turnpikes and palisadoes, all after the modern way of fortification. After you had passed several courts you came to the centre, wherein you might behold the constable himself in his own lodgings, which had windows fronting to each avenue, and ports to sally out upon all occasions of prey or defence.

In this mansion he had for some time dwelt in peace and plenty, without danger to his person by swallows from above, or to his palace by brooms from below: when it was the pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a wandering bee, to whose curiosity a broken pane in the glass had discovered itself, and in he went; where, expatiating awhile, he at last happened to alight upon one of the outward walls of the spider's citadel; which, yielding to the unequal weight, sunk down to the very foundation. Thrice he endeavoured to force his passage, and thrice the centre shook. The spider within, feeling the terrible convulsion, supposed at first that nature was approaching to her final dissolution. However, he at length valiantly resolved to issue forth and meet his fate. Meanwhile the bee had acquitted himself of his toils and, posted securely at some distance, was employed in cleansing his wings, and disengaging them from the ragged remnants of the cobweb.

By this time the spider was adventured out, when, beholding the chasms, the ruins and dilapidations of his fortress, he was very near at his wits' end, he stormed and raged like a madman, and swelled till he was ready to burst. At length, casting his eye upon the bee, and wisely gathering causes from events (for they knew each other by sight).

"You giddy puppy, is it you, with a vengeance, that has made this litter here? could you not look before you? do you think I have nothing else to do but to mend and repair after you?"

"Good words, friend," said the bee (having now pruned himself, and being disposed to be droll): "I'll give you my hand and word to come near your kennel no more; I was never in such a terrible pickle since I was born."

"Sirrah,” replied the spider, "if it were not for breaking an old custom in our family, never to stir abroad against an enemy, I should come and teach you better manners."

"I pray have patience," said the bee, "or you'll spend your substance, and, for ought I see, you may stand in need of it all, toward the repair of your house."

"Rogue, rogue," replied the spider, "yet methinks you should have more respect to a person whom all the world allows to be so much your betters."

"By my troth," said the bee, "the comparison will amount to a very good jest; and you will do me a favour to let me know the reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful a dispute."

"Not to disparage myself," said the spider, "by the comparison with such a rascal, what art thou but a vagabond without house or home, without stock or inheritance? born to no possession of your own, but a pair of wings and a drone-pipe. Your livelihood is a universal plunder upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a violet. Whereas I am a domestic animal, furnished with a native stock within myself. This large castle (to show my improvements in the mathematics) is all built with my own hands, and the materials extracted altogether out of my own person."

"I am glad," answered the bee, "to hear you grant at least that I am come honestly by my wings and my voice; for then, it seems, I am obliged to Heaven

alone for my flights and my music; and Providence would never have bestowed on me two such gifts, without designing them for the noblest ends. I visit indeed all the flowers and blossoms of the field and garden; but whatever I collect thence enriches myself, without the least injury to their beauty, their smell, or their taste. Now, for you and your skill in architecture and mathematics, I have little to say; in that building of yours there might, for ought I know, have been labour and method enough; but, by woful experience for us both, it is too plain the materials are naught; and I hope you will henceforth take warning, and consider duration and matter, as well as method and art.

You boast indeed of being obliged to no other creature, but of drawing and spinning out all for yourself; that is to say, if we may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you possess a good plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast; and, though I would by no means lessen or disparage your genuine stock of either, yet I doubt you are somewhat obliged, for an increase of both, to a little foreign assistance. Your inherent portion of dirt does not fail of acquisitions, by sweepings exhaled from below; and one insect furnishes you with a share of poison to destroy another. So that, in short, the question comes all to this; whether is the nobler being of the two, that which, by a lazy contemplation of four inches round, by an overweening pride, feeding and engendering on itself, turns all into excrement and venom, producing nothing at all but flybane and a cobweb; or that which, by a universal range, with long search, much study, true judgment, and distinction of things, brings home honey and wax."

SWIFT.

A WILD NIGHT AT SEA.

On, on, on, over the countless miles of angry space roll the long heaving billows, Mountains and caves are here, and yet are not; for what is now the one, is now the other; then all is but a boiling heap of rushing water. Pursuit and flight, and mad return of wave on wave, and savage struggling, ending in a spouting up of foam that whitens the black night; incessant change of place, and form, and hue; constancy in nothing but eternal strife; on, on, on they roll, and darker grows the night, and louder howl the winds, and more clamorous and fierce become the million voices in the sea, when the wild cry goes forth upon the storm, "A ship!"

Still she comes striving on; and at her boldness and the spreading cry, the angry waves rise up above each other's hoary heads to look; and round about the vessel, far as mariners on her decks can pierce into the gloom, they press upon her, forcing each other down, and starting up, and rushing forward from afar, in dreadful curiosity. High over her they break; and round her surge and roar; and giving place to others, moaningly depart, and dash themselves to fragments in their baffled anger. Still she

comes onward bravely. And though the eager multitude crowd thick and fast upon her all the night, and dawn of day discovers the untiring trail yet bearing down upon the ship in an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes, with dim lights burning on the hull, and people there, asleep; as if no deadly element were piercing in at every seam and chink, and no drowned seamen's grave, with but a plank to cover it, were yawning in the unfathomable depths below.

DICKENS.

JANE AUSTEN.

[Jane Austen was the daughter of the rector of Steventon, Hampshire. Her principal works are, "Pride and Prejudice," "Sense and Sensibility," "Mansfield Park," Northranger

66

Abbey," &c. She was born in 1775, and died 1817.]

THE VOLUBLE LADY.

Miss Bates and Miss Fairfax, escorted by two gentlemen, walked into the room. Everybody's words were soon lost under the incessant flow of Miss Bates, who came in talking, and had not finished her speech under many minutes after her being admitted into the circle at the fire. As the door opened she was heard,—

"So very obliging of you!-No rain at all. Nothing to signify. I do not care for myself. Quite thick shoes. And Jane declares-well!" (as soon as she was within the door), "well! This is brilliant indeed! This is admirable Excellently contrived, upon my word. Nothing wanting. Could not have imagined it. So well lighted up! Jane, Jane, look! did you ever see anything? Oh! Mr. Weston, you must really have had Aladdin's lamp. Good Mrs. Stokes would not know her own room again. I saw her as I came in; she was standing in the entrance. 'Oh! Mrs. Stokes,' said I—but I had not time for more." She was now met by Mrs. Weston. "Very well, I thank you, ma'am. I hope you are quite well.