'No,' returned Dominique; it is a peculiar influence that I cannot explain. Perhaps,' added he, after some hesitation, you may have observed my eyes frequently fixed on you of late?' I remembered that I had observed this; and he then told me that whoever he looked at in that manner was the person he dreamt of." 'Such,' said Charlie Lisle, was the prior's account of this strange personage. I confess, when I had heard his explanation, I began to feel particularly queer, for I was already satisfied that Fra Dominique and Brother Lazarus were one and the same person; and I perceived that I was in considerable danger of being the selected victim of his next dream; and so I told Père Jolivet.' "Never fear," said he; "we lock him up every night, and have done so ever since my adventure. Added to which, he is now very unwell; he was taken with a fit yesterday, and we have been obliged to bleed him." "But he is digging there below," said I. "Yes," replied the prior; "he has a notion he is going to die, and intreated permission to prepare his grave. It is, however, a mere fancy I daresay. He had the same notion during the indisposition that succeeded the dream I have just related. I forgot to tell you, however, though you seem to have penetrated the secret, that this Fra Dominique changed his name to Lazarus when he accompanied me here, which he was allowed to do at his own urgent intreaty; why, I cannot tell, but ever after that conversation, he seemed to have imbibed a strong attachment to me; perhaps because I exhibited none of the distrust or aversion towards him which some persons might have been apt to entertain under the same circumstances."

'A week after this I was informed that Brother Lazarus was dead,' continued Lisle; and I confess I did not much regret his decease. I thought a man subject to such dangerous dreams was better out of the world than in it; more especially as by all accounts he had no enjoyment in life. On the day I quitted the monastery, I saw from my window one of the brothers completing the already partly-made grave, and learnt that he was to be buried that evening; and as I descended the stairs, I passed some monks who were carrying his coffin to his cell. "Rest his soul!" said I, as I buckled on my spurs; and having heartily thanked the good prior for his hospitality, I mounted my horse and rode away.'

Here Charlie Lisle rang the bell and asked for a glass of water.

'Is that all?' inquired Lady Araminta. 'Not quite,' said Charlie; the sequel is to come. My visit to the monastery of Pierre Châtel had occurred in the month of June. During the ensuing months I travelled over a considerable part of the south of France; and at length I crossed the Pyrenees, intending to proceed as far as Madrid, and winter there. Amongst the lions I had been recommended to visit was a monastery of Franciscans in the neighbourhood of Burgos, and I turned somewhat out of my road for the purpose of inspecting some curious manuscripts which the monks were reputed to possess. It was in the month of October, and a bright moonlight night, when I rang the bell, and requested to see the Padre Pachorra, to whom I had letters of introduction. I found him a dark, grave, sombre-looking man, not very unlike my old friend Brother Lazarus; and although he received me civilly enough, there was something in his demeanour that affected my spirits. The whole air of the convent, too, was melancholy; convents, like other establishments, taking their tone very much from the character of their superiors. As the monks had already supped when I arrived, I was served with some refreshment in the parlour; and the whole internal arrangements here being exceedingly strict, I immediately afterwards retired to my chamber, firmly resolved to take my departure the next day. I am not in the habit of going to bed early, and when I do, I never can sleep. By the time my usual sleeping hour is arrived, I have generally got so restless and nervous from lying awake, that slumber is banished

altogether. Consequently, whenever I am under circumstances that oblige me to retire early to my room, I make a practice of reading till I find my eyelids heavy. But the dormitory assigned me in this Franciscan convent was so chilly, and the lamp gave so little light, that either remaining out of bed or reading in it was out of the question; so I yielded to necessity, and stretched myself on Padre Pachorra's hard couch; and a very hard one it was, I assure you. I was very cold too. There were not coverings enough on the bed to keep in my animal heat; and although I spread my own clothes over me also, still I lay shivering in a very uncomfortable manner, and, I am afraid, uttering sundry harsh remarks on the padre's niggardly hospitality. In this agreeable occupation, as you may suppose, the flight of time was somewhat of the slowest. I do not know how many hours I had been there, but I had begun to think it never would be morning, when I heard something stirring in the gallery outside my door. The silence of a convent at night is the silence of the grave. Too far removed from the busy world without for external sounds to penetrate the thick walls, whilst within no slamming door, nor wandering foot, nor sacrilegious voice breaks in upon the stillness, the slightest noise strikes upon the ear with a fearful distinctness. I had no shutters to my window, so that I was aware it was still pitch-dark without, though, within, the feeble light of my lamp still enabled me to see a little about me. I knew that the inmates of monasteries not only rise before daylight, but also that they perform midnight masses, and so forth; but then I had always observed that on these occasions they were summoned by a bell. Now, there was no bell; on the contrary, all was still as death, except the cautious foot which seemed to be approaching my room. "What on earth can it be?" thought I, sitting up in bed with an indescribable feeling of apprehension. At that moment a hand was laid upon the latch of my door. I cannot tell why, but instinctively I jumped out of bed-the door opened, and in walked what appeared to me to be Brother Lazarus, exactly as the prior of Pierre Châtel had described him to me on the occasion of his nocturnal visit to his chamber. His eyes were open, but glazed, as of one dead; his face was of a ghastly paleness; he had nothing on but the gray tunic in which he slept; and in his hand he held a knife, such a one as was used by the monks to cut their large loaves with.

You may conceive my amazement,' continued Charlie Lisle, whilst amongst his auditors every eye was firmly riveted. 'I rubbed my eyes, and asked myself if I were dreaming. Too surely I was awake-I had never even slumbered for an instant. Was I mad? I did not think I was; but certainly that was no proof to the contrary; and I almost began to doubt that Brother Lazarus was dead and buried on the other side of the Pyrenees. The prior of Pierre Châtel had told me he was dead, and I had heard several others of the brotherhood alluding to his deccase. I had seen his grave made ready, and I had passed his coffin as I descended to the hall; yet here he was in Spain, again rehearsing the frightful scene that Jolivet had described to me! Whilst all this was fleeting through my mind, I was standing en chemise betwixt the bed and the wall, on which side I had happened to leap out. In the meantime the apparition advanced with bare feet, and with the greatest caution, towards the other side of the bed; and as there were of course no curtains, I had a full view of his diabolical features, which appeared contracted with rage and malignity. As Jolivet had described to me, he first felt the bed, as if to ascertain if I were there; and I confess I was frightened out of my senses lest he should discover that I was not, and possibly detect me where I was. What could I have done, unarmed, and in my shirt, against this preternatural-looking monster? And to wake him-provided always it was really Brother Lazarus, and not his double, a point about which I felt exceedingly uncertain-İ had learnt from Jolivet was extremely perilous. How

of infinitesimal reckoning? The legislature ought certainly to interfere. If it did not, there was only one hope left, and that was, that every one of the brownmoney intruders would very shortly be ruined!

In this manner, with blended feelings of consolation and despair, the bookselling world looked on the revolution from silver to copper which broke out in 1832. As is always the case in revolutions, the universal notion was, that things would by and by return to their wonted condition, and that all would go on comfortably as usual-meaning thereby that the cheap-sheet nonsense would soon explode, and no more about it. This expectation was not creditable to the acumen of the bibliopolic community. Instead of setting their faces so generally against the change, and prophesying all sorts of bad endings to the new régime, they should have perceived-Jacob Tonson and Dodsley would have done so -that the cheap-sheet idea was nothing more than an exponent of the age. In the progress of human affairs, a time had arrived when nobody had any guineas, halfcrowns, or shillings to spend on books. There was nothing left in the pockets of the human race but a few odd pence and halfpence. But, deplorable as was such a catastrophe, it happened that there was still as much money in the world as ever. The only novelty was, the dispersion of the money through a great many pockets: there being, for example, eight men each with threehalfpence, in place of one who formerly had a shilling. The change was not confined to books. Every object which could be manufactured by the agency of wheels instead of men and women's fingers, similarly, and about the same time, came down in price with a marvellous celerity. Where is the haberdasher who cannot show a piece of beautiful lace, which, within his remembrance, was sold at half-a-crown a yard, but is now offered at the humble price of three-halfpence?

Of all mad ideas, that is the maddest which anticipates a return of old usages in trade. Yet how common to see men endowed with rationality standing coolly by, in the hope that affairs will resume their previous character, and with all their might denouncing changes of which it should have been their duty to take advantage. One of the first principles of commercial wisdom consists in a ready adaptation to what is evidently about to become a new fashion of taste. To stand aloof and jeer is a piece of short-sighted folly, which carries with it its own punishment; because others less scrupulous minister to the popular fancy, and speedily leave their brethren nothing to laugh at but their own incredulity. Booksellers, we fear, were too long sceptical as to the permanency or propriety of the cheaper class of publications. Many, resisting them as long as possible, have even at the last given but a faint and ungracious adherence to that great modern principle of trade-small profits on numerous transactions, instead of large profits on few transactions. On the whole, however, considerable allowances for an entirely altered state of things require to be made. Booksellers with neat counters and prim shelves could not, with complacency, see the disorderly intrusion of bales of loose sheets, which threatened a demand for new accommodation, new book-keeping, and an addition of sundry new hands. The truth is, the poor trade' were taken a good deal by surprise, and out of that state they have not all as yet been able to come.

So much may be granted by way of palliation; but unfortunately no degree of allowance can exactly mend the matter. To our mind the fact is as clear as the sun at noonday, that the existing bookselling apparatus has failed as an enginery for the distribution of cheap literary sheets. To do justice to the recent innovations, an entirely new system of trade, supplementary to the other, would be desirable, in order to bring the distributive into harmony with the productive. Here is the way the thing stands. Twenty years ago, books were generally printed in small editions of seven hundred and fifty or one thousand copies; and for the distribution of these limited quantities the bookselling

trade was strictly and well adapted. A new order of affairs ensues. Sheets, each a book of its kind. are printed by machinery to the extent of hundreds of thousands of copies. The number of sheets which our own machines alone turn out annually is ten millions; and this is but a fragment of the new kind of trade in literature. It may seem that, if we can manage to distribute ten millions of sheets through the ordinary channels of trade, there is nothing to complain of. This is reasoning which would do for the eighteenth, not for the nineteenth century. Let us grapple with particulars. Of each number of our Journal, about eighty thousand copies have for years been distributed. Fifty thousand of these are issued in monthly parts, and such are, to all intents and purposes, monthly magazines, purchased by the higher-class families. Thirty thousand are disposed of in single sheets, the way we really wish the work to be sold. Now, what are these thirty thousand cheap sheets among twenty-eight millions of people? Say that, with our Miscellany of Tracts, and other things, we dispose of two hundred thousand sheets per week, what is even that amount to the reading population of the British islands and colonies? Our object all along has been to reach the masses, but we cannot get to them. In vain, as we said in a late article, do we cheapen literature to the verge of non-productiveness; the persons for whom we write and incur hazards are not those, generally speaking, who become our purchasers. Our sheets are addressed to the cottage fireside; they find their way to drawing-rooms. Mr Knight-of whom the 'trade' have no little reason to be proud-makes, we believe, a similar remark. There is, he observes, a universal tendency for sheets to run into the book form; the proper interpretation of which seems to be, that the enginery for sheet distribution is imperfect, and that booksellers generally encourage the monthly part or book form, as everyway less trouble

some.

The great question, however, remains-Do the masses, that is, the bulk of the manual labouring classes in town and country, really wish to buy literary sheets? Is it not all a delusion and fallacy for publishers like ourselves to imagine that these classes have a taste for reading, or that it is possible to create such a taste in them? After making every proper allowance for the unsuitableness of existing literary sheets, our own included, to the tastes of the working-classes, we are inclined to think that a large proportion of them would become purchasers if the article were brought distinctly within their reach. At present, few of them enter booksellers' shops; and unless a person frequent these establishments, he cannot, according to old-established usage, become a buyer of books. The only sure way to reach the masses is to act aggressively-take the booksellers' shop to their doors and firesides, and let them see and handle what is going on in the department of literature specially addressed to them. But who could undertake to send salaried agents to the doors of all the working-people of Great Britain, in the hope of selling them halfpenny tracts? There appears to us to be only two means by which the thing could be feasibly attempted. One would consist in country booksellers greatly altering the style of their operations. Instead of laying a parcel of new tracts or cheap popular books on their counters, and there letting them take their chance, they might either proceed themselves, or send persons in their employment, to call on all parties around likely to become purchasers. If well-worked, such a system would carry literature into every neighbourhood, and probably extend the sale of cheap and useful books immensely; and it would have the advantage of being carried out at scarcely any expense.

Should provincial booksellers find it inconvenient or impracticable to institute any such process, then another distributive enginery might be attempted. Small shopkeepers in the country, or in densely-peopled neighbourhoods, might safely and profitably adventure in the trade of selling cheap and popular tracts; and so

might individuals out of employment take up the business of hawking articles of this kind. A number of instances have come to our knowledge of parties, formerly in wretchedness, making a good livelihood by this easily-conducted trade, while at the same time they greatly extended the taste for popular literature. In a large town, where the sale of our Journal could not by the usual means be raised above fifty copies, an enterprising individual, stepping beyond the bounds of the trade, elevated it with ease to twelve hundred copies. In another, but much larger town, the sales of our publications generally have been latterly doubled, merely by a bookseller in the place having incited a few men in poor circumstances to become peripatetic dealers. There is not one of these men, he tells us, who sells fewer than forty volumes daily of our Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Tracts immediately after their publication; and all this over and above what the regular trade were in the habit of distributing. These, and other circumstances, convince us that the process of distributing literature has fallen considerably behind the age, and admits of prodigious extension through the agency of a new class of tradesmen acting aggressively on the masses.

Whether these rambling observations may have the effect of calling into existence such an agency as we speak of, is of course to be determined by time alone; but we mention a fact, by way of showing that our ideas on the subject are not altogether visionary. One day, about nine or ten years ago, a young man from the country waited upon us to crave our assistance. He was not begging. He told us that he had been a handloom weaver; that his trade was gone; that he could no longer subsist by it; and that he was determined to try something else. He said he had always had a taste for reading, and he fancied that he could make a livelihood by going about the country selling books and tracts. The only difficulty was this-he had no capital to begin with. Would we give him credit? All he wished was a small stock of our publications, to the value of L.2; and to show that we might rely on his integrity, he produced a certificate of character from the minister of a congregation to which he had been some years attached. This little bit of paper was all the young man had to depend on. His fate trembled on our decision. Starvation in one scale of the balance, a comfortable independence in the other. The latter went down with a bang. We gave him the credit he required. He sold the books in a few days, and came to pay some of his debt, and get more books. In a few days, again, he sold these, paid up a little more of his debt, and again had a fresh supply. Thus he went on, always getting the more cheerful and enterprising; extending his business round the country, and realising a comfortable livelihood. Where and what is he doing now? That once abject hand-loom weaver is at this moment a respectable bookseller in a country town, with a number of persons in his employment. From first to last he has dispersed a large quantity of our sheets and books; and of other publications his sales have doubtless been far more considerable.

The success of this person, whom we may call handloom weaver No. 1, incited another individual, whom we may call hand-loom weaver No. 2, to try the same sort of trade. We likewise granted him credit on the like terms; and he also, we are glad to say, turned out well, and is now in respectable circumstances. Hearing of all this, hand-loom weaver No. 3 made his appearance; and he, after a little inquiry, was placed on the same footing with his predecessors. No. 3, however, was a failure. Having got the two pounds' worth of credit, we never saw him more. The cash he got into his hands proved too heavy a temptation. There were, in his opinion, a great many good drams and bottles of porter in two pounds. And to indulge his appetite in these, he sacrificed a lifetime of respectability and comfort. At this moment he is precisely in the position from which he made the too ambitious effort some years

ago to raise himself. In these anecdotes do we not see a miniature of the social world?-the true and honest man getting forward in his arduous enterprises; the false, the self-indulgent, the indolent, lost in the great gulf of human wretchedness.

JACQUES LAFITTE.

'IF men make their boast of the honourable name, the rank in life, which they inherit from their fathers, why should it not be a much nobler boast to owe only to myself, to my own talent, my genius, my industry, name, and fortune, and position in society-to make them all, in short, for myself?'

Such were the reflections of a youth who, one morning in the year 1787, was hurrying, in much apparent agitation, along the street of the Chaussee d'Antin, and who now stopped, as if undecided what to do, before one of the handsomest hotels in Paris, which had been long the abode of a great banker.

No sooner had he passed through the gate, than a very natural feeling of timidity made the youth draw back a few steps, while his mild and pleasing countenance seemed to assume a still more pensive expression as his eye for a moment fell upon his plain coarse garb. The courage which had led him on so far had suddenly abandoned him, and he would have gone away as he came, if the concierge, or house-porter, who had been for some moments watching and smiling at his embarrassment, had not advanced towards him and inquired what he wanted.

I wish to see Monsieur Perregaux,' replied he, encouraged by something in the look of the man. 'You can walk up stairs,' answered the porter, pointing to a wide handsome staircase, which our young hero ascended as if every step was made of fire, so much did he dread cutting with his hob-nailed and dusty shoes the soft rich carpets which covered it.

In the anteroom he found a great many people, and stood modestly in a corner, while the big tears were trembling in his eyes as he thought of his native town, of the paternal roof, of the companions of his childhood, and of the last adieu of his mother-her anguish, her fears, her admonitions.

'You have here a humble home, but still a home,' said she weepingly; what do you expect to do at Paris?' 'I want to make my fortune,' replied the young man, and then to share it with you, and my father, and my brothers.'

'Fortune does not always come to him who seeks,' said the anxious mother.

'But it never comes to those who do not seek,' replied the young enthusiast.

'Well,' said the fond mother, 'go, if it must be so; but should you not succeed, do not be ashamed to return to us. The house of your father, and the arms of your mother, will be ever open to you, and, like the prodigal, you shall have the fatted calf killed for you.'

He had laughed in his youthful ardour at the puerile fears of his mother. Not succeed!' said he to himself; 'impossible!' Nor was his faith shaken in the morning on which he left his home; for that morning was a lovely one in April, and how could he distrust the gracious providence of God, whilst the very air he breathed seemed redolent with his goodness? But as he drew near the end of his journey, the goal of his hopes, he began to feel some misgivings; and by degrees they took such possession of his mind, and of every faculty, that at the moment it came to his turn to have an audience of the banker, he would gladly have been anywhere else.

Monsieur Perregaux was standing in the window: he was reading a letter, and hardly raised his eyes as the youth entered, as if awaiting his speaking; but hearing nothing but a hurried breathing, he at length looked up, and perceived a very pleasing countenance, and lips parted as if to address him, but no sound was audible.