start, I woke up; and now perceived | were happy; but sleepless with aches, and agues, and rheumatism of old age. "The gentleman gave me brandy and water," she said, her old voice shak that I must have been dreaming altogether. "Dessein's" of nowadays is not the "Dessein's" which Mr. Sterne, and Mr. Brummell, and I rec-ing with rapture at the thought. I ollect in the good old times. The town of Calais has bought the old hotel, and "Dessein " has gone over to "Quillacq's." And I was there yesterday. And I remember old diligences, and old postilions in pigtails and jack-boots, who were once as alive as I am, and whose cracking whips I have heard in the midnight many and many a time. Now, where are they? Behold! they have been ferried over Styx, and have passed away into limbo. I wonder what time does my boat go? Ah! Here comes the waiter bringing me my little bill. never had a great love for Queen Charlotte, but I like her better now from what this old lady told me. The Queen, who loved snuff herself, has left a legacy of snuff to certain poorhouses; and, in her watchful nights, this old woman takes a pinch of Queen Charlotte's snuff, "and it do comfort me, sir, that it do!" Pulveris exigui munus. Here is a forlorn aged creature, shaking with palsy, with no soul among the great struggling multitude of mankind to care for her, not quite trampled out of life, but past and forgotten in the rush, made a little happy, and soothed in her hours of unrest by this penny legacy. Let me think as I write. (The next month's sermon, thank goodThis dis ON SOME CARP AT SANS ness! is safe to press.) SOUCI. We have lately made the acquaintance of an old lady of ninety, who has passed the last twenty-five years of her old life in a great metropolitan establishment, the workhouse, name- | ly, of the parish of Saint Lazarus. Stay twenty three or four years ago, she came out once, and thought to earn a little money by hop-picking; but being overworked, and having to lie out at night, she got a palsy which has incapacitated her from all further labor, and has caused her poor old limbs to shake ever since. An illustration of that dismal proverb which tells us how poverty makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows, this poor old shaking body has to lay herself down every night in her work-house bed by the side of some other old woman with whom she may or may not agree. She herself can't be a very pleasant bed-fellow, poor thing! with her shaking old limbs and cold feet. She lies awake a deal of the night, to be sure, not thinking of happy old times, for hers never for course will appear at the season when Herself ninety, her mother a hundred, her grandmother a hundred and two? What a queer calculation! were born, then, in 1772. Your mother, we will say, was twenty-seven when you were born, and was born therefore in 1745. Your grandmother was thirty when her daughter was born, and was born therefore in 1715. Ninety! Very good, granny: you | es to pay your respects to his good lady, the injured Queen of England, at Brandenburg House; and you remember your mother told you how she was taken to see the Scotch lords executed at the Tower. And as for your grandmother, she was born five years after the battle of Malplaquet, she was; where her poor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton for the Queen. With the help of a "Wade's Chronology," I can make out ever so queer a history for you, my poor old body, and a pedigree as authentic as many in the peeragebooks. We will begin with the present granny first. My good old creature, you can't of course remember, but that little gentleman for whom your mother was laundress in the Temple was the ingenious Mr. Goldsmith, author of a "History of England, "The Vicar of Wakefield," and many diverting pieces. You were brought almost an infant to his chambers, in Brick Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, for the doctor was always good to children. That gentleman who well-nigh smothered you by sitting down on you as you lay in a chair asleep was the learned Mr. S. Johnson, whose history of "Rasselas you have never read, my poor soul; and whose tragedy of "Irene" I don't believe any man in these kingdoms ever perused. That tipsy Scotch gentleman who used to come to the chambers sometimes, and at whom everybody laughed, wrote a more amusing book than any of the scholars, your Mr. Burke and your Mr. Johnson, and your Doctor Goldsmith. Your father often took him home in a chair to his lodgings; and has done as much for Parson Sterne in Bond Street, the famous wit. Of course, my good creature, you remember the Gordon Riots, and crying No Popery before Mr. Langdale's house, the Popish distiller's and that bonny fire of my Lord Mansfield's books in Bloomsbury Square? Bless us, what a heap of illuminations you have seen! For the glorious victory over the Americans at Breed's Hill; for the peace in 1814, and the beautiful Chinese bridge in St. James's Park; for the coronation of his Majesty, whom you recollect as Prince of Wales, Goody, don't you? Yes; and you went in a procession of laundress Peerage-books and pedigrees? What does she know about them? Battles and victories, treasons, kings, and beheadings, literary gentlemen, and the like, what have they ever been to her? Granny, did you ever hear of General Wolfe? Your mother may have seen him embark, and your father may have carried a musket under him. Your grandmother may have cried huzza for Marlborough; but what is the Prince Duke to you, and did you ever so much as hear tell of his name? How many hundred or thousand of years had that toad lived who was in the coal at the defunct Exhibition? - and yet he was not a bit better informed than toads seven or eight hundred years younger. "Don't talk to me your nonsense about Exhibitions, and Prince Dukes, and toads in coals, or coals in toads, or what is it? says granny. "I know there was a good Queen Charlotte, for she left me snuff; and it comforts me of a night when I lie awake." To me there is something very touching in the notion of that little pinch of comfort doled out to granny, and gratefully inhaled by her in the darkness. Don't you remember what traditions there used to be of chests of plate, bulses of diamonds, laces of inestimable value, sent out of the country privately by the old Queen to enrich certain relations in M-ckl-nb-rg Str-l-tz? Not all the treasure went. | (my Lord Orford, as you justly say), Non omnis moritur. A poor old palsied thing at midnight is made happy sometimes as she lifts her shaking old hand to her nose. Gliding noiselessly among the beds where lie the poor creatures huddled in their cheerless dormitory, I fancy an old ghost with a snuff-box that does not creak. “There, Goody, take of my rappee. You will not sneeze, and I shall not say 'God bless you.' But you will think kindly of old Queen Charlotte, won't old Sarah Marlborough, and little Mr. Pope, of Twitnam, died in the year of your birth? What a wretched memory you have! What? haven't they a library, and the commonest books of reference at the old convent of Saint Lazarus, where you dwell ?” "Convent of Saint Lazarus, Prince William, Dr. Swift, Atossa, and Mr. Pope, of Twitnam ! What is the gentleman talking about?" says old Goody, with a "Ho! ho!" and a laugh like an old parrot-you know they live to be as old as Methuselah, parrots do, and a parrot of a hundred is comparrotively young (ho! ho! ho!). Yes, and likewise carps live to an immense old age. Some which Frederick the Great fed at Sans Souci are there now, with great humps of blue mould on their old backs; and they could tell all sorts of queer stories, if they chose to speak but they are very silent, carps are of their nature peu communicatives. Oh! what has been thy long life, old Goody, buta dole of bread and water and a perch on a cage; a dreary swim round and round a Lethe of a pond? What are Rossbach or Jena to those mouldy ones, and do they know it is a grandchild of England who brings bread to feed them? 'Did I understand you, my good Twoshoes, to say that your mother was seven and twenty years old when you were born, and that she married your esteemed father when she herself No! Those Sans Souci carps may was twenty-five? 1745, then, was the live to be a thousand years old, and date of your dear mother's birth. I have nothing to tell but that one day dare say her father was absent in the is like another; and the history of Low Countries, with his Royal High-friend Goody Twoshoes has not much ness the Duke of Cumberland, under more variety than theirs. Hard lawhom he had the honor of carrying bor, hard fare, hard bed, numbing a halberd at the famous engagement cold all night, and gnawing hunger of Fontenoy or if not there, he most days. That is her lot. Is it may have been at Preston Pans, lawful in my prayers to say, "Thank under General Sir John Cope, when heaven, I am not as one of these"? the wild Highlanders broke through If I were eighty, would I like to feel all the laws of discipline, and the the hunger always gnawing, gnawEnglish lines; and, being on the spot, ing? to have to get up and make a did he see the famous ghost which bow when Mr. Bumble the beadle didn't appear to Colonel Gardiner of entered the common room? to have the Dragoons? My good creature, to listen to Miss Prim, who came to is it possible you don't remember that give me her ideas of the next world? Doctor Swift, Sir Robert Walpole | If I were eighty, I own I should not tragedy is acted over. Yesterday, in the street, I saw a pair of eyes so like two which used to brighten at my coming once, that the whole past came back as I walked lonely, in the rush of the Strand, and I was young again in the midst of joys and sorrows, alike sweet and sad, alike sacred and fondly remembered. like to have to sleep with another gentleman of my own age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old dreams, and snoring; to march down my vale of years at word of command, accommodating my tottering old steps to those of the other prisoners in my dingy, hopeless old gang; to hold out a trembling hand for a sickly pittance of gruel, and say, "Thank you, If I tell a tale out of school, will ma'm," to Miss Prim, when she has any harm come to my old school-girl? done reading_her_sermon. John! Once, a lady gave her a half-sovereign, when Goody Twoshoes comes next which was a source of great pain and Friday, I desire she may not be dis- anxiety to Goody Twoshoes. She turbed by theological controversies. sewed it away in her old stays someYou have a very fair voice, and I where, thinking here at least was a heard you and the maids singing a safe investment (vestis a vest hymn very sweetly the other night, an investment, - pardon me, thou and was thankful that our humble poor old thing, but I cannot help the household should be in such harmony. pleasantry). And what do you think? | Poor old Twoshoes is so old and Another pensionnaire of the estabtoothless and quaky, that she can't lishment cut the coin out of Goody's sing a bit; but don't be giving your- stays- an old woman who went upon self airs over her, because she can't two crutches! Faugh, the old witch! sing and you can. Make her com- What? Violence amongst these fortable at our kitchen hearth. Set toothless, tottering, trembling, feeble that old kettle to sing by our hob. ones? Robbery amongst the penniWarm her old stomach with nut- less? Dogs coming and snatching brown ale and a toast laid in the fire. Lazarus's crumbs out of his lap? Ah, Be kind to the poor old school-girl of how indignant Goody was as she ninety, who has had leave to come out told the story! To that pond at for a day of Christmas holiday. Shall Potsdam where the carps live for there be many more Christmases for hundreds of hundreds of years, with thee? Think of the ninety she has hunches of blue mould on their back, seen already; the fourscore and ten I dare say the little Prince and Princold, cheerless, nipping New Years! cess of Preussen-Britannien come sometimes with crumbs and cakes to feed the mouldy ones. Those eyes may have goggled from beneath the weeds at Napoleon's jack-boots: they have seen Frederick's lean shanks reflected in their pool; and perhaps Monsieur de Voltaire has fed them and now, for a crumb of biscuit they will fight, push, hustle, rob, squabble, gobble, relapsing into their tranquillity when the ignoble struggle is over. Sans souci, indeed! It is mighty well writing "Sans souci over the gate; but where is the gate through which care has not slipped? She perches on the shoulders of the sentry in the sentry-box: she whispers the porter sleeping in his arm-chair: she glides If you were in her place, would you like to have a remembrance of better carly days, when you were young, and happy, and loving, perhaps; or would you prefer to have no past on which your mind could rest? About the year 1788, Goody, were your cheeks rosy, and your eyes bright, and did some young fellow in powder and a pigtail look in them? We may grow old, but to us some stories never are old. On a sudden they rise up, not dead, but living- not forgotten, but freshly remembered. The eyes gleam on us as they used to do. The dear voice thrills in our hearts. The rapture of the meeting, the terrible, terrible parting, again and again the she was MARRIED — to that insignificant up the staircase, and lies down between | page); the words you were writing the king and queen in their bed-royal; when your mother came in, and said this very night I dare say she will it was all over perch upon poor old Goody Two-Emily married shoes's meagre bolster, and whisper, little rival at whom you have laughed "Will the gentleman and those ladies a hundred times in her company. ask me again? No, no; they will No, no; they will Well, well; my friend and reader, forget poor old Twoshoes.' Goody! whoe'er you be be-old man or young, For shame of yourself! Do not be wife or maiden you have had your cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-grief-pang. Boy, you have lain awake creatures. What? Has the Christmas the first night at school, and thought morning dawned upon thee ninety of home. Worse still, man, you have times ? For fourscore and ten years parted from the dear ones with bursthas it been thy lot to totter on thising heart; and, lonely boy, recall the earth, hungry and obscure? Peace bolstering an unfeeling comrade gave and goodwill to thee, let us say at this you; and lonely man, just torn from Christmas season. Come, drink, eat, your children their little tokens of rest a while at our hearth, thou poor affection yet in your pocket- pacing old pilgrim! And of the bread which the deck at evening in the midst of God's bounty gives us, I pray, brother the roaring ocean, you can remember reader, we may not forget to set aside how you were told that supper was a part for those noble and silent poor, ready, and how you went down to the from whose innocent hands war has cabin and had brandy and water and torn the means of labor. Enough! biscuit. You remember the taste of As I hope for beef at Christmas, I vow them. Yes; forever. You took them a note shall be sent to Saint Lazarus whilst you and your Grief were sitting Union House, in which Mr. Rounda- together, and your Grief clutched you bout requests the honor of Mrs. Two- round the soul. Serpent, how you shoes's company on Friday, 26th have writhed round me, and bitten December. me! Remorse, Remembrance, &c., come in the night season, and I feel you gnawing, gnawing! tell you that man's face was like Laocoon's (which, by the way, I always think over-rated. The real head is at Brussels, at the Duke Daremberg's, not at Rome). AUTOUR DE MON CHAPEAU. I NEVER have I seen a more noble tragic face. In the centre of the forehead there was a great furrow of That man! What man? That care, towards which the brows rose man of whom I said that his magnifipiteously. What a deep solemn grief cent countenance exhibited the noblest in the eyes! They looked blankly at tragic woe. He was not of European the object before them, but through blood. He was handsome, but not of it, as it were, and into the grief beyond. European beauty. His face whiteIn moments of pain, have you not not of a Northern whiteness; his eyes looked at some indifferent object so? protruding somewhat, and rolling in It mingles dumbly with your grief, their grief. Those eyes had seen the and remains afterwards connected Orient sun, and his beak was the with it in your mind. It may be eagle's. His lips were full. The some indifferent thing-a book beard, curling round them, was unwhich you were reading at the time kempt and tawny. The locks were when you received her farewell letter of a deep, deep coppery red. The (how well you remember the para-hands, swart and powerful, accusgraph afterwards the shape of the tomed to the rough grasp of the words, and their position on the wares in which he dealt, seemed un |