I succeeded, the tiger, whether to drown my voice, or from sympathy, set up such a roar at the same time, and this he did so repeatedly, that convinced of the futility of the experiment, I abandoned myself in silence to my fate. Its crisis was approaching. If he had no hunger for food the savage had an appetite for revenge, and soon showed himself disposed, cat-like, to sport with his victim, and torment him a little by exciting his terror. I have said cat-like, but there seemed something more supernaturally ingenious in the cruelty of his proceedings. He certainly made faces at me, twisting his grim features with the most frightful contortions-especially his mouth,-drawing back his lips so as to show his teeth-then smacking them, or licking them with his tongue-of the roughness of which he occasionally gave me a hint by rasping it against the iron bars. But the climax of his malice was to come. Strange as it may seem, he absolutely winked at me, not a mere feline blink at excess of light, but a significant, knowing wink, and then inflating his cheeks, puffed into my face a long, hot breath, smelling, most ominously, of raw flesh!

"The horrid wretch! why he seemed to know what he was about like a Christian!"

Yes, madam-or, at any rate like an inhuman human being. But, before long, he evidently grew tired of such mere pastime. His tail-that index of mischief-resumed its activity, swinging and flourishing in the air, with a thump every now and then on his flank, as if he were beating time with it to some Tiger's March in his own head. At last it dropped, and at the same instant thrusting one paw between the bars he tried by an experimental semicircular sweep, whether any part of me was within his reach. He took nothing, however, by his motion, but his talons so nearly brushed my knees, that a change of posture became imperative. The den was too low to allow of my standing up, so that the only way was to lie down on my side, with my back against that of the cage-of course making myself as much like a bas-relief as possible.

Fortunately, my coat was closely buttoned up to the throat, for the hitch of a claw in a lappel would have been fatal: as it was, the paw of the brute, in some of its sweeps, came within two inches of my person. Foiled in this fishing for me, he then struck the bars, seriatim, but they were too massive, and too well imbedded in their sockets, to break, or bend, or give way. Nevertheless, I felt far from safe. There was such a diabolical sagacity in the Beast's proceedings that it would hardly have been wonderful if he had deliberately undone the bolt and fastenings of his late front-door and walked in to me.

"Oh, how dreadful if he had! And what a position for you, sir! Such a shocking picture-a human fellow-creature in a cage with a great savage tiger, a-tearing at him through the bars-I declare it reminds me of the Cat at our Canary!"

CHAP. IX.

I WOULD not marry the Young Lady who made that last comparison for Ten Thousand Pounds!

CHAP. X.

CONFOUND the Keepers!

For

Not one of them, Upper or Under, even looked into the room. any help to me, they might as well have been keeping sheep, or turnpikes, or little farms, or the King's peace-or keeping the Keep at Windsor, or editing the Keepsake! or helping the London Sweeps and Jack-in-the-Green to keep May Day!

Oh! what a pang, sharp as tiger's tooth could inflict, shot through my heart as I remembered that date with all its cheerful and fragrant associations-sights, and jscents, and sounds so cruelly different to the object before my eyes, the odour in my nostrils, the noise in my

ears!

How I wished myself under the hawthorns, or even on themhow I yearned to be on a village-green, with or without a Maypole; but why do I speak of such sweet localities?

Mayday as it was, and sweep as I was not, I would willingly have been up the foulest flue in London, cleansing it gratis. Fates that had formerly seemed black and hard, now looked white and mild in comparison with my own. The gloomiest things, the darkest misfortunes, even unto negro-slavery shone out, like the holiday sooterkinswith washed faces.

My own case was getting desperate. The Tiger enraged by his failures, was furious, and kept up an incessant fretful grumble-sometimes deepening into a growl, or rising almost into a shriek-while again and again he tried the bars, or swept for me with his claws. Lunch-time it was plain had come, and an appetite along with it, as appeared by his efforts to get at me, as well as his frequently opening and shutting his jaws, and licking his lips, in fact making a sort of Barmecidal feast on me beforehand.

The effect of this mock mastication on my nerves was inexpressibly terrible as the awful rehearsal of a real tragedy. Besides from a correspondence of imagination, I seemed actually to feel in my flesh and bones every bite he simulated, and the consequent agonies. Oh, horrible -horrible-horrible!

"Horrible, indeed! I wonder you did not faint !"

Madam, I dared not. All my vigilance was too necessary to preserve me from those dangerous snatches, so often made suddenly as if to catch me off my guard. It was far more likely that the brain overstrained by such intense excitement, would give way, and drive me by some frantic impulse-a maniac-into those foamy jaws.

Still bolt, and bar, and reason, retained its place. But alas! if even the mind remained firm, the physical energies might fail. So long as I could maintain my position, as still and as stiff as a corpse, my life was comparatively safe: but the necessary effort was almost beyond the power of human nature, and certainly could not be long protracted -the joints and sinews must relax, and then

Merciful Heaven !-the crisis just alluded to was fast approaching, for the overtasked muscles were gradually give, give, giving-when suddenly there was a peculiar cry from some animal in the inner room. The Tiger answered it with a yell, and, as if reminded of some hated

object at least as obnoxious to him as myself-instantly dropped from the cage, and made one step towards the spot. But he stopped short-turning his face again to the cage, to which he would probably have returned but for a repetition of the same cry. The Tiger answered it as before with a yell of defiance, and bounded off through the door, into the next chamber, whence growls, roars, and shrieks of brutal rage soon announced that some desperate combat had commenced.

The uproar alarming the Keepers, they rushed in, when springing from the cage with equal alacrity, I rushed out; and while the men were securing the Tiger, secured myself by running home to my house in the Adelphi, at a rate never attained before or since.

Nor did Time, who "travels in divers paces with divers persons" ever go at so extraordinary a rate-for slowness-as he had done with me. On consulting my watch, the Age which I had passed in the Tiger's Den must have been some sixty minutes!

And so ended, Courteous Reader, the Longest Hour in my Life!

SHORT RIDES IN AN AUTHOR'S OMNIBUS.

MORTUARY AFFECTATIONS.

So many people dramatize their deaths, especially if there be any thing public or premature in the mode or time of its occurrence, that it would almost warrant the assertion that a natural and unaffected exit is as rare from the stage of life as from the stage of a theatre. When we read of Cardinal Wolsey, that nothing in his life became him like the leaving it, we are only to conclude that he was acting a part for the first time. A public death is never a natural one in any sense, as has been repeatedly exemplified in the case of criminals, some of whom assume for the nonce the demeanour of suddenly converted saints, while others affect the defiance and impenitence of irreclaimable daredevils. Few, indeed, meet their fate in a manner consistent with their previous character and career, or perhaps in conformity with their realfeelings at the moment.

Even in selecting modes of suicide there is sometimes a touch of conceita hankering after posthumous celebrity. Why did Empedocles throw himself into the crater of Mount Vesuvius-why did ancient desperadoes select the Leucadian rock-why do our modern love-lorn damsels choose the Monument for their last leap? Neither of these would seem to be very attractive modes of self-destruction. Others are not inattentive to personal comfort at a moment when one would expect them to be utterly indifferent to such trifles; for it is a remarkable fact that persons rarely drown themselves in very cold weather, while in a very hot season the number of river suicides often rises with the thermometer.

Every one knows that Cæsar fell like a brave soldier, sinking down.

in a becoming manner at the foot of the statue of Liberty; but it is not so generally known that he also fell like the author of the "Commentaries," for he defended himself with his stylus, or steel pen, and stabbed Casca in the arm before he yielded to his fate. This was indeed dying in character; but then he was taken by surprise. time been allowed him he would doubtless have got up a mortuary affectation.

POPES THE FIRST REFORMERS.

Had

WHEN the Popes, at the revival of letters, encouraged education and learning, they unintentionally laid the foundation-stone of the Reformation, for the rays of knowledge which they thus scattered, like the torches of the Furies, revealed the ugliness of the enlighteners. To use the words of Bolingbroke, "the magicians themselves broke the charm by which they had bound mankind for so many ages, and the adventures of that knight errant who, thinking himself happy in the arms of a celestial nymph, found himself the miserable slave of an infernal hag, was in some sort renewed." It is well to see schools planted, for their founders are only sowing so many dragons' teeth, which will rise up as armed men against ecclesiastical tyranny and

abuse.

HOW QUOTATIONS SHOULD BE INTroduced.

"I Do not profess myself a scholar; and for a gentleman I hold quotations a little pedantical. He should use them rather as brought in by memory, raptim, and occasional, than by study, search, or strict collection, especially in essay, which of all writing is the nearest to a running discourse. I have so used them as you may see I do not steale but borrow. There is no cheating like the felony of wit: he which theeves that, robbes the owner, and cozens those that heare him."-Owen Feltham's Resolves.

The late Chief Justice Kenyon was sometimes betrayed by his forgetfulness into a curious infelicity of allusion, quotation, and translation. He once complained of some malpractice in the following

terms:

"I was in hopes that an amendment would have been produced by the last notice of the court, but I am sorry to say it is semper eadem

worse and worse."

It is recorded of the same judge, probably by some wag of a barrister who did not very accurately catch his words, that on the trial of a bookseller for publishing Payne's "Age of Reason," he exclaimed, "This impious and audacious writer has dared to attack the truths of our blessed religion-truths not only recognised by sages and philosophers, both ancient and modern, but even by the Roman Emperors, one of whom was so deeply imbued with the spirit of Christianity that he deservedly received the name of Julian the Apostle."

A curious instance of inept and unapt quotation is afforded by a tombstone in the neighbourhood of London, erected to the memory of a pious and irreproachable young lady, who died, quite suddenly, in her twentieth year; after informing the reader of which facts, the inscription concludes with the words, "Frailty! thy name is woman!"

LOGOMOTIVE RESULTS OF A BAD CHARACTER.

"WHAT a traveller you have become !" exclaimed an Englishman on meeting an acquaintance at Constantinople.

"To tell you the truth," was the frank reply, "I am obliged to run about the world to keep ahead of my character; the moment it overtakes me I am ruined; but I don't care who knows me so long as I travel incognito."

Boswell records an unhappy man, who having totally lost his character committed suicide, a crime which Dr. Johnson reprobated very severely.

"Why, sir," urged Boswell, "the man had become infamous for life;-what would you have had him do?"

66

Do, sir? I would have him go to some country where he was not known, and not to the devil, where he was known."

PROGRESSION OF MANKIND.

GOETHE, Speaking of the perfectibility of the human understanding says, "It is always advancing, but in a spiral line. Like a pointer coursing a field, it returns on its steps, and going backwards and forwards before it advances, finally discovers its game.'

Some have doubted the progression of our race because men are born with the same capacity now as in the earliest stages of the world. True, abstractedly, but not relatively; for each individual succeeds to the accumulated mental wealth of his predecessors, which, to a man of genius, gives the same marvellous power of expansion that capital and machinery supply to a manufacturer. Libraries, those savingsbanks of thought, are the stored-up treasures of past ages, placed at the command of the present; so that although our individual capacity be the same as that of our forefathers, our collected means are immeasurably greater. Our eyes may not be better than theirs, but we see the further for being mounted on their shoulders.

Not to believe in the certain advancement of our race, however slow may be the ratio, is the most melancholy of all disbeliefs. It implies a distrust of the Creator's beneficence; for to multiply the number of human births, without ennobling the destiny of man, is only to prepare a more sumptuous banquet for death-perhaps also for the devil. "Never attempt to villanize mankind," says Cudworth. If the wheel of thought, and consequently of action and condition, rolled round like that of fortune-if there were to be no such thing as human progression, mankind would be doomed to the fate of Sisyphus without his crime.

TO BE DAZZLED IS TO BE DARKENED, NOT ENLIGHTENED.

If we gaze too intently at the material sun we seem to be surrounded, when we remove our eyes, with black spots and a misty dimness. So it is with the enthusiast who contemplates too long and too closely the brightness of the spiritual sun. "Blind with excess of light," when he looks out upon the world, it appears a mass of moral plague-spots, a sink of benighted iniquity, and he denounces mankind at large as wallowers in reeking abominations, sinful worshippers of dumb idols in a dark cave. Does it never occur to these libellers of their species, these diabolizers of man, that they cannot vilify and make a monster