incarnation of glorious fun? The scenes, are they not the scenes of our childhood? Yes; the objects and the sounds we loved linger in the old, old spots. The nightingale sings round them yet; and the roses are still bright by the calm Bendemeer. But their scent has fled.

Ich finde sie nimmer
Und nimmermehr.

What of that, I say yet again! Let us stop and see the whole formance out, and part friends with the actors.

per

Peace be with them! God speed thee home, Paillasse, to thy care-lorn wife and the little God help thee and them, and help us all.

ones.

A ROLLING STONE.

BY WARWICK REYNOLDS.

R. and Mrs. Humdrone are, what the middle-aged middle-class portion of the world denominates, a comfortable couple. They have been married, at this present writing, near upon thirty years, and, as Humdrone himself says (Mrs. H. being present to receive the counubial chuck under the chin, which invariably forms a part of the observation) they have neither of them found any cause for regret in that circumstance. They manage to rub along tolerably well (Humdrone is a tallowchandler, in a middling way of business); they have no aspirations beyond their eight-roomed dwelling, and the little greasy shop which projects from the front of it, like the proscenium of a penny peep-show; their tastes are mutual, their tempers consistent, and they know but one care. That care is represented in the person of Mr. Thomas Humdrone, their only son.

"I don't know what to make of him," was Humdrone's lament to me, a few week's back, in reference to the obstacle in question, (I am an old friend of the family, and have had a similar piece of intelligence confided to me a hundred times before in as many months). "You see we can't get him to settle to anything. What he likes to-day he don't to-morrow, and so on to the end of the chapter. In short, he is what you would call a rolling stone-is Tom."

Mr. Humdrone had embodied, in half a dozen words, an admirable synopsis of his son's character. Let me devote a few paragraphs to a description of it in detail.

When I first made the acquaintance of the worthy tallow-chandler and

his wife, Tom was a sallow-faced, red-haired lad of sixteen; with a squat nose, a large mouth, and a faint blue eye, that made you feel quite sleepy when you looked at it-it was so very vacant and unspeculative. His figure, moreover, was disagreeably plump and short, and he had a distaste for exertion, and a constitutional propensity to lethargy and lying about, which amounted almost to a disease. In effect, there is no question that he was an uncommonly heavy-headed, stupid animal, and the very last person in the world to whom you would give the credit of possessing those unfortunate erratic characteristics which time subsequently developed in him. Tom had recently left school, and his father was turning over in his mind the expediency of putting him into harness, as he called it—or in other words of furnishing him with the means of earning a future livelihood. What would he like to be? Would he take his place behind the counter, and make his money at the tallow-chandlery, as his father had done before him? No. Tom had seen enough of that—he thanked him. Something light and genteel, where there wasn't too much to do, and the pay was good; that, he thought, would be about his mark.

Tom sought these desiderata in a lawyer's office, and returned to the paternal roof, at six, P.M., for three months, in a state of inkiness, with respect to his tongue, fingers, collar, and shirt-front, quite beyond description. On the evening of the first day of the fourth month, he brought home with him, in addition to the attramental peculiarities just mentioned, a vermillion face, a ferocious deportment, and a remarkably dishevelled head of hair. Being questioned touching these phenomena, he blubbered a good deal, and observed, in reference to the office, that he didn't go there to be crowed over by the other clerks, he hoped; or to be called a “pothooks," and a "jolly marksman," because his writing wasn't good. Winding up with a sarcastic allusion to his employer, to the effect of—“ And wasn't Pruffles a fine tellow, now, to order him about, and chuck things at him. Who was Pruffles, he should like to know, that he was to ride the high horse with him (Tom)? A boxing of his ears, a banging him about the head with the disbursement book, and all but knocking out his eye with last year's diary. "Blow him!-yes he did," snivelled Tom. "And if I was going back again to his nasty, dirty, pettyfogging, mouldy, beast of an office-which I ain't, thank goodness!-I'd pretty quick let him know what was o'clock, burst him!" From all which premises Mr. and Mrs. Humdrone deduced the very sagacious inference, that something of an unpleasant nature had occurred to ruffle their son's feelings, and that that something had originated in the office where he was employed. Further enquiry into the matter serving to confirm these suspicions, Tom was allowed to take his own course, and, as the reader will already have surmised, threw up his clerkship, and became from that moment a voluntary exile from Pruffles, and the precincts of the law.

"It was a mistake," sighed the tallow-chandler; "and that's the long and short of it. The boy mistook his calling. He ought to have been a tradesman. Look at the way in which he's handling his knife and fork at this moment," (the family were discussing a boiled leg of mutton with caper sauce, and the remark was made to Mrs. Humdrone). "Will anyone believe that a chap as can cut up his victuals in that handsome way, was not born to be a cookshop keeper, or," added the admiring father, allowing his imagination to soar into the far prospective, " a butcher."

Well," replied Tom, after a few seconds of grave consideration, “I shouldn't so much mind being a butcher, if you come to that."

"Oh, Tom!" remonstrated Mrs. H., "it's such a nasty business; so cruel, too!"

"Cruel," retorted the tallow-chandler, catching his wife's eye, and frowning her into silence, "what nonsense! Cruel, indeed! Not half so bad as sodgering. Where would you be without butchers, Mrs. Humdrone; let me ask you that? You may do without sodgers; in fact, you couldn't eat one, if you had him; but can you get on without meat? Certainly not. And can you get meat without having butchers? Not exactly."

"Well, you know best, my dear," said Mrs. Humdrone, backing out of the argument in some confusion.

"I am of your opinion, my love," was her husband's dignified rejoinder. "And if Tom likes to say the word, a butcher he shall be."

Tom did say the word; and accordingly a master was found for him, a steel was bought for him, and his delicate body was swathed in that kind of short, tight bathing dress which it is the delight of slaughtermen to wear. For a whole week Tom had a pride in his azure vestment, and in the long, bright steel dangling before him by a leathern cincture, loosely passed about his waist, and believed in both to an unlimited extent. For a whole week he thought there was nothing like the butchering for a jovial trade. Having reached this point, however, he pulled up short, vacileated a little, and finally allowed his sentiments to undergo a gradual and complete revulsion. It began by his slicing a piece off his thumb, in the first attempt to sharpen a knife upon that pretty steel; was strengthened by a narrow escape from amputation of the arm with a chopper; and was confirmed, by his being on two occasions all but gored by the horns of an obstinate bullock, that wouldn't be persuaded of the benefits to be derived from an application of the pole-axe to his skull. Tom began to hate the butchering very heartily. It was a moist calling, a clammy calling, a greasy calling. There was a deal of gore about it; and its other characteristics were not of the most refreshing kind. But it was evidently the "bloody" business which informed most to Mr. Thomas Humdrome's eyes, and ultimately impelled him into "cutting the carcase dodge," (as he put it) out of hand, and taking up with the bread and biscuit baking.

Yes! The bread and biscuit baking. That was the ticket, after all. There was nothing offensive, or dangerous to life and limb, in dough, he thought. You couldn't mess your fingers much in handling clean, white flour, don't you see. And then there was this advantage about the bread and biscuit baking dodge, that it was genteeler than butchering, and that you were always certain (Tom was a chilly subject) of a warm place to work in, in the winter time, you know.

Again Tom had his way, and pinned his faith to dough and flour for a whole year; so that his worthy parents began to think that he was really settled down to something at last, and to congratulate themselves immensely thereupon. It was while this belief was in its fullest leaf and blossom, as I may term it, that it was rudely torn up by the roots, by Master Tom, and cast aside. His present occupation, so he said, proved upon a near acquaintance, no more congenial to his tastes than the former one. The oven, whose proximity in the winter time, a thing to be desired, was un

bearable in the summer. The clean, white flour got upon his lungs, and made him cough; or into his hair, and brought a rash there; or worked its way to his skin under his clothes, with a similar result. More than that, he had an insurmountable objection to being compelled to wear nothing but clay-coloured garments, which didn't suit his complexion, and gave occasion for the street boys, whenever he appeared in public, to call him "slack-bake," "quaker," "dusty-bob," and other such derisive and opprobious epithets. Then again, he couldn't stand the setting up of nights; and so-"

"But you don't mean to tell me," says the tallow-chandler, in a tone of faint misery, "that you're a going to leave the bread and biscuit baking, after sticking to it like a leech for twelve whole months."

"Why, you see," Tom explained, with the calmest air in the world, "it's not at all the sort of thing that's cut out for me, isn't baking. I've tried it, and therefore must be allowed to know more about the matter than those that haven't. And the result of my experience in the bread and biscuit baking business is, that it don't suit me. The truth is, that I don't like shop-keeping in any shape, it's altogether out of my line; and if it hadn't been for you, father, I should never have taken up with it in the first instance."

Tom was exactly seventeen years and six months old, when he made this overwhelming revelation. Six months later we come upon him in another sphere of action.

Mr. Humdrone had a brother, residing in some part of Hampshire, (but where I cannot precisely say, nor is it important to mention it), who farmed about five hundred acres of land, and was a miller beside. To this gentleman did the distressed tallow-chandler appeal, by letter, on behalf of his vacillating and troublesome son; and the sequence of the communication was, that one sunny morning in May, Tom swaggered into his uncle Gregory's sanded kitchen, in the country, and introduced himself, by stating, off-hand, that he had come to be put up to the agricultural trick, and no mistake! His uncle began by reading him a good long lecture, to which he paid no attention whatever, and ended by trying to make a farmer of him, with no better effect. In short (as he took occasion to observe in a subsequent epistle to the young man's unhappy parents) he believed his nephew to be an idle, good-for-nothing dog, who would never so much as earn salt to his porridge, and to whom the old saw about the silk purse and the sow's ear bore an exact application.

It was at this period that my poor friend, Humdrone took me into his confidence, and made those lugubrious observations in reference to Tom, which have since passed, by constant repetition, into familiar household words— "That he didn't know what to make of him; that he couldn't get him to settle to anything; that what he liked to-day he didn't to-morrow; and that he was what you would call a rolling stone."

As it was not my intention in setting out, to prolong this paper by any unnecessary elaboration, I shall content myself by saying, that the few illustrations I have already given of Mr. Thomas Humdrone's erratic propensities, are types of all. He is, at this moment, eight-and-twenty years of age. He has been at various times, to my certain knowledge, a land-surveyor, an omnibus conductor, a commercial traveller, a postman, a house

agent, a policeman, a commission agent, a dust contractor, a rate collector, a railway clerk, and almost everything you can mention, except a forger, a burglar, or a pickpocket; for I must say this for Tom, that notwithstanding his many lamentable failings, dishonesty and fraud form no part of his character. After what I have said in the preceding paragraph, the reader will not be surprised to learn that this gentleman is still upon his father's hands, without the faintest hope of doing anything for himself in the way of earning a living.

It is at the instigation of Mr. Humdrone, senior, that I have made a private grievance a public matter, and it is at his urgent request, also, that I solicit at the hands of the philanthropic reader, an answer to a question of vital importance to himself

Is there anybody who can suggest an opening of any kind, for that bugbear of parental life-a Rolling Stone?

AMUSEMENTS IN ALLMANIA.

BY THOMAS ARCHER.

T is, I suppose, unnecessary for me to say anything here about my experiences in Frankistan, or the journey which I lately made in company with my friend Al-paca, to explore the sources of the Upper Vine River; it will doubtless be sufficient to remind the intelligent reader that my work called, "A flight through Frankistan," with a treatise on the rock-quartz and grape soils of the great Vine Water, is just ready for the press; three able and friendly critiques having been written for the papers, by a friend of mine, to appear directly the book is published, price 31s. 6d.; in morocco, 50s.

The subject to which I would direct attention in the present paper is,if I may so call it,-an episode of that journey; a parenthetical adventure, about which there still hangs so much of the unreal that I hesitated in the act of embodying it in a supplement to my great work; and afterwards determined to make it known, only that I might enlist the sympathies of some adventurous spirits who will endeavour to bring the matter to a satisfactory explanation.

I had just returned, then, from that arduous journey, which will, I flatter myself, be prolific in its unsuspected results, and had become weary of long wandering, Al-paca being well-nigh worn out with exertion, when I conceived the design of visiting the Island of Allmania, a territory which, although only a few leagues from the outer-boundary or seaboard of Frankistan, and not difficult of access