who would also be a helpmate for him in his missionary labours.' Five ladies, all young, answer in this present number. You will see what five young English ladies consider to be desirable qualifications for assistance in missionary labour. Amelia Cameron is fine, handsome, amiable, and young.' H. M. S. is a fair and pretty girl, just turned twenty.' Nelly is 'twenty, and very good looking, being tall and graceful in figure, with beautiful features, having fine blue twinkling eyes, and a profusion of dark auburn hair.' Lottie is a warm-hearted English girl, fair and handsome.' Heartscase is a tall, fine-looking girl, who would live anywhere with a good and noble husband.'” "Is this missionary a Moslem, or a Mormonite?" "I cannot tell, as I have not the number which contains his application." "I think all five of the young ladies give far more enticing qualifications than the qualification which Edward Irving once gave of a certain lady." "What was that, Schoppe?" "I saw it in Mr. Story's life of his father, the late Rev. Robert Story, minister of Rosneath in Dumbartonshire. When Mr. Story was in England, Irving was bent upon his friend paying his addresses to a lady of his acquaintance, who, said he, will be an admirable helpmate for you, because she knows more of the mystery of the Papacy than any woman in England, except my wife!" "The invariable qualification of the London Journal husband-seekers (after beauty) is wealth. One is surprised that such very rich people should write to a penny journal. They should apply to Blackwood, or to the Morning Post. In this number Mimia Faithful's cousin, a bachelor of forty-three, actually asks some lady to accept himself, a thorough gentleman, with a beautiful country home, carriage, hounds, and hunters. He is a very tall, fine-looking man, and of unexceptional habits, for he does not even smoke.' The only qualification he asks is that the lady be 'not too old, but a lady by family and education.' "All anxious mothers and doubting dowagers," said Schoppe, "ought to take in the London Journal. A penny a week would save them hundreds a year spent in junketings, evening parties, continental journeyings, and wearying visits to watering places." "The young briefless barristers, surgeons without practice, and underpaid curates, would also do well, you will say, to take it in. The young ladies are usually wealthy. No less than six, in this present number, have good coin to give, as well as good looks. Kate H., a young widow without family, 'is very anxious to meet with a kind and affectionate husband. She has sufficient money to contribute to the happiness of a home.' Jeannie and Bella, two Glasgow ladies, are very good-looking, and have large fortunes, which they long to share with the husbands of their choice.' Eliza and Plain Lassie, both of Halifax, who send their cartes de visite, are good-looking, accomplished, domesticated, and pos sessed of independent incomes.' An English girl offers her hand and fortune' to a certain German gentleman who has applied for a wife in some previous number." "It is a comfort for some, perhaps," said Mr. Schoppe, "to know that amongst them there was one who considered domestication and accomplishment a qualification. Of course, the accomplished lady who can think herself accomplished, is very limitedly so. The professor of ontology, after many years, as yet, like his predecessor, knows only this, that he knows nothing. In what she considers domestication to consist, I should like to hear. Probably Miss Rogers thought herself domesti cated when she managed the domus of her brother, our English consul in Palestine. She tells us, however, that two little Arab girls, eight and nine years old, were astonished at her ignorance of cooking. It is the chief point in the education of an Arab girl. If one of these young ladies would send the editor, instead of her carte de visite, a chop of her own cooking, it would make more way for her with some wife-seekers whom I know. It is better that this accomplishment should be learnt before marriage than after, since it is sometimes taught in an unpleasant manner afterwards. A drunken man once told me, in the same borough where I learned of the existence of penny serials, that he thumped his wife into cooking well, and that she could, consequently, cook better than any woman in the borough. Do you know Lessing's wedding fable?" "No." "A hawk heard a nightingale singing in a hedge. He seized it, crying, 'Since you sing so sweetly, how nice you must be to eat.' It reminded Lessing of a man whom he heard say, 'That young lady, who sings so delightfully, would make an excellent wife.'" "Why, that is as good as Thomas Hood's young lady, who was fetched hurriedly from the boarding-school to nurse her rheumatic father. She began a soliloquizing roll-call of all her accomplishments, in order to find which would be now helpful to her parent. She could cover him up with knitting, netting, and crochet; she could make him tatted. collars and cuffs; she could bury him in tissue-paper roses; she could encrust him with blue alum; she could But, alas, what relief could either of these give to her poor, dear father (or poor, dear possible husband) groaning with the gout ?” "Men of different conditions require very different qualifications in their wives. Suppose Madame Blondin should die, and Mr. Blondin should apply to your editors for a second wife. She must, he would say, be light enough to be easy and comfortably carried; and she must have fool-hardiness enough not to be afraid to be carried along the high rope." "The qualification Mr. Stratton (Tom Thumb) required was excessive diminutiveness." "Tell me," said Schoppe, "does the editor never receive a really knightly and courteous application for an ill-favoured damsel, a poor damsel, or a shrew ?” "I have never found one." "That settles me. Neither Hooker, Vico, Petruchio, Schoppe, or your Puritan minister need apply to the London Journal. Perhaps other periodicals would help us?" "Matrimonial advertisements appear in many-of all parties and opinions. I cut out the following from the Christian World, for March the 27, 1863: A CHRISTIAN young man, a widower and tradesman, wishes to meet with a respectable YOUNG PERSON, from 26 to 30, who would show kind maternal care to three dear little children. True piety indispensable. Member of Baptists or Independents preferred. Important that she be fond of children, intelligent, and domesticated. Cartes de visite may be sent, with particulars, to Post-office. "A very clever one," cried Schoppe. "He does not commit himself; he will not say that he wants a wife, but he implies it very strongly in the nine qualifications he requires. She must be young. She must be respectable. She must have maternal feeling-a broad hint at a probable marriage. She must have Anabaptism or Independency. She must like children, be intelligent, and domesticated. Lastly, she must have good looks; or why does he want her carte de visite? I think if I ever advertise my qualifications, I shall offer to pay for the carte de visite which applicants may send me." "It is growing common amongst matrimonial advertisers to ask for portraits. Some advertisers must by this time, I should think, have an amusing, though rather unfair, museum of young ladies who want a husband." "What an excellent speculation for a Barnum," said Schoppe, "to buy up all private collections, and exhibit them together." THE LADY OF MY DREAMS. BY DALTON STONE. OFTTIMES in sleep-o'erwaved by Fancy's wand, Full oft that face-those features form'd for love, Can never picture forth night's glory gone; The face that fades with waking and with dawn. There is a longing in my glowing heart, To that fair form my earnest love disclose, And, like when petals in the sunshine part, From round the ripening redness of the rose, My heart leave bare, unto Love's sunny beam, To ripen it, with warm, pervading hope; And make my eyes with her fond image teem, While baby faces smile in each blue scope. But no my eyes may never mirror hers, Or even view them, save when mine are shut; And if my longing, empty arm but stirs, To circle her, the bonds that bind are cut! When I in wish'd for slumber close my eyes, In the long sleep that needs no painful breath; Perchance, when I again in waking rise, I'll find my ideal in the land of Death! QUICKSANDS ON FOREIGN SHORES. EDITED BY ARCHBISHOP WHATELY. (Continued from Page 92.) CHAPTER XIX. FRIENDS MEETING. MONTHS had passed since our last chapter, and brought no change to Agatha. All her entreaties that her brother would at least endeavour to withdraw Clara from the convent still met with cold refusals or vague promises of future interference, which she knew meant nothing. When summer should come, if nothing meantime had been gained, she thought she would return to France, and under the protection of M. and Madame Marcel, patiently await some change that might enable her to rescue her sister. To such an event she still hopefully looked, and, at any rate, to be near her would be a comfort. Meantime she lived on with her brother and sister-in-law, though she stood aloof from their gaieties, which were rather incongruously mingled with religious rites and observances, for Mrs. Courtney was extremely fond of society, though she atoned, as she thought, for her dissipation, by hastening from ball-room society to early service in the chapel of the admired Mr. Priestly. Agatha's inner life was a thing quite apart from those she lived with, yet she strove to be all that she could to her hosts while under their roof, however unwillingly they had received her; and when Mrs. Courtney was laid up with influenza, and incapacitated for the society she preferred, Agatha was found a very valuable nurse and companion. An occasional note from her mother, speaking of herself as happy, but really telling nothing, was all the direct communication Agatha received from the convent for some time after her arrival in England; but one or two letters from M. Marcel, enclosing the hastily written scraps which poor Clara, by means of Justine, had conveyed to him, reached her at last, though at long intervals, and were of course infinitely more precious. About a month after Agatha had become their guest, Mr. and Mrs. Courtney returned to London, which she regretted, as depriving her of the solitary walks which were her chief relaxation; and a London life to one whose situation makes her dependent on those whose habits and feelings are totally dissimilar to her own, is as monotonous an existence as can well be. Yet even here, Agatha's spirit was not broken; there was still a light in her eye that spoke of cheering thoughts within; the clouds were indeed dark on her horizon, but she could discern the sun that shone beyond them. At length arrived (through the Superior at St. Catherine's) the news of |