Various

In the summer of ’49, an old acquaintance of mine, who had grown fat upon the Black Letter of the Profession; who, for twenty years, had hardly seen the outside of our parish; and whom I had supposed a fixture, so fixed, as no allurements of travel could draw beyond the limit of his daily rounds about the courts, came to my rooms, with wonder in his eyes, to tell me that he was about to leave for Europe; to visit England, and France, and Germany, and Italy, and the Levant, and the Holy Land, and heaven knew what horrid places beside; and, as it might be that he should never get back, he had called to bid me good-bye. I congratulated him on his new-born propensity to rove, and said to myself, now here is an opportunity for learning something of Paqueta, of whom I have dreamed so much since Charles’ sad fate. So, I related her story; and when my friend became interested in it—for he had a bit of romance beneath his Law—I asked him to call upon her in Paris, giving him her residence, with a letter addressed to “Madame Charles R——, NÉe Paqueta.” He put the letter in his pocket, saying, that really—after what he had heard—he should himself like to know what had become of the fair widow of the Deputy; then, charging him, in case of her removal from the hotel in which I had found her, to inquire for her of the wife of the commissaire, we joined hands and parted.

My fortunate brother went abroad, and saw a part of the countries he had enumerated, and returned with this tale of the message I had confided to him—mournful indeed, but which caused me to love Paqueta more and more. He said that, on arriving in Paris, he soon found out the street, and the number of the hotel I had given him, and put my letter into the commissaire’s hands. The old servant read the address, shrugged his shoulders, crossed himself, and was silent.

“Is Madame at home?”

“Non, Monsieur; she is dead!”

The wife of the commissaire, who stood near by, within the corridor, hearing the question, came forward and asked, whom Monsieur would be pleased to see?

“Madame Charles R——.”

“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed the little woman, also crossing herself, and beginning to cry—“Madame is with the virgin in heaven; and is happier now than she ever was with us; though Jean, my good man, knows she was then the sweetest and happiest angel alive. Did you know her, Monsieur?”

My friend gave the kind woman my name, and said I had heard of the Deputy’s death, and he had called, at my request, to learn something of his widow.

“Eh, I remember him very well. He loved Madame a great deal, and Madame loved him; I think he was her godfather. He was here in good King Philippe’s time. Mon Dieu, mon Dieu! we were well enough under good King Philippe, but now it is À bas this and À bas that, and vive this and vive that, and we shall never have done until we have cut every body’s throat. A bas les Émeutes, say I; poor Monsieur Charles and Madame were killed in an Émeute.” And then, amid many crosses and many sobs, she told how Paqueta had died.

“On the morning of the 25th of June, 1848, only four short months after Lamartine had proclaimed the Republic, with liberty, equality and fraternity as its watch-words—when the fight raged hottest at the Clos St. Lazare, Paqueta called to her the wife of the commissaire. ‘You,’ said she, ‘were born in Paris, and know all its streets and blind, crooked ways; be quick, put on that dress, and go with me.’ ‘I thought my good lady mad,’ said the commissaire’s wife, ‘for she stood before me habited in male attire, with a gentleman’s hat upon her head, and the dress she offered me was like her own. But she looked so firm, and so fearful, too, and her words were so hoarse and had such a command in them, that I obeyed without knowing why. ‘Now, no one will know us,’ said Madame; ‘do you hear that terrible cannon! For two days it has boomed in my ears, and in all that time Charles has not been with me. My God! my God! they are slaughtering the people in the streets, and he is in the battle!’ What could I do? The little creature, so soft, so pretty, so mild, so loving to all about her, looked like a giant, and I hastened after her, afraid to cry out, afraid to say any thing, as she rushed ever forward in search of her husband. Where the noise was greatest, where the shout was loudest, she ran to catch it, crying, ‘Come, quickly, quickly.’ Oh, monsieur, the poor people! Oh, monsieur, the blood, the dying, and the dead! And Madame heeding nothing of all that, but still crying, ‘Come, quickly, quickly.’ Mon Dieu, Monsieur, À bas les Émeutes! The strife grew nearer every step we made, the combatants fleeing and pursuing, grew thicker, and when we entered the Clos St. Lazare, we saw the roar of the battle. ‘Ah, there is Monsieur Charles!’ said I. Madame sprang from me at the word, and was soon at his side fighting with the rest; oui, monsieur, fighting with a musket which she snatched from a falling soldier’s grasp. Monsieur, quel horreur! I could neither fly nor go forward, but stood where I was, and watched the war, until I saw Charles go down—and then Madame, comme un tigre, sprang upon the ouvrier who struck him, and was avenged, and sank not to rise any more. Oh, monsieur, quel horreur!”

When the fight was ended, and the smoke had cleared off, and quietude had returned with death, the good wife of the commissaire reclaimed Paqueta’s body. There was no hurt upon it, she said; and about her neck she found, fastened by a little black ribbon, a very small bronze medal, which she had never seen her wear before. And now she rests, side and side with the one she loved so much, in the bosom of the Pere la Chaise.

Of all who fell upon that terrible day, Paqueta was among the noblest. She fought on neither side; knew nothing of liberty, of despotism, of forms of government; knew only her love, and the man who kept it, her life and—her death. Generous Paqueta, noble Paqueta, brave Paqueta, my pen shall ever run riot when speaking of thee—Heaven bless thy soul.

---

RECOLLECTIONS.

———

BY MISS MATTIE GRIFFITH.

———

The twilight now is blushing o’er the earth—

The west is glowing like a garden, rich

With summer’s many-tinted blooms; the flowers

Of earth hold up their fairy cups to catch

The softly falling dew-drops; the bright stars

Are set like glorious diamonds on the dark

Blue drapery of the halls of heaven; the pale,

Sweet moon, like some young angel of the air,

Floats from the east upon her silver wing;

Eve’s golden clouds hung low—and thin, white mists

Rise silently and beautifully up

Through the calm atmosphere. Serenity

And loveliness and beauty are abroad

O’er the whole world of Nature.

At this hour,

When all the dark, wild passions of the breast

Are hushed and quelled by Nature’s spell of power,

When every wayward feeling is rebuked

And chastened by the blended influence

Of earth and heaven, I’ve stolen forth alone

Beneath the blue and glorious sky, to hold

Communion with the golden hours now gone

Into the past eternity.

My heart

Is very soft to-night, and joys long past

Shine through the silver mists of memory,

Like sweet stars of the soul. My brow is flushed,

My bosom throbs, and blessÉd tears well up

From my heart’s unsealed fountain, as I see,

Through the pale shadows of the years, the home

Where first I felt the sweet, bewildering bliss

Of new existence. Softly, through the deep

Green foliage of the grove, the beautiful

White cottage peeps with its thick-blooming vines,

And in the distance the still church-yard, where

Repose the cold, unthrobbing hearts of those

I loved in childhood, lifts its marble shafts

Beneath the drooping willows. I behold

The shaded paths where my young footsteps strayed

To gather wild flowers at the morning tide,

And for a few brief moments once again

I seem to wander through the dear old wood.

The birds sing round me, the dark forest pines,

Stirred by the breeze, make music like the low,

Faint murmurs of the sea, my playmates shout

Beside me, and my mother’s music call

Of gentle love is in my ear.

Oh, there,

In that sweet home, I cherished fairy dreams

Of happiness, sad all my being wore

A glow of deep, ideal loveliness.

My vanished childhood rises to my view

In pale and melancholy beauty. Life

Since then hath been but desolate. Alas!

What heart-chords have been broken, what bright dreams

Been shadowed by the hue of grief. No more

The Egeria of my spirit-worship haunts

The grove and wood. No charm can woo her back,

She will not hear my call, she answers not

The witching spell of fancy. It is not

That Nature has grown old. Her skies are still

As blue, her trees as green, her dews as soft,

Her flowers as sweet, her clouds as beautiful,

Her birds, her waves, her winds as musical

As when I was a child—Alas! the change

Is in my heart.

Oh, blessed memories

Of home! ye are the worshiped household gods

Upon my spirit’s altar. Vanished years!

Ye are the dew-drops that my spirit’s flowers

Enfold within their petals. Years have passed

Since that all-mournful day when, with a sad

And breaking heart, and streaming eyes, I left

The scenes of childhood, and went forth to find

A home amid the stranger-crowds, where I

Have learned to wear the mask that others wear,

To smile while agony is in my soul,

Yet at an hour like this, when Nature glows

With deepest loveliness, when earth and heaven

Unite to woo my heart from its retreat

Of gloom and sorrow, I can wander back

To quench my faint and sinking spirit’s thirst

At young life’s gushing fountains, and forget

That I am not once more a happy child.

---

THE BOY AFAR UNTO HIS SISTER.

———

BY LILIAN MAY.

———

There are hearts in Northland valleys

Throbbing, beating wild for me,

And their soul-love yearneth ever

For a far-off one to see;

And the heart-strings of a sister

Harpeth all their melody,

Wild, sweet lays, for her lone brother,

In her joyness and her glee.

Oh, the ties which bind me to her

Keep aglow my ardent heart,

Thrilling it with pure emotion—

May it nevermore depart;

Oh, I love her ever dearly,

Sister kind she’s been to me—

All her words are golden music

To my heart-hopes minstrelsy.

Through the mellow sunlight glim’ring,

Glinting down upon the stream,

Voices sweet of love-tones falleth,

On my gorgeous, bright day-dream,

And I fancy forms of beauty

Linger then anear my side—

’Mid them all I see my sister

Through the misty visions glide.

In her love, and in her beauty,

Softly, slowly doth she glide,

O’er the pathway of my day-dream,

As a moon-beam on the tide;

And she whispers close beside me,

Meekly soft, and kindly low,

Words, that kindle up my heart-hopes,

Which no other one may know.

When the fairies from the Southland

Bring from far the meek-eyed flowers—

Undine trippeth o’er the waters,

In the rosy June-day hours—

As I watch her mellow glances

Lighting up the fitful stream,

I shall tell her all the haloes

Of a youthful poet’s dream;

And I’ll gather on the lea-land,

By the hill-side, in the grove,

Gems she’ll prize far more than jewels,

The bright flowers which I love,

With the dew-drops heavy-laden,

Sparkling in the red dawn light,

As the molten glory beameth

O’er the ebon wand of night.

Oh, my heart throbs wildly ever,

In its loneliness and wo,

And I long me for the summer,

When the Southland breezes blow;

Gladly, quickly, then I’ll hasten,

In the bright mid-summer day,

To my love-light Northland sister,

In my childhood’s home away.

---

BLIND ROSA.

———

BY HENRIK CONSCIENCE. TRANSLATED BY MARY HOWITT.

———

On a splendid summer day in 1846, the diligence was rolling along the great highway from Antwerp to Turnhout at the regular hour. The horses trotted, the wheels rattled, the carriage creaked, the driver clucked incessantly with his tongue in order to quicken the speed of his cattle, dogs barked in the distance, birds soared up from the fields high into the air, the shadow sped alongside of the diligence, and danced along with its peculiar motion amongst the trees and bushes.

Suddenly the conductor pulled up not far from a solitary inn. He leaped down from his seat, opened the door of the diligence without saying a word, slapped down the step, and put out his hand to a traveler, who, with a knapsack in his hand, descended to the road. In the same silence the conductor again put up the step, closed the door, sprung again into his seat, and whistled gently to intimate to the horses that they must move. The horses trotted on; the heavy vehicle pursued its monotonous career.

In the mean time the traveler had entered the inn, and seated himself at a table with a glass of ale before him. He was a man of more than ordinary size, and appeared to be about fifty. You might at the same time have supposed him to be sixty, if his vigorous carriage, his quick glance, and a certain youthful smile about his lips, had not testified that his soul and senses were much younger than his appearance. His hair was gray, his forehead and cheeks covered with wrinkles, and his complexion bore the stamp of early age which excessive exertion and long-continued care impress on the countenance. Yet, at the same time, his breast heaved with vigor, he bore his head upright, and his eyes still gleamed with the fire of manhood. By his dress you would take him for a wealthy citizen; it had nothing peculiar, except that the frock-coat buttoned to the throat, and the large meerschaum pipe which hung at his breast, bespoke a Flemish or a German officer.

The people of the house, having attended to his demands, again returned to their occupations, without taking further notice of him. He saw the two daughters go to and fro, the father renew the fire with wood and turf, and the mother fill the kettle with water; but not one of them addressed to him a single word, though his eyes followed earnestly every member of the family, and although in his friendly glance might have been read the question—“Do you not recognize me?”

At this moment his attention was caught by the striking of a clock which hung upon the wall. As if the sound had painfully affected him, an expression of disagreeable surprise appeared in his countenance, and chased the smile from his lips. He stood up and contemplated the unlucky clock while it went sounding stroke after stroke, to the number of nine. The mother observed the singular emotion of the stranger, and placed herself in wonder at his side; she, too, looked at the clock, as if to discover what he found so remarkable in it.

“The clock has a pleasant sound—has it not?” said she. “It has now gone for twenty years without the hand of the clockmaker touching it.”

“Twenty years!” sighed the traveler. “And where, then, is the clock which hung there before? What has become of the image of the Virgin which stood here upon the mantlepiece. They are both probably broken and gone.”

The woman looked in astonishment at the stranger, and replied:—“The figure of the Virgin, Zanna broke as she played with it as a child. But it was really so pitiful, that the priest himself had advised us to buy another. Here stands the new one, and it is much handsomer.”

The traveler shook his head dissentingly. “And the clock,” continued the hostess, “you will soon hear. The wretched old thing is always too late, and has hung from time immemorial in the lumber-room. There! now it is just beginning to buzz.”

And, in truth, there came from the adjoining room a peculiar, croaking noise. It was like the hoarse note of a bird which slowly wheezed out “Cuckoo! cuckoo!” But this extraordinary sound called into the traveler’s countenance a beaming smile; accompanied by the hostess, he hastened into the lumber-room, and there, with glistening eyes, gazed on the old clock, which still had not got to the end of its “Cuckoo! cuckoo!”

Both daughters approached the stranger with curiosity, and stared with wonder at him, their large eyes turning from him to their mother full of inquiry. The looks of the damsels awoke the stranger to consciousness, and he returned to the room, followed by the three women. His heart clearly felt very happy, for his features glowed with so attractive an expression of pleasure and good-will, and his eyes bedewed with tears glanced so brightly, that the two young girls with evident sympathy approached him. He seized their hands and said:—

“You think my conduct strange, eh, children? You cannot conceive why the voice of the old cuckoo delights me so much. Ah! I too have been a child, and at that time, my father, when he had done his work, used to come and drink here his glass of ale. When I had behaved well, I was allowed to accompany him. For whole hours have I stood and waited for the cuckoo opening its little door; I have danced and leaped to the measure of her song, and admired in my childish simplicity the poor bird as a masterpiece. And the sacred image of the Virgin, which one of you has broken, I loved it for its beautiful blue mantle, and because the little Jesus-child stretched its arms toward me, and smiled as I smiled. Now is the child—myself—almost sixty years old, with gray hair and furrowed countenance. Four-and-thirty years have I passed in the steppes of Russia, and yet I remember the sacred image of Mary, and the cuckoo, as if I had only been brought hither by my father yesterday.”

“You are from our village, then?” said Zanna.

“Yes, certainly,” answered the stranger, with a joyous precipitance. But this announcement had not the anticipated effect; the girls only smiled familiarly; that was all; the intelligence seemed to give them neither pleasure nor pain. The traveler turned to the mother:—

“Well,” said he, “what is become of Baes Joostens?”

“You mean Baas Jan,” answered the hostess; “he died about twenty years ago.”

“And his wife, the good, stout Petronella?”

“Dead too,” was the answer.

“Dead! dead!” sighed the stranger; “and the young herdsman, Andries, who made such handsome baskets?”

“Also dead,” replied the hostess.

The traveler dropped his head and gave himself up to gloomy thoughts. In the meantime the hostess went out into the barn to relate to her husband what had passed with the unknown guest. The host entered the room carelessly, and awoke by his noisy wooden shoes the stranger out of his reverie. He sprung up, and with an exclamation of delight, rushed with outstretched arms toward the host, who coldly took his hand, and almost with indifference looked at him.

“Don’t you either know me again, Peter Joostens?” cried the stranger, quite confounded.

“No, I do not recollect ever to have seen you,” replied the host.

“No! Don’t you know who it was that ventured his life under the ice to rescue you from an otherwise inevitable death?”

The host shrugged his shoulders. Deeply wounded, the traveler continued, almost moved to tears:—

“Have you actually forgotten the youth who defended you against your bigger comrades, and supplied you with so many birds’-eggs, that you might make a beautiful garland for the may-pole? He who taught you to make so many pipes of reeds, and who so often took you with him when he went with the tile-burner’s cart to market?”

“Something of the kind floats dimly in my memory,” answered the host; “my late father used to tell me that when I was about six years old I was very near perishing under the ice; but that Tall Jan drew me out, and that he went away with the rest in the emperor’s time to serve for cannon fodder. Who knows now where his bones lie in unconsecrated earth? God be merciful to his poor soul!”

“Ah! now at length you know me!” exclaimed the stranger, joyously; “I am tall Jan, or rather, Jan Slaets.”

As he did not receive an immediate answer, he added, in surprise:—

“You recollect the good shot at the bird-shooting, who for four miles round was reckoned the best sportsman, who every time carried off the prize, and who was envied by the young men because the girls showed him the preference? I am he, Jan Slaets of the hill.”

“Very possibly,” said the host, incredulously; “at the same time, do not take it amiss, my good sir, if I do not remember you. Our village has no longer a bird-shooting; the shooting-ground is converted into private property, and for a year past has been unoccupied, owing to the death of the possessor.”

Deterred by the cold reception of the host, the traveler gave up the attempt to make himself known; but as he prepared to go further, he said, calmly:—

“In the village here there live a good many of my friends who cannot have forgotten me. You, Peter Joostens, were very young at that time. I am persuaded that the brick-maker, Paul, will rush to my arms the moment that he sees me. Does he yet live in the clay dale?”

“The brick-yard became, many years ago, a prey to the flames; the clay-field is cultivated, and bears now the finest hay. The meadow now belongs to the rich Mr. Tirt.”

“And what has become of Paul?”

“After their misfortunes, the whole family went away... I do not know certainly, perhaps he, too, is dead. But I observe that you talk of our grandfathers’ time, and it will be difficult to get answers to all your questions unless you go to the grave-digger. He can reckon up for you on his fingers what has happened for a hundred years past, or more.”

“I can believe that; Peter Jan must have reached his ninetieth year.”

“Peter Jan? That is not the name of the grave-digger; his name is Lauw Stevens.”

A glad smile illumined the countenance of the traveler.

“God be praised,” he exclaimed, “that he has at least left one of my comrades still in life!”

“Indeed! was Lauw your friend, sir?”

“Not exactly my friend,” replied the traveler, shaking his head: “we were always at loggerheads. Once, in the heat of our strife, I flung him from the little bridge into the brook, so that he ran great risk of drowning; but above thirty years are flown since then. Lauw will be glad to see me again. Give me now your hand, good Joostens; I shall often come to drink a glass of ale with you here.”

He paid, took his knapsack under his arm, and went out. Behind the inn he took his way through a young pine-wood. His interview with the host, although not very animating, had, nevertheless infused comfort into the heart of the traveler. Memories from his childhood transported him; memories at every step crowded upon him, and gave him new life. True, the young wood could say nothing to him; in its place stood formerly a tall pine-wood, whose trees had concealed so many birds’-nests, under whose shade the refreshing bilberries had ripened. It had fared with the wood as with the inhabitants of the village—the old trees had fallen, or were cut down, and a new generation, who were strange and indifferent to him, had taken their places. But the songs of the birds which resounded on all sides were still the same; the wind murmured complainingly as before through the branches; the cricket sang as it used to do, and the fresh aroma of the wood still filled the air. All objects had changed, but the work of eternal nature had continued in its principal features the same. Thoughts like these arose in the traveler’s soul, and now glad and inspirited he continued his way without looking up from the ground till he came out of the wood.

Here opened before his eyes the wide extent of fields and meadows, amongst which the brook’s silvery thread coursed playfully its way. In the background, at the distance of a quarter of a mile, the pointed spire of the church lifted aloft its gilded vane, which gleamed in the sunshine like a morning-star; and still beyond it the windmill whirled its red wings.

Overcome by an unspeakable emotion, the traveler stood still—his eyes filled with tears, he let his knapsack fall, and stretched out his arms, while his countenance glowed with love and rapture. At the same moment the bells rang for Angelus. The traveler fell on his knees, sunk his head deep upon his bosom, and continued thus for a considerable time, immovable though trembling. A prayer streamed up from his heart and lips; this was evident as he cast his eyes full of inward thankfulness toward heaven, and lifted his clasped hands to God. He then took up again his knapsack, and said, with his gaze riveted on the church-tower—“Thou at least hast not become changed, thou little church, in which I was baptized, in which I celebrated my first communion, in which all looked to me so wonderful and so holy. Yes, I shall see them again, the Sacred Virgin in her garments of gold, and her silver diadem; St. Anthony with the little friendly swine; St. Ursula and the devil with the red tongue, of which I so often dreamed! and the organ, upon which the sexton played so beautifully, while we sung with all our hearts—

‘Ave Maria

Gratia plena.’”

The last words the traveler sung aloud, while a tear trickled down his cheek. Silent and dreaming he went on till he came to a little bridge, which led over a brook into a meadow. There his countenance brightened, and he said with emotion—“Here I first pressed Rosa’s hand! Here our eyes confessed for the first time that there is a happiness on earth which seizes irresistibly our hearts, and opens heaven to the young! As now, so then shone the yellow iris flower in the sunshine; the frogs croaked, full of the enjoyment of life, and the larks sang above our heads.”

He went over the bridge and said aloud to himself—“The frogs which witnessed our love are dead; the flowers are dead; the larks are dead! Their children now greet the old man, who like a spectre returns home from the past times. And Rosa, my beloved Rosa! livest thou still? Perhaps .... probably married and surrounded by children. Those who stay at home forget so soon the unhappy brother who wanders over distant lands in sorrow and care.” .... His lips moved as if he were smiling:—“Poor pilgrim!” he sighed, “there wells up again in my heart the old jealousy, as if my heart yet remained in its first spring. The time of love is long gone by! .... But so be it; if she only knows me, and remembers our former relation, I shall not repent the long journey of eighteen hundred miles, and will then willingly lie down in my grave, and sleep by the side of my ancestors and friends!”

A little farther, and near the village, he went into a public-house, on whose sign there was a plough, and bade the hostess bring him a glass of ale. In the corner by the fire sat a very old man, who stared into the fire as immovably as a stone. Before the hostess had returned from the cellar, the traveler had recognized the old man. He drew his chair close to him, seized his hand, and said gladly—

“Thank God, who has let us live so long, Baes Joos! We yet remain from the good old time. Don’t you know me again? No! The audacious lad that so often crept through your hedge, and stole your apples before they were ripe?”

“Six-and-ninety years,” muttered the old man, without moving.

“Very likely, but tell me, Baes Joos, is the wainwright’s Rosa living yet?”

“Six-and-ninety years!” repeated the old man with a hollow voice.

The hostess came with the ale, and said—“He is blind and deaf, sir, don’t give yourself the trouble to talk with him; he cannot understand you.”

“Blind and deaf,” exclaimed the stranger, disconcerted. “What irrepairable devastations time commits in the space of thirty years! I walk here in the midst of the ruins of a whole race of men.”

“You were asking after the wainwright’s Rosa?” continued the hostess; “our wainwright has four daughters, but amongst them is no Rosa. The eldest is called Lisbeth, and is married to the footman; the second is named Goude, and makes caps; the third is Nell; and the youngest, Anna: the poor thing is short-sighted.”

“I am not speaking of these people,” exclaimed the stranger, with impatience; “I mean the family of Kobe Meulinck.”

“Ah, they are all dead long ago, dear sir!” was the hostess’s reply.

Deeply agitated, the traveler paid for his ale, and left the public-house with a feverish impetuosity. Out of doors he pressed his hand upon his eyes, and exclaimed in despair:—“God! even she! my poor Rosa—dead! Always, always the inevitable word—dead! dead! Then shall no one on earth recognize me! Not one kind eye shall greet me!”

With a staggering step, as if he were drunk, he plunged into the wood, and pressed his throbbing head against a tree, that he thus might by degrees recover himself. He then directed his course toward the village. His way led him across the solitary church-yard, where he remained standing with bare head at the foot of a crucifix, and said:—“Here, before the image of the Crucified One, Rosa gave me her word that she would remain true to me, and wait for my return. Sorrow overwhelmed us; upon this bench fell our tears; in deep grief she received the gold cross, my dearly purchased pledge of love. Poor beloved one! Perhaps now I stand by thy grave!”

With this sorrowful observation he sank motionless upon the bench, where he long continued sitting, as if unconscious. His eye wandered over the church-yard, and the small mounds of earth which covered the freshest graves. It grieved him to see how many of the wooden crosses were fallen with age, without the hand of a child troubling itself to raise again these memorials in a father’s or a mother’s place of rest. His parents, too, slept here under the earth, but who could show him the spot which their graves occupied?

In this manner he sat long, sunk in gloomy reverie; the unfathomable eternity weighed heavily on his soul, when a human step awoke him out of his dreams. It was the old grave-digger, who, with his spade on his shoulder, came along by the church-yard wall. Misery and indigence might be read in his whole exterior: his back was bent, and through his constant labor with the spade had become crooked; his hair was white, and wrinkles ploughed his brow; though strength and spirit still spoke in his eye.

The traveler recognized at the first glance Lauw—his rival, and would have willingly sprung toward him; but the bitterly disappointed hopes which he had already experienced held him back, and inspired him with a resolve to say nothing, but to see whether Lauw would know him again.

The grave-digger remained standing some paces from him, contemplated him awhile with common curiosity, and then began to mark out a long square with his spade, and to prepare a new grave. From time to time, however, he continued to cast stolen glances at the man who sat before him on the bench, and a secret melancholy joy gleamed in his eyes. The traveler, who deceived himself as to the expression in the grave-digger’s countenance, felt his heart begin to beat, and expected that Lauw would come forward and name his name.

But the grave-digger still continued to look him sharply in the face, and then put his hand into his coat-pocket. He drew out a little old book, bound in dirty parchment, to which was attached a strap with a lead pencil. He turned round and appeared to write something in the book.

This action, accompanied by a triumphant glance, astonished the stranger so much that he stood up, advanced to the grave-digger, and asked him in surprise, “What do you write in your book?”

“That is my affair,” answered Lauw Stevens; “for a confounded long time there has stood a vacant place in my list: I make a cross by your name.”

“You know me, then?” exclaimed the traveler, with the liveliest joy.

“Know you?” answered the grave-digger, jeeringly; “that I cannot exactly say; I only remember, as if it were yesterday, that a jealous fellow flung me into the brook, and nearly drowned me, because the wainwright’s Rosa loved me. Since that time many an Easter taper has burnt—”

“You! did wainwright’s Rosa love?” said the stranger, interrupting him; “that is not true, let me tell you.”

“You know that well enough, you jealous fool. Did not she wear for a whole year the blessed ring of silver that I brought with me from Scherpenheuvel, till you yourself took the ring by force, and cast it into the brook?”

The traveler’s countenance brightened into a melancholy smile.

“Lauw! Lauw! the recollection of the old times makes children of us again. Believe me, Rosa never loved you as you fancy. She took your ring out of friendship, and because it had been blessed. In my youth I was rude and harsh, and did not always act in the best manner toward my comrades; but should not the four-and-thirty years which have operated so annihilatingly on men and things, have calmed down our evil passions? Shall I, in the only man who has recollected me, find an irreconcilable enemy? Come, give me your hand; let us be friends; I will make you comfortable for your whole life.”

But the grave-digger drew angrily his hand back, and answered in a caustic tone—

“It is too late to forget. You have embittered my life, and there passes no day but I think of you. Is that, think you, to bless your name? You, who contributed so much to my misfortune, may easily guess.”

The traveler struck his trembling hands together, and lifting his eyes toward heaven, exclaimed—

“God! hatred alone recognizes me! hate only never forgets!”

“You have done well,” continued the grave-digger, “to come back to rest amongst your departed ancestors. I have kept a good grave for you. When the headstrong long Jan lies under the earth, the rain will wash misery from his corpse.”

The traveler trembled in every limb at this rude jest. Anger and displeasure kindled in his eyes. But this hasty emotion quickly vanished; dejection and pity took their place.

“You refuse,” he said, “to extend your hand to a brother who returns after four-and-thirty years; the first greeting which you give to an old comrade is bitter mockery? That is not well of you, Lauw. But let it be so; we will speak no more of this. Tell me only where my late parents are laid.”

“That I don’t know,” said the grave-digger; “it is full five-and-twenty years since, and since that time the same spot has certainly been thrice used for new graves.”

These words made the traveler so sorrowful, that his head sunk on his bosom, and with an immovable look he continued lost in his melancholy thoughts.

The grave-digger proceeded with his labor, but he also seemed to linger over it, as if a gloomy thought had taken possession of him. He saw the deep suffering of the traveler, and was terrified at that thirst of revenge which had caused him thus to torture a fellow-mortal. This change of mood showed itself even upon his countenance; the bitter mockery disappeared from his lips, he contemplated for a moment with increasing sympathy his afflicted comrade, advanced slowly toward him, seized his hand, and said in a low, but still heart-touching voice—

“Jan, my dear friend, pardon me what I have said and done. I have behaved cruelly and wickedly to thee; but thou must remember, Jan, that I have suffered so much through thee.”

“Lauw!” exclaimed the stranger with emotion, and shaking his hand, “that was the violence of our youth. See how little I thought of thy enmity, for I felt myself infinitely happy when I heard thee name my name. And for that I am grateful to thee, though thy bitterness has gone to my heart. But tell me, Lauw, where is Rosa buried? She will rejoice in heaven, when she sees us thus as reconciled brothers stand upon her last resting-place.”

“How?—Rosa buried!” exclaimed the grave-digger. “Would to God that she were buried, poor thing!”

“What meanest thou?” cried the traveler: “does Rosa yet live?”

“Yes, she lives,” was the answer, “if that terrible fate that she has to endure can be called life.”

“Thou terrifiest me. For God’s sake tell me what calamity has happened to her?”

“She is blind.”

“Blind? Rosa blind! Without eyes to see me? Wo, wo is me!”

Overwhelmed by anguish, he advanced with uncertain steps to the bench, and sunk down upon it. The grave-digger placed himself before him, and said—

“For ten years has she been blind—and begs her daily bread. I give her, every week, two stivers: and, when we bake, we always remember her with a little cake.”

The traveler sprung up, shook powerfully the grave-digger’s hand and said—

“A thousand thanks! God bless thee for thy love to Rosa! I pledge myself in his name to reward thee for it. I am rich, very rich. By evening we will see one another again. But tell me now, at once, where Rosa is to be found: every moment is to me a hundred years of suffering.”

With these words, he drew the grave-digger along with him, and directed his steps toward the church-yard gate. Arrived there, the grave-digger pointed with his finger, and said—

“See there, by the side of the wood, there rises a smoke from a low chimney. That is the house of besom-binder Nelis Oom: she lives there.”

Without waiting for further explanation, the traveler hastened through the village toward the indicated spot. He was soon at the dwelling. It was a low hut, built of willow-wands and clay, but on the outside neatly white-washed. Some paces from the door, four little children were playing and amusing themselves, in the bright sunshine, with planting in circles blue corn-flowers and red poppies. They were bare-foot and half-naked: the eldest, a boy of about six years old, had nothing whatever on but a linen shirt. While his little brother and sisters looked at the stranger with fear and shyness, the boy let his eyes rest steadily on the unknown one, full of curiosity and wonder.

The stranger smiled at the children, but advanced without delay into the hut, in one corner of which a man was busy making besoms, while a woman sat with her spinning-wheel by the hearth. These people could not be more than thirty years of age, and at the first glance might be perceived their contentment with their lot. For the rest, all around them looked as clean as country life within such narrow space will allow. The stranger’s entrance obviously surprised them, although they received him with kindness and offered him their services. They were clearly of opinion that he wanted to inquire his way, for the husband put himself in readiness to go and show it him. But he asked with evident emotion whether Rosa lived there: and the husband and wife cast astonished looks at each other, and could scarcely find words to answer him.

“Yes, good sir,” said the man at length: “Rosa lives here; but at present she is gone out a-begging. Do you wish to speak with her?”

“God! God!” exclaimed the traveler. “Cannot you quickly find her?”

“That would be difficult to do, sir: she has gone out with Trientje, to make her round for the week; but we expect her in an hour’s time, she never stays out.”

“Can I wait for her here, good friends?”

Scarcely had he uttered the words, before the man hastened into the next room, and fetched thence an easy-chair, which—although of rude workmanship—appeared more inviting than the still ruder chairs which stood in the outer room. Not satisfied with this, the wife took out of a chest a white cushion, which she laid in the chair, and requested the stranger to sit down. He was astonished at the simple but well-meant attention, and returned the cushion with many thanks. He then sat down in silence, and let his eyes glance round the room, as if to discover something which might speak of Rosa. As his head was thus turned aside, he felt a small hand gently thrust into his, and his fingers stroked. He looked round curiously to discover who bestowed on him this mark of friendliness, and he met the blue eyes of the boy, who—with heavenly innocence—looked up to him, as if he had been his father or brother.

“Come here, Peterken,” said the mother; “thou shouldst not be so forward, dear child.”

But Peterken did not seem to hear this warning, and continued to hold the hand of the stranger, and look at him. The stranger found the friendship of the child unaccountable, and said—

“Dear child, thy blue eyes penetrate deep into my soul. As thou art so friendly, I will give thee something.”

He put his hand into his pocket, and took out a little purse, with silver clasp and pearls, that changed color in the light, and gave it to him, after he had dropped into it some pieces of money. The boy gazed on the purse with great delight, but did not let go the stranger’s hand. The mother approached, and desired the child to go away.

“Peterken,” said she, “thou wilt not be rude: thank the gentleman, and kiss his hand.”

The boy kissed his hand, stooped his head toward him, and said—in a clear voice—

“Many thanks, tall Jan.”

A clap of thunder could not have so startled the traveler as his own name thus pronounced by the innocent child. Tears started involuntarily from his eyes: he lifted the boy upon his knee, and now gazed deeply into his face.

“So, dost thou know me, thou blessed angel! me, whom thou never saw’st before! Who taught thee my name?”

“Blind Rosa,” was the answer.

“But how is it possible that thou hast known me? It must be God himself who has enlightened thy childish mind.”

“O, I know you very well,” said Peterken. “When I lead Rosa about to beg, she always talks of you. She says that you are tall, and have dark, fiery eyes; and that you will come back again, and bring us all such beautiful things. And so I was not afraid of you, good sir; for Rosa had bade me to love you, and you are to give me a bow and arrow.”

The child’s simple confidence made the traveler perfectly happy. He kissed him hastily, and with tenderness, and said in a solemn tone—

“Father—mother—this child is rich! I will bring him up and educate him, and richly endow him. It shall be a blessing to him to have recognized me!”

Joy and amazement overwhelmed the parents. The man stammered forth—

“Ah! you are too good. We, ourselves, thought that we knew you, but we were not so certain of it, because Rosa told us that you were not so rich a gentleman.”

“And you, too, knew me, my good people!” exclaimed the traveler. “I find myself amongst friends. Here I have relations and a family ... while hitherto I have only found death and forgetfulness!”

The wife pointed to a smoky image of the Virgin, which stood upon the chimney-piece, and said—

“Here, every Saturday evening, burns a light for the return of Jan Slaets, or for the repose of his soul!”

The traveler directed his eyes in devotion toward heaven, and with a voice full of emotion, said—

“Thanks be to thee, O God, rich in love, that thou hast made affection more powerful than hate! My enemy has shut my name within his heart, with the dark feeling of his spite; but my friend has lived in memory of me, has inspired all around her with her love, has kept me here present, and made me the favorite of this child, while eighteen hundred miles separated me from her. O God be praised, I am rewarded to the full.”

A long silence followed before Jan Slaets could subdue his emotion, which inspired the people of the house with respect. The husband returned to his work; but held himself ready to hasten to the service of his guest. He, with little Peterken still upon his knee, asked quite calmly—

“Good mother, has Rosa lived long with you?”

The wife—as if preparing herself for a long explanation—took her wheel, set it by his side, and began—

“I will tell you, good sir, how it has gone on. You should know that when the old Meulinck died, he divided his property amongst his children. Rosa, whom nothing in the world could induce to marry—I need not tell you the reason—gave her share wholly up to her brother; and only asked, in return, to live with him during her life-time. At the same time, she employed herself in making ornamental articles, and by this means acquired a great deal of money. There was no need to leave this to her brother, and she employed all her gains in doing good. She attended the sick, and paid for a doctor when it was necessary. She had always a pleasant word to encourage the suffering, and some delicacy to offer the sickly. We had scarcely been married six months, when my husband came home one day dreadfully ill of inflammation on the lungs: the cough which you now hear is the consequence of it. We have to thank our merciful God and the good Rosa, that our poor Nelis is not now lying in the church-yard. If you could have but seen, dear sir, what she wholly and solely out of love did for us! She brought us additional bed-clothes; for it was cold, and we were wretchedly poor. She sent for two physicians from the next parish, and had them to consult with the doctor here on my husband’s condition. She watched by him; alleviated his sufferings and my trouble by her affectionate conversation, and she paid all that was necessary for food and medicine; for Rosa was esteemed by everybody, and when she requested the ladies of the estate, or the peasantry, to assist the poor, she was never refused. Six whole weeks was our Nelis confined to his bed, and Rosa protected and assisted us, till he—by degrees—could resume his work again.”

“How I long to see the poor blind one!” sighed the traveler.

The husband raised his head from his work: tears glanced in his eyes, and he said with emotion—

“If my blood could give her her sight again, I would freely spend the last drop of it.”

This exclamation powerfully affected Jan Slaets: the wife observed it, and with her hand gave a sign to her husband to be silent. She then continued—

“Three months after, God gave us a child—the same that sits upon your knee. Rosa, who bore it to the font, desired that it might be christened Johan, but Peter, my husband’s brother, who was godfather—a good man, but somewhat self-willed—insisted that it should be called Peter, after him. After a long discussion, the boy received the name of Johan Peter. We call him Peterken, after his godfather—who still insists on its being so, and who would be angry if it were otherwise; but Rosa will not hear him called so: she calls him constantly Janneken. The boy is proud of it, and knows that she calls him Jannekin because it is your name, good sir.”

The traveler pressed the boy with transport to his breast, and kissed him passionately. With silent admiration he gazed into the boy’s friendly eyes, and his heart was deeply moved. The wife went on—

“Rosa’s brother had engaged with people in Antwerp, to collect provisions in the country round, and ship them to England. Trade was to make him rich it was said, for every week he sent two carts to Antwerp. In the beginning, all went well; but a bankrupt in Antwerp reduced all the gain to nothing, for poor Tirt Meulinck, who was bound for him; scarcely could he pay half his debts. Through grief on this account he is dead. God be merciful to his soul!

“Rosa, after this, lived at Nand Flinck’s, the shopkeeper, in a little room. The same year, the son Karl—who had been away as a recruit—came home with bad eyes, and—fourteen days after—the poor young man became blind. Rosa, who was sorry for him, and only listened to her own heart’s suggestions, attended him during his illness, and led him by the hand, in order to amuse him a little. Alas! she herself took the same complaint, and from that time she has never seen the light of day. Nand Flinck is dead, and his children are scattered about. Blind Karl lives at a farm-house near Lierre. Then came Rosa to live with us, and we told her how gladly we saw her with us, and how willingly we would work all our lives for her. She accepted our invitation. Six years are now flown, and God knows that she has never received from us a cross word: for she is herself all affection and kindness. If it be a question of doing something for her, the children are ready to fight which shall get to do it first.”

“And yet she begs,” said the traveler.

“Yes, good sir,” said the wife, with a certain pride; “but that is her own fault. Do not imagine that we have forgotten what Rosa has done for us: and had we suffered hunger, and must have taken the yoke upon us, we would never have obliged her to beg. What think you then of us? Six months we kept her back from it; but beyond that point we could not prevail. As our family was increasing, Rosa, the good soul, thought she would become a burden to us, and wished on the contrary to help us. It was impossible to hinder her from it: she became sick of sorrow. When we saw that—after the half-year—we gave way to her desire. For a poor blind person it is, nevertheless, no shame. At the same time, though we are poor, we do not make a gain of what she earns by begging. She will, ever and anon, compel us to take part with her; we cannot always be at strife with her, poor thing! but we give it her double back again. Without her knowing it, she is better clad than we are, and the food we set before her is better than our own. There always stands at the fire a separate little pan for her. See here: to her potatoes, she has a couple of eggs and melted butter. Of the remainder of her gains, I believe, from what I can learn by her words, that she is laying up a little hoard till our children are grown up. Her love deserves our gratitude, but we cannot oppose her will.”

The traveler had listened in silence to the whole relation, but a happy smile upon his lips, and a mild lustre in his moistened eye, showed how much his heart was moved. The wife had ceased to speak, and occupied herself again with her wheel. The traveler remained awhile sunk in deep thought, when, setting the boy hastily down, he advanced toward the husband, and said in a commanding tone:

“Have done with your work.”

The besom-maker did not comprehend his meaning, and was startled at his unusual tone.

“Give over your work, and give me your hand, farmer Nelis.”

“Farmer?” said the besom-maker, astonished.

“Yes,” exclaimed the traveler; “fling the besoms out of the door; I will give you a farm, four milch cows, a calf, two horses, and all that is necessary for housekeeping. You do not believe me,” continued he, and showed the besom-maker a handful of money. “I tell you the truth, I could at once give you the necessary sum; but I respect and esteem you too much to offer you money. But I will make you the proprietor of a farm, and protect your children both before and after my death.”

The good people looked at each other with the tears streaming from their eyes, and did not seem rightly to comprehend what was passing. While the traveler was about to make them fresh promises, Peterken pulled him by the hand as if he had something to communicate.

“What wilt thou, dear child?”

“Herr Jan,” answered the boy, “see, the peasants are coming home from the field; I know now where I shall find Rosa. Shall I run and tell her that you are come?”

The traveler seized Peterken’s hand, and drew him with impatience toward the door, as he said, “Come, come, lead me to her!” And while he made his adieu to the people of the house with his hand, he followed the child, who went with rapid pace through the midst of the village. So soon as they came to the first house, the people ran in wonder from shop and yard to look after them, as if they were something extraordinary. And truly, they presented a singular spectacle; the child with his little shirt and bare feet, who laughing and playful skipped along holding by the hand of the unknown one. The astonished people could not comprehend what the rich gentleman, who at least seemed to be a baron, had to do with the besom-binder’s Peterken. Their astonishment still increased as they saw the stranger stoop down and kiss the child. The only thought which occurred to some of them, and over which they now gossiped at every door, was that the rich gentleman had purchased the child of his parents to bring him up as his own son. People from the city who have no child of their own are often wont to do so; and the besom-maker’s Peterken was the handsomest child in the village, with his large, blue eyes and his light, curly hair. At the same time it was extraordinary that the rich gentleman took the child with him in his bare shirt.

The traveler strode rapidly forward. The whole village seemed to him to be magically illuminated; the leafy trees shone in their clear verdure, the low huts smiled at him, the birds sung with a transporting harmony, the air was filled with a balsamic odor and the warmth of life.

He had turned his attention from the child to enjoy this new happiness. During this time, he had fixed his eye on the distance to transpierce the dark wood which, at the other end of the village, seemed to close up the way.

Hastily, the child pulled him by the hand with all his power, and cried:

“See there!—there comes Rosa with our Trientje!”

And actually there came forward, by a house upon a great by-road, an elderly blind woman led by a child of five years old.

Instead of rapidly accompanying the child the traveler remained standing, and contemplated with pain and sorrow the poor blind one, who, at a distance, approached with unsteady steps. Was that his Rosa, the handsome, amiable girl, whose image still lived so young and fresh in his heart? But this contemplation lasted only a moment: he drew the child along with him, and hastened toward his friend. When he had arrived at about fifty paces from her, he could no longer command himself, but cried out in the highest transport—“Rosa! Rosa!”

The instant that this sound reached the blind one’s ear, she drew her arm from that of her leader, and began to tremble as if she were seized with a fit of the ague. She extended her arms, and with the cry—“Jan! Oh, Jan!” sprang forward to meet him. At the same time she drew up a ribbon which hung round her neck, and exhibited with an agitated mien a golden cross.

The next instant she fell into Jan Slaets’s arms, who, amid unintelligible words, attempted to kiss her. But the blind one prevented him gently with her hands, and as this wounded his feelings, she seized his hand and said:

“Oh, Jan! Jan! I swoon with delight ... but I am bound by an oath ... come with me ... we will go together to the church-yard.”

Jan Slaets did not comprehend Rosa’s meaning, but in the tone of her voice lay something so solemn, and at the same time sacred, that without opposition he complied with the wish of his friend. Without taking heed of the people of the village who surrounded them, he led her to the church-yard. Here she directed her course to the seat beside the cross, and obliged him to kneel by her side while she said—

“Pray with me; I have vowed it to God.”

She, at the same time, elevated her clasped hands, breathed forth a warm prayer, and then flinging her arms round her friend’s neck, she kissed him, and sank exhausted but smiling on his breast.

During this time, Peterken skipped about amongst the villagers, who stood in wonder about, clapping his hands, and crying one time after another, “That is tall Jan! That is tall Jan!”

On a fine autumn day of the year 1846, the diligence rolled along the great highway from Antwerp to Turnhout, at the regular hour. In haste the conductor drew up not far from a solitary inn, and opened the door of the carriage. Two young travelers sprang laughing and exulting out upon the road, and stretched their arms like escaped birds who again in full freedom try their wings. They gazed around them on the trees, in the beautiful blue autumn air, with a joy which we experience when we have left the city, and with every breath can enjoy free nature. At the same instant, the younger traveler turned his eyes upon the fields, and exclaimed with transport—“Listen! listen!”

And in truth, there came through the wood the indistinct tones of a distant music. The air was quick and lively, you might almost fancy that you heard the accompanying dance. While the younger one in silence pointed with his finger, his companion said in an almost ironical tone:

“Come, come, dear Jan, don’t rejoice thyself so beforehand. Probably, they are celebrating the election of a new burgomaster.”

“Nay, nay, that is no official joy. Let us too go there and see the peasant girls dance—that is so charming.”

“Let us first drink a glass of ale with Peter Joostens, and ask him what is going on in the village.”

“And give ourselves up to the unexpected jollification, eh? So be it.”

The two travelers entered the inn, and thought they should die of laughter the moment they put their heads into the room. Peter Joostens stood erect and stiff beside the fire. His long, blue, holyday coat hung in rich folds almost down to his heels. He greeted the well-known guests with a heavy smile, in which a certain feeling of shame manifested itself, and he dared not move himself, for at every motion his stiff shirt collar cut his ears.

At the entry of the travelers, he exclaimed with impatience, but without turning his head—“Zanna! Zanna! hasten thee: I hear the music, and I have already told thee that we shall come too late.”

Zanna came running in with a basket full of flowers. She looked so charming with her crimped lace cap, her woollen gown, her rose-colored bodice, the large, golden heart at her breast, and her ear-rings. Her face was flushed with the bloom of the most joyous anticipation, and resembled a rose which opens its closed bud.

“A beautiful peony which blows on a fine summer day,” observed the younger companion.

Zanna had fetched the two desired glasses of ale, and now hastened out of the door with her flowers, singing and laughing. Still more impatiently shouted Peter Joostens with all his might:

“Lisbeth! if thou dost not come directly, I will go away without thee, as sure as I stand here.”

An old clock which hung by the wall pointed at the same instant to nine, and struck with a hoarse tone, “Cuckoo! cuckoo!”

“What wretched taste is that!” said one of the travelers; “have you sold the handsome clock, and hung this up to plague yourselves the whole year through with its death-note?”

“Yes, yes,” said the host, smiling; “make yourself merry, at your pleasure, over this bird; it brings me in yearly fifty Dutch guilders—a good crop that needs no tillage.”

Four cannon shots were heard at the same moment.

“O heavens!” shrieked Peter Joostens; “the feast has begun. The women take my life with their hunting here and there.”

“But, Peter Joostens,” asked one of the travelers, “what is this that is going on in the village? Is it the wake?—that would be odd on a Thursday—or is the king coming to the village?”

“It is a very extraordinary thing,” replied the host; “it is an unheard-of thing. If you knew the story, you might fill a whole book with it, without any invention. And the old cuckoo here has its place in Blind Rosa’s story.”

“Blind Rosa!” said the younger traveler, astonished; “what a charming title! That would make a fine counterpart to ‘The Sick Youth.’”

“Nay, that wont do,” said the elder; “if we go out together to collect material for stories, we must honorably divide the spoil.”

“Well, we can hereafter draw lots for it,” said the younger, half regretfully.

“In the meantime,” observed the elder, “we actually know nothing. Pull down your detestable shirt collar from your ears, Peter Joostens, and begin and regularly tell us all; and for your reward you shall have a book as soon as it is printed.”

“Now I have no time for it,” answered the host; “I hear my wife coming down stairs; but come along with us to the village, and on the way I will tell you why the cannon are fired and the music plays.”

The hostess entered the room, and dazzled the travelers’ eyes by her dress, so did it blaze in all the colors of the rainbow. She rushed up to her husband, pulled up his shirt collar again higher than ever, took his arm, and issued out of doors with him. The two travelers accompanied them, and Peter Joostens related on the way to his attentive hearers the whole story of Tall Jan and Blind Rosa; and though he had almost talked himself out of breath, he became besieged with all sorts of questions.

They learned of him, however, that Herr Slaets bought of him the old cuckoo clock, that it might hang in its former place in the inn; that tall Jan had been four-and-thirty years in Russia, and in the fur trade had become a very rich man. That he had bought an estate, and meant to live upon it with Blind Rosa and the besom-maker Nelis’s family, whose children he had already adopted. That he had given the grave-digger a considerable sum of money; and, finally, that this evening there was to be held a grand folks-feast on the estate, for which occasion a whole calf was to be roasted, and two whole copper-fulls of rice furmety to be boiled.

Peter Joostens ceased as they came behind a house upon a great by-road. And now the travelers listened no longer, for they were resolved to be present, and see all the gayety which offered itself to their gaze.

All the houses in the village were adorned with green boughs, bound together with garlands of white and many-colored flowers, and between these, over the heads of the spectators, hung every where festoons, with small lamps and with large red letters. Here and there stood a stately May-pole, with hundreds of little flags glittering with tinsel, and adorned with garlands of bird’s-eggs and pieces of glass. Along the sides of the way the boys and girls had laid wreaths of flowers upon silver-white sand, and bound them together at regular distances, showing the alternating initials J. and R. for Jan and Rosa, the invention of the schoolmaster.

Amongst all this ornament thronged a swarm of spectators from the neighboring villages to witness this extraordinary wedding. The young travelers went from one group to another, and listened to what the people said. But before the procession, which came over the fields, arrived at the village, they hastened to the church, and placed themselves in front of it on a mound, so that they might overlook the whole.

They beheld the procession with a feeling almost bordering on veneration ... and it really was so beautiful and touching that the heart of the younger one beat with poetic rapture. More than sixty young girls from five to ten years of age, came clad in white, and with childhood’s enchanting smile, like little bright clouds floating through the azure heaven. Upon their free locks, hanging around their fresh countenances, rested garlands of monthly roses, which seemed to contend in beauty with the vermeil lips of the children.

“It is like a saga of Andersen’s,” said the younger of the companions; “the sylphs have quitted the bosoms of the flowers. Innocence and simplicity, youth and joy ... what an enchanting picture!”

“Ah, ah!” said the other, “there come the peonies! and Zanna Joostens goes first.”

But the younger one was too much affected to notice this unpoetic speech. He gazed with delight on the taller maidens, who in full splendor, beaming with life and health, followed the lesser ones. What a train of full-grown young women in snow-white lace caps! How their blushes added to the sweetness of their countenances! How enchanting was the modest smile about their lips, resembling the gentle curling of the waters which the zephyr on a summer’s evening produces on the surface of an inland lake.

Ah! there comes Blind Rosa with Herr Slaets, her bridegroom! How happy she must be! She has suffered so much! She has been reduced even to the beggar’s staff. For four-and-thirty years she has succored and nourished her soul with a hope that she herself regarded as vain ... and now he is there, the friend of her childhood, of her youth. Led by his hand, she now approaches the altar of that God who has heard her prayers. Now shall the vow made by the cross in the church-yard be accomplished, and she shall become Jan Slaet’s wife. On her breast glitters the simple gold cross which Tall Jan gave her. Now she listens to the joyful congratulations, to the song and music which celebrate his return. She trembles with emotion, and presses his arm closer to her side, as if she doubted whether her happiness was real.

After them came Nelis with his wife and his children; they are all clad as wealthy peasantry. The parents go forward with bowed heads, and wipe the tears of wonder and thankfulness from their eyes, so often as they look upon their blind benefactress. Peterken bears his head proudly erect, and shakes his light locks, which play about his neck. He leads his sister by the hand.

But what troop is that? The remnant of the camp which the power of time has laid waste. About twenty men followed the children of Nelis. They really present a singular spectacle; they are all gray-haired men or bald. Most of them support themselves on their staves; two go on crutches, one is blind and deaf, and all are so worn out and exhausted by long years of weary labor, that one might imagine that death had by force brought them again from their graves.

Lauw Stevens went first, and stooped so that his hands nearly touched the ground; blind Baes from Plogen supported himself on the miller’s grandfather. These old men constituted the remains of the generation which lived when tall Jan flourished in the village, and by his youthful courage always asserted for himself the first place. After them came the people of the village, men and women, who were invited to the wedding.

The train entered the church ... the organ was heard accompanying the solemn hymn. The younger traveler drew his companion aside in the church-yard. He stooped down, turned round, and presented to the other his closed hand, out of which the ends of two bents of grass protruded.

“In such haste? why so?” asked the other.

“Proceed,” said the younger; “the subject pleases me, and I would willingly know whether it will fall to me or not.”

The elder one drew a bent; the younger let his fall upon the ground, and sighed, “I have lost!”

This is the reason, good reader, why the elder of the travelers has told you the story of Blind Rosa. It is a pity; for otherwise you would have read in beautiful poetry, what you have now read in prose. But fortune another time may be more auspicious to you.

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BY MISS M. E. ALILSON.

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The alleged stupidity of the ostrich and indifference to its young, is, perhaps, the very oldest popular error in existence, and it is principally founded on the above passages in Job. It appears, however, that these passages are open to a different interpretation to that put upon them in the authorized versions of the Old Testament. The word which has been translated “leaveth” her eggs, in the sense of abandoning them, signifies in the original “deposits,” and tekhammem signifies actively that she heateth them, namely, by incubation, which is, indeed, the fact. In the sixteenth verse, the bird is said to be “hardened against her young ones as though they were not hers;” and the same want of affection is alluded to in the third verse of the fourth chapter of Lamentations, “the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness;” but, in fact, the idea is altogether erroneous. Recent observations show that no bird has a greater affection for its young than the ostrich, that the eggs are carefully watched and tended, and when the offspring have chipped their shells, and for some days are unable to run, they are regularly supplied with grass and water by the old birds, who are eager to defend them from harm. Thunberg especially mentions that he once rode past a place where a female was sitting on her nest, when the bird sprang up, and pursued him, evidently with a view of preventing his noticing her eggs or young. Every time he turned his horse toward her, she retreated ten or twelve paces, but as soon as he rode on again, she pursued him, till he had gone a considerable distance from the place where he started her.

The idea of the stupidity of the ostrich seems to have been universally entertained, being taken for granted without investigation. Job, as we have seen, alludes to it; and Pliny, writing from common report, says, “A wonder this is in their nature, that whatsoever they eat—and great devourers they be of all things without difference or choice, they concoct and digest it. But the veriest fools they be of all others; for as high as the rest of their body is, yet if they thrust their head and neck once into any shrub or bush, and get it hidden, they think then they are safe enough, and that no man seeth them.” Many a pretty nursery tale has been written from this, and many a wise saw founded on it; and yet the hiding of the head is, after all, a mere myth. Sparrman, when in South Africa, expressly inquired in those parts where ostriches most abound, and “never once heard mention made of the ostrich hiding its head when it finds it cannot make its escape.” The truth is, the ostrich does nothing of the sort; he tries to escape as well as he can, and continues his efforts, till knocked on the head by the hunter, or driven by him, as we shall presently see, to a place where he may be captured.

Conflicting accounts have been published respecting the whole process of breeding and incubation of the ostrich. Ælian states that as many as eighty eggs have been found in one nest,^[2] fifty or sixty have been certainly discovered, and the question has been whether these are the produce of one female or many?

The balance of opinion inclines to the belief that one male ostrich attaches himself to three or four females, and that all these deposit their eggs in one nest. This, according to Burckhardt, who carefully investigated the subject, is commonly made at the foot of some isolated hill, by the simple process of scratching a hole in the sand; the eggs are then placed close together, half buried in the sand, and a narrow trench is drawn round this to carry off any water. During the extreme heat of the day, the parent birds are instinctively aware that the warmth of the sun renders their attention unnecessary; but as soon as the shades of evening fall they each take their turn upon the nest. The cockbird, however, sits during the night, and Lichtenstein says that great numbers of the smaller beasts of prey, as jackals and wild cats, who will run any risk to procure the eggs, are found crushed to death around the nests; for the male rushes on them, and tramples them with his powerful feet until life is extinct.

The nests are never completely deserted, and the parent birds relieve each other in keeping watch on the summit of the neighboring hill. When the Arabs descry an ostrich thus engaged, they conclude that some eggs must be near; and on their approach, the old birds retire, although it is not uncommon, especially in South Africa, for them to show fight. Having discovered the nest, the Arabs dig a hole in the ground near it, in which they place a loaded gun, having a long burning match fastened to the touch-hole; the gun is pointed toward the nest, and is carefully covered over with sand and stones. The birds after a time return and resume their places on the eggs; the gun in due time explodes, and next morning the Arab is rewarded by finding one or perhaps both of the ostriches dead. This is the common mode of killing them practiced in the deserts of Northern Arabia.

It is said that some addled eggs are generally found outside the nest, and that the flies bred by their decomposition, furnish the callow young with food.

Such may be the case, and if so, it affords a striking illustration of that happy adaptation of means to ends visible throughout the whole economy of nature; but probably the primary reason for these being ejected from the nest is, that more eggs are laid than can be conveniently covered by the bird when sitting, and that she therefore instinctively throws out the surplus; thus at once getting rid of a useless superabundance, and providing a magazine of food for her future tender young.

Various are the purposes to which ostrich’s eggs are applied:—first, they are in great favor as a culinary luxury, and are much sought after by the captains of merchant vessels touching at the African ports, being purchased by them of the slave herdsmen, whose perquisites they generally are, for about sixpence each. A good sized egg weighs eleven ounces, is near seven inches in depth, and holds five pints and a quarter; consequently it is considered to afford a meal which will perfectly satisfy four hungry white men, or eight of the more moderate blacks. The yelk is very rich and luscious, and makes a most enviable omelette, but gourmands agree that the native mode of cooking them is perfect. The Hottentots bury the eggs in hot ashes, and through a small hole in the upper end, the contents are continually stirred until they acquire a certain consistence, which the sable cooks know by experience indicates the right moment for removing them from the ashes to the sackcloth, which covers the traveler’s primitive table. They are then eaten with biscuit, and washed down with copious draughts of corn brandy.

The eggs are frequently found to contain small oval pebble-like bodies, about the size of a marrowfat pea, of a pale yellow color, and exceedingly hard. Barrow found as many as twelve in one egg: and they are converted into buttons by the dandified Hottentots, and perhaps also the Boers.

The porcelain character of the shell and its shape, well adapt it for cups, and such vessels are frequently elegantly mounted in silver, and sometimes in chased gold. The ancient Egyptians used them in their places of worship, and, together with the plumes, insisted on their forming part of the tribute paid by conquered countries where ostriches abounded. They were probably suspended in the temples, as they still are in the Coptic churches, the Copts regarding them as emblems of watchfulness.

When the allied sovereigns were in London, in the days when the Prince Regent was in full possession of his powers of entertainment, and we may add of appetite, a marvelous and unaccountable evaporation of oil took place nightly in the murky lamps, which then served to make darkness visible. In vain were the lamps replenished—they would go out, and the glass receptacles were invariably found empty. The contractor was in despair; the churchwardens took the matter up, and the minds of the parishioners were as gloomy as their streets. One night, however, the mystery was unexpectedly cleared up. A worthy old watchman, or “Charley,” as the class was familiarly called, comfortably wrapped in his sixteen-caped great coat, feeling himself tired with his exertions in informing the sleeping world that it was “past ten o’clock and a cloudy night,” sat down on a step in the shade to take five-and-twenty winks, but just as he was composing his thoughts previous to dropping off, he was startled by seeing a strangely dressed, bearded figure approach a lamp, and after a hasty look round, actively swarm up the post, take out the lamp, snuff the wick with his fingers, and drink the oil! Here was a discovery! Away posted the guardian of the night and reported what he had seen, but the inspector roundly told him that he must have been either drunk or asleep, for he shrewdly remarked, “’Taint likely that them beggars of furriners would go a-drinking ile when they could get brown stout or Tipper Hale.” Notwithstanding the utter improbability of the thing, a watch was set, and, sure enough, it turned out that the mysterious strangers were the Cossacks, who nightly indulged in deep libations of train-oil at the parish expense.

A not less puzzling disappearance of oil took place some years ago from the lamps in a certain Eastern church, and so pertinaciously did the lamps go out, that the priests felt a supernatural influence, and apprehending something terrible, gave orders for a general penance and scourging of backs. The minds as well as the backs of the obedient congregation were, however, infinitely relieved by the accidental discovery (by a dyspeptic priest who could not sleep through heartburn) that the extinguishing of the lamps was attributable to natural and not, as feared, to supernatural causes. A colony of rats had taken up their quarters in the church, and following the example of the gallant Captain Dalgetty, looked at once to the procuring of “provend.” An enterprising member of one of the foraging parties scrambling down a rope by which one of the lamps was suspended, was fortunate enough to hit upon some uncommonly nice oil. The news of this glorious discovery spread, and all the rats chorussed,

Accordingly, the colony flocked to these oleaginous mines with as much eagerness as another description of colonists are now flocking to mines of gold. The result has been described, but in the end the rats were no match for the priests, who, as soon as the rogues were found out, lighted upon the expedient of passing each of the ropes through an ostrich egg. A most effectual and tantalizing barrier was now opposed to the predatory excursions of our furry friends. In vain they sniffed and squeaked; each, as he attempted “to round the cape,” slid off the smooth egg and was smashed on the stones beneath.

The ostrich is a very prudent, wary bird, for which reason the quaggas generally attach themselves instinctively to a troop of these birds, trusting implicitly to their caution for the discovery of danger. This alliance was remarked by Xenophon, who says, “the country was a plain throughout, as even as the sea, and full of wormwood. Of wild creatures the most numerous were wild asses, (quaggas,) and not a few ostriches, besides bustards and roe-deer, (gazelles,) which our horsemen sometimes chased!”^[3]

This bird was not sacred among the ancient Egyptians, but there is reason to believe that it was so with the Assyrians. It has not only been found as an ornament on the robes of figures in the most ancient edifices at Nimroud, but it was frequently introduced on Babylonian and Assyrian cylinders, always accompanied by the emblematical flower. The Romans appear to have regarded it as a delicacy, for Apicius left a receipt for a particular sauce for dressing it; and it is recorded of Heliogabalus, that he had the brains of six hundred of these birds served up as a dish at one of his feasts. But in trencher feats the pseudo-emperor Formius far outdid either, as it is related by Vopiscus, that be devoured a whole ostrich to his own share at a single sitting.

It was broadly asserted by Aristotle, that the ostrich was partly bird and partly quadruped; and by Pliny, that it might almost be said to belong to the class of beasts; ridiculous as such assertions might be supposed, they were not altogether without foundation according to the knowledge of the times. The common name by which the ostrich was designated by the Greeks and Romans, and also by the nations of the East, was the camel bird. Indeed, the total want of feathers on its long and very powerful legs, and the division of the feet into two toes only, connected at their base by a membrane, are very similar to the legs and long, divided hoof of the camel: nor does the resemblance cease here, for there is another singularity in their external conformation, which affords a still more remarkable coincidence. Both camel and ostrich are furnished with hard, callous protuberances on the chest, and on the posterior part of the abdomen, on which they support themselves when at rest, and they both lie down in the same manner, by first bending their knees, then applying the anterior callosity, and lastly the posterior, to the ground. When to this we add the patience of thirst of both, and their inhabiting the same arid deserts, the two may well be compared with each other.

The ostrich is altogether destitute of the power of flight, and accordingly the wings are reduced to a very low state of development, merely sufficient, in fact, to aid it when running at speed. The sharp keel of the breast-bone, which, in birds of rapid flight, affords an extensive surface for the attachment of the muscles moving the wings, is not required, and the surface of the bone is therefore flat, like that of a quadruped, but the muscles of the legs are of extraordinary magnitude.

The family of birds, of which the ostrich forms the leading type, is remarkable for the wide dispersion of its various members: the ostrich itself spreads over nearly the whole of the burning deserts of Africa—the Cassowary represents it amid the luxuriant vegetation of the Indian Archipelago. The Dinornis—chief of birds—formerly towered among the ferns of New Zealand, where the small Apteryx now holds its place; and the huge Æpyornis strode along the forest of Madagascar. The Emu is confined to the great Australian continent, and the Rhea to the southern extremity of the western hemisphere; whilst nearer home we find the class represented by the Bustard, which—until within a few years—still lingered upon the least frequented downs and plains of England.

With the Arabs of the desert, the chase of the ostrich is the most attractive, and eagerly sought, of the many aristocratic diversions in which they indulge; and we are indebted to General Daumas for a highly interesting account of their proceedings. The first point attended to, is a special preparation of their horses. Seven or eight days before the intended hunt, they are entirely deprived of straw and grass, and fed on barley only. They are only allowed to drink once a-day, and that at sunset—the time when the water begins to freshen: at that time also they are washed. They take long, daily exercises, and are occasionally galloped; at which time care is taken that the harness is right, and suited to the chase of the ostrich. “After seven or eight days,” says the Arab, “the stomach of the horse disappears, while the chest, the breast, and the croup remain in flesh: the animal is then fit to endure fatigue.” They call this training techaha. The harness used for the purpose in question is lighter than ordinary, especially the stirrups and saddle, and the martingale is removed. The bridle, too, undergoes many metamorphoses: the mountings and the earflaps are taken away, as too heavy. The bit is made of a camel-rope, without a throat band, and the frontlet is also of cord, and the reins—though strong—are very light. The period most favorable for ostrich hunting is that of the great heat: the higher the temperature, the less is the ostrich able to defend himself. The Arabs describe the precise time as that, when a man stands upright, his shadow has the length only of the sole of his foot.

Each horseman is accompanied by a servant called zemmal, mounted on a camel, carrying four goat-skins filled with water, barley for the horse, wheat-flour for the rider, some dates, a kettle to cook the food, and every thing which can possibly be required for the repair of the harness. The horseman contents himself with a linen vest and trousers, and covers his neck and ears with a light material called havuli, tied with a strip of camel’s hide: his feet are protected with sandals, and his legs with light gaiters called trabag. He is armed with neither gun nor pistol, his only weapon being a wild olive or tamarind stick, five or six feet long, with a heavy knob at one end.

Before starting, the hunters ascertain where a large number of ostriches are to be found. These birds are generally met with in places where there is much grass, and where rain has recently fallen. The Arabs say, that where the ostrich sees the light shine, and barley getting ready, wherever it may be, thither she runs, regardless of distance, and ten days march is nothing to her; and it has passed into a proverb in the desert, that a man skillful in the care of flocks, and in finding pasturage, that he is like the ostrich, where he sees the light, there he goes.

The hunters start in the morning. After one or two days’ journey, when they have arrived near the spot pointed out, and they begin to perceive traces of their game, they halt and camp. The next day, two intelligent slaves, almost entirely stripped, are sent to reconnoitre; they each carry a goat-skin at their side, and a little bread: they walk until they meet with the ostriches, which are generally found in elevated places. As soon as the game is in view, one lies down to watch, the other returns to convey the information. The ostriches are found in troops, comprising sometimes as many as sixty; but at the pairing time, they are more scattered, three or four couple only remaining together.

The horsemen, guided by the scout, travel gently toward the birds: the nearer they approach the spot the greater is their caution, and when they reach the last ridge which conceals them from the sight of their game, they dismount, and two creep forward to ascertain if they are still there. Should such be the case, a moderate quantity of water is given to the horses, the baggage is left, and each man mounts, carrying at his side a chebouta, or goat-skin. The servants and camels follow the track of the horsemen, carrying with them only a little corn and water.

The exact position of the horses being known, the plans are arranged: the horsemen divide and form a circle round the game at such a distance as not to be seen. The servants wait where the horsemen have separated, and as soon as they see them at their posts, they walk right before them: the ostriches fly, but are met by the hunters, who do nothing at first but drive them back into the circle; thus their strength is exhausted by being made to continually run round in the ring. At the first signs of fatigue in the birds, the horsemen dash in—presently the flock separates; the exhausted birds are seen to open their wings—which is a sign of great exhaustion—the horsemen, certain of their prey, now repress their horses: each hunter selects his ostrich, runs it down, and finishes it by a blow on the head with the stick above mentioned. The moment the bird falls, the man jumps off his horse, and cuts her throat, taking care to hold the neck at such a distance from the body, as not to soil the plumage of the wings. The male bird, whilst dying, utters loud moans, but the female dies in silence.

When the ostrich is on the point of being overtaken by the hunter, she is so fatigued that—if he does not wish to kill her—she can easily be driven with the stick to the neighborhood of the camels. Immediately after the birds have been bled to death, they are carefully skinned, so that the feathers may not be injured, and the skin is then stretched upon a tree, or on a horse, and salt rubbed well into it. A fire is lit, and the fat of the birds is boiled for a long time in kettles; when very liquid, it is poured into a sort of bottle, made of the skin of the thigh and leg down to the foot, strongly fastened at the bottom; the fat of one bird is usually sufficient to fill two of these legs—it is said that in any other vessel the fat would spoil. When, however, the bird is breeding, she is extremely lean, and is then hunted only for the sake of her feathers. After these arrangements are completed, the flesh is eaten by the hunters, who season it well with pepper and flour.

Whilst these proceedings are in progress, the horses are carefully tended, watered, and fed with corn, and the party remain quiet during forty-eight hours, to give their animals rest; after that, they either return to their encampment, or embark in new enterprises.

The fat of the ostrich is used in the preparation of the favorite dish kouskousson, and is often eaten with bread. It is also used medicinally. In cases of fever, for instance, the Arabs make a paste with it and bread-crumb, which is given to the patient, who must not drink any thing during the whole day. In rheumatism, and in renal diseases, the painful parts are rubbed with the grease until it disappears. The patient then lies down in the scorching sand, his head being carefully covered, and a profuse perspiration ensuing, the cure is often complete. In bilious attacks, the fat is melted, salted, and taken in draughts, with powerful effect, the patient even becoming extremely thin. The Arab doctors say, “the patient parts with every thing in his body that is bad, gains a frame of iron, and acquires excellent eyesight.”

Ostrich fat is sold in the markets, and in the tents of the great a store is kept to give away to the poor—in value, one pot of this fat is equivalent to three pots of butter. The feathers of the ostrich are sold at the ksours, at Tougartet: at the time of the purchase of grain, the ostrich-skins are bought, that of a male selling for four or five douros, that of a female from eight to fourteen shillings. Formerly, the only use made in the Sahara of the plumes was to decorate the tops of tents.

To the Arab, the chase of the ostrich has a double attraction—pleasure and profit: the price obtained for the skins well compensates for the expenses. Not only do the rich enjoy the pursuit, but the poor, who know how to set about it, are permitted to participate in it also. The usual plan is, for a poor Arab to arrange with one who is opulent for the loan of his camel, horse harness, and two-thirds of all the necessary provisions. The borrower furnishes himself the remaining third, and the produce of the chase is divided in the same proportions.

The use of ostrich-fat in medicine dates back to a very remote period: and Pliny relates that, on a certain occasion, when Cato—surnamed Uticensis—was accused of selling poison, because “he held cantharides at three-score sesterces a pound, at the same time ostrich-grease was sold for eighty sesterces the pound; and, in truth, it is much better for any use it shall be put unto than goose-grease.”

In the quaint account of “The World encompassed by Sir Francis Drake,” there is a curious description of the mode of hunting ostriches, as practiced in those days at the Cape. The history is written by “Mr. Francis Fletcher, preacher in this employment,” and he thus begins:

“Ever since Almighty God commanded Adam to subdue the earth, there hath not wanted in all ages some heroic spirits, which—in obedience to that high mandate—either from manifest reason alluring them, or by some secret instinct enforcing them thereunto, have expended their wealth, employed their times, and adventured their persons to find out the true circuit of the world.” The worthy chaplain being safely arrived at the Cape, goes on to say, “In this place, the people being removed up into the country, belike for fear of our coming, we found near unto the rocks, in houses made for that purpose, great store of ostriches, at least to the number of fifty, with much other fowl; some dried, and some in drying, for their provision, as it seemed, to carry with them to the place of their dwellings. The ostriches legs were in bigness equal to reasonable legs of mutton: they cannot fly at all; but they run so swiftly, and take so long strides, that it is not possible for a man in running by any means to take them, neither yet to come so nigh them as to have any shot at them with bow or piece. Whereof our men had often proof on other parts of that coast, for all the country is full of them. We found there the tools or instruments which the people use in taking them. Amongst other means which they use in betraying of these ostriches, they have a great and large plume of feathers, orderly compact together upon the end of a staff; in the fore-part bearing the likeness of the head, neck, and bulk of an ostrich, and in the hinder part spreading itself out very large, sufficient being holden before him to hide the most part of the body of a man. With this it seemeth they stalk, driving them into some strait or neck of land close to the sea-side; where—spreading long and strong nets, with their dogs, which they have in readiness at all times—they overthrow them, and make a common quarry.”

The ostrich, like many other of the feathered tribe, has a great deal of self-conceit. On fine sunny days, a tame bird may be seen strutting backward and forward with great majesty, fanning itself with its quivering, expanded wings, and at every turn seeming to admire its grace, and the elegance of its shadow. Dr. Shaw says that, though these birds appear tame and tractable to persons well-known to them, they are often very fierce and violent toward strangers, whom they would not only endeavor to push down by running furiously against them, but they would peck at them with their beaks, and strike with their feet; and so violent is the blow that can be given, that the Doctor saw a person whose abdomen had been ripped completely open by a stroke from the claw of an ostrich.

The cry of the ostrich has been compared to the voice of a lion; but when fighting they sometimes make a fierce, angry, and hissing noise, with their throats inflated, and their mouths open. Dr. Shaw often heard them groan, as if in the greatest agonies, a peculiarity alluded to in Micah, i. 8., where it is said, “I will make a mourning like the jaanah (ostrich);” though the word has been improperly translated owl.

A remarkable illustration of the strength of the ostrich is afforded by an incident mentioned by Adanson, which took place during his residence at Podor, a French factory on the southern bank of the river Niger. “Two ostriches, which had been about two years in the factory, and although young, were nearly of their full size, were so tame that two little blacks mounted both together on the back of the largest. No sooner did he feel their weight, than he began to run as fast as possible, and carried them several times round the village, as it was impossible to stop him otherwise than by obstructing his passage. This sight pleased me so much, that I ordered it to be repeated, and to try their strength, directed a full grown negro to mount the smallest, and two others the largest. This burden did not seem at all disproportioned to their strength. At first, they went a tolerably sharp trot, but when they became heated a little, they expanded their wings, as though to catch the wind, and moved with such fleetness, that they scarcely seemed to touch the ground. Most people have, one time or another, seen a partridge run, and consequently must know that there is no man whatever able to keep up with it; and it is easy to imagine that if this bird had a longer step, its speed would be considerably augmented. The ostrich moves like the partridge, with this advantage; and I am satisfied that those I am speaking of, would have distanced the fleetest race-horses that were ever bred in England. It is true, they would not hold out so long as a horse, but they would undoubtedly be able to go over the space in less time. I have frequently beheld this sight, which is capable of giving one an idea of the prodigious strength of an ostrich, and of showing what use it might be of, had we but the method of breaking and managing it, as we do a horse.”

We are much mistaken if there was not an exhibition of ostrich races in a circus at Paris about two years ago; the birds being ridden by boys, who managed their feathered steeds with great dexterity.

To have the stomach of an ostrich has become proverbial, and with good reason; for this bird stands enviably forward in respect to its wonderful powers of digestion, which are scarcely inferior to its voracity. Its natural food consists entirely of vegetable substances, especially grain; and the ostrich is a most destructive enemy to the crops of the African farmers. But its sense of taste is so obtuse, that scraps of leather, old nails, bits of tin, buttons, keys, coins, and pebbles, are devoured with equal relish; in fact, nothing comes amiss. But in this it doubtless follows an instinct, for these hard bodies assist, like the gravel in the crops of our domestic poultry, in grinding down and preparing for digestion its ordinary food. Its fondness for iron was well-known to our forefathers, and we find Shakspeare makes Jack Cade say to Iden, in the “Second Part of Henry VI.,”

An earlier writer, John Skelton, who was poet laureate to Henry the Seventh, alludes to an idea then prevalent, that the ostrich swallowed iron for the same purpose that ices are taken in these degenerate days. The lines are taken from his poem “The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe,”

But there was another and far less selfish reason ascribed for the partiality of these birds to iron—a reason so philanthropic, indeed, that it puts mankind to the blush; for there are few, indeed, who would convert their interiors into a marine-store shop for the benefit of their fellow creatures. In a singular book by Thomas Scott, published in 1616, a merchant meets with an ostrich in the desert, in the act of swallowing a heavy meal of iron, and gazing on him with astonishment, inquires,

There was found by Cuvier, in the stomach of an ostrich that died at Paris, nearly a pound weight of stones, bits of iron and copper, and pieces of money worn down by constant attrition against each other, as well as by the action of the stomach itself. In the stomach of one of these birds which belonged to the Menagerie of George the Fourth, there were contained some pieces of wood of considerable size, several large nails, and a hen’s egg entire and uninjured, perhaps taken as a delicacy from its appetite becoming capricious. In the stomach of another, beside several large cabbage-stalks, there were masses of bricks of the size of a man’s fist. Sparrman relates that he saw ostriches at the Cape so tame that they went loose to and from the farm, but they were so voracious as to swallow chickens whole, and trample hens to death, that they might tear them in pieces afterward and devour them; and one great barrel of a bird was obliged to be killed on account of an awkward habit he had acquired of trampling sheep to death. But perhaps the most striking proof of the prowess of an ostrich in the eating way, is that afforded by Dr. Shaw, who saw one swallow bullet after bullet as fast as they were pitched, scorching hot from the mould.

In a very amusing article in the eighty-eighth number of “Household Words,” there are mentioned some of the “wonderful swallows” of an ostrich, which was not long since in the Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park. A carpenter was one day at work in a stable, the side of which was open to a corner of the cage of the ostrich. A pretty nursery maid chanced to pass that way, and the carpenter having engaged her in conversation, ceased his work for a while, and stood smiling and chatting with his hands behind him, in which he held a gimlet which he had been using. His back was toward the cage. The ostrich observed the gimlet, saw that it was nice, and darting forth his head and long neck between the bars, snapped it out of the carpenter’s hands. The man turned hastily round, but before he could make an effort to regain his gimlet, the ostrich gave a toss with his head, the gimlet disappeared, his neck made a stiff arch for a moment, and the gimlet was safely down.

But the performances of the bird were not to cease with this feat; his reputation was to have other facts to rest upon. Not long after, he saw a young gentleman standing near his cage, displaying to a friend a knife which he had just purchased—it was a many-bladed knife. Directly the ostrich caught sight of this, he knew that it must be very good indeed. Watching his opportunity, he made a sudden dart upon it, and caught it in his beak. The gentleman made a rush at the bars of the cage, but the ostrich, taking a long stride back, stood out of reach with an insolent straddle in the middle of his cage, and with one jerk of his neck bolted the delicious curiosity.

The keepers watched the bird, and examined his cage very narrowly for a long time; but no traces of his preposterous fancies were ever restored to sight, neither did the ostrich appear in any degree incommoded.

Three months after these performances, the ostrich, from some unknown cause or other, got into a bad state of mind with the bars of his cage, and in a contest which ensued, he broke his back. His death speedily followed, and a post mortem examination was speedily made, but no trace whatever either of the gimlet or the many-bladed knife, was discovered in any part of his wonderful interior.

One of the predecessors of this bird at the Gardens had the ill-luck to suffer from his taste for such delicacies as gimlets and many-bladed knives, for he had such difficulty in bolting something of the sort, that his neck never recovered the unnatural curve it then acquired. His lady mate regarding this as an outward and visible sign of effeminacy unworthy of an ostrich, never ceased from that moment to show her contempt by teasing and worrying him in every possible way, and this system of hen-pecking persecution was carried to such an extent, that it was found necessary to separate the pair, without consulting the authorities of Doctors’ Commons.

Far different was the behavior of a gallant male in the Jardin des Plantes. He with his spouse had long lived in connubial felicity, when, unfortunately, the skylight over their heads having been broken, a triangular piece of glass fell, and was instantly snapped up by the female, who regarded it as an acceptable offering. Soon after she was taken ill, and died in great agony. Her body being opened, the throat and stomach were found dreadfully lacerated by the sharp corners of the glass. But now comes the pathetic portion of the tale. From the moment that he found himself bereft of his mate, the survivor had no rest. Day and night the poor bird was incessantly searching for her, and gradually wasted away. He was removed from the spot, in the hope that in new scenes his grief would be forgotten; but no! the arrow had entered into his soul; his fruitless, unavailing search after his lost one still continued, so long as strength enabled him to pursue it, and then, literally constant unto death, he laid himself down and died.

The feathers of the ostrich, which play such an important part in adorning the persons of the living, and decorating the funereal processions of the dead, are distinguished in the trade of the plumassier by several qualities; those of the male are the whitest and most beautiful, and the feathers of the back, and above the wings, hold the first place; next those of the wings, and lastly those of the tail. The down, varying in length from four to fourteen inches, is merely the feathers of the other parts of the body, and is black in the males, gray in the females. The finest white feathers of the female have always their ends a little grayish, which lessens their lustre and lowers their price. The feathers are imported from Algiers, Tunis, Alexandria, Madagascar, and Senegal; the first obtaining the highest price, the last the lowest.

The first thing is to scour the feathers, which is done by tying them in bundles, and rubbing them well with the hand in a lather of soap and water, after which they are rinsed in clean hot water. They are then bleached by washing first with Spanish white, then are passed quickly through a weak solution of indigo, and the process is completed by exposing them to the fumes of sulphur, after which they are hung upon cords to dry. As much of the beauty of ostrich feathers depends upon their graceful pliability, they generally require to be scraped with glass, to render them pliant; and the curly form so admired, is given by drawing the edge of a blunt knife over the filaments. They are then dyed. The process of dying black needs no preparation; but for receiving the other colors it is necessary that they should be bleached by exposure to the sun and dew; and a bleaching ground presents a very singular appearance, seeming for all the world as if it was bearing a luxuriant crop of feathers, ready to be mown; for each feather is stuck singly in the grass, and left for fifteen days, after which it is ready to receive the most delicate shades of pink or other color.

By the natives the feathers are little used; but a curious statement is made by Captain Lyons, to the effect that at all the towns of Sockna, Hoon, and Wadan, it is customary to keep ostriches tame in stables, and to take three cuttings of their feathers every two years; and he adds, that the greater part of the fine feathers sent to Europe are from tame birds; as the plumage of the wild is generally so ragged and torn, that not above half a dozen perfect white feathers can be found in each. We have not been able, however, to verify this assertion.

To all Englishmen the triad of ostrich feathers has a peculiar charm as the especial crest of the Prince of Wales. Romantic is the history connected with this well-known badge, which in its adoption was sorely stained with blood; for at the battle of Cressy no quarter was given, and nearly forty thousand good men and true, of the best blood of France, then yielded up their lives. But of all the sad incidents that occurred that day, there was none more touching than that which marked the closing scene of the life of the brave old King of Bohemia, whose crest was the ostrich plume. Barnes, in his “History of Edward the Third,” thus describes it:—“And first the Marquis Charles, Elect Emperor, resisted the Prince with great courage, but his banner was beaten to the ground, his men slain miserably about him, and himself wounded in three places of his body; wherefore, though not without much difficulty, he turned his horse and rode out of the field, having cast away his coat armor that he might not be known. The meanwhile his father, John, King of Bohemia, who was son to the noble Emperor, Henry of Luxemburgh, although he was nearly blind with age, when he understood how the day was like to go, asked his captains what had become of the Lord Charles his son? They told him that they knew not, but that they supposed him somewhere in the heat of action. Then the good old King, resolving by no means to disgrace his former victories and cancel the glory of his youth by a degenerous old age, said unto them, ‘Gentlemen, you are my men, my companions and friends in this expedition. I only now desire this last piece of service from you—that you would bring me forward so near to these Englishmen, that I may deal among them one good stroke with my sword.’ They all said they would obey him to the death; and lest by any extremity they should be separated from him, they all with one consent tied the reins of their horses one to another, and so attended their royal master into battle. There this valiant old hero had his desire, and came boldly up to the Prince of Wales, and gave more than one, or four or five good strokes, and fought courageously, as also did all his lords and others about him. But they engaged themselves so far that there they were all slain, and the next day found dead about the body of their king, and their horses’ bridles tied together.

“Then were the arms of that noble king (being the ostrich feathers, with the motto ‘Ich Dien,’ signifying ‘I serve,’) taken and won by the Prince of Wales, in whose memory they have ever since been called the Prince’s Arms.”

It appears, however, that the same device had been previously worn by a former sovereign, “For,” says Guillim, in his “Display of Heraldry,” “the ostrich feathers in plume were sometimes also the device of King Stephen, who gave them with this word, ‘Vi nulla Invertitui ordo: No force alters their fashion;’ alluding to the fold and fall of the feather; which howsoever the wind may shake it cannot disorder it; as likewise is the condition of kings and kingdoms well established.”

The death of the blind old King of Bohemia recalls to mind an incident which occurred at the battle of Waterloo, and which displays, in a remarkable degree, chivalric bearing. During the heat and fury of the fight, a very distinguished British cavalry officer, who had lost his right arm in one of the Peninsular actions, led on a dragoon regiment to the charge. In the melÉe which followed, he found himself opposed to a powerful French officer, who raised his sword to hew him down; but suddenly perceiving the helplessness of his antagonist, who made shift to manage his sword with his left hand, holding the bridle between his teeth—the gallant Frenchman suddenly paused, brought his sword to the “salute,” bowed, and galloped on to meet some foe more worthy of his prowess. The English officer, who survived the battle, made great exertions to discover who the French officer was, but was never able to obtain the slightest clue: probably a sabre or a bullet, less merciful than he, had stretched him on the field.

The great swiftness of the ostrich depends not merely upon the length and strength of its legs, or the aid it receives from its plumed wings, but we must take into consideration, in addition, the fact that its bones, like those of other birds, are permeated by air, and are thus lighter than those of animals. The feathers, too, are peculiar; instead of the shaft being, as is commonly the case, unsymmetrically placed as regards the barbs, it is exactly in the middle, and the barbules are long and loose. The accessory plume, too, is wanting in the ostrich. In the emu, on the contrary, the accessory plume equals the original feather, so that the quill supports two shafts; and in the cassowary, besides the double feather, there is also a second accessory plume, so that the quill supports three distinct shafts and vanes.

To Mr. Charles Darwin ornithologists are indebted for the knowledge of the fact, that there are two distinct species of ostrich inhabiting South America. The first is the Rhea Americana, a well-known species abounding over the plains of Northern Patagonia and the Provinces of La Plata. It has not crossed the Cordillera, but has been seen within the first range of mountains on the Uspallata plain, elevated between six and seven thousand feet. These birds, though generally feeding on vegetable matter, have been seen to go in groups of three and four to the extensive mud-banks, which are then dry, at Bahia Blanca, for the purpose of catching small fish, and they will readily take to the water. Mr. King saw ostriches on several occasions swimming from island to island at Port Valdes, in Patagonia, and the Bay of San Blas. When swimming very little of their bodies appear above water; their progress is slow, and their necks are extended forward. On two occasions Mr. Darwin saw ostriches swimming across the Santa Cruz River, where it was about four hundred yards broad and the stream rapid. Mr. Darwin went out hunting one day at Bahia Blanca, the men riding in a crescent, each about a quarter of a mile apart from the other. A fine male ostrich being turned by the headmost riders, tried to escape on one side. The Guachos pursued at a reckless pace, twisting their horses about with the most admirable command, and each man whirling the “bolas,” or balls, round his head. At length the foremost threw them revolving through the air; in an instant the ostrich rolled over and over, its legs fairly lashed together by the thong. These balls can be thrown from on horseback to the distance of eighty yards, and a striking proof of their effect was afforded at the Falkland Islands, when the Spaniards murdered all the English, and some of their own countrymen also. A young Spaniard was running away, when a great tall Indian, Luciano by name, came at full gallop after him, shouting to him to stop, and saying that he only wanted to speak to him. The Spaniard distrusting him continued his flight, and just as he was on the point of reaching the boat, Luciano threw the balls. They struck him on the legs with such a jerk as to throw him down and render him for some time insensible. After Luciano had had his talk, the man was allowed to escape, but his legs were marked with great wales, as if he had been flogged with a heavy whip.

The second species, to which the name of Rhea Darwinii has been applied by Mr. Gould, takes the place of the former species—Rhea Americana, in Southern Patagonia, the part about Rio Negro being neutral ground. The first notice Mr. Darwin had of this species was in accidentally hearing the Guachos talking of a very rare bird, the Avestruz Petise; afterward, when among the Patagonian Indians in the Straits of Magellan, Mr. Darwin found a half-bred Indian who had lived some years with this tribe, but had been born in the Northern Provinces. On being asked if he had ever heard of the Avestruz Petise, he answered by saying, “Why there are none others in these Southern Countries;” and afterward many of these birds were seen; their distinctive characters being that they are light brown, in place of gray, and the bird altogether smaller than the Rhea Americana.

In the year of grace, 1839, there was brought from New Zealand, by Mr. Rule, a most hopeless-looking osseous fragment, just the middle of a thigh-bone, without a scrap of either end remaining. This, which most persons would have regarded with despair, was placed in the hands of the great authority in such matters, with a request that he would state to what creature it had belonged.

After a careful examination, Professor Owen, in a paper read before the Zoological Society, on the 12th of November, 1839, (and which paper is one of the most remarkable examples of acute inductive reasoning ever published,) announced that, “So far as my skill in interpreting an osseous fragment may be credited, I am willing to risk the reputation for it on the statement that there has existed, if there does not now exist, in New Zealand, a Struthious bird, nearly, if not quite equal in size to the ostrich.”

This announcement created not a little stir in the scientific world; but as three years passed away without any confirmation of the opinion, certain wise men looked extra wise, and pronounced that the Professor for once “had made a mistake.” But a triumphant vindication was at hand, even from so unpromising a spot as Poverty Bay, in the shape of two goodly boxes crammed full of bones, which looked as if they were the remains of some ante-diluvial pic-nic, where the giants of those days had been picking the scaffolding of the contents of a Brobdignagian pie; and the curiosity connected with the said bones was heightened by a delightfully mysterious history communicated with them by the gentleman from whom they were sent. For the respectable natives, speaking, of course, by the card, had informed him that the bones belonged to a family of extraordinary monsters, one of whom was still in existence in an inaccessible cavern on the side of a hill near the river Wairoa, and that, like the lady in the fairy tales, this creature was jealously guarded by a sort of huge lizard or dragon. Mr. Williams treated these stories as idle fables, but some time after was a little staggered by a sort of corroboration of the tale; for happening to speak to an American about these bones, he was told by him that the bird was still in existence in the neighborhood of Cloudy Bay, in Cook’s Straits, and that the natives there had mentioned to an Englishman of a whaling party, that there was a bird of extraordinary size, to be seen only at night, on the side of a hill near there. Our countryman, with a companion and a native guide, went to the spot on murderous thoughts intent, and after waiting some time, they saw the creature at a little distance, towering to the height of something like sixteen feet. One of the men was said to have proposed to go near and take a shot at it, but the other was so utterly terrified that they contented themselves with looking; and after a time, the monster took the alarm, and, in almost seven-league boots, strode away up the side of the mountain.

Professor Owen soon determined that the bones sent to him were portions of a gigantic bird allied to the ostrich, and the publication of this announcement, stimulating inquiry in New Zealand, box after box, full of interesting specimens, found their way to the College of Surgeons, and proved the existence, at no very remote period in the island of New Zealand, of at least six different species of Dinornis (as the bird has been named,) the largest certainly not less than ten feet in height; and in the eloquent words of the Professor, “without giving the rein to a too exuberant fancy, we may take a retrospective glance at the scene of a fair island, offering, by the will of a bountiful Providence, a well-spread table to a race of animated beings peculiarly adapted to enjoy it; and we may recall the time when the several species of Dinornis ranged the lords of its soil—the highest living forms upon that part of the earth. No terrestrial mammal was there to contest this sovereignty with the feathered bipeds before the arrival of man.”

But what has become of all these huge birds, for we no longer hear of able seamen or nervous natives being scared by their apparitions? In all probability they gradually became exterminated by the earliest colonists who set foot on this lovely portion of the globe. Conspicuous as to size, heavy in form, stupid, and unprovided with means of escape or defense, the Dinornis would easily fall a victim to the destructive arts of man; and although strong hopes to the contrary have been entertained, there is good reason to suppose that all the varieties of the race have been extinct for very many years; consequently the mysterious inhabitant of the cave, and the apparition that strode up the mountain-side, were doubtless legends that had descended from generation to generation from the distant ancestors of the aborigines of the island. There is to be seen in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a considerable portion of the skeleton of a Dinornis, mounted by the side of that of a large ostrich, above which it towers in the same proportion as its neighbor O’Brien, the Irish giant, towers above all ordinary men.

Gigantic though these New Zealand birds must have been, they were fully equalled in size by a race of birds coeval with them in the island of Madagascar; and it is remarkable that our chief knowledge of the existence of these is derived from that most fragile and perishable of their products—their eggs.

In 1850, M. Abadie, captain of a French merchantman, was at Madagascar, and observed one day, in the hands of a native, an egg of enormous size, perforated at one extremity, and used as a basin for various domestic purposes. His curiosity was excited, and he caused search to be made, which led to the discovery of a second egg of nearly similar size, which was found perfectly entire in the bed of a torrent, among the dÉbris of a land slip; and soon after a third egg was found in alluvia of recent formation, all being in the condition termed sub-fossil or partially fossilized. These precious remains were transmitted to Paris, but so carelessly packed, that one was found on their arrival broken to atoms; the other two being happily sound. Casts of these marvelous eggs have been transmitted to Professor Owen, and we can only compare them to huge conoidal cannon-shot. In fact, in these days of cylindrico-conoidal bullets, they might well pass for such a projectile adapted for a sixty-eight pounder. Some idea of their dimensions may be formed from the following facts. The dimensions of the most oval egg (for they differ somewhat in form) are as nearly as possible thirteen and a half inches in length by nine in diameter; and to fill it would require the contents of six ostrich eggs, seventeen of the emu, one hundred and forty-eight of the hen, or fifty thousand of the humming-bird! Various fragments of bones were transmitted to Paris with the eggs, and the comparative anatomists have arrived at the conclusion, that the bird approached the ostrich in its main characteristics, but was of a less slender make than it, and was probably about six times bigger than the largest known bird of that class! To it the term Æpyornis has been applied; the epithet Maximus being appropriately given to the species to which the bones examined belonged.

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BY FREDERIKA BREMER.

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London! great, magnificent, wonderful London! was the thought which presented itself again and again, during my peregrinations and my visits to various districts of this immense city, and at the contemplation of its rich, varied physiognomy. From the city, where trade lives, strives, and posts its books, speculates and battles for life and death in smoky, gloomy streets and alleys, to Hampstead, where the country joins the town, and children ride upon asses over green hills and dales; from the crowded, noisy Strand, which you can scarcely cross for the throngs of omnibuses and carriages which are unceasingly driving along it, to the silent, elegant Belgravia; from the closely built portions of the city, where human beings live in crowded courts and wretched dens, like moles in the earth, without pleasure and without light, to the immense, magnificent parks—justly called the “lungs of London,” where people wander calmly beneath green trees, or beside the clear little lakes, on which rare water-birds swim rejoicingly; from Westminster to the Tower, from St. Paul’s to Pall Mall and Piccadilly, and so on; all along the Thames, the broad Thames, with its affluent life, with its splendid bridges, with its steam-boats, swift as arrows, which bow down their chimneys as they shoot onward under these bridges—what an abundance of great, characteristic and strong feature is here combined with beautiful detail!—the splendid palaces, the elegant detached houses, with their gardens before them, the markets, with their flowing fountains, the numerous small green inclosures, with their trees and bushes, which are met with every here and there as a refreshment to the eye of the wanderers—these, and many other similar objects. And on all hands that great preponderance of substantial, wealthy, handsome, well-built, well-arranged houses.

In especial must I remark the way in which London, and, in fact, in which all English towns go out into, or up into, the country. It is not, as in many other nations, by the houses becoming smaller, uglier, by smoky chimneys becoming more numerous, marshes more extensive, the refuse of the city more perceptible. No! on the contrary, the gardens become more numerous and more extensive, the houses handsomer and more open, the streets of the town expand and become rows of beautiful villas and cottages, stone becomes less rare, flowers more frequent, the gray is changed into green; one remarks a something “con amore” in the care which is bestowed upon every dwelling, upon every grass-plot, in the luxuriant growth of every creeper which is trained up the walls of the houses and which engarlands their windows; in every iron palisade, which at once incloses and ornaments every plot of garden ground, and by the meaning of that English word comfort being above all things made evident to the mind of the observer.

In the midst of the city itself one does not think so much of this; other interests have here their life or—death. Because the great, closely-built city, where human beings live in dense masses, where they live, so to say, one upon another, in secret or open warfare for bread or the means of existence—the city becomes always, in a certain respect, a home of death for humanity.

When God, however, created man, he placed him not in a city, but in a garden; and people have now begun to be aware of this in England. Men of high cultivation, and even of high birth, deliver lectures and print pamphlets on the evils of great cities with their densely-built habitations, and on the injurious effects which they produce on the human soul, as well as on physical life. And people are already taking measures by which, as cities grow, breathing room may grow also, and are preparing for the inhabitants the means by which, even here, they may preserve health, cleanliness, and the fresh enjoyments of life.

London, though in cleanliness, fresh air, general regulations, and the great number of detached houses standing in their gardens, which in this respect far exceeds most other great towns, has yet not been able to avoid the curse of the great city: I saw that—I saw behind the magnificent quarters, behind the stately palaces, streets and markets, where the luxury and pomp of city and aristocratic life flourished in their fullest extent, that there were hidden regions, streets and lanes where might be seen the very opposite of all this—haunts of human wretchedness, of human tatters both outward and inward. I wished also to see these with my own eyes; to see St. Giles’s and the dirty quarters behind Westminster; because I endeavor to see, every where, the best and the worst, the heaven and the hell of existence in all spheres of life. I wished to see it also in the life of London; and I saw it.

I began to speak of the city’s bright side when I described the Great Exhibition with its cheerful life, and I will yet linger a few moments over this side of London life and over some of its gay scenes—namely, those which may be enjoyed by all, or by nearly all classes, and which are therefore properly the people’s pleasures.

Of these, none were more agreeable to me than the promenades in the great parks—Hyde Park, the Green Park, Regent’s Park, which last, alone, is several English miles in circumference. On Sundays, one sees them crowded with well-dressed people, mostly of the working classes; children tumble about freely on the green turf, which remains green and fresh notwithstanding, or feed with bread the beautiful swans or other aquatic birds which swim about on the river-like winding pieces of water. There stands also in one corner of St. James’ Park a row of cows, from which, if the pedestrians choose, they can drink new milk, and thus taste the pleasures of rural life; neither do other refreshments fail; but the best refreshment here is, after all, the fresh air, the wandering beneath green trees, the sight of the pleasure-takers, of the sports of the children, and the views which are obtained of beautiful palaces and churches. Queen Victoria may often enjoy from her royal residence of Buckingham Palace, the cheerful sight of her people thus wandering for their pleasure. Yes, it is to be feared that she, like other queens and kings, sees too much of this side of the life of her people, and thereby comes to forget that there is any other.

London possesses two scenes of popular enjoyment on a great scale, in its British Museum and its Zoological Gardens. In the former, the glance is sent over the life of antiquity; in the latter, over that of the present time in the kingdom of nature; and in both may the Englishman enjoy a view of England’s power and greatness, because it is the spirit of England which has compelled Egypt and Greece to remove hither their gods, their heroic statues: it is England whose courageous sons at this present moment force their way into the interior of Africa, that mysterious native land of miracles and of the leviathan; it is an Englishman who held in his hand snow from the clefts of the remote Mountains of the Moon; it is England which has aroused that ancient Nineveh from her thousands of years of sleep in the desert; England which has caused to arise from their graves, and to stand forth beneath the sky of England, those witnesses of the life and art of antiquity which are known under the name of the Nineveh Marbles, those magnificent but enigmatical figures which are called the Nineveh Bulls, in the immense wings of which one cannot but admire the fine artistic skill of the workmanship, and from the beautiful human countenances of which glances oriental despotism with eyes—such as those with which King Ahasuerus might have gazed on the beautiful Esther, when she sank fainting before the power of that glance. They have an extraordinary expression—these countenances of Nineveh, so magnificent, so strong, and at the same time, so joyous—a something about them so valiant and so joyously commanding! It was an expression which surprised me, and which I could not rightly comprehend. It would be necessary for me to see them yet again before I could fully satisfy myself whether this inexpressible, proudly, joyous glance is one of wisdom or of stupidity! I could almost fancy it might be the latter, when I contemplate the expression of gentle majesty in the head of the Grecian Jupiter. Nevertheless, whether it be wisdom or stupidity—these representations of ancient Nineveh have a real grandeur and originality about them. Were they then representatives of life there? Was life there thus proud and joyous, thus unconscious of trouble, care, or death, thus valiant, and without all arrogance? Had it such eyes? Ah! and yet it has lain buried in the sand of the desert, lain forgotten there many thousand years. And now, when they once more look up with those large, magnificent eyes, they discover another world around them, another Nineveh which cannot understand what they would say. Thus proudly might Nineveh have looked when the prophet uttered above her his “wo!” Such a glance does not accord with the life of earth.

In comparison with these latest discovered but most ancient works of art, the Egyptian statues fall infinitely short, bearing evidence of a degraded, sensual humanity, and the same as regarded art. But neither of these, nor of the Elgin marbles, nor of many other treasures of art in the British Museum, which testify at the same time to the greatness of foregone ages, and to the power of the English world conquering intelligence, shall I say any thing, because time failed me rightly to observe them, and the Nineveh marbles almost bewitched me by their contemplation.

It is to me difficult to imagine a greater pleasure than that of wandering through these halls, or than by a visit to the Zoological Garden which lies on one side of the Regent’s Park. I would willingly reside near this park for a time, that I might again and again wander about in this world of animals from all zones, and listen to all that they have to relate, ice-bears and lions, turtles and eagles, the ourang-outang and the rhinoceros! The English Zoological Garden, although less fortunate in its locality than the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, is much richer as regards animals. That which at this time attracted hither most visitors was the new guest of the garden, a so-called river-horse or hippopotamus, lately brought hither from Upper Egypt, where it was taken when young. It was yet not full grown, and had here its own keeper—an Arab—its own house, its own court, its own reservoir to bathe and swim in! Thus it lived in a really princely hippopotamus fashion. I saw his highness ascend out of his bath in a particularly good humor, and he looked to me like an enormous—pig, with an enormously broad snout. He was very fat, smooth, and gray, and awkward in his movements, like the elephant. Long-necked giraffes walked about, feeding from wooden racks in the court adjoining that of the hippopotamus, and glancing at us across it. One can scarcely imagine a greater contrast than in these animals.

The eagles sat upon crags placed in a row beneath a lofty transparent arch of iron work, an arrangement which seemed to me excellent, and which I hope seemed so to them, in case they could forget that they were captives. Here they might breathe, here spread out their huge wings, see the free expanse of heaven, and the sun, and build habitations for themselves upon the rock. On the contrary, the lions, leopards, and such like noble beasts of the desert, seemed to me particularly unhappy in their iron-grated stone vaults; and their perpetual, uneasy walking backward and forward in their cages—I could not see that without a feeling of distress. How beautiful they must be in the desert, or amid tropical woods, or in the wild caverns of the mountains, those grand, terrific beasts—how fearfully beautiful! One day I saw these animals during their feeding time. Two men went round with wooden vessels filled with pieces of raw meat; these were taken up with a large, iron-pronged fork, and put, or rather flung, through the iron grating into the dens. It was terrible to see the savage joy, the fury, with which the food was received and swallowed down by the beasts. Three pieces of meat were thrown into one great vault which was at that time empty, a door was then drawn up at the back of the vault, and three huge yellow lions with shaggy manes rushed roaring in, and at one spring each possessed himself of his piece of flesh. One of the lions held his piece between his teeth for certainly a quarter of an hour, merely growling and gloating over it in savage joy, whilst his flashing eyes glared upon the spectators, and his tail was swung from side to side with an expression of defiance. It was a splendid, but a fearful sight. One of my friends was accustomed sometimes to visit these animals in company with his little girl, a beautiful child, with a complexion like milk and cherries. The sight of her invariably produced great excitement in the lions. They seemed evidently to show their love to her in a ravenous manner.

The serpents were motionless in their glass house, and lay, half asleep, curled around the trunks of trees. In the evening, by lamp light, they become lively, and then, twisting about and flashing forth their snaky splendors, they present a fine spectacle. The snake-room, with its walls of glass, behind which the snakes live, reminded me of the old northern myth of Nastrond, the roof of which was woven of snakes’ backs, the final home of the ungodly—an unpleasant, but vigorous picture. The most disagreeable and ugliest of all the snakes, was that little snake which the beautiful Queen Cleopatra, herself false as a serpent, placed at her breast; a little, gray, flat-headed snake, which liked to bury itself in the sand.

The monkey-family lead a sad life; stretch out their hands for nuts or for bread, with mournful human gestures; contentious, beaten, oppressed, thrust aside, frightening one another, the stronger the weaker—mournfully human also.

Sad, also, was the sight of an ourang-outang, spite of all its queer grimaces, solitary in its house, for it evidently suffered ennui, was restless, and would go out. It embraced its keeper and kissed him with real human tenderness. The countenance, so human, yet without any human intelligence, made a painful impression upon me: so did the friendly, tame creature here, longing for its fellows, and seeing around it only human beings. Thou poor animal! Fain would I have seen thee in the primeval woods of Africa, caressing thy wife in the clear moonlight of the tropical night, sporting with her among the branches of the trees, and sleeping upon them, rocked by the warm night wind. There thy ugliness would have had a sort of picturesque beauty. After the strange beast-man had climbed hither and thither along the iron railing, seizing the bars with his hands, and feet—which resembled hands—and also with his teeth, he took a white, woolen blanket, wrapped it around him in a very complicated manner, and ended by laying himself down as a human being might do, in his chilly, desolate room. They say that he will not live long in this country.^[4]

After this, all the more charming was the spectacle presented by the waterfowl from every zone. Ducks, Swans, and Co., all quite at home here, swimming in the clear waters, among little green islands on which they had their little huts. It was most charmingly pretty and complete. And the mother-duck with her little, lively, golden-yellow flock, swimming neck and heels after her, or seeking shelter under her wings, is—at all times—one of the most lovely scenes of natural life—resembling humanity in a beautiful manner.

Even among the wild beasts I saw a beautiful human trait of maternal affection. A female leopard had in her cage two young cubs, lively and playful as puppies. When the man threw the flesh into her cage, she drew herself back, and let the young ones first seize upon the piece.

Crows from all parts of the world here live together in one neighborhood, and that the clattering and laughter was loud here did not surprise me, neither that the European crows so well maintained their place among their fellows. That which, however, astonished and delighted me was, the sweet, flute-like, melodious tones of the Australian crow. In the presence of this crow from Paradise—for originally it must have come therefrom—it seemed to me that all the other crows ought to have kept silence with their senseless chattering. But they were nothing but crows, and they liked better to hear themselves.

Parrots from all lands lived and quarreled together in a large room, and they there made such a loud screaming, that in order to stand it out one must have been one of their own relations. Better be among the silent, dejected, stealthy, hissing, shining snakes, than in company with parrots. The former might kill the body, but the latter the soul.

Twilight came on, and drove me out of the Zoological Garden each time I was there, and before I had seen all its treasures. Would that I might return there yet a third time and remain still longer!

Among the places in London which were much visited at this time by the millions of strangers who streamed hither, was the Egyptian Hall—a temple or museum for the remarkable things and curiosities from all foreign lands, which are traveling through the world, together with extraordinary men, animals, conjurors and conjuration—a temple of novelty which ought to be found in every great city, for the support and refreshment of the spirit of curiosity in the human breast. I saw here a couple of beautiful dioramas, and these were a glorious and extraordinary delight. What is the use of giving one’s self a deal of trouble to travel through far countries, in the face of danger by land and sea—to make great efforts to be in time for the railway-train—to get up in the night to go on board the steam-boat or by diligence—to eat food which does not agree with one—to lose one’s luggage and all one’s clothes—to be paying one’s money away all day long—to have an empty purse and weary body—in a word, to do battle with a thousand difficulties, when one can—here at the Diorama—sit quietly upon a bench, listen to music, and for a shilling behold Europe, Asia, or America pass before one, exhibit their ruins, their rivers, their capitals, their temples, and beautiful natural scenes before one’s eyes. Thus it was that I here beheld Egypt and the Nile travel past me: saw the ancient pyramids and temples with their colossal statues: saw Copts and Turks reposing beneath the palm-trees, and European tourists smoke their cigars under the nose of the old gods of the Hindoos: saw Sirius ascending brilliantly above the Nile: saw the beautiful head of the Sphinx glancing upward from the desert sand, whilst night rested above the desert, and Canopus looking down upon it—a sight which I shall never forget. Beyond this, I allowed the journey from London to Calcutta to journey past me; by Malta, and the Mediterranean, through the desert by caravan, with camels, Arabs, and so on to Ceylon and Hindoostan, with its cities and Hindoo temples. And it is impossible for me to say how convenient and entertaining I found it all.

Among the luxurious establishments of London, I heard much said of the clubs; palace-like houses where certain corporate bodies in the government or the city have their place of meeting arranged for their own especial accommodation, and where every thing which is most recherchÉ in food and in wine, and every article of life’s luxury is provided for the use of these gentlemen. I was shown the Lawyers’, the Merchants’, and the United-Service Club-Houses, with many others. Men of all classes, who have good incomes, may here enjoy themselves every day, without any other danger than that of here forgetting the nobler business of life and their better self; for these magnificent abodes are the promoters of selfishness and the desire for self-indulgence; and the man accustomed to the refined enjoyments of the club not unfrequently comes to despise the more frugal meal of home, and simple domestic pleasure. He is afraid of taking an amiable wife, because he might be prevented from having his delicate club-house dinner; and the man thus corrupted by luxury, renders himself incapable of life’s best enjoyment. Ah! he does still worse than that, because the evil which self-indulgence begets is not negative, is not merely individual!

And now from these halls, where the thirst of pleasure—a beautiful, false Delilah—seeks to lull men to sleep and rob them of their strength, and the saloons where self-indulgent women trifle away life in vanity, and worse still, although they have not their public club-houses for this purpose, I will pass over at once to scenes which present the strongest contrast and resemblance to these places—the quarters in London where the wretched, the poor and the openly criminal of the community, have also their clubs and places of meeting, the great revelation of the dark side of life.

I had already seen it many times, even in the rich splendid parts of the city. I had seen in front of magnificent shops, filled with bread and confectionery of every kind, women stealing along with pallid countenances and glances which earnestly demanded what the lips dared not to ask. I have seen children coming out of the cross streets of the Strand, children with eyes so beautiful that I could have kissed them, but clothed in rags and covered with dirt which was revolting, and I proposed to myself to seethe “nightshade” of London life in its fullest bloom. The poison-flower of this name, so dangerous to the noblest feelings of humanity, and thence seizing upon life, grew here in luxuriance—that I knew—not in nature, but in human life.

And I saw it, saw it in St. Giles’s, and in particular in a part of Westminster, the whole quarter, streets and lanes, filled with wretched half-tumble-down houses, windows stopped up with rags, rags hanging fluttering in the wind outside the houses, as if they were banners; every thing in tatters, every thing dirty, wretched! And human beings with traces of the ale-house upon them, traces of every species of vice, of crime, and want, and misery: pallid-faced women and men, great, ill-conditioned boys and girls, who—in the middle of the day—idled about doing nothing: in fact, “the dangerous classes” were here in vigorous growth. But even into this realm of darkness had the light of the sun began to penetrate.

Only a few years ago, it was not safe even for the police authorities to venture into this quarter, and several persons of the better class who had ventured into houses here were never afterward heard of. Some, however, ventured in yet again, and came out scathless. Clergymen, “The Missionaries of the Poor,” dared to come hither without fear, because they too were poor in every thing but the strength of eternal life—they dared to come hither; visited the sick and dying, penetrated into every corner and nook, helping, comforting, admonishing, and bearing away with them the intelligence of what they had seen and experienced into a higher class of society. That was the beginning. After that, came men of respectability, birth, fortune: men—yes, and women also, of high acquirements, who turned themselves hither both with thought and deed. Thus real and powerful material means were enlisted in the service of humanity. A broad street was opened through the densest portion of the district, through the worst abodes of darkness, and was now in progress of completion. An old house which had been purchased and converted into a “Model Boarding-house,” stood close beside the former den of thieves, whither guests had been inveigled and plundered, if not murdered.

“I expected this summer to have seen many of my countrymen,” lamented a fat and ugly French hostess, to one of her wretched neighbors; “but I have had scarcely any. My room stands empty.”

I did not much wonder at that when I went through this room, up in a third story, and afterward saw the rooms in the large model eating-house just by, established by Lord Canning, and where every thing, although in the highest degree homely, was remarkable for cleanliness and order. This house was under the management of respectable people—a man and his wife, with a fixed salary—who had one hundred boarders, all men. Five or six beds stood in each room. Fresh air, cleanliness, and good order prevailed every where. I saw also a lodging-house somewhat of this kind, but for decayed gentlemen. Each of these had—besides a small sum weekly—a bedroom, together with fuel and the privilege of reading in a common room. Each cooked his own food by his own fire.

I saw in the eating-room here, as well as in the kitchen, several highly original countenances, good studies for a Boz or Hogarth, and evidently still estimable ruins of a better and not insignificant humanity. It seemed to me that I could observe traces of genius or humor of so high a degree that something great might have come out of them, if they had not gone astray or lost their balance. However that might be, still these figures, with their remarkable noses, seen by the light of the fire, with their pipes or their tea-cups, each one busied for himself in that large warm room, produced a peculiar appearance, not unpleasing nor without interest. They had shelter, companionship, a certain independence, and a certain comfort, these old gentlemen. They might wait in peace for the great “flitting day.”

I saw also a newly-erected Ragged-School in this quarter, but the scholars were evidently yet an uncultivated set of urchins, who had great need to go to school. Public baths and wash-houses had been also established here, and these were assiduously visited on Saturdays. Who does not see in all this the commencement of a better state of things?—and already has this begun through these means in various parts of London. In many of the worst and poorest parts of London have model lodging-houses been established, or are about to be so, together with public baths and wash-houses.

I visited one of the larger model dwelling-houses, in company with the good and cheerful Mrs. C——, whose countenance belongs to that class which ought often to be seen in dark places, because it is like sunshine. The building, a large, well-constructed block, with accommodation for twenty families and one hundred and twenty-three single women, was known by the appellation of Thanksgiving Buildings, because it had been erected the year after the last visitation of the cholera in London, and in grateful acknowledgment of its ceasing in a quarter where, in consequence of the unhealthiness of the houses, it had been most fatally prevalent. In truth, a beautiful mode of returning thanks to God: worthy to be considered and imitated.

We visited a few families. The doors of their dwellings had handsome knockers upon them, and every thing in the interior was arranged with the same well-considered attention as in Prince Albert’s cottages. The mistresses of these families, agreeable-looking young women, with many children, took an especial pleasure in showing us how easily and abundantly the fresh water flowed forth by merely turning a little tap. They seemed to place a particular value upon this. The rooms were light, and in arrangement and number similar to those in the dwellings I have already described. One of the women, mother of two little children, lamented that the rent was high, and that she was unable to do any thing to assist her husband in providing for the family. Formerly, and while unmarried, and in the employment of a dress-maker, she had been able to earn seven shillings a-week. She mentioned this with a melancholy expression; and one could not but—while listening to her—think upon the deplorable manner in which the education of the poor woman is circumscribed, and which allows to her hand no other occupation but that of the seamstress. How easily the woman’s work at home, in manufacture or art, might be advantageous to the husband and the family!

A bath and washing establishment were in progress of preparation within the building. The rooms for single women were yet empty: nor were, indeed, all of them complete; and even when they are finished, I hope that they may not become occupied, at least by amiable women. Each room is intended for two occupants, each of whom will pay one shilling per week as rent: and the rooms are so small and so entirely devoid of comfort of any kind, that it required an effort to look at them. I could not help thinking of the magnificent club-houses. Not that I would have such for women; but, nevertheless, I would have something a little nice, and with some convenience—yes, and with something attractive in the neighborhood; this is a mere act of justice which I would demand for these lonely ones.

The great public wash-houses present a gladdening sight. Hundreds of women stood here, each one in her little alcove, with her steaming wash before her, busy and cheerful.

“I can get all my washing done in two hours,” said a woman to me, with sparkling eyes, beside whom I stood.

“And how frequently is it needful for you to wash?” inquired I.

“Once a week,” replied she. “I have a husband and five little children.”

One may fancy this woman doing her washing at home, drying and ironing it on the Saturday in the only room in which is the whole family, in order to have the clothes ready for the Sunday; one may fancy the husband coming home on the Saturday evening from his week’s work in order to enjoy rest and refreshment with his family—and finding the room full of wet clothes, damp, or filled with steam during the ironing process; the wife, occupied by her work, tired, and perhaps cross, the children in the way, or else—out of the way, in order to make room for the wet clothes! If the husband, under such circumstances, did not leave home and wife in order to find rest and refreshment at the ale-house, he must have had the soul of a martyr and hero!

In these new public wash-houses, the wife can do the whole of her washing and have it ironed and finished in two hours. And it was in the highest degree interesting to observe the means by which this operation in all its various departments can be carried on so rapidly and so well, and at the same time, for so small a payment.

The baths are also much frequented by the lower classes, but that most generally on the Saturday. And then the numbers are so great, that the lobbies are crowded with people waiting for their turns. Both these institutions are of incalculable benefit to the domestic life of the poor.

What the model dwelling-houses are and may become for the same class, the following anecdote may suffice to prove.

“On one of my visits to the Metropolitan buildings,” related to me Dr. S. S., one of the noble men who was foremost in their establishment, “I saw a woman standing at her open door. She greeted me so pleasantly, and with so kind an expression, that I was involuntarily compelled to stand and speak to her. She invited me into her dwelling, a sitting-room and kitchen, (but which also was a sitting-room,) showed me how prettily arranged she and her husband had every thing here, the beautiful, extensive prospect from the window, and how convenient was every thing within; she showed me their flowers, books, birds, and seemed to be made most sincerely happy by all these things. I fell into conversation with her, and by this means became acquainted with her history.

“‘We have been in better circumstances,’ said she; ‘at one time, indeed, we were very well off. But my husband became surety for a friend in whom he had as entire faith as in himself. His friend, however, became bankrupt, and by this means we lost nearly all that we possessed. We were obliged to sell a part of our furniture, and to remove from our comfortable dwelling to one much worse, but of a rent which we could afford. Here, however, new misfortunes met us; every thing began to go downward with us; we were obliged to sell the greater part of that which was yet left, and again to remove. We took a house in one of the suburbs of London, the best that we could get for the low rent which we could now afford. But it was a gloomy, damp, ugly, and in the highest degree inconvenient dwelling. When my husband used to come into the gloomy, chilly room, he became, as it were, struck with numbness. He sat silent, without taking pleasure in any thing; he could not even open a book, and reading used formerly to be his greatest delight. ‘It is all over with us now,’ thought I to myself, ‘and we must sink down into wretched poverty.’

“‘One day, however, I saw by chance, in the newspaper, an advertisement of rooms here at a reasonable rate, and I thought, if we could only manage to get into these rooms, he would perhaps come round again. I persuaded him therefore to let us go and look at them. These rooms which we now have, were fortunately still untenanted; and as we could produce the required certificate of character and respectability, we were accepted as tenants. My husband had not been long in these cheerful, excellent rooms, before he again took to his books, and began to work afresh. ‘Thank God,’ thought I, ‘now are we right again!’

“‘And so it was. My husband now earns good wages, and is promised an advance in them. Our rent costs but three shillings a week. We are now again getting on in the world—God be praised!’”

And a hand extended to the sinking—light, air, health, hope to those who sit in darkness—behold, these are offered by this institution of a truly Christian community, to the children of desolation. Prepare ye the way of the Lord!

“If you could remain longer with us,” said the same friend of humanity to me, “I would take you with me in my walks through the city, and I would show you, not our palaces and places of magnificence, but our wretchedness, and that which we do to alleviate it.”

And I have now seen sufficient thereof for me to say, that much is done, but that still more yet remains to be done. How much may be conceived from this single fact, that out of the immense population of the London poor only about fifteen hundred persons can be accommodated in the model dwelling-house!

In connection with these establishments will I mention two of a similar design which I visited during my stay in London. One of these is known under the appellation of “The Dormitory for Thieves.” This was the undertaking of a single individual, and still depends, in a great measure, upon the extraordinary courage and clear-headedness of this one man, together with private assistance which his undertaking has received from noble-minded women and men.

Mr. Nash was a teacher in a Ragged School. Just opposite the school was an open shed, beneath which Mr. Nash observed that early in the morning a number of youths, of from about seventeen to twenty years of age, assembled, who appeared to have no other place of shelter. Before long he fell into conversation with them, and learnt that such was the case, and that these youths spent the greater part of the night, as well as of the day, on foot for the purposes of theft or plunder. He inquired from them whether they would be willing to give up this miserable occupation for something better. All declared that they had no higher wish than to do so. Mr. Nash then proposed to them that they should pass through a probatory period of two weeks, during which they should be placed in a solitary room, and have no other food than bread and water. After this time of trial, if they passed well through it, he promised to receive them into the school, and teach them some trade, of which they themselves should have the choice, and which would thus open to them a respectable path for the future. The boys willingly entered into the plan, and, under the oversight of Mr. Nash, commenced their noviciate on bread and water; a pound weight of bread each a day, in a solitary room, but without fastenings. Some of them grew weary in a few days, and went out again to cheat and to steal, but the greater number persevered, and with these Mr. Nash commenced the institution called the “Dormitory,” which soon extended itself, and now contains about fifty pupils, and at which forty or more candidates present themselves weekly, young men of from sixteen to thirty years of age, who are desirous of leaving the paths of vice. The great school for juvenile offenders, situated a few miles from London, receives only children under fifteen years of age. I very much regret that my time was too short to allow of my visiting it.

The house designed for the Dormitory was now building, and Mr. Nash was therefore compelled from want of room to reject each week many young men who were desirous of being received on trial. The fifty who had successfully passed through the heavy probation—a short one, it is true, but a sufficient trial for young men with hungry stomachs, unbroken wills, and unaccustomed to discipline—were employed in various rooms as shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, smiths, printers, and so on. They scarcely looked up, and were zealously occupied by their work. Three young men, of from eighteen to twenty, underwent, as best for them, their trial in an empty room, the doors of which stood open. They had determined upon pursuing a certain trade, and had firmly resolved upon amending their course of life. I saw among these young men many pleasant, hopeful countenances, and some also which it required courage to admit into an institution for improvement.

But this Mr. Nash has a countenance which is remarkable for great courage and the most cheerful confidence. And, perhaps, it is precisely this very courage and this cheerful confidence which are most needed and of which there is most want in society. Perhaps there would not be found any thing altogether irremediable in the world if we had only this right courage, this right trust—in the strength of resurrection!

The fallen youths in this institution are taught not merely a handicraft trade, but, as a matter of course, first and foremost the principles of Christianity. Many of them are destined for emigration, and, after having well passed through their apprenticeship, obtain aid for their outfit and their voyage, which is in a general way to Australia. For Australia Felix is a picture which floats before the eye of the converted youth as the goal and reward of his industry and his good conduct during his apprenticeship. And the beautiful skies of Australia seem intended by Providence as a symbol of mercy, to entice home the prodigal but repentant son of earth.

I hear at this point an objection which is often made.

“You are promoters of crime, inasmuch as you assist the criminal more than the innocent; inasmuch as the quality of thief becomes a letter of recommendation to ‘the Dormitory for Thieves,’ and thence to Australia.”

This objection would be just if no protecting, aiding hand were stretched forth to guiltless and destitute youth. But in England this objection is overruled by many benevolent institutions. Among these is the Emigrant’s Home for young persons who can produce certificates of blameless life, and who wish to emigrate, but have not the means of so doing. I visited the Home, where young women of the working class and of good character are received for a time, examined, and afterward enabled to leave the country and to obtain situations in the English colonies. Between seven and eight hundred young women had, within rather more than a year, been sent abroad from this Home, their passage paid, and services obtained for them in the colonies, mostly in New Zealand and Australia. In the Ragged Schools also is Australia Felix a land which stands before the souls of the children as a future home with a brighter sky and better prospects for them than their native land, and the sending them thither is a reward for their progress in learning. From thirteen to fifteen years of age they are sent thither—that is to say, to the southern part of the continent, where the climate is most healthy, and where none of the convict population are to be met with; these, as is well known, being confined to the northern coast. The children obtain situations in the families of the wealthy colonists, still remaining in connection with the mother-school which sent them out; and their letters to the teachers and their friends, about the country and the people of that new world to which they have removed, diffuse the utmost pleasure and excite the deepest interest in the old home. I read some of these letters, printed in small, neat, stitched pamphlets, which are sold and circulated for a few pence, together with many other small writings of the same price and form. I read with great interest these child-like, naÏve descriptions, fresh with morning dew, from the new world. And this led me to a more intimate acquaintance with the popular folk-literature of England. This subject, however, is too great to be treated of here, and demands a separate chapter. Merely a few words in short.

In order that it may actually be an advantage to the child to learn to read in the school, it is of importance that when it leaves the school it may find something good to read—something improving for the understanding, something ennobling for the heart. Rich men’s children have this in superabundance: the children of the poor have long had, and still in many countries have—when they leave school—no other reading of an amusing kind to go to than wretched ballads, rude stories, immoral tales and pictures, which degrade mind and taste—and they form themselves accordingly. In England, and in various cultivated countries, people have begun zealously to provide for the needs of the reading portion of the lower classes. Societies have been formed both in the Episcopal church and other religious bodies, for the diffusion of useful and entertaining reading, designed especially for the youth of the lower classes who have the wish to read, but who have not the means of purchasing expensive books. Small works, illustrated with beautiful vignettes, circulate in England by thousands, especially narratives, biographies, and such like, which are calculated to please the most uneducated as well as the most childish mind. The number of these writings, and so called “tracts”—which are sold at from one penny to six-pence each—is immense in England. They circulate over the whole country, and may be met with in all the book-shops.

In the Ragged Schools, in the Model Boarding-houses, in the Home for poor emigrants, in the Dormitory for thieves, in many benevolent institutions, had I seen a copper-plate portrait of a handsome, middle-aged gentleman, holding a roll of paper in his hand, from which he seemed about to read. This was the portrait of Lord Ashley, now Earl of Shaftesbury. It was thus that he stood up, time after time, in Parliament, with narratives which he had collected and written down from the life of the working-classes of England, with its neglects and necessities, its temptations to crime, and its bitterness against society, especially in the manufacturing districts. It was thus that he continued to stand forth and to plead, spite of opposition, derision, reproach, and threats, until he aroused that universal attention and that universal sympathy for the sufferings of the lower classes of society, which he made it his mission to search into and to alleviate. Thus, he became the promoter of important reforms, and of many excellent institutions for the oppressed and the fallen of the laboring classes. Thus, he became so well known for his spirit of active human kindness, that not long since, the thieves of London, to the number of more than a thousand—if I am not mistaken—sent to Lord Ashley, requesting he would meet them at a certain place which they named, where they wished to ask his advice, as to how they might get into some better way of life. Lord Ashley undertook to meet these thieves. These dangerous classes had laid aside their fearful aspect for the occasion. They came now as repentant children to a father, to whose counsel and guidance they would submit themselves. During this meeting, his lordship wished to give a small sum of money to an old man, but not having small change with him, produced a sovereign, and asked if some one would go out and get change for him. Many hands were stretched forth, and Lord Ashley gave the gold coin to a boy, who immediately sprang out with it. As he remained a considerable time away, a general uneasiness spread itself through the assembly; all looked eagerly toward the door, all were evidently anxious that he should not abuse the confidence of his lordship; and when, at length, he returned with the proper amount of change, a general satisfaction showed itself.

I am sorry not to know more about this conference, nor what advice Lord Ashley gave to the thieves, because it must have been something beyond mere theory. The Dormitory, as a preparatory institution, and emigration to countries where there is plenty of honest labor and labor’s wages, are good practical means, which Lord Ashley could refer them to.

And it cannot be denied that England, in its extensive and as yet scantily-peopled colonies, has an excellent mode of assistance and resource for its dangerous population, and in especial for its superabundant population. And one cannot but acknowledge that it is the increasing emigration to these colonies which gives England at this time freer breathing-room and a more vigorous life.

———

BY CAROLINE F. ORNE.

———

Praed, one of the most brilliant, fanciful and peculiar poets of the century, has met with singular ill-luck in his native land in not finding either an editor or a public for the chance-offsprings of his sparkling muse. To Dr. Griswold belongs the credit of rescuing his pieces from oblivion, of collecting them in a permanent form, and of introducing them with a preface which presents, with condensed felicity of expression, the leading incidents of Praed’s life, and the subtle peculiarities of his genius. Poet, scholar, and politician, Praed was also a most popular and accomplished man of society, and not a little of the raciness of his poems consists in their curious combination of the romantic and the worldly. They suggest one of those modern parlors opening on one side into a greenhouse, with a strange blending in the atmosphere of musk and sweet-briar, eau de cologne and lilies. In such a forced union of the ideal and the conventional we are, of course, all the more piquantly reminded of their essential contrast. With all this clever deviltry, however, in the instinctive action of Praed’s mind, he has still given us some poems which indicate that a stout English heart beats beneath the embroidered waistcoat of the man of fashion, and will sometimes gush out in natural tenderness or passion. But his exquisitely nice perception of the falsehood of cultivated and conventual life, combined with a laughing charity for its pleasant hypocricies, commonly interferes with his poetic faith; and he is continually provoking sentimental readers by raising their serious sympathies only to give the greater force to the flush of sarcasm which dissolves them. This peculiarity springs, perhaps, from a deeper source than mere intellectual mischievousness, and refers to a humorous sadness of mood which is apt to characterize men who are both poets and wits—who see things at once in their ideal and conventional relations, and are fascinated by both. The observing reader will also detect, as a result of this, a certain fine misanthropy in the poems, but a misanthropy which is without malice or hatred. His description of the Troubadour, in his delicious poem of that name, may stand in some degree for his own portrait:

Among the best among the many good things in this volume is “The Belle of the Ball,” “The Vicar,” “The Legend of the Teuful-Haus,” “The Bridal of Belmont,” and “The Red Fisherman.” We have but space for a description of Richard Coeur de Lion—a fair specimen of Praed’s dashing manner:

Mr. Curtis has the finest genius for description among the myriad tourists of the day. His observation is clear, accurate and comprehensive, and the picture formed on his own imagination he can transfer to the imagination of the reader without the omission of a single detail. But he also has the poetic faculty of seeing not only the external form and colors of objects, but their inward spirit and meaning; and this makes his pictures alive with thought and feeling, and constitutes their peculiar attractiveness. The reader is literally transported; his eye falls on the page, and at once he is in Cairo or Jerusalem, not only seeing those places, but experiencing the pure and perfect luxury of the feelings they awaken in an imaginative mind. It is this magical power which places Mr. Curtis above all contemporary writers of travels. He has really caught the spirit of the east. Some London critics have objected to his book on account of its characteristic excellence, they being pleased to call his felicity and sureness of insight by the name of idealization, using the word to convey a charge of misrepresentation. We believe that he daguerreotypes both forms and emotions, and is equally true to fact and thought. His faculty of external observation is none the less accurate, because he has in addition the genius which most travelers lack.

We do not know whether Mr. Curtis would succeed as well in describing Western as Eastern life, manners and scenery. In the East he is at home, even the fanciful fopperies with which he pertinaciously bespangles his style, aiding the effect of his pictures. It may be that the sensuous and dreamy atmosphere through which he shows us the forms of Oriental life is native, not so much to his own mind, as the scenes he represents, and that he could vary it with a variation in his subject. If so, we hope he will not leave a corner of the earth unvisited, for such a representative faculty would make him the Shakspeare of tourists.

One of the most delightful pictures in the present volume is the “counterfeit presentment” of Oriental shopping. We quote it as a specimen of Mr. Curtis’s word-painting. The Howadji enters a bazaar:

“The merchant, gravely courteous, reveals his treasures, little dreaming that they are inestimable to the eyes that contemplate them. His wares make poets of his customers, who are sure that the Eastern poets must have passed their lives in an endless round of shopping.

“Here are silk stuffs from Damascus and Aleppo; cambric from the district of Nablus, near the well of Jacob; gold and silver threads from Mount Lebanon; keffie, the Bedouin handkerchiefs, from Mecca, and fabrics of delicate device from Damascus blend their charm with the Anatolian carpets of gorgeous tissue. The fruits of Hamas hang beyond—dried fruits and blades from Celo Syria—pistacchios from Aleppo, and over them strange Persian rugs.

“The eye feasts upon splendor. The wares are often clumsy, inconvenient, and unshapely. The coarsest linen is embroidered with the finest gold. It is a banquet of the crude elements of beauty, unrefined by taste. It is the pure figment unworked into the picture.

“But the contemplation of these articles, of name and association so alluring, and the calm curiosity of the soft eyes, that watch you in the dimness of the bazaar, gradually soothe your mind like sleep, and you sit by the merchant in pleasant reverie. You buy as long and as much as you can. Have rhymes, and colors, and fancies prices?

“The courteous merchant asks fabulous sums for his wares, and you courteously offer a tenth or a twentieth of his demand. He looks grieved, and smokes. You smoke, and look resigned.

“‘Have the Howadji reflected that this delicate linen (it is coarse crash) comes from Bagdad, upon camels, over the desert?’

“‘They have, indeed, meditated that fact.’

“‘Are these opulent strangers aware that the sum they mention would plunge an unhappy merchant into irretrievable ruin?’

“‘The thought severs the heart-strings of the opulent strangers. But are their resources rivers, whose sands are gold?’

“—And the soft-eyed Arab boy is dispatched for fresh coffee.

“We wear away the day in this delightful traffic. It has been a rhetorical tilt. We have talked, and lived, and bought poetry, and at twilight our treasures follow us to the hotel.”

In these volumes the author of Vanity Fair appears as the social critic of Paris. With an eye that nothing ridiculous or bizarre can elude, he peers into the shady corners of French life, and transfers its oddities to his page. His English sense, it is true, is somewhat too constantly accompanied by his English prejudice; but even where he loses his fairness he never loses his brilliancy.

Among the many attractions of the book are some capital stories illustrative of French manners and character. Perhaps the best chapter is that on Louis the Fourteenth. Its exposition of kingship is mercilessly satirical and remorselessly just. There is a little wood-cut in this part of the book, which the revolutionists should distribute in every country in Europe as an instrument of insurrection. It represents first the royal robes, then royalty without the robes, then royalty in the robes. The inference to the eye is irresistible, that the robes and not the men constitute royalty. The satire is especially directed at Louis XIV., but it might with more justice be fastened on the present sovereigns of the continent of Europe.

This volume has been very popular in England, having passed rapidly through four editions. The author not only considers words as “fossil poetry,” but fossil ethics and fossil history. Many of his speculations are ingenious, tending to impress upon the mind the truth that language is the incarnation of thought, and that words are things. But in all that relates to the philosophy of the matter he is very inferior to one of our writers, the Rev. Dr. Bushnell, of Hartford, who, in his late theological writings has exhibited extraordinary depth and sentences of thought in demonstrating both the vitality and the limitations of language. Mr. French’s work is sketchy and readable, distinguished rather for the value of its detached remarks than for the comprehensiveness of its general plan. Its tendency, however, is to provoke independent thinking on the subject, in which Mr. French’s “Story of Words” may be disconnected from the languid wordiness of Mr. French.

An elegant edition, such as the present promises to be, of the works of so eminent a divine as the late Dr. Olin, is a contribution to theological and to general literature. The first and second volumes contain his Sermons, Lectures and Addresses. They are worthy of the author’s extensive reputation as an accurate and practical thinker, and are animated throughout with a tolerant but none the less kindling religious faith. In an age when charity is so common a screen of indifference, it is a refreshment to read an author whose toleration is the result of the depth and breadth of his religious feeling, and whose zeal is as intense as his mind is large. To young men, especially, these volumes are invaluable as guides in the practical duties of life, and the formation of a manly Christian character. Dr. Olin possessed, in no ordinary measure, that wisdom which comes from the union of exalted sentiment with sturdy sense, and his advice is therefore always elevated and always practical.

This little volume, one of the series of Putnam’s Semi-Monthly Library, is altogether the most attractive book on the south of France we have ever read. It is written in a style of great liveliness and point, is full of vigorous descriptions of scenery and manners, and some of the legends are told inimitably. The series of volumes to which it belongs we cannot too cordially commend to the public. Taking into consideration the excellence of the type and paper, it is the cheapest collection of books ever published in the country, the price of each volume being but twenty-five cents. The cheapness, however, of the series is not so noteable as the rare taste which guides the selection of books. The present volume, “Claret and Olives,” is, in point of style alone, a work of high literary merit, and we cannot but think that its author will wake up some fine morning and find himself famous.

This charming volume belongs to a class of works possessing universal interest. It narrates the trials and experiences of an English family lost in the great desert in the interior of North America. In this desert they discover a delightful oasis, and dwell on it for ten years. The descriptions of their housekeeping and hunting are exceedingly vivid, while there is just enough variety in the characters of the family to add a dramatic interest to the narrative. The volume is mostly devoted to exciting representations of hunting adventures, and we know of few books better calculated to convey to young persons a knowledge of natural history. The author evidently writes from personal observation both of the scenery and animals he describes.

Most of the pieces contained in this volume were originally contributed to the New Monthly Magazine, in the old days of that periodical, when it was edited by Campbell, the poet. Smith is now widely known as one of the authors of the “Rejected Addresses,” and as the sole author of numerous admirable novels; but we doubt if any of his works show his genius and character in a light at once so amiable and so sparkling as they are exhibited in the present delightful volume. Full of curious information, brilliant satire, keen observation, and tingling wit, every sentence is a stimulant to attention. The essays on “Noses,” “Lips and Kissing,” “Ugly Women,” “The Eloquence of Eyes,” “The Literary Society of Houndsditch,” not to mention others, are radiant with fancy and wit.

Mr. Mountford is favorably known to thoughtful readers as the author of “Martyria” and “Euthanasy.” The present volume will add to the reputation he has already acquired by them, conceived as it is in the same kindly spirit, and admitting of a greater variety of incidents and characters. The whole representation of the town is exceedingly felicitous, combining considerable diversity of topic and subject with a pervading unity of impression. The most attractive portions of the book are the religious and philosophical conversations which are naturally interwoven with its homely incidents—conversations which are characterized by profound spiritual feeling, pure in tone, sweet in sentiment, full of original thoughts and suggestions, and expressed in a style of great clearness and beauty.

We have read with great interest this admirable life of Jeffrey, from the pen of an intimate friend, who has performed his “labor of love,” in a most admirable and satisfactory manner. The great Edinburgh critic is presented to us in the character of a most amiable friend, and a profound, but somewhat timid statesman. He who put forth, through the “Edinburgh Review,” his fierce and remorseless criticisms of contemporary literature, is here pictured as the agreeable friend, the loving husband and father, and the honest censor of what he deemed pernicious in letters. He stands out from the canvas “a man of gentle amenities, full of all charity, profoundly impressed with the dignity and responsibility of his mission.” Every reader of Jeffrey should purchase these volumes to obtain a fair estimation of the worth and various ability of the man.

This invaluable little volume is a continuation of a series of useful works, for which the country is indebted to the enterprise of Mr. Baird; and we are mistaken if his efforts to extend the knowledge of the useful do not meet a very ample return. The title of the volume is sufficiently significant; and we have only to add, that the book is admirably adapted to fulfill its purpose.

This beautiful edition of the Waverly Novels, has long been wanted by American readers, and the beautiful type and paper of this edition afford a most desired relief to the eye. The publishers announce that they have now ready, Guy Mannering—The Antiquary—Rob Roy—The Black Dwarf—Old Mortality—and The Bride of Lammermoor. The price per novel, in paper, is fifty cents.

These letters are the production of a vigorous and witty controversialist, who brings the full resources of a firm will, a clear understanding, and an animated rhetoric, to the task of assailing the church of Rome. It is a very stimulating book.

This is what may be called a didactic novel; a kind of composition which we find it very difficult to read. It is, however, replete with shrewd remark, and contains many admirable maxims for the discipline both of the mind and the heart. The question of woman’s rights is very elaborately discussed in the volume, and a strong leaning manifested against the new ideas on that topic.

This is another of the series of very highly useful works with which we have been favored from the press of Mr. Baird, and one that will be of great service to the engineer, mechanic, machinist, naval architect, miner and millwright. It is prepared with great care and accuracy, and will be invaluable to all whose business or studies lead them to inform themselves fully of the subjects upon which it treats.

LIFE OF THACKERAY.

Everybody knows Thackeray, and nobody knows any thing about him. We are therefore glad to help ourselves and our readers to a little knowledge of him, derived from a German authority by the Tribune. He was born in Calcutta in the year 1811, and is now consequently 41 years old. His father was a high official of the East India Company, which secured him the entrÉe of the best society, and a large income. Our author was born a “gentleman.” He went to school in England—experienced all the tyranny of a brutal master, and the misery of that system of fagging, a legalized bullying of the little boys by the larger, which is so repulsive to every noble and decent feeling, and which the Englishmen so stoutly defend, as a process which “takes the starch out of pride,” but which is altogether too unreasonable not to lose temper about in discussing. Thackeray has revenged himself upon this inhuman and disgusting system in his Christmas story of “Dr. Birch and his Young Friends,” and he has a general fling at Boarding Schools in the opening of “Vanity Fair,” in which he exhorts the reader to trust the promise of a school prospectus no more than he does the praises of an epitaph. He left school for the University at Cambridge, where he studied with Kinglake, the author of Eothen—Eliot Warburton, who wrote “The Crescent and the Cross,” and was lost with the Amazon, and Richard Moncton Milnes, a well-known London litterateur, a poet, and biographer of Keats, and an ornamental liberal member of Parliament.

Meanwhile the elder Thackeray died, and the future historian of Vanity Fair, launched himself into its midst with an annual income of about a thousand pounds. He lived according to his whims, drew sharp and clever caricatures, smoked, lounged, feasted upon books of every kind, and opened the oyster of the world at leisure. His mother, a woman of great beauty, and full of talent and tenderness, whose memory is so filially embalmed in the character of the mother of Arthur Pendennis, married again, about this time, and the young man, always the object of the proudest maternal love, came into possession of his paternal inheritance. He immediately returned from the continent where he had been staying a little time, and took up his residence in the Temple. Nascent Jurists and Budding Barristers at Law, who have completed a full course at Cambridge or Oxford, enjoy the privilege of paying high prices for comfortable quarters in the Temple, and of eating splendid dinners in its ancient dining-room. Here Thackeray entered himself as a student of jurisprudence, and in the character of Warrington in “Pendennis,” he has developed the career of the students, and the varied life of the Temple, in some of the best passages he has ever written. Henry Taylor, the dramatist, author of Philip Van Artevelde, is among the residents of the Temple, and is mentioned by the German Commentator as the original of a character in Thackeray’s romance. We are at a loss to determine which, for if Warrington be so intended, he seems to us to lose the point. Warrington is a man of power without a career—Taylor, a man of talent, who has certainly achieved a reputation quite equal to his just claims. However, the Temple not only furnished our author characters, but also the necessity of drawing them; for while there, and when scarcely more than 23 years old, the young man had “fooled away” his property, and was poor. The days of smoking, lounging, and “loafing” were evidently ending, and he betook himself to Paris, conceiving, from his facility in sketching, that he was born for an artist. A brief time among the Parisian ateliers sufficed to remove this idea. But as his step-father at this period established a journal in London, called “The Constitutional,” the artist naturally became its Paris correspondent. Thus, like Dickens, he commenced his literary career as a journalist. In Paris, Thackeray met his present wife, an Irish lady of good family, and married her.

From this time dates his first purely literary effort—the “Yellowplush Papers,” afterward published as “Jeames’ Diary”—in which his characteristic tendency is clearly indicated. The step-father’s “Constitutional” absorbed most of his property, of course, and failed. The son was obliged to return to England, and to begin work in earnest for himself. He wrote for Frazer’s Magazine and literary reviews for “The Times,” in which he ridiculed the early Bulwer style of romance—the interesting burglars and romance murderers. But the public, resolved upon enjoying the fascination of crime sentimentally described, received his strictures coldly. The struggling author turned to the humorous, sketchy style, to win an ear and gain a penny. Literary friends, more fairly favored than he, opened their purses to him; but his wife became insane, and is, at this day, the inmate of an asylum. He worked industriously with his pen—he wrote the “Great Hoggarty Diamond,” “The Snob Papers,” the “Irish Sketch Book,” “Journey from Cornhill to Cairo,” “Our Street,” “Rebecca and Rowena,” “The Kickleburies on the Rhine,” and smaller papers, under the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh; and Chambers’ Cyclopedia commended him, before he was so universally known, as “a quiet observer.” In all these sketches his characteristic power shows itself. The two last were written after the great fame and success of “Vanity Fair;” but they are only studies for his large pictures—and it may be noted as proof of his genuine genius, that the completed figures are infinitely superior to the designs, and it is in completing the picture from the speech, so that it shall gain in meaning as well as in elaboration and size, that the true artist is shown. Mr. Thackeray offered the MS. of “Vanity Fair” to a magazine. The editor declined it. The author published it, and made his name immortal. It was followed by “Pendennis,” a mellower, riper fruit, to our fancy; but we have no thought of entering upon a criticism of the author. His latest public literary work is the course of lectures upon the wits of Queen Anne’s times, which has been read before literary and fashionable London, and received with the greatest applause. Copious abstracts were published in the leading journals, and there is little doubt that they are quite worthy their author. Mr. Thackeray is now understood to be engaged in completing a novel of which the scene is laid among the persons and the times treated in his lectures.

Of Mr. Thackeray’s intention to visit the United States, we hear nothing said. We think that there could be little doubt of the success of his lectures here.

Tight Lacing.—In “Dickens’ Household Words,” we find a notice of the first Evening School for Women opened at Birmingham for the instruction of young women who labor in the factories during the day. The experiment has been rewarded with complete success. It is solely under the charge of ladies, who, with the most praiseworthy assiduity, devote their evenings to the moral and intellectual culture of these poor sisters of toil, adding the force of example—even in matters of dress—to the wisdom of precept. The following passage is worthy of the attention of our fair readers.

“As to the matter of dress. There can be nothing but good in telling the plain fact, that the most earnest and devoted of the ladies have found it their duty to wear no stays, in order to add the force of example to their efforts to save the young women who are killing themselves with tight-lacing alone. One poor scholar died almost suddenly from tight lacing alone. Another was, presently after, so ill, from the same abuse, that she could do nothing. A third could not stoop to her desk, and had to sit at a higher one, which suited the requirements of her self-imposed pillory. In overlooking those who were writing, we were struck by the short breathing of several of them. We asked what their employments were, supposing them to be of some pernicious nature. It was not so: all were cases of evident tight-lacing. The ugly walling-up of the figure is a painful contrast to the supple grace of some of the teachers. The girls see this grace, but will not believe, till convinced by the feel, that there are no stays to account for it.

“‘And what have you got on?’ said one of the ladies, feeling in like manner. ‘Why, you are perfectly walled up. How can you bear it?’

“‘Why,’ answered the girl, ‘I have got only six-and-twenty whalebones.’

“The lady obtained some anatomical plates, and formed a class of the older women, apart from the rest, to whom she displayed the consequences, in full, of this fatal practice. At the moment, they appear to disbelieve the facts; but a little time shows that they have taken the alarm—to what extent, the dress of their daughters, as they grow up, will probably indicate.

“The number on the books of this school is about one hundred; the average attendance is about fifty. The eagerness to attend is remarkable; and the dread of losing their place through non-attendance is testified in the strongest ways. Many are detained late at their work on Friday evenings; but they come, if only for a quarter of an hour; or if prevented, perhaps send a supplicating note that their place may not be filled up.”

American Literature in England.—America is rising in literary greatness with startling vigor. The spirit of progressive enlightenment is there ever present, and the motto blazoned in the intellectual escutcheon of the nation is, “Excelsior!” We were aware that a republic with a cheap and unfettered press, and a system of public schools that brings the means of an education within the limits of the humblest class of society, must naturally have a co-existent amount of national intelligence, which other nations with less advantages could not possess. We have long been admirers of the genius of Cooper, Irving, and Bryant; but it is only recently that we have been made acquainted with the weird and subtle efforts of Edgar A. Poe, the remarkable power of Hawthorne, the playful fancy of Holmes and Saxe, the beautiful melodies of Morris, and the ingenious heart-picturings of Grace Greenwood, the sisters Carey, Mrs. Kirkland, and Clara Moreton. The works of these writers have contributed to increase our already formed admiration of the remarkable freshness and vigor of intellect that is daily developing itself in the United States; and it is with a joyous friendliness that we recognize the growing claims of the young country to a place among the literary nations of this era.—London Daily News.

GRAHAM’S SMALL-TALK.

Held in his idle moments, with his Readers, Correspondents and Exchanges.

Among the agreeable letters we have received from many of our subscribers, upon the superior character of our June number, we make room for the following. The remark of our correspondent upon the value of newspaper notices we do not agree with, at least not in their valuelessness, except in cases where they are “paid for” or solicited. A frank expression of sentiment in regard to “Graham,” we invite, and try sometimes to provoke a little captiousness—but the 1340 editors with whom we exchange, will be honest in spite of us, and pronounce “Graham” a great Magazine; and as these opinions coincide with that of our correspondent, we must submit.

Cincinnati, May 23, 1852.

The reception of your Magazine for June, with “new type and paper,” and, I may add, new attractions in the shape of an increase of “solid matter,” reminds me of a promise made myself long ago—to write you a letter expressive of earnest sympathy in your efforts, and hopes of your ultimate success, in the publication of a journal worthy of our country and yourself.

From month to month, since you resumed the management of “Graham,” I have noticed a gradual yet sterling improvement in its pages, until the June number relieves me from all anxiety as to its future course and success. I congratulate you, my dear sir.

Now that “Opinions of the Press” are so profuse and so worthless, (especially to the book-buyer,) I have thought a word of unsought, unpaid for praise, might not be received unkindly from

A Subscriber.

A Fine Lithograph.—We have received from Messrs. Fetridge & Co., of Boston, one of the finest specimens of the lithographic art that ever commanded our attention. It is decidedly a credit to the artists and to Boston. The subject of the picture is a representation of Miss E. Kimberly, the celebrated Shaksperian reader and actress, in the character of Isabella in “The Fatal Marriage.” It is from a Daguerreotype by Southworth and Harvey, of Boston. Our readers will recollect that this gifted young lady made her debut as a Shaksperian reader in this city (Philadelphia) some two and a half years ago. Since that time she has appeared in various cities, before large and intelligent audiences, with entire success. Her reputation is fully established on a remarkably intellectual and correct delineator of the leading characters in the higher drama. She has now fully adopted the stage as her profession; for, with the approbation of such a veteran in histrionic matters as Thomas Barry, Esq., of the Broadway theatre, New York, (who was her instructor,) there can be no question of her fitness for the avocation. Her friends are sanguine that she will reach the highest round in the ladder of histrionic fame. The likeness of her, now before us, portrays the intensity of sorrow more vividly than the portrait of any female actress, in character, we ever beheld.

The writer of the following asks us to forgive him for venturing into the regions poetic, and begs us not to clip his wings. Well, we wont; and shall say in his defense that there is a very sober and serious vein of prose in his poesy, which it becomes some delinquents to study. Clapping our hand upon our pocket, we can say with the wag,—“You’ll find no change with us;” so, if the following only induces a few of our subscribers to “do better,” the change will be duly recorded.

Fitzgerald’s City Item.—The other day this beautiful and ably conducted weekly came to us clothed in a new suit of type, and printed upon white and firm paper. The Item is now one of the largest, handsomest, and certainly one of the ablest of our weeklies. All who take an interest in Business, Literature, the Fine Arts, Music, and the Drama, are recommended to subscribe to it. On these and kindred subjects, it has ever been regarded as first-rate authority. Every family, every gentleman and lady of taste and leisure in the country, should take Fitzgerald’s City Item. It is furnished at the moderate price of $2 a year, in advance. Address Fitzgerald & Co., 46 South Third street, Philadelphia. (Post paid.)

Graham’s Magazine for June is a capital one, as usual. Graham don’t get out any other kind but the best kind. He’s quiet, don’t brag; but he does better, by publishing the best Magazine in Philadelphia.—Perrysburg Star.

Well, yes, brother; we have learned the value of the adage as to “Brag and Holdfast.” Hence our 112 pages were announced and have been carried out in every number since January. Our wood-cuts are engravings.

Church, who has just enlarged his excellent Weekly, enlarges also upon the value of Graham’s wood-cuts.

Wood Engraving.—The beautiful specimens of wood engraving, now beginning to be seen in many of our modern publications, do, indeed, indicate a marked improvement in that branch of pictorial embellishment, over the rough unsightly cuts of a few years back, and at which now the growing taste of the public eye would hardly glance. Nor can we indulge these remarks without bestowing upon the printer his own success in doing full justice to the engraver by clear and beautiful impression, which surely depends upon him; and when he has the proper material in ink and paper, our fine publications compare well with those from across the water.

Our friend Graham has not been relax in his exertions to beautify his agreeable monthly with fine embellishments in wood, and his numerous patrons will be much more gratified with the results of Mr. Devereux’s prolific pencil, than the smoky mezzotints which have so long intruded upon the pages of magazinedom. We go for good legitimate line engravings, either steel or wood, and nothing else. One of “Mote’s” gems is worth a bushel of commonplace truck. We are right glad to see fine wood specimens interlarded in the pages of Graham. Onward, say we, with your well-stored monthly, rich in literature, beautiful in embellishment. A large list is your sure reward. “To him who wills there is no obstacle.”—Church’s Bizarre.

The New Volume.—The almost universal voice of the American Press, in the notices of our June number, encourages us to great hopes for the volume which commences with the present number. The elevated tone of the work seems to meet with the entire approval of our readers, so far as we can learn from letters received from all parts of the United States, giving us ample warrant for a continuance of our efforts to render “Graham” a Magazine of the very highest order.

If our friends will assist us in extending the circulation of “Graham” for the next six months in their respective post-towns, we flatter ourself that we shall open the volume in January next with a reputation and circulation unequaled by any former volume of this Magazine. A word to a neighbor may secure his co-operation; and as we send five copies for six months at half the yearly club rates, the outlay will be but small for each six months subscriber. Try it, friends!

The Family Friend.—Our friend Godman, of Columbia, S. C., has assumed, we see, the entire responsibility of the publishing, as well as the editorial department of his admirable weekly paper. That he may extend its circulation, with all the rapidity its manifest merits should insure, is our most sincere wish, and, to aid him, we offer Graham’s Magazine and The Family Friend, one year, for Four Dollars, in advance.

A FRENCH IDEA.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Punctuation has been corrected without note. Other errors have been corrected as noted below. For illustrations, some caption text may be missing or incomplete due to condition of the originals used for preparation of the ebook.