And found choice themes in quaint Dutch tiles that never seemed to of invention; and there are many books that owe their tire;

INTELLECT is a mercenary who will fight under any I sce its well-thumbed pages, and its title, "Shakspere's Plays ;" banner, and never once stumbles over moral scruples.

And ne'er could "make believe" so well as thou couldst, Bessie to sit upon.
Gray.

And then our bright half-holidays, our happy summer walks,
Oh, Childhood's richest fruit e'er hangs upon the poorest stalks!
Pleasure and Triumph, can ye give to any grown-up daughter,
Such joy as ours when we had leaped the dyke of weeds and water?
Oh, Bessie Gray! we used to play, like two unbroken hounds,
Strong health was thine, warm thoughts were mine, life had no
thorny bounds;

RE-ISSUE OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ELIZA COOK Numerous subscribers having expressed a desire to have the whole of the Poems reprinted in the JOURNAL, we have much And somehow as I've travelled since, no young face seemed to stay pleasure in announcing that a re-issue will be commenced in the Upon the mirror of the past, as thine did, Bessie Gray.

"Why, little better than a booby. I could never get out of place in that gay assembly, though his heart was on with such a man."

there. He loved this girl, and had been fascinated by her; for she was intelligent as well as beautiful. But she was altogether wanting in heart; it had been so frittered away, or hardened, or closed up, that the most beautiful quality of the woman's nature had disappeared. "There again-a good creature! Who ever heard of Benson had been already rebuffed by her that night; she your good creature being anything but a ninny?"

"In this course she grows reckless, is often unfeeling, and generally short-sighted; for she becomes fade, and tnen lovers fail to come at her bidding; and she is surprised in her advanced womanhood to find that, while she has made many victims, the greatest of all is herself. She felt his eyes were upon her, and she was only the In short-" more bent upon piquing him. Assiduously avoiding his "Well, really, I must cut you short myself. Who gaze, she devoted herself to her partner, whose nature

"Shall I, your most faithful slave, carry the gage d'amour to the sighing youth? Don't you see him?" "No! I see nobody that answers your description. What can you mean?"

'Why, Benson to be sure. You know you are going to be married to him-everybody knows that." "Well-I don't. What do you think of that?" "Ah! that's all nonsense. But here he comes himself. And now I resign my charming charge. Well, Benson, you are an enviable fellow to be sure. Au revoir !"

was very congenial to her own-a dashing, and rather The rooms were full. A whist party occupied one impertinent youth. drawing-room, and gay music resounded from the Oh, by the way," said he, as he led her panting to other. I hate whist at those crowded evening para seat, "when does your affair with Benson come off?" ties; for there you cannot give yourself thoroughly Impudence!-how dare you?" was her answer, flap-up to "the quiet rigour of the game," as Mrs. ping her perfumed handkerchief in his face. He adroitly Battle termed it; and so I soon found myself among caught it in his hand. the more brilliant and juvenile portion of the assembly. A young lady-young you might certainly style her, though it was obvious from her finished manner, that she had seen many seasons-sat at the piano, and sung with admirable execution Spohr's recherche song of "A Bird sat on Alder Bough." The notes trilled through her beautiful throat, clear and glittering as diamonds. There was no reserve, no blushing insipidity in the singer, she sung in "full-throated ease," like the lark as she springs exultingly from her nest into the sky, and pours a flood of melody on the listener's ravished ear. Murmurs of applause followed the lady as she was led from her seat at the instrument to make room for another performer; and then it was that I noticed the exquisite grace, the full round beauty, the fascinating manner of this beautiful woman. Many admirers seemed to hover round her, but there was one in especial whom I had no difficulty in setting down in my own mind as the "favoured one." He paid all those little attentions which are so charming in a drawing-room, or indeed anywhere, indicating polish and manners; and though some French cynic has very cruelly styled these "the hypocrisy of society," they are very charming nevertheless in their place.

And Dubbing whisked off, and was soon whirling round with a new partner.

"You enjoy yourself much, I hope, dear Julia," observed the youth.

"Well-why not? Of course we are all here for that purpose?

"Surely! And yet, do you know, I rarely feel more oppressed than at one of these gay parties."

"The more fool you!" she muttered. But he seemed

not to hear her remark.

"I always contrast the glare, and glitter, and noise musical though it be, as I confess-of such places, with the charming quiet and converse of one's own fireside-" "With a dowdy wife, and a pair of dip candles for companions."

"Dowdy! Who would ever have dreamt of such a thing? You dowdy!"

"Oh, excuse me, I could not be the person you were thinking of."

"Why? Who else could grace my house, and make my fireside happy?"

Oh, I fear, with your serious tastes, you will require for a Grace, some heavy person to make you happysome such individual as Miss Murdison, for instance: see how the floor shakes under her ponderous tread."

And here she gave one of her silver-ringing laughsnot a very hearty or cheerful laugh it is true-perhaps her laugh was a little bit studied; and she rather prided herAself on it, since some incognito poet had, in certain verses Ale had sent her, styled it "Julia's silver music-laugh." Ana Benson was rather nettled both at the remark and the Wharth she expressed, at the exhibition of one less gra-1 But ously dealt with by nature than herself. He had before Anoted this unfavourable feature in Julia's character.

It is scarcely charitable," he quietly observed, "to make fun of the infirmities of others."

"Infirmity do you call it? Miss Murdison infirm! why look at her! she has the strength of a giant, and the dimensions of "

Taking advantage of a vacant seat near to the accomplished singer, I soon became an unconscious listener to a conversation going on between her and a beautiful fair girl who sat by her side.

"I think I could love him myself," said the fair girl. "Then, why don't you propose?"

"Julia, how cutting you always are. You know I only jest."

"There's much truth in a jest, love. But I can spare him-there's many more as good as he." "What! are you refusing still?" "My love, no woman of spirit dreams of flinging her self away upon the first that offers." "The first?"

Mr.

Who

Stop, Julia, stop-it is really too bad!" "And who asked you for your wise opinion, Benson, as to whether it is either good or bad? cares?" And here her blue eyes flashed with ire. "I ask your pardon, Miss Julia, for I see I have offended you again."

"To tell you the truth, you bore me."

"Ah, Julia! (for I will still call you so once more), I fear your heart turns from me. I have discerned it

before, but shut my eyes to the fact."

"Well, if they are open now to the fact, keep them so -Dubbing, come here! you dance the Schottische, don't you?"

"Ah, charming Julia-with you anything." And away they went again.

Benson looks rather dumpish."

"Pshaw! the brute's got his quietus, I think."

And very stupid.”

Then, there was Dubbing."

Poor silly Carry!"

وو

Supper was announced, and the conversation was interrupted. I kept near to the pair of charming girls, and took care to make myself agreeable. Being a Benedict, I was suspected by neither. I was no "match,' so the majestic flirt could be at her ease with me. I found her clever, almost too clever, at repartee; brilliant in conversation; and full of satire and wit. She astonished, but did not warm you. I found the charming Caroline by far the more pleasing of the two-a woman whom one could live and be happy with. Julia's beauty dazzled and attracted the most, until you felt a touch of the thorns, which made you fear danger and shun it. The young gentleman, her favoured admirer, fluttered about her for a time, but shortly disappeared to give place to another, like him to disappear and vanish into domesticity elsewhere.

Poor Julia! I watched her grow old. I saw her beauty becoming more stately and rigid, her wit becoming more savage, her temper more soured. Lovers fell away, and she ceased to be the observed of all observers. She was no longer the charming, fascinating Julia; she was the wit of a party still, but had ceased to be its belle. Pretty nothings were no longer poured into her ear; polite attentions ceased to be lavished upon her; other and younger beauties were asked to sing; and she sat apart, a lone woman.

WILLIAM LOVETT'S LESSONS ON
PHYSIOLOGY.

UNTIL recently, LAW, as it governs the entire physical and spiritual universe, was neither declared nor explained in any of the processes of popular education. It was neither made use of as a magnificent instrument by the teacher, for laying a true foundation, nor was the child endowed with the supreme gift of seeing in what courses nature wisely runs; but barren, narrow fact, serving to little purpose, was all a youthful mind could gather from its meagre books, and from its uninstructed and consequently in degree its soulless teacher. For the perception of, or knowledge of, truth can alone bestow the sacred energy, whether upon the writer or the teacher. This it is, this guidance by, and growing up, from a fixed knowledge so characterized, which makes the difference between Lord Bacon and the strolling empiric, between Adam Smith and the economical quacks of his day, between John Stuart Mill and the mob orator, who flatters his audience with a recital of their virtues, but passes over their vices with closed eyes, contented if he can father all the sins of ignorance, dependence, and self-gratification upon one word "wealth;" and this knowledge it is, in degree, arising as it must do out of his own self-culture and observation, which makes the startling difference between the industrious and progressive working man, and the drunken, ill-contented sot, who prefers the workhouse to the spade. It is this teaching of LAW, this setting forth the bounds and lines of nature, however restricted by the codes and formulas of teachers, which have so influenced, through universities and high-class schools, our present state of knowledge amongst the educated of this and other countries. For though many so educated keep safely within the prescribed limits of speech and action, there are happily a largely increasing class, who stride beyond these "pleasant places" of the formalist, and give to law those interpretations which are destined to carry out yet more fully all the progresses contained within itself.

Though but lately come, the present is a time when Alas! the Flirt leads an unhappy life, and makes a not alone the mathematician of the university, the physisorry ending. She has stifled her heart-longings, and ologist of the school, the speculative thinker, or the sealed up the fountains of her nature from which the enlightened economist, usurps this great prerogative of truest happiness flows. If she looks back, it is upon knowledge under the sublime aspect of law, but the new triumphs which have left only regrets behind. She has and great class of the self-cultivated and observant see drawn forth the feelings of others, but not to avail her- likewise the force of cause and effect, of action and conself of them. Like a butterfly she has flown from flower comitant result, and thus the self-taught, the disciples as to flower, and sipped the sweets, but gathered no honey it were of new-found truth, are the teachers destined to for the evening of her life; and when her brief beauty precede and to clear the way for the higher taught and has fled, she leaves the world neither better nor happier recognised schoolmaster. As in all else, law is here too; than she found it. Sometimes the flirt marries, and then, the child goes first to the schoolmistress, and as in that instead of one person, two are made miserable. She fine idea of Pestalozzi, of monitor and scholar, the disciple becomes fade and desperate, accepts hurriedly, and is himself, a continuous scholar, brings greater patience to the married. She seeks an establishment perhaps; the hus-duties of recapitulation and detail, than one who, having band discovers that the showy woman he has selected for long passed these things, has risen into the province of his wife has but a small store of affection reserved for him. generalization, wherein new truths and experiments grow His admiration ceases; but the flirt cannot exist without forth from those already ascertained. Thus, till physiology, it, and she seeks for it elsewhere. The quiet duties of social economy, and geometry, be recognised for their worth home are neglected, and the curtain drops over scenes of as essentials of primary education, the earnestness of the domestic unhappiness, if not worse. disciple teacher, the enthusiasm of the amateur will precede the severer logic of the master, and the holiday botanist, with his humble hortus siccus from the fields, precede the Linnæus of the school-room.

There are male flirts too in numbers-men who have grown grey in heartless trifling with the tenderest feelings of the other sex. Spoilt puppies at an early age, they grow up with an increasing appetite for admiration, I am led to these remarks, by attending some weeks which at length becomes the aim and end of their exist- ago, a school lesson on physiology, given by William Of all the abortions of men, we have no hesitation Lovett. By one of those coincidences, with which the in pronouncing as the most miserable of all, the ex-soul-life of all of us is so strangely filled, I had been hausted, padded, bewigged, and whisker-dyed Male Flirt.

ence.

Or all human actions, pride seldomest obtains its end; for, aiming at honour and reputation, it reaps contempt and derision.

reading that morning a French review on Pestalozzi, and yet whilst in full meditation thereon, some one shouted out close beside me "Day and Martin, if you please," making certainly as fine a descent from the sublime to the ridiculous, as could be conceived even by the matchless brain of Douglas Jerrold. And thus aroused, I cer

with admirable precision, to a class of girls, on anatomy and physiology. They were taught by the aid of large well-executed drawings, the structure of the human body, and they showed a ready knowledge of the bones, the superficial muscles, and the circulating, respiratory, and digestive organs, with their uses. When these girls become wives and mothers, we may hope that this institution will enable them, better than sheer ignorance of such subjects would do, to understand and obey the laws of health, on which their own lives and those of their own children will greatly depend."

tainly was not with the rare old man bending amidst his listening children, but in an omnibus straight before the veritable region, where blacking is brewed like ancient ale in mighty tuns. But once with my face turned from that contemplation of limitless hostlers, maids-of-allwork, and dusty-booted gentlemen, "No. 97, High Holborn, London," and the picture was there before me, as free from the specific adjunct of blacking as it was before the ludicrous antithesis. When again no longer there, it was as if the purely mental fact had passed by some sudden process into the vital and actual, for here stood William Lovett amidst his group of little Mr. Lovett is an amateur in teaching physiology, but girls, as I had unconsciously for an hour before been he executes his task well. No books are used, though seeing the good and great Pestalozzi amidst his scholars. he is at this time preparing a little work for the For the minute I was struck dumb by the parallel-by press, to serve as a manual of physiology. His aids have this extraordinary likeness between the mental and the only been some admirable diagrams of the human body; actual; and whilst the impression was such a one as will but, as respects this subject, I think the diagram greatly never be effaced from my memory, I asked myself, "is preferable to any book, even though the best of its class; then benevolence, when thus approximated to truth, so for the reason, that it conveys a lesson, which, though high and divine a quality of the soul, as to show some- unspoken and unreferred to, is of as profound significance what the same likeness under many aspects?" The anas the one which has a voice, particularly to the female swer was an unconditioned affirmative. If too I could mind. I mean the silent culture of pure ideas, arising stamp upon my age, nay upon any one human heart, as from the habit of thus looking on the beautiful human the teacher stood there, as the uninterrupted lesson body, as we do on a landscape, a tree, or a cathedral aisle, went on, what filled my soul, as by some momentary for its beauty, its purpose, or its use, and not as hitherto illumination, neither would the age, neither would one constantly in reference to sensuous property, making, as man or woman of it desire a more legitimate method it were, what is most beautiful in nature, a mere vehicle towards the future greatness of their country, or have a for one class of suggestions, and that which it is the higher ambition for themselves individually, than either most stringent duty of all culture to modify. It is in to have to be, or to duly appreciate teachers of this sort. this matter that our middle and working classes are so I thought to myself-the man who is only great through far behind those of continental states, particularly those the possession of money, or the fact of title, can at this of Germany, nor shall we have, in this country at least, hour inhabit the costliest room, can order forth his car- indications of the coming age of art I predict, till we riage, can sign a cheque that stands good for hundreds are capable of reading out of the book of nature purer or thousands; but in a century hence the chamber will lessons than we yet do. Let us be but cultivated, and have lost its gilt, the carriage be rotten, the money the anatomist and the sculptor will become as pure spent, whilst here the seed thus sown, the truth be-interpretators of nature as the abstract and inductive stowed, the knowledge given so unobtrusively, and with astronomer. such pure benevolence, will have served to good effect a generation of human mothers, sown and resown itself in the actual fact of organization, and perhaps even beyond the circumstance of physical progress, moulded some noble specimen of the noble Saxon type-an actor, a thinker, whose influence may act and re-act on an age. So I then thought, so I now believe, as always, that truth not only has an ascending scale, but that in great secular acts of this sort, in teaching, modifying, progressing, the humanity of our age is destined to work out its own development, and that as, in a former time, men built cathedrals and monuments and prayed thereby, so now has come a less ostensible, though grander and far more spiritual ambition-the ambition of labour and result in the divine province of Humanity. And this it was that made me see the true dukedom, the actual noble, in the fact and man before me.

Mr. Lovett gave a sort of general lesson, that I might understand his plan, and the proficiency of his little scholars-all girls from about eight to fourteen years of age. First upon digestion, and the organs of digestion, upon the conversion of the food into blood, upon the arterial and venous blood, and the process by which the latter becomes again fitted for the great vital process of circulation and nutrition, upon the arteries, veins, lacteals and capillary vessels, upon the lungs, nerves, brain, and skin; showing, as he proceeded, the opposing effects of good and bad food, of pure and impure air, of cleanliness and dirt, and the comprehension and answers of the children were singularly clear, and so varied though apposite, as to plainly show the ability with which the teacher had addressed the understanding of his scholars. Mr. George Combe, of Edinburgh, who visited the National Hall School last November, thus writes on this matter to the Scotsman newspaper, "In the same school and at another hour, I heard Mr. Lovett give a lesson,

I think too much stress cannot be laid upon the worth of physiology in performing a primary function with respect to secular education. It bears intimate relation to the mental, moral, and religious progress of the people; as the great sanitary measures, of even Government itself, will necessarily remain half inoperative, till the general understanding be brought nearer to a level with the reforms themselves. I look upon the fact of women being educated to a better understanding of their duties one of national significance, next to increasing cheapness and abundance of food, for in the cause and effect of civilization the amelioration of the physical condition stands first. And, as respects society, as well as the individual, it is useless building the school-house till some care has been had for the cradle, the kitchen, and bed and board. No doubt, from the time of the Conquest until now, the physical development of our Saxon race has been one of continuous progress, and no one service which Mr. Macaulay has done by his noble works equals that in which he has made clear to thousands, what had long been an inductive fact to the historical student, that at no time in the period of our history has the physical condition of the masses, and the abundant supply of food, equalled those of the present day. Let any one who doubts the truth of the historian, or sighs for the golden age of the English Georgics, turn to the old county histories, to manor rolls, or to "Sir John Cullum's History of Hawkstede, in Suffolk," and "Eden's State of the Poor," and find there the rates of wages and the supplies of food through centuries gone. This fact of improved physical growth is further borne out by the anatomist and the antiquarian, and however wretched are yet the lower depths of our social condition, no doubt exists that if we could tread the path back step-by-step, we should find a still worse state of things to deplore. At this time, therefore, it seems fitting, when we have an aristocratic class