which they did most clumsily indeed; and then she asked them how they liked it; and, when they said not at all, she let them go because they had only done it out of foolish fashion, fancying it was for their children's good, as if wasps' waists and pigs' toes could be pretty, or wholesome, or of any use to anybody.

Then she called up all the careless nurserymaids, and stuck pins into them all over, and wheeled them about in perambulators, with tight straps across their stomachs, and their heads and arms hanging over the side, till they were quite sick and stupid, and would have had sun-strokes: but, being under the water, they could only have waterstrokes; which, I assure you, are nearly as bad, as you will find if you try to sit under a mill wheel; and, when you hear a rumbling at the bottom of the sea, sailors will tell you that it is a groundswell: but now you know better. It is the old lady wheeling the maids about in perambulators.

And by that time she was so tired, she had to go to luncheon.

And after luncheon she set to work again, and called up all the cruel schoolmasters-whole regiments and brigades of them; and, when she saw them, she frowned most terribly, and set to work in earnest, as if the best part of the day's work was to come. More than half of them were nasty, dirty, frowzy, grubby, smelly old monks, who, because they dare not hit a man of their own size, amused themselves with beating little children instead; as you may see in the picture of old Pope Gregory, teaching children to sing their fa-fa-mi-fa with a cat-o'-nine tails under his chair; but, because they never had any children of their own, they took into their heads (as some folks do still) that they were the only people in the world who knew how to manage children; and they first brought into England, in the old Anglo-Saxon times, the fashion of treating free boys, and girls too, worse than you would treat a dog or a horse: but Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid has caught them all long ago; and given them many

a taste of their own rods; and much good may it do them.

And she boxed their ears, and thumped them over the head with rulers, and pandied their hands with canes, and told them that they told stories, and were this and that bad sort of people; and, the more they were very indignant, and stood upon their honour, and declared they told the truth, the more she declared they were not, and that they were only telling lies; and at last she birched them all round soundly, with her great birch rod, and set them each an imposition of three hundred thousand lines of Hebrew to learn by heart, before she came back next Friday. And at that they all cried and howled so, that their breaths came all up through the sea, like bubbles out of soda-water; and that is one reason of the bubbles in the sea. There are others but that is the one which principally concerns little boys. And by that time she was so tired that she was glad to stop; and, indeed, she had done a very good day's work.

Tom did not quite dislike the old lady; but he could not help thinking her a little spiteful-and no wonder if she was, poor old soul; for, if she has to wait to grow handsome, till people do as they would be done by, she will have to wait a very long time.

Poor old Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid! she has a great deal of hard work before her, and had better have been born a washerwoman, and stood over a tub all day; but, you see, people cannot always choose their own profession.

But Tom longed to ask her one question; and after all, whenever she looked at him, she did not look cross at all; and now and then there was a funny smile in her face, and she chuckled to herself in a way which gave Tom courage, and at last he said:

"Pray, ma'am, may I ask you a question?"

"Certainly, my little dear."

"Why don't you bring all the bad masters here, and serve them out too? The butties that knock about the poor collier-boys; and the nailers that file off

their lads' noses and hammer their fingers; and all the master sweeps, like my master, Grimes? I saw him fall into the water long ago; so I surely expected he would have been here. I'm sure he was bad enough to me."

Then the old lady looked so very stern, that Tom was quite frightened, and sorry that he had been so bold. But she was not angry with him. She only answered, "I look after them all the week round; and they are in a very different place from this, because they knew that they were doing wrong."

She spoke very quietly; but there was something in her voice which made Tom tingle from head to foot, as if he had got into a shoal of sea-nettles.

"But these people," she went on, "did not know that they were doing wrong they were only stupid and impatient; and, therefore, I only punish them till they become patient, and learn to use their common sense like reasonable beings. But as for chimney-sweeps, and collier-boys, and nailer lads, my sister has set good people to stop all that sort of thing; and very much obliged to her I am; for if she could only stop the cruel masters from ill-using poor children, I should grow handsome, at least, a thousand years sooner. now do you be a good boy, and do as you would be done by, which they did not; and then, when my sister, Madame Doasyouwouldbedone by comes on Sunday, perhaps she will take notice of you, and teach you how to behave. She understands that better than I do" -and so she went.

And

Tom was very glad to hear that there was no chance of meeting Grimes again, though he was a little sorry for him, considering that he used sometimes to give him the leavings of the beer: but he determined to be a very good boy all Saturday; and he was; for he never frightened one crab, nor tickled any live corals, nor put stones into the seaanemones' mouths, to make them fancy they had got a dinner; and, when Sunday morning came, sure enough, Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedone by came too. And all the little children began dancing

and clapping their hands, and Tom danced too with all his might.

And as for the pretty lady, I cannot tell you what the colour of her hair was, or of her eyes; no more could Tom; for, when any one looks at her, all they can think of is, that she has the sweetest, kindest, tenderest, funniest, jolliest face they ever saw, or want to see. But Tom saw that she was a very tall woman, as tall as her sister: but instead of being gnarly, and horny, and scaly, and prickly, like her, she was the most nice, soft, fat, smooth, pussy, cuddly, delicious creature who ever nursed a baby; and she understood babies thoroughly, for she had plenty of her own, whole rows and regiments of them, and has to this day. And all her delight was, whenever she had a spare moment, to play with babies, in which she showed herself a woman of sense; for babies are the best company, and the pleasantest playfellows, in the world; at least, so all the wise people in the world think. And there

fore, naturally, when the children saw her, they all caught hold of her, and pulled her till she sat down on a stone, and climbed into her lap, and clung round her neck, and caught hold of her hands; and then they all put their thumbs into their mouths, and began cuddling, and purring like so many kittens, as they ought to do. And those who could get nowhere else sat down on the sand, and cuddled her feet-for no one, you know, wears shoes in the water, except horrid old bathing-women, who are afraid of the water-babies pinching their horny toes. And Tom stood staring at them; for he could not understand what it was all about.

"And who are you, you little darling?" she said.

"Oh, that is the new baby!" they all cried, pulling their thumbs out of their mouths; "and he never had any mother," and they all put their thumbs back again, for they did not wish to lose any time.

"Then I will be his mother, and he shall have the very best place; so get out all of you, this moment."

And she took up two great armfuls of babies-nine hundred under one arm, and thirteen hundred under the otherand threw them away, right and left, into the water. But they minded it no more than the naughty boys in Struwelpeter minded when St. Nicholas dipped them in his inkstand; and did not even take their thumbs out of their mouths, but came paddling and wriggling back to her like so many tadpoles, till you could see nothing of her from head to foot, for the swarm of little babies.

But she took Tom in her arms, and laid him in the softest place of all, and kissed him, and patted him, and talked to him, tenderly and low, such things as he had never heard before in his life; and Tom looked up into her eyes, and loved her, and loved, till he fell fast asleep from pure love; for, not being accustomed to it, it tired him very

soon.

And when he woke, she was telling the children a story. And what story did she tell them? One story she told them, which, begins every Christmas Eve, and yet never ends at all for ever and ever; and, as she went on, the children took their thumbs out of their mouths, and listened quite seriously: but not sadly at all; for she never told them anything sad; and Tom listened too, and never grew tired of listening. And he listened so long that he fell fast asleep again, and, when he woke, the lady was nursing him still.

"Don't go away," said little Tom. "This is so nice. I never had anyone to cuddle me before."

"Don't go away," said all the children; "you have not sung us song."

one

So

"The doll you lost! The doll you lost!" cried all the babies at once. So the strange fairy sang :—

I once had a sweet little doll, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world;
Her cheeks were so red and so white,
dears,

And her hair was so charmingly curled. But I lost my poor little doll, dears,

As I played in the heath one day; And I cried for her more than a week, dears;

But I never could find where she lay.

I found my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day :
Folks say she is terribly changed, dears,
For her paint is all washed away,
And her arm trodden off by the cows,
dears,

And her hair not the least bit curled: Yet for old sakes' sake she is still, dears, The prettiest doll in the world.

What a silly song for a fairy to sing! And what silly water-babies to be quite delighted at it!

Well, but, you see, they have not the advantage of Aunt Agitate's Arguments in the sea-land down below.

"Now," said the fairy to Tom, “will you be a good boy for my sake, and torment no more sea-beasts, till I come back?"

"And you will cuddle me again?" said poor little Tom.

"Of course I will, you little duck. I should like to take you with me, and cuddle you all the way, only I must not ;" and away she went.

So Tom really tried to be a good boy, and tormented no sea-beasts after that, as long as he lived; and he is quite alive, I assure you, still.

Oh, how good little boys ought to be, who have kind pussy mammas to cuddle them, and tell them stories; and how afraid they ought to be of growing naughty, and bringing tears into their mammas' pretty eyes!

To be continued.

CHAPTER XVII.

WHAT SHALL HE BE?

WHEN We said of the Signor Avvocato, that he was not only troubled at home, but abroad, we alluded to the painful pre-occupations with which the disastrous turn of the war oppressed his mind. The battle of Custoza, fatal to our arms, had forced the Piedmontese to retreat, a movement which ended shortly after in their total evacuation of Lombardy. Milan was once more in the clutches of Radetzky; an armistice had been signed between the belligerents, both of whom had accepted the mediation of England and France. Such was the deplorable end of the campaign of 1848. All this Iliad of woe had been consummated within the short compass of Vincenzo's term of apprenticeship as a labourer-less than a fortnight.

Bad and fraught with danger as the crisis was, the panic of alarmists of the Signor Avvocato's hue made it still more So. There was no sort of evil they did not prognosticate. Deprived of their scarecrow of an Austrian occupation, which the armistice distinctly put out of the question, they dressed up another, the inevitable abolition of the Statuto, and the restoration of the old state of things-that is, despotism, with its natural retinue of Jesuits and Codini, and consequent crusade against the Liberals. Nor were there wanting those who assumed, and mordieus contended, of course, backed by plenty of proofs, that the Statuto and the war had been a comedy played in concert with Austria, to bring to light the Liberals, and get rid of them at one blow I would not chronicle here such absurdities, if I had not heard them with my ears passim not in hamlets, but in large towns; not from illiterate folks in fus

tian, but from gentlenen in black coats, who knew how to read, write, and cast accounts.

Truth to say, even from quarters less prone to groundless fears than the Signor Avvocato and Co., arose indications of uneasiness touching the maintenance of the newly-born public liberties. These came from those who had watched the growing tide of discontent pervading the ranks of our soldiers, at the far from friendly reception given them by some of the elated population of Lombardy; at the taunts launched at them of coming to reap the fruit of a victory not their own (as if, with the quadrilateral in the hands of the foe, there remained nothing to be done); and at the systematic hostility of a considerable part of the press, never wearied of denouncing the king and the generals as incapable, and worse. Those, we say, who knew all this, and knew also what a ready engine for reaction an army embittered by ill success and injustice is apt to be, wore anything but cheerful coun

tenances.

Nor were the feelings of the sovereign, as far as they might be prejudged, likely to differ much from those of his army. If man had ever had provocation, that man was Charles Albert. Of all those who figured in the campaign of 1848, not one had been more misconstrued, reviled, cursed, bespattered with contumely and insult, than Charles Albert. But a few days before the armistice, the palace he inhabited at Milan had been fired upon, and violently broken into by the mob. All the blood in his veins must have been turned to gall. And this man had only to nod his head to have all opposition silenced. It seemed almost impossible that he should not give the signal; the very certainty of success was an inducement. Diplomacy urged him, old and tried

friends implored him with tears to put the Statuto aside, at least for a while. Plausible reasons were not wanting to give weight to the advice. It was the only means of keeping his hold on the army; it was the only means of recomposing the unsettled minds of his people; it was for the good of the country at large, a temporary remedy, no opposition to be apprehended, no blood to be shed -a coup d'état à l'eau de rose.

It is to the eternal honour of Charles Albert that he did not will it-that he willed the contrary. He had sworn to the Statuto, and he would hold to it for better for worse. His first care was to issue a manifesto to re-assure the kingdom on this head. It spoke encouragement in dignified words. The sovereign exhorted his people not to sink under unmerited misfortune, but to stand by and show themselves worthy of those liberties which he had willingly intrusted to them, and which it was his own unalterable resolve to uphold and maintain. This manifesto, so firm and frank, went far to allay, if not entirely to uproot, the misgivings which had stolen into part of the Liberal camp. Even the chronic alarmists were surprised into hoping that the disasters of the army would exercise, after all, no fatal influence on the organic institutions of the country. Every day that passed carried away some particles of the remaining distrust, and brought with it a corresponding revival of confidence.

At the end of some time, even Rose's father felt in a magnanimous mood, and charged Rose to announce to Vincenzo, that his term of banishment from the family dinner was over. Vincenzo received this mark of returning favour with due deference, and resumed his accustomed place at his godfather's table in a modest and manly manner. This act of graciousness on her father's part, as it seemed to Rose-of tardy reparation, according to Barnaby's notion--did much towards restoring a good understanding between father and daughter, and master and servant. Rose entirely recovered her conversational powers and her merry laugh; and Barnaby, on his

side, condescended no longer to ignore the existence of his master, as he had done ever since the famous day of Vincenzo's volunteering as a field labourer. The Signor Avvocato's intercourse with the lad was at first meagre and reserved, but it improved gradually, until at the end of a fortnight it was on the old footing.

Vincenzo no longer strolled about the grounds all day as of yore, but put some method in his life, a little to the annoyance of his fair playmate: regularly before and after mid-day he would sit down to his books and read or write for hours. Nor was it unusual for the Signor Avvocato to stop at his godson's desk, and take up his translation from Tacitus -a favourite author with the studentand nod approvingly at it, or suggest some improvement, which was thankfully received.

One day, towards sunset, Rose and Vincenzo were sitting in the green arbour, so often mentioned-the latter expatiating enthusiastically on the glories of the western sky, and trying, but with little success, to transfuse into his young companion a portion of that keen poetic sensibility to nature which he himself so largely possessed. Rose, who had been looking abstracted for the last ten minutes, as if lost in a reverie, said, as he ceased speaking, "Vincenzo, have you indeed made up your mind—quite determined to abandon the career which you were destined from childhood?"

"Indeed I have," said Vincenzo.

for

"Are you sure that, in so doing, you are not yielding to a temptation of the evil one, whose aim is your eternal perdition?"

"How can I know? I hope not," said Vincenzo.

"You hope not, but you are not sure," resumed Rose. "Had you, therefore, not better try, and make sure of what are God's designs for you?"

"So I would, if I could see any means of doing so."

"I will show you the means," continued Rose, warmly; "that is, not I, but Father Terenziano, my confessor