distinction involved deadly warfare, for he had read from beginning to end those two damnable tracts which the tinker had presented to him. But in the midst of all the angry disturbance of his mind, he felt the soft touch of the infant's hand, the soothing influence of her conciliating words, and he was half ashamed that he had spoken so roughly to a child.

Still, not trusting himself to speak, he walked away and sat down at a distance."I don't see," thought he, "why there should be rich and poor, master and servant." Lenny, be it remembered, had not heard the parson's Political Sermon.

An hour after, having composed himself, Lenny returned to his work. Jackeymo was no longer in the garden; he had gone to the fields; but Riccabocca was standing by the celery-bed, and holding the red silk umbrella over Violante as she sat on the ground looking up at her father with those eyes already so full of intelligence, and love, and soul.

or

ius, that loves indeed to dream, but on the violet bank, not the dung-hill. Wherefore, even in the error of the senses, it seeks to escape from the sensual into worlds of fancy, subtle and refined. But apart from the passions, true genius is the most practical of all human gifts. Like the Apollo, whom the Greek worshipped as its type, even Arcady is its exile, not its home. Soon weary of the dalliance of Tempé, it ascends to its missionthe Archer of the silver bow, the guide of the car of light. Speaking more plainly, genius is the enthusiasm for self-improvement; it ceases sleeps the moment it desists from seeking some object which it believes of value, and by that object it insensibly connects its self-improvement with the positive advance of the world. At present Lenny's genius had no bias that was not to the positive and useful. It took the direction natural to his sphere, and the wants therein-viz., to the arts which we call mechanical. He wanted to know about steamengines and Artesian wells; and to know about them it was necessary to know something of mechanics and hydrostatics; so he bought popular elementary works on those mystic sciences, and set all the powers of his mind at work on experiments.

Noble and generous spirits are ye, who, with small care for fame, and little reward from pelf, have opened to the intellects of the poor the portals of wisdom! I honor and revere ye; only do not think

He raised eyes, swimming with all his native good-ye have done all that is needful. Consider, I pray ness, towards the wise man, and dropped them gratefully on the face of the infant peace-maker. Then he turned away his head and fairly wept. The parson was right: "O ye poor, have charity for the rich; O ye rich, respect the poor."

CHAPTER VII.

ye, whether so good a choice from the tinker's bag would have been made by a boy whom religion had not scared from the pestilent, and genius had not led to the self-improving. And Lenny did not wholly escape from the mephitic portions of the motley elements from which his awakening mind drew its nurture. Think not it was all pure Now from that day the humble Lenny and the oxygen that the panting lip drew in. No; there regal Violante became great friends. With what were still those inflammatory tracts. Political I pride he taught her to distinguish between celery do not like to call them, for politics mean the art and weeds and how proud too was she when she of government, and the tracts I speak of assailed learned that she was useful! There is not a greater all government which mankind has hitherto recogpleasure you can give to children, especially fe- nized. Sad rubbish, perhaps, were such tracts to inale children, than to make them feel they are you, O sound thinker, in your easy-chair! Or to already of value in the world, and serviceable as you, practised statesman, at your post on the well as protected. Weeks and months rolled Treasury Bench-to you, calm dignitary of a away, and Lenny still read, not only the books lent learned Church—or to you, my lord judge, who him by the doctor, but those he bought of Mr. may often have sent from your bar to the dire Orcus Sprott. As for the bombs and shells against relig- of Norfolk's Isle the ghosts of men whom that rubion, which the tinker carried in his bag, Lenny bish, falling simultaneously on the bumps of acwas not induced to blow himself up with them. quisitiveness and combativeness, hath ultimately He had been reared from his cradle in simple love slain. Sad rubbish to you! But seems it such and reverence for the Divine Father, and the tender rubbish to the poor man, to whom it promises a Saviour, whose life beyond all records of human paradise on the easy terms of upsetting a world? goodness, whose death beyond all epics of mortal For ye see, these "Appeals to Operatives" repreheroism, no being whose infancy has been taught sent that same world-upsetting as the simplest thing to supplicate the merciful, and adore the holy, yea, imaginable-a sort of two-and-two-make-four propeven though his later life may be entangled amidst osition. The poor have only got to set their the thorns of some desolate pyrrhonism, can ever strong hands to the axle, and heave-a-hoy! and hear reviled and scoffed without a shock to the con- hurrah for the topsy-turvey! Then, just to put a science and the revolt of the heart. As the deer little wholesome rage into the heave-a-hoy! it is so recoils by instinct from the tiger, as the very look facile to accompany the eloquence of "Appeals" of the scorpion deters you from handling it, though with a kind of stir-the-bile-up statistics—“ Abuses you never saw a scorpion before, so the very first of the Aristocracy"- Jobs of the Priesthood"line in some ribald profanity on which the tinker" Expenses of Army kept up for Peers' younger put his black finger, made Lenny's blood run cold. sons"- "Wars contracted for the villanous purSafe, too, was the peasant boy from any temptation pose of raising the rents of the landowners"-all in works of a gross and licentious nature, not only arithmetically dished up, and seasoned with tales because of the happy ignorance of his rural life, of every gentleman who has committed a misdeed, but because of a more enduring safe-guard-genius! every clergyman who has dishonored his cloth; as Genius, that, manly, robust, healthful as it be, is if such instances were fair specimens of average long before it lose its instinctive Dorian modesty; gentlemen and ministers of religion! All this, shamefaced, because so susceptible to glory-gen- passionately advanced, (and observe, never an

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swered, for that literature admits no controversial- | descending the steps from the terrace, charged by
ists, and the writer has it all his own way,) may her mother-in-law with a little basket of sago, and
be rubbish; but it is out of such rubbish that suchlike delicacies, for Mrs. Fairfield, who has
operatives build barricades for attack, and legisla- been ailing the last few days.
tors prisons for defence.

Lenny will see the tinker as he goes home, and
Appeal"-a
he will buy a most Demosthenean"
tract of tracts, upon the "Propriety of Strikes,'
and the Avarice of Masters. But, somehow or
other, I think a few words from Signior Riccabocca,
that did not cost the signior a farthing, and the sight
of his mother's smile at the contents of the basket,
which cost very little, will serve to neutralize the
effects of that "Appeal," much more efficaciously
than the best article a Brougham or a Mill could
write on the subject.

CHAPTER VIII.

SPRING had come again; and one beautiful Mayday, Leonard Fairfield sat beside the little fountain which he had now actually constructed in the garden. The butterflies were hovering over the belt of flowers which he had placed around his fountain, and the birds were singing overhead. Leonard Fairfield was resting from his day's work, to enjoy his abstemious dinner, beside the cool play of the sparkling waters, and, with the yet keener appetite of knowledge, he devoured his book as he munched his crusts.

A penny tract is the shoeing-horn of literature: it draws on a great many books, and some too tight to be very useful in walking. The penny tract quotes a celebrated writer, you long to read him; it props a startling assertion by a grave authority, you long to refer to it. During the nights of the past winter Leonard's intelligence had made vast progress; he had taught himself more than the elements of mechanics, and put to practice the principles he had acquired, not only in the hydraulical achievement of the fountain, nor in the still more

Our poor friend Lenny drew plenty of this stuff from the tinker's bag. He thought it very clever and very eloquent; and he supposed the satistics were as true as mathematical demonstrations. A famous knowledge-diffuser is looking over my "Increase education, and shoulder, and tells me, cheapen good books, and all this rubbish will disappear!" Sir, I don't believe a word of it. If you printed Ricardo and Adam Smith at a farthing a volume, I still believe that they would be as little read by the operatives as they are now-a-days by a I very large proportion of highly cultivated men. still believe that, while the press works, attacks on the rich, and propositions for heave-a-hoys, will always form a popular portion of the Literature of Labor. There's Lenny Fairfield reading a treatise on hydraulics, and constructing a model for a fountain into the bargain; but that does not prevent his acquiescence in any proposition for getting rid of a national debt, which he certainly never agreed to pay, and which he is told makes sugar and tea so shamefully dear. No. I tell you what does a little counteract those eloquent incentives to break his own head against the strong walls of the social system-it is, that he has two eyes in that head, which are not always employed in reading. And, having been told in print that masters are tyrants, parsons hypocrites or drones in the hive, and landowners vampires and bloodsuckers, he looks out into the little world around him, and, first, he is compelled to acknowledge that his master is not a tyrant, (perhaps because he is a foreigner and a philosopher, and, for what I and Lenny know, a republican.) But then Parson Dale, though High Church to the marrow, is neither hypocrite nor drone. He has a very good living, it is true-notable application of science, commenced on the much better than he ought to have, according to stream in which Jackeymo had fished for minnows, the "political" opinions of those tracts; but Lenny and which Lenny had diverted to the purpose of is obliged to confess that, if Parson Dale were a irrigating two fields, but in various ingenious conpenny the poorer, he would do a pennyworth's less trivances for the facilitation or abridgment of labor, good; and comparing one parish with another, which had excited great wonder and praise in the such as Roodhall and Hazeldean, he is dimly aware neighborhood. On the other hand, those rabid litthat there is no greater civilizer than a parson tle tracts, which dealt so summarily with the destolerably well off. Then, too, Squire Hazeldean, tinies of the human race, even when his growing though as arrant a tory as ever stood upon shoe- reason, and the perusal of works more classical or leather, is certainly not a vampire nor bloodsucker. more logical, had led him to perceive that they were He does not feed on the public; a great many of illiterate, and to suspect that they jumped from the public feed upon him: and, therefore, his prac-premises to conclusions with a celerity very different tical experience a little staggers and perplexes Lenny Fairfield as to the gospel accuracy of his theoretical dogmas. Masters, parsons, and landowners! having, at the risk of all popularity, just given a coup de patte to certain sages extremely the fashion at present, I am not going to let you off Don't supwithout an admonitory flea in the ear. pose that any mere scribbling and typework will suffice to answer the scribbling and typework set at work to demolish you-write down that rubbish you can't live it down you may. If you are rich, like Squire Hazeldean, do good with your money; if you are poor, like Signior Riccabocca, do good with your kindness.

See! there is Lenny now receiving his week's wages; and though Lenny knows that he can get higher wages in the very next parish, his blue eyes are sparkling with gratitude, not at the chink of the money, but at the poor exile's friendly talk on things apart from all service; while Violante is

from the careful ratiocination of mechanical science, had still, in the citations and references wherewith they abounded, lured him on to philosophers more specious and more perilous. Out of the tinker's bag he had drawn a translation of Condorcet's Progress of Man, and another of Rousseau's Social Contract. These had induced him to select from the tracts in the tinker's miscellany those which abounded most in professions of philanthropy, and predictions of some coming Golden Age, to which old Saturn's was a joke-tracts so mild and motherlike in their language, that it required a much more practical experience than Lenny's to perceive that you would have to pass a river of blood before you had the slightest chance of setting foot on the flowery banks on which they invited you to reposetracts which rouged poor Christianity on the cheeks, clapped a crown of innocent daffodillies on her head, and set her to dancing a pas de zephyr in the pastoral ballet in which St. Simon pipes to the flock he

shears; or having first laid it down as a preliminary | hand, and remained long silent. Then, gradually axiom, that

The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself-
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

substituted in place thereof Monsieur Fourier's
symmetrical phalanstere, or Mr. Owen's architec-
tural parallelogram. It was with some such tract
that Lenny was seasoning his crusts and his radishes,
when Riccabocca, bending his long, dark face over
the student's shoulder, said abruptly—

"Diavolo, my friend! What on earth have you got there? Just let me look at it, will you?" Leonard rose respectfully, and colored deeply as he surrendered the tract to Riccabocca.

The wise man read the first page attentively, the second more cursorily, and only ran his eye over the rest. He had gone through too vast a range of problems political, not to have passed over that venerable Pons Asinorum of Socialism, on which Fouriers and St. Simons sit straddling and cry aloud that they have arrived at the last boundary of knowledge!

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resuming his ordinary tone, he continued

"Revolutions that have no definite objects made clear by the positive experience of history; revolutions, in a word, that aim less at substituting one law or one dynasty for another, than at changing the whole scheme of society, have been little attempted. by real statesmen. Even Lycurgus is proved to be a myth who never existed. They are the suggestions of philosophers who lived apart from the actual world, and whose opinions (though generally they were very benevolent, good sort of men, and wrote in an elegant poetical style) one would no more take on a plain matter of life, than one would look upon Virgil's Eclogues as a faithful picture of the ordinary pains and pleasures of the peasants who tend our sheep. Read them as you would read poets, and they are delightful. But attempt to shape the world according to the poetry

and fit yourself for a madhouse. The further off the age is from the realization of such projects, the more these poor philosophers have indulged them. Thus, it was amidst the saddest corruption of court manners that it became the fashion in Paris to sit "All this is as old as the hills," quoth Riccabocca for one's picture, with a crook in one's hand, as irreverently; but the hills stand still, and this- Alexis or Daphne. Just as liberty was fast dying there it goes!" and the sage pointed to a cloud out of Greece, and the successors of Alexander emitted from his pipe. "Did you ever read Sir were founding their monarchies, and Rome was David Brewster on Optical Delusions? No! Well, growing up to crush in its iron grasp all states I'll lend it to you. You will find therein a story save its own, Plato withdraws his eyes from the of a lady who always saw a black cat on her hearth- world, to open them in his dreamy Ailantis. Just rug. The black cat existed only in her fancy, but in the grimmest period of English history, with the the hallucination was natural and reasonable-eh-axe hanging over his head, Sir Thomas More gives what do you think?”

"Why, sir," said Leonard, not catching the Italian's meaning, "I don't exactly see that it was natural and reasonable."

"Foolish boy, yes! because black cats are things possible and known. But who ever saw upon earth a community of men such as sit on the hearth-rugs of Messrs. Owen and Fourier? If the lady's halJucination was not reasonable, what is his, who believes in such visions as these?"

Leonard bit his lip.

"My dear boy," cried Riccabocca kindly, "the only thing sure and tangible to which these writers would lead you, lies at the first step, and that is what is commonly called a Revolution. Now, I know what that is. I have gone, not indeed through a revolution, but an attempt at one."

Leonard raised his eyes towards his master with a look of profound respect, and great curiosity.

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Yes," added Riccabocca, and the face on which the boy gazed exchanged its usual grotesque and sardonic expression for one animated, noble, and heroic. "Yes, not a revolution for chimeras, but for that cause which the coldest allow to be good, and which, when successful, all time approves as divine the redemption of our native soil from the rule of the foreigner! I have shared in such an attempt. And," continued the Italian mournfully, "recalling now all the evil passions it arouses, all the ties it dissolves, all the blood that it commands to flow, all the healthful industry it arrests, all the madmen that it arms, all the victims that it dupes, I question whether one man really honest, pure, and humane, who has once gone through such an ordeal, would ever hazard it again, unless he was assured that the victory was certain-ay, and the object for which he fights not to be wrested from his hands amidst the uproar of the elements that the battle has released."

The Italian paused, shaded his brow with his

you his Utopia. Just when the world is to be the theatre of a new Sesostris, the dreamers of France tell you that the age is too enlightened for war, that man is henceforth to be governed by pure reason, and live in a paradise. Very pretty reading all this to a man like me, Lenny, who can admire and smile at it. But to you, to the man who has to work for his living, to the man who thinks it would be so much more pleasant to live at his ease in a phalanstere than to work eight or ten hours a day; to the man of talent and action and industry, whose future is invested in that tranquillity and order of a state, in which talent and action and industry are a certain capital;-why, Messrs. Coutts, the great bankers, had better encourage a theory to upset the system of banking! Whatever disturbs society, yea, even by a causeless panic, much more by an actual struggle, falls first upon the market of labor, and thence affects prejudicially every department of intelligence. In such times the arts are arrested; literature is neglected; people are too busy to read anything save appeals to their passions. And capital, shaken in its sense of security, no longer ventures boldly through the land, calling forth all the energies of toil and enterprise, and extending to every workman his reward. Now, Lenny, take this piece of advice. You are young, clever, and aspiring men rarely succeed in changing the world; but a man seldom fails of success if he lets the world alone, and resolves to make the best of it. You are in the midst of the great crisis of your life; it is the struggle between the new desires knowledge excites, and that sense of poverty, which those desires convert either into hope and emulation, or into envy and despair. I grant that it is an uphill work that lies before you; but don't you think it is always easier to climb a mountain than it is to level it? These books call on you to level the mountain; and that mountain is the property of other people, subdivided amongst a great many pro

ness.

prietors, and protected by law. At the first stroke woman, the romance was carried off by so many of the pick-axe, it is ten to one but what you are genuine revelations of sincere, deep, pathetic feeltaken up for a trespass. But the path up the moun-ing, that it was always natural, though true to a tain is a right of way uncontested. You may be nature from which you would not augur happisafe at the summit, before (even if the owners are fools enough to let you) you could have levelled a yard. Cospetto!" quoth the doctor, "it is more than two thousand years ago since poor Plato began to level it, and the mountain is as high as ever!" Thus saying, Riccabocca came to the end of his pipe, and, stalking thoughtfully away, he left Leonard Fairfield trying to extract light from the smoke.

CHAPTER IX.

Leonard was still absorbed in the perusal of these poems, when Mrs. Fairfield entered the room. "What have you been about, Lenny-searching in my box ?"

"I came to look for my father's bag of tools, mother, and I found these papers, which you said I might read some day.”

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"I does n't wonder you did not hear me when I came in," said the widow sighing. "I used to sit still for the hour together, when my poor Mark read his poems to me. There was such a pretty one about the Peasant's Fireside,' Lenny-have you got hold of that?"

"Yes, dear mother; and I remarked the allusion to you; it brought tears to my eyes. But these verses are not my father's-whose are they? They seem a woman's hand."

Mrs. Fairfield looked-changed color-grew faint-and seated herself.

"Poor, poor Nora!" said she falteringly. "I did not know as they were there; Mark kep 'em ; they got among his-"

Leonard." Who was Nora ?"

Mrs. Fairfield." Who?-child-who? Nora was-was my own-own sister."

can neither read nor write.)- Your sister-is it possible? My aunt, then. How comes it you never spoke of her before? Oh! you should be so proud of her, mother."

Mrs. Fairfield (clasping her hands.)-"We were proud of her, all of us—father, mother-all! She was so beautiful and so good, and not proud she! though she looked like the first lady in the land, Oh! Nora, Nora !"

Leonard (after a pause.)-" But she must have been highly educated?"

SHORTLY after this discourse of Riccabocca's, an incident occurred to Leonard that served to carry his mind into new directions. One evening, when his mother was out, he was at work on a new mechanical contrivance, and had the misfortune to break one of the instruments which he employed. Now it will be remembered that his father had been the squire's head-carpenter; the widow had carefully hoarded the tools of his craft, which had belonged to her poor Mark; and though she occasionally lent them to Leonard, she would not give them up to his service. Amongst these, Leonard knew that he should find the one that he wanted; and being much interested in his contrivance, he could not wait till his mother's return. The tools, with other little relics of the lost, were kept in a Leonard (in great amaze, contrasting his ideal large trunk in Mrs. Fairfield's sleeping room; the of the writer of these musical lines, in that gracetrunk was not locked, and Leonard went to it with-ful hand, with his homely uneducated mother, who out ceremony or scruple. In rummaging for the instrument, his eye fell upon a bundle of MSS.; and he suddenly recollected that when he was a mere child, and before he much knew the difference between verse and prose, his mother had pointed to these MSS. and said, “ One day or other, when you can read nicely, I'll let you look at these, Lenny. My poor Mark wrote such verses-ah, he was a scollard !" Leonard, reasonably enough, thought that the time had now arrived when he was worthy the privilege of reading the paternal effusions, and he took forth the MSS. with a keen but melancholy interest. He recognized his father's handwriting, which he had often seen before in account-books and memoranda, and read eagerly some trifling poems, which did not show much genius, nor much mastery of language and rhythm -such poems, in short, as a self-educated man, with poetic taste and feeling, rather than poetic inspiration or artistic culture, might compose with credit, but not for fame. But suddenly, as he turned over these "Occasional Pieces," Leonard came to others in a different handwriting-a woman's handwriting-small, and fine, and exquisitely formed. He had scarcely read six lines of these last, before his attention was irresistibly chained. They were of a different order of merit from poor Mark's; they bore the unmistakable stamp of genius. Like the poetry of women in general, they were devoted to personal feelingthey were not the mirror of a world, but reflections of a solitary heart. Yet this is the kind of poetry most pleasing to the young. And the verses in question had another attraction for Leonard; they seemed to express some struggle akin to his own-some complaint against the actual condition of the writer's life, some sweet melodious murmurs at fortune. For the rest, they were characterized by a vein of sentiment so elevated that, if written by a man, it would have run into exaggeration; written by a

Mrs. Fairfield." 'Deed she was!"
Leonard. How was that?"

Mrs. Fairfield (rocking herself to and fro in her chair.)-Oh! my lady was her godmother-Lady Lansmere I mean-and took a fancy to her when she was that high! and had her to stay at the Park, and wait on her ladyship; and then she put her to school, and Nora was so clever that nothing would do but she must go to London as a governess. But don't talk of it, boy!-don't talk of it!"

Leonard. Why not, mother?-what has become of her?-where is she?"

Mrs. Fairfield (bursting into a paroxysm of tears.)" In her grave-in her cold grave! Dead, dead!"

Leonard was inexpressibly grieved and shocked. It is the attribute of the poet to seem always living, always a friend. Leonard felt as if some one very dear had been suddenly torn from his heart. He tried to console his mother; but her emotion was contagious, and he wept with her.

"And how long has she been dead?" he asked at last, in mournful accents.

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Many 's the long year, many; but," added Mrs. Fairfield, rising, and putting her tremulous hand on Leonard's shoulder, "you'll just never talk to me about her-I can't bear it-it breaks my heart. I can bear better to talk of Mark-come down stairs-come."

"May I not keep these verses, mother? Do let | grave and earnest pilgrimage, I am Vandal enough

Hitherto, as I have said, the talents of Leonard Fairfield had been more turned to things positive than to the ideal; to science and investigation of fact than to poetry, and that airier truth in which poetry has its element. He had read our greater poets, indeed, but without thoughts of imitating; and rather from the general curiosity to inspect all celebrated monuments of the human mind, than from that especial predilection for verse which is too common in childhood and youth to be any sure sign of a poet. But now these melodies, unknown to all the world beside, rang in his ear, mingled" with his thoughts-set, as it were, his whole life to music. He read poetry with a different sentiment-it seemed to him that he had discovered its secret. And so reading, the passion seized him, and the numbers came."

To many minds, at the commencement of our | Eternal Progress.