Eltham, which there cuts the Dover road at right angles. But we must not carry our remarks into a field where we shall be trespassers.

The calculation made by Addison of the number of church steeples and towers on the City side of the metropolis, the sum demonstrating the greater regard for religion shewn in that quarter, did not fail to recur to our recollection; but, with all due respect for the memory of the author of the Spectator, we must demur to his inference. In the reign of George I. it is probable people judged of religion from such external appearances; in the present day we are grown wiser, especially in regard to a spot which is the central place of worship of a golden deity. The towers and steeples in the City have the merit of being the finest within the circuit of vision; and the architect of St. Paul's strikes the eye in his works every where, both east and west of the crow's nest. The beauties of St. Bride's and Bow, though sensibly felt, are, in some degree, injured, being too near by the foreshortening. St. Dunstan's in the East, with its obelisk over the towerarch, is recognised at once. The Tower

of London is one of the best-defined of the loftier edifices, although, as Gray says, it is London's lasting shame.' This, with its historical recollections, is a striking object. North-east is St. Luke's, reminding us of the most fearful of human calamities, — of man with animal existence, destitute of animal instinct. From thence a line drawn to the south-west, touching the east end of St. Paul's, and prolonged into St. George's Fields across the Thames, cuts Bethlehem Hospital, a still larger receptacle of those to whom the gift of reason has been denied. Thus amidst the triumphs of civilisation and a scene of unparalleled grandeur, both moral and visual, man is still destined to learn lessons of humility!

The distant parks look like green oases in the sombre plain of dingy red which every where surrounds them. The venerable towers of Westminster Abbey, and the curve of the river, bestrode by its magnificent bridges, are among the more prominent objects that attract the gaze. Nor must we forget to particularise the railway-stations, recent

and novel creations, that as yet are in, but scarcely of, London.

Whatever may be the future fate of this great city,-whether it return to comparative nothingness, or become once more the site of meadows and corn-fields, surely none since the world began has ever offered to the observation of the beholder such a wonderful aggregate of man and his labours. London is not London alone, it is the central point of the civilised universe, towards which rays converge from every zone and meridian. London is a part of England, of Europe, of America, of Africa, and of Asia. Beneath our feet is the focus within which are concentrated the hopes, fears, rivalries, and jealousies of all the other nations of the globe. Briarian London reaches all with its outstretched arms, sufficiently to operate upon all. The eye fell from the place where we stood upon magazines of wealth that were not the property of Englishmen, but placed in their hands for security or profit by those who could trust them nowhere else. Beneath us was the harbour of refuge for countless property in peril, as well as for monarchs dethroned and ministers exiled. The riches of realms Cæsar never knew' were deposited there; and productions of the earth, grown in regions of which Greece and Rome had never heard. The wealth that commands all the markets of the globe, all that can stimulate ambition or gratify luxury, existed below us in profusion, either for good or evil. From what elevation besides, since man has emerged from savage life, could such a scene have been presented?

But we must not expatiate longer on the crow's nest, of which neither the present nor any future generation of men is likely to see the representative for a similar purpose; since 'what is writ, is writ;' or, in other words, the observations taken from its site are taken for all time. We can hardly expect a dislocation of the earth in the metropolis, that can alter the correctness of the main observations noted there. The apparatus itself afforded an excellent specimen of the skill with which our engineers erect their scaffolding; it was an equally excellent illustration of the just application of a few simple ma

thematical principles to mechanical contrivance.

The crow's nest that puzzled so many wise observers, has furnished a great number of valuable results towards the scientific purpose to which it was applied,-results that must contribute to the health and comfort of the community, however apparently mysterious the operations by which the object is worked out. What matters ignorance of the details of science to those who can never be made to comprehend them, provided they can participate in their good effects?

'What do they want to do there?' said a plain-looking man in one of the City boats to another standing beside him.

'They be taking a plan of the streets to make the sewers,' was the reply; at least so they tells me.'

'Why could they not take them by going through them?' continued the first speaker.

'Because,' said the other, 'the people be never out of the streets in the day-time; and they cannot stand there long enough and take 'em down without being mobbed.'

'Ay, very like, indeed,' was the reply.

There were several individuals near the speakers, well-dressed persons, who listened attentively, and all seemed to assent to the correctness of the information thus communicated!

It is well, we thought, for science to be contented with being its own reward in the higher sense of the term, since so few comprehend its labours or estimate its discoveries at their just value, even when they are not as obtuse as the speaker just cited. NERKE.

WELL, then, sir,' said Mrs. de Courcy, 'the entirely ignorant can only be approached by a miracle. It was but yesterday morning Now, Georgina, my dear! Dear love, pray listen to me. Such vanities at such a time!'

'Dear mamma, I was only Mr. St. John was only so very kind as offer to chaperone me to the concert this evening; and—and

You know, mamma,' she added, wickedly, they sing a great deal in the spirit-world.'

It was a very sweet voice this of dear Georgina; it made me look at her, which I had not done before; and I saw, as well as the bonnet would let me, a very pretty face indeed : but Mrs. de Courcy summoned off my attention again in an instant.

Intolerable!' she muttered. 'Well, it was but yesterday morning I found my housemaid, who could hardly spell, in the heart of the Memorable Relations. She had seen it open on the table. The broom dropped against the wall, the duster on the floor; and there was she inhaling the spirit of Swedenborg out of those wonderful words. 'Do you understand what you are reading?' I asked.

Under-,

stand!' she answered; 'oh, yes! this is all clear all light.' 6 But you can hardly read,' I said, 'and this is no spelling-book.' 'I do not know how it is, she answered, but I do understand.' And she did, for she gave me an account of what she had found, as clear as I could have given myself. That is a miracle, sir.'

There is no lack of miracles,' replied I; the book itself is a miracle, if a miracle is a thing one can't account for. But, indeed, I hope your housemaid didn't open at the page at which I opened.'

'And pray why not, sir? and what page ?'

6

Why,' I said, 'it is one which gives me a most distressing notion of the breeding of the creatures into whose society we all are going. Swedenborg says he was in a room where two ghosts were discoursing on irresistible grace. The logic didn't prosper, and at last (it was one way of throwing a light upon the subject) one of them snatched up the candlestick and flung it at the other's head. I forget what impression was produced by it. It must have been the ghost of a candlestick, or it wouldn't have made any. But really it is very

bad manners to fling about even ghosts of candlesticks.

'All colours are alike to the blind,' replied Mrs. de Courcy, very angrily. The New Church is yonder-you may see it rising there by the railroad; the wings, these two, of the genius of this modern age. Come, there, if you will, and learn. Come, or forbear to come; but if you come, you will hear words there which angels leave their stars to listen to.'

I was relieved from my embarrassment by a move of the young lady to the piano. I was surprised, as it was only a morning call, and I was not prepared for the excuse of excellence in the daughter of such a mother; but there was sufficient reason. However she came by it, remarkable natural power had been more remarkably cultivated.

She

sang one or two French songs, which Madame Dorus Gras håd made familiar to me; and while the intensely difficult execution was almost as good, her own peculiar genius gave a new charm to them. The mother, with all her abhorrence of vanities, listened critically, as if she quite understood and valued Georgina's talent. They perplexed me, both of them; and when, at the end of a few minutes, the singer started from the piano, and, with a 'Well, between mamma and me, you have had enough of us, I fancy,' carried off mamma in a most abrupt retreat, a whole crowd of feelings came rushing out in the curiosity with which I asked Mrs. St. John whether it was from the new planet that so strange a pair had fallen.

St. John had followed the ladies down stairs, and we heard him slam his study-door with a tone of exhausted deliverance, which promised us a tête-à-tête of at least half-anhour before he would recover from his sofa.

That is not a question they are likely to ask about you,' she answered. 'How you could be so stupid! But you are past lecturing. Mrs. de Courcy was a fashionable beauty. She married early, was left an early widow, with an immense

fortune, and dear Georgina for an only child. I am summing up fast, to save questions. She was splendidly dissipated for a few years, and then partly she forsook dissipation, partly

VOL. XXXIX. NO. CCXXIX.

'But the daughter: how came she by that brilliant music ?'

'Oh, she has been perfectly educated. Mrs. de Courcy is only a half visionary; her stuff about vanities was only because she was speaking herself, and wished to be attended to. You saw how splendidly she was dressed. She is herself very highly cultivated. Georgina has had the best masters; and her mother has, perhaps, done more for her than they. And yet it almost makes me sick to think of it; with all their gifts, and their brilliance, and their talents, a lunatic asyium is the only place fit for either of them.'

To preach to the spirits there. For madame, perhaps but the young lady didn't seem to be infected.'

'Oh, it is not that!' Mrs. St. John answered. 'Money and beauty have always right enough to be eccentric, even at the expense of other people. I could forgive them the misery they are to Frederick; but it is a far more serious affair, and Georgina-ah I have no patience with her!'

I thought I could have a great deal.

Every one, I suppose, has a serious side,' Mrs. St. John continued; 'that is, behind all the talk, and show, and acting of life. Even the most foolish people have a sort of knowledge that, after all, this is not real life; and they have either a vague notion of another, or else of something in this world of more genuine importance; some way of satisfying themselves about themselves, either by under practice or future hopes. Most of us keep this side in better order than the other, and think and feel much better than we act; but there are some unlucky people that, if there be any where a single grain of ab

F

surdity or disease in their characters, insist on its rooting and growing exactly in this one corner, and, in the protection of secrecy, let it shoot into the most extravagant forms. All the outside talk and chatter is nonsense. But this unlucky Mr. Fenton has so possessed Mrs. de Courcy, that she is determined her daughter shall marry him; and Georgina herself, though she allows she does not love him-rather, perhaps, dislikes him— has got a notion, from which nothing can shake her, that it is her duty, which she accepts without reluctance. Oh, I have talked and talked to her! but what can one say? There is nothing too mad for people when twisted religion has got hold upon them. Notions taken up without reason, there is no reasoning with; and one is but diving at random into the ocean of fancies to look for an antidote to a caprice.'

I was more touched at the marrying business than I liked to own. I always felt, as I suppose most unmarried men feel, a sort of annoyance when any young lady of my acquaintance was about to pass into the state from which only ugly death could free her. It is a possibility destroyed. One would have them wait till one's self has chosen, and one likes to moralise on the melancholy risk they are running with another. But I felt more than this here, which I was glad to explain to myself from the unhappy nature of the connexion which the lady seemed to be forming.

'Well,' said I, 'then shall you and I take up the cards and try if we can beat this Mr. Fenton?'

She laughed.

"What, you mean you are to make love to Georgina, and I am to help you? I think you may safely try, after the impression you made today.'

I did not say so; but if Mr. Fenton is really objectionable, humanity would

Humanity! you may come to the party with me this evening, and you will meet them both. I did not tell you Mr. Fenton was objectionable. I don't know him personally. I only know that he is a preacher, and that Mr. St. John dislikes him in consequence; but eccentricity makes a very little talent remarkable. Mr.

Fenton, in this strange line of his, is very popular, and is to be met whenever you like to meet him.’

It is as well to see one's enemy,' said I. 'If there is any chance of beating him, or any credit to be got in doing it, I think I will try.'

By this time St. John had rejoined us. After dispersing the undigested remains of his spleen in a few humorous complainings, he took his hat and made me go out with him for a walk. In the course of it he gave me a few details of what he knew of Mr. Fenton, which came—after stripping off the colouring which was laid on by his general horror of what was outré -to no more than this,—that it was rumoured he had led a wild life when young; and that now he was the Cheltenham rage, and all the fashionable people went to the New Church. His especial spleen at Mrs. de Courcy brave a point to what he said; but it was, in fact, nothing. Easily enough, Mr. Fenton might be but one more instance of an early recklessness being suddenly and violently checked, and then rushing into another extravagance, because plain respectability was too tame for his emotions. The same causes might make an eloquent Swedenborgian which made ascetics in old times, or Pietist evangelicals in later; and if this was so, what business had my impertinence in trying to cross him? The field was preoccupied by a person who had as good a right to be there as I; and the lady's odd way of expressing herself was quite likely to be assumed. They would be above my machinations, and I could be content to form one of their wedding party.

Half laughing at myself for all this excitement about people I had only seen for one strange half hour (though strangeness is a wonderfal ripener of intimacy), I accompanied the St. Johns to the concert. It was crowded, one of those uneasy evenings when long due invitations are wiped off at smallest expense to the entertainer, but at a very serious one to the entertained. Our eyes swept the glittering expanse of jewelled and turbaned headdresses. The De Courcys had not arrived. We kept our places near the door, and, in a few minutes, their names came echoing up the

staircase, and they entered, accompanied by Mr. Fenton. Others, besides ourselves, were anxious for a view of this orator, and a stir passed over the room; the music lost the sound of being listened to, and the crowd hung back that all might see, and yet none press too rudely, on so august a presence. Perhaps I was the only person who at first did not see him. Georgina was so beautiful, that, for the moment, I had not a glance to spare from her. In the morning I had lost the exquisite head, and the long, straight, Egyptian neck, which were now set off so perfectly. A gold chain was coiled, like a snake, into her dark hair, and a great emerald glittered out above her forehead like its jewelled eye. I thought I had never seen so superb a creature; and although my own absurd fancies sank, crushed into the dust, I determined that the man, let him be what he would for whom this being was destined, must be my enemy. I would hate Mr. Fenton.

The ladies swept on up the room, and vanished as a beautiful thought vanishes in the crowding and crushing of common life. They bowed as they passed me; the mother, with the stateliest bend of her proud head; Georgina, with a smile. I turned as I lost them. Now, what was Mr. Fenton about? He was standing where they had left him. I could only see his profile. He was looking on upon the scene, just speaking here and there a word of recognition to the most pressing claimant; but neither joining in it, nor wishing to join, yet without the slightest vulgar affectation of being too good for what was round him. If he was in Folly's shrine, he was no tinsel idol there. No weak enthusiast ever carried so painful a forehead, nor charlatan so high a one; and with so marked a stamp of greatness on him, if he were an intriguer, he would have chosen a more ambitious sphere than a Swedenborgian pulpit.

I began to think it might well be more than duty which had reconciled Georgina. If I could only see his eye! Presently he turned, and it met mine. He remarked my look, as I saw by the change from the gaze of indifference as the eye singled out its object in the crowd. It was

an eye one does not like to see in an enemy: not a defying eye, which challenges one to meet it; but an eye that, as you looked into it, seemed, like very deep water, unfathomable. I felt as if my own vision were quenched in it, and a kind of awe crept over me as I looked at him, which promised poorly, indeed, for rivalry. Some one offered to introduce me; I suppose, observing my interest: but I declined, till I was better able to collect myself. But I was too much fascinated to cease watching him, till, at the end of half an hour, after a few words to his entertainer and a very gentle smile, he withdrew from the room. Every one seemed to breathe more freely; sure sign enough that this retreating figure was that of one greater than ourselves.

Mrs. St. John sat ensconced in a corner; a vacant seat was by her, and I took it.

'We need not trouble ourselves with a conspiracy,' I said, 'if that was Mr. Fenton.'

Hush!' she said, as she pressed my arm. I looked up; Georgina was close to us. She was coming up to speak to Mrs. St. John, who made room for her on the sofa, and she sat down with us. The sight of Mr. Fenton had rebuked me into my senses again. I was able to talk tolerably; and what had been intended but as a move of civility for a few moments of meaningless politeness, became her evening's resting-place. We talked of every thing, music, books, scenery, amusements, even personalities, and in every thing we agreed strangely. The same depth of sensitiveness which made her singing so remarkable, she carried through all her mind. She felt, where I only knew; and when I sketched the outlines, she painted in the figures with her warm heartcolouring. Never had I met so dangerous a person. I forgot all. No warning spirit rose to wake my recollection of Mr. Fenton. Mrs. St. John managed all the little skilful arrangements to preserve our party. Once Georgina was called away to sing, yet she was not away. She sang one of Tennyson's little things of which we had both been speaking; and as the full rich tones went rolling round the room, I thought I caught upon them a breath of feeling