I yn eee ap eon

\iy

ne 122 Tk EXAMINER. ? = oe eT — nn eT ene ate nie Mr. 1 ) who had SPRING. ats ee constituents of the hon. member (Mr. Mooney) w never saw sucha anEEen. look thane motion, were so indebted to the Govern- av Weds’ introduce you,” and so ye ; vere! [ wil]

opposed the a ment, and had applied to him(Mr. Coles) to recommend their being allowed to cancel their debts in the way pointed out in the proposed: Address. Should the hen. member (Mr. Mooney), therefore, follow up his Speech against the motion, by voting against the adoption of the Address, he would, certainly, be acting 1 opposition to the interests and wishes of many of his own constitu- ents. He (Mr. Coles) hac hinted that some few might be dissatisfied with the adoption of the proposed arrange- ment; and, he doubted not, such would be the case: but the croakers against it would, he believed, be found only among a certain class of contractors, who, when the time arrived for Jetting the jobs under the Road Service, were ever found closely following upon the heels of the Road Commissioners. The hon. member concluded by observing, that another recommendation of the proposed arrangement was to be found in the fact, that the amounts due by the People were pretty equally distributed overall the Road Districts; so that, by its adoption, the repairs of the Roads and the relief to the Government Debtors would alike be fairly and equitably made.

Mr. Fraser said he had great pleasure in supporting the proposed Address. ‘he arrangement, if adopted, would, he felt certain, be regarded as a boon by the People. His constituents had sent him a Petitionto be presented. to his Excellency, in wich they pray to be} flowed to. cancel their debts to the Government, by labour, instead of money. ‘The Petition he had sent down to the Government immediately after receiving it; but no answer had been received to it from that day to this. The parties indebted to the Government for the advances made to them, were not able to pay in money ; and, unless they should be allowed the privilege of pay- ing in labour, they would not be able to pay at all.

Ifon. Mr. T'orntow said the adoption of the pro- posed arrangement would be received by the People to wom it would apply, as a positivejbonus. It would not,

Tax Spring is here—the delicate-iooted May, With its slight lingers full of leaves and flowers, And with it comes a thirst to be away, Wasting in wood-path its voluptuous hours— A feeling that is like a sense of wings, Restless to soar above these perishing things.

We pass out from the city’s feverish hum, TJ’o find refreshment in the silent woods ; And nature, that is beautifal and dumb, Like a cool sleep upon the pulses broods. Yet. even there, a restless thought will steal, ‘l'o teach the indolent heart it must feel.

Strange, that the audible stillness of the noon, "The waters tripping with their silver feet, The turning to the light of leaves ini June, And the light whisper as their edges meet— Strange—that they fill not, with their tranquil tone, The spirit, walking in their midst alone.

There’s no contentment, in a world like this, Save in forgetting the immortal! dream ; We may not gaze upon the stars of bliss, That through the cloud-rifts radianlty stream; Bird-like, the poisoned sou! will lift its eye And sing—till it is hooded from the sky.

My First. Folly.

I never fell seriously in love till £ was seventeen.— Long before that period I had learned to talk nonsense, and had established the important points that a delicate figure is equivalentto a thousand pounds, a pretty mouth

better than the bank of England, anda pair of bright

eyes worth all Mexico. Butat seventeen a more intri- cate branch of study awaited me.

I was lounging away my June ata pretty village in Kent, with little occupation beyond my own meditations,

were both in the south of France, and uncle, at whose

however, place all tue Road Districts on an even foot- seat [had pitched my camp, was attending to the interests

ing, a3 by some hon. members it seemed to be supposed it would; for much more was due in seme Districts than in others. In his own District, there was not snore than £60 due. He would, however, support the Address, because he thought the arrangement which} it contemplated would afford very considerable relief and satisfaction to the People. The hon. Speaker then put the question upon the motion, which was carried on the following division :— Arres—Messrs. Pope, Davies, Jardine, Fraser, Laird, Lord, Clark, Coles, Warburton, Yeo, Haviland, Mac- Donald, Whelan, Flynn, and Hon. Mr. Thornton—15. Nays—Hon, Solicitor General, and Mr. Mooney—2. The Address was then ordered to be engrossed, and Messrs. Pope, Clark, and Warburton were appointed a Committee to present the same.

i ~——

— RAPERATORE,

THE MAY FLOWER.

MEErxE starry-form’d Flower! ’mid convulsions carest, The pale snow-drift.came rudely and hung on thy breast, And the wild, reckless winds sought to wither and blight With the cold dews of morn and frosts of the night.

Yet, Wilding! the Being who gave wings to the storm, Guarded. safe fram the tempest thy delicate form,

And sent his warm Sun-beams al] vita] to earth,

To scatter the rude ones and herald thy birth.

Now with virtue in blushes thy fair blossom vies— With bright hues of morn with the pearl in its dyes— And tints softer than exe's in the last glance of cay, Adorn thy young bosom, gentle Wilding of May!

lar away o’er the heath, on the mossy hill side,

1 cull’d thee, thou sweet one,for my garland of pride ; And no spot in this world to my heart would be dear, if thou, the wilderness beauty, blossom’d not there,

Gentle one of my love! sweetest flow’ret of ail,

Thy pure petals are dear as the days they recall ; And, ah! when the feeling you awake | forget,

With damps ef the stera grave my heart shall be wet.

WERAND. . Charlottetown, May, 1850.

CLOUDLAND.

BY COLERIDGE.

O ! itis pleasant, with a heart at ease, Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To makethe shifting clouds be what you please, Or let the easily persuaded eyes Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould; Of a friend’s fancy ; or with head bent low, And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold ’Twixt crimson banks ; and then, a traveller, go From mount te mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!

Or list’ning to the tide, with closed sight, Be that blind bard, who, on the Chian strand. By whose deep sounds possess'd with inward light Behe!d the Iliad and the Odyssey Kise to the swelling of the voicefu) ees.

of his constituents and the wishes of his patron in. Par- liament. I began after the lapse of a week, to be im- mensely bored; I felt a considerable dislike to an agri- cultural life; aad an incipient inclination for laudanum. I took to playing backgarmmon with the reetor. He was more than. a match for me, and used to grow most amus- ingly hot when the dice, as was their duty, befriended the weaker side. At last, at the conclusion of a very long hit, which had kept Mrs. Penn’s tea waiting full an hour, my worthy and wigged friend flung deuce-ace three times in succession, put the board in the fire, overturn- ed Mrs. Penn’s. best china, and hurried to his study.

Then I took up reading. My uncle had a delightful library, where a reasonable man might have lived and died. But I confess I never could endure a long hour of lonely reading. It is a very pretty thing to take down a volume of T’'asso or Rachne, and study accent and cadence for the benefit of a half a dozen listening belles, all dividing their attention between the work and the work-basket, their feelings and their flounces, their tears and their trimmings, with becoming and laudable perseverance. But to sit down to a novel or a philoso- pher, with no companion to participate in the enjoyment and no object to reward the toil, this indeed——oh! I never could:-endure a jong hour of lonely reading; and so I deserted Siz Roger’s library, and lef. his books to the slumbers from which I had unthinkingly awakened them.

At last I was roused from a state of Turkish torpor by a note from an old lady, whose hall, for so an indifferent country-house was by courtesy dencminated, stood at the distance of a few miles. She was about to give a ball. Such a thing had not been seen-for ten years within ten miles of us. From the sensation produced by the intimation you might have deemed the world at an end. Everything was everywhere in a flurry; kitch- en, and parlour, and boudoir, and garret. Needles and pins were flying right and left; dinner was ill dressed that dancers might be well dressed; mutton was marr- ed that misses might be married. There was nota schoolboy who did not cut Homer end capers; nora boarding-school beauty who did not try on ascore of dancing shoes, and talk for a fortnight of Angiolini.— Every occupation was laid down; every carpet was taken up; every combination of hands-a-cross and down- the-middle was committed most laudably to memory; and nothing was talked, nothing was meditated, nothing was dreamed, but love and romance, fiddles and flirta- soe, warm negus, partners, dyed feathers, and chalked

oors.

“ For one evening,” said I to myself, “ I will encoun- ter the tedium and taste of a village ball.” I went— turned my uncle’s one-horse chaise into the long old avenue about an hour after the time specified, and per- ceived by the Jights flashing from all the windows, and the crash of chairs and carriages returning from the door, that the room was most punctually full, and the performers most pastorally impatient. The first face [ encountered on my entrance was that of my old friend Villars; I was delighted to.meet him, and expressed my astonishment at finding him in a situation for which his inclination, one would have supposed, was s0 litile adapted.

“Come! I am of little service to-night,” cried Villars (he had had a fall from his horse,) “but my popularity

‘may be ofuse to you: you don’t know asoun]! I thought

so—read itin your face the inoment youcame in—

and no company but.my horse and dogs. My sisters

. (ps Reggestemmnr limped, half danced, with me ya Miss oe ae

nil, and: presentéd me in dueiform,

When I lookback tony particular scene of my ex- istence, I can never keep the stage clear of second-rate characters. 1 never think of Mr. Kean’s Othello with- out an intrusive reflection »pon the subject of Mr. So-

and-so’s Cassio. »And thus, beautiful Margatet. it is in vain that I endeavour to separate your fascination from the group whieh was colleeted around. Der.

haps that dominion, which at this moment { feel almost revived, recurs more vividly to my imagination, when the forms and figures of ail by whom it. was contested are semaiatad nie renewal,

I got tired, and cried, “1 am bored, my dear Vi positively bored! the light is ‘bad sbkthe music a inable ; there is no spring in_ the boards and less in the conversation ; it is a lovely moonlight night, and there is nothing worth looking at in the room.”

I shook hands with my friend, bowed to three or four people, and was moving off. As I passed to the door I met two ladies in conversation; “ Don’t you, dance eny more, Margaret?” said one. “Oh no,” replied the other, “I am bored, my dear Louisa—positively bored ; the light is bad and the music abominable ; there is no spring in the boards and less in the conversation; itis a lovely moonlight night, and .there is. nothing worth looking at in the room.”

I never was distanced in a jest. I put on the look of aten years, acquaintance and commenced parley.— “Surely you are not going away yet; you have not danced with me, Margaret; it is impossible you can be so cruel?” The lady behaved with wonderful intrepi- dity. “She would allow me the honour, but I was very late; really I had not deserved it ;” and so.we stood up together. Ue

“Are you-not very impertinent?” “ Very,” said I, with my usual effrontery.

Margaret danced like an ange?; [ knew she would. I could not conceive by what blindness I had four hours without being struck. We. talked of all things that are, and a few beside. She was something ofa botanist, sc we began with flowers; a digression upon China roses carried us to China, the Mandarins with little brains, and the ladies with little feet, the Em- peror, the Orphan of China, Voltaire, Zayre, criticisin, Dr. Johnson, the great bear, the system of Copernicus, stars, ribbons, garters, the Order of the Bath, sea-bath- ing, Dawlish, Sidmouth, Lord Sidmouth, Cicero, Rome,, Italy, Alfieri, Metastasio, fountains, groves, gardens, and so, as the dancing concluded, we contrived to end a3 we began, with Margaret Orleans and botany.

Margaret talked weil on all subjects and wittily ou many. ! had expected to find nothing but a romping girl, somewhat amusing, and Véry vain. But I-was out of my latitude in the first five minutes, and ovt of my senses in the next. She left the room very early, and I drove home more astonished than I had beei. for many vears,

Several weeks passed away, and I was about to leave England to join my sisters on the Continent. I deter- mined to look once more on that enslaving smile, whose recollection had haunted me more than once. I had as- certained that she resided with an old lady who took two pupils, and taught French, and Italian, and music, and manners, at an establishment called Vine House. ‘T'wo days before I Jeft the country, I had been tilla late hour shooting at a mark with a duelling pistol, an entertainment of which, perhaps, from a lurking pre- sentiment, I was very fond. Iwas returning alone when I perceived by the light of an enormous Jamp, a board by the way-side bearing the inscription, “ Vine House.” “ Enough,” f exclaimed, “enough! one more scene before the curtain drops—Romeo and Juliet by lamplight !’—-I roamed about the dwelling-place of all I held dear, tilt !sawa figure at one of the windows inthe back ofthe house, which it was quite impossible to doubt. I leaned against a tree in a sentimental po- sition, and began to chant some rhymes.

“ Are these your own verses?” said my idol’ at the window. “They are yours, Margaret! I was only the versifier; you were the muse herself.”

“'Fhe muse herself is obliged to you. And now what is your errand ? for it grows late, aud you must be sensible— no, that you never will be-—but you must be aware, that this is very indecorous.” “I am come to see you, dear Margaret—which I cannot without can- dles--to see you, and. to tell you, thai it is impossible I can forget.”—“ Bless me! what a memory you have. But you must take another opportunity for your tale! for”—* Alas! I leave England immediaicly!” “A. pleasant voyage to you! there, not a word more; I must run down to coffee.” Now may I never laugh more,” I said, “if Iam baffled thus ;? sol strolled baek to the front ofthe house and proceeded to reconnoitre. 4. bay-window was half open, and in a sma! neat draw- ing-room ] pereeived a group assembied: and an old lady, with a high muslin cap and red ribbons, was pour- ing out the coffee; her nephew, a tal] awkward young gentieman, sitting on one chair, and resting his lege on another, was occupied in the study of Sir Charles Gran- dison; aud my fair Margaret was leaning on a sofa, and laughing immoderately. “ Indeed, niiss,” said the ms- tron, “you should learnto govern your mirth ; people will think you came out of Bed!am.”

I lifted the window gently, and stepped into the room,

Ce a