charcoal, sulphur, nor nitre. No matter; his denly withdrew his allowance of £1000 per anstern volition was proof against all difficulties. num, and left our friend to shift for himself. His Having once conveyed his design to the negroes, own means, never very great, were entirely exhe found them eager to assist him, though, as hausted. He knew too well the impracticable difficulty after difficulty arose, it required all the temper of his father-in-law to waste time in atconfidence of courage and hopeful energy to con- tempting to soften him. He also knew that by trol their savage impatience. The first batch his wife's settlement he should be rich at the was a failure, and it was only by pretending that death of the old man, who had already passed his it was yet unfinished he was enabled to try a seventieth year. He could not borrow money, second, in which he triumphed over all obsta- for he had been severely wounded in Syria, and cles. When the negroes had really loaded their the insurance-offices refused him but he felt a muskets with his powder, and fired them off in spring of life and youth within him that mocked celebration of the event, they indeed revered the their calculations. He took things cheerfully, stranger as a superior and marvelous being. For and resolved to work for his living. He answernearly eighteen months the German remained on ed unnumbered advertisements, and made incesthe coast. It was a port rarely visited, and the sant applications for all sorts of situations. At negroes would not allow him to make any at-length matters came to a crisis: his money was tempt to travel to a more frequented place. Thus nearly gone; time pressed; his wife and child he continued to make gunpowder for his barbar- must be supported. A seat-not in parliament, ous friends, and to live, according to their no- but on the box of an omnibus, was offered him. tions, "like a prince;" for to do King Bocca- He accepted it. The pay was equivalent to Bocca justice, when he learned our friend's value, three guineas a week. It was hard work, but he he treated him like a man and a brother. What stuck to it manfully. Not unfrequently it was might have been his fate had he awaited in idle his lot to drive gentlemen who had dined at his despondency the arrival of a vessel? As it was, table, and drunk his wine in former days. He the negroes crowded the beach, and fired off never blushed at their recognition; he thought repeated salvos at his departure. Doubtless his working easier than begging. For nearly ten name will descend through many a dusky gen- years he endured all the ups and downs of omnieration as the teacher of that art which they still bus life. At last, the tough old father-in-law, practice, carrying on a lucrative commerce in who during the whole interval had never regunpowder with the neighboring tribes. A small lented, died; and our hero came into the possessquare chest of gold-dust, which the escaped vic- sion of some £1500 a year, which he enjoys at tim of Jesuit fraud brought back to Europe, was this present moment. Suppose he had borrowed no inappropriate proof of the policy of doing and drawn bills instead of working during those something "in the mean time," while waiting, ten years, as many have done who had expect however anxiously, to do something else. ancies before them, where would he have been We knew another case in point, also connected on his exit from the Queen's Bench at the ex with the late king of the French. M. de Gpiration of the period? In the hands of the was, on the downfall of that monarch, in possession of a very handsome pension for past ser- Our next specimen is that of a now successful vices. The revolution came, and his pension author, who, owing to the peculiarity of his style, was suspended. His wife was a woman of en- fell, notwithstanding a rather dashing début, into ergy she saw that the pension might be recov- great difficulty and distress. His family withered by making proper representations in the drew all support. because he abandoned the more right quarters; but she, also, saw that ruinous regular prospects of the legal profession for the embarrassment and debt might accrue in the in- more ambitious but less certain career of literaterim. Her house was handsomely furnished- ture. He felt that he had the stuff in him to she had been brought up in the lap of wealth make a popular writer; but he was also comand luxury. She did not hesitate; she turned pelled to admit that popularity was not in his her house into a lodging-house, sank the pride case to be the work of a day. The res angusta of rank, attended to all the duties of such a sta- domi grew closer and closer; and though not tion, and what was the result? When, at the objecting to dispense with the supposed necessiend of three years, M. de Grecovered his ty of dining, he felt that bread and cheese, in the pension, he owed nobody a farthing, and the literal acceptation of the term, were really indisarrears sufficed to dower one of his daughters pensable to existence. Hence, one day, he inabout to marry a gentleman of large fortune, who vested his solitary half-crown in the printing of had become acquainted with her by lodging in a hundred cards, announcing that at the "Classtheir house. Madame de G's fashionable ical and Commercial Day-school of Mr., &c., friends thought her conduct very shocking. But Young Gentlemen were instructed in all the what might have become of the family in three Branches, &c., for the moderate sum of Two years of petitioning? Shillings weekly." These cards he distributed Again: one of our most intimate acquaintance by the agency of the milkman in the suburban was an English gentleman, who, having left the and somewhat poor neighborhood, in which he army at the instance of a rich father-in-law, had occupied a couple of rooms at the moderate ren' the misfortune subsequently to offend the irasci- of 7s. weekly. It was not long before a few ble old gentleman so utterly, that the latter sud-pupils made, one by one, their appearance at the

Philistines, or of the Jews?

would-be pedagogue's. As they were mostly the sons of petty tradesmen round about, he raised no objection to taking out their schooling in kind, and by this means earned at least a subsistence till more prosperous times arrived, and publishers discovered his latent merits. But for this device, he might not improbably have shared the fate of Chatterton and others, less unscrupulous as to a resource for the "mean time" that rock on which so many an embryo genius founders.

The misfortune of our next case was, not that he abandoned the law, but that the law abandoned him. He was a solicitor in a country town, where the people were either so little inclined to litigation, or so happy in not finding cause for it, that he failed from sheer want of clients, and, as a natural consequence, betook himself to the metropolis-that Mecca cum Medina of all desperate pilgrims in search of fickle Fortune. There his only available friend was a pastry-cook in a large way of business. It so happened that the man of tarts and jellies was precisely at that epoch in want of a foreman and book-keeper, his last prime-minister having emigrated to America with a view to a more independent career. Our ex-lawyer, feeling the consumption of tarts to be more immediately certain than the demand for writs, proposed, to his friend's amazement, for the vacant post; and so well did he fill it, that in a few years he had saved enough of money to

third held the very devil up to ridicule; and a fourth bore a hideous resemblance to the grim King of Terrors himself! They were but rude productions as works of art; but there was a spirit and expression about them that toyshops rarely exhibit. The ingenious manufacturer then sallied forth with his merchandise. Within an hour afterward he might have been seen driving a bargain with a vagrant dealer in "odd notions," as the Yankees would call them. It is unnecessary to pursue our artist through all his industrial progress. Enough that he is now one of the most successful theatrical machinists, and in the possession of a wife, a house, and a comfortable income. He, too, had prospects, and he still has them-as' far off as ever. Fortunately for him, he "prospected" on his own account, and found a "diggin'."

"There is always something to be done, it people will only set about finding it out, and the chances are ever in favor of activity. Whatever brings a man in contact with his fellows may lead to fortune. Every day brings new opportunities to the social worker; and no man, if he has once seriously considered the subject, need ever be at a loss as to what to do in the mean time. Volition is primitive motion, and where there is a will there is a way.

THE LOST AGES.

Y friends, have you read Elia? If so, follow

start again in his old profession. The pastry. Me, walking in the shadow of his mild pres

cook and his friends became clients, and he is at present a thriving attorney in Lincoln's Inn, none the worse a lawyer for a practical knowledge of the patés filled by those oysters whose shells are the proverbial heritage of his patrons.

ence, while I recount to you my vision of the Lost Ages. I am neither single nor unblessed with offspring, yet, like Charles Lamb, I have had my dream children." Years have flown A still more singular resource was that of a over me since I stood a bride at the altar. My young gentleman, of no particular profession, eyes are dim and failing, and my hairs are silwho, having disposed somehow or other in nu- ver-white. My real children of flesh and blood profitable speculations, of a very moderate inher- have become substantial men and women, carvitance, found himself what is technically termed ing their own fortunes, and catering for their "on his beam-ends;" so much so, indeed, that own tastes in the matter of wives and husbands, his condition gradually came to verge on positive leaving their old mother, as nature ordereth, to destitution; and he sat disconsolately in a little the stillness and repose fitted for her years. garret one morning, quite at his wits' end for the Understand, this is not meant to imply that the means of contriving what Goethe facetiously fosterer of their babyhood, the instructor of their called "the delightful habit of existing." Turn- childhood, the guide of their youth is forsaken ing over his scanty remains of clothes and other or neglected by those who have sprung up to possessions, in the vain hope of lighting upon maturity beneath her eye. No; I am blessed something of a marketable character, he sudden- in my children. Living apart, I yet see them ly took up a sheet of card-board which in hap- often; their joys, their cares are mine. Not a pier days he had destined for the sketches at Sabbath dawns but it finds me in the midst of which he was an indifferent adept. He had evi- them; not a holiday or a festival of any kind is dently formed a plan, however absurd: that was noted in the calendar of their lives, but grandplain from the odd smile which irradiated his mamma is the first to be sent for. Still, of ne features. He descended the stairs to borrow of cessity, I pass much of my time alone; and old his landlady-what? A shilling?-By no means. age is given to reverie quite as much as youth. A needle and thread, and a pair of scissors. I can remember a time-long, long ago-when Then he took out his box of water-colors and in the twilight of a summer evening it was a set to work. To design a picture?-Not a bit luxury to sit apart, with closed eyes; and, heedof it; to make dancing-dolls!-Yes, the man less of the talk that went on in the social circle without a profession had found a trade. By the from which I was withdrawn, indulge in all sorts time it was dusk he had made several figures of fanciful visions. Then my dream-people were with movable legs and arms: one bore a rude all full-grown men and women. I do not recolresemblance to Napoleon; another, with scarce-lect that I ever thought about children until I posly excusable license, represented the Pope; a sessed some of my own. Those waking visions

were very sweet-sweeter than the realities of life that followed; but they were neither half so curious nor half so wonderful as the dreams that sometimes haunt me now. The imagination of the old is not less lively than that of the young it is only less original. A youthful fancy will create more new images; the mind of age requires materials to build with: these supplied, the combinations it is capable of forming are endless. And so were born my dream-children.

Has it never occurred to you, mothers and fathers, to wonder what has become of your children's lost ages? Look at your little boy of five years old. Is he at all, in any respect, the same breathing creature that you beheld three years back? I think not. Whither, then, has the sprite vanished? In some hidden fairy nook, in some mysterious cloud-land he must exist still. Again, in your slim-formed girl of eight years, you look in vain for the sturdy elf of five. Gone? No; that can not be "a thing of beauty is a joy forever." Close your eyes: you have her there! A breeze-like, sportive buoyant thing; a thing of breathing, laughing, unmistakable life; | she is mirrored on your retina as plainly as ever was dancing sunbeam on a brook. The very trick of her lip-of her eye; the mischief-smile, the sidelong saucy glance,

"That seems to say,

"I know you love me, Mr. Grey:"

the somewhat rough but ingenuous boy of ten As my inner eye traced their different outlines, and followed them in their graceful growth from year to year, my heart was seized with a sudden and irresistible longing to hold fast those beloved but passing images of the brain. What joy, I thought, would it be, to transfix the matchless beauty which had wrought itself thus into the visions of my old age! to preserve, forever, unchanging, every varied phase of that material but marvelous structure, which the glorious human soul had animated and informed through all its progressive stages from the child to the man.

Scarcely was the thought framed when a dull, heavy weight seemed to press upon my closed eyelids. I now saw more clearly even than before my children's images in the different stages of their being. But I saw these, and these alone, as they stood rooted to the ground, with a stony fixedness in their eyes: every other object grew dim before me. The living faces and full-grown forms which until now had mingled with and played their part among my younger phantoms altogether disappeared. I had no longer any eyes, any soul, but for this my new spectreworld. Life, and the things of life, had lost their interest; and I knew of nothing, conceived of nothing, but those still, inanimate forms from which the informing soul had long since passed

away.

And now that the longing of my heart was answered, was I satisfied? For a time I gazed, and drew a deep delight from the gratification of my vain and impious craving. But at length the still, cold presence of forms no longer of this earth began to oppress me. I grew cold and numb beneath their moveless aspect; and constant gazing upon eyes lighted up by no varying expression, pressed upon my tired senses with a more than nightmare weight. I felt a sort of dull stagnation through every limb, which held me bound where I sat, pulseless and moveless as the phantoms on which I gazed.

As I wrestled with the feeling that oppressed me, striving in vain to break the bonds of that strange fascination, under the pressure of which I surely felt that I must perish-a soft voice, proceeding from whence I knew not, broke upon my ear.

is it not traced there-all, every line, as clear as when it brightened the atmosphere about you in the days that are no more? To be sure it is; and being so, the thing must exist-somewhere. I never was more fully possessed with this conviction than once during the winter of last year. It was Christmas-eve. I was sitting alone, in my old arm-chair, and had been looking forward to the fast-coming festival day with many mingled thoughts-some tender, but regretful; others hopeful yet sad; some serious, and even solemn. As I laid my head back and sat thus with closed eyes, listening to the church-clock as it struck the hour, I could not but feel that I was passing very slowly and gently it is true -toward a time when the closing of the grave would shut out even that sound so familiar to my ear; and when other and more precious sounds of life-human voices, dearer than all else, would cease to have any meanings for me-and even their very echoes be hushed in the silence of the one long sleep. Following the train of association, it was natural that I should recur to the hour when that same church's bells had chimed my wedding-peal. I seemed to hear their music once again; and other music sweeter still-the music of young vows that "that kept the word of promise to the ear, and broke it" not "to the "No," replied the same still, soft voice; hope." Next in succession came the recollec- "these forms belong to the things of the past. tion of my children. I seemed to lose sight of In God's good time they breathed the breath of their present identity, and to be carried away in life; they had then a being and a purpose on this thought to times and scenes far back in my long-earth. Their day has departed-their work is departed youth, when they were growing up done." around my knees-beautiful forms of all ages, So saying, the voice grew still the leaden from the tender nursling of a single year spring-weight which had pressed upon my eyelids was ing with outstretched arms into my bosom, to lifted off: I awoke.

"You have your desire," it said gently; "why, then, struggle thus? Why writhe under the magic of that joy you have yourself called up? Are they not here before you, the Lost Ages whose beauty and whose grace you would perpetuate? What would you more?. O mortal!"

"But these forms have no life," I gasped; "no pulsating, breathing soul!"

Filled with reveries of the past-my eyes | regular and classic mould, was charming to look closed to every thing without-sleep had indeed upon from its undefinable expression of lovableovertaken me as I sat listening to the old church-ness and sweet temper. Her tiny feet tripped clock. But my vision was not all a vision: my noiselessly along the pavement, and a glance dream-children came not without their teaching. from her black eye sometimes met mine like a If they had been called up in folly, yet in their ray of light, as, punctually at twenty minutes to going did they leave behind a lesson of wisdom. nine, we passed each other near House, The morning dawned-the blessed Christmas- each of us on our way to the theatre of our morning! With it came my good and dutiful, daily operations. She was an embroideress, as my real life-children. When they were all I soon discovered from a small stretching-frame, assembled round me, and when, subdued and containing some unfinished work, which she octhoughtful beneath the tender and gracious as-casionally carried in her hand. She set me a sociations of the day, each in turn ministered, worthy example of punctuality, and I could any reverently and lovingly, to the old mother's need day have told the time to a minute without lookof body and of soul, my heart was melted with- ing at my watch, by marking the spot where we in me. Blessed, indeed, was I in a lot full to passed each other. I learned to look for her overflowing of all the good gifts which a wise regularly, and before I knew her name, had given and merciful Maker could lavish upon his erring her that of "Minerva," in acknowledgment of and craving creature. I stood reproved. I felt her efficiency as a mentor. humbled to think that I should ever for a moment have indulged one idle or restless longing for the restoration of that past which had done its appointed work, and out of which so gracious a present had arisen. One idea impressed me strongly I could not but feel that had the craving of my soul been answered in reality, as my dream had foreshadowed; and had the wise and beneficent order of nature been disturbed and distorted from its just relations, how fearful would have been the result! Here, in my green old age, I stood among a new generation, honored for what I was, beloved for what I had been. What if, at some mortal wish in some freak of nature, the form which I now bore were forever to remain before the eyes of my children! Were such a thing to befall, how would their souls ever be lifted upward to the contemplation of that higher state of being into which it is my hope soon to pass when the hand which guided me hither shall beckon me hence? At the thought my heart was chastened. Never since that night have I indulged in any one wish framed in opposition to nature's laws. Now I find my dream-children in the present; and to the past yield willingly all things which are its ownamong the rest, the Lost Ages.

THE

BLIGHTED FLOWERS. Y HE facts of the following brief narrative, which are very few, and of but melancholy interest, became known to me in the precise order in which they are laid before the reader. They were forced upon my observation rather than sought out by me; and they present, to my mind at least, a touching picture of the bitter conflict industrious poverty is sometimes called upon to wage with "the thousand natural shocks which flesh is heir to."

It must be now eight or nine years since, in traversing a certain street, which runs for nearly half a mile in direct line southward, I first encountered Ellen. She was then a fair young girl of seventeen, rather above the middle size, and with a queen-like air and gait, which made her appear taller than she really was. Her countenance, pale but healthy and of a perfectly

A year after the commencement of our acquaintance, which never ripened into speech, happening to set out from home one morning a quarter of an hour before my usual time, I made the pleasing discovery that my juvenile Minerva had a younger sister, if possible still more beautiful than herself. The pair were taking an affectionate leave of each other at the crossing of the New Road, and the silver accents of the younger as kissing her sister, she laughed out, "Good-by, Ellen," gave me the first information of the real name of my pretty mentor. The little Mary-for so was the younger called, who could not be more than eleven years of age-was a slender, frolicsome sylph, with a skin of the purest carnation, and a face like that of Sir Joshua's seraph in the National Gallery, but with larger orbs and longer lashes shading them. As she danced and leaped before me on her way home again, I could not but admire the natural ease and grace of every motion, nor fail to comprehend and sympathize with the anxious looks of the sisters' only parent, their widowed mother, who stood watching the return of the younger darling at the door of a very humble two-storied dwelling, in the vicinity of the New River Head.

Nearly two years passed away, during which, with the exception of Sundays and holidays, every recurring morning brought me the grateful though momentary vision of one or both of the charming sisters. Then came an additional pleasure-I met them both together every day. The younger had commenced practicing the same delicate and ingenious craft of embroidery, and the two pursued their industry in company under the same employer. It was amusing to mark the demure assumption of womanhood darkening the brows of the aerial little sprite, as, with all the new-born consequence of responsibility, she walked soberly by her sister's side, frame in hand, and occasionally revealed to passers-by a brief glimpse of her many-colored handiwork. They were the very picture of beauty and happiness, and happy beyond question must their innocent lives have been for many pleasant months. But soon the shadows of care began to steal over their hitherto jovons faces, and

traces of anxiety, perhaps of tears, to be too | virtue, like that of glory, leads but to the grave.

plainly visible on their paling cheeks. All at once I missed them in my morning's walk, and for several days-it might be weeks-saw nothing of them. I was at length startled from my forgetfulness of their very existence by the sudden apparition of both, one Monday morning, clad in the deepest mourning. I saw the truth at once the mother, who, I had remarked, was prematurely old and feeble, was gone, and the two orphan children were left to battle it with the world. My conjecture was the truth, as a neighbor of whom I made some inquiries on the subject was not slow to inform me. "Ah, sir," said the good woman, "poor Mrs. D have had a hard time of it, and she born an' bred a gentleooman."

I asked her if the daughters were provided for. "Indeed, sir," continued my informant, "I'm afeard not. 'Twas the most unfortunatest thing in the world, sir, poor Mr. D's dying jest as a' did. You see, sir, he war a soldier, a-fightin' out in Indy, and his poor wife lef at home wi' them two blossoms o' gals. He warn't what you call a common soldier, sir, but some kind o' officer like; an' in some great battle fought seven year agone he done fine service I've heerd, and promotion was sent out to un', but didn't get there till the poor man was dead of his wounds. The news of he's death cut up his poor wife complete, and she han't been herself since. I've know'd she wasn't long for here ever since it come. Wust of all, it seems that because the poor man was dead the very day the promotion reached 'un, a' didn't die a captain after all, and so the poor widder didn't get no pension. How they've managed to live is more than I can tell. The oldest gal is very clever, they say; but Lor' bless 'ee! 'taint much to s'port three as is to be got out o' broiderin'."

So it was in the present instance: the blossom of this fair young life withered away, and the grass-fringed lips of the child's early tomb closed over the lifeless relics ere spring had dawned upon the year.

Sorrow had graven legible traces upon the brow of my hapless mentor when I saw her again. How different now was the vision that greeted my daily sight from that of former years! The want that admits not of idle wailing compelled her still to pursue her daily course of labor, and she pursued it with the same constancy and punctuality as she had ever done. But the exquisitely chiseled face, the majestic gait, the elastic step-the beauty and glory of youth, unshaken because unassaulted by death and sorrow-where were they? Alas! all the bewitching charms of her former being had gone down into the grave of her mother and sister; and she, their support and idol, seemed no more now than she really was-a wayworn, solitary, and isolated struggler for daily bread.

Were this a fiction that I am writing, it would be an easy matter to deal out a measure of poetical justice, and to recompense poor Ellen for all her industry, self-denial, and suffering in the arms of a husband, who should possess as many and great virtues as herself, and an ample fortune to boot. I wish with all my heart that it were a fiction, and that Providence had never furnished me with such a seeming anomaly to add to the list of my desultory chronicles. But I am telling a true story of a life. Ellen found no mate. No mate, did I say? Yes, one: the same grim yoke-fellow, whose delight it is "to gather roses in the spring," paid ghastly court to her faded charms, and won her who shall say an unwilling bride? I could see his gradual but deadly advances in my daily walks: the Thus enlightened on the subject of their private same indications that gave warning of the sishistory, it was with very different feelings I after-ter's fate admonished me that she also was on ward regarded these unfortunate children. Bereft of both parents, and cast upon a world with the ways of which they were utterly unacquainted, and in which they might be doomed to the most painful struggles even to procure a bare subsistence, one treasure was yet left them-it was the treasure of each other's love. So far as the depth of this feeling could be estimated from the looks and actions of both, it was all in all to each. But the sacred bond that bound them was destined to be rudely rent asunder. The cold winds of autumn began to visit too roughly the fair pale face of the younger girl, and the unmistakable indications of consumption made their appearance: the harassing cough, the hectie cheek, the deep-settled pain in the side, the fail-eyed Charity walks with shining wings. . . . It ing breath. Against these dread forerunners it was vain long to contend; and the poor child had to remain at home in her solitary sick chamber, while the loving sister toiled harder than ever to provide, if possible, the means of comfort and restoration to health. All the world knows the ending of such a hopless strife as this. It is sometimes the will of Heaven, that the path of

her way to the tomb, and that the place that had known her would soon know her no more. She grew day by day more feeble; and one morning I found her seated on the step of a door, unable to proceed. After that she disappeared from my view; and though I never saw her again at the old spot, I have seldom passed that spot since, though for many years following the same route, without recognizing again in my mind's eye the graceful form and angel aspect of Ellen D

"And is this the end of your mournful history?" some querulous reader demands. Not quite. There is a soul of good in things evil. Compassion dwells with the depths of misery; and in the valley of the shadow of death dove

was nearly two months after I had lost sight of poor Ellen, that during one of my dinner-hour perambulations about town, I looked in, almost accidentally, upon my old friend and chum, Jack W. Jack keeps a perfumer's shop not a hundred miles from Gray's Inn, where, ensconced up to his eyes in delicate odors, he passes his leisure hours-the hours when commerce flags,