children once or twice after, always in Scowler's company; but we did not dare to give each other any marks of recognition.

That night they would sleep among | little men! poor mother sitting by the strangers. The little beds at home vacant little beds! We saw the were vacant, and poor mother might go and look at them. Well, tears flow, and friends part, and mothers pray every night all over the world. I dare say we went to see Heidelberg Castle, and admired the vast shattered walls, and quaint gables; and the Neckar running its bright course through that charming scene of peace and beauty; and ate our dinner, and drank our wine with relish. The poor mother would eat but little Abendessen that night; and, as for the children that first night at school-hard bed, hard words, strange boys bullying, and laughing, and jarring you with their hateful merriment as for the first night at a strange school, we most of us remember what that is. And the first is not the worst, my boys, there's the rub. But each man has his share of troubles, and, I suppose, you must have yours.

From Baden we went to Basle, and thence to Lucerne, and so over the St. Gothard into Italy. From Milan we went to Venice; and now comes the singular part of my story. In Venice there is a little court of which I forget the name: but in it is an apothecary's shop, whither I went to buy some remedy for the bites of certain animals which abound in Venice. Crawling animals, skipping animals, and humming, flying animals; all three will have at you at once; and one night nearly drove me into a straitwaistcoat. Well, as I was coming out of the apothecary's with the bottle of spirits of hartshorn in my hand (it really does do the bites a great deal of good), whom should I light upon but one of my little Heidelberg

I have said how handsomely they were dressed as long as they were with their mother. When I saw the boy at Venice, who perfectly recognized me, his only garb was a wretched yellow cotton gown. His little feet, on which I had admired the little shiny boots, were without shoe or stocking. He looked at me, ran to an old hag of a woman, who seized his hand; and with her he disappeared down one of the thronged lanes of the city.

From Heidelberg we went to Baden-Baden boys! Baden: and, I dare say, saw Madame de Schlangenbad and Madame de la Cruchecassee, and Count Punter, and honest Captain Blackball. And whom should we see in the evening, but our two little boys, walking on each side of a fierce, yellow-faced, bearded man! We wanted to renew our acquaintance with them, and they were coming forward quite pleased to greet us. But the father pulled back one of the little men by his paletot, gave a grim scowl, and walked away. I can see the children now looking rather frightened away from us and up into the father's face, or the cruel uncle's which was he? I think he was the father. So this was the end of them. Not school, as I at first had imagined. The mother was gone, who had given them the heaps of pretty books, and the pretty studs in the shirts, and the pretty silken clothes, and the tender-tender cares; and they were handed to this scowling practitioner of Trente et Quarante. Ah! this is worse than school. Poor

From Venice we went to Trieste (the Vienna railway at that time was only opened as far as Laybach, and the magnificent Semmering Pass was not quite completed). At a station between Laybach and Graetz, one of my companions alighted for refreshment, and came back to the carriage, saying:

"There's that horrible man from Baden, with the two little boys."

Of course, we had talked about the appearance of the little boy at Venice, and his strange altered garb.

My companion said they were pale, wretched-looking, and dressed quite shabbily.

black, and all-colored; and on their return to dominion such good old Tories would naturally have preferred to restore their good old Orders of Saint Louis, Saint Esprit, and Saint Michel; but France had taken the ribbon of the Legion of Honor so to her heart that no Bourbon sovereign dared to pluck it thence.

SO

I got out at several stations, and looked at all the carriages. I could not see my little men. From that | day to this I have never set eyes on them. That is all my story. Who were they? What could they be? How can you explain that mystery In England, until very late days, we of the mother giving them up; of the have been accustomed rather to poohremarkable splendor and elegance of pooh national Orders, to vote ribtheir appearance while under her bons and crosses tinsel gewgaws, care; of their bare-footed squalor in foolish foreign ornaments, and Venice, a month afterwards; of their forth. It is known how the Great shabby habiliments at Laybach? | Duke (the breast of whose own coat Had the father gambled away his was plastered with some half-hundred money, and sold their clothes? How decorations) was averse to the wearcame they to have passed out of the ing of ribbons, medals, clasps, and hands of a refined lady (as she evi- the like, by his army. We have all dently was, with whom I first saw of us read how uncommonly distinthem) into the charge of quite a com-guished Lord Castlereagh looked at mon woman like her with whom I saw one of the boys at Venice? Here is but one chapter of the story. Can any man write the next, or that preceding the strange one on which I happened to light? Who knows? the mystery may have some quite simple solution. I saw two children, attired like little princes, taken from their mother and consigned to other care; and a fortnight afterwards, one of them bare-footed and like a beggar. Who will read this riddle of The Two Children in Black?

ON RIBBONS.

THE uncle of the present Sir Louis N. Bonaparte, K. G., &c., inaugurated his reign as Emperor over the neighboring nation by establishing an Order, to which all citizens of his country, military, naval, and civil all men most distinguished in science, letters, arts, and commerce were admitted. The emblem of the Order was but a piece of ribbon, more or less long or broad, with a toy at the end of it. The Bourbons had toys and ribbons of their own, blue,

Vienna, where he was the only gentleman present without any decoration whatever. And the Great Duke's theory was, that clasps and ribbons, stars and garters, were good and proper ornaments for himself, for the chief officers of his distinguished army, and for gentlemen of high birth, who might naturally claim to wear a band of garter blue across their waistcoats; but that for common people your plain coat, without stars and ribbons, was the most sensible wear.

And no doubt you and I are as happy, as free, as comfortable; we can walk and dine as well; we can keep the winter's cold out as well, without a star on our coats, as without a feather in our hats. How often we have laughed at the absurd mania of the Americans for dubbing their senators, members of Congress, and States' representatives, Honorable! We have a right to call our Privy Councillors Right Honorable, our Lords' sons Honorable, and so forth : but for a nation as numerous, well educated, strong, rich, civilized, free as our own, to dare to give its distinguished citizens titles of honor strous assumption of low-bred arro

mon

and one man is as tall as another and one man is as good as another and a great dale betther, as the Irish philosopher said.

gance and parvenu vanity! Our titles | is nought; and Honor is humbug; are respectable, but theirs absurd. and Gentlemanhood is an extinct Mr. Jones, of London, a Chancellor's folly; and Ambition is madness; and son, and a tailor's grandson, is justly desire of distinction is criminal vaniHonorable, and entitled to be Lord ty; and glory is bosh; and fair fame Jones at his noble father's decease: is idleness; and nothing is true but but Mr. Brown, the senator from two and two; and the color of all the New York, is a silly upstart for tack-world is drab; and all men arc equal; ing Honorable to his name, and our sturdy British good sense laughs at him. Who has not laughed (I have myself) at Honorable Nahum Dodge, Honorable Zeno Scudder, Honorable Hiram Boake, and the rest? and the rest? A score of such queer names and titles I have smiled at in America. And, mutato nomine? I meet a born idiot, who is a peer and born legislator. This drivelling noodle and his descendants through life are your natural superiors and mine-your and my children's superiors. I read of an alderman kneeling and knighted at court: I see a gold-stick waddling backwards before Majesty in a procession, and if we laugh, don't you suppose the Americans laugh too?

Yes, stars, garters, orders, knighthoods, and the like, are folly. Yes, Bobus, citizen and soap-boiler, is a good man, and no one laughs at him or good Mrs. Bobus, as they have their dinner at one o'clock. But who will not jeer at Sir Thomas on a melting day, and Lady Bobus, at Margate, eating shrimps in a donkey-chaise ? Yes, knighthood is absurd: and chivalry an idiotic superstition: and Sir Walter Manny was a zany: and Nelson, with his flaming stars and cordons, splendent upon a day of battle, was a madman and Murat, with his crosses and orders, at the head of his squadrons charging victorious, was only a crazy mountebank, who had been a tavern-waiter, and was puffed up with absurd vanity about his dress and legs. And the men of the French line at Fontenoy, who told Messieurs de la Garde to fire first, were smirking French dancing-masters; and the Black Prince, waiting upon his royal prisoner, was acting an inane masquerade: and Chivalry

Is this so? Titles and badges of honor are vanity; and in the American Revolution you have his Excellency General Washington sending back, and with proper spirit sending back, a letter in which he is not addressed as Excellency and General. Titles are abolished; and the American Republic swarms with men claiming and bearing them. You have the French soldier cheered and happy in his dying agony, and kissing with frantic joy the chief's hand who lays the little cross on the bleeding bosom. At home you have the Dukes and Earls jobbing and intriguing for the Garter; the Military Knights grumbling at the Civil Knights of the Bath; the little ribbon eager for the collar; the soldiers and seamen from India and the Crimea marching in procession before the Queen, and receiving from her hands the cross bearing her royal name. And, remember, there are not only the cross wearers, but all the fathers and friends; all the women who have prayed for their absent heroes; Harry's wife, and Tom's mother, and Jack's daughter, and Frank's sweetheart, each of whom wears in her heart of hearts afterwards the badge which son, father, lover, has won by his merit; each of whom is made happy and proud, and is bound to the country by that little bit of ribbon.

It

I have heard, in a lecture about George the Third, that, at his accession, the King had a mind to establish an order for literary men. was to have been called the Order of Minerva- I suppose with an Owl for a badge. The knights were to have

worn a star of sixteen points, and a | Pardoe, and Paul Pry-and Queeyellow ribbon; and good old Samuel chy, and R, and S, and T, mère et fils, Johnson was talked of as President, and very likely U, O gentle reader, for or Grand Cross, or Grand Owl, of who has not written his novel now-athe society. Now about such an order days? who has not a claim to the as this there certainly may be doubts. star and straw-colored ribbon ? - and Consider the claimants, the difficulty who shall have the biggest and largest? of settling their claims, the rows and Fancy the struggle! Fancy the squabsquabbles amongst the candidates, ble! Fancy the distribution of prizes! and the subsequent decision of posWho shall decide on them? Shall terity! Dr. Beattie would have ranked it be the sovereign? shall it be the as first poet, and twenty years after Minister for the time being? and has the sublime Mr. Hayley would, no Lord Palmerston made a deep study doubt, have claimed the Grand Cross. of novels? In this matter the late Mr. Gibbon would not have been Ministry,* to be sure, was better qualeligible, on account of his dangerous ified; but even then, grumblers who freethinking opinions; and her sex, had not got their canary cordons, as well as her republican sentiments, would have hinted at professional might have interfered with the knight- jealousies entering the Cabinet; and, hood of the immortal Mrs. Catherine the ribbons being awarded, Jack Macaulay. How Goldsmith would would have scowled at his because have paraded the ribbon at Madame Dick had a broader one; Ned been Cornelys's, or the Academy dinner! indignant because Bob's was as large : How Peter Pindar would have railed Tom would have thrust his into the at it! Fifty years later, the noble drawer, and scorn to wear it at all. Scott would have worn the Grand No -no: the so-called literary world Cross and deserved it; but Gifford was well rid of Minerva and her would have had it; and Byron, and yellow ribbon. The great poets Shelley, and Hazlitt, and Hunt would would have been indifferent, the little have been without it; and had Keats poets jealous, the funny men furious, been proposed as officer, how the the philosophers satirical, the histoTory prints would have yelled with rians supercilious, and, finally, the rage and scorn! Had the star of jobs without end. Say, ingenuity Minerva lasted to our present time- and cleverness are to be rewarded by but I pause, not because the idea is State tokens and prizes-and take dazzling, but too awful. Fancy the for granted the Order of Minerva is claimants, and the row about their established — who shall have it? A precedence? Which philosopher shall great philosopher? no doubt we corhave the grand cordon? — which the dially salute him G. C. M. A great collar? which the little scrap no historian? G. C. M. of course. bigger than a butter-cup? Of the great engineer? G. C. M. A great historians - A, say, and C, and poet? received with acclamation G. F, and G, and S, and T,-which C. M. A great painter ? oh! certainshall be Companion and which Grandly, G. C. M. If a great painter, why Owl?. Of the poets, who wears, or claims, the largest and brightest star? Of the novelists, there is A, and B, and CD; and E (star of first magnitude, newly discovered), and F (a magazine of wit), and fair G, and H, and I, and brave old J, and charming K, and L, and M, and N, and O (fair twinklers), and I am puzzled between three P's Peacock, Miss

A

not a great novelist? Well, pass, great novelist, G. C. M. But if a poetic, a pictorial, a story-telling or musiccomposing artist, why not a singing artist? Why not a basso-profondo? Why not a primo tenore? And if a singer, why should not a ballet-dancer

* That of Lord Derby, in 1859, which included Mr. Disraeli and Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.