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From Chambers' Journal.

THE LODGINGS THAT WOULD N'T SUIT. My landlady was a little, spare, neat, cleanlooking old woman, with the kind of superficial sharpness of eye that bespeaks a person whose mind has always moved within the same small circle. When, or at what age she began the business of letting furnished apartments, or whether she was born in it, and grew up of nature and necessity a landlady, I do not know; but there she was, as intimate with her house and everything that concerned it as a limpet is with its shell, and as ignorant, too, as that exclusive animal is of the outside world. Her connection with that world was of a peculiar kind. She never visited it but when driven by the force of circumstances, and then it was as a beleaguered garrison makes a sortie against the enemy. Her natural foes were the trades-people who dealt in anything she wanted, and the result of a conflict between them, if it involved but the fortunes of a half-penny, colored her whole day. It was not frequently, however, that she was driven to this aggressive warfare, for my landlady was a great dealer at the door, and lived in a state of perpetual hostility with the venders of sprats-0, and live soles.

breakfast-time, I would fain even have prolonged the ministering of the dirty maid-of-allwork, by asking questions. But Molly had doubtless been ordered not to speak to the lodgers, and therefore she answered curtly; and, slamming down, or whisking off the things, went her way. I had at length recourse to my landlady herself, and found her so much more communicative, that I suddenly conceived the wild idea of being able to select from her reminiscences the materials for a story-with which I had already resolved to delight the public, if I could only think of a plot. She was not at all disinclined to speak. Indeed, I believe she would have made no scruple of telling me the history of all her lodgers, from the epoch when things began to settle down after the Norman Conquest; for it was to some such period I referred in my own mind the first appearance in her window of "Lodgings to Let." But somehow her lodgers had no history to relate. Her favorite hero was a gentleman, who every now and. then brought her in news from the world that Parliament was going to impose a tax upon furnished lodgings. This was a very excit ing subject. So far as it went, she was so unscrupulous a democrat, that I began to be fearful of political consequences if we were Her house, or at least the parlor floor overheard; indeed, she did not hesitate to set which I inhabited, bore a curious resemblance the whole boiling of them at defiance, saying, to herself, being a little, spare, neat, clean- in answer to my caution, that if she was took looking old floor. It consisted of a sitting-up in such a cause, she would soon let them room and bedroom in excellent preservation. know they had got the wrong sow by the What the age of the furniture may have been, ear! it was impossible even to guess; but for all practical purposes, it was as good as new. There was no gloss on it- there never is in a lodging-house-but neither was there a single grain of dust. Though kept constantly clean, it had never been rubbed in its life; and that was the secret of its longevity. The carpet, though as whole as the rest, was not in other respects so fortunate. Its color was so completely faded, that you could not tell what it had originally been; the pattern "The lady and her daughter?" said she. might have been matter of endless controversy;" Well, I don't know as there is anything and it exhibited a decided gangway from the door to the fireplace. Its dimensions might be thought scanty, for it did not cover the entire floor; but then it must be considered that this carpet was intended for the comfort of the lodgers' feet, not of those of the six enne-bottomed chairs ranged at wide intervals along the walls. On the mantel-piece there stood a lion of Derbyshire spar, and flanking him on each side a vase of stoneware; the background being formed by a long narrow horizontal mirror, divided into three compartments, with a black frame.

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But since my landlady had not a story, why not tell it? There was in it a young gentle- and a young lady-and a mother and a journey-and a legacy: all the requisite materials, in short-only not mixed. It would be something new-would n't it? to give a love-story without a word of love, without an incident, and without a dénouement. Such was my landlady's no-story; and we will get it out of her.

particular to tell about them. They were respectable people, and excellent lodgers; their rent was as punctual in coming as the Saturday; they stayed fourteen months, and then they went away."

"You have not mentioned their name?"

"Their name? Well, surely I must have known their name when I went after the reference; but as they knew nobody, and were known to nobody, I soon forgot it. We called the mother the Parlor, and the daughter the Young Lady; for you see, at that time there was no other young lady in the house. Their occupation? As for that, the mother marketed, and the daughter sewed, sitting in the ful. They had, indeed, rather a cold, solitary chair at the window. Sometimes they walked, look; and sometimes in the morning at sometimes they read, sometimes they chatted.

These apartments, for which I paid twelve shillings a week, were not particularly cheer

"I only wanted to know what was their station, how they lived, and".

They did nothing else as I know of. They | I went out for a couple of chops, for their dinlived on their means, like other lodgers. All ners. Well, I was ever so long gone- for I lodgers that stay fourteen months have means. was not to be done so easily out a ha'penny a You be so green, mister, you make me laugh pound - but in coming home, as the young sometimes!" lady was still sewing away, I thought I would just pass by the other side before crossing over. And so, mister, while going by the house, I looked in at his window promis cuous- - and there was a sight to see! He had retired to the other end of the room, where he was sitting with his back to the wall, his two elbows on a table before him, and his chin resting on his knuckles; and thus had he been staring for an hour right across the street, unseen and alone, with that young lady before him, like a vision of his own calling up. As for the meeting of the

"Lived? oh, very respectable! A baked shoulder, we shall say, on the Sunday, with potatoes under it; Monday, cold; Tuesday, hashed; then, maybe, a pair of live sole for the Wednesday; Thursday, a dish of sassengers; Friday, sprats-0; and on Saturday, bread and butter in the forenoon, with a saveloy or a polony at tea, made up the weekrespectable. I know what a lady is, mister" here the landlady fixed her eye upon me severely" and them were ladies!"

"I have no doubt at all of it; and the young man was of course something like themselves?"

two"-
"Stop, mistress! Before you come to that,
describe the young man.

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"The young man, if he were a young man, "He was like nothing but a mystery at the was a grave, steady, sedate, quiet individual, Coburg! I don't know as even he were a who might have been all ages from twentyyoung man. He might just as well have been five to fifty. He wore black clothes and a a middle-aged or an elderly man. There he sat white cravat; his hat was always as smooth at the parlor window opposite, with a book in as satin; his boots looked as if they had been his hand; but it was easy to see that it was French polished; his hair was brown, and our window he was reading, where the young combed smooth; his face gray; and he walked lady was sitting, as I have told you, sewing as if he was measuring the pavement with in her chair. Day after day, week after his steps. He left the house at one hour, and week, month after month, there was he look-returned at another, neither a minute earlier ing, and looking, and looking; till the pic-nor later; and he indulged his poor heart ture, I daresay, gathered upon his eye, with the young lady for the very same space he could see little else in the world." of time every day. "The young lady, I hope, returned the looks?"

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"And the heroine ?"
"The what, mister?"

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"The young lady I beg pardon."

"Oh, she was a nice sort of person, of two or three and twenty; light-hearted, but quiet in her manners; with a good complexion; pretty enough features, taking them altogether; and light-blue eyes, with the hazy appearance of short-sight."

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Then, go on to the meeting!"

"She, poor dear! Lor' love you, she was so short-sighted, that she could not tell whether it were a house or a hedge on the other side of the street. She did so laugh when I told her there was a young man alooking at her! Then, when she turned her poor blind eyes in the direction, promiscuous like, how he snatched away his head, as if he had been a-stealing something! It was "I'm a-coming to it. It was one day that great misfortune for him that I had put my the Parlor and the Young Lady were out; oar in, for all his long, lonely, quiet looks and the live sole being fried beautiful, I was were now at an end. The young lady could standing at the window, wondering what not refrain from turning her head sometimes; ever could be keeping them, and it just one. and time she did so, it every gave him such a So, as the church-clock struck, I sees my spasm! but when, at last, she got up, now young man, as usual, open his door and come and then, as if to look, full-length, at some-out, and after a sweeping glance with the tail thing in the street, he fairly bolted off from of his eye at our window, walk away down the the window. He could not stand that by no street, so steady that one or two stepped out manner of means; little knowing, poor soul! of his line, thinking he was a-measuring the that the eyes that had bewitched him did not pavement. Well, who should be coming, right carry half-way across the street." in his front, as if for the express purpose of meeting him, but our two ladies! I declare, it put me in mind of the appointment in the paper for the sake of Matrimony with somebody as has honorable intentions and means secrecy. The young man went on for a while, as if he meant to cut right through between the mother and daughter; but his courage

"That is excellent, mistress," said I, for we were evidently coming to the pith of the story; "but they no doubt met at last?"

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"You shall hear you shall hear," replied my landlady; "but I must first tell you, that one day, when he had been driven away out of sight by the full length of the young lady,

failed him at last, and he stopped at a win- at everything minutely, but without moving dow, and stared in at the bill, Day-school from where he stood near the door: at the for Young Ladies,' till they had passed some table, the chairs, the fireplace, the chimneytime. He then set off again, and disappeared glass; I am sure he noticed that the tail of without turning his head." that lion was broken (but the hussy tramped for it, I can tell you!)-nothing escaped him; and at last he looked at the window, and at the chair the young lady used to sit in as she sewed; and then, turning quietly round, he walked out.

"And is this the meeting, mistress?" said I with some indignation.

"To be sure it is," said my landlady, "and the only meeting they ever had; for that very day the Parlor received a letter from France, or Scotland, or some other place abroad, which made her give me a week's warning; and at the end of that time they went off, and I never saw them more."

"And is this your story, mistress?" said I, getting into a downright rage.

"I told you from the first, mister," replied my landlady, flaring up," that I had no story to tell; and if you don't choose to hear the end of it, you may do the other thing!"

"It is the end, my dear madam, that I am dying to hear. You have so interesting a way with you, that really"

"What do you think of them?' asked I anxiously, as I followed him.

"Would n't suit,' said he; and so he went his way. I was a little put out, you may be sure".

"I'll take my corporal oath of that!" remarked I.

"But not so much as you think, mister," said my landlady; "for I could not help feeling sorry for him. But yet I own, when the very same thing occurred next year" "Next year!"

"On the very day, hour, minute, second: the same knock, the same look in my face, the same inspection of the room, the same gaze at the young lady's chair, and the same answer: Would n't suit!' The next year” My dear madam!-how long is that

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ago?"

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"Well -a matter of twenty year."

I was glad it was no worse; for a misgiving had come over me, and my imagination was losing itself in the distance of the past.

"Well, well. It was eight months before I heard anything about the ladies; but then I had a few lines from the Parlor, telling me that she had given up all thoughts of returning to London, as her daughter was now well married, and she was to live with her. I hardly knew at first what the letter was about, or who it was from; for the young man had gone too, soon after them to one of the midland counties, I heard and what with crosses of my own, and the tax that was "The next year," continued my landlady, agoing to be laid upon lodgings, I had forgot-" and the next, and the next, and the next, ten all about them. By the end of a year, were as like as may be. Sometimes the parthings were very dull with me. The parlors lor was let; but it was all one- he would were empty, and the two-pair-back had gone off without paying his rent. One day I was sitting alone, for the girl was out, and thinking to myself what ever was to be done, when all of a sudden a knock came to the door, that made my heart leap to my mouth. Not that it was a loud, long knock, clatter, clatter, clatter; nor a postman's knock, ra— -tatt; nor a knock like yours, mister, rat-at-at-at; it was three moderate, leisurely strokes of the knocker, with precisely the same number of seconds between them; and I could have sworn the strokes were knocked by the young man, for many a time and oft had I heard them on the door on the other side of the way."

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I hope to goodness you were right?" said I. "Never was wrong in my life," said my landlady, "when I felt anything. Black coat, white cravat, smooth hat, glossy boots, brown hair, gray face-all were unchanged. He looked steadily at me for some seconds when I opened the door, and I was just going to ask him how he did - when at last he said: Lodgings?'

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"Yes, sir," said I, please to step in; and I showed him into the parlor. He looked

see it, as it might do for another time; and the lodgers being out, he did see it, and still it wouldn't suit. At last, I happened one year to be out myself, forgetting that it was the young man's day; and iny! as the thought struck me when coming home, it gave me such a turn! I felt as if I had n't done right. I was by this time accustomed to the visit, you see, and always grew anxious when the time came. But it was of no consequence to him; only he stared twice as long when the door was opened, and he saw a strange face. But he went in all the same, looked at everything as usual-Would n't suit. At all these visits of inspection, his stay was of the same length to a minute; and when he went away, I found for I did watch him oncehe walked straight to the coach-office.

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Well, mister, you may think, as years passed on, that I saw some difference in the young man's appearance. But he did n't grow a bit older. His hair changed, but his gray face was still like granite stone. His pace became slower; but for that, he only came the sooner, so that he might have the same time to look, and get back to the coach at the proper moment. Then he seemed to.

tremble a little in his walk; but he had now like. The girl was out; we had hardly any a cane to keep him stiff and upright; and he lodgers; things were very bad with me-I still looked as if he was a-measuring the pave- was sore cast down. But business is busiment, only taking more pains to it. I cannot ness; and I opened the letter, which was no think what it was that made me care so much doubt about the apartments, for I never got about that old young man, for I never in my any other. This time it was from a country life exchanged more words with him than you attorney, telling me of that Death, and of a have heard. But once, when the clock was clause in the will, leaving a hundred pounds fast, and he had n't made his appearance at to me for my trouble in showing the lodgings the hour, I sat quaking in my chair, and grew that would n't suit. Mister, I was took all of a so nervous that, when at last the knock came, heap! The whole twenty years seemed to be I started up with a scream. But this was upon my brain. The young man the young after we had been well-nigh a score of years lady-the long, long love-looks across the accustomed to each other. Earlier, I was street the meeting he could n't stand, that sometimes cross; that was when we had was like Matrimony in the papers the visits hardly any lodgers, and the parlor never would to the parlor, where she had lived, and sat, suit. But it was all one to him. He did n't and never saw him the gray facemind me a pin-not even when, being in bet- sinking limbs - the whitening hair - the ter humor, I once asked him to sit down. empty lodgings-the hundred pounds! I He just looked as usual—as if there was was alone in the house; I felt alone in the nobody in the world but himself. I was so world; and straightway I throws the letter nettled, that I thought of repeating the in- upon the table, plumps me down in a chair vitation, and pointing to the young lady's and burst out a-crying and sobbing." chair; but it was a bad thought, and I am glad now I kept it down.

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Here my landlady stopped; and here ends a tale that wants, methinks, only incident, "He grew more and more infirm; and at plot, character, coloring, a beginning, a midlast, when one year he came and went in a dle, and an end, to be a very good one. But coach, although he would not make use of all these it receives from the reader, who is coachee's arm either in coming down or going acquainted with the inner life of that old up the steps, I had a sore heart and dim eyes young man, and is able, if he chose, to write looking after him. The next year, you may his history in volumes; and whose memory be sure, I was at my post as usual; but when brings before him some unconscious image, it came near the hour, I was so fidgety and which gave a tone and direction to the nervous, that I could not sit down, but kept thoughts of years, and supplied a Mecca of going from the parlor window to the door, the heart for his meditative visits, without and looking up at the clock. The clock affecting in any sensible degree the cold calm struck there was no knock. Poor old young look, and the measured step with which he man! In ten minutes more, there was the paced through the cares and business of the postman's knock, and I took the letter he world. gave me into the parlor - slow and desolate

THE CONDEMNATION OF MARIE ANTOINETTE; either of technical art or of the proportion due to PAINTED BY DELAROCHE.—A picture of this the subject; but that face and figure will comgreat historical subject, just painted by Paul pensate for much. With only faint traces of its Delaroche, has been on view at Messrs. Col-old auburn in her whitened hair, with eyes red naghi's; and is about to be engraved in line, by from watching and endurance, but unchanged the engraver of the " Napoleon Crossing the by any immediate emotion, and unswerving from Alps" M. A. François, of Paris - under the their forward gaze, her head erect on her erect superintendence of the painter himself. The neck, she walks straight on. There is silence on moment selected is when the discrowned queen, her face; to her judges and her enemies she has having just heard her sentence of death pro- spoken for the last time; and now scorn is nounced, turns to leave the Convention, followed stamped there final and supreme - a scorn not by the republican guards, amid the howls and indicated by any movement of the features, but menaces of the spectators. In one face alone are the expression of her whole self. It is the scorn there distinct traces of sympathy-that of a too of a queen at bay; which will produce reyoung girl to the extreme right of the composi- volt and rage in the popular heart, and the tion, who gazes tearfully at the queen. This determination to bring it down anyhow, rather head is earnestly expressive; but it may be said than remorse or compunction. Such is the main that in Marie Antoinette's face and figure centres expression; but it is complicated with nicer the whole interest of the work. The other per- shades of feeling - disdainful pity and strong sonages, some dozen in number, are kept back self-mastering effort; and all are subdued, as by conventional tones of color and an artificial well in the undemonstrative action of the figure disposition of the lights and shadows, and are, in- as in the countenance, beneath the calm mask deed, of themselves comparatively valueless. We of dignity. In virtue of this figure the picture is cannot acquiesce in this system on the grounds a grand one, truly and highly historical. —Spect.

From the Examiner.

Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Desert. Being the result of a Second Expedition undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum. By AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M. P., Author of Nineveh and its Remains." With Maps, Plans, and Illustrations. Murray.

"

least among the multitude of other wonders, we are told of a clay seal, now in the British Museum, attached probably to a treaty of peace between Assyria and Egypt, displaying on one piece of clay the signets of the two great kings, side by side, Sennacherib and Sabaco.

But endless as are the topics for surprise and admiration in this volume, there is also something to suggest regret. Although we We know no fairy tale that more excites are very far indeed from underrating the imthe imagination than a narrative of the dis- mense value of the wall sculptures which coveries that have been made within the last enable us to see the old Assyrians in their few years upon the site of Nineveh. Told, as habits as they lived, getting in harvests of here, by the chief discoverer himself, in a praise and glory, yet we cannot but regret most pleasant, easy, graphic way, yet also very much that the extreme inadequacy of with a genuine earnestness, it is the most de- the means placed at Mr. Layard's command, lightful reading in the world. The account should have compelled him almost wholly of Mr. Layard's second expedition now before to confine and limit his attention to the walls us forms a work less striking than his former of those rooms which he entered. That so volumes upon Nineveh and its Remains only much should have been done with so little, because the topic is no longer absolutely new. and so many grand results obtained, is not The details, however, are new; and in every one of the least wonderful portions of the tale essential respect the present work is more of wonder which is brought to us from important and more interesting than its pre- Mesopotamia. decessor, inasmuch as it begins where that left off, and guides us with a strange certainty, before impossible, among the stupendous records of the old Assyrian kings.

Cheap as labor is in a region where the camel-load of wheat (480 lbs.) costs but 4s., it would have been impossible for any man not gifted with Mr. Layard's rare combination of energy and tact to have econoThe scholarship of Col. Rawlinson, Doctor mized his means so well, or to have produced Hincks, M. de Sauley and others has by this out of the slender material resources placed at time begun to tell with good effect on the his command a tenth part of the results now Assyrian inscriptions; and there occur so many before us. As it is, however, Mr. Layard has modes of testing, in one place and another, been compelled to restrict his operations; to the correctness of a reading, that of many tunnel round the walls of chambers for their most important fragments we may now say sculptured tablets, and to leave the mass of positively that they have been thoroughly earth and ruin untouched, over the floor of read and translated. Nor is there any fair almost every room. And when we consider reason to doubt that continued study of the the gains that have rewarded an examination subject will result in an almost complete reve- of the floor of the two small record chambers, lation of the knowledge that still lies hidden it seems to us most probable that under the beneath the undeciphered arrow-heads. There huge masses of ruin now covering the paveis material enough to work upon. Mr. Lay-ments trodden by Sennacherib, there must be ard's present volume relates chiefly to explor- hidden many an object which, like the throne ations at Kouyunjik in one palace, the palace of the great kingof Sennacherib. The glories of Assyria were carved upon its walls, and in that one palace alone two miles of sculptured wall have been already discovered. Seventy-one of its halls, chambers, and passages have been entered, The reader will at the same time underand twenty-seven portals formed by colossal-stand that we think the course actually taken winged bulls and lion sphinxes have been laid bare by Mr. Layard during his researches.

More touching far than aught which on the walls
Is pictured.

To all living, mute memento breathes

in all respects best adapted to make the most of the means afforded. For the limited Two of the chambers so explored contained amount of excavations he was authorized to state records on tablets and cylinders of clay. undertake, Mr. Layard most properly and In the great fire by which the palace was wisely selected his field. He could not afford destroyed, the shelves on which these records to dig to waste, and therefore made his chief may have been arranged would of course business to trace along the walls, which, have been consumed; at any rate the records from the outward signs already visible, it were discovered, in a mass of fragments strewn was quite certain contained a rich vein of upon the floor -a layer of historic treasure, a historic ore. But what treasures are yet to foot thick. In the volume before us we also come out of the great Nineveh mines, when read how the Arab excavators dug their way our national sense of their value shall havo to the very throne of Sennacherib; and, not | been expressed by a less niggardly allowance

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