visions of mingled fever and insanity:  all, all now swept across my mind, as for the last time I gazed on the remains of him who was powerless henceforth for ever.  In a few minutes one little span of earth would keep down that strange form which seemed once endowed with ubiquity.  That wild unearthly voice was mute; that wandering glance was fixed; a seal was set upon those lips which eternity itself could not remove.  Yes, my Tormentor—­my mysterious—­omnipresent Tormentor was indeed gone; and in that one word, how much of vengeance was forgotten!  I was roused from this reverie by the hollow sound of the clay as it fell dull and heavy on the coffin-lid.  The poor sleeper beneath could not hear it, it is true; his slumber, henceforth, was sound; the full tide of human population pressing fast beside the spot where he lay buried, should never wake him more:  no human sorrow should rack his breast, no dream disturb his repose; yet cold, changed, and senseless as he was, the first sound of the falling clods jarred strange and harsh upon my ear, as if it must perforce awake him.  In this feverish state of mind I quitted the church-yard, and, on my road home, passed by the shop where I had first met with the deceased.  It was altered—­strangely altered—­to my mind, revoltingly so.  Its quaint antique character, its dingy spectral look were gone, and there was even a studied air of cheerfulness about it, as if the present proprietor were anxious to obliterate every association, however slight, that might possibly remind him of the past.  The former owner had but just passed out, his ashes were scarcely cold, and already his name was on the wane.  Yet this is human nature.  So trifling, in fact, is the gap caused by our absence in society, that there needs no patriotic Curtius to leap into it; it closes without a miracle the instant it is made, and none but a disinterested Undertaker knows or cares for whom tolls our passing bell.

Monthly Magazine.

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF THE

+PUBLIC JOURNALS.+

THE TOUR OF DULNESS.

From her throne of clouds, as Dulness look’d
  On her foggy and favour’d nation,
She sleepily nodded her poppy-crown’d head,
And gently waved her sceptre of lead,
  In token of approbation.

For the north-west wind brought clouds and gloom,
  Blue devils on earth, and mists in the air;
Of parliamentary prose some died,
Some perpetrated suicide,
  And her empire flourish’d there.

The Goddess look’d with a gracious eye
  On her ministers great and small;
But most she regarded with tenderness
Her darling shrine, the Minerva Press,
  In the street of Leadenhall.

This was her sacred haunt, and here
  Her name was most adored,
Her chosen here officiated. 
And hence her oracles emanated,
  And breathed the Goddess in every word.