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might succeed in "plucking out the heart of his mystery."

The horses were at the door, and Rosa was mounted, but in place of the corporal there stood a huge bulky dragoon, with high shoulders, a round face, and a wide mouth, who stared at her, as he saluted, with eyes about as expressive as his boots.

"Tindal has sent a note," said Bagot, "to say he is sorry that Onslow cannot be spared; but he thinks Sergeant Cumbermare will be found equally serviceable." In fact, Tindal

From the Courier.

SPRING CLEANING.

BY A SUFFERER.

THE melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year,

Of cleaning paint and scrubbing floors, and scouring far and near;

Heaped in the corners of the room, the ancient dirt lay quiet,

Nor rose up at the father's tread, nor at the children's riot;

But now the carpets are all up, and, from, the staircase top,

The mistress calls to man and maid to wield the broom and mop.

Where are those rooms, those quiet rooms, the house but now presented, Wherein we dwelt, nor dreamed of dirt, so

cosy

and contented? Alas! they've turned all upside down, that quiet suit of rooms,

With slops and suds, and soap and sand, and tubs and pails and brooms.

Chairs, tables, stands, are standing round, at sixes and at sevens,

While wife and housemaids fly about, like meteors

in the heavens.

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had discovered that some of his young hands were terribly in want of riding drill, and that nobody but Onslow could administer it.

Orelia bestowed on the unhappy Cumbermare a glance so full of scorn, that Rosa expected to see that warrior wither away and sink down into his boots. Then, putting out her lip, she said, "I shall not ride to-day ;" and, sweeping round majestically, she reentered the house; while Rosa, in order that the sergeant's feelings might not be injured, set out upon a solitary ride.

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He looks for papers, books or bills, that all were there before,

And sighs to find them on the desks or in the drawer no more.

And then he grimly thinks of her who set this fuss afloat,

And wishes she were out to sea, in a very leaky boat;

He meets her at the parlor door, with hair and cap awry,

With sleeves tucked up, and broom in hand, defiance in her eye;

He feels quite small, and knows full well there's nothing to be said,

So holds his tongue, and drinks his tea, and sneaks away to bed.

Mary Redcliffe, Bristol - a spot known but to
IN a neglected spot in the churchyard of St.
adjoining church.
few of the numerous frequenters of the celebrated
rest the mortal remains of
the father, mother, sister, and other relations of
Thomas Chatterton. A gravestone was many
years ago placed over them, but in the course of
time it had become so dilapidated as to render
which made the substitution of a new stone a
the inscription partially illegible; a circumstance
quainted with the state of the old one. This very
thing much wished for by those who were ac-
necessary step has been taken in the course of the
last few days; and a substantial and durable
stone now covers the dust of the family of
The marvellous Boy,

The sleepless soul that perished in his pride.
The following is the inscription :-
In Memory of

Thomas Chatterton, Schoolmaster, who died 7th August, 1752, aged 39 years.

Also Thomas Newton, Son-in-law of the above, who died 29th September, 1785, aged 40 years. Also 2 of his Sons and 1 Daughter. Also Sarah Chatterton, Widow of the above Thomas Chatterton, who died 25th December, 1791, aged 60 years.

Also Mary Newton, Widow of the above Thomas Newton, who died 23rd February, 1804, aged 53 years. Also Mary Ann Newton, Spinster, Daughter of the above Thomas and Mary Newton, who died 7th September, 1807, aged 24 years.

The old Tombstone having fallen into decay was thus replaced

Anno Domini MDCCCLIII.

SHOLTO VERE HARE,
WILLIAM HENRY EDWARDS,
Churchwardens.

From Household Words.

appearing only for a season, like specks upon

THE KINGDOM OF RECONCILED IMPOS- the sun or the floating islands in Windermere

SIBILITIES..

THERE is a kingdom whose boundaries are within the reach of every man's hand, on whose frontiers no heavier entrance-tribute or import duty is exacted save that comprised in the payment of two score inflections of the eyelids or forty winks; a kingdom into which the majority of humanity travel at least once in every twenty-four hours; though the exact time the precise moment at which that voyage is commenced is, and never has been, known to any man alive. Whether we are transported by some invisible agencyon the wings of spirits or in the arms of genii - whether we go to the kingdom or the kingdom comes to us, we cannot tell. Why or how or when we came there we know not; yet, almost invariably, when the tribute of the forty inflections has been duly paid, we find ourselves wandering in the Kingdom of Reconciled Impossibilities.

Locomotion in this kingdom is astonishingly rapid; we run without moving and fly without wings. Time and space are counted zeros; centuries are skipped at a bound; continents and oceans are traversed without an effort. We are here, there, and everywhere. Grayheaded men, we are little boys at school, breaking windows and dreading the vindicatory cane. Married and settled, we are struggling through the quickset hedges of our first love. Crippled, we race and leap; blind, we see. Unlearned, we discourse in strange tongues, and decipher the most intricate of hieroglyphics. Unmusical, we play the fiddle like Paganini. We pluck fruit from every branch of the tree of knowledge; the keys of every science hang in a careless bunch at our girdle; we are amenable to no laws; money is of no account; Jack is as good as his master; introductions are not required for entrance into polite society; the most glaring impossibilities are incessantly admitted, taken for granted and reconciled; whence the name of this kingdom.

Much more wondrous and full of marvels is it than the famed land of Cockaigne, than the country of Prester John, than the ground of Tom Tidler (whose occupation is now gone in consequence of the discovery of rival grounds in California and Australia), than Raleigh's Dorado, than the Arcadia of Strephon and Corydon, Celia and Sacharissa; than the fearful country where there are men

-whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders; than even the mirabolant land that Jack saw when he had gotten to the top of the beanstalk. The only territorial kingdom that I can compare it to is one-and even the duration of that one is fleeting and evanescent,

66

-visible and to be travelled in from the end of December to the end of the following February, called the Kingdom of Pantomime. This kingdom, which, at other seasons of the year, is as rigorously barred and closed against strangers as China or Japan or the Stock Exchange, offers many points of resemblance to the Kingdom of Reconciled Impossibilities. There is a voyager therein, one Clown, who with Pantaloon, his friend and dupe, and scapegoat, dances about the streets, insults and beats respectable shopkeepers, swindles and robs ready-furnished lodgings, leers at virtuous matrons, commits burglaries and larcenies in the broad day (or lamp) light, and perpetrates child-murders by the dozen, yet goes unwhipp'd of justice;" nay, he and his confederate are rewarded, at last, by an ovation of fireworks and revolving stars; as are also Harlequin, a lewd fellow in a spangled jerkin and hose, and a dancing girl they call Columbine; who together play such fantastic tricks before the footlights as make the gallery roar-such tricks as would be tolerated nowhere but in a Kingdom of Impossibilities. For, in all other kingdoms, theft of fish or sausage were it even the smallest gudgeon or the most infinitesmal saveloy — is three months at least, and robbery in a dwelling-house is felony; and to force a respectable white-bearded man with a crutch stick and an impediment in his speech to cast involuntary sommersaults, and to make him sit down oftener on a hard surface than he wishes, is an assault punishable by fine or imprisonment; and the cutting up, mulilating, smothering, or thrusting in a letter-box of a baby is murder.

In all other kingdoms, likewise, as we are well aware, vice is always vanquished and virtue rewarded ultimately; but in the Kingdom of Reconciled Impossibilities, as well as in that of pantomime, nothing of the kind takes place. In this former one, innocent, we are frequently condemned to death, or to to excruciating tortures. Masters, we are slaves; wronged and oppressed, we are always in the wrong and the oppressors. Though in the every-day kingdom we are perhaps wealthy, at least in easy circumstances, we are in the Realms of Impossibility perpetually in difficulties. Moments of inexpressible anguish we pass, from the want of some particular object or the non-remembrance of some particular word; though what the object or the word, we never have and never had the remotest idea. Spectres of duties omitted, ghosts of offences committed, sit at banquets with us; and, under circumstances of the greatest apparent gayety and joviality, we are nearly always in sore perturbation of mind. and vexation of spirit.

I could weep.

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Sometimes, though rarely, the rulers of the Impossible kingdom will permit you to drink provided always that you have tumbled (which is exactly your mode of entrance) into their domains in a desperately parched and thirsty condition. Cold water is the general beverage provided, and you are liberally allowed to drink without cessation to empty water-jugs, pitchers, decanters, buckets, if you choose. I have known men who have sucked a pump for days, nay, have lapped gigantic quantities of the Falls of Niagara ; but the Impossible king has mingled one cruel and malicious condition with his largesse. You may drink as much as you like, but you must never quench your thirst, and you must always wake-tumble out of the kingdom, I mean more thirsty than you were before.

The kingdom, indeed, is full of tribulations, that have tempted my appetite; and of the impossible yet poignant. Frequently, when unhandsome manner in which I have been we attempt to sing, our voice dies away in an denied the enjoyment of the first spoonful of inarticulate murmur or a guttural gasp. If soup, and of the rude and cavalier process by we strive to run, our legs fail under us; if we which I have been summarily transported to a nerve our arm to strike, some malicious power kingdom where I am usually expected to pay paralyzes our muscles, and the gladiator's for dinner my - when I think of these things fist falls as lightly as a feather; yet, powerless as we are, and unable to beat the knave who has wronged us, we are ourselves continually getting punched on the head, beaten with staves, gashed with swords and knives. Curiously, though much blood flows, and we raise hideous lamentations, we do not suffer much from these hurts. Frequently we are killed shot dead — decapitated; yet we walk and talk shortly afterwards, as Saint Denis is reported to have done. Innumerable as the sands of the sea are the disappointments we have to endure in the Kingdom of Impossibilities. Get up as early as we may, we are sure to miss the first train; the steamboat always sails without us. If we have a cheque to get cashed, the iron-ribbed shutters of the bank are always up, when our cab drives to the door, and somebody near us always says, without being asked, "Stopped payment!" All boats, vehicles, beasts of burden and other animals, behave in a similar tantalizing and disappointing manner; tall horses that we drive or ride, change unaccountably into little dogs, boats split in the middle, coaches rock up and down like ships. We walk for miles without advancing a step we write for hours without getting to the end of a page; we are continually beginning and never finishing, trying and never achieving, searching and never finding, knocking and not being admitted.

The Kingdom of Impossibilities must be the home of Ixion and the Danaïdes and Sysiphus, and peculiarly of Tantalus. The number of tubs we are constantly filling, and which are never full; and the quantity of stones, which, as soon as we have rolled them to the top of a hill, roll down again; are sufficiently astonishing; but it is in a tantalizing point of view that the kingdom is chiefly remarkable. We are forever bidden to rich banquets -not Barmecide feasts, for the smoking viands and generous wines are palpable to sight and touch. But no sooner are our legs comfortably under the mahogany, than a something far more teasing and vexatious than the ebony wand of Sancho's physician, sends the meats away untasted, the wines unquaffed, changes the venue to a kingdom of realities. Dear me! When I think of the innumerable gratuitous dinners I have sat down to in the Land of Impossibilities; of the countless eleemosynary spreads to which, with never a sous in my pocket, I have been made welcome; of the real turtle, truffled turkeys, Strasburgh pies, and odoriferous pineapples,

Travelling in this strange country is mostly accomplished in the night season-“in thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men." It is when the Kingdom of Life is hushed and quiescent, when the streets are silent, and there are none abroad but the watchers and the houseless, that the Kingdom of Impossibilities wakes up in full noise, and bustle, and activity. Yet betimes we are favored with a passport for this kingdom in the broad-day season - in the fierce summer heat, when we retire to cool rooms, there to pay the tribute of forty winks to the Monarch of the Impossible; when, as we travel, we can half-discern the green summer leaves waving through our translucent eyelids, can hear the murmuring of fountains and the singing of birds in the kingdom we have come from. Very pleasant are these day voyages, especially when we can drowsily hear the laughter of children playing on a lawn outside.

The Kingdom of Reconciled Impossibilities is a land of unfulfilled promises, of broken engagements, of trees forever blossoming but never bearing fruit, of jumbles of commencements with never a termination among them, of prefaces without finises, of dramas never played out. The unities are not observed in this kingdom. There are a great many prologues, but no epilogues. It is all as it should not and cannot be. It snows in July, and the dog-days are in January. Men sneeze with their feet and see with their thumbs, like Gargantua. The literature of the country consists of tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The houses are all built without foundations;

they are baseless fabrics, which, vanishing, leave not a wreck behind. Everything in the kingdom is impossible.

into dry leaves, like the money paid by the magician in the Arabian Nights.

If the kingdom (to expatiate further on its advantageous features) be one of tribulations and disappointments, it is also one of great and extended privilege. We are privileged to walk about unwashed, unshaven, and undressed, to clap kings upon the back, to salute princesses if we list, to ride blood-horses, to y higher than the skylark, to visit foreign lands without a foreign-office passport, the reference of a banking firm, or the necessity of being personally known to the foreign secretary. We have the privilege of being a great many people and in a great places at one and the same time. We have the privilege of living our lives over again, or undoing the wrongs we have done, of reestablishing our old companionship with the dead, and knowing their worth much better than we did before we lost them.

Impossible, yet reconciled. In no other land, certainly, are we so convinced of the truth of the axiom that, "whatever is, is right." Against our knowledge, feelings, experience, and convictions, against all evidence, oral or ocular, against truth, justice, reason, or possibility, we smilingly confess that black is white, that clouds are whales, that the moon is cheese. We know our brother to be our brother, yet without difficulty or reluctance we admit him to be Captain Cook. With a full knowledge that what we are doing can't be, we are pleasantly convinced that it can be, and that it is, and is right. So we violate all laws of morality, decorum, international justice, honesty, and courtesy, with a comfortable self-consciousness that it is "all right," and that we are wronging no one. Quakers have been known in the Yes, preeminent and radiant stands one Kingdom of Impossibilities to lie in wait for privilege, to the enjoyment of which every men and murder them; nay, to have hidden traveller in the land of Reconciled Impossithe bodies afterwards in corn-bins, or chem- bilities is entitled. He is privileged to ists' bottles. Moral men have eloped with behold the Dead Alive. The King of Terballet dancers. Bishops have found them-rors has no power in the domains of the Imselves at the Cider Cellars. Judges of the possible. The dead move and speak and laugh, Ecclesiastical Court have created disturbances as they were wont to speak and move and at the Casino, and have wrenched off knockers laugh, in the old days when they were alive, in company with jovial proctors and fast old and when we loved them. They have been surrogates about town. There was a cathe-dead- of course - we know it and they tell dral verger once, in the Kingdom of Impossibilities, who refused a fee; there was an Irish member without a grievance; there was a chancery suit decided to the satisfaction of all parties.

us so-but they are alive now; and, thanks to the irresistible logic of the Impossible Kingdom, we slightly question how. These visitors have no grim tales to tell, no secrets of their prison-house to reveal. Here, joyful Good men not only become rascals, but and mirthful as ever, are the old familiar rascals turn honest men in this astonishing faces; the life-blood courses warmly through country. Captain Mac Swindle paid me, only the old friendly hands; dead babies crow and last night, the five pounds he has owed me battle valorously in nurses' arms; dead sweetfor fifteen years. I saw the unjust steward hearts smile and blush; dead aunts scold; render up a faultless account. All is not dead schoolmasters awe; dead boon comvexatious and disappointing in the Impossible panions crack the old jokes, sing the old Kingdom. If it be a kingdom of unfulfilled songs, tell the old stories, till we wake into promises, it is one of accomplished wishes. the Kingdom of the Possible; and ah, me! Sorely pressed for cash in this sublunar king- the eye turns to a vacant chair, a faded miniadom, no sooner are we in the other than the ture, a lock of soft hair in crumpled tissue exact sum we wished for, chinks in golden paper, a broken toy; while the mind's vision sovereigns, rustles in crisp notes, mellifluously recurs to a green mound, and a half-effaced whispers in soft-papered cheques before our stone. eyes, within our gladsome pockets, or our rejoicing fingers. We shall be able to meet the little bill; streets are no longer stopped up; the tailor shall cringe again; Caroline shall have the velvet mantle trimmed with sable. Hurrah! But, alas! the money of the kingdom that never can be, and yet always is and will be, is as treacherous and deceitful as a will-of-the-wisp, or an Eastern mirage; no sooner do we possess it than we have it not. We wake, and the shining sovereigns and the rustling notes have turned

In the regions of the Impossible there is a population separate, apart, peculiar; possible nowhere but in a land of impossibilities. Monstrous phantasies in semi-human shape, horrible creations, deformed giants, dwarfs with the heads of beasts; shapeless phantoms, hideous life such as the Ancient Mariner saw on the rotting deep. Such things pursue us through these regions with grinning fangs, and poisonous breath; kneel on our chests; wind their sharp talons in our hair; gnaw at our throats with horrid yells. And, apart

from the every day scenes of every day life | Staffordshire.
brought to the reductio ad absurdum in the
Kingdom of Impossibilities, we tarry betimes
in chambers of horrors, in howling deserts,
in icy caverns, in lakes of fire, in pits of un-
utterable darkness. Miserable men are they
who are frequent travellers through these dis-
tricts of the Impossible Kingdom. They may
say with the guilty Thane

-Better be with the dead

It there appeared that the firemen, who ought to have examined the safety of the workings ere the miners entered, had, on the morning of the accident, deputed this duty to another person. The deputy went round with a lamp not closed, and was seen going into the workings closely followed by some men and boys, each with a lighted candle in his hand! Again, T. E. Foster, Esq., an extensive viewer, relates, that last year he visited a pit in Lancashire. "On

Whom we to gain our place have sent to peace, going down, the overlooker told me:

Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy.

If you would leave such countries unexplored, lead virtuous lives, take abundant exercise, be temperate (in the true sense of the word; not choosing in what, but in everything), and take no man's wrong to bed with thee no, not for one single night.

From Chambers' Journal.

COAL-MINE EXPLOSIONS.

Or the many Blue Books that have recently been laid before Parliament, none is more full of matter for grave cogitation than that now to be referred to on coalmine explosions.* This Report, only one of a series, makes known, in a very emphatic way, the terrible loss of life in coal-mines; one fact alone being sufficiently appalling the loss of 900 lives by mine explosions within the short space of twenty-one weeks, in the year 1852.

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'We

work this mine entirely with safety lamps.' I said: Very well, Jonathan. I should like to see these lamps, that they are all right before I go in.' The first lamp he put in my hand was Clanny's, and between the gauze I could put my little finger in. I said: This will not do; I will take one of the others.' I examined one, and the gauze was perfect, but very dirty. We proceeded along the railway from the bottom of the shaft. And in the face of the workings every man had a Davy-lamp; but every man had the gauze out, and it was a naked light! I said: If you are not more particular than this, you will have a blow-up.' And next week they had it." So much for mere carelessness; but we shall by and by advance more serious charges against the lamp. Meanwhile, as to know the disease is half the cure, let us look for a moment at the dread agent of destruction.

6

The reader who takes his idea of a gas from the ordinary illuminating medium of All reports on this subject of serious con- our streets, will, in studying fire-damp, find cern concur in stating, that for explosions the himself not very far off the mark. Relieved only proper remedy is better ventilation; from the pressure of the superincumbent strata, and they all deprecate placing too great reli- light carburetted hydrogen exudes in great ance on the safety-lamp. They affirm, that abundance, often from almost every pore of the coal in our mines; and on examining our gaswhile many accidents are traceable solely to the use of this instrument, it is perfectly works, we find ingenious machinery to sepacompatible with science to reduce these mel-rate and convey away the tar, ammonia, and ancholy occurrences to a small fraction of the other chemical products of the distillation their present number, and that, ultimately, of coal from the carburetted hydrogens, the mines may be rendered perfectly safe. Little only useful ingredients for the purposes of good, however, can be done while operative light and heat. If so, why do we not hear miners entertain an undue, and what may of catastrophes in our streets and parlors be called a superstitious confidence in their similar to those so much dreaded underDavy-lamp, no matter how much that lamp ground? The reason is simple. Ask any may be out of order. With them, this useful chemist, and he will tell you, that the danger companion is not so much a delicate scientific lies not in any property of the gas or gases instrument, as a thing of talismanic power. themselves, but only when they are combined Danger may be most imminent the lamp in certain proportions with the oxygen of completely out of trim - but all is right, pro- that if our ordinary coal-gas be allowed not atmospheric air. Every housewife knows, vided the minor has only a Davy. Stories, most ludicrous but for their associations, are to burn, but to escape into the atmospheric told in abundance respecting this childlike air, an explosion will follow the introduction simplicity. We select two. The first was of a light into the room, rivalling only in brought out in evidence at the investigation degree the dread catastrophes of the mines. of an explosion which happened last year in

*Report on Coal-mines. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 22d June, 1852.

Though, from its small specific gravity, light carburetted hydrogen easily escapes into the atmosphere, the coal still retains a large portion of it; and this has been amply proved

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