Farewell, sweet! be not in a fright, Should your grandmamma bid you beware Of a youth, who was murdered one night, And whose ghost haunts the dark waters there: For _you_ know, ever since his decease, Of a harmless young ghost that's allow'd To go, by the River Police, Serenading about in his shroud! [From the Dublin University Magazine.] THE MYSTIC VIAL: OR, THE LAST DEMOISELLE DE CHARREBOURG. I.--THE GAME OF BOWLS. More than a century ago--we know not whether the revolution has left a vestige of it--there stood an old chateau, backed by an ancient and funereal forest, and approached through an interminable straight avenue of frowning timber, somewhere about fifteen leagues from Paris, and visible from the great high road to Rouen. The appliances of comfort had once been collected around it upon a princely scale; extensive vineyards, a perfect wood of fruit-trees, fish-ponds, mills, still remained, and a vast park, abounding with cover for all manner of game, stretched away almost as far as the eye could reach. But the whole of this palatial residence was now in a state of decay and melancholy neglect. A dilapidated and half-tenanted village, the feudal dependency of the seignorial domain, seemed to have sunk with the fortunes of its haughty protector. The steep roofs of the Chateau de Charrebourg and its flanking towers, with their tall conical caps, were mournfully visible in the sun among the rich foliage that filled the blue hazy distance, and seemed to overlook with a sullen melancholy the village of Charrebourg that was decaying beneath it. The Visconte de Charrebourg, the last of a long line of ancient seigneurs, was still living, and though not under the ancestral roof of his chateau, within sight of its progressive ruin, and what was harder still to bear, of its profanation; for his creditors used it as a storehouse for the produce of the estate, which he thus saw collected and eventually carted away by strangers, without the power of so much as tasting a glass of its wine or arresting a single grain of its wheat himself. And to say the truth, he often wanted a pint of the one and a measure or two of the other badly enough.