by time and weather, while before them lay heaps of rank manure, like islands floating in the dark fluid they had themselves produced. Though its occupants were considered decent, industrious people, it had something in its aspect of the squalor and neglect which usually indicate the abode of idleness and crime. If it was occasionally refreshed by a coat of whitewash, the effect (from its exposed situation) was soon destroyed, and it again looked as comfortless as ever. One or two stunted trees, that seemed to be dying a lingering death, served to add to its appearance of desolation; and the only circumstance which lessened its dulness was, that every foot or bridle-path across the common seemed in some way to pass near it.

We have endeavoured to picture it to the reader, because it will be the scene of more than one of our incidents.

Stopping in front of this dreary habitation, "Is he alive?" asked Mr. Pigott, addressing a woman who stood at the door.

"He is alive," she replied, "and that's all."

"I hope he has had every attention."

"I have done all I could for him," answered the woman, "but he's past human help."

"He seemed strangely altered," continued Mr. Pigott. "If he had not brought some facts to my recollection"--and here he involuntarily sighed "I should scarcely have believed that he was the same man. Does he ever ask for me?"

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"For the last six hours," said the woman, "he has not spoken at all." After this short colloquy he bade her good night, and turning his pony's head, proceeded homewards.

The weather, as he had apprehended, became worse. He had to encounter a heavy, driving rain, and the small steed he rode having stumbled over a low furze-bush, he fell heavily from the saddle, and lay for some time in a state of unconsciousness.

When he recovered, the pony was grazing at his side, and, remounting it, he was soon by his own hearth, relating to his family the successful result of his negotiations. But he felt chilled by having lain so long upon the wet ground; this was followed by an attack of pleurisy, and, in less than a fortnight after the conversation with which our story commenced, he was buried in the Abbey Church of Stoke Dotterell.

"Whose is that other funeral, Thomas?" said a young man, who was one of Mr. Pigott's mourners, addressing himself to the sexton.

"It's only a pauper funeral, Sir Jonah. It's the man that died up at the Hunter's Lodge. They say he was formerly an attorney's clerk in this town, but I don't hear of anybody that could rightly recollect him." Strange !" said the inquirer, as he stepped into his carriage. "If

66

my father's papers tell the truth, this was the only mortal evidence that

remained; and Mr. Pigott himself dies at the moment when (myself consenting) he might have lived undisturbed by any further annoyance."

On his return home he carefully sealed up the papers he had referred

to, and deposited them with the title-deeds of his estates.

It was observed that Henry did not seem much affected by his father's death. But the outward manifestations of grief are so various and uncertain, that, even with the whole story of his life before us, we should hesitate before we attributed his apparent indifference to insensibility of the loss he had sustained.

Of its effect upon his future career, the first intimation was received in a dry-looking letter addressed to Mrs. Pigott by Messrs. Dangerfield and Pounce. It was written in that sharp and painfully-distinct hand which make the not-always-agreeable communications of an attorney so unmistakable, and it enclosed their account "agt deceased," at the same time informing Mrs. Pigott, "in answer to her inquiry," that they could not make any alteration in "the terms agreed upon," and "must therefore consider the arrangement with regard to Mr. Henry as cancelled." And thus perished the hopes of another aspirant to the Woolsack.

II.

DELIBERATION, AND DEPARTURE.

MRS. PIGOTT's position was greatly altered by her husband's death. With the exception of a property scarcely yielding three hundred a year, and partly dependent upon rents, which had been settled upon herself at their marriage, his income passed at his decease to a sister who was residing in Italy; and even the small sum remaining to his widow would be diminished, for a year or two, by the payment of debts. Of her own she had little. She was also without friends who could aid her in her projects for the advancement of her son, even with their advice. Mr. Pigott had been of retired habits; a reading, dreamy, nervous person; kindly affectioned, but so reserved that very few of his acquaintances could ever become intimate with him.

It must be admitted, indeed, that Stoke Dotterell afforded few opportunities for the cultivation of friendly intercourse. The whole of its society was restricted to about a dozen families, divided as usual by politics, jealousies, and religion; so that Henry himself, with the greater accessibility of youth, had only two close friends-Sir Jonah Foster, who had just attained his majority, and Blake Whitmore, the son of a country

solicitor.

They were of very different dispositions and characters, and were we disposed to enlighten our readers with our own reflections, we might speculate upon the unsympathetic materials of which friendships are often made.

Blake Whitmore was one of those happy natures which not even the practice of a country attorney could spoil. He was frank, cheerful, and high-principled ; and self-cultivation, superadded to a tolerable education, had strengthened his natural talents with no ordinary degree of information.

Sir Jonah Foster was considered by most of his acquaintance as a very unattractive person. In all he said there was a tone of morbid sarcasm, and his views of society were tinctured by much of the misanthropy which is usually peculiar to age and disappointment. He occasionally performed acts, apparently, of generosity; but there was something ungratifying even in his favours; a questionable phrase, or a want of delicacy in the manner of presentation, often made them grating, rather than grateful, to the feelings of their recipients. Many insinuated that it was sufficient for Henry Pigott that his friend was a baronet of good fortune, the owner of Abbey Grange, and the possessor of considerable local influence, and that Sir Jonah's regard in return was propitiated by dexterous flattery.

Serious and frequent were the conversations between Henry and his family as to their future plans, and, as must generally happen when the means are inadequate to the ends proposed, they usually finished very unsatisfactorily.

On one of these occasions, when his mother had repeated, not for the first time, how painful it would be to leave a place which her husband had brought into such perfect order, and to which, on many accounts, she was so much attached, the following letter was laid before her:

"Knight's Carey, 15th September.

"DEAR MRS. PIGOTT,-As the friend of your son, may I request that you will continue to occupy Abbey Grange, free of rent, as long as you may think it desirable. I shall expect you to keep it in its present state of repair, and shall give directions to my agent accordingly, at the same time desiring him not to call upon you for the rent which will become due at Michaelmas.

"With my best remembrances to your family circle,

"Believe me, dear Mrs. Pigott,

"Very faithfully yours,

"JONAH FOSTER."

"There!” cried Henry, when he had read the letter, "I always said that Sir Jonah was a good-hearted fellow; his offer is promptly and handsomely made, and I hope you will accept it."

"Impossible! Apart from all other considerations, to live here with our present reduced means would be a constant and painful effort to keep up appearances. You have still to be put forward. Live how I might, I could do little to assist you, my dear Henry, and living here I could do nothing."

"Don't think of that. I have a perfect confidence in myself and my prospects, and hope to be able to assist you, rather than encroach upon your limited means."

This was said in sincerity. Henry Pigott was essentially selfish, and it is often one of the attributes of such a disposition to be sanguine as to the future. It believes that all things are to happen as it wishes, because it thinks they ought.

"And pray, Henry," asked Mrs. Pigott, "what are the prospects in which you have so much confidence ?"

"None, certainly," replied her son, "if we are to look for assistance to your friends in London. Only think of that grave and potent citizen proposing to place me with an upholsterer or an engraver!-both wealthy men, forsooth, and 'deputies of their wards! What are their wealth and their wards to me? I feel certain that I shall be in parliament before any of the three will even have risen to the dull dignity of an alderman." "Well, my child, don't vex yourself about it. He was the only relation likely to advise me; in writing to him, I acted for the best; and I expected a very different answer. But what are your own views ?"

If I cannot be a great lawyer, I will be a great merchant. I will go to Liverpool. Blake Whitmore has an uncle there; he has promised to give me a letter to him; and I intend to set out to-morrow. He tells me that unless I wish, by seven years' servitude, to gain the freedom of the

borough, there are offices where a shorter apprenticeship is sufficient, and where I might have a salary that would help materially to maintain me." "Since circumstances," said Mrs. Pigott, "compel us to change the career I had marked out for you, I do not think that your plan is a bad But why set out to-morrow?"

one.

"I intended to do so; but I do not know that I shall set out at all, unless you show more disposition to meet my wishes."

"In what way, my dear Henry, have I done otherwise ?"

"Why, as regards the offer of Sir Jonah. You don't know, mother, how much it may influence my more distant plans; and unless you remain at Abbey Grange, at least for a year or two, I will do nothing; or, what I should think much worse, I will take the advice of your city relation, and turn upholsterer. Will you promise me?"

"I must confess, Henry, that I neither like the offer, nor the way in which it is made; but I have no wish in life but for my children; and for the present, then, we will make no change."

Helen had listened to this conversation with various feelings. At one part, were the kind offer of Blake Whitmore was mentioned, they were of deep satisfaction.

Soon afterwards he called.

"I have brought you the letter, Henry," said Blake, “and I am certain that, if it be possible, my uncle will assist you; but I regret that you are to leave us. I shall often miss you, even as my pupil in German; and am afraid that you will forget what you have already learnt."

"I am afraid so too. Can you give me anything that I could take with me to fix my interest in it."

"Give him," said Helen, "your line-for-line translation of 'Herman and Dorothea.""

"What!” cried Henry, "the English Hexameters ?

Spare me! for, even for friendship, would that be too great an infliction!" Why a man might go on making such lines as this for ever. The difficulty is not in writing English hexameters, but in finding any one to read them. I never quite entered into your feelings as to the original. What are its points of attraction ?"

"In the first place, I consider it the most purely German picture of German provincial life that has ever fallen under my notice. Then I like its tone of domestic affection. I envy that old patriarch the regards of his wife and children."

"I have often thought that you would have no objection to be at the head of a tribe yourself. Am I not right, Blake ?"

"You are certainly not very far wrong. But I should wish to make a wife the partner of my success and not of my poverty; and, till I obtain. one or two appointments which I have in view-or something equivalent -I should be sorry to entangle the fortunes of such a woman as I could love, or, indeed, of any one."

Yet he was doing so, though unconsciously, even then.

"I doubt if I should be so particular myself," said Henty.

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"Do not speak of yourself worse than you deserve," replied Blake. “I

believe

you would."

"And do you think," inquired Helen, "that Henry has a fair chance of success?"

"Every chance, as far as a commencement may be deemed success. The rest he must achieve for himself."

"If it is to depend upon myself," resumed Henry, "I have no fears whatever. Why should I? On Monday I will set out."

And Monday witnessed his first departure from Abbey Grange.

III.

I say it though he's my friend.-SHERIDAN.

AMONG the moral plague-spots which disfigured the social state of England at the commencement of the nineteenth century, there were few more fearful than the mercantile apprentice-life of Liverpool.

The rapid rise to wealth and importance of many of its inhabitants, and the inexhaustible field which it seemed to open to exertion and enterprise, caused the great sea-mart of the north to be regarded at that time throughout the British Empire as the land of promise which has now to be sought for in distant climates.

Many hundred youths, their ages varying from fourteen to eighteen, were annually sent there, and at an age so ductile it was a position of severe trial. In some counting-houses, there were one or two; in some as many as ten or twenty. A few had relations in the town; many not even a friend. They lived in such lodgings as their respective means enabled them to occupy. As long as they attended to their duties at the hours appointed-and the post-office regulations of those days often detained them at the desk till nine o'clock at night-few of their masters ever inquired into the employment of their time elsewhere, or showed any care as to the habits they might fall into. Freed from occupations more or less fatiguing at this late hour, with companions as unrestrained as themselves, some of whom had money at their disposal, and surrounded by all the gross temptations of a crowded seaport, they were led into habits of dissipation which ended in the death of some, and in the moral and social degradation of many. Their training as members of a Christian community was never thought of, or so little regarded, that when business required it a breach of the Sabbath was considered as part of their duty. In most instances all the traditional relations between master and apprentice seemed to have been forgotten, or were laid aside as something too troublesome to be attended to.

As our story does not refer to living persons or to very recent times, and as we write at a distance from the place, we do not say what the apprentice-life may be at present. If it still remains as we have described it, the account of heavy responsibilities disregarded has been fearfully increased, and the evil itself will not be found to have been exaggerated.

In this school of iniquity Henry Pigott was to commence his career. He found Blake Whitmore's uncle to be one of those good, easy men who take things pretty much as they come, and do not trouble themselves as to the consequences. He had been a widower for some years; and he lived about a mile from the town, his great amusement being the cultivation of tulips and auriculas. It is unnecessary to say that he was not rich. His reception of his nephew's friend was kind, and he invited