whole into his hands, and distributes two or three bits, as the number allows, to each, and, should there be any remainder after the division, pulls it into yet smaller pieces, and hands them round with equal impartiality. After a meal they express general satisfaction by a clapping of hands; a mode also used by some among them of asking a favour, or begging pardon for a fault."

And, now, let it not be set down to the discredit of the savage race and natural good manners, if their best black behaviour relaxes under trials which would probably disturb the good conduct of even white civilisation. Morals may well change colour in an atmosphere which tarnishes the purest metals.

"At the outset of our voyage, it was comparatively trifling, and I suffered little inconvenience from venturing down on the slave-deck, to see what the matter was, when any extraordinary noise or outcries occurred. It is superfluous now to make this descent, in order to inhale its atmosphere, which pervades every part of the vessel, and in our after-cabin is almost intolerable. Gold lace and silver articles, though kept in drawers or japanned cases, have turned quite black, through this state of the air.

"Disorder, I think, in every sense, is on the increase among the unhappy blacks. During the late fine weather, they have spent the sunny hours of the day on deck, but when below, their cries are incessant day and night. Thinned as their numbers are by death, there is no longer narrowness of room, but increasing sickness and misery make the survivors more hard and unfeeling, and they fight and bruise one another more than formerly. Little Catula, the finest among them, who received a bite in the leg about six weeks since, getting continual blows and knocks, the wound has now become a deep-spreading ulcer. Another fine intelligent lad has been lately severely bitten in the head. Others have the heel, the great toe, the ankle-joint, nearly bitten through; and worse injuries than these, too savage to mention, have been inflicted. Madness, the distraction of despair, seems to possess them."

The number of deaths, during the voyage of fifty days, appears to have been 163, but the real number who died on board was 175, besides 14 more who expired on shore, out of a total of 397-a fearful waste of human life. As a set-off, however, the crew of the Slaver escaped with as much im

punity as if they had only committed a literary piracy; and certainly a very white fate was reserved for the skipper.

"The captain, whom they reported to have perished in the surf near Quilimane, but who was concealed among them, embarked for Rio, with four of his companions, in an English brig, having obtained money, as has been since discovered, from an English mercantile house in Cape Town."

That the Slave Trade should exist at all in the nineteenth century is a great fact, to the disgrace of civilisation. No Christian nation ought to accredit a representative of human nature to a Court that connives at such a detestable traffic; or to acknowledge, even as foreign relations, those repudiators, who disown their brotherhood to any of the sons of Adam!

1844.

[Continued.]

THE HOUSE OF MOURNING.

A FARCE.

SCENE.-A street at the west end of London. Enter SQUIRE HAMPER and his Lady, personages rather of the rustic order, recently come up from the family seat in Hampshire.

Squire. WELL, Ma'am, I hope you've had shopping enough. Lady. Almost. Only one more--O! there it is, over the way.

Squire. What, the one yonder? Why, it's all raven gray, picked out with black; and a hatchment over the door. What can you want at an undertaker's?

Lady. An undertaker's !—no such thing. Look at the goods in the window.

Squire. O, shawls and gowns! A foreign haberdasher's, I suppose, and that's the French for it. Mason de Dool?

Lady. Hush! Don't expose your ignorance in the street; everybody knows French at the West End. It means the House of Mourning.

Squire. What, the one mentioned in the Bible?

Lady. No-no-dear me !-no. I tell you it's a mourning establishment.

Squire. O, I understand.

The master's dead, and the

shop's put into black for him. The last new-fangled mode, I suppose, instead of the old-fashioned one of putting up the shutters.

Lady. Nonsense! It's a shop to buy black things at.

Spuire. Humph! And pray, Ma'am, what do you want with black things? There's nobody dead belonging to us, as I know of, nor like to be.

Lady. Well; and what then? Is there any harm in just looking at their things-for I'm not going to buy. What did we come up to town for ?

Squire. Why, for a bit of a holiday, and to see the sights, to be sure.

Lady. Well, and that black shop is one of them, at least for a female. It's quite a new thing, they say, just come over from Paris; and I want to go in and pretend to cheapen something, just out of curiosity.

Squire. Yes, and pay for peeping. For in course you must buy after tumbling over their whole stock.

Lady. By no means-or only some trifle-a penn'orth of black pins-or the like. If I did purchase a black gown, it is always useful to have by one.

Squire. Yes-or a widow's cap. Perhaps, Ma'am, you're in hopes?

Lady. La, Jacob, don't be foolish! Many ladies wear black for economy, as well as for relations. But I only want to inspect for they do say, what with foreign tastiness, and our own modern refinements, there's great improvements in mourning.

Squire. Humph-and I suppose a new-fashioned way of crying.

VOL. IX.

11

Lady. New fiddlesticks! It's very well known the Parisians always did out-do us in dress; and in course go into black more elegantly than we do.

Squire. No doubt, Ma'am-and fret in a vastly superior

manner.

Lady. No, no. I don't say that. Grief's grief all the world over. But as regards costume, the French certainly do have a style that entitles them to set the fashion to us in such matters.

Squire. Can't say. I'm no judge.

Lady. In course not.

should be left to our sex.

They're women's matters, and

Squire. Well, well, come along, then! But stop. Ask your pardon, Sir (to a passenger), would you oblige me with the English of that Greek or Latin, yonder, under the hatchment?

Stranger. O, certainly-"Mors Janua Vitæ "-let me seeit means, Jane, between life and death.

Squire. Thankee, Sir, thankee. I'll do as much for you. when you come into our parts. Poor Jane! So it may come, mayhap, to be a real house of mourning after all!

[The Squire and his Lady cross over the road and enter the shop, where ebony chairs are placed for them by a person in a full suit of sables, very like Hamlet, minus the cloak and the hat and feathers. A young man, also in black, speaks across the counter with the solemn air and tone of a clergyman at a funeral.

May I have the melancholy pleasure of serving you, Madam?

Lady. I wish, Sir, to look at some mourning.

Shopm. Certainly, by all means. A relict, I presume? Lady. Yes; a widow, Sir. A poor friend of mine, who has lost her husband.

Shopm. Exactly so for a deceased partner. How deep