best friend; though, to be sure, his manner is a little stiff."

gels of God, Love and Pity, in your indurated bosoms, and you will be astonished to find what a paradise will spring up there, a paradise from whose shining gates shall flow out upon all the world, harmonizing and cheering rays of mercy and forgiveness.

There was no need to call the children. Their father, now that he was fairly launched into his subject, described the events of the last hour with a certain sort of eloquence, inspired by intense feeling. How he had been startled and So Annie gathered up her scanty remnant of somewhat alarmed by the stopping of a hand-clothing, and her few little relics of early wedsome carriage at his humble door; how Mr. ding-days, before the illusion of the courtship Curling had stepped out of it and entered the house, accompanied by a pretty, but pale and timid-looking lady, whom he introduced as his wife. How, with a far kinder manner than his tenant had supposed could ever belong to him, the gentleman had made minute inquiries into the poor man's circumstances, and finding his statement corroborated by the artless replies of the children, and that his poverty was no fault of his, but to be attributed to a series of circumstances, over which he had no control, had not only dismissed the bailiff, and agreed to forgive him his arrears of rent until better times, but had even offered to lend him a hundred pounds, at four per cent. interest, to enable him to open a small shop, as a fancy stationer.

"I told him, mother, that I had been brought up to the business, and was sure I could make it answer, so we arranged that I should immediately take that small shop at the corner of Cross Street. And you and Mary, mother, shall knit some of those jimcrack things in Berlin wool, and put

them in the windows. We will be sure to make it out, somehow-won't we, mother?"

"Thank the Lord, my son, for all his mercies," ejaculated the pious old woman. "He has seen your upright intentions, and though he has tried you sorely, it was but to make your reward the greater. If our poor Elizabeth could but have lived to behold this day!" "Ah! mother!"

and honeymoon had been proved over and over again, to be a bad, delusive cheat. Then she stepped into the next street, laden with the remainder of her provisions, and gave them to a poor hard-working widow woman, for a newyear's feast for seven hungry children. And so, extinguishing the tiny fire. closing the shutters, and drawing down the blinds, the sisters went out and locked the door, feeling as if a wo had been left behind, and locked into the dark and solitary house.

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The unconscious hours roll on, unknowing that their midnight hush witnesses the obsequies of the weary Old Year, and the installation of his hope-fraught successor, in another twelve months to lay his disappointed head as wearily down in the cold grave of the past. How many wishes. and anticipations, and fears, and, above all, resolutions, that tessellated pavement of the abyss, have their origin with the birth-day of each new year!

"We shall do better this year, please God, than we did the last. This year will, I hope, see my family all settled and doing for themselves. It is likely to be a bad year for the poor, God help them! With this new year I begin a new life, according to my solemn resolutions. The Lord enable me to keep them!" Such are the thoughts of hearts that shall be cold ere its close, or shall live to see their hopes, fears, anticipations, resolutions, frustrated or made void by the force of circumstances. But let us cease to deal with generalities, and take a peep at Ralph Curling's comfortable dining-room, at the usual hour for our visit thereto.

An hour later still, and Annie was sitting in her mean room, but not now alone. Kind little Charlotte was there with her, seated close by her side; her transparent cheeks, wet with tears, through which a smile was struggling, and her Mr. Curling himself is there, seated in his fond arms wound round her sorrowful, but no easy-chair; for, though compelled to retire to longer despairing sister. For Charlotte had hed after his benevolent exertions of yesterday, been sent thither as the bearer of a note, full of he rallied in time to join the company after dinaffection and kindness, though couched some-ner, on this new year's day. He is in deep what in a dry style. that was a second nature mourning, of course, as are all the rest, and with Mr. Curling, and not easily to be altered by wears his invariable blue goggles and velvet any change of feeling. So all was harmony now, skull-cap. But there is no peering of hard susand Annie was to pack up her poor apparel and go with Charlotte in the carriage which was to be sent for them, to spend the New Year's Eve, and many more thereafter, in the sheltered re

treat of her old home.

No longer sallow, dishevelled, almost ugly Annie. A tinge of color beautifies her oval check; her brown hair has been gathered up and smoothed by the dexterous hand of her young sister; her dark eyes brighten and soften beneath the influence of kindness

picious eyes beneath the glasses, or hasty questioning about the merest trifle, or peevish tossing to and fro on his chair, as if the cushions were bestudded with thorns plucked from Mammon's crown. Instead, is visible a melancholy calm of demeanor, for the old man's thoughts are ever near his son's grave in the far tropical country; and an occasional ray of benevolence, as the softened eyes rest on one or another of the suffering ones with whom his awakened conscience has made its own peace. Mrs. Curling Oh! who would not be kind? Ye who are has relinquished her usual seat opposite, and sits severe in judgment, intent on rectifying the beside him; for his helplessness requires her aid, errors of your weaker brethren and sisters, by and better days than those of their early mar what you consider a just reprehension of their riage are established between them. Annie ocsins, permit the due influence of those twin an-cupies her step-mother's old place, and Charlotte

clings closely to her, admiring how changed she is from the Annie she found her only yesterday. Thomas Curling, his wife, and their two children, the latter full of awe at the grandeur, as they think it, of everything in their rich uncle's house,-fill up the remainder of the seats at the table.

and Missus went in the carriage yesterday; but I didn't think of him treating them quite as if they was his equals."

"Ah!" said the cook, "it's ever since the news of young master's death. Losses and sickness soften the heart, Joseph, and subdue the spirit wonderful. I shall never forget how he was took that day; and he's been mild as a lamb ever since."

Necessarily there was nothing of a gay tone in this family re-union, taking place as it did in a house of mourning. But hope, and forgiveness, "Well, I'm glad," said the housemaid, who and mutual good will were there. The brothers had been some years in the family. "But for did justice to each other's better qualities; and young master's death, and he's gone to heaven, Annie felt in her penitent soul, for the first time, if ever young gentleman did, perhaps Miss how gravely she had sinned in slighting the Annie, as I always calls her, married though she paternal blessing upon her youthful choice. be, would not this day be sitting with the rest of "It was my conduct, doubtless," she thought, them in her own father's dining-room, bless her and a tear stole down her cheek, which Char-kind heart and tidy figure. So, it's all happened lotte, in her loving scrutiny remarking, placed to for the best, after all."

I

the account of the absent traitor; "it was my It was not only Hannah the house-maid that conduct that rendered my father's character thought thus. As the little Curlings went to harder than it otherwise would have been. I rest, at an unusually late hour for them, in a was his eldest, his pride, and he expected that grand bedstead all hung with handsome yellow should have been his joy. My disobedience and damask, and ornamented with fringe and tassels, poor Edward's folly soured his temper, and ren- and upon a thick down bed, into which they dered him suspicious of every one about him." sank very comfortably that cold winter's night, with the light of a fire to cheer them to sleep, Emily whispered to Ralph (she had scarcely spoken above her breath since she came into the house), "Do you know papa's going to keep a shop again? Mamma says, it is all on account of poor cousin Charles's death in India that uncle is so kind to us all. I am glad, Ralph; aren't you?"

Perhaps Annie was right. It is certain that her stolen marriage had been a great blow to her father; and when men of a certain rigidity of mind are disappointed in their expectations of one human being to whom they have implicitly trusted, they frequently end by thinking unchar itably of all. Let children beware of violating the parental confidence. The consequences of an obstinate or thoughtless infringement of the No," grumbled honest little Ralph. "We fifth commandment may extend even into eter-shall have to go to school again, and learn hard nity. lessons."

"

And Thomas Curling said to his wife, as they settled themselves to sleep in the blue bed-room opposite, "How changed and softened my brother is! Nothing but the death of my poor nephew could have effected such a miracle."

The pet canary twittered cheerfully, as the party sat over their dessert; and Joseph and his fellow-servants, soberly enjoying themselves in the comfortable kitchen, with a bottle of their master's old sherry, and a handsome cake, specially presented to them by Mrs. Curling in honor "The Almighty could have used other means, of the day, chatted together pleasantly, and mar- had He seen fit," reverentially replied Mrs. Curlvelled at the events of the last thirty-six hours. ing. "But doubly blessed are those who, not "Master's taking a strange turn," remarked content with doing all the good they can in their Joseph. Only think of him sending me with lifetime, amend the world even in the act of his compliments and a fine goose to those vulgar | leaving it!" folks in Denton Strect. I wondered when him

A country gentleman has been indulging a The King of Prussia having ordered a collecstrange whim for the last two or three weeks-tion of the books of the Mormons, the Latterconstantly travelling by rail between London and day Saints jumped to the conclusion that he must Manchester. After arriving at one city he re- be about to favor their views. So a deputation turns by the next train, snatching what refresh-set out from Stettin to wait upon the monarch to ment he can in the intervals.

The last advices from the West Indies mention the discovery of a guano island in the Leeward group-Aves, or Bird Island, belonging to the Dutch Government. The deposit was discovered by an American; two American vessels were taking in cargoes; and it is said that the Yankees have landed men and cannon to defend their possession against intruders.

"compliment" him; but when the train arrived at Berlin, the Mormons were arrested by the Police, interrogated at great length, and ordered to leave the city in twenty-four hours.

The superb articles collected in India to form part of the Paris Exposition have been exhibited at Calcutta previously to transmission to Europe. All the world went to see them.

ENGLISH LETTER-WRITERS OF THE

ENGLISH LETTER-WRITERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 183 From Fraser's Magazine. |preciated in good society. And such a mode Pope introduced in the epistolary style he made current. With Pope we may couple EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as a specimen LETTER-WRITING has become an easy mat- of a writer whose letters exhibited the highter in modern days. We write because we bred ease and wit that suggested a correspondhave got something to say, feeling careless how ing display in men of literary reputation. The it is said; or we write to stop the mouth of a art of letter-writing passed into a second stage correspondent, and as we know he must swal- when from this beginning epistolary graces low the sop we throw him, are not over nice came to be cultivated as a requisite for high about kneading it to his taste. But things standing among the upper classes of society. were different in the days of our grandfathers. It grew to be a study with the most refined They wrote to do themselves credit, and to members of these classes how to say everykeep up their literary reputation. The good thing to their correspondents in the most letter-writer had a distinct and recognized pointed and elegant way. Of such writers place in society as much as the good dancer we may take Horace Walpole and Lord Chesor dresser. The perfect gentleman had to ac- terfield as sufficient examples. Lastly, that quire an elegant style, which he must exhibit which had been confined to the higher circles as a mark of his standing as he did his rapier spread downwards, and all educated men imand his well-trimmed wig. His mind had to bibed something of the love, and in some wear a court-dress as well as his body, and he measure used the style current in the world would have as soon thought of seizing his sove- of fashion. Letter-writing then attained its reign by the hand as of presenting himself to highest perfection. It lost its forced and hota correspondent without the epistolary bows house character, and retained all its beauty and flourishes which good breeding demanded. and grace. The style adopted was more eleLetter-writing was made an art; and the vated and sustained than would be employed epistles of a great letter-writer the last centu- in the present day; but still it was perfectly ry had not a merely general and remote con- easy, natural, and simple. Of the writers nection with his character and history, but whose letters exhibited this perfection, Gray served him as a field on which he might dis- and Cowper are perhaps the most conspicuplay and exercise his powers. To succeed in the literary effort was the primary object, and to please or inform the friend addressed was the subsidiary one.

ous.

In the days of Queen Anne, the position of the leading wits, as men of literary pretensions were then termed, was a very remarkaThis art had a peculiar history of its own; ble one. The great fish were quite separated its course may be marked off into characteris- from the lesser ones, and the heroes of the tic epochs; it rose, grew, and faded away. Dunciad were forbidden even to swim in the Fully to trace this history would carry us far same waters as their more successful rivals. beyond the limits of our present purpose; and Pope and Addison, Garth, Arbuthnot, Swift, we must content ourselves with noticing only Gay, Prior, and a few others stood at an eleone or two of the most eminent of those whose vation which raised them into the envied cirletters mark each of the different stages cles of the rich and powerful, and kept them through which the art passed in England. at a safe distance from the ignobile vulgus. Pope must necessarily begin the series: in his The courtiers of Charles and James, while inhands letter-writing was an instrument by dulging in the license that showed at once the which the writer strove to adopt and preserve danger and the worth of the Puritanism to the tone of an exclusive artificial society, a which it succeeded, needed some vent for the means of establishing a sort of freemasonry impulses of intellectual power. They found between those whom birth or the privilege of what they wanted in the drama, in light verses, genius entitled to speak a peculiar kind of lan- in epigrams, and in the sallies of a lively reguage denied to the vulgar. The literary partee. The gayety and the graces of France man assumed in the days of Pope a new posi- were sedulously cultivated. But wit and tion, and Pope himself assumed it more com- dramatic talent cannot be always commanded pletely than any of his contemporaries. The even by the favorites of a court. The faculman of genius asserted himself the equal of ties of obscure auxiliaries must be called in the man of rank; but he did so on the condi-aid, if the desired aim is to be attained, and tion of adopting the manners and morals of thus a class of wits grew up, whose claims his superior in worldly position. It thus be- were felt and acknowledged by the rulers of came necessary, or at least natural, that ac- fashion. In France or in England, before the quaintances holding such a relation to each Civil Wars, these allies might have been conother should seek a mode of interchanging demned to be the very humble servants of the their thoughts that should bear a perpetual men they stimulated, amused, or enlightened. testimony and tribute to the excellences ap- But the clown and the noble had been brought

together too closely in that great collision to know that they wrote rough copies of their permit Englishmen, at the head of any class letters. When we open a well-edited volume so important as the literary, to be thereafter of Pope's Correspondence, we find appended the abject dependants of the great. Some- as a running commentary the first draft of the thing of the spirit of liberty imperceptibly composition. Words were inserted or erased, pervaded all the relations of society. Gradu- sentences compressed or expanded, the lima ally a kind of coalition was formed, and the labor was as severe, as when a poem or an ode result in its perfect form was seen in the days was to be polished. If this toil had been a of Pope, to whose exertions it was indeed sacrifice on the altar of friendship, the offering greatly owing. The literary class sent a few would have been one unrivalled since the representatives into the assembly of the beau days of Pylades and Orestes. But it was nomonde, but the representatives when elected, thing of the sort. It was a sacrifice of the or rather promoted, were cut off from the body kind made by Court beauties in the days to which they belonged. They had too to when they would sit for hours with their conform to the standard, to adopt the lan- hair built into pyramids, waiting till night guage, and breathe the sentiments of the cir- brought the season of display. It was a cle to which they were raised. Being men of means to a great end, a means of astongenius, they of course themselves affected in ishing and delighting others, and of gratiturn those who thus colored their own minds fying the author's vanity, a means, too, we and expressions; but certainly the influence ought in justice to add, of satisfying his own of society on literature in the early part of the artistic fastidiousness. Pope bestowed this eighteenth century is more observable than the kind of compliment more freely on Lady Mary influence of literature on society; and it is more Wortley Montagu than on any other of his observable in Pope than in any other writer. correspondents. She had every claim upon We have already said that Pope used the his epistolary powers. She was the daughter art of letter-writing as a powerful engine in of a duke; was a beauty, a wit, an excellent binding together this intercourse between the letter-writer herself, and the object of that gifted and the great; and in proportion as he thinks the full force of this engine ought to be brought into play does he aim at the greater artistic excellence in his letters. It is true that what is meant to be most excellent is often less so than that which is more simple and unpremeditated. But the presence of the effort is very apparent, according as the demand for it is greater, and we may trace in Pope's let- Pope's show-letters were modelled on the ters three styles, or rather three distinct points writings of Addison in the Spectator. He did to which the style is wound up. The lowest is not contribute to a periodical collection printed that in which he writes to ordinary acquaintan- and laid before the public, but he had private ces, on business, and for a direct purpose. There correspondents who were very happy to reis of course nothing remarkable in such of his ceive descriptions and essays such as those letters couched in this style as have been pre- which have made Addison immortal, and were served. The wording has the neatness of a sure to let others enjoy the pleasure they practised pen, but that is all. We need take themselves received. Elaborate and careful no further notice of it. But two styles remain in the one, the inferior, he does justice to himself and his pretensions when writing to those of his own class, to the great wits of his acquaintance, and to those in the world of fashion with whom he was on too familiar a footing to talk long in his supreme and Olympian mode. This mode was reserved for very great people, for ladies of rank, and for what may be termed "show-letters," letters, that is, which were written on a theme or particular subject, and with great care and study, and which were evidently intended to be passed from hand to hand through a large circle of admirers. We will bestow a little attention on each of these styles separately, beginning with the last.

:

vague kind of devotion on the part of Pope, which is frequently excited towards a person of different sex and rank by a community of tastes and studies. To her, therefore, he always writes his best. He never starts the subjects which he intends to make the ground work of his letter without the most carefully turned flourishes and preludes.

sketches of great houses and country residences were the specimens which Pope most delighted to give of his power to walk in the path of Addison. Sometimes the whole interest is intended to be centred in the fidelity, minuteness, and liveliness of the delineations; sometimes little touches of Addisonian humor, irony, and satire are added. The Duke of Buckingham, to take a conspicuous instance, had sent Pope a longwinded account of Buckingham House; and Pope, in return, gave a picture of a house where, he tells the Duke, he was then living, but which the critics rightly conjecture to have existed only in his own mind. He diverts himself with the ingenuity of construction which had built up such beautiful edifices in the Spectator. Everything is It places us at an immeasurable distance touched so as to be seemingly consistent, and from the letter-writers of the last century, to yet the result of a scarcely concealed whim.

You must excuse me (he begins) if I say no- | afterwards as a model letter-writer. But he thing of the front; indeed I do not know which was not a man ever really to dislike publicity, it is. A stranger would be grievously disap- where he could be as sure that the public pointed who endeavored to get into this house the would not find him off his guard as in his letright way. One would reasonably expect after ters to his distinguished friends. These letters the entry through the porch to be let into the abound with the fruits of his painstaking vigilhall; alas! nothing less! you find yourself in an office. From the parlor you think to step into ance, and are replete with passages which, the drawing-room, but upon opening the iron- even detached from their context, and brought nailed door you are convinced by a flight of forward as unconnected quotations, must be birds about your cars, and a cloud of dust in allowed to contain much that is graceful and your eyes, that it is the pigeon-house. If you charming. come into the chapel, you find its altars, like those of the ancients, continually smoking, but it is with the steams of the adjoining kitchen.

And the description of every part of the house is given in the same style, and is crowned with the portrait of an old steward, who is in fact the very counterpart of an old steward painted by Addison; and we might fancy we had the Spectator in our hands as we read

that

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has left behind her a collection of letters too remarkable for excellences of the most varied kind to allow us to pass her over in silence. Yet many of her letters have so unstudied and unpremeditated an air, and seem to shine, not from the care that has been bestowed upon them, but because they have emanated from a bright and humorous mind, that it may seem unnatural to treat her as belonging to, and representing an epoch when letter-writing was an art. A closer examination of her correspondence will, He entertained us, as we passed from room to room, with several relations of the family; but however, considerably modify the impression his observations were particularly curious when which a first perusal conveys. The writer is he came to the cellar: he informed us where almost violent in her denunciations of the stood the triple row of butts of sack, and where smooth and florid style of Pope and Bolingwere ranged the bottles of Tent for toasts in a broke; but she very carefully cultivates the morning; then, stepping to a corner, he tugged style to which she herself gives the preference, out the tattered fragments of an unframed pic-and even hints that she moulds it on that of ture - "This," says he, with tears," was poor Sir Addison. In her letters to her daughter, the Thomas, once master of all this drink." Countess of Bute, she speaks much more freely of herself ad of her own opinions and tastes, than in the letters she addressed to her friends; and when she is writing to her daughter, and the subject of her letter is, as is very often the case, the education of her granddaughters, she honestly discloses the pains she had herself taken to gain the pen of a ready writer.

When Pope descended to the regions of ordinary letter-writing, and addressed his brother wits in the terms of familiar intercourse, he naturally adopted a style much more simple and unaffected, and one that, in our opinion, is a far better specimen of his skill. Still the habit and love of seeming elegant, polished, and refined could not forsake him; and although It is often the surest method of estimating he felt himself at ease and unconstrained, yet taste to notice antipathies, especially where he had his literary reputation to maintain we find a strong judgment pronounced against among those who were his most discerning and something which, beforehand, we should have critical admirers. If we compare Swift's let-thought would be as probably liked as disliked. ters with his, we cannot but be struck with After her quarrel with Pope, Lady Mary was the differences of thought, manners, and mode most severe in her criticisms on the wits. of living they betray. Swift writes in a vigor- She was affronted at their arrogance, and reous, manly, and rather caustic style; while fused to accede to the standard of merit they Pope cannot feel quite comfortable without one upheld. "Well-turned periods," she says, or two fine sentences at the beginning, a few "or smooth lines, are not the perfection of sentences of telling description, and a due pro- either prose or verse; they may serve to adorn, portion of general remarks, mildly hinting the but can never stand in the place of good sense. depravity of the world, and illustrating the And laughing at the way in which Pope and his calm and serene philosophy of the writer him- friends played into each other's hands, she reself. The letters of Pope and Swift were pub- marks that the confederacy of Bolingbroke lished in their lifetime, certainly against the with Swift and Pope, puts her in mind of that inclination of Swift, but perhaps not contrary of Bessus and his swordsmen in the King and to the real wishes of Pope. Not that Pope con- no King, who endeavored to support themsciously wrote for posterity and the public. selves by giving certificates of each other's He would have taken as much pains to main-merit. "Pope," she continues, has triumphanttain what he thought his proper position in the ly declared that they may do and say whateyes of Swift, as to be studied a hundred years ever silly things they please, they will still be