this point-blank questioning.

replied :

After a moment's hesitation, he

"I believe he did,—it was,-what more?"

"Was the chief part, if not the whole, of his property to revert to me, in the event of his widow's decease, who received the interest during her lifetime?"

"I believe so, but you must remember from the power which your respected mother had over the capital, the sum was considerably lessened through the speculations of her lawyers."

"Granted, but there is still a sum ?”

"Yes, and a very respectable one, I assure you."

"Then answer me plainly,-why am I kept out of the property or at least out of the unencumbered portion?"

Edward Westwood, clever lawyer as he was, received all these attacks in so unprepared a state, and shewed such evident symptoms of confusion, spite of his habitual sang-froid, that a little more of the same style of proceeding, would have carried the day altogether against him, and he would have had to explain himself, fully and clearly, before escaping from his excited companion. But the wine had done its work, and Amble already pined after the soothing cigar: he therefore suffered the startled barrister to recover himself as he pleased, scarcely attending to the words which he spoke.

Why, really,-one would think that—that you suspected me of melo-dramatically defrauding you of your just rights and parchments. No, no:" and the speaker assumed a graver and more collected tone, noticing a cigar case just placed on the table beside him, and perceiving, from the non-attention of his young friend, that he was at liberty to string together any nonsense he pleased: you must consider that the chancery suit being quashed, and the whole landed property under mortgage, and the intervention of trustees, as residuary legatees, being inadmissible, by the means you hint at, the whole estate would be plunged into difficulties, and dilemmas, from which neither you or I or indeed all the legal talent of England, could ever extricate it."

66

"Oh, if that be the case," interrupted Amble, "we'll have one glass of punch, and be off: what say you?"

"No, not punch: consider, my dear boy, after all this wine; a cup of coffee, and a 'petit verre,' will suit my purpose." "And then, to try the luck of this," added Amble, pulling from his waistcoat pocket, two notes of fifty, and four of twenty pounds each: "who knows but

"Hush,—I do not join you, I have nothing to say to it, 'tis positive wilfulness."

"As you please: what time is it? half-past ten."

"So late as that! I must be going homewards. Good night." But whether an actual separation occurred or not, we cannot

say: all we are enabled to add hereon being, that, at one o'clock on the ensuing morning, two individuals, in the garb of gentlemen, were seen walking up Regent-street,—they parted at the upper circus.

"We meet to-morrow, at two," said the elder.

"Yes," assented the other, with a hiccough. This latter, on being left alone, was about to beckon a cab, but instinctively put his hand to his coat-pocket: the purse was there, but empty,he felt in the waistcoat,-there was not a sixpence left: moodily walking onwards, he exclaimed,

"Cleaned out entirely! turn-out, hunters,-all-and that luckless couple of hundred which urged me on!"

We do not think it necessary to name the parties, to ensure their recognition by the reader.

LAYS OF FAMINE.

BY MRS. CHARLES TINSLEY.

V.

I stand by my spoiled hearth, I stand in despair,
The ashes of them that my soul loved lie there;
I have borne as a man what not many have borne,

Till the last clinging growth of my life's hope was torn.
But it is no light thing earth asks of me at length,*

And I shrink from such tasking of hearts' and souls' strength;

* In a letter, now before me, dated "Tralee, March 7th, 1847," is a brief notice of a man whose family, consisting of his wife, four children, and his sister, had all died of the famine. Four lay dead in the hovel, called his

There are voices around me, that cry "Dust to dust!
For the grave's shielding rest, to thy tried love we trust!"
And I know that no hand, save mine own, may be found
To dig for those dear ones a place in the ground
Yet I stand as one rendered all-powerless by wrong,
With a curse in my heart, and a curse on my tongue;
And I ask, in the might of my blind, fierce despair,
Where vengeance should fall? Tell me where-but where!

Aye, vengeance! ne'er say that God willed all this woe,-
That 'twas His hand still struck, 'mid the stricken, each blow;
No hand in this wide desolation I see,

Save that man has lifted against mine and me :—

No power, save that dark one, through long ages past,
Linking chain unto chain till our thrall was made fast.
And with wild thoughts that ceaselessly beat on my brain,
As the restless waves beat 'mid pent rocks in the main ;
All powerless to ransom, as powerless to save,-
One black sky around, and beneath me one grave,-
I stand here at bay in the midst of my wrong,
With a curse in my heart, and a curse on my tongue.
And I ask, in the might of my blind, fierce despair,
Where vengeance should fall! Tell me where-but where!

From this soil, by man's hand with destruction thick sown :
From this soil where that seed to such rank growths has grown ;
Where the broken in frame, and the weary in heart,
Look with envy on them God has willed to depart;
Where the black clouds of fate, as the folds of a pall,
O'er the past and the future alike densely fall;
Where the scant food that teacheth stern patience alway,
Springs up from dead hearts lashed to wrath in their day.
Where the strength of affection, the striving of hope,
Are vain 'mid the ills wherewith life has to cope;
I look up to heaven 'mid the wastes of my wrong,
With a curse in my heart, and a curse on my tongue :
And I ask, in the might of my blind, fierce despair,

Where vengeance should fall? Tell me where-but where !

home at one time; and it was not until he found himself called upon to dig for them a grave with his own hands, that the patience with which he had hitherto borne, forsook him. His character, from that time, entirely changed. He became fierce and sullen, and heaped terrible maledictions on the heads of those he termed his oppressors. The suffering that subdued many, rendered many desperate.

EA FOR ASSOCIATED HOMES.

BY THE EDITOR.

NOTHING can be more amusing than the air of genuine satisfaction which lightens up the face of your thorough-bred John Bull. In his own humble opinion, there are few better fellows than himself. Upon foreigners he is prone to look down with somewhat of contempt. Smoking and expectorating Germans he does not think much of. Frenchmen he positively detests. Americans find little favour in his eyes. John goes to Exeter Hall, and hears that in some countries the inhabitants are so awfully depraved, as to obey the Pope, and he becomes as indignant as if some young candidate for Newgate had filched his purse, or had abstracted his watch from its accustomed fob. Happy, ignorant, gullible John Bull, forgetful of the tragedies every day's police report narrates, forgetful of the selfishness which has suffered crime and want in their direst forms to pollute and devastate in our midst, he goes up into the temple, and thanks God that he is not as other men are.

Yet now and then a little light will find its way through John's bony skull. It has sometimes struck him that it would be quite as well to reward virtue as to punish vice; that it is hardly right to be so free with Hudson testimonials, when its Haydons are left to starve and die; that if society owes something to its warriors and statesmen, some small favour might be shown the men who nurse up in the masses of the people the love and practice of noble and generous deeds. Other ideas, also, have been gradually finding their advocates. It has come to be a question whether the arrangements of society as they are, are altogether of divine origin. Indeed, it has come to be admitted, that we Englishmen in this nineteenth century are not altogether perfect, that we are in the habit of doing a great deal of work for very little real good,— that whilst we toil from morning to night, we do not have that amount of happiness to which such unwearied labour might be supposed to qualify us to lay claim,-that owing to the malarrangements of society, much more time is given to mere mechanical toil than is actually required; and that thus our countrymen and country-women are deprived of an immense amount of social and intellectual enjoyment, the progress of civilization

impeded, and the aspect of society rendered very different to what it might become.

This statement cannot for a moment be questioned. The situation of a majority of families, in the middle classes more especially, is one of anxiety and toil,—one in which the claims of the passing day are too often with difficulty met,-in which much of real comfort is sacrificed in the vain struggle to present a respectable appearance to the world. The father of a family can see but little of them but on the sabbath,-the mother is too often harassed with cares, as how best to manage with the money her husband provides. Merchants go to their counting-houses early, and remain till late. Professional men have to perform a similar, if not a greater, amount of work. Tradesmen are equally confined in their shops. Now this state of society is attended with tremendous ills. Home might be made a more happy and blessed spot than it now is. More time might be given, and ought to be given, to the full development of the mental and bodily powers. Science, morality, religion, might have a better chance of reaching the ear and influencing the heart. There might be less of ignorance and immorality, and their natural results, crime and misery, in the land. Is not this a consummation devoutly to be wished? By means of Associated Homes, the thing might be done.

What do we mean by Associated Homes ?-We mean homes in which the co-operative principle is brought to bear,-homes in which families, while they live in separate apartments, can be fed and waited on much cheaper, and much more comfortably, than they are now; the rooms of which shall be larger, healthier, better furnished than at present; in which families will live much more secluded than they can now, overlooked as every London house is before and behind, with its thin partition walls, through which every sound manages to find its way.

"The advantages of such a plan," says Mary Gillies, in the June number of "Howitt's Journal," "would be best understood, by observing the various deficiencies of the present arrangements. Let us picture to ourselves a street containing fifty houses, rented at about fifty pounds a year. Here is a rental of £2,500 a year, for which those families have each a house which, with all its comforts, has many faults. The drainage is very commonly defective, and there is a bad smell at times; the water is not conveyed above the ground floor; the sunk story is damp and unhealthy for the servants; the rooms are small; they generally admit draughts when doors are opened, and are close when shut up; and the walls, being thin, are cold in winter, and hot in summer. Less than such a rental as this would command the erection of fifty houses of much superior description and convenience, if built in combination. These houses have each their kitchen-range. Fifty kitchen-ranges, each of which, with the necessary utensils for cooking, must have October, 1847.-VOL. L.-NO. CXCVIII.

M