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truth of the delineation, and laughed accordingly. Even Hodge is polishing now-a-days, though he is a very rough diamond indeed, and needs town attrition to bring out his worth,-to open his eyes even to the loveliness of nature; and -mark another change-instead of being the favourite buffoon on the stage, he is himself the thorough playgoer when he comes to town, the Acted Drama precisely suiting his state of mental development!

The masses in great towns are, I hopefully believe, passing beyond that state. They have the poets' pages, and all our great national literature, for their recreation and instruction; art galleries free, or at merely nominal cost to enter; the multiplications of the engraver; mechanics' institutions and their almost nightly lectures; music of all kinds, and at all prices; and— better thing than the mimic sentiment of the Acted Dramathe middle classes, beyond all others, know how to cherish and prize and enjoy intelligent intercourse with each other, and society at each other's Homes!

MY HOUSEHOLD JEWELS.

BY MRS. W. P. O'NEILL.

My first-born is a gladsome child,
With earnest eyes and bright,
All heart, all love, yet sweetly wild-
A child of life and light!

Yet, gentle as the gentlest, she
Doth softly creep to visit me

When I am sick and weak, and stand
Pressing her bright lips on my hand;
Or asking me, with sweet surprise
Lighting the depths of her fond, dark eyes,
"Why are you there? Be up, and away
With your own wee child to romp and play!"

My second is a boist❜rous boy,

A curly-headed knave,

With full blue eyes, lit up with joy,

And brow that seems to brave

The thousand storms that may assail
His onward course. Oh, words would fail

To tell how fervent, fond, and deep,

The prayers I've pray'd for him when sleep Hath seal'd all other eyes! for, lo!

Man's path is rough, and mothers feel it so !"

My youngest is a tiny flower,
That lately bless'd my sight,
Kindling within the household bower
A new and dear delight.

I pride me in her forehead fair,
Her dark, abundant, silken hair,

Her soft blue eyes, - but this is weak!
Some holier word than pride should speak
For me.
In better words I bless
The beauty and the gentleness
Of this my placid babe, for she
Is gentlest of the darling three.
I call her lamb-I call her dove-
This gentle, gentle child of love!

TO BE READ AT DUSK.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

ONE, two, three, four, five. There were five of them. Five couriers, sitting on a bench outside the convent on the summit of the Great St. Bernard in Switzerland, looking at the remote heights, stained by the setting sun, as if a mighty quantity of red wine had been broached upon the mountain top, and had not yet had time to sink into the snow.

This is not my simile. It was made for the occasion by the stoutest courier, who was a German. None of the others took any more notice of it than they took of me, sitting on another bench on the other side of the convent door, smoking my cigar, like them, and also like them-looking at the reddened snow, and at the lonely shed hard by, where the bodies of belated travellers, dug out of it, slowly wither away, knowing no corruption in that cold region.

The wine upon the mountain top soaked in as we looked; the mountain became white; the sky, a very dark blue; the wind rose; and the air turned piercing cold. The five couriers buttoned their rough coats. There being no safer man to imitate in all such proceedings than a courier, I buttoned mine.

The mountain in the sunset had stopped the five couriers in a conversation. It is a sublime sight, likely to stop conversation. The mountain being now out of the sunset, they resumed. Not that I had heard any part of their previous

discourse; for, indeed, I had not then broken away from the American gentleman, in the travellers' parlour of the convent, who, sitting with his face to the fire, had undertaken to realise to me the whole progress of events which had led to the accumulation by the Honourable Ananias Dodger of one of the largest acquisitions of dollars ever made in our country.

My God!" said the Swiss courier, speaking in French, which I do not hold (as some authors appear to do) to be such an all-sufficient excuse for a naughty word, that I have only to write it in that language to make it innocent; "if you talk of ghosts"

"But I don't talk of ghosts," said the German.

"Of what then?" asked the Swiss.

"If I knew of what then," said the German, "I should probably know a great deal more."

It was a good answer, I thought, and it made me curious. So, I moved my position to that corner of my bench which was nearest to them, and leaning my back against the convent-wall, heard perfectly, without appearing to attend.

"Thunder and lightning!" said the German, warming, "when a certain man is coming to see you, unexpectedly; and, without his own knowledge, sends some invisible messenger, to put the idea of him in your head all day, what do you call that? When you walk along a crowded street-at Frankfort, Milan, London, Paris-and think that a passing stranger is like your friend Heinrich, and then that another passing stranger is like your friend Heinrich, and so begin to have a strange foreknowledge that presently you'll meet your friend Heinrich-which you do, though you believed him at Triestewhat do you call that ?"

"It's not uncommon either," murmured the Swiss and the other three.

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