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as did he, the Poet, when he raised up the one of the summer air crushed beneath his mountain plough,

Therefore the divine metaphysic principle of Truth is this: Evil is not a necessity to man, but a contingent of ignorance, that will fall as humanity progresses towards the great principle of good, which is that of Nature.

SILVERPEN.

TO GOVERNESSES.

THE BOSOM OF A FAMILY.

AMONG the Advertisements in one of the morning papers, there appeared the other day the following exquisite morceau :

“ To GOVERNESSES AND OTHERS.-WANTED, by an English family, living in seclusion in a healthy and warm part of the North of Scotland, some distance from towns, an active, cheerful, and obliging Young LADY, who is competent to take the charge of education, and otherwise, of three children, all under six years of age ; also make herself generally useful in domestic matters. This is required in return for her board, lodging, washing, &c., but if on all other points an applicant should suit, a small salary would not be refused, if particularly wanted. As the advertiser and her mother have the children constantly with them, the governess will necessarily live in the bosom of the family: lady-like manners and address are therefore indispensable. French, music (vocal and instrumental), drawing, dancing, needlework, English, &c., will gradually be required. The situation is likely to be permanent, and certainly comfortable and advantageous. Most unexceptionable references will be given and required. Apply personally," &c.

This is, we think, without any exception, the most naive and altogether perfect expression of rapacity and intense selfishness we have ever met with the most elaborate, and at the same time the most natural and unconscious. The words come evidently out of the fulness of the writer's heart. Curiously precise as the address is throughout, coolly and deliberately as the fair composer (for it is a woman, as we see, who is not ashamed to make this insolent, insulting proposition, to educated womanhood), proceeds in laying down her rules and requirements--piling line upon line, and pre

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cept upon precept, with almost the anxious particularity of an Act of Parliament—the tone of quiet self-possession is yet such as no mere audacity could supply. Nothing could inspire it short of a conviction of being in the right, from which all doubt was banished. It is clearly a case of genuine, however mistaken, enthusiasm. This provident mother, who comes before the world with such an ingenious scheme for getting her three children taken charge of, “education and otherwise,” all for nothing, is, in her own conceit, a philanthropist, a professed lover and benefactor of the species. She believes herself to be holding out Governesses and others," (as she comprehensively puts it,) an offer which only labours under the disadvantage of being too tempting. She only dreads the number of applications that there will be for a situation so “likely to be permanent, so “certainly comfortable and advantageous. The active, cheerful, obliging, and all-accomplished young ladies, whom she invites to hie them to the warm latitudes of the North of Scotland, there to devote themselves to her and her children, and to make themselves "generally useful in domestic matters,” are expressly warned that “ most unexceptionable references" will be required, to give them a chance of securing so enviable a promotion. Only personal applications, too, are to be permitted, with the hope of further diminishing the number; and, besides, the presence or absence of the “ lady-like manners and address," which are declared to be indispensable for the children's maid and general doniestic drudge without wages, may

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be detected at once. It must be confessed, indeed, that some of the attractions of the appointment are very seducing. In the first place, the fortunate individual who obtains it, although she will be in reality only a servant of all work, is to be styled a young lady. Then, think of the charming prospect-especially at this season of the year—of going to "live in seclusion, in a healthy and warm part of the North of Scotland." The hyperborean paradise, too, has the further recommendation of being some distance from towns,”—which are so apt to distract the ideas of young ladies occupied with the cares of the nursery, and the general domesticities. Most localities in the northern parts of Scotland, indeed, are fortunate in being tolerably remote from the gaieties of town life. We come next to the unlimited nature of the recompense the young lady is to receive for her multifarious services; she is to receive no salary indeed, --unless, as it is facetiously subjoined, it should be a particularly wanted,” in which case, a small one would not be refused :- —that is to say, the alms would be thrown to the beggar if it were sued for with sufficient humility or importunity; but she is to get her " board, lodging, washing, &c." If this be somewhat mysteriously expressed, it is yet well calculated to excite the youthful imagination. What is, or are, we would ask, a young lady's &c. ? Something above and beyond her board, her lodging, and her washing, at any rate. Last, not least, of all, she is to live in the bosom of the family." It is really too good, too rich. Live in their bosom ! It ought to be, she will starve, and pine away, and die there. Or, if she did live, would it be either much to be marvelled at, or much to be lamented, would it be other than retributive justice, if she were some day to turn upon and sting the bosom that had afforded her such a shelter ?

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MOONLIGHT on all! still and inseparate,
The lucid rays diffuse their gentle glow
Where Death dominion holds, and where his mate,
The sinuous worm, has revelry below.
Moonlight on all ! no ray apart to shine.
O’er sculptured sepulchre, or storied worth ;
No single beam to mark the flattering line,
Or show the record of the poor man's birth.
Turf-laden and distinct, each simple mound
That tells the peasant's lowly place of rest
The silvery softness feels,— tis hallow'd ground,
Where tomb and grave alike.by Heaven are blest.
Moonlight on all! the world for once forgot
Equality is here a common lot.

W, BRAILSFORD.

New Books.

a

CAMP AND BARRACK-ROOM ; OR, THE BRITISH ARMY AS IT IS. Post 8vo.

London : Chapman & Hall. The horrors of war are supposed to consist alone in carnage, rapine, and destruction of all kinds: the abandonment of all domestic happiness, and the perpetual retardation of civilisation. But whoever peruses this book will find that the evils of war do not consist alone in the miseries occasioned by its violent movement through the unhappy land it visits. That it is not alone the habitations its merciless engines sweep down ; it is not alone the blood it sheds with its sabres and

; bayonets; it is not alone the furious unbridled lusts and cruelties its followers gratify and perpetrate in the hour of battle and triumph that occasion so much woe to mankind. This little book (small in comparison to the magnitude of the subject) will show that even to its own members the following of war as a profession must necessarily be degrading; that an army is an ignorant mob, kept from open violation of the law by the most brutal treatment; but containing within itself the most frightful amount of fraud, servility, and licentiousness that can be imagined. The one hundred thousand men thus banded together without any of the domesticities that soften, and to a certain extent humanise the coarsest peasant, are only educated to a false standard of morality. Cringing servility, or in other words implicit obedience to the commands of a superior they cannot respect, is the one great cardinal virtue of a soldier. If the men commanding them

vere philanthropists and Solomons it would be bad enough for human nature even then to be nothing more than a machine, and the unreasoning and unresisting tool of another. But when it is known that the officers of the army generally comprise (we will grant there are honourable exceptions) the silliest weakest fops of aristocratic and rich families, we may easily suppose that they have no other idea than that the men placed under their : command are the matériel wherewith they are to win laurels and honours, and so ladies' hearts. There seems to be no real kindly feeling in the army (and we have read many military works) from the officers towards the men-not so much as a huntsman has to his hounds, nor a man of ordinary feeling towards his horses : indeed, it would seem as if any such feeling would be deemed derogatory, as mingling too much the two classes--officers and menwho are divided by an impassable gulph. It is a perfect system of physical force; and when any loftier kind of human feeling or human nature at all breaks forth, it is in the hour of the greatest excitement, when false and unmeaning watchwords are used, and we must say basely because empirically used, to stimulate men to a disregard of life.

This book, written in a plain, and it may be said unconscious style, will reveal to the reflective reader more arguments against military proceedings, and raise more doubts as to the lawfulness and necessity of war than many others written for the purpose of exposing and denouncing the military system.

The author seems to be what he states, “A Late taff Serjeant of the 13th Light Infantry,” and one who, being desirous of travelling, adopted enlistment as the only mode in which he could gratify the vagrant feeling. He tells a “round unvarnished tale," and certainly has less of the habit of "bragging and telling fantastical lies” than from time immemorial has been ascribed to the soldier story-teller. The charm and utility of his book is that he narrates what he knows of his own knowledge with plain good sense, and with considerable graphic power; and he certainly shows that “the British Army as it is" is not at all what the British Army ought to be. We will give a few sentences from a great number, significant of the state of these shillinga-day heroes :

“ Arrived at Rochester, I remained at a public-house, agreeably to the instructions of the old staff-sergeant, until he came up with the other recruits, when we proceeded together to the barracks, and being there duly handed over by him to the proper authorities, were marched to the receiving-house. The number of recruits already there was łupwards of two hundred, the larger part of whom were in no way distinguished for orderly conduct, while many of them had vice and ruffianism stamped indelibly on their faces...

“It was, however, only natural to expect that characters of this description should be met with in a place where the very offscourings of several of the principal cities of the United Kingdom were congregated. Rogues and scoundrels were jumbled together en masse ; and these, despite their relationship, agreed in no one respect, save in fleecing their more simple companions, by means of cards, pitch and toss, &c., to the utmost extent of their knavish abilities, and in utter contempt of Her Majesty's regulations touching gambling. They likewise indulged without restraint in the use of the most foul and abominable language, and I certainly felt considerable pain of mind as I asked myself, are these to be my future companions? Hard fare I little cared for, and it mattered not to me how rough my bed might be; privations of this nature are inseparable from a soldier's lot; but the prospect of mingling for any lengthened (period with some of the individuals I saw in the receiving-house, was, I must acknowledge, excessively disheartening. I was not then aware what a surprising alteration for the better in many respects, subjection to a strict and uniform discipline would effect in them in a little time.

“ All recruits on their first arrival at Chatham are sent to the receivinghouse; hence its name; and are obliged to remain there until they pass the garrison doctor, and are finally approved of by the lieutenant-colonel of the provisional battalion; when they receive their uniforms, and are sent to their several depots. The sleeping accommodations in this place were anything NO. XXIV. - VOL. IV.

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