How beautiful this night! The balmiest sigh Which vernal Zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, Were discord to the speaking quietude That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault, Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which Love had spread To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, Robed in a garment of untrodden snow; Yon darksome walls, whence icicles depend So stainless, that their white and glittering spears Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep, Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower So idly, that wrapt Fancy deemeth it A metaphor of Peace--all form a scene Where musing Solitude might love to lift Her soul above this sphere of earthliness; Where silence undisturbed might watch alone So cold, so bright, so still. P.B. SHELLEY. * * * * * HACKNEY COACHES. Nothing in nature or art can be so abominable as those vehicles at this hour. We are quite satisfied that, except an Englishman, who will endure any thing, no native of any climate under the sky would endure a London hackney coach; that an Ashantee gentleman would scoff at it; and that an aboriginal of New South Wales would refuse to be inhumed within its shattered and infinite squalidness. It is true, that the vehicle has its merits, if variety of uses can establish them. The hackney coach conveys alike the living and the dead. It carries the dying man to the hospital, and when doctors and tax-gatherers can tantalize no more, it carries him to Surgeons' Hall, and qualifies him to assist the "march of mind" by the section of body. If the midnight thief find his plunder too ponderous for his hands, the hackney coach offers its services, and is one of the most expert conveyances. Its other employments are many, and equally meritorious, and doubtless society would find a vacuum in its loss. Yet we cordially wish that the Maberley brain were set at work upon this subject, and some substitute contrived. The French have led the way, and that too by the most obvious and simple arrangement possible. The "_Omnibus_,"--for they still have Latin enough in France for the name of this travelling collection of all sorts of human beings--the Omnibus is a long coach, carrying fifteen or eighteen people, all inside. For two-pence halfpenny it carries the individual the length of the Boulevard, or the whole diameter of Paris. Of those carriages there were about half-a-dozen some months ago, and they have been augmented since; their profits were said to have repaid the outlay within the first year: the proprietors, among whom is Lafitte, the banker, are making a large revenue out of Parisian sous, and speculation is still alive.--_Monthly Mag_. * * * * * FRANKLIN'S GRAVE.