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ment, when the hoarse cry of a raven seemed to startle him, and the sound was presently answered by a low howl, when, to the inexpressible horror of all present, a hideous wolf rushed forth, as if from the tombs, and was lost in the surrounding gloom.

"No one could stir from the spot where each stood but Heinrich, who darted toward the place where the garments were hid, and drawing them forth, wrapped them in a heap, and calling to the petrified group who looked on, bade them follow. They did so, and having returned to the village, prepared to complete the directions of Heinrich, who ordered a large fire to be made, into which all the clothes were thrown; but, to the surprise of all, among them was discovered the hood and vail of a female. They were burned with the rest, and as the last spark of the fire died away, the face of Heinrich seemed to have caught its glow, so fierce was the expression of his eyes, as he exclaimed, "Now the work of vengeance is complete; now the Black Huntsman has his own!'

"He told the trembling lookers-on that on the destruction of these habiliments depended the Wahr-wolf's power of resuming his human shape, which had now become quite impossible.

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when he had finished, I was so impressed with the earnestness of his manner, and the firm belief he attached to this strange relation, that I was not sorry to hear the voices of my awaking companions, nor unrelieved to observe that day. was breaking. We soon resumed our journey, and it was with little regret I quitted the gloomy valley where I had listened to the fearful legend of the Wahr-wolf.

The superstition is scarcely even yet done away with in these parts, in spite of the march of civilization, which has sent steam-boats on the Danube to drive away such follies. I be lieve, however, there are few places now, except in the Böhmer-wald, where such monstrous fables are believed. Such a belief was once current all over France, and, indeed, wherever wolves existed; but as our robber chiefs and black bands are pretty well rooted out, no one has any interest in keeping up the credit of these imaginary culprits.

But see," exclaimed the baron, "we are arrived at Vilshofen, and I am obliged to leave off my gossip, and allow you to pursue your way toward Vienna. Yonder are the walls of my domicile, and here I must bid you farewell."

"DID

A TRUE GHOST STORY.

ID you ever hear," said a friend once to me, "a real true ghost story, one you might depend upon ?"

"After all these ceremonies, each person returned to his respective dwelling; but my father" was unable to obtain a moment's rest all night, for the continual shrieking of a raven close to his window. As day dawned the annoyance ceased, and he rose the next morning hoping all he had witnessed the preceding night was a dream. However, he hastened to the house of Agatha, and there he found all in confusion and dismay. She could be nowhere found, nor any trace of her discovered. Heinrich was in more consternation than any one, and hurried up and down almost distracted.

"My father now related how his rest had been disturbed by the hoarse cries of the raven, and said that such an omen boded no good. He then proposed seeking for the unfortunate girl in the cemetery, as perhaps, her mysterious lover had murdered and buried her in one of the tombs. At the mention of this suspicion, a new light seemed to burst on the awe-struck Heinrich. He suddenly called out in a piercing voice,

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"The hood-the vail !-it is too plain, I have betrayed him, and lost her forever. burnt her garments, and doubtless, he had taught . her his infernal art, so that she can never be restored to her human form. She will remain a raven, and he a Wahr-wolf, forever!'

"So saying, he gnashed his teeth with rage, and, with a wild look, rushed from the house. No one observed where he went, but, from that hour, neither he, nor Augustin, nor Agatha, were ever beheld in the village of Hundersdorf; though often, on a wintry night, the howling of wolves is heard not far off, and the ill-boding scream of the raven is sure to echo their horrid yells."

Such was the wild tale of the Bavarian; and

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There are not many such to be heard,” I replied, "and I am afraid it has never been my good fortune to meet with those who were really able to give me a genuine, well-authenticated story."

"Well, you shall never have cause to say so again; and as it was an adventure that happened to myself, you can scarcely think it other than well authenticated. I know you to be no coward, or I might hesitate before I told it to you. You need not stir the fire; there is plenty of light by which you can hear it. And now to begin. I had been riding hard one day in the autumn for nearly five or six hours, through some of the most tempestuous weather to which it had ever been my ill luck to be exposed. It was just about the time of the Equinox, and perfect hurricanes swept over the hills, as if every wind in heaven had broken loose, and had gone mad, and on every hill the rain and driving sleet poured down in one unbroken shower.

"When I reached the head of Wentford valley-you know the place, a narrow ravine with rocks on one side, and those rich full woods (not that they were very full then, for the winds had shaken them till there was scarcely a leaf on their bare rustling branches) on the other, with a clear little stream winding through the hollow dell-when I came to the entrance of this valley, weather-beaten veteran as I was, I scarcely knew how to hold on my way; the wind, as it were, held in between the two high banks, rushed like a river just broken loose into

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a new course, carrying with it a perfect sheet | wonderfully warm and bright, and there seemed of rain, against which my poor horse and I struggled with considerable difficulty: still I went on, for the village lay at the other end, and I had a patient to see there, who had sent a very urgent message, entreating me to come to him as soon as possible. We are slaves to a message, we poor medical men, and I urged on my poor jaded brute with a keen relish for the warm fire and good dinner that awaited me as soon as I could see my unfortunate patient, and get back to a home doubly valued on such a day as that in which I was then out. It was indeed dreary riding in such weather; and the scene altogether, through which I passed, was certainly not the most conducive toward raising a man's spirits; but I positively half wished myself out in it all again, rather than sit the hour I was obliged to spend by the sick-bed of the wretched man I had been summoned to visit. He had met with an accident the day before, and as he had been drinking up to the time, and the people had delayed sending for me, I found him in a frightful state of fever; and it was really an awful thing either to look at or to hear him. He was delirious, and perfectly furious; and his face, swelled with passion, and crimson with the fever that was burning him up, was a sight to frighten children, and not one calculated to add to the tranquillity even of full-grown men. I dare say you think me very weak, and that I ought to have been inured to such things, minding his ravings no more than the dash of the rain against the window; but, during the whole of my practice, I had never seen man or woman, in health or in fever, in so frightful a state of furiou's frenzy, with the impress of every bad passion stamped so broadly and fearfully upon the face; and, in the miserable hovel that then held me with his old witch-like mother standing by, the babel of the wind and rain outside added to the ravings of the wretched creature within. I began to feel neither in a happy nor an enviable frame of mind. There is nothing so frightful as where the reasonable spirit seems to abandon man's body, and leave it to a fiend instead.

"After an hour or more waiting patiently by his bedside, not liking to leave the helpless old woman alone with so dangerous a companion (for I could not answer for any thing he might do in his frenzy), I thought that the remedies by which I hoped in some measure to subdue the fever, seemed beginning to take effect, and that I might leave him, promising to send all that was necessary, though fearing much that he had gone beyond all my power to restore him; and desiring that I might immediately be called back again, should he get worse instead of better, which I felt almost certain would be the case, I hastened homeward, glad enough to be leaving wretched huts and raving men, driving rain and windy hills, for a comfortable house, dry clothes, a warm fire, and a good dinner. I think I never saw such a fire in my life as the one that blazed up my chimney; it looked so

an indescribable air of comfort about the room
which I had never noticed before. One would
have thought I should have enjoyed it all in-
tensely after my wet ride, but throughout the
whole evening, the scenes of the day would keep
recurring to my mind with most uncomfortable
distinctness, and it was in vain that I endeavored
to forget it all in a book, one of my old favorites
too; so at last I fairly gave up the attempt, as
the hideous face would come continually between
my eyes and an especially good passage; and I
went off to bed heartily tired, and expecting
sleep very readily to visit me. Nor was I disap-
pointed: I was soon deep asleep, though my last
thought was on the little valley I had left. How
long this heavy and dreamless sleep continued, I
can not tell, but gradually I felt consciousness re-
turning, in the shape of the very thoughts with
which I fell asleep, and at last I opened my eyes,
thoroughly roused by a heavy blow at my win-
dow. I can not describe my horror, when, by the
light of a moon struggling among the heavy
surge-like clouds, I saw the very face, the face
of that man looking in at me through the case-
ment, the eyes distended and the face pressed
close to the glass. I started up in bed, to con-
vince myself that I really was awake, and not
suffering from some frightful dream; there it
staid, perfectly moveless, its wide ghastly eyes
fixed unwaveringly on mine, which, by a kind
of fascination, became equally fixed and rigid,
gazing upon the dreadful face, which alone
without a body was visible at the window, un-
less an indefinable black shadow, that seemed
to float beyond it, might be fancied into one.
I can scarcely tell how long I so sat looking at
it, but I remember something of a rushing
sound, a feeling of relief, a falling exhausted
back upon my pillow, and then I awoke in the
morning ill and unrefreshed. I was ill at ease,
and the first question I asked, on coming down
stairs, was, whether any messenger had come
to summon me to Wentford. A messenger had
come, they told me, but it was to say I need
trouble myself no further, as the man was al-
ready beyond all aid, having died about the
middle of the night. I never felt so strangely
in my life as when they told me this, and my
brain almost reeled as the events of the previous
day and night passed through my mind in rapid
succession. That I had seen something super-
natural in the darkness of the night, I had
never doubted, but when the sun shone brightly
into my room in the morning, through the same
window, where I had seen so frightful and
strange a sight by the spectral light of the
moon, I began to believe more it was a dream,
and endeavored to ridicule myself out of all un-
comfortable feelings, which, nevertheless, I could
not quite shake off. Haunted by what I con-
sidered a painful dream, I left my room, and
the first thing I heard was a confirmation of
what I had been for the last hour endeavoring
to reason and ridicule myself out of believing.
It was some hours before I could recover my

ordinary tranquillity; and then it came back, not slowly as you might have expected, as the impression gradually wore off, and time wrought his usual changes in mind as in body, but suddenly by the discovery that our large white owl had escaped during the night, and had honored my window with a visit before he became quite accustomed to his liberty."

[From the London Critic.]

SKETCHES OF LIFE. BY A RADICAL.

*

was an error to call this work the auto

in love, and is imprisoned for spouting Chartism. The upshot of his rough life is, that he becomes a true Christian.

Several characters are hit off with great perfection. Such is the mother of ALTON; and such is SANDYE MACKAYE, a friend to whom the boy occasionally ran for sympathy, and to borrow books.

But we will now draw upon the pages of the work itself, merely repeating that it is a remarkable composition, and one which men in high places would do well to ponder. It is a growth from the defects of our time, and should

Ibiography of an individual. It is a picturing be taken as a presage that change must come

-faithful, minute, and eloquent-of the hardships, the sufferings, and the miseries endured by a large mass of our fellow men. It is an earnest and honest exposure of the hollowness that infests English society-an insight to the weakness of the substratum. It shows what education should have done, and what corruption really has done. ALTON LOCKE is also a personification of the failings, as well as of the sufferings, that make up the sum of existence of a large class.

The author has effectually carried out his design-we will not say altogether with artistic consistency, or with book-making propriety. We know it is deemed a great offense against taste to make a novel the medium of exposing social dangers, or political inequalities and wrongs. We know that those who stick up for "the model," would have a fiction all fiction, or at least that the philosophy be very surbordinate, and the social aim be hidden so completely as not to be discernible excepting to the professional reader. But Alton Locke is an exception to all these objections. Spite of its defects, it is a perfect work-perfect, that it is invested with an air of the wildest romance, while it goes home to the heart and the judgment as a faithful picture-perfect, that it is eloquent and natural, and consistent with itself. It is one of those books which defy classification. We have not seen its like. And to those readers who accept our eulogy in earnest, Alton Locke will ever remain a token of rich enjoyment, and a memento that 1850 did produce at least one cherishable book.

The story of the biography will not impress so much or so favorably as the style. The hero is a widow's only child: his mother is a stern Calvinist. Her teachings, and the teaching of the vipers in religious form who come to administer consolation and to drink the old lady's tea, are hateful to an intense degree to ALTON. He is of a poetic temperament, and a great admirer of nature. Opportunities of indulging his natural tastes are denied him. Born in a close London street, very rigidly watched and governed by his mother and the good men who come to visit her, his life is any thing but pleasant. But he subsequently becomes a tailor, reads largely, writes verses, turns Chartist, falls * ALTON LOCKE, Tailor and Poet-An Autobiography, In the press of Messrs. Harper and Brothers.

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The working-men of this country will be indebted to ALTON LOCKE for the manner in which he pleads their cause; all men should be gratified that the warning voice, which he will inevitably be deemed, is so moderate in tone and so philosophical in manner.

ALTON's youth, we have said, was not happy. The following are his descriptions of his mother, and one of her associates:

ALTON'S MOTHER AND THE MISSIONARY. "My mother moved by rule and method; by God's law, as she considered, and that only. She seldom smiled. Her word was absolute. She never commanded twice, without punishing. And yet there were abysses of unspoken tenderness in her, as well as clear, sound, womanly sense and insight. But she thought herself as much bound to keep down all tenderness as if she had been some ascetic of the middle ages-so do extremes meet! It was 'carnal,' she considered. She had as yet no right to have any 'spiritual affection' for us. We were still 'children of wrath and of the devil'- -not yet 'convinced of sin,' 'converted, born again.' She had no more spiritual bond with us, she thought, than she had with a heathen or a papist. She dared not even pray for our conversion, earnestly as she prayed on every other subject. For though the majority of her sect would have done so, her clear, logical sense would yield to no such tender inconsistency. Had it not been decided from all eternity? We were elect, or we were reprobate. Could her prayers alter that? If He had chosen us, He would call us in His own good time: and, if not, -Only, again and again, as I afterward discovered from a journal of hers, she used to beseech God with agonized tears to set her mind at rest by revealing to her His will toward us. For that comfort she could at least rationally pray. But she received no answer. Poor, beloved mother! If thou couldst not read the answer, written in every flower and every sunbeam, written in the very fact of our existence here at all, what answer would have sufficed thee? And yet, with all this, she kept the strictest watch over our morality. Fear, of course, was the only motive she employed; for how could our still carnal understandings be affected with love to God? And love to herself was too paltry and temporary to

be urged by one who knew that her life was of the house, some ten feet long by six wide. uncertain, and who was always trying to go I could just stand upright against the inner wall, down to deepest eternal ground and reason of while the roof on the other side ran down to the every thing, and take her stand upon that. So floor. There was no fire-place in it or any our god, or gods rather, till we were twelve means of ventilation. No wonder I coughed all years old, were hell, the rod, the Ten Com- night accordingly, and woke about two every mandments, and public opinion. Yet under morning with choking throat and aching head. them, not they, but something deeper far, both My mother often said that the room was 'too in her and us, preserved us pure. Call it small for a Christian to sleep in, but where could natural character, conformation of the spirit- she get a better?' Such was my only study. conformation of the brain, if you like, if you are I could not use it as such, however, at night a scientific man and a phrenologist. I never without discovery; for my mother carefully yet could dissect and map out my own being, looked in every evening, to see that my candle or my neighbor's, as you analysts do. was out. But when my kind cough woke me, I rose, and creeping like a mouse about the room-for my mother and sister slept in the next chamber, and every sound was audible through the narrow partition-I drew my dar

"My heart was in my mouth as I opened the door to them, and sunk back again to the very lowest depths of my inner man when my eyes fell on the face and figure of the missionary-aling books out from under a board in the floor squat, red-faced, pig-eyed, low-browed man, one end of which I had gradually loosened at with great soft lips that opened back to his very odd minutes, and with them a rushlight, earned ears; sensuality, conceit, and cunning marked by running on messages, or by taking bits of on every feature-an innate vulgarity, from work home, and finishing them for my fellows. which the artisan and the child recoil with an No wonder that with this scanty rest, and this instinct as true, perhaps truer, than that of the complicated exertion of hands, eyes, and brain, courtier, showing itself in every tone and mo- followed by the long dreary day's work of the tion-I shrunk into a corner, so crest-fallen that shop, my health began to fail; my eyes grew I could not even exert myself to hand round the weaker and weaker; my cough became more bread-and-butter, for which I got duly scolded acute; my appetite failed me daily. My mother afterward. Oh! that man!-how he bawled noticed the change, and questioned me about it, and contradicted, and laid down the law, and affectionately enough. But I durst not, alas! spoke to my mother in a fondling, patronizing tell the truth. It was not one offense, but the way, which made me, I knew not why, boil arrears of months of disobedience which I should over with jealousy and indignation. How he have had to confesss; and so arose infinite false filled his teacup half full of the white sugar to excuses, and petty prevarications, which embitbuy which my mother had curtailed her yester-tered and clogged still more my already overday's dinner-how he drained the few remain-tasked spirit. Before starting forth to walk ing drops of the three-penny worth of cream, with which Susan was stealing off to keep it as an unexpected treat for my mother at breakfast next morning-how he talked of the natives, not as St. Paul might of his converts, but as a planter might of his slaves; overlaying all his unintentional confessions of his own greed and prosperity, with cant, flimsy enough for even a boy to see through, while his eyes were not blinded with the superstition that a man must he pious who sufficiently interlards his speech with a jumble of old English picked out of our translation of the New Testament. Such was the man I saw. I don't deny that all are not like him. I believe there are noble men of all denominations doing their best, according to their light, all over the world; but such was the one I saw and the men who are sent home to plead the missionary cause, whatever the men may be like who stay behind and work, are, from my small experience, too often such. It appears to me to be the rule that many of those who go abroad as missionaries, go simply because they are men of such inferior powers and attainments that if they staid in England they would starve."

two miles to the shop at six o'clock in the morning, I sat some three or four hours shivering on my bed, putting myself into cramped and painful postures, not daring even to cough, lest my mother should fancy me unwell, and come in to see me, poor dear soul !—my eyes aching over the page, my feet wrapped up in the bedclothes to keep them from the miserable pain of the cold; longing, watching, dawn after dawn, for the kind summer mornings, when I should need no candlelight. Look at the picture awhile, ye comfortable folks, who take down from your shelves what books you like best at the moment, and then lie back, amid prints and statuettes, to grow wise in an easy chair, with a blazing fire and a camphine lamp. The lower classes uneducated! Perhaps you would be so too, if learning cost you the privation which it costs some of them."

But ALTON read largely, notwithstanding his privations. What of his time was not spent on the tailor's board, was devoted to the writings of the great spirits of the age. On a holiday he visited the National Gallery, and learned to love and bless the painters. He studied narrowly MILTON and TENNYSON, and many other writers, and among them "that great prose "I slept in a little lean-to garret at the back poem, the single epic of modern days, THOMAS

ALTON'S STUDY.

CARLYLE'S French Revolution." ALTON's daydreams were more numerous than we should imagine are those of the majority of men who are steeped in poverty as he was; and he has described them well. When he did learn to walk into the fields, he truly enjoyed the liberty thus attained.

THE FIRST SIP OF FREEDOM.

"It was a glorious morning at the end of May; and when I escaped from the pall of smoke which hung over the city, I found the sky a sheet of cloudless blue. How I watched for the ending of the rows of houses, which lined the road for miles-the great roots of London, running far out into the country, up which poured past me an endless stream of food, and merchandise, and human beings-the sap of the huge metropolitan life-tree! How each turn of the road opened a fresh line of terraces or villas, till hope deferred made the heart sick, and the country seemed like the place where the rainbow touches the ground, or the El Dorado of Raleigh's Guiana settlers-always a little farther off! How, between gaps in the houses right and left, I caught tantalizing glimpses of green fields, shut from me by dull lines of high-spiked palings! How I peeped through gates and over fences at trim lawns and gardens, and longed to stay, and admire, and speculate on the names of the strange plants and gaudy flowers; and then hurried on, always expecting to find something still finer ahead something really worth stopping to look at―till the houses thickened again into a street, and I found myself, to my disappointment, in the midst of a town! And then more villas and palings; and then a village: when would they stop, those endless houses? At last they did stop. Gradually the people whom I passed began to look more and more rural, and more toil-worn and ill-fed. The houses ended, cattle yards and farm buildings appeared; and right and left, far away, spread the low rolling sheet of green meadows and corn-fields. Oh, the joy! The lawns with their high elms and firs, the green hedgerows, the delicate hue and scent of the fresh clover-fields, the steep clay banks where I stopped to pick nosegays of wild flowers, and became again a child-and then recollected my mother, and a walk with her on the river bank toward the Red House. I hurried on again, but could not be unhappy, while my eyes ranged free, for the first time in my life, over the checkered squares of cultivation, over glittering brooks, and hills quivering in the green haze, while above hung the skylarks, pouring out their souls in melody. And then, as the sun grew hot, and the larks dropped one by one into the growing corn, the new delight of the blessed silence! listened to the stillness; for noise had been my native element; I had become in London quite unconscious of the ceaseless roar of the human sea, casting up mire and dirt. And now, for the first time in my life, the crashing, confusing hubbub had flowed away, and left my brain

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calm and free. How I felt at that moment a capability of clear, bright meditation, which was as new to me, as I believe it would have been to most Londoners in my position. I can not help fancying that our unnatural atmosphere of excitement, physical as well as moral, is to blame for very much of the working-men's restlessness and fierceness. As it was, I felt that every step forward, every breath of fresh air, gave me new life. I had gone fifteen miles before I recollected that, for the first time for many months, I had not coughed since I rose.”

The following is the utterance in a more eloquent mode, of some startling facts revealed by the London Correspondent of The Morning Chronicle:

THE TERRORS OF THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM.

"Well: one day our employer died. He had been one of the old sort of fashionable West-end tailors in the fast decreasing honorable trade; keeping a modest shop, hardly to be distinguished from a dwelling-house, except by his name on the window blinds. He paid good prices for work, though not as good, of course, as he had given twenty years before, and prided himself upon having all his work done at home. His work-rooms, as I have said, were no elysiums; but still, as good, alas! as those of three tailors out of four. He was proud, luxurious, foppish; but he was honest and kindly enough, and did many a generous thing by men who had been long in his employ. At all events, his journeymen could live on what he paid them.

"But his son, succeeding to the business, determined, like Rehoboam of old, to go ahead with the times. Fired with the great spirit of the nineteenth century—at least with that one which is vulgarly considered its especial glory

he resolved to make haste to be rich. His father had made money very slowly of late; while dozens, who had begun business long after him, had now retired to luxurious ease and suburban villas. Why should he remain in the minority? Why should he not get rich as fast as he could? Why should he stick to the old, slow-going, honorable trade? Out of some 450 West-end tailors, there were not one hundred left who were old-fashioned and stupid enough to go on keeping down their own profits by having all their work done at home and at firsthand. Ridiculous scruples! The government knew none such. Were not the army clothes, the post-office clothes, the policemen's clothes, furnished by contractors and sweaters, who hired the work at low prices, and let it out again to journeymen at still lower ones? Why should he pay his men two shillings where the government paid them one? Were there not cheap houses even at the West-end, which had saved several thousands a year merely by reducing their workmen's wages? And if the workmen chose to take lower wages, he was not bound actually to make them a present of more than they asked for. They would go to the cheapest

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