when I began forthwith to make my way to the side of the pit, the whole house considering my attempt to escape as a confession of guilt and shame, and taking advantage of the emptiness of the stage, while Lady Macbeth was coming to listen at the door, opened upon me with one simultaneous roar of execration. I carried about for a month the bruises I received on my passage out, from the malicious treadings on the toes, kicks on the shins, and punches in the back, which I endured as I squeezed my way out through the crowded benches, though at the moment the excitement of the cause in which I suffered happily rendered me insensible to the pain and indignity of such annoyances. If the musicians in the orchestra thought me mad, as I told you before, much more must the few who were lounging about the lobbies, as I emerged from my persecutions, have set me down as so afflicted, for I rushed up the stone staircases as if the whole pit were still at my heels, eager to fulfil its still unsated revenge. Half breathless with the exertion of both doing and suffering, I turned the handle of the box-door, entered, and found it-empty. My first thought was, of course, that I had mistaken the box, and I was turning hastily away to try the next, when something white lying on one of the seats caught my eye. It was a letter folded, but unsealed, and directed merely 'To I have got it still, and will show it you some day, Master Oliver; but as I know its contents by heart, it does not matter just now. It was unsigned, and written evidently in a woman's hand, though even in this there was an attempt at disguise, and ran thus:-' I told you that you and I might meet again. We have done so, and now I tell you that we shall never meet more. What is owed to you, and why, you will never know ; that there are some who hold themselves something your debtors, this, which has been long prepared for such an opportunity, may serve to convince you. Fill up the blank left in the enclosed with the date of an evening which you will hardly have forgotten-or it will be useless. All endeavours to follow or trace me hence will be fruitless. In a few days broad seas will roll between us for ever.'

"Well," said I, "uncle, that was a strange sort of epistle, however." "It was so," said my uncle; "but there was something still more strange in it, nevertheless."

"And that was -?" said I, inquiringly.

"A cheque for one thousand pounds!" said my uncle, emphasizing

each word.

"Drawn," said I, "upon the Man in the Moon, and made payable at the latter Lammas."

6

"Drawn," resorted my uncle, upon the first banker in London-signed by six independent letters of the alphabet-filled in by my own handin favour of the twenty-third of June, 18—, or bearer '—and cashed in good clean crisp bank-notes, by the chief clerk of the establishment, who, as he handed them over, told me, with much politeness, in answer to a half commenced inquiry, that the orders of the house were to honour such a cheque, and neither to ask nor answer any question whatsoever.' "Wh- -ew," said, or rather whistled, I.

6

"You may be sure," resumed my uncle, magnanimously disregarding my incredulous ejaculation, "I lost not a moment in making inquiries. The boxkeeper had seen a lady closely cloaked and veiled pass out not half a

minute before, and pass towards the great staircase, but on the staircase itself there was a crowd collected round a fat woman, who had been carried out fainting, and nobody had seen or taken notice of any such person as I inquired for. I rushed out to the corner at which I had entered the carriage on that inexplicable night, but there was nothing visible save a drunken artizan warmly embracing a lamp post, and in the throng of carriages which surrounded the great door of the theatre, and the confusion which prevailed, all search was hopeless, nor was it in the slightest degree probable that the unknown, if she so much desired to avoid a personal interview, should not have taken measures to secure her retreat, without running the risk of hindrance in a crowd like that which was there collected. And so, Master Oliver, if you want any explanation of these facts, you must even take the trouble to invent one for yourself, for from that day to this, I have neither heard, seen, nor in any way discovered anything, directly or indirectly, to throw light upon the matter; and, moreover, be so kind as to hand me over that punch jug, you seem to be so closely attached to, for my throat's as dry as a bone."

"Really, uncle," said I, "the only wonder is, that you weren't choked outright by telling such a long-winded rigmarole, cock-and-bull, improbable, incredible

"True story," interposed my uncle, and he said it so quietly and yet so emphatically, that, whatever I thought about the matter, I did not contradict him, H. L. T.

The main incidents of the above tale, whether real or fictitious, are not due to the imagination of the present writer. They were related to him some years ago, by a valued friend, now dead, who professed to have himself received them, in his youth, from the actual hero of the story. This latter, though of no aristocratic extraction, was an eminently handsome, "fast," and notorious man about town; wellknown to have been engaged in many adventures more curious than edifying. There was, according to my informant, no ground for suspecting his veracity. He, of course, had, as the ingenious reader will have, a theory by which he explained the facts of his story, and which is, perhaps, obvious enough not to need resuggestion here. It remains only to add the name of the adventurer.

ὄνομα δ ̓ ἔσχεν άμετρον, ἀθέσφατον ουδ ̓ ὀνομαστὸν

He was called Jenkins.

THE BALLADS AND ROMANTIC POEMS OF VICTOR HUGO.

TRANSLATED BY ROBERT B. BROUGH.

No. 12.-THE GIANT.

Ho, warriors! I was born in Gaul, the land where giants grow.

My ancestors, across the Rhine, as 'twere a gutter, skipp'd.

My mother plunged me, squalling, in a bath of polar snow;

My lusty sire, for coverlids across my cot to throw, The reeking skins from three huge bears, unmercifully stripped.

Dad was a mighty man, i' faith! but all to age must bend!

The thin locks fall, like melting snows, from off his furrow'd brow.

He waxes old, he waxes faint-he draws so near

his end,

He scarce has strength an oak tree by its roots from earth to rend, To make a staff to help along his tott'ring footsteps now!

All's one! I live to take his place: I have his iron bow,

His oxen, hatchets, armlets, chains-his javelin of death; I the old giant's heir, who-seated on the hillock's brow (My careless feet bedabbled in the valley stream below)

Can make the distant poplars bend, like rushes, with my breath!

When but a brat, I proved my strength: the trackless Alps amid,
By tearing rock from rock, these hands my steps a pathway wrought;
Then, like a bluff in ocean spray, my stalwart bust was hid
In wreathing mists; then, (watching them as through the air they slid),
The screaming eagles, in my cap, like butterflies, I caught.

I battled with the mountain storm, or, stout of heart and lung,
In sport, puff'd out the lightning as it wound its tortuous way:
Or, chasing some huge whale, I strode the yesty waves among,
While humbled Ocean, open to my path, his portals flung,

And ne'er were seas in tempest lashed as in my childish play.

I gamboll'd here and thither-chased the falcon in the air;
Harpooned the cunning shark, deep down in coral caverns hushed;
Within my arms, snatch'd up and hugged, the grizly Polar Bear
Would gasp and die without a wound! while in his wintry lair

Deep in his jaws, the wolf's white fangs, my baby-hand has crushed.

These schoolboy sports were well enough, but they have lost their charms;
War is my pastime now, with all its rude and manly joys,
Curses of weeping mothers, wives, and children! shrieks! alarms!
The camp! the foeman bounding 'neath his panoply of arms,

Whose challenge blast, like cock-crow, sleep and indolence destroys!

Mid clouds of dust and founts of blood, with clashing spear and glaive,
When armies undistinguished roll pell-mell upon the plain,
Then do I rise in all my pride of strength and stature brave;
And even as the sea-hawk cleaves, with splitting stroke, the wave,
I plunge amid the cohorts! Faith, my passage leaves a lane!

And like a reaper standing up amid the fallen corn,

Alone, erect, above their heaps of carrion, I am seen.
Beneath my shouts their murmurs sink to whisperings forlorn.
Beneath my naked fist their arms are battered, bruised and worn,
As by the strokes of knotted oak, tough from the forest green!

I go as naked as your hand. My sov'reign valour strong

Laughs at the steel-bound weaklings, who your silken camps supply; I merely take my ashen spear to charge the battle throng,

And this light casque (which, by-the-way, methinks, to drag along
On wheels, a good half dozen yoke of bulls in vain might try.)

I waste no useless ladders to besiege a fortress wall;

I simply with a thumb or finger snap their drawbridge chains. No batt'ring ram like this strong arm can make a bastion fall;

Show me a city's tow'rs, I'll crush them, singly, one and all,
And fill the deepest moat up with their battlements' remains.

Oh, warriors! when my time shall come, my victims to pursue
Beyond the bounds we parted at, to Death's mysterious gloom,
Let not the ravens feast on me: amid yon mountain's blue
Make me a grave, that strangers, when the misty range they view,
May wond'ring ask, which Alpine summit marks the giant's tomb!

IGNORANT EDUCATION.

Br. J HOLLINGSHEAD.

I AM a working man. I go to my factory every morning at six, and I leave it every night at the same hour. I require, on the average, eight hours' sleep, which leaves four hours for recreation and improvement. I have lived at many places in the outskirts, according as my work has shifted, but generally I find myself at Mile End. I always live near the factory where I work, and so do all my mates, no matter how small, dirty, and dear the houses may be; and sometimes it strikes me that three shillings a-week is rather a high rent to pay for a little, dirty, badly-ventilated room, in a back street at Stepney. However, the landlords won't take less, because they have always got customers at that price, and, looking at it in that light, I don't see why they should. One or two of my mates have tried the plan of living a few miles out, and walking to business in the morning, like the clerks do in the city. It don't do I suppose because they have not been used to it from boys; perhaps, because walking exercise at five in the morning don't suit men who are hard at work with their bodies all day. As to railways and omnibuses, they cost money, and we don't understand them, except on holidays, when we have got our best clothes on.

Now, what I am going to talk to you about, Sir, is the attempts that you gentlemen at the west-end are so fond of making, every now and then, to improve our mental condition. I dare say you all mean well enough, but, unfortunately you don't know anything about us. Talk of the ignorance of the lower orders, why, it's nothing to the ignorance of the upper classes. A working man, like any one of my mates, is employed, we'll say, in making boilers. Before he's allowed to work independently, he passes, at least, a seven years' apprenticeship in learning his craft and the nature of the material with which he has to deal. But a gentleman has only to reach twenty-one years of age, and come from college into possession of a large fortune, and he may set up at once as a benefactor of his species, without knowing anything whatever of the business. Some of these gentlemen, well-intentioned enough, no doubt, are very fond of starting Working-men's Colleges, for the