66

Don't

us, and to make reparation for the ruin I have wrought. be harsh with me. Don't repulse me, as I have repulsed you, many's the wicked time. I have money, as you know; you shall yet be a rich man, Spencer, though only in your just position, were you to hold up your head with the wealthiest and proudest.' Money?" sneered the man he addressed; "yes, that is your panacea for all evils-I know it. But will money bring back the child that lies rotting in his grave, and who died of no disease, but that of want and cold? You know that I came to you and begged for a trifle of money to get him what was necessary to save his life, and you refused me, and drove me from your door. Will money," continued the man, savagely, taking the infant from its mother's arms, "spare me this child either? No; not if you emptied the Bank of England at my feet. Your reparation comes too late."

The usurer wrung his hands.

"Don't be hard with me, Spencer," he cried; "for the love of God show that mercy to me, which I denied to you. We may save that child yet. If money can command science enough to save him, he shall live to comfort ye both for many a long year. the child that's gone-and for

my

child that 's gone

For

He sank back into the youth's arms, murmuring through his tears-"Forgive me, Spencer, forgive me."

"As I hope to be forgiven, I do," replied the man.

In less than ten minutes after this scene, the usurer and his young companion were again seated in the cab; and the driver was urging his horses towards the Fleet Prison.

I

"The man I am going to release has been confined seventeen years," said the usurer. "Don't look at me so. I am human now, whatever I might have been. He borrowed money of me. thought his security good, but it turned out otherwise. The man was honest, I believe, and would have paid me if he could; but there was never a chance of that. I put him in the Fleet, seventeen years ago this winter."

66

And he has never been at large in all that time?" cried the youth, amazed and horror-stricken.

"Never! He had no friends to do anything for him. He lived on the poor side of the prison, as it is called, and must have been more than half starved, during the whole time he has been there ; but, please God, he shall be a rich man yet. "Here we are," shouted the driver. sir ? "

66

Shall I ring the bell,

They got out, and when the gate was opened, the usurer desired to be shown into the waiting-room, and that Henry Abbot might be brought to speak to him.

66

Henry Abbot!" exclaimed the man addressed; "you're too late to speak to him. He died yesterday."

With much difficulty they got the old man into the cab, and while the youth supported his senseless burden, the driver whipped his horses the whole way back to the inn they had first quitted.

The usurer died about a year afterwards, but he lived long enough to accomplish a great deal of the good he intended, and increased the funds of the principal charitable institutions in the metropolis at his death. The youth-but we will be silent

about him.

Our tale is told.

ARNHELDT WEAVER.

THE DEVIL'S WALK IN 1846.

THE Devil uneasy sat in his state,
Revolving the news from earth of late.
Cries he, "I must have later:

I shall visit the earth;" and as he spoke
Around him he threw his travelling cloak,
And with rumble and groan,

On a red hot stone,

Rode up from Mount Etna's crater.

He spread his wings, and away he flew
O'er Sicily, to Malta;

But alighted not, as a fresh wind blew,
Till a favourite haunt came into view,
A stepping-stone, where to rest his shoe-
The rock of fam'd Gibraltar.

Cloudless and starlight, the brilliant sky,
As o'er sea and land he roll'd his eye,
And his quick glance scour'd the coast afar,
From Cape St. Vincent to Trafalgar ;
"There!" cries the Devil, "my temples are."
On Africa now he turn'd his gaze,
Yonder," said he, " my altars blaze,
And hecatombs, as in ancient days,

214

THE DEVIL'S WALK IN 1846.

Are offered at my shrine.

Ye priests! of Dahra's murderous caves,
Heed not your victims' whine,
But pile the faggots higher;

Until by hundreds the wretched slaves
Roast, and expire,

And from the pyre,

Spreading o'er all the world its human flame,

In deathless characters shall spread Pelissier's name."
Once more, the Devil is on his way,
Flying o'er Biscay's foaming bay,

Dropping a glance from his onward soar,

As he passed the banks of the fatal Loire ;

Whence there rose to his ear, as he thought, the wild
And drowning shriek of mother and child.

And now the Devil's voyage is over,

He has furl'd his wings on the cliff of Dover,
And blithe as a bridegroom before his marriage,
Takes his seat for town in a first-class carriage.
'Twas night; and the Devil contrived to steal
Into the House, as Sir Robert Peel

Made his free-trade oration:

Oh could you have seen him writhe and smart,
As each duty discarded pierced his heart,

And he groaned out with vexation,
"Curse their free-trade-for wars will cease:
Buyer and seller must dwell in peace:

I had hoped to have set America on
To fight with England for Oregon,

But
my blood-red standard may now be furl'd,
Goodwill must reign throughout the world."
And the Devil with anger storm'd and shook,
As from the house his way he took.-

He saw a huge crowd by a prison wall,
Waiting the gibbet's festival;

They had waited there from set of sun,
And as yet the day had not begun.

Hark! the death-bell tolls

Back the vast crowd rolls

A moment's pause, like the silence of death ;
Even the Devil held his breath:

Then a murmuring shout, it rent the air-
A woman hung strangled and quivering there ;
And the Devil glared on the crowd below,

And he joy'd at the fruit of the murderous show.

Thieves, by dozens, were plying their trade,
Women were fighting, or drunken laid.
"These are the scenes that I love right well,"
Thought the Devil; "they serve to people Hell."
Now he takes 'mong the city streets his range
And marks a crowd, anxious and dense,
Thronging around the Stock Exchange,
With eagerness most intense;

As if hung the life of each needy wretch
On the price his scrip that day would fetch.

"Hurra!" cried the Devil, "man's never content
With the sober rate of five per cent.;

To get rich without labour, is now the desire
Of noble and beggar, parson and squire ;

Sinner and saint, all join the dance;

But to-morrow I'll play to them, 'Off to France.""
And now for a moment quiet and still,

The Devil he lurk'd in the smoke of a mill :

Where spindles were turning,

And gaslights were burning,

And children their day's bread were busily earning.
Thought he, "What a conscience these Englishmen have!
They give millions of money to free the poor slave,
And then to his master they turn round and cry,
Though you whip your slave till he's ready to die,
In raising your cotton, that cotton we'd buy."

The mill is stopp'd, the work is done:
Away the weary children run,
Quoth the Devil with a hellish grin,
As he stroked his finger upon his chin-
"That child is gone to purchase gin."

But pale he turn'd, when he saw the libel,

The child has not purchased gin but-a Bible.

Still paler he turn'd, and scarce could speak,

When he found ten thousand were sold that week.*

Confounded, he spread his wings on high,
And shot like a meteor through the sky,
Till over Mount Etna he stopp'd,

When with rumble and groan,

Like a red-hot stone,

He once more down the crater dropp'd.

* Alluding to the present extraordinary demand for Bibles at Manchester.

A PLEA FOR THE WORLD BELOW STAIRS.

BY PAUL BELL.

66

WHEN I was a little tiny boy, sir, I used to stand at the door of the Blue Bell, opposite my father's house, that I might watch the mails going out, with a bitterness of yearning you gentlemen who live perpetually in the metropolis can't understand; we country folks used to be for ever hearing of your London Cries! Now it may be that the increase of reciprocal intercourse has taken off the edge of the strangeness; or else you have fewer "Water Cresses," and "Babes in the Wood," Bird Cages,' "Dolls' Bedsteads," "Hot Muffins," and other such "easements of life," (as Jeannie Deans called them) than your fathers. Here and there, it is true, one may hear, in a long lonely street, some pernicious Italian tempting you to buy a "tombola," (under which invitation the Le Grands have assured me there lurks a jesuitical meaning and intention calling for close watchfulness on the part of The Record); but there's no more possibility of encountering a sweep than a Unicorn :. while the ice carts are too grand, and Monsieur Jullien's vans too genteel and English (for Monsieur Jullien boasts, I hear, that he is now a thorough Englishman) to make any noise as they go! In short, whatever Mr. Hullah may choose to say, sir,-London is a less musical place by daytime than it was thirty years ago.

For all this and though, to boot, the race of town criers who used to bawl in village streets for lost children, and to announce sales by auction, is well nigh extinct, there is no lack of cries abroad. I can never, for instance, set foot in certain houses, without being knocked down by "Who wants an old abuse?" or "Churches to mend !" And what housekeeper will deny the fact, that, so soon as ever two or three get together and begin to praise their own and to pity their neighbours' mismanagements, of "Ullalu" or lament, over the "degeneracy of servants," is as certain to be raised, as a most comprehensively christian "grace" after my Lord Bishop of Exeter's dinner, or the peal of applause which follows Macready's "There's no such thing!" in his dagger scene from Macbeth. Young England or Old England,-Exeter Hall-goer or Romeward-bound-aristocrat or mill-owner, it is

-a sort