dust with bowed head and broken heart. He struck his finger on the place, And he was a demigod, if a demigod be a And said,Thou ailest here, and here.'' being at once more and less than ordinary He knew all symptoms of disease, a few allemen, having a power which few attain, and viations, no remedies. The earth was eloowing it, in part, to a deficiency in qualities quent to him, but the skies were silent. Next in which few are so deficient; a being who to Luther he was the greatest of the Gerputs forth a stronger fascination over the earth because expending none of his strength" in yearnings towards heaven. In this sense Goethe was a demigod :

man's; next-but what a gulf between! Adequate to himself," was written on that broad calm forehead; and therefore men thronged eagerly about him to learn the incommunicable secret. It was not told, and will not be told. For man it is a weary way

"He took the suffering human race; He read each wound, each weakness clear; to God, but a wearier far to any demigod.

Indowment of virtue, and abandoning of vice,
knights and barons, with other states, and noble-
men of the realm, place their children in those
innes; though they desire not to have them
learned in the lawes, nor to live by the practice
thereof, but only upon their father's allowance.'
- Sir John Hawkins' History of Music, vol
II., p. 109.

INNS OF COURT IN FORTESCUE'S TIME. the reign of Henry the Sixth the students in each of the inns of court were computed at two hundred, and these bear but a small proportion to their number at this day. The reason given by Fortescue for the smallness of their number in his time is very curious, and is but one of a thousand facts which might be brought to prove the vast increase of wealth in this country. His words are these: In these greater innes there USE OF POINTS, IN ANCIENT COSTUME. can no student be maintained for less expences Points were anciently a necessary article in by the year than twenty markes; and if he have the dress, at least of men; in the ancient a servant to wait upon him as most of them have, comedies and other old books we meet with then so much the greater will his charges be. frequent mention of them: to describe them Now, by reason of this charges, the children only exactly, they were bits of string about eight of noblemen do study the laws in those innes, for inches in length, consisting of three strands of the poor and common sort of the people are not cotton yarn, of various colors, twisted together, able to bear so great charges for the exhibition and tagged at both ends with bits of tin plate; of their children. And merchant men can sel- their use was to tie together the garments worn dom find in their hearts to hinder their mer- on different parts of the body, particularly the chandize with so great yearly expences. And breeches or hose, as they were called hence the thus it falleth out that there is scant any man phrase "to untruss a point." "With the leathern found within the realm skillful and cunning in doublet, or jerkin, buttons were introduced, and the lawes, except he be a gentleman born and these in process of time rendered points useless; come of a noble stock. Wherefore they, more nevertheless they continued to be made till of than any other kind of men, have a special very late years, and that for a particular purregard to their nobility, and to the preservation pose. On Ascension-day it is the custom of the of their honor and fame. And to speak up inhabitants of. parishes with their officers to rightly, there is in these greater innes, yea and perambulate, in order to perpetuate the memory in the lesser too, beside the study of the lawes, as of their boundaries, and to impress the rememit were an university or school of all commend-brance thereof on the minds of young persons, able qualities requisite for noblemen. There they learn to sing, and to exercise themselves in all kinds of harmony. There also they practice dancing, and other noblemen's pastimes, as they use to do, which are brought up in the king's house. In the working days most of them apply themselves to the study of the law; and on the holy days to the study of holy scripture; and out of the time of divine service to the reading of chronicles. For there indeed are virtues studied, and vices exiled; so that, for the en

especially boys; to invite boys therefore to attend this business, some little gratuities were found necessary, accordingly it was the custom at the commencement of the procession to distribute to . cach a willow-wand, and at the end thereof a handful of the points above spoken of; which were looked on by them as honorary rewards long after they ceased to be useful, and were called tags. Sir John Hawkins' History of Music, vol. II., p. 112.

From Chambers' Journal.

A FAMILY ON THE WING.

THIS is the age of complainings. Nobody suffers in silence; nobody breaks his or her heart in secrecy and solitude: they all take "the public" into their confidence venient public, which, like murder,

"Hath no tongue, but speaks
With most miraculous organ;

the con

of course it is neither the confider's fault nor yet the confidant's, if the winds sometimes whisper that King Midas has asses' ears.

"Mr. Green," I submitted to the force of circumstances, and to the duties of a brother-inlaw.

He has dined with us every Sunday since. He and I are capital friends; regularly, when the ladies retire, he informs me what the Funds have been at day by day during the past week, and which is the safest railway to buy shares in for the week following. A most worthy person, I repeat; will make a kind husband, and I suppose Martha likes him; but- However, poor girl, she is old enough to judge for herself, and it is no busiMine is no such confession. I have no ness of mine. Sometime before long, I shall gossip to retail of my neighbors: I am a give her away at the old parish church—-quietvery quiet gentleman of forty or so, who pre-ly, without any show; I shall see her walk fer confining my interests and observations to down the church-aisle with old Mr. Green-he my own household, my own immediate family. in his best white waistcoat, and she in her Ay, there lies my inevitable grief, there lurks sober gray poplin, that she insists on being my secret wrong; I am the unhappy elder married in-not the clear soft muslin and long brother of a family involved in love affairs. lace-veil I quite well remember seeing Patty The fact has dimly dawned upon me, working at and blushing over, we won't say widening by degrees, ever since I came home how many years ago. Well, women are from India last year, and took upon myself better married, they say, but I think I would the charge of my five sisters, aged from about rather have had Martha an old maid.

But Martha might object to my particularizing. Good little Patty! what a merry creature she was when she went nutting and fishing with me. And what ugly caps she has taken to wearing, poor dear! And why can't she speak as gently when scolding the servants, as I remember our sweet-voiced, pretty mother used always to do? And why, in spite of their position, will she persist in calling Mr. Green, with a kind of frigid solemnity, “Mr. Green?" But he does not seem to mind it; probably he never was called anything else.

My second sister, Angeline, was fifteen when I left England; and the very loveliest creature I ever beheld. Everybody knew it, everybody acknowledged it. She could not walk down the street without people turning to look after her; she could not enter a room without creating a general whisper: "Who is she?" The same thing continued as she grew up to womanhood. All the world was at her feet; everybody said she would make a splendid marriage—become a countess at least; and I do believe Angeline herself had the fullest confidence in that probability. She refused lovers by the dozen: every letter I got told me of some new slaughter of Miss Angeline's. I would have pitied the poor fellows, only she was such a dazzling beauty, and no man falls out of love so safely as a man who falls in love with a beauty. I never heard that anybody died either by consumption, cord, or pistol, through the cruelty of my sister Angeline.

He is a very worthy person, nevertheless, and I have a great respect for him. When my sister Martha-Miss Heathcote, as she has been from her cradle-by letter announced to me at Madras that she intended to relinquish that title for the far less euphonious one of Mrs. Green, I was, to say the least of it, surprised. I had thought, for various reasons (of no moment now), that my eldest sister was not likely to marry-I rather hoped she would not. But, like most cruel damsels, she paid the We might have been so comfortable, poor penalty of her hard-heartedness; when I came Patty and I. However I had no business to home I found Angeline Heathcote Angeline interfere with either her happiness or her des- Heathcote still. Beautiful yet, beautiful extiny; so when, the first Sunday after my ceedingly; a walking picture, a visible poem : arrival at home, a cozy carriage drove up the it was a real pleasure to me to have such a avenue, and a bald, rather stout little man beautiful creature about the house. Though got out, to be soberly introduced to me as people did say, with a mysterious shake of

the head, that, handsome as she was, if I had only seen my sister two or three years ago! And Angeline herself became tenacious on the subject of new gowns, and did not like it to be generally known whether she or Charlotte was the elder. Good, plain, merry Charlotte, who never thought about either her looks or her age!

as in

wrong of interfering with any apparently sincere vows; so I sent for Lotty. talked with her: found she was just as foolish as he. That because he was the best waltzer, the sweetest tenor singer, and had the handsomest moustache she knew our lively Charlotte was quite contented to dance through life with Mr. Cuthbert, and decidedly proud of Yet Charlotte was the first who brought having his diamond ring on her third finger, me into trouble-that trouble which I am and being considered " engaged now called upon to bemoan. I had not been deed they were likely to remain, if their at home three months, when there came a minds changed not, for the next ten years. young gentleman-a very lively and pleasant So, what could I do? - Nothing but deal young gentleman too-who sang duets with with the young simpletons-if such they the younger girls, and made himself quite at were according to their folly. If true, home in my family circle. I myself did not their love would have time to prove itself much meddle with him, thought him a good- such; if false, they would best find out that natured lad, and no more-until one fine fact by its not being thwarted. I kissed morning he astonished me by requesting five away Lotty's tears, silly child! and next minutes' conversation with me in my study. Sunday I had the honor of carvirg for (Alas! such misfortunes come not singly future brother-in-law No. 2. my study has never been safe from similar applications and conversations since.)

I was very kind to the young man; when he blushed, I looked another way; when he trembled, I asked him to take a chair. I listened to his stammering explanations with the utmost patience and sympathy; I even tried to help him out with them till he came to the last clause.

Now, I do say that a man who asks you for your purse, your horse, your friendship, after only four weeks' acquaintance, has considerable courage; but a man who, after that brief period since his introduction, comes and asks you for your sister-why, one's first impulse is to kick him down stairs.

Happily, I controlled myself. I called to mind that Mr. Cuthbert was a very honest young fellow, and that if he did choose to risk his whole future upon the result of a month's laughing, and singing, and dancing at balls certainly it was his affair, not mine. My business solely related to Charlotte. I was just despatching it in the quickest and friendliest manner, by advising the young fellow to go back to college and not make a fool of himself in vain, when he informed me that my consent only was required, since he and Charlotte had been a plighted couple for the space of three whole days!

It never rains but it pours. Whether Angeline was roused at once to indignation and condescension by Charlotte's engagement - which she was the loudest in inveighing against- or whether, as was afterwards reported to me, she was influenced by a certain statistical newspaper paragraph, maliciously read aloud by Mr. Cuthbert for general edification, that women's chances of matrimony were proved by the late census to diminish fourfold between the ages of thirty and thirty-five; but most assuredly Angeline's demeanor changed. She stooped to be agreeable as well as beautiful. To more than one suitor whom she had of old swept haughtily by, did she now graciously incline; and the result was-partly owing to the gaities of this autumn's general election that the beauty of the county held a general election on her own private account.

Alas for me! In one week I had no less than four hopeful candidates requesting "the honor of an interview" in my study.

Angeline's decision was rather dilatory they were all such excellent matches; and, poor girl-with her beauty for her chief gift, and with all the tinsel adoration it brought her- she had never been used to think of marriage as anything more than a mere worldly arrangement. She was ready to choose a husband as she would a weddingI have always held certain crotchets on gown-dispassionately, carefully, as the best the paramount rights of lovers, and the out of a large selection of articles, each rich