by the torture. The boat moves-faster and faster cracks the whip; it slips into the water; and No. 66, his back one mass of bloody weals, falls exhausted on the slime, dragging his chain-fellow with him. choir. They have not been as yet very successful in the latter object of their ambition, for the people of Hamborough seem to be born with the most stubborn propensity to sing out of tune; but as to the school, they have really done wonders. With these employments, and a pleasant though small circle of acquaintances, who eat and drink, Night comes at last. Surely, now at least there will be some cessation of their sufferings? They will lose their misery for awhile in heavenly sleep? A few, from extreme ex-gossip, and dance at one another's houses; haustion, may snatch a short forgetfulness; but fever, ague, cramp, the pain of festering wounds, the sting of innumerable insectsthey can tell how the hours are waning by the varied hum and bite of these winged tormentors-make the night only a continuation of the sufferings of the day to most. Unavenged? Why, the couch in the condemned cell were a bed of roses, the last sermon a friendly greeting, the sudden drop a kind relief indeed, compared to this. Unavenged? When the murderer was no longer known as Adolphus Hartman, Robert Clements, or by any other of the names which he had assumed in the course of his long career of crime, but as No. 66 in a gang of Spanish convicts on a tropical coast! A few years, very few, have elapsed. William and Mary Fletcher are still living at Hamborough, and her father resides in the same house with them. William is one of the great unpaid, for whom we pray every Sunday that they 'may indifferently administer justice;' though perhaps, when the Prayer Book is revised, it may be better to omit the in. He is mad about gardening and pigs, and believes himself to have the finest specimens of geraniums and grunters in the county. He exhibits, and sometimes gets prizes for both his hobbies. He hunts a little, shoots a little, and boats and fishes a little-amusements in which his father-inlaw, who has in a great measure recovered his spirits, joins him; though certainly, as regards the first, he does not ride very straight to hounds, being a somewhat heavy weight and never famous for his horsemanship. However, he potters occasionally after the harriers, and gets a capital appetite for his dinner. But he is great at fishing, and takes intense interest in the future of the Thames as a trout and salmon river. Mary, who is rather High Church, at least in ornamentation and singing, works altar cloths and such things, and seconds the efforts of the clergyman of the place to make the schools model institutions and organize a with boating in summer and riding with her husband or father all the year round; with an ever-changing box of books from a London library; and, above all, with a couple of children, whose very tender years require a great deal of her care, she passes her life very happily. William grumbles when he has to go up to London, and leave his pigs and flowers; but when his wife wants to shop, or a new exhibition is opened, or a comedy or opera which sounds tempting is announced, they run up for a day or two, and are remarkably glad to get back. They experience a like feeling of relief when they return to Hamborough after the annual trip which they feel it their duty to make to the seaside or the Continent; and how can I write any more about such unadventurous human cabbages? Arnold often stays with them. He is godfather to one of the children, and has a room allotted to him during his visits, in which he may smoke, and write his leaders. I expect that he will marry some day, and that his wife will fearfully avenge her sex for all the hard things he has said of them. He has been writing able social articles lately about domestic matters, teaching husbands and fathers how to manage their interiors; and as his theories of the rights of man are bordering on the tyrannical, he is safe to be henpecked. But a truce to last words. Whether you have been bored by my story or have liked it-nay, even if you are a skipper, may health and happiness attend you, reader. Fare you well! THE END. SOME EXPERIENCES OF AN MY DEAR EDITOR-I recollect reading an anecdote of a man who was to be hanged at Tyburn in the good old days when men were hanged with much greater spirit and vigour than they are at present. Black Monday morning came. The bell tolled; the cart was in waiting; and the gaoler had the pleasure to announce that the time had arrived when-- At this summons to quit for a better a wicked world-in which the condemned man had had the misfortune to confuse the ownership of a handkerchief, valued at one shilling and fourpence-he pulled a very long face, and bemoaned his sad fate in the appropriate language of a last dying speech and confession of the period. But he suddenly cheered up, and became almost gay, on being informed that he was by no means alone in his plight, but that a batch of five was to swing at the same time with himself. Such is the effect of companionship! So gregarious an animal is man, that he goes with comparative calmness even to be hanged if he has but company. It is the solitary misfortune that is insupportable. The story with which I begin is ominous. What is its application? This. You know my connection with The Miscellany-that during three or four years I was the occupant of the editorial chair. Receive my solemn assurance that I would as lief be hanged as edit anything of the sort again. I know your hard lot. Like our friend of the sixteenpenny handkerchief, there is some grain of comfort for you in a feeling that you have companions in misfortune in the knowledge that others have trodden the thorny paths of editorship before you. In this sympathetic light you will read the recital of my troubles with some interest; and it is to be presumed that what interests you will be of interest to your readers, or, in your editorial capacity, why do you exist? The Miscellany! It is some time since I put an end to my connection with the paper; but as I pronounce the word, once so often on my lips, always in my thoughts -my plague by day, my dream by nightI heave a profound sigh: a composite sigh, breathed part in regret, part in sorrow; in anger somewhat, yet having in it a tinge of grief. I am not surprised now that Dickens resigned his editorship of a daily paper in something less than a fortnight, or that Thackeray found conducting the Cornhill an uncongenial task. There is no more unthankful work than rejecting contributions, unless it be reading them. This last difficulty, I am aware, may be got over by a rude contempt for the feelings and rights of the senders of MSS., and the use of a large waste paper basket. There are publications that receive no contributions from outsiders, though they veil the practice under some such words as these "It is impossible for the editor to return rejected communications; and to this rule no exception can be made." The real meaning of this phrase is, in most cases, that the editor has a waste paper basket under his table, into which everything goes without fear or favour. But while such a practice saves the editor's time and temper, it is a manifest injury to a contributor who, ignorant of this rule, sends up such a trifle as a three volume novel, which has cost months of labour perhaps, and may be a "Jane Eyre" or a "Vanity Fair" in manuscript. My own experience leads me to the belief that under such a régime injury would be done to the interests of literature in about five per cent. of the cases. Of a hundred manuscripts received, about ninety are not worth publishing, varying in demerit from utter trash to mediocre wordspinning; five per cent. of the cases are doubtful-a safe and easy course would be to toss a coin for or against; and five per cent. are worth printing. At The Miscellany, my practice was to read myself, or place in the hands of a competent reader, all the MSS. we received. In this way justice was done to everybody, but at a great sacrifice of time. Of course it was impossible to enter into a correspondence with every sender of MSS. Their rejected contributions were put into pigeon-holes, and kept till they applied by letter for them-alas! too often, in person-when they were returned to their irritated owners. It became necessary to adopt some stereotyped form of refusal-at once polite, but firm. I hit upon this as a sort of salve for wounded vanity: This Manuscript is returned to the Writer, with the Editor's compliments. The pressure upon our space is very great, and the Editor desires it to be understood that the return of a Manuscript is not in all cases to be taken as a criterion of its merit. It worked, perhaps, a little better than the lithographed letters of some of my contemporaries; but I always felt certain that every man, woman, and child-I have had manuscripts from correspondents who stated they were "only twelve years old," and hoped their faults would be excused-whose copy was returned or pigeon-holed, became a determined and implacable enemy for life. I do not know whether The Miscellany was Oxford Union Society. Editor, The Miscellany. And I must say, such brevity was so rare, that I always felt much more favourably disposed towards those persons who left their MSS. to tell their own tale, instead of explaining what they meant in several pages of illegibility. Before proceeding further with these recollections, let me say a word or two about The Miscellany, over which I was the presiding spirit. It was a magazine of the highest respectability, published monthly, and had seen some five-and-forty summers when I took it by the hand. It was established in the days when prospectus-writing was alive, and it was ushered into existence with a flourish of trumpets played by master hands. It was said in the prospectus that it desired "to establish an independent position, neither rivalling its weekly nor copying from its daily contemporaries. . . . The editor and writers of the proposed miscellany are aware that their aim is high, and consequently think their pretensions may be considered ambitious. For such an imputation they are, however, fully prepared. They desire to be judged by their magazine itself rather than by professions which can but very inadequately describe their hopes and objects." And they wound up by "appealing with hope and confidence to public support," feeling sure that they would "never plead in vain to the educated and reflective mind of this country." This grand language was appropriate enough at a time when a monthly periodical of the sort was comparatively a new invention, and when the monthlies were a power in the world of letters much greater than they now are. By the general decline of "periodical" literature in the public favour, The Mis cellany had suffered not so much, however, as many of its contemporaries now happily buried. The truth is, the age was slower when The Miscellany was started. Now, the dailies and weeklies do the work the monthlies and quarterlies did then. Hence the wretched spectacle of decayed and dying "mags" we see around us: vigorous in their youth, strong in their prime, but now-the less said of them the better. The public taste has changed: powerless to adapt themselves to the change of fashion, they have been simply stranded by the force of circumstances. An opinion expressed now seventeen years ago on the prospects and position of periodical literature may, with a slight alteration, serve very well to describe the state of affairs with The Miscellany when I took it in hand. "Fat, fair, and close on forty, her disposition, now mild and motherly, was dashed in youth with a touch of acerbity, sometimes suddenly varying the sweetness of her aspect with a scowl of disdain or a gleam of fierceness. Such forbearance admirably according with the dignity of the matron and with the stateliness of her full-blown presence, has not been without ill-consequences. The chivalry of periodical writing has lost some dash ever since the laws of the combat placed buttons on the foils; the fiercer spirits miss the excitement of the game in earnest; meek men in spectacles venture into the ring once sacred to the grim yet graceful athlete, victor in a hundred fights; the combatants pique themselves on being open to conviction, and fight in the courteous spirit" of Mr. Gladstone's able coadjutors when arguing with an American Secretary of State, let us say. In fact, the change that had come over the old magazines had left them in a hopelessly dull state. It was this dullness that I hoped to remove; and, by a lively discussion of topics of the day, to supersede the padding that had helped the fiction out. I knew the public were heartily tired of the articles to which they had been helped by every magazine for so long a time. I determined that The Miscellany should no longer be-as for a quarter of a century it had been-so unimpeachably respectable, but so hopelessly uninteresting in all the matter except fiction, which its pages contained. I am about to record some of the difficulties of prosecuting such a scheme. |