(_For the Mirror._)


Our ages are the same, you say,
But know that love believes it not;
The Fates, a wager I would lay,
Our tangled threads shared out by lot;
What part to each they did assign
The world, fair dame, can plainly see;
The Spring and Summer days were thine,
Autumn and Winter came to me. H.

* * * * *


ENGLISH BALLAD SINGING.

(_For the Mirror._)


The minstrels were once a great and flourishing body in England; but
their dignity being interwoven with the illusory splendour of feudal
institutions, declined on the advance of moral cultivation: they became
in time vulgar mountebanks and jugglers, and in the reign of Elizabeth
were _suppressed_ as rogues and vagabonds. Banished from the highways
they betook themselves to alehouses--followed the trade of pipers and
fiddlers--and minstrelsy was no longer known in England.

The suppression of "the order" of minstrels, gave rise to that of the
Ballad-singers, who relied upon the quality of their voices for success.