They got out, and when the gate was opened, the usurer desired to be shown into the waiting-room, and that Henry Abbot might be brought to speak to him.

Henry Abbot!" exclaimed the man addressed; "you're too late to speak to him. He died yesterday."

With much difficulty they got the old man into the cab, and while the youth supported his senseless burden, the driver whipped his horses the whole way back to the inn they had first quitted.

The usurer died about a year afterwards, but he lived long enough to accomplish a great deal of the good he intended, and increased the funds of the principal charitable institutions in the metropolis at his death. The youth--but we will be silent

about him.

Our tale is told.

ARNHELDT WEAVER.

THE DEVIL'S WALK IN 1846.

THE Devil uneasy sat in his state,
Revolving the news from earth of late.
Cries he, "I must have later:

I shall visit the earth;" and as he spoke
Around him he threw his travelling cloak,
And with rumble and groan,

On a red hot stone,

Rode up from Mount Etna's crater.

He spread his wings, and away he flew
O'er Sicily, to Malta;

But alighted not, as a fresh wind blew,
Till a favourite haunt came into view,
A stepping-stone, where to rest his shoe-
The rock of fam'd Gibraltar.

Cloudless and starlight, the brilliant sky,
As o'er sea and land he roll'd his eye,
And his quick glance scour'd the coast afar,
From Cape St. Vincent to Trafalgar ;
"There!" cries the Devil, "my temples are."
On Africa now he turn'd his gaze,
"Yonder," said he, "my altars blaze,
And hecatombs, as in ancient days,

Are offered at my shrine.

Ye priests! of Dahra's murderous caves,
Heed not your victims' whine,
But pile the faggots higher;

Until by hundreds the wretched slaves
Roast, and expire,

And from the pyre,

Spreading o'er all the world its human flame,
In deathless characters shall spread Pelissier's name."
Once more, the Devil is on his way,
Flying o'er Biscay's foaming bay,

Dropping a glance from his onward soar,

As he passed the banks of the fatal Loire ;

Whence there rose to his ear, as he thought, the wild And drowning shriek of mother and child.

And now the Devil's voyage is over,

He has furl'd his wings on the cliff of Dover,
And blithe as a bridegroom before his marriage,
Takes his seat for town in a first-class carriage.

'Twas night; and the Devil contrived to steal
Into the House, as Sir Robert Peel

Made his free-trade oration :

Oh could you have seen him writhe and smart,
As each duty discarded pierced his heart,

And he groaned out with vexation,

"Curse their free-trade-for wars will cease:
Buyer and seller must dwell in peace :
I had hoped to have set America on
To fight with England for Oregon,

But my blood-red standard may now be furl'd,
Goodwill must reign throughout the world."
And the Devil with anger storm'd and shook,
As from the house his way he took.-

He saw a huge crowd by a prison wall,
Waiting the gibbet's festival;

They had waited there from set of sun,
And as yet the day had not begun.

Hark! the death-bell tolls

Back the vast crowd rolls

A moment's pause, like the silence of death;
Even the Devil held his breath:

Then a murmuring shout, it rent the air-
A woman hung strangled and quivering there ;
And the Devil glared on the crowd below,

And he joy'd at the fruit of the murderous show.

Thieves, by dozens, were plying their trade,
Women were fighting, or drunken laid.
"These are the scenes that I love right well,"
Thought the Devil; "they serve to people Hell."
Now he takes 'mong the city streets his range
And marks a crowd, anxious and dense,
Thronging around the Stock Exchange,
With eagerness most intense;

As if hung the life of each needy wretch
On the price his scrip that day would fetch.

"Hurra!" cried the Devil, "man's never content
With the sober rate of five per cent.;

To get rich without labour, is now the desire
Of noble and beggar, parson and squire ;
Sinner and saint, all join the dance;

But to-morrow I'll play to them, 'Off to France.""
And now for a moment quiet and still,

The Devil he lurk'd in the smoke of a mill :

Where spindles were turning,

And gaslights were burning,

And children their day's bread were busily earning.
Thought he, "What a conscience these Englishmen have!
They give millions of money to free the poor slave,
And then to his master they turn round and cry,
Though you whip your slave till he's ready to die,
In raising your cotton, that cotton we'd buy."

The mill is stopp'd, the work is done:
Away the weary children run,
Quoth the Devil with a hellish grin,
As he stroked his finger upon his chin-
"That child is gone to purchase gin."

But pale he turn'd, when he saw the libel,

The child has not purchased gin but—a Bible.

Still paler he turn'd, and scarce could speak,

When he found ten thousand were sold that week.*

Confounded, he spread his wings on high,
And shot like a meteor through the sky,
Till over Mount Etna he stopp'd,
When with rumble and groan,

Like a red-hot stone,

He once more down the crater dropp'd.

* Alluding to the present extraordinary demand for Bibles at Manchester.

A PLEA FOR THE WORLD BELOW STAIRS.

BY PAUL BELL.

66

WHEN I was a little tiny boy, sir, I used to stand at the door of the Blue Bell, opposite my father's house, that I might watch the mails going out, with a bitterness of yearning you gentlemen who live perpetually in the metropolis can't understand ;-we country folks used to be for ever hearing of your London Cries! Now it may be that the increase of reciprocal intercourse has taken off the edge of the strangeness; or else you have fewer "Water Cresses," and "Babes in the Wood," 'Bird Cages,' "Dolls' Bedsteads,' "Hot Muffins," and other such "easements of life," (as Jeannie Deans called them) than your fathers. Here and there, it is true, one may hear, in a long lonely street, some pernicious Italian tempting you to buy a tombola," (under which invitation the Le Grands have assured me there lurks a jesuitical meaning and intention calling for close watchfulness on the part of The Record); but there's no more possibility of encountering a sweep than a Unicorn: while the ice carts are too grand, and Monsieur Jullien's vans too genteel and English (for Monsieur Jullien boasts, I hear, that he is now a thorough Englishman) to make any noise as they go! In short, whatever Mr. Hullah may choose to say, sir,-London is a less musical place by daytime than it was thirty years ago.

66

For all this and though, to boot, the race of town criers who used to bawl in village streets for lost children, and to announce sales by auction, is well nigh extinct,-there is no lack of cries abroad. I can never, for instance, set foot in certain houses, without being knocked down by 66 Who wants an old abuse?" or "Churches to mend !" And what housekeeper will deny the fact, that, so soon as ever two or three get together and begin to praise their own and to pity their neighbours' mismanagements,-a sort of "Ullalu" or lament, over the " degeneracy of servants," is as certain to be raised, as a most comprehensively christian “grace" after my Lord Bishop of Exeter's dinner, or the peal of applause which follows Macready's "There's no such thing!" in his dagger scene from Macbeth. Young England or Old England,-Exeter Hall-goer or Romeward-bound-aristocrat or mill-owner, it is

pretty much the same song-the same words to the same tune! -a beggarly account of "perquisites" and keys turned-of Licentiousness in a shoulder-knot, and Cheatery in a bedgown and apron; a tale of trumpery warfare, without a single new feature or excitement to distinguish it. And when the chroniclers have talked themselves out of breath, ninety-nine times out of the hundred comes this inevitable winding-up: "Well, we shall never see such a thing as a good old servant again. It's a great pity!"

Now, sir, without any unfair wish to take their bread (a grievance) out of the Criers' mouths, I must beg leave to say a few words on a matter which comes home to all of us : whether we have "chariots and horses, and fifty men to run before us," like Adonijah the son of Haggith,-or but one poor gawky Tilly Slowboy, to brandish our baby in the faces of all our friends who threaten to enter our houses. What right have I to speak? is a question which will be asked, perhaps.-This, sir-Owning as I do some fifty cousins, in every condition of life, from my cousin, Lord- -'s steward, up to my cousin the cotton Lord, who has a steward of his own, (and who, Mrs. Bell desires me to add, might naturally be expected to show more kindness to his relations,) I have had much opportunity of observing what goes on in families: and as I only make mischief in print, can warrant my fairness as a private witness. What I say, I know; and I hope this assertion will content any who may be disposed to fancy me presuming.

First, sir,-nay, it is last too, as well as first, I am disposed to deny that those who treat their servants in "the good old fashion," are worse served than their grandfathers and great aunts. How was it with them? If I was not fearful of prolixity; or, if the matter could be proved by instance against instance, I could bring up some famous examples of knavery and ingratitude which were produced in those homely days, when the persons under the same roof lived toge ther like one tribe; and father and son waited upon father and son. Was there any charm in frugality of manners and familiarity of speech which could keep out cupidity and ignorance?-destroy the desire to rise, or put to rest the gross sensual passions? Look at an old Newgate calendar ;—not that I wish to be understood to encourage such reading, save for good purposes-false wills, murders, personal outrages, connivance in mad-house oppressions !—are no such "accidents and offences" chargeable on the domestic servant of the blessed old times? What tales, again, would our provincial annals unfold, of misers in lonely houses-of credulous ladies held