The two friends stayed for two nights at my house, well pleased to know that I did not make an ill use of the fortune which, after Heaven, I owed to them.-From the Arabian Nights.'

THE PRISONER'S VAN.

WE were passing the corner of Bow-street, on our return from a lounging excursion the other afternoon, when a crowd, assembled round the door of the Police Office, attracted our attention. We turned up the street accordingly. There were thirty or forty people standing on the pavement and half across the road; and a few stragglers were patiently stationed on the opposite side of the way-all evidently waiting in expectation of some arrival. We waited too, a few minutes, but nothing occurred; so we turned round to an unshorn, sallow-looking cobbler, who was standing next us with his hands under the bib of his apron, and put the usual question of "What's the matter?" The cobbler eyed us from head to foot, with superlative contempt, and laconically replied, "Nuffin."

Now, we were perfectly aware that if two men stop in the street to look at any given object, or even to gaze in the air, two hundred men will be assembled in no time; but, as we knew very well that no crowd of people could by possibility remain in a street for five minutes without getting up a little amusement among themselves, unless they had some absorbing object in view, the natural inquiry next in order was, "What are all these people waiting here for?"-" Her Majesty's carriage," replied the cobbler. This was still more extraordinary. We could not imagine what earthly business Her Majesty's carriage could have at the Public Office, Bow-street. We were beginning to ruminate on the possible causes of such an uncommon appearance, when a general exclamation from all the boys in the crowd of "Here's the wan!" caused us to raise our heads, and look up the street.

The covered vehicle, in which prisoners are conveyed from the police offices to the different prisons, was coming along at full speed. It then occurred to us, for the first time, that Her Majesty's carriage was merely another name for the prisoners' van, conferred upon it, not only by reason of the superior gentility of the term, but because the aforesaid van is maintained at Her Majesty's expense: having been originally started for the

exclusive accommodation of ladies and gentlemen under the necessity of visiting the various houses of call known by the general denomination of "Her Majesty's Gaols."

The van drew up at the office door, and the people thronged round the steps, just leaving a little alley for the prisoners to pass through. Our friend the cobbler, and the other stragglers, crossed over, and we followed their example. The driver, and another man who had been seated by his side in front of the vehicle, dismounted, and were admitted into the office. The office door was closed after them, and the crowd were on the tiptoe of expectation.

After a few minutes' delay, the door again opened, and the first two prisoners appeared. They were a couple of girls, of whom the elder could not be more than sixteen, and the younger of whom had certainly not attained her fourteenth year. That they were sisters was evident from the resemblance which still subsisted between them, though two additional years of wickedness had fixed their brand upon the elder girl's features as legibly as if a red-hot iron had seared them. They were both gaudily dressed, the younger one especially; and, although there was a strong similarity between them in both respects, which was rendered the more obvious by their being handcuffed together, it is impossible to conceive a greater contrast than the demeanour of the two presented. The younger girl was weeping bitterly-not for display, or in the hope of producing effect, but for very shame; her face was buried in her handkerchief, and her whole manner was but too expressive of bitter and unavailing

sorrow.

"How long are you for, Emily?" screamed a red-faced woman in the crowd. "Six weeks and labour," replied the elder girl, with a flaunting laugh; "and that's better than the stone jug, any how; the mill's a deal better than the Sessions, and here's Bella going too for the first time. Hold up your head, miss!" she continued, boisterously tearing the other girl's handkerchief away; "Hold up your head, and show 'em your face!-I an't jealous, but I'm blessed if I an't bold!"-"That's right, old gal!" exclaimed a man in a paper cap, who, in common with the greater part of the crowd, had been inexpressibly delighted with this little incident.-"Right!" replied the girl! "ah, to be sure; what's the odds, eh?"—"Come! In with you," interrupted the driver.-"Don't you be in a hurry, coachman," replied the girl," and recollect I want to be set down in Cold Bath, Fields-large house with a high garden wall in front; you can't

mistake it. Hallo. Bella, where are you going to-you'll pull my precious arm off?" This was addressed to the younger girl, who, in her anxiety to hide herself in the caravan, had ascended the steps first, and forgotten the strain upon the handcuff; "Come down, and let's show you the way." And after jerking the miserable girl down with a force which made her stagger on the pavement, she got into the vehicle, and was followed by her wretched companion.

These two girls had been thrown upon London streets, their vices and temptations, by a sordid and rapacious mother. What the younger girl was then, the elder had been once; and what the elder then was, the younger must soon become. A melancholy prospect, but how surely to be realized; a tragic drama, but how often acted! Turn to the prisons and police offices of London-nay, look into the very streets themselves. These things pass before our eyes day after day, and hour after hourthey have become such matters of course that they are utterly disregarded. The progress of these girls in crime will be as rapid as the flight of a pestilence, resembling it too in its baneful influence and wide-spreading infection. Step by step, how many wretched females, within the sphere of every man's observation, have become involved in a career of vice, frightful to contemplate; hopeless at its commencement, loathsome and repulsive in its course; friendless, forlorn, and unpitied, at its miserable conclusion!

There were other prisoners-boys of ten, as hardened in vice as men of fifty-a houseless vagrant, going joyfully to prison as a place of food and shelter, handcuffed to a man whose prospects were ruined, character lost, and family rendered destitute, by his first offence. Our curiosity, however, was satisfied. The first group had left an impression on our mind we would gladly have avoided, and would willingly have effaced.

The crowd dispersed; the vehicle rolled away with its load of guilt and misfortune; and we saw no more of the Prisoners' Van.-Charles Dickens.

THE WEDDING BONNET.

I WAS the other day in the company of half-a-dozen young ladies -gentle cousins—all of them as merry as little larks, as busy as lamplighters, and as important as the preparation for the great

event in female life—a wedding-could make them. The bride's bonnet had just come home, and I had the satisfaction of seeing a dozen lily-white hands all in one tumultuous group, arranging and shaping it to the face of the fair maid herself. It was pronounced on all hands quite the thing-a love of a bonnet, in fact; and after having deposited it in the centre of the table, and hunted under the sofa and in all quarters of the room to make sure that the cat was not there, they left me with an especial charge not to touch it for the world. I promised accordingly, as I sat dozing before the fire, and they left me alone to pursue their welcome task. Presently, a knock, knock, came to the door; it speedily opened, and a strange gentleman in respectable black entered with a magic-lantern under his arm. Somehow or other I was not a bit astonished at his entrance, but took it quite as a matter of course. "So you have a bride's bonnet there, "said he, looking at me with his keen gray eyes; "all smiles and happiness, I suppose?"

"Yes," said I, as though he had been the oldest friend in the world, "little Annie

"Ah!" said he, interposing, "people must marry, I suppose; but I have a word or two to say to you about this gimcrack." And stepping up to the bonnet, he turned up his cuffs like an expert chemical lecturer, took it in his hands, blew upon it, and as quickly as a child's card-house rattles to the ground, the bonnet lay in pieces before him. Satin, blushrose, feather, frame-work, and the very cotton with which it was sewn, lay grouped under his hands. He then deliberately wiped the illuminated lens of his magic-lantern. "Let us begin," said he, "from the beginning," taking in his grizzly fingers the blushrose, and stripping its stem until the iron wire of which it was composed was laid bare. "Before even this thread of metal can be produced, men must dive into the bowels of the earth to procure the ore and the fuel with which to smelt it. I will show you the true history of the making of this bonnet." With that he turned the focus of the lantern upon the wall, and I saw a picture of a deep pit into which men continually kept entering, and as continually emerging from, like so many emmets, black and filthy to the last degree; and further in the mine, toiling up steep ascents, women on their hands and knees, with chains round their bodies, dragged up the heavy corves of coal.*

"But this," said I, " surely is not fit employment for women?"

* Since this paper was written, this degrading kind of labour has been prohibited by the Legislature.

"Well," said he with a shrug, as if mimicking a general expression, "what's to be done? Somebody must do it."

With that he changed the slides, and I saw a child, not more than five years old, sitting in a narrow low passage in the remotest darkness of the mine. I saw him pull something he held in his hand, a little door opened, and the woman harnessed to the corve passed onwards: the door shut to, and the child was again in the darkness, huddled up in the corner to protect himself from the cold and damp. Noticing my surprise, my strange visitor remarked, "This sort of thing soon uses them up, but there are plenty more in the labour market.' What so cheap as flesh and blood? But we have forged the tough iron and spun the fine wire. Now for the artist's touch."

As he spoke, a fresh slide rattled through the lantern; and in a mean room I saw a poor girl, winding delicate gauze round the iron wire, and with wan fingers, mocking Nature in one of her most beautiful moods. As she added petal after petal of the rose she was making, she stole hour after hour from the night. "You see," said he, "she tints the flower from the colour of her own poor cheek. Alas! that the human rose should decay that this artificial thing might flourish!" He said this sadly, but immediately added, in his usual tone, "but there-what's to be done? The pay is slow starvation, I admit; but these women crowd the labour-market so, that they are glad enough to slave even at this work-if not, a worse fate awaits them.

"But we have only got as far as the flower, in our lecture," he said, and held out the blush-rose he had taken from the bonnet; he then put it aside with the triumphant air of one who has just made a successful demonstration.

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'Here," said he, holding up a piece of the glazed calico lining, "I will show you something interesting about this," and imme◄ diately threw out upon the wall a picture which differed from all that had gone before it. Tall palms, and all the luuriant vegetation of the East, shot up. Then a village was seen upon the banks of the Ganges. In the open air workmen sat at their looms weaving cloth, and singing as they wove.

"Have you noticed the scene enough?" said he. I nodded, the picture dissolved, and instead of the former scene of beauty and industry, I saw a village in ruins, through which the wild dog alone roamed, and the jungle grew up to its very foot.

"You see," said he, anticipating my eager query as to the cause of this change, "when the power-loom first began to revolve, and the tall chimneys of Manchester to rise, the poor

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