66 struck with the beauty of the child, whose features brought his sister to his recollection.-"What is your name, my little dear ?" said he. Rosalia, Sir." "Rosalia, do you say? Good woman, is this your child?" addressing the laundress. "Yes, Sir, I think I have a good right to call her mine, since I have adopted her and maintained her for these three years; but though I say she is mine, I cannot say I am her mother. Her poor mother was a prisoner, and she has now neither father nor mother." "Her mother a prisoner, did you say?" Aye, and a grand lady she was, Sir, but she was guillotined along with others in Robespierre's time." 66 The Count was persuaded that he had found his niece; but to be farther convinced, he made the experiment of speaking to her in Polish. On hearing the accents of her native tongue, Rosalia burst into tears, and throwing herself into the Count's arms, exclaimed, "Ah! I understand you; that is the way my mother used to speak to me." The Count had no longer any doubt; he pressed the child to his heart, exclaiming," Rosalia! Rosalia! you are my niece, the daughter of my beloved sister!" Then turning to the laundress, whom surprise had ren dered motionless and silent, "Worthy woman," said he, "be still the mother of your Rosalia, you shall not be separated from her. Since you made her one of your family when she was a destitute orphan, your family shall belong to hers in her prosperity. And now let us begin to share with you." With these words, he put a purse of gold into her hands, and that very day provided lodgings for her and her children at the Hotel Grange Batelliere. Soon after he left Paris for Poland, whither Rosalia's second mother and the whole family also went. The children of the laundress were educated under the eyes of the Count with the greatest care. The boys, who were sent to the University of Wilna, afterwards joined the Polish army, and became Aids-de-Camp to Prince Poniatowski. The daughters received handsome portions and were married to Polish gentlemen. As to the Countess Rosalia, she married her cousin, Count Rezewonski; and, when she related to me this affecting anecdote, opulence and felicity had spread their golden wings over her destiny. The good Madame Bertot still lived with the Countess, who called her always her mother. LONDON. [From the unpublished Travels of Theodore Elbert, a young Swede.] THIS, then, is St. Paul's. What but with any other feeling than curiosity, with any deep sympathy, any trembling aspiration, with faith, or hope, or charity? Nothing-nothing whatsoever. It may be a good Cathedral; I am sure it is a bad church. This wide blank circumference, with the dusty banners above, and the statues of victory, and Neptune, and the stone lions around it, and the pattering feet and loud tones of idle wanderers; it is an exchange, a show-room, a promenade-any thing but a temple. It has nothing of the shadowy magnificence of the Teuto nie minster, harmonizing so well with all our higher and more obscure feelings. It was made as a haunt for Deans and Prebendaries; but who would think of bringing to it his prayers, his thanksgivings, and his penitence? But, leaving the interior of the church, and mounting to one of the outer galleries, there is a change indeed. We lose St. Paul's, and see nothing but London. The building becomes no more than a vantage ground, from which to contemplate the vast city. Far and wide spreads over the earth the huge, dim capital of the world. Look northward over that province of brick, to the dim outlines of the hills, which seem scarce more than a part of the murky atmosphere; and west towards that other realm of houses, outstripping the gaze, and encircling other distant towers, and stretching away to the seats of government and legislation; and again south, where the wilderness of human habitations is cleft by the wide and gleaming river, laden with all its bridges, and flechered with a myriad of keels for wealth or idleness; and see, too, the broad fronts and soaring pinnacles of a hundred churches, and the port that raises against the sky its trellis-work of innumerable masts: and, over all this, is one hue of smoke, and one indistinguishable hum of activity. It is difficult to reduce one's thoughts and feelings at such a spectacle, to any thing definite. The mind at first, is all vague restless astonishment, while the eye wanders over leagues of building: and sees every where the same working mass of busy vitality. How is it that the scene has been produced, which so fills and stirs us? How is it, that this portion of the world has been so cut off from all the rest, and set apart as the agent of such peculiar impressions? Time has been when there was nothing here but marsh and meadow, and woody knoll, and the idle river rolling down its waters between banks only trodden by the wolf and elk, to a sea, whither no human eye had ever traced its course. Time was when the shaggy savage first leaned upon his club ou yonder northern hill, turning his eager eyes over the green plain, and the broad river; and then led down some strag gling horde of barbarians to rear their huts of mud and wicker beside the stream, perhaps upon the very spot now filled by this enormous pile of architecture. The wicker was changed for brick and wood, and the narrow dungeons, which were the homes of the other generations, threw their shadows over the wea pons of the Roman legions, and over faces which wore the hues of every climate under the sun. The city became the home of burghers, the haunt of nobles, the seat of kings. The massy bridge, the moated castle rose; and the clumsy boats of those rude centuries began to float hither ward with every tide, till, with the halls of hundreds of Barons, and the guilds of hundreds of trades, now filled with mustering armies, no desolated by plagues and famines. sometimes active with revolt, and again glittering with royal triumphs, London became a mighty city. The growth of many ages, the greatness of a whole people, have made it whe it is. Successes, which gave wealth to the nation, gave more than share to the capital; and misfor tunes, which desolated the country have driven its population hither. The commerce of the world pours into its gates, and circulates through all its streets. Here are the thrones of three kingdoms, and of three-score colonies, of the provinces of the west, and the empires of the east, and hither come the gifts of subject millions. The tides of every sea. and the wheels of every manufactory on earth, speed the current of exist ence through the veins of London. And thus it is, that I am now survey. ing at a glance, this whole immense domain of bustle and competition, 2 kingdom of swarming streets, enormous concentration of hu an t: ed by the sight of it. At a distance, we think of a few resplendently bright, of a few pre-eminently dark, points in its history. The slaughter of Roman Catholic and Protestant martyrs by royal tyranny and sectarian intolerance, the escape of the five members to the city,-the study of Milton, the scaffold of Vane. But when we look upon the scene itself, we see little but the widespread collection of vulgar desires and fierce passions, the size of Mammon's temple, and the number of his worshippers. We scarcely connect the idea of religion with those churches which are so entirely imbedded among worldly structures, and many of which we know to be completely the mere husks and shadows of devotion, scarcely ever entered even by a score out of all those thousands now hurrying past them,empty pretences, and solemn mockeries! There is little to indicate any nobler intelligence than the mechanical among the crowds all bent upon gain, and surrounded by the ingenious devices of luxury, which mingle in yonder streets for the various rivalries of traffic. Every thing around is so alien from meditation, that we are inclined not to study and think upon it, but to take part in its restlessness, and give ourselves up to its absorbing interests. There is nothing here to which any feeling attaches itself, but the inclusion beneath our eyes of so many hundreds of thousands of our fellow little accord with the feeling produc- the hearts of the crowds which pass beneath me, what could earth show of more profound and intense interest? These confluent streams of life are big with a thousand varieties of opinion and feeling, into all of which we can in some degree enter, and which cannot be thought of without an anxious and mysterious curiosity. The greater number of these persons are ignorant, misguided, opposing their will to duty, never to passion, utterly reckless and almost utterly wretched. I have, as it were, beneath my hand, a million of living souls; yet, in fact, to moral purposes, dead and decaying. Nurtured in alternations of toil and vice, they are, through life, bound down by the tyrannous necessities of their daily existence, or only loosed at intervals for the relaxation of debasing excess. Their sympathies are deadened by the want of sympathy around them; for the greedy poverty of the crowd has devoured almost all their love for their neighbour, and the more ravening selfishness of the rich, has, alas! swallowed up the whole of theirs. Many of these myriads know scarce any thing, but the pressure of the hour; the retrospect of the past is similarly painful; and, when they look forward for a moment to the future, they transfer to it the direct suffering or the unsatisfying pretence of pleasure which deforms the present. The dust eats the dust; and the image of God is degraded in man to the likeness of the beasts that perish. Yet wherefore should this be so? There are also in the city I look upon hundreds, at least, of expansive hearts and searching intellects, not indeed arrived at clear satisfaction, yet stirred by the prompting consciousness that there is a higher aim of being than the outward world or our senses and passions can furnish. They vary perhaps on innumerable subjects of prudeuce, of duty, of religion; but, while there is within a living power, restless and aspiring, there are also hope, and strength, and comfort. But, above all, there may be even men. Extent, number, ceaseless and multitudinous occupation, these are the objects which strike us. The details are only interesting as linked to these. For there is here no crumbling pyramid, or shattered Coliseum; no volcanic mountain filling the atmosphere of a city with the menace of death. But we are face to face with a larger mass of living and busy humanity, than on any other spot of the world's surface. And is not this enough to think of? If the height on which I stand would enable me to look down into 44 ATHENEUM, VOL. 9, 2d series. now moving among those undistinguished swarms below me, or dwelling upon that dim eminence which rises in the distance, some great and circular mind, accomplished in endow ment, of all-embracing faculties, with a reason that pervades like light, and an imagination that embodies the essence of all truth in the forms of all beauty,—even such an one as C—, the brave, the charitable, the gentle, the pious, the mighty philosopher, the glorious poet. How strange is the bond which unites all these together under the name of man! Or is not that which they have in common, the very capacity, by the cultivation of which we might exalt the meanest of those I see, into perhaps the highest perfection I have thought of? I am now standing on a building which proclaims to every eye in the capital of England the nominal supremacy of Christianity; yet nine in ten of its inhabitants never turn a thought towards the benevolence and piety of Christ, while many of the remainder, with all the phrases ready in their mouths, which make their speech a confused jargon of worldliness and religion, yet feel, it is to be feared, no whit of love to God or man, but angrily cling to their sect, and idolatrously bow to some lifeless creed. Nor is this to be wondered at. Every thing around us tends to make religion a matter of forms, and names, and lip-service, and thereby to deprive it of all permanent hold upon the hearts of men. All, all is selfishness. Selfishness in the conduct of every one of the corporations which compose or minister to the government: selfishness in the intercourse of society: selfishness in the auxiety of every class to weigh down those below it. But where is the attempt at the moral culture of the people? Or who the men that, without thought for the feeding of their own vanity, or the spread of their own power, go forth in courage and sincerity for the regeneration of their country? If such there be, (and some such there are,) where are the signs of their exertions? Track home to their lanes and cellars many of the craftsmen and the labourers, the servants of our pleasure, and see amid their families the unquiet tempers, the sullen rages, the evil cravings, the mutual unrepentant reproaches, which add a sting to penury, and throw poison into the waters of bitterness. But if, instead of stopping there by the squalid fireside of the poor, we turn away to the dwellings of the rich, how much is changed in the shape, but how little in the material! Here, too, are jealousies, and hatreds, and malignity, vulgar anxieties, and miserable ambitions. To be sure, the lean cheek of envy is fed from plate instead of earthenware, and self-oblivion is sought for in the costliest, not the cheapest, intoxication; but the miserable debasement of human nature shows as foul in velvet and jewels as in rags. Look at that dark roof,-it covers a prison: and there the laws of the country proclaim that the most atrocious guilt is collected,-the worst moral diseases. We do nothing to make men self-denying and conscientious. The Government says, "If you do not agree with us on every point of doctrine, you have no title to become wise or good, and we will not assist you." We surround the people with innumerable temptations. We do little towards instructing, nothing towards educating them; and we set them the perpetual example of secure selfishness. A wretched child, born perhaps in a work-house, aud nurtured in a brothel, is taught to gain his daily bread by crime; and compelled, by the menaces of his protectors and the physical sufferings of hunger, to trample down his moral repugnance, plunders some rich man's superfluity. Again and again, perhaps, he succeeds: at last comes the sudden vengeance of the law; and, to remedy the evil, be is thrown into a prison; probably the only abode on earth worse than his habitual home. He learns still more to glory in criminal enterprise. The pride of endurance comes to his aid: and with no good feeling strengthened, no new idea of man's social relations or higher duties communicated, he is disgorged, an outcast upon the world, again to prey upon his kind; until, before he is yet a man, some consummate outrage brings him to the scaffold. Then through all these streets pours the dense throng of eager spectators; and, while the bell sounds from yonder tower, thousands without a thought either of terror or compassion, but with the same love of excitement which makes them seek the inferior stimulus of a dram, hurry from every corner of London to see the horrible removal from the world of a being, who, perhaps, never heard the name of God or duty, or received the sympathy of one human creature. Such is socie ty. Such is London. Such scenes as these might well disgust us with cities. It has been often said, and is in some degree true, that the evils of humanity are increased by being brought together in towns; that corruption thus communicates corruption, and that, in these hot-beds, every vice bears fruit after its kind. But be it remembered, that good has a tendency to spread as well as ill, and is no less living and productive. In the enor mous assemblage of minds I now survey, what an object is there for good men to act upon! Evil as are the arts, and discoveries, and means of enjoyment, heaped up and displayed in this vast store-house of the world and treasury of invention, if they be considered as in themselves final ends; how immeasurably valuable are they as instruments of real improvement! And above all, placed here at the central heart and moving springs of the whole social earth, every beneficial impulse we may give will thrill, not merely through all the mass of this, the capital city of mankind, but will be felt in the utmost limits and recesses of the globe! From this spot, the beneficent energy of a single man may produce good to the future generations of the whole race, which will be felt and celebrated, not merely when his bones are among the graves of the church-yard beneath my eye, but when the churchyard itself shall be encumbered with the ruins of this great structure; when the remains of a fallen city shall have choked up the channel of yonder river; when these palaces and towers shall have no inhabitant but the owl, and no visitant but the forest deer; and silence and desolation shall prevail where once was London. ASCENT OF A MOUNTAIN IN IRELAND. LEAVING Mucness, I began the disclosing glens, whose gloomy sides ascent of Mangerton by a mountain path from a little village called Cloghereen. As you ascend, you leave the lakes behind; but from several points, when one turns about and looks down, the prospect is extremely beautiful. The lakes, studded with little wooded islands, and bounded by huge mountains, whose ample sides are clothed with trees, lie like a delicious picture beneath your feet, while the wreaths of curling smoke mark the town of Killarney in the distance, and new vistas open in the mountains to the right, are contrasted with the glittering surface of the little lakes that lie deep in their bosoms. At the height of nearly two thousand feet, on turning the shoulder of a slight and abrupt eminence, more perpendicular than the general line of the ascent, you come suddenly upon a still lake of very considerable extent, awfully deep and cold-this is called the "Devil's Punch Bowl." The name embodies in it a pithy moral; for if Satan can boast no better liquor than this, it is an awful warning not to travel his way, nor put up in his |