Wearing a shade of every hateful vice,
  Ingratitude, injustice, selfishness. 
  But I was wrong, for I have traced the stream
  Back to its fountain in the inmost cave,
  And found in postulate of purest grain,
  It’s first beginning.—­It is not the man,
  The friend who has obliged us, we would shun,
  But the conviction which his presence brings,
  That we have done him wrong:—­a sense of grief
  And shame at our own rash improvidence: 
  The heart bleeds for it, and we love the man
  Whom we would shun.  The feeling’s hard to bear.

    A BLUSTERING FELLOW!  There’s a deadly bore,
  Placed in a good man’s way, who only yearns
  For happiness and joy.  But day by day,
  This blusterer meets me, and the hope’s defaced. 
  I cannot say a word—­make one remark,
  That meets not flat and absolute contradiction—­
  I nothing know on earth—­am misinformed
  On every circumstance.  The very terms,
  Scope, rate, and merits of my own transactions
  Are all to me unknown, or falsified,
  Of which most potent proof can be adduced. 
  Then the important thump upon the board,
  Snap with the thumb, and the disdainful ‘whew!’
  Sets me and all I say at less than naught. 
    What can a person do?—­To knock him down
  Suggests itself, but then it breeds a row
  In a friend’s house, or haply in your own,
  Which is much worse; for glasses go like cinders;
  The wine is spilled—­the toddy.  The chair-backs
  Go crash!  No, no, there’s nothing but forbearance,
  And mark’d contempt.  If that won’t bring him down,
  There’s nothing will.  Ah! can the leopard change
  His spots, or the grim Ethiop his hue? 
  Sooner they may and nature change her course,
  Than can a blusterer to a modest man: 
  He still will stand a beacon of dislike. 
  A fool—­I wish all blustering chaps were dead,
  That’s the true bathos to have done with them.

Fraser’s Magazine.

* * * * *

THE GATHERER.

A snapper up of unconsidered trifles. 
SHAKSPEARE.

GAD’S HILL.

Gad’s Hill, not far from Chatham, was formerly a noted place for depredations on seamen, after they had received their pay at the latter place.  The following robbery was committed there in or verging on the year 1676:  About four o’clock one morning, a gentleman was robbed by one Nicks, on a bay mare, just as he was on the declivity of the hill, on the west side.  Nicks rode away, and as he said, was stopped nearly an hour by the difficulty of getting a boat, to enable him to cross the river; but he made the best use of it as a kind of bait to his horse.  From thence he rode across the county of Essex to Chelmsford.  Here he stopped about an hour to refresh his horse, and give the animal a ball;—­from thence to Braintree, Bocking,