me, lovely Jenny; sisters can have no obligations between them.' As they embraced each other, the baronet approached. "There stands my poor brother,' said my lady; 'as you are now my sister, he may stand nearer to your heart, dear Jenny; may he not?' Jenny blushed, and replied: "He is my father's benefactor.'

'Will you not be,' replied the lady, 'the benefactress of my poor brother? I pray you look kindly on him. If you only knew how he loves you!'

The baronet took Jenny's hand and kissed it, and said, as she struggled to withdraw it: Madam, will you be unkind to me? I cannot be happy without this hand.' Jenny, much disturbed, let her hand remain in his. The baronet then led my daughter to me, and begged me for my blessing.

'Jenny,' said I, 'it depends upon thee. Do we dream? Canst thou love him? Do thou decide."

She then turned to the gentleman, who stood before her deeply agitated, and cast upon him a full, penetrating look, and then took his hand in both hers, pressed it to her breast, looked up to heaven, and softly whispered: God has decided.'

Satisfied with the decision, I blessed my son and daughter, who embraced each other. There was a solemn silence, and all eyes were wet with a pleasing emotion.

Suddenly the lively Polly sprung up, laughing through her tears, and flinging herself on my neck, she cried: "There! now we have it! The New-year's gift-a gift better than a bishop's mitre.' The vivacity of Polly awoke little Alfred.

It is in vain for me to continue the description of what occurred during this happy day. I am continually interrupted; my happy heart, full to overflowing, is thankful to God for all his goodness.*

*This singularly touching narrative of certain passages in the life of a poor vicar in Wiltshire, is translated from the German of Zchokke, who took it from a fugitive sketch that appeared in England many years ago, and which probably gave Goldsmith the first hint towards his Vicar of Wakefield. The present translation from Zchokke, who has improved considerably on the original, is (some emendations excepted) by an American writer, by whom it was contributed to The Gift for 1844, published by Carey and Hart, Philadelphia. It is almost unnecessary to add, that no vicar or curate can be exposed in the present day to hardships so great as those endured by the hero of the piece: and we hope that men of the Dr Snarl species are now extinct.

25

EVERY nation possesses prejudices respecting its neighbours. A prejudice is an opinion formed without having in the first place acquired a sufficient body of facts whereon to form a correct judgment. The French entertain some strange prejudices respecting the English; they consider them to be generally a coarse, overbearing, money-making, and sensual people, without taste or delicacy of feeling. The English, with equal injustice and ignorance of facts, are in the habit of considering the French, universally, to be silly, frivolous, and deceitful, with the additional misfortune of being very poor and very idle. Anxious to correct all such wrong impressions, which tend to foster national animosities, we shall tell a little story respecting a young Frenchwoman, whose character for industry, good sense, and benevolence, whilst no way singular in her own country, could not be excelled in ours.

The name of our humble heroine was Blanche Raymond, and her occupation was that of a washerwoman in one of the large barges which are moored, for the convenience of her class, within the margin of the Seine. At boats of this kind, all the laundry washing of Paris is performed the clear water of the river as it runs past with a piece of soap, and a mallet to beat the clothes, being the sole means of purification. The labour is considerable, and the payment for it small, yet no women are more cheerful than these laundresses. Exposed at all seasons to perpetual damp, which saturates their garments, and prematurely stiffens their limbs, they still preserve their national vivacity, which finds vent in many a song; and, in a spirit of cordial fellowship, sympathise with each other in prosperity or adversity. Earning on an average little more than two francs, or twentypence daily, they nevertheless agree to set aside rather more than twopence out of that sum towards a fund for unforeseen calamities, and, above all, to prevent any of their number, who may be laid aside by illness, from being reduced to seek other relief. The greater part of them are married women with families.

Unromantic as is the occupation of these women, yet incidents occur among them, as in every other class of society, however

humble, of the most interesting and pathetic kind. This was well illustrated in the life of our heroine, Blanche Raymond. Blanche was no more than twenty-three years of age, endowed with a fine open smiling countenance, great strength of body, and uncommon cleverness of hand. She had lost her mother some time before, and being now the only stay of her old blind father, a superannuated labourer on the quay, she had to work double-tides for their joint support; though the old man, by earning a few pence daily by weaving nets, was saved the feeling of being altogether a burden on his child.

There was a nobleness in Blanche's conduct towards her poor old father, that mounted like a brilliant star above the ordinary circumstances of her condition. After preparing her father's breakfast, at his lodgings opposite the stairs in the quay leading to her boat, she went down to it at seven o'clock every morning, came home at noon to give the poor blind man his dinner, and then back to work for the rest of the day. Returning at its close to her humble hearth, where cleanliness and comfort reigned, she would take out her old father for an hour's walk on the quay, and keep him merry by recounting all the gossip of the boat; not forgetting the attempts at flirtation carried on with herself by certain workmen in a merino manufactory, whose pressing-machine immediately adjoined the laundress's bark, and who never failed, in going to and fro twenty times a day, to fling passing compliments at the belle blanchisseuse (pretty laundress). The cheerful old man would re-echo the light-hearted laugh with which those tales were told; but following them up with the soberer counsels of experience over the closing meal of the day, then fall gently asleep amid the cares and caresses of the most dutiful of daughters.

Three years had rolled away since her mother's death, and Blanche, happily engrossed between her occupation abroad and her filial duties at home, had found no leisure to listen to tales of love. There was, however, among the young merino-dressers a tall, fine, handsome fellow, named Victor, on whose open countenance were written dispositions corresponding to those of his fair neighbour; whom, instead of annoying with idle familiarities, he gradually won upon, by respectful civility towards herself, and still more by kind inquiries after her good old father.

By degrees he took upon him to watch the time when she might be toiling, heavily laden, up the steep slippery steps; and by coming just behind her, would slyly ease her of more than half her burden. On parting at the door of one of the great public laundry establishments (where the work begun on the river is afterwards completed), he would leave her with the hopeful salutation, in which more was 'meant than met the ear, of, 'Good-bye, Blanche, till we meet again.'

Such persevering attentions could hardly be repaid with indifference; and Blanche was of too kindly a nature to remain unmoved

by them. But while she candidly acknowledged the impression they had made on her heart, and that it was one which she would carry to her grave, she with equal honesty declared that she could allow no attachment to another to come between her and her devotedness to her blind father. And why should it, dear Blanche?' was the young man's rejoinder; surely two of us can do more for his happiness than one. I lost my own father when a child, and it will be quite a pleasure to me to have some one I can call so. In marrying me, you

6

will only give the old man the most dutiful of sons.'

'Ah, but I should give myself a master, who would claim and engross the greatest part of my love, for I know I should so love you, Victor! And if we had a family, the poor dear old man would come to have but the third place in my heart, after having it all to himself so long! He would find it out, blind as he is, though he would never complain; but it would make him miserable. No, no; don't talk to me of marrying as long as he lives, or tempt me with thoughts of a happiness which I have quite enough to do to forego. Let poor Blanche fulfil the task God has given her to perform; and don't lure her by your honeyed words to forget her most sacred duty!' Poor Blanche might well say she had enough to do to maintain her dutiful resolution, between the gentle importunities of her betrothed, and the general chorus of pleadings in his favour among her sisterhood in the boat, whom Victor's good looks and goodbehaviour had converted into stanch allies, and who could not conceive it possible to resist so handsome and so constant a lover. Borne down by their homely remonstrances, which agreed but too well with her own internal feelings, Blanche came at length to confess that if she had wherewithal to set up a finishing establishment of her own, where she could preside over her business without losing sight of her father, she would at once marry Victor. But the capital required for its fitting up was at least 5000 or 6000 francs, and where was such a sum to be got, or how saved out of her scanty wages? Victor, however, caught eagerly at the promise, and never lost sight of the hope it held out of attaining his darling object.

He was able to earn five francs a day, and had laid by something; and the master whom he had served for ten years, and who expressed a great regard for him, would perhaps advance part of the sum. Then, again, the good women of the boat, whose united yearly deposits amounted to upwards of 9000 francs, kindly expressed their willingness to advance out of their savings the needful for the marriage of the two lovers. But Blanche, whilst overflowing with gratitude for the generous offer, persisted in her resolution not to marry till their own joint earnings should enable her to set up a laundry.

That she worked the harder, and saved the harder to bring this about, may easily be believed. But the race is not always to the swift; and the desired event was thrown back by a new calamity, which well-nigh dashed her hopes to the ground. Her old father,

who had been subjected for fifty years of a laborious life to the damps of the river, was seized with an attack of rheumatic gout, which rendered him completely helpless, by depriving him of the use of his limbs.

Here was an end at once to all his remaining sources of amusement and occupation—it might be said, to his very animated existence; for he was reduced to an automaton, movable only at the will and by the help of others. He had now not only to be dressed and fed like a new-born infant, but to be kept from brooding over his state of anticipated death by cheerful conversation, by news from the armies, by words of consolation and reading more precious still, in all which Blanche was fortunately an adept. The old man now remained in bed till nine, when Blanche regularly left the boat, took him up, set him in his old arm-chair, gave him his breakfast, and snatching a crust of bread for herself, ran back to her work till two o'clock; then she might be seen climbing up the long steps, and running breathless with haste to cheer and comfort the old man with the meal of warm soup, so dear to a Frenchman's heart. Unwilling as she was to leave him, his very necessities kept her at work till a late hour, when, with her hard-won earnings in her hand, she would seek her infirm charge, and fall on a thousand devices to amuse and console him, till sleep stole at length on eyelids long strangers to the light of day.

One morning, on coming home as usual, Blanche found her dear invalid already up and dressed, and seated in his elbow-chair; and on inquiring to whom she was indebted for so pleasing a surprise, the old man, with a mysterious smile, said he was sworn to secrecy. But his daughter was not long in learning that it was her betrothed, who, happy thus to anticipate her wishes and cares, had prevailed on his master so to alter his own breakfast hour, as to enable him to devote the greater part of it to this pious office. Straight to her heart as this considerate kindness went, it fell short of what she experienced when, on coming home some days after, she found her dear father not only up, but in a medicated bath, administered by Victor, under the directions of a skilful doctor he had brought to visit the patient. At sight of this, Blanche's tears flowed fast and freely; and seizing on her betrothed's hands, which she held to her heart, she exclaimed: 'Never can I repay what you have done for me!' 'Nay, Blanche,' was the gentle answer, 'you have but to say one word, and the debt is overpaid.'

That word! few but would have spoken it, backed, as the modest appeal was, by the pleadings of the ally within, and the openly avowed concurrence of old Raymond in the wish so dear to both. Let none despise the struggles of the poor working-girl to withstand at once a father and a lover! to set at nought, for the first time, an authority never before disputed, and defy the power of a love so deeply founded on gratitude! In spite of them all, filial duty still