficient-not even coming up to his precursor Mrs. Behn. Το the construction or the most vague conception of a plot he seems to have been quite inadequate. This may be accounted for partly by the fact that, from abstaining on religious grounds from the theatres, his mind had not been duly educated in this most difficult department of his art; and partly by the rapidity with which his "histories" were evolved. Whatever may be the cause of the fault, that it exists few will be so rash as to question. All Defoe's novels, long as they are, are but a string of separate anecdotes related of one person, but having no other connection with each other. In no one of them are there forces at work that necessitate the conclusion of the story at a certain point. One meets with no mystery, no denouement in them. They go on and on, (usually at a brisk pace, with abundance of dramatic positions) till it apparently strikes the author he has written a good bookful, and then he winds up with a page and a half of "so he lived happily all the rest of his days ;" intermixed with some awkward moralizing by way of apology for the looseness of the bulk of the work. For example, "Roxana" might as well have been twice or half as long as it is.

One feature more of Defoe as a novelist. May he not be regarded as the first English writer of prose-fiction who pointed out the field of history to imaginative literature? His

Journal of the Plague Year;" his "Memoirs of a Cavalier ;" and "The Memoirs of an English Officer who served in the Dutch War in 1672, to the peace of Utrecht in 1713, &c. &c. By Captain George Carlton," were the pioneers of that army of which the Waverley Novels form the main body. The great Earl of Chatham used, before he discovered it to be a fiction, to speak of the "Memoirs of a Cavalier" as the best account of the civil wars extant. And of "Captain Carleton" there is the following anecdote in Boswell's Johnson. "The best account of Lord Peterborough that I have happened to meet with is in 'Captain Carleton's Memoirs.' Carleton was descended of an officer who had distinguished himself at the

the saints). Plants of a baneful nature were dedicated to the gloomy deities, and to witches, and formed necessary ingredients in unholy spells and incantations. Narcotic herbs that occasioned trances and strange dreams, and plants that, like the "insane root" of Shakespeare, caused delirium, whose ravings superstition received as oracular, and whose visions as supernatural, were fitting materials for sorcery. Even the Laurel, the glossy perennial laurel, the favorite of Apollo for his lost Daphne's sake, the crown of the victor and the bard, saw its bright leaves degraded to dark rites on account of its supposed delirium-exciting powers when chewed by the Pythoness. Theocritus in his second Idyl, "The Incantation," makes his sorceress say: "Delphis afflicts me; I burn this laurel against Delphis, and as it crackles inflamed, and suddenly burns up, so that no cinder of it appears, so may the flesh of Delphis consume in the flame."*

The plants and herbs of the superstitions were of two kinds, the good and the evil; the former held in the veneration of respect, the latter in the veneration of fear.

In the ancient world the most esteemed and holy, perhaps, of all plants was the VERVAIN (Verbena officinalis,) the Hierobotane, or holy herb of Dioscorides. It was believed to cure no less than thirty maladies, among which were gout, palsy, dropsy, jaundice, tertian and quartan argues, inveterate headaches, &c. ; but that for which it was most valued was not its physical, but its supposed moral quality of supernaturally disposing to peace, of reconciling enemies, and of causing a favourable feeling towards those persons who carried it about them, (and surely those who would not avail themselves of such an easy mode of conciliating others, must have been strange misanthropes, and very fond of strife).

It was highly venerated by the

Druids, who used it in their sacred ceremonies; they gathered it with solemn rites at the rising of the great Dog-star, when neither sun nor moon was above the earth to look inquisitively upon their operations. They described a circle round it three times, and then looking westwards, they dug it up with a sword; and strewed honey-combs upon the spot where it had grown, as a compensation to the earth for the treasure they had taken. The sun-worshippers in the east also held it in their hands during their devotions.

Among the Greeks and Romans the Vervain was used in religious ceremonies, and in incantations.+ The Romans called it herba sacra, and used it in casting lots and drawing of omens; and also in aspersions and lustral rites. It was sent as a gift among the Romans on their New Year's day, as emblematic of good wishes and good fortune. The Roman heralds, when they went to offer peace to a city, carried a sprig of Vervain in their hands, both on account of its being the symbol of peace, and of its supposed peace-making virtues. But when a herald was sent to demand from the enemy the restitution of things that had been carried away by force, it was thought necessary to select for that occasion a sprig of Vervain growing within the enclosure of the capitol; and the herald was called Verbenarius.

Since the Christian era the Vervain has been venerated from a tradition that our Lord once trod upon it, and that it was thenceforward endowed with antidotal virtues against the bite of serpents and venomous reptiles. The root is still worn in some parts of Europe as a cure for scrofula, and as a charm against ague. The shepherds in the south of France still believe the Vervain endowed with magical qualities.

It has a square stalk, jagged opposite leaves, and a spike of pale lilac