rate additional relief by emigration, the introduction of English capital and farming over the remaining surface of Ireland (at least where the proprietors may think it necessary) would at once cease to be chimerical."* At least we feel justified by these facts, by all the statements here made, and by the authorities by whom this plan has been recommended, in demanding that a measure which promises so much relief, not only to the miseries of Ireland, but to the various philanthropic designs in this country-which are so continually thwarted by the influx of Irish poor-should be fairly and openly canvassed; and that, if any serious objections can be stated to it, they should be publicly brought forward and discussed.

As to the simply economical objection, on the score of the outlay that would be required, we do not lay stress on the statement made on no less authority than Lord Devon's Commission, that, in fact, it ought to cost nothing; and that the improved rental of the land ought to bring in a return of ten per cent on the capital invested in the speculation. We may admit that this is too sanguine a view of the matter that the sums advanced by the government of this country will probably be tardily and only partially repaid. Still, when we reflect on the facts that have been stated as to the actual cultivation of waste lands in Ireland, and on the concurrent opinion of so many able and experienced men, who have examined the country carefully, and report specifically on the facilities for the improvement of its different parts, it seems impossible to doubt, that, if the expenditure of the sums advanced by government is superintended and controlled by the talent and experience which the country may expect that the government can command, the repayment of a considerable part of the outlay, particularly of that which may be advanced on the credit of the poor-law unions, may be expected within a few years. And even if there were ultimately a loss to the extent of one-half of the £10,000,000, which has been stated

*

as the probable expense of the whole change, the money will at all events have gone to the immediate relief of Irish suffering, and been better spent than what was formerly voted for that purpose; and we cannot think that a nation which spent a larger sum, only two years ago, in the mere relief of the sufferings of the Irish people, without any attempt at improvement, and very generally with a deteriorating (because not previously considered) effect on the resources of the countryand which spent £20,000,000 only a few years ago with very questionable effect, but certainly without being grudged, in attempting to assuage the sufferings, and raise the condition of the negroes in the West Indies-can repent the loss of a fourth part of that sum, in an attempt which can hardly by possibility fail of producing considerable effect, to provide remunerative employment for the hordes of Irish labourers in their own country, and arrest those grievous calamities which their diffusion over this country has brought on themselves, and on so many others who have come in contact with them.

In thus stating the grounds of a very decided opinion as to the measure supplementary to the new poor-law, which is most essentially required for Ireland, we do not of course mean to deny, that various other means may be adopted, with more or less of good effect, in furtherance of the same grand object. We have no doubt that both religious and secular education are of the utmost importance to the civilisation and improvement of every coun try; and although we do not regard education, as some authors do, as the main remedy for the evils of over-population, (being thoroughly persuaded that nature has provided for this object more surely than education can, by that growth of artificial wants in the human mind, which is the result and the reward of pains taken to relieve suffering and secure comfort during youth,) we are as anxious as any of our contemporaries for the extension of education in Ireland. We believe that instruction in agriculture, as

well as encouragement to industry, is very much needed in most parts of Ireland; and that measures for the direct communication of such instruction, both to landlords and tenants, may be very useful. We believe that in Ireland, as in this country, there is great need of sanitary regulations; and we trust that the draining, cleaning, and paving of the Irish towns will be regarded with as much interest as similar purifications in England and Scotland. But we think no one who reflects on the subject can fail to perceive two truths, and to acknowledge their direct bearing on the subject of Irish misery-first, that to a people nurtured in destitution and amidst scenes of suffering, something of the great mental stimuli of employment and hope must be applied, in order to enable them to appreciate, or permanently to profit by, any kind of education; and,

secondly, that in the existence of laws securing sustenance to all the poor of a country, and at the same time enabling the higher ranks to exact labour as the price of that sustenance, we possess a security such as no other social arrangements can afford, for habitual attention to all means of bettering the condition of the poor, on the part of those who have it in their power to apply those means, and on whose exertions their successful application must necessarily depend. Thus the poor-laws of Ireland, and the subsidiary measures for procuring employment for the poor there, so far from being opposed to any wise system of instruction, or of sanitary improvement, must be regarded as in truth an essential preliminary to the truly beneficial operation of any system that may be devised for either of these purposes.

PART VIII.

THERE entered, in the front drawing-room of my father's house in Russell Street-an Elf!!! clad in white, small, delicate, with curls of jet over her shoulders;—with eyes so large and so lustrous that they shone through the room, as no eyes merely human could possibly shine. The Elf approached, and stood facing us. The sight was so unexpected, and the apparition so strange, that we remained for some moments in startled silence. At length my father, as the bolder and wiser man of the two, and the more fitted to deal with the eirie things of another world, had the audacity to step close up to the little creature, and, bending down to examine its face, said, "What do you want, my pretty child?"

Pretty child! was it only a pretty child after all? Alas! it would be well if all we mistake for fairies at the first glance could resolve themselves only into pretty children!

"Come," answered the child, with a foreign accent, and taking my father by the lappet of his coat-"come! poor papa is so ill! I am frightened! come -and save him—”

"Certainly," exclaimed my father quickly: "where's my hat, Sisty? Certainly, my child! we will go and save

papa.

"But who is papa?" asked Pisistratus a question that would never have occurred to my father. He never asked who or what the sick papas of poor children were, when the children pulled him by the lappet of his coat.-"Who is papa?

The child looked hard at me, and the big tears rolled from those large luminous eyes, but quite silently. At this moment, a full-grown figure filled up the threshold, and, emerging from the shadow, presented to us the aspect of a stout, well-favoured young woman. She dropped a curtsy, and then said, mincingly,

"Oh, miss! you ought to have waited for me, and not alarmed the gentlefolks by running up stairs in that way.

If you please, sir, I was

"But what is the matter?" cried I; for my father had taken the child in his arms, soothingly, and she was now weeping on his breast.

"Why, you see, sir, (another curtsy,) the gent only arrived last night at our hotel, sir-The Lamb, close by Lunnun Bridge—and he was taken ill and he's not quite in his right mind like:-so we sent for the doctor, and the doctor looked at the brass plate on the gent's carpet-bag, sir, and then he looked into the Court Guide, and he said, 'There is a Mr Caxton in Great Russell Street,is he any relation?' and this young lady said, 'That's my papa's brother, and we were going there.'-And so, sir, as the Boots was out, I got into a cab, and miss would come with me, and

"Roland-Roland ill!-Quickquick, quick!" cried my father; and, with the child still in his arms, he ran down the stairs. I followed with his hat, which, of course, he had forgotten. A cab, by good luck, was passing our very door; but the chambermaid would not let us enter it till she had satisfied herself that it was not the same she had dismissed. This preliminary investigation completed, we entered and drove to The Lamb.

The chambermaid, who sate opposite, passed the time in ineffectual overtures to release my father of the little girl, who still clung nestling to his breast, in a long epic, much broken into episodes, of the causes which had led to her dismissal of the late cabman, who, to swell his fare, had thought proper to take a "circumbendibus!"—and with occasional tugs at her cap, and smoothings down of her gown, and apologies for being such a figure, especially when her eyes rested on my satin cravat, or drooped on my varnished boots.

Arrived at The Lamb, the cham

bermaid, with conscious dignity, led us up a large staircase, which seemed interminable. As she mounted the region above the third story, she paused to take breath, and inform us, apologetically, that the house was full, but that, if the "gent" stayed over Friday, he would be moved into No. 54, "with a look-out and a chimbly." My little cousin now slipped from my father's arms, and, running up the stairs, beckoned to us to follow. We did so, and were led to a door, at which the child stopped and listened; then taking off her shoes, she stole in on tiptoe. We entered after her.

By the light of a single candle, we saw my poor uncle's face it was flushed with fever, and the eyes had that bright, vacant stare which it is so terrible to meet.-Less terrible is it to find the body wasted, the features sharp with the great life-struggle, than to look on the face from which the mind is gone, the eyes in which there is no recognition. Such a sight is a startling shock to that unconscious habitual materialism with which we are apt familiarly to regard those we love: for, in thus missing the mind, the heart, the affection that sprang to ours, we are suddenly made aware that it was the something within the form, and not the form itself, that was so dear to us. The form itself is still, perhaps, little altered; but that lip which smiles no welcome, that eye which wanders over us as strangers, that ear which distinguishes no more our voices, the friend we sought is not there! Even our own love is chilled back-grows a kind of vague superstitious terror. Yes, it was not the matter, still present to us, which had conciliated all those subtle nameless sentiments which are classed and fused in the word "affection," - it was the airy, intangible, electric something, the absence of which now appals us.

I stood speechless-my father crept on, and took the hand that returned no pressure:-The child only did not seem to share our emotions, — but, clambering on the bed, laid her cheek on the breast and was still.

"Pisistratus," whispered my father at last, and I stole near, hushing my breath" Pisistratus, if your mother were here!"

I nodded; the same thought had

VOL. LXIV.-NO. CCCXCVIII.

struck us both. His deep wisdom, my active youth, both felt their nothingness then and there. In the sick chamber, both turned helplessly to miss the woman.

So I stole out, descended the stairs, and stood in the open air in a sort of stunned amaze. Then the tramp of feet, and the roll of wheels, and the great London roar, revived me. That contagion of practical life which lulls the heart and stimulates the brain,what an intellectual mystery there is in its common atmosphere! In another moment I had singled out, like an inspiration, from a long file of those ministrants of our Trivia, the cab of the lightest shape and with the strongest horse, and was on my way, not to my mother's, but to Dr MH- Manchester Square,

whom I knew as the medical adviser to the Trevanions. Fortunately, that kind and able physician was at home, and he promised to be with the sufferer before I myself could join him. I then drove to Russell Street, and broke to my mother, as cautiously as I could, the intelligence with which I was charged.

When we arrived at The Lamb, we found the doctor already writing his prescription and injunctions: the activity of the treatment announced the danger. I flew for the surgeon who had been before called in. Happy those who are strange to that indescribable silent bustle which the sickroom at times presents-that conflict which seems almost hand to hand between life and death- when all the poor, unresisting, unconscious frame is given up to the war against its terrible enemy; the dark blood flowing-flowing; the hand on the pulse, the hushed suspense, every look on the physician's bended brow; then the sinaplasms to the feet, and the ice to the head; and now and then, through the lull or the low whispers, the incoherent voice of the sufferer-babbling, perhaps, of green fields and fairyland, while your hearts are breaking! Then, at length, the sleep-in that sleep, perhaps, the crisis-the breathless watch, the slow waking, the first sane words — the old smile again, only fainter-your gushing tears, your low-"Thank God! thank God!"

2 x

Picture all this; it is past: Roland has spoken-his sense has returned my mother is leaning over him-his child's small hands are clasped round his neck-the surgeon, who has been

there six hours, has taken up his hat, and smiles gaily as he nods farewell-and my father is leaning against the wall, with his face covered with his hands.

ALL this had been so sudden that, to use the trite phrase-for no other is so expressive-it was like a dream. I felt an absolute, an imperious want of solitude, of the open air. The swell of gratitude almost stifled methe room did not seem large enough for my big heart. In early youth, if we find it difficult to control our feelings, so we find it difficult to vent them in the presence of others. On the spring side of twenty, if any thing affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in our room, or get away into the streets or the fields; in our earlier years we are still the savages of Nature, and we do as the poor brute does, the wounded stag leaves the herd, and, if there is any thing on a dog's faithful heart, he slinks away into a corner.

Accordingly, I stole out of the hotel, and wandered through the streets, which were quite deserted. It was about the first hour of dawn, the most comfortless hour there is, especially in London! But I only felt freshness in the raw air, and soothing in the desolate stillness. The love my uncle inspired was very remarkable in its nature: it was not like that quiet affection with which those advanced in life must usually content themselves, but connected with the more vivid interest that youth awakens. There was in him still so much of vivacity and fire, in his errors and crotchets so much of the self-delusion of youth, that one could scarce fancy him other than young. Those Quixotic exaggerated notions of honour, that romance of sentiment, which no hardship, care, grief, disappointment, could wear away, (singular in a period when, at two-and-twenty, young men declare themselves blasés!) seemed to leave him all the charm of boyhood. A season in London had made me more a man of the world, older in heart than he was. Then, the sorrow

that gnawed him with such silent sternness. No-Captain Roland was one of those men who seize hold of your thoughts, who mix themselves up with your lives. The idea that Roland should die-die with the load at his heart unlightened, was one that seemed to take a spring out of the wheels of nature, an object out of the aims of life of my life at least. For I had made it one of the ends of my existence to bring back the son to the father, and restore the smile, that must have been gay once, to the downward curve of that iron lip. But Roland was now out of danger,

and yet, like one who has escaped shipwreck, I trembled to look back on the danger past; the voice of the devouring deep still boomed in my ears. While rapt in my reveries, I stopped mechanically to hear a clock strike-four; and, looking round, I perceived that I had wandered from the heart of the city, and was in one of the streets that lead out of the Strand. Immediately before me, on the door-steps of a large shop, whose closed shutters wore as obstinate a stillness as if they had guarded the secrets of seventeen centuries in a street in Pompeii,-reclined a form fast asleep; the arm propped on the hard stone supporting the head, and the limbs uneasily strewn over the stairs. The dress of the slumberer was travel-stained, tattered, yet with the remains of a certain pretence: an air of faded, shabby, penniless gentility made poverty more painful, because it seemed to indicate unfitness to grapple with it. The face of this person was hollow and pale, but its expression, even in sleep, was fierce and hard. I drew near and nearer; I recognised the countenance, the regular features, the raven hair, even a peculiar gracefulness of posture: the young man whom I had met at the inn by the way-side, and who had left me alone with the Savoyard