same pane, in the same window, during our play hours, kuocking with a key, till he had worn a hole in the glass, and, whenever he caught an eye, beckoning frantically for the boy to come in, and not play any longer? Lastly, shall I tell how, so sure as quarter-day came, the learned doctor sallicd forth for the receipt of some mysterious income or pension, one half of which was forthwith expended in certain strong dilutions that sent him reeling home, whilst the other was laid out upon tables, for which he had an extravagant mania, and which never could be got into his house, excepting through the windows? Or how, on such occasions, brought up by some ditch, the doctor would lay and contemplate the stars, until some wary policeman, expostulating upon the lateness of the hour, received for reply-" Get away, man, or I'll kick ye to my fut! Don't ye see that I'm taking the angle of yonder star!"

All these are stitched together and bound up with my recollections of good but eccentric Dr. M. -now, alas, many years gathered to his fathers.

Another strange character, who figured conspicuously in those sunny days, was the father of two of my schoolfellows, the eccentric but talented old Mr. B. B. was an author of high standing, and a decided old beau of the Brummel school. He prided himself on everything he wore, from his cravat to his pumps, and was the terror of French tailors at Paris. Often with our legs under his hospitable mahogany have we listended to the eloquence and wit of men whose names are familiar to literature, and to draw out each one of these in his own particular hobby was old B.'s greatest delight. Having been in India myself, I became a species of young lion—a cub of a minor breed and over and over again has the stale joke been elicited by the simple quesiton, By-thebye, N., you've been in India, eh ?" "Yes, sir." They hunt with chetahs there, don't they?" On our replying in the affirmative, out came the bon bouche-"Ha, ha! How different from us. In England we don't hunt with chetahs, but we invariably hunt cheaters, Sir."

:

SO

His greatest antipathy was fussy old women and omnibus cads. With regard to the former, I well remember one occasion, when a fidgetty old lady called in at B.'s, all of a tremble. She had witnessed such a terib'e accident, she said, shocking, so heartrending-oh! dear, dear! 'twas terrible.' "What was it, mum ?" impatiently observed old B. "A poor apple woman, knocked over by a cab, and carried into the nearest chemists." "Was she much hurt, mum ?" "No; but her clothes were shockingly torn?" "Hum!" said old B., angrily; "better have carried her to a tailor's, mum, instead of a chemist's!"

As for omnibus people they knew B. by sight to a man; and, I earnestly believe, would have gladly driven over him had the opportunity presented itself. Whenever B. wanted to cross a street, and a 'bus chanced to be coming up un

pleasantly near, B. would hold up his finger, and, as a natural result, the 'bus would immediately stop, when crossing jauntily over, he would bow and say, "Thank you, sir, not this time," followed by a shower of invectives from the deluded conductor and cad.

CHAPTER XIII.

SOUVENIRS OF HOME.

My early home in England, like that of a great many other East Indians, was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Kensington-to wit, in Sloane Street. If some of my school acquaintances were eccentric, I leave the reader to judge what kind of originals my own immediate connexions were. In the first place I, in common with all my elder brothers and sisters, had been consigned to the care of six maiden aunts; ladies who had once won and held the hearts of countless victims both at home and abroad, but whose capricious dispo sitions had outlived their charms and left them (alas! that I should say it), like so many beanstalks, stripped of verdure and beauty by the equinoctial autumnal gales. The six Miss N.'s had once passed under the pleasant soubriquet of "the beautiful," but this was long before my time and years, and disappointments had dealt unkindly with them. Nevertheless, they were excellent guardians of youth, and terrible disciplinarians. Owing to the gallant services of my uncle George, the East India Company had awarded them a very handsome pension; in addition to which, the various sums paid for our board and lodging, and that of sundry other cousins of like juvenile ages— and the income of one Lady A., the widow of a K.C.B., of the Bengal Engineers, afforded them affluent means, and they occupied a perfect mansion, maintained in becoming grandeur. story of this old lady was most remarkable: an exceedingly handsome and spirited girl, she had early in life married Sir Thomas, then simply Colonel A., of the Bengal Engineers. Emigrating with him to the East, her charms and her excellent and bold horsewomanship attracted the admiration and laudatory praise of all officials, from the Right Hon. the Governor-General down to the latest arrived Ensign. The hot sun of India, and exposure to the glare, unfortunately for Lady A., caused a slight skin eruption, which, doubtless, proper remedies might have speedily removed. Impatient, however, of the slightest interruption in life, and heeding the recommendation of some native quack, she made use of a powerful remedy, constituted chiefly of mercury, which produced a species of paralysis, and crippled her for life. Her naturally fiery temper became perfectly vicious, and her husband, though devotingly fond of her, was forced to a separation, and allowing her a very liberal income, sent her home under the care of two of my aunts, with

The

whom she ever afterwards remained, through a period of not less than forty years. Though wholly deprived of all exercise during this long period (save only such as could be taken in the chair that wheeled her from room to room), she never, till within a day or so of her death, lost her appetite, spirit, or energy. It was really hard to say which we youngsters most dreaded, her ladyship or her maid; the latter was certainly a terrible incubus to every individual of the household, but more especially a terror to all the maidservants. Yet, Mrs. J. and my lady were inseparables, and none dared go against them openly; not even my six aunts in solemn conclave, assisted and abetted by a grown up niece (who was herself the mother of two daughters), and her brother, an old Indian bachelor. Not all these forces could make head against Lady A. and her handmaid, till the latter, in an unlucky moment of inebriety, was detected making free use of her ladyship's best port wine, and forthwith handed over to a constable; an event which was productive of universal rejoicings in the establishment.

Next to Lady A. herself, old D., the Indian, ranked as a curiosity. For fifty years nearly had he rolled in riches and luxury, as a partner in one of the wealthiest firms at Madras, till a sudden crash deprived him of his last farthing, involving thousands in ruin and misery, besides rendering him responsible for debts that fell very little short of a million sterling. From this unpleasant predicament he managed, with the assistance of his sister, to extricate himself by leaving India, and now, after three score years of independence and affluence, found himself utterly dependent for support upon others, and subjected to the hundred annoying whims and caprices of a herd of old maiden ladies, who seemed to take special delight in exercising their authority over their unfortunate

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male victim. In one thing, however, old D. kept up his courage he never lost his appetite. Happy was this ruined nabob when one of us boys had the carving of the joint, for he knew no Vauxhall slices would fall to his lot that day. Immediately after breakfast it was his daily custom to go out for a constitutional, which usually extended over a couple of hours or more. With old bachelor precision, his room, and everything in it, was always kept in apple-pie order, so that if a pin were only misplaced he would tell that some. body had been there. Weather-wise, in his own estimation, he invariably left his window wide open, with sundry choice garments airing on chair backs close to it, when, in his opinion, there was not the slightest chance of any rain falling. It sometimes happened that, like other mortals, he was deceived in his judgments and opinions, and if only a few drops of rain chanced to fall during his absence, so surely would we mischief-loving urchins inundate his apartment, and then, hidden by a partition, impatiently await his return and enjoy his surprise as, on re-entering his room, he gazed on the prospect before him.

"It is very extraordinary! it hardly rained two drops out o' doors, and here's my best coat wet through and ruined!”

Spite, in its most unmitigated form, existed be tween old D. and Lady A. They had known each other in their youthful and palmy days; flirted, danced, and hunted together, and they were now by a strange accident forced into each other's society-living monuments of one and the other's folly.

"Were you ever married, D.?" was the most heart-rending and grievous question that Lady A. could possibly put to the unhappy old bachelor. "Married!" he would shout in reply, would marry after your example ?"

"who

UNSENT LETTERS.

"Heard melodies," says Keats, "are sweet; bat those unheard are sweeter." Letters despatched to their original destination, we might say, are interesting; but those never despatched are more so. Volatile people-and people to whom, being of artist-mould, expression is a necessity-write numerous epistles which never reach the hands of the individuals addressed, for the simplest and most satisfactory of reasons-they are never sent. The writers change their minds. Still, they very often keep the MSS. To some of us, every register of strong feeling is precious; and it occa

So you

sionally happens that a composition which, after you have slept on it, you decline to post, may contain things which, struck off at fever heat, you will never say better, try as you may. lay it by,-not with any design of using it, probably, but from a sort of unwillingness to throw away what rings true.

One reason why we do not post all the letters we write-while young, at all events,-is, that we sometimes find them too true. We feel a sort of shame that "Pysche, my Soul," should so loosen her zone to strangers. Has it never happened to you to blush, when, all alone, you have accident

ally turned up an Unsent Letter of old days, which contained no love, and no sin, but seemed to lay you too bare almost to your own self? "Oh, was that I? Could I ever have thought of writing like that to that Brown? Psyche, my sweet, for shame!"

Perhaps it may cross your mind at such a moment that you failed in duty to your "truth of truth," in not sending Brown the communication! How do you know what a prophecy he might have found it ? "Letters once committed to the box," says the Postmaster-General, "are the property of Her Majesty, and cannot be delivered up to the sender on any pretence whatsoever." A wholesome regulation. Suppose you adopt some such rule with respect to all communications once penned? If you began to speak to Brown, you would feel bound to go on. What difference between speaking by word of mouth and by goosequill?

To quit transcendentals, and deal only with the everyday interests of our nature-what commotions would be raised if ten thousand desks could be made to yield up their secrets in the shape of Unsent Letters!

Poor, fast-fading rose," withering on the virgin thorn," nobody has asked you to live, and you did not know how to live without being asked; but what if you could read a somewhat faded epistle -much blurred, blotted, and corrected-of which I have at this moment a glimpse! Is it possible? "MADAM.--I am aware that the step I am about to take is an unusual one. True, I am unversed in the customs of society in such matters, and fear I should distrust any method I should be likely to invent for communicating with you as much as the one I now actually adopt. But unless I have misread your countenance (some epithet-"angelic,"perhaps struck out before "countenance"), I feel that even if you should smile-nay, dear madam (O forgive me!), even if you should despise, you will yet pity and pardon.

"The signature at the foot of this letter will, alas! be quite strange to you; but you will, I doubt not, have already guessed something of its daring purport. Yet, you will naturally inquire, Where has this strange correspondent seen me, and how does he know my name and address ? Dear Madam, the tale is soon told.

"On Saturday afternoon last, I was a passenger in one of the Wellington omnibuses that go from Paddington to the Bank. I had a roll of paper in my hand, and sat opposite to you, at the end nearest the horses. I do not know how to proceed, yet it is simple, what I wish to say-Oh! pardon, pardon, pardon! To see you was to love you. I can say no more. I can say no less. I did love you-I do love you-I must love you for ever. Love made me bold.

"I took the liberty of following you to the house whither you went, after you left the omnibus. I waited in the street till past eleven, to make sure that it was, at all events, where you were staying. The next day was Sunday. A

little after 10 a.m., I was in your street, watching your door. At about the half-hour, I saw you come out, accompanied by a lady, whom I took to be your mamma; and I judged, from the way in which I saw you turn and deliver some orders to the servant who let you out, that it was your home. My heart leaped up with joy. I followed you to church, dear, dear Madam, and witnessed the devout attention with which you listened to the Rev. Cornelius Butterbrains, of whom I have myself been an occasional hearer. Forgive me, if I mention any, the slightest circumstance, which may serve to create the most momentary link between us!

"I could not summon courage to take a seat where I might be sure of catching your eye; nor, in truth, did the pew-opener appear disposed to place me in an auspicious pew. It would be more than I dare hope, that you should have noticed a gentleman who sat three off from the fourth pillar under the north gallery, who wore a watered silk waistcoat, and dropped his prayerbook in the middle of the second lesson. "In thus trespassing

The

Aud there, the faded writing breaks off. question is, why did not this excitable, and, let us hope, respectable young man, finish and send his letter? That I cannot say. Perhaps his heart misgave him. Perhaps he was poor, and, resolving upon making inquiries before going any further, discovered that Withering Rose was a fortune, who would probably pack him off with disdain. Perhaps his father failed in business that very day, and, renouncing all thoughts of marriage, he devoted himself to retrieving his parents' position. Perhaps he was the young man who was waylaid and murdered about that time under such horrible circumstances that Withering Rose turned pale as she read the newspaper account of it to her mamma. One thing is clear, that the letter was never finished or sent. And another, that Withering Rose knows nothing about it till this number of " 'Tangled Talk" gives her the suppressed information.

But here is another Unsent Letter, no less noticeable in its way :

"DEAR JACK.-I cannot forbear telling you that I was deeply wounded at what you said last night of my share in that abominable affair of the Saw-mills. Were you not very tart to your old friend? I can't get over it, so I must tell you. It cuts me to the quick, and I half fancy Polly noticed how I turned. But, if you would just give me one word

Once more, never finished, never sent! I think we can guess the story of this little letter. Some sharply, suspiciously seeming words had been dropped in the course of a warm and hurried conversation by Jack to Bob, Jack and Bob being old schoolfellows and friends. There was no opportunity for explanation at the time, and next day Bob began a note to his friend to ask him for a word of explanation to set his mind at

rest. When he had got halfway through the note, he thought to himself, "No, I won't; I'm a morbid, conceited fellow-too thin-skinned by half-Jack will only laugh at me in his sleeve, though we are friends. I'll just pocket it, and keep silence." This was wrong. Bob was wounded; he ought to have said so, and given Jack a chance of setting matters straight. As for Jack, less self-conscious than his friend, he had not "meant" anything by what he had said, much less remembered it. It sometimes happened, however, in the subsequent intercourse of these twain, that a shade of expression in Bob's eye, coming and going like a flash of lightning, would cause Jack acute pain. "What can it mean ?" he would ask himself; and, by degrees, a something unpleasant, not amounting to a chill, or even to a coolness, crept into their intercourse, never to be exorcised thence, as by one sentence on each side it might have been.

"Speech," says Carlyle, "is silvern, but silence is golden." Perhaps. C'est tout selon. Ask Withering Rose. The longing for expression has its rights as well as its duties.

ABOUT RHYTHM.

DID it ever strike you how very important the typographer's arrangement of the lines is to the effect of poetry ?—

As the husband is, the wife is:

Thou art mated to a clown,

And the grossness of his nature

Shall have power to drag thee down.

lle will answer to the purpose,

Easy things to understand

Better thou wert dead before me,

Though I slew thee with my hand! . . . .
Forward, forward, let us range,

Let the great world spin for ever,

Through the ringing grooves of change;
For I doubt not through the ages,

One increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widened
With the process of the suns;
Through the shadows of the globe we

Sweep into the younger day;
Better fifty years of Europe

Than a cycle of Cathay!

How do you like that? Not very well, I am afraid. Perhaps the loss is not so great when we turn short lengths into long, as when we turn long into short. This we have tried with snatches

from "Locksley Hall." Now, still keeping to Tennyson, let us reverse the process with a few stanzas from the "Day-dream":

So, Lady Flora, take my lay, and if you find no moral there,
Go look in any glass and say what moral is in being fair;
Or to what purpose shall we put the wildweed flower that
simply blows ?

Or is there any moral shut within the bosom of the rose ? That is not such a very disagreeable experiment as our last, and this kind of verse was formerly so printed. And yet we instinctively feel

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that something more than the habit of the eye, or, say, of the mental ear, is offended by the alteration made. We have not got the poet's inten tion. Very subtle indeed are the links between form and spirit in all imaginative utterances; nay, in all such utterances as demand any sort of music for their expression. The eye takes strange likes and dislikes. In the same book, within a few pages, the present writer took it into his head that in one case he must have "grey," and in the other "gray," for the same word. At the time of printing, the thing was as clear as daylight to him; and quite imperative. Six weeks afterwards, all that was changed; he had no such fancy about the matter.

As I was turning over Emerson this morning, a well-known passage in the oration on "Literary Ethics" shaped itself into blank verse as I read. Not good blank verse, indeed, but much better than nine-tenths of the unrhymed prose which takes that name. Here is the passage:

:

The noonday darkness of the primal forest,
The deep, broad, echoing, aboriginal woods,
Where living columns of the oak and fir
From ruined trees of last millennium rise;
Where, year by year, the eagle and the crow
See no intruder; and, with savage moss
Bearded, the pines arise, yet touched with grace
By violets at their feet; the lowland broad
And cold, which puts its coat of vapour on
Silently as the crystal grows beneath;
And where the traveller, 'mid repulsive forms
Of plant-life native to the swamp, recalls
The distant city with a pleasing terror;
This haggard, desert beauty, which the sun,
The moon, the snow, and rain, repaint and vary,
Has never yet been registered by art,

But is indifferent to no passenger;

For all, at heart, are poets. Men may serve
Nature for bread, but still her loveliness
O'ercomes them sometimes!

Readers who will turn to the original will find that my alterations and transpositions are of the most trivial character; in fact that the passage stands nearly as Emerson wrote it.

A woman cannot do the thing she ought,
Which means whatever perfect thing she can,
In life, in art, in science, but she fears
To let the perfect action take her part
And rest there she must prove what she can do
Before she does it,-prate of woman's rights,
Of woman's mission, woman's function, till
The men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry,
"A woman's function plainly is-to talk.
Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!
They cannot hear cach other speak."

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An artist, judge so?

And you,

I, an artist,-yes,
Because, precisely, I'm an artist, sir,
And woman,-if another sate in sight,

I'd whisper,-Soft, my sister! not a word!
By speaking we prove only we can speak;
Which he, the man here, never doubted. What
He doubts is whether we can do the thing
With decent grace, we've not yet done at all:
Now, do it; bring your statue-you have room!
He'll see it even by the starlight here;
And if 'tis e'er so little like the god
Who looks out from the marble silently
Along the track of his own shining dart
Through the dusk of ages-there's no need to speak;
The universe shall henceforth speak for you,
And witness," She who did this thing was born
To do it-claims her license in her work."

And so with more works. Whoso cures the plague,
Though twice a woman, shall be called a leech;
Who rights a land's finances, is excused

For touching coppers, though her hands be white,

But we, we talk!

Take the place and attitude to which you see your unquestionable right, and all men acquiesce. The world must be just. It always leaves every man with perfect uncon cern to settle his own rate. It will certainly accept your own measure of your doing and being, whether you sneak about and deny your own name, or whether you see your work produced to the concave sphere of the heavens, one with the revolution of the stars. A man passes for what he is worth. Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and idle is all fear of remaining unknown. If a man know that he can do anythingthat he can do it better than any one else, he has a pledge of the acknowledgment of that fact by all persons. The world is full of judgment days, and into every assembly a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is guaged and stamped. Do not trouble yourself too much about the light of your statue, said Michael Angelo to the young sculptor, the light of the public square will test its value.

It is very pleasant, and perhaps not a little helpful, to a reading man to cherish the habit of noting such parallelisms as this. And they abound in the

best literature of all times and countries.

"AN EARLY AND LOVELY DEATH."

Ir is well known in the "Row" that scarcely any books sell so well as pious memoirs; and that of pious memoirs in general, those go off best which relate to young people, especially young females, who, after a morbidly exemplary career, have made "an early and lovely death." The serious-consumptive market, as we may call it, is always to be reckoned upon, and a wretchedly diseased taste the fact implies.

It would scarcely seem to need insisting on, that a young girl is made to live. That is the express object of all this complicated machinery of use and beauty. The lungs are to breathe, the heart to beat, the legs to walk and run, the hand to clasp, the lips to kiss, and the eyes to shine. If by any misfortune the lungs

should become unfitted for their office, and the fair creature should die, it is a great sorrow; something abnormal-a warning; nay, a penalty. Such an event says to those who have ears to hear: "Purify the air around you; ventilate your dwelling-houses; minimise unwholesome influences of all kinds; train your own daughter, if you have one, to active exercise; give her as little desk and as much open air as possible; in a word, do all you can to help her to do what she was made to do-to live."

But in serious-consumptive literature, do you find that moral drawn? I trow not. I have now before me a serious-consumptive memoir of a young lady of considerable gifts and attainments, not unknown to literature, in which "our Heavenly Father" is "thanked" for removing "our dear

-" and enabling her to make "such an early and lovely end." And in that spirit the whole book is written. Not a glimpse of perception that the poor child was a victim to violated lawlaw violated, it may be, before she came into existence-but still violated law, and law God-made. The general impression left upon the mind of a soft-headed individual would be, that it was rather the right thing for an amiable and gifted girl to die at twenty-five; and that on her deathbed she should make minute verbal corrections in her volume of poems, bequeathing to a friend the task of arranging "my letters and papers, if anything in my poor life should be thought worthy, &c., &c." An utterly morbid spirit pervades the whole thing; the entire environment of this unfortunate girl seems to have been made up of circumstances adapted to aggravate that preponderance of nervous over muscular action which was part of her disease; some of the anecdotes are ridiculous in their sickliness; the "glorified departed" (I am not responsible for that phrase) is furnished with a portable inkstand, that she may write under a tree in the park, when common sense would have furnished her with a rampant pony to pitch her into the furze-bushes in the park; or, if that were too expensive, with a spirited companion to keep her at romps as long as possible. And so on, through anecdote upon anecdote of nauseating namby pambyism, of children who "burst into tears" on hearing sacred music, and express their "fears lest they should he unable to bear the singing in heaven," and feeble-minded seniors, who exchange copies of verses-till the end comes. Then, after having laughed a little during the progress of the story, you shut the book in a rage, exclaiming, "If this amiable creature had been helped to live gallantly, instead of being spiritually molly coddled, she might have been living now; or, if God had said Nay' to that, she would at least have bequeathed a healthier memory to her friends and the world."

I speak warmly upon this matter, because it is time some one did so. Hundreds of delicate young ladies are tacitly taught, by books of this sort, and the gossip of certain circles, to consider