velops the disposition and habits of her husband in a light not the most favourable, while it awakens no common sympathy for herself.

“That she hath been no charge to the said Philip Gray; and, during all the said time, hath not only found herself in all manner of apparel, but also for her children to the number of twelve, and most of the furniture of his house, and paying forty pounds a-year for his shop, almost providing every thing for her son at Eton School; and now he is at Peter-House, Cambridge.

"Notwithstanding which, almost ever since he hath been married, the said Philip hath used her in the most inhuman manner, by beating, kicking, pinching, and with the vilest and most abusive language; that she hath been in the utmost fear of her life, and hath been obliged this last year to quit his bed and lie with her sister. This she was resolved to bear if possible, not to leave her shop of trade, for the sake of her son, to be able to assist him in the maintenance of him at the University, since his father won't."

To the love and courage of this mother, Gray

owed his life when a child: she ventured to do what few women are capable of doing, to open a vein with her own hand, and thus removed the paroxysm arising from a fulness of blood, to which, it is said, all her other children had fallen victims.We need not wonder that Gray mentioned such a mother with a sigh.

SADI, AND HIS WIFE.

THIS celebrated Persian Poet and Moralist was taken prisoner by the Turks, and condemned to work at the fortifications at Tripoli. While in this deplorable state, he was redeemed by a merchant of Aleppo, who had so much regard for him as to give him his daughter in marriage, with a dowry of one hundred sequins. This lady, however, being an intolerable scold, proved the plague of his life, and gave him that unfavourable opinion of the sex, which appears occasionally in his works. During one of their altercations, she reproached him with the favours her family had conferred on him-" Are not you the man," said she, " my father bought for ten pieces of gold?" "Yes," answered Sadi, "and he sold me again for a hundred sequins,"

NONSENSE VERSES.

AMPHIGOURIE is a word composed of a Greek adverb, signifying about, and of a substantive, signifying a circle; it must, therefore, convey an idea somewhat similar to what plain Englishmen familiarly express by the term circumbendibus. It is a word much employed by the French, to distinguish certain little lyrical parodies of a burlesque nature, and which, turning on words and ideas, without order, or any particular meaning, appear, in spite of this incoherence, to carry some sense.

Here is one, imitated from the French. It is as unmeaning a piece of verse as ever posed an admirer of the Cruscan school, but it sounds well, and is what the French call richly rhymed.

"How happy to defend our heart,

When Love has never thrown a dart!
But ah! unhappy when it bends,
While pleasure her soft bliss suspends.
Sweet in a wild disordered strain,
A lost and wandering heart to gain.
Oft, in mistaken language wooed,
The skilful lover's understood."
VOL. III.

This song has such a resemblance to meaning, that the celebrated Fontenelle, hearing it sung, imagined he discovered in it a glimpse of sense, and desired to have it repeated. "Don't you see," said Madame de Tencin, "they are nonsense verses?" "It resembles so much," replied the malignant wit, "the fine verses I have heard here, that it is not surprising I should, for once, be mistaken."

There is a certain kind of pleasure which we receive from absurd poetry; but ordinary nonsense verses are not sufficiently nonsensical. Taylor, the water-poet, has described the pleasurable sensation which exquisite nonsense can give. In addressing himself to Coriat, who had a very happy turn for the nonsensical, he says,- "Your plenteous want of wit is wondrous witty."

One of the finest specimens of this sort of verses, is to be found in No. 59 of "Blackwood's Magazine;" and this has an additional zest from the circumstance of its having been frequently copied as an example of beautiful writing. "I wrote it," says its witty author, "merely to prove I could write fine, if I liked ; but it cost me a lot of trouble. I actually had

to go to the Commercial Buildings, and swallow seven cups of the most sloppish Bohea I could get, and eat a quartern loaf cut into thin slices, before I was in a fit mood to write such stuff. If I were to continue that diet, I should be the first of your pretty song writers in the empire; but it would be the death of me in a week. I am not quite recovered from that breakfast yet; and I do not wonder at the unfortunate figure the poor Cockneys cut, who are everlastingly suffering the deleterious effects of tea-drinking."

""Tis sweet upon th' impassion'd wave
To hear the voice of music stealing,
And while the dark winds wildly rave,

To catch the genuine soul of feeling!
While all around, the ether blue

Its dim majestic beam is shedding,

And roseate tints of heavenly hue

Are through the midnight darkness spreading!

So is it, when the thrill of love

Through every burning pulse is flowing;
And, like the foliage of the grove,

A holy light on all bestowing!

O never from this fever'd heart

Shall dreams on wings of gold be flying;