Chapter XVII.

Lord L’Estrange did not proceed at once to Riccabocca’s house. He was under the influence of a remembrance too deep and too strong to yield easily to the lukewarm claim of friendship. He rode fast and far; and impossible it would be to define the feelings that passed through a mind so acutely sensitive, and so rootedly tenacious of all affections. When he once more, recalling his duty to the Italian, retraced his road to Norwood, the slow pace of his horse was significant of his own exhausted spirits; a deep dejection had succeeded to feverish excitement. “Vain task,” he murmured, “to wean myself from the dead! Yet I am now betrothed to another; and she, with all her virtues is not the one to—” He stopped short in generous self-rebuke. “Too late to think of that! Now, all that should remain to me is to insure the happiness of the life to which I have pledged my own. But—” He sighed as he so murmured. On reaching the vicinity of Riccabocca’s house, he put up his horse at a little inn, and proceeded on foot across the heath-land toward the dull square building, which Leonard’s description had sufficed to indicate as the exile’s new home. It was long before any one answered his summons at the gate. Not till he had thrice rung did he hear a heavy step on the gravel walk within; then the wicket within the gate was partially drawn aside, a dark eye gleamed out, and a voice in imperfect English asked who was there.

“Lord L’Estrange; and if I am right as to the person I seek, that name will at once admit me.”

The door flew open as did that of the mystic cavern at the sound of “Open Sesame;” and Giacomo, almost weeping with joyous emotion, exclaimed in Italian, “The good Lord! Holy San Giacomo! thou hast heard me at last! We are safe now.” And dropping the blunderbuss with which he had taken the precaution to arm himself, he lifted Harley’s hand to his lips, in the affectionate greeting familiar to his countrymen.

“And the Padrone?” asked Harley, as he entered the jealous precincts.

“Oh, he is just gone out: but he will not be long. You will wait for him?”

“Certainly. What lady is that I see at the far end of the garden?”

“Bless her, it is our Signorina. I will run and tell her that you are come.”

“That I am come; but she can not know me even by name.”

“Ah, Excellency, can you think so? Many and many a time has she talked to me of you, and I have heard her pray to the holy Madonna to bless you, and in a voice so sweet—”

“Stay, I will present myself to her. Go into the house, and we will wait without for the Padrone. Nay, I need the air, my friend.” Harley, as he said this, broke from Giacomo, and approached Violante.

The poor child, in her solitary walk in the obscurer parts of the dull garden, had escaped the eye of Giacomo when he had gone forth to answer the bell; and she, unconscious of the fears of which she was the object, had felt something of youthful curiosity at the summons at the gate, and the sight of a stranger in close and friendly conference with the unsocial Giacomo.

As Harley now neared her with that singular grace of movement which belonged to him, a thrill shot through her heart—she knew not why. She did not recognize his likeness to the sketch taken by her father, from his recollections of Harley’s early youth. She did not guess who he was; and yet she felt herself color, and, naturally fearless though she was, turned away with a vague alarm.

“Pardon my want of ceremony, Signorina,” said Harley, in Italian; “but I am so old a friend of your father’s that I can not feel as a stranger to yourself.”

Then Violante lifted to him her dark eyes, so intelligent and so innocent—eyes full of surprise, but not displeased surprise. And Harley himself stood amazed, and almost abashed, by the rich and marvelous beauty that beamed upon him. “My father’s friend,” she said hesitatingly, “and I never to have seen you!”

“Ah, Signorina,” said Harley (and something of his native humor, half arch, half sad, played round his lip), “you are mistaken there; you have seen me before, and you received me much more kindly then—”

“Signor!” said Violante, more and more surprised, and with a yet richer color on her cheeks.

Harley, who had now recovered from the first effect of her beauty, and who regarded her as men of his years and character are apt to regard ladies in their teens, as more child than woman, suffered himself to be amused by her perplexity; for it was in his nature, that the graver and more mournful he felt at heart, the more he sought to give play and whim to his spirits.

“Indeed, Signorina,” said he demurely, “you insisted then on placing one of those fair hands in mine; the other (forgive me the fidelity of my recollections) was affectionately thrown around my neck.”

“Signor!” again exclaimed Violante; but this time there was anger in her voice as well as surprise, and nothing could be more charming than her look of pride and resentment.

Harley smiled again, but with so much kindly sweetness, that the anger vanished at once, or rather Violante felt angry with herself that she was no longer angry with him. But she had looked so beautiful in her anger, that Harley wished, perhaps, to see her angry again. So, composing his lips from their propitiatory smile he resumed, gravely—

(To Be Continued.)

A BRACE OF BLUNDERS BY A ROVING ENGLISHMAN.

I arrived at Bayonne from Paris, by the Malle-Poste, one glorious morning. How well I remember it! The courier, who used to play an important part in the economy of the old French Malle-Poste, was the most irritable man I ever saw. He quarreled with every one and every thing on the road. I fancy that he was liable to some slight penalty in case of reaching Bayonne later than a given hour; but had the penalty been breaking on the wheel, he could not have been more anxious to drive at full speed. Here let me note, by the way, that the pace of a French courier, in the good old times, was the most tremendous pace at which I have ever traveled behind horses. It surpassed the helter-skelter of an Irish mail. The whole economy of the Malle-Poste was curious. No postillion ever drove more than one stage: mortal arms could not have continued flogging any farther. The number of the horses was indefinite—now there were four; presently, five, or six, or seven; four again, or eight; all harnessed with broken bits of rope and wonders of fragmentary tackle. The coach-box, on which the postillion used to sit, was the minutest iron perch to which the body of a man could hook itself. The coach itself was britzka-shaped, with room for two. It was in this conveyance that I traveled over the frightful hills between Bordeaux and Bayonne. When we neared any descent a mile or two long, the postillion regularly tied the reins loosely to some part of the frail box, seized the whip, and flogged, and shouted, until down we went with a great rush, dashing and rocking from side to side while my irate friend, the courier, plied a sort of iron drag or rudder, with the enthusiastic gestures of a madman. Watching my time, when, after one of these frantic bouts, my friend sank back exhausted, and quite hoarse with all his roaring, I quietly offered him a bunch of grapes, which I had bought at Tours. Their grateful coolness made the man my friend eternally, but had I offered him a captain’s biscuit at that moment I could not have answered for the consequences. So much depends on judgment in the timing of a gift!

On arriving at Bayonne, the first notable thing I saw was a gendarme, who asked me for my passport. I had none. He looked grave, but I, young in travel, pushed him aside cavalierly, and bade my servant, who had arrived the day before, see to my luggage. The cocked hat followed me into the inn, but bidding it be off, I walked into a private sitting-room, in which a bed was a prominent article of furniture. I ordered for my breakfast some broiled ham and eggs, and was informed that I could not have ham, though in Bayonne. I should be served with chocolate and sugar-sticks, pump-water, and milk-bread. While breakfast was preparing, the cocked hat arrested me, and marched me off to the police-office.

“Your passport?” said the Inspector.

“My breakfast,” said I.

“You are under arrest,” said the Inspector.

Then I referred to the consul, with whom I had a sort of second-hand acquaintance, and who offered to provide me with a passport; but his offer was declined. I was conducted to the prefêt. The prefêt transferred me to the Procureur du Roi, whom I unhappily disturbed when he was sitting down to breakfast. I apologized for my unavoidable intrusion.

“Pray don’t mention it,” said he; “I take cold fish for breakfast, and iced coffee;” so he sat down and listened to my tale, and said that I must be detained.

“Impossible!” I cried. “I have sent on my money and baggage to Madrid.”

“Many political agitators have slipped through Bayonne,” replied the procureur. “Write to Lord Hervey. When a passport comes for you from Paris you can pass the frontier; not before.”

Of course he said he was “desolated,” as he bowed me out. I was at liberty to reside at the hôtel, under the lackeyship of two gendarmes, who waited on me night and day. A crowd had gathered to witness my return from the house of the procureur, and ladies thronged the balconies. Rumor had, in fact, created me Conde de Montemolin!

Henceforth, until my passport came, I was peeped at through all manner of doors by all manner of men, and encountered accidentally in passages by all manner of women; one band hindered me from sleeping in my bed, another played to me at dinner, and both expected payment for their services, until the passport came, and brought me so much degradation as enabled me to step, uncared for, into the common diligence, and travel on.

It has occurred to many other people to be mistaken in some such way, and more than once it has occurred to people to make, on their own account, a certain blunder, which Goldsmith has immortalized. This blunder, I, when I ought to have known better, was incautious enough one day to commit....

In the year one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight, I was engaged in a tour through the by-ways of Germany, on horseback. During this tour I found myself, one summer morning, drawing near to the small town of Maikommen, in the Palatinate. Though the dawn had been cloudless, the noon threatened a storm, and already the big drops struck on the ground. Respect for my baggage, which consisted of two shirts, three books, and a pair of stockings, made me look for shelter.

The heavy drops fell faster as I cantered on at a brisk pace, and just at the entrance of the little town rode through a pair of broad gates into what I took for the inn-yard. Having stabled my horse in a remarkably clean stall, I ran into the house, and got under cover, just as the first peal of thunder rattled among the distant hills, and the rain had begun plashing down in earnest. A pretty child sucked its thumbs in the passage. “Quick, little puss,” said I, shaking the raindrops from my hat, “tell somebody to come to me!” “Mamma,” the child cried, running in, “here is a strange gentleman.”

A pleasant-looking woman, with a homely German face, came out of an adjoining room with the child clinging to her dress, and asked me what I wanted?

“Some dinner,” I answered “and a bottle of your best wine.”

“Go and tell father to come,” said the woman, looking at me curiously. A tall, good-humored man, of about fifty, made his appearance, and I repeated my desire in a tone somewhat more authoritative. He laughed, and the wife laughed, and the child shrieked with laughter. But I had met with many curiosities among the German innkeepers in remote country places, and, being willing to let these people, see that, though an Englishman, I was also good-humored, I joined their laugh, and then asked, with a grave face, when the table-d’hôte would be served?

“We keep no table-d’hôte,” replied the husband.

“Well,” I said, “but notwithstanding, you will let me have some dinner, I suppose? I have come a long way, and it is far to the next town. Besides, it rains!”

“Certainly, it rains!” replied the man, with a phlegmatic look over the puddles in the court-yard.

At this moment a clattering of plates, a steam of soup, and a sweet odor of fresh cucumber, attracted my attention. I said immediately that I was quite willing to dine at their table. By this time the child had got over its fear, and was at play with my riding-whip; a few caressing words of mine toward the little one, had reassured its mother. She spoke for a moment in _patois_ with her husband; and then bade the servant lay another knife and fork.

I rather liked my landlord’s eccentricity; so, tapping him upon the shoulder in a friendly way, I desired that he would let me have a bottle of his very best wine; and by way of propitiating him still more, I feigned to have heard a good deal of his cellar, and requested to see it. “O, very well,” he said; “follow me if you please.’”

He took me down into a cellar capitally stocked, and there we tasted a good many wines. My landlord seemed to be in the best temper.

“And what,” I asked, “is the price of that white wine in the thin long-necked bottles?”

I despair of getting its colossal name down upon paper, or I would try it; he gave it a great many syllables, and said it was the choicest and most expensive wine he had.

“Then,” said I, “that is what we will drink to-day. I will take a bottle to myself, and you another; you shall drink it with me.”

“You are very kind,” he said; “but let me recommend some other bin; this wine you will find is—is very heady.”

I thought that, like a thrifty host, he had some qualm about my means of paying for it; so I seized, manfully, a bottle in each hand, and crying “Come along!” accompanied the host into the dining-room.

The wine deserved its praise; opening our hearts, it soon made us famous friends. I had been pleased with the scenery about this quiet nook, and, being master of my time, and very comfortable, I made up my mind and said,

“I tell you what, my friend. I shall send for my things from Heidelberg, and stay here for a week or two.”

The laughter again pealed out; but my host, who probably had seen quite enough of a guest who insisted upon drinking his best wine, put on a grave face. It looked like an innkeeper’s face, when he is buckling himself up to strike a bargain. To save him trouble, I at once said that I would pay three florins a day for myself, and one for the accommodation of my horse.

“He thinks we keep an inn!” the little child screamed through her laughter. I instantly collapsed.

PUBLIC EXECUTIONS IN ENGLAND.

One Saturday morning toward the close of November or beginning of December, I have forgotten the precise date, a letter was put into my hand at the office. It was from my quondam friend and employer the cutler editor, as whose agent I occasionally acted, and who charged me with a commission to procure him certain “sorts” from the foundry and transmit them by coach, in time for his next impression. Not choosing to disappoint my wife and lose my dinner, I deferred the visit to the foundry until after work in the evening; when, upon arriving at Chiswell-street, I found the men in the act of leaving, but was informed I could have the materials I wanted as early as I chose on Monday. On Monday morning, accordingly, having risen rather earlier than usual and breakfasted by candle-light, I set forth to execute my commission before proceeding to work. Crossing Blackfriars-bridge, and barely noticing that there was an unusual concourse of foot-passengers of the laboring and lower sorts, I turned up Ludgate-hill, where I found the crowd still greater, less equivocally disrespectable, and all hurrying forward at a rapid walking-pace. Intent upon the object I had in view, I pushed forward as rapidly as the rest, and turning sharp round into the Old Bailey, came suddenly upon a spectacle which, of all others, was the farthest from my thoughts. It was the morning of an execution. A thick damp haze filled the air, not amounting to an actual fog, but sufficiently dense to confine the limits of vision to a few hundred yards. The beams of the level sun threw an almost supernatural light of a dim but fiery hue into the mist which they yet had not force enough to penetrate; and there, darkly looming with grim and shadow-like outline against a background of lurid vapor, rose the gallows upon which a wretched fellow-creature was about to be death-strangled and dangled in expiation of the crime of murder. In a moment the commission I had in hand vanished from my thoughts, and, impelled by a fearful and morbid curiosity, I suffered myself to be borne by the pressure behind, every moment aggravated by the arrival of trampling multitudes to the spot, toward the object of the general gaze. One minute afterward, I saw that the attempt to retrace my steps would be not only vain but dangerous; and, compelled to make the best of what I could not now avoid, I was pressed onward as far as the outlet of Fleet-lane, when, contriving by main force to get my back against the end of a stout tressle upon which seven or eight fellows were mounted, I managed to maintain my position until the horrible ceremony was concluded. It wanted yet full twenty minutes to eight o’clock, when I stood fast-wedged within a few fathoms’ length of the scaffold. As far as the eye could pierce through the misty glare, was one unbroken sea of human heads and faces; the outer masses reeling, staggering and driving in fitful currents against the firm, compact and solid centre, fixed and immovable as though charmed to stone by the horrible fascination of the gibbet. Far beyond and above all the tower of St. Sepulchre’s, magnified by the morning haze, showed like a tall, transparent cloud, from which was soon to burst the thunder-peal of doom upon the miserable man who had shed his brother’s blood. The subdued murmur of the immense mob rose and swelled like the hollow roar of a distant but angry sea. Here and there a tall and burly ruffian, pre-eminent above the crowd, signaled his fellow in the distance, or bellowed a ghastly witticism upon the coming horror across the heads of the throng. Women—if women they are to be called, who, like vultures to the carcass, flock to the spectacle of dying agonies—of all ages but of one indescribably vicious and repulsive class, had pushed, and struggled, and fought their way to an eligible point of view, where they awaited with masculine impatience the close of the fearful drama of which they formed so revolting a part. Children of tender age, who must have taken up their position ere the day had dawned, and before the arrival of the masses, made an unsightly addition to the scene. A boy of nine, borne aloft on the shoulders of a man of sixty, who stood by my side, expressed his uncontrollable delight at the tragedy he was about to witness. At every window in the houses opposite, the debtors’ door, and indeed wherever a view of the gallows could be obtained, parties of pleasure were assembled for the recreation of the morning. The roofs, the parapets, the protruding eaves of the shops, all were populous with life; the very lamp-posts and projecting sign-boards were clung and clustered over with eager beings impatient to assist in the funeral obsequies of the victim of the law. And now a violent surging and commotion in the centre of the living mass gives token of a fierce quarrel which has ripened to a fight. Shrieks, yells, and cheers of encouragement issue from a hundred throats, while a crew of tall and powerful blackguards elbow and trample their way to the scene of action, and the glazed hats of the police are seen converging unerringly to the disturbed spot. Then there is the flourishing of gilded staves, the sound of sturdy blows followed by a roar of execration, and a gory-visaged culprit is dragged forth, defrauded of his expected banquet, and consigned to a cell in the nearest station. The tumult has hardly subsided when another claims attention. A brace of pickpockets, taking advantage of the fight, are caught in the too confident exercise of their profession; and these, much easier captives than the fighting Irishman, are led off in their turn to the same vile durance.

By this time, weary and actually sore with the repeated violent collisions I had undergone in sustaining my post, I was glad to make a bargain with the man perched above me, who, for a bribe of a few pence, allowed me to effect a footing in his front. I had scarcely accomplished this when the church-clock in the distance rung out the quarters. The crowd, listening for this, had been comparatively silent for the last few minutes, and the note of the bell was acknowledged by a kind of shuddering deprecation for silence, by the instant uncovering of innumerable heads, and the involuntary direction of every eye toward the debtors’ door. As the fatal hour at length pealed forth the door was slowly opened, and there came out upon the scaffold, not the mournful death-procession which all were awaiting with such intense interest, but its grim herald and precursor, the crime-honored aristarch of kill-craft, the great stage-manager of the law’s last scene, whose performances are so much relished by the mob—the hangman, bearing the odious strand of new rope coiled upon his arm. He was received with a low but universal hum of recognition from the vast multitude now breathless with the exciting anticipation of what was so soon to follow. With an apparent perfect unconsciousness of the presence of a single spectator, he proceeded to mount to the cross-piece of the gibbet, to which, with an air of professional dexterity, he deliberately attached the loathsome cord, occasionally pausing and measuring with his eye the distance to the level of the platform. During this operation he was favored with a running fire of comments and counsels, garnished with infernal jokes and sallies of insane humor, from the mob who stood nearest. Having made the necessary preparations he withdrew for a few minutes, amidst the mock cheers and congratulations of some kindred spirits below. The awful pause which ensued was but of brief duration. Too soon a group of dark figures slowly emerged from the open door-way, among which I could discern the chaplain reading the burial-service, and then the quivering criminal, his hands clasped in prayer, yet bound together in front of his breast: he was supported by two assistants, and was already, to all appearance, more than half dead with mortal terror. These demonstrations of insupportable anguish on the part of the principal performer were received with evident and audible dissatisfaction by a large portion of the spectators of the drama. Derisive sneers on the want of “pluck” manifested by the poor, horror-stricken wretch were expressed in language which can not be repeated; and in many a female but unfeminine face, hardened by embruting vice and callous to every feeling of humanity, I read a contemptuous scorn of the timorous sufferer and a proud and fiend-like consciousness that they themselves would have dared the dark ordeal with less shrinking. The very boy mounted on the old man’s shoulders at my side called his “grand-dad” to witness that “the cove as was to be hanged wasn’t game;” a declaration which was received with a hoarse chuckle and a corroborative verdict by the standers-by, while the repulsive ceremony went on with fearful rapidity. In less than a minute the light of day was shut forever from his eyes, the last prayerful accents from human lips were dumb to his ears, and the body of the malefactor, sinking with a sudden fall until half concealed by the level platform, struggled in the final throes of agony for a few moments—mercifully abbreviated, as some well-experienced amateurs at my side plainly pointed out, by the coadjutors of the hangman pulling heavily at the feet in the inclosure below—and then swung senseless, veering slowly round upon the now deserted stage.

The very instant the “drop” fell, and while the short gasping cry from a thousand lips which hailed the close of the tragedy yet rung in the air, the scene assumed a new character: the elements of business were borne into the arena of pleasure. Three or four nondescript specimens of the street-orator, who were standing just beneath me, drew suddenly forth from the depths of their long-tailed greasy coats of serge each a bundle of damp paper, which they flourished into flags in a twinkling; and while the death-struggle was acting before their eyes, eager to turn it to account and to realize an honest penny, filled the air with their roaring intonations of “the last dying speech, confession, and behavior” of the murderer of the season. Their example was imitated by fifty others on different parts of the ground, and the chorus of their united voices formed but a beggarly requiem to the departing spirit. The tragedy ended, the farce, as a matter of course, came next. The body had to remain suspended for an hour, and during that hour amusement must be provided, at least for that portion of the spectators who can never have enough unless they have the whole of an entertainment. To swing a live cat from a side avenue into the middle of the crowd; to whirl a heavy truncheon from one broken head on a mission to another; to kick, maul, and worry some unfortunate stray cur that has unhappily wandered from his master; to get up a quarrel or a fight, if between women so much the better—such are some of the time-honored diversions chosen to recreate the hour which a sagacious legislature presumes to be spent in moral reflections upon the enormity of crime and the certainty of its bitter punishment, in the presence of the law-strangled dead.

I had never before seen a public execution in England, but I knew perfectly well—as who does not know?—the feeling with which such exhibitions are regarded by the lower orders, and I had often revolved in my mind the probable cause of that feeling. In now witnessing thus accidentally the whole ceremony, I thought I perceived one source of it, and that not a trifling one, in the ceremony itself. It struck me, and I have no doubt but others have received the same impression, that with all the actual horrors of the dismal process, in addition to a great deal that is disgusting, there is a great deal more that is essentially though horribly ridiculous in our national legal method of public killing. The idea of tying a man’s hands, of drawing over his face a white night-cap, through which his features yet remain dimly legible, and then hanging him up in the air is manifestly a ridiculous idea—and connect it with what dreadful realities we may, the sense of the comic or absurd will predominate in the minds of the populace, ever alive to the appreciation of the preposterous or the discrepant, and never willingly disposed to serious reflection. The vagabond kennel-raker, the nomadic coster, the houseless thief, the man of the lowest order of intellect or of morals, sees the majesty of the law descending to the punch-and-judy level, and getting rid of its criminals by the same process as the hunch-backed worthy adopts to get rid of his tormentor—and being accustomed from his infancy to laugh heartily at the latter exhibition, he is not likely to retain for any length of time a grave demeanor in presence of the former one. A flogging in the army is allowed by all unfortunate enough to have witnessed it to be a far more impressive spectacle than a hanging at the Old Bailey. Strong men are known to faint at the sight of the one, while boys and women find amusement in the other. If the object of either exhibition be to deter the spectators from offending against the laws, why is the discrepancy between the effects of the two all on the wrong side? unless it be that the one exhibits the semblance at least of Justice vindicating her violated authority with a deserved though terrible measure of severity, while the other comes into view as a mere hasty and bungling business of killing, the vulgar and beggarly details of which it is impossible to connect in imagination with her divine attributes.

Some years before, I had witnessed in Paris the execution of two men for assassination. The crowd on that occasion, in the Place de Grève, was as great as now in the Old Bailey; but their decorum, I am bound to state, was infinitely greater. I can only account for this difference in favor of a population among whom human life is at a far greater discount than it is with us, from the fact that among the French a public execution is a much more impressive spectacle than it can be made to be in England. The guillotine bears a higher character, perhaps, because it wears a more serious and terrible aspect than the gallows; and the functionary who controls its avenging blade does not, as with us, bear a name the synonym of all that is loathsome and repulsive. It is the same class of men and the same order of minds that flock together to gaze at public executions wherever they take place; but I question whether, in any other country than England, a class of traders could be found corresponding with our hawkers and bawlers of last dying speeches, who congregate with their lying wares around the foot of the gallows, watchfully waiting for the commencement of the death-struggle, to them the signal of commerce, and then at the precise moment of horror, unanimously exploding from their hoarse throats “a full, true, and particular account, for the small charge of one half-penny.” The meanest mud-lark in all Gaul, the infamous and mal-odorous _chiffonier_ of Paris, would recoil with disgust from such a species of traffic, the prevalence and prosperity of which at such a time among the lowest orders of London, testify perhaps more than any other single fact to the degraded state of the popular feeling in reference to death-punishment by the hands of the hangman.

Second, to the influence of the hangman, and the scene in which he figures in the production of a degrading and disgraceful estimate of the terrible solemnities of justice, is that of the press. What the Old Bailey or the Horsemonger-lane exhibition is to the uneducated spectator, the broad-sheet is to the uneducated reader; and it requires no great discrimination to recognize in the publication of every minute particular of deeds of violence and bloodshed, looking to the avidity with which such details are seized upon by the public, one of the most fruitful sources of demoralization and crime. The wretched criminal whose language, looks, and deportment are chronicled as matters of general importance, becomes first an object of interest, then an idol to those of his own class. If, as we know to be the case, men are led by the force of example to the commission of suicide, why not of any other species of crime? If a fashion may spring up, and prevail for a time, of leaping headlong from the top of a monument or the parapet of a bridge through the publicity given to such acts by means of the press, how shall the exploits of the felon or the assassin escape imitation when made the subjects of a far more extensive and pertinacious publicity, and paraded as they are before the world with all the importance they can be made to assume? There can be no question but that this practice of pandering to a morbid taste for a detestable species of excitement results largely in engendering the very crimes which certain public writers find it so profitable to detail at such length. The performer on the Old Bailey stage becomes a veritable hero in the eyes of the mob of readers for whose especial delectation his history is periodically dished up, and they gloat over the recital of his acts with a relish and a gusto which no other species of literature can awaken. So great, indeed, of late years, has grown the appetite for violence and villainy of all kinds, that our romance-writers have generously stepped forward to supplement the exertions of the last-dying-speech patterer, as a pendant to whose flimsy damp sheets they supply a still more “full, true, and particular account” in the form of three volumes post octavo. Thus, besides the certainty of being hanged in the presence of ten or twenty thousand admiring spectators, the daring and darling desperado who “dies game” stands the enviable chance of becoming a literary property in the hands of one of those gentlemen, and of running a second course, in half-calf and lettered, to interest and instruct that very community whom it was his life-long occupation to rob, to plunder, or to slay.

Pondering such discursive philosophy as this in my mind, I stood still on my three-penny eminence until the crowd had sufficiently cleared away to allow me to retrace my steps as far as Ludgate-hill without inconvenience. Then, having no great relish for the cadaverous jocularity which generally characterizes the scene of an execution during the removal of the body of the malefactor, I descended and turned my back upon the ignominious spectacle, with a feeling of disgust for the multitude of my fellows who could find recreation in the elements of cruelty and horror, and with anger and vexation at myself for having added one to their number.

WHAT TO DO IN THE MEAN TIME?

It has been frequently remarked by a philosopher of our acquaintance, whose only fault is impracticability, that in life there is but one real difficulty: this is simply—what to do in the mean time? The thesis requires no demonstration. It comes home to the experience of every man who hears it uttered. From the chimney-pots to the cellars of society, great and small, scholars and clowns, all classes of struggling humanity are painfully alive to its truth.

The men to whom the question is pre-eminently embarrassing are those who have either pecuniary expectancies, or possess talents of some particular kind, on whose recognition by others their material prosperity depends. It may be laid down as a general axiom in such cases, that the worst thing a man can do is to _wait_, and the best thing he can do is to _work_; that is to say, that in nine cases out of ten, doing something has a great advantage over doing nothing. Such an assertion would appear a mere obvious truism, and one requiring neither proof nor illustration, were it not grievously palpable to the student of the great book of life—the unwritten biographical dictionary—of the world—that an opposite system is too often preferred and adopted by the unfortunate victims of this “condition-of-every-body question,” so clearly proposed, and in countless instances so inefficiently and indefinitely answered.

To multiply dismal examples of such sad cases of people ruined, starved, and in a variety of ways fearfully embarrassed and tormented during the process of expectation, by the policy of cowardly sloth or feeble hesitation, might, indeed, “point a moral,” but would scarcely “adorn a tale.” It is doubtless an advantage to know how to avoid errors, but it is decidedly a much greater advantage to learn practical truth. We shall therefore leave the dark side of the argument with full confidence to the memories, experience, and imaginations of our readers, and dwell rather—as both a more salutary and interesting consideration—on the brighter side, in cases of successful repartee to the grand query, which our limited personal observation has enabled us to collect. Besides, there is nothing attractive or exciting about intellectual inertia. The contrast between active resistance and passive endurance is that between a machine at rest and a machine in motion. Who that has visited the Great Exhibition can have failed to remark the difference of interest aroused in the two cases? What else causes the perambulating dealers in artificial spiders suspended from threads to command so great a patronage from the juvenile population of Paris and London? What else constitutes the superiority of an advertising-van over a stationary poster? What sells Alexandre Dumas’s novels, and makes a balloon ascent such a favorite spectacle? “Work, man!” said the philosopher: “hast thou not all eternity to rest in?” And to _work_, according to Mill’s “Political Economy,” is to _move_; therefore perpetual motion is the great ideal problem of mechanicians.

The first case in our museum is that of a German officer. He was sent to the coast of Africa on an exploring expedition, through the agency of the _parti prêtre_, or Jesuit party in France, with whose machinations against Louis Philippe’s government he had become accidentally acquainted. The Jesuits, finding him opposed to their plans, determined to remove him from the scene of action. In consequence of this determination, it so happened that the captain of the vessel in which he went out, set sail one fine morning, leaving our friend on shore to the society and care of the native negro population. His black acquaintances for some time treated him with marked civility; but as the return of the ship became more and more problematical, familiarity began to breed its usual progeny, and the unhappy German found himself in a most painful position. Hitherto he had not been treated with actual disrespect; but when King Bocca-Bocca one day cut him in the most unequivocal manner, he found himself so utterly neglected, that the sensation of being a nobody—a nobody, too, among niggers!—for the moment completely overcame him. A feeble ray of hope was excited shortly afterward in his despondent heart by a hint gathered from the signs made by the negro in whose hut he lived, that a project was entertained in high quarters of giving him a coat of lamp-black, and selling him as a slave; but this idea was abandoned by its originators, possibly for want of opportunity to carry it out. Now our adventurer had observed that so long as he had a charge of gunpowder left to give away, the black men had almost worshiped him as an incarnation of the Mumbo-Jumbo adored by their fathers. Reflecting on this, it occurred to him that if, by any possibility, he could contrive to manufacture a fresh supply of the valued commodity, his fortunes would be comparatively secure.

No sooner had this idea arisen in his brain, than, with prodigious perseverance, he proceeded to work toward its realization. The worst of it was, that he knew the native names neither of charcoal, sulphur, nor nitre. No matter; his stern volition was proof against all difficulties. Having once conveyed his design to the negroes, he found them eager to assist him, though, as difficulty after difficulty arose, it required all the confidence of courage and hopeful energy to control their savage impatience. The first batch was a failure, and it was only by pretending that it was yet unfinished he was enabled to try a second, in which he triumphed over all obstacles. When the negroes had really loaded their muskets with his powder, and fired them off in celebration of the event, they indeed revered the stranger as a superior and marvelous being. For nearly eighteen months the German remained on the coast. It was a port rarely visited, and the negroes would not allow him to make any attempt to travel to a more frequented place. Thus he continued to make gunpowder for his barbarous friends, and to live, according to their notions, “like a prince;” for to do King Bocca-Bocca justice, when he learned our friend’s value, he treated him like a man and a brother. What might have been his fate had he awaited in idle despondency the arrival of a vessel? As it was, the negroes crowded the beach, and fired off repeated salvos at his departure. Doubtless his name will descend through many a dusky generation as the teacher of that art which they still practice, carrying on a lucrative commerce in gunpowder with the neighboring tribes. A small square chest of gold-dust, which the escaped victim of Jesuit fraud brought back to Europe, was no inappropriate proof of the policy of doing something “in the mean time,” while waiting, however anxiously, to do something else.

We knew another case in point, also connected with the late king of the French. M. de G—— was, on the downfall of that monarch, in possession of a very handsome pension for past services. The revolution came, and his pension was suspended. His wife was a woman of energy: she saw that the pension might be recovered by making proper representations in the right quarters; but she, also, saw that ruinous embarrassment and debt might accrue in the interim. Her house was handsomely furnished—she had been brought up in the lap of wealth and luxury. She did not hesitate; she turned her house into a lodging-house, sank the pride of rank, attended to all the duties of such a station, and—what was the result? When, at the end of three years, M. de G—— recovered his pension, he owed nobody a farthing, and the arrears sufficed to dower one of his daughters about to marry a gentleman of large fortune, who had become acquainted with her by lodging in their house. Madame de G——’s fashionable friends thought her conduct very shocking. But what might have become of the family in three years of petitioning?

Again: one of our most intimate acquaintance was an English gentleman, who, having left the army at the instance of a rich father-in-law, had the misfortune subsequently to offend the irascible old gentleman so utterly, that the latter suddenly withdrew his allowance of £1000 per annum, and left our friend to shift for himself. His own means, never very great, were entirely exhausted. He knew too well the impracticable temper of his father-in-law to waste time in attempting to soften him. He also knew that by his wife’s settlement he should be rich at the death of the old man, who had already passed his seventieth year. He could not borrow money, for he had been severely wounded in Syria, and the insurance-offices refused him: but he felt a spring of life and youth within him that mocked their calculations. He took things cheerfully, and resolved to work for his living. He answered unnumbered advertisements, and made incessant applications for all sorts of situations. At length matters came to a crisis: his money was nearly gone; time pressed; his wife and child must be supported. A seat—not in parliament, but on the box of an omnibus, was offered him. He accepted it. The pay was equivalent to three guineas a week. It was hard work, but he stuck to it manfully. Not unfrequently it was his lot to drive gentlemen who had dined at his table, and drunk his wine in former days. He never blushed at their recognition; he thought working easier than begging. For nearly ten years he endured all the ups and downs of omnibus life. At last, the tough old father-in-law, who during the whole interval had never relented, died; and our hero came into the possession of some £1500 a year, which he enjoys at this present moment. Suppose he had borrowed and drawn bills instead of working during those ten years, as many have done who had expectancies before them, where would he have been on his exit from the Queen’s Bench at the expiration of the period? In the hands of the Philistines, or of the Jews?

Our next specimen is that of a now successful author, who, owing to the peculiarity of his style, fell, notwithstanding a rather dashing _début_, into great difficulty and distress. His family withdrew all support, because he abandoned the more regular prospects of the legal profession for the more ambitious but less certain career of literature. He felt that he had the stuff in him to make a popular writer; but he was also compelled to admit that popularity was not in his case to be the work of a day. The _res angustæ domi_ grew closer and closer; and though not objecting to dispense with the supposed necessity of dining, he felt that bread and cheese, in the literal acceptation of the term, were really indispensable to existence. Hence, one day, he invested his solitary half-crown in the printing of a hundred cards, announcing that at the “Classical and Commercial Day-school of Mr. ——, &c., Young Gentlemen were instructed in all the Branches, &c., for the moderate sum of Two Shillings weekly.” These cards he distributed by the agency of the milkman in the suburban and somewhat poor neighborhood, in which he occupied a couple of rooms at the moderate rent of 7_s._ weekly. It was not long before a few pupils made, one by one, their appearance at the would-be pedagogue’s. As they were mostly the sons of petty tradesmen round about, he raised no objection to taking out their schooling in kind, and by this means earned at least a subsistence till more prosperous times arrived, and publishers discovered his latent merits. But for this device, he might not improbably have shared the fate of Chatterton and others, less unscrupulous as to a resource for the “mean time”—that rock on which so many an embryo genius founders.

The misfortune of our next case was, not that _he_ abandoned the law, but that the law abandoned _him_. He was a solicitor in a country town, where the people were either so little inclined to litigation, or so happy in not finding cause for it, that he failed from sheer want of clients, and, as a natural consequence, betook himself to the metropolis—that Mecca _cum_ Medina of all desperate pilgrims in search of fickle Fortune. There his only available friend was a pastry-cook in a large way of business. It so happened that the man of tarts and jellies was precisely at that epoch in want of a foreman and book-keeper, his last prime-minister having emigrated to America with a view to a more independent career. Our ex-lawyer, feeling the consumption of tarts to be more immediately certain than the demand for writs, proposed, to his friend’s amazement, for the vacant post; and so well did he fill it, that in a few years he had saved enough of money to start again in his old profession. The pastry-cook and his friends became clients, and he is at present a thriving attorney in Lincoln’s Inn, none the worse a lawyer for a practical knowledge of the _pâtés_ filled by those oysters whose shells are the proverbial heritage of his patrons.

A still more singular resource was that of a young gentleman, of no particular profession, who, having disposed somehow or other in nonprofitable speculations, of a very moderate inheritance, found himself what is technically termed “on his beam-ends;” so much so, indeed, that his condition gradually came to verge on positive destitution; and he sat disconsolately in a little garret one morning, quite at his wits’ end for the means of contriving what Goethe facetiously called “the delightful habit of existing.” Turning over his scanty remains of clothes and other possessions, in the vain hope of lighting upon something of a marketable character, he suddenly took up a sheet of card-board which in happier days he had destined for the sketches at which he was an indifferent adept. He had evidently formed a plan, however absurd: that was plain from the odd smile which irradiated his features. He descended the stairs to borrow of his landlady—what? A shilling?—By no means. A needle and thread, and a pair of scissors. Then he took out his box of water-colors and set to work. To design a picture?—Not a bit of it; to make dancing-dolls!—Yes, the man without a profession had found a trade. By the time it was dusk he had made several figures with movable legs and arms: one bore a rude resemblance to Napoleon; another, with scarcely excusable license, represented the Pope; a third held the very devil up to ridicule; and a fourth bore a hideous resemblance to the grim King of Terrors himself! They were but rude productions as works of art; but there was a spirit and expression about them that toyshops rarely exhibit. The ingenious manufacturer then sallied forth with his merchandise. Within an hour afterward he might have been seen driving a bargain with a vagrant dealer in “odd notions,” as the Yankees would call them. It is unnecessary to pursue our artist through all his industrial progress. Enough that he is now one of the most successful theatrical machinists, and in the possession of a wife, a house, and a comfortable income. He, too, had prospects, and he still has them—as far off as ever. Fortunately for him, he “prospected” on his own account, and found a “diggin’.”

“There is always something to be done, if people will only set about finding it out, and the chances are ever in favor of activity. Whatever brings a man in contact with his fellows may lead to fortune. Every day brings new opportunities to the social worker; and no man, if he has once seriously considered the subject, need ever be at a loss as to what to do in the mean time. Volition is primitive motion, and where there is a will there is a way.”

THE LOST AGES.

My friends, have you read Elia? If so, follow me, walking in the shadow of his mild presence, while I recount to you my vision of the Lost Ages. I am neither single nor unblessed with offspring, yet, like Charles Lamb, I have had my “dream children.” Years have flown over me since I stood a bride at the altar. My eyes are dim and failing, and my hairs are silver-white. My real children of flesh and blood have become substantial men and women, carving their own fortunes, and catering for their own tastes in the matter of wives and husbands, leaving their old mother, as nature ordereth, to the stillness and repose fitted for her years. Understand, this is not meant to imply that the fosterer of their babyhood, the instructor of their childhood, the guide of their youth is forsaken or neglected by those who have sprang up to maturity beneath her eye. No; I am blessed in my children. Living apart, I yet see them often; their joys, their cares are mine. Not a Sabbath dawns but it finds me in the midst of them; not a holiday or a festival of any kind is noted in the calendar of their lives, but grand-mamma is the first to be sent for. Still, of necessity, I pass much of my time alone; and old age is given to reverie quite as much as youth. I can remember a time—long, long ago—when in the twilight of a summer evening it was a luxury to sit apart, with closed eyes; and, heedless of the talk that went on in the social circle from which I was withdrawn, indulge in all sorts of fanciful visions. Then my dream-people were all full-grown men and women. I do not recollect that I ever thought about children until I possessed some of my own. Those waking visions were very sweet—sweeter than the realities of life that followed; but they were neither half so curious nor half so wonderful as the dreams that sometimes haunt me now. The imagination of the old is not less lively than that of the young: it is only less original. A youthful fancy will create more new images; the mind of age requires materials to build with: these supplied, the combinations it is capable of forming are endless. And so were born my dream-children.

Has it never occurred to you, mothers and fathers, to wonder what has become of your children’s lost ages? Look at your little boy of five years old. Is he at all, in any respect, the same breathing creature that you beheld three years back? I think not. Whither, then, has the sprite vanished? In some hidden fairy nook, in some mysterious cloud-land he must exist still. Again, in your slim-formed girl of eight years, you look in vain for the sturdy elf of five. Gone? No; that can not be—“a thing of beauty is a joy forever.” Close your eyes: you have her there! A breeze-like, sportive buoyant thing; a thing of breathing, laughing, unmistakable life; she is mirrored on your retina as plainly as ever was dancing sunbeam on a brook. The very trick of her lip—of her eye; the mischief-smile, the sidelong saucy glance,

“That seems to say, ‘I know you love me, Mr. Grey:’ ”

is it not traced there—all, every line, as clear as when it brightened the atmosphere about you in the days that are no more? To be sure it is; and being so, the thing must exist—somewhere.

I never was more fully possessed with this conviction than once during the winter of last year. It was Christmas-eve. I was sitting alone, in my old arm-chair, and had been looking forward to the fast-coming festival day with many mingled thoughts—some tender, but regretful; others hopeful yet sad; some serious, and even solemn. As I laid my head back and sat thus with closed eyes, listening to the church-clock as it struck the hour, I could not but feel that I was passing—very slowly and gently it is true—toward a time when the closing of the grave would shut out even that sound so familiar to my ear; and when other and more precious sounds of life—human voices, dearer than all else, would cease to have any meanings for me—and even their very echoes be hushed in the silence of the one long sleep. Following the train of association, it was natural that I should recur to the hour when that same church’s bells had chimed my wedding-peal. I seemed to hear their music once again; and other music sweeter still—the music of young vows that “that kept the word of promise to the ear, and broke it” _not_ “to the hope.” Next in succession came the recollection of my children. I seemed to lose sight of their present identity, and to be carried away in thought to times and scenes far back in my long-departed youth, when they were growing up around my knees—beautiful forms of all ages, from the tender nursling of a single year springing with outstretched arms into my bosom, to the somewhat rough but ingenuous boy of ten. As my inner eye traced their different outlines, and followed them in their graceful growth from year to year, my heart was seized with a sudden and irresistible longing to hold fast those beloved but passing images of the brain. What joy, I thought, would it be, to transfix the matchless beauty which had wrought itself thus into the visions of my old age! to preserve, forever, unchanging, every varied phase of that material but marvelous structure, which the glorious human soul had animated and informed through all its progressive stages from the child to the man.

Scarcely was the thought framed when a dull, heavy weight seemed to press upon my closed eyelids. I now saw more clearly even than before my children’s images in the different stages of their being. But I saw these, and these alone, as they stood rooted to the ground, with a stony fixedness in their eyes: every other object grew dim before me. The living faces and full-grown forms which until now had mingled with and played their part among my younger phantoms altogether disappeared. I had no longer any eyes, any soul, but for this my new spectre-world. Life, and the things of life, had lost their interest; and I knew of nothing, conceived of nothing, but those still, inanimate forms from which the informing soul had long since passed away.

And now that the longing of my heart was answered, was I satisfied? For a time I gazed, and drew a deep delight from the gratification of my vain and impious craving. But at length the still, cold presence of forms no longer of this earth began to oppress me. I grew cold and numb beneath their moveless aspect; and constant gazing upon eyes lighted up by no varying expression, pressed upon my tired senses with a more than nightmare weight. I felt a sort of dull stagnation through every limb, which held me bound where I sat, pulseless and moveless as the phantoms on which I gazed.

As I wrestled with the feeling that oppressed me, striving in vain to break the bonds of that strange fascination, under the pressure of which I surely felt that I must perish—a soft voice, proceeding from whence I knew not, broke upon my ear. “You have your desire,” it said gently; “why, then, struggle thus? Why writhe under the magic of that joy you have yourself called up? Are they not here before you, the Lost Ages whose beauty and whose grace you would perpetuate? What would you more? O mortal!”

“But these forms have no life,” I gasped; “no pulsating, breathing soul!”

“No,” replied the same still, soft voice; “these forms belong to the things of the past. In God’s good time they breathed the breath of life; they had _then_ a being and a purpose on this earth. Their day has departed—their work is done.”

So saying, the voice grew still: the leaden weight which had pressed upon my eyelids was lifted off: I awoke.

Filled with reveries of the past—my eyes closed to every thing without—sleep had indeed overtaken me as I sat listening to the old church-clock. But my vision was not all a vision: my dream-children came not without their teaching. If they had been called up in folly, yet in their going did they leave behind a lesson of wisdom.

The morning dawned—the blessed Christmas-morning! With it came my good and dutiful, my real life-children. When they were all assembled round me, and when, subdued and thoughtful beneath the tender and gracious associations of the day, each in turn ministered, reverently and lovingly, to the old mother’s need of body and of soul, my heart was melted within me. Blessed, indeed, was I in a lot full to overflowing of all the good gifts which a wise and merciful Maker could lavish upon his erring and craving creature. I stood reproved. I felt humbled to think that I should ever for a moment have indulged one idle or restless longing for the restoration of that past which had done its appointed work, and out of which so gracious a present had arisen. One idea impressed me strongly: I could not but feel that had the craving of my soul been answered in reality, as my dream had foreshadowed; and had the wise and beneficent order of nature been disturbed and distorted from its just relations, how fearful would have been the result! Here, in my green old age, I stood among a new generation, honored for what I was, beloved for what I had been. What if, at some mortal wish in some freak of nature, the form which I now bore were forever to remain before the eyes of my children! Were such a thing to befall, how would their souls ever be lifted upward to the contemplation of that higher state of being into which it is my hope soon to pass when the hand which guided me hither shall beckon me hence? At the thought my heart was chastened. Never since that night have I indulged in any one wish framed in opposition to nature’s laws. _Now_ I find my dream-children in the present; and to the past I yield willingly all things which are its own—among the rest, the Lost Ages.

BLIGHTED FLOWERS.

The facts of the following brief narrative, which are very few, and of but melancholy interest, became known to me in the precise order in which they are laid before the reader. They were forced upon my observation rather than sought out by me; and they present, to my mind at least, a touching picture of the bitter conflict industrious poverty is sometimes called upon to wage with “the thousand natural shocks which flesh is heir to.”

It must be now eight or nine years since, in traversing a certain street, which runs for nearly half a mile in direct line southward, I first encountered Ellen ——. She was then a fair young girl of seventeen, rather above the middle size, and with a queen-like air and gait, which made her appear taller than she really was. Her countenance, pale but healthy and of a perfectly regular and classic mould, was charming to look upon from its undefinable expression of lovableness and sweet temper. Her tiny feet tripped noiselessly along the pavement, and a glance from her black eye sometimes met mine like a ray of light, as, punctually at twenty minutes to nine, we passed each other near —— House, each of us on our way to the theatre of our daily operations. She was an embroideress, as I soon discovered from a small stretching-frame, containing some unfinished work, which she occasionally carried in her hand. She set me a worthy example of punctuality, and I could any day have told the time to a minute without looking at my watch, by marking the spot where we passed each other. I learned to look for her regularly, and before I knew her name, had given her that of “Minerva,” in acknowledgment of her efficiency as a mentor.

A year after the commencement of our acquaintance, which never ripened into speech, happening to set out from home one morning a quarter of an hour before my usual time, I made the pleasing discovery that my juvenile Minerva had a younger sister, if possible still more beautiful than herself. The pair were taking an affectionate leave of each other at the crossing of the New Road, and the silver accents of the younger as kissing her sister, she laughed out, “Good-by, Ellen,” gave me the first information of the real name of my pretty mentor. The little Mary—for so was the younger called, who could not be more than eleven years of age—was a slender, frolicsome sylph, with a skin of the purest carnation, and a face like that of Sir Joshua’s seraph in the National Gallery, but with larger orbs and longer lashes shading them. As she danced and leaped before me on her way home again, I could not but admire the natural ease and grace of every motion, nor fail to comprehend and sympathize with the anxious looks of the sisters’ only parent, their widowed mother, who stood watching the return of the younger darling at the door of a very humble two-storied dwelling, in the vicinity of the New River Head.

Nearly two years passed away, during which, with the exception of Sundays and holidays, every recurring morning brought me the grateful though momentary vision of one or both of the charming sisters. Then came an additional pleasure—I met them both together every day. The younger had commenced practicing the same delicate and ingenious craft of embroidery, and the two pursued their industry in company under the same employer. It was amusing to mark the demure assumption of womanhood darkening the brows of the aerial little sprite, as, with all the new-born consequence of responsibility, she walked soberly by her sister’s side, frame in hand, and occasionally revealed to passers-by a brief glimpse of her many-colored handiwork. They were the very picture of beauty and happiness, and happy beyond question must their innocent lives have been for many pleasant months. But soon the shadows of care began to steal over their hitherto joyous faces, and traces of anxiety, perhaps of tears, to be too plainly visible on their paling cheeks. All at once I missed them in my morning’s walk, and for several days—it might be weeks—saw nothing of them. I was at length startled from my forgetfulness of their very existence by the sudden apparition of both, one Monday morning, clad in the deepest mourning. I saw the truth at once: the mother, who, I had remarked, was prematurely old and feeble, was gone, and the two orphan children were left to battle it with the world. My conjecture was the truth, as a neighbor of whom I made some inquiries on the subject was not slow to inform me. “ Ah, sir,” said the good woman, “poor Mrs. D—— have had a hard time of it, and she born an’ bred a gentleooman.”

I asked her if the daughters were provided for.

“Indeed, sir,” continued my informant, “I’m afeard not. ’Twas the most unfortunatest thing in the world, sir, poor Mr. D——’s dying jest as a’ did. You see, sir, he war a soldier, a-fightin’ out in Indy, and his poor wife lef at home wi’ them two blossoms o’ gals. He warn’t what you call a common soldier, sir, but some kind o’ officer like; an’ in some great battle fought seven year agone he done fine service I’ve heerd, and promotion was sent out to un’, but didn’t get there till the poor man was dead of his wounds. The news of he’s death cut up his poor wife complete, and she ban’t been herself since. I’ve know’d she wasn’t long for here ever since it come. Wust of all, it seems that because the poor man was dead the very day the promotion reached ’un, a’ didn’t die a captain after all, and so the poor widder didn’t get no pension. How they’ve managed to live is more than I can tell. The oldest gal is very clever, they say; but Lor’ bless ’ee! ’taint much to s’port three as is to be got out o’ broiderin’.”

Thus enlightened on the subject of their private history, it was with very different feelings I afterward regarded these unfortunate children. Bereft of both parents, and cast upon a world with the ways of which they were utterly unacquainted, and in which they might be doomed to the most painful struggles even to procure a bare subsistence, one treasure was yet left them—it was the treasure of each other’s love. So far as the depth of this feeling could be estimated from the looks and actions of both, it was all in all to each. But the sacred bond that bound them was destined to be rudely rent asunder. The cold winds of autumn began to visit too roughly the fair pale face of the younger girl, and the unmistakable indications of consumption made their appearance: the harassing cough, the hectic cheek, the deep-settled pain in the side, the failing breath. Against these dread forerunners it was vain long to contend; and the poor child had to remain at home in her solitary sick chamber, while the loving sister toiled—harder than ever to provide, if possible, the means of comfort and restoration to health. All the world knows the ending of such a hopeless strife as this. It is sometimes the will of Heaven, that the path of virtue, like that of glory, leads but to the grave. So it was in the present instance: the blossom of this fair young life withered away, and the grass-fringed lips of the child’s early tomb closed over the lifeless relics ere spring had dawned upon the year.

Sorrow had graven legible traces upon the brow of my hapless mentor when I saw her again. How different now was the vision that greeted my daily sight from that of former years! The want that admits not of idle wailing compelled her still to pursue her daily course of labor, and she pursued it with the same constancy and punctuality as she had ever done. But the exquisitely chiseled face, the majestic gait, the elastic step—the beauty and glory of youth, unshaken because unassaulted by death and sorrow—where were they? Alas! all the bewitching charms of her former being had gone down into the grave of her mother and sister; and she, their support and idol, seemed no more now than she really was—a wayworn, solitary, and isolated struggler for daily bread.

Were this a fiction that I am writing, it would be an easy matter to deal out a measure of poetical justice, and to recompense poor Ellen for all her industry, self-denial, and suffering in the arms of a husband, who should possess as many and great virtues as herself, and an ample fortune to boot. I wish with all my heart that it were a fiction, and that Providence had never furnished me with such a seeming anomaly to add to the list of my desultory chronicles. But I am telling a true story of a life. Ellen found no mate. No mate, did I say? Yes, one: the same grim yoke-fellow, whose delight it is “to gather roses in the spring,” paid ghastly court to her faded charms, and won her—who shall say an unwilling bride? I could see his gradual but deadly advances in my daily walks: the same indications that gave warning of the sister’s fate admonished me that she also was on her way to the tomb, and that the place that had known her would soon know her no more. She grew day by day more feeble; and one morning I found her seated on the step of a door, unable to proceed. After that she disappeared from my view; and though I never saw her again at the old spot, I have seldom passed that spot since, though for many years following the same route, without recognizing again in my mind’s eye the graceful form and angel aspect of Ellen D——.

“And is this the end of your mournful history?” some querulous reader demands. Not quite. There is a soul of good in things evil. Compassion dwells with the depths of misery; and in the valley of the shadow of death dove-eyed Charity walks with shining wings.... It was nearly two months after I had lost sight of poor Ellen, that during one of my dinner-hour perambulations about town, I looked in, almost accidentally, upon my old friend and chum, Jack W——. Jack keeps a perfumer’s shop not a hundred miles from Gray’s Inn, where, ensconced up to his eyes in delicate odors, he passes his leisure hours—the hours when commerce flags, and people have more pressing affairs to attend to than the delectation of their nostrils—in the enthusiastic study of art and _virtu_. His shop is hardly more crammed with bottles and attar, soap, scents, and all the _et ceteras_ of the toilet, than the rest of his house with prints, pictures, carvings, and curiosities of every sort. Jack and I went to school together, and sowed our slender crop of wild-oats together; and, indeed, in some sort, have been together ever since. We both have our own collections of rarities; such as they are, and each criticises the other’s new purchases. On the present occasion, there was a new Van Somebody’s old painting awaiting my judgment; and no sooner did my shadow darken his door, than, starting from his lair, and bidding the boy ring the bell, should he be wanted, he bustled me up-stairs calling by the way to his housekeeper, Mrs. Jones—Jack is a bachelor—to bring up coffee for two. I was prepared to pronounce my dictum on his newly-acquired treasure, and was going to bounce unceremoniously into the old lumber-room over the lobby to regale my sight with the delightful confusion of his unarranged accumulations, when he pulled me forcibly back by the coat-tail. “Not there,” said Jack; “you can’t go there. Go into my snuggery.”

“And why not there?” said I, jealous of some new purchase which I was not to see.

“Because there’s some body ill there; it is a bed-room now; a poor girl; she wanted a place to die in, poor thing, and I put her in there.”

“Who is she?—a relative?”

“No; I never saw her till Monday last. Sit down, I’ll tell you how it was. Set down the coffee, Mrs. Jones, and just look in upon the patient, will you? Sugar and cream? You know my weakness for the dead-wall in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields.” (Jack never refuses a beggar backed by that wall, for the love of Ben Jonson, who, he devoutly believes, had a hand in building it.) “Well, I met with her there on Monday last. She asked for nothing, but held out her hand, and as she did so the tears streamed from her eyes on the pavement. The poor creature, it was plain enough, was then dying; and I told her so. She said she knew it, but had no place to die in but the parish workhouse, and hoped that I would not send her there. What’s the use of talking? I brought her here, and put her to sleep on the sofa while Jones cleared out the lumber-room and got up a bed. I sent for Dr. H—— to look at her; he gave her a week or ten days at the farthest: I don’t think she’ll last so long. The curate of St. —— comes every day to see her, and I like to talk to her myself sometimes. Well, Mrs. Jones, how goes she on?”

“She’s asleep,” said the housekeeper. “Would you like to look at her, gentlemen?”

We entered the room together. It was as if some unaccountable presentiment had forewarned me: there, upon a snow-white sheet, and pillowed by my friend’s favorite eider-down squab, lay the wasted form of Ellen D——. She slept soundly and breathed loudly; and Dr. H——, who entered while we stood at the bedside, informed us that in all probability she would awake only to die, or if to sleep again, then to wake no more. The latter was the true prophecy. She awoke an hour or two after my departure, and passed away that same night in a quiet slumber without a pang.

I never learned by what chain of circumstances she was driven to seek alms in the public streets. I might have done so, perhaps, by inquiry, but to what purpose? She died in peace, with friendly hands and friendly hearts near her, and Jack buried her in his own grave in Highgate Cemetery, at his own expense; and declares he is none the worse for it. I am of his opinion.

MONTHLY RECORD OF CURRENT EVENTS.

United States.

The past month has not been marked by any domestic event of interest or importance. The principal topic of public discussion has been the character of Kossuth and of the cause he represents. Public opinion is divided as to the propriety of acceding to his request that this country should take an active part in the struggles of Europe; and somewhat, also, as to the rightfulness of his claim to be regarded as still the Governor of Hungary. But there is no difference of opinion as to the wonderful ability which his speeches display. Kossuth has continued his progress Westward, and at the time of closing this Record is at Cincinnati. He visited Pittsburgh, Harrisburgh, Cleveland and Columbus, on his way, and was received at each place with marked demonstrations of respect and confidence. Large sums of money have also been contributed in each, in aid of his cause. He has publicly declined to receive any more public entertainments of any sort, on the ground that they involve a wasteful expenditure of money and lead to no good result

Whatever funds any town, or any individuals may be inclined to devote to him, he desires should be contributed to the cause and not expended in any demonstrations of which he may be the object. His speeches have been devoted to an exposition of his wishes and sentiments, and all bear marks of that fertility of thought and expression which has excited such general admiration.

A very warm discussion, meantime, has sprung up among the exiled Hungarian leaders, of the merits of the cause and of Kossuth. Prince Esterhazy, at one time a member of the Hungarian ministry, a nobleman possessed of large domains in Hungary, first published a letter, dated Vienna, November 13, in which he threw upon the movement of 1848 the reproach of having been not only injurious to the country, but unjust and revolutionary. He vindicated the cause of the Austrian government throughout, and reproached Kossuth and those associated with him in the Hungarian contest with having sacrificed one of Kossuth’s Ministers, and a refugee with him the interests of their country to personal purposes and unworthy ends. Count Casimir Batthyani, also in Turkey, now resident in Paris, soon published a reply to this letter of the Prince, in which he refuted his positions in regard to the Austrian government, proving that dynasty to have provoked the war by a series of unendurable treacheries, and to have sought, systematically, the destruction of the independence and constitution of Hungary. He reproached Esterhazy with an interested desertion of his country’s cause, and with gross inconsistency of personal and public conduct. He closed his letter with a very bitter denunciation of Kossuth, charging upon his weakness and vacillation the unfortunate results of the contest, denying his right to the title of Governor, and censuring his course of agitation as springing simply from personal vanity, and likely to lead to no good result. To this letter Count Pulszky, now with Kossuth, published a brief reply, which was mainly an appeal to the Hungarian leaders not to destroy their cause by divisions among themselves. He also alleged that Count Batthyani did not express the same opinion of the character and conduct of Kossuth during the Hungarian contest, but made himself, to some extent, responsible for both by being associated in the government with him and giving his countenance and support to all his acts. Still more recently two letters have been published from Mr. Szemere, who was also intimately and responsibly connected with Kossuth and his government, and who brought forward in the Diet, immediately after the Declaration of Independence, on behalf of the Ministry of which he was the President, a programme declaring that the future form of government in Hungary would be republican. In one of his letters, dated at Paris, January 4th, he censures Kossuth very severely for his misconduct of the war, and of his subsequent course. Referring especially to Kossuth’s abdication of office and to his transfer of power to the hands of Görgey, he alleges that although it was done in the name of the Ministry, of which he was a member, he never either subscribed or even saw it. He says that Kossuth having repeatedly denounced Görgey as a traitor, ought not to have put supreme power in his hands. He charges him also with having fled to Turkey and deserted the cause of his country, while there were still left four fortresses and over a hundred thousand men to fight for her liberties; and says that the rest of the army surrendered only because Kossuth had fled. He denies Kossuth’s right to the title and office of Governor, because he voluntarily resigned that position, and transferred its powers to another. Much as he might rejoice in the success of Kossuth’s efforts to excite the sympathy of the world on behalf of Hungary, Mr. Szemere says that “to recognize him as Governor, or as he earnestly claims to be acknowledged, the absolute Dictator, would be equivalent to devoting the cause of Hungary, for a second time, to a severe downfall. We welcome, him, therefore, in our ranks only as a single gifted patriot, perhaps even the first among his equals, but as Governor we can not acknowledge him, we who know his past career, and who value divine liberty, and our beloved fatherland above every personal consideration.” But while conceding fully the justice of the censures bestowed upon Kossuth himself, he claims that the cause of Hungary was at least as pure and holy as the war of the American Revolution—that they were the defenders of right and law against the efforts of faithlessness and anarchy—that they were the heroes, the apostles, the martyrs of freedom under the persecutions of tyranny.—In another letter, dated at Paris, December 9, Mr. Szemere addresses Prince Esterhazy directly, and in a tone of great severity. He denounces him for ignorance of the history of his country, and for guilty indifference to her rights, and proceeds, in an argument of great strength, to vindicate the cause in which they were both engaged, from the calumnies of false friends. He gives a clear and condensed historical sketch of the contest, and shows that Hungary never swerved from her rightful allegiance until driven by the faithlessness and relentless hostility of the Austrian dynasty to take up arms in self-defense. Being himself a republican, Mr. Szemere thinks that although it was honorable and loyal, it was not prudent or politic for the nation to cling so long to legitimacy: still “the heroism of remaining so long in the path of constitutional legality redounds to its glory; the short-sightedness of entering so late on the path of revolution is its shame.” He closes by expressing the trust and firm conviction of every Hungarian that the harms his country now suffers will be repaired.—Count Teleki, who represented Hungary at Paris, during the existence of the provisional government, and who now resides at Zurich, has also published a letter in reply to that of Prince Esterhazy, in which he vindicates Count Louis Batthyani from the unjust reproaches of the Prince, and pursues substantially the same line of argument as that of the letter of Mr. Szemere.—Mr. Vakovies, who was one of the Cabinet, also publishes a letter vindicating Kossuth from the accusation of Batthyani.

These conflicting representations from persons who were prominently and responsibly connected with the Hungarian government, of course create difficulties in the way of forming clear opinions upon the subject in the United States. The points of difference, however, relate mainly to persons and particular events, upon the main question, the rightfulness of the Hungarian struggle, little room is left for doubt.

The proceedings of Congress have been unimportant. The sum of $15,000 has been appropriated to the refitting that part of the Congressional library which was destroyed by fire. The subject of printing the census returns has engaged a good deal of attention, but no result has yet been attained. Resolutions were introduced into the Senate some time since by Mr. Cass, asking the friendly interposition of our government with that of Great Britain, for the release of the Irish State prisoners. Several Senators have made speeches upon the subject, nearly all in their favor, but with more or less qualifications. The Compromise resolutions, originally offered by Senator Foote, were discussed for several days, without reaching a vote, and they have since been informally dropped. The resolutions offered by Senators Clarke, Seward, and Cass, on the subject of protesting against intervention, came up for consideration on the 2d of February, when Senator Stockton made an extended speech upon the subject—favoring the Hungarian cause, but expressing an unwillingness to join Great Britain in any such policy, and saying Russia has always evinced friendly dispositions toward the United States. Senator Clarke on the 9th, made a speech upon the same subject, against any action on the part of our government. On the 11th, Senator Cass made an elaborate speech in support of his resolution, in which he vindicated the right, and asserted the duty of the United States to pronounce its opinion upon the interference of despotic states against the efforts of nations to free themselves from oppression. He opposed the idea of armed intervention on our part, but insisted upon the propriety of our exercising a decided moral influence. On the 13th Senator Clemens spoke in reply, insisting that movements in Europe had neither interest nor importance for the United States, denying the justice of the Hungarian struggle, and assailing the character of Kossuth.

The correspondence between the governments of England and the United States in regard to the insult offered to the steamer Prometheus by the English brig-of-war Express, at Greytown, has been published. The first letter is from Mr. Webster to Mr. Lawrence, instructing him to inquire whether the English government sanctioned the act of the officer. The last is from Earl Granville, dated January 10th, in which he states that an official statement of the case had been received. The Vice Admiral on the West Indian Station had already disavowed the act, and denied the right of any British vessel to enforce the fiscal regulations of Mosquito, and had forbidden the Commander of the Express from again employing force in any similar case. Earl Granville states that these representations were fully ratified by the English government; and that they entirely disavowed the act of violence, and had no hesitation in offering an ample apology for that which they consider to have been an infraction of treaty engagements.

Official intelligence has been received of the appointment of John S. Crompton, Esq., who has been for some years connected with the British legation at Washington, as Minister Plenipotentiary in place of Sir Henry Bulwer.—It is understood that Mr. John S. Thrasher, who was convicted of sundry offenses against the Spanish authority in Cuba, and sentenced to imprisonment for seven years on the African coast, has been pardoned by the Queen of Spain, as have also all the Cuban prisoners.

The political parties are beginning to take measures concerning the approaching Presidential election. The Whigs in the Legislature of Maine held a meeting on the 27th of January, at which they adopted a series of resolutions, in favor of a National Convention to be held at Philadelphia on the 17th of June, and nominating General Scott for President, and Governor Jones of Tennessee, for Vice-President, subject to the decision of that Convention. A Democratic State Convention was held at Austin, Texas, January 8th, at which resolutions were adopted, setting forth the party creed, and nominating General Houston for the Presidency.—In Alabama a Democratic State Convention has nominated William R. King for the Presidency.

The Legislature of Wisconsin met on the 15th of January. Governor Farwell’s Message states that owing to the want of funds, the appropriations of last year were not paid within the sum of $38,283. He recommends the passage of a general banking law, and amendments of the school law, and opposes granting public lands in aid of works of internal improvement. He advises that Congress be memorialized upon sundry topics of general interest, among which are the establishment of an Agricultural bureau, the improvement of rivers and harbors, and a modification of the present tariff.—The Legislature of Louisiana met on the 26th ult. The Governor’s Message is mainly devoted to local topics. He advises the appropriation of money for a monument to General Jackson.—The Legislature of Texas has been discussing a proposition to appropriate a million of dollars, of the five millions to be received from the United States, together with other funds, to the establishment of a system of Common Schools. The bill had passed the House.—A bill has been passed ratifying the classification of the public debt submitted by the Governor and Comptroller.

A letter from Honorable James Buchanan has been published, addressed to a Mississippi Democratic Convention, urging the necessity of a strict limitation of the powers of the Federal Government, and attributing to a growing spirit of centralization the evils we now experience.—Colonel Benton has also written a letter to the Democracy of St. Louis County, urging them to blot from the records of the Legislature, the resolutions in favor of nullification, adopted some time since.

From CALIFORNIA we have news to Jan. 20th. It is not, however, of much importance. The country had been visited by a succession of very heavy rain storms, which had swollen the rivers, and in some cases cut off land communication between the towns. The location of the seat of government is still undecided. The Indian difficulties had been quelled for the present at least, but fears were entertained of new outbreaks. Fresh discoveries of gold were still made.

One-third of the city of San Juan de Nicaragua, the most valuable portion, was destroyed by fire on the 4th of February.

Later advices from NEW MEXICO represent the condition of the southern part of the country as most unhappy, in consequence of the violent and deadly hostility of the Apache Indians. They have been provoked by the Mexicans, and wreak their vengeance indiscriminately on the whole country. The provisions of the U. S. Government for keeping the Indians in check have been wholly unavailing, mainly from a wrong disposition of the troops. Steps are now taken to establish posts at various points throughout the Indian Country, as this has been found the most effectual means for preventing their depredations.—The silver mine discovered at Taos proves to be exceedingly rich; and the gold diggings on the Gila are as productive as ever.

Mexico.

We have intelligence from the City of Mexico to the 28th of December. Congress was again in session, but had not completed its organization. On the 20th, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Señor Ramirez, received the representatives of Foreign Powers, and listened to extended remarks from them in favor of modifications in the Mexican tariff. The whole subject will probably soon be brought before Congress. The Indians in the State of Durango continue their ravages; the inefficiency of the measures taken against them by the government is loudly condemned. A riot, directed against the government, occurred on the 18th, in the State of Puebla, but it was speedily suppressed. In Tehuantepec a more serious movement had occurred under the lead of Ex-Governor Ortis; it was defeated after a contest of over four hours. At Cerro Gerdo also, on the 12th, there was a revolt of most of the forces of the Uragua Colony against their chiefs, but it was soon put down.—It is stated on authority that seems entitled to respect, that Santa Anna is planning a new revolutionary movement, and that he designs to make his descent at Acapulco on the Pacific coast. A house has been built there for him, and many of the utensils of a camp and munitions for a campaign are arriving there. It is said that all the officials of that department are friendly to him, and would readily co-operate in his designs.—The Mexican government seems to be satisfied that the revolutionary movement in Northern Mexico has been completely quelled; but our advices from that quarter scarcely justify that confidence. At the latest date, Jan. 23d, Caravajal was on the Rio Grande, with a force of 700 men and several pieces of artillery, and was constantly receiving reinforcements. Several persons connected with the movement were in New Orleans engaged in procuring and shipping supplies for the revolutionists. Gen. Uraga had been relieved from the command at Matamoras, and succeeded by Gen. Avalos. Upon his departure Col. Harney, in command of the U. S. troops on the frontier, addressed him in a letter, thanking him for the facilities he had received from him in the discharge of his duties, and expressing the warmest admiration of his character and services. The Mexican force defending Matamoros is stated at about twelve hundred men.—The official report of the battle of Ceralvo states the number of killed at six, and of wounded twenty-one,

Great Britain.

The burning of the steamer Amazon, with a dreadful loss of life, is the event of most interest which has occurred in England during the past month. She belonged to the West India Company’s line of steam-packets, and sailed on her first voyage from Southampton on Friday the 2d of January. At a quarter before one o’clock on Sunday morning, a fire broke out suddenly, forward on the starboard side, between the steam-chest and the under part of the galley, and the flames instantly rushed up the gangway in front of the foremost funnel. The alarm was at once given, the officers and crew rushed upon deck, and steps were taken to extinguish the fire. But the ship was built of fir, and was very dry, and the flames seized it like tinder. The whole vessel was speedily enveloped in fire. The mail-boat was lowered, but was instantly swamped, and twenty-five people in her were drowned. The other boats were lowered with a good deal of difficulty. Only two, however, succeeded in saving life. The life-boat got loose from the ship with twenty-one persons, and after being at sea thirty hours, was picked up by an English brig, and landed at Plymouth. Another boat, with twenty-five persons on board, succeeded in reaching the French coast. There were 161 persons on board, of whom 115 are supposed to have perished. Among the latter was the well-known author, Eliot Warburton, who was on his way to the Isthmus of Darien, whither he had been sent by the Pacific Junction Company to negotiate a friendly understanding with the Indians. The Amazon was commanded by Captain William Symons, a gentleman of known ability, who also perished. Among those saved were two ladies. The English papers are filled with details and incidents of this sad catastrophe, which, of course, we have not space to copy. An investigation into the origin of the fire, and the circumstances of the disaster, has been made, but no satisfactory result has been reached. The machinery was new, and its working was attended with very great heat, which facilitated the progress of the fire after it had broken out. A great deal of confusion seems to have prevailed on board, but it does not appear that any thing practicable was left undone. The two ladies saved were a Mrs. MacLennan, who got into the life-boat in her night dress with her child, eighteen months old, in her arms, and a Miss Smith, who escaped in the other boat. The value of the Amazon was £100,000, and she was not insured.

The English press continues to discuss French affairs with great eagerness. The whole of Louis Napoleon’s proceeding is denounced with unanimous bitterness, as one of the most high-handed and inexcusable acts of violence and outrage ever perpetrated; and a general fear is felt that he can not maintain himself in a state of peace, but will be impelled to seek a war with England. The condition of the national defenses is, therefore, the chief topic of discussion, and upon this point all the leading journals express serious apprehensions.

The difficulty between the master engineers and their men continues unadjusted. Meetings are held and public statements made by both sides, and the dissension is much more likely to increase than to diminish. The employers will not concede the right of their men to fix the terms on which they shall be hired, and the men will not yield what they consider their just rights. The latter are taking steps to set up workshops of their own by co-operation, and they have already made some progress in the accomplishment of their object.

The Reformers in the principal towns are taking measures to influence the measure which Lord John Russell intends to introduce into Parliament. Meetings have been held at various places, and resolutions adopted, specifying the provisions they desire, and pledging support to the Cabinet, if its measures shall conform to their principles. The friends of the voluntary system of education are also active. They proposed to send a deputation to wait upon the Prime Minister, but he declined to meet them, on the ground that it was not the intention of the Ministry to introduce any bill on that subject during the present session of Parliament, and that a deputation, therefore, could do no good.—New discoveries of gold in Australia have excited great interest and attention in England. It is said that deposits have been met with near Port Philip, much richer than any known hitherto, either there or in California.—Later advices from the Cape of Good Hope represent colonial affairs in an unpromising light. The expedition of the British troops against the Caffres in their mountain fastnesses had proved to be of little use, and to have been attended with serious losses of British officers and men. The Caffres are excellent marksmen, and prove to be very formidable enemies. Col. Cathcart, who was one of Wellington’s aids at Waterloo, has been sent out as Governor of the Cape.—The British cruisers on the African coast recently sought to make a treaty for the suppression of the slave trade, with the King of Lagos who had, previously, forbidden their ascending the river to the town where he lived. A force of twenty-three boats, however, was fitted out with 260 officers and men, and attempted to ascend the river by force. It was at once attacked, and it was only with considerable difficulty and loss of life that the men regained their ships. The king had always received deputations from the squadron with every demonstration of respect; and this fact shows the extreme folly and injustice of such an armed expedition. It has been indirectly sanctioned, however, by the English government which has ordered a strict blockade of that part of the African coast.

France.

Political affairs in France continue to present features of extraordinary interest. The election, of which we gave the general result in our last Number, seems to have fortified Louis Napoleon, for the present, on his Presidential throne, and he has gone on without obstacle in the accomplishment of his plans. The official returns show 7,439,219 votes in his favor, and 640,737 against him. On New Year’s day the issue of the election was celebrated with more than royal magnificence. Cannon were fired at the Invalides at ten in the morning—seventy discharges in all, ten for each million of votes recorded in his favor; and at noon the President went to Notre Dame, where _Te Deum_ was performed amid gorgeous and dazzling pomp. The scene was theatrical and imposing. All Paris was covered with troops, and the day was one of universal observance. From Notre Dame Louis Napoleon returned to the Tuileries, where the reception of the authorities took place, and a banquet was given at which four hundred persons sat down. The day before he had received the formal announcement by the Consultative Commission of the result of the election. M. Baroche, the President of the Commission, in announcing it, said that “France confided in his courage, his elevated good-sense, and his love: no government ever rested on a basis more extensive, or had an origin more legitimate and worthy of the respect of nations.” In reply Louis Napoleon said that France had comprehended that he departed from legality only to return to right: that she had absolved him, by justifying an act which had no other object than to save France, and perhaps Europe, from years of trouble and anarchy: that he felt all the grandeur of his new mission, and did not deceive himself as to its difficulties. He hoped to secure the destinies of France, by founding institutions which respond at the same time to the democratic instincts of the nation, and to the desire to have henceforth a strong and respected government. He soon issued a decree re-establishing the French eagle on the national colors and on the Cross of the Legion of Honor, saying that the Republic might now adopt without umbrage the souvenirs of the Empire. On the 28th of December, the Municipal Council of the Department of the Seine was dissolved and re-constructed by a decree—thirteen of the old members, most distinguished by intellect, experience, and character, being superseded because they would not make themselves subservient to Louis Napoleon’s views.—The Chamber of Commerce at Havre was ordered to be dissolved, and that portion of its journal which recorded its protest against the usurpation was erased.—An ordinance was issued, directing all political inscriptions, and particularly the words “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” to be erased, because they are “for the people a perpetual excitement to revolt,” and for the same reason all the trees of liberty were ordered to be rooted up, in the departments as well as in Paris.—The military organization of France was remodeled also by decree, the nine military divisions being re-arranged into twenty-one principal divisions, with as many principal commands, all subordinate to the Prince, Commander-in-chief.—By a decree dated Jan. 9, the President expelled from the territory of France, Algeria, and the Colonies sixty-six members of the late Legislative Assembly, without trial, preamble, or cause stated. Should any of them put foot on French soil again without obtaining express permission, they run the risk of deportation. Among them is Victor Hugo. By another decree of the same date, eighteen ex-representatives are condemned to temporary banishment. Among them are all the generals in prison at Ham, except Cavaignac, who is allowed to go to Italy. At his own request, he has also been placed upon the retired list. Thiers, Girardin, and Sue are also among the proscribed. About twenty-five hundred political prisoners have been ordered to be deported to Cayenne, a place on the coast of Africa, where the chances are that not one in ten of them can live five years. These measures of high-handed severity have created deep feeling and disapprobation, to which, however, no one dares give expression, either in print or in public conversation. The press is subjected to a most rigorous censorship, and spies lurk about every _café_ and public place to report “disaffected” remarks.—A decree was issued on the 11th of January, dissolving the National Guard, and organizing a new corps under that name. The officers are all to be appointed by the President, and privates are to be admitted only upon examination by Government officers.

On the 14th of January the new Constitution was decreed. In the proclamation accompanying it, the President says that, not having the vanity to substitute a personal theory for the experience of centuries, he sought in the past for examples that might best be followed; and he said to himself, “Since France makes progress during the last fifty years, in virtue alone of the administrative, military, judicial, religious, and financial organization of the Consulate and the Empire, why should not we also adopt the political institutions of that epoch?” After sketching the condition of the various interests of France, for the purpose of showing that it has been created by the administration of the Emperor, Louis Napoleon says that the principal bases of the Constitution of the year VIII. have been adopted as the foundation of that which he submits. The Constitution consists of seven sections. The government is intrusted to Louis Napoleon, actual President of the Republic, for ten years: he governs by means of the Ministers, the Council of State, the Senate, and the Legislative body. He is responsible to the French people, to whom he has the right always to appeal. He is Chief of the State, commands the land and sea forces, declares war, concludes treaties, and makes rules and decrees for the execution of the laws. He alone has the initiative of the laws, and the right to pardon. He has the right to declare the state of siege in one or several departments, referring to the Senate with the least possible delay. The Ministers depend solely on him, and each is responsible only so far as the acts of the Government regard him. All the officers of the Government, military and civil, high and low, swear obedience to the Constitution and fidelity to the President. Should the President die before the expiration of his office, the Senate convokes the nation to make a new election—the President having the right, by secret will, to designate the citizen whom he recommends. Until the election of a new President, the President of the Senate will govern.—The number of Senators is fixed at 80 for the first year, and can not exceed 150. The Senate is composed of Cardinals, Marshals, Admirals, and of the citizens whom the President may name. The Senators are not removable, and are for life. Their services are gratuitous, but the President may give them 30,000 francs annually, if he sees fit. The officers of the Senate are to be elected on nomination of the President of the Republic, and are to hold for one year. The Senate is to be convoked and prorogued by the President, and its sittings are to be secret. It is the guardian of the fundamental pact and of the public liberties: no law can be published without being submitted to it. It regulates the Constitution of the Colonies, and all that has not been provided for by the Constitution, and decides upon its interpretation—but its decisions are invalid without the sanction of the President. It maintains or annuls all acts complained of as unconstitutional by the Government or by petition. It can fix the bases of projects of laws of national interest—in reports to the President; and can also propose modifications of the Constitution; but all modifications of the fundamental bases of the Constitution must be submitted to the people.—In the Legislative body there is to be one representative for every 35,000 electors—elected by universal suffrage, without _scrutin de liste_. The deputies receive no salary, and hold office for six years. The Legislative body discusses and votes the projects of law and the imposts. Every amendment adopted by the committee charged with the examination of a project of law, shall be sent without discussion to the Council of State, and if not adopted by that body, it can not be submitted to Legislative deliberation. The sittings are to be public, but may be secret on the demand of five members. Public reports of the proceedings shall be confined to the journals and votes—and shall be prepared under direction of the President of the Legislative body. The officers are to be named by the President of the Republic. Ministers can not be members of the Legislature. No petition can be addressed to the Legislative body. The President of the Republic convokes, adjourns, prorogues, and dissolves the Legislative body: in case of dissolution he shall convoke a new one within six months.—The number of Councilors of State is from 40 to 50. They are to be named by the President and are removable by him. He presides over their meetings. They are to draw up projects of law and regulations of the public administration, and to resolve difficulties that may arise, under the direction of the President. Members are to be appointed from its number by the President to maintain, in the name of the Government, the discussion of the projects of law before the Senate and the Legislative corps. The salary of each Councilor is 25,000 francs. The Ministers have ranks, right of sitting, and a deliberative voice in the Council of State.—A High Court of Justice judges without appeal all persons sent before it accused of crimes, attempts or plots against the President of the Republic, and against the internal and external safety of the State. It can not be convened except by decree from the President. Its organization is to be regulated by the Senate.—Existing provisions of law not opposed to the present Constitution shall remain in force until legally abrogated. The Executive shall name the Mayor. The Constitution shall take effect from the day when the great powers named by it shall be constituted.—Such are the provisions of the new Constitution of France.

The Minister of the Interior has issued a circular calling upon the Government officers to promote the election of none but discreet and well-disposed men, not orators or politicians, to the Legislative body, and saying that if they will send to the Ministry the names of proper persons, the influence of the Government will be used to aid their election.—The disarming of the National Guard has been effected without the slightest difficulty.—On the 23d of January a decree was published instituting a Ministry of Police and one of State, and appointing M. Casabianca Minister of State, M. Maupas Minister of General Police, M. Abbatucci Minister of Justice, M. de Persigny Minister of the Interior, M. Bineau Minister of Finance; General de Saint-Arnaud, Minister of War; Ducos, of Marine; Furgot, of Foreign Affairs, and Fortone, of Public Instruction and Worship.—On the 26th of January a decree was issued organizing the Council of State, and appointing 34 Councillors, 40 Masters of Requests, and 31 Auditors. The Council contains the names of most of the leaders in the Assembly, who took sides with the President in the debates of that body. On the 27th, the list of Senators was announced. It contains the names of many who were formerly Peers of France and members of the Legislative Assembly.—On the 23d a decree was issued declaring that the members of the Orleans family, their husbands, wives, and descendants can not possess any real or personal property in France, and ordering the whole of their present possessions to be sold within one year: and on the same day another decree declared that all the property possessed by Louis Philippe, and by him given to his children, on the 7th of August, 1830, should be confiscated and given to the state; and that of this amount ten millions should be allowed to the mutual assistance societies, authorized by law of July 15, 1850; ten millions to be employed in improving the dwellings of workmen in the large manufacturing towns; ten millions to be devoted to the establishment of institutions for making loans on mortgage; five millions to establish a retiring pension fund for the poorest assistant clergy; and the remainder to be distributed among the Legion of Honor and other military functionaries.—The promulgation of these decrees excited great dissatisfaction, and led to the resignation of several members of the Councils. M. Dupin, President of the late Assembly, resigned his office as Procureur-general, in an indignant letter to the President; and Montalembert also resigned his office as member of the Consultative Commission.—The first great ball at the Tuileries on the 24th was very numerously and brilliantly attended.—A decree has been issued abrogating that of 1848 which abolished titles of nobility.—The President fills column after column daily in the _Moniteur_ with announcements of promotions in the army.—Measures of the utmost stringency have been adopted to prevent public discussion in any form. The manufacturers of printing presses, lithographic presses, copying machines, &c., have been forbidden to sell them without sending the buyers’ names to the Police department.—It is rumored that two attempts have been made to assassinate the President, but they are not sufficiently authentic to be deemed reliable.

Austria And Hungary.

The Austrian Emperor issued on New Year’s day three decrees, formally annulling the Constitution of March 4, 1849, and promulgating certain fundamental principles of the future organic institutions of the Austrian Empire. The first decree declares that, after thorough examination, the Constitution has been found neither to agree with the situation of the empire, nor to be capable of full execution. It is therefore annulled, but the equality of all subjects before the law, and the abolition of peasant service and bondage are expressly confirmed. The second decree annuls the specific political rights conferred upon the various provinces. The third decree abolishes open courts, and trials by jury, requires all town elections to be confirmed by the Government, forbids publication of governmental proceedings, and destroys every vestige of the Parliamentary system. These measures make the despotism of Austria much more absolute and severe than it was before 1848.—Proposals are in active preparation for a new Austrian loan. In consequence of this, Baron Krauss, the Minister of Finance, resigned, and is succeeded by M. von Baumgartner.—The members of the London Missionary and Bible Society, who have for many years resided at Pesth and other Hungarian towns, have been ordered out of the Austrian states.—In Prussia strenuous efforts are made by the reactionary party to secure the abolition of the Chambers and the restoration of absolutism.—It is said that the Austrian Government has received from Earl Granville, in reply to its demand for the suppression of revolutionary intrigues carried on in England against the Continental Governments, assurances that every thing should be done to meet its wishes so far as they were not incompatible with the laws and customs of England.—The Austrian Minister of the Interior has directed a committee to make a draft of new laws for Hungary on the basis of the decrees of the 1st of January.

EDITOR’S TABLE.

The seventh enumeration of the inhabitants of the United States, taken on the 1st of June, 1850, exhibits results which every citizen of the country may contemplate with gratification and pride. The Report of the Superintendent of the Census-office to the Secretary of the Interior, laid before Congress, in December, 1851, gives a full abstract of the returns, from which we select the most interesting portions; adding other statements showing the progress of this country in population and resources.

Since the census of 1840, there have been added to the territory of the Republic, by annexation, conquest, and purchase, 824,969 square miles; and our title to a region covering 341,463 square miles, which before properly belonged to us, but was claimed and partially occupied by a foreign power, has been established by negotiation, and has been brought within our acknowledged boundaries. By these means the area of the United States has been extended during the past ten years, from 2,055,163 to 3,221,595 square miles, without including the great lakes which lie upon our northern border, or the bays which indent our Atlantic and Pacific shores; all which territory has come within the scope of the Seventh Census.

In endeavoring to ascertain the progress of our population since 1840, it will be proper to deduct from the aggregate number of inhabitants shown by the present census, the population of Texas in 1840, and the number embraced within the limits of California and the new territories, at the time of their acquisition. From the best information which has been obtained at the Census-office, it is believed that Texas contained, in 1840, 75,000 inhabitants; and that when California, New Mexico, and Oregon came into our possession, in 1846, they had a total population of 97,000. It thus appears that we have received by accessions of territory, since 1840, an addition of 172,000 to the number of our people. The increase which has taken place in those extended regions since they came under the authority of our Government, should obviously be reckoned as a part of the development and progress of our population, nor is it necessary to complicate the comparison by taking into account the probable natural increase of this acquired population, because we have not the means of determining its rate of advancement, nor the law which governed its progress, while yet beyond the influence of our political system.

The total number of inhabitants in the United States, according to the returns of the census, was on the 1st of June, 1850, 23,258,760. The absolute increase from the 1st of June, 1840, has been 6,189,307, and the actual increase per cent. is slightly over 36 per cent. But it has been shown that the probable amount of population acquired by additions of territory should be deducted in making a comparison between the results of the present and the last census. These reductions diminish the total population of the country, as a basis of comparison, and also the increase. The relative increase, after this allowance, is found to be 35.17 per cent.

The aggregate number of whites in 1850 was 19,631,799, exhibiting a gain upon the number of the same class in 1840, of 5,436,004, and a relative increase of 38.20 per cent. But, excluding the 153,000 free population supposed to have been acquired by the addition of territory since 1840, the gain is 5,283,004, and the increase per cent. is 37.14.

The number of slaves, by the present census, is 3,198,324, which shows an increase of 711,111, equal to 28.58 per cent. If we deduct 19,000 for the probable slave population of Texas in 1840, the result of the comparison will be slightly different. The absolute increase will be 692,111, and the rate per cent. 27.83.

The number of free colored persons in 1850 was 428,637; in 1840, 386,345. The increase of this class has been 42,292 or 10.95 per cent.

From 1830 to 1840, the increase of the whole population was at the rate of 32.67 per cent. At the same rate of advancement, the absolute gain for the ten years last past, would have been 5,578,333, or 426,515 less than it has been, without including the increase consequent upon additions of territory.

The aggregate increase of population, from all sources, shows a relative advance greater than that of any other decennial term, except that from the second to the third census, during which time the country received an accession of inhabitants by the purchase of Louisiana, considerably greater than one per cent. of the whole number.

The decennial increase of the most favored portions of Europe is less than one and a half per cent. per annum, while with the United States it is at the rate of three and a half per cent. According to our past progress, viewed in connection with that of European nations, the population of the United States in forty years will exceed that of England, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland combined.

In 1845, Mr. William Darby, the Geographer, who has paid much attention to the subject of population, and the progress of the country; having found that the increase of population in the United States for a series of years, had exceeded three per cent. per annum, adopted that ratio as a basis for calculation for future increase. He estimated the population of 1850 at 23,138,004, which it will be observed is considerably exceeded by the actual result. The following are Mr. Darby’s calculations of the probable population of the Union for each five years up to 1885:

1850 23,138,004 1870 40,617,708 1855 26,823,385 1875 47,087,052 1860 31,095,535 1880 54,686,795 1865 35,035,231 1885 63,291,353

If the ratio of increase be taken at three per cent. per annum, the population duplicates, in about twenty-four years. Therefore, if no serious disturbing influence should interfere with the natural order of things, the aggregate population of the United States at the close of this century must be over one hundred millions.

The relative progress of the white and colored population in past years, is shown by the following tabular statement, giving the increase per cent. of each class of inhabitants in the United States for sixty years.

Classes. 1790 to 1800 to 1810 to 1820 to 1830 to 1840 to 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 Whites 35.7 36.2 34.19 33.95 34.7 38.28 Free 88.2 72.2 25.25 36.85 20.9 10.9 col. Slaves 27.9 33.4 29.1 30.61 23.8 28.58 Total 32.2 37.6 28.58 31.44 23.4 26.22 col. Total 35.01 36.45 33.12 33.48 32.6 36.25 pop.

The census had been taken previously to 1830 on the 1st of August; the enumeration began that year on the 1st of June, two months earlier, so that the interval between the fourth and fifth censuses was two months less than ten years, which time allowed for would bring the total increase up to the rate of 34.36 per cent.

The table given below shows the increase for the sixty years, 1790 to 1850, without reference to intervening periods:

Number. 1790. 1850. Absolute Incr. per Increase. cent. Whites 3,172,364 19,631,799 16,459,335 527.97 Free col. 59,466 428,637 369,171 617.44 Slaves 697,897 3,198,324 2,500,427 350.13 Total free 757,363 3,626,961 2,869,598 377.00 col. and slaves Total pop. 3,929,827 23,258,760 19,328,883 491.52

Sixty years since, the proportion between the whites and blacks, bond and free, was 4.2 to one. In 1850, it was 5.26 to 1, and the ratio in favor of the former race is increasing. Had the blacks increased as fast as the whites during these sixty years, their number, on the first of June, would have been 4,657,239; so that, in comparison with the whites, they have lost, in this period, 1,035,340.

This disparity is much more than accounted for by European emigration to the United States. Dr. Chickering, in an essay upon emigration, published at Boston in 1848—distinguished for great elaborateness of research—estimates the gain of the white population, from this source, at 3,922,152. No reliable record was kept of the number of immigrants into the United States until 1820, when, by the law of March, 1819, the collectors were required to make quarterly returns of foreign passengers arriving in their districts. For the first ten years, the returns under the law afford materials for only an approximation to a true state of the facts involved in this inquiry.

Dr. Chickering assumes, as a result of his investigations, that of the 6,431,088 inhabitants of the United States in 1820, 1,430,906 were foreigners, arriving subsequent to 1790, or the descendants of such. According to Dr. Seybert, an earlier writer upon statistics, the number of foreign passengers, from 1790 to 1810, was, as nearly as could be ascertained, 120,000; and from the estimates of Dr. Seybert, and other evidence, Hon. George Tucker, author of a valuable work on the census of 1840, supposes the number, from 1810 to 1820, to have been 114,000. These estimates make, for the thirty years preceding 1820, 234,000.

If we reckon the increase of these emigrants at the average rate of the whole body of white population during these three decades, they and their descendants in 1820, would amount to about 360,000. From 1820 to 1830 there arrived, according to the returns of the Custom-houses, 135,986 foreign passengers, and from 1830 to 1840, 579,370, making for the twenty years 715,356. During this period a large number of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland, came into the United States through Canada. These were estimated at 67,903 from 1820 to 1830, and from 1830 to 1840, at 199,130. From 1840 to 1850 the arrivals of foreign passengers amounted to 1,542,850, equal to an annual average of 154,285.

From the above returns and estimates the following statement has been made up, to show the accessions to our population from immigration, from 1790 to 1850—a period of sixty years:

Number of foreigners arriving from 1790 to 1810: 120,000 Natural increase, reckoned in periods of ten years: 47,560 Number of foreigners arriving from 1810 to 1820: 114,000 Increase of the above to 1820: 19,000 Increase from 1810 to 1820 of those arriving previous to 1810: 58,450 Total number of immigrants and descendants of immigrants in 1820: 359,010 Number of immigrants from 1820 to 1830: 203,979 Increase of the above: 35,728 Increase from 1820 to 1830 of immigrants and descendants of immigrants in the country in 1820: 134,130 Total number of immigrants and descendants of immigrants in the United States in 1830: 732,847 Number of immigrants arriving from 1830 to 1840: 778,500 Increase of the: 135,150 Increase from 1830 to 1840 of immigrants and descendants of immigrants in the United States in 1830: 254,445 Total number of immigrants and descendants of immigrants in the United States in 1840: 1,900,942 Number of immigrants arriving from 1840 to 1850(8): 1,542,850 Increase of the above at twelve per cent: 185,142 Increase from 1840 to 1850 of immigrants and descendants of immigrants in the United States in 1840: 722,000 Total number of immigrants in the United States since 1790, and their descendants in 1850: 4,350,934

The following, we think, may be considered an approximate estimate of the population of the United States, in 1850, classed according to their descent from the European colonists, previous to the American Revolution, also from immigration since 1790, from the people who inhabited the territories acquired by the United States (Louisiana, Texas, &c.), and from Africans:

Descendants of the European colonists, previous to 1776: 14,280,885 Ditto of people of Louisiana, Texas, and other acquired territories: 1,000,000 Immigrants since 1790, and their descendants: 4,350,934 Descendants of Africans: 3,626,961 Total population: 23,258,760

It will be seen from the above, that the total number of immigrants arriving in the United States from 1790 to 1850, a period of 60 years, is estimated to have been 2,759,329—or an average of 45,988 annually for the whole period. It will be observed also that the estimated increase of these emigrants has been 1,590,405, making the total number added to the population of the United States since 1790, by foreign immigrants and their descendants, 4,350,934. Of these immigrants and their descendants, those from Ireland bear the largest proportion, probably more than one half of the whole, or say two and a half millions. Next to these the Germans are the most numerous. From the time that the first German settlers came to this country, in 1682, under the auspices of William Penn, there has been a steady influx of immigrants from Germany, principally to the Middle States; and of late years to the West.

The density of population is a branch of the subject which naturally attracts the attention of the inquirer. Taking the thirty-one States together, their area is 1,485,870 square miles, and the average number of their inhabitants is 15.48 to the square mile. The total area of the United States is 3,280,000 square miles, and the average density of population is 7.22 to the square mile.

From the location, climate, and productions, and the habits and pursuits of their inhabitants, the States of the Union may be properly arranged into the following groups:

Divisions. Area in Population. Inhab. to sq. miles. sq. m. New Engl’d States (6) 63,226 2,727,597 43.07 Middle States, including 151,760 8,653,713 57.02 Maryland, Delaware and Ohio (6) Coast Planting States, 286,077 3,537,089 12.36 including South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana (6) Central Slave States: 308,210 5,168,000 16.75 Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas(6) Northwestern States: 250,000 2,735,000 10.92 Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa (5) Texas 237,321 212,000 .89 California 188,982 165,000 .87

Table of the area, and the number of inhabitants to the square mile, in each State and Territory in the Union.

Free States. Area in Population Inhab. to sq. miles in 1850. sq. m. Maine 30,000 583,188 19.44 New Hampshire 9,280 317,964 34.26 Vermont 10,212 314,120 30.07 Massachusetts 7,800 994,499 126.11 Rhode Island 1,306 147,544 108.05 Connecticut 4,674 370,791 79.83 New York 46,000 3,097,394 67.66 New Jersey 6,320 489,333 60.04 Pennsylvania 46,000 2,311,786 50.25 Ohio 39,964 1,980,408 49.55 Indiana 33,809 988,416 29.23 Illinois 55,405 851,470 15.37 Iowa 50,914 192,214 3.77 Wisconsin 53,924 305,191 5.45 Michigan 56,243 397,654 7.07 California 188,982 165,000 .87 Minnesota Terr. 83,000 6,077 .07 Oregon ditto 341,463 13,293 .04 Mew Mexico ditto 219,774 61,547 .28 Utah ditto 187,923 11,380 .06 Total 1,474,993 13,419,190

Slaveholding States. Delaware 2,120 91,535 43.64 Maryland 9,356 583,035 62.31 Dis. of Columbia 60 51,687 861.45 Virginia 61,352 1,421,661 23.17 North Carolina 45,000 868,903 19.30 South Carolina 24,500 668,507 27.28 Georgia 58,000 905,999 15.68 Florida 59,268 87,401 1.47 Alabama 50,723 771,671 15.21 Mississippi 47,126 606,555 12.86 Louisiana 46,431 511,974 11.02 Texas 237,321 212,592 .89 Arkansas 52,198 209,639 4.01 Tennessee 45,600 1,002,625 21.98 Kentucky 37,680 982,405 26.07 Missouri 67,380 682,043 10.12 Total 844,115 9,638,223

It will be observed that a large proportion of the area of the Free States and Territories is comprised in the unsettled country west of the Mississippi. The following Territories, inhabited by Indians, also lie west of the Mississippi.

Nebraska Territory: 136,700 square miles. Indian Territory: 187,171 square miles. Northwest Territory: 587,564 square miles.

The following is a comparative table of the population of each State and Territory in 1850, and 1840:

Free States. Pop. 1850. Pop. 1840. Maine 583,188 501,793 New Hampshire 317,964 284,574 Vermont 313,611 291,948 Massachusetts 994,499 737,699 Rhode Island 147,544 108,830 Connecticut 370,791 309,978 New York 3,097,394 2,428,921 New Jersey 489,555 373,306 Pennsylvania 2,311,786 1,724,033 Ohio 1,980,408 1,519,467 Indiana 988,416 685,866 Illinois 851,470 476,183 Iowa 192,214 43,112 Wisconsin 305,191 30,945 Michigan 397,654 212,367 California 165,000 Minnesota Territory 6,077 Oregon Territory 13,293 New Mexico Territory 61,505 Utah Territory 11,380 Total 13,419,190 9,978,922

Increase of population, 3,440,268, or exclusive of California and Territories, 3,183,013—equal to 31.8 per cent.

Slaveholding States. Pop. 1850. Pop. 1840 Delaware 91,536 78,085 Maryland 583,035 470,019 District of Columbia(9) 51,687 43,712 Virginia 1,421,661 1,239,797 North Carolina 868,903 753,419 South Carolina 668,507 594,398 Georgia 905,990 691,392 Florida 87,401 54,477 Alabama 771,671 590,756 Mississippi 606,555 375,651 Louisiana 511,974 352,411 Texas 212,592 (est. 75,000) Arkansas 209,639 97,574 Tennessee 1,002,625 829,210 Kentucky 982,405 779,828 Missouri 682,043 383,702 Total 9,658,224 7,409,431

Total increase of population 2,248,793, equal to 30.3 per cent.

Comparative population of the United States, from 1790 to 1850.

Census of Total. Whites. Free Slaves. col. 1790 3,929,827 3,172,464 59,446 687,897 1800 5,345,925 4,304,489 108,395 893,041 1810 7,239,814 5,862,004 186,446 1,191,364 1820 9,654,596 7,872,711 238,197 1,543,688 1830 12,866,020 10,537,378 319,599 2,009,043 1840 17,063,355 14,189,705 386,295 2,487,355 1850 23,258,760 19,631,799 428,637 3,198,324

Table showing the number of the different classes of population in each State and Territory.

Free States. Whites. Free col. Slaves. Maine 581,863 1,325 New Hampshire 317,385 475 Vermont 313,411 709 Massachusetts 985,704 8,795 Rhode Island 144,000 3,544 Connecticut 363,305 7,486 New York 3,049,457 47,937 New Jersey 466,240 23,093 222 Pennsylvania 2,258,463 53,323 Ohio 1,956,108 24,300 Indiana 977,628 10,788 Illinois 846,104 5,366 Iowa 191,879 335 Wisconsin 304,965 626 Michigan 395,097 2,537 California 163,200 1,800 Minnesota 6,038 39 Territory Oregon 13,089 206 Territory New Mexico 61,530 17 Territory Utah Territory 11,330 24 26 Total 13,406,394 192,745 248

Slaveholding Whites. Free col. Slaves. States Delaware 71,289 19,957 2,289 Maryland 418,590 74,077 90,368 District of 38,027 9,973 3,687 Columbia Virginia 895,304 53,829 472,528 North Carolina 533,295 27,196 283,412 South Carolina 274,623 8,900 384,984 Georgia 521,438 2,880 381,681 Florida 47,167 925 39,309 Alabama 426,507 2,272 342,892 Mississippi 205,758 899 309,898 Louisiana 255,416 17,537 239,021 Texas 154,100 331 58,161 Arkansas 162,068 589 46,982 Tennessee 756,893 6,271 239,461 Kentucky 761,688 9,736 210,981 Missouri 592,077 2,544 87,422 Total 6,224,240 235,916 3,198,076

The following table shows the population west of the Mississippi River.

Western Louisiana 207,787 Texas 212,592 Arkansas 209,639 Missouri 682,043 Iowa 192,214 Minnesota Territory 6,077 New Mexico Territory 61,505 Utah Territory 11,293 Oregon Territory 13,293 California 165,000 Total 1,761,530

The population of the Valley of the Mississippi, comprising Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, is 9,090,688, of whom the free population is 7,614,031, and 1,476,657 are slaves.

THE RATIO OF REPRESENTATION, as determined by the recent census, and a late Act of Congress, will be about 93,716, and the relative representation of the States in Congress for the next ten years, will be as follows:

New York 33 Pennsylvania 25 Ohio 21 Virginia 13 Massachusetts 11 Indiana 11 Tennessee 10 Kentucky 10 Illinois 9 North Carolina 8 Georgia 8 Alabama 7 Missouri 7 Maine 6 Maryland 6 New Jersey 5 South Carolina 5 Mississippi 5 Connecticut 4 Michigan 4 Louisiana 4 Vermont 3 New Hampshire 3 Wisconsin 3 Rhode Island 2 Iowa 2 Arkansas 2 Texas 2 California 2 Florida 1 Delaware 1 Total 233

AGRICULTURE.—The following is a summary of the returns of the Census for a portion of the statistics obtained respecting agriculture:

Number of acres of land improved: 112,042,000 Value of farming implements and machinery: $151,820,273 Value of live stock: $552,705,238 Bushels of wheat raised, 1849: 104,799,230 In 1839: 84,823,272 Increased production: 19,975,958 Bushels of Indian corn raised, 1849: 591,586,053 In 1839: 377,531,875 Increased production: 214,054,178 Pounds of Tobacco raised, 1849: 199,522,494 In 1839: 219,163,319 Decreased production: 19,640,825 Bales of cotton of 400 lb. each—1849: 2,472,214 In 1839: 1,976,199 Increased production: 495,016 Pounds of sheep’s wool raised, 1849: 52,422,797 In 1839: 35,802,114 Increased production: 16,620,683 Tons of hay raised, 1849: 13,605,384 In 1839: 10,248,108 Increased production: 3,357,276 Pounds of butter made, 1849: 312,202,286 Pounds of cheese made, 1849: 103,184,585 Pounds of maple sugar, 1849: 32,759,263 Cane sugar—hhds. of 1000 lbs: 318,644 Value of household manufactures, 1849: $27,525,545 In 1839: 29,023,380 Decrease: 1,497,735

Manufactures.

The entire capital invested in the various manufactures in the United States, on the 1st of June, 1850, not to include any establishments producing less than the annual value of $500, amounted, in round numbers, to: $530,000,000 Value of raw materials used: 550,000,000 Amount paid for labor: 240,000,000 Value of manufactured articles: $1,020,300,000 Number of persons employed: 1,050,000

The following are the number of establishments in operation, and capital employed in cotton, woolens, and iron:

No. of Capital Estab. invested. Cotton 1094 $74,501,031 Woolens 1559 28,118,650 Pig Iron 377 17,356,425 Castings 1391 17,416,360 Wrought iron 422 14,495,220

The value of articles manufactured in 1849 was as follows, compared with 1839.

1849. 1839. Cottons $61,869,184 $46,350,453 Woolens 43,207,555 20,696,999 Pig Iron 12,748,777 Castings 25,108,155 286,903 Wrought Iron 16,747,074 197,233

The period which has elapsed since the receipt of the returns at Washington, has been too short to enable the Census-office to make more than a general report of the facts relating to a few of the most important manufactures. The complete statistical returns, when published, will present a very full view of the varied interests and extent of the industrial pursuits of the people.

THE PRESS.—The statistics of the newspaper press form an interesting feature in the returns of the Seventh Census. It appears that the whole number of newspapers and periodicals in the United States, on the first day of June, 1850, amounted to 2800. Of these, 2494 were fully returned, 234 had all the facts excepting circulation given, and 72 are estimated for California, the Territories, and for those that may have been omitted by the assistant marshals. From calculations made on the statistics returned, and estimated circulations where they have been omitted, it appears that the aggregate circulation of these 2800 papers and periodicals is about 5,000,000, and that the entire number of copies printed annually in the United States, amounts to 422,600,000. The following table will show the number of daily, weekly, monthly, and other issues, with the aggregate circulation of each class:

Published. No. Circulation. Copies annually. Daily 350 750,000 235,000,000 Tri-weekly 150 75,000 11,700,000 Semi-weekly 125 80,000 8,320,000 Weekly 2,000 2,875,000 149,500,000 Semi-monthly 50 300,000 7,200,000 Monthly 100 900,000 10,800,000 Quarterly 25 29,000 80,000 Total 2,800 5,000,000 422,600,000

Of these papers 424 are issued in the New England States, 876 in the Middle States, 716 in the Southern States, and 784 in the Western States. The average circulation of papers in the United States, is 1785. There is one publication for every 7161 free inhabitants in the United States and Territories.

MORTALITY.—The statistics of mortality for the census year, represent the number of deaths occurring within the year as 320,194, the ratio being as one to 72.6 of the living population, or as ten to each 726 of the population. The rate of mortality in this statement, taken as a whole, seems so much less than that of any portion of Europe, that it must, at present, be received with some degree of allowance.

INDIANS.—The Indian tribes within the boundaries of the United States are not, as is well known, included in the census, but an enumeration of these tribes was authorized by an act of Congress, passed in March, 1847; and the census of the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains has been taken by Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq., under the direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. These returns have been published, with estimates for the Indian tribes in Oregon, California, Utah, &c., and the result shows the total Indian population to be 388,229, to which may be added from 25,000 to 35,000 Indians within the area of the unexplored territories of the United States. The Indian population of Oregon is estimated at 22,733; of California 32,231; of New Mexico 92,130; of Utah 11,500; of Texas 24,100. In round numbers, the total number of Indians within our boundaries may be stated at 420,000.

CENSUS OF 1840.—For the purpose of comparison, we here present a summary of the Sixth Census of the United States, June 1, 1840.

Free States. Whites. Free col. Slaves. Maine 284,036 537 1 New Hampshire 500,438 1,355 Vermont 291,218 730 Massachusetts 729,030 8,668 Rhode Island 105,587 3,238 5 Connecticut 301,856 8,105 17 Total of N. England 2,212,165 22,633 23 New York 2,378,894 50,027 4 New Jersey 351,588 21,044 674 Pennsylvania 1,676,115 47,864 64 Ohio 1,502,122 17,342 3 Indiana 678,698 7,165 3 Illinois 472,254 3,598 331 Michigan 211,560 707 Wisconsin 30,749 185 11 Iowa 42,924 172 16 Total Free States 9,557,065 170,727 1129

Slaveholding States. Whites. Free col. Slaves. Delaware 58,161 16,919 2,605 Maryland 318,204 62,078 89,737 District of Columbia 30,657 8,361 4,694 Virginia 740,968 49,842 448,987 North Carolina 484,870 22,732 255,817 South Carolina 259,084 8,276 327,038 Georgia 407,695 2,753 280,944 Florida 27,943 837 25,717 Alabama 335,185 2,039 253,532 Mississippi 179,074 1,369 195,211 Louisiana 158,457 25,592 168,451 Arkansas 77,174 465 19,935 Tennessee 640,627 5,524 183,059 Kentucky 590,253 7,317 182,258 Missouri 323,888 1,574 58,240 Total Slave States 4,632,640 215,568 2,486,226 Total United States 14,189,705 386,295 2,487,355

Total population of the United States in 1840, 17,063,355.

ATLANTIC STATES.—The progress of population in the Atlantic States, since 1790, is shown by the following table. The Middle States are New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

New Middle. Southern. England. 1790 1,009,823 958,632 1,852,504 1800 1,233,315 1,401,070 2,285,909 1810 1,471,891 2,014,695 2,674,913 1820 1,659,808 2,699,845 3,061,074 1830 1,954,717 3,587,664 3,645,752 1840 2,234,822 4,526,260 3,925,299 1850 2,728,106 5,898,735 4,678,728

It may be interesting to notice in this sketch of the progress of the United States, the population of the country comprising the original thirteen States, while under the Colonial Government, as far as the same is known. The first permanent colony planted by the English in America was Virginia, the settlement of which commenced in 1607. This was followed by the colonization of Massachusetts, in two original settlements; first that commenced at Plymouth in 1620; the other at Salem and Boston in 1628 and 1630. Maryland was settled by English and Irish Catholics in 1634; and New York by the Dutch in 1613.

With the exception of Vermont, the foundation of all the New England States was laid within twenty years from the arrival of the first settlers at Plymouth. Hutchinson says that during ten years next prior to 1640, the number of Puritans who came over to New England amounted to 21,000. If this estimate is correct, the whole number of inhabitants in New England in 1640, taking the natural increase into consideration, must have been over 32,000. As the Puritans came into power in England, under Cromwell, their emigration was checked, and almost ceased, until the restoration, in 1660. Mr. Seaman, in his “Progress of Nations,” has estimated the population of New England to have increased to 120,000 in 1701, and gives the following statement of the population of the original United States, while British colonies, estimated for 1701, 1749, and 1775:

1701. 1749. 1775. New England 120,000 385,000 705,000 New York 30,000 100,000 200,000 New Jersey 15,000 60,000 120,000 Pennsylvania 20,000 200,000 325,008 Delaware 5,000 25,000 40,000 Maryland 20,000 100,000 210,000 Virginia 70,000 250,000 540,000 North Carolina 20,000 80,000 260,000 South Carolina 7,000 50,000 160,000 Georgia -- 10,000 40,000 Total 307,000 1,260,000 2,600,000

From 1750 to 1790 (Mr. Seaman states), the white population of the Southern Colonies or States increased faster than the same class in the Northern States, and about as fast from 1790 to 1800. But since that period the increase of whites has been greater in proportion in the Northern than in the Southern States.

In estimating the future progress of that part of the Continent of America within the boundaries of the United States, with reference to the march of population over the immense regions west of the Mississippi, it should be borne in mind that there is a large tract, of about one thousand miles in breadth, between the western boundaries of Missouri and Arkansas, and the Rocky Mountains, which is mostly uninhabitable for agricultural purposes, the soil being sterile, without timber, and badly watered. But the population flowing into California and Oregon, attracted by the rich mineral and agricultural resources of those extensive regions, leaves no doubt that our States on the Pacific will form a most important part of the Republic, and afford new fields for enterprise for many future years.

In taking the Seventh Census of the United States, there have been engaged 45 marshals, and 3231 assistants. The aggregate amount appropriated by Congress for the expenses was $1,267,500. On the 30th of September last there were employed in the Census-office ninety-one clerks, who in November were increased to one hundred and forty-eight.

THE IMMENSITY OF THE UNIVERSE!—How often has the grandeur of the conception been marred by the scientific puerilities that have been brought to its aid. Lecturers have astonished us with rows of decimals, as though these could vivify the imaginative faculty, or impart an idea in any respect more elevated than could have been entertained through an unscientific yet devout contemplation of the works and ways of God. They have talked to us of millions, and millions of millions, as though the computation of immense numbers denoted the highest exercise of the human intellect, or the loftiest sublimities of human thought. Sometimes they would vary the effect by telling us how many billions of years it would take for a railroad locomotive to travel across the solar system, or for a cannon ball to fly to the widest range of a comet’s orbit, or for the flash of the electric telegraph to reach the supposed remotest confines of the Milky Way. And so we have known some preachers attempt to measure eternity by clocks and pendulums, or sand-glasses as large as the earth’s orbit, and dropping one grain of sand every million of years, as though any thing of that kind could come up to the dread impression of that one Saxon word—_forever_, or the solemn grandeur of the Latin _secula seculorum_, or to the effect produced by any of those simple reduplications through which language has ever sought to set forth the immeasurable conception, by making its immeasurability the very essence of the thought, and of the term by which it is denoted.

Such contrivances as we have mentioned only weary instead of aiding the conceptive faculty. If any such help is required for the mind, one of the shortest formulas of arithmetic or algebra, we contend, would be the most effective. The more we can express by the highest symbol, the less is the true grandeur of the thought impaired by any of that imitating and ever-foiled effort of the imagination which attends those longer methods that are addressed solely to it. Let us attempt such a formula by taking at once, for our unit of division, the most minute space ever brought into visibility by the highest power of the microscope. Let our dividend on the other hand, be the utmost distance within which the telescope has ever detected the existence of a material entity. Denote the quotient by the letter _x_, and let _r_ stand for the radius of the earth’s orbit. Then _rx__x_ is the formula sought; and if any one think for a moment on the immense magnitude of the latter part of the expression (_x__x_), and at what a rate the involution expands itself even when _x_ represents a moderate number,(10) he may judge how immeasurably it leaves behind it all other computations. The whole of the universe made visible by Lord Rosse’s telescope actually shrinks to the dimensions of an animalcule in the comparison. And yet, even at that distance, so utterly surpassing all conceivability, we may suppose the existence of worlds still embraced within the dominions of God, and still, in the same ratio, remote from the frontiers of his immeasurable empire.

But let us return from so fruitless an inquiry. There is another idea suggested by the contemplation of the heavens of no less interest, although presenting a very different, if not an opposite aspect. It is the comparative NOTHINGNESS of the tangible material universe, as contrasted with the space, or spaces, occupied even within its visible boundaries. The distance of our sun from the nearest fixed star (conjectured by astronomers to be the star 61 Cygni) is estimated at being at least 60,000,000,000,000 of miles, or 600,000 diameters of the earth’s orbit, or about sixty million diameters of the sun himself. Taking this for the average distance between the stars, although it is doubtless much greater, and supposing them to be equal in magnitude to each other, and to the sun, we have these most striking results. The sun and the star in Cygnus (and so of the others) would present the same relation as that of two balls of ten inches diameter placed ten thousand miles apart, or one a thousand miles above the North Pole, and the other a like distance below the South Pole of our earth. Preserving the same ratio, we might represent them again, by two half-inch bullets placed, the one at Chicago, and the other on the top of the City Hall in the City of New York; and so on, until finally we would come down to two points, less than a thousandth part of an inch in diameter, requiring the microscope to render them visible, and situated at the distance of a mile asunder. Suppose then an inch of the finest thread of thistle-down cut into a thousand sections, and a globular space as large as the sphere of our earth, occupied with such invisible specks, at distances from each other never less than a mile at least, and we have a fair representation of the visible universe—on a reduced scale, it is true, yet still preserving all the relative magnitudes, and all the adjusted proportions of the parts to each other, and to the whole. On any scale we may assume, all that partakes, in the lowest degree, of sensible materiality, bears but an infinitessimal proportion to what _appears_ to be but vacant space. In this view of the matter it becomes more than a probability that there is no relatively denser solidity than this any where existing. Even in the hardest and apparently most impenetrable matter, the ultimate particles may be as sparse in their relative positions, as are, to each other, the higher compound and component bodies which we know are dispersed at such immense distances as mere points in space.

But not to dwell on this idea, there is another of a kindred nature to which we would call attention, although it must often have come home to every serious mind. Who can soberly contemplate the mighty heavens without being struck with what may be called the ISOLATION of the universe, or rather, of the innumerable parts of which it is composed. To the most thoughtful spirit a sense of loneliness must be a main, if not a predominant element in such a survey. The first impression from these glittering points in space may, indeed, be that of a _social_ congregated host. And yet how perfect the _seclusion_; so that while there is granted a bare knowledge of each other’s existence, the possibility of any more intimate communion, without a change in present laws, is placed altogether beyond the reach of hope. What immeasurable fields of space intervene even between those that seem the nearest to each other on the celestial canvas!

We may say, then, that whatever may be reserved for a distant future, this perfect seclusion seems now to be the predominant feature, or law, of the Divine dispensations. No doubt our Creator could easily have formed us with sensitive powers, or a sensitive organization, capable of being affected from immensely remote, as well as from comparatively near distances. There is nothing inconceivable in such an adaptation of the nervous system to a finer class of etherial undulations as might have enabled us to see and hear what is going on in the most distant worlds. But it hath not so pleased Him to constitute us; and we think, with all reverence be it said, that we see wisdom in the denial of such powers unless accompanied by an organization which would, on the other hand, utterly unfit us for the narrow world in which we have our present probationary residence. If the excitements of our limited earth bear with such exhausting power upon our sensitive system, what if a universe should burst upon us with its tremendous realities of weal or woe!

It is in kindness, then, that each world is severed, for the present, from the general intercourse, and that so perfectly that no amount of science can ever be expected to overcome the separation. “HE hath set a bound which we can not pass,” except in imagination. Even analogical reasoning utterly fails, or only lights us to the conclusion that the diversities of structure, of scenery, and of condition, must be as great, and as numberless as the spaces, and distances, and positions they respectively occupy. The moral sense, however, is not wholly silent. It has a voice “to which we do well to take heed” when the last rays of reason and analogy have gone out in darkness. It can not be, it affirms—it can not be, that the worlds on worlds which the eye and the telescope reveal to us are but endless repetitions of the fallen earth on which we dwell. What a pall would such a thought spread over the universe! How sad would it render the contemplation of the heavens! How full of melancholy the conception that throughout the measureless fields of space there may be the same wretchedness and depravity that have formed the mournful history of our earth, and which we fail to see in its true intensity, because we have become hardened through long and intimate familiarity with its scenes. And yet, for all that natural science merely, and natural theology can prove, it may be so, and even far worse. For all that they can affirm, either as to possibility or probability, a history of woe surpassing any thing that earth has ever exhibited, or inhabitant of earth has ever imagined, may have every where predominated. The highest reasoning of natural theology can only set out for us some cold system of optimism, which may make it perfectly consistent with its heartless intellectuality to regard the sufferings of a universe, and that suffering a million-fold more intense than any thing ever yet experienced, as only a means to some fancied good time coming, and ever coming, for other dispensations and other races, and other types of being in a future incalculably remote. To a right thinking mind nothing can be more gloomy than that view of the universe which is given by science alone, taking the earth as its base line of measurement, and its present condition (assumed to have come from no moral catastrophe, but to be a necessary result of universal physical laws) as the only ground of legitimate induction. But we have a surer guide than this. Besides the moral sense, we have the representations the Bible gives of God and Christ. These form the ground of the belief that our earth is not a fair sample of the universe, that fallen worlds are rare and extraordinary, as requiring extraordinary mediatorial remedies—that blessedness is the rule and not the exception, and that the Divine love and justice have each respect to individual existences, instead of being both absorbed in that _impersonal_ attribute which has regard only to being in general, or to worlds and races viewed only in reference to some interminable progress, condemned by its own law of development to eternal imperfection, because never admitting the idea of finish of workmanship, or of finality of purpose, either in relation to the universe or any of its parts.

EDITOR’S EASY CHAIR

New-Yorkers have a story to tell of the winter just now dying, that will seem, perhaps, to the children of another generation like a pretty bit of Munchausenism. Whoever has seen our Metropolitan City only under the balmy atmosphere of a soft May-day, or under the smoky sultriness of a tropic August—who has known our encompassing rivers only as green arms of sparkling water, laughing under the shadows of the banks, and of shipping—would never have known the Petersburg of a place into which our passing winter has transformed the whole.

Only fancy our green East River, that all the summer comes rocking up from the placid Sound, with a hoarse murmur through the rocks of Hell-Gate, and loitering, like a tranquil poem, under the shade of the willows of Astoria, all bridged with white and glistening ice! And the stanch little coasting-craft, that in summer-time spread their wings in companies, like flocks of swans, within the bays that make the vestibule to the waters of the city, have been caught in their courses, and moored to their places, by a broad anchor of sheeted silver.

The oyster-men, at the beacon of the Saddle-rock, have cut openings in the ice; and the eel-spearers have plied their pronged trade, with no boat save the frozen water.

In town, too, a carnival of sleighs and bells has wakened Broadway into such hilarity as was like to the festivals we read of upon the Neva. And if American character verged ever toward such coquetry of flowers and bon-bons as belongs to the Carnival at Rome, it would have made a pretty occasion for the show, when cheeks looked so tempting, and the streets and house-tops sparkled with smiles.

As for the country, meantime, our visitors tell us that it has been sleeping for a month and more under a glorious cloak of snow; and that the old days of winter-cheer and fun have stolen back to mock at the anthracite fires, and to woo the world again to the frolic of moonlight rides and to the flashing play of a generous hickory-flame.

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Beside the weather, which has made the ballast of very much of the salon chat, city people have been measuring opinions of late in their hap-hazard and careless way, about a new and most unfortunate trial of divorce. It is sadly to be regretted that the criminations and recriminations between man and wife should play such part as they do, not only in the gossip, but in the papers of the day. Such reports as mark the progress of the Forrest trial (though we say it out of our Easy Chair) make very poor pabulum for the education of city children. And we throw out, in way of hint, both to legislators and editors, the question how this matter is to be mended.

As for the merits of the case, which have been so widely discussed, we—talking as we do in most kindly fashion of chit-chat—shall venture no opinion. At the same time, we can not forbear intimating our strong regret, that a lady, who by the finding of an impartial jury, was declared intact in character, and who possessed thereby a start-point for winning high estimation in those quiet domestic circles which her talents were fitted to adorn—should peril all this, by a sudden appeal to the sympathies of those who judge of character by scenic effects: and who, by the very necessity of her new position, will measure her worth by the glare of the foot-lights of a theatre!

Mrs. FORREST has preferred admiration to sympathy; her self-denial is not equal to her love of approbation.

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European topic still has its place, and LOUIS NAPOLEON with his adroit but tyrannic manœuvres, fills up a large space of the talk. It would seem, that he was rivaling the keenest times of the Empire, in the zeal of his espionage; and every mail brings us intelligence of some unfortunately free-talker, who is “advised” to quit “the Republic.”

Americans are very naturally in bad odor; and from private advices we learn that their requisitions to see the lions of the capital city, meet with a growing coolness. Still, however, the gay heart of Paris leaps on, in its fond, foolish heedlessness; and the operas and theatres win the discontented away from their cares, and bury their lost liberties under the shabby concealment of a laugh.

Report says that the masked balls of the Opera were never more fully attended; or the gayety of their Carnival pursued with a noisier recklessness.

This, indeed, is natural enough: when men are denied the liberty of thinking, they will relieve themselves by a license of desire; and when the soul is pinioned by bonds, the senses will cheat the man.

There is no better safeguard for Despotism, whether under cover of a Kingdom or a Republic—than immorality. The brutality of lust is the best extinguisher of thought: and the drunkenness of sensualism will inevitably stifle all the nobler impulses of the mind.

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As for political chat at home, it runs now in the channel of President-making; and the dinner-tables of Washington are lighted up with comparison of chances. Under this, the gayeties proper are at a comparative stand-still. The Assembly balls, as we learn, are less brilliant, and more promiscuous than ever; and even the select parties of the National Hotel are singularly devoid of attractions. Lent too is approaching, to whip off, with its scourge of custom, the cue of papal diplomats; and then, the earnestness of the campaign for the Presidency will embrue the talk of the whole Metropolis.

While we are thus turning our pen-point Washington-ward, we shall take the liberty of felicitating ourselves, upon the contrast which has belonged to the reception of LOLA MONTES, in New York, and in the metropolis of the nation. Here, she was scarce the mention of a respectable journal; there, she has been honored by distinguished “callers.”

We see in this a better tone of taste in our own city, than in the city of the nation; and it will justify the opinion, which is not without other support, that the range of honorable delicacy is far lower in the city of our representatives, than in any city of their clients. Representatives leave their proprieties at home; and many a member would blush at a license within the purlieus of his own constituency, which he courts as an honor in the city of our Cæsars! We wish them joy of their devotion to the Danseuse, whom—though we count as humble as themselves in point of morals—we believe to be superior, mentally, to the bulk of her admirers.

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As a token of French life and morals, we make out this sad little bit of romance from a recent paper:

A few days since, some boatmen upon the Seine saw what appeared to be a pair of human feet floating down the stream; manning their barge, they hastened to the spot, and succeeded in drawing from the water the body of a young woman, apparently about twenty-five years of age, and elegantly dressed; a heavy stone was attached to her neck by a cord. Within a small tin box, in the pocket of her dress, carefully sealed, was found the following note:

“My parents I have never known; up to the age of seven years, I was brought up by a good woman of a little village of the Department of the Seine and Marne; and from that time, to the age of eighteen I was placed in a boarding-house of Paris. Nothing but was provided for my education. My parents were without doubt rich, for nothing was neglected that could supply me with rich toilet, and my bills were regularly paid by an unknown hand.

“One day I received a letter; it was signed, ‘Your mother.’ Then I was happy!

“ ‘Your birth,’ she wrote me, ‘would destroy the repose of our entire family; one day, however, you shall know me: honorable blood flows in your veins, my daughter—do not doubt it. Your future is made sure. But for the present, it is necessary that you accept a place provided for you in the establishment of M——; and when once you have made yourself familiar with the duties of the place, you shall be placed at the head of an even larger establishment.’

“A few days after, I found myself in the new position. Years passed by. Then came the Revolution of February. From that fatal time I have heard nothing of my family. Alone in the world, believing myself deserted, maddened by my situation, I yielded, in an evil hour, to the oaths of one who professed to love me. He deceived me; there is nothing now to live for; suicide is my only refuge. I only pray that those who find this poor body, will tell my story to the world; and, please God, it may soften, the heart of those who desert their children!”

The story may be true or not, in fact; it is certainly true to the life, and the religion of Paris: and while such life, and such sense of duty remains, it is not strange that a Napoleon can ride into rule, and that the French Republic should be firmest under the prick of bayonets.

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It appears that a Madame de la Ribossière has deceased lately in Paris, leaving a very large fortune—to the city of Paris—much to the ire, not only of her family, but of sundry friends, literary and others, who had contributed very greatly to her amusement.

A French writer comments on the matter in a strain which, considering our duties as Editor, we shall not think it worth while to gainsay.

Madame de la Ribossière was a lady of refined tastes, who derived a large part of her enjoyment of life from the accomplishments of artistic and literary gentlemen; how then, does it happen that she should not have given proof of the pleasure she had received by a few princely legacies?

In the good old times (may they come again!) authors had different treatment. Thus Pliny, the younger, in writing to Tacitus, says, “I have received the past year some twenty-five thousand _ses terces_ more than yourself—in the way of legacies—but don’t be jealous!”

The truth is, that a rich man rarely died in Rome, without leaving some token to the author who had beguiled the hours of solitude—enlarged his ideas, or consoled him in affliction. Cicero speaks of a large inheritance, which he possessed, of statues and beautiful objects. In short, Roman literature and the history of antiquity grew out of those princely endowments, which independence and strength of opinion did not fail to secure.

But nowadays, says the French author, a writer is paid like a starveling; and picks up such crumbs of charity as fall only from the tables of the publishers. And he goes on pleasantly, to suggest a change in this matter; which, if it gain footing on the other side of the water, we shall take the liberty of welcoming very kindly in America. When the custom of leaving legacies to writers is in vogue, we shall take the liberty of suggesting, in our own behalf, such objects of art as would be agreeable to us; and such stocks as we should prefer as a permanent investment.

Meantime, we suck our quill in our Easy Chair, with as much forbearance as we can readily command.

EDITOR’S DRAWER.

That was a dignified and graceful entertainment which recently took place in the gay capital of France. Some two hundred of the “nobility and gentry,” including a sprinkling of English aristocracy, assembled in a prominent hall of the city, to see a _Rat and Owl Fight_! And while they were getting ready the combatants, which went by sundry fancy or favorite names, they had a _poet_ in leash, who “improvised a _strophe_” for the occasion! Think of a “poet” apostrophizing, in studied measures, twelve rats and four old owls! But that’s “the way they _do_ things in France.”

They have another very sensible and dramatic amusement there, which they call the “_Mat de Cocagne_.” This is a long pole, of about eighteen inches diameter at the base, well polished and greased from top to bottom, with soft soap, tallow, and other slippery ingredients. To climb up this pole to the top is an eminent exploit, which crowns the victorious adventurer with a rich prize, and gains him the acclamations of ten thousand spectators. The “pretenders” strip off their upper gear altogether, and roll up their trowsers mid-thigh, and thus accoutred, present themselves at the bottom of the mast. Now just listen to a description of the operation, and reflections thereupon, and tell us whether you ever read any thing more “perfectly _French_.”

“The first who attempt the ascent look for no honor; their office is to prepare the way, and put things in train for their successors: they rub off the grease from the bottom, the least practicable part of the pole. In every thing the first steps are the most difficult, although seldom the most glorious; and scarcely ever does the same person commence an enterprise, and reap the fruit of its accomplishment. They ascend higher by degrees, and the expert climbers now come forth, the heroes of the list: they who have been accustomed to gain prizes, whose prowess is known, and whose fame is established since many seasons. They do not expend their strength in the beginning; they climb up gently, and patiently, and modestly, and repose from time to time; and they carry, as is permitted, a little sack at their girdle, filled with ashes to neutralize the grease and render it less slippery.

“All efforts, however, for a long time prove ineffectual. There seems to be an ultimate point, which no one can scan, the measure and term of human strength; and to overreach it is at last deemed impossible. Now and then a pretender essays his awkward limbs, and reaching scarce half way even to this point, falls back clumsily amidst the hisses and laughter of the spectators; so in the world empirical pretension comes out into notoriety for a moment only to return with ridicule and scorn to its original obscurity.

“But the charm is at length broken: a victorious climber has transcended the point at which his predecessors were arrested. Every one now does the same: such are men: they want but a precedent: as soon as it is proved that a thing is possible, it is no longer difficult. Our climber continues his success: farther and farther still; he is a few feet only from the summit, but he is wearied, he relents. Alas! is the prize, almost in his grasp, to escape from him! He makes another effort, but it is of no avail. He does not, however, lose ground: he reposes. In the mean time, exclamations are heard, of doubt, of success, of encouragement.

“After a lapse of two or three minutes, which is itself a fatigue, he essays again. It is in vain! He begins even to shrink: he has slipped downward a few inches, and recovers his loss by an obstinate struggle (‘_applause_!’—‘_sensation_!’), but it is a supernatural effort, and—his last. Soon after a murmur is heard from the crowd below, half raillery and half compassion, and the poor adventurer slides down, mortified and exhausted, upon the earth!

“So a courtier, having planned from his youth his career of ambition, struggles up the ladder, lubric and precipitous, to the top—to the very consummation of his hopes, and then falls back into the rubbish from which he has issued; and they who envied his fortune, now rejoice in his fall. What lessons of philosophy in a greasy pole! What moral reflections in a spectacle so empty to the common world! What wholesome sermons are here upon the vanity of human hopes, the disappointments of ambition, and the difficulties of success in the slippery paths of fortune and human greatness! But the very defeat of the last adventurer has shown the _possibility_ of success, and prepared the way for his successor, who mounts up and perches on the summit of the mast, bears off the crown, and descends amidst the shouts and applause of the multitude. It is Americus Vespucius who bears away from Columbus the recompense of his toils!”

So much for climbing a greased pole in reflective, philosophical Paris!

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Inquisitiveness has been well described as “an itch for prying into other people’s affairs, to the neglect of our own; an ignorant hankering after all such knowledge as is not worth knowing; a curiosity to learn things that are not at all curious.” People of this stamp would rather be “put to the question” than not to ask questions. Silence is torture to them. A genuine _quidnunc_ prefers even false news to _no_ news; he prides himself upon having the first information of things that never happened. Yankees are supposed to have attained the greatest art in parrying inquisitiveness, but there is a story extant of a “Londoner” on his travels in the provinces, who rather eclipses the cunning “Yankee Peddler.” In traveling post, says the narrator, he was obliged to stop at a village to replace a shoe which his horse had lost; when the “Paul Pry” of the place bustled up to the carriage-window, and without waiting for the ceremony of an introduction, said:

“Good-morning, sir. Horse cast a shoe I see. I suppose, sir, you are going to—?”

Here he paused, expecting the name of the place to be supplied; but the gentleman answered:

“You are quite right; I generally go there at this season.”

“Ay—ahem!—do you? And no doubt you are now come from—?”

“Right again, sir; I _live_ there.”

“Oh, ay; I see: you do! But I perceive it is a London shay. Is there any thing stirring in London?”

“Oh, yes; plenty of other chaises and carriages of all sorts.”

“Ay, ay, of course. But what do folks say?”

“They say their prayers every Sunday.”

“That isn’t what I mean. I want to know whether there is any thing new and fresh.”

“Yes; bread and herrings.”

“Ah, you are a queer fellow. Pray, mister, may I ask your name?”

“Fools and clowns,” said the gentleman, “call me ‘Mister;’ but I am in reality one of the clowns of Aristophanes; and my real name is _Brekekekex Koax!_ Drive on, postillion!”

Now this is what _we_ call a “pursuit of knowledge under difficulties” of the most _obstinate_ kind.

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In these “leaking” days of wintry-spring, when that classical compound called “_splosh_,” a conglomerate of dirty snow and unmistakable mud, pervades the streets of the city, perhaps these “_Street Thoughts by a Surgeon_” may not be without some degree of wholesome effect upon the community:

“In perambulating the streets at this period, what a number of little ragamuffins I observe trundling their hoops! With what interest I contemplate their youthful sport; particularly when I regard its probable consequences! A hoop runs between a gentleman’s legs. He falls. When I reflect on the wonderful construction of the skeleton, and consider to how many fractures and dislocations it is liable in such a case, my bosom expands to a considerate police, to whose ‘non-interference’ we are indebted for such chances of practice!

“The numerous bits of orange-peel which diversify the pavement, oftentimes attract my attention. Never do I kick one of them out of the way. The blessings of a whole profession on the hands that scatter them! Each single bit may supply a new and instructive page to the ‘Chapter of Accidents.’

“Considering the damp, muddy state of the streets at this time of the year, I am equally amazed and delighted to see the ladies, almost universally, going about in the thinnest of thin shoes. This elegant fashion beautifully displays the conformation of the ankle-joint; but to the practitioner it has another and a stronger recommendation. I behold the delicate foot separated scarcely by the thickness of thin paper from the mire. I see the exquisite instep, undefended but by a mere web. I meditate upon the influence of the cold and wet upon the frame. I think of the catarrhs, coughs, pleurisies, consumptions, and other interesting affections that necessarily must result from their application to the feet; and then I reckon up the number of pills, boluses, powders, draughts, mixtures, leeches, and blisters, which will consequently be sent in to the fair sufferers, calculate what they must come to, and wish that I had the amount already in my pocket!”

A world of satirical truth is here, in a very small compass.

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There is a good story told recently of Baron Rothschild, of Paris, the richest man of his class in the world, which shows that it is not only “money which makes the mare go” (or horses either, for that matter), but “_ready_ money,” “unlimited credit” to the contrary notwithstanding. On a very wet and disagreeable day, the Baron took a Parisian omnibus, on his way to the Bourse, or Exchange; near which the “Nabob of Finance” alighted, and was going away without paying. The driver stopped him, and demanded his fare. Rothschild felt in his pocket, but he had not a “red cent” of change. The driver was very wroth:

“Well, what did you get _in_ for, if you could not pay? You must have _known_, that you had no money!”

“I am Baron Rothschild!” exclaimed the great capitalist; “and there is my card!”

The driver threw the card in the gutter: “Never heard of you before,” said the driver, “and don’t want to hear of you again. But I want my fare—and I must _have_ it!”

The great banker was in haste: “I have only an order for a million,” he said. “Give me change;” and he proffered a “coupon” for fifty thousand francs.

The conductor stared, and the passengers set up a horse-laugh. Just then an “Agent de Change” came by, and Baron Rothschild borrowed of him the six sous.

The driver was now seized with a kind of remorseful respect; and turning to the Money-King, he said:

“If you want ten francs, sir, I don’t mind lending them to you on my own account!”

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“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” says the BIBLE, “THOU hast ordained praise.” Whoso reads the following, will feel the force of the passage.

At an examination of a deaf and dumb institution some years ago in London, a little boy was asked in writing:

“Who made the world?”

He took the chalk, and wrote underneath the words:

“In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth.”

The clergyman then inquired, in a similar manner

“Why did JESUS CHRIST come into the world?”

A smile of gratitude rested upon the countenance of the little fellow, as he wrote:

“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that JESUS CHRIST came into the world to save sinners.”

A third question was then proposed, evidently adapted to call the most powerful feelings into exercise:

“Why were _you_ born deaf and dumb, when _I_ can both hear and speak?”

“Never,” said an eye-witness, “shall I forget the look of resignation which sat upon his countenance, when he again took the chalk and wrote:

“_Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight!_”

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We find a piece of poetry in the “Drawer,” entitled “_The Husband’s Complaint_,” and we quote a few stanzas from it to show, that there are elsewhere, sympathizers with all those unfortunate husbands, victims to German worsted, who are compelled to see pink dogs with green eyes gradually growing before them every day, or untamed African lions in buff, with vermilion eyeballs, glaring from the frame upon them.

“I hate the name of German wool, In all its colors bright, Of chairs and stools in fancy-work, I hate the very sight! The rugs and slippers that I’ve seen, The ottomans and bags, Sooner than wear a stitch on me, I’d walk the streets in rags!”

“I’ve heard of wives too musical, Too talkative, or quiet; Of scolding or of gaming wives, And those too fond of riot; But yet, of all the errors known, Which to the women fall, Forever doing “fancy-work,” I think exceeds them all!

“The other day, when I came home, No dinner was for me; I asked my wife the reason why, And she said “One, two, three!” I told her I was hungry, And I stamped upon the floor, She never looked at me, but said, “I want one dark-green more!”

“Of course she makes me angry, But she doesn’t care for that; But chatters while I talk to her, “One white and then a black; One green, and then a purple, (Just hold your tongue, my dear, You really do annoy me so), I’ve made a wrong stitch here!”

“And as for confidential chat,” With her eternal “_frame_,” Though I should speak of fifty things, She’d answer me the same: ’Tis, “Yes, love—five reds, then a black— (I quite agree with you)— I’ve done this wrong—seven, eight, nine, ten, An orange—then a blue!”

“If any lady comes to tea, Her bag is first surveyed; And if the pattern pleases her, A copy then is made; She stares the men quite out of face, And when I ask her why, ’Tis, “Oh, my love, the pattern of His waistcoat struck my eye!”

“And if to walk I am inclined (It’s seldom I go out), At every worsted-shop she sees, Oh, how she looks about! And says, “Bless me! I _must_ ’go in, The pattern is so rare; That group of flowers is just the thing I wanted for my chair!”

“Besides, the things she makes are all Such “Touch-me-not” affairs, I dare not even use a stool, Nor screen; and as for chairs, ’Twas only yesterday I put My youngest boy in one, And until then I never knew My wife had such a tongue!

“Alas, for my poor little ones! They dare not move nor speak, It’s “Tom, be still, put down that bag, Why, Harriet, where’s your feet! Maria, standing on that stool!! It wasn’t made for use; Be silent all: three greens, one red, A blue, and then a puce!”

“Oh, Heaven preserve me from a wife With “fancy-work” run wild; And hands which never do aught else For husband or for child: Our clothes are rent, our bills unpaid, Our house is in disorder, _And all because my lady-wife_ _Has taken to embroider_!”

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Private subscriptions to a book, “for the benefit of the author,” is one way of paying creditors by taxing your friends. There have been some curious specimens of this kind of “raising the wind,” in this same big metropolis of Gotham, which have proved what is called at the West “a caution;” a caution which the victims found, to their mortification, that they needed beforehand. “All honor to the sex,” we say, of course, but not the _same_ honor to _all_ of the sex; for there have been instances, hereabout, of inveterate feminine book-purveyors, who have reflected little honor upon themselves, and less upon “the sex;” as certain public functionaries could bear witness—in fact, _have_ borne witness, upon the witness-stand. There is a laughable instance recorded of a new method of giving a subscription, which we shall venture to quote in this connection. Many years ago, a worthy and well-known English nobleman, having become embarrassed in his circumstances, a subscription was set on foot by his friends, and a letter, soliciting contributions, was addressed, among others, to Lord Erskine, who immediately dispatched the following answer:

“MY DEAR SIR JOHN:

“I am enemy to subscriptions of this nature; first, because my own finances are by no means in a flourishing plight; and secondly, because pecuniary assistance thus conferred, must be equally painful to the donor and the receiver. As I feel, however, the sincerest gratitude for your public services, and regard for your private worth, I have great pleasure in _subscribing_—[Here the worthy nobleman, big with expectation, turned over the leaf, and finished the perusal of the note, which terminated as follows]: in _subscribing_ myself,

“My dear Sir John,

“Yours, very faithfully,

“ERSKINE.”

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Very bad spelling is sometimes the best, as in the case of the English beer-vender, who wrote over his shop-door:

“_Bear_ sold here.”

Tom Hood, who saw it, said that it was spelled right, because the fluid he sold was his own _Bruin_!

Not less ingenious was the device of the quack-doctor, who announced in his printed handbills that he could instantly cure “the most obstinate _aguews_;” which orthography proved that he was no conjuror, and did not attempt to cure them by _a spell_.

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It was Punch, if we remember rightly, who told the story, some years ago, of a man who loaned an umbrella to a friend, a tradesman in his street, on a wet, nasty day. It was not returned, and on _another_ wet, disagreeable day, he called for it, but found his friend at the door, going out with it in his hand.

“I’ve come for my umbrella,” exclaimed the loan-_or_.

“Can’t help _that_,” exclaimed the borrower; “don’t you see that I am going out with it?”

“Well—yes—” replied the lender, astounded at such outrageous impudence; “yes; but—but—but what am _I_ to do?”

“Do?” replied the other, as he threw up the top, and walked off; “do? do as _I_ did: _borrow one_!”

One of the best chapters in “Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures,” is where that amiable and greatly-abused angel reproaches her inhuman spouse with loaning the family umbrella:

“Ah! that’s the third umbrella gone since Christmas! What were you to do? Why, let him go home in the rain. I don’t think there was any thing about _him_ that would spoil. Take cold, indeed! He does not look like one o’ the sort to take cold. He’d better taken cold, than our only umbrella. Do you hear the rain, Caudle? I say, do you _hear the rain_? Do you hear it against the windows? Nonsense; you can’t be asleep with such a shower as that. Do you _hear_ it, I say? Oh, you _do_ hear it, do you? Well, that’s a pretty flood, I think, to last six weeks, and no stirring all this time out of the house. Poh! don’t think to fool _me_, Caudle: _he_ return the umbrella! As if any body ever _did_ return an umbrella! There—do you hear it? Worse and worse! Cats and dogs for six weeks—always six weeks—and no umbrella!

“I should like to know how the children are to go to school, to-morrow. They shan’t go through _such_ weather, _that_ I’m determined. No; they shall stay at home, and never learn any thing, sooner than go and get wet. And when they grow up, I wonder who they’ll have to thank for knowing nothing. People who can’t feel for their children ought never to _be_ fathers.

“But _I_ know why you lent the umbrella—_I_ know, very well. I was going out to tea to mother’s, to-morrow;—you _knew_ that very well; and you did it on purpose. Don’t tell me; _I_ know; you don’t want me to go, and take every mean advantage to hinder me. But don’t you think it, Caudle! No; if it comes down in buckets-full, I’ll go all the more: I will; and what’s more, I’ll walk every step of the way; and you know that will give me my death,” &c., &c., &c.

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The satire of the following lines, upon that species of sentimental song-writing which prevailed a few years ago to a much greater extent than at present, is somewhat broad; but any one who remembers the feeble and affected trash which has hitherto been set to music, and sung by lachrymose young ladies and gentlemen, will not consider it one whit too much deserved.

I.

“My lute hath only one sad tone, It hath a mournful twang: Its other strings are cracked and gone, By one unlucky bang! You ask me why I don’t restore Its early sweetness, and fresh cord it; Oh, no! I’ll play on it no more! Between ourselves—I can’t afford it!

II.

“You tell me that my light guitar Is now as silent as the grave; That on it now I play no bar, Though _once_ it thrill’d with many a stave Alas! to strike it once again, More power than I possess requires; The effort would be worse than vain— My light guitar has lost its wires!

III.

“My heart, my lute, my light guitar, All broken as they be, As like unto each other are, As little pea to pea. Come, heart; come, lute, guitar, and all, In one lament ye all are blended! Hang on your nails against the wall— I can’t afford to get you mended!”

Just fancy this touching song sung by a “nice young man,” with all the modern “shakes” and _affetuoso_ accompaniments, and you will “realize” a fair hit at what was not long since a fashionable species of English ballad music.

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“Speaking of music,” by-the-by, we are reminded of rather a sharp reply made by a celebrated nobleman in England to an enterprising musical gentleman, who was a good deal of an enthusiast in the art. “I have waited upon you, my lord, to ask for your subscription of twenty guineas to the series of six Italian concerts, to be given at ——’s Rooms. Knowing your lordship to be an admirer of the sweet—”

“You’ve been misinformed, sir. I am _not_ much of an admirer of the school of ‘difficult music:’ on the contrary, I often wish, with Dr. Johnson, that ‘it was not only _difficult_, but _impossible_.’ ”

“But as a nobleman, as a public man, your lordship can not be insensible to the value of your honored name upon the subscription-list. Your eminent brother, the greatest of London’s prelates, the most gifted, your honorable brother subscribed fifty guineas. Here, sir, is his signature upon this very paper which I hold in my hand.”

“Well,” replied “his lordship,” “I have no hesitation to state, that if I were as _deaf_ as he is, I wouldn’t mind subscribing myself! He’s as deaf as a post, or as a dumb adder; and can not hear the sounds of your Italian charmers, charm they never so loudly. I have no such good luck.”

Thinking, doubtless, that trying to secure “his lordship’s” patronage under such circumstances, and with such opinions, involved the pursuit of musical subscriptions “under difficulties,” the importunate solicitor, with a succession of low bows, left the apartment; and as he left “the presence” he _thought_ he heard a low, chuckling laugh, but it didn’t affect _his_ risibles!

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What a life-like “picture in little” is this by HOOD of the “torrent of rugged humanity” that set toward an English poor-house, at sound of _The Work House Clock_! Remark, too, reader, the beautiful sentiment with which the extract closes:

“There’s a murmur in the air, And noise in every street; The murmur of many tongues, The noise of many feet. While round the work-house door The laboring classes flock; For why? the Overseer of the P—— Is setting the work-house clock.

“Who does not hear the tramp Of thousands speeding along, Of either sex, and various stamp Sickly, crippled, and strong; Walking, limping, creeping, From court and alley and lane, But all in one direction sweeping, Like rivers that seek the main?

“Who does not see them sally From mill, and garret, and room, In lane, and court, and alley, From homes in Poverty’s lowest valley Furnished with shuttle and loom: Poor slaves of Civilization’s galley— And in the road and footways sally, As if for the Day of Doom? Some, of hardly human form, Stunted, crooked, and crippled by toil, Dingy with smoke, and rust, and oil, And smirched beside with vicious toil, Clustering, mustering, all in a swarm, Father, mother, and care-full child, _Looking as if it had never smiled_; The seamstress lean, and weary, and wan, With only the _ghosts_ of garments on; The weaver, her sallow neighbor, The grim and sooty artisan; Every soul—child, woman, or man, Who lives—or dies—by labor!

“At last, before that door That bears so many a knock, Ere ever it opens to Sick or Poor, Like sheep they huddle and flock— And would that all the Good and Wise Could see the million of hollow eyes, With a gleam derived from Hope and the skies Upturned to the Work-House Clock!

“Oh! that the Parish Powers, Who regulate Labor’s hours, The daily amount of human trial, Weariness, pain, and self-denial, Would turn from the artificial dial That striketh ten or eleven, And go, for once, by that older one That stands in the light of Nature’s sun, And takes its time from Heaven!”

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There is something very amusing to us in this passage, which we find copied upon a dingy slip of paper in the “Drawer,” descriptive of the “sweet uses” to which sugar is put in “Gaul’s gay capital:”

“Here is the whole animal creation in paste, and history and all the fine arts in _sucre d’orge_. You can buy an epigram in dough, and a pun in a soda-biscuit; a ‘Constitutional Charter,’ all in jumbles, and a ‘Revolution’ just out of the frying-pan. Or, if you love American history, here is a United States frigate, two inches long, and a big-bellied commodore bombarding Paris with ‘shin-plasters;’ and the French women and children stretching out their little arms, three-quarters of an inch long, toward Heaven, and supplicating the mercy of the victors, in molasses candy. You see also a General Jackson, with the head of a hickory-nut, with a purse, I believe, of ‘Carroway Comfits,’ and in a great hurry, pouring out the ‘twenty-five millions,’ a king, a queen, and a royal family, all of plaster of Paris. If you step into one of these stores, you will see a gentleman in mustaches, whom you will mistake for a nobleman, who will ask you to ‘give yourself the pain to sit down,’ and he will put you up a paper of bon-bons, and he will send it home for you, and he will accompany you to the door, and he will have ‘the honor to salute you’—all for four sous!”

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Few things are more amusing, to one who looks at the matter with attention, than the literary style of the Chinese. How inseparable it is, from the exalted opinions which “John Chinaman” holds of the “Celestial Flowery Land!” Every body, all nations, away from the Celestial Empire, are “Outside Barbarians.” And this feeling is not assumed; it is innate and real in the hearts of the Chinese, both rulers and ruled. A friend once showed us a map of China. China, by that map, _occupied all the world_, with the exception of two small spots on the very outer edge, which represented Great Britain and the United States! These “places” they had _heard_ of, in the way of trade for teas, silks, etc., with the empire.

We once heard a friend describe a Chinese “chop,” on government-order. He was an officer on board a United States vessel, then lying in the harbor at Hong-kong. A great commotion was observable among the crowds of boats upon the water, when presently a gayly-decorated junk was observed approaching the vessel. She arrived at the side, when a pompous little official, with the air of an emperor, attended by two or three mandarins, was received on deck. He looked the personification of Imperial Dignity. He carried a short truncheon in his right hand, like Richard the Third; and with his “tail” (his own, and his followers’) he strode toward the quarter-deck. Arrived there, he unrolled his truncheon, a small square sheet of white parchment, bearing a single red character, and held it up to the astonished gaze of the officers and crew! This was a “_Vermilion Edict_,” that terrible thing, so often fulminated by Commissioner Lin against the “Outside Barbarians;” and that single red character was, “_Go away!_” After the exhibition of which, it was impossible (of course!) to stay in the Chinese waters. Having shown this, the great Mandarin and his “tail” departed in solemn silence over the side of the ship. Of these “special edicts,” especially those touching the expulsion of the “smoking mud,” or opium, from the “Central Kingdom,” we may give the readers of the “Drawer” specimens in some subsequent number; there happening to be in that miscellaneous receptacle quite a collection of authentic Chinese State Papers, with translations, notes, and introductions, by a distinguished American savant, long a resident in the “Celestial Flowery Land.”

LITERARY NOTICES.

One of the most welcome reprints of the season is Harper and Brothers’ edition of the _Life and Works of Robert Burns_, edited by ROBERT CHAMBERS, in four handsome duodecimos. This is a tribute of exceeding value to the memory of the great Peasant Bard, disclosing many new facts in his history, and enhancing the interest of his writings by the admirable order of their arrangement. These are interwoven with the biography in chronological succession, and thus made to illustrate the poetical experience and mental development of Burns, while they receive a fresh and more striking significance from their connection with the circumstances and impressions that led to their production. The present editor was induced to undertake the grateful task of preparing the works of his gifted countryman for the press by his profound interest in the subject, and by his perceptions of the short-comings of previous laborers in the same field. Dr. Currie, who was the pioneer of subsequent biographical attempts, entered upon his task with too great deference to public opinion, which at that time visited the errors of Bums with excessive severity of retribution. Hence the caution and timidity which characterized his memoir, converting it into a feeble apology for its subject, instead of a frank and manly narration of his life. Lockhart’s biography of Burns is a spirited and graceful production, inspired with a genuine Scottish feeling, written in a tone of impartial kindness, and containing many just, and forcible criticisms. It is, however, disfigured with numerous inaccuracies, and brings forward few details to increase our previous knowledge of the subject. Nor can the genial labors of Allan Cunningham be regarded as making further biographical efforts superfluous.

Mr. Chambers has availed himself in this edition of ample materials for a life of the poet, including the reminiscences of his youngest sister, who was still living at the date of the composition of these volumes. Devoted to the memory of Burns with the enthusiasm of national pride, a zealous student of his glorious poetry, and a warm admirer of the originality and nobleness of his character, in spite of its glaring and painful defects, he has erected a beautiful and permanent monument to his fame, which will survive the recollections of his errors and infirmities. We think this edition must speedily take the place of all others now extant. The notes in illustration of the biography, are copious and valuable. No one can read the poems, in connection with the lucid memoir, without feeling a new glow of admiration for the immortal bard, “whose life was one long hardship, relieved by little besides an ungainful excitement—who during his singularly hapless career, did, on the whole, well maintain the grand battle of Will against Circumstances—who, strange to say, in the midst of his own poverty conferred an imperishable gift on mankind—an Undying Voice for their finest sympathies—stamping, at the same time, more deeply, the divine doctrine of the fundamental equality of consideration due to all men.”

A new edition of _The Corner Stone_, by JACOB ABBOTT, with large additions and improvements, is issued in a very neat and convenient volume by Harper and Brothers. The series of works devoted to practical religion, of which this volume is a part, have been received with such general favor by the Christian public, as to make quite unnecessary any elaborate comments on their merits. Their peculiar power consists in their freedom from speculative subtleties, their luminous exhibition of the essential evangelical doctrines, their spirit of fervent and elevated piety, their wise adaptation to the workings of the human heart, and their affluence, aptness, and beauty of illustration. Mr. Abbott is eminently a writer for the masses. His practical common sense never forsakes him. He is never enticed from his firm footing amidst substantial realities. The gay regions of cloud-land present no temptations to his well disciplined imagination. He must always be a favorite with the people; and his moral influence is as salutary as it is extensive.

Blanchard and Lea have issued a reprint of BROWNE’S _History of Classical Literature_. The present volume is devoted to the literature of Greece, and comprises an historical notice of her intellectual development, with a complete survey of the writers who have made her history immortal. Without any offensive parade of erudition, it betrays the signs of extensive research, accurate learning, and a polished taste. As a popular work on ancient literature, adapted no less to the general reader than to the profound student, it possesses an unmistakable merit, and will challenge a wide circulation in this country.

We have also from the same publishers a collection of original _Essays on Life, Sleep, Pain_, and other similar subjects, by SAMUEL H. DIXON, M.D. They present a variety of curious facts in the natural history of man, which are not only full of suggestion to the scientific student, but are adapted to popular comprehension, and form a pleasant and readable volume.

George P. Putnam has republished SIR FRANCIS HEAD’S lively volume entitled _A Faggot of French Sticks_, describing what he saw in Paris in 1851. The talkative baronet discourses in this work with his usual sparkling volubility. Superficial, shallow, good-natured; often commonplace though seldom tedious; brisk and effervescent as ginger-beer, it rattles cheerfully over the Paris pavements, and leaves quite a vivid impression of the gayeties and gravities of the French metropolis.

James Munroe and Co., Boston, have issued the third volume of _Shakspeare_, edited by Rev. H. N. HUDSON, whose racy introductions and notes are far superior to the common run of critical commentaries—acute, profound, imbued with the spirit of the Shakspearian age, and expressed in a style of quaint, though vigorous antiqueness.

The same publishers have issued a Poem, called the _Greek Girl_, by JAMES WRIGHT SIMMONS, thickly sprinkled with affectation on a ground-work of originality;—a charming story, by the author of the “Dream-Chintz,” entitled _The House on the Rock_;—and a reprint of _Companions of My Solitude_, one of the series of chaste, refined, and quiet meditative essays by the author of “Friends in Council.”

_Sorcery and Magic_ is the title of a collection of narratives by THOMAS WRIGHT, showing the influence which superstition once exercised on the history of the world. The work is compiled with good judgment from authentic sources, and without attempting to give any philosophical explanation of the marvelous facts which it describes, leaves them to the reflection and common sense of the reader. It is issued by Redfield in the elegant and tasteful style by which his recent publications may be identified.

_Ravenscliffe_, by Mrs. MARSH, and _The Head of the Family_, by the author of “Olive,” and “The Oglevies,” have attained a brilliant popularity among the leading English novels of the season, and will be welcome to the American public in Harper’s “Library of Select Novels,” in which they are just reprinted.

Miss MITFORD’S _Recollections of a Literary Life_ (republished by Harper and Brothers) will be found to possess peculiar interest for the American reader. In addition to a rich store of delightful personal reminiscences, genial and graceful criticisms on old English authors, as well as on contemporary celebrities, and copious selections from their choicest productions, Miss Mitford presents several agreeable sketches of American authors and other distinguished men, including Daniel Webster, Halleck, Hawthorne, Whittier, Wendell Holmes, and so forth. She shows a sincere love for this country, and a cordial appreciation of its institutions and its literature. The whole book is remarkable for its frank simplicity of narrative, its enthusiasm for good letters, its fine characterizations of eminent people, and its careless beauties of style. A more truly delightful volume has not been on our table for many a day.

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Mr. T. HUDSON TURNER, one of the ablest of British archæologists, and a contributor to the _Athenæum,_ died of consumption, on the 14th of January, at the age of thirty-seven.

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The _Westminster Review_ has been excluded from the Select Subscription Library of Edinburgh, on the special ground of its heresy!

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Among the new works in the press the following are announced by Mr. Bentley: “History of the American Revolution,” by GEORGE BANCROFT; the “Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham,” by the Earl of ALBEMARLE; “Letters of Gray the Poet,” edited from original MSS., with Notes by the Rev. J. MITFORD; “Memoirs of the Court of George III.,” by J. HENEAGE JESSE; “Memoirs of Sarah Margaret Fuller, the Marchioness of Ossola,” edited by R. W. Emerson and W. H. CHANNING; “History of the Governors-General of India,” by Mr. KAYE, author of “The History of the Affghan War,” and various other works of general interest.

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JULES BENEDICT, the companion of the Swedish Nightingale in America, has entered into an arrangement with a London publisher to issue his complete account of Jenny Lind’s tour in America.

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It is said that Mr. MACAULAY has delayed the publication of the third and fourth volumes of his _History of England_ in consequence of his having obtained some new information relating to King William the Third. King William, it is asserted, figures as the chief personage in the narrative—and the greatest stress is laid on his conduct subsequently to the Revolution.

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ROBERT BROWNING, in his Italian sojourn, has been interesting himself biographically in PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY; and the result of this inquiry we are to have shortly in some unpublished letters of SHELLEY’S, with a preface by BROWNING himself.

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MR. W. CRAMP is preparing a critical analysis of the _Private Letters_ of Junius to Woodfall, to be added to his new edition of Junius. The private correspondence with Woodfall is a field of inquiry that hitherto has not been sufficiently explored. Mr. Cramp is pursuing his investigation on the plan of the essays on the letters of “Atticus Lucius,” and those in defense of the Duke of Portland. This inquiry promises to reveal many additional facts in proof of Mr. Cramp’s hypothesis that Lord Chesterfield was Junius.

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Major CUNNINGHAM has completed his work on _The Bhilsa Topes, or Budhist Monuments of Central India_—and the Governor General of India has sent the manuscript home to the Court of Directors, strongly recommending the court to publish it at their own expense.

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DR. WILLIAM FREUND, the philologist, is engaged in constructing a German-English and English-German Dictionary on his new system. He hopes to complete the work in the course of next year.

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The first volume has appeared of a collected edition of the _Poetical and Dramatic Works of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton_, containing “The New Timon,” “Constance,” “Milton,” “The Narrative Lyrics,” and other pieces. Of the poems in this volume public opinion has already expressed its estimate, and it is sufficient for us to notice their republication in convenient and elegant form. In a note to the passage in “The New Timon” referring to the late Sir Robert Peel, the author says “he will find another occasion to attempt, so far as his opinions on the one hand, and his reverence on the other, will permit—to convey a juster idea of Sir Robert Peel’s defects or merits, perhaps as a statesman, at least as an orator.” Very singular are the lines in the poem, written before the fatal accident:

“Now on his humble, but his faithful steed, Sir Robert rides—he never rides at speed— Careful his seat, and circumspect his gaze, And still the cautious trot the cautious mind betrays. Wise is thy head! how stout soe’er his back, Thy weight has oft proved fatal to thy hack!”

The generous and graceful turn given to this in the foot-note, is such as one might expect from Sir E. Bulwer Lytton. In another series we have the second part of _Ernest Maltravers_, or, as the other title bears, _Alice, or The Mysteries_. In this work of allegorical fiction, with the author’s usual power and felicity of narrative, there is mingled a philosophical purpose; and in a new preface Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton ascribes to it, above all his other works, “such merit as may be thought to belong to harmony between a premeditated conception, and the various incidents and agencies employed in the development of plot.” “Ernest Maltravers,” the type of Genius or intellectual ambition, is after long and erring alienation happily united to “Alice,” the type of Nature, nature now elevated and idealized.

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A new novel, by the gifted author of “Olive,” and the “Ogilvies,” entitled “The Head of the Family,” is spoken of in terms of warm admiration by the London press. The _Weekly News_ remarks, “The charm of idyllic simplicity will be found in every page of the book, imparting an interest to it which rises very far above the ordinary feeling evoked by novel reading. So much truthfulness, so much force, combined with so much delicacy of characterization, we have rarely met with; and on these grounds alone, irrespective of literary merit, we are inclined to credit the work with a lasting popularity.”

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The same journal has a highly favorable notice of LOSSING’S _Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution_, from which we take the following passage: “In reviewing the recent volumes of Lord Mahon’s History that treat of the American war, we expressed an opinion that the subject was one to which no American writer had done justice. The work now before us appears (so far as we may judge from its first moiety), to be the best contribution that any citizen of the United States has yet made to a correct knowledge of the circumstances of their war of independence. It is not a regular history; and the blank in transatlantic literature, to which we have referred, remains yet to be supplied. But Mr. Lossing has given us a volume full of valuable information respecting the great scenes and the leading men of the war. And the profuseness with which he has illustrated his narrative with military plans, with portraits of statesmen and commanders, and with sketches of celebrated localities, gives great interest and value to these pages.”

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With all its stubborn John Bullism, the London _Athenæum_ is compelled to pay a flattering tribute to the literary merits of our distinguished countryman, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: “Among the sterling pleasures which, though few, make rich amends for the many grievances and misconstructions that await honest critics, there is none so great as the discovery and support of distant and unknown genius. Such pleasure the _Athenæum_ may fairly claim in the case of Mr. Hawthorne. Like all men so richly and specially gifted, he has at last found his public—he is at last looked to, and listened for: but it is fifteen years since we began to follow him in the American periodicals, and to give him credit for the power and the originality which have since borne such ripe fruit in ’The Scarlet Letter’ and ’The House of the Seven Gables.’ Little less agreeable is it to see that acceptance, after long years of waiting, seems not to have soured the temper of the writer—not to have encouraged him into conceit—not to have discouraged him into slovenliness. Like a real artist Mr. Hawthorne gives out no slightly planned nor carelessly finished literary handiwork.”

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Among the list of passengers who perished by fire on board the Amazon steamer, we find the name of Mr. ELIOT WARBURTON, the author of “The Crescent and the Cross,” a book of Eastern travel—“Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers”—and the novels “Reginald Hastings” and “Darien.” Mr. Warburton, says a correspondent of the _Times_, had been deputed by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company to come to a friendly understanding with the tribes of Indians who inhabit the Isthmus of Darien: it was also his intention to make himself perfectly acquainted with every part of those districts, and with whatever referred to their topography, climate, and resources. “To _Darien_, with the date of 1852 upon its title-page,” says the _London Examiner_, “the fate of its author will communicate a melancholy interest. The theme of the book is a fine one. Its fault consists chiefly in the fact that the writer was not born to be a novelist. Yet, full as it is of eloquent writing, and enlivened as it is with that light of true genius, which raises even the waste work of a good writer above the common twaddle of a circulating library, _Darien_ may, for its own sake, and apart from all external interest, claim many readers. External interest, however, attaches to the book in a most peculiar manner. Superstitious men—perhaps also some men not superstitious—might say that there was a strange shadow of the future cast upon its writer’s mind. It did not fall strictly within the limits of a tale of the Scotch colonization of Darien, to relate perils by sea; yet again and again are such perils recurred to in these volumes, and the terrible imagination of a _ship on fire_ is twice repeated in them.”

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M. THIERS, ALEXANDRE DUMAS, VICTOR HUGO, several newspaper editors, and other literary men of France, are now at Brussels. Thiers is said to be working hard at his _History of the Consulate and of the Empire_, and Hugo is represented to entertain the intention of again seriously returning to literary pursuits, in which, one would think, he must find more pleasure, as well as more fame and profit, than in the stormy arena of politics. Dumas, who works like a cart-horse, and who, as ever, is in want of money, has, in addition to his numerous pending engagements at Paris, undertaken to revise, for a Belgian publishing firm, the _Memoirs of his Life_, now in course of publication in the Paris _Presse_; and he is to add to them all the passages suppressed by Louis Bonaparte’s censors. Another new work is announced by Dumas, called _Byron_, in which we are promised the biography, love adventures, journeys, and anecdotic history of the great poet.

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M. DE LAMARTINE has resigned the editorship, or, as he called it, the directorship, of the daily newspaper on which he was engaged at a large salary, and in which he published his opinions on political events. He has also put an end to his monthly literary periodical, called _Les Foyers du Peuple_; no great loss, by the way, seeing that it was only a jumble of quotations from his unpublished works, placed together without rhyme or reason; and, finally, he has dropped the bi-monthly magazine, in which he figured as the _Counsellor of the People_. But he promises, notwithstanding the sickness under which he is laboring, to bring out a serious literary periodical, as soon as the laws on the press shall be promulgated.

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Among the novelties that are forthcoming, there is one which promises to be very important, called _Lord Palmerston—L’Angleterre et le Continent_, by Count FICQUELMONT, formerly Austrian Ambassador at Constantinople and St. Petersburg, where he had occasion to experience something of Lord PALMERSTON’S diplomacy. It is, we are told, a vigorous attack on English policy.

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_La Vérité_, a pamphlet containing the true history of the _coup d’état_, is announced in London, with the production of authentic documents which could not get printed in France. This _coup d’état_ has set all servile pens at work. MAYER announces a _Histoire du 2 Decembre_; CESENA, a _Histoire d’un Coup d’État_; and ROMIEU, the famous trumpeter of the Cæsars—Romieu, who in his _Spectre Rouge_ exclaimed, “I shall not regret having lived in these wretched times if I can only see a good castigation inflicted on _the mob_, that stupid and corrupt beast which I have always held in horror.” Romieu has had his prediction fulfilled, and he, too, announces a History of the event.

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No ruler of France, in modern times, has shown such disregard to literary men as Louis Napoleon. King Louis XVIII. patronized them royally; Charles X. pensioned them liberally; Louis Philippe gave them titles and decorations freely, and was glad to have them at his receptions; the princes, his sons, showed them all possible attention; but during the whole time Louis Bonaparte has been in power he has not only taken no official notice of them, but has not even had the decent civility to send them invitations to his _soirées_. By this conduct, as much, perhaps, as by his political proceedings, he has made nearly the whole literary body hostile to him: and, singular to state, the most eminent writers of the country—Lamartine, Lamennais, Beranger, Hugo, Janin, Sue, Dumas, Thiers—are personally and politically among his bitterest adversaries.

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Madame GEORGE SAND is in retirement in the province of Berry, and is at present engaged in preparing “Memoirs of her Life,” for publication.

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The second division of the third volume of Alexander VON HUMBOLDT’S _Cosmos_ has just issued from the German press. The new chapters treat of the circuits of the sun, planets, and comets, of the zodiacal lights, meteors, and meteoric stones. The uranological portion of the physical description of the universe is now completed. The veteran philosopher has already made good way into the fourth volume of his great work.

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HERR STARGARDT, a bookseller at Stuttgardt, has lately made a valuable acquisition by purchasing the whole of Schiller’s library, with his autograph notes to the various books.

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The _Icelandic-English Dictionary_ of the late distinguished philologist, Mr. CLEASBY, is now nearly ready for the press; Mr. Cleasby’s MS. collections having been arranged and copied for this purpose by another distinguished Icelandic scholar, Hector Konrad Gislason, author of the “Danish-Icelandic Lexicon.”

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The Swedish Academy has elected Professor HAGBERG, the translator of Shakspeare, in place of the deceased Bishop Kullberg. The great prize of the academy has this year been conferred on a poem entitled “Regnar Lodbrok,” written by Thekla Knös, a daughter of the late Professor Knös.

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Attention is beginning to be paid in Spain to the popular literature of England, and it is not improbable that it may get into as high favor as that of France. Already Dickens’s “David Copperfield” and Lady Fullerton’s “Grantley Manor” have been translated, and are being published in the _folletinos_ of two of the newspapers.

A LEAF FROM PUNCH.

France Is Tranquil.

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Signs Of The Times.

When a young lady “has a very bad cold, or else she’d be delighted,” &c., it is rather a dangerous sign that, when once she sits down to the piano, she will probably not leave it for the remainder of the evening.

When a gentleman loses his temper in talking, it is a tolerably correct sign that he is getting “the worst of the argument.”

When you see the servant carrying under her apron a bottle of soda-water into a house, you may at once seize it as a sure sign that some one has been drinking over-night.

When the children are always up in the nursery, you may construe it into a sure sign that the mother does not care much about them.

When a young couple are seen visiting a “Cheap Furniture Mart,” you may interpret it into a pretty fair sign that the “happy day” is not far distant.

When the boys begin to tear up their books, it is a sign the holidays are about to commence.

The Road To Ruin.

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The accompanying is a good sketch of the PATENT STREET-SWEEPING MACHINE lately introduced in Paris. The sketch was taken on the spot (represented at A). The want of firmness in the lines of the drawing would seem to indicate some tremor in the nerves of the artist. The invention is not entirely new, having been used in the same city by the uncle of the present owner. The result of the late experiment is represented to have been quite satisfactory. The Constitution, which it was feared would interfere with its operation, was removed by it without any difficulty, so that no traces of it were left.

FASHIONS FOR MARCH.

Figure 1.—Full Dress for Ball or Evening Party.

Figure 1.—Hair in puffed bands, raised, ornamented with bunches of wild poppies, with silver foliage—coral necklace and waistcoat buttons—waistcoat open, of white satin, embroidered in front with silver and white jet. Pardessus of white gauze, bordered with a silver band, and embroidered with silver spots. This pardessus fits quite close, being hollowed out at the seam under the arm. Back flat; great round skirt without plaits, sitting well over the hips. Sleeves short, and turned up _à la Mousquetaire_: the silver band is about a quarter of an inch from the edge, and is itself an inch wide. The skirt is white gauze, and very ample; its only ornaments are three silver bands starting from the middle and diverging toward the bottom. The space between them is covered with silver spots. Pantaloons of plain white gauze, not very full, are fastened round the ankle with a silver band. The foot is shod with a small white silk _bottine_, laced up at the instep, from the top almost to the toe. The lacing is crossed.

Figure 2.—Young Lady’s Toilet.

Fig. 2.—Bonnet of plain silk or satin, with a fringe at the edge of the brim. A broad plaid ribbon is laid like a _fanchon_ over the brim and crown. Curtain plaid cross-wise; plaid strings; the brim is forward at the top, and falls off very much at the sides; no trimming inside. Waistcoat of white quilting, open at the top, with small enamel buttons; two small gussets at the waist; lappets rounded; a double row of stitches all around. The muslin chemisette is composed of two rows, raised at the neck, of a front piece in small plaits, and two lapels, embroidered and festooned, which turn back on the waistcoat and vest. The sleeves are plaited small, with embroidered wristbands and cuffs. The vest is velvet; it is high, and opens straight down, but is not tight in the foreparts: it is hollowed out at the seams of the side and back, so as to sit close behind and on the hips. The foreparts form a hollow point at the side. The sleeves, half-large, are cut in a point. A broad _galloon_ edges the vest and the ends of sleeves. The lining is white satin. Skirt of Scotch poplin. Narrow plaid cravat.

Figure 3.—Morning Toilet.

FIG. 3.—Drawn bonnet, satin and crape; the edge crape for a width of three inches. The crape is doubled over a wire covered with satin, which is seen through the crape. The rest of the brim is formed of five drawings of satin. The crown, satin, is round, and divided into four parts separated by three small _bouillonnés_; one, starting from the middle, goes over the head to the curtain; the two others are at the sides. The curtain is satin at top, and crape at bottom. Inside the brim, at the lower edges, are bunches of ribbon from which hang loops of jet.

Dress of gros d’Ecosse. Body with round lappet Sleeves tight at top, open at bottom. Skirt with flat plaits on the hips, so as not to spoil the sit of the lappet. The body all round, and the front of the skirt are ornamented with crape _bouillonnés_ sprinkled with jet beads. Each of the beads seems to fasten the gathers of the _bouillonné_. Collar and under-sleeves of white muslin festooned.

The waistcoat is in higher favor than ever. There are morning waistcoats, visiting waistcoats, walking waistcoats. The first are made of white quilting, simply, their only richness being in the trimming; nothing can be prettier than the malachite buttons hanging at the end of a small chain. There are some waistcoats of white or pink watered silk, ornamented with a very small lace ruff, which is continued down the front as a frill; there are others of silk, with needlework embroidery round the edges, and sprinkled with flowers; others again of white satin with gold figures. As a great novelty, we may mention the _Molière_ waistcoats, buttoning up to the neck without collars, provided with little pockets, coming down low and ending square below the waist, where the two sides begin to part. In order to give the _Molière_ waistcoat the really fashionable stamp, it must have a _godrooned_ collar, made of several rows of lace, a frill of the same, and ruffles reaching to the knuckles. The buttons are cornelian, agate, turquoise, or merely gold, bell-shaped. It is not uncommon in toilets for places of public amusement to see the waistcoat fastened with buttons mounted with brilliants. It is unnecessary to say that every waistcoat has a little watch-pocket out of which hangs a chain of gold and precious stones, the end of which is hooked in a button-hole and bears a number of costly trinkets. We may here remark that they are made very simple or very richly ornamented; for instance, those of the most simple description are made either of black velvet, embroidered with braid, and fastened with black jet buttons, or of cachmere.

Materials for this month vary very little from those of the winter months, as we seldom have really fine spring weather during March. The fashionable colors which prevail for the present month for out-door costume are violet, maroon, green, blue, and gray of different shades; while those intended for evening are of very light colors, such as white, maize, blue, and pink, the latter being extremely fashionable, relieved with bright colors.

HEAD-DRESSES.—Petit dress-hats are now greatly in request, made in the following manner:—It is formed of black lace, and inlet formed of a jet-black net-work, placed alternately, and ornamented with a _panache_, each slip of feather being finished with a small jet-bead, which falls in a glittering shower upon the side of the head. Then, again, we see those _petit bords_ of black velvet; the crown being open, shows the beauty of the hair; having also, upon one side of the front, which is slightly turned back, a _nœud_ of black satin ribbon broché gold very wide and the ends descending nearly to the waist.

FOOTNOTES

1 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by Harper and Brothers, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

2 From “Recollections of a Literary Life, or Books, Places, and People.” By Mary Russell Mitford. In press by Harper and Brothers.

3 This picture is believed to be no longer in existence. I have found its description in the work of the historian Decamps.

4 Continued from the February Number

5 As there have been so many revolutions in France, it may be convenient to suggest that, according to the dates of this story, Harley, no doubt, alludes to that revolution which exiled Charles X. and placed Louis Philippe on the throne.

6 Have you fifty friends?—it is not enough. Have you one enemy?—it is too much.

7 At home—

“In the serene regions Where dwell the pure forms.”

8 As the heaviest portion of this great influx of immigration took place in the latter half of the decade, it will probably be fair to estimate the natural increase during the term, at twelve per cent., being about one-third of that of the white population at its commencement.

9 Alexandria &c. ceded back to Virginia since 1840.

10 When _x_ = 10, then _x__x_ = 10,000,000,000, or _ten thousand million_. When _x_ = 100, the value of the function passes beyond all bounds capable of being expressed by any known numerical names. If we might manufacture a term for the occasion, it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of a _quadragintillion_.