week would reach the purchase of the best of these.

The same sum laid out in the old book shops in London would buy you more classics, and pretty editions too, in one year, than you could read in five.

Now, I do not grudge laying out a half a crown a week upon you; but when so many good things for yourself and others may be done with it, I am unwilling you should squander it away like your schoolfellows in tarts and trinkets.

A large old house in the country was so ex tremely infested with rats, that nothing could be secured from their depredations. They scaled the walls to attack flitches of bacon, though hung

The

as high as the ceiling. Hanging shelves afforded no protection to the cheese and pastry They penetrated by sap into the store-room, and plundered it of preserves and sweetmeats. They gnawed through cupboard doors, undermined floors, and ran races behind the wainscots. cats could not get at them: they were too cunning and too well fed to meddle with poison; and traps only now and then caught a heedless straggler. One of these, however, on being taken, was the occasion of practising a new device. This was, to fasten a collar with a small bell about the prisoner's neck, and then turn him loose again.

Overjoyed at the recovery of his liberty, the rat ran into the nearest hole, and went in search of his companions. They heard at a distance the bell tinkle, tinkle, through the dark passages, and suspecting some enemy had got among them, away they scoured, some one way and some another. The bell bearer pursued; and soon guessing the cause of their flight, he was greatly amused by it. Wherever he approached, it was all hurry scurry, and not a tail of one of them was to be seen. He chased his old friends from hole to hole, and room to room, laughing all the while at their fears, and increasing them by all the means in his power. Presently he had the whole house to himself. "That's right (quoth he)-the fewer the better cheer." So he rioted alone among the good things, and stuffed till he could hardly walk.

For two or three days this course of life went on very pleasantly. He eat, and eat, and played the bugbear to perfection. At length he

grew tired of this lonely condition, and longed to mix with his companions again upon the former footing. But the difficulty was, how to get rid of his bell. He pulled and tugged with his forefeet, and almost wore the skin off his neck in the attempt, but all in vain. The bell was now his plague and torment. He wandered from room to room, earnestly desiring to make himself known to one of his companions, but they all kept out of his reach. At last, as he was moping about disconsolate, he fell in puss's way, and was devoured in an instant.

He who is raised so much above his fellowcreatures as to be the object of their terror, must suffer for it in losing all the comforts of society. He is a solitary being in the midst of crowds. He keeps them at a distance, and they equally shun him. Dread and affection cannot subsist together.

Of a complaint made against sundry persons for breaking the windows of Dorothy Careful, widow, and dealer in gingerbread.

The court being sat, there appeared in person the widow Dorothy Careful, to make a complaint against Henry Luckless, and other person or persons unknown, for breaking three panes of glass, value nine pence, in the house of the said widow. Being directed to tell her case to the court, sne made a curtsey, and began as follows: "Please your lordship, I was sitting at work by my fire

*This was meant as a sequel of that very pleasing and ingenious little work entitled Juvenile Trials, in which a court of justice is supposed to be instituted in a boarding-school, composed of the scholars themselves, for the purpose of trying oflences committed at school.

side, between the hours of six and seven in the evening, just as it was growing dusk, and little Jack was spinning beside me, when all at once crack went the window, and down fell a little basket of cakes that was set up against it. I started up, and cried to Jack, bless me, what's the matter! So says Jack, somebody has thrown a stone and broke the window, and I dare say it is some of the school boys. With that I ran out of the house, and saw some boys making off as fast as they could go. So I ran after them as quick as my old legs would carry me; but I should never have come near them, if one had not happened to fall down. Him I caught, and brought back to my house; when Jack knew him at once to be master Harry Luckless. So I told him I would complain of him next day; and I hope your worship will make him pay the damage, and I think he deserves a good whipping into the bargain, for injuring a poor widow woman."

The judge, having heard Mrs. Careful's story, desired her to sit down; and then calling up Master Luckless, asked him what he had to say for himself. Luckless appeared with his face a good deal scratched, and looking very ruefully. After making his bow, and sobbing two or three times, he said:

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My lord, I am as innocent of this matter as any boy in the school, and I am sure I have suffered enough about it already. My lord, Billy Thompson and I were playing in the lane near Mrs. Careful's house, when we heard the window crash; and directly after, she came running out towards us. Upon this, Billy ran away, and I ran