question, "What in the devil's name does the child mean?" The robust woman read it there and answered him huskily:"Poor mite, she's buried her father this mornin'; an' Mister Barrabel is the coffinmaker, an' nailed en down." "Now," said Annie, this time eagerly, "will 'ee warm him, same as the big doll did just now? 66 Her mother's been dead these two Luckily the old gentleman did not un-year'. I'm her aunt, an' I'm takin' her derstand this last allusion. He had not home to rear 'long wi' my own childer." seen the group around the Punch and Judy show; nor, if he had, is it likely he would have guessed the train of thought in the child's mind. But to me, as I looked at my fellow-passenger's nose and the deformity of his shoulders, and remembered how Punch treats the undertaker in the immortal drama, it was all plain enough. I glanced at the child's companions. There was nothing in their faces to show that they took the allusion. And the next minute I was glad to think that I alone knew what had prompted Annie's speech. He was bending over Annie, and had resumed his chat. It was all nonsense something about the silver knob of his malacca - but it took hold of the child's fancy and comforted her. At the next station I had to alight, for it was the end of my journey. But looking back into the carriage as I shut the door, I saw Annie bending forward. over the walking-stick and following the pattern of its silver-work with her small finger. Her face was turned from the old gentleman's, and behind her little black hat his eyes were glistening. Q. THE COMEDIE FRANCAISE AND ITS TREASURES. - How did the Comédie obtain all their works? From letters preserved in the archives we shall learn the secret. Caffieri, we find, estimated the terra-cottas of La Fontaine and Quinault at twenty-five louis each, and his marble busts at three thousand francs each, but the comedians did not pay in money. In 1773 Piron died; Caffieri conceived the idea of making the bust of that author for the Comédie, and asked his friend De Belloy to make terms with the comedians. The negotiations took place by correspondence, and here is the first letter from De Belloy to the actor Molé: "Mon cher Molé, -Caffieri offre aux comédiens d'exécuter le buste en marble de Piron, à la seule condition de ses entrées en tout temps pendant sa vie. -DE BELLOY." The comedians accepted the offer and placed Caffieri on the free list for life, and henceforward in exchange for each bust in marble they gave the sculptor a free pass for his lifetime, with the right of transferring it to another person. Thus the comedians adorned their green-room without any outlay, and Caffieri received indirectly payment for busts to make which interested him, but which he would doubtless have found difficulty in disposing of otherwise. The price of a life entrance at the Comédie Française was reckoned at three thousand francs. A private individual who wished to purchase such an entrance had the advantage of credit and payment by instalments in dealing with Caffieri rather than with the Comédie directly. Indeed, the sculptor seems to have amused himself by speculating with these life en trances, and he did not always get the best of the bargain, as we may see from his correspondence, published by M. Jules Guiffrey in his excellent volume, "Les Caffieri Sculpteurs et Fondeurs-ciseleurs" (Paris, 1877). The example of Caffieri was followed by other artists as soon as it became known. In March, 1778, Houdon offered a marble bust of Voltaire in exchange for a life entrance. Pajou, Foucou, Boizot, and Moret treated on the same terms for the busts of Dufresny, Dancourt, Racine, and Regnard, and so from year to year the number of works of art increased. In 1780 Madame Duvivier, niece and heiress of Voltaire, gave to the Comédie the pearl of its collection, that superb marble statue of Houdon, which is the glory of the public foyer. Magazine of Art. TENNYSON'S PENSIONS. Lord Tennyson has often been censured for continuing to take the pension of £200 which he received now nearly forty years ago. It ought to be known, however, says a London correspondent, that for many years the poet laureate has derived no personal advantage from the pension. He has given the whole of it for the relief of authors in distress. He has, in fact, constituted himself the almoner of a fund of £200 a year, and has used it no doubt with judg ment and care-to relieve the necessities of authors. If he relinquished the pension it would not be conferred on another less prosperous writer. Its abandonment would merely save the State 200 a year, and Lord Tennyson thinks that the money may be well employed in relieving the distress of men of letters... For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and moncy-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. A WINTER NIGHT'S DREAM. "During the greatest extension of this ice sheet in the last glacial epoch, in fact, all England, except a small south-western corner (about Torquay and Bournemouth), was completely covered by one enormous mass of glaciers, as is still the case with almost the whole of Greenland." (Grant Allen in "Falling in Love, and other Essays."). "My realm," so rang a strange voice in my dream, "Shall now be far extended as of old, Uttered dark oracles from Highgate Hill, In those glad days when I was young, and And with new-launched argosies of rhyme drove The feverish sun before me to the South!" A gleaming iceberg 'neath the Polar Star. Again he spake: "I have no care for life To me more grateful seem wide wastes of snow Where all is dumb; or, if there must be sound, "To-night that island, fairest of the flood, No mercy, none, need man expect from me— The voice was silent or I heard no more, Gilds and makes brave this sombreing tide of time. Far be the hour when lesser brows shall wear oar, The ave atque vale from the shore! To him nor tender nor heroic muse tongue; Himself the Merlin of his magic strain, Spectator. From The Cornhill Magazine. "WRITE: me as one who loves his fellow men, are the words upon the stone under which lie the remains of Leigh Hunt. They were written by himself, and when the monument was erected to his memory in 1869, at Kensal Green, they were chosen by those who had known and loved him as the most appropriate to be inscribed over his grave. 131 briefly alluded to here. In two of the leading papers of the day had appeared some articles loaded with the most fulsome and extravagant eulogies on the prince regent, which awakened in Hunt a glow of honest indignation, and induced him to express in plain language his contempt for such toadyism in the pages of the Examiner, a newspaper which he started and edited jointly with his brother. The follies and vices of the regent were at that time a matter of common talk, but to make fearless and open allusion to them in a public journal was audacious. His own defence for what he wrote is contained in the following words: "Flattery in any shape is unworthy a man and a gentleman; but If it is true that "love begets love" it was presumably the poet's gentle, kindly nature that inspired men of all sorts and conditions with a friendly feeling towards bim. With his personality has passed away, save in the minds of a very small remnant, the memory of its power. That political flattery is almost a request to be that power was remarkable is undoubted. Letters are now lying before the present writer addressed to him from Shelley, Keats, Browning, Carlyle, Charles Lamb, Thackeray, Dickens, and many others, containing such warm expressions of affection and esteem that one can hardly avoid regarding with a feeling akin to envy the favored individual into whose lap such treasures were poured. made slaves. If we would have the great to be what they ought, we must find some means or other to speak of them as they are." An extract from the offending article is. here given, which, in its turn, supplies us with a very fair idea of the nature of the sentiments so fearlessly attacked by Leigh Hunt. -- "What person," wrote the critic, "unA curious mixture of qualities appears acquainted with the true state of the case, to have existed in his nature. To a simple, would imagine, on reading these astoundchildlike faith in human nature, and a ing eulogies, that this Glory of the Peostrong, enduring love of humanity without ple' was the subject of millions of shrugs respect to creed, politics, or opinions, was and reproaches !-that this 'Protector of united a hearty and healthy detestation of the Arts' had named a wretched foreigner many of its common weaknesses. He his historical painter, in disparagement or possessed a singular facility for adapting in ignorance of the merits of his own himself to the tone of mind of the compan- countrymen ! that this Mæcenas of the ion of the moment, throwing himself with Age' patronized not a single deserving equal ease into the gaiety or gravity of writer ! that this 'Breather of Elohis friend's mood, but always detecting quence' could not say a few decent exand disapproving on the instant the slight- tempore words, if we are to judge, at least, est expression of anything that savored of by what he said to his regiment on its want of charity or kindly feeling towards embarkation for Portugal! others. Conqueror of Hearts His stern, unyielding aversion to pre-pointer of hopes! that this 'Exciter of tence or sham resulted for him, as the Desire' (bravo! Messieurs of the Post!) world knows, in two years' imprisonment this 'Adonis in loveliness,' was a corpuand the payment of a fine of 500/., an epi- lent man of fifty!-in short, this delightsode to which be refers afterwards in ful, blissful, wise, pleasurable, honorable, simple words: "Much as it injured me, I virtuous, true, and immortal prince, was a cannot wish I had evaded it, for I believe violator of his word, a libertine over head that it has done good." and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half The circumstances, which may not be fresh in the minds of all readers, may be that this was the disap a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country, or the respect of posterity!" The times have indeed changed since flattery of so gross and outrageous a nature as drew forth this reproof could with impunity be poured forth as incense to the great, and be suffered to pass unnoticed and unchallenged by a multitude whose ears were, unfortunately, too well attuned to such revolting displays of sycophancy. Another to his wife breathes the same spirit of fond affection: I "Surrey Jail: May, 1813. "MY DEAREST LOVE, You may well imagine how your letter of yesterday relieved me, and what additional pleasure I received from the one of to-day. Your sorrow at having sent the former one de. lights while it pains me; but I knew you would feel as you do, and long to fold you in my arms to comfort you in return. am glad Thornton bears his bathing so Leigh Hunt's manly and spirited attack well. I am afraid that I did indeed omit "did good" in more senses than one. He to ask about his riding, but by the next was undoubtedly the pioneer of a better post I hope to be able to send you the and more wholesome state of things. Men result of another application to Dr. Gooch, known to him by name only, as well as whom I have not yet seen. Pray take care tried and true friends, rallied round him, of yourself, for if I only fancy you are spoke up boldly in his defence, and not in getting these fits of illness upon you, with his defence only, but in hearty admiration your head tumbling about the hard back of his fearless outspokenness. And here of the chair and my arm not near to supappears the bright side of his prison ex-port it, I shall long to dash myself through periences; they resulted in the formation of many valued and lifelong intimacies between himself and those who were enabled to throw aside convention and range themselves on his side. But there was also to be endured the heaviness of a first separation from his wife and little children, and Leigh Hunt was the man of all others to feel this keenly and bitterly. This little letter to his boy, which I find in my collection, shows us, I think, another side of his character when compared with the stinging Examiner diatribe which brought so much trouble on his head. "Surrey Jail: May 17, 1813. "MY DEAR, GOOD LITTLE THORNTON, the walls of my prison, though pretty well used to them by this time. "I am rather better myself this afternoon, though I have a good deal of fever hanging about me, with a strange, full sensation in my head that seems as if it arose from deafness, though I hear as well as ever; it is, I believe, the remains of rheumatism, and I should not care a pin for all the bodily pain I feel if my spirits were not affected at the same time. But still, I am more capable of being amused than I was formerly; a little continuation of fine weather brings me about surprisingly, and by the time these strange vicissitudes of sky have gone past, and you and the summer come back again, I hope to be "Kiss my dear boys for me, and thank Thornton for his marbles. But you made me another present of the value of which I have been sleepyou were not aware. ing with a piece of flannel about my neck for some nights, after having my throat rubbed with hartshorn oil and laudanum, and last night I substituted the wadding, - I am quite glad to hear of your getting myself once more. ones. "Your affectionate papa, which was smoother and more comforta ble. I need not say with what additional comfort I laid my cheek upon it, coming from you." But the loss of liberty and freedom began to tell upon his health. He had every |