And now, as the rest of the household have all gone up bed-ward, and left us with their good-night tones,

"Like flowers' voices, if they could but speak," we dip our pen into the cocked hat of the brave little bronze warrior who has fed us many a year with ink from the place where his brains ought to be. Pausing before we proceed to paper, we look around on our household gods. The coal bursts into crackling fits of merriment, as we thrust the poker between the iron ribs of the grate. It seems to say, in the jolliest possible manner of which it is capable, "Oh, go no more a-roaming, a-roaming, across the windy sea!" How odd it seems to be sitting here again, listening to the old clock out there in the entry! Often we seemed to hear it during the months that have flown away, when we knew that "our ancient" was standing sentinel for Time in another hemisphere. One night, dark and stormy on the Mediterranean, as we lay wakeful and watchful in the little steamer that was bearing us painfully through the noisy tempest towards Saint Peter's and the Colosseum, suddenly, above the tumult of the voyage, our household monitor began audibly and regularly, we thought, to mark the seconds. Then it must have been only fancy. Now it is something more, and we know that our mahogany friend is really wagging his brassy beard just outside the door. We remember now, as we lay listening that rough night at sea, how Milton's magic sounding line came to us beating a sad melody with the old clock's imagined tramp,—

ish, extravagant companion, and we are glad to be rid of it. One little blazing fragment lifts itself out of the flame, and we can trace on the smouldering relic the stamp of Austria. Go back again into the grate, and perish with the rest, dark blot!

We look round our quiet apartment, and wonder if it be all true, this getting home again. We stir the fire once more to assure ourself that we are not somewhere else, that the street outside our window is not known as Jermyn Street in the Haymarket,—or the Via Babuino near the Pincio,,-or Princes Street, near the Monument. How do we determine that we are not dreaming, and that we shall not wake up to-morrow morning and find ourself on the Arno? Perhaps we are not really back again where there

are no

"Eremites and friars,

White, black, and gray, with all their trumpery."

Perhaps we are a flamingo, a banyan-tree, or a mandarin. But there stands the tea-cup, and our identity is sure!

Here at last, then, for a live certainty! But how strange it all seems, resting safely in our easy slippers, to recall some of the far-off scenes so lately present to us! Yesterday was it, or a few weeks ago, that this "excellent canopy," our modest roof, dwelt three thousand miles away to the westward of us? At this moment stowed away in a snuggery called our own; and then-how brief a period it seems! what a small parenthesis in time!

putting another man's latch-key into another man's door, night after night, in

plaint."

Let the waves bark to-night far out on "the desolate, rainy seas,”—the old clock is all right in the entry!

Landed, and all safe at last! our muchabused, lock-broken, unhinged portmantean unpacked and laid ignobly to rest under the household eaves! Stay a moment,-let us pitch our inky passport into the fire. How it writhes and grows black in the face! And now it will trouble its owner no more forever. It was a fool

miliar aperture with all the sensation of an innocent housebreaker! Muffled here in the oldest of dressing-gowns, that never lifted its blessed arms ten rods from the spot where it was born; and only a few weeks ago lolling out of C. R.'s college-window at Oxford, counting the deer, as they nibbled the grass, and grouped themselves into beautiful pictures on the sward of ancient Magdalen!

As we look into the red fire in the grate, we think of the scarlet coats we saw not

long ago in Stratford, when E. F., kindest of men and merriest of hosts, took us to the "meet." We gaze round the field again, and enjoy the enlivening scene. White-haired and tall, our kindhearted friend walks his glossy mare up and down the turf. His stalwart sons, with sport imbrowned, proud of their sire, call our attention to the sparkle in the old man's eye. We are mounted on a fiery little animal, and are half-frightened at the thought of what she may do with us when the chase is high. Confident that a roll is inevitable, and that, with a dislocated neck, enjoyment would be out of the question, we pull bridle, and carefully dismount, hoping not to attract attention. Whereat all our jolly English cousins beg to inquire, "What's the row?" We whisper to the red-coated brave prancing near us, that "we have changed our mind, and will not follow the hunt to-day, another time we shall be most happy,- just now we are not quite up to the mark, next week we shall be all right again," etc., etc. One of the lithe hounds, who seems to have steel springs in his hind legs, looks contemptuously at the American stranger, and turns up his long nose like a moral insinuation. Off they fly! we watch the beautiful cavalcade bound over the brook and sweep away into the woodland passes. Then we saunter down by the Avon, and dream away the daylight in endless visions of long ago, when sweet Will and his merry comrades moved about these pleasant haunts. Returning to the hall, we find we have walked ten miles over the breezy country, and knew it not, so pleasant is the fragrant turf that has been often pressed by the feet of Nature's best-beloved high-priest! Round the mahogany tree that night we hear the hunters tell the glories of their sport, how their horses, like Homer's steeds, "Devoured up the plain"; and we can hear now, in imagination, the voices of the deep-mouthed hounds rising and swelling among the Warwick glens.

Neither can we forget, as we sit here musing, whose green English carpet, down

in Kent, we so lately rested on under the trees, nor how we wandered off with the lord of that hospitable manor to an old castle hard by his grounds, and climbed with him to the turret-tops,-nor how we heard him repeople in fancy the aged ruin, as we leaned over the wall and looked into the desolate court-yard below. The world has given audience to this man, thought we, for many a year; but one who has never heard the sound of his laughing voice knows not half his wondrous power. When he reads his "Christmas Carol," go far to hear him, judicious friend, if you happen to be in England, and let us all hope together that we shall have that keen gratification next year in America. To know him is to love and esteem him tenfold more than if you only read of him.

Let us bear in mind, too, how happily the hours went by with us so recently in the vine-embowered cottage of dear L. H., the beautiful old man with silver hair,"As hoary frost with spangles doth attire The mossy branches of an oak." The sound of the poet's voice was like the musical fall of water in our ears, and every sentence he uttered then is still a melody. As we sit dreamily here, he speaks to us again of "life's morning march, when his bosom was young," and of his later years, when his struggles were many and keen, and only his pen was the lever which rolled poverty away from his door. We can hear him, as we pause over this leaf, as we heard the old clock that night at sea. He tells us of his cherished companions, now all gone, of Shelley, and Keats, and Charles Lamb, whom he loved, of Byron, and Coleridge, and the rest. As we sit at his little table, he hands us a manuscript, and says it is the " Endymion," John Keats's gift to himself. He reads to us from it some of his favorite lines, and the tones of his voice are very tender over his dead friend's poem. As we pass out of his door that evening, the moon falls on his white locks, his thin hand rests for a moment on our shoulder, and we hear him say very kindly, "God bless you!"

In London, not long after this, we meet again the bard of "Rimini," and his discourse is still sweet as any dulcimer. Another old man is with him, a poet also, whose songs are among the bravest in England's Helicon. We observe how these two friends love each other, and as they stand apart in the anteroom, the eldest with his arm around his brother bard, we think it is a very pleasant sight, and not to be forgotten ever. And when, a few months later, we are among the Alpine hills, and word comes to us that L. H. is laid to rest in Kensal Green Churchyard, we are grateful to have looked upon his cheerful countenance, and to have heard him say, “God bless you!”

We cry your mercy, gayest of cities, with your bright Bois de Boulogne, and your splendid cafés! We do not much affect your shows, but we cannot dismiss forever the cheerful little room, cloudenvironed almost, up to which we have so often toiled, after days of hard walking among the gaudy streets of the French capital. One pleasant scene, at least, rises unbidden, as we recall the past. It is a brisk, healthy morning, and we walk in the direction of the Tuileries. Bending our steps toward the Palace, (it is yet early, and few loiterers are abroad in the leafy avenues,) we observe a group of three persons, not at all distinguished in their appearance, having a roystering good time in the Imperial Garden. One of them is a little boy, with a chubby, laughing face, who shouts loudly to his father, a grave, thoughtful gentleman, who runs backwards, endeavoring to out-race his child. The mother, a fair-haired woman, with her bonnet half loose in the wind, strives to attract the boy's attention and win him to her side. They all run and leap in the merry morning-air, and, as we watch them more nearly, we know them to be the royal family out larking before Paris is astir. Play on, great Emperor, sweet lady, and careless boy-prince! You have hung up a picture in our gallery of memory, very pleasant to look at, this

cold night in America. May you always be as happy as when you romped together in the garden!

-

The days that are fled still knock at the door and enter. We are walking on the banks of the Esk, toward a friendly dwelling in Lasswade, Mavis Bush they call the pretty place at the foot of the hill. A slight figure, clad in black, waits for us at the garden-gate, and bids us welcome in accents so kindly, that we, too, feel the magic influence of his low, sweet voice, an effect which Wordsworth described to us years before as eloquence set to music. The face of our host is very pale, and, when he puts his thin arm within ours, we feel how frail a body may contain a spirit of fire. We go into his modest abode and listen to his wonderful talk, wishing all the while that the hours were months, that we might linger there, spellbound, day and night, before the master of our English tongue. He proposes a ramble across the meadows to Roslin Chapel, and on the way he discourses of the fascinating drug so painfully associated with his name in literature, -of Christopher North, in whose companionship he delighted among the Lakes,of Elia, whom he recalled as the most lovable man among his friends, and whom he has well described elsewhere as a Diogenes with the heart of a Saint John. In the dark evening he insists upon setting out with us on our return to Edinburgh. When it grows late, and the mists are heavy on the mountains, we stand together, clasping hands of farewell in the dim road, the cold Scotch hills looming up all about us. As the small figure of the English Opium-Eater glides away into the midnight distance, our eyes strain after him to catch one more glimpse. The Esk roars, and we hear his footsteps no longer.

The scene changes, as the clock strikes in the entry. We are lingering in the piazza of the Winged Lion, and the bronze giants in their turret overlooking square raise their hammers and beat the solemn march of Time. As we float away through the watery streets, old

the

WHAT is a dry-goods jobber? No wonder you ask. You have been hunting, perhaps, for our peripatetic postoffice, and have stumbled upon Milk Street and Devonshire Street and Franklin Street. You are almost ready to believe in the lamp of Aladdin, that could build palaces in a night. Looking up to the stately and costly structures which have usurped the place of once familiar dwellings, and learning that they are, for the most part, tenanted by dry-goods jobbers, you feel that for such huge results there must needs be an adequate cause, and so you ask, What is a dry-goods jobber?

It is more than a curious question. For parents desirous of finding their true sphere for promising and for unpromising sons, it is eminently a practical question. It is a question comprehensive of dollars and cents,- also of bones and sinews, of muscles, nerves, and brains, of headache, heartache, and the cyclopædia of being, doing, and enduring. An adequate answer to such a question must needs ask your indulgence, for it cannot be condensed into a very few words.

A dry-goods jobber is a wholesale buy

er and seller, for cash or for approved credit, of all manner of goods, wares, and materials, large and small, coarse and fine, foreign and domestic, which pertain to the clothing, convenience, and garnishing, by night and by day, of men, women, and children: from a button to a blanket; from a calico to a carpet; from stockings to a head-dress; from an inside handkerchief to a waterproof; from a piece of tape to a thousand bales of shirtings; not forgetting linen, silk, or woollen fabrics, for drapery or upholstery, for bed or table, including hundreds of items which time would fail me to recite. All these the dry-goods jobber provides for his customer, the retailer, who in his turn will dispense them to the consumer.

A really competent and successful drygoods jobber, in the year of grace, one thousand, eight hundred and sixty-one, is a new creation. He is begotten of the times. Of him, as truly as of the poet, and with yet more emphasis, it must be said, He is born, not made. He is a poet, a philosopher, an artist, an engineer, a military commander, an advocate, an attorney, a financier, a steam-engine, a telegraphoperator, a servant-of-all-work, a Job,

To a youth, for a time interrupted in his preparation for college, I said,

Never mind; this falls in exactly with my well-considered plan. You shall go into a dry-goods store till your eyes recover strength; it will be the best year's schooling of your life.

"How so?" was the dubious answer; "what can I learn there?"

Learn? Everything,- common sense included, which is generally excluded from the University curriculum: for example, time, place, quantity, and the worth of each. You shall learn length, breadth, and thickness; hard and soft; pieces and yards; dozens and the fractions thereof; order and confusion, cleanliness and dirt, to love the one and hate the other; materials, colors, and shades of color; patience, manners, decency in general; system and method, and the relation these sustain to independence; in short, that there is a vast deal more out of books than in books; and, finally, that the man who knows only what is in books is generally a lump of conceit, and of about as much weight in the scales of actual life as the ashes of the Alexandrian library, or the worms in any parchments that may have survived that conflagration.

"Whew!" was his ejaculation; "I didn't know there was so much." I dare say not. Most of your limited days have passed under the training of men who are in the like predicament, whose notion of the chief end of man is, to convert lively boys into thick dictionaries, and who honestly believe that the chief want of the age is your walking dictionary. Any other type of humanity, they tell us, "won't pay." Much they know of what will and what won't pay! This comes of partial education,— of one-sided, of warped, and biased education. It puts one out of patience, this arrogance of the University, this presum

ing upon the ignorance of the million, this assertion of an indispensable necessity to make the boy of the nineteenth century a mere expert in some subdivision of one of the sciences. The obstinacy of an hereditary absolutism, which the world has outgrown, still lingers in our schools of learning. Let us admit the divine right of Science, admit the fitness of a limited number of our youth to become high-priests in her temple, but no divine right of fossil interpreters of Science to compel the entire generation to disembowel their sons and make of these living temples mere receptacles of Roman, Grecian, or Egyptian relics. We don't believe that "mummy is medicinal," the Arabian doctor Haly to the contrary notwithstanding. If it ever was, its day has gone by. Therefore let all sensible people pray for a Cromwell, not to pull down University Science, but to set up the Commonwealth of Common Sense, to subordinate the former to the latter, and to proclaim an education for our own age and for its exigencies. Your drygoods jobber stands in violent contrast to your University man in the matter of practical adaptation. His knowledge is no affair of dried specimens, but every particle of it a living knowledge, ready, at a moment's warning, for all or any of the demands of life.

You are perhaps thinking, "Yes, that is supposable, because the lessons learned by the jobber are limited to the common affairs of daily life, are not prospective; because, belonging only to the passing day, they are easily surveyed on all sides, and their full use realized at once; in short, a mere matter of buying and selling goods: a very inferior thing, as compared with the dignified and scholarly labors of the student."

How mistaken this estimate is will appear, as we advance to something like a comprehensive survey of the dry-goods jobber's sphere.

First, then, he is a buyer of all manner of goods, wares, and materials proper to his department in commerce. He is minutely informed in the history of