commendable purpose of showing the amount and value of the public good done by the subject of his memoir. The sketch is a striking one; and a portion of it at least must be given. Let readers perpend, and thank their stars for the present better times : 'There was then in this country no popular representation, no emancipated burghs, no effective rival of the Established Church, no independent press, no free public meetings, and no better trial by jury, even in political cases (except high treason), than what was consistent with the circumstances that the jurors were not sent into court under any impartial rule, and that, when in court, those who were to try the case were named by the presiding judge. The Scotch representatives were only forty-five, of whom thirty were elected for counties, and fifteen for towns. Whatever this system may have been originally, it had grown, in reference to the people, into as complete a mockery as if it had been invented for their degradation. The people had nothing to do with it. The Secession Church had not then risen into much importance. There were few Protestant Dissenters. Even the Episcopalians were scarcely perceptible. Practically, Papists were unknown. During a few crazy weeks, there had been two or three wretched newspapers, as vulgar, stupid, and rash as if they had been set up in order to make the freedom of the press disgusting; and, with these momentary exceptions, Scotland did not maintain a single opposition newspaper, or magazine, or periodical publication. The nomination of the jury by the presiding judge was controlled by no check whatever, provided his lordship avoided minors, the deaf, lunatics, and others absolutely incapable. Peremptory challenge was unknown. Meetings of the adherents of government for party purposes, and for such things as victories and charities, were common enough. But, with ample materials for opposition meetings, they were in total disuse. Attendance was understood to be fatal. The very banks were overawed, and conferred their favours with a very different hand to the adherents of the two parties. Thus, politically, Scotland was dead.' Honour to the men who resisted the temptation at such a period to deny their principles for lucre! One of these was Francis Jeffrey, and another was Henry Cockburn, The latter had even peculiarly strong inducements thrown in his way to depart from the path of conscientiousness, being a relative of Dundas, the first Lord Melville, then all-powerful in Scotland. He gives a sketch of that statesman, which is coloured by his kindly feelings. Cockburn, however, courted not the smiles of power, when these were all in all in Scotland, and most especially in the department of the law. Political feelings (we are told) operated nowhere so severely as at the bar. Clients and agents shrink from counsel on whom judges frown.' A youth who adhered formerly to the popular side was universally given up, even by his own family, as a lost son.' It required courage to face these bugbears. The father of Jeffrey absolutely objected to his attending the lectures of Professor Millar of Glasgow, if not also of Dugald Stewart, on account of their supposed liberal opinions. Lord Cockburn refers much of this spirit, on the part of the prudent seniors of Britain, to the terrors exeited by the French Revolution. That event was indeed the blow that sunk a stamp upon the age; and the impress, happily, was for good on the whole. THE OLD VIRTUOSI OF FRANCE. Is the following conference, the Virtuosi discussed the He judge from the notable declaration made in the British Se- The first (speaker) said, The division of things into necessary, profitable, and delightful, is observed particularly in speech, the soul's interpreter. For at the beginning languages were only for necessity void of all artifice, being employed to no other use but to make us understand one another; which sort of language the first philosophers employed to express the essence and nature of things. Afterwards, history and oratory enriched it with the addition of flowers and flourishes. And, lastly, poetry added to those words number and cadence, not barely to teach and instruct, as the other liberal sciences, but withal to recreate and delight; which is an excellent method to prevent the disgust which the disciplines bring even in their rudiments. I therefore compare our language, considered in its original, to gold yet in the ore, mingled with earth; the same language polished by rhetoric to an ingot refined from its dross; but poetry to a goodly vessel of gold, not less rich for the workmanship than for the matter. The second (virtuoso) said, That which gave birth to poetry, and makes it so much esteemed, is the desire of imitation, proper to man alone; as he alone that understands the similitudes, correspondencies, and proportions of things. Hence it is that we admire the picture of a serpent, a dead body, and other things whose original we have in horror; and we are ravished to hear the voice of a swine naturally counterfeited, though we hate it in that animal. So poetry and painting imitate, and in some manner do, everything that is done in nature; whence poetry is termed a speaking picture, and picture dumb poetry. For a poet does not signify merely a versifier, and one that relates things done, which is the property of a historian; but as an actor or player by his postures does the very things, so the poet must both describe things and make them. And the word poet does not signify one that feigns, but one that makes. When he speaks of a tempest, he makes the winds mutiny, ships split, mountains of water clash and lose themselves in gulfs; when of war, he makes you hear the clashing of arms, the thundering of cannons, and see the field strewed with carcasses: and so in all other subjects which he treats. Wherefore, to be a good poet, one must know everything in perfection; which makes poetry so difficult, and consequently so rare and admirable, that few succeed well in it: for there are many versifiers, but few poets. The third (debater) said, There need no other judges to condemn poetry than poets themselves, who call their highest conceits fury-that is to say, folly; whether it arrive to them from their fabulous gods, or more truly from the fumes of wine, which cause them to make the best verses, as they tell of Ennius: the frequentation of which is one of the greatest crimes that Cato imputed to Marcus Nobilior in the survey that he made of his province and it is observed that there is so great affinity between poetry and folly, that the best poets have very odd actions and postures while they are making their works, and retain something thereof in their ordinary carriage. The fourth (speaker) said, Variety of wit has not appeared in any science more than in poetry. For it has not only different laws according to the diversity of nations, which makes it doubted what sort of verses those of Job are, considering that they have no resemblance with the Greek and Latin, no more then these have with ours. But neither were ours (which consist of certain numbers of feet, and consonances or rhythms) such as those in Cæsar's time, in which he reports that the Gauls versified; and within a thousand years that our rhythm began in imitation of the prose of the church, French poetry hath been so often diversified, that the poets of one age would not be so in another. And yet, sometimes under the name of rhythmers, sometimes under that of devisers and poets, they have been always very acceptable to great persons. And Charlemagne preferred the poems containing the exploits of his predecessors before their histories. The fifth (arguer) said, That Plato and sundry other politicians accounted poetry not only so useless, but so hurtful to their commonwealth, that they utterly banished it from thence, because poets, by their shameful relations of the vices to the gods, enticed men to commit the like, conceiving they did not offend when they had the example of a god; and also that verses are more proper for loose loves than the sciences, of which the confinements of poetry are not capable; besides, that the enthusiasm of poets cannot consist with the gravity of philosophy; seldom with the probity of manners, and never with a settled judgment; the Italian proverb being almost always found true, 'Di buona terra cattiva Gente, Di buon poeta cattiva mente.' Whence Aristophanes saith, that when Bacchus desired to find Euripides or some other good poet, he went down to hell, because he could not find any in heaven. Moreover, their too great liberty of satirical detraction made them sometimes be driven out of Rome. Their dangerous doctrine has caused the reading of them to be forbidden to Christians by the canons and rendered them so infamous, that Philip, the first Christian emperor, in the third law, at the title of professors and physicians in the code, grants no immunity to them as he doth to all others. Indeed, one may get his living in all professions with honour, except in poetry; and if it always less fills the poets' purses with crowns than their heads with presumption, so (as it happens in all other conceits or pastimes) it may be found sometimes proper for the divertisement of those few that have leisure to read them; but it is most unprofitable to the authors; for few or none are advanced by it, but rather many have been hindered by this art of versifying from making their fortune otherwise. Yea, their profession is so vile and abject, that, whereas others count it an honour to be styled physicians, advocates, or the like, these are offended with the name poet; and that with good reason, considering that of all other arts poetry alone glories in disguising the truth. For which cause it begins to be banished even from theatres, to which alone it was destinated; and prose is come in request in sundry places, being preferred for gracefulness and naturalness; by which means this art is in danger to be confined to the corners of streets, to serve only for songs and ballads. Hence it was that Ovid was so severely punished by his father to make him leave off this art, which proved so unlucky to him, that, for writing his book of the Art of Loving, he became, of a rich Roman knight, a miserable exile amongst barbarians. The sixth (spokesman) said, It is to be a sworn enemy of excellent things, or rather, as Scaliger saith, to renounce being man, to think of banishing poetry out of states; which is slighted only by the ignorant, and hated by those that have irregular minds. For melody is natural, not only to man, but to all things in the world which God hath created in number and measure; which made the Pythagoreans say, that not only the celestial bodies make a most agreeable consort, but also the plants by their proportions, and the beasts by their motions, chant measured odes in praise of their Creator. Therefore, with more reason must man, whose soul is a number moving of itself, be delighted with numerous language, which is poetry, the most sensible effect of that divine harmony which is infused into his body. And we may make the same judgment of good from vulgar wits, by their delight or disaffection to poetry, as by the recreation which they take in music. Indeed, if a wise man ought to be regular in all his actions, why not in his words, the image of his reason, as reason is of his soul? As if you should say, that the well-regulated dance of a ball ought to be less prized than the ordinary walk or a country dance. Moreover, poetry hath such power over men's minds: Tyrtæus animated his soldiers to fight by the rehearsal of his verses, which was also the custom of the Germans when they were to charge their enemies; Moses, David, and many other prophets, accounted nothing more worthy than poetry, to sing the praises of God. And the first poets, as Musæus, Orpheus, and Linus, were the divines of paganism. Yea, the gods of antiquity affected to deliver their oracles in verse; and so did legislators their laws, to render them more venerable. Besides, they greatly help the memory; their cadence or measure serving as a rule to the mind to keep it from being at a loss. Poetry alone, amongst all the arts, supplies praise to virtue; the rampant style of rhetorical discourse, though it borrow its fairest flowers and square periods from poetry, being not comparable to that of poetry, which is far more sublime, and consequently more fit to immortalise the memory of heroic actions. Upon which account the Muses were believed the daughters of Mnemosyne or Memory. Now, if poets have been sometimes expelled out of states, so have philosophers, physicians, mathematicians, and many other professors of arts, acknowledged nevertheless very useful to human society. If some of them have been lascivious, others impious, others slanderous, these are the vices of the poets, not of poetry. And as the more delicate any wine is, the more hurtful its excess is to the body; so poetry is so much the more excellent, by how much its abuse is noxious. Plato, who advised the banishing of it out of his imaginary commonwealth, calling it a sweet poison, deserved more than it to be really interdicted, there not being in all the poets such fables, impieties, and impurities as that of his Convivium, his Phædrus, and some other pieces. In the meantime, he is forced to admire them, to call them the sons and interpreters of the gods, yea divine, and the fathers of wisdom. For their raptures cannot be called folly, unless in that sense that Aristotle saith, to philosophise well, a man must be beside himself. But their wisdom being extreme, and their motions unknown to the vulgar; therefore they call that fury which they ought to call the highest point and pitch of wisdom; termed enthusiasm or divine inspiration, because it surpasses the reach of man. And indeed every one acknowledges in poetry some character of divinity, and therefore it is received by all the world, and serves for a guide and introducer to great personages, who otherwise would not give audience, but like that well in verse which they would blame in prose: which obliged Sylla to reward the good, that they might be encouraged to continue their divine works; and the bad poets, on condition that they made no more. And it is of these, as of some rhythmers of our time, that they speak who blame poetry; in whose reproaches the true poets are no more concerned than physicians in the infamy of mountebanks. The fables of the ancient poets are full of mysteries, and serve for ornament to the sciences and to divinity itself, as the gold of the Egyptians did to the sanctuary. But if they have in all ages complained of not advancing their fortune, this doth not argue any demerit of theirs, but rather the want either of judgment or gratitude in others.' THE ARABS.-THE BOOK OF JOB. THESE Arabs Mahomet was born among are certainly a notable people. Their country itself is notable-the fit habitation for such a race. Savage, inaccessible rockmountains, great grim deserts, alternating with beautiful strips of verdure; wherever water is, there is greenness, beauty; odoriferous balm-shrubs, date-trees, frankincensetrees. Consider that wide waste horizon of sand, empty, silent, like a sand sea, dividing habitable place from habitable. You are all alone there, left alone with the universe; by day, a fierce sun blazing down on it with intolerable radiance-by night, the great deep heaven with its stars. Such a country is fit for a swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men. There is something most agile, active, and yet most meditative, enthusiastic in the Arab character. The Persians are called the French of the East; we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people; a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noble-mindedness, of genius. The wild Bedouin welcomes the stranger to his tent, as one having right to all that is there; were it his worst enemy, he will slay his foal to treat him, will serve him with sacred hospitality for three days, will set him fairly on his way; and then, by another law as sacred, kill him if he can. In words, too, as in action. They are not a loquacious people, taciturn rather; but eloquent, gifted when they do speak: an earnest, truthful kind of men. They are, as we know, of Jewish kindred; but, with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews, they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, which is not Jewish. They had 'poetic contests' among them before the time of Mahomet. Biblical critics seem agreed that our own Book of Job was written in that region of the world. I call that, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew; such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble book! all men's book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending problem-man's destiny, and God's ways with him here in this earth; and all in such free-flowing outlines: grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity, in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So true every way; true eyesight and vision for all things; material things no less than spiritual: the horse-Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? '—he ‘laughs at the shaking of the spear!' Such living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest choral melody, as of the heart of mankind-so soft, and great; as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit.--Carlyle's 'Heroes and Hero-Worship.' AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN UNRECOGNISED GENIUS. CHAP. III. THE unsatisfactory termination of our appeal to science for direction (recorded in last chapter) leaving us as undecided as before we made it, our family circle shortly relapsed into its former easy indifference as to my settlement; and perhaps the true reason of our failure to find any suitable engagement for me was, that not one of us was really very anxious to do so. My father, whose health had been for some time gradually declining-probably feeling the feebleness of advancing age stealing upon him-might be, almost unconsciously to himself, well contented to have me near him, especially as (being in easy circumstances) there was no immediate and urgent reason why it should be otherwise. My mother and sisters, too, would not be displeased with an arrangement which secured to them the presence and aid of a son and brother; while, so far as I was concerned, matters went far too smoothly for me to be anxious for a change. During this interval I employed my time, as I conceived, not unprofitably. I read a good deal, and wrote much and on many subjects; but whether the polite and learned world is ever to be favoured with any of these lucubrations, circumstances must determine. While we were enjoying and promising ourselves a long continuance of this peaceful domestic life, it was suddenly and permanently interrupted. My father's health, long infirm, now gave way altogether. A physician peremptorily ordered immediate and complete retirement from business, with residence in the country. The business was disposed of; a picturesque retreat, upwards of two hundred miles distant from London, was selected; and, while the warm glow of autumn rested on the face of nature, we entered our new abode. My father appeared at first to rally wonderfully, and we rejoiced at a change which had issued so beneficially. But our joy was of short continuance; the approach of cold weather was followed by aggravation of his disease, and, after struggling with it through the winter, he died in the early spring. My mother did not long survive him. A few months after my father's death, I had gone up to London to arrange for the settlement of his property; and finding, on my return, that the state of her health gave reason to fear a speedy termination of her life, I forbore communicating to her the information relative to the state of my father's affairs, which I had acquired in my visit to town. After my mother's death, I made my sisters acquainted with the fact, that, through the dishonesty and failure of one in whom my father had placed most undeserved confidence, the bulk of his property was lost, and the mere wreck that remained would barely suffice to afford them a comfortable maintenance, while I should have at once to provide the means of my own support. My sisters urged me to remain and share with them the scanty income arising from the residue of our father's estate; but my determination was taken. I felt a sort of pride, I confess, in embracing an opportunity of proving what I could do, now that the emergency had arrived. Making my arrangements without my sisters' knowledge, I secured for them the whole of the property remaining after the settlement of the affairs; and, reserving to myself only my books and a small sum of money, withdrew quietly from the house, sparing them and myself the pain of a formal parting under such discouraging circumstances, and leaving for them a letter, assuring them of my conviction of the propriety and even necessity of my thus putting them in possession of all that remained of the estate; acquainting them with my intention of engaging in any suitable occupation that might promise me the means of a living, and exhorting them to share my hope that we should soon meet again under happier circumstances. I bade them believe I was prosperous until they heard I was not so; and, comforting them with the assurance, that in every ill I should remember I had a retreat in their quiet home, I concluded by telling them not to be needlessly uneasy as to my fate, as I had made happening to me, or of my death, by carrying about with arrangements for their hearing of any serious disaster me constantly a document containing such information as would at once identify me, and enable private friends or the public authorities to communicate with them directly. Before they received this letter, I was already many miles from our home. Looking back on this circumstance, I can still see but the duty of thus quitting home, and leaving my sisters in the enjoyment of the little which misfortune had spared. Fairly adrift in the troubled waters of life, with a few pounds in my pocket, I proceeded to London, having formed no plans, having no definite views, but expecting, in some mode or other, to push my way to fame or fortune, or to both. An exceedingly pleasing, but withal somewhat sanguine, dream this, and all delusive, as the event proved. And now at length the time for trial had arrived. The strong pressure of necessity was laid on me; and, if I could do aught, if the fair promise of my youth was not altogether false, now might I make it good. I was sorely perplexed, however, as to what I should do. I fancied that a competency invited my acceptance in many paths; and my difficulty was to decide on any one of the number which I supposed were open to me. I resolved, first of all, to secure lodgings, in which I might make myself at home, and ponder my course at leisure; and, remembering that an old acquaintance of my father's had been compelled by the death of her husband to open a small shop, in connection wherewith she let off apartments, I at once went in search of her. Miss Drummond had been as sonsie a lass as any in Aberdeen, meaning thereby the shire as well as the town of that name. Born and educated at the foot of the Grampian Hills, she was as clever as most of her neighbours, and did no discredit to her birth and breeding. She was a good and kind body, too; kind every day, and good more particularly on a Sunday, on the evening of which day her remarks on the discourses to which she had listened in the morning and afternoon were truly edifying and exceedingly touching. But I am anticipating. This Miss Drummond having made the acquaintance of one Sandy M'Cormick, a sailor who owned a small sloop plying between Ardrossan and Belfast, had received the attentions of the said Sandy so graciously, that, after only five years' courtship (rather short for the land of the mountain and the flood, as some of our douce sober bodies in the north will bear testimony), she consented to become Mrs M'Cormick. After a few years, Captain M'Cormick's vocation being rather at a discount in Ayrshire, and the prospect of a good trade being done along the east coast of England opening up, Mr and Mrs M'Cormick very prudently resolved to forsake the Frith of Clyde, and to remove to Hull, and sail from that port southward. There was every appearance of this adventurous move being attended with complete success, when, one stormy night, the unfortunate bark, after beating about in a gale for two or three hours, run foul of a Baltic trader, and foundered. Mrs McCormick happening to be at the time on a visit to London, took counsel of my father as to the best means of providing for herself and two children; and being advised by him to lay out the small sum of money she had saved in the purchase of stock and furniture, and open a shop and lodging-house, she had followed his advice, and was now doing a snug little business near the river-side, and on the whole was making ends lap over. This, then, was the asylum which presented itself to my view. of our reduced circumstances, and the necessity I was under of applying myself to some business, and of my desire to lodge with her, if she had any rooms vacant. I ascertained that one of her lodgers was leaving in a few days, and that his rooms would then be at my service; and, assuring her that I expected to be very comfortableof which she seemed to be doubtful-I took my leave, promising to enter on my lodgings in a week. Punctual to my engagement, I appeared on the spot, and found all clean and comfortable. My hostess, finding that I had not yet succeeded in obtaining a situation, spoke cheerfully of the future, and begged me to be under no concern for the rent of the rooms; she could trust me for years, she said, and if I never could pay her for them, my father had; and she did not doubt but that anything she lost by me would come back to her in some way, for she had always done well yet; her sons were grown up, and in good work, and the widow's Husband would help her still. I was cheered and delighted at meeting with such disinterested kindness, although I had not the remotest intention of taking advantage of it. It was something, in beginning life, to meet with gratitude and kindness. The world is too censorious; there are people in it yet who do good without hope of return, and love virtue for her own sake. I passed week after week in the disappointed expectation of meeting with a situation, and deferred hope caused me many a fit of heart-sickness. I waited on one old friend of my father's after another, and most of them showed themselves quite willing to assist me, but knew not how to do so. The fact was, I was fit for no situation which they had interest to procure me. Sometimes, indeed, I met with cold and heartless ingratitude, and frequently with recommendations to other persons, designed rather to shift the burden off the party thus advising me, than to afford me aid; but here and there I experienced the kindest sympathy. One old gentleman expressed great sorrow that he could not procure me something permanent, but insisted on my accepting a five-pound note from him. This proved a more seasonable replenishment of my exhausted funds than he could possibly have supposed it to be. At length, when my money was all but gone, I met with an engagement; my work, during a long day, was to write for a paper, or to correct the writings of others. Unspeakably wearisome and monotonous as this was, I was wretchedly remunerated for it; and yet I was truly rejoiced on entering upon it. It was what I had so long sought for in vain-a living. I daresay few of those who at that time were speculating so freely in railway stock experienced half the On arriving in town, I at once sought Mrs M'Cormick's establishment, and had occasion, in doing so, to pass my father's late house and shop. A brisk business was keeping the new proprietor and his assistants in constant employment. I thought of my father and mother with a sigh, and trudged on. Mrs M'Cormick had been slightly addicted to coqueting in her younger days, but, all that sort of thing having long since passed away, she had subsided into a quiet, rather elderly woman, albeit still but just past the meridian of life. She was, in fact, one of those motherly old women, whose maternity, if carried out to its utmost extent, becomes insupportably disagree able. Mrs M'Cormick, it is but justice to say, seldom or never suffered her kindness to become obtrusive; happy at being allowed to coax, nurse, and caudle, she knew, as it were intuitively, when to forbear attentions which would prove irksome. I soon reached her place of busi-joy in calculating their enormous prospective profits that ness. Her stock was heterogeneous enough; the space in which it was contained sufficiently large, but the window to the street of such miserable dimensions, that it was with extreme difficulty that even Mrs M'Cormick's skill could bring a fair proportion of her goods into view of the street. The widow had indeed betrayed marvellous and most praiseworthy ingenuity in effecting this, and had contrived to introduce a sample of various kinds of goods, presenting on the whole a most curious appearance. Haberdashery and provisions, sailors' clothing and confectionary, were mingled in pleasing confusion; small treacle and jam pies were in dangerous proximity to heaps of pins, hooks and eyes, and glass beads. The whole frontage amounted to a surface of three feet wide by four deep; and in this space might be discerned half a fantail, a quarter of a sou'-wester, two rolls, a plate of toffee, three skeins of pack-thread, two bundles of tape, a piece of cold boiled beef, silk and cotton pocket-handkerchiefs, and a small card indicating the existence of apartments to let in the immediate neighbourhood. Pies, snuffboxes, pins, needles, gingerbeer, red herrings, cheese, tobacco, ballads, and sundry other articles, distributed themselves as best they could over the small space allotted to them. Mrs M'Cormick welcomed me with the utmost cordiality, supposing, of course, that I had merely dropped in to see her. Deeming it unnecessary to conceal anything, I told her I did, when, in my sitting-room in the evening, I balanced my expenses with the income of salary arising from the situation I had that day obtained. I was overjoyed to find that my receipts would cover my then very moderate expenditure. And thus I continued toiling for days and weeks; the day's work and the night's sleep filled up my time, and, excepting on the day of rest, I knew not what it was to have an hour at my own disposal. This was a pretty issue of all my schemes and hopes. Had I not been prepared to welcome it by months of toil in seeking even this, I should have been disgusted, and unable to continue such labours. How long I might have remained thus chained to the oar, I know not. It is possible I might eventually have turned the experience I was gaining in it to better account, and have resigned the situation in course of time; but for this there was no occasion, as I was in no long time deprived of even this miserable means of support. It happened thus: little money passed through the hands of those who with myself were employed in the different departments of the business, but even this little excited the cupidity of one of them. A few pounds were abstracted, and this so artfully, that, while no one was directly convicted of dishonesty, suspicion was made to rest very strongly on myself. I confess, when I saw the train of evidence by which my guilt was made probable, I could not resist the impression that it rendered it all but evident. Knowing my own innocence, I yet felt persuaded that no one save myself and the really guilty party could exculpate me. I felt sure that any impartial person, looking merely at the evidence, must pronounce me the defaulter, and was therefore quite prepared to receive my dismission. The editor, calling me into his private office, laid the facts before me, and blandly asked me if I could offer any explanation of them tending to clear myself. I could not, and so replied in the negative. He proceeded to state, that, unable to fix the charge on me, they should not prosecute, but simply dispense with my services for the future. I told him that I thought he could not do otherwise under the circumstances, and at the same time I offered him a most solemn assurance of my perfect innocence; my only hope being, that at some time the whole transaction might come to light. He appeared to be moved by my earnest denial of the charge; and, telling me he was sorry he could do nothing further for me, shook me by the hand, and wished me good-by. I passed the sub-editor as I left the office, and bowed to him; he turned his head aside, and refused to return the salutation. I walked forth a poor and now a degraded man, and I felt that it would be useless for me to attempt to obtain a fresh situation. and find there evil and wo altogether undreamt of by the philanthropist, and appalling even to those conversant with the more ordinary aspects of sin and suffering. But this course of life was drawing to its close. My resources were being daily lessened, and I could easily calculate the day on which I should be alike without money or the means of obtaining it. That day came: all was gone; and when I walked forth, towards noon, from the garret in which I had for some time found a nightly shelter, it was without the remotest intention of ever again entering it. I had not breakfasted, and the threadbare suit in which I was clad formed the last remains of my wardrobe. I remember being cheered even then by recollecting how the noble old lexicographer, and his friend Savage, had walked about the steeets all night talking of philosophy and poetry, neither of them possessing the funds for a supper or bed. Hope comes to all; and surely, when a man is in the predicament I then was, having nothing to fear, he has everything to hope. I had no purpose, no prospects; and, while I strolled through the streets, I dwelt much more in meditation on the past than in thought for the future. I continued walking slowly along through the streets and squares, passing now the handsome shop of some tradesman well-to-do in the world, now the noble mansion of some aristocratic family, and now the humbler (but perhaps, also, happier) dwelling-house of one belonging to that extensive and respectable grade of society known as 'the middle classes.' The early evening of advanced autumn closed around me while thus lounging about; and then I watched the gradual illumination of shops, houses, and streets, until all was a blaze of light. Here were wares of the costliest description, provisions, confectionary, in tempting variety, heaped up in profuse abundance, but all sacred from the intrusions of want or fraud. And, as the evening grew later, now and then would roll by the glittering equipage, bearing some of the favoured possessors of rank, wealth, and beauty to the amusement which was to kill the tedious hour. How many did I meet in that walk, and how few of that vast number were, like myself, homeless! How various were the scenes to which they were hurrying: some to the snug fireside, the seat of domestic bliss; some, perhaps, to houses rendered miserable by family discord; one to the ball, concert-room, or theatre; another to the society of friends; and a third to the formal meeting of acquaintance; but all had their homes, to which, when it pleased them, they could retire. I expected that my progress to utter ruin would be rapid that I should be plunged into almost immediate destitution; but the process proved much more tedious than I had anticipated. I failed, indeed, in procuring employment, but, by parting one by one with articles of personal property which before I had never had occasion to dispose of, I put off the evil day for a considerable period. Immediately on losing my situation, I had given up my rooms: and only escaped from the kind hospitality of Mrs M'Cormick by entirely concealing from her the cause of my removal. Taking up my residence in cheaper lodgings, I supported myself principally by sales of those articles of property which I least required, gradually proceeding from these to others more useful to me, and finally even to those ornaments and trinkets which were more especially endeared to me as memorials of friendship, affection, and happier days. It is a hard thing to submit to at first-to carry a book to some mercenary wretch, whose feelings (never very acute) have become blunted by familiarity with misery-to offer such an one a volume, the former companion of our leisure, whose margin, perhaps, is here and there marked with notes and observations of our reading, now regarded only as disfigurements depreciating its value; to see the cool business-like examination of such a book, and hear the decided tone with which the often ridiculously low price is announced. But one becomes accustomed to such scenes by a few repetitions of them; and, in a short time, an old book, in which we may have had great delight, is taken to the stall or shop, and disposed of almost without feeling; and the very decision and curtness of the buyer becomes more tolerable than to higgle and bargain would be, even if it secured an advance of price. Yet, in spite of repetitions or aught else, curious qualms will come over a man when he sacrifices the furniture of his library piecemeal. How-parently soliciting charity. I looked up, and beheld a ever this may be, I can record it as part of my experience, that, when books come to this base usage, we find the process of devouring them in this style much more expeditious than the merely intellectual mode of doing so; and I soon ate up a moderately good collection of volumes, case and all. Life wore on with me at this time sufficiently tedious. The only society accessible to me-even had I been disposed to cultivate society of any kind-was that of the dissipated and worthless. With such I was not able to associate; for, though intimately acquainted with poverty and wretchedness, I was as yet a stranger to vice. Strange haunts of miserable infamy did I visit; modes of procuring a subsistence often scanty and precarious-unheard of by those in respectable stations, did I see in operation. Amongst, but not of, a mass of putrefying vicious humanity, I had the entrée into its caves and dens-could peer and grope my way into its deepest, darkest recesses, It was near ten o'clock, and I had rambled until, faint and weary, I could walk no further, when it struck me that I had penetrated into a neighbourhood with which I was little acquainted. I was unable through weakness to retrace my steps, and, had I possessed the power, whither could I have gone? I seated myself on the lower step of a genteel house in a retired street, and, fairly bewildered by my position, was attempting to lay down some plan for bettering myself, when I began gradually to sink into a doze. suppose I was almost unconscious, when a low sweet voice addressed me, apyouth of foreign aspect, with a large hurdy-gurdy slung at his back. In the dim light, he had mistaken me for a gentleman half-intoxicated, and unable to proceed home until he had slept off the fumes of his evening's potations; and supposing that a person in such a condition ran no slight risk of being robbed, he had most considerately stooped to awaken me. The tone of my voice in reply to his warning undeceived him; and-most likely struck by the incongruity of my language and manner with the circumstances in which he found me-he, in the kindest and most delicately-respectful manner, inquired the cause of my being in such a place at such an hour, and offered me any assistance he could render. I thanked him for his kind solicitude for my welfare, and assured him he could not be of any service to me. He was not thus to be repulsed. In spite of my refusal of his sympathy, he still lingered near, and in a minute or two, returning to me, he again tendered his aid, with so much of what some |