at intervals the deep volleying thunder. In the midst of this hubbub the Italian rubbed his hands, tripped lightly up and down his room, placed his ear at the keyhole, and chuckled and rubbed his hands again in a paroxysm of glee-now and again venting his gratification in brief ejaculations of intense delight the very incarnation of the spirit of mischief.

"The sounds in Sir Richard's room had ceased for two hours or more; and the piping wind and the deep-mouthed thunder still roared and rattled. The Neapolitan was too much excited to slumber. He continued, therefore, to pace the floor of his chambersometimes gazing through his window upon the black, stormy sky and the blue lightning, which leaped in blinding flashes across its darkness, revealing for a moment the ivyed walls, and the tossing trees, and the fields and hills, which were as instantaneously again swallowed in the blackness of the tempestuous night; and then turning from the casement, he would plant himself by the door, and listen with eager curiosity for any sound from Sir Richard's room.

"As we have said before, several hours had passed, and all had long been silent in the baronet's apartment, when on a sudden Parucci thought he heard the sharp and well-known knocking of his patron's ebony stick upon the floor. He ran and listened at his own door. The sound was repeated with unequivocal and vehement distinctness, and was instantaneously followed by a prolonged and violent peal from his master's hand-bell. The summons was so sustained and vehement, that the Italian at length cautiously withdrew the bolt, unlocked the door, and stole out upon the lobby. So far from abating, the sound grew louder and louder. On tiptoe he scaled the stairs, until he reached to about the midway; and he there paused, for he heard his master's voice exerted in a tone of terrified entreaty

"Not now-not now-avaunt-not now. Oh, God!-help,' cried the well-known voice.

"These words were followed by a crash, as of some heavy body springing from the bed -then a rush upon the floor-then another crash.

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"The voice was hushed; but in its stead the wild storm made a long and plaintive moan, and the listener's heart turned cold. Malora-Corpo di Pluto!' muttered he between his teeth. 'What is it? Will he reeng again? Santo gennaro !—there is something wrong.'

"He paused in fearful curiosity; but the summons was not repeated. Five minutes passed; and yet no sound but the howling and pealing of the storm. Parucci, with a beating heart, ascended the stairs, and knocked at the door of his patron's chamber. No answer was returned.

"Sir Richard, Sir Richard,' cried the man, 'do you want me, Sir Richard?'

"Still no answer. He pushed open the door and entered. A candle, wasted to the very socket, stood upon a table beside the huge, hearse-like bed, which for the convenience of the invalid had been removed from his bed-chamber to his dressing-room. The light was dim, and waved uncertainly in the eddies which found their way through the chinks of the window, so that the lights and shadows flitted ambiguously across the ob jects in the room. At the end of the bed a table had been upset; and lying near it upon the floor was something-a heap of bedclothes, or could it be?-yes, it was Sir Richard Ashwoode.

The

"Parucci approached the prostrate figure: it was lying upon its back, the countenance fixed and livid, the eyes staring and glazed, and the jaw fallen-he was a corpse. Italian stooped down and took the hand of the dead man-it was already cold; he called him by his name and shook him, but all in vain. There lay the cunning intriguer, the fierce, fiery prodigal, the impetuous, unrelenting tyrant, the unbelieving, reckless man of the world, a ghastly lump of clay.

"With strange emotions the Neapolitan gazed upon the lifeless effigy from which the evil tenant had been so suddenly and fearfully called to its eternal and unseen abode.

"Gone-dead-all over-all past,' muttered he slowly, while he pressed his foot upon the dead body, as if to satisfy himself that life was indeed extinct-'quite gone. Canchero! it was ugly death-there was something with him; what was he speaking with ?'

"Parucci walked to the door leading to the great staircase, but found it bolted as usual.

"Pshaw, there was nothing,' said he, looking fearfully round the room as he approached the body again, and repeating the negative as if to re-assure himself—no, nonothing, nothing.'

"He gazed again on the awful spectacle in silence for several minutes.

"Corbezzoli, and so it is over,' at length he ejaculated-'the game is ended. See, see, the breast is bare, and there the two marks of Aldini's stiletto. Ah! briccone, briccone, what wild faylow were you-panzanera, for a pretty ankle and a pair of black eyes, you would dare the devil. Rotto di collo, his face is moving!-pshaw, it is only the light that wavers. Diamine! the face is terrible. What made him speak; nothing was with him-pshaw, nothing could come to him here-no, no, nothing.'

"As he thus spoke, the wind swept vehemently upon the windows with a sound as if some great thing had rushed against them, and was pressing for admission, and the gust blew out the candle; the blast died away in a lengthened wail, and then again came rushing and howling up to the windows, as if the very prince of the powers of the air himself were thundering at the casement;

then again the blue dazzling lightning glared into the room and gave place to deeper darkness.

"Pah! that lightning smells like brimstone. Sangue d'un dua, I hear something in the room.'

"Yielding to his terrors, Parucci stumbled to the door opening upon the great lobby, and with cold and trembling fingers drawing the bolt, sprang to the stairs and shouted for assistance in a tone which speedily assembled half the household in the chamber of death."

"Woman's Friendship" is a tale told, as woman only could tell it, of the influence and truth of such disinterested affection. The authoress, it has been spoken to us in Christian hope, is "where the weary are at rest." We content ourselves with transcribing two passages from her unpretending little volume. The subject of both sketches is a young artist and poet, who had contended with the difficulties of an adverse condition and a feeble constitution :—

"But though Florence could not summon sufficient courage to remain while the interview lasted, suspense became so intolerable that she felt as if the most dreaded reality could be better borne. Hardly knowing her own intentions, she waited in a little sittingroom, till they descended; then springing forward, she caught hold of Sir Charles's hand, and looked up in his face with cheeks and lips perfectly blanched, and every effort to speak died away in indistinct murmurs. Only too well accustomed to such painful scenes, the physician gently led her within the parlour and closed the door; the action recalled voice, and she gasped forth"Oh! is there no hope? will you not save him? Tell me he will not die!'

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My good young lady, life and death are not in the hands of man; yet it were cruel, unwisely cruel, to give you hope. Your brother's mind has been his poison-I dare not tell you-he may live.'

"But he will linger-he may be spared us many years yet,' persisted Florence, in the wild accents of one determined against belief. It cannot be that he will go now—— 80 young-so- -but forgive me,' she added, when the hysterical sobs gave way, 'tell me, I am better now-I can bear it-I ought to know, for my poor mother's sake, how long we may call him ours?'

"The reply was given kindly and carefully; but what language, what gentleness may

She

soften the bitter anguish of such words? Florence heard, and yet she sank not. bade farewell to those kind friends; she saw them go, but still she stood as if thought, sense, life itself were frozen; and then she rushed up the stairs into her own room, secured the door, and sinking on her knees, buried her face in the bed-clothes, and her slight frame shook beneath its agony.

"Another hour, and that suffering girl was seated by her brother's couch, holding his hand in hers, and with a marble cheek, but faint sweet smile, listening to and sympathising in his lovely dreams of fame. And such is woman,-her tears are with her God, her smile with man; the heart may break, and who shall know it?

"Mr. Morton had suggested a frontispiece as an improvement to his book, and Walter's every energy now turned to the composition of a picture from which the print might be engraven. He had resolved not to put his name to the publication, and therefore felt that a group entitled 'The Poet's Home' could convey no identity; and he commenced his task with an ardour and enjoyment, strangely at variance with the prostrating languor of disease. Who that has watched the workings of the mind and spirit, as the human frame decays, can doubt our immortality? How can the awful creed of materialism exist with the view of that bright light of mind shining purer and brighter, with every hour that brings death nearer? Life may afford matter for the sceptic and the materialist to weave their fearful theories upon, though we know not how it can; but let such look on the approach of sure yet lingering death, and how will they retain them then?"

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Many scenes of life are holy-the early morn, the twilight hour, the starry night, the rolling storm, the hymn of thousands from the sacred fane, the marriage rite, or funeral dirge; but none more holy than the chamber of the dying, lingering beside a departing spirit, seeming as if already the angel shone above the mortal, waiting but the eternal summons to wing his flight on high.

"One evening Walter's couch had been drawn near the open casement, which looked into the garden at the back of the house; and even the dirty green and scentless flowers, peculiar to the environs of London, were grateful to the poet. He was propped up with pillows, and his hand was yet busy on the canvass, giving the last touches to his picture.

"All was completed but the figure of Minie, who was sitting in the required attitude; but it was well he had not waited till that moment to give the joyous expression he so much loved.

"An hour passed, and no movement, no sound disturbed that little party: the hand of the artist moved languidly, but still it moved, and the concluding touches started into life beneath it. Sometimes his eyes would close, and then after a brief interval of rest, re-open to look upon his task.

"Florence had not yet returned, having gone out of her way to purchase some fresh flowers, as was her custom every third day, in spite of Walter's remonstrances: the intense delight which they always gave him was too visible to permit any cessation of the indulgence that she deprived herself of many little necessaries, and, exhausted and weary, never rode to her pupils, that she might save to purchase luxuries for him, he never knew. She often recalled Emily Melford's horror of exertion, and half smiled at the widely different meanings that word bore in their respective vocabularies: but a bitter feeling mingled with the smile at her own credulity in Emily's profession of interest and regard from the day she had sought her to the present moment, a full year, she had rested as silent and indifferent as before.

"As Florence came within sight of the bay-windows of her house, she fancied that she could distinguish the figure of Walter looking down the road, as if watching her

return.

She was surprised, because, since his increasing illness, they had changed their apartment from the front to the back sittingroom, in order to give him more quiet and fresh air than the dusty road afforded. What he could be doing there she could not conceive, for even if he were anxious for her return and wished to watch for her, he surely had not sufficient strength to walk from one room to another, and there remain standing so that she could distinguish his full figure. Hope flashed on her heart that he was better. Some extraordinary change must have taken place, and he might yet live! Oh, what a sudden thrill came with that fond thought! and she hurried, almost ran the intervening space. Breathless she entered the house, and sprang up the staircase.

What, settled again so soon at your drawing, dearest Walter, and only a minute ago I saw you beckoning me from the next room-how could you stand there so long?'

"Mrs. Leslie put her finger on her lips'You have been strangely deceived, my love, Walter has not quitted this room nor this posture for some hours. Come softly, I think he sleeps.'

"No word, no cry, passed the lips of Florence, although a pang, sharp as if every drop of blood were turned to ice, curdled through ber frame. She knew she was not deceived. As surely as she now looked on him, she felt she had seen him smile, as if to bid her hasten home, not ten minutes before, and with

a fleet and noiseless step she stood beside him. The pencil was still within his hand, but it moved no longer on the canvass-the eyes were closed, the lips were parted: she bent down her head and pressed her lips upon his brow-it was marbly cold.

"Walter!' she shrieked, for in that dread moment she knew not what she did. Walter-my brother-speak to me-look on me again!'

"For a moment she stood as if waiting for the look, the voice she called; then, pressing her hands wildly to her brow, sought to collect thought, energy, control, for her poor mother's sake-but all, all failed-and, for the first time in her life, she sunk down in a deep and death-like swoon."

The authoress of "Two Old Men's Tales" has been engaged in what is called "a social story." It appears in that beautiful periodical, "The Ladies' Companion at Home and Abroad," and it is worthy of its author's reputation. How manifest and how characteristic is the distinction between the language of those who would use the poor for their own purposes, and of those who would serve them! How manifest and characteristic the distinction between the Socialist and the Christian, in their descriptions of those sufferings by which poverty tries the children of affliction. The one is perpetually solicitous to set out such sufferings as testimony against the system which protects social order-the other, as an occasion to call forth an exercise of Christian benevolence. The Socialist gives a voice and speech to poverty, as if it cried out for vengeance against the prosperous-the Christian interprets the accents of distress as invitations to discharge a duty which is twice blessed, and to give for the sake of Him through whom his people hope to be forgiven. The Socialist would relieve the wants he describes at the cost of pulling down the edifice of Government and Order. The Christian would supply the deficiency for which human policy has not provided, by calling in the aid of a divine principle, which that very deficiency has been provi dentially appointed to call into exercise. Human institutions permit great inequality of condition, and leave severe sufferings unrelieved-then, cries the Socialist, down with existing insti

tutions. The Christian philanthropist confesses the same truth, but would assign the office of redressing the wrong to that principle which "vaunteth not itself, seeketh not its own-is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly." Thus it is, Convulsion and Ruin are the Socialist's reformers. The true philanthropist evokes the aid of Christianity.

One sketch from this little gem of a story, we cannot refrain from offering to the reader :

"Two young women inhabited one small room of about ten feet by eight, in the upper story of a set of houses somewhere near Mary-le-bon-street. These houses appear

to have been once intended for rather substantial persons, but have gradually sunk into lodging-houses for the very poor. The premises look upon an old grave-yard; a dreary prospect enough, but perhaps preferable to a close street, and are filled with decent but very poor people. Every room appears to serve a whole family, and few of the rooms are much larger than the one I have described.

"It was now half-past twelve o'clock, and still the miserable dip tallow candle burned in a dilapidated tin candlestick. The wind whistled with that peculiar wintry sound which betokens that snow is falling; it was very, very cold,-the fire was out, and the girl who sat plying her needle by the hearth, which was still a little warmer than the rest of the room, had wrapped up her feet in an old worn-out piece of flannel, and had an old black silk wadded cloak thrown over her to keep her from being almost perished. The room was scantily furnished, and bore an air of extreme poverty, amounting almost to absolute destitution. One by one the little articles of property possessed by its inmates had disappeared to supply the calls of urgent want. An old four-post bedstead, with curtains of worn-out serge, stood in one corner; one mattress, with two small, thin pillows, and a bolster that was almost flat; three old blankets, cotton sheets of the coarsest description upon it; three rushbottomed chairs, an old claw-table, a very ancient, dilapidated chest of drawers,―at the top of which were a few battered bandboxes, a miserable bit of carpet before the fire-place; a wooden box for coals; a little low tin fender, a poker, or rather half a poker; a shovel and tongs, much the worse for wear, and a very few kitchen utensils, was all the furniture in the room. What there was, however, was kept clean; the floor was clean, the yellow paint was clean; and, I forgot to say, there was a washingtub set aside in one corner.

"The wind blew shrill, and shook the window, and the snow was heard beating

against the panes; the clock went another quarter, but still the indefatigable toiler sewed on. Now and then she lifted up her head, as a sigh came from that corner of the room where the bed stood, and some one might be heard turning and tossing uneasily upon the mattress, then she returned to her occupation, and plied her needle with increased assiduity.

"The workwoman was a girl of from eighteen to twenty, rather below the middle size, and of a face and form little adapted to figure in a story. One whose life, in all probability, would never be diversified by those romantic adventures which real life in general reserves to the beautiful and highly-gifted. Her features were rather homely, her hair of a light brown, without golden threads through it, her hands and arms rough and red with cold and labour; her dress ordinary to a degree, her clothes being of the cheapest materials, but then, these clothes were so neat, so carefully mended where they had given way; the hair was so smooth, and so closely and neatly drawn round the face; and the face itself had such a sweet expression, that all the defects of line and colour were redeemed to the lover of expression, rather than beauty.

"She did not look patient, she did not look resigned; she could not look cheerful exactly. She looked earnest, composed, busy, and exceedingly kind. She had not, it would seem, thought enough of self in the midst of her privations, to require the exercise of the virtues of patience and resignation; she was so occupied with the sufferings of others that she never seemed to think of her own.

She was naturally of the most cheerful, hopeful temper in the world-those people without selfishness usually are. And, though sorrow had a little lowered the tone of her spirits to composure, and work and disappointment had faded the bright colours of hope; still hope was not entirely gone, nor cheerfulness exhausted. But the predominant expression of every word and look, and tone, and gesture, was kindness,-inexhaustible kindness.

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I said she lifted up her head from time time to time, as a sigh proceeded from the bed, and its suffering inhabitant tossed and tossed: and at last she broke silence and said, Poor Myra, can't you get to sleep?'

"It is so fearfully cold,' was the reply; 'and when will you have done and come to bed?'

"One quarter of an hour more, and I shall have finished it. Poor Myra, you are so nervous, you never can get to sleep till all is shut up-but have patience, dear, one little quarter of an hour, and then I will throw my clothes over your feet, and I hope you will be a little warmer.'

"A sigh was all the answer; and then the true heroine, for she was extremely beautiful, or rather had been, poor thing, for she was too wan and wasted to be beautiful now,-lifted

up her head, from which fell a profusion of the fairest hair in the world, and leaning her head upon her arm, watched in a sort of impatient patience, the progress of the indefatigable needle-woman.

One o'clock striking, and you hav'nt done yet, Lettice? how slowly you do get

on.'

"I cannot work fast and neatly too, dear Myra. I cannot get through as some do-I wish I could. But my hands are not so delicate and nimble as yours, such swelled clumsy things,' she said, laughing a little, as she looked at them-swelled, indeed, and all mottled over with the cold! 'I cannot get over the ground nimbly and well at the same time. You are a fine race-horse, I am a poor little drudging pony, but I will make as much haste as I possibly can.'

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Myra once more uttered an impatient fretful sigh, and sank down again, saying, 'My feet are so dreadfully cold!'

"Take this bit of flannel, then, and let me wrap them up.'

"Nay, but you will want it.'

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"Oh, I have only five minutes more to stay, and I can wrap the carpet round my feet.'

"And she laid down her work and went to the bed, and wrapped her sister's delicate, but now icy feet, in the flannel; and then she sat down; and at last the task was finished. And oh, how glad she was to creep to that mattress, and to lay her aching limbs down upon it! Hard it might be, and wretched the pillows, and scanty the covering, but little felt she such inconveniences. She fell asleep almost immediately, whilst her sister still tossed and murmured. Presently Lettice, for Lettice it was, awakened a little and said, 'What is it, love? Poor, poor Myra! Oh, that you could but sleep as I do.'

"And then she drew her own little pillow from under her head, and put it under her sister's, and tried to make her comfortable; and she partly succeeded, and at last the poor, delicate, suffering creature fell asleep, and then Lettice slumbered like a baby."

It has been purely accidental that the works mentioned in this article have all been the production of female genius, two of them, we believe, of writers from whom our own country can derive honour. How such works may minister to the best interests of society and of man, it is scarcely necessary for us to speak—

"Caust thou not minister to a mind diseased-
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow-
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
That weighs upon the heart."

But there are ministrations not named in the Pharmacopeia, which can do more than the physician in Macbeth dreamed of. There are anodynes which can affect even the body through the mind. How deeply momentous it is that, they be carefully How prepared and administered! richly are they rewarded, and, in some instances, how grievously are they abused!

We account it among the happy characteristics of our age, that, in so many instances, periodical literature offers so many safe distractions for heavy hearts and troubled minds; and that, in no few instances, they who read only to be entertained, are acquiring, in their self-indulgence, valuable information. There are, it must be admitted, periodicals of a far different description, designed, as it might seem, to efface good impressions from the heart, to pamper vicious inclinations, and to undermine principle. Such are of the agencies in which a deceiving spirit makes his presence most mischievously manifest. Their omnigenous character, their cheapness, and their abundance" their name is legion, for they are many"-impose a solemn and a peculiar duty on all who have the welfare of society at heart-the duty of protecting such of the millions of our people as they can influence, from the ravages of these locust visitations. The duty will be most effectually discharged by supplying what is good; but the supply should be accompanied by an exposure of the disguises under which the concoctors of intellectual poison endeavour to screen their malignity from public opprobrium. It would be well worth the devotion of good men's lives to watch over reading-clubs or book societies, where the working classes form the great staple of the members. It is among the great advantages of our time, that wholesome aliment for the mind can be had in such abundance, and of so agreeable a quality, that the vile productions of what has been called the "Satanic School" would soon fall into contemptuous neglect, and return in the form of unsaleable stock "to plague the inventors," if even moderate pains were taken to bring really useful literature within the reach of the people, or rather, for it is

under their observation.