and with both arms flung up, rushes, like a little maniac, out on the platform. The station-master, coming leisurely down a side-path, sees him, and runs forward. "I didn't signal-I didn't signal, and the up-train is just due!” cries the boy. 4. "My God " The man fairly staggers, appalled by the fightful peril. If the up-train is punctual to its time, and has left the next station, where, according to some late agreement, it ought to have been detained until this train (run on for some casual purpose) had passed, they must inevitably meet, and a catastrophe ensue. There was a tunnel on the line. May God be merciful this day! 5. The alarm is quickly raised, and officials start from vari ous corners. Now the signals work with frantic speed. After a breathless pause, the needle quivers with the response-the up-train has passed the next station, and is on its way, unconscious of danger; so clearly there is nothing to do but prepare for the worst. 6. Men, with grave faces, hurry down the line. A surgeon, and then another, appears on the scene; the few inhabitants of the neighborhood, suspending every employment, gather, with straining eyes, on the little bridge which spans the rails; and all this time the poor negligent lad, kicked indignantly by a dozen feet, stands shivering and crying on the plat form. * 7. "Well, we had not that to bear in my young days," said Father Lawrence, as the train, after tearing, with a desperate shriek, into subterraneous gloom, and rattling, quivering, in darkness, relieved only by an occasional gleam of light from an occasional crevice overhead, at length emerged into the fair sunshine, and triumphantly screamed to the fields which it cast behind it. 8. The old gentleman laughs, though rather nervously; for, though on the line pretty often, he can never get quite used to this way of travelling, never overcome a horror of those underground passages. Selwyn, also, feels a strange uneasi ness creeping over him, and, to escape it, shows a willingness to converse. There is more good-will between them that moment than there has been during their two hours' unbroken journey. 9. "We had a very different way of travelling in those days," resumed the priest. "It was safety versus speed then; but the saying is reversed by this generation. It is altogether1 too clever for a loiterer like me." 10. Selwyn replied, "What, do you regret the good old Highflier so long? His neck is broken, and will never be set again, depend upon it. But I also must own a sneaking attachment to him, for the sake of old times. To a gay young dog as I was, there was something pleasant about travelling in those days, what with the bright company you often met outside, the jolly coachman with his inexhaustible stories, and the hundred incidents you had time to notice on the road. Yet I must say I would not like to coach it to London now. The improvements which we grumble at are useful to you and me, sir, after all." 11. "What's that?" A piercing whistle, sharply repeated and answered-a curious movement-a hoarse call or two. Something is going wrong. Down claps every window, and heads look anxiously out. The peril is instantly understood. We are on the same line with an approaching train. 12. Such a scene of confusion as follows, such rapid, dismal whistles, such heart-rending screams of distress as rise from those flying carriages, may we never hear or see again. Some of the doors are burst open, and the frenzied occupants leap out, to be left, writhing and ghastly, on the road. "Keep inkeep in-see! we have still a chance for life." 13. By a special providence, the trains sighted each other at a good distance. The men have turned off the steam, and stand, white and breathless, in a terrible calculation-slacken perceptibly-we slide onward-good God! we meet!-No! Our lingering impetus carries us within six yards of each other, and there, with laboring vapor bursting from every outlet, face to face, we stop. 14. We stop, but are in imminent danger, for other trains are closely due, and if the irregularity has not been already rectified, our destruction is certain. The casual train has made the least way-it must go back, and we must follow. Slowly we follow, as, with retrograding movement, it slowly goes, a belching monster, whose murderous crash has been arrested, but whose hot breath still snorts at us in rage and menace. 15. What's that! A man in the next compartment, unable to bear the suspense, and trusting to the slow movement of the train, has jumped out; he lies with a dislocated neck, so keep quiet there, if you value your safety: we keep quiet, in such prayer as terror can make: we proceed without new danger; and presently,-passing men who stand and seem to cheer,-passing an engine with a tail of carriages, which has arrived, and been detained for us,-passing beneath the crowded bridge, we glide into the station. 16. The casual train slides off into safety, and we pause before a throng of anxious faces on the platform. Our stoker jumps down-heavy beads are standing on his forehead. "Six yards between us and eternity!" he shouts, with an outstretched arm. "SIX YARDS BETWEEN US AND ETERNITY!" He is a Godfearing man from that hour. TH 88. THE MONTH OF OCTOBER IN ITALY. THE month of October in Italy is certainly a glorious season. The sun has contracted his heat, but not his splendor; he is less scorching, but not less bright. As he rises in the morning, he dashes sparks of radiance over awaking nature, as an Indian prince, upon entering his presence-chamber, flings handfuls of gems and gold into the crowd; and the mountains seem to stretch forth their rocky heads, and the woods to wave their lofty arms, in eagerness to catch his royal largess. 2. And after careering through a cloudless sky, when he reaches his goal, and finds his bed spread with molten gold on the western sea, and canopied above with purple clouds, edged with burnished yet airy fringes, more brilliant than Ophir supplied to the couch of Solomon, he expands himself into a huge disk of most benignant radiance, as if to bid farewell to his past course; but soon sends back, after disappearing, radiant messengers from the world he is visiting and cheering, to remind us he will soon come back and gladden us again. 3. If less powerful, his ray is certainly richer and more active. It has taken months to draw out of the sapless, shrivelled vine-stem, first green leaves, then crisp, slender tendrils, and last, little clusters of hard, sour berries; and the growth has been provokingly slow. But now the leaves are large and mantling, and worthy in vine countries to have a name of their own; and the separated little knots have swelled up into luxurious bunches of grapes. And of these some are already assuming their bright amber tint, while those which are to glow in rich imperial purple are passing rapidly to it, through a changing opal hue, scarcely less beautiful. 4. It is pleasant then to sit in a shady spot, on a hillside, and look ever and anon, from one's book, over the varied and varying landscape. For, as the breeze sweeps over the olives on the hillside, and turns over their leaves, it brings out from them light and shade, for their two sides vary in sober tint; and as the sun shines, or the cloud darkens, on the vineyards, in the rounded hollows between, the brilliant web of unstirring vine-leaves displays a yellower or browner shade of its delicious green. 5. Then, mingle with these the innumerable other colors that tinge the picture, from the dark cypress, the duller ilex, the rich chestnut, the reddening orchard, the adust stubble, the melancholy pine-to Italy what the palm-tree is to the Easttowering above the box, and the arbutus, and laurels of villas, and these scattered all over the mountain, hill, and plain, with fountains leaping up, and cascades gliding down, porticoes of glittering marble, statues of bronze and stone, painted fronts of rustic dwellings, with flowers innumerable, and patches of greensward; and you have a faint idea of the attractions which, for this month, as in our days, used to draw out the Roman patrician and knight, from what Horace calls the clatter and smoke of Rome, to feast his eyes upon the calmer beauties of the country. CARDINAL WISEMAN. 89. COXCOMBRY IN CONVERSATION. THE emphatic speaker dearly loves to oppose, In contact inconvenient, nose to nose, A tasteless journal of the day before. Call'd on a friend, drank tea, stepped home again, I interrupt him with a sudden bow,- 3. I cannot talk with civet in the room- Perhaps might prosper with a swarm of bees; |