world acknowledges, and offers an appeal to coarse leaden balls! This is surely derogatory to the dignity of a teacher of the people, to put himself on a level with the weapons of Blackwood's Bullies.'

In this same Number there is a rich treat of extracts from the different journals, showing their mutual abuse of each other.

The fourth pamphlet is on the subject of the Dorchester Labourers.' It is a clear and masterly statement of the iniquity practised towards poor men, and hitherto with impunity. Will the same people transport the Duke of Cumberland, should Joseph Hume make good his charges against him of fostering Orange Lodges in the army? It were indeed a sight more conducive to morality than all the sermons all our bishops ever preached, to behold a royal criminal imitating Prince Harry, and dutifully submitting to the sentence of the judge to pass the remainder of his days at forced labour in a penal colony. The same law for rich and poor, and the same administration of it, would soon entirely supersede the necessity of soldiers. The rich would make humane laws when exposed to their operation themselves, and the poor would hold such laws in respect. This will be called by respectable' people, shocking, radical, and revolutionary language. I will not vituperate them in turn, but simply ask, Is it the language of justice? It would be a droll sight to see our royal Ernest hunting bushrangers and tending sheep, week about, and fain to fill his belly with the husks that the swine

did eat.'

The fifth pamphlet is a very temperate and judicious article ou the Amusements of the Aristocracy and of the People.' The style of the writing is admirable, plain and simple as Cobbett, and truly philosophic. It has not the exquisite polish of the • Examiner,' it deals not in the terse allusion, but it speaks to the people in words which all will comprehend. In the same Number is an article on the American Ballot Box,' by H. S. Chapman, which exposes the absurdities talked against the ballot system, and describes the advantages gained by it. The member for St. Ives, whose name is Halse, is also held up to public

exposure.

The sixth pamphlet is on The Persecution preached by the Parsons of the State Church in Ireland,' and, under the signature of Thomas Falconer, is a most useful exposition of the costly absurdity of maintaining the expensive regiments called Guards, while the money is wanted for more useful purposes. Twenty thousand pounds are voted towards the education of the people, and upwards of two hundred thousand are wasted on the childish folly of playing at soldiers.' And it is the Reformed House of Commons' which does this! Go on, John Roebuck, and, with as many of your friends' assistance as may be, continue to put forth such pamphlets for the instruction of the people. If their sale be as

great as their desert, it will not be many years ere we shall have a House of Commons truly representing the people, in a state widely improved from the present one.

I lay down my pen well pleased to have lent such aid as I can to increase the circulation of a work which in my judgment is calculated to produce great good where instruction is so much wanted, in the dwellings of the poor, who bid fair to be well ' helped.'

July 23d, 1835.

JUNIUS REDIVIVUS.

SKETCHES OF DOMESTIC LIFE.

No. 6. THE COQUETTE.

THE prettiest villa in the vicinity of London belonged to Isabella Hervey. She was brilliantly beautiful, the possessor of an ample independent fortune, and the idol of a bachelor brother, who, many years her senior, had long supplied to her orphaned youth parental care and protection.

The crimson glow of a summer sunset burnished all the windows of her boudoir, gleamed through their light and graceful draperies, and made the sumptuous carpet, couches, and ottomans dimly visible; from this apartment, over which the spirit of enchantment seemed to preside, the eye passed through a beautiful vista formed by two consecutive drawing-rooms, in which the lights were being kindled for a throng of expected guests.

Just at this interval-this pause which was not peace, but seemed like it-Isabella glided slowly into the scene of which she was the sovereign. As she passed, the splendid mirrors reflected her form a form fair as woman ever wore; a thousand odours greeted her with a voice of silent fragrance; and her harp, half hid in the recess of a window, through the gauzy veil of which gleamed clustering roses, whispered of melody as she went by.

But Isabella had now been many years a fashionable coquette: though still young, still, to the common and cursory eye, beautiful, still rich, still flattered and followed, she was not happy. All the freshness or rather all the sweetness of feeling was gone; little susceptibility was left her but to the impressions of pain.

This is one of the penalties that humanity pays for the abuse of the human powers; sensibility to pleasure it must surrender, sensibility to pain it cannot.

Isabella entered her boudoir with a letter in her hand-that letter had disappointed her. Her satiated mental appetite now required the hyperbole of praise; she could not do without it, it was a condiment essential to the savour of all that was said to her; yet it did not give her pleasure, though its absence gave her pain.

Conscience, never utterly destroyed, and judgment, in her naturally acute, would each continually add something to rankle the wounds from which she suffered. Deficient flattery suggested fears about default, and then conscience would ask, 'Do you deserve faith, fealty, or firmness? Excessive flattery suggested suspicions of sincerity, and then judgment would exclaim, Is this daubing meet for a classic eye like your's?' But conscience, judgment, every high and noble thought, were flung aside as she hurried to the accustomed crowd, as if she had set her life upon a cast, and must stand the hazard of the die.'

Perhaps beauty is of all human power the most perfect; effortless, instantaneous in its action, it may say, with Cæsar, I came, I saw, I conquered.' Yet perhaps it is also the least fortunate kind of power, since it is most subject to corrupting influences during its rise and meridian, and suffers most intensely from moral reverses during its decline. But nature had not dowered Isabella merely with beauty-the mental jewel was worthy of the material casket; energy and fine spirits also formed a part of her gifted nature, and these, in co-operation with a high, free, diligent cultivation of her powers, might have carried her to some point of greatness where she might have lived blessed and blessing as well as brilliant-whence she might have been exhaled to other heights in that region to which, rapt and reverent, imagination rises.

The principal characteristic of Isabella's mind was concentration: born in circumstances which strictly confined her to the woman-sphere,-vanity and wedlock,-she chose the field which the first offered her. With feelings free from every sordid taint, when she first entered the paltry arena in which art forms the means and marriage the meed, she was like a young Arab barb put upon a mill-wheel, who would circle it again and again like wildfire, till he destroyed himself and the dull instrument of his

torture.

Virtually, not actually, her plan of action was prescribed to her, but the poisonous policy inculcated could not shape her course to mercenary conquest-her quarry was the heart. But, with the conqueror's ignorant and insatiable thirst for dominion, to win and waste was her bent:-like him, reckless and destructive, she remorselessly left to desolation the region she had invaded and subjugated.

War is called a noble science-the soldier an ennobled being: the ambuscade, the surprise, the assault, the carnage, which is the consummation of the whole, are all arrayed in the pages of history -in the columns of the Gazette;' and people, perverted by false impressions, see nothing but glory and greatness: now be the same compliment paid to the coquette; let her have, at least, one leaf from the soldier's chaplet.

It is constantly observed that we cannot say to the passions,

Thus far thou shalt go and no farther;' but we say this to the intellect, and, strange to say, we are obeyed; how many minds do we see arrested in mid career, and coming to a stand at some point at which it is more difficult to pause than to pass onward!

As Isabella sunk upon a couch in her boudoir, she felt the wooing of the evening breeze, and she leaned her uneasy head towards the window to catch that gentle caress of kindly nature. A sweet inartificial song was warbled at the moment; Isabella looked out and saw a young peasant girl passing home from a neighbouring hay-field with an apron full of the new-mown grass. Isabella was touched with admiration. Taste, one of the diamondsparks of spirit, is indestructible; it may be burned with us in the crucible of passion; it may be shattered with us by the mallet of misfortune; but let the calm hour come back, and there is taste bright as ever; let the day of prosperity return, gather up the fragments, and taste is still essentially the same.

The wide scene, the sweet scent, the happy songstress, the contrast presented to all within by all without, was gaining some influence on the mind of Isabella, when the prolonged summons of the pealing knocker induced her to draw in her head, and sink again upon the couch.

To a lady with spirits as much below par as were Isabella's, the kind of visitor who first arrives is of infinite consequence. Some come, like an essence-box, with a reviving influence, with a pleasing smile and playful sally; others appear as if they had a portable fog in the waistcoat-pocket, and there is no telling at what moment it may not burst forth. Some, possessed by a ceaseless volubility, discharge a cataract of words with the rapidity that Mr. Perkins's machine does bullets-only fortunately they are not all hits; while others again speak so slow that they seem to wait for a Habeas Corpus to bring up every syllable they say.

Isabella's first visitor was unfortunately one of the latter description-you might put in a parenthesis of any length during a pause of his; he had lately returned from the continent, whence he had brought a foreign title, the better to enable him to catch a rich native wife; but he had left none of his tediousness in exchange, so that he had still plenty at the service of society. Isabella, when in conversation with this worthy Count, was like a rapid chess player engaged with a slow one; the former anticipates every move, and thus becomes a sort of sentinel at the board, rather than an antagonist at the game.

But Isabella was a disciplinarian, and besides she had not passed seven seasons in London without having learned how to manage bores and lions. By-the-bye, a strange sort of metamorphosis occurs in our metropolitan exhibition-rooms for the display of rare animals, for the lion of one season often becomes the bore of the next.

New arrivals soon rapidly succeeded each other, and, as the business of the evening called upon her, Isabella rose above the vapid tone which had possessed her. Still her restless spirit, craving for exercise it could not find, looked forth like an eagle for prey worthy of her power.

Many of such guests as 'come like shadows, so depart;' who are pledged to produce themselves at so many places the same night, and say nothing at any of them-for the sake, I suppose, of saying something of all of them,-had floated away, when a pale spectral person passed Isabella: rapidly he passed; but he left the spell of his dark deep-seated eyes upon her. She lost him immediately in the crowd; but though others surrounded her, and continual claims were made on her attention, she could not banish the stranger's image.

The evening passed as such evenings usually do-the rooms got warm, if the people did not; some ices were carried about to other ices which sat still. There was music, and singing, and talking in the midst of both, excruciating the nerves and feelings of the musician, and mortifying the vanity of the musical exhibitor. One exception to that rule occurred on that evening, towards the conclusion of the entertainment. A rapid prelude, which appeared a voluntary, was followed by a voice of so deep, sweet, and thrilling a tone, that the crowd became instinctively hushed, the spirit of passionate melody appeared present, and even the babbler dare not break the spell.

'Forgotten quite-forgotten quite

The pang I cannot bear!

Oh, feel my brow; the death-drops now

Are there'

The musician fell from the instrument. Full of power as that burst of song had been, it seemed his last, for he lay across the arms of those who had raised him, as if life were extinct.

This way, this way,' exclaimed Mr. Hervey, Isabella's brother, 'bear him into the ante-room.'

The crowd passed; Isabella was alone, and, as if petrified, in the attitude in which she stood when those heart-searching tones had reached her ear, even unto her heart, callous as it was become, they had pierced, and seemed to congeal her into marble.

She had been some time in her dressing-room when her brother came to her there. She had never before seen him look so sternly. With all her faults, she had redeeming points; proud, tyrannical, cruel as she was, she loved that brother, honoured him, cherished him, would have sheltered him from suffering as the mother-bird does her callow young, and been regardless of injury to herself, so she but spared it to him. She looked up; and her beautiful face, so usually expressive of imperial power, had all the meekness of the unweaned lamb; her form, generally so full of haughty grace,