of monastic walks, old ruins, or sunshiny woods flits through our brain during that pleasant rest. Eventide in its loveliest form is here

Parting day

Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour as it gasps away,

The last still loveliest, till-'tis gone-and all is gray. Red rose tints resting on the old castle, and tinging the heaving sea; a whole banner of crimson floating over Beachy Head; and then the soft gliding in of twilight, and the hush of the dying day. Good-night, gentle reader. So closes that portion of time in our life at Hastings.

HOW WE BUILD IN LONDON. A HOUSE fell down in the city a few weeks ago, not a great way from what Punch calls the Royal Brigand's Bank. A stir was made about it, because somebody was killed, and it turned out on inquiry that the house was an old one; perhaps one of those that were built after the great fire in 1666. So, of course, nobody was to blame.

Now, what I want to ask is, whether anybody is to blame for the many new houses that are 'run up' every year, and that are always ready to fall downwould fall down indeed, if they tried to stand alone. Perhaps you will wonder how this can be, seeing that we have a Building Act here in London, and inspectors to take care that its provisions are complied with, and penalties for evasions. It sounds all right; but haven't we got an act against profane swearing-and is that obeyed? Ah! innocent reader, if you would only take a walk with me for half a day, I could shew you how our Building Act is respected.

I ought to know something about the matter, for I am a handicraftsman, and have helped to put the finishing-touch to many a house-if house be the proper name. I could take you, reader, to street after street, and shew you that these so-called houses ought to be ticketed dangerous, as the ice is in the parks in winter. The act provides that for a certain width of road, houses shall have such and such a height. I can point out houses to you which scornfully look down from a height of several feet upon the legal limit. I could shew you dishonest party-walls, rotten foundations, and sham drainage; and yet the act declares in one of its clauses, that considerations to be especially regarded are the safety of the public, as against insecure construction, and the spread of fire.'

For confirmation, you may turn back to the Proceedings of the Royal Institute of British Architects, where you will find it in discussions on the subject held among the members of that enterprising corporation. You will see how one said that the act defines the thickness of walls, varying according to the height; another, that inspectors were apathetic; another, that evasions were possible, and often practised; and more to the same purport. After reading those reports, you will perhaps wonder that modern houses stand at all. They wouldn't stand, if it wasn't that they had others to lean against. One lends a shoulder to the other, and so they manage to keep the perpendicular for a while; but, after all, it is nothing more than cripple helping cripple. And this is London -the head-quarters of civilisation and liberty-the emporium of the commerce of the world!

Suppose we go a little into particulars. I haven't kept my eyes shut when I have been at my work of finishing and decorating, and one consequence is, that I have witnessed many of the tricks and scandals of the builders. It is not an unusual thing for the plaster of a new London house to change from white to a dirty brown, or to fall off the wall or ceiling in patches; and many a tenant has been astonished

This

by the bad smells in rooms which have never been inhabited. There's a reason for everything, if you only knew it. Did you ever see scavengers scooping up the mud in the streets after a rainy day? mud they call 'micmac;' and rare slimy stuff it is, as you have found out, if you have ever been splashed by it. The men of the broom cart it away to secret places, where great heaps of it are accumulated, and when dry enough to be sifted, they sell it to the builders. But what do the builders do with it? tell you. They pass it through a sieve, to free it from stones and other coarse-grained refuse; then to forty bushels of the pulverised micmac they add a bushel or two of lime: and what then? Why, then they use it for plastering the walls and ceilings of new houses.

I'll

There's economy in this. Mud is cheaper than lime, and besides, owing to its cohesiveness, the cost of cow-hair is saved, and the labour of mixing it in. The tenacious mud will be sure to stick to the walls, at least it will do so long enough to answer the builder's purpose; so you see nothing could be better. And what an admirable way of utilising street-sweepings!-one that I would recommend to the attention of our Metropolitan Board of Works; provided always, that Works' be the proper term for a body which as yet has shewn so little capacity for working. What matter that your bedroom smells like a dead-house, or worse, every time the weather becomes damp; that the offensive odour turns you sick, should there be a prevalence of rain; that the paper which your wife always admired, because it was so 'nice a pattern,' grows blotchy with foul stains, hideous to look on? What matter, I say, if mud can be turned to such profitable account, and your builder is enabled to keep his phaeton? In your innocence, you have always thought that none but savage tribes-such as the Grimphisogs and Rawgrubgobblers-dwelt in mud-houses, and you won't be very willing to believe that here, in this world-renowned London, you have been living in a mud-house ever since the day you brought your blushing Marian home from the honeymoon.

Possibly the notion of such a thing may shock you. But try to forget all the abominations that go to the composition of micmae, and imagine it a compound of the dust of an imperial Cæsar or two, to say nothing of dukes, barons, and members of parliament, and you will be consoled.

I read once in a periodical that the cause of bad smells in rooms was the many thicknesses of paper on the walls, the new having been pasted over the old till the accumulation began to ferment. I didn't believe it, because I knew better. Take my word for it, if the walls are all right, you may 'stick up,' as they say in Staffordshire, a new layer of paper every year as long as you live without any offence to your olfactories. But how can walls be sound or wholesome when, as I have seen, the mortar is one part lime and three parts mould-when, as I have also seen, the labourers, to save themselves trouble, slake the lime with water dipped from a filthy sewer!

One fact more, and then I shall get out of the mud. I have told you how economical our builders are in the matter of lime, but what if I tell you that in many a party-wall they do without lime entirely. I have seen party-walls put together with nothing but unsophisticated mud-genuine and unadulterated mud. I could pull every brick from its place as easily as a baker lifts loaves from his shelf. Of course, such walls are always damp, if not slimy; but perhaps the builder regards damp as an additional security against fire. I have been up on house-tops where the walls came through the roof, the said walls being as easily displaced as if merely piled of loose bricks.

And even the mud itself is saved in laying

foundations. Builders of our day-ought we not to be proud of them?-dispense with mud, mortar, or cement below the ground. Pile 'em up! The weight of the house is sure to keep the bricks in place. They'll last our time, and that's as much as can be expected nowa-days.

And then the bricks. Did you ever contemplate a London brick? It would be yellowish-gray in colour were it not defaced by what looks like dirty bruises, and here and there a deep crack, and a clinker sticking out. It is meant to be a parallelogram, but it is no such thing; for it is all muddy, twisted, crooked, and thicker at one end than at the other. Some, if you take them up by one end, will break in two with their own weight; and you shall hardly see one that is not a scandal to the nimble art of brickmaking. Even in Victoria Street-that aristocratic and vaunted Westminster thoroughfare-I have seen piles of such rubbish-bricks I cannot call them used in the building of those stately houses which are let out in flats to tiptop gentlefolk. And this being the case within sight of the Houses of Parliament, of the Queen's palace, what must it be a mile or two further away! Baked rubbish and mud. Why will the Society of Arts persist in offering prizes for new building-materials when here is such abundance always at hand!

I shall never forget how once, during a walk in Gloucestershire, I came to a brick-field, where the piles of large, sound, well-shaped red bricks were a pleasure to behold. I took one and another in my hand, and surveyed them with that feeling of satisfaction always inspired by good workmanship. An antiquary could not have been more delighted with Roman potsherds and rusty Saxon sword-blades, than I was with the Gloucestershire bricks.

About two years ago, I was papering a house-a rather stylish house within cannon-shot of the Elephant and Castle. The drawing-room had a deep handsome cornice, an ornamental circle in the middle of the ceiling, and the paint of all the wood-work was no bad imitation of mottled maple, and the paper a graceful convolvulus pattern. I felt rather proud of it when my part was finished, and the next day began to paper the bedroom above. Intent on my work, I jumped on one occasion to the floor from the steps on which I had to mount with every breadth of paper, and was at the same moment startled by a tremendous crash beneath me. I ran down stairs: clouds of dust were pouring from the drawing-room, and the room itself was by that time a wreck. Shaken by my jump, the heavy cornice and the ceiling had given way, and fallen to the floor, leaving the bare laths exposed. The paint was all scratched and bruised; the paper was torn, hanging here and there in tatters, and furrowed through to the plaster. It was a woful commentary on modern building, and in a house intended to be let for L.60 a year. Are we not clever people in London?

:

No longer ago than last winter, just as I had finished supper one evening, and was taking my ease in slippered feet by the fire, a messenger came with a hurried knock to summon me to Eglantine Cottage, where my services were instantly required. What a sweet name! Eglantine-redolent of delicious odours and sunshine, of beauty reposing in luxuriant bowers anything, indeed, but unhappiness. However, on arrival, I was conducted to the kitchen, and asked to look at the ceiling. A dance was going on in the room above, and the ceiling bent and undulated like waves turned upside down, and little shreds of plaster sprinkled the floor. There was no time to be lost: I recommended an immediate cessation of the dance, and, running home, speedily returned with the boards and joists necessary for shoring up the ceiling. When this was done, the light fantastics went to work again,

and capered into the small hours, no longer in danger of dropping through upon the heads of the cook and housemaid. I rather expect that this shoring up will be an annual job for me at Eglantine Cottage.

Perhaps you will think this is an uncommon occurrence. No such thing. There is many a house in London let upon the express stipulation that the tenant shall never have a dance in the drawing-room: houses being built not to live and be merry in, but merely to stay in. Who knows whether by and by the little children will not be forbidden to romp in the nursery, lest they endanger the whole edifice.

You wouldn't wonder that floors sway and ceilings bend, if you saw how slender, and how few and far between, are the joists by which they are supported. I have seen floors laid on joists one inch and a quarter thick, and two feet six apart. The consequence of this is, that even if you don't want to dance, the windows and doors rattle every time you walk across the room: in fact, the house dances, whether the inhabitants do or not. You might as well live in a lantern, or in one of those Chinese houses all paper and bamboo. Not so very long ago, a man was tried for having stolen a number of scaffold poles. He was found guilty, as he deserved; and it came out on the trial, that, after stealing them, he quartered them lengthwise, and used the quarters as floor-joists in some houses he was building. Think of that!-the fourth of a six-inch pole, to sustain a family and their household gear. Talk of being on a raft on the stormy ocean after that! Fine specimens of this style may be seen in Battersea Fields. An enterprising builder once offered to sell me a row of six new houses in that 'desirable neighbourhood' for L.150!

A builder once offered me 'fippence a piece (twelve yards) all round,' to paper a row of ten houses, and to find paste as well as labour. This offer may be judged of when I tell you that the fair price for hanging paper is a shilling a piece. I told him 'twas impossible to hang it for 'fippence' with any hope of its remaining any time on the walls. He didn't care for that; if it would stay up three weeks, till he got the houses off his hands, that was all he wanted.

Botch-papering is kept in countenance by botchpainting. It would surprise you not a little to see how quickly two men will paint a row of houses; but not if you knew the dodge they are practising. The paint is nothing but a wash of water-colour well charged with size, and is laid on with a whitewash-brush wherever the surface is wide enough. It is finished off with a coat of varnish, and the only oil-paint used is on the window-sashes. No wonder your children's fingers so soon wear the paint off the doors and skirting! no wonder it washes off from the mantel-piece! If you buy cheap 'japanned' washstands and chests of drawers, you will find the 'japan' to be nothing more than water-colour.

That the cities of ancient Nineveh have become mere earthy mounds, nothing more in appearance than a swell in the great Mesopotamian plain, is well known to all of us through Mr Layard's remarkable explorations and discoveries. How long would it take to convert London into a similar mound? You won't want me to answer that question, for you will have no difficulty in calculating the time necessary for the decomposition of such a mass of rubbish into its original elements. The result would be accomplished long before the time assigned for the arrival of Mr Macaulay's New Zealander.

But you will say that all this has only to do with poor people's houses. If by poor people you mean such as pay from L.20 to L.30 a year rent, you are right; but let me tell you that such people constitute no small portion of the respectable middle class of London; that they pay their way honestly, and submit to self-imposed self-denying ordinances to get decent schooling for

their children; and that they deserve better treatment than most of them get from their landlords. Do you think it is fair to make a man pay even L.20 a year for living in a brick packing-case, that wouldn't stand an hour, if it hadn't others to lean against, as aforesaid? It is very true that most of what is here mentioned took place in the great parish of Lambeth, where the archbishop lives in his palace at one edge of it; but you mustn't think that things are any better over the water,' which means on the Middlesex side. If it were necessary, I could soon convince you that St Pancras or Marylebone can't brag so very much over Lambeth. I have heard the president of the Institute of British Architects say-and he ought to know-that some of the worst building in London is in and around Russell Square. You won't find many L.20 or L.30 houses in that quarter. There is one house in the square, if not more, which trusts the entire weight of its three-flight staircase to a single nine-inch wall. After this, you will hardly desire to know any further particulars of rickety window-sashes, shrunken floors, leaky roofs, and cracking walls. You could slip your watch easily through the joints in some of the floors: perhaps the builder foresaw there would be an outcry for ventilation, and used green wood in order to provide against it. Seasoned wood is rare now-a-days. Don't expect your carpenter to be too virtuous, or you will be disappointed. Make up your mind beforehand that he will use green wood, and then you won't lament so bitterly over the dishonesty of the age, as one of our most eminent literary characters does. He paid a good price to have a new study built. It was a studyto use an artist's technicality-in which the builder depicted himself as knave. An Indian wigwam would have been preferable.

It was about 1804, that a Mr Burton began to build Russell Square, and set an example which later builders have so cunningly improved on. He perpetuated his name in Burton Crescent, that resort of foreign refugees; and if the square be bad, the crescent is worse. The president above mentioned says there is little hope of real amendment until builders cease to fancy themselves architects, and until architects are employed to direct builders. We have proof enough of what can be done with bricks and mortar in houses built in the reign of Queen Anne, or further back in that of Elizabeth. And the late Mr Cubitt shewed that it was possible to build good houses with more profit than bad ones. There is a new house at the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, which I recommend as a pattern to those builders who are fond of the dead-alive Gower Street style; and there is one in Southampton Street, Strand, which demonstrates the capabilities of coloured bricks, and the possibility of producing picturesque effects even in London. way in which the chimneys are made to contribute to the architectural appearance, is worthy of all praise and imitation. They are not a deformity, but an

ornament.

The

Cockneydom is renowned for its self-conceit; fancies itself, as the tall Kentuck did on the levee at New Orleans, 'a leetle cleverer' than all the rest of creation. But is it not the fact that Cockneydom could learn a lesson from some of our provincial towns? Ugly Birmingham even has a finer market-hall than any in London; and what is Covent Garden compared with the market at Birkenhead? There's some talk of building a new one, and I hope it is true, for it is pretty nearly time that the excellent fruits and vegetables offered for sale in Covent Garden should be displayed in a market more worthy of them. And in the matter of omnibuses: do not Glasgow, Liverpool, and some other places far outvie the metropolis?

Why should London be worse built than Edinburgh? I once lived six months in the northern metropolis, and had two rooms on a third flat in the New Town. It was

a good height; but so solid were the walls, and so firm the floors, that my sitting-room did not chatter when I walked across it; neither had I any apprehensions of tumbling through on the heads of the lodgers in the second flat. A widow with a large family occupied the room above mine; but, except on a Saturday, when she dragged her furniture about in a general cleaning, I never was disturbed by noises overhead, or alarmed for the safety of my ceiling. In my present London | lodgings I hear every sound made by my neighbours, east, west, north, south, and underneath-happily there are none above me-and have frequently to lament that London builders have not yet profited by the example of those at Edinburgh.

So ends my say about How we Build in London: should it be read by any whom the cap fits, I only hope they'll try to be honest for the time to come, or let us know whether anybody's to blame.

THE GRAVE IN THE WEST. WESTERN Wind, balmy and sweet! Stole you the breath of the blossoming limes, Under whose boughs we were wont to meetWont to meet in the olden times?

Far away-adown in the west

Blossom the limes that I love so well,
Under whose boughs my life was blest
With a love far dearer than words may tell.

Western wind, though so far away,

I trace in your sighing their odorous breath; Surely you stole it, and brought it to say: "Think of the boughs you have wandered beneath!'

The limes in that avenue, leafy and sweet,
Blossomed and faded one happy year,

While under their shadow our two hearts beat
With a love unclouded by doubt or fear.

The limes in that avenue, shady and old, Have blossomed and faded many a year, Since one true heart grew for ever cold, And the other for ever withered and sere.

Western wind, let the lindens rest!

Waft me no breath from the lime-tree bowers-
But the perfume of roses that grow in the west
On a lowly grave that is covered with flowers!
THOMAS HOOD.

AFRICAN ABSOLUTISM.

His

The king of Dahomey is one of the most absolute tyrants in the world; and being regarded as a demigod by his own subjects, his actions are never questioned. No person ever approaches him, even his favourite chiefs, without prostrating themselves at full length on the ground, and covering their faces and heads with earth. It is a grave offence to suppose that the king eats, drinks, sleeps, or performs any of the ordinary functions of nature. meals are always taken to a secret place, and any man that has the misfortune or the temerity to cast his eyes upon him in the act is put to death. If the king drinks in public, which is done on some extraordinary occasions, his person is concealed by having a curtain held up before him, during which time the people prostrate themselves, and afterwards shout and cheer at the very top of their voices.-Wilson's Western Africa.

Printed and Published by W. and R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by JAMES FRASER, 14 D'Olier Street, DUBLIN, and all Booksellers.

of Italy, where intercourse with foreigners is still too rare to have any influence in modifying the oldfashioned tone of conversation.

Then the budget of news would be unfolded, and every murder or highway robbery within the circuit of fifty miles, every accident that has taken place in the town that day, is as circumstantially related as if a reporter from Scotland Yard had been in attendance. Next, there are the maladies of all their invalid acquaintances to be discussed; while any remarkable complaint amongst members of the mezzo cetto and shopkeepers, whom of course they all know by sight and name, is also gratefully admitted to the general repository. Add to these the births, present or anticipated, in the high world of Macerata, and, above all, the marriages—an unfailing source of speculation and interest-and a tolerable idea may be formed of the home-department of the Colloquial Gazette, which supplies the place of newspapers and weekly periodicals, &c., to an Italian interior. The foreign intelligence is almost equally well supplied, though not so widely, or, more properly speaking, not so unreservedly communicated. How they contrived to know all they did of what was passing in other countries, considering that the newspapers allowed to be circulated only gave the official report of some events, and pertinaciously ignored others, was always a surprise to me, though fully weighing the stimulus to inquiry of which the government's senseless restrictions were naturally productive.

But this information, as I have remarked, was not common to all, nor dispensed to all equally. The happy possessor of any contraband political novelty could be detected by his air of mysterious importance, his unwonted sententiousness, his impatience till the one or two old codini, who had devolved like family heir-looms upon the marchese, had taken their leave; when it would be related, with the accompaniment of many gleeful expressive gestures, how such and such tidings had been received, that must have been like gall and wormwood to the existing powers.

Piedmont, constitutional Piedmont, progressist Piedmont, generally furnished the substance of these discourses. One day it would be whispered that a law was being contemplated in that contumacious little kingdom for the suppression of many among the monastic orders; another, that its clergy were rendered amenable to civil tribunals for offences unconnected with ecclesiastical discipline: or else it would be ecstatically reported that the minister Cavour snapped his fingers at the threatened interdict, and answered the vituperations of the exiled archbishop of Turin by fresh concessions to liberty of conscience. These graver themes were but interludes, however. As if fearful of lingering too long upon them, they used to pass to more trivial subjects with strange versatility, though losing no opportunity of levelling a shaft against their own government, and inveighing at the existing and daily increasing grievances, which not even the respectable codini any longer attempted to defend.

The marchesa's società had not more than four or five unvarying frequenters; but in a small town like Macerata, where most of the ladies received, this was considered quite a brilliant circle. No refreshments of any kind were served or thought of, and no other light was supplied than what the lucerna furnished. If the reader, who has followed me through my first day in the bosom of the Marziani family, likes to hear something of its conclusion, he may fancy himself seated on a brocaded chair in that corner-he need not fear being discovered; the lucerna's rays do not penetrate so far-he may put on his cloak if he is cold-there! I have pushed a little square of carpet towards him for his feet, while for the first time he assists, to use a foreign idiom, at a genuine Italian conversazione.

'Has the marchesa heard of the strange adventure at the Villa D, two nights ago?' inquired a young physician, who, uniting some poetical to a considerable share of medical reputation, had the entrée to the palazzo, which its mistress was only restrained by the fear of compromising her husband, from throwing open to all the disaffected professional men in Macerata and its environs. The house was attacked soon after midnight by a number of banditti, some of them with firearms, of which the people left in charge were of course destitute-our new-year's gift from the Austrian general having been, as you remember, a peremptory refusal to our petition that country-houses in isolated situations might retain one or two fowlingpieces as a defence. Well, the wind was high, so that the unfortunate inmates feared their cries for help, and the ringing of the alarm-bell, would be unlike unheard; while the robbers, finding the coast clear, after having, luckily enough, lost a good deal of time in trying to force open the strongly secured housedoor, bethought themselves of undermining it. They had almost finished their labours, when the storm beginning to lull, the beleaguered garrison succeeded in attracting attention. A picket of finanzieri (customhouse officers) who chanced to be patrolling, on the look-out for smugglers, hastened to their assistance; and the enemy hearing them approach, precipitately dispersed.'

But This

Ehi poveri noi!' sighed the old Marchese Testaferrata, the strongest advocate of retrogradism in the società, we are indeed in a bad case! The boasted improvements of this century, its fine liberalism, its socialism, its toleration to heretics, ahem, ahem !—it is all being visited now upon us! I grant you, yes, even I confess, that this military law is a little severe. if we had not this, ugh! we should have worse. is what the Mazziniani would give us, if they could. We can speak of that with some experience, ehi?' and tapping his heart with his forefinger, to denote stabbing, he then extended it horizontally as an emblem of shooting; after which he drew in his two hollow cheeks, so as to form a still greater cavity, and slowly nodding his head, looked as if he thought quite enough had been said upon so unpleasant a subject.

The young doctor shrugged his shoulders; the marchesa took up the gauntlet.

'If we had not this! Per Bacco, you are right, we should have worse. If the Austrians go on in this way, who will reap the harvest of the odium they have plentifully sown? Why, the priests, of course, whom they are now supporting with their bayonets and the stick! They are safe from popular vengeance. What has an army like theirs to fear? But let their backs be once turned-let the last sail of the fleet which will bear them from our shores have sunk beneath the horizon, and who can estimate the violence with which the torrent, so long forcibly restrained, will break forth? Who can assign any limits to popular fury under provocation such as daily, weekly, yearly, is crying to Heaven for redress? And who will be the sufferers along with the priests? Why, we nobles, of course, whom the people, right or wrong, identify with them, and hate with equal hatred.'

Per carità, marchesa,' interposed a very timorouslooking little man, turning pale, and wiping his forehead, 'let us not speak of such things. Those who have outlived the Reign of Terror of '49, have reasonable grounds for not expecting to see anything so horrible again. Besides, we are all friends here; but still, walls have ears.'

'It cannot be denied, however, that we are in a cruel position,' said a quiet, benevolent-looking man, with a stoop of the shoulders, and a great weakness of sight-the latter an appanage of old descent in many of the noble families in the Marche. 'It is quite true that the people place us in the same category with the