THE YOUNG MAN AND THE SWALLOW.

A PRODIGAL young spendthrift, who had wasted his whole patrimony in taverns and gaming-houses, among, lewd, idle company, was taking a melancholy walk near a brook. It was in the month of January, and happened to be one of those warm, sunshiny days, which sometimes smile upon us even in that wintry season of the year; and, to make it the more flattering, a swallow, which by mistake had made its appearance too soon, flew skimming along upon the surface of the water. The giddy youth observing this, without any further consideration concluded that summer was come, and that he should therefore have little occasion for clothes, so went and pawned them at the broker's, and ventured the money for one stake more among his sharping companions. When this, like the rest, was gone, he took another solitary walk in the same place as before. But the weather, being severe and frosty, had given everything an aspect very different from what it had before; the brook was quite frozen over, and the poor swallow lay dead upon the bank; the very sight of which cooled the young spark's brains, till, coming to a sense of his misery, he reproached the deceased bird as the author of all his misfortunes :-"Ah! wretch that thou wert; said he, "thou hast undone both thyself and me, who was so credulous as to depend upon thee."

That" One swallow does not make a summer," is perhaps upon the whole the best rendering of this Fable which could be given: it contains, however, a more extended morality, and teaches us to retain at least sufficient forethought for self-preservation, and not to allow our conduct to be regulated by the accidental circumstances of the moment. Sir Roger L'Estrange, in his metrical translation of the Fables of Esop, appends the following Moral to the version given of the " Young man and the swallow."

"Uncommon causes should not be

Made rules in our economy;

Nor an irregular accident

Be drawn into a precedent.

THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE PEACOCK.

A SOCIABLE nightingale found amongst the songsters of the grove, plenty who envied her, but no friend. "Perhaps," thought she, "I may find one in another species," and flew confidingly to the peacock.

"Beautiful peacock! I admire thee.”—“ And I thee, lovely nightingale!”"Then let us be friends," continued the nightingale ; we shall not be envious of each other; thou art as pleasing to the eye as I to the ear." The nightingale and the peacock became friends.

THE YOUNG MAN AND THE LION.

An old man who was lord of a great estate, and had only one child, a son, of whom he was exceedingly fond, was remarkably weak and superstitious regarding the influence of dreams, omens, and prognostics. The young man, his son, was

addicted to hunting, and usually rose with the first streak of morning to follow the chase.

One night the father dreamed that his son was killed by a lion, and the circumstance made so deep an impression upon him, that he would not suffer the young man to go into the forest any more. He built a castle for his reception, in which he kept him closely confined, lest he should steal out privately to hunt, and meet his fate. Yet, as this was purely the effect of his love and fondness for him, he studied to make his confinement as agreeable as possible: and, in order to do so, furnished the castle with a variety of pictures, in which were all kinds of wild beasts, such as his son used to hunt, and among the rest, the portrait of a lion. This the young man viewed one day more attentively than ordinary; and being vexed in his mind at the unreasonable confinement which his father's dream had occasioned him, he broke out into a violent passion, and looking sternly at the lion: "Cruel savage," said he, "it is to thy grim and terrible form that I owe my imprisonment; if I had a sword in my hand, and thou wert living and before me, I would run it through thy heart, thus-" Saying this he struck his fist at the lion's breast, and unfortunately tore his hand with the point of a nail which stuck in the wainscot, and was hidden under the canvass. The wound festered, and turned to a gangrene; this threw the young man into a fever, of which he died; so that the father's dream was fulfilled by the very caution he took to prevent it.

A counterpart of the story of this Fable will be found in the "History of the third Royal Calender," in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments; where a rich jeweller conceals his son in a subterraneous cavern of a desert island, to avert the consequences of an astrological prediction which had doomed him at a certain age, to die by the hands of King Agib: an event which is brought to pass by an accident, occasioned by the very precautions used to prevent it. To account for the similarity, it will perhaps be sufficient to allude to the fact, that, at a very early period, the Arabic writers were well acquainted with the works of the Greek and Latin classics, which they translated into their own language, and thus disseminated through the Eastern world. There is sufficient evidence that Æsop and Phædrus were among the authors with whom they were familiar. Though, without adopting this solution, we might refer the matter to the universal prevalence, in ancient times, of a belief in the truth of astrology; and the stories put in circulation by the adepts in that art, in order to maintain their own credit, would naturally have partaken of much sameness, whether the practitioners of one country were acquainted with the resources of another or not.

Dr. Croxall has some sensible and judicious observations on this Fable. "Though it may seem," he says "to favour and encourage the notion of dreams and such fancied discoveries of future events, it is intended to ridicule and explode them. What can be more absurd than the practice of those credulous fools, who, having faith enough to believe the veracity of oracles, had the impudence or stupidity to try 10 defeat them afterwards? This was making a god with one hand, and throwing him away with the other. First they ask the Almighty what he intends to do? When he has told them, they believe and tremble, but are resolved to disappoint him if they can: nay, they think they can, and set about it accordingly. These low, inconsistent notions of God, gave the first birth to Atheism; and were they not too common in the world still, that pernicious principle, if there be any such principle in reality, would be either entirely rooted out, or grow so thin, as not to hinder the increase of virtue. When the Deity, which the generality of the world acknowledge, is used as if he were a Deity of irresolution, instability, mutability and passion, men of any discernment immediately renounce such a Deity as that, and, for want of due consideration, remain Atheists; it being, indeed, less absurd of the two, not to believe in a Supreme Being at all, than to believe that he is subject to the frailties of us wretched mortals, and governed by whim and fancy."