Where are they now? Why, ask Newgate-ask Newgate," said Jem, moodily. "And that's what they'll do with you, my little codger"—and Jem nodded to the infant,-" that's what they'll do with you. I can see it-though it's a good many years off yet -I can see the rope about your little neck as sure—'

La, Jem!" screamed Mrs. Aniseed; and she instantly seized the baby in her arms, and hugged it to her breast, as though to protect it from immediate peril.

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'Why, what an old fool you are!" said Jem, wanly smiling at

his wife.

"Well, you should n't talk in that way," answered Mrs. Aniseed, "it's tempting Providence. If you 're such a fortune-teller, and can see so much, it's a bound duty upon you, Jem, to prevent it." Jem was silent: therefore his wife-true to her sex-talked on : "You ought to go down upon your knees, and bless yourself that you can make this darling lamb your own, and save it.”

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Jem was silent a minute; and then spoke somewhat briskly on the inspiration of a new thought. "It's all very well about lambs, my dear; but how do we know they 'll let us have it? How do we know that its mother-"

"It has n't no mother, Jem. I slipt out afore you woke, and I run down to the watchhouse, and its mother died in the night, Jem; I thought she could n't live. It's a hard thing to say, but it's no loss to the child; she's gone, and I won't say nothing about her; but them as know her give her shocking words. So here's the child, Jem, a begging of you, with all its little might" -and here the woman put the baby's hands together "to take it, and to do all you can for it, and to be sure that our little, under such a blessing, will never grow less; and here it is-is n't it like our dear Dick, Jem ?-here it is, a praying you to take pity on it, and love it, and be a father to it. And you will, Jem?you will?" cried the woman, the tears coming into her eyes, as she held the infant towards her husband.

Now Bright Jem was in face and figure as uncomely a lump of humanity as is ordinarily met with in any one day's travel. His flat broad face was the colour of ancient parchment, thinly sprinkled with deep pock-marks. His mouth was capacious as a horse-shoe. Short brush bristles thatched his head; and his eyebrows, clubbing together, could not have mustered fifty hairs between them. His small, deep-set black eyes-truly black, for there seemed no white to them-were the lamps that lighted up

with quick and various expression this most difficult countenance; and, in the present instance, did certainly appear as though they twinkled with a fire, direct from the heart. Jem was an ugly man. He knew it. This truth had been so frequently, so earnestly, so plainly impressed upon him, that slow as most men are in such belief he could not but believe it. More: we believe that he was quite contented with the creed. There are times, however, when ugliness may steal a look-a tint from beauty. We believe that no woman-if she marry for love-let her be ugly as Sibyl, looks altogether ugly on her wedding-day. How it is done, whence it comes, we have not the philosophy to fathom; but sure we are that the spirit of beauty does sometimes irradiate the features of deformity, melting and moulding them into momentary comeliness, -and most sure we are, that the said spirit did with its best doing, shine in the countenance of Jem, as his wife pressed the orphan child upon him.

"You'll love it, and be a father to it?" again, cried Mrs. Aniseed.

"If I don't," cried Jem, "I'm-" but the wife stopped whatever word was coming, by putting the child's face to Jem's mouth; and he took the creature in his arms, and hugged it fondly, nay, vigorously.

And now is young St. Giles snatched from the lowest round of the ladder (can it be Jacob's ladder that, resting on the mud of a cellar, is still to lead to heaven ?)-Now is he caught from direst . destitution; from the teaching of hypocrisy, and craft, and crime, to have about him comforts-though small comforts it is true; to be no longer shown, the image of poverty-a thing of human flesh and blood to beg halfpence upon? Is he really to be promoted from the foul, dark vault of a loathsome lane-savage beasts have sweeter sleeping-places-to the wholesomeness, the light, the airiness, the respectability of a three-pair front, in Short's Gardens? To that very three-pair front which Kitty Muggs, of St. James'ssquare, looks down upon from her scullery with all the loftiness of contempt? Yes, it is true: St. Giles will be promoted. On the dunghill of poverty, how great the distinction between the layers of straw what a world of difference between base, half-way and summit! There is an aristocracy of rags, as there is an aristocracy of stars and garters.

Alas! for only one minute is young St. Giles housed in his new home-for only one minute is he the adopted babe of James and

Susan Aniseed, when he is called back to act his unconscious part of mendicant, when he is reclaimed, carried away in boudage, the born slave of penury and wrong. It is even so.

Before Jem had ceased caressing the child, he heard an unusual hubbub on the staircase; another instant, and his door was flung open, and a wretched, ragged woman-worn, thin, and ghastly— staggered into the room, followed by other women. "My babemy own babe," cried the first woman, and was falling in a heap upon the floor, when Jem rapidly placing the child in his wife's arms, caught the intruder. Aroused, excited beyond her strength, she pointed to the child, tried to speak, and then fainted.

The cause of this interruption was soon made known to Jem. "The dear soul had come after her child."

"Her child!" cried Mrs. Aniseed. "She's not the child's mother, and she shan't have it. I saw the mother last nightsaw her frozen to death—at least she died soon afterwards.'

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Why you see, said an old crone, "this is how it is. The dear woman there, that's the darling's mother, was sick of a fever -the Lord help us, she 's sick now, and so is half the lane. Well, you see, being so sick, she couldn't go out herself not by any means. Well, and so she lends the child to Peggy Flit; and when Peg never came back at all, the poor cretur that's there, went well nigh mad. And this morning, we found at the watchhouse that Peg was dead; and that you had got the babe, and you see we've come for it, that's all," said the harridan with remarkable diplomatic precision.

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But if she's the mother," asked Mrs. Aniseed, should she lend the child?"

"for what

"For what should she lend the child! crowed the old woman, looking very contemptuously at her catechist" for what should she lend,-why in the name of blessed heaven for what else, if not to beg with it?

In fine for why should we protract the scene-young St. Giles, the unconscious beggar, was borne back in triumph to Hampshire Hog Lane.

"SHADOWS" OF "COMING EVENTS."

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ONE may certainly seek in vain through all history, for a parallel to the present time. Look around! What a chaos of conflicting influences and movements are at work! Listen! What a hubbub of voices, each with its own peculiar burden, ascends from the tumultuously heaving masses of society! Improve your system of cultivation," recommends the landlord; "Give us leases," 1ejoins the farmer; "Give us bread," chimes in the labourer, and in his ignorance and despair fires a stack by way of calling attention to his words. "Hurrah for the League and the Repeal of the Corn Laws!" exclaims the manufacturer; 66 Suppose you give us a Ten Hour Bill first?" suggest his artisans; "England would be ruined if they did," shrieks the economist, or political Cassandra, "Ruined! Ruined! Ruined!" and so he disappears among the crowd, to emerge again presently with the same unfailing hoot. "The poor man wants baths," says one; No, parks and gardens," says another; "You are both wrong, he wants national holidays," insists a third. "Ah! if the state would but erect more churches!" croaks a respectable-looking gentleman in black; “Or make us go back to the excellent customs of the middle ages.-Alas! faith went out with the credence tables; charity disappeared with the offertory," remarks his glossy-coated neighbour; Or," roars a host of voices, overpowering both speakers, if it would but put down Puseyism, before Puseyism puts down the church.” "God bless me, that district has not yet enjoyed the advantages of our excellent Poor Law," points out the statesman; "introduce it immediately!" but while he speaks, both he and his darling measure are assailed by a shower of epithets, among which unchristian! savage! atrocious! are but the gentler specimens ; and mingling with them are heard too often, as though in evidence of their practical truth, the sob of the wife, who had been denied admittance to the place where her husband was dying, because it was night; the frenzied outburst of the parent whose young ones are famishing, while he waits the relieving officer's convenience; or the terrible curses of those who perish in their pride rather than submit to the mercies of the

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workhouse.* But our eyes are weary—our head aches with the confusion and the din; amid which, however, it is evident the destructive agencies are exhibiting a startling degree of activity. Every creed, science and art, of any pretensions to age-all institutions, however time-honoured, appear to be smitten and tottering to their base; and while the resisting forces are growing daily weaker, the attacking ones on the contrary are, with every step they take, becoming more and more vigorous. Baffled here, they advance there; or else, after a pause, return with redoubled force to the old breach.

What does it all mean?

Simply, we believe, that the Spirit of the age, conscious of the unprecedented magnitude of the evils that afflict and weigh down humanity, and seeing the insufficiency of those ordinary processes of renovation that are ever quietly going on, is, without troubling himself about niceties or appearances, turning society into one grand workshop; and there, with unabating activity and unflinching purpose, examining and pulling to pieces whatever has ceased to be useful or suitable to the work he has in hand—that of accumulating materials for a new, more harmonious, and infinitely nobler state.

Transition periods are notoriously uncomfortable ones; ours is a transition period, and as usual the "Shadows" of "coming events" are upon us; rendered, however, a thousand times vaster in their range, a thousand times deeper in their gloom, by the very magnitude of those events, and the very brilliancy of the golden land of promise that lies beyond them.

"Ah, the old story of happy ages long past-of Utopias ever to come!"

Well, it is an old story; but humanity, somehow or other, has a trick of continually turning those old stories that embody its wants and aspirations, into new, solid, and practical institutions.

Little more than three centuries ago, a man speaking with full apprehension of the knowledge and history of past, as well as of his own times, proposed as a kind of speculative theoretical good, that theft should be abolished by education, war confined to cases of gross injury to a nation or its allies, and religious prosecution be treated as in itself a crime rather than the pursuer of crime,

* The readers of the newspapers will perceive we refer here to real not imaginary cases, which are unhappily so frequent as to render it unnecessary to particularise.