to return to London; and thence to Paris. Nevertheless, the "Letters on the Manufacturing Districts" were written all the same. And I have since seen grave appeals made in grave places to his lucubrations, as to a testimony worth heeding.

On what, then, should the ignorant minds be fed:-by whom should the intellects bare of everything, save a few rags of tawdry prejudices, be clad? Not, assuredly, on mouthings and pleasant periods, attudinisings and grimacings :-not by the Player-Kings and Player-Philanthropists, who bring the tinsel of Richardson's Show into Life's serious business. If it be too much to expect for the instant that state of high morality which shall preclude the political Rope-Dancer from finding any serious employment, he should not be trusted. Let us hope that the days when the trust-worth-less shall look for their audience in vain, are near. As for cutting off the People from such pleasures as brilliant oratory can afford their imagination and musical sense (their judgment convinced the while) as for denying them such advocacy as the Poet, the Novelist, the Dramatist can tender, and reducing the statement of their wrongs and wishes to the tabulated form of a Work-House Board Report-far be that from me, sir. I would have Poetry and Taste mingle with every transaction of our lives; seeing that the one is merely the loftiest Truth, and the other the most refined Common Sense. Nay, more, to those who can recognise trumpery as trumpery while they love to see the Puppet jerk its limbs-to hear how far a given Orator can burlesque pathos and sincerity—to read whatever new monstrosity their pet writer may have described -the Political Charlatan is innoxious-he is entertaining the licensed successor of The Fool of old feudal times. But the People have not leisure to be fantastic over their pleasures: they are not, thank Heaven! so blasé as to require monstrosity and exaggeration to move them. Let us, then, beware how we encourage them to fancy the Puppet a real man-to mistake the Talker's trashy "lengths of sound and fury" for an outpouring of real enthusiasm -to accept the Scrawler's melodramatic caricatures of their homes and workshops as simple and faithful representations. Romancer is, after all, smaller by a cubit than the Nec-romancer of elder times like him, a Quack, but with powers seriously impaired, and pretensions far more grasping than his ancestors'. As for solemn Dulness parading his discoveries as infallible by the aid of that cosmopolitan jargon, which accepts every stranger

The

as therefore a man of Science-his reign with the People cannot last long. The Merry Andrew may be too nimble for The Schoolmaster, so long as the world endureth; but twenty years more of enlightenment on matters which the most concern their interests will enable our friends (without need of any Dr. Dilworth) themselves to turn the Plodders back, bidding them "work their sum at home." But the dinner bell rings. Enough, then, of "BENJAMIN'S MESS," and all that it symbolises. Back to wholesome English roast and boiled

THE CAULD HEARTH-STANE.

THE blithest sight a poor man sees
Is his ain ingle's couthie bleeze:
When the kind hearth is glowin' het,
And friends in social circle met.-
The blackest sight that meets his e'e,
When trampled down by poverty,
Wi' friends, and gear, and credit, gane,
Is the gruesome look o' the cauld hearth-stane.
When a' that lo'e us leave their stools,
And, ane by ane, mix wi' the mools;
When friendship's, love's, endearin' bands
Are riven frae our thowless hands;
When blackness sits in beauty's place,
And sorrow darkens heaven's face,
How sad to sit, in tears, alane,

Demented wi' grief, by the cauld hearth-stane.

When down the black and cheerless lum
The frozen winds o' winter come;

When through the crazy wa's the drift
O'er a' the house will swirl and sift.

Pity the wretch that's doomed to jouk
In rags beside the ingle-nook;

While hunger bites him to the bane,

And streeks him in death on the cauld hearth-stane.

Wi' nane his glazen een to close,

Or his sair writhen limbs compose;

Wi' nane to speer, and nane to care,

What wrought the deed o' murder there!

From Nature's heart and table turned,
Despised, degraded, shamed, and spurned-
Left like a dog in death, wi' nane

To lift up his corpse frae the cauld hearth-stane.

I've had my share o' warld's ill;

O' grief I've aften drank my fill;
Misfortune's, slander's, venom'd dart
Has broke my peace, has pierced my heart.
I've borne them all, and yet could bear,
Would Heaven but in mercy spare,

What e'en in thought maist turns my brain,
The lang dreaded look o' the cauld hearth-stane.

DEAREST MRS. RUSTLER,

Take the account of our visit to Lady

fresh from

the tablets of recollection. Should I, indeed, postpone the narration, disturbing exteriorities might arise, which, by weakening impressions, might impair the functions of veracity. Ever let us be actuated by the motto,

Now is the present; Virgins, vineyards till,
And sweet advice by eager deeds fulfil.

Truth be our guide, and Charity, prompt to authenticate good by eradicating evil, our companion.

It was with feelings, as you will believe, of more than ordinary excitation, that P and myself presented ourselves at the portal of Lady Highborough's sumptuous mansion in Square. The strikingness of her character had made itself known to us through a thousand sources. In her youth, as her portrait, painted by Sir Richard Phillips, must have already acquainted you, she was surpassingly beautiful—and, as we all are (who knows better than myself?) an object of precious anxiety, and unmitigated temp

tations. Royalty was at her feet; but she declined its elegant bait. Her father's board, high in the councils of his Sovereign, was crowned by all the dissolute liberalism of England. Wits, men of letters, foreigners of every shade of speciousness, flung their laurels at her feet; but she stood firm as Niobe. Her perspicuous intellect detected from afar the storms which were about to submerge every social classification. She saw the nobility of her land, her altar and her throne, in peril; and when little more than a shrinking girl, presented herself in the breach! Deaf to the fascinations of a circle so illusive, she abode by her principles. "It was her duty," she said, "to resist the materialism of the middle classes-she pitied, but could not admit them to privileges for which treasure had been wasted and blood shed." Dowered only by this astounding rectitude and a delicate prettiness tout-à-fait mignardise, (to quote de Sevigne's Memoirs)—she espoused, when little more than a child, the august Earl whose name she bears; and entered at once upon her career of heroic energy. As patroness of Almack's, she at once applied herself to the fostering of high breeding, and the discouragement of the unlicensed intrusions of Republican ambition. No tamperer with the wives of Mammon (in the persons of Bankers) while she used the privileges of gold, she kept the aspiring race who deal therein aloof. Unflinching in her pursuit of Primogeniture, the younger son found no adherence at her hands the libertine pens of Authors still less. She drew around her an august circle, which Rank accredited and Fashion adorned. Her uncompromising boldness-no less than the vivacity of her parlance, in which the repartee of the French woman and the sense of her own mother tongue were blended-exposed her to salient attacks from the vulgar, the presuming, and the upstart. But she steered her way. She it was who maintained on the Continent the august character of a Peeress of England. Accustomed at home to press the products of the Cashmerian loom in her boudoir, to respire but air laden with the odours of the rarest exotics conveyed from the conservatories of Lightington with a regal disregard of expensehabituated to assemble on her table the luxuries of the four hemispheres-Lady Highborough's firm mind did not shrink from the perils and privations of foreign travel. Courageous in the Pride of Sex-and daring even to read Oriental despots a lesson on the immured victims whom their Salic, ordinances confine behind veils, - she it was who claimed an audience of the Grand Sultan, and

awed his barbarian eyes by the splendour of England's lilies and roses, ripened by Time, and decorated with the lustrous heirlooms which cannot make her rank more sparkling. Long will her visit to Sultan Abd-el-Kader, in his Alhambra Palace, at Constantinople, be talked of in the "Harem." It is to her (and not to the authoress of the " City of the Sultan") that the exquisite and well-known poem by Mr. Milnes refers. This P has from unquestioned authority. But we can dilate without hearsay on Lady Highborough's union of what is most aristocratic with what is most fascinating,

:

visit till that hour.

Fortified by a provision of tracts, we set forth a little after noon our Landlady having advised P to pretermit the "What would they say at Tinglebury could they see us now?" was uppermost in the thoughts of one of us at least, as we appealed to the bell. The door gave way to the summons: and a domestic resplendent in the Highborough colours (staunch orange to which my heart warmed, and blue) admitted us, with a civil "So you're the Ladies!" Judge of our confusion! Clothed, indeed, in filthy rags did I feel myself. That our poor humble Tinglebury deeds should have preceded us! That our faltering endeavours to assert infallible truth should have resounded in the noble halls of England's Aristocracy! What was Mr. Podd to us now? A phantom. Was not here a rich recompense for our Ephesian struggles with his Hydra of false doctrine? * * * * * * * * I felt tears of silent praise on my cheek, but was aroused from them by a rapid exclamation on P-'s part

"Diana! darling our travelling companion!"-It was so:-He, and none other, was crossing the hall, and ere Pcould spring forward to put in her claim for the welcome of recognition in a strange land-he had vanished in the interior.Could this be Lord Highborough! whom censorious tongues had described as in a state of alienation from his august spouse, and rarely at home? "Are not friends raised up for us?" said Ppressing my arm, as we mounted the stairs, to the presence of her we came to seek,

Time was given us to survey the drawing-room of a Belgravian star of the first water; since we were told that Lady Highborough would see us shortly-and meanwhile invited-nay desired (such are the courteous customs of the house!) to sit down. What was more distinguishing, we perceived through the open door by which we had entered, that the footman remained in attendant propriety