haps one of Ogden's sermons. O Arcadia! what a life it must have been!

The theater was always his delight. His bishops and clergy used to attend it, thinking it no shame to appear where that good man was seen. He is said not to have cared for Shakespeare or tragedy much; farces and pantomimes were his joy; and especially when clown swallowed a carrot or a string of sausages, he would laugh so outrageously that the lovely princess by his side would have to say, "My gracious monarch, do compose yourself." But he continued to laugh, and at the very smallest farces, as long as his poor wits were left him.

"George, be a king!" were the words which his mother was forever croaking in the ears of her son; and a king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried to be.

He did his best, worked according to his lights: what virtue he knew, he tried to practice; what knowledge he could master, he strove to acquire. But, as one thinks of an office almost divine, performed by any mortal man,- of any single being pretending to control the thoughts, to direct the faith, to order implicit obedience of brother millions; to compel them into war at his offense or quarrel; to command, "In this way you shall trade, in this way you shall think; these neighbors shall be your allies, whom you shall help, these others your enemies, whom you shall slay at my orders; in this way you shall worship God; "— who can wonder that, when such a man as George took such an office on himself, punishment and humiliation should fall upon people and chief?

Yet there is something grand about his courage. The battle of the king with his aristocracy remains yet to be told by the historian who shall view the reign of George more justly than the trumpery panegyrists who wrote immediately after his decease. It was he, with the people to back him, that made the war with America; it was he and the people who refused justice to the Roman Catholics; and on both questions he beat the patricians. He bribed, he bullied, he darkly dissembled on occasion; he exercised a slippery perseverance, and a vindictive resolution, which one almost admires as one thinks his character over. His courage was never to be beat. It trampled North underfoot; it bent the stiff neck of the younger Pitt; even his illness never conquered that indomitable spirit. As soon as his brain was clear, it resumed the scheme, only laid aside when his reason left him: as soon as

his hands were out of the strait-waistcoat, they took up the pen and the plan which had engaged him up to the moment of his malady. I believe it is by persons believing themselves in the right, that nine-tenths of the tyranny of this world has been perpetrated. Arguing on that convenient premise, the Dey of Algiers would cut off twenty heads of a morning; Father Dominic would burn a score of Jews in the presence of the Most Catholic King, and the Archbishops of Toledo and Salamanca sing Amen. Protestants were roasted, Jesuits hung and quartered at Smithfield, and witches burned at Salem; and all by worthy people, who believed they had the best authority for their actions. And so with respect to old George, even Americans whom he hated and who conquered him, may give him credit for having quite honest reasons for oppressing them.

Of little comfort were the king's sons to the king. But the pretty Amelia was his darling; and the little maiden, prattling and smiling in the fond arms of that old father, is a sweet image to look on.

the

From November, 1810, George III. ceased to reign. All the world knows the story of his malady; all history presents no sadder figure than that of the old man, blind and deprived of reason, wandering through the rooms of his palace, addressing imaginary parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly courts. have seen his picture as it was taken at this time, hanging in the apartment of his daughter, the Landgravine of Hesse Homburg,amidst books and Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over his breast, star of his famous Order still idly shining on it. He was not only sightless, he became utterly deaf. All light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God, were taken from him. Some slight lucid moments he had; in one of which, the queen, desiring to see him, entered the room, and found him singing a hymn, and accompanying himself at the harpsichord. When he had finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding with a prayer for himself, that it might please God to avert His heavy calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to submit. He then burst into tears, and his reason again fled.

What preacher need moralize on this story; what words save

the simplest are requisite to tell it? It is too terrible for tears. The thought of such a misery smites me down in submission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch Supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser of life, death, happiness, victory. "O brothers," I said to those who heard me first in America, "O brothers! speaking the same dear mother tongue,— O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse, and call a truce to battle! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest; dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne, buffeted by rude hands; with his children in revolt; the darling of his old age killed before him untimely; our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little!'

'Vex not his ghost-oh! let him pass- he hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer!'

"Hush! Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, Trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, Dark Curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy!"

-William Makepeace Thackeray.

THE BIRTH OF DOMBEY

Rich Mr. Dombey sat in the corner of his wife's darkened bedchamber in the great arm-chair by the bedside, and rich Mr. Dombey's Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket, carefully placed on a low settee in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential te toast him brown while he was very new.

Rich Mr. Dombey was about eight-and-forty years of age. Rich Mr. Dombey's Son, about eight-and-forty minutes.

Mr. Dombey, exulting in the long-looked-for event, the birth of a son, jingled his heavy gold watch-chain as he sat in his blue coat and bright buttons by the side of the bed, and said:

"Our house of business will once again be not only in name but in fact Dombey and Son; Dombey and Son! He will be christened Paul, of course. His father's name, Mrs. Dombey, and his

grandfather's! I wish his grandfather were alive this day!" And again he said, "Dombey and Son."

Those three words conveyed the one idea of Mr. Dombey's life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light. Common abbreviations took new meanings in his eyes, and had sole reference to them. A. D. had no concern with anno Domini, but stood for anno Dombei — and Son.

He had been married ten years, and, until this present day on which he sat jingling his gold watch-chain in the great arm-chair by the side of the bed, had had no issue.

-To speak of. There had been a girl some six years before, and she, who had stolen into the chamber unobserved, was now crouching in a corner whence she could see her mother's face. But what was a girl to Dombey and Son!

Mr. Dombey's cup of satisfaction was so full, however, that he said: "Florence, you may go and look at your pretty brother, if you like. Don't touch him!"

Next moment the sick lady had opened her eyes and seen the little girl; and the little girl had run towards her; and, standing on tiptoe, to hide her face in her embrace, had clung about her with a desperate affection very much at variance with her years. The lady herself seemed to faint.

"O Lord bless me!" said Mr. Dombey, "I don't like the look of this. A very ill-advised and feverish proceeding having this child here. I had better ask Doctor if he 'll have the goodness to step up stairs again," which he did, returning with the Doctor himself, and closely followed by his sister, Mrs. Chick, a lady rather past the middle age than otherwise, but dressed in a very juvenile manner, who flung her arms around his neck, and said:

“My dear Paul! This last child is quite a Dombey! He's such a perfect Dombey!

"Well, well! I think he is like the family. But what is this they have told me, since the child was born, about Fanny herself? How is Fanny?"

"My dear Paul, there's nothing whatever wrong with Fanny. Take my word, nothing whatever. An effort is necessary. That's all. Ah! if dear Fanny were a Dombey! But I dare say, although she is not a born Dombey herself, she 'll make an effort; I have no doubt she 'll make an effort. Knowing it to be required of her,

as a duty, of course she 'll make an effort. And that effort she must be encouraged, and really, if necessary, urged to make. Now, my dear Paul, come close to her with me.'

The lady lay immovable upon her bed, clasping her little daughter to her breast. The girl clung close about her, with the same intensity as before, and never raised her head, or moved her soft cheek from her mother's face, or looked on those who stood around, or spoke, or moved, or shed a tear.

There was such a solemn stillness round the bed, and the Doctor seemed to look on the impassive form with so much compassion and so little hope, that Mrs. Chick was for a moment diverted from her purpose. But presently summoning courage, and what she called presence of mind, she sat down by the bedside, and said, in the tone of one who endeavors to awaken a sleeper,— "Fanny! Fanny!"

There was no sound in answer but the loud ticking of Mr. Dombey's watch and the Doctor's watch, which seemed in the silence to be running a race.

"Fanny, my dear, here's Mr. Dombey come to see you. Won't you speak to him? They want you to lay your little boy in bed,— the baby, Fanny, you know; you have hardly seen him yet, I think, but they can't till you rouse yourself a little. Don't you think it's time you roused yourself a little? Eh?"

No word or sound in answer. Mr. Dombey's watch and the Doctor's watch seemed to be racing faster.

"Now really, Fanny my dear, I shall have to be quite cross with you if you don't rouse yourself. It's necessary for you to

make an effort, and perhaps a very great and painful effort, which you are not disposed to make; but this is a world of effort, you know, Fanny, and we must never yield when so much depends upon us. Come! Try! I must really scold you if you do n't. Fanny! Only look at me; only open your eyes to show me that you hear and understand me; will you? Good Heaven, gentlemen, what is to be done?"

The physician, stooping down, whispered in the little girl's ear. Not having understood the purport of his whisper, the little creature turned her deep, dark eyes towards him.

The whisper was repeated.

"Mamma!"

The little voice, familiar and dearly loved, awakened some