support them by her own hands. They moved from place to place, the fair girl battling with poverty, yet hoping, struggling on, until we find her and her charge occupying, as described, a room in a squalid house in one of the most wretched regions of the metropolis. It was now about three o'clock; the young seamstress had not broken her fast for the day; but the two children and the idiot had devoured for their morning's meal the last piece of bread which the cupboard contained. She still plied her needle, striving to forget in that activity the hunger that was gnawing within. She hoped in a few hours more to complete her task, and then her employer, Mr. Abraham Isaacs, would pay her for the making of the six shirts: these sailors' shirts had already taken her twenty-four hours of unremitted labour, and when completed would have occupied her two full days. What was her remuneration? Mr. Abraham Isaacs was considered a very liberal man among the slop-sellers, and so he paid two shillings per dozen shirts, the workwomen finding their own thread. Generous Mr. Isaacs! who allowed twopence legal coin of the realm for the mere sewing and hemming one man's shirt-two silver shillings for only fifty hours' labour! We will not say one disparaging word of a gentleman so merciful, liberal, and considerate, as Mr. Abraham Isaacs !* ས "Now, when are we to have our dinner?" said the little boy, suspending his game of marbles, and running up to his sister's table. "I am dying of hunger, and so, I'm sure, is father." "Dinner! dinner!" said the idiot, catching the welcome word, as he played with his potato and his turnip. "But ye shan't eat these; I shall plant them in my farm next year. Dinner! ay, quick-I'm hungry." And he stared with a vacant but wolfish stare towards his daughter. The little girl joined in the cry for food. "Now, hush! my dears," said Caroline, without suspending her toil. "I shall not be able to buy you anything until I have finished my work. However, I shall not be long now." "Not long? And what do you call not long?"" said the boy in a sullen tone. "I can't wait." But the little girl seemed to know their relative positions and misfortunes better; for she kissed her sister, and asked if she herself did not feel hungry, having eaten nothing for the day. "Dinner! dinner!" again muttered the idiot from his corner. Another half-hour passed; solicitations for food became more urgent, until the impatient cries of the three half bewildered her by whom their wants had been supplied so long, that they scarcely deemed the necessaries of life could Far be it from us to insinuate that the Mr. Isaacs in the text is a type of his class. The Jews are a calumniated people. As a body of men they possess as much integrity, honour, and kindly feeling, as any race beneath the sun. proceed from any other quarter. But the shirts were not completed, and Caroline knew it would be in vain to apply to Mr. Isaacs for payment of her work until the last stitch was sewn; and to raise money by pawning was no longer possible -nothing remained to be pawned. A thought, however, struck her; she would not keep them famishing any longer; accordingly she hurried from the room. With hesitating step the girl approached the apartment on the ground floor, occupied by the woman who kept the house. "And what do you want, Caroline Melford?" said the worthy lady, whose face was very red; for she had just dined. "Will you oblige me so far, Ma'am, as to lend me for a very short time "Lend you, Caroline Melford?" interrupted Mrs. Gubbins in considerable surprise, glancing from some fruit and a bottle of spirits at her elbow to the intrusive applicant, and back again. "I shall receive this evening money from Mr. Isaacs. I only ask until that time for sixpence, to purchase something for my father and the children to eat." "Only sixpence?" said Mrs. Gubbins, elevating her red eyebrows. Only sixpence? Bless my heart! one would think by you that sixpence was no coin at all. What a face, what impudence some people have, to be sure! Young woman, I'm surprised at you!" "I am sorry if I have given you offence, Ma'am." "Ask me to lend you money, and silver too!" pursued the lady, in virtuous indignation. "You owe me already just a fortnight's rent. I must say this is rather too bold, too bad." "I expect some better work next week, and then I will certainly pay you the half-crown due for the rent." Mrs. Gubbins slammed the door upon her young lodger, and returned to her fruit and spirit-bottle. Caroline ascended the stairs slowly, and in tears; yet her fruitless negociation and the indignities she had suffered were not sufficient to crush her hopeful, persevering spirit. As well as she was able she silenced for a short time longer the clamours of the hungry three, and determined to complete her needlework, and so receive the money from the slopseller. "Sister, haven't you done yet?" said the boy. "We shall all die of hunger if you don't make haste to the Jew's." "Dinner! dinner!" still growled the old man with the hollow wolfish eyes. "I am going," said Caroline. And a few minutes afterwards the girl was on her way to the shop of Mr. Abraham Isaacs. The Hebrew was standing at a small desk inside his counter, busily engaged in the very interesting occupation of weighing sovereigns. Mr. Isaacs was not an ill-looking man, and his countenance expressed keen intellect; as he balanced his little scales his little round eyes twinkled and sparkled; and as the gold was found to be of good or bad weight, so a smile or a frown flitted across his face. Caroline had placed her parcel on the counter, and waited several minutes before the master slopseller deigned to address her. At length he spoke in abrupt and short sentences. Well, leave them; they shall be examined. Call for your money to-morrow night." "I should feel extremely obliged, sir, if—if I could be favoured with the amount now, for, I confess, I am in great want." "Pshaw! it is your own fault then. That's the way with all you young women. You spend the money in fine clothes as fast as you get it. Let me see the things." Mr. Isaacs looked carefully at the articles, and his scrutiny had reference principally to the quality of the work. While the examination was proceeding, Caroline's eyes fell involuntarily on the little pyramid of shining gold, one piece of which would have been to her comparative wealth. But her attention was speedily called to the Jew, who, as he held one of the check shirts closely to his round glistening eyes, frowned a terrible frown. "Moses help us! what's here? Do you call this work, young woman?" Caroline trembled. It was the last shirt, which she had hurried to complete, and the sewing was less neat than that of the others. "The thing is not fit for a dog to wear!" cried Mr. Isaacs, flinging down the garment in a great rage upon the counter. "I pay more than my neighbours by a halfpenny a shirt, on purpose to keep up the respectability of my house; and you dare to bring me home work like this!" "Indeed, I am very sorry, sir; I have only one excuse to plead. I wished to finish the shirt to-night, in order to procure a meal for my father, and young brother and sister." "That's no excuse, none. Now, leave go back and unpick the work; sew it all over again, or not a copper have." shall you 'It will take me three hours." "It may take you three days, my dear; I can't help that—now go!" The inexorable but respectable gentleman pointed his hand towards the door. He then turned, with his wonted composure and dignity, to his little high desk, and resumed his laborious task of counting silver and weighing gold. "Sister is come!" shouted the famishing boy, as Caroline entered the room. "At last, then, we shall have something to eat.' "And what have you brought?" asked the little girl, peering into the parcel. It contained the rejected work! Eat, eat-hungry-starving!" cried the old man, moving uneasily on his stool. But Caroline, who had sustained herself until now, regarded for a few minutes, without speaking, the wretched and helpless ones who depended on her for food. Faint, weary, and heartbroken, her feelings at length gave way; she sank into a chair, and, stooping her face on her little table, burst into a passionate flood of tears. Our sketch draws to a close. The four went that night supperless to their straw beds. On the following morning the work was completed, the remuneration-a shilling-received, and the wretched family were saved from immediate starvation. We wish our limits would permit us to trace further the fortunes of Caroline Melford. Still she laboured, still she hoped, and still she struggled on. We do not think we have overcharged the picture, or described what has not happened, or does not almost daily take place, in the eastern districts of our crowded metropolis. No assistance, no mark of approbation from any philanthropic society-for that alluded to at the commencement of this sketch was not, we repeat, yet established-fell to the lot of the young seamstress. Her unparalleled industry, perseverance, and filial affection, were alike unnoticed and unrewarded. For the sake, however, of our readers, we shall disclose the sequel of her history. Fate sometimes is kind, when human laws are harsh. Though no society of good men rewarded the poor girl, heaven did. After some months more of hard struggling, she was driven to extremity, and the woman of the house, as she had threatened, seized her scanty furniture for arrears of rent. The members of this unhappy family were on the threshold, and just issuing as vagrants into the street, when they were met by a young man, the clerk of the lawyer who, some years before, had carried on Mr. Melford's case against the party claiming his property. Stop, young woman!" said the attorney's clerk: "I beg pardon, Miss Melford-I remember your face: thank heaven, I have found you at last. Good news, miss! good news! the case respecting that property down at Norwood, which the old grub, Hardflint, seized upon, has been again gone into. The former judgment is reversed. Hardflint is ejected, and the house and fields are again yours!" We do not attempt to describe the surprise, the rapture, the tears, which this happy intelligence occasioned. Enough to say, that the sun of prosperity again shone on the late suffering family; and in addition to this, such was the salutary influence of the scene, and sounds familiar to his early days, on the brain of the lunatic, that the mists of idiotcy were gradually dispersed, memory returned, the extinguished torch of reason was again illumined, and old Mr. Melford became as sound in mind, as he was once more happy in circumstances. D STANZAS. (Addressed to the Lady Rachel Russell.) BY THE LADY EMMELINE STUART WORTLEY. Child of a house-the favourite of all fame ! Be worthy of that name! To wish for thee Yet different be thy destinies from those That name which glorifies the race and line May'st thou in all but sorrow, sweetly share LINES, (On seeing a Bouquet of Sweet Violets worn by a beautiful Young Lady.) They blossomed in some sheltered cell, Sweet flowers! a happy lot was theirs, For beauty marked their green retreat; Bright blossoms of the azure hue! Your short-lived charms must fade to-morrow, Though from clear heavens and fragrant dew Your tints and perfume soft ye borrow; May she, whose gentle bosom wears CHARLOTTE GUBBINS. *John, the second Duke of Rutland, married, for his first wife, Catherine, daughter of Lord William Russell, and of the Lady Rachel Wriothesley, so renowned for virtues and accomplishments, and for her heroic devotion to her unfortunate husband. Thus the noble and gifted Manners' family also claim descent from the illustrious lady whose portrait embellishes our present number.-ED. N. M. B. A. SONNETS WRITTEN ON WINDERMERE LAKE. BY GEORGE HALSE. BEAUTIFUL WINDERMERE! Oh, I could float And what a landscape is around thee! hills Cresting a fir-clad gentle hill, here stands A castle-noble sight! The siege of Time Impresses not its blocks; for, still sublime, It lords it o'er the scene. See yonder bands Of reapers, girding with laborious hands The loaded spikes. There lusty travellers climb The mountain side-Ah! hearest thou the chime Of noon? How sweet, as every knoll expands Upon the wind! Mark you how yonder cot, Hooded in trees, peeps like a beauty forth? A lily reared in moss. Delicious spot! BEAUTIFUL WINDERMERE! My heart is loth To quit thee now-yet, who would feast for aye On one delight? Who would? Away, away. September, 1846. "I HEARD A VOICE AT EVENING TIDE." CANZONET. BY F. L. JAQUEROD. I heard a voice at evening-tide It told of one long pass'd away, I heard a voice at evening-tide The starry skies their radiance lent To that enthralling sound. But dwell in endless love!" THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE. (A Sketch, in Two Parts.) BY GEORGE J. O. ALLMAN. “Look upon every day as the whole of Life, not merely as a section; and enjoy the present without wishing, through haste, to spring on to another lying before the section." "But gentles alle, beware the adder's tongue JEAN PAUL FR. RICHTER. Of those vyle babblers who swyte Truth despise ; JOHN LYLIE, about 1580. "It is said that troubles never come singly; and if they must come, it is well, for the great griefs drive out the lesser ones, which might else fret and swell beyond their just proportions." CAMILLA TOULMIN. PART THE FIRST. "To-morrow!" said I, as I laid my whirling head upon my pillow, to seek, if possible, a temporary release from the wild joy with which my heart beat and my head ached-to-morrow," I cried, with an almost delirious shout, "will be the happiest day of my life 'The merriest maddest day,' as Tennyson's fair Mayqueen sang in her sunny hours, that ever rose upon my lifepath." The fire of impatience was at my heart; the indefinable bliss of anticipated happiness hurried me into a thousand vagaries; and though I was, corporeally, snugly ensconced within the warm valley of feathers, I experienced the same sensation that one might be supposed to feel who is poised in the light, bracing ether, where all around is intangible and spiritual, but who yet has the exquisite, the delicious certainty, that there exists no danger of that bright atmosphere parting, and of thereby sharing a similar fate to Vulcan's of Old, and of finding a Lemnos in this same dear little Island of ours. It is true I had laid my head on the downy recess of my pillow, to seek a brief respite from thought; for excess of joy doth surfeit, and becomes a pain; but "the gods were averse," and my parched tongue still continued syllabling the burning words, "To-morrow will be the happiest day of my life." Alas! how often, when the eager eye beholds but the goblet of joy near, is the cup of bitterness and sorrow still closer to our lips; and in the mad certainty of mortals to quaff the former, do we find, when too late, that it is the latter which we have clutched, and the draught must be swallowed then! But, in sooth, at the time I uttered the words above recorded, this rhapsodical reflection was far from being the tenor of my thought-Philosophy, that calm, contemplative, and abstruse stream of reason (with a dash of the sullen, though richly-stored river of logic in it) was entirely at variance with the swollen flood of my emotions at that time-its barque had ventured out of its own quiet haven, had been whirled away by the cataract of my joy, and engulphed in the careering foam which its torrent created; for my heart was deaf to the voice of control, was blind to all but the one gigantic, overwhelming, and ever-intruding idea, "To-morrow will be the happiest day of my life." I soon began to chafe inwardly and irascibly; I endeavoured to repeat slowly, and with cool emphasis, "To--mor---row--will---be--the-hap---pi---est"-but nature obtained the mastery over my assumed calmness, and I concluded about a thousand degrees more rapidly and incoherently-" the very happiest day of my life." Gentle reader, I am, I own, of an excessively sanguine" temperament; butstart not-I have not red hair-neither do I possess sandy whiskers. 66 Ah! at last-that state of silent, inert, and wondrous being, had at length crept over meand in the indefinite breathing of sleep "So near to life, so wondrous like to death," my body lay; but the mind, so intimately and extraordinarily connected with that viewless chain of existence, was as active as before; and though I lay supine in the arms of Morpheus, it enacted its part of Immaterialism among the invisible inhabitants of a world unseen to all eyes save those bound by the drowsy god, and carried by him into the land of dreams, so strangely peopled with aerial phantoms, so | cried, but this time aloud-"I have cut mydensely crowded with silent, shadowy figures, which come and go, till the senses are blent with a mysterious awe, astonishment, and delight. When I awoke, the saffron tint of morning was fast disappearing in the deeper glow of day. The sun "The day's bright messenger ”— poured a stream of orient effulgence through the curtains of my room. I bounded out of bed with a thrill bordering upon ecstacy, and hastened to undraw the envious veil" that hid the glad face of day from my longing eyes. | How lovely, how inexpressibly beautiful seemed the face of nature as I gazed! It was one of those bright mornings in early spring, when the world bursts forth as in a newly-born existence, rich in adornments, and radiant as a young child in all the blush of her warm beauty; the birds were twittering on the trees, like the prattle and joyous laughter of that child ere the first blight of life falls on her youngest hours; the earliest dews of morning were still glistering on the half-opened, half-closed petals of the flowers, which bent towards the east to share the warm smiles which the glorious Luminary showered down, and drank from his invigorating beams new life and gladness. The moist, exhaling earth returned, a thousand-fold, the blessings dowered on her by Nature, and diffused through the ambient air a cool refreshing breath, whose sense was happiness itself. Never had my eyesight rested on the meadows clothed with so rich a hue as their emerald mantle displayed that morning. The very river went dancing along in the distance, like a stream of enchanted fire; and my heart made the sweetest music, which kept most euphoniously accordant with the placid flow of that shining water. "And this," I exclaimed, in a burst of enthusiasm, "is my wedding-day-the happiest day of my life-and in a few brief hours thou wilt be mine own, dear Julia. Oh! that it may be, as the old poet sings"Blessedde is ye weddinge on wche ye sonne dothe shyne." self at last with a vengeance." I anathemized the apricity of my razor, and silently evoked all the entailments of eternal annihilation on that "bore" to manhood-my beard. It is said by our divinest bard, that it needs but one step between the sublime and the ridiculous; and how short is the distance beneath the smooth placidity and the rugged unevenness of our temper; thus a trifling every-day-no, not every day, preserve us-occurrence had, for the moment, entirely blotted out my deep, hopeful joy. I looked into my glass, and, as I perceived the slight stream of blood trickling down my chin, my words found vent in a more humble yet not less natural exclamation than my former lucubrations. "A pretty figure I shall cut, by jingo!" I sighed, "with a slice out of my chin, or a huge bar of plaister lying grimly on its surface! What will Julia say, I wonder? And then her distingué brother, too: will our solemn-vowed friendship prevent his assailing me with his quizzical remarks? Hallo! Churchill, mon cher !'-won't he say? 'He jests at scars who never felt a wound.' And then old Carrington will break out into his horrid laugh- Ha! ha! ha! who never felt a wound-eh, Churchill?' A (ahem) on my ill-starred and unlucky hand, and the imp who misguided it. However, my ire very soon smoothed down-the well-timed application of a sponge and a little water quickly stopped the hemorrhage; and when I took a final leave of my mirror, I felt perfectly satisfied with myself, and could not help owning, as I beheld myself reflected, that I was looking remarkably well," (id est, in man's vocubulary, "eminently handsome!") and that, after all, the incision scarcely betokened itself; and I could have yielded to a fit of laughter at my late disaster, and the revolution it had caused, temporarily, in my feelings. 66 6 But I must, ere I proceed farther, just narrate a few circumstances which will be to my readers the door-the adytus as it were-to my future relation. My father, " Lawyer Drayton," as he was called by the villagers, had formerly filled the post of attorney in the small town of B-, in Suffolk. At the time when he settled there, Notwithstanding these parenthetical remarks it was before that superlucrative profession was -which, I believe, I uttered aloud to the telltale swamped with the enormous number of folwalls, and somewhat wildly—perhaps, I pursued, lowers with whom it now is. He was the only as do all sublunary creatures, even under the "limb of the law" in the town, and par conseeffects of any contending emotion, the custo-quence, "revelled alone in his glory." There mary avocations of my toilet; and surely the boy-god himself must that day have guided my razor, or I had chopped off either a lip or a chin in my hasty attempt to "adonize" myself. "Alas!" thought I, (I was thinking aloud bythe-bye,) "alas! it is hard indeed not to love as jolly old Anacreon says— his shrewdness, business-like habits, and ready tact, united to no small share of legal knowledge, soon obtained for himself the good word of the "rustici vulgi”—thereby putting, with no inconsiderable celerity, many pleasant likenesses of his late majesty into his pockets-there his every word of advice was received as were the oracular mysteries of Delphi-there his voice held most arbitrary sway in the councils of their corporation. For an attorney, too, he was more than commonly honest (I seldom knew an attorney who was a thoroughly conscientious and upright man; that they can be such is totally opposed to their occupation); so that praise |