up the hill, stopping and starting afresh with spasmodic effort. The wheezing leader seemed ready to drop at every step. There is something of fascination in a scene of horror; painful as it was to witness such a sight, yet we could not resist gazing back at the throes and agonies of the over-strained animal. We

had stood some minutes at the inndoor, and ascertained that we could get fresh horses, before our team came up; it was sad to look at them, quivering and heaving. But the off leader arrested our chief attention; he was bathed in sweat and flecked with froth, his tail shook, his head drooped, he twitched in every limb.

"The lazy brute would never go agin collar!" said the postilion, with an oath, striking him on the head as he unbuckled the harness.

"If I were only a man!" exclaimed cousin Kate, in a low voice, with eyes of fire.

The horse made an effort to reach the yard-gate; he seemed too stiff to move, he staggered, reeled, and fell with a sort of moan.

"He is dead!" observed one of the postilions with nonchalance; the other ran forward, and then they swore at the miserable beast as a "faint-hearted brute, that never had no pluck."

I had hard work to persuade cousin Kate to proceed on her journeyshe was seized with horror-if it should happen again! She was most unaffectedly wretched, and certainly a more revolting sight was never witnessed. Sin stands forth in his own monster-shape when man persecutes animals, the innocent victims of his fall. Ah, 'tis a wicked world!

However, we set off again, considerably damped in spirits since the morning; the dying horse haunted us both, and conjured up nervous fears. Kate, too, was lost in other thoughts she was living the past over again, and in my heart she had called up a mixture of feelings. I pondered sadly at the often unutterable woes lurking darkly in beings, who appear outwardly calm and some times phlegmatic; and I marvelled at the fast springing greenness in others, which strove to hide the rents, and bloomed freshly, vividly, amidst ruined hopes and stricken affections. It is beautiful, this young

life, in a heart that has known the storms of the world. It is sweet to see how a good God binds up and heals, making all lovely things minister silently to the sick heart, calling to the soul to step out of the wreck into the warm sunshine and the springing grass. And Time, we dread him, we trick him out with all imagined ugliness, we think of him as harsh and stern, cold, unsparing. As God's messenger, he is a blessed visitor; how he clothes the mean with dignity, softening sharp angles, toning down strong contrasts, teaching the flower to bloom in the breach, binding up the tottering with strong green bands, spreading films of loveliest dyes over the dark and rugged. We ought not to teach our little ones to fear Time-to hate old age. Let us rather fill them with love to those who use the chinks rough weather has made, as loopholes for the light of heaven to stream through more abundantly. These cherish the stray gifts borne into their wounded bosoms by the gales and the birds; they guard the winged seed, sustain the silken fibre, and shelter the opening bud; they bring life out of death; though the winds rend and smite, they give back only a perfumed sigh. Yes, though the tapering ash, which struggles to the sunbeam, cleave the old fissure wider asunder, and though the blooming thorn-tree, scenting the air which wafts its flakes around, and elicits a thanksgiving from the weary traveller resting under its flowery boughs, be rooted in the grave of some early hope, buried deep in the broken heart. Oh! there are many suchmany, in this hard world, who smile when their soul is full of tearsmany who train glistening ivy over the gaping wounds, and send forth smiles and sighs from an anguished spirit, like the wall-flower shedding its odours from the cleft window, and all because they will not look gloomy, and frighten the young in a world of death; because they would teach the trifler that time and sorrow are not foes, when God's angels lead them by the hand.

We approached a straggling hamlet; cousin Kate roused herself with an effort.

"Do you see that little inn ?" she said, at the same time pressing

her hand on her temple, as if in pain.

"Do not talk, your head aches." "Yes," she replied, with a quiet sadness, infinitely more touching than complaint," yes, but it is not worse than it often is."

"Well, but shall we stop on the road? We have not above an hour and a half more of daylight, and before we reach D- we must make up our minds whether we will stay there or pass on to London to-night; and then if there should be a fog, I should turn back and sleep in Kingston."

When we

What was to be done? reached D-, it seemed a pity to halt while there was yet so much good daylight left. So, after some hesitation, some hints from Kate of fears of foot-pads and drunken post-boys, parried by suspicions of damp beds on my part, we determined to go on to C, at all events. But our legs were cramped after being screwed up between boxes and baskets all day. Cousin Kate was seized with the fidgets, the excitement of the morning was beginning to pale her cheek and weigh down her eyelids. When I looked at her languid face, I almost regretted we did not stop at D- -; the darkness, too, gathered momentarily, and the shadows assumed fantastic shapes, which, ever and anon, made my companion start and ask feverishly, "What is that?"

"That is the moon-the young moon getting up from behind the cloud, and this is the village of C-."

"Yes, we must stay the night here!" ejaculated Kate. "I trust I shall not have a headach here tomorrow." So we uncoiled ourselves gradually, loosing the folds of cloaks and capes, till we attained the free use of our limbs, lending an incredulous but hopeful ear meanwhile to the landlord, who poured out protestations concerning the well-aired state of his beds. It was a dulllooking place, and, with "lingering steps and slow," we followed the woman-waiter up-stairs. She marshalled us into a parlour, opening the door with a bounce and violent wrench, and, whilst we looked round with chattering teeth, betook herself to

lighting a fire. Puff, puff! and hiss, hiss! was all the notice the green fagot took of her summons. She comforted us by saying it was the worst grate in the house; "Only arter a bit 't would burn up; and there had been a fire in it only last Sunday, when a gentleman came from London." Cold comfort this for two shivering travellers in this palace of the winds. No less than two doors and three windows in the room, all at right angles, ensuring ventilation and defending us from the night air only by crazy casements and summer drapery of white muslin. The damp cushions of the chairs curdled the blood to one's fingers' ends, the wind whistled through every cranny, the black fire smouldered, the woman waiter bustled about, shutting the door with a bang which seemed the only way of "hapsing" it, according to her, and the open sesame was in the same sonorous strain. We found the only other room we could get opened with glass doors into the garden, and was reckoned colder than the one allotted to us. We drew the sofa before one of the windows, and barricaded the panes with the supernumerary cushions. Then we pinned our cloaks over the muslin curtains, and rang for a fresh supply of coals and a pair of bellows. The coals arrived, but the snout of the bellows was melted off. Doubtless that same London gentleman was the culprit, who, in desperation at the cold, had smelted off the nose of the kind, homely bellows. We shall find few better friends through life than the bellows. The patient, hopeful, unwearied drudge, puffing away to cherish the spark thrown into the corner when the blaze darts up the chimney, and casts a ruddy light on our moody face. But the bellows at C were broken. Once more patience, and behold! preparations for dinner. The table was large enough to dine ten; the china figures on the mantel-piece and in the glass buffet nodded and rattled, as the noisy woman-waiter stumped across the creaking floors. But here came the mutton, smoking hot, and tender withal. It compensated in part for the draughty room and sullen fire. Then followed a pudding; surely it partakes too strongly of that dish Miss

Bremer tells us the Nordlander loves

We

"onion milk." We agree with Susanna Bjoik, this same flavour of onion is not pleasant, and the womanwaiter is sorry we cannot "enjoy it." So dinner is ended, and we return to the fire, for there is a fire at last. The very iron back of the grate was red-hot, and now we had three hours to dispose of in the best way we could. We examined the model of a stage-coach on the chimneypiece, evidently constructed in the palmy days of coaches. It will be a curiosity a hundred years hence. looked at a screen adorned with ladies, after the Poonah painting style. Alack! some wag had furnished the fair ones with moustachios. We surveyed several quaint prints on the walls; some shepherds of Arcady, others, ancient-dated caricatures. But the whistling wind through the casements drove us back to our chairs opposite the fire, which, having conquered all impediments, roared up the wide chimney, as if glad of an excuse to be jolly. The " merry days" of the inn at C were past and gone. But the backgammonboard! To be sure-the very thing! Why didn't we think of it before? Ring the bell, and let it be fished out of the chaotic depths of the barouche. When it arrived, the difficulty was to get opposite each other, the table was so large, and had so many legs; but, by dint of holding one leaf of the board in our hand, whilst we twirled the dice-box in the other, we succeeded. Cousin Kate laughed, and was sure the people of the house would think us queer old maids, travelling in search of adventures. "Between our fears of damp beds and smoky chimneys, noise and dirt, and now this backgammonboard, depend upon it, they will be puzzled to make us out. Quatres again! really it is too bad; that is the third doublet you have had already." Nevertheless, Cousin Kate gammoned me, in spite of my lucky throws.

"Be the day ever so long,

At length cometh even-song." Our watches were in great request, but the pleasures of our repose were threatened by the racket of ome new-comers. From Mrs. Fer

rars we learnt a novel edition of High Life below Stairs was going on,

an influx of servants, travelling homewards by short stages in the chariot, whilst their master and mistress were on a visit. They kept up an incessant ringing of bells, verifying the old proverb of, "Set a beggar," &c. They who so often had to answer the bell seemed to find it sweet to ring it. Here was as strong an instance of the tyranny springing from enforced servility as one would desire to see. Now came the agitating questions," Were the beds damp?" Should we have an incursion of those Lilliput Goths and Vandals? Like many other things in the world, the outward appearances were fair. Should they, however, only prove treacherous simulacra? Every poet has sung of the "honey dew of slumber:" especially Shakspeare seems to have loved his bed; Scott certainly said his visions floated most mystically in the half-awake, half-asleep hour before getting up,-that most luxurious hour in the twenty-four, when one is dimly conscious of the deliciousness and half alive to the sweetness of stolen waters. But

66

sleep, gentle sleep," you shall be left in peace, for you shed your poppies on my pillow in the white bed at C. Cousin Kate's report the next morning was the same. We breakfasted, and packed into the earriage again, congratulating ourselves on our good fortune. Success to the country inn at C. May all ti mid women, who hate the smell of tallow and the phizzing of steam, get over their troubles as well as we did this morning. To a country eye, how disagreeable are the environs of London! Mildewy, dank, rotten, grimy, sordid,-poverty and pretension jostling each other; hovels, villas, and citizens' boxes, lying as thick as peas in a pod. Even the Thames partakes of the black, sullen life predominating in these precincts, -a thick, turgid monster, bearing away all the impurities. Ah! and rivers are generally so beautiful! and they give us such thoughts. A landscape without water is like a body without a soul. And at Kingston we found we should not have got horses if we had proceeded the night before. Oh, what we had escaped!

prototype is not as familiar to the mind of the reader as a household word. Take but a few of the most prominent. In Coningsby himself we recognise an exaggerated, and therefore by no means a wellsketched portraiture of the Honourable Mr. Smythe; Lord Monmouth represents the late Marquess of Hertford; the Duke of Blanc is the Duke of Rutland; Lord Henry Sydney, Lord John Manners; Messrs. Earwig, Tadpole, and Taper, rather the genus Ross, Bonham, and Clarke, than the veritable Charles, the true Sir George, and the undoubted store-keeper of the ordnance. Mr. Lyle is the amiable and excellent Lord Surrey; Mr. Rigby, the Right Honourable John Wilson Croker; and Sidonia, the Jew, the most sublimated abstraction of the whole, Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, accommodated, for the nonce, with the wealth and political position of Baron Rothschild. Now, really, whenever it comes to this, when gentlemen who mix at all in society, and are capable of observing a little of what passes there, make up their minds to transfer to their private note-books the sayings and doings of individuals whom they are in the daily habit of meeting, the deuce is in it if they fail, having taken to the concoction of novels, to strike off, here and and there, tolerably startling passages. How far the parties affected, whether by the praise or censure of the limner, may happen to relish the attitudes into which their friend has thrown them, is quite another matter. The public laughs, or marvels, as the case may be, at the exhibition; and should the novelist, by any accident, get into trouble, the probability is that the mirth or wonder of the said public would suffer no diminution.

Mr. Disraeli's new novel is dedicated to the highly favoured proprietor of Deepdene. As the dedication is, in its style, eminently characteristic of the writer, and contains an avowal, besides, of the great object which he seeks to accomplish, we conceive that we should be unjust, both towards him and our readers, were we to withhold it. Here it is at length :

"To Henry Hope.

"It is not because these volumes were conceived, and partly executed, amid the

glades and galleries of the Deepdene, that I have inscribed them with your name. Nor merely because I was desirous to avail myself of the most graceful privilege of an author, and dedicate my work to the friend, whose talents I have always appreciated, and whose virtues I have ever admired.

"But because in these pages I have endeavoured to picture something of that developement of the new and, as I believe, better mind of England, that has been the subject of our converse and speculation.

"In these volumes you will find many a thought illustrated, and many a principle attempted to be established, that we have often together partially discussed and canvassed. Doubtless you may encounter some opinions with which you may not agree, and some conclusions the accuracy of which you may find cause to question. But if I have generally succeeded in my object, to scatter some suggestions that may tend to elevate the tone of public life, ascertain the true character of political parties, and induce us, for the future, more carefully to distinguish between facts and phrases, realities and phantoms, I believe that I shall gain your sympathy, for I shall find a reflex to their efforts in your own generous spirit and enlightened mind.

Δ.

"Grosvenor Gate, May-Day, 1844."

To

We have copied this dedication precisely as we found it at pages iii. and iv. of the first volume of Coningsby; with its broken sentences, its arbitrary paragraphs, its May-day date, and its Delta signature. have done otherwise, whether by transposing points, or changing, or abbreviating, or Anglicising terms, would have been to take a very undue liberty with the writer, whose purposes, it is clear, go very much farther than the mere paying of a compliment to Mr. Henry Hope. We say nothing, moreover, about the announcement made regarding the great end which the tale is meant to serve. That must be sufficiently obvious to all men; but there is a hidden, or symbolical, design shadowed forth in every line of the dedication, which it were a thousand pities not to place in a clear point of view before the world. Mr. Disraeli's style is, like his philosophy, mediæval. He approves of the arrangement of words that was in vogue under the last princes of the house of Tudor. He announces a truth, important in his own eyes, by