With thoughtful brows, and not in any very high state of hilarity, after the duties of the day

to do the same. It is extremely hot, and a most | silent and dusky as an Egyptian tomb. The agreeable sensation. The faces of the men here, tubs of powder, dimly seen in the uncertain being all black from the powder, and shining light, are ranged along the walls, like mummies with the addition of the black lead, have the ap--all giving the impression of a secret life withpearance of grim masks of demons in a panto- in. But a secret life, how different! "Ah! mime, or rather of real demons in a mine. Their there's the rub." We retire with a mental eyes look out upon us with a strange intelli- obeisance, and a respectful air-the influence gence. They know the figure they present. So remaining with us, so that we bow slightly on do we. This, added to their subdued voice, and rejoining our friends outside, who bow in return, whispering, and mute gesticulation, and noiseless looking from us to the open door-way of the moving and creeping about, renders the scene "house!" quite unique; and a little of it goes a great way. Our time being now short-our hours, in fact, being "numbered"--we move quickly on to the next house, some hundred yards distant. It is the "Stoving-house." We approach the door. Mr. Ashbee is so good as to say there is no need for us to enter, as the process may be seen from the door-way. We are permitted to stand upon the little platform outside, in our boots, dispensing with the over-shoes. This house is heated by pipes. The powder is spread upon numerous wooden trays, and slid into shelves on stands, or racks. The heat is raised to one hundred and twenty-five degrees. We salute the head stoveman, and depart. But turning round to give a "longing, lingering look behind," we see a large mop protruded from the door-way. Its round head seems to inspect the place where we stood in our boots on the platform. It evidently discovers a few grains of gravel or grit, and descends upon them immediately, to expurgate the evil communication which may corrupt the good manners of the house. A great watering-pot is next advanced, and then a stern head-not un-tances, except by a general combustion of the like an old medallion we have seen of Diogenes looks round the door-post after us.

The furnace, with its tall chimney, by means of which the stove-pipes of the house we have just visited, are heated, is at a considerable distance, the pipes being carried under-ground to the house.

We next go to look at the "Packing-house," where the powder is placed in barrels, bags, tin cases, paper cases, canisters, &c. On entering this place, a man runs swiftly before each of us, laying down a mat for each foot to step upon as we advance, thus leaving rows of mats in our wake, over which we are required to pass on returning. We considered it a mark of great attention a kind of Oriental compliment.

The last of our visits is to a "Charge-House." There are several of these, where the powder is kept in store. We approach it by a path through a plantation. It lies deep among the trees-a most lonely, dismal sarcophagus. It is roofed with water—that is, the roof is composed of water-tanks, which are filled by the rain; and in dry weather they are filled by means of a pump arranged for that purpose. The platform at the entrance is of water-that is to say, it is a broad wooden trough two inches deep, full of water, through which we are required to walk. We do so, and with far more satisfaction than some things we have done here to-day. We enter the house alone; the others waiting outside. All

not to speak of being wet through to the skin, for the second time-we move through the fir groves on our way back. We notice a strange appearance in many trees, some of which are curiously distorted, others with their heads cut off; and, in some places, there are large and upright gaps in a plantation. Mr. Ashbee, after deliberating inwardly a little while, informs us that a very dreadful accident happened here last year. "Was there an explosion?" we inquire. He says there was. "And a serious one!""Yes."-"Any lives lost?"-"Yes.”—“ Two or three ?"-" More than that."—" Five or six!" He says more than that. He gradually drops into the narrative, with a subdued tone of voice. There was an explosion last year. Six different houses blew up. It began with a "Separating House,"-a place for sizing, or sorting, the dif ferent grains through sieves. Then the explo sion went to a "Granulating-House," one hundred yards off. How it was carried such dis

air, he can not imagine. Thence, it went to a
"Press House," where the powder lies in hard
cakes. Thence, it went in two ways-on one
side to a Composition Mixing-House," and, on
the other, to a "Glazing-House ;" and thence
to another "Granulating-House." Each of these
buildings were fully one hundred yards from an-
other; each was intercepted by plantations of
fir and forest trees as a protection; and the whole
took place within forty seconds. There was no
tracing how it had occurred.
This, then, accounts for the different gaps-
some of them extending fifty or sixty yards-in
the plantations and groves? Mr. Ashbee nods
a grave assent. He adds, that one large tree
was torn up by the roots, and its trunk was found
deposited at such a distance, that they never
could really ascertain where it came from. It
was just found lying there. An iron water-
wheel, of thirty feet in circumference, belonging
to one of the mills, was blown to a distance of
fifty yards through the air, cutting through the
heads of all the trees in its way, and finally
lodging between the upper boughs of a large tree,
where it stuck fast, like a boy's kite. The poor
fellows who were killed-(our informant here
drops his voice to a whisper, and speaks in short
detached fragments; there is nobody near us,
but he feels as a man should feel in speaking of
such things-the poor fellows who were killed
were horribly mutilated--more than mutilated,

AN INSANE PHILOSOPHER.

We turn our eyes once more toward the immense gaps in the fir groves, gaps which here and there amount to wide intervals, in which all the trees are reduced to about half their height, having been cut away near the middle. Some trees, near at hand, we observe to have been flayed of their bark all down one side; others have strips of bark hanging dry and black. Several trees are strangely distorted, and the entire trunk of one large fir has been literally twisted like a corkscrew, from top to bottom, requiring an amount of force scarcely to be estimated by any known means of mechanical power. Amid all this quietness, how dreadful a visitation! It is visible on all sides, and fills the scene with a solemn, melancholy weight.

some of them—their different members distribu- | austerity, and hauteur, especially when brought ted hither and thither, could not be buried with into contact with the ignorant and vulgar. In their proper owners, to any certainty. One man conversation, though impeded by a slight hesiescaped out of a house, before it blew up, in time tation of utterance, he displays clearness and to run at least forty yards. He was seen run- breadth of intelligence in all his views, and pours ning, when suddenly he fell. But when he was forth freely from the treasures of a well-stored picked up, he was found to be quite dead. The memory abundance of information, anecdote, and concussion of the air had killed him. One man fact. His physiognomy and physical structure are well adapted to enshrine a mind of such a coming down the river in a boat was mutilated. Some men who were missing, were never found calibre. In stature he is tall, rather slender, but -blown all to nothing. The place where some firmly knit. The muscular development of the frame denotes considerable strength-a quality of the "houses" had stood, did not retain so All had which he claims to possess in a pre-eminent demuch as a piece of timber, or a brick. been swept away, leaving nothing but the torn-gree. He boasts, probably with considerable truth, up ground, a little rubbish, and a black hash of of having no equal, in this respect, in the asybits of stick, to show the place where they had lum. His head, beautifully formed, after a fine intellectual type, is partially bald-the few surbeen erected. viving locks of hair that fringe its sides being nearly gray. The keen, twinkling, gray eye; the prominent classic brow; the boldly-chiseled aquiline nose; the thin cheeks, “sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;" the sharp features, together with the small, firmly-compressed mouth, plainly bespeak him a man of reflection, In age, he appears to have and strong purpose. weathered about fifty stormy winters. The term of his residence in this rendezvous of afflicted strangers is somewhere about six years. His real name, his early history, his human kindred, his former social status-in fact, all the antecedents of his life, previous to his admission to the asylum-are utterly unknown. On all these matters he preserves the silence of a sphinx. No remarks, so far as we know, have ever escaped his lips, calculated to afford any certain clew for the elucidation of the mystery that enshrouds him. Surmise and conjecture have of course been busy with their guesses as to his probable extraction; and the organ of wonder has been sorely taxed in an effort to account for the marvelous fact, that a gentleman of such apparent distinction, it may be of noble birth and fortune, should have been lost to his friends for a space of six years, and no earnest inquiries been made to discover his fate. That he is of aristocratic descent, appears to be the general impression among the officers and inmates of the asylum-an impression justified by his elegant manners, his superior attainments, his extensive acquaintance with noble families, and many significant allusions found in his painted chamber, upon the walls of which he has faithfully daguerreotyped the images, the feelings, the recollections, and the cherished sentiments of his inner man. The fictitious name by which he is known at present is that of Mr. Chiswick—a name commemorative of the scene of that sad event which has overshadowed the afternoon, and which threatens to darken the evening, of his earthly

But we will linger here no longer. We take a parting glance around, at the plantations of firs, some of them prematurely old, and shaking their heads, while the air wafts by, as though conscious of their defeated youth, and all its once-bright hopes. The dead leaves lie thick beneath, in various sombre colors of decay, and through the thin bare woods we see the gray light fading into the advancing evening. Here, where the voice of man is never heard, we pause, to listen to the sound of rustling boughs, and the sullen rush and murmur of water-wheels and mill-streams; and, over all, the song of a thrush, even while uttering blithe notes, gives a touching sadness to this isolated scene of human labors-labors, the end of which, is a destruction of numbers of our species, which may, or may not, be necessary to the progress of civilization, and the liberty of mankind.

A

AN INSANE PHILOSOPHER. VISITOR to the Hanwell Insane Asylum, in England, will have his attention directed to one of the inmates who is at once the "pet," the peer, the philosopher, and the poet of that vast community. No one can long enjoy the priv-existence. But the reader will be anxious to ilege of his company without perceiving that he has received a first-rate classical education. His mind is remarkably clear-visioned, acute, severe, logical, and accomplished. His manners usually display the refinement, polish, and urbanity of a well-bred gentleman, though at times, it is said, they are tinged with a degree of aristocratic pride,

learn under what strange conjunction of circum-
stances this mysterious being-without father or
mother, brothers or sisters, kinsfolk or acquaint-
ances, and without even a local habitation or a
name-obtained an introduction to this strange
We will at once state such facts as we
home
have been able to collect.

On one Sabbath-day, about six years ago, a saneness, and of his ability to secure self-maincongregation had gathered together, as was their tenance by the productions of his own genius, wont, for the celebration of divine worship, in the that confinement begins to be felt by him as insmall country church of Turnham Green, near tolerably irksome and oppressive. The invisible Chiswick. The officiating clergyman and the fetters gall his sensitive soul, and render him worshiping assembly had jointly gone through impatient of restraint. On our last visit but one, the liturgical services without the occurrence of he declared that he had abandoned all thoughts any unusual event. As soon as the robed minis- of doing any thing more to his painted room; he ter had ascended the sacred desk, and commenc-aspired to higher things than that. He was ed his discourse, however, the eyes of a portion striving to cultivate his artistic talents, so that of the audience were attracted toward a gentle- by their exercise he might henceforth minister man occupying a somewhat conspicuous position to his own necessities. Who his connections, in the church, whose strange and restless move- and what his antecedents were should never be ments, wild and excited air, and occasional audi-known-they were things that concerned no one; ble exclamations, indicated the presence of either his aim was to qualify himself, by self-reliant a fanatic or a lunatic. These symptoms contin- labor, to wrestle once more with the world, and ued to increase, until, at length, as if irritated to wring from it the pittance of a humble subbeyond endurance by some sentiment that fell sistence. As soon as he felt himself competent from the lips of the preacher, he gave way to a to hazard this step, he intended to demand his perfect paroxysm of frenzy, under the influence immediate release; and, should it then be reof which he seized his hat, and flung it at the fused," said he, with the solemn and impressive head of the minister. Of course, the service was emphasis of a man thoroughly in earnest, "they suspended until the offender was expelled. It will, on the next day, find me a corpse." To was soon discovered that the unhappy author of the superintendent in the tailoring department, this untoward disturbance was suffering under a he likewise remarked, a short time since, when violent fit of mania. When borne from the church, giving instructions for a new garment: "This no person could recognize or identify him. He is the last favor I shall ever ask of you. I inwas a total stranger to all residing in the neigh- tend shortly to quit the asylum; for if they də borhood, so that no clew could be obtained that not discharge me of their own accord, in answer would enable them to restore him to the custody to my request, I will discharge myself." and surveillance of his friends. Under these circumstances, he was taken to the adjoining workhouse at Isleworth, where he was detained for some weeks under medical care, during which period the most diligent inquiries were instituted with the view of unraveling the mystery of the stranger's kinship. But without avail. No one claimed him; and even when pressed himself to impart some information on the subject, he either could not or would not divulge the secret. Finding, at length, that all efforts to identify the great Incognito were ineffectual, he was removed to Hanwell, the asylum of the county to which he had thus suddenly become chargeable, and where he has ever since remained.

Mr. Chiswick is treated by the magistrates and officers with great kindness and consideration. His employments are such as befit a gentleman. No menial or laborious tasks are imposed upon him. He is allowed, to a great extent, to consult his predilections, and these are invariably of a tasteful and elegant description. His time is divided chiefly between reading and painting, in which occupations he is devotedly industrious. He is an carly riser, and intersperses his more sedentary pursuits with seasons of vigorous exercise. To this practice, in conjunction with strictly temperate habits, he attributes his excellent health and remarkable prowess. To a stranger, no signs of mental aberration are discernible. His aspect is so calm and collected, and his ideas are so lucidly expressed, that, if met with in any other place besides an asylum, no one would suspect that he had ever been smitten with a calamity so terrible. He would simply be regarded as eccentric. So satisfied is he of his own perfect

On the occasion of our second visit to the asylum, we were received by Mr. Chiswick with great courtesy, and were favored with a long conversation on a variety of topics. Besides the exercise of his brush and pencil, his genius manifests itself in other ways, some of them being rather amusing and eccentric. Among these, is that of making stockings, and other articles of apparel in a very original manner. His mind, as we have remarked, is well replenished with anecdotes and illustrations suitable to whatever topic may happen to be on hand. On the pres ent occasion, upon offering us a glass of wine. we declined his hospitality, on the true plea that we had fasted since eight o'clock in the morning, and it was then nearly five in the afternoon Upon this, he produced a piece of sweet bread, saying, "Take that first, and then the wine will not hurt you. You remember the anecdote of the bride? Soon after her marriage, her mother inquired, 'How does your husband treat you, my dear?' 'Oh, he loves me very much, for he gives me two glasses of white wine every morning before I am up.' 'My dear child,' said the mother, with an air of alarm, he means to kill you. However, do not refuse the wine, but take a piece of cake to bed with you at night, and when he is gone for the wine in the morning, do you eat the cake, then the wine will not hurt you,' The bride obeyed the mother's advice, and lived to a good old age."

Having sat down by the fire in the ward with a number of the patients, Mr. Chiswick took out his pocket-book to show us a letter which he had received from some kind but unknown friend, who had visited the asylum. and also that he

66

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongy fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and plow-boy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time-as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

might present to us a piece of poetry, which had | cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the just been printed at the asylum press. In look-yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; ing for these, he accidentally dropped a greater fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small part of the contents of his pocket-book on the boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient floor; and when one of the lunatics hastened to Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides scramble for some of the papers, Mr. Chiswick, of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the quick as thought, pulled off the officious patient's afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in hat, and sent it flying to the other end of the his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and ward, bidding its owner to run after it. We of- fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deek. fered to assist in picking up the scattered papers, Chance people on the bridges peeping over the but he would not allow us to touch them. "You parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all act," we remarked, "on the principle of not al-round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and lowing others to do for you any thing that you hanging in the misty clouds. can do yourself." 'Exactly so," said he, "and I will tell you a good anecdote about that. There was once a bishop of Gibraltar, who hired a valet; but for some time this valet had nothing to do: the bishop cleaned his own boots, and performed many other menial tasks, which the servant supposed that he had been engaged to do. At length he said 'Your lordship, I should be glad to be informed what it is expected that I should do. You clean your own boots, brush your own clothes, and do a multitude of other things that I supposed would fall to my lot.' 'Well,' said the bishop, 'I have been accustomed to do this, and I can do it very well; therefore, why should you do it? I act upon the principle of never allowing others to do what I can do myself. Therefore, do you go and study, and I will go on as usual. I have already had opportunities to get knowledge, and you have not; and I think that will we to do to you as I should wish you to do to me.""

L

BLEAK HOUSE.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

CHAPTER I.-IN CHANCERY.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest, near that leaden-headed old obstruction, approheaded old corporation: Temple Bar. And hard priate ornament for the threshold of a leadenby Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds, this day, in the sight of heaven

and earth.

On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be sitting here-as here he is -with a foggy glory round his head, softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. On such an afternoon, some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be—as here they are-mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words, and making a pretense of equity with serious faces, as players might. On such an afternoon, the various solicitors in the cause, some two or three of whom

ONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and he Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hal Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the water had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holbor hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes -gone into purning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horse carcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrella, in a general infection of ill-tem-have inherited it from their fathers, who made a per, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of ty susands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Fog every where. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the VOL. IV.-No. 23.-T T

fortune by it, ought to be-as are they not?— ranged in a line, in a long matted well (but you might look in vain for Truth at the bottom of it), between the registrar's red table and the silk gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits, issues, references to masters, masters' reports, mountains of costly nonsense, piled before them. Well may the court be dim, with wasting candles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it would never get out; well may the stained glass windows lose their color, and admit no light of day into the place; well may the uninitiated from the streets,

ing. A few lawyers' clerks and others who know this suitor by sight, linger, on the chance of his furnishing some fun, and enlivening the dismal

who peep in through the glass panes in the door,
be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect,
and by the drawl languidly echoing to the roof
from the padded dais where the Lord High Chan-weather a little.
cellor looks into the lantern that has no light in
it, and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in
a fog-bank! This is the Court of Chancery;
which has its decaying houses and its blighted
lands in every shire; which has its worn-out
lunatic in every mad-house, and its dead in every
church-yard; which has its ruined suitor, with his
slipshod heels and threadbare dress, borrowing
and begging through the round of every man's
acquaintance; which gives to moneyed might the
means abundantly of wearying out the right;
which so exhausts finances, patience, courage,
hope; so overthrows the brain and breaks the
heart; that there is not an honorable man among
its practitioners who would not give-who does
not often give-the warning, "Suffer any wrong
that can be done you, rather than come here!"

Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor's court this murky afternoon besides the Lord Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three counsel who are never in any cause, and the well of solicitors before mentioned? There is the registrar below the Judge, in wig and gown; and there are two or three maces, or petty-bags, or privy-purses, or whatever they may be, in legal court suits. These are all yawning; for no crumb of amusement ever falls from JARNDYCE AND JARNDYCE (the cause in hand) which was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, and the reporters of the newspapers, invariably decamp with the rest of the regulars when Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes on. Their places are a blank. Standing on a seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the curtained sanctuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed bonnet, who is always in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting some incomprehensible judgment to be given in her favor. Some say she really is, or was, a party to a suit; but no one knows for certain, because no one cares. She carries some small litter in a reticule which she calls her documents; principally consisting of paper matches and dry lavender. A sallow prisoner has come up, in custody, for the half-dozenth time, to make a personal application "to purge himself of his contempt;" which, being a solitary surviving executor who has fallen into a state of conglomeration about accounts of which it is not pretended that he had ever any knowledge, he is not at all likely ever to do. In the meantime, his prospects in life are ended. Another ruined suitor, who periodically appears from Shropshire, and breaks out into efforts to address the Chancellor at the close of the day's business, and who can by no means be made to understand that the Chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence after making it desolate for a quarter of a century, plants himself in a good place and keeps an eye on the Judge, ready to call out "My lord!" in a voice of sonorous complaint, on the instant of his ris

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have mar ried into it; innumerable old people have died ou of it. Scores of persons have deliriously foun themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarn dyce, without knowing how or why; whole fam ilies have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps, since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery-lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the Court, perennially hopeless.

Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke That is the only good that has ever come of it It has been death to many, but it is a joke in the profession. Every master in Chancery has had a reference out of it. Every Chancellor was "in it," for somebody or other, when he was counsel at the bar. Good things have been said about it by blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old benchers, in select port-wine committee after dinner in hall Articled clerks have been in the habit of fleshing their legal wit upon it. The last Lord Chancellor handled it neatly, when, correcting Mr. Blowers the eminent silk gown who said that such a thing might happen when the sky rained potatoes. he observed, "or when we get through Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr. Blowers;"'—a pleasantry that particularly tickled the maces, bags, and purses.

How many people out of the suit, Jarndyce and Jarndyce has stretched forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt, would be a very wide question. From the master, upon whose impaling files reams of dusty warrants in Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into many shapes; down to the copying clerk in the Six Clerks' Office who has copied his tens of thousands of Chancery. folio-pages under that eternal heading; no man's nature has been made the better by it. In trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under false pretenses of all sorts, there are influences that can never come to good. The very solicitors' boys who have kept the wretched suitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that Mr. Chizzle, Mizzle, or otherwise, was particularly