last. The grief of her husband on this
occasion exhibits itself in so much
extravagance, that we are almost prepared to
expect it would not be very lasting. He
tells us, however, that he provided mourning
for twenty of her relations, had her
buried handsomely in Bunhill Fields, and
requested Mr. Rogers to preach her funeral
sermon at her late father's meeting-house.
We have this sermon now before us—not a
pamphlet, but a well-bound octavo volume,
containing the Character of a good Woman,
in a Funeral Discourse, with a long essay for
a preface, together with an Epistle dedicatory,
to the Ladies who are religious and good-
humoured, both in a single and married
State—a curious and amusing book it is,
almost, we think, unique of its kind. A
tombstone, with a long inscription in verse,
was placed over her grave, and with the
narrative of these funeral honours paid to "dear
Iris," the work concludes.

Notwithstanding his vows of eternal
remembrance of dear Iris, we find that John
married again within little more than six
months after! The lady possessed some
property, and her mother more; but soon
after her marriage she left him, and her
dislike seems to have been irreconcilable.
Dunton now gave up the Black Raven, and
went to Dublin with a large consignment of
books. On his return, his wife being still
unwilling to come back to him, he attacked
her mother in a bitter pamphlet, showing up
Madam Jane Nicholas, of St. Alban's, for
preventing "dear Valeria" from returning
to him. An answer was published by the
ladies' friends, and in one of dear Valeria's
letters she plainly tells him, "I and all good
people think you never married me for love,
but for my money." We next find him, in
seventeen hundred and five, preparing his
Life and Errors for the press, in solitude,
being compelled to keep out of the way of
creditors; and it must have been sad for
him to reflect, how many of his brothers in
trade were still gaining a competency, if not a
fortune, under their respective signs, while he,
by indulging his old wayward and unsettled
disposition, was sinking fast into the very
ranks he so despised—the ranks of the hack
writers, whom he (likely enough) had not
done much to reclaim.

And, indeed, only as a pamphlet writer
was John Dunton henceforward known. His
publications were very numerous, and one on
the Hanoverian succession, entitled, Neck
or Nothing, is declared by Swift himself to
have been among the best ever published. In
seventeen hundred and twenty-three, John,
then an old man, petitioned the government
for a pension, in reward for forty pamphlets
written in its favour, but the application does
not appear to have been successful. The last
notice of him, is in Pope's Dunciad, and from
this it would seem that he was in poverty.
Having survived his second wife, to whom we
believe he was never reconciled, John Dunton
died in seventeen hundred and thirty-three,
at the age of seventy-four.

AN OLD OFFENDER.

A CULPRIT, from the stony prison brought,
  Stands at the solemn stern judicial bar;
A thief of many seasons; traced and caught,
   The plunder in his gripe. With mouth ajar,
He strives to look untouched by evil thought,
   But his eye steals around for friends afar.

"Who owns the boy?" No answer. "Eight years old?"
   "His tenth offence, sir." " Well, what has he done?"
"Cut off this watch, these seals." "He's very bold:
  Where is his daily living earned, or won?"
"In the streets, both night and day, sir, hot or cold."
   "Where are the poor child's parents?" "He has none."

None—none! No parent! Like the cuckoo's young,
  Cast on the lap of chance, for life, for bread;
Amongst the starved and sinful roughly flung;
  By felons taught; by nightly plunder fed!
Help, angels! who his birth-day carol sung,
  Teach him, or take him quickly to the dead.

"Help!" through the regions of the echoing sky,
  Through earth, and all its zones and circles, rings.
Ah, learn! When tears are forced from Pity's eye,
  To every gentle orb a moisture clings:
When Worth for human misery breathes a sigh,
  In answering music, know, an angel sings.

BROTHER MIETH AND HIS
BROTHERS.

WHY do I look lovingly back on the two
years of childhood passed in exile from all
friends at home, among one or two hundred
boys under the guidance of one or two dozen
masters? Why do I believe, as I do firmly, that
I learned precious things in that German school
which suffered me to forget my little Greek,
and to dwindle down from a precocious bolter
of Virgil to a bad decliner of rex, regis; which
administered its Euclid in homœopathic doses;
which taught me to write in mystic characters
that had to be unlearnt at home; and in
which I cannot remember that I ever did a
sum? Why do I believe that I learned more
than ever in the same time before or after, till
I went as a man into the school of sorrow?
For the benefit of teachers, let me try to look
at that school from the boy's point of view,
and find out what the lessons were by which
I profited.

From several English boarding-schools
through which I had been shifted with the
vain hope of finding, at last, one that was a
proper place of education, I went to New
Unkrant on the Rhine, a very little boy:
experienced in the applications of the fag, familiar
with the respective powers of fists, stones, nuts,
whipcord in all its combinations, bumping
against corners of wall, tommy and cane, and
other means of torture. I had learned to be