of the population. No charity is excited by religion nothing is done or suffered for that sacred cause. Consequently, you find none of those noble and disinterested efforts for the poor and helpless, which excite every mind, more or less, in England and America. There has lately, however, been a little reaction in this way, which is spreading among the higher ranks of life, and principally among the ladies, who, desiring a purer and more active piety, are the leaders in many excellent institutions. One lady of rank, in Berlin, is the superintendent of a hospital: several, both in that city and in Hamburg, are usefully engaged. There has also been much conversation lately upon what is called the "inner mission;" which is intended as a strong protest against Rationalism, and an endeavor to gain a firmer hold of the minds of the people in favor of religion. The leaders of this mission say their desire is to Anglicize Germany; to restore the Sabbath to its true position, as a day consecrated to God; and to obtain for the ministers of religion a respect and attention which is almost entirely lost. The great disappointment which has been felt about the movement of Ronge, which at the time of the pilgrimage to Trèves it was hoped would prove a second Reformation, obliges us to be cautious in forming another judgment. His sect of German Catholics still remain in Prussia. They have been exposed to bitter persecution everywhere, and entirely suppressed in Vienna, owing to their democratic tendencies; not fearing, even from the pulpit, to speak of the oppression of the rulers, and want of freedom among the people. They are, in fact, the only people who speak out in Germany. Their leader was obliged to fly to England to escape imprisonment; and many wild doctrines have now spread among his followers. They believe that the spirits of the good, instead of having a separate existence in the world to come, will be absorbed into the essence of God; and many of the members refuse a belief in Christ as divine, or in the inspiration of the Scriptures. As a religious party it will soon die out; but its influence upon politics may be extensive, containing, as it does, the only elements of freedom in the country. I think, then, we may gather that, upon the whole, there is some ground for the hope that among all these jarring elements of religious belief, a brighter day of pure Herr Wiehern, well known as the founder of the Rauhe Haus, a most successful reformatory institution for the young, near Hamburg, is the leader of this movement. He has traveled over all Germany to pro-religion and worship will arise for Germote its object, and holds a high place in the esteem of many of its rulers and kings. The King of Prussia, who, though so vacillating as a monarch, has yet many virtues, supports and desires the success of this mission. The young men, who are at the head of each Rauhe Haus, are imbued with its doctrines; and, as they are sent for into all parts of the country to conduct similar reformatory institutions, they carry with them the praises of Herr Wiehern and the "inner mission ;" and the apprentices who leave the Home, and who are received with open arms by the masters, though gathered from the dregs of the people, so complete is the reform effected, are all converts to the same doctrines. It is difficult to say what will be the result of this effort. Disappointment may be the portion of many of its enthusiastic advocates; but, at any rate, it is rousing from lethargy, and will awaken some to a higher sense of their social and religious duty. VOL. VII.-18 many-when dreaming and speculation are reduced to practice, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them, we come nearer to the life of Christ, and are more likely to obtain the wished-for results, than from all the philosophers who hope to penetrate by the light of reason into what was only intended to be discerned by faith—and that, where the morning star of the Reformation was first seen,* the Sun of Righteousness will again shine with redoubled brightness, and shed healing from his wings. CHARLES IV. AND THE WATCHES.-After his abdication, Charles amused himself in his retirement at St. Juste by attempting to make a number of watches go exactly together. Being constantly foiled in this attempt, he exclaimed: "What a fool have I been to neglect my own concerns, and to waste my life in a vain attempt to make all men think alike on matters of religion, when I cannot even make a few watches keep time together!" SPLENDID MISERY. A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. what relieved to the girls the sadness of their gloomy home. Their father had all an Irishman's love of company; and. ARGARET, or, as she preferred to though very young, his graceful daughters Countess of Blessington, rose from one of the lowest stations in life to the possession of wealth and all the enjoyments that wealth can purchase. She was surfeited with the pleasures of the world; flattered and caressed, almost idolized, but yet never happy. Her history carries with it a profound moral lesson, and is as strange and improbable as the novelist could portray; the scenes of her life are as full of marvelous and striking contrasts as the dramatist might venture to imagine. We meet her first in a plain, middle-class Irish home, in the obscure village of Knockbrit, when about five years old. Her family removed to the little town of Clonmel, where the father followed first the business of a corn-merchant and butter-seller, which was afterward relinquished for that of proprietor of a local paper-a change which proved ruinous to his fortunes. This father, Edmund Power, is bad and repellant enough for any tale. Abroad, he is considered a handsome, thoughtless, jovial fellow; with pleasant manners-a sufficiently merry and agreeable companion; at home, he is perfectly brutal-a man whose very presence carries terror to his wife and children. Now and then, too, the savageness of his temper bursts out beyond the domestic circle. A magistrate he must needs be; and, albeit he is a Roman Catholic, he chooses to distinguish himself by the fierce zeal with which he hunts for supposed rebels. On one of his excursions he shot mortally a poor innocent lad, and was tried for the murder, but acquitted. other gentlemen who frequented the Clonmel balls. It is curious to find these girls, notwithstanding the unpropitious environments of their home, and the training of their very commonplace mother, exhibit, when almost children, a rare elegance in dress and manner-native elegance it may well be called. Ellen was then the fairer of the two; but Marguerite charmed all by the vivacity of her conversation and the fascination of her manners. Ere she was fifteen the poor child had the misfortune to receive two offers of marriage. The gentlemen were both officers, both men of good family—either a great match for the daughter of a worthless, ruined man. One, Captain Murray, was favored by the young lady; the other, Captain Farmer, she held in the utmost dread and abhorrence. Yet he was the richer of the two; and the heartless, mercenary parents hesitated not to sell the unhappy child, in spite of her passionate remonstrances, to a man she detested, and whom they knew to be frequently insane. With this husband she lived three months, during which time "he frequently treated her with personal violence; he used to strike her on the face, pinch her till her arms were black and blue, lock her up whenever he went abroad, and often left her without food till she felt almost famished." Bad as was the Clonmel home, this was worse; and the miserable girl-wife escaped to her father's house. But there she found no welcome; "her father was unkind, and more than unkind to her." She was considered as standing in the way of her sisters' prospects, and ere long she again left the paternal roof. At little more than fifteen, Marguerite Farmer, with a living husband and a living father, is thrown on the world, an outcast from both the homes which nature and law had given her, and utterly unprepared by sound moral training to meet the perils of such a position. No fear and love of a heav As years passed on, the home of the Powers at Clonmel became more and more wretched. Increasing poverty and embarrassments irritated the father's temper to fury, and his outbursts of rage became more frequent and more terrific. It was an awful place for the training of young hearts; yet three of the daughters of this misery-stricken house lived to wear a coronet-Marguerite, Countess of Bless-enly Father had ever been inculcated on ington; Ellen, Viscountess Canterbury; and Mary Anne, Countess de St. Marsault. the child; respect for her earthly one was impossible. Naught that was high and noble, good or worthy, had she ever been Provincial gayeties now and then some- taught by precept or example. The world, miserable as to her it hitherto had been, was all she had been taught to think of from her cradle; to snatch such of its shallow joys as were within her reach was all the solace she had learned to expect. A long gap now occurs in the history of her life. Whither she wandered, or how she employed herself, for a period of about a dozen years, we know not. In 1816 she is resident in Manchester-square, London, with a brother, and has renewed her acquaintance with the Earl of Blessington. She had met this nobleman, as Lord Mountjoy, long before in Clonmel, when he was there with a regiment of militia. After that time he had married. In 1814 his wife died, and the disconsolate husband chose to display his grief by the most costly funeral honors. The body lay in state in his house in Dublin, and some four thousand pounds were required to defray the expenses. On the 16th of February, 1818, he married Mrs. Farmer, she having become a widow four months previously by the death of her husband, from an accident which befell him in a drunken revel. The newly-wedded couple repair to Dublin. A party of his lordship's friends are asked to meet them. Some of these knew nothing of the marriage, which had been kept a secret, till Lord Blessington "entered the drawing-room with a lady of extraordinary beauty, and in bridal costume, leaning on his arm, whom he introduced as Lady Blessington." Then they remembered that when in that room before, it was draped in the emblems of mourning, and contained the lifeless remains of another Countess of Blessington, in her life beautiful and pleasure-seeking, like the fair lady now entering on the same paths, but all-forgetful that at length she must reach the same goal. In her husband's magnificent mansion in St. James's-square, Lady Blessington commenced her London life of fashion. What though she be but the daughter of an Irish trader, she will not submit to be looked coldly on as a parvenu; she is now a countess, nay, she will be more than an ordinary countess; she has grace, and talent, and energy, and she will aim at fashionable leadership, of the most flattering kind too-leadership in the world of aristocratic intellect. And she accomplishes her object. Holland-house and Charleville-house had each its own attrac tions for political and literary men; yet Lady Blessington speedily succeeds in filling her saloons with as distinguished a circle as any to be found in the metropolis. "The Blessingtons' splendid mansion in St. James's-square," writes Dr. Madden, "in a short time became the rendezvous of the élite of London celebrities, of all kinds of distinction; the first literati, statesmen, artists, eminent men of all professions, in a short time became habitual visitors at the abode of the newly-married lord and lady." "Two royal English dukes condescended, not unfrequently, to do homage at the new shrine of Irish beauty and intellect in St. James's-square. Canning, Lord Castlereagh, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Scarlett and Jekyll, Erskine and many other celebrities, paid their devoirs there. Whig and Tory politicians and lawyers, forgetful of their party feuds and professional rivalries for the nonce, came there as gentle pilgrims. Kemble and Matthews, Lawrence and Wilkie; eminent divines too, Dr. Parr, and others; Rogers, Moore, and Luttrel, were among the votaries who paid their vows in visits there, not angel-like, for theirs were neither 'few nor far between.'" Brilliant as this life was, my lord soon got tired of it. He had pursued pleasure so long that the chase itself had become wearisome, and the goal naught. A sad story was his. Born to a fortune of £30,000 per annum, with the large capacities for good and the many objects of interest open to a great land owner, with good abilities and an amiable disposition, he yet passed through life with no thought of responsibility, no one worthy aim. He lived to amuse himself; and, while yet in the prime of life, had the horror to find that he was no longer amusable. When grasped, all his delights fell into ashes in his hands. Still he would pursue the same weary, fruitless road, only try another of its many paths. Fresh excitement must be sought abroad, and a long continental tour was determined on. His lordship travels in magnificent style; and nothing which John Bull could wish for comfort, or aristocratic pride demand for show, is wanting. All arrangements are made in Paris, and my lord and lady are en route for Italy, accompanied by her ladyship's youngest sister, Miss Mary Anne Power, Mr. Matthews, the cele brated comedian, then a young man, studying architecture, and Count D'Orsay. In Naples our travelers remained upward of two and a half years. Part of this time they rented the palace Belvidere on the Vomero, "one of the most beautiful residences in Naples, surrounded by gardens overlooking the bay, and commanding the most enchanting view of its exquisite features. Within, we have marble terraces and pavilions, gilt ceilings, walls literally covered with pictures, doors with architraves of oriental alabaster and the rarest marbles, tables and consoles of the same materials-a sumptuous background to the graceful figure of the beauteous lady who here, as elsewhere, surrounds herself with the most brilliant society the neighborhood affords. And just at this time Naples had several English residents highly distinguished in science and art, from whom her ladyship obtained valuable assistance in her efforts -and they were diligent ones-to increase the store of her mental accomplish ments. About six years having been spent in Italy, our travelers return to Paris. The splendid mansion of the Maréchal Ney, in the Rue de Bourbons, is taken and furnished "with princely magnificence." Her ladyship's bed and dressing-rooms are fitted up after my lord's directions, and when all is ready she is ushered into them to be astonished, used to magnificence as she is, by the splendor and elegance of all around her. "The bed," she writes, "which is silvered instead of gilt, rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in alto relievo, and looks as fleecy as those of the living bird. The recess in which it is placed is lined with white fluted silk, bordered with bìue embossed lace, and from the columns that support the frieze of the recess, pale blue silk curtains, lined with white, are hung, which, when drawn, conceal the recess altogether." Dr. Madden very justly remarks, that Lord Blessington, when fitting up the hôtel Ney in this sumptuous manner, was coöperating very largely indeed with others of his order-equally improvident and profuse-in laying the foundation of the Encumbered Estates Court Jurisdiction, in Ireland. Ah! little did this gay couple, while thus decorating their mansion, think of the unwelcome visitor whose shadow was even now resting on it! Their plans were being laid for a new career of that thing which they called pleasure, though they knew it was not happiness. But the grim monarch, whose rule with its gloomy adjuncts must be ignored in these brilliant salons, may not be shut out himself. Suddenly he comes, and claims the master. While out riding, Lord Blessington was seized by apoplexy. He was carried home, and never spoke again. On the 23d of May, 1829, he terminated his earthly course. The spring of 1832 found the widow established in a house, furnished with her usual taste and magnificence, in Seymourplace. Then commenced her second London career, which extended over nearly twenty years, and by which she is best known to the public. Now, as before, she aims at sovereignty in the world of fashion, and of fashionable literature. Her soirées will be the most brilliant, her réunions none may surpass. For this purpose all her graceful talents and attractions are tasked. And not in vain. "The salons of Lady Blessington were opened nightly to men of genius and learning, and persons of celebrity of all climes, as well as to travelers of every European city of distinction. Her abode became a center of attraction for the beau monde of the intellectual classes-a place of réunion for remarkable persons of talent or eminence of some sort or another; and certainly the most agreeable resort of men of literature, art, science, of strangers of distinction, travelers and public characters of various pursuits; the most agreeable that ever existed in this country." In 1836 her ladyship removed to Gorehouse, where she resided for thirteen years. This same Gore-house had formerly been the residence of the excellent Wilberforce, who thus writes of it in his diary: "Walked from Hyde-park Corner, repeating the 119th psalm in great comfort. We are just one mile from the turnpikegate at Hyde-park Corner, having about three acres of pleasure-ground around my house, or rather behind it, and several old trees, walnut and mulberry, of thick foliage. I can sit and read under their shade, which I delight in doing, with as much admiration of the beauties of nature-remembering at the same time the words of my favorite poet, Nature is but a name for an effect, whose cause is God,' -as if I were two hundred miles from the city." Strangely different are the associations of Gore-house now. A brilliant course Lady Blessington's is called; yet compare its real joylessness, its heart desolation, with the glad seriousness, the fullness of domestic bliss, and of all which renders life a beautiful and harmonious thing, which that of the God-fearing man exhibits, and who will venture to characterize the one as a life of pleasure in the genuine sense of that word-the other as a life of gloom? 66 The establishment at Gore-house was sustained in a style of even greater magnificence than that of Seymour-place; its soirées more influential and of greater pretensions, congregating a higher class of men of great intellect" than used to assemble in her rooms. She received company every night from ten till half-past twelve; and there she sat, "the Minerva of the shrine, whom all the votaries of literature and art worshiped." "The swinging of the censer before the fair face of Lady Blessington never ceased in those salons; and soft accents of homage to her beauty and talent seldom failed to be whispered in her ear, while she sat enthroned in her well-known fauteuil, holding high court in queen-like state'the most gorgeous Lady Blessington."" Amidst all this adulation, Lady Blessington's old friends could observe increasing traces of care, disappointment, and dissatisfaction. And alas! she had ample cause for such feelings. Hitherto we have glanced at the current of Lady Blessington's life, as it sparkled in the drawing-room and to the public eye. But there were various under-currents of a very different hue. At her husband's death she found herself reduced from $150,000 of their former income, to a jointure of $10,000. This sum was altogether insufficient for the cost of such an establishment as her ladyship determined to keep; and, besides, she had a host of needy relatives to provide for, her exertions for whom is one of the brightest spots in this strange history. More money she must have; and authorship, formerly resorted to for pleasure or fame, was the only mode open to her of procuring it. On her second settlement in the metropolis, she applied her self to the work as a profession, and a regular means of support. Her "Journal of Conversations with Lord Byron" was published in 1832. In 1839, her "Idler in Italy," in three volumes, was given to the world; and was succeeded by her "Idler in France." Novel after novel, verses, reviews, whatever would sell, proceeded from her pen with more rapidity than suited her publishers at all times. But the prestige of her rank and name, and fashionable notoriety, procured for her wares a market and price which assuredly their merits could not have secured. To novel writing she added the editing of illustrated annuals; these were the palmy days of such pretty books. "The Keepsake," Heath's "Book of Beauty," and "Gems of Beauty," all claimed for their title-pages the name of this noble and fair lady. For some years her literary income is supposed to have amounted to $10,000, or even more. At length, however, both novels and annuals began to fail her; the public were wearied of her tales, and of the whole tribe of gilded and decorated inanities which issued with the dying year. Then her ladyship, fertile in resources, turned to the newspapers. The 66 Daily News" was started in 1846. Lady Blessington was engaged "to contribute, in confidence, any sort of intelligence she might like to communicate, of the sayings, doings, memoirs, or movements in the fashionable world." $4,000 per annum was the writer's estimate of the value of her services; the managers were disposed to give $2,000 only, for a year certain, or for half a year at the rate of $2,500. This arrangement was accepted, but at the end of six months her ladyship closed the engagement. Her last work of fiction first appeared in the columns of a London Sunday paper! Sadly fagging and harassing were these literary toils. No servant in her establishment had half such hard work as the mistress. A friend describes her as writing away like a steam-engine. In a letter to Landor, she says:-"I have been very unwell of late. The truth is, the numerous family of father, mother, sister, brother, and his six children, that I have to write for, compels me to write, when my health would demand a total repose from literary exertion." In five weeks one of her novels was written. Writing to Dr. |