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154 MY NEIGHBOURS OVER THE WAY.-SONNET. many books about the old lady has a white and feminine hand they do not dine at one o'clock -they went twice to church last Sunday, there is something superior, yet something foreign and forlorn about them something unusually subdued about the two younger boys something in the deportment of the eldest unusually deferential to his mother, and kind to the little ones. I fell in with the little girl by accident yesterday, that is, by accident on purpose. She was on her way to the fashionable shop at our end of the town; suddenly it struck me that I had urgent need of two yards and a half of plain, broad, green ribbon, which my servant could not possibly choose, and I stepped in before her. Mr. Hopkins was supereminently delighted to see me on his boards for the first time this season, and began to discuss ribbons with the gravity of Newton speculating on rainbows (a rainbow to Mr. Hopkins is nothing but a box of ribbons in the sky), when in walked my little incognita. There were many persons in the shop, and she held back abashed; my ears were open perforce to the sounds of “grass green two and fourpence, a singularly neat article for a plain cottage bonnet sea green, one and eightpence, a cool, elegant looking thing, and remarkably firm fabric: -What did you please to want, Miss? (excuse me ma'am, a second), drawing pencils? -no Miss we do not keep pencils, (a splendid ribbon there, ma'am, the tint of unripe corn, two shillings), can I show you any thing else, Miss? “My dear,” said I,” you will procure drawing pencils a few doors below; I will take you there, if you will wait a moment.” The child thanked me with a pair of eyes that looked like large, lustrous planets, shining through a mist; but if she had the eyes of an antelope she had also its timidity, for when I procured her the pencils she only thanked me with another beaming glance, and then ran from me. It then struck me that I wanted some French cambric, and I re entered Mr. H.'s shop. “Mr. Hopkins, who is that little girl? “Really, upon my word, ma'am, she is a perfectly entire stranger to me! Mrs. Hopkins, do you know who that little girl is? “Mrs. Hopkins was enlarging on the merits of some stout huckaback, which, to judge from her eulogy, must have given its word of honour never to wear out; when she heard the question, she gave it undivided attention, for she considered herself vastly superior to her husband as a saleswoman, and in knowledge of her customers ' business.” Certainly, Mr. Hopkins, I do know that there little lady and all about her; didn't I hear last Monday that she, and her brother, and her grandmother, are just come from India, as rich as Jews, are looking out for a house in this neighbourhood, to have the benefit of pure air. And didn't I hear it yesterday all contradicted? “What is your own opinion, Mrs. Hopkins?” said I. “Well and indeed, ma'am, it is hard to say.” A thorough bred gossip never likes to confess herself ignorant, so Mrs. Hopkins returned to her huckaback“if you want it for towels, or want it for common kitchen table cloths, it is a piece in a thousand I wish you good morning, ma'am, good morning -I dare say (this was in a half whisper at the door) I could get to know something about the strangers direct from the servant of the house; Peggy here most days.” “Not on any account, Mrs. Hopkins,” said I, somewhat alarmed for my character; “not on any account. I merely asked because the child's appearance interested me; “and I walked off, half vexed at, half ashamed of, my sympathy. But this afternoon it has returned with renewed strength, for I see the two little boys walking hand in hand up and down the pavement, reminding me, I know not why, of the babes in the wood: -now they stand still, and watch with boyish eagerness the flight of a superb kite, with a tail two yards long, and ornamented in front with stars and crowns, and anon they resume their steady hand in hand walk; their sister, too, is at the window, tracing something with one of the pencils of yesterday; the old lady (and a lady she is) is reading but thinking at intervals, and on subjects foreign to the book, unless the book be a sad one, one that will not let you think of your own affairs and hark! -from their open window, through my open window, there comes music: the eldest is playing on his flute. Poor, poor things! -that Indian tale is not true; they are Spanish emigrants, or the father of those children was probably one of the Carbonari. I will call on them to morrow. Alas, how refinement of mind heightens bodily privation! What a misfortune is sensibility! That girl looks like an embryo Corrinne: -the A's, and B's, and the P's, I think, I could get to call on my strangers; at all events, I will call myself to morrow.

NOTE. The writer of the above was, by a fortunate chance, spared the pain of making herself ridiculous and her friends angry, by discovering, just before she put her sympathetic plans into execution, that her neighbours over the way had an engagement at the minor theatre; that the babes in the wood danced hornpipes, their interesting brother sung comic songs, and the lady with the feminine white hand, was a celebrated Columbine. So much for curiosity: so much for sympathy!

SONNET. “I speak to Time.” BYRON.

What voice may speak to thee, tomb builder, Time?, Thou wast, and art and shalt be, when the breath That holds communion now, is hush'd in death. Upon thy tablet, earth a page sublime Are chronicled the wrecks of buried years; The cities of the lava sepulchre— The relics of heav'n's wrathful minister— Yield up their hoarded history of tears! The Pyramids, and Mausoleum proud, Attest of thee, and tell of those that were; Of sounding names, now heard as empty air- That once were as the voice of nations loud: The Persian and the Greek are crowding there, Feuds are forgot, when foes the narrow dwelling crowd!

W.