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a tight hand over him, but its too late now. God help 'em, poor souls, I say."

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"Amen, mistress," said Andrew; 66 nevertheless punishment is wholesome for example's sake, and it's right guilt should suffer; and verily the parents of the lad if they be as you say pious Christians should rather rejoice in their affliction, and praise the Lord that he is cut short in his wickedness."

"I say 'praise the Lord,' indeed, that their only child should come to the gallows! A fine thing to praise God on," growled the woman yet more indignantly; "I wonder what some folk's feelings are made of. I say 'praise the Lord,' indeed!"

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Woman," retorted Andrew, but his sentence was cut short by her angry vehemence as she continued in a taunting key:

"Maybe you'll like for example's sake' to see that pretty lamb by your side with the rope round his neck some day; maybe you'll praise the Lord for that, master," and so saying she stretched out her long bony arm and laid her hand on the shoulder of the shuddering child; and when Andrew turned to rebuke her and their eyes met, the expression of hers struck into his heart with a sensation of strange uneasiness, as caused him suddenly to draw the child beyond her reach; and long afterwards, for many and many a day, and when months and years had passed away and the recollection of that scene had faded and no particular circumstance occurred to revive it, that woman's face and that peculiar look would come across him, and again strike into his heart the same feeling of horror which impelled him at the moment he actually encountered it to snatch the boy from within the evil influence of her touch. But all further altercation was cut short by the pressure of the living mass, among which a general agitation and a low confused murmur took place as it fell back on either hand to make way for the cart, and the woman left off in the midst of a volley of revilings on Andrew's hard-heartedness, in her anxiety to press back in time to secure a snug place near the gibbet, where she might see all in comfort. Andrew raised his head involuntarily as the cart came abreast of his own vehicle, and the wretched criminal was so near, that in the deep stillness which had succeeded that murmur his short, quick, laborious respiration, broken at intervals by a convulsive sob, was distinctly audible. The culprit was a mere youth, a tall, slim lad; he was almost effeminate in the transparent delicacy of his complexion, the profusion of fair hair, which waved in disorder about his temples, and the sickly whiteness of his long thin hands, one of which hung lifelessly over the side of the cart in which he sat erect and stiffened, as if under the influence of some spell, and seemingly incapable of attending to the clergyman, who was seated by his side, occasionally reading a few sentences from the book of Common Prayer, and exhorting him to join in some pious ejaculation or penitential verse. At such times the wretched boy looked for

an instant towards the book of prayer, and his lips moved, but no articulate sound proceeded from them. Those quivering lips were parched and deadly white, but a spot of vivid crimson burnt on his hollow cheek, and the expression of his large blue eyes, distended to an unnatural roundness, was exceedingly ghostly. Occasionally he looked eagerly from side to side, and in one of these hurried glances his eyes met Andrew's, and he faintly ejaculated the word "Father."

Right glad was Andrew Cleave when, the cart with its miserable burden, the sheriffs with their attendants, and the whole dismal train having passed onwards, the people thronged after them to the place of execution, and he was once more at liberty to pursue his way, urging on Dobbin with an energy he had never before ventured to exert on that steep declivity; but the sound of that agitated swell of a distant ocean, was still audible, and multitude-that heavy, awful sound, like the Andrew speeded to get beyond it, and to reach C, now within the distance of a few furlongs.

All this while not a word had passed between father and son, but just before they entered the town Andrew looked round at the child who remained, as it were, glued to his side, both his little arms being fast locked round one of his father's. He was very pale and trembled like a leaf, and when his father spoke to him and he tried to answer the attempt produced only a deep choking sob that burst out as if his very breath had been pent up for years; one or two hysterical catches succeeded a broken word or two, the brimming eyes overflowed, and then his little heart was relieved and lightened. Oh! that the burden of older hearts could be as easily breathed! and he slackened his grasp of his father's arm and began to breathe and prattle again freely. Andrew fairly enough improved the opportunity of that awful sight they had witnessed by pointing out to his young companion the dreadful consequences of vice and the danger of yielding to temptation, even by the most trifling deviation from moral and religious rectitude. They had just reached the entrance of C, so the lecture was necessarily concluded, but Andrew failed not to wind up his exhortations against the early inroads of sin by inveighing especially against the particular sin of waste and extravagance, charging his son to take great care of his clothes and not to squander his money in toys or sweets. The latter charge was especially requisite, as Josiah took with him to school the capital of three sixpences in silver, and was to receive the stipend of twopence every Monday morning. Andrew's last charge was abruptly put an end to by the rumbling of his cart wheels over the stones of the high-street, and in two minutes they had turned out of it into the market place, then through a long narrow back street, and at length drew up before a tall red house with a bright green door, having on

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it a large brass plate, whereon was engraved white cloth, and, having partaken of the meal with sundry flourishes:

"( THE COMMERCIAL ACADEMY

FOR YOUNG GENTLEMEN,

KEPT BY THE REV. JEREMIAH JERK.”

All matters concerning the admission of Josiah
had been settled over and over again, so Andrew
had nothing more to do than to deposit his boy
in the hands of the Rev. gentleman, which
transfer was the affair of a moment; for Andrew
had his private reasons for brief leave-taking;
so setting his son down at the door of his new
abode (when the master took the hand of his
little pupil, with that peculiar tenderness of
manner so insinuating to the breaking hearts of
new comers), he laid his hand on the boy's,
head, and, with a bright "God be with you, my
lad!" was in his seat again and off, and round
the corner of the street before the tears, which
had been swelling up into the little fellow's eyes,
had burst over their lids and down his pale
quivering face, in all that agony of grief excited
by the pang of a first parting. However cogent
were the reasons which decided Andrew to de-
cline the Rev. Mr. Jerk's proffered hospitality,
he was by no means in haste to get home that
day; he had business to transact with sundry
corn-factors and graziers, and various other
persons in C, and found so much to detain
him there, though his concerns were wont to be
more expeditiously transacted, that it was eve-
ning before he mounted his rumbling vehicle,
and put Dobbin in motion, and quite dark be-
fore he reached the door of his own cottage.
It was a cold, cheerless March evening, and
an east wind and sleety rain had been driving
in his face all the way home, and as he ap-
proached the cottage its bright blazing hearth
glowed invitingly through the low casement and
reflected a red cheerful light on the half-open
door, and streamed forward like a clew of
welcome along the narrow gravel-walk to the
entrance-wicket and yet Andrew was in no
haste to re-enter his comfortable home. Some
heart may guess why he lingered on the cold
heath-such as have felt the pang of returning
to an abode where all is as it was, except that
the light of life is extinguished, the jewel gone,
the shrine left desolate but at last poor
Jenny came hurrying out, at the sound of the
cart-wheels, with her humble welcome and won-
derment at his late return, and offers of assist-
ance in unharnessing Dobbin, that her master
might the sooner come in and warm himself.
Her well-meant kindness was rather gruffly de-
clined, so she had to retreat within doors, and
leave "master (as she muttered to herself, not
in the best of humours) to please himself his own
way;" and when at last he approached the fire-
side, and she ventured a cautious question as
to how he had left the dear child, she was
snapped up with an injunction to mind her own
business, and not to trouble him with foolish
questions; so, having set down his supper on
the small table already prepared with its clean

in unsocial silence, she was dismissed to her
own cottage, with an intimation that Andrew
could himself put away the fragments of the re-
past, and had no need of her further services
that night. What were Andrew Cleave's special
reasons for ridding himself of old Jenny's com-
pany that evening, and what were his cogitations
after he had locked her out, and himself in, and
resumed his former station by the hearth and
the little supper-table, we cannot exactly guess,
though it is to be presumed they differed widely
from that feeling of snug satisfaction with
which, after the old lady had set by him his
pipe and his glass of ale, he had been wont to
lock her civilly out and reseat himself in the
comfortable corner, knowing that his child was
sleeping peacefully in the adjoining chamber,
and that he should himself lie down near him
when the cuckoo flung open his small door in
the old Dutch clock and warned him that it was
time to retire. It would be hard to say whether
the ensuing Saturday was more eagerly looked
Certain it is that
forward to by father or son.
when the morning of that day arrived Andrew
was in no less haste to be gone than when he
had harnessed old Dobbin to the cart so ex-
peditiously the Monday before, but when he
reached C-it was still too early to call for
his boy; for Andrew, with all his impatience,
would not on any account have anticipated the
precise moment when the half-holiday began;
so he trafficked away the intervening time at the
different places of call, and drew up the cart at
the door of Mr. Jerk's Academy, just as the
boys had risen from their Saturday's commons
of scrap-pie and stickjaw-certain savoury pre-
parations not enumerated in the catalogue of
that scientific professor, Monsieur Ude, or per-
haps recommended by Dr. Kitchener, but quite
familiar to the palate of provincial schoolboys.
Little Josiah, having just risen from the aforesaid
banquet, came running to the door at the sound
of the cart-wheels, choking with joy and the last
huge mouthful of tenacious compound, and in a
moment he was up in his father's arms, and
hugging him so tight round the neck that
Andrew was fain to cry out:

“Well, well, my little man; but you'll not throttle your old father, will you? Have you been a good boy, Joey?"

Joey answered with a second hug, and the usher, who stood smirking at the door, satisfactorily certified the same; so the boy was sent to wash his greasy face and hands, and fetch his hat and little bundle of Sunday clothes; and then his father lifted him up in the cart, and, turning old Dobbin and giving him the sign of departure (a bright chirrup and a propelling stamp), in a few minutes they were fairly out of C, and on their glad way to the cottage. What were the boy's exclamations of delight at the first sight of its curling smoke and dark brown thatch; and how, in spite of Andrew's endeavours to set him right, he persisted in miscalculating time and space; and how often he fidgeted up and down on the seat; and how

he took a heap of chalk in a distant field for the grey colt, and a flannel-petticoat hung out to dry for old Jenny herself; and how his father pointed out the folly of making such foolish assertions, and how the boy went on making them thick and three-fold-those will be at no loss to conceive who have ever accompanied a lively urchin to his own home on his first return after his first week's schooling. They may also picture to themselves the actual arrival: little Joey actually at home again, smothering old Jenny with kisses, squeezing the cat to a thread-paper, scampering down the garden to see if his beans had come up, unhitching his hoop from the nail, and flinging it away to run and see whether the grey colt was in the home-croft, scampering upon the back of his unbroken favourite, and racing round the fields, holding on by its mane, and not a jot the worse as a finale for being pitched right into the privet hedge, from whence, half rolling, half scrambling, out into the garden he came crawling up the gravel-walk on all-fours, with that characteristic disregard of seriousness and propriety which had so early evinced itself, despite

his father's solemn exhortations and decorous example. Fortunately, on the present occasion Andrew was busy unharnessing his mare, and there was nothing new to Jenny in the uncouth performance. When the first ebullition of joy had subsided Josiah was well content to sit on his little stool beside his father, close by his warm bright hearth, while Jenny lit the candle and then sat beside him.

LINES.

BY AN ANONYMOUS POET.

Tortured by fierce experiences, consumed
Through fiery ordeal of implacable years,
Shut out from hope, beset with pains and fears,
Pierced by sharp thorns where roses should have

bloomed,

Without a single thought or sight that cheers,
Thy buried pangs exhumed and re-exhumed,
How sad thy bitter lot! Yet he who steers
His bark above the grave, where lie entombed
In time's deep sea the fruits of vain desire,
Blighted ere ripe, may hold a nobler way,
And though rough storms about his course may fire
Their thunderbolts, and waves and winds may play
With his frail vessel, like a toy, yet higher
Than storm and cloud and wind shall rise his day.
Though death should draw thee from this fair
domain,

And with a little clay seal up thine eyes,
And turn to common air thy breathed sighs,
Yet shall thy sweetness be blown forth again,
And make thy tears but drops of April rain;
And, fed with summer glories, newly rise;
And echoed music of thy soft replies
For beauty ne'er hath limned a fairer face,
Be sung once more by birds about the plain;
Nor truth and love e'er lit a brighter eye:
And surely He who is the Lord of grace,
Will never let such truth and beauty die;
But though they change their mortal dwelling-
place,
Their shows shall still survive beneath the sky!

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A PICTURE FROM NATURE.

Then let us to the purple heath,
Inhale the fragrant, sweet-gale breath,
Where the wide, embrownèd ground
Stretches like an ocean round.

No sign of man that may be traced,
Not a tree to mark the waste;
Only narrow pools that lie
Shining to the shining sky.
Waving o'er the black morass,
Tufted plumes of cotton-grass;
Pale buck-bean, with fringèd flower,
Sparkling under every shower;
Golden stars of Asphodel,

With knops of clustered heather-bell,
And tender sundew-'broidery fair
Any queen might wish to wear.
We shall find the freckled snake
Sleeping in a tangled brake
Of cranberry and crooked ling,
Curled in a threefold ring.
Wheeling over where we sit,
The curlew with a shrill "Tewit !"
And buntings, whirling round, distrest,
To lure us from the neighbouring nest.
Then we dream, 'midst breezes bland,
Of some happy, fairy-land,
On the curling cloud that lies
Anchored in the tranquil skies.

THE MOABITE STONE.

Not long ago, being quite tired with the turmoil and worry of the commercial life of London, I thought I would "air my mind," and at the same time refresh my exhausted spirits, by withdrawing for a while from the wear and tear of every-day toil; and as I knew that Oxford, quiet Oxford, would be the place I should like best, I took up my abode there for a few weeks. I heard accidentally someone talking of a famous lecture on the Moabite Stone, which a Dr. Neubauer, one of the most distinguished palæologists of the present day, was going to deliver in the Taylor Buildings the next day. The old-world Moabite stone! only lately discovered, which has thrown the whole learned world into a ferment of astonishment and wonder, it being the oldest | specimen of writing on record ever discovered, and which verifies scripture in a most wonderful manner. It has besides occasioned no little quarrelling, as some are sceptical both as to the nature of the stone itself and also to the interpretation of its meaning, so that it appears likely to prove a bone of contention upon the modern Ólympus. I thought I would go and hear what Dr. Neubauer had to say on the subject, so taking my hat and stick in spite of a lazy inclination to eke away the afternoon in my comfortable arm-chair, I sauntered down St. Giles', which leads to the Taylor Buildings. I never walk down St. Giles-street with its quaint houses jutting out one before the other, making fantastic play of light and shadow (which you never see in houses straight "like charity children" in a row), without having a curious feeling as if I were suddenly transported back into the sixteenth instead of living in this nineteenth century of straight lines and angles. The same when I go past St. John's College, with the old trees before it and the rooks (with a contemptuous disregard of the many footpassengers and noisy carriages of all description), that are quarrelling, making love, and gossiping; one I have no doubt bitterly complaining to the other, "How neighbour Blackfeather has been stealing some of my sticks which I brought for my nest," whereupon he flies upon poor Blackfeather, who imagined that no one had been witness to his pilfering, and a fight ensues, which sends the said sticks with feathers and straws flying through the air upon the pavement beneath. I have the same feeling also when I go into the Taylor Buildings on the right hand; for when you are fairly inside you are struck at once by the sight of the most lovely forms of Grecian Art strewed about in all directions, and it would literally be quite possible to play with "the heads and crowns of kings" which lie there in confusion jumbled up with sphynxes, colossal figures, and mutilated forms of beauty. There! a lovely winged figure

stands in the centre of the room, looking round in a listening attitude, as if he were expecting someone suddenly to appear who would deliver him from the cellar-like dungeon in which he is now incarcerated. I could not help thinking a great want of taste displayed in placing these beautiful specimens in an underground apartment, the beautifully lighted room in which they formerly stood being now apportioned to the school of design which is held there; and I have always a sad feeling when I go into that cellarlike room downstairs, where all Chantry's beautiful models (more beautiful than the marbles themselves as bearing the first impress of his genius), stand in mournful sadness, the damp of the place causing great natural tears to run down their miserable-looking faces. Some of them are covered with a black and blue mould, as if like the ship's crew wrecked upon a desolate island they had grown desperate, and been quarrelling and beating one another; that lovely sculpture by Westmacote, Venus with a love in her arms holding a butterfly in its hand, now opposite to a beggar-woman and her child, which before stood in a recess in the upper room under a window, the light of which fell upon the heads of the children, and gave the butterfly those iridescent colours which lighten and shimmer on a butterfly's wing; now it looks as if some ruthless schoolboy had caught it in his great hot hand, and the colours all gone: nothing but an ugly skeleton remains. But more lamentable still, in the dampest, darkest corner are two lovely full-length figures by Chantry, which reminds you of the Prince in the "Arabian Nights" all turned to black marble; so disfigured by the damp are they that if they had been carved out of coal they could not be more ebony in hue than are those woe-begone figures, who look as if they were enduring a kind of purgatory for their past sins. But we must leave this part of the Taylor Buildings, where Rome lies in ruins and where "Athens weeping over her lost Ægis" reminds us that here we have no abiding city; and I must now take my gentle readers by the hand and conduct them to the large and well-lighted room in which Dr. Neubauer is now beginning to explain to us the wonderful stone, a full length likeness of which hangs up on the wall behind him, not only with the characters inscribed, but the very fissures in the stone (described by blue lines), which were made by the Arabs in the hope of getting more money by selling it piecemeal, are faithfully delineated. Hanging by its side was a map of the valley of the Jordan, the long narrow strip of land not unlike a bottle in shape; a land almost divested of vegetation, and covered with patches of yellow green grass, while here and there is an oasis of bright green, occasioned by some little spring

which has forced its way bubbling above ground, making the rest of the valley only look more sterile and desolate. On each side of this valley lie the cities and towns formerly inhabited by the Moabites, to which the stone refers, and these towns it was the constant endeavour of the Israelites to get possession of, and to drive the inhabitants still further to the south. At Dibon, one of the principal towns, this stone was found, and all my readers who have ever been into that wonderful picture-room at the Bodleian library will gain a good idea of the stone by seeing the obelisk which stands in the centre (and on which are delineated the captive Israelites); they will, I say, have a good idea of the Moabite Stone, which seems to have been an obelisk in shape. When I was listening to Dr. Neubauer I could not help wishing that some of our English lecturers would follow his example, and instead of "with words like weeds" covering "their subject o'er;" so that sometimes you quite lose the subject altogether, which only crops up at intervals, like stones covered with vegetation, they would, like Dr. Neubauer, give a plain account, unembellished by any of the beauties of rhetoric. When I looked round the lecture-room and saw round the lecturer the reverend faces of the college dons with their quaint gowns, I could not help being reminded of the old Roman senators in the Forum, their gowns "like the Roman toga" adding to the resemblance, and the calm, quiet, meditative expression of their faces, produced by their long and habitual intercourse with books of the best kind, giving an expression so different from the disturbed eager money-loving expression which you so often see upon old men's faces who have always lived in the money-getting mercantile world, and which takes away so much from the sanctity and dignity of old age. One thing has always appeared to me singular-that Germans, unless they have learned English when quite young, are never able fully to master this language; and Dr. Neubauer's English was of the most broken description. I could hardly at first understand what he meant by "Zie robbings of die stone;" however, even with this slight drawback, it was a most interesting lecture. He translated to us a kind of diary upon stone, which Mesha, the King of Moab (see the third chapter of the second book of Kings), appears to have kept writing on the stone just as some ladies fill large manuscript-books, with the small details of their everyday life, and which they read in after years, perhaps with a sigh, as containing the account of the happiest part of their lives they having stepped from "the light into the shadow." This Mesha, it seems, was a sheep master, and had to render to the King of Israel an hundred thousand lambs and an hundred thousand rams, with their wool; while Ahab, who though a wicked king, appears to have kept a tight hand not only on his own subjects, but also on his tributaries, kept them in wholesome fear of him. M. Ganeau was the first

who had any information that this stone existed from the Arabs, who pastured their flocks in the neighbourhood. He sent some of his people to take rubbings of the stone, which however, nearly cost them their lives; for the Arabs, who imagined that they had some evil design in touching the stone, set upon them, and they only just escaped with their lives. From the fragments which they brought back to M. Ganeau he felt convinced that the stone was of singular value, and he opened negotiations with a friendly Shiek. As they will undertake nothing without payment beforehand, M. Ganeau bargained with him to bring him the stone for three hundred guineas, giving him two hundred on the spot. Nothing of the Shiek or the stone was heard of for some time, and M. Ganeau began to despair, when one day be suddenly appeared, and with singular honesty returned the money. It appeared that two Arab tribes both claimed possession of the stone, and refused to give it up for any consideration; and it seems also they imagined there was some cabalistic virtue in the stone, which made the French so eager to obtain it. That is the general opinion they hold when they see Europeans attempting to decipher any inscription, or making explorations of any kind. At last, after great trouble, they were prevailed upon to part with the stone, mutilated and broken about so that it could hardly be deciphered. M. Ganeau has published a transcription of the stone, supplying lacunæ. It is the oldest Phoenician inscription ever discovered, being two thousand seven hundred B.C. What is called the Shalmanasar stone ranks next to it, being two centuries later. The inscription slightly partakes of the character of hieroglyph, just as in geology the conglomerate rocks are a mixture of the stratum underlying it, and the stratum above it. M. Neubauer first gave us an historical and linguistic bearing of the inscription. It begins with an account of Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, being angry, and he said "I will desert the tabernacles of Moab;" so he departed, and Moab was smitten. Then Mesha and all the tributaries had to pay tribute (Kings iii.); but he triumphantly records, upon the black basalt stone, his rebellions against the king. "Then I began to reign, and Chemosh, he said unto me, Arise, and take the cities!' So I arose, and took Edom and Dibon." Then follows the summary of the different towns skirting the valley of the Jordan, which Mesha took from the Israelites. In speaking of one of the towns, he says, "I then sacrificed three hundred women and children to Chemosh, with which he was well pleased." Again: "I went up and took Dibon, and there I sacrificed men, women, and children to Ashtaroth, with which she was well pleased." It seems strange to read the name of that moon-diademed lady on this old stone, the same goddess who supplied Goëthe with his first idea of Faust, as the plot of the whole story was suggested to him by a play performed by some strolling players in an outhouse, which he witnessed when a boy.

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