ts body brevity, and wit its soul.

W. H. H.

* * * * *

"THE MOUSE TOWER"

A GERMAN LEGEND.

(_For the Mirror_.)

The bishop of Mentz was a wealthy prince,
Wealthy and proud was he;
He had all that was worth a wish on earth--
But he had not charitie!

He would stretch put his _empty_ hands to _bless_,
Or lift them both to _pray_;
But alack! to lighten man's distress,
They moved no other way.

A famine came! but his heart was still
As hard as his pride was high;
And the starving poor but throng'd his door
To curse him and to die.

At length from the crowd rose a clamour so loud,
That a cruel plot laid he;
He open'd one of his granaries wide,
And bade them enter free.

In they rush'd--the maid and the sire.
And the child that could barely run--
Then he clos'd the barn, and set it on fire.
And burnt them every one!

And loud he laugh'd at each terrible shriek,
And cried to his archer-train,
"The merry mice!--how shrill they squeak!--
They are fond of the bishop's grain!"

But mark, what an awful judgment soon,
On the cruel bishop fell;
With so many mice his palace swarm'd,
That in it he could not dwell.

They gnaw'd the arras above and beneath,
They eat each savoury dish up;
And shortly their sacrilegious teeth
Began to nibble the bishop!

He flew to his castle of Ehrenfels,
By the side of the Rhine so fair;
But they found the road to his new abode,
And came in legions there.

He built him, in haste, a tower tall
In the tide, for his better assurance;
But they swam the river, and scal'd the wall,
And worried him past endurance.

One morning his skeleton there was seen,
By a load of flesh the lighter;
They had picked his bones uncommonly clean,
And eaten his very mitre!

Such was the end of the bishop of Mentz,
And oft at the midnight hour,
He comes in the shape of a fog so dense,
And sits on his old "Mouse-Tower."

C.K.W.

* * * * *

PRUSSIC ACID.

(_For the Mirror_.)

The circumstance of Montgomery's recent suicide in Newgate, has led me
to send you the following remarks upon the nature and properties of that
most violent poison, Prussic acid, with which the unfortunate man
terminated his existence.

Were we to consider the constituent parts and properties of the most
common things we are in the habit of daily using, and their poisonous
and destructive natures, we