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partment opened, and we were invaded. | The heat in the carriage by this time They tumbled in over my legs, panting, was hardly more overpowering than the laughing, exclaiming, calling to each other smell of crape, broad-cloth, and camto hurry- —an old man, two youths, four phor. The youth who had wedged him. middle-aged women, and a little girl about self next to me carried a large packet of four years old. My choleric fellow-pas-"fairing," which he had bought at one of senger leapt up, choking with wrath, and the sweet-stalls. He began to insert it shouted to the guard. But the door was into his side pocket, and in his struggles slammed on his indignation, and we moved drove an elbow sharply into my ribs. I off. He sat back, purple above his stock, shifted my position a little. rescued his malacca walking-stick from under the coat-tails of a subsiding youth, stuck it upright between his knees, and glared around at the intruders. They were still possessed with excitement over their narrow escape, and unconscious of offence. One of the women dropped into the corner seat and took the little girl on her lap. The child's dusty boots rubbed against the old gentleman's trousers. He shifted his position, grunted, and took snuff furiously.

"That was nibby jibby," the old man of the party observed, while his eye wandered round for a seat.

"I thought I should ha' died," said a robust woman, with a wart on her cheek and a yard of crape hanging from her bonnet. "Can't 'ee find nowhere to sit, uncle?"

"Reckon I must make shift 'pon your lap, Susannah." This was said with a chuckle, and the woman tittered. "What new-fangled game be this o' the Great Western's? Arms to the seats, I declare. We'll have to sit intimate, my dears.”

"'Tis first class," another woman announced in an awed whisper. "I saw it 'pon the door. You don't think they'll fine us."

"'T all comes of our stoppin' to glare at that Punch an' Judy," the old fellow went on, after I had shown them how to turn back the arm-rests and they were settled in something like comfort. "But I never could refrain from that antic- tho' I feels condemned, too, in a way — an' poor Thomas laid in earth no later than eleven this mornin'. But in the midst of life we are in death."

"I don't remember a more successful buryin'," said the woman with the wart. "That was part luck, you see; it bein' regatta-day an' the fun o' the fair not properly begun. I saw a lot at the cemetery I didn' know by face, an' I reckon they was mostly excursionists that caught sight of a funeral an' followed it, to fill up the time."

"Well, it all added."

"Oh, aye; Thomas was beautifully interred."

"Tom's wife would ha' felt it a source o' pride, had she lived."

But I ceased to listen; for in moving I had happened to glance at the further end of the carriage, and there my attention was arrested by a curious little piece of pantomime. The little girl - a dark-eyed, intelligent child, whose pallor was emphasized by the crape which smothered her - was looking very closely at the old gentleman with the hump-staring at him hard, in fact. He, on the other hand, was leaning forward with both hands on the knob of his malacca, his eyes bent on the floor and his mouth squared to the surliest expression. He seemed quite unconscious of her scrutiny, and was tapping one foot impatiently on the floor.

After a minute I was surprised to see her lean forward and touch him gently on the knee.

He took no notice beyond shuffling about a little and uttering a slight growl. The woman who held her put out an arm and drew back the child's hand, reprovingly. The child paid no heed to this, but continued to stare. Then in another two minutes she again bent forward and tapped the old gentleman's knee.

This time she fetched a louder growl from him and an irascible glare. Not in the least daunted she took hold of his malacca and shook it to and fro in her small hand.

"I wish to heavens, madam, you'd keep your child to yourself!"

"For shame, Annie!" whispered the poor woman, cowed by his look.

But again Annie paid no heed. Instead, she pushed the malacca towards the old gentleman, saying:

"Please, sir, will 'ee warm Mister Barrabel wi' this?"

He moved uneasily and looked harshly at her without answering. "For shame, Annie!" the woman murmured a second time; but I saw her lean back and a tear started and rolled down her cheek.

"If you please, sir," repeated Annie, "will 'ee warm Mister Barrabel wi' this?" The old gentleman stared round the carriage. In his eyes you could read the

question, "What in the devil's name does the child mean?" The robust woman read it there and answered him huskily:"Poor mite, she's buried her father this mornin'; an' Mister Barrabel is the coffinmaker, an' nailed en down."

"Now," said Annie, this time eagerly, "will 'ee warm him, same as the big doll did just now?"

For the next minute, with a beautiful change on his face, the old gentleman had taken the child on his knee and was talking to her as I dare say he had never talked before.

"Are you her mother?" he asked, looking up suddenly and addressing the woman opposite.

"Her mother's been dead these two

Luckily the old gentleman did not un-year'. I'm her aunt, an' I'm takin' her derstand this last allusion. He had not home to rear 'long wi' my own childer." seen the group around the Punch and Judy show; nor, if he had, is it likely he would have guessed the train of thought in the child's mind. But to me, as I looked at my fellow-passenger's nose and the deformity of his shoulders, and remembered how Punch treats the undertaker in the immortal drama, it was all plain enough. I glanced at the child's companions. There was nothing in their faces to show that they took the allusion. And the next minute I was glad to think that I alone knew what had prompted Annie's speech.

He was bending over Annie, and had resumed his chat. It was all nonsensesomething about the silver knob of his malacca - but it took hold of the child's fancy and comforted her. At the next station I had to alight, for it was the end of my journey. But looking back into the carriage as I shut the door, I saw Annie bending forward over the walking-stick and following the pattern of its silver-work with her small finger. Her face was turned from the old gentleman's, and behind her little black hat his eyes were glistening.

2.

trances, and he did not always get the best of the bargain, as we may see from his correspondence, published by M. Jules Guiffrey in his excellent volume, "Les Caffieri Sculpteurs et Fondeurs-ciseleurs" (Paris, 1877). The example of Caffieri was followed by other artists as soon as it became known. In March, 1778, Houdon offered a marble bust of Voltaire in exchange for a life entrance. Pajou, Foucou, Boizot, and Moret treated on the same terms for the busts of Dufresny, Dan

Racine, and Regnard, and so from year to year the number of works of art increased. In 1780 Madame Duvivier, niece and heiress of Voltaire, gave to the Comédie the pearl of its collection, that superb marble statue of Houdon, which is the glory of the public foyer. Magazine of Art.

THE COMEDIE FRANCAISE AND ITS TREASURES. How did the Comédie obtain all their works? From letters preserved in the archives we shall learn the secret. Caffieri, we find, estimated the terra-cottas of La Fontaine and Quinault at twenty-five louis each, and his marble busts at three thousand francs each, but the comedians did not pay in money. In 1773 Piron died; Caffieri conceived the idea of making the bust of that author for the Comédie, and asked his friend De Belloy to make terms with the comedians. The negotia-court, tions took place by correspondence, and here is the first letter from De Belloy to the actor Molé: "Mon cher Molé, -Caffieri offre aux comédiens d'exécuter le buste en marble de Piron, à la seule condition de ses entrées en tout temps pendant sa vie. - DE BELLOY." The comedians accepted the offer and placed Caffieri on the free list for life, and henceforward in exchange for each bust in marble they gave the sculptor a free pass for his lifetime, with the right of transferring it to another person. Thus the comedians adorned their green-room without any outlay, and Caffieri received indirectly payment for busts to make which interested him, but which he would doubtless have found difficulty in disposing of otherwise. The price of a life entrance at the Comédie Française was reckoned at three thousand francs. A private individual who wished to purchase such an entrance had the advantage of credit and payment by instalments in dealing with Caffieri rather than with the Comédie directly. Indeed, the sculptor seems to have amused himself by speculating with these life en

TENNYSON'S PENSIONS. - Lord Tennyson has often been censured for continuing to take the pension of £200 which he received now nearly forty years ago. It ought to be known, however, says a London correspondent, that for many years the poet laureate has derived no personal advantage from the pension. He has given the whole of it for the relief of authors in distress. IIe has, in fact, constituted himself the almoner of a fund of £200 a year, and has used it -no doubt with judg ment and care to relieve the necessities of authors. If he relinquished the pension it would not be conferred on another less pros. perous writer. Its abandonment would merely save the State £200 a year, and Lord Tennyson thinks that the money may be well employed in relieving the distress of men of letters.

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Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

130

A WINTER NIGHT'S DREAM. "During the greatest extension of this ice sheet in the last glacial epoch, in fact, all England, except a small south-western corner (about Torquay and Bournemouth), was completely covered by one enormous mass of glaciers, as is still the case with almost the whole of Greenland." (Grant Allen in "Falling in Love, and other Essays. ")

"THE FORESTERS: ROBIN HOOD AND MAID MARIAN."

CLEAR as of old the great voice rings to-day, While Sherwood's oak-leaves twine with Ald worth's bay,

The voice of him, the master and the sire Of one whole age and legion of the lyre, "My realm," so rang a strange voice in my Who sang his morning song when Coleridge dream,

"Shall now be far extended as of old,

still

Uttered dark oracles from Highgate Hill,

In those glad days when I was young, and And with new-launchèd argosies of rhyme Gilds and makes brave this sombreing tide of time.

drove

The feverish sun before me to the South!"
I looked, and lo! a withered form and wan,
Sceptred and crown'd, was throned upon a
height-

A gleaming iceberg 'neath the Polar Star.
No living thing made answer, but the winds
Roused into moaning at the frozen cry.

Again he spake: "I have no care for life
Of bird or beast, or of that senseless tribe
Which plants, and sows, and weds, and wars,

and weeps;

To me more grateful seem wide wastes of

snow

Where all is dumb; or, if there must be sound,
I find my music in the hurtling hail,
And winds that wail their anguish in the dark;
Or in the ocean's thunder, when his waves,
Baffled, still beat upon the crystal floor
I spread for leagues about me as I move.

"To-night that island, fairest of the flood,
Which once was mine, I go to claim again.
There foolish folk are sleeping in their beds,
Who never more shall wake to see the sun.
The old will shiver when they feel me pass,
The young, unconscious, smiling, sleep in
death.

No mercy, none, need man expect from me -
All, all shall perish in a single night!"

The voice was silent or I heard no more,
The terror of the vision made me start;
I woke the dreamer of a wintry doom.
JOHN JERVIS BERESFORD, M.A.

Temple Bar.

CUPID'S VISIT.

I LAY sick in a foreign land;

And by me on the right,
A little Love had taken stand
Who held up to my sight

A vessel full of injured things,

His shivered bow, his bleeding wings;
And underneath the pretty strew
Of glistening feathers, half in view,
A broken heart: he held them up
Within the silver-lighted cup

That I might mark each one; then pressed
His little cheek against my chest,
And fell to singing in such wise

He shook the vision from my eyes.
Academy.

MICHAEL FIELD.

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From The Cornhill Magazine. CONCERNING LEIGH HUNT. "WRITE me as one who loves his fellow men," are the words upon the stone under which lie the remains of Leigh Hunt. They were written by himself, and when the monument was erected to his memory in 1869, at Kensal Green, they were chosen by those who had known and loved him as the most appropriate to be inscribed over his grave.

If it is true that "love begets love" it was presumably the poet's gentle, kindly nature that inspired men of all sorts and conditions with a friendly feeling towards him. With his personality has passed away, save in the minds of a very small remnant, the memory of its power. That that power was remarkable is undoubted. Letters are now lying before the present writer addressed to him from Shelley, Keats, Browning, Carlyle, Charles Lamb, Thackeray, Dickens, and many others, containing such warm expressions of affection and esteem that one can hardly avoid regarding with a feeling akin to envy the favored individual into whose lap such treasures were poured.

A curious mixture of qualities appears to have existed in his nature. To a simple, childlike faith in human nature, and a strong, enduring love of humanity without respect to creed, politics, or opinions, was united a hearty and healthy detestation of many of its common weaknesses. He possessed a singular facility for adapting himself to the tone of mind of the companion of the moment, throwing himself with equal ease into the gaiety or gravity of his friend's mood, but always detecting and disapproving on the instant the slightest expression of anything that savored of want of charity or kindly feeling towards others.

briefly alluded to here. In two of the leading papers of the day had appeared some articles loaded with the most fulsome and extravagant eulogies on the prince regent, which awakened in Hunt a glow of honest indignation, and induced him to express in plain language his contempt for such toadyism in the pages of the Examiner, a newspaper which he started and edited jointly with his brother. The follies and vices of the regent were at that time a matter of common talk, but to make fearless and open allusion to them in a public journal was audacious. His own defence for what he wrote is contained in the following words: "Flattery in any shape is unworthy a man and a gentleman; but political flattery is almost a request to be made slaves. If we would have the great to be what they ought, we must find some means or other to speak of them as they are."

An extract from the offending article is here given, which, in its turn, supplies us with a very fair idea of the nature of the sentiments so fearlessly attacked by Leigh Hunt.

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"What person," wrote the critic, "unacquainted with the true state of the case, would imagine, on reading these astounding eulogies, that this 'Glory of the People' was the subject of millions of shrugs and reproaches !-that this Protector of the Arts' had named a wretched foreigner his historical painter, in disparagement or in ignorance of the merits of his own countrymen ! — that this 'Mæcenas of the Age' patronized not a single deserving writer ! that this Breather of Eloquence' could not say a few decent extempore words, if we are to judge, at least, by what he said to his regiment on its embarkation for Portugal! that this 'Conqueror of Hearts' was the disapHis stern, unyielding aversion to pre- pointer of hopes! that this 'Exciter of tence or sham resulted for him, as the Desire' (bravo! Messieurs of the Post!) world knows, in two years' imprisonment this Adonis in loveliness,' was a corpuand the payment of a fine of 500l., an epi-lent man of fifty!-in short, this delightsode to which he refers afterwards in ful, blissful, wise, pleasurable, honorable, simple words: "Much as it injured me, I cannot wish I had evaded it, for I believe that it has done good."

The circumstances, which may not be fresh in the minds of all readers, may be

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virtuous, true, and immortal prince, was a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half

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