All is now of the past.  The “schoolmaster is abroad,” and not only is the belief in witches, but all the tribe of ghosts and spirits is fast melting away.  The latter have also added in no inconsiderable degree to the sum of human suffering.  The number of the good was small compared to the evil, and though it was in their power to come in what shape or guise they chose, “dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,” yet it must be confessed they generally chose to assume “forms forbidden,” and their visitations were much oftener accompanied with “blasts from hell” than “airs from heaven.”  It has been justly remarked that “they were potent agents in the hands of the priest and the tyrant to delude and to enslave; for this business they were most admirably fitted, and most faithfully did they perform it.”  Those inevitable evils which man is destined to endure in this present state, are enough without the addition of the almost unmingled bitterness of the infusion, which superstition would pour into his cup.

(To be continued.)

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

* * * * *

LONDON LYRICS.—­THE IMAGE BOY.

  Whoe’er has trudged, on frequent feet,
  From Charing Cross to Ludgate-street,
    That haunt of noise and wrangle,
  Has seen, on journeying through the Strand,
  A foreign image-vender stand
    Near Somerset’s quadrangle.

  His coal-black eye, his balanced walk,
  His sable apron, white with chalk,
    His listless meditation,
  His curly locks, his sallow cheeks,
  His board of celebrated Greeks,
    Proclaim his trade and nation.

  Not on that board as erst, are seen
  A tawdry troop; our gracious Queen
    With tresses like a carrot,
  A milk-maid with a pea-green pail,
  A poodle with a golden tail,
    John Wesley, and a parrot;—­

  No; far more classic is his stock;
  With ducal Arthur, Milton, Locke,
    He bears, unconscious roamer,
  Alemena’s Jove-begotten Son,
  Cold Abelard’s too tepid Nun,
    And pass-supported Homer.

  See yonder bust adorned with curls;
  ’Tis her’s, the Queen who melted pearls
    Marc Antony to wheedle. 
  Her bark, her banquets, all are fled;
  And Time, who cut her vital thread,
    Has only spared her Needle.

  Stern Neptune, with his triple prong,
  Childe Harold, peer of peerless song,
    So frolic Fortune wills it,
  Stand next the Son of crazy Paul,
  Who hugg’d the intrusive King of Gaul
    Upon a raft at Tilsit.

  “Poor vagrant child of want and toll! 
  The sun that warms thy native soil
    Has ripen’d not thy knowledge;
  ’Tis obvious, from that vacant air,
  Though Padua gave thee birth, thou ne’er
    Didst graduate in her College.