HARPER'S

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

VOLUME I.

JUNE TO NOVEMBER, 1850.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
329 & 331 PEARL STREET,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
MDCCCL

ADVERTISEMENT.

The Publishers take great pleasure in presenting herewith the first volume of the New Monthly Magazine. It was projected and commenced in the belief, that it might be made the means of bringing within the reach of the great mass of the American people, an immense amount of useful and entertaining reading matter, to which, on account of the great number and expense of the books and periodicals in which it originally appears, they have hitherto had no access. The popularity of the work has outstripped their most sanguine expectations. Although but six months have elapsed since it was first announced, it has already attained a regular monthly issue of more than Fifty Thousand Copies, and the rate of its increase is still unchecked. Under these circumstances, the Publishers would consider themselves failing in duty, as well as in gratitude, to the public, if they omitted any exertion within their power to increase its substantial value and its attractiveness. It will be their aim to present, in a style of typography unsurpassed by any similar publication in the world, every thing of general interest and usefulness which the current literature of the times may contain. They will seek, in every article, to combine entertainment with instruction, and to enforce, through channels which attract rather than repel attention and favor, the best and most important lessons of morality and of practical life. They will spare neither labor nor expense in any department of the work; freely lavishing both upon the editorial aid, the pictorial embellishments, the typography, and the general literary resources by which they hope to give the Magazine a popular circulation, unequaled by that of any similar periodical ever published in the world. And they are satisfied that they may appeal with confidence to the present volume, for evidence of the earnestness and fidelity with which they will enter upon the fulfillment of these promises for the future.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

Lord Jeffrey's Account of the Origin of the Edinburgh Review—Character of Sir Robert Peel—The Ownership of Land—A Self-Taught Artist—Conversation of Literary Men—Rewards of Literature—Schamyl the Prophet of the Caucasus—The Colossal Statue—Wordsworth's Prose-Writings—Anecdotes of Beranger—The Paris Academy of Inscriptions.

Bryant's Letters of a Traveler; Bayard Taylor's Eldorado, [140]. Standish the Puritan; Talbot and Vernon, [141]. Smyth's Unity of the Human Races, 284. Talvi's Literature of the Slavic Nations; Greeley's Hints toward Reforms, 288. Antonina Martinet's Solution of Great Problems; Lossing's Field Book, 286, 427, 837. Lamartine's Past Present and Future of the French Republic; Lardner's Railway Economy; The Lone Dove; Mezzofanti's Method applied to the Study of the French Language; The Ojibway Conquest; Buffum's Six Months in the Gold Mines; The World as it is and as it appears; Drake's Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America, 286. Campbell's Life and Letters, 425. Life and Correspondence of Andrew Combe, 426. Dr. Johnson's Religious Life and Death; Sydney Smith's Sketches of Moral Philosophy; The Plough, the Loom, and the Anvil, 427. Mrs. Child's Rebels; Davies's Logic and Utility of Mathematics; The Gallery of Illustrious Americans; The Phantom World; Christopher under Canvas; Byrne's Dictionary of Mechanics; Griffith's Marine and Naval Architecture, 428. Duggin's Specimens of Bridges, etc. on the U.S. Railroads; M'Clintock's Second Book in Greek; Baird's Impressions of the West Indies, and North America; Fleetwood's Life of Christ; The Shoulder Knot; Supplement to Forester's Fish and Fishing; The Morning Watch; Debates in the Convention of California; The Mothers of the Wise and Good, 429. Carlyle's Latter-Day Pamphlets, 430, 571. The Illustrated Domestic Bible; Earnestness; Amy Harrington; The Vale of Cedars; Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange; Wah-to-yah, and the Taos Trail; Poems by H. Ladd Spencer; Talvi's Heloise; The Initials; The Lorgnette, 430. Tennyson's In Memoriam, 570. Abbott's History of Darius; Fowler's English Language in its Elements and forms; Julia Howard; Cumming's Five Years of a Hunter's Life; Moore's Health, Disease, and Remedy; Wright's Perforations of the Latter-day Pamphlets; Lanman's Haw-Ho-Noo, 571. Leigh Hunt's Autobiography; U.S. Railroad Guide and Steamboat Journal; Ware's Hints to Young Men; The Iris; Irving's Conquest of Granada, 572. Life and Times of Gen. John Lamb, Progress of the Northwest; Everett's Bunker Hill Oration; Walker's Phi Beta Kappa Oration; Bayard Taylor's American Legend; Ungewitter's Europe, Past and Present; Downing's Architecture of Country Houses, 573. Jarvis's Don Quixote; Halliwell's Shakspeare; Meyer's Universum; The Night Side of Nature; Giles's Thoughts on Life; Hill's Lectures on Surgery; The National Temperance Offering, 574. Rural Hours; Robinson's Greek and English Lexicon; The Berber, 713. Works of Joseph Bellamy; Adelaide Lindsay; Mayhew's Popular Education; Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning; After Dinner Table Talk; Cooper's Deer Slayer; Stockton's Sermon on the Death of Zachary Taylor; Raymond's Relations of the American Scholar to his Country and his Times, 714. Loomis's Recent Progress of Astronomy; Loomis's Mathematical Course; Autobiography of Goethe; Braithwaite's Retrospect; Mrs. Ellett's Domestic History of the Revolution; Lives of Eminent Literary and Scientific Men; Johnson's Cicero; Lady Willoughby's Diary; The Young Woman's Book of Health, 715. Whittier's Songs of Labor; Nicholson's Poems of the Heart; The Mariner's Vision; Collins's edition of Æsop's Fables; Seba Smith's New Elements of Geometry, 716. Buckingham's Specimens of Newspaper Literature; Edward Everett's Orations and Speeches, 717. Echoes of the Universe; Memoir of Anne Boleyn; The Lily and the Totem; Reminiscences of Congress; Mental Hygiene, 718. Williams's Religious Progress; Poetry of Science; Footprints of the Creator; Pre-Adamite Earth, 857. Household Surgery; Gray's Poetical Works; Memoirs of Chalmers; History of Propellers and Steam Navigation; The Country Year-Book; Success in Life; Alton Locke, 858. The Builder's, and the Cabinet-maker and Upholster's Companion; Lessons from the History of Medical Delusions; Lexicon of Terms used in Natural History; Lamartine's Additional Memoirs, and Genevieve; Rose's Chemical Tables; Pendennis; Stockhardt's Principles of Chemistry; Petticoat Government; Etchings to the Bridge of Sighs, 859. Bartlett's Natural Philosophy; Church's Calculus; Lonz Powers; Abbott's History of Xerxes; Alexander's Dictionary of Weights and Measures; America Discovered; Dwight's Christianity Revived in the East; Grahame, 860. George Castriot; The Last of the Mohicans; Johnston's Relations of Science and Agriculture; Descriptive Geography of Palestine; Life of Commodore Talbot; American Biblical Repository; North American Review, 861. Methodist Quarterly Review; Christian Review; Brownson's Quarterly, 862.

General Intelligence.—The invasion of Cuba, 275. Mr. Webster's letter on the delivery of fugitive slaves; Reply of Hon. Horace Mann, 275. Prof. Stuart's pamphlet, 275. The Nashville Convention, 275. New Southern Paper at Washington, 275. Connecticut resolutions in favor of the Compromise Bill, 275. Dinner to Senator Dickenson, 275. Dinner to Hon. Edward Gilbert, of California, 276. Constitutional conventions in Ohio and Michigan; Governors Crittenden and Wright, 276. Anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, 276. Seizure of a vessel for violation of the neutrality act, 276. Death of President Taylor; succession of Mr. Fillmore, and the new Cabinet, 416. Release of the Contoy prisoners, 417. Incorrect rumor of an insult to the U.S. Minister to Spain, 417, 703. Fire in Philadelphia, 417. Will saltpetre explode, 417. Cholera at the West, 417. Professor Webster's confession, 418. The Collins steamers, 418. Mr. Squier's researches in Central America, 418. Measures for a direct trade from the South to Liverpool, 418. Free School System in New York, 418. Medal to Colonel Fremont, 418. U.S. Boundary Commission, 418. State Convention in New Mexico, 419. Fourth of July Addresses at various places, 420. Celebration of the Capture of Stony Point, 420. Affairs at Liberia, 420. American claims on Portugal, 424. Courtesies between the Corporations of Buffalo and Toronto, 563. Suffering the growth of the Canada thistle made penal in Wisconsin, 563. Report of the West Point Board of Visitors, 563. Project for shortening the passage of the Atlantic, 563. Gen. Quitman's letter, 702. Re-election of Mr. Rusk as Senator from Texas, indicating a disposition to accept the U.S. proposals, 702. Arrival of a Turkish Commissioner, 702. Changes in the Cabinet, 702. Mr. Conrad's letter to his constituents on the slavery question, 702. Execution of Prof. Webster, 703. Arrival of Jenny Lind, 703. Opening of the Gallery of the Art Union, 704. Passage of the Pacific from Liverpool, the shortest ever made, 707. Whig State Convention at Syracuse; Convention of the seceders at Utica; Letter of Washington Hunt, 849. Anti-Renters' convention at Albany, 849. Feeling at the South in relation to the admission of California, 850. Hon. C.J. Jenkins on disunion, 850. New Collins steamers, Arctic and Baltic, 850. Property in N.Y. City, 850. Swedish colony in Illinois, 850. Working of the Fugitive Slave Bill, 850. Jenny Lind's concerts, 850. New York a Catholic Archepiscopal See, 850. The Boundary Bill in Texas; Mr. Kaufman's letter, 851. Policy of Government in relation to the transit of the Isthmus, 851. Earthquake at Cleveland, 851.

Congressional.—The Compromise Bill in the Senate, 275. Webster's speech on the Bill, 416. The Galphin Claim, 416. Final action of the Senate on the Compromise Bill, 561. Protest of Southern Senators against the admission of California, 561. Proposals to Texas, in relation to the boundary, 562. Discussion in the House on the Appropriation Bill, 562. President's Message on Texas and New Mexico, with Webster's letter to Gov. Bell, of Texas, 562. Nominations to the Cabinet, 563. Passage of the Texas Bill, and analysis of the votes, 700. Passage of the California Bill; of the Fugitive Slave Bill; of Bill abolishing the Slave-trade in the District, 701. Passage of the Appropriation Bills, with provisions for abolishing flogging in the navy, and granting bounties to soldiers; Adjournment of Congress, 849.

Elections.—In Virginia for members of constitutional convention; contest between the eastern and western sections, 463. In Missouri, partial success of the Whigs, 463. In North Carolina, success of the Democrats, 463. In Indiana, giving the Democrats the control of the legislature and constitutional convention, 463. In Vermont, success of the Whigs, 703. Election of Hon. Solomon Foot as Senator, 850.

California, New Mexico, and Oregon.—Tax on foreigners, 276. Excitement at the delay of admission to the Union, 276. Riot at Panama, 276. Fires at San Francisco, 419. Gold, 419. Indian hostilities, 419. Bill for the admission of California as a state into the Union, passed the Senate, and protest of Southern Senators, 561. Line of stages between Independence, Mo., and Santa Fé, 563. Continued discoveries of gold, 566. Disturbances with Foreigners and Indians, 566. Steam communication between San Francisco and China, 566. Rumors of gold in Oregon, 566. Resignation of Gov. Lane, 566. News from the Boundary Commission, 702. Disturbances on account of Sutter's claims, 705. Cholera on board steamers, 706. New rumors of gold in Oregon, 706. Arrival of Senators from New Mexico; conflict of authorities; Indian outrages, 706. State of affairs in California, up to Sept. 15, 851. In Oregon to Sept. 2, 852.

Mexico And South America.—Presidential Election in Mexico, Cholera; Right of Way across the Isthmus, 418. Ravages of the Indians in Mexico, 566. Transit of the Isthmus; Opening of the Port of San Juan, 851. Steamers proposed between Valparaiso and Panama, 851.

Literary.—Agassiz and Smyth on the Unity of the Human Race; Address of Professor Lewis; Bishop Hughes on Socialism. Walter Colton's book on California; Professor Davies's Logic and Utility of Mathematics, 276. Bartlett's Natural Philosophy; Mansfield on American Education, 277. De Quincey's writings: Poems by Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell; Giles's Christian Thoughts on Life; Bristed's Reply to Mann; Gould's Comedy, The Very Age, 277. Historical Society in Trinity College, Hartford, 420. March's Reminiscences of Congress, 564. Torrey's translation of Neander, 564. Life of Randolph, 565. Kendall's work on the Mexican War, 565. Commencement Exercises at various Colleges, 565. G.P.R. James's Lectures, 704. Andrews's Latin Lexicon, 704. Hildreth's new volume of American History, 705. Dr. Wainwright's Our Saviour with Prophets and Apostles; Miss McIntosh's Evenings at Donaldson Manor, 853.

Scientific.—Paine's Water-gas, 277, 564. Forshey's Essay on the deepening of the channel of the Mississippi, 563. Professor Page's experiments in electro-magnetism, 564. Mathiot's experiment's at illuminating with hydrogen, 564. Meeting of the American Scientific Association at New Haven, 564. Astronomical Expedition under Lieutenant Gillis; Humboldt's Notice of American Science, 705.

Personal.—Arrival of G.P.R. James, 419. Arrival of Gen. Dembinski, 419. Emerson, Prescott, Hudson, Garibaldi, 420. Hon. D.D. Barnard, 563. Henry Clay at Newport, 563. Intelligence from the Franklin Expedition, 564. Messrs. Lawrence and Rives at the Royal Agricultural Society, 567. Messrs. Duer, Spaulding, and Ashmun, decline re-election to Congress, 702. Ammin Bey, 702. Jenny Lind, 703. Nomination of George N. Briggs for re-election as Governor of Mass., 850. Hamlet the fugitive Slave, 850. Archbishop Hughes, 851. Bishop Onderdonk, 851. G.P.R. James and the Whig Review, 853.

Deaths.—Adam Ramage; S. Margaret Fuller, 420. Commodore Jacob Jones, 563. Mr. Nes; Professor Webster; Dr. Judson; Bishop H.B. Bascom; John Inman, 703. Gen. Herard, ex-President of Haiti, 706.

England.—Birth of Prince Arthur, [123]. Mr. Gibson's motion in Parliament to abolish all taxes on knowledge; bearing of these taxes; motion negatived; evasion of the excise on paper by the publisher of the "Greenock Newscloth," [124]. Education Bill introduced, discussed, and postponed, [124]. Defeat of ministers on unimportant measures, [124]. Preparations for Industrial Exhibition, [125], 280, 852, 853. Expeditions in search of Sir John Franklin, [125], 855. The Greek quarrel, 277. Consequent action of Russia and Austria in relation to British subjects, 278. University reform, 278. Imprisonment of British colored seamen at Charleston, 278. Sinecures in the ecclesiastical courts, 278. Motion in Parliament to give the Australian colonies the full management of their own affairs, lost, 278. Bill passed reducing the parliamentary franchise in Ireland, and speech of Sir James Graham in its favor, 279. Various bills for Sanitary and Social reform, 279. Bill to abolish the Viceroyalty in Ireland, 280. Commission of inquiry into the state of the Universities, 280. Death of Sir Robert Peel, 420. Discussions on the Greek question; remarkable speeches of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, 421. Sunday labor in the Post-office, 421. Bill lost for protecting free sugar; Intra-mural interments Bill passed, 422. Assault on the Queen, 422. Wrecks in the Northern Atlantic; wreck of the Orion, 422. The Rothschild case, 566. Foreign policy of ministers sustained, 566. Sundry Bills for social and political reform lost, 567. Grants to the Duke of Cambridge and the Princess Mary, 567. Explosion of a coal-mine, 567. Gen. Haynau mobbed, 706. Prorogation of Parliament, 706. Lord Brougham's vagaries, 706. Extent of railways in Great Britain, 707. The Times and Gen. Haynau, 852. The Arctic Expedition, 852. Cotton in Siberia, 852. Lord Clarendon in Ireland, 852. Queen's University and the bishops, 852, 855. Shipwrecks, 853. The Sea Serpent in Ireland, 853. Punishment of naval officers for carelessness, 853. Amount of Irish crop, 855. Cunard steamers, 855.

France.—Contest in Paris for election of Member of Assembly; election of Eugene Sue, [122]. Mutiny in the 11th Infantry, [122]. Destruction of the suspension-bridge at Angers, and terrible loss of life, [122]. Arrest of M. Proudhon, [123]. Capture of Louis Pellet, a notorious murderer, [123]. Bill for restricting the suffrage, 283. Stringent proceedings against the Press, 283. Recall of the French embassador to England, 283. Increase voted to the salary of the President, 424. New laws for the restriction of the Press, 424. Walker's attempt to assassinate Louis Napoleon, 424. M. Thiers's visit to Louis Philippe, 424. Tax on feuilletons, 569. The President's tour, 707. Death of Louis Philippe, and notice of his life, 708. Decision of a majority of the departments in favor of a revision of the constitution, 709. Duel between MM. Chavoix and Dupont, 711. Death of Balzac, and notice of his life and works, 711. The President's plans; revision of the Constitution, 856.

Germany.—Convocations at Frankfort and Berlin, 284. Attempt on the life of the King of Prussia, 284. Dissolution of the Saxon Chambers, and of the Wurtemberg Diet, 424. Peace Convention at Frankfort, 424, 712. Restrictions on the Press in Prussia, 424. Fresh hostilities in Schleswig-Holstein, Battle of Idstedt, 570. Proceedings of Austria, respecting the Act of Confederation, 712. Inundations in Belgium, 712. General Krogh rewarded by the Emperor of Russia for his bravery at the battle of Idstedt, 712. Extension of telegraphs, 855. Hungarian musicians expelled from Vienna, 855. Colossal statue completed, 855. Revolutions in Hesse Cassel and Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 856.

Italy, Spain, Portugal.—The Pope's return, and adhesion to the Absolutists, [128]. State of affairs in Italy, 284. Intrigues in Spain, 284. Rain after a five years' drought, 284. Explosion of a powder-mill, 284. Claims of the United States on Portugal, and consequent difficulties, 424, 569. Birth and death of an heir to the Spanish Crown, 569. Disturbances in Piedmont, 712. Disquiets in Rome, 712. Inundation in Lombardy, 855. Prisons at Naples, 855.

India, And The East.—Disturbances among the Affredies; their villages destroyed by Sir Charles Napier, [128]. Arrangements of the Pasha of Egypt for shortening the passage across the desert, [128]. Establishment of a new journal in China, [129]. Permission granted the Jews for building a temple on Mount Zion, [129]. University in New South Wales, [129]. Terrible explosion at Benares, 570. Sickness at Canton, 570. The great diamond, 570. Revolt at Bantam, 570. Sulphur mines in Egypt, 856.

Literary.—Postponement of the French Exhibition of Paintings, [129]. Goethe's Manuscripts, 423. Mr. Hartley's bequests set aside, 423. History of Spain, by St. Hilaire, 568. Sir Robert Peel's MSS., 568, 712. Miss Strickland's forthcoming Lives of the Queens of Scotland, 569. Bulwer's new novel, 710. Copyright of foreigners, 710. Sale of the Paintings of the King of Holland, 710. Lamartine's Confidences, 710. Notice of Ticknor's Spanish Literature in the Morning Chronicle, 710. The North British Review, 711. Sale of the Barbarigo Gallery at Venice, 711. A new singer, 711. New edition of Owen's Works, 853. Copyrights paid to American Authors, 854. Theological Faculties in Germany, 854. Translation of Dante and Ovid into Hebrew, 854. Books issued, [126], 282, 422, 564, 710.

Scientific.—Papers read by Murchison and Lepsius before the Geological Society, [125]. Before the Royal Society, by O'Brien, Faraday, and Mantell, [125]. The Pelorosaurus, [125]. Lead for statues, [126]. Operations of Mr. Layard, [126], 280, 854. Discovery of ancient Roman coins in the Duchy of Oldenburg, [128]. Opening of the submarine telegraph between Dover and Calais, [129]. Experimental slips dropped from balloons, [129]. Box Tunnel, London, [129]. Transplantation of a full grown tree, [129]. Glass pipes for gas, [129]. International railway commission, [129]. Russian expedition for exploring the Northern Ural, [129]. Invention for extinguishing tires, 280. Experiments on light and heat, 281. Discovery of a new comet, 281. Unswathing a mummy, 423. Society for investigating epidemics; for observations in Meteorology, 423. Depredations on Assyrian and Egyptian antiquities, 568. Apparatus to render sea-water drinkable, 568. Improved mode of producing iron, 569. Prof. Johnston on American Agriculture, 569. Telegraphic wire between Dover and Calais, 711. Iron unsuitable for vessels of war, 853. New submarine telegraph, 853. The atmopyre, 854. A new star, 854. The Britannia bridge, 855. Ascent of Mount Blanc, 855.

Social.—Great project for agricultural emigration, [129]. English criminal cases, [129]. Building for the Industrial exhibition, 567. Lord Campbell on the Sunday Letter Bill, 707. Extension of the Franchise in Ireland, 707. Introduction of laborers into the West Indies, 707. Tenant-right conference in Dublin, 707. Peace Congress at Frankfort, 424, 712.

Personal.—Monument to Jeffrey, [125]. Absence of mind of Bowles, [133]. Degree of Doctor of Music conferred upon Meyerbeer, 422. Gutzlaff, Corbould, Gibson, 422. Baptism of the infant prince, 422. Accident to Rogers, 423. Monument to Wordsworth, 423. Sir Robert Peel's injunction to his family not to accept titles or pensions, 567. Barral and Bixio's balloon ascent, and Poitevin's horseback ascent, 568. Poverty of Guizot, 568. Meinhold fined for libel, 569. Guizot's refusal to accept a seat in the Council of Public Instruction, 569. Bulwer a candidate for the House of Commons; his new play, 569. Ovation to Leibnitz and Humboldt, 569. Haynau mobbed, 706. Movements of the Queen, 707. Duel between MM. Chavoix and Dupont, 711. Viscount Fielding embraces Catholicism, 855. Prospective liberation of Kossuth, 855.

Deaths.—Wordsworth, Bowles, [125]; Sir James Bathurst, Madame Dulcken, Sir Archibald Galloway, Admiral Hills, Dr. Prout, Madame Tussaud, [127]; Dr. Potts, inventor of the hydraulic pile-driver, [129]. Gay Lussac, 282; M.P. Souyet, the Emperor of China, Earl of Roscommon, Sir James Sutherland, Mrs. Jeffrey, 283; Sir Robert Peel, 420; Duke of Cambridge, 422; Dr. Burns, Dr. Gray, Rev. W. Kirby, B. Simmons, 568; Neander, 569; Louis Philippe, 708; Balzac, 711; Sir Martin Archer Shee, 711. Gale the aeronaut, 854.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

initial Letter. Meteoric Showers in Greenland. Meteors at the Falls of Niagara. Falling Stars among the Cordilleras. The November Meteors. Diagram.

Initial Letter. Monument at Concord. Monument at Lexington. Near View of Lexington Monument. Portrait of Jonathan Harrington. Washington's Head-quarters at Cambridge. The Riedesel House at Cambridge. Autograph of the Baroness Riedesel. Bunker Hill Monument. Chantrey's Statue of Washington. Mather's Vault. Handwriting of Cotton Mather. Speaker's Desk and Winthrop's Chair. Philip's Samp-Pan. Church's Sword.

Ball and Visiting Dresses. Straw Hats for Promenade. Straw Bonnet. Tulip Bonnet. Lace Jacquette.

Carriage Costume. Bridal Dress. Riding Dress.

Promenade Dress. Pelerines. Little Girl's Costume. Home Dress. Ball Dress.

Promenade Dress. Costume for a Young Lady. Morning Caps. Morning Costume.

Evening Costume. Morning Costume. Promenade Dress.

Promenade And Carriage Costume. Morning Costume. Opera Costume.

HARPER'S
NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. I—JUNE, 1850—Vol. I.

A WORD AT THE START.

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, of which this is the initial number, will be published every month, at the rate of three dollars per annum. Each number will contain as great an amount and variety of reading matter, and at least as many pictorial illustrations, and will be published in the same general style, as the present.

The design of the Publishers, in issuing this work, is to place within the reach of the great mass of the American people the unbounded treasures of the Periodical Literature of the present day. Periodicals enlist and absorb much of the literary talent, the creative genius, the scholarly accomplishment of the present age. The best writers, in all departments and in every nation, devote themselves mainly to the Reviews, Magazines, or Newspapers of the day. And it is through their pages that the most powerful historical Essays, the most elaborate critical Disquisitions, the most eloquent delineations of Manners and of Nature, the highest Poetry and the most brilliant Wit, have, within the last ten years, found their way to the public eye and the public heart.

This devotion to Periodical writing is rapidly increasing. The leading authors of Great Britain and of France, as well as of the United States, are regular and constant contributors to the Periodicals of their several countries. The leading statesmen of France have been for years the leading writers in her journals. Lamartine has just become the editor of a newspaper. Dickens has just established a weekly journal of his own, through which he is giving to the world some of the most exquisite and delightful creations that ever came from his magic pen. Alison writes constantly for Blackwood. Lever is enlisted in the Dublin University Magazine. Bulwer and Croly publish their greatest and most brilliant novels first in the pages of the Monthly Magazines of England and of Scotland. Macaulay, the greatest of living Essayists and Historians, has enriched the Edinburgh Review with volumes of the most magnificent productions of English Literature. And so it is with all the living authors of England. The ablest and the best of their productions are to be found in Magazines. The wealth and freshness of the Literature of the Nineteenth Century are embodied in the pages of its Periodicals.

The Weekly and Daily Journals of England, France, and America, moreover, abound in the most brilliant contributions in every department of intellectual effort. The current of Political Events, in an age of unexampled political activity, can be traced only through their columns. Scientific discovery, Mechanical inventions, the creations of Fine Art, the Orations of Statesmen, all the varied intellectual movements of this most stirring and productive age, find their only record upon these multiplied and ephemeral pages.

It is obviously impossible that all these sources of instruction and of interest should be accessible to any considerable number even of the reading public, much less that the great mass of the people of this country should have any opportunity of becoming familiar with them. They are scattered through scores and hundreds of magazines and journals, intermingled with much that is of merely local and transient interest, and are thus hopelessly excluded from the knowledge and the reach of readers at large.

The Publishers of the New Monthly Magazine intend to remedy this evil, and to place every thing of the Periodical Literature of the day, which has permanent value and commanding interest, in the hands of all who have the slightest desire to become acquainted with it. Each number will contain 144 octavo pages, in double columns: the volumes of a single year, therefore, will present nearly two thousand pages of the choicest and most attractive of the Miscellaneous Literature of the Age. The Magazine will transfer to its pages as rapidly as they may be issued all the continuous tales of Dickens, Bulwer, Croly, Lever, Warren, and other distinguished contributors to British Periodicals: articles of commanding interest from all the leading Quarterly Reviews of both Great Britain and the United States: Critical Notices of the current publications of the day: Speeches and Addresses of distinguished men upon topics of universal interest and importance: Notices of Scientific discoveries, of the progress and fruits of antiquarian research, of mechanical inventions, of incidents of travel and exploration, and generally of all the events in Science, Literature, and Art in which the people at large have any interest. Constant and special regard will be had to such articles as relate to the Economy of Social and Domestic Life, or tend to promote in any way the education, advancement, and well-being of those who are engaged in any department of productive activity. A carefully prepared Fashion Plate, and other pictorial illustrations, will also accompany each number.

The Magazine is not intended exclusively for any class of readers, or for any kind of reading. The Publishers have at their command the exhaustless resources of current Periodical Literature in all its departments. They have the aid of Editors in whom both they and the public have long since learned to repose full and implicit confidence. They have no doubt that, by a careful, industrious, and intelligent use of these appliances, they can present a Monthly Compendium of the periodical productions of the day which no one who has the slightest relish for miscellaneous reading, or the slightest desire to keep himself informed of the progress and results of the literary genius of his own age, would willingly be without. And they intend to publish it at so low a rate, and to give to it a value so much beyond its price, that it shall make its way into the hands or the family circle of every intelligent citizen of the United States.

[From the Dublin University Magazine.]

MAURICE TIERNAY, THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

CHAPTER I. "THE DAYS OF THE GUILLOTINE."

Neither the tastes nor the temper of the age we live in are such as to induce any man to boast of his family nobility. We see too many preparations around us for laying down new foundations, to think it a suitable occasion for alluding to the ancient edifice. I will, therefore, confine myself to saying, that I am not to be regarded as a mere Pretender because my name is not chronicled by Burke or Debrett. My great-grandfather, after whom I am called, served on the personal staff of King James at the Battle of the Boyne, and was one of the few who accompanied the monarch on his flight from the field, for which act of devotion he was created a peer of Ireland, by the style and title of Timmahoo—Lord Tiernay of Timmahoo the family called it—and a very rich-sounding and pleasant designation has it always seemed to me.

The events of the time—the scanty intervals of leisure enjoyed by the king, and other matters, prevented a due registry of my ancestors' claims; and, in fact, when more peaceable days succeeded it, it was judged prudent to say nothing about a matter which might revive unhappy recollections, and open old scores, seeing that there was now another king on the throne "who knew not Joseph;" and so, for this reason and many others, my great-grandfather went back to his old appellation of Maurice Tiernay, and was only a lord among his intimate friends and cronies of the neighborhood.

That I am simply recording a matter of fact, the patent of my ancestors' nobility now in my possession will sufficiently attest: nor is its existence the less conclusive, that it is inscribed on the back of his commission as a captain in the Shanabogue Fencibles—the well-known "Clear-the-way-boys"—a proud title, it is said, to which they imparted a new reading at the memorable battle afore-mentioned.

The document bears the address of a small public house called the Nest, on the Kells Road, and contains in one corner a somewhat lengthy score for potables, suggesting the notion that his majesty sympathized with vulgar infirmities, and found, as the old song says, "that grief and sorrow are dry."

The prudence which for some years sealed my grandfather's lips, lapsed, after a time, into a careless and even boastful spirit, in which he would allude to his rank in the peerage, the place he ought to be holding, and so on; till at last some of the government people, doubtless taking a liking to the snug house and demesne of Timmahoo, denounced him as a rebel, on which he was arrested and thrown into jail, where he lingered for many years, and only came out at last to find his estate confiscated and himself a beggar.

There was a small gathering of Jacobites in one of the towns of Flanders, and thither he repaired; but how he lived, or how he died, I never learned. I only know that his son wandered away to the east of Europe, and took service in what was called Trenck's Pandours—as jolly a set of robbers as ever stalked the map of Europe, from one side to the other. This was my grandfather, whose name is mentioned in various chronicles of that estimable corps, and who was hanged at Prague afterward for an attempt to carry off an archduchess of the empire, to whom, by the way, there is good reason to believe he was privately married. This suspicion was strengthened by the fact that his infant child, Joseph, was at once adopted by the imperial family, and placed as a pupil in the great military school of Vienna. From thence he obtained a commission in the Maria Theresa Hussars, and subsequently, being sent on a private mission to France, entered the service of Louis XVI., where he married a lady of the queen's household—a Mademoiselle de la Lasterie—of high rank and some fortune; and with whom he lived happily till the dreadful events of 17—, when she lost her life, beside my father, then fighting as a Garde du Corps, on the stair-case at Versailles. How he himself escaped on that day, and what were the next features in his history, I never knew; but when again we heard of him, he was married to the widow of a celebrated orator of the Mountain, and he himself an intimate friend of St. Just and Marat, and all the most violent of the Republicans.

My father's history about this period is involved in such obscurity, and his second marriage followed so rapidly on the death of his first wife, that, strange as it may seem, I never knew who was my mother—the lineal descendant of a house, noble before the Crusades, or the humble "bourgeoise" of the Quartier St. Denis. What peculiar line of political action my father followed I am unable to say, nor whether he was suspected with or without due cause: but suspected he certainly was, and at a time when suspicion was all-sufficient for conviction. He was arrested, and thrown into the Temple, where I remember I used to visit him every week; and whence I accompanied him one morning, as he was led forth with a string of others to the Place de la Grève, to be guillotined. I believe he was accused of royalism; and I know that a white cockade was found among his effects, and in mockery was fastened on his shoulder on the day of his execution. This emblem, deep dyed with blood, and still dripping, was taken up by a bystander, and pinned on my cap, with the savage observation, "Voila, it is the proper color; see that you profit by the way it became so." As with a bursting heart, and a head wild with terror, I turned to find my way homeward, I felt my hand grasped by another—I looked up, and saw an old man, whose threadbare black clothes and emaciated appearance bespoke the priest in the times of the Convention.

"You have no home now, my poor boy," said he to me; "come and share mine."

I did not ask him why. I seemed to have suddenly become reckless as to every thing present or future. The terrible scene I had witnessed had dried up all the springs of my youthful heart; and, infant as I was, I was already a skeptic as to every thing good or generous in human nature. I followed him, therefore, without a word, and we walked on, leaving the thoroughfares and seeking the less frequented streets, till we arrived in what seemed a suburban part of Paris—at least the houses were surrounded with trees and shrubs; and at a distance I could see the hill of Montmartre and its wind-mills—objects well known to me by many a Sunday visit.

Even after my own home, the poverty of the Père Michel's household was most remarkable: he had but one small room, of which a miserable settle-bed, two chairs, and a table constituted all the furniture; there was no fire-place, a little pan for charcoal supplying the only means for warmth or cookery; a crucifix and a few colored prints of saints decorated the whitewashed walls; and, with a string of wooden beads, a cloth skull-cap, and a bracket with two or three books, made up the whole inventory of his possessions; and yet, as he closed the door behind him, and drew me toward him to kiss my cheek, the tears glistened in his eyes with gratitude as he said,

"Now, my dear Maurice, you are at home."

"How do you know that I am called Maurice?" said I, in astonishment.

"Because I was an old friend of your poor father, my child; we came from the same country—we held the same faith, had the same hopes, and may one day yet, perhaps, have the same fate."

He told me that the closest friendship had bound them together for years past, and in proof of it showed me a variety of papers which my father had intrusted to his keeping, well aware, as it would seem, of the insecurity of his own life.

"He charged me to take you home with me, Maurice, should the day come when this might come to pass. You will now live with me, and I will be your father, so far at least as humble means will suffer me."

I was too young to know how deep my debt of gratitude ought to be. I had not tasted the sorrows of utter desertion; nor did I know from what a hurricane of blood and anarchy fortune had rescued me; still I accepted the Père's benevolent offer with a thankful heart, and turned to him at once as to all that was left to me in the world.

All this time, it may be wondered how I neither spoke nor thought of my mother, if she were indeed such; but for several weeks before my father's death I had never seen her, nor did he ever once allude to her. The reserve thus imposed upon me remained still, and I felt as though it would have been like a treachery to his memory were I now to speak of her whom, in his life-time I had not dared to mention.

The Père lost no time in diverting my mind from the dreadful events I had so lately witnessed. The next morning, soon after daybreak, I was summoned to attend him to the little church of St. Blois, where he said mass. It was a very humble little edifice, which once had been the private chapel of a chateau, and stood in a weed-grown, neglected garden, where broken statues and smashed fountains bore evidence of the visits of the destroyer. A rude effigy of St. Blois, upon whom some profane hand had stuck a Phrygian cap of liberty, and which none were bold enough to displace, stood over the doorway; besides, not a vestige of ornament or decoration existed. The altar, covered with a white cloth, displayed none of the accustomed emblems; and a rude crucifix of oak was the only symbol of the faith remaining. Small as was the building, it was even too spacious for the few who came to worship. The terror which prevailed on every side—the dread that devotion to religion should be construed into an adherence to the monarchy, that submission to God should be interpreted as an act of rebellion against the sovereignty of human will, had gradually thinned the numbers, till at last the few who came were only those whose afflictions had steeled them against any reverses, and who were ready martyrs to whatever might betide them. These were almost exclusively women—the mothers and wives of those who had sealed their faith with their blood in the terrible Place de la Grève. Among them was one whose dress and appearance, although not different from the rest, always created a movement of respect as she passed in or out of the chapel. She was a very old lady, with hair white as snow, and who led by the hand a little girl of about my own age; her large dark eyes and brilliant complexion giving her a look of unearthly beauty in that assemblage of furrowed cheeks, and eyes long dimmed by weeping. It was not alone that her features were beautifully regular, or that their lines were fashioned in the very perfection of symmetry, but there was a certain character in the expression of the face so different from all around it, as to be almost electrical in effect. Untouched by the terrible calamities that weighed on every heart, she seemed, in the glad buoyancy of her youth, to be at once above the very reach of sorrow, like one who bore a charmed fate, and whom Fortune had exempted from all the trials of this life. So at least did I read those features, as they beamed upon me in such a contract to the almost stern character of the sad and sorrow-struck faces of the rest.

It was a part of my duty to place a foot-stool each morning for the "Marquise," as she was distinctively called, and on these occasions it was that I used to gaze upon that little girl's face with a kind of admiring wonder that lingered in my heart for hours after. The bold look with which she met mine, if it at first half abashed, at length encouraged me; and as I stole noiselessly away, I used to feel as though I carried with me some portion of that high hope which bounded within her own heart. Strange magnetism! it seemed as though her spirit whispered to me not to be down-hearted or depressed—that the sorrows of life came and went as shadows pass over the earth—that the season of mourning was fast passing, and that for us the world would wear a brighter and more glorious aspect.

Such were the thoughts her dark eyes revealed to me, and such the hopes I caught up from her proud features.

It is easy to color a life of monotony; any hue may soon tinge the outer surface, and thus mine speedily assumed a hopeful cast; not the less decided, that the distance was lost in vague uncertainty. The nature of my studies—and the Père kept me rigidly to the desk—offered little to the discursiveness of fancy. The rudiments of Greek and Latin, the lives of saints and martyrs, the litanies of the church, the invocations peculiar to certain holy days, chiefly filled up my time, when not sharing those menial offices which our poverty exacted from our own hands.

Our life was of the very simplest; except a cup of coffee each morning at daybreak, we took but one meal; our drink was always water. By what means even the humble fare we enjoyed was procured, I never knew, for I never saw money in the Père's possession, nor did he ever appear to buy any thing.

For about two hours in the week I used to enjoy entire liberty, as the Père was accustomed every Saturday to visit certain persons of his flock who were too infirm to go abroad. On these occasions he would leave me with some thoughtful injunction about reflection or pious meditation, perhaps suggesting, for my amusement, the life of St. Vincent de Paul, or some other of those adventurous spirits whose missions among the Indians are so replete with heroic struggles; but still with free permission for me to walk out at large and enjoy myself as I liked best. We lived so near the outer Boulevard that I could already see the open country from our windows; but fair and enticing as seemed the sunny slopes of Montmartre—bright as glanced the young leaves of spring in the gardens at its foot—I ever turned my steps into the crowded city, and sought the thoroughfares where the great human tide rolled fullest.

There were certain spots which held a kind of supernatural influence over me—one of these was the Temple, another was the Place de la Grève. The window at which my father used to sit, from which, as a kind of signal, I have so often seen his red kerchief floating, I never could pass now, without stopping to gaze at; now, thinking of him who had been its inmate, now, wondering who might be its present occupant. It needed not the onward current of population that each Saturday bore along, to carry me to the Place de la Grève. It was the great day of the guillotine, and as many as two hundred were often led out to execution. Although the spectacle had now lost every charm of excitement to the population, from its frequency, it had become a kind of necessity to their existence, and the sight of blood alone seemed to slake that feverish thirst for vengeance which no sufferings appeared capable of satiating. It was rare, however, when some great and distinguished criminal did not absorb all the interest of the scene. It was at that period when the fierce tyrants of the Convention had turned upon each other, and sought, by denouncing those who had been their bosom friends, to seal their new allegiance to the people. There was something demoniacal in the exultation with which the mob witnessed the fate of those whom, but a few weeks back, they had acknowledged as their guides and teachers. The uncertainty of human greatness appeared the most glorious recompense to those whose station debarred them from all the enjoyments of power, and they stood by the death-agonies of their former friends with a fiendish joy that all the sufferings of their enemies had never yielded.

To me the spectacles had all the fascination that scenes of horror exercise over the mind of youth. I knew nothing of the terrible conflict, nothing of the fierce passions enlisted in the struggle, nothing of the sacred names so basely polluted, nothing of that remorseless vengeance with which the low-born and degraded were still hounded on to slaughter. It was a solemn and a fearful sight, but it was no more; and I gazed upon every detail of the scene with an interest that never wandered from the spot whereon it was enacted. If the parade of soldiers, of horse, foot, and artillery, gave these scenes a character of public justice, the horrible mobs, who chanted ribald songs, and danced around the guillotine, suggested the notion of popular vengeance; so that I was lost in all my attempts to reconcile the reasons of these executions with the circumstances that accompanied them.

Not daring to inform the Père Michel of where I had been, I could not ask him for any explanation; and thus was I left to pick up from the scattered phrases of the crowd what was the guilt alleged against the criminals. In many cases the simple word "Chouan," of which I knew not the import, was all I heard; in others jeering allusions to former rank and station would be uttered; while against some the taunt would imply that they had shed tears over others who fell as enemies of the people, and that such sympathy was a costly pleasure to be paid for but with a life's-blood. Such entire possession of me had these awful sights taken, that I lived in a continual dream of them. The sound of every cart-wheel recalled the dull rumble of the hurdle—every distant sound seemed like the far-off hum of the coming multitude—every sudden noise suggested the clanking drop of the guillotine! My sleep had no other images, and I wandered about my little round of duties pondering over this terrible theme.

Had I been less occupied with my own thoughts, I must have seen that Père Michel was suffering under some great calamity. The poor priest became wasted to a shadow; for entire days long he would taste of nothing; sometimes he would be absent from early morning to late at night, and when he did return, instead of betaking himself to rest, he would drop down before the crucifix in an agony of prayer, and thus spend more than half the night. Often and often have I, when feigning sleep, followed him as he recited the litanies of the breviary, adding my own unuttered prayers to his, and beseeching for a mercy whose object I knew not.

For some time his little chapel had been closed by the authorities; a heavy padlock and two massive seals being placed upon the door, and a notice, in a vulgar handwriting, appended, to the effect, that it was by the order of the Commissary of the Department. Could this be the source of the Père's sorrow? or did not his affliction seem too great for such a cause? were questions I asked myself again and again.

In this state were matters, when one morning, it was a Saturday, the Père enjoined me to spend the day in prayer, reciting particularly the liturgies for the dead, and all those sacred offices for those who have just departed this life.

"Pray unceasingly, my dear child—pray with your whole heart, as though it were for one you loved best in the world. I shall not return, perhaps, till late to-night; but I will kiss you then, and to-morrow we shall go into the woods together."

The tears fell from his cheek to mine as he said this, and his damp hand trembled as he pressed my fingers. My heart was full to bursting at his emotion, and I resolved faithfully to do his bidding. To watch him, as he went, I opened the sash, and as I did so, the sound of a distant drum, the well-known muffled roll, floated on the air, and I remembered it was the day of the guillotine—that day in which my feverish spirit turned, as it were in relief, to the reality of blood. Remote as was the part of the city we lived in, to escape from the hideous imaginings of my overwrought brain, I could still mark the hastening steps of the foot-passengers, as they listened to the far-off summons, and see the tide was setting toward the fatal Place de Grève. It was a lowering, heavy morning, overcast with clouds, and on its loaded atmosphere sounds moved slowly and indistinctly; yet I could trace through all the din of the great city, the incessant roll of the drums, and the loud shouts that burst forth, from time to time, from some great multitude.

Forgetting every thing, save my intense passion for scenes of terror, I hastened down the stairs into the street, and at the top of my speed hurried to the place of execution. As I went along, the crowded streets and thronged avenues told of some event of more than common interest; and in the words which fell from those around me I could trace that some deep Royalist plot had just been discovered, and that the conspirators would all on that day be executed. Whether it was that the frequent sight of blood was beginning to pall upon the popular appetite, or that these wholesale massacres interested less than the sight of individual suffering, I know not; but certainly there was less of exultation, less of triumphant scorn in the tone of the speakers. They talked of the coming event, as of a common occurrence, which, from mere repetition, was gradually losing interest.

"I thought we had done with these Chouans," said a man in a blouse, with a paper cap on his head. "Pardie! they must have been more numerous than we ever suspected."

"That they were, citoyen," said a haggard-looking fellow, whose features showed the signs of recent strife; "they were the millions who gorged and fed upon us for centuries—who sipped the red grape of Bourdeaux, while you and I drank the water of the Seine."

"Well, their time is come now," cried a third.

"And when will ours come?" asked a fresh-looking, dark-eyed girl, whose dress bespoke her trade of bouquetiere—"Do you call this our time, my masters, when Paris has no more pleasant sight than blood, nor any music save the 'ça ira' that drowns the cries at the guillotine? Is this our time, when we have lost those who gave us bread, and got in their place only those who would feed us with carnage?"

"Down with her! down with the Chouan! à bas la Royaliste!" cried the pale-faced fellow; and he struck the girl with his fist upon the face, and left it covered with blood.

"To the lantern with her!—to the Seine!" shouted several voices; and now, rudely seizing her by the shoulders, the mob seemed bent upon sudden vengeance; while the poor girl, letting fall her basket, begged, with clasped hands, for mercy.

"See here, see here, comrades," cried a fellow, stooping down among the flowers, "she is a Royalist: here are lilies hid beneath the rest."

What sad consequences this discovery might have led to, there is no knowing; when, suddenly, a violent rush of the crowd turned every thought into a different direction. It was caused by a movement of the Gendarmerie à cheval, who were clearing the way for the approaching procession. I had just time to place the poor girl's basket in her hands, as the onward impulse of the dense mob carried me forward. I saw her no more. A flower—I know not how it came there—was in my bosom, and seeing that it was a lily, I placed it in my cap for concealment.

The hoarse clangor of the bassoons—the only instruments which played during the march—now told that the procession was approaching; and then I could see, above the heads of the multitude, the leopard-skin helmets of the dragoons, who led the way. Save this I could see nothing, as I was borne along in the vast torrent toward the place of execution. Slowly as we moved, our progress was far more rapid than that of the procession, which was often obliged to halt from the density of the mob in front. We arrived, therefore, at the Place a considerable time before it; and now I found myself beside the massive wooden railing placed to keep off the crowd from the space around the guillotine.

It was the first time I had ever stood so close to the fatal spot, and my eyes devoured every detail with the most searching intensity. The colossal guillotine itself, painted red, and with its massive ax suspended aloft—the terrible basket, half filled with sawdust, beneath—the coarse table, on which a rude jar and a cap were placed—and, more disgusting than all, the lounging group, who, with their newspapers in hand, seemed from time to time to watch if the procession were approaching. They sat beneath a misshapen statue of wood, painted red like the guillotine. This was the goddess of Liberty. I climbed one of the pillars of the paling, and could now see the great cart, which, like a boat upon wheels, came slowly along, dragged by six horses. It was crowded with people, so closely packed that they could not move their bodies, and only waved their hands, which they did incessantly. They seemed, too, as if they were singing; but the deep growl of the bassoons, and the fierce howlings of the mob, drowned all other sounds. As the cart came nearer, I could distinguish the faces, amid which were those of age and youth—men and women—bold-visaged boys and fair girls—some, whose air bespoke the very highest station, and beside them, the hardy peasant, apparently more amazed than terrified at all he saw around him. On they came, the great cart surging heavily, like a bark in a stormy sea; and now it cleft the dense ocean that filled the Place, and I could descry the lineaments wherein the stiffened lines of death were already marked. Had any touch of pity still lingered in that dense crowd, there might well have been some show of compassion for the sad convoy, whose faces grew ghastly with terror as they drew near the horrible engine.

Down the furrowed cheek of age the heavy tears coursed freely, and sobs and broken prayers burst forth from hearts that until now had beat high and proudly.

"There is the Duc d'Angeaç," cried a fellow, pointing to a venerable old man, who was seated at the corner of the cart, with an air of calm dignity; "I know him well, for I was his perruquier."

"His hair must be content with sawdust this morning, instead of powder," said another; and a rude laugh followed the ruffian jest.

"See! mark that woman with the long dark hair—that is La Bretonville, the actress of the St. Martin."

"I have often seen her represent terror far more naturally," cried a fashionably-dressed man, as he stared at the victim through his opera-glass.

"Bah!" replied his friend, "she despises her audience, voila tout. Look, Henri, if that little girl beside her be not Lucille of the Pantheon."

"Parbleu! so it is. Why, they'll not leave a pirouette in the Grand Opera. Pauvre petite, what had you to do with politics?"

"Her little feet ought to have saved her head any day."

"See how grim that old lady beside her looks: I'd swear she is more shocked at the company she's thrown into, than the fate that awaits her. I never saw a glance of prouder disdain than she has just bestowed on poor Lucille."

"That's the old Marquise d'Estelles, the very essence of our old nobility. They used to talk of their mesalliance with the Bourbons as the first misfortune of their house."

"Pardie! they have lived to learn deeper sorrows."

I had by this time discovered her they were speaking of, whom I recognized at once as the old marquise of the chapel of St. Blois. My hands nearly gave up their grasp as I gazed on those features, which so often I had seen fixed in prayer, and which now—a thought paler, perhaps—wore the self-same calm expression. With what intense agony I peered into the mass, to see if the little girl, her grand-daughter, were with her; and, oh! the deep relief I felt as I saw nothing but strange faces on every side. It was terrible to feel, as my eyes ranged over that vast mass, where grief and despair, and heart-sinking terror were depicted, that I should experience a spirit of joy and thankfulness; and yet I did so, and with my lips I uttered my gratitude that she was spared! But I had not time for many reflections like this; already the terrible business of the day had begun, and the prisoners were now descending from the cart, ranging themselves, as their names were called, in a line below the scaffold. With a few exception, they took their places in all the calm of seeming indifference. Death had long familiarized itself to their minds in a thousand shapes. Day by day they had seen the vacant places left by those led out to die, and if their sorrows had not rendered them careless of life, the world itself had grown distasteful to them. In some cases a spirit of proud scorn was manifested to the very last; and, strange inconsistency of human nature! the very men whose licentiousness and frivolity first evoked the terrible storm of popular fury, were the first to display the most chivalrous courage in the terrible face of the guillotine. Beautiful women, too, in all the pride of their loveliness, met the inhuman stare of that mob undismayed. Nor were these traits without their fruits. This noble spirit—this triumphant victory of the well-born and the great—was a continual insult to the populace, who saw themselves defrauded of half their promised vengeance, and they learned that they might kill, but they could never humiliate them. In vain they dipped their hands in the red life-blood, and, holding up their dripping fingers, asked, "How did it differ from that of the canaille?" Their hearts gave the lie to the taunt for they witnessed instances of heroism from gray hairs and tender womanhood, that would have shamed the proudest deeds of their new-born chivalry!

"Charles Gregoire Courcelles!" shouted out a deep voice from the scaffold.

"That is my name," said a venerable-looking old gentleman, as he arose from his seat, adding, with a placid smile, "but, for half a century my friends have called me the Duc de Riancourt."

"We have no dukes nor marquises; we know of no titles in France," replied the functionary. "All men are equal before the law."

"If it were so, my friend, you and I might change places; for you were my steward, and plundered my chateau."

"Down with the royalist—away with the aristocrat!" shouted a number of voices from the crowd.

"Be a little patient, good people," said the old man, as he ascended the steps with some difficulty; "I was wounded in Canada, and have never yet recovered. I shall probably be better a few minutes hence."

There was something of half simplicity in the careless way the words were uttered that hushed the multitude, and already some expressions of sympathy were heard; but as quickly the ribald insults of the hired ruffians of the Convention drowned these sounds, and "Down with the royalist" resounded on every side, while two officials assisted him to remove his stock and bare his throat. The commissary, advancing to the edge of the platform, and, as it were, addressing the people, read in a hurried, slurring kind of voice, something that purported to be the ground of the condemnation. But of this not a word could be heard. None cared to hear the ten-thousand-time told tale of suspected royalism, nor would listen to the high-sounding declamation that proclaimed the virtuous zeal of the government—their untiring energy—their glorious persistence in the cause of the people. The last words were, as usual, responded to with an echoing shout, and the cry of "Vive la Republique" rose from the great multitude.

"Vive le Roi!" cried the old man, with a voice heard high above the clamor; but the words were scarce out when the lips that muttered them were closed in death; so sudden was the act, that a cry burst forth from the mob, but whether in reprobation or in ecstasy I knew not.

I will not follow the sad catalogue, wherein nobles and peasants, priests, soldiers, actors, men of obscure fortune, and women of lofty station succeeded each other, occupying for a brief minute every eye, and passing away for ever. Many ascended the platform without a word; some waved a farewell toward a distant quarter, where they suspected a friend to be—others spent their last moments in prayer, and died in the very act of supplication. All bore themselves with a noble and proud courage; and now some five or six alone remained, of whose fate none seemed to guess the issue, since they had been taken from the Temple by some mistake, and were not included in the list of the commissary. There they sat, at the foot of the scaffold, speechless and stupefied—they looked as though it were matter of indifference to which side their steps should turn—to the jail or the guillotine. Among these was the marquise, who alone preserved her proud self-possession, and sat in all her accustomed dignity; while close beside her an angry controversy was maintained as to their future destiny—the commissary firmly refusing to receive them for execution, and the delegate of the Temple, as he was styled, as flatly asserting that he would not re-conduct them to prison. The populace soon grew interested in the dispute, and the most violent altercations arose among the partisans of each side of the question.

Meanwhile, the commissary and his assistants prepared to depart. Already the massive drapery of red cloth was drawn over the guillotine, and every preparation made for withdrawing, when the mob, doubtless dissatisfied that they should be defrauded of any portion of the entertainment, began to climb over the wooden barricades, and, with furious cries and shouts, threatened vengeance upon any who would screen the enemies of the people.

The troops resisted the movement, but rather with the air of men entreating calmness, than with the spirit of soldiery. It was plain to see on which side the true force lay.

"If you will not do it, the people will do it for you," whispered the delegate to the commissary; "and who is to say where they will stop when their hands once learn the trick!"

The commissary grew lividly pale, and made no reply.

"See there!" rejoined the other; "they are carrying a fellow on their shoulders yonder; they mean him to be executioner."

"But I dare not—I can not—without my orders."

"Are not the people sovereign?—whose will have we sworn to obey, but theirs?"

"My own head would be the penalty if I yielded."

"It will be, if you resist—even now it is too late."

And as he spoke he sprang from the scaffold, and disappeared in the dense crowd that already thronged the space within the rails.

By this time, the populace were not only masters of the area around, but had also gained the scaffold itself, from which many of them seemed endeavoring to harangue the mob; others contenting themselves with imitating the gestures of the commissary and his functionaries. It was a scene of the wildest uproar and confusion—frantic cries and screams, ribald songs and fiendish yellings on every side. The guillotine was again uncovered, and the great crimson drapery, torn into fragments, was waved about like flags, or twisted into uncouth head-dresses. The commissary failing in every attempt to restore order peaceably, and either not possessing a sufficient force, or distrusting the temper of the soldiers, descended from the scaffold, and gave the order to march. This act of submission was hailed by the mob with the most furious yell of triumph. Up to that very moment, they had never credited the bare possibility of a victory; and now they saw themselves suddenly masters of the field—the troops, in all the array of horse and foot, retiring in discomfiture. Their exultation knew no bounds; and, doubtless, had there been among them those with skill and daring to profit by the enthusiasm, the torrent had rushed a longer and more terrific course than through the blood-steeped clay of the Place de la Grève.

"Here is the man we want," shouted a deep voice. "St. Just told us, t'other day, that the occasion never failed to produce one; and see, here is 'Jean Gougon;' and though he's but two feet high, his fingers can reach the pin of the guillotine."

And he held aloft on his shoulders a misshapen dwarf, who was well known on the Pont Neuf, where he gained his living by singing infamous songs, and performing mockeries of the service of the mass. A cheer of welcome acknowledged this speech, to which the dwarf responded by a mock benediction, which he bestowed with all the ceremonious observance of an archbishop. Shouts of the wildest laughter followed this ribaldry, and in a kind of triumph they carried him up the steps, and deposited him on the scaffold.

Ascending one of the chairs, the little wretch proceeded to address the mob, which he did with all the ease and composure of a practiced public speaker. Not a murmur was heard in that tumultuous assemblage, as he, with a most admirable imitation of Hebert, then the popular idol, assured them that France was, at that instant, the envy of surrounding nations; and that, bating certain little weaknesses on the score of humanity—certain traits of softness and over-mercy—her citizens realized all that ever had been said of angels. From thence he passed on to a mimicry of Marat, of Danton, and of Robespierre—tearing off his cravat, baring his breast, and performing all the oft-exhibited antics of the latter, as he vociferated, in a wild scream, the well-known peroration of a speech he had lately made—"If we look to a glorious morrow of freedom, the sun of our slavery must set in blood!"

However amused by the dwarf's exhibition, a feeling of impatience began to manifest itself among the mob, who felt that, by any longer delay, it was possible time would be given for fresh troops to arrive, and the glorious opportunity of popular sovereignty be lost in the very hour of victory.

"To work—to work, Master Gougon!" shouted hundreds of rude voices; "we can not spend our day in listening to oratory."

"You forget, my dear friends," said he blandly, "that this is to me a new walk in life I have much to learn, ere I can acquit myself worthily to the republic."

"We have no leisure for preparatory studies, Gougon," cried a fellow below the scaffold.

"Let me, then, just begin with monsieur," said the dwarf, pointing to the last speaker; and a shout of laughter closed the sentence.

A brief and angry dispute now arose as to what was to be done, and it is more than doubtful how the debate might have ended, when Gougon, with a readiness all his own, concluded the discussion by saying,

"I have it, messieurs, I have it. There is a lady here, who, however respectable her family and connections, will leave few to mourn her loss. She is, in a manner, public property, and if not born on the soil, at least a naturalized Frenchwoman. We have done a great deal for her, and in her name, for some time back, and I am not aware of any singular benefit she has rendered us. With your permission, then, I'll begin with her."

"Name, name—name her," was cried by thousands.

"La voila," said he, archly, as he pointed with his thumb to the wooden effigy of Liberty above his head.

The absurdity of the suggestion was more than enough for its success. A dozen hands were speedily at work, and down came the Goddess of Liberty! The other details of an execution were hurried over with all the speed of practiced address, and the figure was placed beneath the drop. Down fell the ax, and Gougon, lifting up the wooden head, paraded it about the scaffold, crying,

"Behold! an enemy of France. Long live the republic, one and 'indivisible.'"

Loud and wild were the shouts of laughter from this brutal mockery; and for a time it almost seemed as if the ribaldry had turned the mob from the sterner passions of their vengeance. This hope, if one there ever cherished it, was short-lived; and again the cry arose for blood. It was too plain, that no momentary diversion, no passing distraction, could withdraw them from that lust for cruelty, that had now grown into a passion.

And now a bustle and movement of those around the stairs showed that something was in preparation; and in the next moment the old marquise was led forward between two men.

"Where is the order for this woman's execution?" asked the dwarf, mimicking the style and air of the commissary.

"We give it: it is from us," shouted the mob, with one savage roar.

Gougon removed his cap, and bowed a token of obedience.

"Let us proceed in order, messieurs," said he, gravely; "I see no priest here."

"Shrive her yourself, Gougon; few know the mummeries better!" cried a voice.

"Is there not one here can remember a prayer, or even a verse of the offices," said Gougon, with a well-affected horror in his voice.

"Yes, yes, I do," cried I, my zeal overcoming all sense of the mockery in which the words were spoken; "I know them all by heart, and can repeat them from 'lux beatissima' down to 'hora mortis;'" and as if to gain credence for my self-laudation, I began at once to recite in the sing-song tone of the seminary,

"Salve, mater salvatoris,
Fons salutis, vas honoris:
Scala cœli porta et via
Salve semper, O, Maria!"

It is possible I should have gone on to the very end, if the uproarious laughter which rung around had not stopped me.

"There's a brave youth!" cried Gougon, pointing toward me, with mock admiration. "If it ever come to pass—as what may not in these strange times?—that we turn to priest-craft again, thou shalt be the first archbishop of Paris. Who taught thee that famous canticle?"

"The Père Michel," replied I, in no way conscious of the ridicule bestowed upon me; "the Père Michel of St. Blois."

The old lady lifted up her head at these words, and her dark eyes rested steadily upon me; and then, with a sign of her hand, she motioned to me to come over to her.

"Yes; let him come," said Gougon, as if answering the half-reluctant glances of the crowd. And now I was assisted to descend, and passed along over the heads of the people till I was placed upon the scaffold. Never can I forget the terror of that moment, as I stood within a few feet of the terrible guillotine, and saw beside me the horrid basket, splashed with recent blood.

"Look not at these things, child," said the old lady, as she took my hand and drew me toward her, "but listen to me, and mark my words well."

"I will, I will," cried I, as the hot tears rolled down my cheeks.

"Tell the Père—you will see him to-night—tell him that I have changed my mind, and resolved upon another course, and that he is not to leave Paris. Let them remain. The torrent runs too rapidly to last. This can not endure much longer. We shall be among the last victims! You hear me, child?"

"I do, I do," cried I, sobbing. "Why is not the Père Michel with you now?"

"Because he is suing for my pardon; asking for mercy, where its very name is a derision. Kneel down beside me, and repeat the 'angelus.'"

I took off my cap, and knelt down at her feet, reciting, in a voice broken by emotion, the words of the prayer. She repeated each syllable after me, in a tone full and unshaken, and then stooping, she took up the lily which lay in my cap. She pressed it passionately to her lips; two or three times passionately. "Give it to her; tell her I kissed it at my last moment. Tell her—"

"This 'shrift' is beyond endurance. Away, holy father," cried Gougon, as he pushed me rudely back, and seized the marquise by the wrist. A faint cry escaped her. I heard no more; for, jostled and pushed about by the crowd, I was driven to the very rails of the scaffold. Stepping beneath these, I mingled with the mob beneath; and burning with eagerness to escape a scene, to have witnessed which would almost have made my heart break, I forced my way into the dense mass, and, by squeezing and creeping, succeeded at last in penetrating to the verge of the Place. A terrible shout, and a rocking motion of the mob, like the heavy surging of the sea, told me that all was over; but I never looked back to the fatal spot, but having gained the open streets, ran at the top of my speed toward home.

(To be continued.)

[From Bender's Monthly Miscellany.]

WOMEN IN THE EAST.

by an oriental traveler.

Within the gay kiosk reclined,
Above the scent of lemon groves,
Where bubbling fountains kiss the wind,
And birds make music to their loves,
She lives a kind of faery life,
In sisterhood of fruits and flowers,
Unconscious of the outer strife
That wears the palpitating hours.
The Hareem. R.M. Milnes.

There is a gentle, calm repose breathing through the whole of this poem, which comes soothingly to the imagination wearied with the strife and hollowness of modern civilization. Woman in it is the inferior being; but it is the inferiority of the beautiful flower, or of the fairy birds of gorgeous plumage, who wing their flight amid the gardens and bubbling streams of the Eastern palace. Life is represented for the Eastern women as a long dream of affection; the only emotions she is to know are those of ardent love and tender maternity. She is not represented as the companion to man in his life battle, as the sharer of his triumph and his defeats: the storms of life are hushed at the entrance of the hareem; there the lord and master deposits the frown of unlimited power, or the cringing reverence of the slave, and appears as the watchful guardian of the loved one's happiness. Such a picture is poetical, and would lead one to say, alas for human progress, if the Eastern female slave is thus on earth to pass one long golden summer—her heart only tied by those feelings which keep it young—while her Christian sister has these emotions but as sun-gleams to lighten and make dark by contrast, the frequent gloom of her winter life.

But although the conception is poetical, to one who has lived many years in the East, it appears a conception, not a description of the real hareem life, even among the noble and wealthy of those lands. The following anecdote may be given us the other side of the picture. The writer was a witness of the scene, and he offers it as a consolation to those of his fair sisters, who, in the midst of the troubles of common-place life, might be disposed to compare their lot with that of the inmate of the mysterious and happy home drawn by the poet.

It was in a large and fruitful district of the south of India that I passed a few years of my life. In this district lived, immured in his fort, one of the native rajahs, who, with questionable justice, have gradually been shorn of their regal state and authority, to become pensioners of the East India Company. The inevitable consequence of such an existence, the forced life of inactivity with the traditions of the bold exploits of his royal ancestors, brilliant Mahratta chieftains, may be imagined. The rajah sunk into a state of slothful dissipation, varied by the occasional intemperate exercise of the power left him within the limits of the fortress, his residence. This fort is not the place which the word would suggest to the reader, but was rather a small native town surrounded by fortifications. This town was peopled by the descendants of the Mahrattas, and by the artisans and dependents of the rajah and his court. Twice a year the English resident and his assistants were accustomed to pay visits of ceremony to the rajah, and had to encounter the fatiguing sights of dancing-girls, beast-fights, and music, if the extraordinary assemblage of sounds, which in the East assume the place of harmony, can be so called.

We had just returned from one of these visits, and were grumbling over our headaches, the dust, and the heat, when, to our surprise, the rajah's vabul or confidential representative was announced. As it was nine o'clock in the evening this somewhat surprised us. He was, however, admitted, and after a short, hurried obeisance, he announced "that he must die! that there had been a sudden revolt of the hareem, and that when the rajah knew it, he would listen to no explanations, but be sure to imprison and ruin all round him; and that foremost in the general destruction would be himself, Veneat-Rao, who had always been the child of the English Sahibs, who were his fathers—that they were wise above all natives, and that he had come to them for help!" All this was pronounced with indescribable volubility, and the appearance of the speaker announced the most abject fear. He was a little wizened Brahmin, with the thin blue lines of his caste carefully painted on his wrinkled forehead. His dark black eyes gleamed with suppressed impotent rage, and in his agitation he had lost all that staid, placid decorum which we had been accustomed to observe in him when transacting business. When urged to explain the domestic disaster which had befallen his master, he exclaimed with ludicrous pathos, "By Rama! women are devils; by them all misfortunes come upon men! But, sahibs, hasten with me; they have broken through the guard kept on the hareem door by two old sentries; they ran through the fort and besieged my house; they are now there, and refuse to go back to the hareem. The rajah returns to-morrow from his hunting—what can I say? I must die! my children, who will care for them? what crime did my father commit that I should thus be disgraced?"

Yielding to these entreaties, and amused at the prospect of a novel scene, we mounted our horses and cantered to the fort. The lights were burning brightly in the bazaars as we rode through them, and except a few groups gathered to discuss the price of rice and the want of rain, we perceived no agitation till we reached the Vakeel's house. Arrived here we dismounted, and on entering the square court-yard a scene of indescribable confusion presented itself. The first impression it produced on me was that of entering a large aviary in which the birds, stricken with terror, fly madly to and fro against the bars. Such was the first effect of our entrance. Women and girls of all ages, grouped about the court, in most picturesque attitudes, started up and fled to its extreme end; only a few of the more matronly ladies stood their ground, and with terribly screeching voices, declaimed against some one or something, but for a long time we could, in this Babel of female tongues, distinguish nothing. At last we managed to distinguish the rajah's name, coupled with epithets most disrespectful to royalty. This, and that they, the women, begged instantly to be put to death, was all that the clamor would permit us to understand. We looked appealingly at Veneat Rao, who stood by, wringing his hands. However, he made a vigorous effort, and raising his shrill voice, told them that the sahibs had come purposely to listen to, and redress their grievances, and that they would hold durbar (audience) then and there.

This announcement produced a lull, and enabled us to look round us at the strange scene. Scattered in various parts of the court were these poor prisoners, who now for the first time for many years tasted liberty. Scattered about were some hideous old women, partly guardians of the younger, partly remains, we were told, of the rajah's father's seraglio. Young children moved among them looking very much frightened. But the group which attracted our attention and admiration consisted of about twenty really beautiful girls, from fourteen to eighteen years of age, of every country and caste, in the various costume and ornament of their races; these were clustering round a fair and very graceful Mahratta girl, whose tall figure was seen to great advantage in the blaze of torchlight. Her muslin vail had half fallen from her face, allowing us to see her large, soft, dark eyes, from which the tears were fast falling, as in a low voice she addressed her fellow-sufferers. There was on her face a peculiar expression of patient endurance of ill, inexpressibly touching. This is not an unfrequent character in the beauty of Asiatic women; the natural result of habits of fear, and the entire submission to the will of others.

Her features were classically regular, with the short rounded chin, the long graceful neck, and that easy port of head so seldom seen except in the women of the East. Her arms were covered with rich bracelets, and were of the most perfect form; her hands long and tapering, the palms and nails dyed with the "henna." No barbarously-civilized restraint rendered her waist a contradiction of natural beauty; a small, dark satin bodice, richly embroidered, covered a bosom which had hardly attained womanly perfection; a zone of gold held together the full muslin folds of the lower portion of her dress, below which the white satin trowsers reached, without concealing a faultless ankle and foot, uncovered, except by the heavy anklet and rings which tinkled at every step she took. After the disturbance that our entrance had caused, had in a measure subsided, the children, who were richly dressed and loaded with every kind of fantastic ornament, came sidling timidly round us, peering curiously with their large black eyes, at the unusual sight of white men.

Considerably embarrassed at the very new arbitration which we were about to undertake, B. and I consulted for a little while, after which, gravely taking our seats, and Veneat Rao having begged them to listen with respectful attention, I, at B.'s desire, proceeded to address them, telling them,

"That we supposed some grave cause must have arisen for them to desert the palace of the rajah, their protector, during his absence, and by violently overpowering the guard, incur his serious anger (here my eye caught a sight of the said guard, consisting of two blear-eyed, shriveled old men, and I nearly lost all solemnity of demeanor) that if they complained of injustice, we supposed that it must have been committed without his highness's knowledge, but that if they would quietly return to the hareem we would endeavor to represent to their master their case, and entreat him to redress their grievance."

I spoke this in Hindusthani, which, as the lingua franca of the greater part of India, I thought was most likely to be understood by the majority of my female audience. I succeeded perfectly in making myself understood, but was not quite so successful in convincing them that it was better that they should return to the rajah's palace. After rather a stormy discussion, the Mahratta girl, whom we had so much admired on our entrance, stepped forward, and, bowing lowly before us, and crossing her arms, in a very sweet tone of voice proceeded to tell her story, which, she said, was very much the history of them all. The simple, and at times picturesque expressions lose much by translation.

"Sir, much shame comes over me, that I, a woman, should speak before men who are not our fathers, husbands, nor brothers, who are strangers, of another country and religion; but they tell us that you English sahibs love truth and justice, and protect the poor.

"I was born of Gentoo parents—rich, for I can remember the bright, beautiful jewels which, as a child, I wore on my head, arms, and feet, the large house and gardens where I played, and the numerous servants who attended me.

"When I had reached my eighth or ninth year I heard them talk of my betrothal,[1] and of the journey which we were, previous to the ceremony, to take to some shrine in a distant country. My father, who was advancing in years, and in bad health, being anxious to bathe in the holy waters, which should give him prolonged life and health.

"The journey had lasted for many days, and one evening after we had halted for the day I accompanied my mother when she went to bathe in a tank near to our encampment. As I played along the bank and picked a few wild flowers that grew under the trees I observed an old woman advancing toward me. She spoke to me in a kind voice, asked me my name? who were my parents? where we were going? and when I had answered her these questions she told me that if I would accompany her a little way she would give me some prettier flowers than those I was gathering, and that her servant should take me back to my people.

"I had no sooner gone far enough to be out of sight and hearing of my mother than the old woman threw a cloth over my head, and taking me up in her arms, hurried on for a short distance. There I could distinguish men's voices, and was sensible of being placed in a carriage, which was driven off at a rapid pace. No answer was returned to my cries and entreaties to be restored to my parents, and at sunrise I found myself near hills which I had never before seen, and among a people whose language was new to me.

"I remained with these people, who were not unkind to me, three or four years; and I found out that the old woman who had carried me off from my parents, was an emissary sent from the rajah's hareem to kidnap, when they could not be purchased, young female children whose looks promised that they would grow up with the beauty necessary for the gratification of the prince's passions.

"Sahibs! I have been two years an inmate of the rajah's hareem—would to God I had died a child in my own country with those I loved, than that I should have been exposed to the miseries we suffer. The splendor which surrounds us is only a mockery. The rajah, wearied and worn out by a life of debauchery, takes no longer any pleasure in our society, and is only roused from his lethargy to inflict disgrace and cruelties upon us. We, who are of Brahmin caste, for his amusement, are forced to learn the work of men—are made to carry in the gardens of the hareem a palanquin, to work as goldsmiths—and, may our gods pardon us, to mingle with the dancing-girls of the bazaar. His attendants deprive us even of our food, and we sit in the beautiful palace loaded with jewels, and suffer from the hunger not felt even by the poor Pariah.

"Sahibs! you who have in your country mothers and sisters, save us from this cruel fate, and cause us to be restored to our parents; do not send us back to such degradation, but rather let us die by your orders."

As with a voice tremulous with emotion, she said these words, she threw herself at our feet, and burst into an agony of weeping.

Deeply moved by the simple expression of such undeserved misfortune, we soothed her as well as we were able, and promising her and her companions to make every effort with the rajah for their deliverance, we persuaded Rosambhi, the Mahratta girl (their eloquent pleader), to induce them to return for the night to the palace. Upon a repetition of our promise they consented, to the infinite relief of Veneat Rao, who alternately showered blessings on us, and curses on all womankind, as he accompanied us back to the Residency.

And now we had to set about the deliverance of these poor women. This was a work of considerable difficulty.

It was a delicate matter interfering with the rajah's domestic concerns, and we could only commission Veneat Rao to communicate to his highness the manner in which we had become implicated with so unusual an occurrence as a revolt of his seraglio; we told him to express to his highness our conviction that his generosity had been deceived by his subordinates. In this we only imitated the profound maxim of European diplomacy, and concealed our real ideas by our expressions. This to the rajah. On his confidential servant we enforced the disapprobation the resident felt at the system of kidnapping, of which his highness was the instigator, and hinted at that which these princes most dread—an investigation.

This succeeded beyond our expectation, and the next morning a message was sent from the palace, intimating that the charges were so completely unfounded, that the rajah was prepared to offer to his revolted women, the choice of remaining in the hareem, or being sent back to their homes.

Again they were assembled in Veneat Rao's house, but this time in much more orderly fashion, for their vails were down, and except occasionally when a coquettish movement showed a portion of some face, we were unrewarded by any of the bright eyes we had admired on the previous visit. The question was put to them one by one, and all with the exception of a few old women, expressed an eager wish not to re-enter the hareem.

After much troublesome inquiry, we discovered their parents, and were rewarded by their happy and grateful faces, as we sent them off under escort to their homes. It was painful to reflect what their fate would be; they left us rejoicing at what they thought would be a happy change, but we well knew that no one would marry them, knowing that they had been in the rajah's hareem, and that they would either lead a life of neglect, or sink into vice, of which the liberty would be the only change from that, which by our means they had escaped.

In the inquiries we made into the circumstances of this curious case, we found that their statements were true.

Large sums were paid by the rajah to his creatures, who traveled to distant parts of the country, and wherever they could meet with parents poor enough, bought their female children from them, or when they met with remarkable beauty such as Rosambhi's, did not hesitate to carry the child off, and by making rapid marches, elude any vigilance of pursuit on the part of the parents.

The cruelties and degradations suffered by these poor girls are hardly to be described. We well know how degraded, even in civilized countries the pursuit of sensual pleasures renders men, to whom education and the respect they pay the opinion of society, are checks; let us imagine the conduct of the eastern prince, safe in the retirement of his court, surrounded by those dependents to whom the gratification of their master's worst passions was the sure road to favor and fortune.

Besides the sufferings they had to endure from him, the women of the hareem were exposed to the rapacities of those who had charge of them, and Rosambhi did not exaggerate, when she described herself and her companions as suffering the pangs of want amid the splendors of a palace.

This is the reverse of the pleasing picture drawn by the poet of the Eastern woman's existence—but, though less pleasing, it is true—nor need we describe her in the lower ranks of life in those countries, where, her beauty faded, she has to pass a wearisome existence, the servant of a rival, whose youthful charms have supplanted her in her master's affections. The calm happiness of advancing age is seldom hers—she is the toy while young—the slave, or the neglected servant, at best, when, her only merit in the eyes of her master, physical beauty, is gone.

Let her sister in the western world, in the midst of her joys, think with pity on these sufferings, and when sorrow's cloud seems darkest, let her not repine, but learn resignation to her lot, as she compares it with the condition of the women of the East; let her be grateful that she lives in an age and land where woman is regarded as the helpmate and consolation of man, by whom her love is justly deemed the prize of his life.

[From The Ladies' Companion.]

LETTICE ARNOLD.

By the Author of "Two Old Men's Tales," "Emilia Wyndham," &c.

CHAPTER I.

"It is the generous spirit, who when brought
Unto the task of common life, hath wrought
Even upon the plan which pleased the childish thought
······
Who doomed to go in company with pain,
And fear, and ruin—miserable train!—
Makes that necessity a glorious gain,
By actions that would force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate.
······
More gifted with self-knowledge—even more pure
As tempted more—more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness."
Wordsworth. Happy Warrior.

"No, dearest mother, no! I can not. What! after all the tenderness, care, and love I have received from you, for now one-and-twenty years, to leave you and my father, in your old age, to yourselves! Oh, no! Oh, no!"

"Nay, my child," said the pale, delicate, nervous woman, thus addressed by a blooming girl whose face beamed with every promise for future happiness, which health and cheerfulness, and eyes filled with warm affections could give, "Nay, my child, don't talk so. You must not talk so. It is not to be thought of." And, as she said these words with effort, her poor heart was dying within her, not only from sorrow at the thought of the parting from her darling, but with all sorts of dreary, undefined terrors at the idea of the forlorn, deserted life before her. Abandoned to herself and to servants, so fearful, so weak as she was, and with the poor, invalided, and crippled veteran, her husband, a martyr to that long train of sufferings which honorable wounds, received in the service of country, too often leave behind them, a man at all times so difficult to sooth, so impossible to entertain—and old age creeping upon them both; the little strength she ever had, diminishing; the little spirit she ever possessed, failing; what should she do without this dear, animated, this loving, clever being, who was, in one word, every thing to her?

But she held to her resolution—no martyr ever more courageously than this trembling, timid woman. A prey to ten thousand imaginary fears, and, let alone the imaginary terrors, placed in a position where the help she was now depriving herself of was really so greatly needed.

"No, my dear," she repeated, "don't think of it; don't speak of it. You distress me very much. Pray don't, my dearest Catherine."

"But I should be a shocking creature, mamma, to forsake you; and, I am sure, Edgar would despise me as much as I should myself, if I could think of it. I can not—I ought not to leave you."

The gentle blue eye of the mother was fixed upon the daughter's generous, glowing face. She smothered a sigh. She waited a while to steady her faltering voice. She wished to hide, if possible, from her daughter the extent of the sacrifice she was making.

At last she recovered herself sufficiently to speak with composure, and then she said:

"To accept such a sacrifice from a child, I have always thought the most monstrous piece of selfishness of which a parent could be guilty. My love, this does not come upon me unexpectedly. I have, of course, anticipated it. I knew my sweet girl could not be long known and seen without inspiring and returning the attachment of some valuable man. I have resolved—and God strengthen me in this resolve," she cast up a silent appeal to the fountain of strength and courage—"that nothing should tempt me to what I consider so base. A parent accept the sacrifice of a life in exchange for the poor remnant of her own! A parent, who has had her own portion of the joys of youth in her day, deprive a child of a share in her turn! No, my dearest love, never—never! I would die, and I will die first."

But it was not death she feared. The idea of death did not appall her. What she dreaded was melancholy. She knew the unsoundness of her own nerves; she had often felt herself, as it were, trembling upon the fearful verge of reason, when the mind, unable to support itself, is forced to rest upon another. She had known a feeling, common to many very nervous people, I believe, as though the mind would be overset when pressed far, if not helped, strengthened, and cheered by some more wholesome mind; and she shrank appalled from the prospect.

But even this could not make her waver in her resolution. She was a generous, just, disinterested woman; though the exigencies of a most delicate constitution, and most susceptible nervous system, had too often thrown upon her—from those who did not understand such things, and whose iron nerves and vigorous health rendered sympathy at such times impossible—the reproach of being a tedious, whimsical, selfish hypochondriac.

Poor thing, she knew this well. It was the difficulty of making herself understood; the want of sympathy, the impossibility of rendering needs, most urgent in her case, comprehensible by her friends, which had added so greatly to the timorous cowardice, the fear of circumstances, of changes, which had been the bane of her existence.

And, therefore, this kind, animated, affectionate daughter, whose tenderness seemed never to weary in the task of cheering her; whose activity was never exhausted in the endeavor to assist and serve her; whose good sense and spirit kept every thing right at home, and more especially kept those terrible things, the servants, in order—of whom the poor mother, like many other feeble and languid people, was so foolishly afraid; therefore, this kind daughter was as the very spring of her existence; and the idea of parting with her was really dreadful. Yet she hesitated not. So did that man behave, who stood firm upon the rampart till he had finished his observation, though his hair turned white with fear. Mrs. Melwyn was an heroic coward of this kind.

She had prayed ardently, fervently, that day, for courage, for resolution, to complete the dreaded sacrifice, and she had found it.

"Oh, Lord! I am thy servant. Do with me what thou wilt. Trembling in spirit, the victim of my infirmity—a poor, selfish, cowardly being, I fall down before Thee. Thou hast showed me what is right—the sacrifice I ought to make. Oh, give me strength in my weakness to be faithful to complete it!"

Thus had she prayed. And now resolved in heart, the poor sinking spirit failing her within but, as I said, steadying her voice with an almost heroic constancy, she resisted her grateful and pious child's representation: "I have told Edgar—dear as he is to me—strong as are the claims his generous affection gives him over me—that I will not—I can not forsake you."

"You must not call it forsake," said the mother, gently. "My love, the Lord of life himself has spoken it: 'Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife.'"

"And so he is ready to do," cried Catherine, eagerly. "Yes, mother, he desires nothing better—he respects my scruples—he has offered, dear Edgar! to abandon his profession and come and live here, and help me to take care of you and my father. Was not that beautiful?" and the tears stood in her speaking eyes.

"Beautiful! generous! devoted! My Catherine will be a happy woman;" and the mother smiled. A ray of genuine pleasure warmed her beating heart. This respect in the gay, handsome young officer for the filial scruples of her he loved was indeed beautiful! But the mother knew his spirit too well to listen to this proposal for a moment.

"And abandon his profession? No, my sweet child, that would never, never do."

"But he says he is independent of his profession—that his private fortune, though not large, is enough for such simple, moderate people as he and I are. In short, that he shall be miserable without me, and all that charming stuff, mamma; and that he loves me better, for what he calls, dear fellow, my piety to you. And so, dear mother, he says if you and my father will but consent to take him in, he will do his very best in helping me to make you comfortable; and he is so sweet-tempered, so reasonable, so good, so amiable, I am quite sure he would keep his promise, mamma." And she looked anxiously into her mother's face waiting for an answer. The temptation was very, very strong.

Again those domestic spectres which had so appalled her poor timorous spirit rose before her. A desolate, dull fireside—her own tendency to melancholy—her poor maimed suffering, and, alas, too often peevish partner—encroaching, unmanageable servants. The cook, with her careless, saucy ways—the butler so indifferent and negligent—and her own maid, that Randall, who in secret tyrannized over her, exercising the empire of fear to an extent which Catherine, alive as she was to these evils, did not suspect. And again she asked herself, if these things were disagreeable now, when Catherine was here to take care of her, what would they be when she was left alone?

And then such a sweet picture of happiness presented itself to tempt her—Catherine settled there—settled there forever. That handsome, lively young man, with his sweet, cordial ways and polite observance of every one, sitting by their hearth, and talking, as he did, to the general of old days and military matters, the only subject in which this aged military man took any interest, reading the newspaper to him, and making such lively, pleasant comments as he read! How should she ever get through the debates, with her breath so short, and her voice so indistinct and low? The general would lose all patience—he hated to hear her attempt to read such things, and always got Catherine or the young lieutenant-colonel to do it.

Oh! it was a sore temptation. But this poor, dear, good creature resisted it.

"My love," she said, after a little pause, daring which this noble victory was achieved—laugh if you will at the expression, but it was a noble victory over self—"my love," she said, "don't tempt your poor mother beyond her strength. Gladly, gladly, as far as we are concerned, would we enter into this arrangement; but it must not be. No, Catherine; Edgar must not quit his profession. It would not only be a very great sacrifice I am sure now, but it would lay the foundation of endless regrets in future. No, my darling girl, neither his happiness nor your happiness shall be ever sacrificed to mine. A life against a few uncertain years! No—no."

The mother was inflexible. The more these good children offered to give up for her sake, the more she resolved to suffer no such sacrifice to be made.

Edgar could not but rejoice. He was an excellent young fellow, and excessively in love with the charming Catherine, you may be sure, or he never would have thought of offering to abandon a profession for her sake in which he had distinguished himself highly—which opened to him the fairest prospects, and of which he was especially fond—but he was not sorry to be excused. He had resolved upon this sacrifice, for there is something in those who truly love, and whose love is elevated almost to adoration by the moral worth they have observed in the chosen one, which revolts at the idea of lowering the tone of that enthusiastic goodness and self-immolation to principle which has so enchanted them. Edgar could not do it. He could not attempt to persuade this tender, generous daughter, to consider her own welfare and his, in preference to that of her parents. He could only offer, on his own part, to make the greatest sacrifice which could have been demanded from him. Rather than part from her what would he not do? Every thing was possible but that.

However, when the mother positively refused to accept of this act of self-abnegation, I can not say that he regretted it. No: he thought Mrs. Melwyn quite right in what she said; and he loved and respected both her character and understanding very much more than he had done before.

That night Mrs. Melwyn was very, very low indeed. And when she went up into her dressing-room, and Catherine, having kissed her tenderly, with a heart quite divided between anxiety for her, and a sense of happiness that would make itself felt in spite of all, had retired to her room, the mother sat down, poor thing, in the most comfortable arm-chair that ever was invented, but which imparted no comfort to her; and placing herself by a merry blazing fire, which was reflected from all sorts of cheerful pretty things with which the dressing-room was adorned, her feet upon a warm, soft footstool of Catherine's own working, her elbow resting upon her knee, and her head upon her hand, she, with her eyes bent mournfully upon the fire, began crying very much. And so she sat a long time, thinking and crying, very sorrowful, but not in the least repenting. Meditating upon all sorts of dismal things, filled with all kinds of melancholy forebodings, as to how it would, and must be, when Catherine was really gone, she sank at last into a sorrowful reverie, and sate quite absorbed in her own thoughts, till she—who was extremely punctual in her hour of going to bed—for reasons best known to herself, though never confided to any human being, namely, that her maid disliked very much sitting up for her—started as the clock in the hall sounded eleven and two quarters, and almost with the trepidation of a chidden child, rose and rang the bell. Nobody came. This made her still more uneasy. It was Randall's custom not to answer her mistress's bell the first time, when she was cross. And poor Mrs. Melwyn dreaded few things in this world more than cross looks in those about her, especially in Randall; and that Randall knew perfectly well.

"She must be fallen asleep in her chair, poor thing. It was very thoughtless of me," Mrs. Melwyn did not say, but would have said, if people ever did speak to themselves aloud.

Even in this sort of mute soliloquy she did not venture to say, "Randall will be very ill-tempered and unreasonable." She rang again; and then, after a proper time yielded to the claims of offended dignity, it pleased Mrs. Randall to appear.

"I am very sorry, Randall. Really I had no idea how late it was. I was thinking about Miss Catherine, and I missed it when it struck ten. I had not the least idea it was so late," began the mistress in an apologizing tone, to which Randall vouchsafed not an answer, but looked like a thunder cloud—as she went banging up and down the room, opening and shutting drawers with a loud noise, and treading with a rough heavy step; two things particularly annoying, as she very well knew, to the sensitive nerves of her mistress. But Randall settled it with herself—that as her mistress had kept her out of bed an hour and a half longer than usual, for no reason at all but just to please herself, she should find she was none the better for it.

The poor mistress bore all this with patience for some time. She would have gone on bearing the roughness and the noise, however disagreeable, as long as Randall liked; but her soft heart could not bear those glum, cross looks, and this alarming silence.

"I was thinking of Miss Catherine's marriage, Randall. That was what made me forget the hour. What shall I do without her?"

"Yes, that's just like it," said the insolent abigail; "nothing ever can content some people. Most ladies would be glad to settle their daughters so well; but some folk make a crying matter of every thing. It would be well for poor servants, when they're sitting over the fire, their bones aching to death for very weariness, if they'd something pleasant to think about. They wouldn't be crying for nothing, and keeping all the world out of their beds, like those who care for naught but how to please themselves."

Part of this was said, part muttered, part thought; and the poor timid mistress—one of whose domestic occupations it seemed to be to study the humors of her servants—heard a part and divined the rest.

"Well, Randall, I don't quite hear all you are saying; and perhaps it is as well I do not; but I wish you would give me my things and make haste, for I'm really very tired, and I want to go to bed."

"People can't make more haste than they can."

And so it went on. The maid-servant never relaxing an atom of her offended dignity—continuing to look as ill-humored, and to do every thing as disagreeably as she possibly could—and her poor victim, by speaking from time to time in an anxious, most gentle, and almost flattering manner, hoping to mollify her dependent; but all in vain.

"I'll teach her to keep me up again for nothing at all," thought Randall.

And so the poor lady, very miserable in the midst of all her luxuries, at last gained her bed, and lay there not able to sleep for very discomfort. And the abigail retired to her own warm apartment, where she was greeted with a pleasant fire, by which stood a little nice chocolate simmering, to refresh her before she went to bed—not much less miserable than her mistress, for she was dreadfully out of humor—and thought no hardship upon earth could equal that she endured—forced to sit up in consequence of another's whim when she wanted so sadly to go to bed.

While, thus, all that the most abundant possession of the world's goods could bestow, was marred by the weakness of the mistress and the ill-temper of the maid—the plentiful gifts of fortune rendered valueless by the erroneous facility upon one side, and insolent love of domination on the other; how many in the large metropolis, only a few miles distant, and of which the innumerable lights might be seen brightening, like an Aurora, the southern sky; how many laid down their heads supperless that night! Stretched upon miserable pallets, and ignorant where food was to be found on the morrow to satisfy the cravings of hunger; yet, in the midst of their misery, more miserable, also, because they were not exempt from those pests of existence—our own faults and infirmities.

And even, as it was, how many poor creatures did actually lay down their heads that night, far less miserable than poor Mrs. Melwyn. The tyranny of a servant is noticed by the wise man, if I recollect right, as one of the most irritating and insupportable of mortal miseries.

Two young women inhabited one small room of about ten feet by eight, in the upper story of a set of houses somewhere near Mary-le-bone street. These houses appear to have been once intended for rather substantial persons, but have gradually sunk into lodging-houses for the very poor. The premises look upon an old grave-yard; a dreary prospect enough, but perhaps preferable to a close street, and are filled, with decent but very poor people. Every room appears to serve a whole family, and few of the rooms are much larger than the one I have described.

It was now half-past twelve o'clock, and still the miserable dip tallow candle burned in a dilapidated tin candlestick. The wind whistled with that peculiar wintry sound which betokens that snow is falling; it was very, very cold; the fire was out; and the girl who sat plying her needle by the hearth, which was still a little warmer than the rest of the room, had wrapped up her feet in an old worn-out piece of flannel, and had an old black silk wadded cloak thrown over her to keep her from being almost perished. The room was scantily furnished, and bore an air of extreme poverty, amounting almost to absolute destitution. One by one the little articles of property possessed by its inmates had disappeared to supply the calls of urgent want. An old four-post bedstead, with curtains of worn-out serge, stood in one corner; one mattress, with two small thin pillows, and a bolster that was almost flat; three old blankets, cotton sheets of the coarsest description upon it: three rush-bottomed chairs, an old claw-table, very ancient dilapidated chest of drawers—at the top of which were a few battered band-boxes—a miserable bit of carpet before the fire-place; a wooden box for coals; a little low tin fender, a poker, or rather half a poker; a shovel and tongs, much the worse for wear, and a very few kitchen utensils, was all the furniture in the room. What there was, however, was kept clean; the floor was clean, the yellow paint was clean; and, I forgot to say, there was a washing-tub set aside in one corner.

The wind blew shrill, and shook the window, and the snow was heard beating against the panes; the clock went another quarter, but still the indefatigable toiler sewed on. Now and then she lifted up her head, as a sigh came from that corner of the room where the bed stood, and some one might be heard turning and tossing uneasily upon the mattress—then she returned to her occupation and plied her needle with increased assiduity.

The workwoman was a girl of from eighteen to twenty, rather below the middle size, and of a face and form little adapted to figure in a story. One whose life, in all probability, would never be diversified by those romantic adventures which real life in general reserves to the beautiful and the highly-gifted. Her features were rather homely, her hair of a light brown, without golden threads through it, her hands and arms rough and red with cold and labor; her dress ordinary to a degree—her clothes being of the cheapest materials—but then, these clothes were so neat, so carefully mended where they had given way; the hair was so smooth, and so closely and neatly drawn round the face; and the face itself had such a sweet expression, that all the defects of line and color were redeemed to the lover of expression, rather than beauty.

She did not look patient, she did not look resigned; she could not look cheerful exactly. She looked earnest, composed, busy, and exceedingly kind. She had not, it would seem, thought enough of self in the midst of her privations, to require the exercise of the virtues of patience and resignation; she was so occupied with the sufferings of others that she never seemed to think of her own.

She was naturally of the most cheerful, hopeful temper in the world—those people without selfishness usually are. And, though sorrow had a little lowered the tone of her spirits to composure, and work and disappointment had faded the bright colors of hope; still hope was not entirely gone, nor cheerfulness exhausted. But, the predominant expression of every word, and look, and tone, and gesture, was kindness—inexhaustible kindness.

I said she lifted up her head from time to time, as a sigh proceeded from the bed, and its suffering inhabitant tossed and tossed: and at last she broke silence and said,

"Poor Myra, can't you get to sleep?"

"It is so fearfully cold," was the reply; "and when will you have done, and come to bed?"

"One quarter of an hour more, and I shall have finished it. Poor Myra, you are so nervous, you never can get to sleep till all is shut up—but have patience, dear, one little quarter of an hour, and then I will throw my clothes over your feet, and I hope you will be a little warmer."

A sigh for all answer; and then the true heroine—for she was extremely beautiful, or rather had been, poor thing, for she was too wan and wasted to be beautiful now—lifted up her head, from which fell a profusion of the fairest hair in the world, and leaning her head upon her arm, watched in a sort of impatient patience the progress of the indefatigable needle-woman.

"One o'clock striking, and you hav'n't done yet, Lettice? how slowly you do get on."

"I can not work fast and neatly too, dear Myra. I can not get through as some do—I wish I could. But my hands are not so delicate and nimble as yours, such swelled clumsy things," she said, laughing a little, as she looked at them—swelled, indeed, and all mottled over with the cold! "I can not get over the ground nimbly and well at the same time. You are a fine race-horse, I am a poor little drudging pony—but I will make as much haste as I possibly can."

Myra once more uttered an impatient, fretful sigh, and sank down again, saying, "My feet are so dreadfully cold!"

"Take this bit of flannel then, and let me wrap them up."

"Nay, but you will want it."

"Oh, I have only five minutes more to stay, and I can wrap the carpet round my feet."

And she laid down her work and went to the bed, and wrapped her sister's delicate, but now icy feet, in the flannel; and then she sat down; and at last the task was finished. And oh, how glad she was to creep to that mattress, and to lay her aching limbs down upon it! Hard it might be, and wretched the pillows, and scanty the covering, but little felt she such inconveniences. She fell asleep almost immediately, while her sister still tossed and murmered. Presently Lettice, for Lettice it was, awakened a little, and said, "What is it, love? Poor, poor Myra! Oh, that you could but sleep as I do."

And then she drew her own little pillow from under her head, and put it under her sister's, and tried to make her more comfortable; and she partly succeeded, and at last the poor delicate suffering creature fell asleep, and then Lettice slumbered like a baby.

CHAPTER II.

"Oh, blest with temper whose unclouded ray
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day:
····And can hear
Sighs for a sister with unwounded ear."
Pope.—Characters of Women.

Early in the morning, before it was light, while the wintry twilight gleamed through the curtainless window, Lettice was up, dressing herself by the scanty gleam cast from the street lamps into the room, for she could not afford the extravagance of a candle.

She combed and did up her hair with modest neatness; put on her brown stuff only gown, and then going to the chest of drawers—opening one with great precaution, lest she should make a noise, and disturb Myra, who still slumbered —drew out a shawl, and began to fold it as if to put it on.

Alas! poor thing, as she opened it, she became first aware that the threadbare, time-worn fabric had given way in two places. Had it been in one, she might have contrived to conceal the injuries of age: but it was in two.

She turned it; she folded and unfolded: it would not do. The miserable shawl seemed to give way under her hands. It was already so excessively shabby that she was ashamed to go out in it; and it seemed as if it was ready to fall to pieces in sundry other places, this dingy, thin, brown, red, and green old shawl. Mend it would not: besides, she was pressed for time; so, with the appearance of considerable reluctance, she put her hand into the drawer, and took out another shawl.

This was a different affair. It was a warm, and not very old, plaid shawl, of various colors, well preserved and clean looking, and, this cold morning, so tempting.

Should she borrow it? Myra was still asleep, but she would be horridly cold when she got up, and she would want her shawl, perhaps; but then Lettice must go out, and must be decent, and there seemed no help for it.

But if she took the shawl, had she not better light the fire before she went out? Myra would be so chilly. But then, Myra seldom got up till half-past eight or nine, and it was now not seven.

An hour and a half's, perhaps two hour's, useless fire would never do. So after a little deliberation, Lettice contented herself with "laying it," as the housemaids say; that is, preparing the fire to be lighted with a match: and as she took out coal by coal to do this, she perceived with terror how very, very low the little store of fuel was.

"We must have a bushel in to-day," she said. "Better without meat and drink than fire, in such weather as this."

However, she was cheered with the reflection that she should get a little more than usual by the work that she had finished. It had been ordered by a considerate and benevolent lady, who, instead of going to the ready-made linen warehouses for what she wanted, gave herself a good deal of trouble to get at the poor workwomen themselves who supplied these houses, so that they should receive the full price for their needle-work, which otherwise must of necessity be divided.

What she should get she did not quite know, for she had never worked for this lady before; and some ladies, though she always got more from private customers than from the shops, would beat her down to the last penny, and give her as little as they possibly could.

Much more than the usual price of such matters people can not, I suppose, habitually give; they should, however, beware of driving hard bargains with the very poor.

Her bonnet looked dreadfully shabby, as poor little Lettice took it out from one of the dilapidated band-boxes that stood upon the chest of drawers; yet it had been carefully covered with a sheet of paper, to guard it from the injuries of the dust and the smoke-loaded air.

The young girl held it upon her hand, turning it round, and looking at it, and she could not help sighing when she thought of the miserably shabby appearance she should make; and she going to a private house, too: and the errand!—linen for the trousseau of a young lady who was going to be married.

What a contrast did the busy imagination draw between all the fine things that young lady was to have and her own destitution! She must needs be what she was—a simple-hearted, God-fearing, generous girl, to whom envious comparisons of others with herself were as impossible as any other faults of the selfish—not to feel as if the difference was, to use the common word upon such occasions, "very hard."

She did not take it so. She did not think that it was very hard that others should be happy and have plenty, because she was poor and had nothing. They had not robbed her. What they had was not taken from her. Nay, at this moment their wealth was overflowing toward her. She should gain in her little way by the general prosperity. The thought of the increased pay came into her mind at this moment in aid of her good and simple-hearted feelings, and she brightened up, and shook her bonnet, and pulled out the ribbons, and made it look as tidy as she could; bethinking herself that if it possibly could be done, she would buy a bit of black ribbon, and make it a little more spruce when she got her money.

And now the bonnet is on, and she does not think it looks so very bad, and Myra's shawl, as reflected in the little threepenny glass, looks quite neat. Now she steals to the bed in order to make her apologies to Myra about the shawl and fire, but Myra still slumbers. It is half-past seven and more, and she must be gone.

The young lady for whom she made the linen lived about twenty miles from town, but she had come up about her things, and was to set off home at nine o'clock that very morning. The linen was to have been sent in the night before, but Lettice had found it impossible to get it done. It must per force wait till morning to be carried home. The object was to get to the house as soon as the servants should be stirring, so that there would be time for the things to be packed up and accompany the young lady upon her return home.

Now, Lettice is in the street. Oh, what a morning it was! The wind was intensely cold the snow was blown in buffets against her face; the street was slippery: all the mud and mire turned into inky-looking ice. She could scarcely stand; her face was blue with the cold; her hands, in a pair of cotton gloves, so numbed that she could hardly hold the parcel she carried.

She had no umbrella. The snow beat upon her undefended head, and completed the demolition of the poor bonnet; but she comforted herself with the thought that its appearance would now be attributed to the bad weather having spoiled it. Nay (and she smiled as the idea presented itself), was it not possible that she might be supposed to have a better bonnet at home?

So she cheerfully made her way; and at last she entered Grosvenor-square, where lamps were just dying away before the splendid houses, and the wintry twilight discovered the garden, with its trees plastered with dirty snow, while the wind rushed down from the Park colder and bitterer than ever. She could hardly get along at all. A few ragged, good-for-nothing boys were almost the only people yet to be seen about; and they laughed and mocked at her, as, holding her bonnet down with one hand, to prevent its absolutely giving way before the wind, she endeavored to carry her parcel, and keep her shawl from flying up with the other.

The jeers and the laughter were very uncomfortable to her. The things she found it the most difficult to reconcile herself to in her fallen state were the scoffs, and the scorns, and the coarse jests of those once so far, far beneath her; so far, that their very existence, as a class, was once almost unknown, and who were now little, if at all, worse off than herself.

The rude brutality of the coarse, uneducated, and unimproved Saxon, is a terrible grievance to those forced to come into close quarters with such.

At last, however, she entered Green-street, and raised the knocker, and gave one timid, humble knock at the door of a moderate-sized house, upon the right hand side as you go up to the Park.

Here lived the benevolent lady of whom I have spoken, who took so much trouble to break through the barriers which in London separate the employers and the employed, and to assist the poor stitchers of her own sex, by doing away with the necessity of that hand, or those many hands, through which their ware has usually to pass, and in each of which something of the recompense thereof must of necessity be detained.

She had never been at the house before; but she had sometimes had to go to other genteel houses, and she had too often found the insolence of the pampered domestics harder to bear than even the rude incivility of the streets.

So she stood feeling very uncomfortable; still more afraid of the effect her bonnet might produce upon the man that should open the door, than upon his superiors.

But "like master, like man," is a stale old proverb, which, like many other old saws of our now despised as childish ancestors, is full of pith and truth.

The servant who appeared was a grave, gray-haired man, of somewhat above fifty. He stooped a little in his gait, and had not a very fashionable air; but his countenance was full of kind meaning, and his manner so gentle, that it seemed respectful even to a poor girl like this.

Before hearing her errand, observing how cold she looked, he bade her come in and warm herself at the hall stove; and shutting the door in the face of the chill blast, that came rushing forward as if to force its way into the house, he then returned to her, and asked her errand.

"I come with the young lady's work. I was so sorry that I could not possibly get it done in time to send it in last night; but I hope I have not put her to any inconvenience. I hope her trunks are not made up. I started almost before it was light this morning."

"Well, my dear, I hope not; but it was a pity you could not get it done last night. Mrs. Danvers likes people to be exact to the moment and punctual in performing promises, you must know. However, I'll take it up without loss of time, and I dare say it will be all right."

"Is it come at last?" asked a sweet, low voice, as Reynolds entered the drawing-room. "My love, I really began to be frightened for your pretty things, the speaker went on, turning to a young lady who was making an early breakfast before a noble blazing fire, and who was no other a person than Catherine Melwyn.

"Oh, madam! I was not in the least uneasy about them, I was quite sure they would come at last."

"I wish, my love," said Mrs. Danvers, sitting down by the fire, "I could have shared in your security. Poor creatures! the temptation is sometimes so awfully great. The pawnbroker is dangerously near. So easy to evade all inquiry by changing one miserably obscure lodging for another, into which it is almost impossible to be traced. And, to tell the truth, I had not used you quite well, my dear; for I happened to know nothing of the previous character of these poor girls, but that they were certainly very neat workwomen; and they were so out of all measure poor, that I yielded to temptation. And that you see, my love, had its usual effect of making me suspicious of the power of temptation over others."