have itself scrubbed and brushed up, so as to look almost spick-and-span new, if there were in it but so much as one active and judicious citizen--and where was there ever any town so small but had its clever fellow, as well as its parson and its crier? Only let the said genius have some magnanimity to bear the sneers and cavils of the mean and invidious, with a determination, coûte qui coûte, that the object shall be effected, and ten to one the thing is done even in less time, and with less difficulty, than he himself could have expected.] THE DYING FLOWER; BEING A DIALOGUE BETWEEN A PASSENGER AND A FADING VIOLET. [The following is extracted from German Anthology; a series of Translations from the most popular of the German Poets, by James Clarence Mangan. 2 vols. Dublin: Curry and Co. 1845.' We have perused this collection with much pleasure and advantage. The pieces are so various, and from such a variety of sources, as to leave hardly any author or style of verse of our German neighbours unrepresented; and the style of translation is free, bold, and energetic, at the same time that special character is well preserved. In short, it is such a collection as could only be expected from a man of original genius, deeply imbued with the spirit of the literature which he endeavours to make his own.] PASSENGER. DROOP not, poor flower!-there's hope for thec: The spring again will breathe and burn, And glory robe the kingly tree, Whose life is in the sun's return; And once again its buds will chime Their peal of joy from viewless bells, Though all the long dark winter-time They mourned within their dreary cells. FLOWER. Alas! no kingly tree am I, No marvel of a thousand years: I cannot dream a winter by, And wake with song when spring appears. At best my life is kin to death; My little all of being flows From summer's kiss, from summer's breath, And sleeps in summer's grave of snows. PASSENGER. Yet grieve not! summer may depart, FLOWER. Yes!-moons will wane, and bluer skies I know that while the unit dies, But shall my soul survive in them? Vain dream! I wither, soul and stem; The sun may lavish life on them; That sparkles on their tender leaves; How should I shun his fatal beam! But, vainly in my bitterness I speak the language of despair: And, now that yon bright orb on high For them I breathe my final sigh! How often soared my soul aloft In balmy bliss too deep to speak, When zephyr came and kissed with soft, Sweet incense-breath my blushing cheek! When beauteous bees and butterflies Flew round me in the summer-beam, Or when some virgin's glorious eyes Bent o'er me like a dazzling dream! Ah, yes! I know myself a birth Of that All-wise, All-nighty Love, Farewell, thou iamp of this green globe! And clasps me in-a death-embrace! Farewell, thou balsam-dropping spring! Farewell, ye skies that beam and weep! Unhoping and unmurmuring, I bow my head and sink to sleep! GREAT EVENTS FROM TRIFLING CAUSES. We hear sometimes of great events being produced by trifling, and, one would think, inadequate causes. Within these few years, in this country, the inadvertence of slightly misplacing a single figure on a scrap of paper occasioned to one person, who was ill able to afford it, the loss of a thousand pounds, and to another the punishment of seven years' transportation. Two builders in Glasgow, carrying on business in company, discounted a bill for L.120 with a bank of that city. The slip on which the discount was marked, attached to the bill, was handed by the accountant's clerk to the teller. This charge, deducted from the bill, showed a balance of L.117, 14s. 4d. to be paid to the person who presented the bill acting for the company. On the slip, however, it was ascertained afterwards by concurring circumstances, though the slip itself was lost, that the 1 of the shillings being rather near the 7 of the pounds, the teller had mistaken the sum for L.1171, 4s. 4d., and gave away above L.1000 more than he should have done; though, what is strange, the proper sum was entered in his own cash-book. The deficiency was of course immediately dis covered, but neither the teller himself, nor any others in the bank, could at that time trace out how the error had been committed. The teller had, indeed, to give up his place, and his cautioners to make up the deficiency. He was still retained, however, in another department of the same bank; but he removed afterwards to an Edinburgh bank connected with that in Glasgow. Three years had now elapsed since this transaction had taken place, when the secretary of the bank discovered the real cause by comparing the amount of the deficiency with the supposition of the above error; but this did not enable the bank to bring home the charge to the person who received the money. The builders at length becoming bankrupt, and their books getting into the hands of the trustee for their creditors, the sum was found marked with pencil at the end of their cash-book. But the thing was made still more clear by the partner who managed their money matters having told the story to another person, who it appears did not keep it a secret. This partner, therefore, being ap prehended, and tried before the circuit Court of Justiciary at Glasgow, the above evidence, both direct and circumstantial, sufficed to convict him, and he was sentenced to seven years' transportation. 1 EDINBURGH JOURNAL CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c. No. 99. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1845. TO WANT AND TO HAVE. In a late lecture to the farmers on scientific agriculture, it was pointed out that, when a hill-side is left undrained, its dampness forms an attraction to clouds to come and discharge themselves on that hill; so that what least needs moisture, and is most apt to be injured by it, is the most apt to have it; while land where care has been taken to do away with humidity, is likely to remain exempt from all such additions of that evil. This natural fact serves to recall certain reflections which we often have occasion to make upon human affairs. Things somehow seem so constituted, as to be always unfavourable to the person who wants, whether it be in natural endowment or in worldly wealth. When a boy is put to school, if he be of ordinary, or say below ordinary talent, it might be presumed that he had the greater need of assistance from the teacher. But does he get such extra assistance? Assuredly not. The master proceeds as well as he can with the bright and the tolerably bright, who would do passing well without him. The dull he leaves to form a residuum of repose at the bottom of the class, to the mortification of anxious parents and the dismay of hopeful grandfathers. Thus, because the poor fellows have been treated ungenerously by nature, they must be treated ungenerously by man too. Because they want, they remain unsatisfied. Requiring a push, for that very reason they do not get it. Being helpless, they must remain without help. It seems the very contrary of what is called for in the case, by common sense; for better, one would say, leave the clever and inherently active to their own energies, and bring on the laggards, so as to induce a kind of equality between the two sets. But the ways of the world are different, and it would be more than is to be expected of mortal pedagogue, to suppose that he was to give up the feeding of those who take their meat kindly, and appear to thrive upon it, and devote himself to a struggle with the intellectual languor of the dunces. Who, again, is the favourite at the bar for employment before railway committees? It is not any of the great horde of young men who go about endeavouring to look smart, knowing, and engaged, but who in reality have nearly the whole of their time upon their hands. No; it is the man who is known to be utterly oppressed with the amount of his business, so as to have hardly the least chance of being able to spare five minutes for the case when it comes on. Agents have more hope from the moments of this man than from the days and weeks of those who have no business. The disqualification of the young man is, that he is without that which he desires to have. It is an insuperable ground of suspicion against him, that he has time to execute what he undertakes. For why has he time? Were he highly fitted for his employment, he would get employment; PRICE 1d. he would then have no time. Thus things seem to go with him in a vicious circle. Because he wants business, he does not get it. Because he does not get it, he wants it. The wonder is, how any one in such circumstances ever gets business. Perhaps it happens thus. If he be a clever person, little casual matters in the course of time come his way, and break the spell. By using these advantages well, he ultimately surmounts the difficulty. It has ever been observed, that the destruction of the poor is their poverty. Because they are penniless, they get no pennies, or only pennies. Because, from their narrow means, they would require to obtain everything cheap, they are just for that reason obliged to buy everything dear. If they require a loan, probably they have to pay three times the interest upon it which is demanded from persons in better circumstances. Fortune, perhaps, makes them an offer once in a lifetime; but often, from their want of funds, they have to forego it, and it is snapped up by their wealthy neighbour, who so little needs it, that he is hardly sensible of its making any increase to his means. The man who has thrives, indeed, just because he has. He has money-men become his creditors without fear. He has money-the customer is sure he can afford to keep the largest stock and the best article, and sell at the smallest profit. It is not only that himself works; the money works too. It is like having so many more hands. Here, as in the case of the barrister, the first steps are the great difficulty. It generally requires excessive self-denial and dexterity to make the first accumulations; and it is usually long before they are made. But with the smallest advantage of this kind in one's favour, the next steps are always easier, until at length the money seems to make itself. If increase of means be the more difficult in proportion to the smallness of means, it is easy to see how inequality in this respect must always tend to exaggerate itself. In a country where fortunes, from whatever cause, are unusually various, and men are all free to advance their individual interests, the house of Have must enjoy an uncommon degree of advantage over the rest of the community. The members of that family, having the disposition of all things in their favour, will continually tend to become richer in proportion to their neighbours. It will show itself in the contrast between the master and his thousands of workers, in the power of the wholesale trader over retailers, in the voracity of the bloodsucking private-bill discounter, and of banks generally, over men of little capital. Even in literature it will make its appearance; and the man of intellect will be the working slave of the brute-force Capital, personified in the bookseller. It may not make any man absolutely worse off than he would have been otherwise; but the multitude will feel relatively worse; because they have a more painful subject of invidiousness and jealousy set up before them, and are less able, by any personal merits or exertions of their own, to escape from the Want to the Have party. There will always, indeed, be a possibility of passing into the domains of Have; because there is no amount of self-denial which men will not be found capable of exemplifying, and natural and acquired talents, with a little good fortune, will always be performing wonders. But the difficulty will be great for the mass to make any such transitions. Nor does it appear that there is any natural check to this progress, besides the limitation imposed upon the power of obtaining suitable hired assistance in the higher departments of business, and the conclusion which death and the failure of natural power put to all great mercantile, as well as heroic conquests. In a system of independent individual exertion, such a progress must go on-as long as human nature can endure it. But it were a libel on Providence to suppose that such a plan is that designed to form the perfection of human society. It will have its era, and then pass away. We have, meanwhile, this consolation under a system which obviously produces vast evils, that it is an active system. It evokes human powers, and strains them to the uttermost. There is no dallying or languor in this form of the human problem. Work is done-physical difficulties are smoothed down-the field is prepared for whatever better system is in store. Let us, then, make the best, as individuals, of a plan which we evidently cannot, as individuals, control. Wealth is power -let the power be used for good ends. Social influence involves a responsibility towards moral objects; let it be so used accordingly. Let due encouragement be given to the civilising influences which, notwithstanding all drawbacks, real and apparent, are constantly at work amongst us. Thus we may hope that, as the spirit of chivalry brightens the memory of the age of rude baronial power, so shall there be a glory on the page which commemorates even this mechanical and moneymaking era-the glory of an enlarged humanity working towards noble issues, even in the midst of what we might sometimes think a more sordid kind of selfishness than any which has ever before become conspicuous upon earth. ture of his home and little library, and the sketches of his simple neighbours, are interesting, and often a strain of beautiful moralising is indulged in. It appears to us that the following bit of painting is perfect:-The most uncomfortable weather on earth is the breaking up of a snow-storm at a lonely farm-house in the country, on a cold and clayey bottom. The sickly feeling of reading a book by the fire in the forenoon could still be endured, were there a book to read; but there is not a fresh page in the house. Out, then, you must sally; but what to do? The hills are cheerlessly spotted; the unmelted snow is still lying up the furrows with indentations, like the backbone of a red herring; a cold blashy rain is driven from the spongy west by a wind that would certainly blow you away, did not your feet stick fast in the mud, as you wade along the sludgy road. Determined to have some exercise, you set your face winkingly against the storm, and make for the black Scotch firs on the hill-side. Finding no shelter, you return to the farm soaked to the skin, and the leather of your shoes like boiled tripe. Hearing the fanners at work in the barn, you make for the stir; and winking against the stour as you bolt in, step up to the ankles in chaff, which sticks to you like a bur. The dusty atmosphere clings lovingly to you, and in a trice you are cased in drab. The luxury of clean dry clothes is now fairly earned: the change is truly an enjoyment, and doubly so in helping you to loiter away an hour. But would, would the evening were come! Such were the leading features of a late visit I paid to a farming acquaintance some three miles off from our village. I don't like such visits at all now. I confess myself afraid of unused bed-rooms, glazed curtains, and cold sheets. Ah! I fear I am getting old.' Equally perfect in description and in feeling is an account of the wild fruit put by October in the attainment of a Caledonian youth. In quantity and in quality there is always a natural correspondence be tween the wild and home fruit of the season: so the wild, like the home, is very abundant this year upon the whole. Haws, however, are rather scanty. Indeed the hawthorn is a capricious and delicate plant in this respect, and seldom yields a very good crop. Even in seasons when the flower (chivalrously called "Ladies' | Meat") covers the long line of hedges as with a snowy sheet, and delights every nose of sensibility in the parish, THE OLD BACHELOR IN THE OLD SCOTTISH we are by no means sure of a harvest of haws entirely VILLAGE.* THIS is the title of a little volume, half descriptive, half fictitious, by a gentleman who is known in literary circles in our northern land as a successful writer of verses. The tales, by which a large portion of the volume is filled, are, in general, not characteristic; but the chapters devoted to simple village scenes, life, and character, must strike every one qualified to judge, as in many parts faithfully reflective of the subject. And yet Mr Aird is not the best qualified kind of person for such homely painting. He is too fine and poetical, too much given to effusions of pathetic sentiment. Often we find his villagers expressing feelings of deep affection in the various relations of life: an entire mistake, as we apprehend it; for in all our experience of Scottish life, we never yet knew an instance of such feelings being expressed in words. The Scotsman never tells his child or his parents, or his brothers or sisters, that he has any regard for them--not even in the most exigent circumstances: he leaves his acts to speak for him. The book appears as written by one who returns from fortune-seeking, in middle life, unmarried, to spend the remainder of his days in his native village. The pic * By Thomas Aird. Small octavo. Edinburgh: Myles Mac phail. London: Simpkin and Marshall. correspondent; as the blossom, with the first set of the fruit, is exceedingly tender. Well do the boys know the fat ones. Hips (called in some parts of Scotland jupes) are a fair yield this harvest, whether smooth or hairy, hard or buttery. That all-devouring gourmand, the school-boy, who crams every crudity into his maw, literal position) to the Swedish turnip, sweetened by the from the sour mouth-screwing crab up (though down in frost, riots in the luxury of the hip, caring not how much the downy seeds may canker and chap the wicks of his mouth, and render his nails an annoyance in scratching his neck. See the little urchin slily watching the exit of the "lang" cart from the stackyard; then jumping in from behind, he takes his seat on the crossbench, or ventures to stand erect by the help of the pitchfork, his black, dirt-barkened little feet overcrept and hither-and-thither-running residuum of the last by earwigs, beetles, and long-legged spinners, the living cartload of peas; till, when the half-cleared field is reached, Flibbertigibbet, who ought all the while to be "gathering," bolts through a slap in the hedge, and is down upon the buttery hips in the Whitelea braes Our hedgerows, sandy banks, and wild stony places, are quite black with brambles this autumn. Clean them from the worms of the thousand-and-one flies that feed painting children's faces, as we see every day in the byon them, and they are capital for jelly and jam; and for lanes around our village. The bramble is called in Roxburghshire (honi soit qui mal y pense) "Ladies' Garters." There, however, the land being mostly a stiff clay, it thrives poorly. It loves a sharp sandy soil, and espe room come first? Tom Campbell, in his "Rainbow," "The earth to thee its incense yields, When, glittering in the freshened fields, cially those rough stony knowes in the middle of fields, where also in the warm still sunny days of harvest you startle the whirring partridge, and see her feathers where she has been fluttering in the stour, and where you hear the whins, with their opening capsules, crackling on the sun-dried braes. Blaeberries were abundant this year, and ripe in the beginning of July. The barberry bears Now, the lark ceases to sing early in July; and I rather a fair crop. In my boyish days this bush was called think, Thomas, the mushroom is rarely seen till August; gule-tree; and we made yellow ink of it, to give a what say you? But I refer the matter to William variety of flourish to our valentines to the little lasses-Wordsworth, that master martinet of poetical accuracy. from whom we got pins in return to be played for at Meanwhile, having thrown Thomas this metaphorical tee-totum. Il fares the poor gean-tree by the road- nut to crack, I go on to the literal nuts; and I beg to side, torn down and dismantled in all its branches by the say that their white young clusters are almost the village urchins, bent at once on provender and "papes." loveliest fruit that grows in glen or shaw. Now, howScarcely ever does its fruit see the first blush of red. ever, they are glossy brown, and lots of them. So mask A guinea for a ripe black gean within three miles of a yourself, gentle swain, in the most tattered gear you country school! The juniper is a scarce bush; but it can muster (buckskin breeches, if you have them), as has plenty of fruit this year-green, red, and black-on recommended in the said William Wordsworth's poem the different exposures of its close-matted evergreen of "Nutting," and, bag and crook in hand, sally forth branches. In my days of childhood, I had a sort of with your lady-love, bedizened like Otway's witch in the religious regard for the juniper, from the "coals of juni- “Orphan," and Pan speed you! And if any lurker, on per" mentioned in Scripture along with "sharp arrows the spy system, among the bushes, hear you drawing a of the mighty;" and also from the circumstance that I simile from the hazels among which you are in praise had never seen the berries till they were brought me by of your sweetheart's eyes, why, he can only take you my granny, who plucked them on a remote hill-side, as at worst for King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid. So she came from a Cameronian sacrament. So far as still speed you! Sloes, being harsh and salivating in eating was concerned, their resinous tang of fir helped their sourness, are almost always plentiful; for Dame my veneration, and I never got beyond chewing one or Nature is a queer old economist, giving us fine things two. I am compelled to add, however, that my reve- sparingly, but lots of the coarse. But ah! Flibbertirence for the holy berries was considerably abated when gibbet aforesaid delights in the sloe. No matter how I found out that the sly old wife had popped a dozen or deceptively that blue-purple down, or rather film, of two of them into her own whisky bottle, to give it the seeming ripeness veils the sullen green of harsh immaflavour of gin. Crabs are not so plentiful as might have turity; it's all one to "Ill Tam." Away he goes with been expected; and (as Johnson said of Churchill) his pocketful, whooping through the dry stubble fields their spontaneous abundance being their only virtue, to the village cow-herd boy on the common, who, they are below notice this season. But look at the seed smitten with the eager hope of company in his cheerof the ash-how thick! The light green bunches of it, less waiting on, perks up his head out of his dirty-brown relieved against the somewhat darker verdure of the maud from beyond the beilding heap of divots; starts leaf, make it well seen, and the whole thing has a very up with an answering holla; and comes running over rich effect. The pods of the pea-tree (laburnum) hang the bent to meet his welcome crony, the rush cap on from every branch in clusters. When ripe, the peas are his head nodding like a mandarin's, and his doggie, glossy black as jet, and are much sought after by bits with its ears laid back in the wind, gambolling on of country lasses for making necklaces of beads-for the before. Straightway the fire of whins and dry barren little monkeys have early notions of finery. They are thistles is set a-going, and sends up what Eschylus unsafe to be meddled with, however, as they are very calls "its beard of flame," better seen by its wavering poisonous. It is worthy of remark that, come good year smoke-topped flicker than by its gleams of colour, or bad year, the pea-tree never fails to have loads of deadened in the daylight; and the roast of sputtering depending flowers as thick as swarms of bees a-skep-sloes, with an eke of beans and potatoes, which proping; and the fruit is always equally abundant. Of all plants, and shrubs, and trees in garden and field, and on the mountain sides, none is to be compared in this respect with the prolific pea-tree. It is one of nature's richest gifts to adorn our hedgerows. The wood, I may add, is extremely beautiful, and that the turner knows right well. The rowan-tree, the beauty of the hills and the terror of witches, is red all over with berries this autumn. May she ever see her fair blushing face in the sleeping crystal of the mountain pool! Her berries are also for beads. The boor-tree, famous for bulletguns, bored with a red-hot old spindle, and tow-charged, in the days of boyhood, is also very rich this autumn with her small black-purple berries. "Miss Jeanie" would not take the "Laird o' Cockpen" when she was making the "elder-flower wine;" let him try her again in this the time of the elder-berry vintage: she is herself elder now, and has had time to think better of his offer; not to say that a sip of the richer berry may have softened her heart. Never had the "bummie" such a "summer high in bliss" as this year among the honied flowers of the lime. The autumn of its fruit is not less exuberant. The ground where it grows is quite littered with the small round seed. The broom is all over black with its thin pods. Plantagenet, more swain-like than king-like, has coined his glory of summer bullion into a bushel of peas. Mushrooms, in their fairy rings in the rich old unploughed pastures, are a fair crop this season. By the way, when does the mush vident little Patie has in store, is more to our genial worthies, sitting on their hunkers, and nuzzling and fingering among the ashes, than Ossian's Feast of Shells. And thus they feast till the day begins to decline. And then they run to the distant road to ask the passing traveller what o'clock it is; and, in the fearless necessities of rude nature, the question is popped whether the passer-by be a charioted buck of seven seals, or a trudging hind who hangs out a crooked sixpence, a simple spotted shell, or a bit of polished parrot-coal, by an affectionate twine of his grandmother's hair. "Then come the hoar mornings of November frost, and the sloes begin to crack, and are really not so bad; and "Ill Tam" has another day at Eildon hills. He finishes the ploy by tearing and wearing his corduroys, up trees and down "slidders," to very reasonable tatters; and thus the light of knowledge is let in by many and wide holes upon his mother at night, that her son "has been out;" and her patience being worn out as well as his breeks, a good sound thrashing winds up the day to Thomas. Anything like a full crop of acorns is a very rare harvest indeed. This year, however, they are "plenty as blackberries;" and now that the air is beginning to smell of winter, they are popping down upon your head wherever you go; clean, glossy, and slightly ribbed in their brown and white. They must have been better to eat in the Golden Age than now, or the stomachs of our simple sires must have been more easily pleased than those of their degenerate and luxurious sons; for hang me from an oak branch if I could eat an acorn, so harsh and stringently tasteful of the tannin, even to see the lion lie down with the lamb. So my age of gold is not likely to get beyond pinchbeck. But swine can eat acorns, though old bachelors are not so innocent; and therefore I advise all my country friends, after the wants of the nurseryman are served, to turn the snouts of their pigs among the mast, or have it gathered by the bairnies and flung into the trough. The porkers grunt almost graciously over it, and it helps to give that fine flavour to the flesh which touches the tongue so racily in the wild-boar ham.' We must not part with Mr Aird till we have remonstrated against a certain leaning to the past, which appears to us to be not the true feeling of its kind, for it is needlessly insulting to the present. He sees only mischief threatened by the efforts now making to educate the masses, and seriously expresses his willingness to give up all modern popular literature for the filth which filled the pedlar's basket thirty years ago. This is only maudlin sentimentalism, not manly feeling. It is putting rational choice between good and evil at scorn, and playing into the hands of those who hate the public good for reasons which they think important to their own interests. We believe that men, in writing in this manner, do not exercise judgment at all; they are only indulging in caprices and fancies. We greatly prefer to see a man writing with his head clear, and his heart open, and as if he felt every word he put down to be upon oath. It is by such earnest men that the world is to be made better, not by sickly indulgers in whimsy and paradox. and the expression of her features was that of natural joyousness, tempered, but not wholly suppressed, by thoughtfulness beyond her years. Leonard Beaufort had once been, as was implied by his daughter, in a different station to that he now occupied. He was by birth and education a gentleman; but partly owing to his own mismanagement and extravagance, and partly from misfortunes altogether u avoidable (though he chose to attribute his reverses wholly to the latter cause), he found himself suddenly plunged from competence into utter destitution. He had hitherto practised painting as an amateur, but now he was forced to embrace it as the only means afforded him of supporting his family, which at that time consisted of a wife and two children. He was not without some share of talent; but unhappily for those who depended on his exertions, he was too indolent to make much progress in an art which requires the exercise of perseverance, no less than the possession of genius; and after struggling for more than three years with the bitterest poverty, his wife and youngest child fell vic tims to their change of circumstances. Little Amy was thus left motherless, and would have been friendless, but for the care of a neighbour, who, pitying her forlorn condition, watched over her with almost maternal regard. Mrs Lyddiard was the widow of a mer chant's clerk, who had no other provision than that which was afforded her by her own labours in a little school; but from these humble means she was enabled, by prudent management, to give her only child Herbert (a boy about three years the senior of Amy) a tolerable education, which would fit him to undertake a similar situation to that which his father had filled. THE ARTIST'S DAUGHTER-A TALE. BY MISS ANNA MARIA SARGEANT. Act well thy part-there the true honour lies.-POPE. Towards this amiable woman and her son, the warm 'I WISH, papa, you would teach me to be a painter,' affections which had been pent up in the young heart of was the exclamation of a fair-haired child, over whose our little heroine, since the death of her mother and inbrow eleven summers had scarcely passed, as she sat fant brother, now gushed forth in copious streams; for, earnestly watching a stern middle-aged man, who was though she loved her father with a tenderness scarcely giving the last touches to the head of a Madona. to be expected, and certainly unmerited by one who 'Pshaw,' pettishly returned the artist; go play with manifested such indifference in return, she dared not exyour doll, and don't talk about things you can't under- press her feelings in words or caresses. Beaufort would stand.' But I should like to learn, papa,' the child usually devote a few of the morning hours to his proresumed: 'I think it would be so pretty to paint, and, fession, and then, growing weary, throw aside his pencil besides, it would get us some more money, and then we in could have a large house and servants, such as we used to have, and that would make you happy again, would it not, papa?' 'You are a good girl, Amy, to wish to see me happy,' the father rejoined, somewhat softened by the artless affection of his little daughter; but women are never painters, that is, they are never great painters.' The child made no further comment, but still retained her seat, until her father's task was accomplished. disgust, and either wander about the neighbourhood in moody silence, or spend the rest of the day in the society of a few dissolute persons of education, with whom he had become acquainted since his residence in Manchester. The indolence of the parent had, however, the effect of awakening the latent energies of the daughter's mind; and young as she was at the time we introduce her to our readers, her thoughts were engaged upon a scheme which, if successful, would, she deemed, reinstate them in competence. This was for her to become possessed of a knowledge of her father's art (secretly, since he had given a check to her plan), and she believed she could accomplish it by watching his progress, and prac tising during his long absences from home. As Mrs Lyddiard warmly approved of the proposition, it was immediately put into execution; and Herbert, who was also made a confidant, volunteered to purchase her colours and brushes; for she dared not make use of her father's, for fear of discovery. The chamber in which this brief dialogue took place was a meanly-furnished apartment in a small house situated in the suburbs of Manchester. The appearance of the artist was that of a disappointed man, who contends doggedly with adversity rather than stems the torrent with fortitude. Habitual discontent was stamped on his countenance, but ever and anon a glance of fierceness shot from his full dark eyes, as the thought of the position to which his talents ought to have raised him would flit across his brain. A greater contrast could The performances of the young artist for the first scarcely be conceived than existed between the father twelve months, as might be expected, did not rise above and child: the latter added to the charms of that early mediocrity; but by increased perseverance and a deter period of life a face and form of exquisite beauty. Hermination to excel, she rapidly improved. The disposal dazzling complexion, rich auburn hair, and graceful attitudes, accorded ill with the rusty black frock which was the mourning habiliment for her maternal parent, of a few of her pictures furnished her with the means to procure materials for others; but she still studiously concealed her knowledge from her father, intending to |