left the crowded ring of delighted spectators standing upon the grass in a level field at the back of the town. The weather was very sultry, and the harvest was nearly in, it being the 19th of August. A passing cloud discharged a heavy shower, and crowds hastened through the streets to their homes. About five o'clock there was an awful peal of thunder, which re-echoed round the fine cliffs of Lyme Bay. Our attention was called, soon after, to a group of noisy talkers, who had an infant, for whom they wanted some hot water. A bath was procured, and the apparently dead child was bathed with ultimate success, amidst the joyful exclamations of the assembled crowd. Three dead bodies were carried home at the same time, one of whom was the nurse of the infant whom she had taken to the Rackfield. There, the three were together with the infant in arms when the shower began, and the whole ran under the dangerous shelter of an elmtree, when the flash of lightning dealt instant destruction to all but the babe. This baby was the offspring of a carpenter and his wife, who lived near the jail. She had been a dull infant, but was dear to her parents her name was Mary Anning.

Fifty years before the catastrophe we have described, two very important entries in the world's bulky catalogue-watering-places and geology-did not exist.

As regards the former, the sea, up to that time, was judged to be designed for commerce, and seaside towns for the residence of merchants and fishermen. There were no migrations to the sea-side. Why should people go to the coast? and at a time when the healthy climate of Northampton was attributed to its distance from the noxious fumes of the sea. There were watering-places, it is true, but these were towns which possessed mineral waters. At this period, however, 1750, Dr Russel, the son of a London bookseller, wrote upon the beneficial effects of sea-water upon glandular affections; and straightway did our countrymen, like so many land-crabs, make towards sea-lodgings wherever they could find them. Dr Russel was obliged to reside at Brighton to direct the bathers, his patients, and old towns were revived in a surprising manner, and new ones founded. Brighton, Hastings, Weymouth, Lyme-Regis, &c., were metamorphosed; Torquay, Worthing, Bognor, Bourne Mouth, Weston-super-Mare, &c., sprang up from the bare

shore.

As to geology? This great science was in its earliest infancy, without form or fashion. Some noble pioneers had been clearing the way; but the startling outbreak had not yet taken place. Watering-places had begun when geology was unknown. But what have wateringplaces and geology to do with our story? You shall hear.

The infant thus recovered, as we have told, grew up a fine lively girl. Her fate was decided by circumstances which rule most of our destinies; and it involves some interesting particulars which pertain to the history of science.

The coaches from London to Exeter passed through Charmouth, two miles from Lyme. A man named Lock, whom Dr Maton, the tourist, calls Curiman that is, curiosity-man; but who is better known as Captain Cury, had for some time accustomed himself to attend the coaches. He offered for sale curosities to the passengers daily, and adopted the nomenclature of the day for his fossils. There were the bones of crocodiles' backs and jaws, ladies' fingers, John Dorie's petrified mushrooms, &c. This captain was the first vendor of curosities; a Mr Crookshank, a retired London tradesman, was the first collector of such things; and soon a gentleman, named South, came occasionally in the summer in pursuit of interesting objects.

Richard Anning, the infant's father, was a carpenter, and often accompanied Mr South to the shore. When Richard found anything pretty, he placed it

upon a table in front of his residence to attract the attention of visitors. But at length Richard, when on his way to Charmouth in the year 1810, to deliver a message, taking a short-cut, fell over the cliff at the present New Cut, and died in consequence of the injuries he received. This fossil-seller's visits to the beach had made his wife, Molly Anning, very angry, as she considered the pursuit utterly ridiculous.

6

After her father's death, which the family, consisting of a widow, one son, and a daughter, felt sorely in a pecuniary point of view, Mary Anning went down to the shore to look for curosities. She found a cornemonius, a corruption of cornu ammonis, which is now called an ammonite. Her age was then ten years. Something occurred as she was returning which decided at once her future career. A lady in the street, seeing the pretty fossil in her hand, offered her half-a-crown for it, which she accepted; and from that moment fully determined to go down upon beach' again, and thus find means to support the family. She did so regularly, and roamed over the ledges of blue lias left uncovered by the sea at low-water. When the layer of stone was removed by workmen or the action of the sea, a bed of marl remained. In four months after, Mary Anning saw a bone of some kind projecting from this marl. She traced the organic fossil-a crocodile as was then believed-and men she hired dug it out. H. H. Henley, Esq., the lord of the manor, purchased these organic remains for the sum of L.23, intending the fossil for his private museum; but he eventually gave it to Bullock's Museum, where it was greatly admired; and the trustees of the British Museum purchased it when the Piccadilly collection and exhibition were dispersed. This so-called crocodile was no less than a specimen of the ichthyosaurus, and what a history does the name of this fossil animal present! It quite engrossed the attention of the scientific world. The great geologists, Buckland, Delabeche, Sir Everard Home, Birch Conybeare, Cuvier, and the élite of that body in this and other nations, were for six years deep in the study of the contribution from the young girl of Lyme-Regis. Mary Anning, now called with great respect Miss Mary Anning, furnished drawings of fragments, supplied deficiencies in published accounts, and proceeded to discover plesiosauri, pterodactyles, and fish more numerous than the present sea produces. Only look round the cases of the British Museum, and you will see that the grandest specimens were found by Miss Mary Anning. The science of geology has become firmly established; honour to those who, and under no small discouragement, laboured in its infancy. Miss Mary Anning was known to Sir R. Murchison, Sir C. Lyell, Professor Owen, Agassiz, and, in a word, to the greatest savans of the age. Many illustrious foreigners made a pilgrimage to Lyme. Her death, when it took place, was a great misfortune to the town; but the inhabitants smiled incredulously when the fact was mentioned. Just so at Yverdun, Pestalozzi having gone to prison for the sum of L.25, no one could see what that could have to do with the welfare of the place. One hundred and fifty residents, however, who had come from Russia and other countries to take lessons from Father Pestalozzi for a twelvemonth, returned home, and the town was nearly ruined.

Mary Anning was of rather masculine appearance. She braved all weathers, and was far too generous in allowing even wealthy visitors to accompany her in her explorations without requiring a fee, as some naturalists now very reasonably do. A cancer in the breast was the cause of the death of this remarkable character, at the age of forty-seven, on the 9th of May 1847. An obituary window has been set up in Lyme Church in remembrance of her. Who can ever hope to fill the place she occupied? Were Mary alive, I

should like to have extracted from her a list of the famous men of all countries with whom she maintained a correspondence. The Geological Society subscribed towards the window, 'in commemoration of her usefulness in furthering geology.' Molly Anning, the mother, who was quite an original, used to say of her famous daughter that she was a history and a mystery. The lower orders, who could not understand what she had achieved, remembered the deadly flash of lightning.

SIMPLE PEOPLE AND THEIR INVESTMENTS. THERE is so much truth, sagacity, and practical usefulness in the following little article of the Scotsman newspaper of November 17th, that we believe we must be conferring a public benefit in helping to extend its circulation:

About joint-stock companies there lurk many obstinate and mischievous prejudices in the human mind, confusing the relations of debtor and creditor. When a merchant possessed of just five thousand pounds invests it all in boxes of indigo, and sells them at a tempting price to a buyer, who fails to pay him, he goes into the Gazette, of course, and the result is counted in the natural order of things, for he had his eyes open, and must have known that he ran some risk. He is to some extent, in fact, a gambler-he tables his stake, and he pays the loser's forfeit. But the retired half-pay officer, the widow, the slenderly endowed old maid, do not perceive that they may be doing precisely the same thing when they lay out their L.500 in the shares of a joint-stock company. They do not speak of trading-they say they are investing. If the jointstock company sell to unsound purchasers, or lend to precarious debtors, they risk the individual partners' money as much as if he did the same thing with it. And yet how many people, who would not entertain for a moment the notion of risking their money in trade, or of lending it to some private borrower who proposes to do so, will, without hesitation, hand it over to a joint-stock company to be gambled with as the managers may please. Nor is there generally, in times when all runs smooth, the slightest anxiety about the soundness of the 'investment,' or any curiosity to know what those who have taken the pittance into their clutches are doing with it; but there is a childlike reliance not only on their honesty, but on the extreme prudence of men generally of a class who being ever ready to risk their own wealth on the chances of extravagant profits, cannot be expected to resist the temptation of throwing other people's money into the game, especially when they are neither controlled nor even watched.

Individual thrift makes public wealth, and individual losses make public calamities. It surely tends to support the hallucination which causes these calamities, that in mercantile nomenclature the losses of shareholders are not losses to the public. It has been the boast of the Scottish banking-system that every bank truly founded on it has paid 20s. in the pound to every note-holder, and to every depositor; but how has this been accomplished? By the ruin of whole tribes of shareholders. And the shareholder, is he not a man and a brother-is not the shareholder often in the position of a helpless sister? If a hundred poor depositors have their savings restored to them, is it nothing that a hundred poor shareholders have lost all their humble investments?

...

themselves on these points, but unless they know them either through their own skill or the assurance of adepts whom they can trust, they must keep in mind that in buying shares they do not invest their money-they speculate with it. The vast enlightened enterprise-the great prosperity of the company-will be no effective substitute for such a knowledge, for the bold operations which are likely to bring it to ruin will readily invest it with these characteristics. . When the humble seeker of an investment sees the names of capitalist potentates in a list of directors, he should remember that these are men who can afford to gamble for great prizes at the risk of losses, and he may be none the worse of keeping in recollection the story of the giant and the dwarf who went out together to battle. Even the new arrangements for establishing companies on limited responsibility, capable as they no doubt are of very beneficial results, must not supersede individual prudence and inquiry. Let the natural limitation of the word 'limited' be duly remembered. It does not exclude the subscribed capital from loss. He who subscribes L.500 to such a company is warranted against further loss, but he may lose that L.500, and if it be, as it may be, all that he possesses, the limitation will be of small service to him.

SHE sleeps; but the soft breath
No longer stirs her golden hair,
The robber hand of Death
Has stolen thither unaware;
The lovely edifice

Is still as beautiful and fair,
But mournfully we miss

The gentle habitant that sojourned there.
With stealthy pace he crept,
To the guest-chamber where it lay-
That angel thing-and slept,
And whispered it to come away;
He broke the fairy lute

That light with laughter used to play,
And left all dull and mute

The silver strings that tinkled forth so gay.

Then with his finger cold

He shut the glancing windows too;
With fringe of drooping gold,

He darkened the small panes of blue.
Sheer from the marble floor

He swept the flowers of crimson hue;
He closed the ivory door,

And o'er the porch the rosy curtains drew.

The angel-guest is gone,

Upon the spoiler's dark wings borne ;
The road she journeys on,

Wends evermore, without return.
To ruin and decay

The fairy palace now must turn,

For the sun's early ray

Upon its walls and windows shall not play, Nor light its golden roof to-morrow morn.

NEW ROMANCE BY MAYNE REID.

C.

large and tempting profits or percentages, for these are the sure concomitants of risks. But further, they ought to be assured about the business of the joint-stock company in which they embark their capital, as if they were embarking it in business entirely of their own. They cannot, of course, make themselves acquainted with the several transactions of the company, but they should know that it does not speculate in fluctuating sales-like an eminent bank which speculated in indigo, an article liable to great oscillations in value-and that it does not advance money on insufficient or tainted security. It is hard, perhaps, for those who are not men of business to assure

the commencement of OCEOLA:

A STORY OF THE SEMINOLE WAR.
BY CAPTAIN MAYNE REID,
AUTHOR OF THE WAR TRAIL,' &c.
To be continued weekly till completed.

Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster
Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by
WILLIAM ROBERTSON, 23 Upper Sackville Street, DUBLIN, and all
Booksellers.

FALSE THEORIES AND THEIR RESULTS. OUR community does a vast amount of hard work, and realises considerable returns for it; but it is wonderful how much of these results is wasted. False theories in political economy lose us half the benefits of our national industry. One by one, we get them trampled out. One age sees the prejudice against forestallers expire. Another witnesses the extinction of 'protection." But these pets of ignorant selfishness are hard to kill. One which clamours for large credits as an encouragement to trade, and for large issues of paper-money as needful thereto, has been in the course of killing for many years, but unhappily is not dead yet. What may be called the authorised or parliamentary monetary system of the country, is against it; but it lives, nevertheless. Unwise theorists support it; and in places where speculative commerce is rife, there are men who venture their means to carry it into action; for, somehow, a false theory will work itself out. Some of its votaries may be kept right by the applomb of their common sense; but others are sure to be carried beyond the line, being most likely favoured in that movement by certain persons to whom the results of the false theory are convenient.

The consequence is-a Bank, professing to supply 'a want generally felt in the commercial community.' Its directors are partly men of substance under the false theory, partly men of little substance for whom 'increased accommodation' is desirable. Shareholders of the same character are obtained, besides a vast number of innocent, ignorant people, who are led to believe that their little fortunes, portions, and endowments cannot be better placed for a profit. The leading spirit is the false theory as to 'increased accommodation.' Some would take a less charitable view of the said spirit; but we believe that sincere error does nine-tenths of all the mischief done in this world, and deliberate roguery but a small part. Even those ultimately found to have done the most harm as the debtors of the bank, we believe to be in general men misled by views false, but entertained in perfect good faith.

Well, the bank goes on. Now, what should a bank do? In the first place, how should merchants carry on their business? The fundamental principle in all great scenes of industry is simply this: Saved results of labour-or capital-are the means by which further work is done. Those who possess such results, and employ them in fresh undertakings which they have thoroughly ascertained to be calculated to make a profitable return-the only criterion of their soundness-will be benefiting the world and themselves in

PRICE 1d.

so doing. And where the capitalist is himself the worker of the fresh undertaking, or keeps a sharp eye on those to whom he intrusts his funds to be used, the results are likely to be tolerably satisfactory. Such may be called the natural order of things in work and in commerce. To proceed on this principle, is to act in harmony with the divine ordinances; and all such action is productive of good. Where, on the other hand, a set of men, with little or no capital of their own, are endowed temporarily with a merely ideal capital based on credit, we always find that wilder projects are undertaken, management is less prudent, and waste and loss almost inevitably follow. The latter kind of trader has everywhere to outbid and undersell, to grasp at every promise of a market however perilous, to be constantly making great sacrifices for the fulfilment of his engagements; he raises obstructions against himself by the very inflation which his kind of business gives to the prices of all those articles on which his work-people live. While he almost ruins, or at least creates great difficulty and loss to all sound and well-intending traders in the same line, he does no real good to himself, but sooner or later comes to destruction-the fate of all those who will not take God's rule as this way, which is truth, but insist on taking it that way, which is error.

There is a legitimate, safe, and honourable business for banks in facilitating the business transactions of persons trading on actual capital; but if a bank sets itself to support adventurers with little or no capital by giving them credit, it clearly lends itself to what is wrong, and prosperity cannot be expected for it. Fortunately, the greater number of our banks keep mainly to the legitimate business-scarcely any, perhaps, but what go beyond the line somewhat, for the false theory cannot quite be withstood; but, happily, the greater number do not trespass to any serious extent. But there is an order of banks-generally of recent institution-it is not the destiny of any to be old-which act almost wholly on the false theory.

Assistance to expanding commerce' is with them the cry. The colossal speculations of Liverpool and Glasgow impress them greatly. Pushing men who have suddenly sprung from nothing into transactions of considerable moment, especially those who seem to have been clever in breaking into new walks of commerce, are received with favour, and allowed liberal accommodation. Directors permit each other to get similar favours. At first, perhaps, a certain moderation is observed, but with an 'expanding commerce' this is. difficult to be maintained. After five thousand is in peril in an account, it becomes necessary to give other five thousand to recover the first. This, too, being

compromised, further advances must be made. Good money goes out in search of bad, and neither comes back. The debtor sometimes honestly expresses a desire to stop and declare insolvency; but the bank, for its own credit, will not allow him. It advances more and more-and more. We have lately been astounded with single accounts in a deficit equal to a grandee's fortune. There is something Titanic in such sins. There can be no doubt that the actual posture and character of a bank such as we have described, is simply that of a fomenter and supporter of all kinds of false and unprofitable business throughout the country. It is the adventurer ultimately in all these cases, and it becomes the ultimate sufferer. In short, its funds and its credit are compromised, till, error having spent itself, a collapse takes place, and the bank is obliged to suspend payment. Then do we hear a Babel of wild outcries. The bank, according to some, has only suffered a little in a good cause-so tenacious of life is the false theory. Other banks are loudly railed at for not supporting it through its temporary difficulties. A judicious few see that great errors have been committed, and acknowledge the justice of the punishment. But the sad thing is, that the shareholders, who thought themselves only employing their money at a fair rate of interest, find they are committed to losses of indefinite magnitude. It never had occurred to them that they were authorising a set of men, hardly known to them, to speculate for them, and on their responsibility, in every kind of imaginative project which the seething brains of a commercial city could invent. Quiet ladies, living the most unspeculative of lives, were thus speculating by proxy, without once dreaming of responsibilities, till they were suddenly startled with the prospect of ruin, or an approach to it. Could anything be more pitiable than such a consequence of simple ignorance? One looks round for some one to wreak vengeance upon, or at least to visit with a seemingly due indignation. But if he takes a candid view of the matter, he will most likely be arrested in his design. The immediate administrators have been doubtless greatly to blame; but they have not meant any harm; quite the contrary. They had a doctrine that there was need for increased accommodation to an expanding commerce-they have fairly worked it out-and, the doctrine being unfortunately false, behold the consequences.

Yet, while we acquit the fallacious banking-men of dishonesty, we must frankly express our opinion that they are encouragers of dishonesty in others. The reckless speculators with other people's money, whom they supply with funds, are all dishonest workers, for they are seeking gains at the hazard of others; indeed, pursuing a career of the purest selfishness. The proper destiny of these men, seeing they had no capital of their own wherewith to seek profits, was to take subordinate places in the concerns of those who really have capital, and to try thus to realise a fair remuneration for a modest industry. But they despised such honest working. They would be quickly rich at the expense of their neighbours. For all who countenance, or in any way assist such unrighteous ambition, there can be nothing but condemnation. And if they suffer loss in consequence, and are themselves brought to ruin, they have only reaped the crop which they sowed. Increased intelligence, and an improved sense of the real government of the world, and of the necessity of conforming to it, will alone save our community from such shocks as it has lately received. If men would truly learn that there is but one source of wealth, work done judiciously in time and place; that promises to pay can never be themselves wealth, or be of any good use unless they represent real wealth; if they would, amidst the excitements of an industrious career, never lose sight of the beauties of soberness and moderation,

and keep in mind that there are many other precious things to look after in this life besides money; we might hope to see these disgraceful confusions cease to be periodical, as they have hitherto been. The great evil is ignorance. Our people shew immense industry; but want of sound knowledge is constantly balking them of its fairest fruits. Men occupying important stations in life, men commissioned with great trusts, will, as a rule, be found unacquainted with the simplest principles of political economy. Active merchants, whose aspirations have perhaps led them into the senate of the realm, will be found standing up, and unblushingly advocating fallacies in that science of the most transparent character-all the time pretending to be sound practical men, and no theorists, as if a multitude of right practical steps became a falsity and a dream when they were agglomerated into a general principle. The success of such men will generally be found to have depended on adherence to some profitable routine, or a few lucky conjunctures. They are in danger from every new and unwonted step they take, particularly when they attempt to carry realised means into higher fields of business-as, for instance, into banking. Then they are seen to act like the children which they really are; then does the value of their boasted practicalness appear. The last estate of these men is extremely apt to be worse than the first.

MORAL SUNSHINE.

Time

IN the Jardin des Plantes at Paris is a sun-dial bearing this inscription: Horas non numero nisi serenas (I count only the sunny hours)-a pretty and appropriate motto for the ancient timekeeper, and one which might, with almost equal propriety, be adopted by those merry mortals who are the moral sunshine of our work-a-day world, and who appear as heedless as the dial itself of the fact that even sunny hours are numbered by a shadow. Happy beings! the birthright of enjoyment they possess surpasses the fabled gifts bestowed by fairy godmothers, since it enables them by a mental alchemy to turn dross to gold, and to laugh away the wrinkles from Time's brow of care. And then the power they have over the sympathies and the affection of their fellow-creatures! and difference of opinion cannot shake the hold these counters of the sunny hours take on our good-will and kindly feeling; and we think of Raleigh cheerful in the prison and on the scaffold; of More meeting death with playfulness; and even of the worldly but merry Cardinal de Retz, laughing at the malice of Mazarin, and seeking a gay revenge for his imprisonment by writing the life of his jailer-with a sort of affectionate interest which we do not bestow on other perhaps wiser and better personages. Even in fiction we acknowledge the charm, and love Falstaff in spite of his cowardice and gluttony, and feel more for Mercutio than for Romeo himself. Happy-tempered people are perfect sunbeams in our everyday life, and, like sunbeams, make their way through difficulties and obscurities that would effectually repulse duller spirits. We will introduce some two or three of these lighthearted individuals to our reader, trusting that he may find them, as we have, pleasant acquaintances. And first, out of respect to the motto which suggested our sketch, we will select M. Jules Bernard, whose history is a good exemplification of the advantage to be derived, even in worldly matters, from a cheerful and sanguine temper.

He was born of republican parents during the first French Revolution, and received a good education, being destined for the profession of the law. His father was engaged in commerce, and was supposed to possess a large fortune; but at his death, which took place when Jules was about nine-and-twenty, his affairs were found to be greatly embarrassed. Their final

arrangement left the young man almost destitute, and dependent on his own exertions for support. Having always had a great facility in acquiring languages, he determined to proceed to England, and try to turn his powers as a linguist to good account; but he brought to his adopted country no introduction and a very slender purse, and found himself therefore as completely lost in London as if he had suddenly alighted in the Great Desert.

A heavy shadow was then marking his life, but he saw only the occasional gleams of sunshine vouchsafed him in the kindness of some few of the surrounding strangers. His lodging was in a time-stained, gloomy house in one of the dullest and dirtiest streets of London, but he used to congratulate himself on its elevation bringing him into a purer atmosphere; and on its comparative quiet, from its not being a thorough fare. At first, the reserve and coldness of the people, so different from the sociable and courteous character of his own countrymen, somewhat chilled him; but, as he said when recounting his history to us, there was warmth behind the snow-cloud;' at least it was evident that the dwellers beneath the same roof were thawed by the sunny hilarity of the Frenchman, whose singing the popular chansons of the day attracted the attention of his landlady, and introduced him to her tea-table. To be sure, the good woman was by no means equal in point of education or station to her lodger, but Jules was not fastidious; he appreciated her motherly kindness and common sense, and preferred her society to his former absolute solitude. The rainy days of England and his want of employment were now the evils he most deplored; but the former were destined to be of essential service to him, and even in the end, to remove the still greater one of idleness.

It was on the very wettest of wet days that Jules, weary of watching the descent of the rain on the opposite house-roofs, tied his comforter round his throat, and armed with an umbrella, issued out into the streets. He had walked to some little distance from his abode, when he perceived a gentleman with a young lady leaning on his arm standing beneath an archway. The former was endeavouring to shield his companion as much as possible from the storm, from which they had no other shelter than the narrow arch, being without an umbrella; moreover, there was no cab-stand, or rather hackney-coach stand, near, nor any shops in which they might have taken refuge. Bernard, with the courteous gallantry of his nation, advanced, and offered the lady his umbrella; the gentleman, rather surprised at such unusual civility from a stranger, accepted it for her, 'till a vacant carriage should pass;' and Jules took his place beside them, meantime, beneath the arch. They entered into conversation on the weather--the ordinary topic of the English-and the stranger, perceiving that their new friend was a Frenchman, asked him if the contrast between the sunny days of his own land and the climate of England did not greatly distress him. The cheerful negative which followed, the light spirit that disdained that subjection to the elements which the sadder Anglo-Saxon acknowledged, interested the unknown, who was a man of intellect, and considered himself a philosopher. He asked if his companion found that his health, as well as his spirits remained unaffected by the island atmosphere; and Bernard acknowledged that he had been slightly indisposed on his arrival in England; but,' he added, 'it was from the change of diet, not the air. I was too poor to be able to procure sufficient fruit, and the want of it, in warm weather, affected me; but happily, one day I thought of oranges, which were not quite gone out, and leaving off all other food, purchased two dozen; and by the time I had eaten them, was quite well again. Ah! monsieur, we do not half appreciate the good gifts le bon Dieu bestows on us. The people round me

looked on the over-ripe fruit that cured me as worthless, and for myself I then first learned the full value of an orange.'

The stranger was amused, and when the arrival of a vacant hackney-coach separated them from his new acquaintance, expressed a wish to know him better, and asked for his address. Bernard gave it willingly; and from that time a way was opened for him to fortune and comfort. The unknown proved to be a physician of eminence, and very speedily procured in the families of his patients, pupils for the French teacher. The cheerful energy of Jules rapidly brought him into repute. His pupils loved him, for childhood is seldom uninfluenced by the attraction of a happy temper, and his teaching was consequently most successful. Indeed, it was impossible not to learn with a master who could not be brought into daily communion even with nouns and verbs without bestowing on them a portion of his affections; who talked of words as of living things, till the student remembered them and their adjuncts rather as friends than as mere abstractions, and, consequently, were as little likely to forget the gender of a noun or the conjugation of a verb, as they would have been to become oblivious of the names of their intimate acquaintance. A merry jest or a whimsical similitude fixed many a dry rule in their memories; and thus he laughed his way up the high road to success, till the dingy lodging was exchanged for a good house in a large city square, where he saw bright-green on leaves veiled by eternal dust, and rejoiced in having a prospect of a wide space of sky, regardless and heedless of the intervening smoke.

It was when his fortunes were most prosperous that he became our teacher, and occasionally we gathered from his own lips the story of his life; though so completely did he dwell on and count the sunny hours,' that even the account of his early trials and difficulties did not cause a painful impression.

Happy old man! in a strange land, he had created round him, by his warm-hearted hilarity, a circle of friends, perhaps even more affectionate than if attached to him by the ties of affinity. His portrait by a firstrate artist smiles from the wall of his pleasant drawing-room; it was painted for, and presented to him by his pupils. The elegant silver coffee-pot from which his coffee is poured on les Dimanches was also their gift. He is wealthy, and he rejoices in diffusing round him a portion of his own happiness. Daily, some poor and unknown foreigner or struggling teacher dines at his hospitable board; and on Sundays a group of such persons spend their weekly holiday in his house, and he devotes himself to their entertainment: a motley party, speaking many different tongues; some well dressed, some very shabbily attired, but all infected by the contagion of his mirth, and forgetful of their work-a-day cares in his presence. Some of his more peculiar friends once remonstrated with the excellent host on the incongruous mixture of his society, and received the simple reply, 'that his invitations were given in accordance with the spirit of l'Evangile.'

Monsieur Bernard is a rare and happy specimen of the union of industry and contentment; truly might he assume the motto: Horas non numero nisi serenas.

Our next merry mortal' was far less blessed by nature and fortune with those external gifts we are apt to value so highly; yet, with a calmer and quieter manner than the volatile Frenchman, he possessed, we believe, to the full as happy a disposition.

We were walking on a cold March morning on the esplanade of a fashionable watering-place, when we first saw him. It was one of the most uncomfortable days we can remember. The sky was thickly overcast with clouds; the wind was high and chilly; the sea looked heavy and sullen, and there was a disconsolate tone in the hoarse murmurs it breathed upon