spell of the Alas! alas! The echoes

pleasure, wondering whether they were under the same fancy that once rendered this valley a fairy-land to me. to me everything now stood revealed in its simple reality. no longer answered with wizard tongues; the dream of youth was at an end; the spell of Sleepy Hollow was broken!

I sought the ancient church on the following Sunday. There it stood on its green bank among the trees; the Pocantico swept by it in a deep, dark stream, where I had so often angled; there expanded the mill-pond, as of old, with the cows under the willows on its margin, knee-deep in water, chewing the cud, and lashing the flies from their sides with their tails. The hand of improvement, however, had been busy with the venerable pile. The pulpit fabricated in Holland had been superseded by one of modern construction; and the front of the semi-Gothic edifice was decorated by a semi-Grecian portico. Fortunately the two weathercocks remained undisturbed on their perches at each end of the church, and still kept up a diametrical opposition to each other on all points of windy doctrine.

On entering the church the changes of time continued to be apparent. The elders round the pulpit were men whom I had left in the gamesome frolic of their youth, but who had succeeded to the sanctity of station of which they once had stood so much in awe. What most struck my eye was the change in the female part of the congregation. Instead of the primitive garbs of homespun manufacture and antique Dutch fashion, I beheld French sleeves, French caps, and French collars, and a fearful fluttering of French ribands.

When the service was ended, I sought the church-yard in which I had sported in my unthinking days of boyhood. Several of the modest brown stones, on which were recorded in Dutch the names and virtues of the patriarchs, had disappeared; and had been succeeded by others of white marble, with urns, and wreaths, and scraps of English tombstone poetry, marking the intrusion of taste and literature, and the English language, in this once unsophisticated Dutch neighbourhood.

As I was stumbling about among these silent, yet eloquent, memo. rials of the dead, I came upon names familiar to me; of those who had paid the debt of nature during the long interval of my absence. Some I remembered my companions in boyhood, who had sported with me on the very sod under which they were now mouldering ; others who in those days had been the flower of the yeomanry, figuring in Sunday finery on the church-green; others, the whitehaired elders of the sanctuary, once arrayed in awful sanctity around the pulpit, and ever ready to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the wanton stripling, who, now a man, sobered by years, and schooled by vicissitudes, looked down pensively upon their graves. "Our fathers," thought I, "where are they !-and the prophets, can they live for ever !"

I was disturbed in my meditations by the noise of a troop of idle urchins, who came gambolling about the place where I had so often gambolled. They were checked, as I and my playmates had often been, by the voice of the sexton, a man staid in years and demeanour. I looked wistfully in his face; had I met him anywhere else, I should, probably, have passed him by without remark; but, here I was alive to the traces of former times, and detected in the demure

features of this guardian of the sanctuary the lurking lineaments of one of the very playmates I have alluded to. We renewed our acquaintance. He sat down beside me on one of the tombstones over which we had leaped in our juvenile sports, and we talked together about our boyish days, and held edifying discourse on the instability of all sublunary things, as instanced in the scene around us. He was rich in historic lore, as to the events of the last thirty years, and the circumference of thirty miles, and from him I learned the appalling revolution that was taking place throughout the neighbourhood. All this I clearly perceived he attributed to the boasted march of intellect, or rather, to the all-pervading influence of steam. He bewailed the times when the only communication with town was by the weekly market boat-the "Farmer's Daughter," which, under the pilotage of the worthy Gabriel Requa, braved the perils of the Tappan Sea. Alas! Gabriel, and the "Farmer's Daughter" slept in peace. Two steam-boats now splashed and paddled up daily to the little rural port of Tarrytown. The spirit of speculation and improvement had seized even upon that once quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighbourhood was laid out into town lots. Instead of the little tavern below the hill, where the farmers used to loiter on market-days, and indulge in cider and ginger-bread, an ambitious hotel, with cupola and verandahs, now crested the summit, among churches built in the Grecian and Gothic styles, showing the great increase of piety and polite taste in the neighbourhood. As to Dutch dresses. and sun-bonnets, they were no longer tolerated, or even thought of; not a farmer's daughter but now went to town for the fashions; nay, a city milliner had recently set up in the village, who threatened to reform the heads of the whole neighbourhood.

I had heard enough! I thanked my old playmate for his intelligence, and departed from the Sleepy Hollow church, with the sad conviction that I had beheld the last lingerings of the good old Dutch times, in this once-favoured region. If anything were wanting to confirm this impression, it would be the intelligence which has just reached me, that a bank is about to be established in the aspiring little port just mentioned. The fate of the neighbourhood is, therefore, sealed. I see no hope of averting it. The golden mean is at an end. The country is suddenly to be deluged with wealth. The late simple farmers are to become bank-directors, and drink claret and champagne; and their wives and daughters to figure in French hats and feathers; for French wines and French fashions commonly keep pace with paper money. How can I hope that even Sleepy Hollow may escape the general awakening? In a little while I fear

the slumber of ages will be at an end; the strum of the piano will succeed to the hum of the spinning-wheel; the trill of the Italian opera to the nasal quaver of Ichabod Crane; and the antiquarian visitor to the Hollow, in the petulance of his disappointment, may pronounce all that I have recorded of that once spell-bound region, a fable. GEOFFREY CRAYON.

172

VINCENT EDEN;

OR, THE OXONIAN.

BY QUIP.

CHAPTER VII.

THE HIEROKOSMION.—AN AVOWAL.-A NUNEHAM PARTY-THE BROTHERS.

THUS terminated, as recorded in our last chapter, the Freshman's first adventure with the Proctor; and, after a due participation in the sympathetic condolences of the social circle at present engaged in the discussion of Raffleton's champagne, on the subject of that gentleman's rustication, and a full explanation of the somewhat ludicrous circumstances which had led to it, he took his leave of the party, and prepared to return once more to his rooms with the firm determination of losing no time in setting about his imposition for the Reverend Burnaby Birch.

Just as he had descended the staircase a mild-looking personage with a snowy neckcloth, neatly-trimmed whiskers, and an appearance altogether strongly resembling that of a beneficed clergyman of the established church, glided into the passage, and, with the sweetest of smiles, volunteered to open the street-door for him.

"I beg you won't think of giving yourself any such trouble, sir," said Eden, wondering who the polite gentleman could be, and surmising that it might possibly be Raffleton's private tutor, lodging in the same house with him. "Really, sir-I must beg"

"Trouble, sir !" said the mild man; "there are moments when trouble becomes a pleasure. Dear me !" added he, after fumbling at the door-handle for some time," dear me, this handle does stick so. Perhaps you would'nt mind walking round. This way, sir, if you please. I say," resumed the mild man, as Eden followed him through the passage,—“I say, I'm afraid our friend up there has got into a scrape with the Proctor this morning-eh?"

More fully convinced than ever of the relation in which the mild man stood to Raffleton by the interest which he evidently took in his welfare, Eden briefly narrated the circumstances of his friend's rustication.

"You don't say so !" ejaculated the mild man. "Ah!" proceeded he, halting suddenly, and catching Eden gently by the arm,—“ah! what a pity it is, my dear young sir, that youth will still be youth! What a pity it is, I say, that all those fine feelings, all those fervid aspirations, all that buoyancy and elasticity of spirit which belong to the spring-time of life, should only tempt their gay possessor to pass the

rubicon of prudence as easily as-as he would a double post and rail. Ah !"

Here the mild man stopped short, and scrutinized Eden's face for a moment.

"Sir," he then resumed,-" sir, I give you my honour that, in losing Mr. Raffleton, I shall lose more than I can express. By the playfulness of his disposition, the profuseness of his liberality, the-I had almost said nobility of his manners, he has endeared himself to all the house. Ah! why will not Proctors remember that they too have once been young?"

Here the mild man suddenly threw open a door which led into a most extensive shop, evidently devoted to the tailoring business.

"You appear, sir," said the mild man, "to have been but a short time in Oxford. In that short time, however, it is not absolutely impossible that the name of Mr. Walrus and his Hierokosmion may have reached you."

"Mr. Walrus and his what?" asked Eden, fairly astonished at last beyond all power of suppression.

"Hierokosmion," said the mild man. "I am that Mr. Walrusthis is my Hierokosmion."

"Oh!" said Eden, becoming at once alive to the reason why the street-door had stuck, and he himself been invited to make his exit through the shop. "Oh! I see now."

"Yes," resumed Mr. Walrus, looking with an air of ineffable dignity, blended with extreme sweetness, round the shop; "this is my Hierokosmion, or temple of fashion; being a Greek word as I need not tell you, sir, compounded of hieron-fashion, and kosmos-a temple. Bring down some of them summer waistcoatings, Jemes."

James, who was the shop-boy, with a rival white tie to his master's, instantly proceeded to obey.

“Thank you,” said Eden, "I'm not exactly in want of

"No, sir," said Mr. Walrus; "I should only wish you, as a friend of Mr. Raffleton's, just to glance over the establishment, with a view to future favours. More stripes, Jemes. Our waterproof cloaks, sir, are unrivalled-allow me. There is a fact, sir, connected with these, which is, I believe, not generally known. You have heard of Grace Darling, of course, sir."

“Oh, yes,” said Eden, somewhat at a loss to know what was coming next. "The lady who saved some lives at the wreck, you mean. Yes. Well

“Well, sir,” said Mr. Walrus, mysteriously sinking his voice to a whisper," well, sir, it is not generally known,-as I said before, but, during the whole of that tremendous storm, when the waves ran moun. tains high, and the rain fell in torrents round the frail boat in which they had embarked, that heroic girl and her aged parent were enveloped

in two of my patent waterproofs, and were thus enabled to brave alike the blast and the billow in the cause of suffering humanity. I never see the picture of her, sir, but I identify myself in a manner with that You smile, sir; I can refer to my books for the fact. • Walrus waterproofs,' we used to call them before; 'Darling dreadnoughts' we call them ever since, for the alliteration, you perceive, sir. Some of them figured Egyptian silks in the window, Jemes."

6

cause.

"Yes," said Eden, "it's all very well; and you're very poetical, Mr. Walrus; but really I don't happen to

"No, sir," said Mr. Walrus; "of course not-that is, at present. Sweet thing this rose and rhododendron pattern, sir. This is a nice quiet thing, too, for breakfasting with a tutor, or anything in a mild way. Allow me, sir; more to the light-so."

"You seem to have reduced the study of dress to a science," said Eden.

"Science, sir," said the mild man; "I believe you. Science! ah! where should we be without it? We, sir, who breathe a classical airwho live, if I may be allowed the expression, in a logical atmosphere, unconsciously learn to systematise our ideas on the most trifling matters, much more so on such a noble study as that of dress. There are in Oxford, sir, four sorts of dress: in a logical moment I divided them. There is, first, the quiet, or gentlemanly; secondly, the romantic, or ultra-gorgeous; and thirdly, the sporting, or cord-and-cut-away cos. tume; and, fourthly, the domestic, or dirty; which last is confined solely to reading-men. Jemes, show the gentleman that romantic dresswaistcoat we made for the Earl of May to go to the Woodstock ball in. Singularly ultra-gorgeous, is it not, sir?"

If there be any among my readers whose lot it has been, even as it once was mine, to be exposed, as Freshmen, to the tender mercies of Mr. Walrus, they will readily believe that our hero found himself utterly unable to extricate himself from the meshes of the "Hierokos. mion," until he had been fairly (or rather unfairly) seduced into an order for a full suit of "quiet or gentlemanly" vestments.

"And mind you let me have them soon, Mr. Walrus," said Eden : 66 or else, you know, youth will still be youth,' and I shall come and blow you up."

"Youth be d-d!" said the mild man, in the surliest of tones, and with a total change of manner, as his new customer quitted the shop. "I say, Jemes," shouted this double-faced Janus of the Temple of Fashion," Jemes, that Raffleton's been and got rusticated at last. I knew he would before long. You see and get the money for his lodg. ings out of him this blessed day, and make him give me a note of hand, payable at three months, for his tailor's bill, or else I'll put him in the Vice-Chancellor's Court before he goes, and keep him there all the Long Vacation, tell him."