66 Price is no consideration; shew me them." Slowly and with an expressive rub at his old thick set nose, the florist unlocked a drawer in the dusty shelves behind him, and bringing six large sized bulbs from thence, placed them before the lady. "These," he said, are cheap at the price," and he named a costly sum, for they have double blooms, and the true hue. But this one," he continued, and picking an extraordinary sized bulb from amidst the set before him, I will prove a matchless flower for bloom and odour." "Purple ?" for them, and to this, perhaps, are owing many errors in laconic as this Duke's only daughter was haughty, still what we do know, and the vast number of remaining kept his arms folded on the little yellow leaved, dog eared pages in the great volume of Nature, which, with all our | ledger which lay before him researches, we have not yet turned over. Since, also, the development of one fact leads not to another single discovery, but to a whole series in relation to that one, (thus light through a crevice irradiates indistinctly, but still universally,) so the advance of knowledge is in exact proportion to the certainty of our cognizance of first principles, and of their separate and united operation. To these the royal road of reading can alone conduct all classes; for its end is the endowment of power to frame others and ourselves to good. By instructing the faculties to exercise their proper duties, so that the will may give energy to act, without the tyranny of passion, by instituting an intellectual comparison of human capacities in others, and by prompting how, and what to do, to rise higher in the scale of intelligence, so will " cheap reading" affect society, and by a wide diffusion of moral happiness and healthy principles, tend to create wise rulers and an enlightened people. "PROTEUS." THE THREE HYACINTHS BEFORE HEAVEN. BY SILVERPEN. WITH his own hand, as the way-worn pavement, the dusty, little, low set window, and even Covent Garden clock could have told, he had done for nigh forty years, old Jan Blum, the Dutch florist, had swept out his queer old shop that morning. For nigh full forty years the process had been the same; which was, that as the scraps of string and straw, and bass, made a little heap beside the kennel's edge-a very little heap, for the florist was thrifty even to a fragment of string, he settled his spectacles more steadily on his old thick Dutch nose, and bending stiffly-as little old thick-set men do, hunted amidst the heap before him, as diligently, as cunningly, as acutely, as sharply, as a monkey for a nut amidst the leaves, or as Teniers' miser amidst his bag of guelders. After the rescue of five scraps of string of undue length, old Jan's broad Dutch thumb and forefinger came upon what almost any one else would have mistaken for a pickled onion; a cloven, mouldy, withered, miserable, little bulb. This, after sundry looks, and doubts, and pinches, was consigned again beneath the brush, and swept into the kennel. And there it lay,-lay till the chilly evening drew around; lay till every figure on the clock was blank to the upturned gaze of passers by; lay till the churchyard gravestones showed no calendar of age or time, of wealth or poverty, of reputation or obscurity; lay till the bloom on clustered grapes, on pine, on ruddy Norman apple, on pearly hued camellia flowers, or those vermillion tinted, on thick set bunches of geraniums, was only fitful to the eye in the little artificial light yet shed; lay till prowling misery began unseen to search amidst the garbage of the market, and the rich odour of a hundred dinners from the wealthy taverns around lured men on to these taverns' warmth, and light, and luxury. 64 Yes, though the depth and richness of the colour almost wholly depend upon the quantity of light and warmth such bulbs require, and are accustomed to." "Just mark it. My servant, who has some knowledge of these things, shall have particular instructions, as I am desirous of a fine flower of this colour, for a certain table of my boudoir; the draperies around being of the richest yellow, and needing a contrast." The lady had referred the old man to the Duke's housesteward for payment, and swept across the shop towards the door, when she stepped back a pace or two, and said, "Have you yellow hyacinths, and what's their price?" "I have a few that would have flowers as golden as a new minted sovereign; their price about five shillings a bulb." "I'll thank you to rear me one, for our gardeners have wholly failed in this colour, and I will call again at the close of winter. Good day," and the proud lady retraced her steps. 66 'And yet," chuckled the old man, when the costly bulbs had been deposited in a brown paper bag, and delivered to the "silver stick-in-waiting," and the carriage had left the door; "they may be seen in the homely windows of middle class streets; they'll thrive in the smell of cheese and candles, of tailors' shreds and booksellers' paste, in dull rooms, and above smoky fireplaces, and yet, be often as golden hued as the brightest sovereign in our pocket; aye, aye, and shed a light about, which purple cannot. But I hate poor and rich, the one for its pride, the other for its poverty." And so he did, this old Covent Garden florist, for the tax-collectors dreaded his growl, especially Mr. Thumble, who came quarterly for the poor rate, and who, not only confided his trepidation on the particular mornings to his barber, but never failed purchasing a little extra pungent snuff, to stimulate his courage, as he said, against this "Greenland bear." As for the rich, not one amongst them would have entered his shop, but that his great wealth enabled him to keep a rare stock of such luxuries as they sought. Beyond this, of giving money's worth, and taking money, the old florist acted, and through life had acted, as if every man's hand was raised against him, and his own against theirs. Moral justice or gospel truth he knew not; his whole code of living well consisted in living in hostility with all men. When it had grown fully dark, and the one little mise At the same moment as two children crossed to the pavement with a carrot they had found amidst the rub-rable oil lamp shed but a sickly glare across the shop, he bish, to examine it by the light of the old florist's one little oil lamp, a carriage of unusual splendour dashed up and stopped before the door. Two footmen descended, and came to the carriage window nearest the pavement. "No," was the brief answer to their inquiry, "I alight," and the door being opened, the far younger of two ladies within the carriage descended, and guarded by the "silver sticks-in-waiting" from the unholy touch of the two prowling children, swept into the shop. "I want some purple hyacinths," she said in a voice that would have been beautiful had it been less haughty, "of double blooms; you have such, have you not?" "I have, but they are costly;" and the old florist, as chained the door, and went into the little back room, which served him for the purposes both of parlour and kitchen. Rousing up the bit of dull fire in the little stove, and placing the tea kettle already on the hob, over it, he set a tea tray on a small round table beside his old greasy leather chair, got out a cup and saucer, a teapot with a tin spout, a modicum of moist sugar in an old blue finger-glass, from a little three cornered cupboard, and lighting a candle in an old tin candlestick, sat down in his chair. Whilst he evidently waited for some further addition to his tea-table before that meal commenced, he whiled away his time, by taking from a low shelf close beside his chair an old dusty cracked hyacinth glass, stopped up the fissure with a bit of putty, poured into it some composition from a bottle, and then taking an ordinary looking bulb from the same place, stuck it in the top. Whilst he was examining this achievement, and meditating a place of deposit, amidst the heaped up litter on shelf and table, a side door, evidently leading from a passage, was opened, and an old woman came in, bringing with her a small loaf, a piece of butter, and two kidneys in a scrap of paper. She placed them on the tray, and then eyed what the old man had been doing. quartern loaf and two ounces of butter; and finding as she hoped he would be, still away in the shop, she put the loaf and butter in, and the kettle beneath her apron, and going through the little door, opposite the new set hyacinth, pulled off her shoes and crept up the dark dirty staircase to the second floor, where beneath a door a narrow streak of light shone; she tapped as gently at this door as she had crept up stairs, and then went in. A girl of about eleven years of age was seated by so small a handful of fire, in a large old fashioned grate, as to look like a nut "Don't stand looking there," he said, at length, with in a cauldron, engaged in embroidering pieces of canvass, one of those growls Mr. Thumble had specified to the with silk and wool of rich colour, which lay sorted in barber; and when he had duly examined the kidneys, little skeins on the small round table before her; she used the butter, and the loaf, "but just give me the toasting her fingers with such dexterity, as to at once show what fork; these kidneys are uncommon smal, Mrs. Wink-practice she had; but staying them, and lifting up her and just find a place where this thing can stand. D'ye face, burst into tears, as the old woman came and crouched hear?" before her. Mrs. Wink, with a grumble, took up the candlestick and went round the room, specifying as she did so, shelf and lidless box and drawer, all literally heaped up with the florist's priceless treasures; but this place was too dark, the other too cold, and so on, till arriving at a little old fashioned table opposite the door by which she had entered, she half dropped the candle from her hand, when she saw before her, on the top of an old dusty herbal, a small piece of rich needlework about the size of a child's sampler. "Lord, Sir," she exclaimed, "if here ain't small Charlotte's primroses." "Just mind your own business, Mrs. Wink," replied the old man, turning round his head, and holding forth the toasting fork as if it were a sword, "or else we shall settle our account very briefly on Saturday night. Is there a place I say? Or, stop, come and hold the two kidness-they are uncommon small, whilst I see; for you are duller and slower than ever." Obeying this mandate, Mrs. Wink came towards the fire, where resigning the toasting fork to her charge, the old florist took up the hyacinth glass and bulb, and went round to the small semi-circular table opposite the door, on which stood, on a tattered, faded green cloth, a very thick old Dutch herbal in the midst, and on either side, a pile of dog-eared books, a mouldy ink-horn, and a scattered litter of papers and old pocket books. On the top of the great thick Dutch book itself, lay a multitude of odds and ends, chiefly scraps of paper; these he pushed aside, set down the hyacinth glass, with strict injunctions to Mrs. Wink not to lay an unholy finger thereon, and then took up the little piece of embroidery. It was to put it away, to lock it safely up, till the bankrupt housepainter and decorator on the second floor could pay the month's rent due that morning, and this he had taken into a sort of pledge (there being little else left) knowing the value small Charlotte's father set upon it. This done, he resumed his place by the fire, finished his meal, and was about to return again into the shop, in order to close it for the night, when Mrs. Wink stayed him by asking him for sixpence in advance of her weekly fee of eighteenpence. "What's it for? eh? You can't want it, Mrs. Wink; eighteenpence on Saturday night, and gone already?” "Lord a mussy, what's eighteenpence to get coal and candle-and-" "There, there," interrupted the old man, "I pay the poor rate, and that's all I've to do with poverty, or all that concerns me. And recollect, that if you have this sixpence, let it be the last you ask for, or you and I shall settle accounts on Saturday night. Do ye hear?" The old woman made an humble obeisance which showed she did, waited till the florist brought her sixpence in coppers from the shop, and then set about clearing away, mending the fire, and filling the kettle. As soon as this boiled, and her household duties were over for the night, she, under pretence of fetching the old man's nightly half-pint of beer, brought in with her a new half "Lord a mussy, there he is," exclaimed the poor old creature; and half upsetting the kettle in her tremor, she dropped the loaf and butter from her apron, and hobbled from the room. The old man, with the shop lamp in his hand, met her at the foot of the staircase. "Again tampering with my lodgers, eh, Mrs. Wink? Again serving them at my cost, eh? Again troubling yourself, whether other people live or die, eh? Very well, here's twelve more penny pieces, and our Saturday night': settlement is to night. There's the door, and recollect, if you ever again cross it, I'll The threat was not destined to be recorded, for the old creature interrupted him, by pleading her poverty and asking mercy. "I tell you what," he answered "I've no concern about the matter, there's the door. My way of reading the text do unto others' is to pay 'em their money, and there the matter ends." He half pushed the aged creature to the door, latched it upon her, locked himself safely into his own apartment, and rousing up the fire, lighted his pipe, and meditated over this dismissal of Mrs. Wink, and his next experiment, as regarded domestic assistance, coming at last to the conclusion that he would try a "cheap boy." But, never conscious once through all this meditation, that an invisible chain of causes links creature unto creature, poor unto rich, rich unto poor, evil unto good, good unto evil; that no despair existing, no misery endured, no sorrow disregarded, but what bear up, and set in motion, their own great principles of final truth and justice. Never was once conscious that the dull and husky bulbs and roots around his walls held each within them, in their germs of beauty and fragrance, a protest against his most unchristian creed; being unlike and different in odour and in hue, yet when germinated, severally beautiful, and, as a whole, necessary to the divine purposes, of HIM who made them ONE. He was unconscious of these things! But the golden coloured hyacinth was set, and the germination of odour and beauty was begun! The Duke's horses, in bearing away the carriage, had scattered the little heap from out the kennel with their hoofs on to the pavement before the florist's door, so that when the two prowling children turned from the window, through which they had been intently watching the lady, the little scraps of strings and straw, and the miserable bulb, which even avarice had disregarded, lay at their feet. The younger of the two lads saw it first, and seizing it, held it up with an exulting grin. 66 Halloo, Swallowtail! got a quicker eye than you'rn. See here." The child evidently mistook it for an onion, for he set his teeth into it like a famished dog; but a moment convinced him of his mistake, and he spit it out on to the ground. The other lad, who might be twelve years old, was evidently named from the garment he wore having been originally a man's full sized dress-coat, for it was as long as he was tall, and, consequently, the taper ends trailed in the mud which lay upon the streets, picked it up again with some curiosity, and examined it by the light of the street lamp under which they now stood. When this was done, he thrust the uneaten modicum of his own share of the carrot into the other's hand, as a sort of tacit barter for unreserved possession, and then, without a word, dived down an alley in the purlieus of Drury Lane. He had evidently some purpose in view, for though the a-la-mode beef, and tripe, and pie-shops, were especially fragrant and tempting at this hour, and the chance of filching best, just then as customers streamed in, he kept on, till after threading a multitude of short but intricate gullies and lanes of the lowest and most squalid character, he reached a sort of yard, or court abutting on one of those narrow plots of burial-ground which disgrace the civilization of our age, and the decency of human nature. In this yard were a few old dilapidated houses, whose chambers were reached by a common staircase, and whose windows, from the blank wall turned towards the yard, were evidently so placed as to look fully on the burialground. Lurking in the shadows till several persons had passed to and fro to the staircases, he crept into one of the passages, and up to a door in its extremity. Though closed, light streamed through its dilapidated chinks, and the clink of a cobbler's hammer on a lapstone was plainly heard. For a long time, more or less, this continued monotonously; and before it ceased all the clocks round had gone ten. At length the door opened, and a man, gaunt and threadbare, and advanced in years, came out, and passed into the yard. For this departure the boy had waited, for he immediately lifted the door latch and went into the room. There was abasement and timidity in the tread of his naked feet upon the floor, as he approached a woman binding shoes at a small table, quite different to that with which they ordinarily leapt and bounded along the pavement of the streets. The woman, as she heard the step, looked up into the boy's face, but never spoke, though her silence implied either anger or sorrow. "Don't be hard on me, mum," at last spoke Swallowtail, "it was them as did it; though I was cotched, you know it mum, and that's how the three months was got." "I give you up, Swallowtail," replied the woman, with much coolness. "I did take compassion on you when your mother died on our staircase three years ago, and done my best ever since, though the Lord knows our poverty's a hard thing on us, but its no use; three months more on it, and in the old company, and what's a lad, or what's the use I say of forgiving?" "But it is use, Esther," continued the lad contritely, ''specially if you says it. Don't make me bad outright, Esther, as you may. But it ain't bin with other lads; it's separate up at Brixton where I bin, and there's what they says on me, both the schoolmaster and the chaplain." He brought a scrap of paper from his pocket and read it to the woman. Her gaze softened and her eye fell more kindly upon him; and thus intuitively assured of forgiveness, he knelt, and grasped her coarse hard hand. Still more kindly at last she said, "When did you get out?" "At twelve. A lot on 'em got out then." "And where have ye been since?" She asked this question with something like doubt in the tone or ner voice. "Didn't dare to come 'afore, mum, 'cause o' the old man, he ain't like you, Esther; and so as I was hungry, I went with Ned to Covent Garden to find a scrap, and that's the truth." The shocbinder raised up the miserable child's face, and reading truth there, pressed down her lips upon his forehead. "Do be a good lad, Swallowtail," she said, "for my heart's bin sore about you; and don't be a going with 'em any more so as to drop into their traps." As he made a fervent promise, she recollected he was hungry, so rising and going to a closet, she brought out, and gave to him, the portion of a loaf and a scrap of cheese, and rousing up the narrow fire, set on a coffee-pot; and when she had made him some coffee, she drew up the table to the fire, and the lad crouched beside her as she continued her labours. At length, when he had satisfied his voracious hunger and regarded her face for some moments with an earnestnoss as profound as it was touching, he produced the miserable, cracked, and bitten little bulb from the only present pocket of the swallowtail garment, and laid it on the leather she was binding. She mistook it for an onion, and said so. "No, there'll come a flower on't. There was some on 'em growing in the turnkey's lodge this morning, and that's how I know." "But what's the good on 'em to folks like us, as have no gardens, or mould, or even a flower, in places such as this?" "It only wants water," replied the lad, "to make it grow; and I should like you to take the care of this for me, Esther, and see what'll come on it. You've often wished for a flower for the window there, so, if this was to come to one, you might be glad." And then he entered into the full history of this little, miserable, bitten, discarded thing, minutely describing the old florist's shop, the grandeur of the carriage, and the great lady who had descended from it. The shoebinder had listened more and more attentively, and now as the crouching child described, with almost Dutch graphicness, the colour of the Duke's gorgeous livery, and the beauty of the lady's features, she dropped her work and exclaimed, "It is no other than the Lady Augusta you saw, Swallowtail, and the great Duke's daughter, where our little Kitty lives kitchen-maid." "Him as is the Parliament Duke the old man goes on about, eh?" inquired the lad, with an acute earnestness, which showed how precocious were his wits, and how these sort of subjects had been discussed in his hearing. "He goes on about all them sort of folks," rejoined the shoebinder; "but perhaps on this one more than the rest, because of his doings and speeches about the poor; looking down on 'em, as father says, and treating 'em like children, instead o' giving 'em laws by which they could help themselves. And so as this sort o' thing rankles sore in his heart, charity instead o' justice, he hates Kitty being there, and 'll never be friends with her whilst she eats this bread of unjust pride and wealth. So this is why him and me are always a squabbling; and when I sometimes get hot on him, and tell him what Kitty often tells me, when I go and take a cup of tea with she and Mr. Wink in the pantry, about what a deal Lady Augusta gives in charity, and what a good man the Duke is, he always stops me short, and tells me to talk no longer of pride and selfishness. But I tell you what I think it is, Swallowtail, and I've told the old man so more than once, its ignorance of the truth on every side; so that when the poor shoebinder, thinking of Swallowtail, stepped in and made inquiry, the old man's growl was not so fierce as usual. The truth was, that he had lately had an uncommon fit of the rheumatism, and had found shutting the shutters, and lighting his bit of miserable fire, irksome tasks, so that when Esther spoke of her ability to procure a recommendation from the lad's schoolmaster, and one from the printers, he consented to take him upon trial, if such recommendations proved found up an old coat, trousers, and hat; Esther was able to procure a second-hand pair of shoes on credit; so that in a week, under his real name of Joe, the poor outcast, who had so lately fed upon the garbage of the market near, stood behind the old counter, amidst the latent glory of a million flowers. the rich not knowing the poor, nor the poor the rich. But I think, if the hearts of all on us could be seen by each other, as God must see 'em, how much charity, and good, and love, there is in the natur' o' the very worst among us, and how that wealth and high places are as full of evils in the way o' shutting up the human hearts o' the great, as poverty and ignorance among sich as us, our wisdom would so grow, and our charity so increase for one another, as to make us all understand, that it ain't by putting up, or down, or trampling on, or destroy-satisfactory. They did so; the printers amongst them ing, that we shall make the world and its evils better; but by coming to understand, that as different flowers grow side by side in a garden, so human natur's stand before God, with their biggest duty, to be wiser and better, if they can, whilst cheerful in heart at the place they stand in, and willing only to change it, by being worthy of a better." Thus speaking with the best measure of philosophy she had, Esther, now much interested about the miserable little bulb, so lately rescued from the kennel, rose, and, assisted by the lad, found up an old glazed teapot, lidless and cracked, but which answering its purpose well, when fitted with an old spoutless tin funnel, and filled with water, received the bulb, and was carried and placed upon the rotten window-sill. So, by the time the outcast of the streets nestled to the bit of rug the poor shoebinder had spread for him, upon some shavings in a sort of closet beneath the staircase, the text of Truth and God began to write itself, by its own signs: Amidst gorgeousness, artistic beauty, and wealth: Amidst plainness, unused riches, and common-place life: Amidst poverty, honesty, crime, and ignorance: AND YET ONE GOD AND HEAVEN WERE OVER ALL. * * * * * * * * * * * * Weeks passed on, and winter fell, before the genial goodness of the spring! And like this goodness of dear Nature in another form, the genial influence of the poor shoebinder's honest virtues warmed into life the latent virtues of the wretched outcast lad. Through this influence he again resumed his old place in an adjoining ragged school, and through her kind words and her own honest labour, earned a few weekly pence by running errands for some printers in a neighbouring garret, and secured a daily meal and nightly shelter. Here was the true secret of the growing change; this security against need of vicious companionship. And lo! the little, miserable, bitten bulb, began to grow in the old teapot on the rotten window-ledge, much to the amusement of the old saturnine cobbler, as he sat stitching shoes, and meditating public wrongs. But, as it thrived and threw forth little leaves, though pale in their poor greenness from the want of sun and air, and thrust out little fibres far down into the old teapot, the lad, creeping there of an evening when the old cobbler was away, watched its growth with singular curiosity. This, in itself, generated a strong interest in the old florist's shop, in its dusty roots and bulbs, and in the old man himself; and looking often in, as he passed on his errands for Esther or the printers, he began at last to identify himself with it, and to wish that he could stand behind the counter, and learn the secrets written on the slips of wood, thrust here and there between the heaps of bulbs. Telling these things to Esther, and her interest awakened, both by the growth of the poor root in the teapot, and the singular pertinacity of the lad in visiting this strange old florist's window so often, she one day passed it purposely in order to look; and doing so, her eye rested on a slip of paper yellow with dust, on which, she had just scholarship enough to decipher, was written, "Wanted a lad, wages a shilling a week, and no victuals." Now, it happened that some weeks had passed since Mrs. Wink's dismissal, and no lad had yet bid for this tempting office; There was but one fear or doubt in the heart of the poor shoebinder, and this was, lest the lad should again get inveigled by those who had profited by his outcast life, or who finding his advance into a place of decency and trust, should, through intimidation or persuasion, make him the tool of their arts, in order to compass some design upon wealth, so proverbial, as was that of the Dutch florist's. But there was no fear; and none should have been in the heart of the poor shoebinder, considering the worth of all her anxious care and service, her self-denial, so that hunger should offer no temptation, her appeal against the saturnine remonstrances of the old man her father, and her earnest words to Joe; never put in the shape of a homily, but quietly as a prayer to affection and to duty: and in no barren soil this good seed fell. In a week or ten days, a customer might have thought Joe had been amidst bulbs and brown paper bags all his life; and as he could light a fire and shut the shop, and never asked questions or made any reply to a dozen or so of those growls so dreaded by Mr. Thumble, the poor rate collector, the old man and his "cheap boy" got on fairly, more especially, as the misery of his late singlehandedness was still fresh upon his mind. Thus installed into something more than Mrs. Wink's place, having more duties, and being there a greater number of hours, Joe soon began to distinguish from the footing of the officials and their clerks, who rented the first floor as an office, certain little steps, heard on the old dirty staircase, especially after this office had closed. As he had had strict injunctions from the old man, never to ascend this staircase, except on a special and ordered errand to the third floor, where the spare stock of bulbs were stored, it might have been some time before he had really learnt to whom these little steps belonged, but that good Mrs. Wink, living in a near neighbourhood, soon discovering he was errand boy, made herself known to him, and entrusted him with divers messages and humble love tokens to small Charlotte, to deliver which, unsuspected by the old man, required no common amount of tact and ingenuity. Thus did Joe, ready of ear and quick of foot, soon rival Mrs. Wink in good offices, whilst by degrees he gathered from her some outline of their poor lodger's story. That this small Charlotte's father was one of those, by whose exquisite taste and genius, too often unregarded, wealth is so much indebted for the artistic grace and beauty it can gather around it. He could be hardly called either a house-painter, a designer, or a decorator; but somewhat all combined in a rare and exquisite manner. He adapted colours in decoration to one another, such as costly draperies to their aspects, and the walls around; he hung pictures with masterly effect as to light and shade; he disposed of statuary; and had been consulted in general decoration, from the placing of golden shields, and cups and salvers, upon a royal buffet, to the vase and its exotics in a drawing room. But in the midst of a most prosperous career he had fallen into bad health. To meet some heavy demand, which fell upon him at that time for decorations he had to provide, he had borrowed of Blum; who, to his trade of florist, added secretly that of usury. At this time, an application was made to this poor man of genius, to design and procure draperies for a private suit of rooms belonging to the great Duke's daughter, of this story, which, unusually costly, drew largely on his finances. Their colour was the deepest golden, and their fabric the most georgeous satin the looms of Lyons could produce; but when up, they were, merely, for what appeared to be no more than a whim of the moment, disapproved of, ordered down, and replaced by others. The draperies were retained, and the fabric paid for; but recompence for design and labour refused by the Duke's man of business, as an impossible claim, considering the fact of disapproval. Thus, the designer was a ruined man, for he had to satisfy the claims of workmen he had employed. But in extenuation, these circumstances had never reached the ear of Lady Augusta; she had only to say "I will," or, "I will not,' and all the rest was referred to the solicitor or the house-steward; and that any one would be ruined by a mere wish, had possibly never entered her mind. But it did ruin the poor designer, did consign him to the tender mercies of old Blum, who, being by far the largest opposing creditor, consented to waive his present claim to a little annuity tied up to the poor designer's only child, and on which the money had been borrowed, on condition that he received yearly two-thirds of this sum, and that the designer rented two empty rooms upon his second floor, which considering the rent he asked, he could let to no one else. This was bondage over them; this the secret of his hostility. Broken in health by these misfortunes, and by the death of his wife, and almost incapable of labour, the wretched father and the little child had, for months, dragged on a weary life, mainly supported by the industry of the child, in working small rugs for the bazaars and shops, and embroidering velvet bags. These sold rapidly, for the child was a genius-a genius of no common-place kind Inheriting all her father's masterly eye for colour, and intense perception of grace in its disposal, this little soul found in her great duty, one of love. Though she could draw beautifully, drawing would not give bread, so she wrought flowers and fruit, which Flora would have bent before in adoration. It seemed as if the soul of this sweet creature had walked with Eve, and seen the flowers of Paradise, in the freshness of the vernal morning, and viewed with Claude the matchless sunsets of the south, or with Rubens the garments of the Sabine women. And thy heart was true to this great nature in thee, sweet one! Sitting up in that old room, nature was not, nor had not, been shut out. There was a little glimpse of the market to be seen every morning, in spring and summer, especially when flowers were bright. And these looked on, were nature's patterns to the child. She had no others. Thus roses and water lilies, jonquils and convolvulus, carnations and anemonies, died not, though the summer died, but carried as it were to that old story, lived there again in freshness and in splendour. The spring before these hyacinths of our story had been set, sweet Charlotte saw, after a week of dull and rainy days, a tuft of early primroses upon the dank and dirty pavement of the market. This had so pleased her eye in its pale yellowness and greenness, as to make her imitate it upon a little piece of canvass, and place it before her father one evening. He said he had never seen a thing so beautiful; and prized it as it deserved. This was the tuft of primroses so worked old Blum had seized, and which had excited the lamentations of Mrs. Wink. In this case, old Blum, with his usual sagacity, had, like Shylock, laid claim to a veritable pound of flesh, which he knew must be redeemed, as it was, through the poor father pledging his sole spare coat at the nearest pawnshop; so that, when poor Joe slipped in with the kettle secretly boiled, Mrs. Wink's ounce of butter, or a little loaf, there it hung above the tall old fire-place, like a sign of spring laid on by nature's hand. These little services, and the repeated absence of her father, either for the purpose of disposing of the little rugs, or in search of such light employment as might suit his weakness aud declining health, made sweet Charlotte, in the dull loneliness of this old house, soon cling with unfeigned sympathy to poor Joe, so ready to oblige her and so docile to her will. As the old florist had been unable to stir much from home, between the time of dismissing Mrs. Wink, and the hiring the "cheap boy," he soon began, when he found Joe worthy of trust, to retain him after the shop was closed of a night, whilst he indulged in a sixpenny supper of tripe, at a tavern in Drury Lane, or went, on monetary business, to the far off regions of Finsbury. As Joe soon discovered, that whenever he undertook this latter expedition he put on his old snuffy coloured top-coat, and duly inserted into the breast pocket a leather pocket-book, with a tremendous lengthy strap, he began to make such evenings those of pleasant license, by creeping up stairs to sit with the poor designer and the little child, or by admitting Mrs. Wink to a tender embrace with Charlotte, or else on those evenings, when the designer was absent, getting her to come down stairs, and warm herself a bit, by the old man's fire, whilst they turned over his great Dutch herbal, and wondered together at the coloured prints it held; Charlotte being able to tell him so much, teach him the names of the rich colours, and pointing to the shelves around the walls, show him the bulb which belonged to the tinted flower upon the open page before them. I scarcely think this pleasure would have been so great, even taking into account the usual freedom of childish friendship, but that there was sympathy of tastes between the two, though one was so immeasureably advanced beyond the other. But that same touch of nature, which had led the lad to set the bitten bulb in the broken teapot, which had made him haunt the florist's window, and be so eager to learn and know, was indirectly the same which led the child to take delight in and contrast colours, and be so passionately fond of flowers of any hue or shape. Thus, that old herbal looked at with beating hearts, and with the sense of listening as keen as that of a frightened mouse, lest the old man should return, was a sort of garden to them, full of new freshness, though so often seen. As I have said, many weeks had passed by; and now the golden hyacinth, which, carefully tended by the old man, had flourished so wonderfully in both leaf and fibre, began to put forth its splendid and its gorgeous blossoms, though only here and there these were opened into flowers. Both children, who had watched its growth so heedfully, were charmed as pendant bell came after bell, for one so rare had no likeness in the herbal. So Charlotte's eye revelling in a flower sweet and rare like this, brought down stairs one evening, when, taking the signs of the coat and pocket-book, it was supposed old Blum was off to Finsbury, some canvass and a pencil, and silks and worsted, in little threadpapers which Joe had made her, in order to copy it as she had done the knot of primroses. This little holiday was all the sweeter to the child, for the reason that her father had been more than usually complaining for several days, and she had been closed in continuously with him; but coming down stairs and finding the fire bright, made so with an old broken box Joe had brought from the shop, and the old florist's leather chair set for her, and Joe on a little stool on the other side, and the old cat tucked up like a grand pincushion on the table, and the thick Dutch herbal near, and the cracked hyacinth glass, and its rare flower set on the top, she was never happier or more delighted with a coming task. So drawing the outlines of the stalk and leaves with a pencil, she began with the needle to clothe them in greenness; Joe snuffing the candle and watching her intently, whilst Mr. Bob enlivened the treat |