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"Then tell her to put the dinner by, it will do for to-morrow. I cannot eat at this newfashioned hour; clear away the things below, and get me some tea."

As if the dog understood the mandate which deprived her of her bones, she leaped up to her master's hand; he stooped and fondled her, 66 No, no, Fan shall have her dinner; tell the cook to send me up Fan's dinner-poor Fan." He took the little animal in his arms, and caressed it tenderly, and his eyes lost their fierce, suspicious look, while playing with his little favourite; it was strange how much the cold man and the cross dog were to each other. Mr. Francis Oldham never looked sternly or suspiciously on Fan, never grudged her her food, never withered her by unkindness, or spurned her, as he did his fellow-creatures, with contempt from his heart and door. In a short time, both were seated in the little back room. Tea was the only luxury he indulged in, and this he drank so strong that, if he had taken council of a physician, he would have learned that the excited state of his nerves, and the irresistible humours from which he suffered, were the results of his libations to the Chinese gods. A knock came to the door, single and deep; the lonely man sprang from his chair as if electrified, and Fan barked furiously; the step from the depths below again ascended the stairs, and in process of time, the gaunt housemaid entered with the newspaper-which Mr. Francis had long since ascertained he could keep for two hours in the evening for the charge of one penny--he read it in less than one, for he was quick of eye and comprehension; but he calculated on the possibility of not being able to read it in one, and, besides, it was a bargain, "I told him,” said the maid, in answer to her master's angry look, "I told him, over and over again, he must ring, not knock,"

Hard, iron-hard, as that man seemed-unimpressible his features and expression remaining unchanged, while perusing column

after column of disastrous warfare, of frightful shipwreck, of murder and rapine, of execution, of marriage, of insanity, of gay balls, of costly city pageantry, of advertising misery, of catchpenny falsehood; redeemed from time to time by a burst of honest enthusiasm for a noble cause, or a noble virtue, or marked by the no less noble sarcasm, shivering a false speculation to atoms, or torturing some hoary sinner by the public exposure of his gilded sins. Unmoved, I say, as the old man looked; unmoved by wit, or eloquence, or heroism; untouched by misery; stolid, silent, except when shaken by his warning cough-there was still beneath that mask of wrinkles, within that petrified heart, one eternal pulsation, that beat there night and day, that would not, could not rest; throbbing on, gaining strength from his weakness in its fearful monotony-still talking of the past!

Another knock, by a hesitating hand, followed rapidly by one loud and redoubled-a will-come-in, whether-at-home-or-not, sort-ofknock-and then a tearing ring, vibrating through the house! Fan was paralyzed, she opened her mouth twice or thrice to bark, but could not; Mr. Francis dropped the paper, clutched the arms of his chair firmly, and gasped for breath.

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What a waste of noise!" he murmured, thirty years has not changed his knock; another! why will not that woman hurry, he will shake the paint off the door."

There was loud and joyous questioning in the hall, a voice of boisterous cheerfulness shouting with all the eagerness of fraternal affection for his "brother." Mr. Francis Oldham was moved, he did not understand it, but he was moved; he almost staggered to the door, and staggered still more when his brother, after an embrace close as the hug of a brown bear, wrung and shook his hands until they ached again. The old men looked each the other in the face. "Why Frank, God bless me, your features are our poor father's; your height, size, all his! But are you ill, brother? or has any sorrow since the last I know of, come upon you? No; well, that is good; but you show sorrow-you must brighten up."

"But for your voice, John, I should not have known you. Your hair, however, is not white as mine." By a dexterous movement John Oldham removed his wig; "there," he exclaimed, "how do I look now, and not afraid of the phrenologists. But where are your fellows? I want my things brought in and taken up stairs. What, no men servants; well, my rascal will soon be here, I left him to look

after the luggage, and take care (don't be frightened, Frank, my boy) of my monkey; the nicest creature you ever saw. I hope your dog is good-natured; Jebb is quiet enough, but if she teazes him, he'll flay her alive, he will by Jupiter!"

"He'd better not," growled Mr. Francis, snatching up his favourite. "John, this is my only companion, or friend; she betrays no secrets, tells no tales, and knows a beggar even in the disguise of a gentleman."

Ah!

"Ah! Frank, you were always cynical. Make a dog your only companion and friend, when there are friends to be had, aye, in plenty, if we only deserve them; and as to the beggars, poor devils! why Frank, you remember our own young days; a broom and a crossing would have been a fortune to me, when our luxury consisted in sniffing the savoury steams that loomed from the kitchens of the London Coffee House; talk of the increased power of steam after that," and he laughed joyously; ' and then do you remember how we worked for a supper- Want a coach, your honour ?'' here Frank, hold the link to his lordship!' Chairman! Sec-dan-ay-ay-all ready!' the days of Ranelagh and Vauxhall! we were hungry, half-starved link-boys, errandboys, serving-boys then; but we had youth, and hope, and energy; strong wills, though in tangled ways, and triumphed. Lucky dogs we have been, eh, Frank?" and again John Oldham shook his brother's hands; while the proud, rigid brother writhed under the remembrances in which John gloried, and continued, "Do you remember, Frank, our unlucky sixpence ? I never forget the tenderness I felt for that last coin we had in the world! and how, after a hard day's fag, and a hard day's disappointment, we went to the baker's to buy us a loaf, depending on the change for a bed, and how the sixpence was a bad one! and how the baker would have it that we knew it, and threatened us with a constable; but the baker's wife said him nay--that I "looked honest," and "you looked starved,” and she gave us a stale roll. That woman's kind eyes have shone in my dreams many times since then! what a living, abiding thing is charity!"

It was well that John did not then look at his brother Frank.

The baker's wife was right; more than fifty years had gone past, grinding its thousands, and its tens of thousands, and its hundreds of thousands, into nameless or forgotten graves; a generation had come and gone, yet her judgment was still true-"the one looked honest, the other starved." The children had grown into

boyhood, into youth, manhood, age! had passed through six of the "seven ages," with toil and labour, been elevated by "lucky hits," and depressed by commercial changes; had been both battered and cherished by what the one called "Luck," and the other "Providence;" had been stimulated by extraordinary energy, and strengthened by a fixed purpose; nurtured, they could not imagine how, though they could tell where; they had achieved the same end, by different means, and in different hemispheres, and still "one looked honest, the other starved."

Mr. John and Mr. Francis Oldham sat opposite to each other in the little parlour, that commanded a view of the small square courtyard, with the high walls; there never before, had been such a fire in the grate, the coal seemed endowed with a spirit of life, and crackled and sparkled-resolved to "make a night of it." The spring of the candle-lamp gave an occasional click, a sort of hurra in steel, and a bound, thrusting the candle up so as to form a mimic illumination. Fan did not partake of this dumb hilarity; she knew the monkey was in the house, and crouched her nose between her paws, ready to spring forth in a moment. She groaned and growled to herself, wondering, doubtless, in her canine selfishness, what her master could want with a brother or a monkey, when he had her.

Wine, of marvellous age and flavour, was poured from cobwebbed bottles into glasses which had been dry and dusty for years; it evinced its power by fevering the one, and rendering the other still more hard and bitter; but both men were "moderate"--the one from penurious habit, the other from a principle instilled by wisdom and experience.

"I wonder, brother," said Frank, abruptly, after many topics had been exhausted, "I wonder you never married."

"I think," replied John, after a very long pause, during which the thoughts of both had been rushing wildly among memories of the past--long forgotten; while some almost obliterated associations started like skeletons from mouldering graves, or arose with all the freshness of mocking youth before them; trials and turmoils, hopes, disappointments, a mingling of life and death, vapoured through the long vista of time, into which each gazed bewildered! John's jocund face assumed now a sad, and then a serious expression, like the long-drawn rays of a winter sunset; his thoughts had strolled back to the present, laden heavily with the memory of a wrong, revived, cruelly and unnecessarily by his bro-

ther's question. He felt constrained to speak, and yet feared to give his thoughts or feelings voice; his age was forgotten, or only recalled by the shrivelled, blighted man, whose manner and words had jarred upon the heart that only wished to feel how they, two remnants of the past, were alone in the wide world; and that it would be wiser never to touch the chord, that already the brother had struck with heartless violence.

"I think, Frank," he said, at last, "if your memory does not fail you, you cannot wonder why I never married."

"If," replied his brother, and his words came hard and broken through his compressed lips, "if you mean that her memory prevented it, so best. One was quite enough to be ensnared into matrimony. I congratulate you on your escape, brother John."

"This comes ill from you," replied the brother; "she preferred you."

"She married me," interrupted Frank Oldham, with bitter sarcasm. John rose from his seat, and looked fixedly at his brother.

"If she had not loved you, she would not have married you; there was nothing to induce her but the love of woman--the unselfish love which we so little understand. She sacrificed all for you, Frank; you were not then the prosperous man that you becameshe was a blessing."

"A curse!" groaned out Francis Oldham, fiercely, prolonging the r, grating it between. his teeth, while his dark, sunken eyes, glared like a tiger's in the dark. "A cu-r-se," he repeated; "I wish you had had her, with all the luck she brought to me!"

A variety of contending feelings wrestled in John Oldham's bosom; his distress was suffocating-agonizing; he gazed on the distorted features of his brother, and thought, “ Was it for this I returned-despite his written words, is he unchanged?" And then, terror-stricken, he fancied that Frank must be insane. For a moment, frightful as this was, he would rather have had it so, than know that, in his senses, his brother had ever dared to express such thoughts: he summoned his better angel to his aid, by a rapid supplication for strength, and power to overcome evil by good. After another moment, he felt compassion for the rich, wretched man, who was grasping convulsively the handles of the chair whereon he saté, and muttering. "Brother," he said, “more must have passed, during the many years of our estrangement, than I have ever known. We are old men, both; we exchanged brief letters; at first they were cold and for

mal-but of late our hearts drew towards each other-mine did, God knows, towards you! We are, to all appearance, once more together, beneath the sanctuary of your roof, warmed by your cheerful fire, stimulated, perhaps, over-much by your good wine-but we are, in reality, beside the graves which yawn for those who approach three-score and ten. I have given up the associates and associations of forty years, for my heart yearned to be with you, brother, so that we might end our days, as we began them-if it was God's willwithin an hour of cach other. For this I have crossed the sea, determined, because of the long estrangement between us, that we should now be all in all to cach other; but while I breathe this air, and have the power of speech, I will suffer no shadow to be cast upon her memory. You wooed her from me, brother, and far-off I bore, silently, unrepiningly, the misery which I believed secured her happi

ness.

Age had failed to paralyze that large heart! it was beating at that moment with the fervour of youth within his breast; tears overflowed his eyes, and, if he had yielded to his feelings, he would have covered his face and wept; but there was a stern severity, an unmelting nature about his brother, which brought his years back upon him, and though his purpose remained. his enthusiasm faded.

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"We will not speak of it," said Frank, abruptly; we are two old men now, waiting annihilation."

John Oldham shuddered, and drew back, as if stricken by sudden ague. "Not so," he said, "waiting the perfecting of a life commenced here, to be purified and immortalized hereafter." Such was his noble nature that he could hardly help-as he stood looking down upon the man, "the muck worm," writhing in the toils of infidelity, ashamed to let his face be seen, so that he covered it with his handsfalling on his knees beside him, and praying that his heart might be changed; he forgot his indignation in his horror and sorrow at the confession which had escaped from those. shrivelled lips; his sanctified benevolence, born of true Christian charity, came forth, and he longed to take him to his bosom as a little child, and nurture him with tidings of great joy; the cause of the deformity of his brother's nature was laid bare before him; the hideous skeleton of his life was there in all its frightful, fleshless deformity; the coil of the great sin-serpent was around him, its breath stifled him, its eyes pierced him, its poison mingled with his blood, he was exist

ing without hope! without faith! trembling on the brink of the damp, hollow grave, from which he believed, or desperately thought he believed, there was no resurrection. What availed his heaps of gold, the greetings of men in the market-places, the notoriety achieved by his wealth, he must exchange all for the putrid grave-for that consummation he had toiled-living his latter years unloving and unbeloved-living without a blessing, dying without a hope!

John, the eldest of the two old men by one hour, laid his hand gently-pityingly-on his brother's shoulder. "Frank," he said, "this must not be this cannot be! My poor brother, what fearful tortures you must have gone through to have come to this."

The gentle, tender tone of the voice, the loving pity of the words, touched him; the wine fever was abating—the bitterness giving way; he was never otherwise than hard and severe, but he had become a demon under the unusual influence of the old wine. He withdrew his hands from his full, but wrinkled brow, and spoke :-"You do not spurn away your infidel brother? She learned to shrink from my touch before she died. The preachers got hold of her; men who cry perpetually, 'Flee from the sinner-flee from the sinner, and leave him to destruction;' but that was not all the mother of five children-but one survived-one boy-beautiful as she had been. I looked to that boy to take up my life, and in his turn bequeath it to his child-that was the immortality I sought! John, she taught that boy to shudder at my voice; she did more! she strengthened him in what she called a faithful standing up against Apolyon. I will tell you; I would not have my child think and feel as I do for the universe! I would teach my enemy to do so, not my friend —not my child,” the old man groaned.

"Speak freely," said John, soothingly; “I pity you the more, but do not love you the less, my brother!"

"But Margaret thought I would have taken away the stay, the hope, from my own child, though I had nothing to give him in return! She made him dread his father. My child shrank from my side; those eyes of light became dark when I drew near; and when my wife lay dead, that boy watched beside her, lest I should disturb the inanimate clay by my presence. He rose against me when I crept into the room to look my last on her-it might be in love, or hate-he rose against me, upbraided me like a strong man, for having broken her heart. I did not do it, John

women have pined and died from contradiction before now! I could not help it! if she would watch and pray by night, and catch consumption, what could I do? She had a doctor, too; though the boy upbraided me, and said, 'not until it was too late!' My own child taunted me; and that dreary night I was heated, as I was but now; for I had drunk much wine, to give me strength to look upon the face of death. Thus nerved, he bade me back-dared me to take the seat which he had left-stood in my path-I struck him down. As I am a living man, the dead cried out! It was no fancy; for years I have been started from my sleep by that same cry!" His shrunken chest heaved convulsively, and he shuddered so, that his after-words came trembling from his quivering lips. "I raised him in my arms, and laid him in my own bed; and when I went for help, he crawled back, and there again I found him, kneeling beside her corpse. If I injured her, she was revenged by the deep hatred that most beautiful of boys bore to mehis father! Oh! how I watched and waited, thinking to win his love; how I sought to discover his tastes, his fancies, and force them to the one purpose-affection for myself. All spoke of his beauty, and congratulated me on having such a son, a scholar and a gentleman, to hold high place in good society. I wish I could have hated him; no, cold as he was to me, he was my pride, but as he grew, his genius was cramped by fanaticism; he sought conventicles, and took companionship with Methodists, little caring what I thought. And then his health failed, and I sent him from his associates into the country, hoping he might be tempted into the manly pastimes of the English field. What did he then? Marriedwhile a mere boy, he married a farmer's daughter. He, whom I hoped would have brought family and distinction, enriched our blood by means of my hard-earned wealth, wedded a low-born, silly girl-a loving fool, no more! And when I questioned him-hoping they were not wed-he said she was good enough for him; that his mother had often told him of the lowly struggles and station of our young life; and how riches, such as I possessed, never brought honour or honourable distinction. I told him he was no more son of mine; and he coolly wished that such were possible! I never saw him after."

"Did he leave no children?" inquired John. "What care I!" said Frank, fiercely. “If he left a swarm of children, what is that to me? My heart was forthwith locked against him and all the world; I have long shut out

all human sympathies, and never thought to be moved again as I have been moved tonight. Now, brother John, you know me, or nearly so. It may be that you leave me tomorrow: there is no reason why we should seek to please each other-neither can serve the other's interests."

"Enough of this stony creed!" exclaimed the stranger. "I have heard so much, that I can endure no more to night. I warn you of one thing—if your son left children, I

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ITALY AND HER FOREMOST MEN.*

In our preceding remarks concerning Rome and the Papal States, we have shown upon what obsolete and absurd principles their present existing laws are founded; the unjust and contradictory manner in which those laws are administered, and the disreputable character and conduct of too many of the individuals to whom the power of carrying them into execution is entrusted. It is now our more painful duty-a duty we owe alike to humanity and truth-to inquire into the effects of such a system of government upon those unfortunate enough to be subjected to its tyranny; to consider the severity of the sentences that follow a secret accusation, and a mockery of a trial; and to throw open the doors of the prisons, wide enough to show the horrors to which their unhappy inmates are exposed.

Under the old clerical régime, the prisons and galleys of Rome were in a most deplorable condition. At the epoch of the Italian revival, and during the constitution, Doctor Luigi Carlo Farini, at this time minister of public instruction in Piedmont, was appointed to the superintendence of them; and under his direction many abuses were destroyed, and the whole system was much ameliorated. But with the restoration of the papacy came the restoration of all the evils, in every department, of the old clerical administration.

We have already stated that a Roman citizen may be dragged from his home, even in the middle in the night, without any charge being specified against him, and confined, for an indefinite period, in any of the ordinary prisons. That of Monte Citorio is the one to which an unfortunate is usually sent, immediately upon his arrest; from this depôt, as it may be considered, and which we have already mentioned

* Continued from page 111.

as receiving within its walls, in the first seven months of the past year, 3745 persons, from a population not exceeding 120,000 souls, the prisoner is generally removed to the Carcere nuove, or new prisons, where he is placed in segreta, or secret confinement. This segreta is a subterranean chamber, about ten or twelve feet square, and the same height, with a vaulted roof, containing one sole aperture for air and light. In this cell frequently twelve or fourteen unhappy wretches, not condemned, but only suspected, are pent up, in a space that does not allow more air than is required for four or five. In one of those cells, by order of some previous Pope, who had more compassion for the sufferings and sorrows of his subjects than Pio Nono has ever shown, a marble inscription was put up, directing that not more than eight persons should be confined in it at once; notwithstanding which edict, twenty-two persons were very recently crammed into this same cell!

What renders this over-crowded state still more intolerable is, that no classification, either with regard to offence or station in society, is made. A young man accused of attending an obnoxious meeting, or merely suspected of political disaffection, may be placed side by side with a murderer, or a miscreant whose crimes disgrace humanity; and Colonel Grandoni, a gentleman in every sense of the word, is at this moment associated, by the infamy of his gaolers, with the very dregs of society, in one common prison. There are at this time seven hundred prisoners in the Carcere nuove. Out of seventy-five who were personally known to a highly respectable resident in Rome, holding an important official situation, only thirty remain; fever, consumption, sickness of the heart, and, unhappily, suicide, having burst the bonds of the rest.

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