guard having surrounded them and come to an order, according to the tactics of that day, the doctor cried out, in a more solemn voice, but of equal energy," You, Tevas Oaks, stand forward!" The summons was not to be evaded or disobeyed. With a downward look, faltering steps, and knees that knocked together with hysterical irregularity and violence, Oaks came up slowly and sneakingly in front of the judgment "Get up on that stone, you puppy," said the doctor," and take off that gilt gallipot from your skull, and hold up your face. Let us see whether or no you are worth hanging?"

seat.

"No

With a trembling hand poor Oaks took off his gold-laced Montero cap, on the assigned pedestal, shivering and shaking in all his members. -upon the whole," said the doctor, after a pause, "it would grieve your old mother too much; she is a very honest woman, and one of my patients; and her rheumatism is bad enough. It would break her heart to see you strung up on Gibbet Island. Get about your business, you forlorn rascal. Sell your finery immediately. I will see that Vince allows you a fair price. Mend your manners, and try to get a living by some honest handicraft. I may lend you five pounds myself, to set you up in some smal way. Be off; let me see you in proper clothes to-morrow at nine."

Tevas, who, as the reader must ere this have conjectured, had been enabled to sport his fine clothes, by becoming an agent or organ to certain irregular importers of contraband goods into his Majesty's provinces, departed forthwith, like a guilty ghost dismissed by the exorcist. And here I too must dismiss him with a very few words. He did not make his appearance next day, according to orders; and the places which once knew him, never knew him more. But I have heard, from indisputable authority, that, under another name, he afterwards kept a tavern on the banks of the Delaware, in the beautiful village of Bristol. His hotel was celebrated for its ambitious attempts at style; for its gilt china and short commons; bad beds and full-blooded bugs; Brussels carpets and smoky chimnies; lazy blackies and long bills.

The Doctor now sat himself leisurely down, with his legs hanging over the precipice, supporting himself, as he leaned backward with his left hand, while he swung his cane to and fro, and remained, for some minutes, in profound meditation. At length the current of his thoughts found vent, in a sort of muttered prophecy.

"Yes," said he, " I see how it is. These poor people too must go the way of all flesh. Half a century hence, they will be as wicked as the

Londoners. With the same vices they will have more wit. But what of that? So much the worse for them. They will have their South Sea bubbles, their land bubbles, their bank bubbles, and all manner of bubbles. They'll have their Stock Market and their New Market; and there will be bulls and bears, lame ducks, rooks and pigeons in both of them. They will have lotteries and operas and elopements and cracked poets and ballets and burlettas and Italian singers and French dancers. And every second man in a good coat, will be a broker or a lawyer or an insolvent. And there will be no more cash payments; but the women will wear cashmeres, and the men will drink champagne.And the girls, instead of learning to cook and mend clothes, will be taught to chatter bad French and worse Spanish, and to get their husbands into jail:—but there will be no jail in those days! for they will have bankrupt laws, and three-quarter laws and two-third laws, and the limits will be as big as the county! There will be no more comfortable tea-drinkings, and innocent dances, but they will have their balls and routes and conversaziones and fêtes and fiddlesticks. People will dine by candle-light of week days; and nobody will go to church on afternoons on Sundays! Folks will be knowing in

wines and cookery and players and paintings and music, and know nothing of their own affairs. They will go to fashionable churches as an amusement and to fashionable gaming-houses as a business. The girls will learn to waltz of the Germans, and their mammas to flirt from the French. The boys will all be men and the old men will try to be boys. Then they will have all manner of quackery, from a patent pair of loops to hold up their breeches, to a patent way of paying off the national debt. And they will run after the heels of every quack who comes among them, and think he is the devil himself, though he has not half the sense of the dirty little devil that I have just discharged! And the doctors will quarrel about moonshine, and ruin the character of the profession and themselves by telling the truth about one another! But I shall be gone ere then :sufficient for the day is the evil thereof!"

The doctor concluded his soliloquy; and after sitting a while in a melancholy mood, he regained his legs, took three or four huge pinches of snuff, and descended from his rostrum. Preparations were now made to return. The smugglers were guarded by the soldiers, and the multitude followed their measured tread, as they set forward on their march. My narrative has reached its proper dramatic conclusion, and I shall not

detain my readers with other particulars which their own imaginations will easily suggest.

Sixty-seven years have past away, but this spot remains as wild and uncouth, as it then was. The fissure made, where, according to the tradition, the preacher disappeared, is plainly visible, though choked with the dead leaves of many winters. The stairs are still distinguishable, though dilapidated, and overgrown with moss. Should any of my readers have a curiosity to go there, they will be at no loss as to reaching the point of the road designated in the description I have given in the commencement of the story. But after they begin to climb the hill, I must confess I am puzzled as to directing them precisely how to reach the spot. I have at various times attempted it from different points; but although I have frequently visited it, yet I have as often been obliged to return without finding the object of my search. I am not naturally superstitious, but I have been sometimes tempted to believe that a kind of enchantment reigned over the place. The whole side of the hill is overgrown with bushes of cedar, witch-hazel, dogwood, and laburnum. They are tangled with the sweetbriar, the wild vine, and all the creeping plants that abound in our waste grounds, from the staff tree, to the moonseed of ominous and