place, I should have felt it almost impossible to visit her, now when my own circumstances were so completely changed. But she had removed to some distance, though still within reach of those whose intimacy I had once enjoyed, and who had thus an opportunity of extending their kindness to me in the way that would have been most agreeable, and certainly at a time when it was much needed.

I had often been told in happier days, when surrounded with all the comforts of life, that I could never want the means of subsistence; that I had a fortune in my head and even in my hands. The truth of these assurances had now been put to the test, and many an anxious and enquiring look did I cast towards my cousin Jane, before I could bring myself to ask what money she had in hand for me.

"Money!" was her hopeless reply, with a tone of astonishment, the very emptiness of which sent a sudden quivering through my nerves, and an aching through my heart -"Money! I believe I have five shillings for a little cap, but really you must take your things away, for I am quite tired of showing them about, and as to the drawings, I cannot get them off on any terms! People say they are badly coloured, and quite out of perspective. For my own part, I do not understand such matters, and therefore cannot give an opinion."

"And pray whose opinion do you give ?" "Mr. Blundell's, the Morrisons', and Miss Green's."

"Miss Green's ?"

"Yes; they tell me she laughed very much in Miller's shop the other day, at a house, which she said stood on one corner. You may possibly remember the piece. It has cattle in the fore-ground."

I did remember the piece; and I remembered also that Miss Green had once attempted to beg it of me by earnest entreaties which I had great difficulty in refusing; but when I heard that Mr. Blundell, a man who took the lead in all matters of taste, was her companion, and had doubtless set the laugh

agoing, I did not wonder that she, who had no judgment of her own, should have been willing to follow.

Oh! ye who love to sport with ridicule, and think it pleasant pastime to murder with the shafts of criticism, how often is your cruel aim directed to the stricken deer, and your envenomed arrow sent into the bosom that was galled before!

How little can be known by you, whose days are spent in luxury and idleness, of what is felt by those who depend upon the mercy of your smiles for the very sustenance of life! You can take up the productions of the pen or pencil, find out each petty fault,— laugh, sneer, and cast aside, while the author or the artist: whose genius has been exhausted, and whose sensibility tortured for your amusement, waits for his daily bread. You can open the little volume, dedicated by the lowly to the great, and stretched at ease on a voluptuous couch, can peer amongst the pages, to draw forth with "critical inspection," and examine with anatomical scrutiny the sentiments that have been wrung out from a breaking heart. You can expatiate with all the dignity of a judge, who pronounces sentence of death against a criminal, upon the want of light and sweetness in the picture of some lonely wretch whose life is all shade and bitterness, and who, in attempting to imitate the fair face of nature, has not derived his resources from the exuberance of a pampered fancy, but from half extinguished recollections of beauty and harmony, which the discord of worldly strife, and the harshness of penury, are fast obliterating from his weary and distempered mind. You can luxuriate in the realms of art, light as the butterfly amongst the flowers of summer: but how unlike this happy and harmless insect tasting of innumerable sweets, while it depreciates and poisons none. Before you the works of imagination are spread forth to be contemned and trampled upon. Pause then, for one moment, in your merciless career, and reflect that such are often the productions of those whose labour is carried on at the midnight hour, when you

are in your downy beds, and ceases not for the throbbing of the heart that is torn with unkindness, nor the aching of eyes that are blinded with tears.

My agent was but too faithful in her report. The efforts of my genius had been miserably depreciated in value, and what was of infinitely more consequence to me, had not been sold. Not that the kind companions of my early years had ceased to be kind, or would not willingly have given me the stated price of all my worthless trifles; but it makes a wonderful difference, whether at hing is exhibited as a matter of taste, or as an article of sale. Many will value as a gift what they would not buy at any cost, however small; not at all because they grudge the money, but because, while receiving a gift (that not being always a matter of choice) their own judgment is not implicated, but the giver being solely responsible for all deficiency of merit, they can say to their criticising friends, "I know it has many faults, but I value it for her sake, poor thing!" and thus save their credit; but for the appalling question, "And pray how much might you give for this splendid concern?" they are provided with no saving reply, but must suffer an imputation upon their good taste, in having chosen to make such a purchase.

No one can thoroughly know the world and its odd ways without they have been poor. A thousand secrets are laid open to the eyes of the needy which the children of affluence will not believe of themselves; and the rude key of penury unlocks the laboratory of the human mind, where a view may be obtained of the various particles of which it is compounded before they are refined, amalgamated, and sent forth for the ornament of polished circles. It is almost worth enduring a little reduction of our means for the knowledge which is thus obtained; but then it is the loss of caste that reveals the truth; and who, from the poor Indian, owning no property beneath the sun but his Braminical thread, to the philosopher who professes to despise all worldly possessions, would not

rather endure every other earthly loss than this.

The discipline I was subjected to beneath the sheltering roof of my aunt Morris was like hard labour, and strong bitters, used to correct the evils of too much indulgence. For some days I bore it well, thinking the "pelting of the pitiless storm" would surely cease in time; instead of which it rather gathered and accumulated upon me, until I found my temper had imbibed the bitterness of which I was constantly partaking.

Gentle ladies, have you a cousin Jane? If not, your gentleness has never been fully put to the test. Have you a friend who takes the liberty of a near connexion, or familiar acquaintance, to tell you every disagreeable thing which every body has said about you, and that not at all on her own behalf, so that you cannot retort or repel the injury? While she has no part nor lot in the matter, but just thinks it right to tell you so much that, in time, you are induced to believe all old friends are changed, and all new ones are false. Perhaps the most distressing part of the information laid before me, was what had been said by my sister. Jane Morris had lately been staying with her, and reported that she had made many remarks about my expences, did not at all approve of my way of living,-should be truly glad if I had a settled home, and wished I would consent to live with them, where I should be more free from unpleasant remarks.

"Never!" I exclaimed with warmth quite unusual to me. "I will live any where but with them. I will advertise for a situation."

My aunt peeped over her spectacles, and thought I had better advertise for a husband.

"They have heard," continued my tormentor, "all about your affair with the Burtons. Mrs. Arundel tell every body, and how you tried to captivate Sir Charles."

"And how I failed?"

"Not exactly that; for I find he followed you to the methodist's, where he found you amongst such low people that he had little inclination to go again."

"Did Sir Charles tell his own story?"

and insulting letter to my sister, declining any further advance of money from that quarter; and, under the influence of the same feeling, I had lately passed Miss Green, from whom I had received a pressing invitation, without any sign of recognition. In short, I was rapidly becoming the victim of the most unamiable of passions; for no other reason than because the senseless gossip of an idle woman had conveyed to my ear the unkind and uncharitable remarks made upon myself, which we are making upon each other every day.

Where in the wide world was I to go, and how was I to find bread? I, who had a multitude of friends, was without a home. I, who had a fortune in my fingers, found nothing in my purse, and my cousin Jane was constantly reminding me that my things would not sell.

"Perhaps not," I replied, "amongst these spiteful people who are determined to crush me; but I will try my fate with strangers. There is a world elsewhere?" and, so saying, I proudly withdrew myself, and prepared for my departure, no one could conjecture to what place.

The London coach took me away from my aunt's door, and set me down in a narrow bustling street of the metropolis, in the very heart of the city, where an early friend, whose mind would once have done honour to the most refined and elevated sphere, now dragged on her existence as the wife of a tradesman, in the midst of perpetual toil and confusion. I had known her, when a young woman, mild, delicate, and gentle. Her home was not the most comfortable, and she had married young, hoping (surely this is hoping against hope) that with the change would come some little improvement in her circumstances. Her husband was a kind, rational, and worthy man, worn down with the burden of an unprofitable business, a sickly wife, and nine children. With these people it was my intention to lodge, and to support myself by painting.

It was on a Saturday evening, about the middle of October, that I sought out their

humble dwelling; and, after winding along many streets, in a drizzling rain, which I thought might just as well have spared itself and me a month longer, I saw the name of Wilson in large gilt letters over the door of a shop, where many busy feet were passing to and fro. Mr. Wilson, adorned with his apron, had just time to stretch his head over the counter and ask me to walk forward into the parlour where I should find his wife.

"Take away that barrow," he called out, in a loud authoritative tone to the shopman, who, with alternate skip and strut, hastened to remove the obstacles, and threw open a door, through which I groped my way along a passage, directed to the parlour only by the screams and uproar of nine children undergoing the agony of a Saturday-night's wash. My heart failed me; but the rival discord of the shop prevented my return. While I hesitated, the parlour door was sud| denly thrown open by one of the little rebels, hoping to escape his share in the general purification; and the scene within was thus revealed to my wondering vision.

It was ten years since I had seen my friend-ten married years. Nine children, three attacks of hooping cough, four of measles, scarlet fever, croop, and one cripple had done nuch to make Mrs. Wilson exceedingly unlike the fair girl I had once known her; but living in a dark street in London, poverty and underselling had done more. Oh! who can say they do not wish for money, so long as young helpless girls will marry before they have had much more experience than the dolls they have just laid aside-so long as men who have not wherewith to clothe and feed themselves, will link their hard fate with those who are not used to hardship. At first all may go smoothly on. New furniture looks well, and kind, pitying relations, make presents that show upon the table and the mantle-piece. They are both young, guileless, and confiding; and affection in the young is more potent while it lasts, than the old will believe; but even love may be drawn upon too often for draughts too large; and Cupid, and the poor man's banker, make

the same complaint. The first child is welcomed by the nurse, and the young mother, and sometimes the father is beguiled of his pressing cares by its happy smiles. A second finds a welcome, because two are little more trouble than one; and a third, because they hope it will be the last: but they have no nursery, and it is very difficult to find a welcome for the fourth. The wife loses her health and her spirits. Her cheek grows hollow, her eye dim, and she is evidently sinking under her accumulating cares; but an underselling tradesman has just settled near them, and they cannot afford to hire more help. The doctor is called in; he looks with compassion on that gentle drooping form, and recommends quiet, with frequent reclining on the sofa. Alas! there is no sofa; and if there were, how should that wife recline-how should she find rest, whose ears are stunned with perpetual discord, who | is constantly called upon to appease the anger of the turbulent, to soothe the fretful, to gather up the bruised, and to forget herself. Perchance the husband loves her still, all changed as she is, and thinks kindly of her, for he can do no more; but the hardship of her lot is not much alleviated by his thoughts. Oh! who does not wish for money when they see the children of such people wanting that education which their parents have enjoyed, and consequently falling into a lower grade of society, without either the dignity of their father or the refinement of their mother; strangers even to the decency of manners and conduct without which we ought not to be contented.

With such a family as this I was now come to eat my bread. I could not expect a welcome, but I found one; for the poor are not the last to fulfil the duties of hospitality, nor the worn and the harassed the most unwilling to show that they can exert themselves yet farther for a friend.

Mrs. Wilson was on her knees in the midst of her noisy group when I entered. She started up at the sight of a stranger, and it was some time before she discovered, by the flickering light of the fire, who that

stranger was; she was herself so changed, that but for a peculiar smile which played for a moment on her lips, and which had once been familiar to her face, I should scarcely have known her.

I told her I was come to be her lodger, She thought I was jesting; nor was it until I had convinced her of my meaning by repeated assurances, that she acknowledged, by a silent tear, how sorry she was to be unable to offer me a home on any other terms.

"You are weary," she said-"I will just put the children to bed, and then you shall have tea."

I asked if, in the mean time, I might go up stairs to my own room.

Poor Mrs. Wilson looked confounded; she had forgot, while offering me a welcome, that, on the birth of her last child, she had resigned the privilege of keeping what is called a spare room, and that it was impossible any apartment under her roof should be exclusively my own. She might have recollected too, if this had not been enough, that long before this fearful encroachment upon comfort, she had laid aside all pretensions to neatness and regularity, and that, even in what was now called the best, instead of the spare room, every drawer was stuffed, and every shelf crowded with different articles of clothing, concealed from the depredations of the small fry, who ranged at large, and intruded with their busy fingers wherever they were not prevented by lock and bolt.

"Stay one moment," said my friend, and I was left in the dark while she ran upstairs. Half the little tribe escaped on the departure of their mother. Of the remaining half I could only make friends with one, while the others shrieked and rolled about the floor, until they woke the baby in the cradle, and I had more than I could well manage to still its cries.

Mrs. Wilson now called to me from the top of the stairs, and I ascended with the cheering hope of finding quiet at last; but, woeful to relate, a low wide bed, made to contain three at least, stood close beside the