he had disposed of at least one of his pursuers. But the men who accompanied the dog were close at hand. There were three of themtall, strong koepers-one of whom made a sudden dash at the gap, but the old man swung his gun round his head, and brought the full weight of its heavy stock against the chest of his pursuer, who fell back into the ditch with a groan.

"There's only one of them," whispered one of the men to the other; do yon leap the hedge a little lower down, and I'll keep him at bay here. But the old man quitted his post at the hedge-gap, and ran hastily along the wood, in the direction of his companion, who must by this time have got a good start, ahead. But both of the keepers had now dashed through the hedge, and were coming up close at his heels. He was old, he was tired, he was almost ready to drop down with fatigue; but still he held on, and ran as fast as his feeble legs could carry him.

II. THE COURT-HOUSE.

ever dreams of going to learn virtue in a criminal court?

Look at these heads-most shaggy and unkempt, rough and large; some of them bullet heads, protuberant and massive; others "with foreheads villanously low," exhibiting in the regions of the moral feelings and intellect, the very minimum of development. The faces are mostly unwashed; perspiration bedews them; some are red and fleshy, open mouthed, large nostrilled, and large eared. Others are pallid and sharpened, as if by want; and they exhibit a keenness of look, watching every word which falls from the bench, as if their own life and liberty were the thing at stake. When any more than ordinarily severe remark falls from some magistrate "determined to do his duty," murmurs rise from the heated crowd, and a commotion stirs them from side to side, which is stilled by the loud cry of the policeman within the bar, of "Order in the Court!-Silence!"

Stand!" said a loud voice behind him, On the day in question, the crowd without or take that!" and a blow was aimed with the rails seemed more than usually interested a blndgeon at his head; but Joe had turned in the proceedings; there were some smockround at the moment, and knocked up the frocked men among them,-evidently labourstick with his gun, bringing its butt down on ers out of employment, who had come there the keeper's head, who stumbled and fell.because they had dothing else to do, or Before Joe could recover himself, the third perhaps because they felt some anxious interest had sprung in upon him, and seized him; and in the fate of the prisoner at the bar. You Joe Crouch was a prisoner! might also here and there catch a glimpse of a shaggy fellow in a fustian or velveteen shooting-jacket-bearing on his face the marks of exposure to rough weather-scarred and blurred, tanned by the sun and the wind-and through which you could detect but little indication of the workings of the soul within. Only the eye, which sometimes glared with a kind of savage light, and at other times drooped below the lashes with an expression of subdued cunning, gave evidences that human passions and feelings worked within These you had little difficulty in recognising as poachers, who swarmed in the neighbour hood, both in the town of Mudley and in the surrounding villages.

"You made him a poacher yourself, squire,
When you'd give neither work nor meat;
And your barley-fed hares robbed the garden
At his starving children's feet!"

Rev. C. Kingsley.-In "Yeast."

THE County Court of the little town of Mudley was crowded with an audience consisting mostly of the poorest order of labourers. The space alotted to the public was very limited, and it was railed off from the more hallowed precints, within which sat attorneys, landlords, agents, and others; and on the bench, at the upper end of the room, were ranged the right worshipful magistrates of the Court themselves.

"Now, fellow," said the chairman of the bench, a wealthy squire in the district, who kept several keepers on his estate, "we have heard the evidence, and a more aggravated case of assault I do not remember to have The mass of heads and faces packed into met with. There you are, found at midnight. the space without the railing would have armed with a gun, and sundry apparatus of afforded an interesting study to the phrenolo- poaching about your person; you are com gist or physiognomist. It is a curious fact, mitting trespass upon a preserve at that that almost the only portion of the "public" suspicious hour, and are challenged to stand that takes such an interest in the proceedings You aim your weapon, doubtless with deady of the courts of law as to induce them to intent, at the men appointed to guard their attend there as spectators of their great lessons, master's property. You might have stood are those who are themselves always hovering there before us a murderer, but happily your on the borders of crime. Ten to one but you purpose failed, and only a dog fell your victim. see some of those identical personages who You then proceeded to commit a most brutal are now without the rail, to-morrow standing assault on these men, grievously wounding arithin it. Have the lessons taught them and maltreating two of the party, until you anything but familiarity with crime? Who were captured by the gallantry of the third

after a desperate resistance. Have you any-implanted by God are stranger by far than the thing to say why you should not now be com- tyrannous laws inflicted by man." mitted to prison?"

The old man stood up

"I have your worship, and here I wish to Say it."

A murmur of approbation ran through the Court, among the crowd packed below the bar.

"Why, this is flat blasphemy, fellow,-we cannot allow this sort of atrocious rigmarole to go on. It has nothing to do with the charge before us."

"It has everything to do with it, and I shall show you it has. I was a hard-working farmer, able to make an honest living, and to "Silence!" cried the magistrate; "other-pay my rent as rent-days came round, up to wise I shall at once order the court to be cleared. Go on now, and cut it short. Nothing you can say can remove the impression made by the evidence we have just heard."

"I don't expect it will," said the man, "but still I have something I wish to say, for all

that."

the time that you turned my farm into a preserve and a rabbit-warren. You sent your pheasants to eat up my grains, and I daren't disturb them, because you gentry would not have your sports interfered with. I grew turnips, with which I meant to feed sheep, but your hares came and ate them up. Thus it was you ruined me,-you gentlemen who judge me from that bench there,-and I had no redress."

"My good man," said the magistrate, interrupting him, "we have nothing to do with this. The arrangements as to game ought all to be provided for by covenants in the lease. If you did not see to that, it is no business of ours; and the fact cannot be of the slightest consequence to the case in hand."

"It may or it may not, but hear me out nevertheless. I wish to make a clean breast of this business, here where I stand. I shall

We need scarcely say that the prisoner was old Joe Crouch, the poacher whom we have seen taken prisoner a few nights before. He stood there not for the first time. He had become familiar enough with those very magistrates, and they with him. In the full daylight of the Court, we can now discern the features and aspect of the man. He had been tall and well-formed in his youth, but now he stopped with premature old age, brought on by hardships, privations, and the make-shift life of a half-starved labourer. Shaggy grey hair grew round his temples, but the top of his head was bald, and ex-not keep you long." hibited a good mass of brain in the upper region. A cotton kerchief, which had been red, but now was of an undistinguishable colour, was tied loosely around his neck; he wore an old velveteen shooting-coat, patched at all corners; and leathern breeches and gaiters, which showed the marks of many a brush through briar and brake, completed his attire. His face was sad but full of firmness. Though he stooped, there was an air of almost dignity about the old man; and you could not help feeling, that sunken though he now was in social position,-a prisoner standing at the bar, tried on a charge of poaching and aggravated assault, he was one who must have seen better days. Even the air of old gentility seemed yet to hover about him.

"I stand here," said he, drawing himself close up erect, "I stand here of your own making and bringing up. If I am a criminal now, I am just what you have made me."

"What can the fellow mean?" said the chairman to one of his brethren, a clerical game-preserver seated by his side.

"I suppose we are in for a speech," was the reply. "He's an impudent old dog. I've heard him before. Quite incorrigible-quite; I do assure you!"

"Yes," continued old Joe, "I am what you have made me. I am a poacher because you drove me to poaching. I took to the woods for a living, because you hurried me out of house and home; and the appetites

"Go on, Joe!" "Speak up!" "Tell them all about it!" was eagerly whispered to him from the crowd behind, and the auditors edged up still nearer to where he stood.

"Silence in the Court!" shouted the policeman within the rails.

"You see, gentlemen, how it was-you fed your hares and pheasants on my young wheat, beans and turnips; it was your vermin that ate me up, and ruined me; and then there was nothing left for me to do but to shoot and live upon the hares and pheasants that had so long lived upon me."

"In short, you confess openly what has long been too well known, that you lived the desperate life of a poacher," said the magistrate.

"Call it poaching if you will. Call it what you like. It was the life you have carved out for me, and for thousands like me. I sought work, and you would not give it me, because I was a poacher. I sought to rent a cottage from you, and I was refused, because I was a poacher. I had children without food, and had none to give them: I tried the workhouse, and was scowled at there again by your creatures, because I was a poacher. Where was I to seek for food but of the wild creatures that roam the fields,-creatures which no man can mark with his brand and claim as his own, but which you have banded together as a class to preserve as the sacred property of your order?"

"I tell you again all this is nothing to the pur

pose. You have broken the laws, and now it exasperation and sulky ferocity which broods

remains for us to

"A word more. You say I have broken the laws! True! I have poached. Your law is a tyrant's law,- -a law against the poor man without money,—a law altogether of the rich man's making, who can buy its privileges for money,—a law which condemns the destitute man to the horrors of a gaol because he kills a wild animal for food, but says nothing to the rich man who can buy a game license, and kills for sport,-a man who is already surfeited with food. That, I say is a tyrant's law, made only to be broken. Such a law makes your other laws hated, and stamps them as the handiwork of the oppressor."

among the labouring classes all over the agricultural districts? Why wonder that reason should fly the helm when mercy and justice are disregarded; and that thoughts dark and wild take possession of the heart, which under more genial circumstances had been warmed with virtue, and filled with generous and kindly sympathies? We never heard of a poacher's fate-ending in transportation or on the scaffold-without thinking on Thom the Scotch weaver, who in describing the state of mind which, in his own person, destitution and the sight of his starving family engendered, eloquently remarked:

"I felt myself, as it were, shut out from "Really, sir," here broke in one of the mankind-enclosed-prisoned in misery-no magistrates, "I cannot sit here to listen to this outlook-none! My miserable wife and little seditious and revolutionary language any longer. Let the prisoner be committed at once. There are other cases still to be disposed of."

"I have done, gentlemen," said Joe, "I have said what I had to say, and now you can do with me what you like. But let me tell you, that though not many, brought here as I am, find a voice to tell you the thoughts that are burning in their hearts, they are not the less bitter that they remain pent up there. You may treat us like brutes, as you have made us and kept us, but you may find yet to your cost that the brutes have fangs, and venomed ones, too."

"Take him away!" said the chairman, and looking down to the clerk underneath him, "make out his commital; he is a brazen scoundrel, that's quite clear."

Old Joe was led from his place at the bar, to the lock-up, amid the sympathizing glances of the audience, who evidently thought him a victim, and admired him for the stand he had made against the "tyranny "-as they did not hesitate to term it-which presided on that worshipful bench.

In describing this scene we have merely chronicled a state of things which prevails more or less in every county in England. We may shut our eyes to the poacher's origin, education, discipline and destiny; but there he is every gaol knows him familiarly. The majority of the prisoners in many provincial prisons are poachers. The game laws breed poachers, and the poachers ripen into criminals. Thus is poverty nursed into desperation. Poachers are punched on the head wherever they are found, are hunted down by blood hounds in some places, and in others shot down when found engaged in their unlicensed craft. We wonder at the recklessness and criminality of the class, but care not to think of the conditions out of which they rise. Every phenomenon has its cause, did we but seek it. Do the magistrates of our land ever think of the path they are treading, and of the end of the

ones, who alone cared for me-what would I have done for their sakes at that hour! Here let me speak out-and be heard too, while I

tell it-that the world does not at all times know how usefully it sits-when Despair has loosed Honour's last hold upon the heartwhen transcendent wretchedness lays weeping reason in the dust-when every unsympa thizing onlooker is deemed an enemy-who THEN can limit the consequences? For my own part, I confess that, ever since that dreadful night, I can never hear of an extraordinary criminal, without the wish to pierce through the mere judicial career, under which I am persuadǝd, there would often be found to exist an unseen impulse--a chain, with one end fixed in Nature's holiest ground, that drew him on to his destiny.'

You cannot make a man believe that a wild

beast, which feeds to day on my field, tomorrow on yours,-or a wild bird, which winters in Norway and summers in England, is any man's exclusive property more than another's. You cannot tell on whose fields they have been born; they are wanderers of the earth, and no proprietor can make out a title to them. They are found eating up the farmer's crops, and destroying the fruits of his labour, yet the farmer dare not kill them, that would be poaching!-so says law. But such a law is only a delusion-a snare! Your labouring man thinks nothing of the law. Even a scrupulously honest labourer in other respects, who would shudder at the idea of robbing a hen roost, or stealing a goose, thinks it nothing venal to knock over a hare, boil it, and eat it. Industry fails him, and he takes to the covers without any compunction of conscience. The game-keeper catches him— he is tried as a poacher-and he is made a criminal. The poacher feels that he has been cruelly dealt with; and he is made more desperate. He harbours revenge, and hesitates not to retaliate. He poaches again more desperately than before; he is ready to de fend the game he takes with his life; he

becomes a desperado, a marauder, and at
length a thoroughly bad and corrupted member
of Society. Thus do our Game Laws work!
(To be continued.)

THE PARISH CLERK.

THE RESURRECTIONISTS.

AT the time I assisted at -Church, I was much struck with the appearance of a middle aged man, who, evidently a maniac, was still so quiet as to render it unnecssary to confine him. His sole occupation and amusement seemed to consist in wandering through the church yard, or lying on the gravestones; and winter or summer Ralph Somers (such was his name) was still found in the churchyard. The elements seemed not to affect him; and I have seen him on the coldest day in December, remain for hours stretched on a gravestone, seemingly unaffected by the rigour of the season. My curiosity was much aroused respecting this forlorn being, and I made some inquiries from Nehemiah respecting him.

churchyard, and the Churchwardens instituted an inquiry into the fact. They were so little satisfied of the falsehood of this statement, that they directed me to provide two or three able-bodied men, whom they would well pay for their undertaking, to watch the churchyard, nightly, for a few months. This I readily promised to do, and soon engaged the requisite number, among whom was Ralph Somers, the maniac, who now frequents the churchyard. As I was directed to watch with them (though much against my inclination,) I could give you a minute account of how we spent the evenings during the first month; but as no event occurred which could possibly interest you, I shall merely observe, that as far as good ale, good jokes, and easy minds could make us happy, we were so.

"At length, on a stormy evening about the middle of December, when the very elements themselves seemed bent on destroying each other, the objects of our wrath made their appearance. We were stationed in the vestry, whence we had a full view of the churchyard; and, further, to insure success, we stationed a scout at the extremity of the churchyard, but under cover of a watch-box, that due notice might be given of the approach of intruders. On the night I before mentioned, after a long and fearful gust of wind which almost shook the church to its foundations,

"It is now about ten years (said the Parish Clerk) since the event occurred that deprived Ralph Somers of his senses, and never did a more melancholy event occur since I was elected Clerk of Church. I shall be as brief as possible in my narrative, as the circum-our scout made his appearance, and, with a stances are too mournful for me to reflect upon. look of terror, informed us, that three men Ralph Somers was the eldest of two sons; his had gained admittance into the churchyard, father died before he attained the age of man- and were at the moment engaged in opening a hood; and, by the labour of his hands, he, for grave, in which a corpse had been buried that some years, supported his widowed mother very day. At this information we prepared for and his younger brother. This younger bro-action, and being four in number, and well ther, John Somers, turned out a wild and idle armed, we had no fear of success. Forthwith, youth, and at all the cock-fights, bear-bait- then, we marched, but with slow and cautious ings, &c., in the neighhood, he was regularly steps, towards the place pointed out by our found; but to work he had a most insuperable informant. As we approached, we plainly objection, and vain were the efforts of his perceived three men engaged in opening a relatives to compel him to labour for his sub-grave, which occupation they pursued in sistence; yet they strove their utmost to sup-silence. The wind, which had ceased for an port him, though it was evident he could not instant, again blew with redoubled violence, exist on the means they could furnish. For and effectually drowned the echo of our footsome time, he lived in a most miserable way, raising food in any honest manner; but suddenly he began, to the great astonishment of the neighbors, to display a profusion of money. He regularly frequented the Griffin, where he drank the best the house could afford, and paid for it like a prince. Various were the surmises respecting the means by which he obtained his money; and, as his relatives disclaimed all knowledge of his resources, the neighbours began to doubt the honesty of one whom they well knew could oft have cheated them, and escaped with impunity. At length an event occured which revealed his means of obtaining money, and which was productive of the greatest misery to his relatives.

"There had been for some time strange reports of dead bodies having been stolen from

steps, so that we wore upon them before they were aware of our presence. Ralph Somers, as the strongest of the four, made a grasp at one of the men, who was raising the earth with a pickaxe; no sooner had he seized him, than we, raising a loud shout, quickly attacked the others, but were as quickly repulsed. One of the men, taking to his heels and decamping, was followed by two of our party. Willing to show my prowess, I seized on the other, a youngster, whom I judged to be a surgeon's apprentice, and attempted to throw him down; but the youth was too nimble for me, and, before I was aware of my situation, I found myself stretchad at full length on a gravestone, and my opponent out of the churchyard. In the meantime, Rolph Somers had continued to struggle with the person he had first seized,

THE COTTAGE AND THE HALL.*

CHAPTER VI.

and desperate were the efforts of the latter to escape. The pickaxe had by some means got wedged firmly between two gravestones, one of the points fixed in the space between them, and the other standing up like a fixed SIR Herbert Ashton's evident attentions to Marion, bayonet. In their struggle, they came in formed the theme of many a conversation, among contact with the pickaxe, and, horrible to the gossips of Willow-bank. Nor did it excite relate, the foot of the resurrectionist slipping, any surprise, when Miss Sedley, on the very best he fell directly on the sharp point of it, and authority, announced their engagement, and, for was pierced through the body: the unhappy once was not far out. "Frank," exclaimed the faman gave a fearful groan, and instantly expired. vored visitor, bursting into the library where his friend was sitting alone, when he and Marion had "turned up," after about three hours disap

am the very happiest man living; she is mine, she has promised to be mine!" and he shook Frank's proffered hand almost to dislocation.

"We were, as you may be well assured, terror-struck at this appalling incident, but our terror was trivial compared to that of pearance,-"wish me joy, my dear fellow! I Ralph Somers; he was loud in his exclamations of grief and despair, and, flinging himself with violence on the ground, he vented execrations on himself for ever joining us in our watch. One of our men, in the meantime, returned from the pursuit of the other resurrectionists, who had escaped; and, bearing in his hand a lighted torch that he had procured from the vestry, he gazed on the dead man; but, when he saw the deceased's countenance, the torch fell from his hand, and he gave a shout so fearful as to make Ralph Somers instantly spring up, and hasten to ascertain the cause of his terror; but what words can express the emotions of Ralph Somers, when, on his holding the torch to the face of the dead body, he recognised the features of his brother!-with a loud yell he again flung himself on the ground, from which he rose a maniac; and from that hour a maniac he has remained.

"It were needless to proceed further: the source of John Somers's riches was now ascertained—he was a resurrectionist; and, in the prosecution of his unlawful calling, he had fallen by the hand of his own brother."

ANECDOTE OF LIFE INSURANCE.

"Why Ashton, dear old boy," returned the lat ter, his whole countenance radiant with delight, "nothing could give me greater pleasure: not that it has taken me quite by surprise, you know. But where is Marion?" and off he ran, to press bis blushing tearful sister to his heart, and murmur blessings on her head. For once "the course of true love did run smooth." Mrs. Perceval could offer no objection to a match in every way so desirable; and though it was a pang to both parents to separate from their child, they could not but rejoice in the prospect before her. But poor Frank missed his sister's society sadly. "Ide clare," he would exclaim, as after breakfast the family dispersed to their several occupations, I consider myself particularly ill-used. My father and Walter, of course, are busied in a thousand ways; so also is my dearest mother; but what you, Marion, and Ashton, are about all day long, I cannot imagine, but your way of disposing of your time seems sufficiently engrossing, and I am left to the society of strangers," and he would leave the room, singing, to the time of "The Days when we went Gipseying," one of the Percy ballads, the refrain of which is:— "It is the most infernal bore, of all the bores I know,

To have a friend who's lost his heart, a short time ago." The usual result of all this, however, was, that an hour after, he made his appearance at Mrs. Montague's gate, and considering that the society there consisted of strangers, contrived to make himself very particularly at home. Things went on in this way until one day's post was the bearer of

So early as the middle of the eighteenth century, the clause which excluded the representatives of suicides from a participation in the amount insured, excited attention; and an office was established, which, for a corresponding increase of premium, paid the amount to the relatives of the self-murdered. One man, deeply in debt, wishing to pay his creditors, and not knowing how, went to the office, insured his life, and invited the insurers to dine with him at a tavern, where several other persons were present. After dinner he rose, and addressing the former, said, "Gentlemen, it is fitting you should know the company you have met. These are my tradesmen, whom an unmistakeable packet, "From Somerset House, I could not pay without your assistance. I by Jove," was his exclamation in no joyful tone. am greatly obliged to you-" without another "Eh, what, Frank ?" asked his father looking word he bowed, pulled out a pistol, and shot up from the letter he was reading, "an appoint himself.-The Stock Exchange.

It is astonishing how soon our follies are forgotten when known to none but ourselves.

ment!"

* Continued from page 250, volume 3, (concluded)