strikes down the highest, and avenges our neglect of the poor. We can scarcely read the facts lately published concerning the domestic miseries of the poor, in London and other great cities, even with proper feelings of humanity. Disgust conquers pity, and the brutalised condition of the unfortunate victims of poverty goes far to destroy our sympathy with them. A degradation less horrible would strike a tenderer chord. It is dreadful that this should be possible in an age of civilisation like the present-that a large population should be degraded, in all that relates to physical comfort, far below the level of the brutes that are fattened for our table. But truth compels us to admit that the fact is so. A new crusade against dirt and disease, in support of that cleanliness which is only next to godli

ness, is the one cure for the evil. Mr Simon is one of those who march in the van, and we heartily wish him God speed!

In conclusion, we cannot resist the melancholy pleasure of extracting the following noble sentences from his Report :

If the possible mischief to be wrought by epidemic cholera lay in some fixed inflexible fate, whatever opinion or knowledge I might hold on the subject of its return, silence would be better than speech, and I could gladly refrain from vexing the public ear by gloomy forebodings of an inevitable future.

'But from this supposition the case differs diametrically; and the people of England are not, like timid cattle, capable only, when blindfold, of confronting danger. It belongs to their race, it belongs to their dignity of manhood, to take deliberate cognizance of their foes, and not lightly to cede the victory. A people that has fought the greatest battles, not of arms alone, but of genius and skilful toil, is little likely to be scared at the necessity of meeting large danger by appropriate devices of science. A people that has inaugurated railways, that has spanned the Menai Strait, and reared the Crystal Palace, can hardly fear the enterprise of draining poison from its infected towns. A people that has freed its foreign slaves at twenty millions' ransom, will never let its house population perish, for cheapness' sake, in the ignominious

ferment of their filth.'

Every one who can procure this Report should read it. It is a noble effort of genius and industry; and if, by the present notice, we can but extend the circle of its diffusion, we shall not regret the attempt to reduce its proportions, and to reproduce, in a shorter form, the general results to which it points our attention.

WEARYFOOT COMMON.

CHAPTER II.

LIFE IN SIMPLE LOdge.

HE would see about it to-morrow! Poor captain! he never saw about anything to-morrow; and how could he? since to-morrow never comes-it is always to-day, and to-day, and to-day. Thus he continued to sit, in his accustomed chair by the fireside, bending upon his sister ferocious brows that concealed-though not from her-a world of gentleness and love; and sometimes turning to throw a puzzled look at the small thin figure that had gradually got beyond the door, and at length flitted slowly through all parts of the room, as silent and unquestioned as a shadow. Elizabeth now and then bestowed a wan smile upon the little boy, and by and by even made a motion with her hand, which she intended to be playful. But she was hardly up to this sort of thing; it was a new language she was trying, and the boy only looked at her the more intently, with his soft, calm, searching eyes. She was more intelligible when, one evening that he was in the

room at tea-time, she thought of offering him a slice of bread spread with preserves. This was surprisingly clear; and Elizabeth was so proud of the advance she had made in the science of puerology, that she repeated the experiment every evening, and every evening with the same success.

It was difficult to get that boy to sit upon a chair. This was probably a mode of bestowing himself he had not been accustomed to, for he always contrived to slip gradually down, and land upon the carpet. There he would sit long and patiently enough, looking first at one, and then at the other interlocutor; striving, apparently, to comprehend the philosophical abstractions of Elizabeth, and trace the appositeness of the captain's stories. The appendages of the latter's face, however, were still a grand object of inquiry. As their acquaintance advanced, he made many attempts to satisfy his curiosity; and at length, one evening, he fairly got upon a footstool, and laying hold of the captain's whisker gently with one hand, and of his shaggy beard with the other, he looked earnestly into the eye they had concealed. The examination was probably satisfactory; for from that moment the patron and his protégé were on familiar terms.

The captain, as had been said by good authority of Mrs Margery, took to him wonderful. And this was not surprising; for although constitutionally fond of children, and, indeed, of everything weak, small, and unprotected, he seemed debarred by some unhappy fatality from exercising the sympathies of his nature. Among the juvenile classes of the common, he bore, in fact, the reputation of a sort of ogre; the trees surrounding his enclosure were observed to have a preternaturally gloomy look; and the silence that usually dwelt in the domain was of the character which betokens constraint, as if there was something kept hushed. There was a tradition afloat touching a little boy he had tried to tempt with an apple, and who would actually have fallen into the snare had he not fortunately looked up into the ogre's face, when of course he ran home, screaming the whole way. A particular child was even pointed out as the hero of this adventure; and although the identity was never absolutely established, he was looked upon for some time by the juvenility as a public character. This being the state of matters, it is not surprising that the captain took to our Boy wonderful; that he told him stories-still beginning, never ending-without number; and that when at last they walked out on the high road, or the common, hand in hand, the old soldier felt as if he was patronised.

In a

As for the boy, who had lived all his life among real ogres, it was not likely that he should be terrified by a sham one. He had been accustomed to take things at their true value, to be imposed upon neither by looks nor words, neither by beards nor imprecations, but to watch narrowly what deeds came of them. As for the bad habits to which he had probably been bred, they dropped away from him from mere want of use. house where all were his providers, his occupation of of it but the self-possessed mind, the noiseless tread, foraging for himself was gone; and nothing remained and the observant eye. The qualities that would have fitted him for a successful tramp were thus quietly transferred, before the awakening of moral consciousness, to the service of civilisation; and the natural gifts that would otherwise have grown crooked, were permitted to attain a healthy development. From the captain he learned to fence; from Mrs Margery, to read; from Mr Poringer, to meditate; and from Elizabeth he acquired insensibly the refinement of manner imposed upon masculine spirits by the presence of a gentlewoman.

But still the captain was puzzled. Every now and

then he would turn a wondering look upon the boy, as if he could not well make out how or why he was there; and on withdrawing his eyes, he would be heard to mutter: That's very extraordinary!' Even Elizabeth, who usually took things with great equanimity, appeared to have a misgiving; and her brother thought she probably indicated the propriety of consulting the rector, by remarking one day, that men who acted as spiritual guides to their flocks, might perhaps be considered competent to advise likewise in the far less difficult matters of worldly concernment;' but the veteran did not choose to acknowledge himself a sheep in any but the religious sense of the word. As for Mr Poringer's hints touching the public refuge provided by the humanity of the legislature for deserted and destitute children, they were listened to with horror by both. The workhouse was inseparably associated in their minds with ideas of captivity, tyranny, and starvation; and the very mention of it made the captain attach himself to the little boy with all the chivalrous generosity of his character. And so matters went on at Semple Lodge, or, as it was pronounced by the villagers, who always cling to colloquial words, Simple Lodge the castaway of the common anchoring himself more and more securely every day in the affections of its inhabitants, till at length the captain's puzzlement wore off, Elizabeth's misgivings gave in, and even the thoughtful Mr Poringer determined that to think more about it was no use.

It is surprising how long this went on-how completely the rags of the common were metamorphosed into the somewhat eccentric manufactures of Mrs Margery and Molly, and these into the orthodox fashionings of the village tailor, before the boy was called anything else than Boy. The question of a name received much discussion in the kitchen before it came before the upper-house, Mrs Margery being all for Alphonso, and Molly for another proper name of romance, which she thought fit to render Ludovig-oh! When at length, however, the difficulty began to be felt in the parlour, an adviser of quite a different calibre was taken into council, and Mr Poringer's prosaic taste prevailed.

'I would have done it, sir! Yes, miss, I would have done it! I know where he would have been to-day. Snug enough, miss. No fear of his coming out of there, like the Gravel-pits.'

The next thing the boy wanted-for, in fact, now that his original rags were off, he had nothing of his own in the world-was a surname; and this seemed to the captain to be a matter of a little more delicacy. Generous as he was, the idea of giving his own, although it occurred to him for a moment, was dismissed as impracticable in a neighbourhood of idle chattering people. He thought of Mollison; but although he knew he could take that liberty with his deceased friend, he was afraid it would distress Elizabeth. Poringer, that was a name that rung well; but he feared the proprietor, although so liberal in the matter of Bob, which belonged to nobody in particular, would object to sharing his own name with a vagrant. The misgiving proved to be correct.

'Mine is a family name,' said Mr Poringer; 'a family name, sir. Service is no inheritance; and my grandfather was a glass and chinaware man in Manchester.' 'What, glass and china? Earthenware too?' 'No, sir: only to complete the stock. Glass and china was the goods he dealt in.'

I remember

'Well, that's very extraordinary! good family, eh? Ah! not unlikely. Elizabeth, I once heard a story read about the "Noble Poringer," and it's all concerning glass and china and earthenware. You see, a certain old gentleman, a grandfather I shouldn't wonder, took himself off to foreign parts for seven twelvemonths and a day, leaving his young wife behind him, on her pledge that she would not take a new husband within that time. Well, home he comes just half an hour before the latest day is out, and finds that his wife is to be married again as soon as the clock strikes. So you see, poor soul, he is no younger, and his skin has grown brown with the sun, and his clothes seedy with travel, so that not one of them knew him from Adam. Well now, you must know they are all drinking together, and just to give his wife-who keeps her oath so strictly-a hint of who he is, as the ballad says―

It was the noble Poringer that dropped amid the wine A bridal ring of burning gold, so costly and so fine; and he sends the-no, it was not a glass, but a-no, not a china-bowl, but a-no, not an earthenware mug: it was, in fact, a golden beaker; but- What now? I didn't say it was your grandfather!'

'It may have been, sir,' said Mr Poringer resignedly: 'all I can undertake to say is, that I never heard a word of the story. My grandfather may have had a ballad made about him, just like any other respectable individual. The lower classes will be impudent; it is their nature, sir, and we can't break 'em of it nohow.'

'Destitute and deserted brats. Yes, miss, I mean the workhouse-that's it.'

'Well, well,' said the captain, as Elizabeth cast down her excited eyes and resumed her work, 'we don't want to know what you would have done; only, the boy must have some name to answer to when the roll is called. Boy is not a name at all.'

"Then, sir, I would give him the very next thing to Boy that is a name-not another letter. If we do not keep the lower classes down to strict allowance, you will see what will come of it. I don't see, sir, that as a vagrant, and the son of a woman of the name of Sall, he has any call to more than Bob.'

'Bob! why that's the very thing! a prodigiously happy idea, for it's no change at all to speak of. Boy -Bob, Bob-Boy! capital!' and the captain would have chuckled outright if that had been his habit; as it was, he contented himself with grinning like a death's-head with the hair on, as he repeated: 'BobBoy, Boy-Bob!'

'Well, Molly,' and her master modulating his voice winningly, so that it almost got to the creak of a civilised door, 'you have a name, haven't you, Molly?' 'O yes, sir! O please, sir-two, sir!'

It is only one we want just now. You see Bob, poor fellow, has none at all, and he must be Bob Something, you know, Molly. You wouldn't mind letting him take yours, would you?'

"O yes, sir! O lawk, sir! mine, sir? Oh, is he to be Molly, and I nothing, O please, sir?' and consternation opened still wider her astonished eyes.

'Nonsense! nonsense!' growled the captain; 'it is the other name you must give him: and we don't want you to give it--you may share it with him.'

'O please, sir, it's such a little name, it won't share! Oh, it's only Jinks, sir; and what ever am I to be, if I am not Molly Jinks?'

'Jinks be hanged!' ejaculated the captain with

contempt. Who would take a gift of such a miserable little imp of a name as Jinks? Keep it to yourself, every letter of it: Bob shan't be Jinks. And now, get away with you, and send the cook. The captain strode up and down the room, indignant with himself at having asked, and been refused, a name that nobody in his senses would accept, unless accompanied by an estate of considerable magnitude. His meditations were interrupted by the reappearance of the culprit. 'It is the cook I want!' he growled furiously. "O yes, sir!' said Molly, 'O please, sir, Mrs Margery is up to the elbows in the soup, and both her best caps in the washing-tub!'

'And when did you come?'

O please, sir, just after father and mother died of the typhus;' and Molly put the corner of her apron to her eyes, and jingled the door handle nervously.

And when was that, poor Molly?' said the captain softly.

O please, sir, I don't know, sir! It can't be long, sir,' added Molly, smothering a small sob, for I remember it like yesterday.'

Elizabeth!' and the veteran turned solemnly to his sister: here is an individual, whose name is said to be Margery, and who, it is pretended, has been in my service for years-I don't know how many, but for years, mind you-and I never set eyes on her in my life! How can I believe in that woman? I don't believe in her! I might as well believe in a ghost, merely because other people say they have heard and seen a ghost!'

O please, sir,' interposed Molly, who could not hear her friend spoken lightly of, Mrs Margery is nothing like a ghost! She is round, sir, and goodhumoured, and can't a-bear Mr Poringer, and teaches the Boy to read, and makes him comfortable and say his prayers, and is willing for him to take her name, which he will give credit and renown to, like John Gilpin, and return honourable in the denowment, when he is the Heir-at-law.'

"What is Margery's name?' demanded the captain anxiously.

"O please, sir, it is Oaklands.'

'And a very sensible name, upon my honour! Oaklands! A capital name-worth forty Jinkses. Get away with you now, poor Molly-the thing is settled.' It was in this wise the waif of the common received the name of Robert Oaklands, destined to become known to the reader of the English tongue wherever these ubiquitous pages travel.

It is no wonder that the captain had never seen Mrs Margery, for the kitchen was to him a region of mystery, which he would hardly have entered even if the rest of the house had been on fire; while Mrs Margery was never known to stray from its precincts further than the little room adjoining, where she slept. She never went out of doors, even to go to church, having always some article of dress deranged, or wanting, which served in case of need for an excuse, although her usual plea was that she had not cleaned herself.' Yet notwithstanding this lack of air and healthful exercise, Mrs Margery, in defiance of the laws of hygiene, grew fat and fair; and it was supposed that Mr Poringer was very anxious to know where she invested her money, and that some of his most deeply meditative moments were spent in calculating the probable amount of her savings.

When Molly returned from her mission to the parlour, she announced the result to her patroness in these words: 'Oh, it is all settled! The Boy is Oaklands now,' and then sat down dejectedly on a chair.

'Did I not tell you so?' cried Mrs Margery, her comely face beaming with delight. Now mind me, that is the first point, and see if I don't come right as well in all the rest. Keep watching for it, girl, if it should be for ten years; it's your own interest; for as sure as you are sitting there, you will never be married till it happens!'

'Oh, and am I never to be married for ten years?' said Molly in discontent.

'Not till the denowment-depend upon that. Keep watching, I tell you, wherever you are, and in whatever service you may be. Never lose sight of young Oaklands for your life!'

'Oh, then I must watch here,' said Molly, 'for I will never leave the captain!'

The captain! Why, I thought he frightened you out of your seven senses! What ever has come over you, Molly, for you look as wobegone as the Lady Araminta herself?'

'Oh, it was before he knew about my coming here he frightened me-before he knew that father and mother were dead of the typhus. And then he spoke so kind, and called me' (some hysterical sobs) poor Molly. And I am poor Molly! I haven't nobody in the world but you, Mrs Margery, and you ain't nothing to me; and I will never leave the captain-not for six pound a year, and tea and sugar-never! Not till I'm married!' added Molly more composedly, as she wiped away her tears with her bare arms.

After receiving his name, Bob, as in duty bound, grew rapidly, both lengthways and breadthways; and for the son of a woman of the name of Sall, was really a very fine-looking boy. Mrs Margery thought he had quite an aristocratic air; and it may be so. He was well fed, clothed, and lodged; he was the pet of everybody in the house but Mr Poringer; he was strong and healthy; and having been pretty well his own master ever since he ought by rights to have been a baby, it is no wonder that he had the light, springy, yet sedate step, the easy carriage, the self-possessed manner, and the independent look vulgarly supposed to be the peculiar attributes of good birth. Being naturally of quick faculties, he very soon surpassed his mistress at reading. While he was still learning, he listened to the evening lectures, and sometimes was the reader himself; but all this was quickly over. He devoured the slender volume on his way home with it from the library, remaining on the common till it was finished; and no entreaties or reproaches could prevail upon him to endure it a second time. The captain's books, which related chiefly to the military art, he next attacked, and got through them like a moth; then Elizabeth's, which were almost all on philosophical subjects-these proved tougher reading, but he finished them; and then a number of older volumes-the usual heir-looms in all middle-class families in this country-which, mixed with the mass, gave a higher character to the whole. Then he copied with a pencil everything of the pictorial kind in them all; made a bust of Molly in pipe-clay, which was considered in the kitchen a master-piece of art; and executed a wooden caricature of Mr Poringer. The boy, in short, by insensible degrees, laid a capital basis for education; but, exhibiting general talents and capabilities rather than a passion for any particular study, it was evident that he was not one of those heaven-born geniuses who are destined to achieve greatness by their own unassisted efforts.

Bob had no companions of his own age. In the earlier period of his abode at the Lodge, he had made an effort to get into juvenile society; but he was unsuccessful. He joined a group of boys who were playing at the edge of the wood just behind the garden; but it was evident that he was looked upon as an intruder. Some of the small boys shrank from him as a kind of familiar of the ogre, while the larger ones desired him to go and look for his mother upon the

common. He did not at the time feel this as an insult, for he was not ashamed of the common, or of anything else; so he merely replied, that he did not want his mother, nor she him.

'And we don't want you!' cried a great lubberly boy, somewhat his senior; 'we will have no vagrants here; so troop, or it will be the worse for you!' Bob merely looked at him, and when the boy advanced to enforce his commands, he did not stir, but continued to look him in the eyes.

'Don't you know,' said the other imperiously, 'that I am master here-that what I say is to be done? If you don't go, I'll throw you over the wall!' and he stepped up to take hold of him. But Bob waited, still looking, till the Philistine was just upon him; and then, seeing that there was no mistake about it, he caught suddenly up from the ground a piece of stick, gave a smart blow with it to the outstretched fingers of his antagonist, and, taking advantage of the pain and astonishment he had caused, glided into the garden of the Lodge, and locked the door. That afternoon, Bob went to the common as he had been ordered. It was the first time he had visited the place without an errand-the first time he had looked in it for anything more than the path to and from the village. Now, he seemed as if he had come in quest of something. Was it his mother? Perhaps. But Bob did not know.

Time wore on, and at length an incident occurred which awoke the still life of Simple Lodge. It was the arrival of a young girl, bequeathed for a certain number of years to the captain by his sister-in-law, the widow of his only brother long deceased. The brothers had rarely met since boyhood; and although Elizabeth had resided for some time in the house of the one engaged in commerce, she had not taken kindly to the wife, and after the husband's death was very glad of the captain's invitation to change her quarters. The widow was now dead in her turn, as they were informed by a lawyer's letter; and although she had maintained but little intercourse with her husband's relatives, she had not scrupled to confer upon them her only child during the years of her nonage. Sara's fortune was two thousand pounds, which was to be allowed to accumulate for her benefit till she was twenty-one; it being supposed by the testatrix that during the intervening years she would be amply provided for by her uncle and guardian, Captain Semple. This was an arrangement which the captain and Elizabeth thought only natural; but it cannot be denied that they both felt a little uncomfortable at the idea of a stranger, even though only a little girl, breaking into the midst of their quiet ménage. The captain had never seen his ward, and Elizabeth recollected her only as an infant, whom her mother had watched over like a dragon, to protect her from the consequences of the old maid's unskilful attentions-for Elizabeth had begun early in life to be an old maid. Upon the whole, the announcement was not a pleasant one, and Simple Lodge was a good deal put out of the way by it. Had the girl been left wholly destitute, it would have been another thing; but as it was, notwithstanding the eleemosynary nature of the duties required of him, she appeared somehow to the captain in the character of an heiress, with whom it was necessary to be upon his Ps and Qs.

This, however, was a good deal mended by the manner of her advent. She had been brought, without notice, by one of her mother's relations, who dismounted with her from the stage-coach at the village, in the midst of an all day's-we may say an all week's -rain. Her luggage was sent round by the road on a cart, and the travellers came across the common with an umbrella between them. With a proper geographical knowledge, they might have managed better than they did; but as it was, they were wading every now and then in a shallow pool, to which the heavy and monotonous plash of the rain communicated a cha

racter of tenfold discomfort; and when at last they entered the house, cold and wet, the slight girlish figure, arrayed in the deepest mourning, and the desolate and lonely look she cast round the strange place, melted the good captain's heart, and he pressed his brother's child in his arms with uncontrollable agitation. Elizabeth was more composed, but not less kind. She kissed the wet little girl at arm's length, and remarked that this sublunary world was made up of comings and goings, that life was a journey of which death was only the end, and that a pale orphan, with wet feet and destitute of luggage, represented man in the abstract coming naked and helpless into a vale of tears.

'That's very true, Elizabeth,' said the captain; that's very true. So go and change Sara's dress before she takes cold; and Bob, fly to the kitchen, and tell the cook to get her something warm and nice to eat; and Molly-poor Molly !-do you bring it up, for you are the fittest to wait upon the orphan.' Whereupon Elizabeth led off the young girl by the arm, Bob disappeared like a shadow, and Molly, after bidding good-by to the door handle with a nervous shake, set to to wipe the table franticly with her dirty apron, The relation, being a man of business, and having executed his commission, had already taken his leave; shaking the orphan absently by the hand, and the moment he left the house, taking out his pocket-ledger, to enter as he went along the last item of the expenses of the journey.

FEMALE BEAUTY IN OLD ENGLAND AND NEW ENGLAND.

Ir is generally allowed that there is more of what is called chiseled beauty in America than in Europe-that the features of the women are finer, and the head more classical. But here ends the triumph of our sisters of the West: their busts are far inferior to those we admire at home, and a certain attenuation in the whole figure gives the idea of fragility and decay.

And this idea is correct. What they want is soundness of constitution; and in consequence of the want, their finely cut faces, taken generally, are pale instead of fair, and sallow when they should be rosy. In this country, a woman is in the prime of her attractions at thirty-five, and she frequently remains almost stationary till fifty, or else declines gradually and gracefully, like a beautiful day melting into a lovely evening. In America, twenty-five is the farewell line of beauty in woman, beyond which comes decay; at thirty-five, she looks weary and worn, her flat chest symbolising the collapsed heart within; and at forty, you see in her thin and haggard features all the marks of premature age.

It is customary to regard this as the effect of climate; but some think it folly to go to an ultimate cause, when the whole system of artificial life in America offers direct defiance, as they assert, to the known hygienic laws. This view is supported with great intrepidity by a woman's journal in Providence, called the Una-not a Lady's Magazine, fair reader, but a regular broad-sheet, written by and for women, whose leading articles are on women's rights, and whose advertisements are from women-doctors, women-professors, women-lecturers, women everything. Una admits the fleeting character of her countrywomen's charms, and contrasts more especially Old England with New England, yielding frankly the pas in beauty to the former. She hints, we must own, at some very problematical causes of the early loss of female charms in America-such as, the bounding of life's horizon by the petty cares that wait on meat, drink, and raiment; the absence of genial and improving intercourse, and of earnest interest in the hopes and fortunes of the race; and the little rivalries and little aspirations on which, for lack of better objects, so many a soul is