minute's silence, and he murmured the burden of some roaring song. He had reached the old house at last; how hot the room was! He had been ill, very ill; but he was well now and happy. Fill up his glass! Who was that, that dashed it from his lips? He fell back on the pillow and moaned aloud.

A short period of oblivion, and he was wandering through a maze of low-arched rooms, so low that he must creep upon his hands and knees to make his way along; it was close and dark, and every way he turned, some obstacle impeded his progress. There were insects too; hideous crawling things, with eyes that stared upon him, glistening horribly in the thick darkness of the place. The walls and ceiling were alive with reptiles; the vault expanded to an enormous size--and the faces of men he knew, rendered hideous by gibing and mouthing, peered out from among them; they were searing him with heated irons, and binding his head with cords till the blood started; and he struggled madly for life.

At the close of one of these paroxysms, when I had with great difficulty held him down in his bed, he sunk into what appeared to be a slumber. Overpowered with watching and exertion, I had closed my eyes for a few minutes, when I felt a violent clutch on my shoulder, I awoke instantly. He had raised himself up, so as to seat himself in bed; a dreadful change had come over his face, but consciousness had returned, for he evidently knew me. The child, who had been disturbed by his ravings, rose from its little bed, and ran towards its father, screaming with fright; the mother hastily caught it in her arms, lest he should injure it in the violence of his insanity, but terrified by the alteration in his features, stood transfixed by the bedside. He grasped my shoulder convulsively, and striking his breast with the other hand, made a desperate attempt to articulate. It was unavailing-he extended his arm towards them and made another violent effort. There was a rattling noise in the throata glare of the eye-a short stifled groan—and he fell back-dead.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (A.D. 1811-1863), was by his own choice bred as an artist; but force of genius, if not loss of fortune, caused him to lay aside the pencil and use the pen. Vanity Fair, Pendennis, The Newcomes, The Virginians, Esmond, are the titles of his works of fiction; his critical powers are displayed in his English Humorists, Four Georges, etc.; and he employs both pen and pencil in his amusing Irish Sketch Book.

PAYING COURT TO RANK.

A PAUPER child in London, at seven years old, knows how to go to market, to fetch the beer, to pawn father's coat, to choose the largest fried fish, or the nicest ham bone, to nurse Mary Jane of three years, to conduct a hundred operations of trade and house-keeping, which a little Belgravian does not perhaps acquire in all the days of his life. Poverty and necessity force this precociousness on the poor little brat. There are children who are accomplished liars and shop-lifters, almost as soon as they can toddle and speak.

I daresay little princes know the laws of etiquette as regards themselves, and the respect due to their rank, at a very early period of their royal existence. Every one of us, according to his degree, can point to the princekins of private life who are flattered and worshipped, and whose little shoes grown men kiss as soon almost as they walk upon ground.

It is a wonder what human nature will support; and that considering the amount of flattery some people are crammed with from their cradles, they do not grow more selfish and worse than they are. Our poor little pauper just mentioned is dosed with Daffy's Elixir, and somehow survives the drug. Princekin or lordkin from his earliest days has nurses, governesses, little friends, school-fellows, school-masters, fellow-collegians, tutors, stewards and valets, led-captains of his suite, and women innumerable, all flattering him and doing him honour. The tradesman's manner, which to you and me is decently respectful,

becomes straightway frantically servile before princekin. Honest folks at railway stations whisper to their families, "That's the Marquis of Farintosh," and look hard at him as he passes. Landlords cry, "This way, my lord, this room for your lordship." They say that at public schools princekin is taught the beauties of equality, and thrashed into some kind of subordination. Pshaw! Toadeaters in pinafores surround princekin. Do not respectable people send their children so as to be at the same school with him; don't they follow him to college and eat his toads through life?

And as for women. O my dear friends and brethren in this vale of tears, did you ever see anything so curious, monstrous, and amazing as the way in which women court princekin when he is marriageable, and pursue him with their daughters? Who was the British nobleman in old days who brought his three daughters to the King of Mercia, that his majesty might choose one after inspection? Mercia was but a petty province, and its king in fact a princekin. Ever since these extremely ancient and venerable times the custom exists, not only in Mercia, but in all the rest of the provinces inhabited by the Angles; and before princekins the daughters of our nobles are trotted out.

There was no day of his life which our young acquaintance, the Marquis of Farintosh, could remember on which he had not been flattered, and no society which did not pay him court. At a private school, he could recollect the master's wife stroking his pretty curls, and treating him furtively to goodies; at college he had the tutor simpering and bowing as he swaggered over the grassplot; old men at clubs would make for him and fawn upon him; not your mere picque assiettes and penniless parasites, but most respectable toadeaters, fathers of honest families, gentlemen themselves of good station, who respected this young nobleman as one of the institutions of the country, and who admired the wisdom of the nation that set him to legislate over us.

When Lord Farintosh walked the streets at night, ho

felt himself like Haroun Alraschid (that is, he would have felt so, had he ever heard of the Arabian potentate), a monarch in disguise, affably observing and promenading the city. And let us be sure there was a Mesrour in his train to knock at the doors for him, and run the errands of this young caliph. Of course he met with scores of men who neither flattered him nor would suffer his airs; but he did not like the company of such, or, for the sake of truth, to undergo the ordeal of being laughed at; he preferred toadies generally speaking. "I like, you know, those fellows who are always saying pleasant things, you know, and who would run from here to Hammersmith if I asked 'em, much better than those fellows who are making fun of me, you know."

As for women, it was his lordship's opinion that every daughter of love was bent on marrying him. A Scotch marquis, an English earl, of the best blood in the empire, with a handsome person, and a fortune of fifteen thousand a year, how could the poor creatures 'do otherwise than long for him? He blandly received their caresses; took their coaxing and cajolery as matters of course, and surveyed the beauties of his time as the caliph the moon faces of his harem. My lord intended to marry; certainly. He did not care for money nor for rank; he expected consummate beauty and talent, and some day would fling his handkerchief to the possessor of these, and place her by his side on the Farintosh throne.

At this time there were but two or three young ladies in society endowed with the necessary qualifications, or who found favour in his eye. His lordship hesitated in his selection from these beauties. He was not in a hurry; he was not angry at the notion that Lady Kew (and Miss Newcome) hunted him. What else should they do? Everybody hunted him. The other young ladies, whom we need not mention, languished after him still more longingly. He had little notes from these, presents of purses worked by them, and cigar-cases embroidered with his coronet. They sang to him in cosey boudoirs—mamma went out of the room, and sister Anne presently forgot

something in the drawing-room. Trembling they gave him a little foot to mount them, that they might ride on horseback with him. They tripped along by his side from the hall to the pretty country church on Sundays. They warbled hymns, sweetly looking at him, while mamma whispered confidentially to him, "What an angel Cecilia is !” And so forth, and so forth-with such chaff the noble bird was to be caught by no means. When he had made up his great mind that the time was come, and the woman, he was ready to give a Marchioness of Farintosh to the English nation.

EDWARD G. E. BULWER-LYTTON.

EDWARD G. E. BULWER-LYTTON (A.D. 1805-1873), created Lord Lytton for his literary and political services, was one of the most voluminous writers of his day in fiction, politics, poetry, and the drama. A new generation has already begun to weed from his works; but Pelham, Eugene Aram, The Caxtons, My Novel, Rienzi, still have their hold on the public; and the Lady of Lyons and Richelieu, still have their hold upon the stage.

EUGENE ARAM'S DEFENCE.

MY LORD, I know not whether it is of right, or through indulgence of your lordship, that I am allowed the liberty at this bar to attempt a defence, incapable and uninstructed as I am to speak. Since, while I see so many eyes on me, so numerous and awful a concourse fixed with attention, and filled with I know not what expectancy, I labour not with guilt, my lord, but with perplexity. For never having seen a court but this, being wholly unacquainted with law, the customs of the bar, and all judiciary proceedings, I fear I shall be so little capable of speaking with propriety, that it might reasonably be expected to exceed my hope should I be able to speak at all.

I have heard the indictment read, my lord, wherein I find myself charged with the highest of human crimes.