"Now don't look so dismal, mother," he | this winter. What would old Henry Egersaid. "I daresay by the time I come back ton say to her, I wonder? I have a good I shall be only too delighted to listen to your sage advice, and to act upon it." Lady Laura closed her eyes, and feebly shook her head, intimating that it little mattered, for he would not have her long she was not what she used to be before he went to the Crimea. "Remember, Charles," she added, "I cannot stand anxiety now; and it is only my duty to tell you that Dr. Coulson says my life hangs upon the merest thread." Still though she bade him good-bye with the air of one taking what was likely to prove a final adieu, she entrusted him with a note to her milliner, Madame Roget, telling him to impress upon Madame the urgency of these commissions being immediately attended to, so that the new bonnet and head-dress ordered might be ready by the following Friday, when he was to bring them down with him. After this she kissed him mournfully and sank back upon the sofa apparently exhausted. But, much to her son's astonishment, as he was slowly descending the stairs, thinking that he had behaved in a most unfeeling manner, he heard her calling in her usual voice "Charles, Charles, tell Madame Roget that if she has any doubt about tulle she is to put lace, but that I desire it may not be such an expensive one as the last she used." 46 "All right, mother," replied Captain Verschoyle, greatly relieved by this sudden change for the better; I'll be sure to execute your commissions, and you shall have something scrumptious when I come back." Having already said good-bye to the rest of the party, who were assembled in the dining-room, he drove past with a wave of the hand. All the way up he had been thinking that perhaps he was, after all, setting off on a fool's errand. Miss Bingham had looked uncommonly pretty that morning, and she seemed quite sorry that he was going. It would be rather a sell if, while he was away, he should be cut out by Dynecourt, who hadn't any more than he had, and was therefore equally open to temptation. Well, what a dog-in-the-manger beast I am!" he said. "I don't want the girl myself at least I am not quite certain whether I do want her or not-and so I don't wish any other fellow to have her while the doubt is on my mind. I should not do badly if I had her money, particularly if we were to be quartered at York mind to run down to Kilcoy, and have a talk with the old boy. I want to see him, and I know in his heart he wants to see me, though he'd die before he'd say so." And as he drove to his hotel, for he had decided not to go to Egmont Street, he thought over the plan. The next two days in London with nothing to do, nobody to see, and nowhere to go, considerably told in Miss Bingham's favour. Captain Verschoyle came to the conclusion that having finished his ostensible business and arranged to go to the Paddington station for the missing boxes that evening, he might as well write to his mother and tell her that it was very probable he should return next day. He would not announce his intentions too decidedly, else her ladyship would fancy by his more speedy return that the business was to be settled to her satisfaction without delay. He had only got so far as to say that things must take their course - che sarà sarà. He half wished something would turn up to prevent him from returning before the day he had specified, but he could not stay in London longer the place was unbear able. -- When he reached Paddington the station was in all the bustle consequent on the arrival of the train from Plymouth. He therefore waited until most of the passengers had left, and then went on the platform to speak to the guard. He was standing looking for him when a porter, addressing some one near, said, "No, ma'am, there's no lady waiting on the other side." "Perhaps we had better go on, then," returned a voice in answer. "Wilt thou get a cab for us, and direct the man to drive to the Shoreditch station?" Captain Verschoyle turned quickly round and exclaimed, "Mrs. Fox, how glad I am to see you again! I hope you will permit me to be of any service to you that I can." Patience held out her hand, saying, "Indeed, I am very glad to see thee, for I have so little knowledge of London that I feel quite bewildered to be alone. My daughter was to have met us, but I fear something unforeseen has happened, as she is not here." Yes, my daughter lives at Fryston, on | great pleasure, so you will not refuse that line." me. "Thank thee," replied Patience; "in that case I will gladly accept thy offer, for Dorothy and I are but country folk, and, therefore, somewhat timid away from home in this large city." after being slightly stirred, becomes solid. The cheese they produce is put in wooden frames about 15 in. square and 2 in, deep; and these are placed on a stone to drain, with a piece of linen of close texture below each frame; when sufficiently drained, the cheese is compressed, by means of pieces of wood loaded with weights, to about half its original thickness, and is then packed in boxes, and often sent great distances. The cheese will not in its natural state keep more than a day in hot weather; but is often salted and otherwise preserved, so as to keep good for years. A lump of it as big as a man's fist does not cost more than half a farthing. The poor Chinese also drink the liquid before it is coagulated, and the cheesemakers' shops are constantly filled with crowds of customers. Pea cheese forms one of the staple goods of the country, and is highly nutritious. When fried in oil or grease, like potatoes, it makes a very delicate dish. Dry pea-cheese contains about 24 per cent. of fatty, and 8 per cent. of azotized matter. Food Journal. CHINESE DISHES. -The Chinese method of bread-making is curious; the flour is mixed with water, and the dough rolled by hand, and then shaped with cones, which are placed on trays or stands made of split bamboo, and cooked in the steam arising from cast-iron boilers; of course such bread resembles our own but little, being a good deal like a steamed hard dumpling. Much of this bread is made of maize; but wheat bread is much preferred. Rice, however, is the common bread of China, and the Chinese know how to boil it, which is not often the case in Europe. This is cooked much in the same way as the bread, being first washed very carefully in several waters, then placed in bamboo baskets, and suspended in the steam; or it is boiled for about half an hour, and then put into a bamboo basket, and not served until nearly all the water has drained away; but in which ever way it is cooked, the grains are distinct, like the little fishes in well cooked whitebait. Pease-pudding is not a luxurious or very expensive dish; and the Chinese have what they call pea-cheese, which holds much the same rank; it is a very cheap and useful article of diet, prepared from oleaginous peas, which are also eaten as vegetables, and from which a rather expensive kind of oil is made. The making of this cheese, al- GOOD TASTE IN RITUAL - English people though a simple operation, requires considerable enjoy the reputation, remarks the Church Recare; the peas are first steeped in water for twen-view, of having the keenest sense of the ridicuty-four hours, and are then drained in a basket; When a year they are then ground in a hand-mill composed of two hard stones, the upper having a hole in the centre through which the mill is fed, like a baby, with a spoon, the water in which they have previously been, being added from time to time, so that the peas leave the mill in the form of a thin paste, which is placed in a filter, and kept constantly agitated by hand; the filtered liquid is boiled very slowly in an iron vessel, and presently becomes covered with a thick scum; it is then turned into a wooden vessel to cool; and, after being stirred about for some time, a pellicle is formed, which is carefully taken off with a wooden ladle and then drained; and this is eaten either fresh or dried, and has somewhat the flavour of new cheese. This is not, however, the pea-cheese which is made from the liquid in the vat; but a small quantity of water containing plaster is added, and a few drops of concentrated solution of salt obtained from the saline marshes; the plaster has the effect of coagulating the caseine of the peas, and the whole mass, lous of any nation under the sun From The New Monthly Magazine. WE have a large company. We stand in the midst of friends who appeal to us so affectionately we do not know which way to turn. But A merry, cock-eyed, curious-looking sprite, 66 dignity, to read. And then, when you had won the great fellow into complacency at last, both he and you turned round upon poor B., and began to ridicule the Scotch! Ha! ha ha!" you laughed out, "the flight of Shakspeare's imagination in creating Birnam Wood.in Scotland, where there never was a shrub!" And you asked, when B. B. boasted an advocate of the Scotch bar earned two thousand per annum, how so much money could be spent in Scotland? Upon which Johnson took up your roar, and cried, Nay! if one man in Scotland gets two thousand pounds, what is there left for all the rest!" And you crowed out afresh, "To be sure! For when Thurot, in the last war, took seven complete Scotch isles, he only carried off three-and-six-pence plunder! There can be no one in the company in the least sorry to see you, John Wilkes. 66 66 Upon the instant started from the throng, Dressed in a fashion now forgotten quite; and as it is John Wilkes-John Wilkes, of the 66 North Briton," and especially of No. 45 — we will speak, then, first to him. John Wilkes, Byron painted you vastly well. You are merry. You have a queer, protruding, jeering, under-jaw. Your eyebrows fix one by their straight strangeness. Your eyes twinkle with (almost) malicious mirth and power. "Which," some one asked you one day "which is the best mode of speaking at the bar of the House of Commons? And you laughed out, And who is this, not very far away, "Be as impudent as you can, as merry as dressed in black silk gown and bands? He you can, and say whatever comes upper- is not a bit of Wilkes's genre. He looks so most!" and you look precisely as if you little acute he may almost be described by could do that to perfection. There was a the opposite adjective. And yet the two pretty fuss made, too, John Wilkes, wasn't were closeted together often, and much there, when you were to dine at Mr. Dilly's hung to one upon the words that fell from with Dr. Johnson? Bozzy, you know, was the other's lips. It is John Dunning, Lord afraid the great man would refuse to meet Ashburton, Wilkes's counsel when he was you; but the great man had thundered out, impeached; as great a lawyer as any of his stung as he perpetually was into a loud re- time, and one who never showed his fine joinder, "What do you mean, sir? Do ability to more advantage than when enyou think I am so ignorant of the world as gaged in his defence. Mr. Dunning, the to imagine that I am to prescribe to a gen- great lawyer, is one of our members," wrote tleman what company he is to have at his Dr. Johnson proudly, of the Literary Club. table? If Jack Wilkes should be there," One is always willing to listen to Dr. what is that to me?" And so Busy-Bozzy Johnson," approved Dunning in return; the did not in the least mind his " snubbing," which being repeated to the Lexicographer but awaited the "much-expected Wednes- by Bozzy, caused some big feathers to be day" with over-brimming glee. And then, plumed with delight. "Here, sir," ran John Wilkes, when the dinner was served, Johnson's chuckle, is a man willing to you know, you placed yourself next to Mr.listen, to whom all the world is listening all Samuel Johnson, and did all you could to the rest of the year!" And when Bozzy stroke down his huge round hide. Pray chattered of his own high aims and rightgive me leave, sir," you said, helping him doing in telling one man of a handsome to some fine veal. "A little of the brown, thing said of him by another, Johnson ansir; it is better here; some fat, sir? a little swered amiably, "Undoubtedly, it is right, of the stuffing; some gravy; let me have sir!"- and undoubtedly it was, since a the pleasure of giving you some butter! sage was pleased at it, and we may all smile A squeeze of orange; or the lemon, per- for ever at the pleasing. haps, may have more zest!" All dead irony, John Wilkes! All with a laugh lurking in the folds of your shaven chin! You knew that Busy-Bozzy had been in a fever an hour before lest he should not have been able to get the big doctor to come at all. You knew that when he had at length convoyed him safely, he had muttered, "Too! too! too!" at finding who were the company, and had finally taken a book into a window-seat and sat down there, in A noise of election cheering and enthusiastic huzzas fills the air merrily as the next guests arrive. When the crowd falls back a little so that their gracious faces may be seen, they prove to be two ladies — the beautiful Mrs. Bouverie, and the still more beautiful Mrs. Crewe. No wonder every hat in the land is off at the first sight of them! They are high-born, well-bred, and charming; and Mrs. Crewe, rivalling the Duchess of Devonshire, has been down to 46 Westminster to assist in bringing in Fox as member, and she has smiled the votes out of the butchers and bakers of that admirable locality, before they were aware of the object of her witchery. She has a banquet at her house in Lower Grosvenor-street, in commemoration of the joyful return, and George, Prince of Wales is one of her guests, and amidst loud acclamations and prodigious gaiety, His Royal Highness rises to propose a toast. He is only twenty-two years of age, and the flush upon his cheek has youth for the cause of it as well as wine, and every one looks upon his fine features rapturously. True blue!" he gives out that being the colour of his own party and of the successful memberand there is a hurrah! "True blue!" he gives out again, with his glass still higher in the air; and then, with the homage of the lowest bow to his near and lovely hostess, "True blue, and Mrs. Crewe!" Before the rattle of the glasses and the sound of the hot hurrahs have died away, the lady rises to her feet, and, with hand upreared, has a pretty imitation. "True blue, and all of you!" is her cry, and never did toast receive more honours, or wax-lights tremble with a more hilarious cry. 66 A large grey-eyebrowed man demands now a greeting. He wears a wide wig, a long big-buttoned coat, knee-breeches, ruffles, and buckled shoes. He walked out with Boswell to show Johnson some of the beauties of Edinburgh, on the third day of the southerner's arrival there, and he is a Scotch minister, and a sound historian, and his name is William Robertson, D. D. Robertson was in a mighty romantic humour!" Johnson complained of him, when he had met him at Allan Ramsay's; but," he exulted, "I downed him!" "Oh, oh!" he had cried, before ever being introduced, "Robertson and I shall do very well together, I warrant." And so they did, spite of the downing; and here they are promenading in Auld Reekie, and pointing with the famous thick oak-stick, as they stand under the shadow of coroneted old St. Giles. 'Do you ever see Robertson?" Johnson asked of Boswell, after this. "Does the dog talk of me? Sir, I love Robertson, and I won't talk of his book!" - because he did not think so well of it as he would wish, and he did not like to blame. There is a sharp volley of musket-shot silencing the buzz of pleasant chatter, and we see a fine man fall. He bleeds; the gold-lace and frills that deck him are staining staining with a trickle of his hot blood; and he is dead; and his own comrades were ordered to kill him, by the coun 66 try he has served. He is John Byng, admiral; and he was told to drive the French from the island of Minorca, and he failed to do it; and failure is a crime when King and Lords and Commons are on tiptoe for successes, and it has been decreed that he is to die. Voltaire (from the France that is not beaten and with a shrug that hides his pity), sneers when he hears of the execution. C'est pour encourager les autres!" he says. And, as things are going, les autres need it! This poor dead autre is of a family of fifteen, eleven of whom are sons; and there must be many wet eyes and wrung hearts now his bronzed face lies pale and lifeless, and it is hidden by the earth of a dishonoured grave. "England expects every man to do his duty!" is rung out by a clear voice courageously; but this John Byng was unable to do what was expected of him, and so is useless, and is swept away, and we turn to another admiral who can do as he is desired, and from whom the brave words come. We see a spare form now; a weary, anxious look; a small-topped head; a mouth that struts up tightly, and forms with itself and chin the smallest part by far of a long thin face that, to be symmetrical, should be divided nearly into three. This man has no right arm, and his breast is covered with gold and jewelled stars. There is no need to call out his name, and announce him as Horatio Nelson. Every one here, and elsewhere, knows him; and every one knows, also, who it is that is so closely at his side. Emma Hart, Lady Hamilton-nursemaid, artists' model, beauty, ambassador's wife- spite of the black wrong it is to many, is near him now, as he and she longed for her to be for ever, and we see the neck she hung on, and the furrowed cheek she has so often kissed. She is so lovely, it is impossible to wonder that Nelson chose her. She is simply and irresistibly delicious. Her face laughs out beauty and love and joy altogether; her bright hair lies about it in soft loose waves; she has sweet child-like features; ripe lips, a thorough challenge for kissing; clear-arched brows, long eye-lashes, and cheeks the very tint of a sun-touched peach. She is posée now, it is true; that may make her look more winning. She has assumed one of those attitudes in which she exhibits herself for the entertainment of company (as some ladies sing a song, or gentlemen are prevailed upon to make a speech); and the Countesses Vere de Vere look coldly on her, and whisper to one another that as it was her métier to do this once, when she was the mignonne of George Rom --- ney's studio, it is no wonder she is so skil- | hides her bosom; she has a gift of jewels ful still. But she is not hindered by the on her; and her hands are warm and limber taunt. Wisely enough, she knows there is in the nest of a wide fur muff; but the no harm in having lent her beauty to be threat of Polixenes enchantment, as his painted; possibly and with what deep eye-sight forced him to call her - and poisonous remorse! - she thinks that I'll have thy beauty scratch'd with briers, and if that were the only stain upon her, she made is to be fulfilled, and death is at hand for 66 could laugh in all these aristocratic faces, More homely than thy state, loudly and triumphantly indeed! But no reflex of this casts a blemish (or a glory!) on her loveliness. She is a Bacchante; her, "as cruel as she is tender," without wanton, sportive, brilliant, and caressing as any need of his devising. Not far from her a witch; and now she is a Magdalene, and are Peg Woffington and Kitty Clive, and all her smiles are gone, and her melting there is a solidity in their Bohemianism that eyes are raised to heaven, and her lips makes the spirits rise again, after contact quiver and are parted with a prayer. She with the perils of a glittering and renowned is to die some day at white-cliffed Calais, court. Clive, sir," declares Johnson, neglected and wretchedly poor; has she a" is a good thing to sit by! She always thought of this, now she has poems written understands what you say!" And Kitty in her honour, and she has this grave sailor laughs out to her neighbour "I love to sit sitting at her side? She might feel the by Dr. Johnson; he always entertains shadow overhanging her; but if she does, me!" Mrs. Woffington comes from makshe braves the death for the taste of this ing tea for Dr. Johnson at Garrick's lodgglad mirth and glitter; and she loves her ings, and though Johnson and she are mained and helpless sailor; and he loves guests, and before company a host should her; and his love strengthens for her deft hold his tongue, David has launched out a helping; and the end is what was threat-grumble at her for making the tea too ened from the beginning. strong. Peg!" he complained, "it is as red as blood!" But then the trio are poor together now, and Peg's extravagance may not be passed by! Besides, Garrick's supervision of his house-expenses shows he has a thought to the payment of them, and that sounds wholesome. It is not good, after this, to think of Peggy being struck with paralysis on the stage as she is acting, and dying of the disease after a long three years; but that is how the dart is hurled at her, and there is no turning the aim away. Perdita! Ah! Perdita, truly! A loss, indeed! As good an epitaph to cut deeply over her as Traviata - one who has lost her way! And here comes she to whom the name was given; Mary Darby once, when she was scholar and protégée of Hannah More; Mary Robinson after, when she was actress, novelist, verse-writer, wife; Perdita for now and ever, since she has acted the " queen of curds and cream," the "poor lowly maid most goddess-like prank'd up," Florizel's dearest and sweet Perdita, "the prettiest low-born lass that ever ran on the green sward," and since George, Prince of Wales, has seen her, and the Winter's Tale thaws into one that has been for all time, and she is "even here undone," and can 66 queen it no inch further," but will "milk her ewes and weep." She is, indeed, dainty and sweet-favoured. She has soft black eyes-no fire in them, but tender, sleepy, with long black lashes sweeping upon her cheeks, giving them deeper languor; she has clear-traced brows, as even and exact as if they had been marked out by a pencil; and she has a modest appealing look, that might spring to the memory of those who have cursed her with their caresses, and lead them to have pity for her when these supple limbs of hers are stiff and useless from rheumatics, and she is left, maimed and tortured so, to die. Poor beauty! Her glossy hair is turned back over a high cushion now; fine lace Who is it arriving now? Lady Bolingbroke puts her face behind her fan and whispers, he is "un politique aux choux et aux raves," and people titter; but Mrs. Thrale-Piozzi has the best tale to tell of him. She points to his light-blue, loose head-dress, and his environment of lightblue folds; she bids every one notice his hairless face, his delicate mournful features, his sharp clear eyes. His "Rape of the Lock," is in her hand, and she tells how Arabella Fermor, "Belinda," is made quite troublesome and conceited by his having written it, and his own caprices are so numerous they would employ as many as ten servants to satisfy them! She has just returned from a visit to Mademoiselle Fermor, Arabella's niece, the prioress of the Austin nuns at La Fossée, so she knows all about it! Her report is, that this wee, infirm, irritable, lady-spoiling man sits dozing all day in idleness, and makes his verses at night! - keeping himself awake by drink |