bless the hand that has given us this comfort, and then gone away and thought nothing of it."

He put on his shoes, shouldered his ax, and went home.

Then the spies had a little dialogue. "Now, this I call really good fun," said the tutor, in rather a shaky voice. "What are you sniveling at?"

"It isn't I that am sniveling; it is you."

"Well, then, we are both sniveling," said the tutor; and with that, being foreigners, they embraced, and did not conceal their emotions any longer.

"Come on!" said the boy.

66 'Where next?" asked the tutor.

"Why, follow him, to be sure. I want to know where they live. Do you think I will let his wife be sick, or his grandchildren starve, after this, if I can help it?"

"Dear boy, I don't for a moment think you will. Yours is not the age nor the heart that does things by halves."

So they dogged their victim home, and the young nobleman secured a modest competence to a very worthy and poverty-stricken family.

CHARLES READE.

Spell and pronounce:-nobleman, wooden, tutor, amazement, dialogue, angels, embraced, foreigners, emotions, shouldered, dogged, poverty, provided, mortal, couple, he's, generous, and sniveling.

Synonyms. - entertaining - amusing; pleasing; diverting. discourse. mortal - human being; logue-conversation; generous-liberal; magnanimous; bountiful.

dia

man.

"The Culprit Fay" arose out of a conversation in the summer of 1816, in which Drake, De Kay, Cooper, the novelist, and Halleck were speaking of the Scottish streams and their adaptation to the uses of poetry by their numerous romantic associations. Cooper and Halleck maintained that our own rivers furnished no such capabilities, when Drake, as usual, took the opposite side of the argument; and, to make his position good, produced in three days "The Culprit Fay." It is a poem of exquisite fancy. The opening scenery is a beautiful moonlight view of the Highlands of the Hudson.

'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night— The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Naught is seen in the vault on high

But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, And the flood which rolls its milky hue,

A river of light on the welkin blue.

The moon looks down on old Cronest,

She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast,

And seems his huge gray form to throw

In a silver cone on the wave below;
His sides are broken by spots of shade,
By the walnut bough and the cedar made,

And through their clustering branches dark,
Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark-

Like starry twinkles that momently break Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack.

The stars are on the moving stream,

And fling, as its ripples gently flow,
A burnished length of wavy beam

In an eel-like, spiral line below;
The winds are whist, and the owl is still,
The bat in the shelfy rock is hid,
And naught is heard on the lonely hill
But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katy-did;

And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will
Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings

Ever a note of wail or woe,

Till morning spreads her rosy wings

And earth and sky in her glances glow.

The Culprit has been guilty of the great crime of falling in love with an earthly maid.

And left for her his woodland shade;
He has lain upon her lip of dew
And sunned him in her eye of blue,
Fanned her cheek with his wing of air,
Played in the ringlets of her hair,
And, nestling on her snowy breast,
Forgot the lily-king's behest.

For this, he is put on trial and sentenced at once. For the damage done to his wings, in order to repair their purity, he is to seize a drop from the glistening vapory arch in the moonlight of

the leaping sturgeon. His flame-wood lamp, too, has been extinguished; this he is to light again from the last sparks of a falling star.

The Fay splurges into the wave in quest of the sturgeon, but is met by a host of

*

*

*

* Spirits of the waves,

From sea-silk beds in their coral caves.

They cut the wave with the living oar
And hurry on to the moonlight shore,
To guard their realms and chase away
The footsteps of the invading Fay.

Their warriors come in swift career

And hem him round on every side.

On his thigh the leech has fixed his hold,
The quarl's long arms are round him rolled,
The prickly prong has pierced his skin,
And the squab has thrown his javelin;
The gritty star has rubbed him raw,

And the crab has struck with his giant claw;
He howls with rage, and he shrieks with pain,
He strikes around, but his blows are vain;
Hopeless is the unequal fight:

Fairy naught is left but flight.

He turned him round, and fled amain

With hurry and dash to the beach again.

But the water-sprites are round him still,
To cross his path and work him ill.
They bade the wave before him rise;
They flung the sea-fire in his eyes;

And they stunned his ears with the scallop stroke, With the porpoise heave, and the drum-fish croak. O! but a weary wight was he

When he reached the foot of the dog-wood tree.

Next time he embarks in the shell of a purple muscle-shell, meets the sturgeon, and catches the evanescent luster. Now, he must go in quest of the star; he mounts a fire-fly steed, and is carried safely through the air.

He put his acorn helmet on;

It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down;
The corselet plate that guarded his breast

Was once the wild bee's golden vest;

His cloak, of a thousand mingled dyes,

Was formed of the wings of butterflies;
His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen,
Studs of gold on a ground of green;

And the quivering lance which he brandished bright,
Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight.

Swift he bestrode his fire-fly steed;

He bared his blade of the bent grass blue;

He drove his spurs of the cockle-seed,

And away like a glance of thought he flew, To skim the heavens and follow far

The fiery trail of the rocket-star.

He wins his way to the palace of the sylphid queen, who, though he rejects her love, kindly speeds him on his errand with a charm. The star burst, his flame-wood lamp is relighted, and there is a general jubilee on his return to the scenery of Crow Nest.