The author of the Guardian, in No. 67, gives an account of Tom Durfey, with a view to recommend him to the public notice for a benefit play, and says, that he remembered King Charles the Second leaning on Tom Durfey’s shoulder more than once, and humming over a song with him.

Roi des Violons, or King of the Fiddlers, was anciently a title in France.  It became defunct, in 1685, owing to anarchy—­thus harmony and discord cannot agree.

P.T.W.

* * * * *

ROSEDALE ABBEY.

(For the Mirror.)

  “A churchyard!—­’tis a homely word, yet full
  Of feeling; and a sound that o’er the heart
  Might shed religion.”

  R. MONTGOMERY.

  Ruins! so dark and lone,
    The pride of other years,
  On which the stars have shone,
    To light the mourners’ tears;
      The ivy clings to ye,
      And softly hums the bee
  Where violets blue are blooming,
  The liquid dews perfuming,
      Beneath each withered tree.

  Tombs! o’er your nameless stone
    What gentle hearts have wept,
  And there, at midnight lone,
    Their silent vigils kept;
      There Beauty laid her wreath,
      And Love seem’d “strong as death,”
  Around the pale shrines sighing,
  While plaintive winds were dying
      With music in their breath.

  But childhood loves to stray
    Whene’er the sward is green,
  Round your mementos grey,
    And haunts the mouldering scene;
      And lovely in repose,
      At sunset’s gorgeous close,
  Your holy walls seem blending
  With purple light descending
      Upon the beauteous rose.

  Tombs of the past unknown! 
    Ye are fringed with violets blue,
  And clouds have laved your stone
    With sweetest tears of dew;
      But when, by angels given,
      The last dread peal of heaven
  Shall rend ye all asunder
  With its immortal thunder,
      Your dead shall claim their heaven.

Deal.

G.R.C.

* * * * *

PORTRAIT OF STERNE.

(To the Editor.)

As many of the pages of your extensively-circulated little work have preserved memorials of Laurence Sterne, I hope you can spare room for the underwritten extract, from a letter of his to Mr. Garrick, dated Paris, March, 1762, and which may be seen in Vol I. of Mrs. Medalle’s “Letters of the late L. Sterne.”

My object in thus troubling you is, in the hope (perhaps you will say an almost forlorn, or distant one) that possibly some one of your readers, either here or abroad, maybe able to suggest where it is likely the under-mentioned whole-length portrait may now be of that once very distinguished man.