INTERIOR OF A GIN-PALACE. BY WILLIAM HOWITT. "Where's Eliza ?" Everybody, a few weeks ago, was asked this question. On every dead wall in the metropolis these words were shrieked to the passer-by in huge letters of black or blue. At all turns and corners the demand was again made of you. The cry for the lost Eliza seemed shouted everywhere by voices full of alarm. It was taken up and carried on by the ends of unfinished houses, by wooden walls, and projecting beams of skeleton buildings. All London, and no doubt all England, was roused by the hue and cry after this mysterious Eliza. "Where's Eliza? where's Eliza?" Voices in the air seemed screaming it; viewless creatures seemed posting over tower and steeple in the hot pursuit of the lost one Everybody's Eliza seemed missing; every family disconsolate; every lover broken-hearted. The cry was everywhere, and nowhere any answer but "Ask Strange, of Paternoster-row." It was a strange answer. What was everybody's Eliza doing in Paternoster-row? Our artist has at length answered the ubiquitous query. The missing creature was in the Gin-Palace. Elizas! See, there, how many lost Elizas are collected! What families have called in vain after these unhappy What mothers' hearts have been wrung for them! What "Rachels weeping for their children, and refusing to be comforted because they were not!" See the haggard looks, the painted, hollow cheeks, the tawdry finery, the trailing boas! Who would ever imagine that these lost Elizas were once little chubby, round-faced, rosy children, sitting on the sills of country cottages with roses and honeysuckles blooming above their heads, or were met by admiring strangers with primroses and violets in their hands, in rustic lanes? Yet it is most likely to have been the case. These dens, and the dens through which they pass to come hither, are plentifully supplied from the rural districts. Hopes of employment as servants, and often fine advertisements of the trading seducers, bring them up by shoals to the great slaughter-house of London. As flocks and herds pour in every week from their distant heaths and mountains, and fresh, solitary fields, to be killed and devoured, so do the simple maidens of the same regions, pressed by want of home employment, driven forth by the low rate of agricultural payment, allured by the wealth of London, come streaming in from all quarters the doomed victims of sensual cannibalism in the greatest of Christian (?) capitals. They hear that London is paved with gold, but they find it paved with fire. It burns under their feet; it burns into their very souls. Frantic and lost! lost for ever! they plunge into the river or the ginpalace. The daring die at once, the timid live on and die by inches-die in crime, in shame, in disease, and in the liquid fire which they quaff at every corner, to burn out the frightful sense of the present, and the green glimpses of the past; that cool, green, flowery, and divine childhood, where, in the absence of other schools, nature whispered to them of God, and God smiled down to them from the blue sky, and they were happy as angels in the piety of nature. Yes! the cry of "Where's Eliza ?" has been heard in every village. The stern labourer in the field and on the road side has had it in his heart as you passed him by, and saw nothing but a coarse-clad man doing coarse work. The cottage dame has been smarting under it, as you have seen her peep from her door, and thought how happy she must be in so quiet and picturesque a home. In town and country; in the lowly house and the dense lodging in the crowded alley of the large city, there has been, and there will never cease to be, while life continues, a sore place in many a heart, over one of these lost creatures. What cares, and musings, and watchings; what expenditure of hard-earned wages for the rearing, the feeding, and clothing of them; what sending forth, morning after morning, with clean faces to the village school; what anxious vigils by sick beds; what hopes and parental pride, as the young persons began to shoot rapidly into womanly grace, have all ended in this scene! Poor, unfortunate, precious, and divine humanity! and is this all we care for thee? Is all this waste of life, of labour, of expenditure, of hope, of love, of beauty, of health, of glad hearts, and immortal minds treated by us with as much indifference as if they were but demons and phantoms of a demon world-and not the realities of earth, and the terrible calamities of the children of Adam and Eve! Has Christ really walked and suffered on this earth to awake in our souls the fire of human sympathy and unfeigned love? Do we love our neighbour as ourselves? Do we believe in the gospel of love? Do we weep on silken sofas over the master fiction of the season, and bless ourselves for our tenderness of heart? Let us undeceive ourselves. While the lost Eliza is to be found on every city pavement, and in every ginpalace while the seducer and procurer are prowling in every street, at every place of crowded assemblage of the people; while they haunt the very churches, and defy the language of damnation from the very pulpit beneath which sits some unconscious victim in her beauty while old hags even get themselves committed to prison for petty offences, in order to cast their nets over young creatures who have gone thither for their first offencepaganism still prevails, Christianity has yet to be introduced. And does any one turn and say, "How can we help it? How can we avoid this huge evil; how can we cope with this overgrown corruption-and how are we accountable for it?" We reply-You can help it. You can cope with this corruption; and till you do it, you and we all are accountable for the misery and the moral death of every immortal creature of them that falls, suffers, blasphemes, and dies. At the root of the greater portion of this sorrow and crime lies national misgovernment To check crime and misery, we must restore the equilibrium of society. We must insist that the masses shall be represented, and trade shall be wholly set free. Give us scope, and we shall soon get a fair day's wages for a fair day's work. We must control government expenditure, and extend our fields of trade. We must educate morally as well as intellectually. We must watch our pupils from day to day, till they are as well fixed in employment as in habits of virtue. If we will save our poor brethren from falling, we must see that they have the necessary food and raiment. We must diminish temptation as well as strengthen the moral principle. Are not our While the Health of Towns' Commissioners purify the dwellings of the poor, we must all join in the labour of purifying the poor themselves. To do that we must give them not only words, but work; not only work, but wages. If the evil be enormous, our efforts should be enormous. Is not humanity worthy of it? brethren and our sisters deserving of it? Has God given us hearts and hands; has he given us pity, and sympathy, and a glorious emulation of good, and an admiration of the god-like-for an idle show-while the rational, sentient, quivering, objects of his creative power and of his Son's redemption, pass before us in their agonies, and perish unheeded? The woe and desolation are gigantic-then let us combine, and make ourselves gigantic. There is nothing so immense, so omnipotent, as combined men-except God himself. The sea-shore is but a congregation of grains of sand--the ocean of drops of water-the very earth but a mass of particles. The insignificant particles of humanity can, at pleasure, become the enormous and the irresistible. Men connected by sympathy, and animated by a great object, are, next to their creator, the invinciblest and immensest of powers-that for which the universe exists, and by which its destinies are shaped. We do not guide the planet, but we shape the life of it. We work out the will of the Eternal, and never are so mighty as when we work with the current of his laws. His first law is love, and the easiest work is the work of love. Let the universal and immortal man, then, blend into his own unity; roll himself into his proper greatness; stand forth in the Titanic stature of his will, and the social reforms which have hitherto been only like the thinly peeping green blades of early spring on the starved earth will rapidly flush into universal ver dure. While we blame the Chartists for violence and extravagance, they are the only portion of the community who show the true degree of zeal and union. What they want they demand fearlessly, and combine that they may make themselves heard. In that they set a great example. We must unite and insist, or we are nothing. We are either mere sticks that any child can break, or the bundle of sticks which nobody can break. Let the cry, then, be union to put down distress; and let it be no inere cry, however loud. Let us resolve to put it down, and it will be done. It is no chimera-it is perfectly practicable. We must compel good government, and wise measures for trade, by which this great people exists, or our moral reforms will be impossible. Want, and its miseries, and its despairs will master us. The gin-palace and the opium shop will flourish on the ruin of workshops and factories. Go into the druggists' shops in town and country, and learn how frightfully the consumption of opium and laudanum increases every year. They are the horrible substitutes for bread and beef, for milk and wholesome pudding. The masses cannot satisfy their hunger, their only hope is to benumb it. Combine, then, perishing men, and you that would not have men perish. Combine! combine! combine! for those National Reforms which must introduce social ones. And, amongst the first questions you ask of government, ask this-"Why gin-palaces are winked at that the excise revenue may flourish ?" Ask your magistrates, too, "Why they license these slaughter-houses, and that more and more?" Let it be remembered that every one of these Gehennas is patronised by government, and licensed by the magistracy. A short time ago the leading members of the Temperance Society at Bolton waited on the magistrates, and remonstrated against the yearly increase of such licenses. The remonstrance was effectual. The conscientious magistrates refused to license any more. Let the magistrates of London, and other large cities, follow that example. Let them walk through Shoreditch, where upwards of thirty gin-palaces may be counted in a short distance; some of them two together; and often five or six with only one single house between each. Let them see their handy works all over London, in like exhibitions and like numbers, wherever the population is dense and poor; and then let them, in church and chapel, and the solitude of the closet, ask themselves who are really the destroyers of souls. The gin-palaces of England-the most horrible scenes of human misery and degradation on the earth-are the product of government enactment, and magisterial patronage. Let us, therefore, be just, and when we denounce the callous selfishness of those who vend infernal fire, and live on the moral ruin of their fellows, let us remember that they are but the agents and creatures of the Queen, the Ministers, the two Houses of Parliament, the Aristocracy, the Middle Classes, who reap a share of the benefit in government posts and offices, and of every man, high or low, who does not unite to denounce the licensed curse. BALLAD. BY RICHARD HOWITT, Most beautiful and blest the spot The charm which made you love her, The heaven that was above her. So easy were her manners sweet, But little was her reading: The liveliest thoughts played round her mouth She stilled the pert, she awed the bold, At length upon a sick-bed long Sweet Avon's lass was lying: Whose loving zeal amazed her; Unwilling to surrender. At length she put the youth aside, Is blest, as wife and mother. Plain path and homely duty, FRUIT FROM PLATES AND DISHES. PART I. capital seems the sole aim of the manufacturer, whether he be textile or artistic; but there must be purposes beyond this, there must be self-imposed duties, there must be begot and used a patriotic morality both nationally and individually, before art will become the great elevator and teacher that it may be made. By this I do not mean to negative the possession of capital to the VESPERS were over in the old cathedral of Beauvais individual; equality of wealth remains a moral imposand the good canon, or le pere Pacifique, as he was sibility, whilst idleness and industry are inherent in hucalled, stepped thoughtfully from the cool shadows of man nature, but what I mean to say is, that capital his little oratory into the magnificent setting sunlight should be made far more conducive to the elevation and that fell aslant upon the aisle pavements. Prayer was comfort of the artizan, than it has ever yet been made. never mere lip-service with this good father; and now Men, the poorest men, were destined by heaven to be the nunc dimittis, even yet a hymn in the far up echoes somewhat more than mere drudges of the earth, that is, of the lofty roof, had this hour, as it had often done be-participators as well as creators of substance and beauty. fore, filled his sublime nature with an intense sense and This is a divine right of labour, which it is the large feeling, that the beautiful is immortally linked unto the wisdom of individuals and nations to recognize. Go good, and that nature has intrusted no diviner mission home then, Monsieur, and let not your visits to the unto us, than to spread it like the glorious faith of Gali- museums of Naples, Tarquinii, Rome, Dresden, our lee beneath the poorest roofs, and place it every where, Sevres and our towns of Arboras, Tarrequemines in the where untaught eyes may look upon its light, and see Moselle, Toulouse, Chantilly, Bordeaux, and this our old in it the presence of divinity. Thoughtfully he paced Beauvais, be solely productive of design as beneficial to on from light to shade, from shade to light again, till he your capital, exalt your workmen through design, let stood in a little sea of amber glory on the floor, in which those same forms which minister to wealth and luxury, lay reflected from the grand painted window far above, however less costly their substance, serve their necessia purple taper vase, that there a virgin saint for many ties and decorate their homes. God, my son, made no many ages, had held to drooping lips, of such as were man exempt from influence of the beautiful, and through poor garmented, way-faring, and alone! He looked and this you would do more to grandly elevate design, and looked again, the feeling in his soul still more sublime, place beauty as it were in the hands of fabricators, than and then meekly crossing his hands, he gently made his by all the visits and models in the world. Create but way through the quaint, quiet cloisters, and from thence keen eyesight to beauty, and nature will reveal originality into a little dull untrodden street, whose vineyards and and grace. For Greece became great in art because old wooden houses looked out upon the open country, she made beauty subservient to use, and placed it as a Entering his old study, where the thick wooden jalousies divinity round and about her common people. I have thrown back showed the peaceful vineyard as it lay in the sought to act upon this consideration, and make the sinking light, he saw seated in his leathern chair, a poor potters of this town and the villages around someyoung man, not however looking at the quaint old La-thing beyond mere drudges, and I have been successful tin folio reared up upon the reading desk, but round upon the few old vases that decked the walls. None of these were gay or costly, but beautiful in form, showed on their flowing surfaces such loveliness of shape and limb, that the ideal was deified, and humanity made angelic. The young man arose and warmly embraced the good father. as far as very limited means will allow. I have dissipated much rudeness, much coarseness, and wherever I have done this, I have found I have exalted the spirit of religious worship. Within the graceful, though coarse, rude wine-cup, I have placed as it were an emotion of the soul; on the poor platter with its wavy line, I may have laid that as essential to true sustenance, as the From this early visit I fear you leave Beauvais to-coarse bread and garlic; around the brown earth vase, night, my son. "Yes, mon pere, replied the young man with earnest friendship, and retaining within his own two hands, the withered one of the admirable father," two modellers have been hired from Sevres, and as our great or der at home stays for their assistance, and my father is in but indifferent healt h,I have arranged to be in Paris to-morrow, and the day after to sail from Boulogne. Therefore, mon pere, in saying adieu, I have but two regrets-leaving you, and the last sight of your lovely Veiien vase, that makes yon niche so sacred." "The first will give you prayers instead of looks, my son Richard, the last may rest in your grand country, even before an old man's death. We know not, mon cher fils. But let us stroll into the vineyard, I have that to say which I would have remembered as a benediction." Slowly they went together into the canon's favourite grassy walk, the vines trellised on old quaint-mossed poles on one side, and on the other a low hedge of oleander, separating the vineyard from a wide marish sort of lane. A little gate led into this, and close beside it ran a small but limpid spring, soon lost, however, amidst the skirting sedges of the grassy bank. Dear Richard Mason, said good Father Pacifique, after some minutes' conversation, "there are two things that I wish again to impress upon your mind. In your country, as somewhat in this, the amassment of upon the shelf or window ledge, I inay have set that spirit of severe grace which appeals more to the mind than to the senses; and poured into the pitcher for the fountain and the spring an element as pure as water. I may have done somewhat of these things, mon fils, but not half what you may do." As he spoke thus the admirable canon, stopped abruptly, and pointed to the little rustic gate, that led into the marish lane. A few minutes previously, some little children had come up the lane, and now seated upon the grassy bank, a few feet from the gate, were intent upon fabricating little dishes and cups out of the soft argillaceous earth that made the bed of the trickling spring. They were very poorly dressed, and even without sabots; but their rosy faces and shining hair, bespoke health and cleanliness. The good canon had been arrested by their merry prattle, and now as he moved to the gate with Mr. Mason, the little girls rose and clapped their hand and danced around the little lad, who still seated on the grass held up in his hands the little dish he had just made. 66 Ah, mon petit Jean" spoke the little sisters out of breath with their delight, "it's beautiful, it's beautiful, it's charming, we'll carry it to Virgine, and it shall hold the supper-grapes next fete day." "It's pretty well," spoke the boy, somewhat contemptuously throwing back his head. "I shall do fifty things better by and by, my little ones. We can ask neighbour Epignon to put it in his furnace, but it won't stand the fire.' "It's beautiful, Jean," and the little sisters would still praise it. "It's for me, that's all," said the boy. "I saw the very thing in the flow of the garment of the Virgin, our Lady in the cathedral window, the last fast-day we went to confession. It's pretty well my little ones; but I've seen twenty prettier things sometimes, in only the swimming of the clouds. We can take it home to Virgine and ask her." The admirable canon, who knew the children well, called them, and the little lad with the most graceful of Normannais rustic bows, came forward to the gate, bearing the dish, and followed by his little sisters. Formed only by the fingers, though with a dexterity that might have honoured the most expert of potters, Jean's little dish was as graceful as if Pomona herself had fashioned it to receive the luscious berry of the vintage. The rudest bit of clay, yet suggestive of a sublime idea to the appreciating eye. Such idea lived in the child's mind, and form expressed it outwardly, as all form of the beautiful does. Mason, whose taste had been highly cultivated, looked from the child's naked feet upwards to the dish, and from that into its bright happy face. "This is remarkable," he said, to father Pacifique. Ah, Monsieur," said little Minilla. the elder of the sisters, as she put her hand with innocent frankness into that of Mason's, "Jean makes little vases too, that even Virgine often says are beautiful in shape, and Virgine has been a painter at Sevres, Monsieur, and we put summer flowers into them, and call them our garden. Jean would go too to Sevres and be taught, but now we have no father." "Ah! it is a touching history, Monsieur," spoke the canon softly, "very touching, but linked to it is one of the best sights in old Beauvais. Come, if you have ten minutes to spare, it is no farther off than the bottom of this lane." The canon placed his arm within that of Mason's, and slowly they proceeded onwards, Jean running quickly on before, and the little sisters remaining and lingering on the footsteps of the stranger. Two or three hundred yards, and a bend in the grassy lane, brought them to a group of wood buildings, partly dwellings and partly potters' sheds, Entering one dwelling, whose coarse open lattice showed a few plants upon its ledge, they found a mud floored chamber neatly swept, a table set with the frugal evening meal, of coarse bread, garlic, and thin vin du pays, and little Jean busied in placing a few grapes upon the small clay dish, the canon had admired. A young woman met them at the door. It was Virgine Marron, a penciller in one of the stoneware manufactories of the town. There was nothing of the coquettish light hearted grisette about her; and instead of the high Normannais cap, or the braid and the bow, her smooth hair was drawn backwards into a knot, as simple as any that ever confined the luxuriant tresses of the chastest and severest goddess. Her gown was dark and plain, and a small crucifix hung at her girdle; but her poor pale face bespoke much severe labour. The good canon would not let her put off the little ones' supper, so she made them lave their hands in water set ready, say a short verse of thankfulness to the Virgin, and then, placing them round the table, portioned them their supper. Mason had time to look round the chamber, and though of wood and mud, natural grace was as plainly painted on the walls, as ever beauty was in picture by the hand of Raphael. Beauty may dwell low, as she will by and by, and be exalted by her lowliness. Thank God for this, thank God for this! as Plato said, "Beauty is the soul itself, and a type of the most Adorable Infinite !!" Five English shillings would possibly have purchased all within the chamber. A bench, an old carved chair or two, a sort of wardrobe, and one small table, besides that spread with supper, covered with Virgine's labours of the pencil, was all the furniture the poor room held; but a coarse vase upon a bracket here, an old dish, of the precious Majolica, or earthenware of Italy, and often found as heirlooms amongst les provinciales, these, in which were elegantly set a few wild flowers and leaves, which the children had gathered, and the poor penciller had been copying; a plaster cast or two of Canova's chef-d'œuvres and M. David's busts; two small prints of Beranger and Madame Roland pasted on to oval pieces of dark wood, and the few plants that served both as a shutter and a curtain to the lattice, showed that Refinement is stepping forth from palaces, and making wide town and country her home. and the little ones were silent. Virgine, at the request of the good canon, sat down, Virgine, Monsieur, is both mother and father to these dear children, and labours very hard for them, as you can judge. She has had twenty offers of marriage, and could earn good wages at both Sevres and Paris, but she cannot part with these poor little ones, les petits pauvres, and does not like they should quit le pere religieux. This is Virgine, Monsieur, whose chastity and diligence were never excelled in the broad shadows of our holy cathedral.” "The holy father thinks too well of his humble pupil," said Virgine, modestly, and with that ease which every Frenchwoman, if at all educated, possesses; "I wish I could do more for the dear ones, but wages here are low. Ah! too, and it's sad; mon petit is so bright a child." "More than bright, Mademoiselle." And a grisette is proud of this title of honour, replied Mason. "I am an English potter, and of course am acquainted with its relative design and art; and to me it appears that the child is not merely bright, but possesses original genius. The form of that little dish could only have been seen by the eye of genius." "The little ones having supped, will go and play a-while," said Virgine, and the children reluctantly withdrawing, Jean, however, keeping close beside the door, she added, "I do not like Jean to hear too much praise, however just, Monsieur, for he is a spirited child, and might, in time, have contempt for the hard, but virtuous lot in life that is before him." 'Ay, but genius should be fostered, Mademoiselle," spoke Mason. "As all things pure from Nature should, Virgine," added the admirable father; "for Nature, like the Blessed Mother in our cathedral window, mostly gives of her spiritual cup to the poorest and sadest wayfarers of the world." Just so,' ," centinued Mason gravely; "and now, Mademoiselle, hear the offer of an abrupt Englishman. I am struck with the evidence of the child's taste and genius; and as I have wealth and other means of assistance, I will, for the sake of my dear friend the canon here, educate him in my manufactory. I have a school of design for my own artizans, and I would place him under my best modeller.". "I thank you, noble sir," said Virgine, rising, with the grateful tears suffusing her eyes, and making the most touching of curtseys, "for your generous offer; but I would not part with the little one-he has no father." "He should find one in me, Virgine; and, moreover, I employ some of your countrymen, and he would not thus be wholly amongst foreigners." "It is ungrateful to child is dear to me." face grew deadly pale. refuse so good an offer, but the Virgine said this firmly, but her She felt she was refusing a true and perhaps noble friend to this child; but intense love prevailed even over interest. "I am sorry, very sorry," replied Mason; "for ability to serve is the choicest blessing that money bestows. But as you will; it would have been a pleasure to have given my new Sevres designer Terence such a pupil !" Virgine had stood deadly pale before; she now sunk again upon the little bench beside the table, covering her face with her hands, but not able to conceal the intense blush that now made so strange and strong a contrast. "Perhaps Virgine," said Mason with a smile, reading the whole truth in a moment, "I may have now prof. fered some inducement." "Be candid, Virgine," said the good father, "as a chaste daughter of our Holy Mother ought." Virgine withdrew her hand, and her face was now pale again, though she visibly trembled. 23 "The sole inducement, gentlemen, for Baptiste Terence, is my fiance. But yet little Jean, Monsieur -Le petite Jean had no desire to be thus tied to the apron strings, small as he was, and having crept in he now stood beside his sister, and putting his arms roguishly round her neck, whispered, pretty loudly though--"Do let me go with the grand Englishman, Virgine, and make plates and dishes, and be a brave man, and earn money, and come back and love you, and buy you a new rosary and fete-day gift." Little Jean hung upon the reply. Highest; for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his way, And to give knowledge unto his people "Yes, knowiedge, for it flows from the beautiful continuously, and from that knowledge is springing religion, of which every one is a prophet that teaches, exalts, and purifies aature." After matins, one of the priests who knew of the child's coming departure, came and gave the benediction, and then leaving them the child and sisters knelt alone. Not a sound broke the holy stillness of the aisle -nothing but the spirit of God was above, below, around; and the sun, stealing on the footsteps of the day, came through the eastern window, throwing, not the image of the holy vase upon the floor, but that of an angel blessing little children, to send them forth on the divine missions of the world! "My little Jean," whispered the good sister, as she drew the child tenderly within her arms, you are going away from me; but you must not forget God, my dear one, for he creates every beautiful thing you love. The flowers, the sky, the setting sun, the morning light are magnificent through him alone, and therefore He is the beautiful; and you must worship him, my little one. Every beautiful line you trace will be to His glory; every form you place before the poor and rude, may teach them how to pray, by the best prayers of good to fellowmen. Think of this, my Jean; and though yet a little lad, be diligent and grateful to the good Monsieur. Pray for me, and your little Manilla, and your Minon; and when you feel cruel to others, or speak untruth, or grow idle, think of the vase that lies so holy on those grey stones in the broad sinking sun, and you will grow good, my little one. My spirit in prayer to our Holy Mother will watch over you, and you may be a good man, and a The admirable father, who had interested himself much in the fortunes of Virgine, here stepped forward and said "That Mr. Mason being one of the most wealthy English potters, and a noble-hearted man, was likely to be a most true and useful friend to the child." The father's words had always been holy to Virgine, and so, in some half-hour's conversation that followed, her consent to part with Jean was obtained, and an arrange-true man, if you will, my little Jean." ment made that Richard Mason should delay his departure from Beauvais till the morrow, and that little Jean should accompany him in the same diligence. The news soon spread like wildfire through Beauvais, that Jean was going to England with the grand Monsieur, and good gossips came to hear, and help Virgine to wash and mend his small wardrobe, or bring some little token of remembrance from their poor stores; and decent artizans, who had known the child's father, to say a blessing, having children of their own; and Jean could not sleep in his little bed, but getting up again was busy half the night with little Minilla and the little Ninon packing a few dried flowers that they had gathered in their many summer play hours, amidst the green lanes and quiet woods; and then at the very first peep of the sun, running out, for the last time, hand in hand together, to view the little spring they called their own and take a last peep into the dear old canon's vineyard, who had been so kind as to say such good things to the "grand monsieur." They by and by were called back by one of the good gossips, and poor Virgine, giving them their breakfast tearfully, washed the little lad, combed his bright hair, put on his best blouse and new shoes, and saying she was going out to matins, took Jean's hand and went forth alone with him to the grey and old cathedral. It was open, and the priests in the matin service were chanting Venite, exultemus Domino, and commenced this sublime verse as the sister and the child knelt"O, come, let us worship and fall down and kneel befere the Lord our Maker." And, after the context, this of the Benediction "I will, I will," said the sobbing child, clinging passionately to her," and love you, Virgine." The sister and the bright-haired boy were silent as they trod the shadows of the old cathedral. There were many tears before little Jean was seated in the diligence besides Monsieur; but the poor grisette of Beauvais hid her tears, and bid Jean, in a whisper, be careful of the letter beneath his little blouse, and deliver it, when alone, to Baptiste Terence. The admirable canon went even so far in his adieu to Richard Mason as to add, that he might visit England for his sake. The sun shone brightly and hopefully on the grey cathedral, as the diligence rolled from the town towards the open country of vineyards and orchards. Before a week was over, little Jean was safe in the hospitable house of Richard Mason, and busy with his drawing, under the care of the Sevres designer, Baptiste Terence. No further off than the day after his return, Richard Mason took a short journey to the moorlands of Staffordshire. In its woodiest depths lay an old country hall, full of quaint gables, and old oriels richly stained. He tethered his horse to a stone buttress of the old fashioned terrace, and with quick but light step made his way to its most retired part. The lattice of the oriel was open, and a quaint old library lay within. On the broad window seat sat a young woman of somewhat haughty beauty; on the table near were strewn books, at her feet lay an open folio, and on the leaf was shown the copy of an Etruscan pitcher, that for grace the naiads of old Thessaly might have held to the lips of their freshest fountain. In a moment, Richard was within the chamber, and by the side of his betrothed. Their marriageday was to be within a week, and therefore their meet "And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the ing was one of interest. |