TWO PAGES FROM THE BOOK OF LOVE.

WHEN will the unwelcome, dreary day be done?
Time loiters ever when we'd have him fly;
The sun lags on his course-the sands unrun ;
The glare of daytime will not leave the sky.
Ah! the gray twilight floateth up on high,

And the dumb night steals over ;-one by one
The pale stars start to life and quivering light;
I watch the last glance of the sinking sun,
And hail the hour and bless the hiding night;
My glad heart leapeth to that graceful height,
And gentle footstep-whose it is I wis.

I still the heaving of that bosom white,

And taste the honey of that blissful kiss ;

Keep Heaven, ye wrangling priests-but only leave me this.

Ah! light of being, Love, that is no more,

What sighs,-what tears, what vain regrets are mine!

What foolish grief, for it cannot restore

Quiet unto my breast,-or tenderness to thine.

Must I remember, and can you forget

All that we felt, and promised, and avow'd:

The dreamy kiss that met us when we met,

The bliss that spake, yet never spake aloud;
The cherish'd hand-the closely clasped waist-
The swimming eye-the step that moved so slow,

And yet, home reach'd, we chided for its haste:

Have we known these, and now we do not know? Must I remember, and have you forgot?

And can such things have been, and now, ah! me, are not?

W. H. B.

AN ADVENTURE IN THE LIFE OF MR. JONAS JENKINS.

BY CYRUS REDDING.

PRECISELY forty-five years ago this year, Mr. Jonas Jenkins was returning from Islington to his lodgings, after an Easter Sunday dinner. with a maiden aunt. He had already descended the hill at Pentonville, then but little encumbered with buildings, and had arrived nearly opposite to the Smallpox Hospital, where in those days arose pyramids of cinders, each huge as that of Cheops, pointing their jetty apexes to the moon, and "rendering night hideous." The watchmen of the locality deeming it an insult to any of the king's subjects ever to say "stand," were not so superfluous as to remain awake. Mr. Jonas Jenkins therefore moved forward unchallenged, ruminating upon his situation at that late hour, and not free of fears lest he should be taken unawares, not, indeed, by "bogles," but by thieves, of whom he had a peculiar dread. Presently he heard footsteps behind, approaching at a very brisk pace, and instinctively began to quicken his own; but in vain, unless he advanced at running speed, which, he argued with himself, would exhibit fear, and infallibly attract the pursuit of one who might be able to run faster than himself.

"Good morning," said the stranger; "it is a drizzly time of it— we shall have a heavy fall presently."

"Good morning, sir," said Mr. Jonas, wishing the stranger at Old Nick; "I had no idea it was past twelve o'clock."

"It will be twelve no more until noonday," replied the stranger. "Perhaps you have some way to go?

?"

"To Cecil-street," said Mr. Jonas Jenkins.

"I am going to Queen-street, Lincoln's-inn-fields," rejoined the stranger.

"You are in the law, then, I presume," said Mr. Jonas, countrymen in London being always more inquisitive than the town bred—" you are in the law?"

"I am not called to the bar yet," replied the stranger.

"A student still it may be an attorney?" said Mr. Jenkins, still curious.

"You are near the mark-I am a conveyancer, and am proud to say, in very active business."

"I am studying anatomy for country practice, as a surgeon-physic won't do alone-one must be able to write and mingle our own prescriptions there-attend midwifery cases, amputate, trepan, reduce, and operate generally, or we don't get both ends to meet at the year's close. Here the profession is a pleasanter thing-every branch separate-'twon't do in the west. So I am just now skimming the hospitals."

"From the west, eh? I thought you were, by your speakingthough it's dark-I don't guess you are above twenty-one years old? We are a sort of connexion by birth."

"Are you, too, from the west?"

"I am, and I am not," said the stranger, "unless a man is a horse because he happens to be born in a stable."

"I am Welsh, from Cardiff, where my father was born; he emiJune.-VOL. LXVIII. NO. CCLXX.

M

grated to Padstow, and there married my mother. My family is one of the most ancient in South Wales; we, the Ap Jenkinses, are descended through the Ap Reeses, from the Ap Llewelyns, who were princes in Wales before England was inhabited."

"You are a sort of noble, then, in Wales, I suppose? My mother was from Launceston, but she left the town when she was young, and completed her education here in London," observed the stranger.

"The best place for education too," said Mr. Jenkins; "she was accomplished, I dare say?"

"You are right," said the stranger, "my mother was very accomplished, and crossed the sea, seeing more of foreign parts than I have done-I shall go abroad some day, myself."

"I envy you the prospect of that pleasure," rejoined the surgeon. "I love the sea-many a charming trip have I had from Padstow to Swansea Bay. I should like to visit America, but the passage money is considerable-it costs a vast deal."

"When you go at your own expense," observed the stranger; "I shall go in a king's ship when I visit the colonies, as I shall be sent upon the public account."

66

Well, I wish I had been bred to the law too; there are capital places to be had in the colonies, only make a little parliamentary interest-I should then have no need to put my nose into dissectingrooms, or to wheedle resurrection-men when I want a subject, or a head for the bones,' or any little thing of the kind-fingering the knife and fork in term time, and carrying a good face, make a lawyer without further trouble."

"You are right-the naked fingers and a brow of brass are every thing in my profession-but the rain begins to fall heavily!"

During this conversation, they had turned up what was then called the Duke of Bedford's New-road, and through Southampton-row into King's-street, where, just at the top of Theobald's-road, the stranger stopped at a watchbox, and giving two or three hearty tweaks at the red-worsted nightcap of the somnolent Argus, awoke him with the question

"Old boy, show us a house where we can turn in out of the rain.” "Ay, ay, sir," said the obliging watchman, "just come with me across the way.'

So saying, the trio crossed the street, and the guardian of the night giving a peculiar knock at a door, over which a faint light was perceptible, and from within which a confused hum of voices issued, it was unbolted, and Mr. Jonas Jenkins, with his two companions, quickly found themselves in a room sashed and glazed at one end, where stood a man and woman, surrounded with barrels and bottles in goodly array; before two or three benches along the walls, were seated half a dozen persons, their chins dropped upon their bosoms in that apoplectic slumber which is indicated by a breathing of a peculiar character, as if the head of the sleeper were bound with iron. There was a room some distance down a passage opposite the bar, whence discordant sounds issued occasionally-sounds of halfanger, half-mirth-the effect of inebriation subdued into helplessness by its own excess, the hour of excitement being passed, and exhaustion triumphant over stimulated passions and vociferations that, too violent

to be continued, subsided into broken sentences, feeble curses, fatuitous exclamations, frowns that were involuntary, and smiles that came and went without reason.

Ordering a couple of glasses of brandy-and-water for himself and Mr. Jonas Jenkins, in return for the hospitality afforded them, the watchman taking his reward in a glass of neat spirit, the stranger led the way into the apartment spoken of, which had a back communication with another street. It was not a fourth part filled, bearing the impress that the orgies celebrated there a few hours before were passed, and that the dregs alone remained. The stranger seemed familiar with the scene, but Mr. Jonas Jenkins lifted up his eyes in surprise, exclaiming,

"This beats Padstow! I never saw the like before!"

"It's only London life," said the stranger; "there are hundreds of such places here, this is not the largest. Is that wench dead, I wonder?"

So saying, he put his hand on the shoulder of a woman who appeared in a deep sleep, and suffered her scantily-clothed infant to fall upon the floor, strewed over as it was with fragments of tobaccopipes, begrimed with dirty feet, and the overflowings of jugs and glasses, among which the unconscious, sickly-looking creature lay sprawling.

"Is the wench dead!-do you see your brat?"

No reply was made to the appeal; the infant continued to wallow, and the mother to sleep insensible to her position. In another place two unwholesome children in rags had followed their mother, who hav ing replenished a potsherd with the burning draught, was waiting the termination of the shower to return to their miserable cellar for the night, having parted with their coin destined for to-morrow's bread. In a broken chair, supporting his folded arms on the back of a second, and now and then raising his head, which dropped involuntarily again into its former position, sat a man once possessed of vigour and an athletic frame, his limbs shrunken, his head palsied and bloated, a living object upon which the grave's noisomeness was already anticipated. To his wife's supplications that he would return home after so many hours sitting, he answered sometimes with a vacant stare, at others, with an unconscious, half-articulated curse-for unconscious he was even of his own being. One female still drank on, regardless of the prayers of her offspring, and their supplications for food, which she repaid by curses, obedient to no call but the brutality of her own stomach. Here were a couple of old men puling over their cups, stupid from the excitement, that kindled the blood of youth into fever. There were two females who exhibited the remains of beauty, boisterous from their continued potations with a third, who appeared to be halffrantic.

Mr. Jonas Jenkins returning towards the bar, again expressed his surprise at the scene, in a morning hour too, repeating, "This beats Padstow!"

The stranger laughed.

"What are people to do in their misery ?-it kills thought!" "They must be bad thoughts that require to be killed," observed Mr. Jonas Jenkins.

"That's as it happens," said the stranger; "it's done, as you see, every day, and will be done again. All who have trouble try to forget it, and they that can't forget, drown it-troubles don't kill, if they did 'twould be well-then who will bear their thoughts when they come down black as hell upon them, scaring, crushing, torturing, and tearing every string of the heart, when they can cure the pain with a glass?"

"For a time," said Mr. Jonas Jenkins.

"For a time!" said the stranger, "and any time, ever so short, is a relief. Can one man tell how another wrestles with his own tortured spirit-how long and bitterly? No, no, it is done as you see, and will be always done, while people have thoughts that wither up their flesh and dry their very marrow-I don't see the harm of it-for bad as it is, 'tis by far the best of two evils-here's to your health, Mr. Jenkins."

The shower having by this time ceased, Mr. Jonas Jenkins and his new friend proceeded towards Queen-street.

"You are a good hand at setting a limb or cutting off an arm now, I dare say, Mr. Jenkins?"

"It will not do to praise myself," said Mr. Jonas Jenkins, “or I might truly say-but no!-I think I can reduce a fracture or amputate a limb with any one of my standing in England-it's my trade, ycu must consider."

"I ask pardon, Mr. Jenkins, and am corrected," rejoined his companion.

Upon reaching the end of Queen-street, they parted, the stranger saying rather significantly,

"We shall meet again very soon!"

"He might have told me his name," thought Mr. Jonas Jenkins. "I wish I had demanded it."

The stranger was a man of the middle height, squarely made, and muscular, but not so overloaded with strength as to impair activity. He had a low, firm forehead, shaded by coarse black hair, eyes dark and deeply set, a broad-hooked nose, thin lips, teeth white and strong, and an expression of visage that bespoke a cold, calculating character, capable of exertion when roused, and of most determined purpose. His limbs were well-shaped, except that he was somewhat bow-legged. His conversation betrayed an unimproved mind, gifted with great natural shrewdness, while his easy manners and acquaintance with every thing around him, as well as an imprecation that now and then broke through the evident restraint he had placed upon his natural habit of conversation, showed that he was playing a part of which a countryman, like Mr. Jonas Jenkins, must have been wholly unconscious from lacking that knowledge of life which nothing but experience can obtain. It was clear he had an intuitive perception of Mr. Jonas Jenkins's provincial character before he was three minutes in his company.

The next morning Mr. Jonas Jenkins was entering the Strand from Cecil-street, when he met his quondam friend as if by accident. "I said we should meet again soon, and I intended it," said the latter, "but not quite so soon as this. Are you engaged, Mr. Jenkins ?"