great grandmother, and you were christened after her," said the old man, and proceeded. "This awe on the part of the young fellows of New Amsterdam, and this well-known determination of the governor, kept all admirers at an awful distance from the young lady, who grew up at the age of eighteen, loving no one save her father, now that her mother was no more, and an old black woman, who had taken care of her ever since she was a child. The throne of her innocent bosom had remained till then quite vacant, nor did she know for certain what it was that made her sometimes so weary of the world, and so tired of length of the livelong sultry summer hours. She walked into the garden to pluck the flowers, until she became tired of that. strolled with her old nurse into the rural retirement of Lady's Valley, and the shady paths which coursed the wood, where the Park is now, until she became tired of that. In short, she became tired of every thing, and so spiritless, that her father was not a little alarmed for her health. (To be continued.) THE DEVIL'S MILL. A GERMAN TRADITION. She In a district of the Harz, belonging to the principality of Bemburg, there is a high hill called the Ramberg, about three hours' distance from Ballenstedt. Its conical top is covered with granite blocks of enormous size, piled up here and there in the most singular groups, and on every side, for a thousand paces downwards, the surface of the mountain appears sewn with stones of various shapes and dimensions, These fragments formed probably, at some remote period, a rocky needle terminating the summit of the Ramberg, which, by an earth quake or some other violent sion, was overthrown, and shattere into a thousand fragments. The group of detached rocks is called the Devil's Mill, of which name popular tradition gives the explanation. At the foot of the Ramberg once stood a mill: it had existed there from time immemorial, and had been successively inherited by father and son for several centuries. The mill had till then afforded a comfortable support for its proprietors, and had always been in the hands of sober and industrious people. But no sooner had the last miller entered on the inheritance of his forefathers, than he began to find fault with every thing about it, he complained especially of the little wind he had, and presently conceived a design of building a new mill on the highest point of the Ramberg: but how to do this puzzled him, --for how could he secure it against the violent storms in such an exalted region? And where was the builder to be found? This dilemma, and the conviction that his wish could never be attained, put the miller in very bad humour. At night he would roll about impatiently in his bed: when he wrought any, he did so with disgust; and was weak enough besides not to perceive that he would certainly not be more happy after the attainment of his wish than before. The horned Sootie-who in these times meddled much more with the trivial details of human life than he does now-a-days-nosooner smelled the thoughts of the miller, than he presented himself to him one night, and made offer of his humble services. The proposal, to be sure, came quite apropos to the miller; but the condition, which the evil-one stipulated for, did not please him at all. However glad he would have been to have seen the new mill raised, he could not think of making 1. his soul the price of its execution; and, therefore he demanded some days to reflect on the proposal. did the heart of the infatuated miller. Gladly would he now have returned, gladly contented himself with the despised inheritance of his father; but repentance came too late for this, and one single solitary hope was all that yet remained to him, and that was the chance of discovering some defect in the building. If the discontented miller had but little rest before, he had still less now. He cast his eyes round his present dwelling, - examined it every where, and asked himself whether he ought not rather to content himself with it as it was. Already he was about to resolve on abiding by the lot which Providence had assigned him, when a dead calm of two days occurred, which rendered it impossible for the miller to grind a single grain of wheat. This circumstance determined him to employ the devil in building a new mill on the highest point of the Ramberg, even at the fearful stipulation pro-ed the wretched man, about to ac posed by the infernal architect. The evil-one returned at the appointed period. The miller signed the compact with his blood, and received the assurance that he would still live thirty years; while Satan engaged on his part to build a complete and perfect mill on the spot pointed out, in the course of the following night, and to accomplish the whole work before the first crowing of the cock. Scarcely had the shadows of night descended upon the earth, when the devil began his labor by piling rocks upon rocks, which his companions tossed over to him from the Blocksberg. And lo, in a very brief space, a magnificent mill stood completed upon the summit of the Ramberg! The devil then went to the miller, and desired him to step up and examine his work. Trembling, and full of anxiety, the poor wretch obeyed. It was a dark summer night, -the wind howled through the tops of the tall oaks and pines, black rainy clouds covered the sky,-lightnings ever and anon shot athwart the gloomy masses,-doubly and trebly re-echoed, the thunder bellowed through the deep vallies, -the earth trembled, and so But aghast stood the miller when he beheld a faultless windmill, with its mighty vane turning slowly round, before him.. Then the evil one grinned in mockery of the miller's distress, and tauntingly inquired whether he had any fault to find with his handiwork, "None-none at all." stammer cept the work as fulfilling the compact on one side, when suddenly he called out, "Stop!" and pointed to a spot where a material stone was yet wanting in the structure. The cloven-foot stoutly denied the necessity of such a stone; but when the miller insisted on its being supplied, he at last agreed to do so. Already the devil was returning through the air with the stone, when lo, the cock crowed in the mill beneath! "Stop," cried the miller, once more; " we are quits!" And away he ran to his old dwelling. Furious at this unexpected event, the devil tore the vane, wheels, and shell of his work to pieces, and scattered the huge fragments about till they covered the whole Ramberg. A small part of the foundation only was all that remained, and to this day stands an eternal monument of the unhallowed compact. But this was not the only revenge the devil took. Forscarcely had the miller with the lightened heart touched the threshold of his own dwelling, when the evil one hurled a rock down upon the frail hut, which, in a single moment destroyed it with all its inmates. Gentleman's Pocket Mag. A celebrated wit, the best scholar of his day, both at Eton and at Oxford - a first-rate speaker too in Parliament, whose only fault was a little over anxiety, in season and out of season, to get the laughers on his side, happened one day, in driving along a narrow road, to meet a heavy loaded waggon.-What was to be done? he wished to be accommodating, but for both to proceed was impossible, asserting the privilege of his aristocratic vehicle, he peremptorily ordered the farmer to get off the road.-" Off the road! not for thee, nor any man in England; and if thou dost not take thy gimcrack out of my way, I'll do what I should be very sorry to be obliged to do." Our hero, though by no means deficient in manhood, yet wisely considering that no honour could be gained in such an encounter, soon determined to take the discreeter part. Therefore, settling the matter of dignity as well as he could, with the best grace possible, and with admirable management of his reins, he contrived to back out of the difficulty, and a length lodged himself and his curricle on a piece of smooth turf, at a considerable distance in the rear. "And now my friend," said he," since I have done this purely for your accommodation, be so good as to tell me what you meant by saying, that if I did not get out of your way, you'd do what you'd be very sorry to be obliged to do?"-"Why, please your honour, said the honest Yorkshireman, pulling off his hat, and making his lowest reverence, if you had not backed I must." Dr. Philpot's Letter to Mr. Canning. ANECDOTE OF ELIZABETH, WIFE OF THE PRINCE ROYAL OF PRUSSIA. This princess, who was afterwards divorced, was brought up at Stettin, and had sent to Lyons for a very beautiful robe, which was directed to her at that town. As an immense duty was laid on foreign stuffs, the custom-house officer detained the robe, till the duty was paid. The princess felt very indignant, and sent to tell the man to bring her the robe, she would pay him his due. He obeyed; but scarce had he entered the apartment of the princess, than she seized hold of the robe, boxed his ears twice most heartily, and drove him out of her apartment, The custom-house officer went out, swelling with rage, and wrote a long account of the transaction, which he addressed to the king, and in which he bitterly complained of having met with very disgraceful treatment, as he was acting in the discharge of his duty. Frederick replied as follows: "The loss of the excise duties must be placed to my account; the robe will remain the property of the princess; the blows, with him who received them. As to the pretended disgrace, I will take off that stigma : never could the application of a beautiful hand on the face of a custom-house officer be regarded as a disgrace." OF AMUSEMENT AND INSTRUCTION, IN HISTORY, SCIENCE, LITERATURE, THE FINE ARTS, &c. Every stranger who goes to Verona is sure to have his sympathy moved, and his curiosity excited, by what is called "The Tomb of Juliet;" and there is no man who has read Shakspeare that will not hasten to the spot where it lies, regardless, at the moment, whether it be real or not. It is well known that this part of Italy had furnished to our immortal bard the materials of a tragedy, which, for all the pathetic details of hapless love and devoted constancy, stands unrivalled in any language. And though much of legendary exaggeration is superadded to the circumstances of the catastrophe, yet the main fact is VOL. I. attested by the local history of Verona; and therefore the mind is disposed to admit the probability that the excavated oblong stone, which is now pointed out in the neglected ruins of an old Franciscan monastary, might have once contained the beauteous form of the unhappy Juliet. Count Persico, one of the native nobility, who has published a very interesting work on the curiosities of Verona, and of the provinces adjacent, thus relates the melancholy story of Romeo and Juliet: "In the year 1303, or about that time, Bartholomew della Scala, being captain of the Veronese, Romeo 17 |