father, who seemed to be unable to take in the fact. "Jenny says so too. She says I'm going to heaven." The interruption, quiet as it was, came on them with a start, and they both turned sharply. The child was lying, with his eyes wide open, his blue-bell in his hand; perhaps had been awake all along. Mr. Whatley bent down to the bed, and Sale held the candle. "Who is Jenny, my little fellow?" asked he, all his roughness of manner gone, and touching the child as tenderly, speaking as gently, as if he had been lying in a satin cradle. "She's the Bible-woman, sir," answered the boy, who had caught his father's correct diction. "She comes because I'm by myself all day, and reads to me and tells me pretty stories." "Stories, eh. About Jack the Giant-killer?" "No, sir. About heaven." Mr. Whatley rose. He took a small white paper from his pocket, shot some powder from it into a tea-cup, and asked for fresh water-if there was such a thing. Sale brought some, which the doctor smelt and made a face over; and he put it to the powder and gave it the child to drink. "He won't eat his food, sir," observed Sale. "I dare say not. He's getting beyond it." The boy held up the flower. "When Jenny gave me this, she said there'd be prettier bluebells in heaven." "Ay, ay," answered the young man, in a tone as though he were lost in some dream. "I'll look in again in the morning," he said to Sale, when the latter went out with him to the unsavoury alley. "Y-ah!" cried he, wrathfully, as he sniffed the air. Sale seemed to want to say something. "I've not got the money to pay you now, sir. I'll bring it to you, if you'll please to trust me, the very first I get.' And the young man, who was a quick reader of his fellow-men, knew that it would be brought, though Sale starved himself to save it. "All right," he nodded, "it won't be much. Look here, my man," he stopped to say, willing to administer a grain of comfort in his plain way, "if it were my child, I should welcome the change. He'll have a better home than this." Sale went in again; to the stifling atmosphere and the dirty walls, in the midst of which the child was dying so peacefully. The boy did not seem inclined to sleep now; he lay in bed talking, a dull glazed light in the once feverish eyes. Sale drew the three-legged stool close, and sat down upon it. The lad❘ | put his hand into his father's, and the trifling action upset Sale's equanimity, who had been battling in silence with his shock of grief. Very much to his own discomfiture, he burst into tears; and he had not done it when his wife died. "Don't cry, da. Is it for me?" "It seems hard, Charley," he sobbed. "The three rest all taken, and now you; and me to be left alone!" "You'll come next, da. Jenny says so. It's such a beautiful land; music and flowers and sweet fresh air. Mother's there, and Bessy and Jane; Jesus took them home to it because it was better than this, and he's coming for Jenny has told it me all." me. Sale made no reply. He saw how it wasthat others had discerned what he had not: the sure approach of death-and the good Biblewoman had been at her work preparing, soothing, reconciling even this little child. But it did seem very hard to the father. "If I could have kept you all in a wholesome lodging, Charley, the illness mightn't have come on: on you or on them. God knows how I've strove to do my best. Things be against us poor, and that's a fact; these horrible tumble-down kennels be against us. "Never mine, da: it'll be better in heaven." Ah yes! yes, it will be better in heaven. And may God sustain all these unaided ones with that sure and certain hope as they struggle on. The boy slept at length; but he started continually; sometimes waking up and asking for water, sometimes rambling in speech. Sale sat and watched him through the night, he and his heavy heart. You may be sure that the dawn could not penetrate quickly into that close place, shut in from the open light and air. It was candlelight there, but getting bright outside, when the boy started up, a gray look on his wan face, never before seen there. "What is it, Charley? Water?" The child looked about him as if bewildered; then he caught up the blue-bell that lay still at hand, and held it out to his father. "Take it, da. I can see the others up there. They are better than this." He lay down again, his little face to the wall, and was very still. So still that Sale hushed his own breath, lest he should disturb him. The sounds of the day were commencing outside: two women had already pitched upon some point of dispute, and were shrieking at each other with shrill voices. By-and-by Sale leaned over to look at the still face, and saw what had happened-that it was still for ever! He went out later with his basket of roots. It is not for the poor to indulge grief in idleness; death or no death indoors, money must be earned. The world was as busy as though no little child, free from want now, had just been laid to rest; people jostled each other on the pavements; and the sun shone down, direct and hot, from the clear blue sky. As Richard Sale looked up, he wondered how long it might be before God removed him to the same bright world: and he took his stand meekly in a convenient spot for the sale of the flowers. SIX SONNETS. [I. William Dunbar, born 1460, died 1520. He was a Scottish poet, but there is little known as to the events of his life. He commemorated the marriage of James IV. with Margaret Tudor in The Thistle and Rose; and received a yearly pension of £10, which was afterwards increased. II. Sir Philip Sidney, born in Penshurst, Kent, 29th November, 1554; died in Arnheim, 7th October, 1586. A soldier, courtier, and poet, and eminent in the three characters He was the author of the Arcadia, and the Defence of Poesie. The nobility of his nature is best illustrated by the anecdote related by Lord Brooke. He was governor of Flushing during the war between the Spaniards and the Hollanders. Wounded in one of the battles, he was leaving the field faint and bleeding when he was attracted by the cries of a dying soldier who craved water. Sidney gave the man his own supply, saying, "Thy necessity is yet greater than mine." IV. John Milton, born in Bread Street, London, 9th December, 1608; died 8th November, 1674. Paradise Lost was first published in 1667, and the author, it is said, received £10 for his work. He became blind about the year 1654. Whilst his poems are to be found in almost every household, it is to be regretted that his prose works are seldom read. He published a History of England in 1670.] L TO A LADYE. Sweit rois of vertew and of gentilness; WILLIAM DUNBAR. II. FEAR OF DEATH. Since nature's works be good, and death doth serve III. DEGENERACY OF THE WORLD. What hapless hap had I for to be born In these unhappy Times and dying days Of this now doating World, when Good decays, Love's quite extinct and Virtue's held a scorn! When such are only prized, by wretched ways, Who with a golden fleece them can adorn; When avarice and lust are counted praise, And bravest minds live orphan-like forlorn ! Why was not I born in that golden age When gold was not yet known? and those black arts By which base worldlings vilely play their parts, With horrid acts staining Earth's stately stage? To have been then, O Heaven; 't had been my bliss, But bless me now, and take me soon from this. DRUMMOND of Hawthornden. IV. TO MR. LAWRENCE. Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, WORLDLINESS. JOHN MILTON. The world is too much with us!-late and soon, Those clouds that will be weeping at all hours, VI. ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET. " "When the heathen philosopher had a mind to eat a grape, he would open his lips when he put it into his mouth, meaning, thereby, that grapes were made to eat, and lips to open.' These are "Facts;" and as such are detailed by Monsieur Touchstone the clown, "a great lover of the same. "Shepherd," quoth he, "learn of me: To have is to have;" another sage maxim, and much acted upon in these enlightened times. Touchstone's relish, however, for "matter of fact" is but the substratum of a vein of humour which puts him a little out of the pale of your true and veritable matter-of-fact people. They-God help them!don't understand jokes. They would no more think of disguising a fact under a covering of fun, than an unsophisticated Costar Pearmain or Tummas Apple-tree would of metamorphosing a piece of fat bacon into a sandwich. They deal in simples, and love what's what for its own sake, as a patron of the "pure disinterestedness" system does virtue. In their vocabulary "whatever is, is right." "Quicquid agunt homines, nostri est farrago libelli," might be their motto. They are of Sir Isaac Newton's opinion, who thought all poetry only "ingen- | " ious nonsense. They ask, with the professor of the mathematics who read Homer, "What does the Iliad prove?" They are the precise antipodes to the lady who doated on Plutarch's Lives until she unluckily discovered, that, instead of being romances, they were all true. With the Irish bishop, they think Gulliver's Travels a pack of improbable lies, and won't believe a word of them! Some of their favourite authors are David Hume, Sir Nathanael Wraxall, Pepys, Sir John Carr, Bubb Doddington, Sir John Mandeville, and John Wesley. While they eschew, as downright fables, the Waverley Novels, The History of John Bull, Robinson Crusoe, The Annals of the Parish, Sinbad the Sailor, Adam Blair, and Humphrey Clinker. If they meet with a book that is dull, "it is useful, for it contains matter-of-fact." If they happen to meet with one that is not dull, they say the same thing. They never for a moment, as other worthies sometimes do, mistake their imagination for their memory; for which there is perhaps a sufficient reason, "if philosophy could find it out." In short, all imaginative literature they call "light reading;" at the same time they are unaccountably shy of calling their own peculiar favourites heavy, which is odd enough, considering that they seem to estimate usefulness (upon which they lay mighty stress) a good deal by weight, and prefer, as in duty bound, "a pound of lead to a pound of feathers." They are most gravelled by the metaphysics, of which they are rather at a loss what to make. They contrive, however, to avoid studying them as being something "not tangible." To conclude they write themselves under the style and title of "Lovers of Fact," and are yclept "matter-of-fact people" by the rest of Europe. That "Facts are chiels wha winna ding, An' downa be disputed," is a truth which Burns has, after his own manner, long ago asserted, and which will not be readily controverted. But still this is no more a reason for loving them, than it is for a henpecked husband to love his better-half, because he dare not contradict her. "Facts are indisputable things," quoth Doctor Dryasdust. Very true; but so much the worse; for, in that case, there is an end of the conversation. Rosalind knew better when she recommended "kissing" as "the cleanliest shift for a lover lacking matter;" for if it be resisted, argues she, "this breeds more matter"-a result the very reverse of the doctor's definition. It is a strange thing, but in all ages divers potent, grave, and reverend signors seem to sible. The wildest inventions are only partial departures from the order of nature. But to nature they always look back, and must ultimately be referred. They are no more independent of her, than a balloon is of the earth, although it may mount for a while above its surface. The connection between them may not be so obvious, but it is no less certain. Fact, then, is the primary substratum-the primitive granite-upon which all Fiction is formed. And this being so, Fiction has always more or less of the advantages of truth, besides superadded advantages peculiar to itself. In its employment we have this privilege. We can, at will, produce such a concatenation of supposed and yet natural events, as may be have got it into their heads that "a fact," as they call it, has a sort of intrinsic value, as a fact, per se. They attach a mystical and peculiar value to it, as mortals (before the new birth of the political economists) used to do to gold, without reference to its uses, its origin, or its adjuncts. Adam Smith and Peter Macculloch have put the gold-doctrine to flight; but the other, its twin brother, remains there still, "unbated and envenomed." "Facts," say they triumphantly, "are true; now Fiction is untrue." Very well, doctor; and suppose it were the reverse. Suppose the "Fact" was untrue and the Fiction true-what then? This is a sort of query that sometimes makes a man's head spin like a teetotum; and what an effect were this to befall a head that never spun any-requisite to bring about the effect, and teach thing but almanacks during life? "Tilly Vally!" The value of a Fact lies not in its being what it is, but in the effect it produces. A historical series is valuable, not because it is true, but because, being true, it, in consequence, pro- | duces certain effects upon the human mind. Could that same effect be produced by a fictitious narrative, it would be just as good. The same effect cannot be so produced, to be sure; and what does this prove? It proves that truth is capable of producing certain effects, of which fiction is incapable. This is all very well; but it happens to be true also of fiction, and to a much greater extent. This is no joke; but of it more by-and-by. If we take a series of historical or other truths, its value seems to lie in this, that, being true, it forms, as it were, an extended experience. It serves as a rule of action for those who read it. To do this, the truth of the series is no doubt absolutely necessary. It is essential to the process. But it is in the effect upon the mind that the value really resides; and the truth of the record is only one aid, amongst others, to the production of that end. The sagacious personages who are, for the most part, accustomed to dogmatize upon this subject, take it broadly for granted that Fiction is something directly the opposite of Fact. They make them out at once to be as light and darkness, virtue and vice, or heat and cold. This is short-sighted work. There are no fictions absolute. None which do not in their essence partake of Fact. For all Fiction is, and must be, more or less, built upon nature. Nor have the most extravagant any very distant resemblance to it. We can only combine. It is beyond the power of man to invent anything which shall have no smack and admixture of reality throughout its whole. If it were possible, it would be incomprehen the lesson we wish. We can always do poetical justice. We need never want an instructive catastrophe. We escape that want of result to which accidental series are so liable; nor do we bring it about, as sometimes it happens in real life, through an unworthy instrument. The murderer who escapes at Newgate is punished upon the stage. Historical ruffians become heroes in an epic; and love, sometimes selfish in its origin, is ever pure in its poetry. The effect arising out of a good tragic or epic poem springs from the same principle as if it were from history. The experience we derive from it, though nominally artificial, is essentially, and to all intents, real. Fiction only enables us to render the effect more direct and complete than events might have done. We conduct the lightning where we want it; but it is not the less lightning. The "vantage-ground" gained by this faculty is unquestionably enormous. We can not only command the sequence of incident and the tides of passion, but we can exhibit them again and again, as often as we please. A century might have elapsed before the gradual progress of wickedness, and the torments of guilty ambition, were exhibited as fully and as much to the life, as they are in Macbeth and Richard. A million of Italian intrigues might have been concocted and enacted, before treachery and jealousy were so completely anatomized as in Othello. But this is not all. In real life, be the series of events what they will, they are rarely manifested to any in their completeness. Dark deeds and intricacies of passion have few witnesses; and even these seldom witness the entire detail. They are only seen in their integrity in newspaper narratives and judicial reports; and then the passions of the actors are buried and lost in the verbiage of an editor or the dry technicality of legal inquiry. Now, in a theatre, Macbeth murders and repents three times a week. Boxes, pit, and galleries are witnesses to the subtle poison of his ambition and the terrible shrinkings of his remorse. The LESSON which in nature would have been imprinted but once, is stereotyped by the art of the poet, and diffused amidst thousands who else had never known either its import or its name. In the circle of the sciences the reign of Fact would, at the first blush, seem to be fully established. Fiction there would either seem to be an open usurper, or at best a sort of Perkin Warbeck-a pretender who can only hope to succeed by counterfeiting the appearance of another. They, however, who acquiesce in this, see a short way into the question. The exact sciences, beautiful and invaluable as they are, seldom embrace the whole, even of the subjects of which they profess to treat. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your-philosophy. tion of the strength of timber, as opposed to the weight of a column of water multiplied into its velocity. If we want a full perception of the power of the beautiful, Professor Camper's facial angle, and Sir Joshua's waving line, sink to nothing before Shakespeare's Imogen or Cleopatra, or Kit Marlowe's description of Helen, in the play of Faustus. All the topographical quartos that ever were written afford no such prospects as the Lady of the Lake or Thomson's Seasons. The true lover of flowers. had rather read Lycidas, or Perdita's description of her garden, than hunt for "habitats" in herbals or botanists' guides;-and whether Glencoe and Borrodale be primary or secondary formations, their sublimity and grandeur remain the same, in freedom and in contempt of systems and scientific arrangements. All this, however, is still not directly to the question. The point is has Fact or Fiction produced the most important changes in society? This is the real gist of the matter, and as this is answered, so must the dispute terminate. It sounds perhaps somewhat like a paradox, yet the reply must be given in favour of the latter. Let us look at it. The exact sciences have, without doubt, most changed the outward and bodily frame and condition of society. But the great mutations of the world have not their origin in these things. They spring from those causes, whatever they may be, which soften the manners, modify the passions, and at once enlarge and purify the current of public thought. The Spartan legislator who punished the poet for adding another string to his lyre, well knew this. A people are the most quickly affected through their imaginative literature. A few ballads have altered the character and destiny of a nation. The Troubadours were amongst the most early and most successful civilizers of Europe. The obscure writers of romances, fabiiaux, and metrical legends were the most. potent changers of the face of society. Upon a barbarous and treacherous brutality, they The simplest natural objects have bearings which calculation does not touch, and appearances and relations which definition fails to include. They must have a poor conception of "this goodly frame the earth,"-of "this brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire," who think that these, in all their infinitude of variety and beauty, can be ranged in categories, and ticketed and labelled in definitions. Can we get an idea of the splendour and odour of the flower by looking out genus and species in Linnæus? Do we hear the roar of the waterfall, or behold the tints of the rainbow, in the theory of acoustics, the law of falling bodies, and the prismatic decomposition of the solar ray? Can we strain an idea of a storm at sea out of an analysis of salt-water and the theories of the tides and winds? Can we compass the sublimity of the heavenly vault by knowing every constellation, and every star of every magnitude, of every name, and of every character, Latin or Greek, upon the celestial globe? Can geography or geology show us Mont Blanc in his unap-gradually ingrafted an overstrained courtesy proachable majesty, or Chamouni in her beauty? It is in vain to ask these questions. Of the sublimer qualities of objects, science (so called) affords no ideas. It gives us substance and measurement, but for the aggregate intellectual effect, we must resort to imaginative description and the painting of the poet. He who never saw Dover Cliff, will find it in King Lear, and not in the County History or the Transactions of the Geological Society. To him who never beheld a shipwreck, Falconer and Alexander Stevens are better helps than the best calcula Don and the most romantic maxims of love and |