THADDEUS RUDDY'S DESCRIPTION OF HIS

MISTRESS.

THE following description of Bridget Brady, by her lover Thaddeus Ruddy, a bard who lived about the middle of the seventeenth century, is perhaps unique as a specimen of local simile.

"She's as straight as a pine on the mountain of Kil

mannon,

She's as fair as the lilies on the banks of the Shannon; Her breath is as sweet as the blossoms of Drumcallan, And her breasts gently swell like the waves of Lough Allan ;

Her eyes are as mild as the dews of Dunsany,

Her veins are as pure as the blue-bells of Slaney;
Her words are as smooth as the pebbles of Terwinny,
And her hair flows adown like the streamlets of Finny."

THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP.

THE extensive continent of North America I combines most of the various features of the gradations of climate, with numberless objects of admiration to the naturalist, peculiar to itself; among these may be classed the Dismal Swamp, a morass of an extent unequalled in any part of the world. It reaches from Albe

marle Sound, in North Carolina, to the neighbourhood of Portsmouth, on the opposite side of the harbour to Norfolk. It is supposed to contain about 250 square miles. or about 150,000

acres.

Lake Drummond is situated near the centre of the Swamp, and is formed by the drainings of this immense bog. It is crowded with fish of various kinds; which, living unmolested, attain to a prodigious size. Its surface is generally calm, being sheltered by lofty trees which grow on its borders.

The solitude and dangers of the place have given rsie to romantic stories, which may have been strengthened by the vapours which frequently exhale from marshy ground, and known by the name of Will-o'-the-Wisp, or Ignis Fatuus. An anecdote of this kind is currently related by the inhabitants of this dreary tract, which gave rise to "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp," written by Mr. Moore.

The story on which it is founded is simply as follows. A very strong attachment was formed by two young people in the neighbourhood of the swamp, when the death of the lady interrupted their prospect of mutual happiness:

an event which made such an impression upon her lover, that he lost his senses. His mind being absorbed in her image, and familiar with the scenery of the place, he imagined that she was still alive and dwelt upon this Lake. Determined to find her on whom his soul was fixed, he went in pursuit of her, and as he was never seen after, it is supposed he perished in some of the dangerous morasses which environ it.

"They made her a grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true,

And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where all night long, by a fire-fly* lamp,

She paddles her white canoe.

And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear ;
Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree,
When the footstep of death is near."

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds,
His path was rugged and sore;

The fire-fly is an insect common in this part of the country; in its flight it emits a beam of light brighter than the glow-worm.

Through tangled juniper beds of reeds,

Through many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And man ne'er trod before.

And when on the earth he sunk to sleep,
If sleep his eyelids knew,

He lay where the deadly vives * do weep
Their venomous tears, and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew!

And near him the she-wolf stirr'd the brake,
And the rattle-snake breath'd in his ear,
Till he starting cried-from his dream awake,
"Oh! when shall I see the frozen lake,
And the white canoe of my dear!"

He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright
Quick o'er the surface play'd.

"Welcome," he said, my dear one's light."

And the dim shore echoed for many a night
The name of the death-cold maid!

Till he form'd a boat of the bucher bark

Which carried him off from the shore,

Far he followed the meteor spark,

The winds were high and the clouds were dark,
And the boat returned no more.

* A plant that grows wild in America, resembling the vine, but of a most pernicious quality.

But oft from the Indian hunter's camp,
This lover and maid so true

Are seen, at the hour of midnight damp,
To cross the lake by their fire-fly lamp,
And paddle their white canoe."

BOCCACIO'S TESEIDE.

BOCCACIO was the disciple of Petrarch; and, although principally known and deservedly celebrated as a writer or inventor of tales, he was, by his contemporaries, usually placed as a poet in the third rank, after Dante and Petrarch. But Boccacio having seen the Platonic sonnets of his master, Petrarch, in a fit of despair, committed almost all his poetry to the flames, except a single poem, of which his own good taste had long taught him to entertain a more favourable opinion. This piece, thus happily rescued from destruction, was, until lately, so scarce and so little known, even in Italy, as to have left its author but a slender proportion of that eminent degree of poetical reputation which he might have justly claimed from so extraordinary a performance.

It is an heroic poem, in twelve books, entitled, "La Teseide," and written in the octave stanza,