exist any degree of either peace or tranquillity without a certain proportion of wealth. Look round this room, full of merry faces," she continues, " and think how different would have been their expressions if they had had to contend with pinching want and sordid cares. I never witness the felicity of dear generous Guy and Emmeline, I never note the placid contentment of your beloved aunt, nor hear the cheerful laugh of the admiral in our blessed abode, without fervently thanking God for having bestowed that abundant wealth on its noble master which enables us to lead together an existence so full of ease and contentment, while, with our full purses in our hands, we can aid and relieve all those in whom we are interested, and to whom fortune has not been equally propitious. If we are favoured in thus being the means of contributing to the enjoyment of our richer relatives, what may we not esteem ourselves when we look at those whom we have had the power to redeem from positive poverty? Regard my kind uncle and aunt Macintosh, and poor Lizzy," she went on in a lower voice," and remember the difficulties from which your generosity enabled me to extricate them; and my dear old Nanny, how different would have been the expression of full contentment and happiness now beaming on her honest face, if she had been obliged to struggle on to old age in toil and anxiety! Oh, Cecil! we are blessed indeed, and to you, and you alone, we owe the perfection of our felicity. Lord Berlington takes Christine's hand in his and gently presses it.

"Stop, my dear enthusiast," he says; "your love for your unworthy husband hurries you too far. It is It is necessary that you should see things in a truer point of view; so now for my side of the case. Had it not been for the beautiful, the pure, the gifted Christine, who crossed my path of gloom like a vision of light, time would have hurried me back to those follies and vices that stained my early years, and led me to form a matrimonial connexion that ultimately would have proved my ruin, by destroying all my good opinion of the sex. My beloved but thoughtless Emmeline-if, indeed, she had survived without your tender care and companionship-would in all human probability have imbibed the levity of the fashionable world, where ultimately she must have taken her place; this would have crushed my heart and have driven me to desperation. Guy, that beloved friend and relative, without your noble energy and disregard of self, would but too certainly have fallen under the dagger of the assassin, while your heroic daring and presence of mind saved the life of the object on whom his future happiness depended. No, no, my Christine! it is to you alone we owe the blessings we possess ; it was in your warm, devoted heart and gifted spirit that was deposited the germ from which has sprung the tree of prosperity,

under which now repose all those with whom you have anything to do. I, who, although nearly twenty years your senior, never ask your opinion or advice without being enlightened and benefited by it, who never see you enter the gay world without your eliciting the enthusiastic admiration of every one, who never behold you in your home, surrounded by your lovely, merry children, without experiencing an overflowing of joyful self-congratulation, it is I who am the debtor to you for a degree of felicity perhaps never before possessed by any man on earth."

Let not my readers judge sarcastically of this conjugal conversation, for they must keep in mind that the wife has been raised from a state of solitude, anxiety, and threatened degradation, into the highest walk of life, to be idolised by her husband in the quiet shelter of the domestic circle, and worshipped by the crowd wherever she shows herself in public. Let them likewise keep in mind that the husband, who has the happiness of possessing her entire affection, esteem, and confidence, is no longer young; and although at forty-four a man can scarcely be reckoned elderly, yet Lord Berlington's mind has been prematurely sobered by the misfortunes attending his first thoughtless marriage, and the consequent anxiety arising from his being the youthful father of a delicate, and worse than motherless daughter. Christine's eyes rest upon her baby; she must acknowledge the truth of much that her husband has advanced, but she feels that she is blest to the fullest extent that is permitted to us here below; so, finding herself unequal to argue longer upon a point which she knows he will not yield, and the other members of the party having awakened to a rather noisy demonstration of sociability and mirth, she thinks that it will be as well to break up the têteà-tête, and go to the rescue of Emmeline, who, pinioned by Guy upon the sofa, is obliged to submit to the tyranny of little Algernon. She therefore takes the part of a politic wife, and, laying her hand softly on her adoring husband's arm, says, with a sly smile, "Sia come vuole, caro marito mio."*

Adieu fair Christine, thou child of beauty, genius, and heart! Adieu brave, generous, wife-tormenting Guy! Adieu to the noble master of the mansion, the happy Emmeline, the gentle Mrs. Mordaunt, the cheerful old admiral! And with them adieu to the attached and benevolent Nanny, carrying off the little girls to bed; to Mr. Macintosh, snapping his fingers, to the great delight of Cecil and Algernon; to his good-natured wife and Lizzie, engaged in petting the fat lazy fellows Turk and Bijou! "To each and all a fair good night!" May many, many a merry Christmas again reunite the happy family circle around the hospitable hearth of Berlington Castle.

* Be it as you will, my dear husband.

MYLOR CHURCH AND FALMOUTH HARBOUR,
CORNWALL.

BY NICHOLAS MICHELL.

'Tis not when jocund Morning walks the hills,
Scattering dew pearls, and laughing o'er the sea;
Or when bright noon the glen with sunshine fills,
And birds pipe jubilee,

That thou shouldst visit Mylor's pensive shades,
View creek and shore, and tread its leafy glades.
But when Eve, Nature's artist, paints the west
With many a ruby line and orange ray,
Striving to make a gorgeous couch of rest
For sleepy, weary Day,

And quiet lulls the hills and woods of green;
Then feels the heart the magic of the scene.
'Tis now that hour; I
gaze across the wave,
Burnished and glossy in the amber light;
The pebbly beach the little billows lave,
In thin-drawn lines of white,

Making a sound most faint on Evening's air,
As if the tranquil Ocean whispered prayer.
Oh, beautiful the circling hills that gird
Fal's sheltering harbour! 'mid wild storms of fear,
Safe in her nest as sits the brooding bird,

The great ship rideth here:

Fair-walled Trelissick decks the green hill's side,
Woods on each bank down sweeping to the tide.
The castles guard the waters far away,

But oft their stirring thunders swell the breeze;
St. Just's smooth slopes now catch the dying ray,
While gold bathes all the trees:

White cottages are sprinkled o'er each steep,
Like drifts of snow the flocks of nibbling sheep.
But Mylor's old grey church and rugged tower,

Unchanged amid a thousand changing years,
Attract my steps; how solemn, this calm hour,
The ancient pile appears!

Link between us and darkling ages fled,
A something holy watching o'er the dead.

*Pendennis and St. Mawes castles, built in the reign of Henry VIII. The former stands on an elevation upwards of three hundred feet above the sea, and commands a prospect as extensive and beautiful as any to be seen on the Cornish coasts.

The tottering belfry thickest ivies hide,
Pall woven for it by funereal time;
How often up the glens, across the tide,
Hath swung that bell's soft chime!
Yes, it hath tolled through ages; now you hear
A small, sweet trill; the redbreast carols near.

Mylor, beneath thy famed and mighty yew,

That gives death's dwellings beauty, let me stand;
The solemn and the lovely meet my view,

A charm on sea and land:

Not sad, though grave the thoughts that on me steal;
'Mid scene like this no gloom the heart can feel.
Here generations have renounced the dreams

That filled each busy brain in long-past day;
Here grief forgets its tears, and craft its schemes,
The gleesome child its play,

The village maid her conquests, here to close
Her sprightly, laughing eyes in calm repose.
By yon rude stone where lengthening shadows fall,
The honest peasant rests to plough no more;
In that white tomb, once courted, loved by all,

The squire's career is o'er;
Beneath where leaves low whisper like a brook,
The priest for ever now hath closed his book.
Yew, venerable, sombre, stately tree!

Sure thou dost droop in grief, and vigil keep
Beside the mound where, victims of the sea,

A hundred warriors sleep:

For fields of blood, for cannon's thunder-boom,
Above their heads now white-ruffed daisies bloom.*
Sweet resting-place, past mortal hopes and fears,

Old church that sanctifies and guards the graves,
Yew, braving tempests through a thousand years,
Wide, music-breathing waves!

Green-hanging wood, brown glen, and sloping hill—
Peace on them rest, and beauty haunt them still!
Peace too with him, whose voice so oft is heard

In those grey walls, whose counsels point to heaven!
Who cheers grief, age, with many a kindly word,

Whose alms to want are given;

Well may these lovely scenes calm bliss impart,
And nearer to his Maker draw his heart.

* In one grave near the great yew-tree lie interred more than a hundred soldiers, who, returning from Spain at the close of the Peninsular War, were most lamentably wrecked in a gale of wind op Trefusis Point.

THE POLITICAL CRISIS.

66

THERE is nothing a nation is more tenacious of than reference to the experience of the past-to the lessons of history in fact-in regard to foregone conclusions of policy. A people bent upon what they are agreed to designate as progress, " will neither tolerate being shown that they are only following. a beaten track, or, being asked if what they term "progress" is really such. There can be no question but that Great Britain has progressed under its old constitution to a very high degree of power and prosperity. This, owing to the industry, enterprise, and intelligence of the people, inspired, sustained, and developed by free institutions and the Protestant religion. A comparison with other countries, in which such a combination does not exist, is sufficient to establish the fact. The question, then, that should present itself to every thoughtful and patriotic mind is, will the carrying out the measures which are so generally associated in the present day with the idea of "progress" enhance that power and prosperity, or will it have an opposite effect? If such measures can only benefit a portion of the community, at the expense of the other, they do not constitute progress-class legislation is generally an injustice-but if they can be shown not to benefit any portion of the community, they are simply retrogressive and ruinous. Το take an example. It has been proposed to cheapen poor men's luxuries and comforts by a relief from the burdens of taxation; and as certain expenses must be borne by any form of government, it has been further proposed to make up the difference by a reduction in crippling, or altogether doing away with the army and navy. Now in what does the prosperity of our country chiefly lie? In

our manufactures.

But how do our manufactures find a market? By means of our vast mercantile marine. And our mercantile marine is indebted for its security to our army and navy, and to our colonial and other foreign possessions. The mercantile marine brings us back tropical and other produce in return for our manufactured goods. Our very manufactures depend in part upon a foreign or colonial supply of raw material. Take away, then, or diminish the efficiency of the army and navy, and there would be no security for our merchant service, and, consequently, no outlet for our manufactures. To reduce the duty upon tea, sugar, coffee, and other colonial produce, it is thus proposed to ruin capitalist and working-man alike; nor would the said colonial produce be cheaper, for, as it would then come via America or Russia, or by some other route, it would be far dearer than with the existing