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A master-piece soon makes its way to light.

The folk ran up and screamed, so soon as Stephen met their sight,

"Ah, Heavens! Ah, there he is! Yes, yes, 'tis he! Oh happy artist! happy wife!

Look at the laughing features! Only see

That open mouth, that seems as if 'twould speak!

I never saw before, in all my life,

Such nature: - no, I vow, there could not be
A truer likeness; so he looked to me,
When he stood godfather last week."

They brought the wooden spouse,

That now alone the widow's heart could cheer,
Up to the second story of the house,

Where he and she had slept one blessed year
There in her chamber, having turned the key,
She shut herself with him, and sought relief
And comfort in the midst of bitter grief;
And held herself as bound, if she would be
Forever worthy of his memory,

To weep away the remnant of her life.-
What more could one desire of any wife?

So sat Dorinda many weeks, heart-broken,
And had not, my informant said
In all the time to living creature spoken,
Except her house-dog and her serving-maid.
And this, after so many weeks of woe,

Was the first day that she had dared to glance
Out of her window. And to-day, by chance,
Just as she looked, a stranger stood below.

Up in a twinkling came the housemaid running
And said, with look of sweetest, half-hid cunning,
Madam, a gentleman would speak with you:
A lovely gentleman as one would wish to view;
Almost as lovely as your blessed one.
He has some business must be done;
Business, he said, he could not trust with me."-

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Must just make up some story then," said she.

"I cannot leave, one moment, my dear man;
In short, go down and do the best you can.
Tell him I'm sick with sorrow; for, ah me!
It were no wonder!"-

“Madam, 'twill not do; He has already had a glimpse of you Up at your window, as he stood below.

You must come down; now do, I pray;
The stranger will not thus be sent away.
He's something weighty to impart, I know;
I should think, madam, you might go."

A moment the young widow stands perplext,
Fluttering 'twixt memory and hope; the next,
Embracing, with a sudden glow,

The image that so long had soothed her woe,
She lets the stranger in.—"Who can it be?
A suitor?" asks the maid: already she
Is listening at the key-hole; but her ear
Only Dorinda's plaintive tone can hear.
The afternoon slips by. What can it mean?
The stranger goes not yet has not been seen
To leave the house. Perhaps he makes request
Unheard of boldness! to remain a guest?
Dorinda comes at length; and, sooth to say, alone.
Where is the image, her dear, sad delight?
"Maid," she begins, "say, what shall now be done?
The gentleman will be my guest to-night.

Go, instantly, and boil the pot of fish." "Yes, madam, yes, with pleasure—as you wish." Dorinda goes back to her room again.

The maid ransacks the house to find a stick

Of wood to make a fire beneath the pot:-in vain; She cannot find a single one. Then quick

She calls Dorinda out in agony.

66

"Ah, madam, hear the solemn truth," says she: There's not a stick of fire-wood in the house. Suppose I take the image down and split it? That Is good hard wood, and to our purpose pat,”— "The image?

yes do!

No, indeed! But well - well

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What need have you been

touse?"

making all this

"But, ma'am, the image is too much for me;

I cannot lift it all alone, you see;

'Twould go out of the window easily."—

"A lucky thought! And that will split it for you

too.

The gentleman in future lives with me;

I may no longer nurse this misery."

Up went the sash, and out the blessed Stephen flew.

- Translation of C. T. BROOKS.

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ELLIUS, AULUS, a Roman grammarian; born, probably at Rome, in the early part of the second century of the Christian era; and died about the year 180. Little is known of the incidents of his life, except what is gathered by personal references in his books. He studied grammar and rhetoric at Rome and became a resident of Athens, where he studied philosophy, and wrote his Noctes Attica (Attic Nights), a work of twenty books. He continued his work after his return to Rome. It is compiled from a sort of diary, which he kept for many years, jotting down observations on grammar, geometry, philosophy, history, scraps of conversation, and notes on persons, as well as extracts from books he read. Though there is no sequence or order of arrangement observed in the books, they are valuable for the insight they give into the pursuits and society of the time and selections from the lost works of ancient authors.

Gellius wrote during that period of Latin literature which commenced during the reign of Hadrian, and

which was characterized by affected archaisms and pedantic learning, combined at times with reckless innovation and experiment, resulting in the creation of a large number of new phrases and the adoption of many plebeian expressions. Gellius cultivated a pure style, but his works abound in rare and archaic words and unheard-of diminutives. He makes some very pointed remarks on those who delight in obsolete words, but his own practice in this respect is not above criticism.

Beloe, the translator of the Noctes Attica, thus speaks of the style of Aulus Gellius as compared with that of Herodotus: "In translating Herodotus, I had before me a writer who has long been esteemed as the finest model of the Ionic dialect. Gellius, on the other hand, though he may boast of many and even peculiar beauties, is far removed from that standard of excellence which distinguished the Augustan age. The structure of his sentences is often intricate; his choice of words is singular, and in some instances even affected; and in addition to the difficulties arising from his own diction, other, and I think greater, are to be found in the numerous pages which he has happily preserved from oblivion. Painful indeed was the toil which I have experienced in my progress through the uncouth and antiquated phraseology of the Roman law; through the undisciplined, though masculine, eloquence of Roman historians and orators."

"Gellius," said the Cornhill Magazine, "was a pedant of the first water; we shall find his reminiscences more curious than either witty or pointed. He had an honest affection for almost every branch of knowledge, but there were three things which had an especial

attraction for him-grammar in its comprehensive sense, anecdotes, and scandal.”

EX PEDE HERCULES."

Plutarch, in the tract which he wrote on the difference existing among men in the accomplishments of mind and body, tells us with what skill and acuteness Pythagoras the philosopher reasoned, in discovering and ascertaining the height and size of Hercules. For as it was well known that Hercules had measured with his feet the space of the stadium at Pisa, near the temple of Jupiter Olympius, and that the length of it was six hundred of his steps; and that the other stadia in Greece, afterward introduced, consisted also of six hundred paces, though somewhat shorter; he drew this obvious conclusion: That according to the rules of proportion, the exact measure of the foot of Hercules as much exceeded those of other men, as the Olympic stadium was longer than the rest. Taking, therefore, the size of the foot of Hercules and adding to it such a height of body as the regular symmetry of all the other limbs demanded, he inferred from it, as a just consequence, that Hercules as much surpassed other men in stature, as the Olympic stadium exceeded all those described with the same number of paces. - From Noctes Attica.

THE RING-FINGER.

We have been told that the ancient Greeks had a ring upon the last finger but one of the left hand. They say too that the Romans usually wore theirs in the same manner. Appion, in his books upon Egypt, says, the reason of it is this, "That by dissecting and laying open human bodies, as the custom was in Egypt, which the Greeks call anatomy, it was discovered that from that finger only, of which we have spoken, a very fine nerve proceeded, and passed quite to the heart: wherefore it does not seem without reason, that that finger should particularly be honored with such an ornament, which

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