across the room to the bedside, and falling down upon his knee, took the ring in his hand, and kissed it too, then kissed his father, and sat down upon the bed, and wept.

"I wish," said my uncle Toby, with a deep sigh,—“ I wish, Trim, I was asleep."

"Your honour," replied the Corporal, " is too much concerned; shall I pour your honour out a glass of sack to your pipe?"-" Do, Trim," said my uncle Toby.

I remember," said my uncle Toby, sighing again, 'the story of the ensign and his wife-and particularly well, that he, as well as she, upon some account or other -I forget what-was universally pitied by the whole regiment:-but finish the story."-" "Tis finished already," said the Corporal-" for I could stay no longer,-so wished his honour a good-night. Young Le Fevre rose from off the bed, and saw me to the bottom of the stairs; and, as we went down together, told me they had come from Ireland, and were on their route to join the regiment in Flanders.—But, alas!" said the Corporal-- the Lieutenant's last day's march is over!"- Then what is to become of his poor boy ?" cried my uncle Toby.

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Thou hast left this matter short," said my uncle Toby to the Corporal, as he was putting him to bed-" and 1 will tell thee in what, Trim.—In the first place, when thou madest an offer of my services to Le Fevre,-as sickness and travelling are both expensive, and thou knewest he was but a poor Lieutenant, with a son to subsist, as well as himself out of his pay,—that thou didst not make an offer to him of my purse; because, had he stood in need, thou knowest, Trim, he had been as welcome to it as myself."-"Your honour knows," said the Corporal, “I had no orders."—"True," quoth my uncle Toby" thou didst very right, Trim, as a soldier,-but certainly very wrong

as a man.

In the second place-for which, indeed, thou hast the same excuse"-continued my uncle Toby, "when thou offeredst him whatever was in my house-thou shouldst have offered him my house too,· -a sick brother-officer should have the best quarters, Trim; and if we had him with us we could tend and look to him; thou art an excellent nurse thyself, Trim; and what with thy care of him, and the old woman's, and his boy's, and mine together, we might recruit him again at once, and set him upon his legs.

-"In a fortnight or three weeks," added my uncle Toby, smiling," he might march."-" He will never march, an't please your honour, in this world," said the Corporal. "He will march," said my uncle Toby, rising up from the side of the bed with one shoe off." An't please your honour," said the Corporal, " he will never march, but to his grave. " He shall march," cried my uncle Toby, marching the foot which had a shoe on, though without advancing an inch,—“ He shall march to his regiment.”—“ He cannot stand it," said the Corporal." He shall be supported," said my uncle Toby." He'll drop at last," said the Corporal; " and what will become of his boy?”—“ He shall not drop," said my uncle Toby firnily." A-well-aday, do what we can for him," said Trim, maintaining his point" the poor soul will die."—" He shall not die, by H- -n," cried my uncle Toby.—

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The ACCUSING SPIRIT, which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in; and the RECORDING ANGEL, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear ́upon the word—and blotted it out for ever!

My uncle Toby went to his bureau,-put his purse into his pocket, and having ordered the Corporal to go early in the morning for a physician, he went to bed and fell asleep.

The sun looked bright, the morning after, to every eye in the village, but Le Fevre's and his afflicted son's; the hand of death pressed heavy upon his eyelids, and hardly could the wheel at the cistern turn round its circle-when my uncle Toby, who had got up an hour before his wonted time, entered the Lieutenant's room, and, without preface or apology, sat himself down upon the chair by the bedside, and, independently of all modes and customs, opened the curtain, in the manner an old friend and brother-officer would have done it, and asked him how he did,-how he had rested in the night,-what was his complaint,—where was his pain,—and what he could do to serve him ?—and, without giving him time to answer any one of the inquiries, went on and told him of the little plan which he had been concerting with the Corporal, the night before, for him.—

-You shall go home directly, Le Fevre," said my uncle Toby, "to my house,—and we'll send for a doctor to see what's the matter,—and we'll have an apothecary, and the Corporal shall be your nurse,—and I'll be your servant, Le Fevre!"

There was a frankness in my uncle Toby,—not the effect of familiarity, but the cause of it,—which let you at once into his soul, and showed you the goodness of his nature:-To this, there was something in his looks, and voice, and manner, superadded, which eternally beckoned to the unfortunate, to come and take shelter under him; so that, before my uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it towards himThe blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart-rallied back!-the film forsook his eyes for a moment-he looked up wishfully in my uncle Toby's face-then cast a look upon his boy.—And that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken!

Nature instantly ebbed again--the film returned to its place the pulse fluttered-stopped-went on-throbbed -stopped again-moved-stopped. Shall I go on? No!

Sterne.

The Distressed Father.

HENRY NEWBERRY, a lad of thirteen years, and Edward Chidley, aged seventeen, were fully committed for trial, charged with stealing a silver tea-pot from the house of a gentleman, in Grosvenor-place. There was nothing extraordinary in the circumstances of the robbery.—The younger lad was observed to go down into the area of the house, whilst his companion kept watch, and they were caught endeavouring to conceal the tea-pot under some rubbish in the Five-fields: but the case was made peculiarly interesting by the unsophisticated distress of Newberry's father.

The poor old man, who it seems had been a soldier, and was at this time a journeyman pavier, refused at first to believe that his son had committed the crime imputed to him, and was very clamorous against the witnesses; but, as their evidence proceeded, he himself appeared to become gradually convinced. He listened with intense anxiety to the various details; and when they were finished he fixed his in silence, for a second or two, upon his son; and turning to the magistrate, with his eyes swimming

eyes

in tears, he exclaimed—“ I have carried him many a score miles on my knapsack, your honour!"

There was something so deeply pathetic in the tone with which this fond reminiscence was uttered by the old soldier, that every person present, even the very gaoler himself, was affected by it. "I have carried him many score miles on my knapsack, your honour," repeated the poor fellow, whilst he brushed away the tears from his cheek with his rough unwashed hand, "but it's all over now!—He has done-and-so have I!”

The magistrate asked him something of his story. He said he had formerly driven a stage-coach, in the north of Ireland, and had a small share in the proprietorship of the coach. In this time of his prosperity, he married a young woman with a little property, but failed in business, and, after enduring many troubles, enlisted as a private soldier in the 18th, or Royal Irish Regiment of Foot; and went on foreign service, taking with him his wife and four children. Henry (the prisoner) was his second son, and his "darling pride." At the end of nine years he was discharged, in this country, without a pension, or a friend in the world; and coming to London, he, with some trouble, got employed as a pavier, by "the gentlemen who manage the streets at Mary-la-bonne."-" Two years ago, your honour," he continued, my poor wife was wearied out with the world, and she deceased from me, and I was left alone with the children; and every night, after I had done work, I washed their faces, and put them to bed, and washed their little bits o' things, and hanged them o' the line to dry, myself-for I'd no money, your honour, and so I could not have a housekeeper to do for them, you know. But, your honour, I was as happy as I well could be, considering my wife was deceased from me, till some bad people came to live at the back of us, and they were always striving to get Henry amongst them; and I was terribly afraid something bad would come of it, as it was but poorly I could do for him; and so I'd made up my mind to take all my children to Ireland.-If he had only held up another week, your honour, we should have gone, and he would have been saved. But now!"

Here the poor man looked at his boy again, and wept: and when the magistrate endeavoured to console him by observing that his son would sail for Botany Bay, and probably do well there; he replied, somewhat impatiently,

—“Aye, it's fine talking, your worship; I pray to the great God he may never sail any where, unless he sails with me to Ireland!" and then, after a moment's thought, he asked, in the humblest tone imaginable, "Doesn't your honour think a little bit of a petition might help him?"

The magistrate replied, it possibly might; and added, "If you attend his trial at the Old Bailey, and plead for him as eloquently in word and action as you have done here, I think it would help him still more.'

Aye, but then you wont be there, I suppose, will you?" asked the poor fellow, with that familiarity which is in some degree sanctioned by extreme distress; and when his worship replied that he certainly should not be present, he immediately rejoined, "Then-what's the use of it? There will be nobody there who knows me; and what stranger will listen to a poor old broken-hearted fellow, who can't speak for crying?"

The prisoners were now removed from the bar, to be conducted to prison; and his son, who had wept incessantly all the time, called wildly to him, "Father, father!" as if he expected that his father could snatch him out of the iron grasp of the law but the old man remained rivetted, as it were, to the spot on which he stood, with his eyes fixed on the lad; and, when the door had closed upon him, he put on his hat, unconscious where he was; and, crushing it down over his brows, he began wandering round the room in a state of stupor. The officers in waiting reminded him that he should not wear his hat in the presence of the magistrate, and he instantly removed it: but he still seemed lost to every thing around him; and, though one or two gentlemen present put money into his hands, he heeded it not, but slowly sauntered out of the office, ap. parently reckless of every thing.

Mornings at Bow-street.

On Shakspeare.

THE four greatest names in English poetry are almost the four first we come to-Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton. There are no others that can really be put in competition with these. The two last have had justice done them by the voice of common fame. Their names are blazoned in the very firmament of reputation; while the two first (though "the fault has been more in their