all with them, and I can hardly tell how it
came about that Lady Fitzroy admired my
hair, and called her daughter to observe its
arrangement, recommending her to describe
the style to her French maid Annette."
"Then I suppose we shall have the honor
of establishing a fashion, my child."

enlightened me. I did not feel confused at remarkably happy, yet raised his eyes every now and then either to the portrait or its reflection, as if it were the presiding deity of the place. Although three years had passed, so far from the lady looking older the case was absolutely the reverse; a truth which was the more apparent from the circumstance of her being much better dressed than before, wearing on this occasion a quiet and matronly dress of dark satin. Her habitual expression now was one of repose and contentment, but at this moment it was lighted by a visible, half tearful gladness, and yet ruffled by some feeling that partook of anxiety.

"I do not think so," replied Caroline, "for the young lady shook her head, and said "that if her maid could dress hair with half the simple grace that mine displayed, she might soon make a fortune at no other employment."

Mrs. Hargrave was twining the last loose tress round her fingers while Caroline spoke, "Why will you," exclaimed Wilton and the daughter did not remark that she Bromley, for we will take up their discourse paused a moment, dropping her hands for at the minute when, Asmodeus-like, we look that instant on the young girl's shoulder. in, "why will you, my dear lady, revert to Then quickly completing her self-appointed what you are pleased to call the inequality task, the mother stooped to kiss the smooth of our station? I will admit it only to be fair brow before her, and dismissed her inequality of fortune; and I am so eccenchild with one of those fond words which tric as to think this an inequality which are the sweetest music loving lips can utter renders us peculiarly well suited to each -when tuned by one heart's key note, they other. Dearly as I love Caroline, were I reach another no less warm.

CHAPTER II.

penniless it would be a sorry subject to speak of our marriage-and were she rich, I should, distrust the power of my moderate income-should feel there were something

Mrs. Hargrave pressed his hand, and said with emotion, "You are all that is good and generous."

THE scene is again the parlor in the "quiet wrong in our relative positions should destreet;" but three years have passed, and spair of ever knowing the exquisite sensation, busy as old Time must have been about the thought, that even in the most worldly more important matters, he had conde- sense, and in reference to mere material scended to leave there agreeable evidences comforts, her future lot promises to be of his passage. The room was no longer dim brighter and easier than her past." and dull; on the contrary, it wore a decided air of substantial comfort. Instead of worn and faded chintz, thick curtains of a plain but serviceable manufacture, kept out the "And what can be really a richer inheriwintry air: a warm carpet felt soft to the tance," the young man continued, "than feet; an easy chair stretched out its invit- health, talent, and beauty? If an artist ing arms on one side of the fire, whilst on be fit companion for our nobles, surely his the other a comfortable couch extended its daughter may mate with a simple gentlelength. Nor was the room without an man." ornament. Opposite to the chimney-glass, "A really great artist !" murmured Mrs. and reflected therein so that the picture Hargrave, as if half ashamed of the insinuaseemed always present, was a beautiful por- tion her words conveyed, and yet determined trait of Caroline Hargrave-in truth one to speak the truth.

of her father's most successful productions. "I am no connoisseur,' ," said Wilton, Representing her simply attired in white, it "nor is this the time to discuss Mr. Harrecalled precisely her appearance on the grave's talents. If," he added with a

eventful night of her first ball; and at the smile, "I do not always award him the moment of which we are speaking the ori- pinnacle he assumes for himself, I cannot ginal was not by, to invite comparisons. deny him very great talents; and even by Mrs. Hargrave was seated on the couch, the vulgar and often false measure of sucand beside her was a gentlemen, a young cess he may be tried, since his Art has proman of three or four and twenty, who, vided honorable and comfortable sustenance though deeply interested in the conversa- for his family, and has educated a daughter tion which was going on, and looking withal to be the paragon I think her."

"How well! Never has her image been don season, besides receiving fees from entirely driven from my heart from that ladies' maids and others merely to be allowhour; though for a while absence and travel ed to look on, while I operated. And out might have weakened the impression. It of the season, I am perpetually being sent was long before I recognized the real nature for into the country, and well paid for my of my feelings, but I now know that in that time and trouble. These are the " ways girlish grace-seé, Mamma! it is beaming and means" which have paid my husband's down upon us now"-and he pointed to the debts; have surrounded us with every needpicture" and almost childish simplicity, ful comfort; and have given Caroline for I met my destiny. What a beautiful por- two years the benefit of the best masters in trait it is. Her father has caught just the every branch of her education. Wilton expression she wore; too innocent of evil to Bromley will not despise his wife's mother, be frightened, too pure and graceful to be for having practised so very humble a branch gauche, her natural timidity had. a fascina- of Art."

arms,

that

tion about it beyond all words to describe. "He will love and honor her the more," I remember comparing her to a white dove said Wilton, pressing her in his whose wings had strayed among the pea- is, if further love and reverence from him cocks of an aviary: and then her beautiful be possible. No wonder, with such a hair! oh, I had no comparison for that." "You thought it beautifully dressed," said Mrs. Hargrave, with a tearful smile.

"I don't know how it was dressed," said Wilton, adding with the most charming ignorance of the mysteries of the toilet, "it did not seem arranged at all; the beauty of it was, it looked so natural-as it always does!""

"You know I always dress Caroline's hair?"

"Yes, I have heard her say so. What is to be done when I take her away? I must absolutely apprentice a maid to you, to be instructed in the art."

"I think you had better: the idea, I assure you, is not in the least absurd. I would take her without a fee-that would be the only point not quite en regle."

"Good Heavens! what do you mean? No, surely-a light is breaking on me!"

66 I mean the admiration excited on the occasion you mention first gave me the idea of turning my talent for hair-dressing to profitable account. A talent originating in a mother's love and pride-though perhaps assisted by opportunities and accidents likely enough to surround an artist's wife. The naturalness you observed seems to be the secret of my success, and the particular by which I am distinguished from the herd of coiffeurs. A day or two after Caroline's first ball, I called on Miss Graham, mentioned the idea which had flashed upon my mind, received her sympathy and approbation and more than this, her introductions were the stepping-stones to my fortune." "Fortune!"

mother, Caroline is peerless. But say, what did you mean by it being a trial, to tell your husband' this history, which to me seems beautiful ?"

"He has a different pride from yours." "And now that the results are so fortunate and evident ?" asked Bromley.

"The subject is never mentioned between us-he acts as if the thing were not. But let me ring now, and send for Carolineshe has longed for days past that I should tell you the Great Secret!"

CROMWELL LETTERS.-The "Thirty-five unpublished Letters of Oliver Cromwell" still continue to be the subject of controversy. Mr. Carlyle has repeated his belief of their genuineness, in a letter addressed to a gentleman at Norwich; and our contemporary, the Examiner, has handled the dispute, on Mr. Carlyle's side, with its usual talent and ingenuity. Lord Jeffrey, we hear, has written a long letter on the subject,-weighing the probabilities like a Judge; sifting the letters from first to last, and summing up against them. Mr. Bruce, too,-long the Secretary of the Camden Society, and a gentleand his times,-has, it is understood, expressed his man thoroughly versed in the history of Cromwell strong conviction that they are nothing more than ingenious impositions. Some of the general arguments used in conversation may not be generally known. There is not a new fact, it is said, in the whole thirty-five letters. They confirm, they illustrate, but beyond this they contribute nothing. Cromwell, says another person, could never have written "Hobbes's Wain" for "Hobson's Wain,"-the wagon of the well-known Cambridge carrier; while others urge that they are untrue, in one important point, to Cromwell's character,-representing him as seeking the Lord in the Bible by the Sortes Viralways by prayer. There is much more to which giliana; whereas, Cromwell's seeking the Lord was we may have, from time to time, to allude. The subject is one of extreme interest, and should be, if possible, determined before a new edition of the

"Yes, fortune; at least, in comparison genuine Letters of Oliver is required. In the present state of the controversy, Mr. Carlyle would not with our former poverty such it has been, be justified in introducing them into the body of the to make twenty guineas a week in the Lon-work.—Athenæum.

From Sharpe's Magazine.

THE CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN.

THERE is no more poetic record of the strife | Lord's supper, and which as long as I can and triumphs of a poet's career than that remember, was her holiday gown. She given to us in "The True Story of my always took home with her from the woods Life," by Hans Christian Andersen, which has been translated by Mary Howitt with her accustomed grace and truthfulness of expression.

He thus describes the circumstances of his birth :

"In the year 1805, there lived here (at Odense, the capital of the Danish island of Funen), in a small mean room, a young married couple, who were extremely attached to each other: he was a shoemaker, scarcely twenty-two years old: a man of a richly gifted and truly poetical mind. His wife, a few years older than himself, was ignorant of life and of the world, but possessed a heart full of love. The young man had himself made his shoemaking bench, and the bedstead with which he began housekeeping; this bedstead he had made out of the wooden frame which had borne, only a short time before, the coffin of the deceased Count Trampe, as he lay in state, and the remnants of the black cloth on the wood-work kept the fact still in remembrance. Instead of a noble corpse, surrounded by crape and wax-lights, here lay, on the 2d of April, 1805, a living and weeping child. That was myself, Hans Christian Andersen."

a great many beech boughs, which were then planted behind the polished stove. Later in the year sprigs of St. John's wort were stuck into the chinks of the beams; and we considered their growth as omens whether our lives would be long or short. Green branches and pictures ornamented our little room, which my mother always kept neat and clean. She took great pride in always having the bed-linen and the curtains very white. The mother of my father came daily to our house, were it only for a moment, in order to see her little grandson. I was her joy and her de light. She was a quiet and most amiable old woman, with mild blue eyes and a fine figure, which life had severely tried. From having been the wife of a countryman in easy circumstances, she had now fallen into great poverty, and dwelt with her feebleminded husband in a little house, which was the last poor remains of their property. I never saw her shed a tear: but it made all the deeper impression upon me when she quietly sighed, and told me about her own mother's mother: how she had been a rich noble lady in the city of Cassel, and that she had married a comely player,' that was as she expressed it and ran away His father had been disappointed, in his from parents and home, for all of which youth, of the education he had hoped to her posterity had now to do penance. I receive at the grammar-school, and hovered, never can recollect that I heard her menduring the rest of his life, a discontented tion the family name of her grandmother, spirit on the bourne of the world of letters, but her own maiden name was Nommesen. which he had not the means of entering. She was employed to take care of a garden He, however, loved his only child with all belonging to a lunatic asylum; and every his heart. He lived for him: yet he ap- Sunday evening she brought us some flowpears to have done very little towards edu-ers, which they gave her permission to take cating him in the highest sense of the word. home with her." He used, on Sundays, to take him with him into the beautiful beech-woods, and to let him string strawberries on a bent, or bind garlands, while he gave way to his own silent meditations.

"Only twice in the year, and that in the month of May, when the woods were arrayed in their earliest green, did my mother go with us; and then she wore a cotton gown, which she put on only on these occasions, and when she partook of the

Andersen has described, with exquisite simplicity, the events of his early childhood, and the impulses they conveyed to his ardent and imaginative mind. His story affords a monograph from which much may be learnt of the purely poetic nature, which, with its peculiar joys and sorrows, few understand, and with which fewer still are found to sympathize. If the elders of his family lived each apart from the other, in their own little world, his life was lonelier

His

still but his world was a fairy realm of While his corpse lay upon the bed, dreams and fancies, in which the songs and cricket chirped the whole night through." legends of his native land, the dramatis" He is dead," said his wife, addressing it; personæ of a play-bill, and recollections of" thou needest not call him. The ice-maidthe days spent with his grandmother at the en has fetched him." After this event lunatic asylum, arranged themselves, like Hans Christian was left still more entirely the beads, and crooked pins, and spangles to himself, for his mother went out washof the kaleidoscope, into strange, and beau ing. There dwelt in their neighborhood tiful, and ever-varying forms. Of this fa- the widow of a clergyman, who had gained culty he gives the following illustrations:- some literary fame (Madame Bunkeflod), My greatest delight was in making and her house was the first belonging to clothes for my dolls (the actors in his pup- one of the educated class which he enpet theatre), or in stretching out one of my tered: there he first heard the word "poet" mother's aprons between the wall and two spoken; and it was with such reverence, as sticks before a currant-bush which I had proved it to be something sacred. He now planted in the yard, and thus to gaze read Shakspeare in a bad translation, and in between the sun-illumined leaves. I was began to write tragedies for himself. a singularly dreaming child, and so con- first regular work was in a manufactory, stantly went about with my eyes shut, as at where his recitations, and his fine voice, least to give the impression of having weak made him a great favorite. One day, howsight, although the sense of sight was espe- ever, a coarse joke of some of the workmen cially cultivated by me." threw him into such a state of agitation The following anecdote is characteristic that he ran home and gained his mother's of his gentle and trustful spirit :promise that he should never be sent there "Sometimes, during the harvest, my again. The same talents which had stopt mother went into the field to glean. I ac- all the looms at the manufactory, while the companied her, and we went like Ruth in journeymen listened to his recitations, the Bible to glean in the rich fields of Boaz. made Hans Christian a welcome visitor at One day, we went to a place, the bailiff of several houses belonging to the most inwhich was well known for being a man of a fluential families at Odense. Amongst rude and savage disposition. We saw him others, Colonel Hoegh Guldberg showed coming, with a huge whip in his hand, and him great kindness, and even introduced my mother and all the others ran away. I him to Prince Christian, the present King had wooden shoes on my bare feet, and in of Denmark. None, however, seem to my haste I lost these; and the thorns have thought of enabling him to earn his pricked me so that I could not run; and bread by any settled plan of education. thus I was left behind and alone. The He was a tall boy, with long bright yellow man came up and lifted his whip to hair, when he was first sent by his mother to strike me, when I looked in his face, and ex- the charity-school, where little was taught, claimed involuntarily, 'How dare you so that he continued to write plays with strike me when God can see it? The scarcely a word of correct spelling in them. strong, stern man looked on me, and at once His mother said he must be confirmed, that became mild. He patted me on my cheeks, he might afterwards be apprenticed to a asked my name, and gave me money. When tailor. He had a sort of dread of the boys I brought this to my mother, and showed it of his own class, who used to laugh at him her, she said to the others, 'He is a strange in the streets as "a play-writer ;" and he child, my Hans Christian; everybody is announced himself as a candidate to the kind to him: this bad fellow even has given provost of the parish of St. Knud, to whom him money. only the children of the so-called upper He grew up "pious and superstitious." families were accustomed to go for inHis father's musings at last took so de-struction previous to confirmation. But cidedly military a turn, that he had no the scholars with whom he was now assorest till he joined a corps levied in Funen ciated would hold no intercourse with him; to serve under Napoleon, who was the idol only one young girl, and she was considered, of his imagination. It never advanced, how-too, of the highest rank, looked kindly and ever, farther than Holstein, when, the peace gently on him: she once gave him a rose, being concluded, he returned to his work-when he "returned home full of happistool, with the health both of mind and ness," because there was one being who did body impaired, and soon afterwards he died. not overlook and repel him. During the