be accomplished by a scythe. They are particularly | of "horse-hair," the idea probably will strike me cautious animals, though not cowards. If a guinea- of submitting it to the scrutiny of one of my pig be let loose on a lawn, he will seek out for guinea-pigs. If any lady, too, should happen to come himself, under a tree or bush, a convenient shelter, into the presence of a guinea-pig, let her beware and for some weeks will not wander farther away how she sits down with an apple in her pocket. than is absolutely necessary for his sustenance. One of my pets, under convenient circumstances Expanding circularly more and more, the grass of this kind, possessed himself of the apple in a will be eaten down in a sort of fairy ring. The way more summary than agreeable to the lady— gardener is loud in his approval of the little simply by gnawing a hole through her pocket. fellow's discretion and self-restraint. But, once let Having succeeded so well in this act of petty the fairy ring be expanded beyond certain limits, larceny, the remembrance of it is cherished by my once let the guinea-pig take a casual bite at a guinea-pig. Every lady who sits down in his stalk that may happen to stand temptingly exposed presence he subjects to particular scrutiny, with in his path, then adieu to restraint for ever after- the object of learning whether she too carries an wards. He becomes a malefactor from that day. apple. Therefore, ladies, beware! He begins to mow down relentlessly vegetables and flowers. What he cannot eat, he spoils. Forthwith he has to be taken away from the garden; or, farewell to the charms of careful horticulture. As is the case with all species of rodent or gnawing animals, biting for them is a frequent necessity-not biting to eat always, though guineapigs do pretty much in that line; for, like all animals which feed on vegetables, and the food of which, therefore, is weak in nutriment, they must eat large quantities. The teeth of rodents are constantly growing longer and longer; wherefore, they require to be kept down by the exercise of continuous biting. In the Museum of the College of Surgeons is a preparation of the head of a rat, in which one of the upper teeth having been removed, and thus consequently the surface of natural contact for the corresponding lower tooth being destroyed, the latter grew inordinately, until, bending upwards in a curve, it turned inwards to the surface of the skull, and to some extent perforated the latter. This necessity for continuous biting furnishes the explanation why rats and mice, and squirrels, not less than guinea-pigs, are so continually working with their sharp chisel-like teeth, gnawing holes in woodwork, seemingly for the mischief of it, though really for the purpose of keeping their teeth within bounds. Whether for the sake of mere tooth exercise, or whether because they like it, I do not know, but all my guinea-pigs are extremely fond of paper. Indeed, this predilection of theirs was the cause of serious inconvenience to me once upon a time. Having stored away some manuscript on the lower shelf of a cupboard within their reach, my guinea-pigs got hold of it and quite destroyed it. Whatever the delicacies supplied to guinea-pigs, in the way of abundant green food, may be, they require a certain amount of dry provender also. Hay is held in great estimation by them, as I learned accidentally. When first I turned my guinea-pigs loose in chambers, and supplied them with the best in the way of green provender that Covent Garden could afford, I little thought they would demolish the cushion of my easy chair for the sake of its hay stuffing. So, however, it happened; therefore, I would commend this fact to the upholsterers for their caution, and to purchasers of easy chairs for their guidance. When next a cushion comes home, under the guarantee THE BARBER'S SHOP. We are almost in danger of forgetting the origin and significance of that singular emblem of his profession, which the barber of to-day, following the example of his ancestor of a hundred years ago, projects from his door-way, and points at an angle of about sixty degrees towards the sky. The pole, immortalized by the savagest of satirists-begirt from end to end with a spiral band, and terminating in a tuft-was but a colossal representation of the once fashionable pigtail, which, in the days of powder and puff-balls, every gentleman of mature years hung out from the nape of his neck, like a rudder, or rather like a steering-oar, from the stern of a barge. The pigtails have passed away, they have become as obsolete as tinder-boxes; it is doubtful if there is even one remaining, unless it be on the head of some antiquated commodore laid up in ordinary, or some nonagenarian squire obstinately conservative of the glories of his youth. But the poles remain, and flourish as prominently and numerously as ever; the only reverse they have experienced being a marked decline in the social scale, which has shifted them from the ateliers of the artists in hair, the builders of forensic and judicial wigs, from the saloons of the fashionable friseurs to the humble porticoes of the popular barber, who shaves for a penny, or even for less, and cuts hair for such a thing, say, as threepence. We Without wandering "from pole to pole," we accept the invitation of the first that beckons us with its lifted finger, and enter the establishment of Mr. Gills, or "little Gills," as he is sometimes called in the neighbourhood-which offers a fair sample of the caravanserais of this kind, which the shaveable populace of our day delight to honour with their patronage and presence. say shaveable populace, for it is undeniable that, since the advent and portentous advance of the great beard movement, a large and ever-growing section of our population of all ranks, the lowest as well as the highest, are no longer shaveable or amenable to Mr. Gills or his congeners in any way, so far as their chins, and whatever their chins produce, are concerned. The time for the due and decent cultivation of the beard, when it was daily trimmed and "posed," as it was in the days of Sir Thomas Moore, or peaked and pointed, as it was by the "gallant cavaliers," has not yet returned; and in the meanwhile the barbers suffer loss, their shaving occupation growing less as the ragged untrimmed beards gain ground. Gills's pole hangs out in a fourth-rate street lying at right angles with the omnibus route, and leading to nowhere particular, unless it be to some small labyrinthine turnings among dead walls flanking a brewery, a distillery, a coal-department, and sawmills, among the operative denizens of which establishments lies the chief part of Gills's connection. Not to lose a chance, however, he has depressed his pole to as obtuse an angle as is consistent with a due regard to the heads of the passers-by, and once a year he gives it a new coat of white paint, with emerald-green bands, that it may attract from far the eye of any fugitive traversing the streets in search of a clean shave. The shop window is innocent of plate-glass, but has within the clouded greenish panes a rather multitudinous and unassorted collection of materials of a useful kind. In the centre stands a black Brutus on a brown block, and dependant from cross lines hangs a series of scalps, fronts, side-curls, whiskers and mustachios, half veiling a motley assemblage of oils, perfumes, pomatums, bear's-grease, strops, razors, shaving apparatus, brushes, combs, scented soaps, curlingtongs, etc. etc. The door, which is in two pieces, the upper half sashed, stands generally open, and indeed is never closed by day, save when some over-sensitive shavee objects to exhibit himself in lather, for the delectation of the numerous small fry of the district, who are apt to congregate around, | to witness the spectacle, and diversify the operation with their original comments. A row of seats round the walls, three or four chairs, and a small portable stove, constitute the furniture; but there is life within the confined area, even when there are no customers, little Gills having a colony of feathered companions of the very choicest description, who not only serve to solace his lonely hours, but now and then add something considerable to his pecuniary gains. Gills, like most barbers, is noticeable under two aspects. Catch him alone, and you may study the man; see him, weapon in hand, amidst a circle of bristly beards, and you may study the barber. In the former case, he will talk freely enough on any subject, whether he understand it or no, but will let you see that he dabbles a little in science of various sorts, particularly of the showy and astonishing kind-knows a little about the air-pump, a little of the electrical machine, more about dissolving views, and can photograph a little, though his real forte is ornithology; and he can supply you with useful information as to many of the feathered tribes, if you want it. We happened once to praise the song of his nightingale. "Ha," said the little man, (the reader will excuse his peculiar patois), "I limed that there bird myself on the 20th of April-he's sure to sing all the days of his life, he is." Why, what has the 20th of April to do with "I'll tell'ee, sir. Don't you see all the cock nightingales come over here first, three weeks or a fortnight afore the hens? The hens rarely comes anigh London afore May. Now, mind me, if you catches a cock bird arter he've got a mate, he don't sing that year, you may depend-likely he don't sing the next, and maybe he don't sing nothing to speak of never at all. But if you catches him afore the hens come, don't you see, he can't have a mate, you know; you catches him in full song, and you got him in song all the while you got him at all Bin offered a guinea for that there bird, and shan't sell him for no such money." "He seems a very fine bird." "Look at him, sir" (and he reached down the cage and took the bird on his finger) "there's a hi there's a figger! there's a ploomidge!-kiss me, sarce-box-he's as quick as lightnin', he is; catches half the flies as comes into the shop: look here;" and Gills, throwing several meal-worms towards the ceiling, the bird catches them in his beak, one two, three, more rapidly than the eye can follow his motions, without suffering one to fall to the ground. In this strain little Gills will amplify to any one who likes to listen to him at a leisure season, by the hour together, when material enough might he got of him to form a bird-fancier's vade-mecum, to say nothing of an analogous kind of knowledge relating to other pet animals. But Mr. Gills is another man on other occasions, especially wher he holds his Saturday night levee-when the benches are filled by detachments from the saw mills, the brewery, the distillery, or the coal-yard, and two or three dozen stubbly chins are all wag ging together in dispute upon the current politics of the hour, three or four of them being under operation at once. The complexion of his polities is not exactly moderate, as you would readily imagine; that colour would hardly suit the taste of his patrons, with whom the ultra-democratie view of affairs of state is generally predominant If you should chance to look in at election time, you might hear the claims of candidates discussed with a rather startling degree of candour; and you might be astonished at the fidelity of the popular memory, and the accuracy with which the delinquencies of men in office are registered in the popular mind. The prospect of England's invasion being men tioned, and the likelihood of the French coming Τ drayman, "my mind's made easy, and I shan't alarm myself no more about invasion." "Ha, ha, ha!" from a dozen throats, Gills himself laughing the loudest. It is not till midnight on the Saturday that Gills's labours are brought to a close, and he is enabled to unship his pole and go to bed. What is the amount of his earnings at one of these long levees we cannot venture to say, though we have an idea that the Saturday's shaving supplies the major portion of the gains of the week. We once put the question to the operative chieftain of a "halfpenny shaving-shop," how many beards he could mow off in the course of an hour, singlehanded? The answer was by no means so straightforward as the question; and, owing to the conditions and circumlocutions with which it was encumbered, we missed the information which it was intended, or not intended, to convey. The respondent hinted that a good deal must depend on the nature of the beards and the occupations of their owners-dustmen and coalwhippers being especially liable to objection on the score of grit— the more so, as the majority of these worthy professionals were not in the habit of washing their faces before they came to be shaved. This, by the way, puts us in mind of a little shaving experience of our own. More than thirty years ago, we were residing temporarily in a small town in Normandy, and, finding ourselves in need of the services of the barber, went in search of one. There was no polar star to guide us, the French, though no strangers to the pigtail, having failed to adopt the pole as the emblem of the tonsor's trade. The suisse, alias the beadle, of the old church at length directed us to a small shop where fruit was sold. On making known our wants, we were ushered into a back room, where a young girl handed us a basin and towel; and while we were laving our face she prepared the shaving apparatus. Being seated and equipped, we watched her preparing the lather in a China bowl with her fingers. With her fingers she spread the soft scented foam over our chin, throat, and upper lip, until the skin seemed saturated with the fragrant mixture. Then, rincing and wiping her hands, she took the razor, and in less than a minute, without hardly feeling the touch of the steel, we were shaved cleaner and closer than we had ever been shaved before, or have been since, except by the same operator, who performed the ceremony some half dozen times, and always with the same, to us, agreeable experience and perfect result. We may remark that shaving, on the other side of the Channel, is not the trifle it is with us: all affairs of the toilet there receive much more consideration than we are in the habit of bestowing upon them. A French tonsor, whether male or female, would never think of shaving for a penny, much less for half-penny; if we recollect rightly, the lass in question received a quarter of a franc for her pains, and that is about the usual tariff in cities as well. The idea of a public shaving-brush, for lathering all the world, is disgusting to a Frenchman; he prefers to feel on his face the clean fingers of the operator. The profession of the barber is one of the most ancient of which civilization has to boast. Once a term of honour, it has sunk in modern days down to one of ridicule, though for what reason it is difficult to say. It may be, though, that, as in former times the professions of the barber and the surgeon were united in the same person, when they became dissevered, the surgeon retained the honour, and the barber sank into social disrepute. In England the barber has long ago dropped his distinctive designation, and has taken up with that of hair-dresser; and if, in our day, he happens to be a skilful hair-dyer as well, the road to riches is plain before him. Professors thus fortunate, to our knowledge keep their carriages and country houses, and can afford to spend their thousand a year or so away from the fatigues of business. But these are the crême de la crême of barbers, who, if they shave at all, take the aristocracy by the nose in their own mansions, and meddle not with the stubbly chins of the vulgar. MOODINESS. EACH member of a family sees the infirmities of the rest; but it is one thing to see them, and another thing to bear with them. This we should endeavour to do, both for the harmony of the house, and because we all require to be borne with in our turn. We may not all have bad tempers of a flagrant type, but we are all more or less liable to moods. We are affected by the weather, by health, by secret trials which are known only to God. These changes depress the spirits, and indispose us for the time to conversation. Not that they produce sullenness. This is an ugly passion-the twin-sister of revenge; hateful and difficult to cure; the curse of the bosom that harbours it, and the bane of domestic enjoyment. But while the depression of spirits alluded to has no affinity whatever with sullenness, it nevertheless puts us in a position to require the indulgence of those into whose society we happen to be thrown. It unfits us for doing our part, for contributing, as every one is bound to contribute, to the common fund of instruction and entertainment. But the other reason for exercising forbearance is still stronger: this is the only way in which a family can get on with comfort. That house will be kept in a turmoil where there is no tolerance of each other's errors, no lenity shown to failings, no meek submission to injuries, no soft answers to turn away wrath. If you lay a single stick of wood upon the andirons and apply fire to it, it will go out; put on another stick, and they will burn; add a half-dozen, and you will have a grand conflagration. There are other fires subject to the same conditions. If one member of a family gets into a passion and is let alone, he will cool down, and possibly be ashamed, and repent. But oppose temper to temper; pile on the fuel; draw in the other members of the group, and let one harsh answer be followed by another; and there will soon be a blaze which will enwrap them all in its lurid splendours. The venerable Philip Henry un derstood this well; and when his son Matthew, the com mentator, was married, he sent these lines to the wedded pair "Love one another; pray oft together; and see If one speak fire, t'other with water come; BLIND MUSICIANS.* hearth, with a china basin in his hand, the child fell, and the result of the accident was total blindness. At a very early age he evinced a love for music, and to this taste might prove a source of amusement. His following the every encouragement was given with the hope that it art as a profession was from his untoward circumstances never contemplated. Rapid progress, however, was made, the best masters obtained, and his proficiency was such, that at the age of eleven he obtained the situation of organist at All Hallows, Bread Street. In 1724, being then only thirteen, he was promoted to the like duty at St. Ardrew's, Holborn, in preference to a large number of com of the past, are few and scanty. Among the crowd of names that greet us at the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, is that of Carolan, the Irish harper. He was one of the last and most famous of the Irish bards, and his compositions have been as much admired for their extraordinary variety, as for their exquisite melody. He is said to have composed no less than four hundred pieces. A poet, as well as a musician, he has left coupled to his own music many fine lyrics; and remnants of these verses are still to be heard among the peasants of West-petitors. And in 1734 the benchers of the Inner Temple meath, of simple but touching beauty. Born in 1670 at Hobber, Westmeath, where his father was a peasant farmer, and deprived of sight by small-pox in infancy, he early displayed a taste for music. The harp becoming his favourite instrument, he seems to have spent his time much after the fashion of the ancient minstrels, in wandering through the country, sometimes on horseback in prosperous times, and sometimes on foot, stopping here and there as chance led him, and ready to sing of love or of sorrow, as his entertainers required. It was during these peregrinations that Carolan composed those airs which are still the delight of his countrymen. He thought the tribute of a song due to every house in which he was entertained, and he never failed to bestow it, choosing for his subject either the head of the family or one of its loveliest members. An Italian musician of high repute residing at Dublin, doubting the exalted opinions entertained of Carolan's musical talents, put it to the following test. He singled out an elegant piece of music in the Italian style; but here and there he either altered or mutilated it in such a manner that none but a real judge could detect the alterations. Carolan, quite unaware that it was intended as a trial of his skill, gave the deepest attention to the performer, who played the piece thus altered in his presence. He then declared it to be an excellent piece of music; but, to the astonishment and satisfaction of the company, added humorously, "but here and there it limps and stumbles." He was then requested to rectify the errors, which he accordingly did. In this state the piece was sent back to Dublin; and the Italian professor no sooner saw the amendments, than he cordially pronounced Carolan to be a true musical genius. elected him one of their organists, which, with the previous appointment, he held during the remainder of his life. He was also master of the king's band; and after Handel's death, for many years was the conductor of the Oratorios at Covent Garden in Lent. Besides numerous compositions for the organ, he was the author of two Oratorios, Jephthah and Zinoi. So greatly did his professional brethren delight in his performances, that it was a common occurrence at St. Andrew's or the Tempis to see forty or fifty of them gathered round the altar, at the close of the service, to hear the voluntary; and Handel among their number. More than one woman, under the pressure of a lifelong darkness, has displayed a full measure of patien endurance, and a noble enthusiasm only heightened by obstacles. Among these, I shall only name Madame Voo Paradisi, a German lady, who lost her sight at the age of between two and three years. Being, however, prov dentially furnished with good instructors, and rapid developing under their tuition a precocious and genuine genius for music, she pursued both vocal and instrumental studies with such success, that when only eleven years old, she sang in public before the great empress, Queen Maria Theresa. The touchingly sweet voice, and skital though artless execution of the child, so won upon the true womanly heart of the empress, that she bestowed upon the singer a generous pension, which lasted as long under the care of her mother, made the tour of Europe, as the giver lived. In after years, Madame Paradisi, giving public concerts here and there. At these st often melted the audience to sympathetic tears by her feeling utterance of a sad song upon her blindness, com posed for her by a brother in affliction, Pfeffel, the blit poet, and set to music by her musical instructor, Kozluch, A remarkable instance of the exquisite sense of touch a composer of note in those days. Of his compositions Madame Paradisi held in her memory more than sixty, is told of him. "When he grew to manhood, there was note by note, many of them being of the most intricate a time when his harp would sound only of love, under the impulse of a passion he had conceived for Bridget special pursuit, she possessed many of the most remark: character. Besides her extraordinary talents in this her Cruise. The lady did not unite her lot with his; and, able of those powers in which it has already been shown after a while, he loved and married another, named Mary the highly-gifted blind are found to excel. So exquisite Maguire. Many years after, he went on a pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory, a cave in the island of Lough-could determine the colour of surfaces, the genuineness was the sensibility of her touch, that with her fingers ste dery, Donegal, and on returning to the shore, met several pilgrims waiting the arrival of the boat that conveyed him. On assisting some of these into the boat, his hand unexpectedly met one which caused him to start, and he instantly exclaimed, "This is the hand of Bridget Cruise." His sense of feeling had not deceived him. It was the hand of her whom he had once loved so passionately. "I had this anecdote from his own mouth," says the narrator, "and in terms which gave me a strong impression of the emotion which he felt on meeting the object of his early affection." He was an old man at his death in 1738. At the beginning of last century appeared John Stanley, one of the most eminent of blind musicians. With him music was not only a pursuit, but an absorbing passion, and such was the eminence he attained that his contempora ries, Handel and Guzzini, were wont to say of him, that as a composer few equalled him, and as a performer he had no superior. Born in 1713, John Stanley, when only two years of age, lost his sight. Crossing a marble From "The Sense Denied and Lost;" a posthumous work of of coin, and the delineations on playing cards. She wa and happy disposition, her brilliant intellect, her read also a geographer and a skilful arithmetician. Her sweet circle. Capable of sustaining her sorrows in solitude, wit and humour, made her a centre of attraction in every that she was in aught debarred from using any of the was not even to be realized from her demeanour in society faculties of her kind. The tide of sympathy which largely sustained her in affliction, and so mercifully com pensated for its privations, gave rise to a reflex action, the development of a bright and pure light, illuminating not only her own path, but shedding its bright radiance on that of all around her. Such are a few of the instances in which those who have never seen the light have, by their genius, over come the barrier which blindness has set in their path Further illustrations might have been given, but enough has been said to convince the reader that the popular impression sometimes advanced has no foundation in fact; that the born blind child is not a blighted plant, Dr. Bull, who for the last eight years of his life was deprived of seeing, may, by careful and diligent culture, be brought but that its mind, endued with all the capabilities of the sight. It is a volume of great interest. (Longman & Co.) to bear the richest fruit. |