The enraged parent has split his skull spang to his chin! years. Nothing less graceful and dignified than the * On! on! on! "Dearest Josey," murmured the fair maiden in a low voice, the music of which showed plainly that she would have attained high distinction as a street crier of wares-" Dearest Josey, I fear, oh! I fear the rage of my pa when he finds out that I've gone and run away! Oh, Josey, dear, I fear the rage of my pa!" "Calm yourself, sweet Sukey," was the answer of the gentleman, in a soothing tone, "am I not here? Sooner than I would resign thee I would heroically place my little finger on the headsman's block! By the storm now raging above us, and by the powers of earth and air, I swear never to desert thee, come weal or come wo! A few short hours, and we shall reach a place where we can be united forever in Hymen's silken chain. But I don't think Jack is driving with sufficient rapidity. Let me stir him up!" The boys in number six vowed they would no The entire contents of his brain-pan are blown out? longer bear the insolence of number eight. These And where is the carriage? The horses, having taken fright at the horrible clashing of swords, have run and jumped off the nearest precipice, which happens to be a little more than twelve hundred feet high. Horses, carriage and maiden are smashed! Look for the last time! In the forest lie three dead bodies- At the foot of the rocks lie five dead bodies- were the two largest sleeping rooms in the schoolhouse where I boarded in the days when my face was not yet bronzed by travel, when my legs were considerably shorter, and my luxuriant beard as yet an invisible dream. I was thirteen, and the oldest boy in the room except Slokins, who was sixteen, though you would never have thought it to look at him, for he was the shortest boy in our class, and the stupidest. However, he was a very good fellow, and ready enough for anything but fighting. Our room was on the top floor of the house, so we resolved to have a grand bolstering campaign, and And again the voice comes mournfully through as a preliminary measure I proposed that somebody the trees, crying- BLOOD!" TURKISH ARABA. OUR illustration (see page 199,) shows a party sinian. should creep on all fours into No. 8, and pull who was so clumsy that he never could catch a of Turkish ladies out for an excursion. The cricket-ball in his life, and was the poorest shot at carriage is the Turkish araba, a kind of waggon marbles I ever saw. drawn by buffaloes. The attendants are slaves, "Not you," said Stookleson junior, a small, redwell armed, under the direction of a tall Abys-haired boy, who, like a little terrier, would fight The destination of the party is probably anything, however big, and never leave off under the valley of Sweet Waters-a delightful place of any circumstances. "Not you, Boxer, you always resort a little distance from Constantinople-or stumble or knock something over." some quiet spot on the shores of the Bosphorus, where they can witness some dancing, and drink wine and brandy ad libitum. We are credibly informed that the ladies of The dead claim a large share of their solicitude. Joseph Green," he said in an awful tone, FUNERALS IN PARIS.-All funerals in Paris are "what have you done with my daughter ?" performed by one chartered, registered company. "She is here, tyrannical parent!" observed the They have got a privilege, a concession, a monopoly man in the carriage. from the government. If you die in the Roman "Come forth, villain!" shouts the incensed Catholic faith, nobody else can bury you. They father," and defend thyself! Here, amid the storm have an office that is open fourteen hours out of the of elements, this day and this hour, thou diest like twenty-four; they own five hundred black horses, a dog! eighty hearses of various sizes, (one expressly for "Thou liest! With this good sword will I meet giants), drivers, mourners, bier-carriers, carpenters, thee, and God defend the right !" drapers, without number; they have shields and The gentleman gets out and draws his toasting armorial bearings ready painted for all the titled iron! They fight ! Long and desperate is the struggle-quick and fierce is the clashing of swords! For somewhere about two hours and a half they combat with the resolution of despair! It is at an end! The lover falls! families in Paris; they have hangings for doorways "Who then?" said Twigsy, the boy who was so delicate that he was ordered a glass of port-wine every day to keep up his stamina, and who was always kissing little Lucy, the master's daughter, in the shrubbery, and who used to buy brandy and bring it up into the bedroom at night, in a soda water bottle, and gave it us to drink out of the shell of a cocoanut. "" Why, Slokins, of course, because he's the oldest," shouted Tom Crisp. "Yes, Slokins for ever!" cried the whole room in chorus. But Slokins would not go, so I, as leader of the expedition, finally volunteered to undertake the hazardous enterprise; and off we started, marching noiselessly in Indian file, holding our night-shirts tightly round us to prevent them from rustling, and each, with his bolster over his shoulder, prepared for the direst extremities. I halted within a yard of the open door of No. 8, and crawling like a "last of the Mohicans," or the celebrated serpent who tempted Eve, on my belly, contrived to reach the foot of Clinton senior's bed, insert my dexter hand under the bedclothes, and give his toe a jerk which roused him like a galvanic shock from the embrace of an incipient slumber. "A-e-o-n-y!" squealed Clinton, "who is that?" and he sprang out of bed, but only to be knocked down, instanter, by Twigsy's bolster. Immediately, an immense slaughter took place. At the foot of every bed in No. 8 was a hero of No. 6, whacking away, like a steam-engine, at the prostrate form of his victim. It was a decided case of surprise, and some minutes elapsed before the enemy rallied. No sooner, however, did they re cover the first shock of our insidious attack, than out they tumbled, and fought with the wilder exasperation from their preliminary drubbing. Slokins, I am sorry to say, beat an inglorious retreat, and shortly afterwards Clinton put the main body of our army to flight, by meanly cutting at their legs with his suspenders. But in the corridor, and on neutral ground, the fight yet raged with Homeric fury, and was at the point of excitement, when a sudden flash of light from the well-staircase warned us of the approach of a third and yet more powerful force. It was in fact the master, who was already on the last turn of the stairs, and would inevitably be upon us before we could return to our dormitories. Whackam, "unless the offender be now given up." panther. It is much admired for its fidelity and Next morning, the doctor forgot to cane us. A new boy had arrived, and Whackam was in a good humor consequently. But at night we had an awful story to tell to the new tenant of the "Haunted Bed." I may as well add, though it has properly speaking nothing to do with the story, that we let down the newboy's pantaloons by a string to the floor below, where they took them in and cut the cord for us; that we, furthermore, filled his boots with nut shells, and put a small frog in his milk and water at breakfast. He turned out a first-rate bolsterer, and when we got up amateur theatricals nearly smothered Stookelson as Desdemona, in the ferocious character of Othello. AT SYDENHAM. I having been the last to retreat from the camp of the hostile forces, was now behind all the rest of my party, who had mutely taken to their heels, and fled madly up the passage towards No. 8. Seeing, therefore, that escape was impossible, I SCULPTURE IN THE CRYSTAL PALACE resolved, like a second Horatius, to "defend the staircase," and commenced by launching my bolster over the bannisters. Falling plump on the head of HE collection of sculpture in the Crystal the ascending master, and extinguishing his light, Palace at Sydenham is extraordinary. It it was a perfectly successful operation. I was snug comprises illustrations of every age and nationin bed like the rest by the time he had obtained a ancient, mediæval, and modern. Here, the Apollo fresh candlestick and returned to the attack. Belvidere, the Venus de Medicis, the Farnesian "What boy threw that bolster?" said the deep- Hercules, the Laocoon, the Discobulus: all Greek toned voice of Dr. Whackam. Silence. T statues-relics of an age of lively enthusiasm for the majestic and the beautiful. There, works of the "I say who threw that bolster?" reiterated the Roman era, in which there is less of beauty but doctor. 66 Why don't you speak?” Nobody spoke, or gave any reason for not doing so. "I'll soon find out," said the angry pedagogue. "Twigsy, where's your bolster ?” "Here, sir." "And yours?" 66 Here, sir." more of portraiture-for it was the conquerors, the The artist has not orientalised his picture of life in the forest; but in its whole execution seems to betray an intimate knowledge of the road to perfection, as laid down by Michael Angelo. A friend called on that great man, who was finishing a statue ; some time afterwards he called again. The sculptor was still at his work. His friend, looking at the figure, exclaimed: "You have been idle since I saw you last!" "By no means!" replied the sculptor. "I have retouched this part and polished that; I have softened this feature and brought out this muscle; I have given more expression to this lip, and more energy to this limb !" "Well," said his friend; "but all these are trifles!" "It may be so!" replied Angelo ; "but recollect that trifles make perfection, and that perfection is no trifle!" THE FALLEN FOE.-A sailor writing from the Baltic, says :-"I fired. He fell like a stone. A broadside from the went in amongst the trees, and the enemy disappeared, we could scarcely tell how. I felt as though I must go up to him to see whether he was dead or alive. He lay quite still, and I was more afraid of him lying so than when he stood facing me a few minutes before. It's a strange feeling to come over you all at once that you have killed a man. He had unbottoned his jacket, and A large collection of modern productions, both by was pressing his hand over the front of his chest foreign and native artists, are also there. Casts of where the wound was. He breathed hard and the the colossal head of Bavaria, and the equestrian blood poured from the wound and also from his statue of Frederick the Great, by Raunch. Thor-mouth, every breath he took. His face was white waldsen, Canova, and other great European artists, as death, and his eyes looked so big and bright as He had at length satisfied himself of the presence with all our own native sculptors—whose imagin- he turned them and stared at me—I shall never forof every boy's bolster but mine, and all clearly fore-ings, though mentioned last in this description, are get it. He was a fine young fellow, not more than saw that the exposure of the culprit was at hand, not least in whatever is truly valuable, talented, and 25. I went down on my knees beside him, and my and that if virtue were not immediately rewarded, praiseworthy-are also largely represented. breast was so full as though my heart would burst. vice stood an admirable chance of being summarily One of our illustrations this week is "The He had a real English face, and did not look like an punished. Massacre of the Innocents "-a sculptured group by enemy. What I felt I never can tell, but if my life the celebrated Dini. As will be seen from the would have saved his, I believe I should have given engraving, it is a work of striking excellence. The it. I laid his head on my knee and he grasped hold brawny figure, close-cropped hair, and stolid aspect of my hand and tried to speak, but his voice was of the executioner serve to render the mother's gone. I could not tell a word he said, and every time he tried to speak the blood poured out so, I knew it would soon be over. "And yours?" "Here, sir." "Mr. Franklin Lafayette Hopscotch, where is your bolster, if you please," said Whackam sardonically, bringing his candle to bear upon my devoted bed. “Here, sir,” said I cheerfully, to the utter amaze- desperation and anguish the most vivid and intense. ment of every boy in the room. She is an exact embodiment of the maternal feeling For an instant the doctor was staggered. Seven struggling, body and soul, for the preservation of boys and eight bolsters! He would as readily have her offspring. We can almost fancy that we behold believed in seven boys and eight heads. But his Rachael struggling with the assassin on the threshold consternation was brief; he suddenly observed that of her home. The story of the work is of course there was a spare bed in the corner. He hastened taken from the narrative of the Evangelist, St. to inspect it. The bolster was absent! Matthew, and no doubt the artist had Rachael before "Who threw that bolster ?" repeated Doctor his mental eye when he designed the beautiful Whackam. figure of the supplicating and frantic mother. All "The ghost of the boy who died in the spare our readers will remember the graphic passage: bed!" said a sepulchral voice. "In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation It was the voice of Slokins, and so artfully dis-and weeping, and great mourning; Rachael weepguised that everybody started; and the smaller boys | for her children, and would not be comforted, bewere thrown into a cold perspiration. "Who spoke?" said the doctor. Silence. cause they are not." We also give an illustration of a beautiful group by Wydnmann-a celebrated artist of Munich. “I shall cane you all to-morrow morning," said The subject is a hunter defending his family from a "I am not ashamed to say that I was worse than he, for he never shed a tear, and I couldn't help it. His eyes were closing when a gun was fired from the to order us on board, and that roused him. He pointed to the beach, where the boat was just pushing off with the guns we had taken, and where our marines were waiting to man the second boat; and then he pointed to the wood where the enemy was concealed-poor fellow, he little thought how I had shot him down. Very engaging, sir?" said Mrs. Sparsit, causing her mittens slowly to revolve over one another. Highly so." 66 "It used to be considered," said Mrs. Sparsit, "that Miss Gradgrind was wanting in animation, but I confess she appears to me considerably and strikingly improved in that respect. Ay, and indeed here is Mr. Bounderby!" said Mrs. Sparsit, nodding her head a great many times, as if she had been talking and thinking of no one else. "How do you find yourself this morning, sir? Pray let us see you cheerful sir." Now, these persistent assuagements of his misery, and lightenings of his load, had by this time begun to have the effect of making Mr. Bounderby softer than usual towards Mrs. Sparsit, and harder than usual to most other people from his wife downward. So when Mrs. Sparsit said with forced lightness of heart, "You want your breakfast, sir, but I dare say Miss Gradgrind will soon be here to preside at the table," Mr. Bounderby replied, "If I waited to be taken care of by my wife, ma'am, I believe you know pretty well I should wait till Doomsday, so I'll trouble you to take charge of the teapot." Mrs. Sparsit complied, and assumed her old position at table. This again made the excellent woman vastly sentimental. She was so humble withal, that when Louisa appeared, she rose, protesting she never could think of sitting in that place under existing circumstances, often as she had had the honor of making Mr. Bounderby's breakfast, before Mrs. Gradgrind-she begged pardon, she meant to say Miss Bounderby-she hoped to be excused, but she really could not get it right yet, though she trusted to become familiar with it by and by-had assumed her present position. It was only (she observed) because Miss Gradgrind happened to be a little late, and Mr. Bounderby's time was so very precious, and she knew it of old to be so essential that he should breakfast to the moment, that she had taken the liberty of complying with his request as long as his will had been a law to her. "There! Stop where you are, ma'am," said Mr. Bounderby, "stop where you are! Mrs. Bounderby will be very glad to be relieved of the trouble, I believe." "Don't say that, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, almost with severity, "because that is very unkind to Mrs. Bounderby, in a blustering way, to his wife. "Of course. It is of no moment. Why should 66 You are old fashioned, ma'am. You are behind did any of the best influences of old home descend Tom Gradgrind`s children's time." upon her. The dreams of childhood-its fairy fables; "What is the matter with you?" asked Louisa, its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adorncoldly surprised. "What has given you offence?" ments of the world beyond; so good as to be be"Offence!" repeated Bounderby. "Do you sup-lieved in once, so good to be remembered when outpose if there was any offence given me, I shouldn't grown, for then the least among them rises to the name it, and request to have it corrected? I am a stature of a great Charity in the heart, suffering straightforward man, I believe. I don't go beating little Children to come into the midst of it, and about for side-winds." to keep with their pure hands a garden in the stony "I suppose no one ever had occasion to think ways of this world, wherein it were better for all you too diffident, or too delicate," Louisa answered the children of Adam that they should oftener sun him composedly: "I have never made that objection themselves, simple and trustful, and not wordlyto you, either as a child or as a woman. I don't wise-what had she to do with these? Rememunderstand what you would have." brances of how she had journeyed to the little that she knew, by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how, first coming upon Reason through the tender light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as itself: not a grim Idol, cruel and cold, with its victims bound hand to foot, and its big dumb shape set up with a sightless stare, never to be moved by anything but so many calculated tons of leverage—what had she to do with these? Her remembrances of home and childhood were remembrances of the drying up of every spring and fountain in her young heart as it gushed out. The golden waters were not there. They were flowing for the fertilisation of the land where grapes are gathered from thorns, and figs from thistles. "Have?" returned Mr. Bounderby. Nothing Otherwise, don't you, Loo Bounderby, know thoroughly well that I, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, would have it?" She looked at him, as he struck the table and made the teacups ring, with a proud color in her face that was a new change, Mr. Harthouse thought. "You are incomprehensible this morning," said Louisa. "Pray take no further trouble to explain yourself. I am not curious to know your meaning. What does it matter!" Nothing more was said on this theme, and Mr. Harthouse was soon idly gay on indifferent subjects. But, from this day, the Sparsit action upon Mr. Bounderby threw Louisa and James Harthouse more together, and strengthened the dangerous alienation from her husband and confidence against him with another, into which she had fallen by she tried. But, whether she ever tried or no, lay degrees so fine that she could not retrace them if hidden in her own closed heart. Mrs. Sparsit was so much affected on this particular occasion, that, assisting Mr. Bounderby to his hat after breakfast, and being then alone with him in the hall, she imprinted a chaste kiss upon his hand, murmured "my benefactor!" and retired, overwhelmed with grief. Yet it is an indubitable fact, within the cognizance of this history, that five minutes after he had left the house in the self-same hat, the same descendant of the Scadgerses and connexion by matrimony of the Powlers, shook her right-hand mitten at his portrait, made a contemptuous grimace at that work of art, and said "Serve you right, you Noodle, and I am glad of it!" Mr. Bounderby had not been long gone, when Bitzer appeared. Bitzer had come down by train, shrieking and rattling over the long line of arches that bestrode the wild country and of past and present coal pits, with an express from Stone Lodge. It was a hasty note to inform Louisa, that Mrs. Gradgrind lay very ill. She had never been well, within her daughter's knowledge; but, she had declined within the last few days, had continued sinking all through the night, and was now as nearly dead, as her limited capacity of being in any state that implied the ghost of an intention to get out of it, allowed. Accompanied by the lightest of porters, fit colorit be of any importance to me?" less servitor at Death's door when Mrs. Gradgrind "Why should it be of any importance to any one, knocked, Louisa rumbled to Coketown, over the Mrs. Sparsit, ma'am?" said Mr. Bounderby, swell-coalpits past and present, and was whirled into its ing with a sense of slight. "You attach too much smoky jaws. She dismissed the messenger to his importance to these things, ma'am. By George, own devices, and rode away to her old home. you'll be corrected in some of your notions here. Neither, as she approached her old home now, She went, with a heavy, hardened kind of sorrow upon her, into the house and into her mother's had lived with the rest of the family on equal terms. room. Since the time of her leaving home, Sissy Sissy was at her mother's side; and Jane, her sister, now ten or twelve years old, was in the room. There was great trouble before it could be made known to Mrs. Gradgrind that her eldest child was there. She reclined, propped up, from mere habit on a couch: as nearly in her old usual attitude, as anything so helpless could be kept in. She had positively refused to take to her bed; on the ground that if she did, she would never hear the last of it. Her feeble voice sounded so far away in her bundle of shawls, and the sound of another voice addressing her seemed to take such a long time in getting down to her ears, that she might have been lying at the bottom of a well. The poor lady was nearer Truth than she ever had been: which had much to do with it. On being told that Mrs. Bounderby was there, she replied, at cross-purposes, that she had never called him by that name since he married Louisa; that pending her choice of an unobjectionable name, she had called him J; and that she could not at present depart from that regulation, not being yet provided with a permanent substitute. Louisa had sat by her for some minutes, and had spoken to her often, before she arrived at a clear understandShe then seemed to come to it all ing who it was. at once. "Well, my dear," said Mrs. Gradgrind, “ and I hope you are going on satisfactorily to yourself. It was all your father's doing. He set his heart upon it. And he ought to know." "I want to hear of you, mother; not of myself." |