all I know of my life is, that it has been breathed into my nostrils by the Source of all Life. And by none is my life understood save by its Author. Each human soul has with that Author a relation so awful, that man can scarce think upon it, and live. Each of us is separate and apart from every being which is, or can be, save One. That Being alone is in us. The hold and knowledge of a man's soul which is impossible to his fellowman, is possessed in the most absolute sense by the soul's Creator.

We may learn from the streets, gratitude. One afternoon, when summer was waning, I came through a by-street in a suburb of London. Beside me, although it was a long street, there was no other person save a man, who, with a large basket on his head, cried at intervals of a few seconds, "Eight a penny, walnuts!" You remember Wordsworth says, regarding the ruffian, Peter Bell:

A primrose by the river's brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.

I must own, when I used to read these lines at school, I was accustomed to marvel as to what more than a primrose a primrose could possibly be to any one. Yet when, on this afternoon, I heard again and again, in the lonely street, the cry of "Eight a penny, walnuts!" I found something in it suggestive of thought. Thus I meditated: It was Sunday afternoon; I had been to church in the morning; I had seen relatives and friends in the mid-day: I was going to my quiet Sunday dinner; in the evening I should be found again at church; a cup of tea would follow; and, at an early hour, I should fall to sleep on an easy bed in a comfortable room. And I looked at the fruit-seller, as he walked slowly along, under the pressure of his basket, and observed how carefully he watched on each side for customers, and how each half minute the cry issued from him. "Now," thought I, "there is a human being like myself, and-what else? Was there anything else we had in common save human nature in its simplest sense? I have described my ordinary mode of spending Sunday; any deviation from it would annoy, any marked deviation would distress me greatly. Now, what is likely to be the case with my involuntary companion? I can easily surmise his doings on this day. He rose, not over early, in the stiflingly close room of a small house, in a narrow and dirty alley. His coarse and scanty morning meal over, he shook off the noisy companionship of his wife and children, and found recreation in his beer and pipe at a public-house. About mid-day he had his dinner, the very sight of which would have nauseated me; and then, with basket on head, he sallied forth to earn money for the next meal. He is honest, you see. He will walk miles and miles ere he will sleep to-night. Still bearing his burden, and still uttering his monotonous cry, he will journey through street, and lane, and by-way, and he will see the day wane, and the sun verge close upon setting, ere he will bend his steps homeward. Now I say again, beyond that we are two human beings, what is there alike between us two? I marvel, and am grateful. His life to me is a mystery. If I ask myself to fancy our lots being exchanged, I am bewildered. And why? I have no difficulty in realising to myself that these things which I have described as forming the Sunday life of the costermonger, might come to

represent my Sunday life also. I could carry that basket, I could utter that cry; the other troubles I could, also, bring myself to endure. Endure? Yes. But here lies the mystery, and herein the teaching. I dare say this benighted creature, whose fate I am pitying, is quite as happy, or more so, than I am. By that wonderful power of adaptation to necessity which our nature possesses, he is, doubtless, not more heavily laden under his life than I am under mine; and he may, and very likely does, form one of the many illustrations with which the great world abounds, that feelings of contentment may have their source from very different causes than ease and luxury.

There are few of us who traverse London streets at night but must have seen reason for gratitude on another score. We get faint inklings now and then into the inner life of vice and crime. Some dread deed of blood uplifts the veil from a murderer's previous career, and no one but is conscious that he might himself have been a murderer. The old maxim that men do not suddenly become very base is verified every day. The man concerning whom we read in the newspapers such harrowing accounts of persistent villany, was, nevertheless, not a villain from the first. The tendency to crime was developed by degrees, and as boyhood changed to manhood, and the sphere of action grew wider, the evil appetite became keener. And there is no crowded thoroughfare in London city wherein you can walk at night without a painful consciousness that you are breathing vice. It is in the air around you. The ill effect upon you may be neutralised by your easy circumstances, your quiet home, your lessons of good hugged to your heart as your protection. But what of those who have no such protection? In speaking of the worst characters in the huge city, we sometimes use a coarse term, and call them "the scum of London." They are, indeed, the scourings of the gaols, and pollute all but the lowest haunts of vice. But these men and women, friend reader, herd together, and hapless children are born, concerning whom we can but lift up our eyes to God, and repeat those words of His which tell us of His mercy. For once more thought is baffled. Staggering from the wonder, we clutch our faith, lest we should fall. Reader, ere this will be before you, we shall have passed another Christmas Day, or, rather, I should say you will have done so, for there is time enough before that day for me to have gone home, and the first tiny blade of grass to have peeped up from my grave. I fear me we are all apt to be selfish on that day, the very day of all others upon which our hearts ought to be thoughtful and free. Now give a few minutes to these reflections. On that day, the poverty and wretchedness, the crime and sin, which in London streets, at night, are so fully represented, will still be in existence. The close room in the alley, where a poor costermonger lies dying, will be repulsive; the shrinking haunt of vice will cover its wretched occupants while they arrange fresh plots and villanies, the known dwellings of sin in its refinement will still rear their heads. You will have eaten your Christmas dinner with enjoyment. You will be looking on a new year. If there be anything you can do to mitigate any of these evils, turn not from the task. And, oh do it quickly, do it quickly, for the mattock and the spade are always ready.

EAST LYNNE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "ASHLEY."

PART THE THIRTEENTH.

I.

A NIGHT INVASION OF EAST LYNNE.

IN one of the comfortable sitting-rooms of East Lynne sat Mr. Carlyle and his sister one inclement January night. The contrast within and without was great. The warm, blazing fire, the handsome carpet on which it flickered, the exceedingly comfortable arrangement of the furniture, of the room altogether, and the light of the chandelier which fell on all, presented a picture of home peace, though it may not have deserved the name of luxury. Without, heavy flakes of snow were falling thickly, flakes as large and nearly as heavy as a crown piece, rendering the atmosphere so dense and obscure, that a man could not see a yard before him. Mr. Carlyle had driven home in the pony carriage, and the snow had so settled upon him, even in that short journey, that Lucy, who happened to see him as he entered the hall, screamed out laughingly that her papa had turned into a white man. It was now later in the evening; the children were in bed, the governess was in her own sitting-room-it was not often that Miss Carlyle invited her to theirs in an evening-and the house was quiet. Mr. Carlyle was deep in the pages of one of the monthly periodicals; and Miss Carlyle sat on the other side the fire, grumbling, and grunting, and sniffing, and choking.

Miss Carlyle was one of your strong-minded ladies, who never condescend to be ill. Of course, had she been attacked with scarlet fever, or paralysis, or St. Vitus's dance, she must have given in to the enemy; but trifling ailments, such as headache, influenza, sore-throat, which other people get, passed her by. Imagine, therefore, her exasperation at finding her head stuffed up, her chest sore, and her voice going; in short, at having, for once in her life, caught a cold like ordinary mortals. "It was that ale," she groaned.

"Ale!" echoed Mr. Carlyle, lifting his eyes from his book.

"Yes, the ale," she tartly proceeded. "Dear me, Archibald, you need not stare as if I had said it was the moon gave it me."

"But how could ale give it you? Unless you drank a great draught of it cold, when you were in a perspiration."

Miss Carlyle lifted her hands in pitying contempt for his ignorance. "You'll be a baby in common sense to the end of your life, Archibald. When do I drink great draughts of ale? Pray, the last two barrels that we have had in tap, has there not been, throughout, a complaint that the taps leaked ?"

"Well ?" said he.

"Well, I knew that the fault lay in the putting in the taps in the first instance, servants are such incapables; so, when Peter came to me after breakfast this morning and said there had better be another barrel of ale

tapped, for this one was stooped yesterday, 'Very well,' said I, 'I'll come and see to it myself.' And down I went out of these warm rooms, and the cellar struck like an ice-house, and I stopped in it for twenty minutes, good."

"Does it take all that time to tap a barrel of ale?"

"No, it doesn't take it when things are in order, but it does when you have to bother over the taps, rejecting one, rejecting another," responded Miss Carlyle, in a tone of exasperation. "And a pretty state that cellar was in! not a thing, scarcely, in place. I had the cook down, and a sharp dressing I gave her: if her hams had been turned for three days, I'll eat them, raw as they are! That's how I must have caught this cold, stopping down there."

Mr. Carlyle made no observation. Had he told her that there was no need whatever for her interference, that Peter was perfectly competent to his duties, she would only have flown at him. He became absorbed in his book again, while Miss Carlyle fretted and grunted, and drew her chair into the fire and pushed it back again, and made violent starts with her hands and feet: in short, performed all the antics of a middle-aged gentlewoman suffering under an attack of fidgets.

"What's the time, I wonder?" she exclaimed, by-and-by.

Mr. Carlyle looked at his watch. "It is just nine, Cornelia."

"Then I think I shall go to bed. I'll have a basin of arrowroot or gruel, or some slop of that sort, after I'm in it: I'm sure I have been free enough all my life from requiring such sick dishes!"

"Do so," said Mr. Carlyle. "It may do you good." "There's one thing excellent for a cold in the head, I know. It's to double your flannel petticoat crossways, or any other large piece of flannel you may conveniently have at hand, and put it on over your nightcap: I'll try it."

"I would," said Mr. Carlyle, smothering an irreverent laugh.

She sat on five minutes longer, and then left, wishing Mr. Carlyle good night. He resumed his reading. But another page or two concluded the article; upon which Mr. Carlyle threw the book on the table, rose, and stretched himself, as if tired of sitting.

He stirred the fire into a brighter blaze, and stood on the hearth-rug. "I wonder if it snows still ?" he exclaimed to himself.

Proceeding to the window, one of those opening to the ground, he drew aside the half of the warm crimson curtain. It all looked dull and dark outside: Mr. Carlyle could see little what the weather was, and he opened the window and stepped half out.

The snow was falling faster and thicker than ever. Not at that did Mr. Carlyle start with surprise, if not with a more unpleasant sensation; but at feeling a man's hand touch his, and finding a man's face nearly in contact with his own.

"Let me come in, Mr. Carlyle, for the love of life! I see you are alone. I'm dead beat: and I don't know but I'm dodged also."

The tones struck familiarly on Mr. Carlyle's ear. He drew back mechanically, a thousand perplexing sensations overwhelming him, and the man followed him into the room. A white man, as Lucy had called her father. Ay, for he had been hours and hours on foot in the snow: his hat, his clothes, his eyebrows, his large whiskers, all were white. “Lock

Need you be told that it was Richard

the door, sir," were his first words. Hare?

Mr. Carlyle fastened the window, drew the heavy curtain across it, and turned rapidly to lock the two doors. For there were two to the room, one of them leading into the adjoining one. Richard, meanwhile, took off his wet smock-frock-the old smock-frock of former memory-his hat, and his false black whiskers, wiping the snow from the latter with his hand.

Richard," uttered Mr. Carlyle, "I am thunderstruck. I fear you have done wrong to come here."

"I cut off from London at a moment's notice," replied Richard, who was literally shivering with the cold. "I'm dodged, Mr. Carlyle; I am indeed; the police are after me, set on by that wretch, Thorn."

Mr. Carlyle turned to the sideboard and poured out a wine glass of brandy. Drink it, Richard: it will warm you."

"I'd rather have it in some hot water, sir."

"But how am I to get the hot water brought in? Drink this for Why, how you tremble!"

now.

6

"Ah. A few hours outside in that cold snow is enough to make the strongest man tremble, sir. And it lies so deep in places that you have to come along at a snail's pace. But I'll tell you about this business. A fortnight ago, I was at a cab-stand at the West-end, talking to a cabdriver, when some drops of rain came down. A gentleman and lady were passing at the time, but I had not paid any attention to them. By Jove! I heard him exclaim to her, I think we are going to have pepper. We had better take a cab, my dear.' With that, the man I was talking to swung open the door of his cab, and she got in-such a fair young girl, she was! I turned to look at him, and you might just have knocked me down with astonishment. Mr. Carlyle, it was the man, Thorn."

"Indeed!"

"You thought I might be mistaken in him that moonlight night; but there was no mistaking him in broad daylight. I looked him full in the face, and he looked me. He turned as white as a cloth: perhaps I did;

I don't know."

"Was he well dressed ?"

"Very. Oh, there's no mistaking his position. That he moves in the higher circles, there's no doubt. The cab drove away and I got up behind it. The driver thought boys were there, and turned his head and his whip, but I made him a sign. We didn't go much more than the length of a street. I was on the pavement before Thorn was, and looked at him again; and again he went white. I marked the house, thinking it was where he lived, and

"Why did you not give him into custody, Richard ?” ?"

Richard Hare shook his head. "And my proofs of his guilt, Mr. Carlyle? I could bring none against him: no positive ones. No, I must wait till I can get proofs, to do that. He would turn round upon

me now, and swear my life away, to render his secure: perhaps testify

that he saw me commit the murder. Well, I thought I'd ascertain for certain what his name was, and that night I went to the house and got into conversation with one of the servants, who was standing at the door. 'Does Captain Thorn live here?' I asked him. Mr. Westleby lives