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well as peer. But then we have an elegant, refined and highly educated homoeopathist and hydropathist, the one with his infinitesimal doses of phos. and sulph. sub., and the other with his wet blanket, and jug of cold water. The only difference between them and the old quack is, that the latter is ever a self-acknowledged rogue and impostor, whereas our modern quacks are, at least in some cases, sincere and conscientious,-they "believe the magic wonders which they sing." Now, this in some aspects, forms a material difference. The impositions of the quack, however injurious to individuals, did no harm to science, and were only a temporary injury to the community; but the real delusions of men of science tell upon their own age, and even on those which follow. Were it not that truth is omnipotent, the self-delusions of the teacher would be infinitely more mischievous than any errors of the taught; but happily truth is like cork, it will ultimately ascend to the surface, and become manifest as the day. Who would have believed, when, about twelve years ago, the wild fancies of a silly dreaming German were first made known in this country, more for amusement than any thing else, that now every town and district almost should have two or three of its homoeopathic physicians, its laboratories, its written treatises, and its periodicals. As hundreds of silly women and still more silly men are in the daily practice of swallowing the draughts of these homoeopathics, we conclude it is almost needless to explain what they are composed of. It may suffice to state, that what medicines they use are given in infinitesimal doses. Thus, instead of exhibiting the usual dose of any medicine, which may consist of an ounce, or some other minor division of one, the homeopathist will prescribe one grain in several dilutions of water, the strength of the first being 100 parts of water to one of medicine, the second to 10,000, the third to one million. In this way some of their most diluted draughts would contain one grain of medicine dissolved in a quantity of water equal to that composing Loch Lomond! Now, Phos., which we believe means phosphorus, is one of their common remedies, as also Sulph. sulphur, with some of the common medicinal drugs.

Will any rational being believe that one-tenth, or one-ten-thousandth of any such mixture will prove of any service, when it is a notorious fact, that every day we dine on fish, or oysters, or crabs, we devour many hundred grains of phosphorus contained in those substances, and that we cannot take a glass of the purest spring water without swallowing many grains of salts, such as they prescribe. Would any hungry man be satisfied with one grain of ox-tail in his pint of soup, or one drop of brandy in his glass of toddy? Would a maltster mask his tun with one barleycorn of malt; or a dyer his vat with a single pinch of logwood. Is medicine then (if medicine be worth any thing at all?) to obey laws different from those common to all

material substances? Of the wet blanket and coldwater cure very little need be said. We have no doubt that actual cures, somewhat like magic, did really take place in the first German establishment of Graafenbergh. Because, to the keen mountain air of this establishment sundry men and women flocked from the Epicurean sties of England, where, after feeding on all manner of luxurious fare, until they could gorge no more, they then fed for an equal time on the drugs of the apothecary, till gout, dyspepsia, rheumatism, palsy, and all the ills which sinful flesh is heir to, had taken possession of their bones-no wonder that on such, pure air, exercise, regular hours, simple diet, and, above all, temperance, should work miracles. But now that similar establishments have been transferred to this country-though calculated to be excellent lazar houses for the infatuated, we doubt much whether their fame will survive a year or two of novelty.

When in history we read of the South Sea scheme, we are apt to think that the nation then must have had a temporary fit of insanity. The bubbles of wealth blown into the air, and dazzling men's eyes, its castle-building,—the high hopes excited, and then the crash and fall,—the ruin and misery of thousands—all appear as some tale of a Bedlam -some page from a New Moon Periodical, such as now issue from our modern Asylums: but we can match all this in the present day,-the same delusion has been dazzling the eyes of the multitude for the last twelve months,-the same wild speculations,—the same visionary schemes, and, no doubt, the same ravages are at hand to parallel those recorded in the history of the past. The gambling hells of Paris and London were held up to notice a few years ago as the pestilent destroyers of all that is sober, and rational, and moral, in the human mind; but what difference is there whether we toss the dice and scramble for the guineas of the gaming-house, or scramble for the scrip of the railway, or other speculative bubble of the day?

If we take higher ground, we shall find that delusion there also is by no means uncommon. While, in sacred things, the general tendency of the age seems to be a forward movement, yet, strange to say, we here find also a retrograde course. Some, in the track of their opinions, like crabs, crawl backwards, and, like those creatures, afraid of the light, seek again the old and worn-out caves of error and superstition. Such conduct appears like the dotage of the intellect. But we shall leave theologians, and come to the philosophers.

In our mental vagaries, we can match the sects and schools of every ancient period. There is nothing new under the sun-not even in psychology. While we have philosophers, who would make mind supreme and universal, even to the extinction of matter, we have, on the other hand, materialists who make every thing of matter,

and what they are pleased to term its general laws, to the utter exclusion of mind. The dogmas of Zoroaster, Pythagoras, and Brahma are revived in the pantheism of the Germans, while the doctrines of the Epicureans find ready imitators and followers in the whole fry of materialists.

No surer delusion, calculated to destroy all feelings of individual and personal identity and responsibility, could be devised than that of the pantheists, who hold that every thing, and every animated being in the universe, is but the idea and expansion of the one entire and sole existing Deity; while nothing can tend to more grovelling and self-sufficient notions, than that matter works out every thing for itself, according to certain great general, but, of course, very vague and indefinite laws. The ideal or spiritual theory cannot be said to have taken root in our soil yet; but it flourishes among our Saxon brethren, every new year bringing its new system of philosophy among those inveterate speculatists. Materialism has long since crossed the Channel, and has taken firm hold in our fertile soil. To the honour of British philosophers, however, we are not arrived at that pitch, that the élite of science should sit complacently around the lecture table of a French sçavan, and hear him declare that "all real science stands in radical and necessary opposition to all theology."* Thank God, the leading lights of British philosophy have ever yet maintained the supremacy of sacred truth, and it is to be hoped that there is still a phalanx able and anxious to tread in the footsteps of a Bacon, Newton, or Locke. Materialism is chiefly rife among our inferior fry of pseudo-philosophers. It has arisen partly from the mechanical and matter-of-fact character of the age, and partly as a necessary consequence of the late sudden and unsystematic diffusion of scientific information among the mass of the people. For a century at least, there had been a total neglect both of the intellectual and religious education of a people increasing in numbers at a very rapid rate. Arts, and commerce, and wealth, however, had meantime been pursued with all the eagerness of a native vigour and enterprise. Machinery and mechanical power became the one engrossing idea, and every thing seen and heard tended to draw the ideas of man more and more earthward. When the flood of knowledge came at last, it came upon minds but ill prepared for it. Few persons beyond middle life are capable of scientific training. It must be begun in youth, and the mind early accustomed to it, else the reverse of lucid trains of thought will be engendered. Nor were the teachers of such knowledge always of the most select kind. If it requires long training, and from the earliest dawn of reason, to conceive rightly of scientific truths,-to teach them to others, demands even a more severe discipline. It was a dangerous thing

*M. Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive.

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to entrust the whole mind of a nation to raw, selftaught, and too often self-sufficient, and mindperverted professors. But here the people were not so much to blame; it was their rulers. The governments of the day had too much to do to manage finance, and to keep fast their tottering power, and they left the people to educate and Christianise themselves. We need not be surprised, then, that with a little learning, and that little often of a very equivocal kind, the soundest results in philosophy should not have been arrived at; but, on the contrary, that along with truth, the wildest and most shallow speculations should be set afloat among the multitude, and that many of this multitude should prefer devouring the garbage to the neglect and even despising of real and substantial knowledge. We can only account in this way for the singular anomaly of the present day, that certain recent works containing a refracciamento of theexploded and utterly repudiated opinions of some philosophers of the last century, should be eagerly devoured by the science-seeking multitude. The speculations of Helvetius, Holback, Volney, Hume, though clever pieces of diablerie, only tended to amuse the leisure hours of a few sçavans of their day, and had no real votaries except among a few crack-brained disciples. The installation of the so-called natural organic law into a system of popular religion, was reserved for the illuminati of the present day. The development theory of Lamarck, was not perhaps adopted by half a dozen of the men of science of the time. It caught the illogical fancy of Darwin, in whose pages it makes a conspicuous figure, as well as in those of a recent Dutchman, and Lord Monboddo made it ridiculous by applying it to his tailed monkey-men. It was left for some reputed Cornish knight to resuscitate this fable, and for the present age to swallow it. Few things are more curious, or more significant of the times, than that it required several giants of science to crush this insignificant gnat; this poor, brainless, buzzing creature, that had flitted about sipping up the venom from every ichorous sore, and then pouring it out again a sweetened, but pestilent and counterfeit honey, to entice away the childlike tastes of the foolish multitude. How may the present public blush, to think that edition after edition of such a thing was bolted and swallowed under the guise of philosophy!!

But it is the failing of this excited age to press heedlessly forward, and grasp and adopt every novelty, however visionary. This is found to gratify the desires of the moment, more than rigid thought, calm and solitary looking inward, and a repressing and subduing of, rather than giving a loose rein to, morbid feeling and erratic fancy.

This is in fact the true childish impulse,―impatient of discipline, but full of boundless fancies of endless and unrestrained present enjoyment.

THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. BY CHARLES DICKENS.

TO LORD JEFFREY,

This little story is inscribed, with the affection and attachment of his friend, THE AUTHOR.

Ar the close of a dark and cold December evening, John Peerybingle the carrier arrived at home from his daily rounds. Having unyoked his cart filled with packages, and stabled his trusty old sleek horse, he enters his cottage, and is met on the threshold by his little, young, pretty, and loving wife, Mrs Peerybingle, familiarly called Dot. A pretty tolerable amount of pride she seemed to have, when she was drawn gently to the cheerful glowing fireside by a sturdy figure of a man much taller and much older than herself, who had to stoop a long way down to kiss her. But she was worth the trouble.

"Oh goodness, John!' said Mrs P., 'what a state you 're in with the weather!'

Why, you see, Dot,' John made answer slowly, as be unrolled a shawl from about his throat; and warmed h's hands; it-it an't exactly summer weather. So, no wonder.'

I wish you wouldn't call me Dot, John. I don't like it,' said Mrs Peerybingle: pouting in a way that clearly showed she did like it very much.

"Why, what else are you?' returned John, looking down upon her with a smile, and giving her waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand and arm could give. 'A dot and'-here he glanced at the Baby-'a dot and carry-I won't say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near a joke. I don't know as ever I was nearer.'

He was often near to something or other very clever, by his own account: this lumbering, slow, honest John; this John so heavy but so light of spirit; so rough upon the surface, but so gentle at the core; so dull without, so quick within; so stolid, but so good! Oh Mother Nature, give thy children the true Poetry of Heart that hid itself in this poor Carrier's breast-he was but a Carrier by the way-and we can bear to have them talking Prose, and leading lives of Prose; and bear to bless Thee for their company!

It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little figure, and her Baby in her arms: a very doll of a Baby: glancing with a coquettish thoughtfulness at the fire, and inclining her delicate little head just enough on one side to let it rest in an odd, half-natural, half-affected, wholly nestling and agreeable manner, on the great rugged figure of the Carrier. It was pleasant to see him, with his tender awkwardness, endeavouring to adapt his rude support to her slight need, and make his burly middle-age a leaning staff not inappropriate to her blooming youth. It was pleasant to observe how Tilly Slowboy, waiting in the background for the Baby, took special cognizance (though in her earliest teens) of this grouping; and stood with her mouth and eyes wide open, and her head thrust forward, taking it in as if it were air. Nor was it less agreeable to observe how John the Carrier, reference being made by Dot to the aforesaid Baby, checked his hand when on the point of touching the infant, as if he thought he might crack it; and bending down, surveyed it from a safe distance, with a kind of puzzled pride: such as an amiable mastiff might be supposed to show, if he found himself, one day, the father of a young canary.

'An't he beautiful, John Don't he look precious in his sleep?'

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Very precious,' said John

generally is asleep, an't he?'

Lor John! Good gracious no!'

"Very much so. He

Oh,' said John, pondering. I thought his eyes was generally shut. Halloa!'

"Goodness John, how you startle one!'

It an't right for him. to turn 'em up in that way said the astonished Carrier, is it? See how he 's winking with both of 'em at once! and look at his mouth! why he 's gasping like a gold and silver fish!'

You don't deserve to be a father, you don't,' said Dot, with all the dignity of an experienced matron. But how should you know what little complaints children are troubled with, John! You wouldn't so much as know their names, you stupid fellow.' And when she had turned the Baby over on her left arm, and had slapped its back as a restorative, she pinched her husband's ear, laughing.

'No,' said John, pulling off his outer coat. 'It's very true, Dot. I don't know much about it. I only know that I've been fighting pretty stiffly with the wind tonight. It's been blowing north-east, straight into the cart, the whole way home.'

'Poor old man, so it has!' cried Mrs Peerybingle, instantly becoming very active. "Here! Take the precious darling, Tilly, while I make myself of some use. Bless it, I could smother it with kissing it; I could! Hie then, good dog! Hie Boxer, boy! Only let me make the tea first, John; and then I'll help you with the parcels, like a busy bee. "How doth the little" -and all the rest of it, you know John. Did you ever learn "how doth the little," when you went to school John?'

'Not to quite know it,' John returned. I was very near it once. But I should only have spoilt it, I dare say.'

Ha, ha!' laughed Dot. She had the blithest little laugh you ever heard. 'What a dear old darling of a dunce you are, John, to be sure!'"

The parcels are then sorted-tea, ham, and other dainties grace the board; the fire gleams; the kettle fumes and hisses; the cricket on the hearth chirps.

666

Heyday!' said John, in his slow way. It's merrier than ever, to-night, I think.'

'And it's sure to bring us good fortune, John! It always has done so. To have a Cricket on the Hearth, is the luckiest thing in all the world!'

John looked at her as if he had very nearly got the thought into his head, that she was his Cricket in chief, and he quite agreed with her. But it was probably one of his narrow escapes, for he said nothing.

The first time I heard its cheerful little note, John, was on that night when you brought me home when you brought me to my new home here; its little mistress. Nearly a year ago. You recollect, John?'

Oh yes. John remembered. I should think so! Its chirp was such a welcome to me! It seemed so full of promise and encouragement. It seemed to say, you would be kind and gentle with me, and would not expect (I had a fear of that, John, then) to find an old head on the shoulders of your foolish little wife.'

John thoughtfully patted one of the shoulders, and then the head, as though he would have said No, No, he had had no such expectation; he had been quite content to take them as they were. And really he had reason. They were very comely.

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'It spoke the truth, John, when it seemed to say so: for you have ever been, I am sure, the best, the most considerate, the most affectionate of husbands to me. This has been a happy home, John; and I love the Cricket for its sake!?"

After tea, John starts up, recollecting that an old deaf gentleman whom he had picked up on the road, had been left asleep in the waggon and forgotten. He is awakened

and, as he appears a stranger, and unacquainted with the neighbourhood, at his own request he is admitted as a lodger for the night. There is something mysterious in this stranger. As he sits by the hearth, some look or expression raises strange emotions in the breast of the carrier's young wife. John is somewhat roused and alarmed. A neighbour coming in, old Tackleton, a shrewd, prying, suspicious animal, increases John's anxiety. They talk over various matters, but chiefly are engaged in discussing the details of Tackleton's marriage with a young pretty girl, the bosom friend of Mrs Peerybingle, which ceremony is to take place in a couple of days, and for which the carrier had brought home in his cart a marriage cake. Next day, a visit is paid to old Caleb Plummer, a toy-maker, a poor man who has an only daughter, Bertha, who is blind. Here a pic-nic party assembles, the presiding genius of which is the kind, active, witty, little wife of the carrier. The mysterious old stranger, however, intrudes himself here also; his entry is even detected by the sensitive blind Bertha, and affects her with unusual emotion. At last, when the party has broken up, and all are preparing to go home, this same stranger, now suspected to be other than the old deaf man he pretends, is seen deeply and anxiously engaged in a private conversation with Mrs Peerybingle. The green-eyed monster of jealousy seizes fast hold of the now unhappy carrier: he walks silently and sullenly home at his horse's head, instead of joining his family in the cart. The Dutch clock in the corner struck ten when the carrier sat down by his fireside, sore troubled and grief-worn. If the little hay-maker that figured on this clock had been armed with the sharpest of scythes, and had cut at every stroke into the carrier's heart, he never could have gashed and wounded it as Dot had done.

"It was a heart so full of love for her; so bound up and held together by innumerable threads of winning remembrance, spun from the daily working of her many qualities of endearment; it was a heart in which she had enshrined herself so gently and so closely; a heart so single and so earnest in its Truth: so strong in right, so weak in wrong: that it could cherish neither passion nor revenge at first, and had only room to hold the broken image of its Idol.

But slowly, slowly; as the Carrier sat brooding on his hearth, now cold and dark; other and fiercer thoughts began to rise within him, as an angry wind comes rising in the night. The Stranger was beneath his outraged roof. Three steps would take him to his chamber door. One blow would beat it in. You might do Murder before you know it,' Tackleton had said. How could it be Murder, if he gave the Villain time to grapple with him hand to hand! He was the younger man.

It was an ill-timed thought, bad for the dark mood of his mind. It was an angry thought, goading him to some avenging act, that should change the cheerful house into a haunted place which lonely travellers would dread to pass by night; and where the timid would see shadows struggling in the ruined windows when the moon was dim, and hear wild noises in the stormy weather.

He was the younger man! Yes, yes; some lover who had won the heart that he had never touched. Some lover of her early choice: of whom she had thought and dreamed: for whom she had pined and pined: when he had fancied her so happy by his side. Oh agony to think of it!

She had been above stairs with the Baby, getting it to bed. As he sat brooding on the hearth, she came

close beside him, without his knowledge-in the turning of the rack of his great misery, he lost all other soundsand put her little stool at his feet. He only knew it, when he felt her hand upon his own, and saw her looking up into his face.

With wonder? No. It was his first impression, and he was fain to look at her again, to set it right. No, not with wonder. With an eager and enquiring look; but not with wonder. At first it was alarmed and serious; then it changed into a strange, wild, dreadful smile of recognition of his thoughts; then there was nothing but her clasped hands on her brow, and her bent head, and falling hair.

Though the power of Omnipotence had been his to wield at that moment, he had too much of its Diviner property of Mercy in his breast, to have turned one feather's weight of it against her. But he could not bear to see her crouching down upon the little seat where he had often looked on her, with love and pride, so innocent and gay; and when she rose and left him, sobbing as she went, he felt it a relief to have the vacant place beside him rather than her so long cherished preThis in itself was anguish keener than all; reminding him how desolate he was become, and how the great bond of his life was rent asunder.

sence.

The more he felt this, and the more he knew he could have better borne to see her lying prematurely dead before him with their little child upon her breast, the higher and the stronger rose his wrath against his enemy. He looked about him for a weapon.

There was a Gun, hanging on the wall. He took it down, and moved a pace or two towards the door of the perfidious Stranger's room. He knew the Gun was loaded. Some shadowy idea that it was just to shoot this man like a Wild Beast, seized him; and dilated in his mind until it grew into a monstrous demon in complete possession of him, casting out all milder thoughts and setting up its undivided empire.

That phrase is wrong. Not casting out his milder thoughts, but artfully transforming them. Changing them into scourges to drive him on. Turning water into blood, Love into hate, Gentleness into blind ferocity. Her image, sorrowing, humbled, but still pleading to his tenderness and mercy with resistless power, never left his mind; but staying there, it urged him to the door; raised the weapon to his shoulder; fitted and nerved his finger to the trigger; and cried Kill him! In his bed!'

He reversed the Gun to beat the stock upon the door; he already held it lifted in the air; some indistinct design was in his thoughts of calling out to him to fly, for God's sake, by the window

When, suddenly, the struggling fire illumined the whole chimney with a glow of light; and the Cricket on the hearth began to chirp!

No sound he could have heard; no human voice, not even her's; could so have moved and softened him. The artless words in which she had told him of her love for this same cricket, were once more freshly spoken; her trembling, earnest manner at the moment, was again before him; her pleasant voice-oh what a voice it was, for making household music at the fireside of an honest man!-thrilled through and through his better nature, and awoke it into life and action.

He recoiled from the door, like a man walking in his sleep, awakened from a frightful dream; and put the gun aside. Clasping his hands before his face, he then sat down again beside the fire, and found relief in tears. The cricket on the hearth came out into the room, and stood in a fairy shape before him.

'I love it,' said the fairy voice, repeating what he well remembered, for the many times I have heard it, and the many thoughts its harmless music has given me." 'She said so!' cried the Carrier. True!'

"This has been a happy home, John; and I love the cricket for its sake!'

26

THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. BY CHARLES DICKENS.

'It has been, Heaven knows,' returned the Carrier. 6 She made it happy, always-until now.'

So gracefully sweet tempered; so domestic, joyful, busy, and light-hearted!" said the voice.

Otherwise I never could have loved her as I did,' returned the Carrier.

The Voice, correcting him, said “ do.'

The Carrier repeated as I did.' But not firmly. His faltering tongue resisted his control, and would speak in its own way, for itself and him.

The Figure, in an attitude of invocation, raised its hand and said:

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The hearth she has blighted," interposed the Carrier.' The hearth she has how oken!--biessed and brightened,' said the Cricket; the hearth which, but for her, were only a few stones and bricks and rusty bars, but which has been, through her, the Altar of your Home; on which you have nightly suerificed some petty passion, selfishness, or care, and offered up the homage of a tranquil mind, a trusting mature, and an overflowing heart; so that the smoke from this poor chimney has gone upward with a better fragrance than the richest incense that is burnt before the richest shrines in all the gaudy Temples of this World!— Upon your own hearth; in its quiet sanctuary; surrounded by its gentle influenees and associations; hear her! Hear me! Hear every thing that speaks the language of your hearth and home!'

And pleads for her?' enquired the Carrier.

All things that speak the language of your hearth and home, must plead for her!' returned the Cricket. For they speak the truth.'

And while the Carrier, with his head upon his hands, continued to sit meditating in his chair, the Presence stood beside him; suggesting his reflections by its power, and presenting them before him, as in a Glass or Picture. It was not a solitary Presence. From the hearthstone, from the chimney; from the clock, the pipe, the kettle, and the cradle; from the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and the stairs; from the cart without, and the copboard within, and the household implements; from every thing and every place with which she had ever been familiar, and with which she had ever entwined one recollection of herself in her unhappy husband's mind; Fairies came trooping forth. Not to stand beside him as the Cricket did, but to busy and bestir themselves. To do all honour to her image. To pall him by the skirts, and point to it when it appeared. To cluster round it, and embrace it, and strew flowers for it to tread on. To try to crown its fair head with their tiny Lands. To show that they were fond of it and loved it; and that there was not one ugly, wicked, or accusatory creature to claim knowledge of it-none but their playful and approving selves.

His thoughts were constant to her image. It was always there.

She sat plying her needle, before the fire, and singing to herself. Such a blithe, thriving, steady little Dot! The fairy figures turned upon him all at once, by one consent, with one prodigious concentrated stare; and seemed to say, 'Is this the light wife you are mourning for!'

There were sounds of gaiety outside: musical instruments, and noisy tongues, and laughter. A crowd of young merry-makers came pouring in; among whom were May Fielding and a score of pretty girls. Dot was the fairest of them all; as young as any of them too. They came to summon her to join their party.

It was

a dance. If ever little foot were made for dancing, hers was, surely. But she laughed, and shook her head, and pointed to her cookery on the fire, and her table ready spread with an exulting defiance that rendered her more charming than she was before. And so she merrily dismissed them: nodding to her would-be partners, one by one, as they passed out, with a comical indiffer

ence, enough to make them go and drown themselves immediately if they were her admirers-and they must have been so, more or less; they couldn't help it. And yet indifference was not her character. Oh no! For presently, there came a certain Carrier to the door; and biess her what a welcome she bestowed upon him!

Again the staring figures turned upon him all at once, and seemed to say, Is this the wife who has forsaken you!'

A shadow fell upon the mirror or the picture; call it what you will. A great shadow of the Stranger, as he first stood underneath their roof; covering its surface, and biotting out all other obiects. But the nimble fairies worked like Bees to clear it off again; and Dot again was there. Still bright and beautiful.

Rocking her little Baby in its cradle; singing to it softly; and resting her head upon a shoulder which had its counterpart in the musing figure by which the Fairy Cricket stood.

The night --I mean the real night: not going by Fairy clocks-was wearing now; and in this stage of the Carrier's thoughts, the moon burst out, and shone brightly in the sky. Perhaps some calm and quiet light had risen also, in his mind; and he could think more soberly of what had happened.

Although the shadow of the Stranger fell at intervals upon the glass- always distinet, and big, and thoroughly defined-it never fell so darkly as at first. Whenever it appeared, the Fairies uttered a general cry of consternation, and plied their little arms and legs, with inconceivable activity, to rub it out. And whenever they got at Dot again, and showed her to him once more, bright and beautiful, they cheered in the most inspiring man

ner.

They never showed her, otherwise than beautiful and bright, for they were Household Spirits to whom Falsehood is annihilation; and being so, what Dot was there for them, but the one active, beaming, pleasant little creature who had been the light and sun of the Carrier's Home!

The Fairies were prodigiously excited when they showed her, with the Baby, gossiping among a knot of sage old matrons, and affecting to be wondrous old and matronly herself, and leaning in a staid, demure old way upon her husband's arm, attempting-she! such a bud of a little woman--to convey the idea of having abjured the vanities of the world in general, and of being the sort of person to whom it was no novelty at all to be a mother; yet in the same breath, they showed her laughing at the Carrier for being awkward, and pulling up his shirt-collar to make him smart, and mincing merrily about that very room to teach him how to dance.

They turned, and stared immensely at him when they showed her with the Blind Girl; for though she carried cheerfulness and animation with her, wheresoever she went, she bore those influences into Caleb Plummer's home, heaped up and running over. The Blind Girl's love for her, and trust in her, and gratitude to her; her own good busy way of setting Bertha's thanks aside; her dexterous little arts for filling up each moment of the visit in doing something useful to the house, and really working hard while feigning to make holiday; her bountiful provision of those standing delicacies, the Veal and Ham-Pie and the bottles of Beer; her radiant little face arriving at the door, and taking leave; the wonderful expression in her whole self, from her neat foot to the crown of her head, of being a part of the establishment-a something necessary to it, which it couldn't be without; all this the Fairies revelled in, and loved her for. And once again, they looked upon him all at once, appealingly, and seemed to say, while some among them nestled in her dress and fondled her, Is this the Wife who has betrayed your confidence!'

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More than once, or twice, or thrice, in the long thoughtful night, they showed her to him sitting on her favourite scat, with her bent head, her hands clasped on

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