LIFE IN A CARRIAGE AND A CART.

NE of our great novelists has said that a man to distinguish himself in this sublunary and selfish world must possess birth, a million, or genius. To praise a man for knowing the world is to commend him often for a

knowledge of its dirty lanes and crooked corners, like the man in a cart. Any fool with a million knows the broad paths of Regent Street or Piccadilly, or the sunny side of Pall Mall, the easy-going parade of the Regent's Park Barracks, or the humdrum of a quiet country town, with its banker, a leading attorney, and a parson. I like the appearance of an old-fashioned country town-say Shrewsbury or Chester-with its gable-ended cornices, Gothic landings, latticed. windows, and old creaking gates, its ancient rows, its King Edward's Schools, and antiquated priories. Chester looks as if the Welsh had begun it and the English finished it. It is market day. A country town, or any other town, only appears alive on such a day; on other days nothing is stirring but stagnation, as poor John Reeves used to say. The inns are out of everything save cold meat and executions. Mary Evans sells oil, oysters, and oranges; John Jenkins, estates and eatables; Philip Piper is beadle and blacksmith. In the afternoon carriages take the place of the country carts, the fine occupants enlivening the town with the last metropolitan fashions, and the town rings with attractions of the overnight Hunt Ball at the Assembly Rooms. The society of a country town is as unique as prejudice in politics can make it. The banker, the member who holds the votes of the electors in his pocket, looks down upon the surgeon, and the attorney looks up to the banker, so between the two Conservatism and Radicalism are much of a muchness, and the clergyman is their umpire. The phases of all society are great and various-here rouge, there noir, jumbled together in fashionable chaos. Etiquette is provided to protect us from barbarism, protecting Belgravia and Grosvenor Square just as much as it would puzzle the good people of Bethnal Green or Bohemia. Paris, before its recent troubles, was more celebrated for its bals masqués, fêtes champêtres, déjeuners à la forchette, and diners à la Russe than for almost anything else. The Bois de Boulogne is nothing to Hyde Park on a fine May or June

afternoon, or rather evening, though its blaze of lamps, like myriads of glowworms at night, is a picture to be remembered. Malvern offers the only likeness to this picture. Still the French do not understand what we call the four-poster style on a Derby Day, with numerous postboys in blue jackets and white hats, although the Emperor's carriages were in the true English style and quite up to the mark. The French postboy was more elaborately dressed than ours, and is well described by a modern writer :— "In huge jack-boots, with much bell ringing, whip cracking, and a loud whooping, guiding his huge fat Norman post-horses or the fast Peckenham mares in the late Emperor's carriage when he went down fast to St. Cloud (now unhappily destroyed) or Chantilly in his travelling carriage; a glazed hat, broad gold band, a cockade as big as a pancake, multi-coloured streamers of attenuated ribbons, short wig with club well powdered, jacket with red facings, saucepan buttons, and metal badge on the left arm, scarlet vest, buckskins, and long spurs; and you have one of the greatest characters of France, not forgetting his whip, short in the crop, but tremendous as to lash and noise."

We have now done with Hyde Park in the palmy days of Count d'Orsay, Beau Brummel, and George the Fourth, the turbaned Turks and the Foreign Ambassadors, and the powdered lacqueys of Lady Jersey, Lady Londonderry, and Lady Blessington, with their superb turnouts, who held their sway in their caparisoned, emblazoned, and well-built town coaches, with the burly wigged body coachman-the bigger the better-and the two stalwart Grenadier-looking footmen, keeping watch and ward with gold-headed canes. We were not in those days terrified to death by pretty horse-breakers-Chloe, Lais, and other Cyprianas, as delightful as dangerous, as fair as Heaven and as false as

; but it was common enough for actresses to captivate and cajole into marriage dukes, earls, and marquises, and some of them turned out better than was expected. was expected. Expediency now is the order of the day, and if a man has money he may go anywhere and almost into any society. We have a member of our club, a retired knacker, who calls himself a guano merchant. A cat's-meat-man is now a purveyor; but what does it matter so that he can make a mare go? Diplomacy is in the ascendant, and although an unwelcome truth to have forced on the mind, one half the world does not care or know how the other half lives so that they do live. Each plays the great game, or the royal game, of goose-you help me, I will help you if I can

-attack and defence; surrender or not surrender. Life in a cart is somewhat different to life in a carriage, as most people will allow; but such is life—a mere farce to the rich, a comedy to the wise, but a severe and painful tragedy to the poor. We behold in our rambles through the great metropolis and elsewhere the young aspirant to parliamentary or family honours gazing out of the bay windows of White's or Brookes's, fresh from college, deep in blue books, deep in love and debt; while the young millionaire, with all the means and appliances of old Dobbs, his City sire, and who hardly knows Marsala from Madeira, is obliged to vegetate at the Grand Junction ordinary. Still he buys large studs of horses at Tattersall's at immense prices, while his friend the senator looks on wistfully at the succession of his elder brother to the estate at Cloverley Court. Anxious mothers hail them both with delight, high-bred daughters dance with them in ecstasy, and gossip with them about the overnight ball as they rein in their sprightly hacks in the morning in Rotten Row. Our old friend Harry Highover, in his work on "The World and how to Square it," says:-"Many men fancy that in boasting of their carelessness of the opinion of the world they evince a greater superiority of mind than those who shape their course with a proper deference to the usages of society. If they really think so they are only laying bare the shallowness of their own mind, instead of manifesting the supposed superiority of it." But, whether in carriage or cart, we are all influenced by the same common instincts of humanity. I have lived in a cart. I have driven my own cattle-and do now, for that matter-down to Epsom. I began my experiences among the gipsies on Salisbury Plain. I once heard that Tom Taylor took a holiday among the red faces, and enjoyed himself. I was happy in a cart. It was a swell cart, mine, with green shutters and everything handsome. I do not think my views are so broad or my opinions so sound in a carriage as they were in a cart. I am sure I was surrounded by a higher morality than I am now, with my box in the highlands and my chambers in Piccadilly. The upper classes are certainly "going it," as young Lord N used to say. I am an old man; I have had a chequered existence; and I can truly say that as a nation we are degenerating in chivalry, etiquette, truth, honesty, morality. But what is worse, the decay is in Belgravia rather than in Bethnal Green.

I think

I fear I have not expressed myself well, but these are the sentiments of a man who though nobly born began life in a cart, and hopes to end it at some wild bit of stuff in Ireland or elsewhere, like Whyte Melville's "Satanella."

OCTOGENARIAN.

MAKING THE WORST OF IT.

BY JOHN BAKER HOPKINS.

CHAPTER I.

AFTER TEN YEARS.

HERE are people to whom in hours of sorrow the world is utter darkness. The way of life, they say, is through a dreary desert that stretches from the cradle to the grave.

Yet the most melancholy will confess that there is an oasis in the arid waste, and that green spot is Home.

At all seasons home is dear unto us, but it seems most beautiful and most gladsome in the winter days. When the bitter wind is blowing, and the cold rain is falling, we rejoice in the kindly warmth of the ruddy fire. We game with our children, our hearts dance to the music of their laughter, and we bemoan not-we remember not-the sunshine of summer. Welcome indeed will be the coming of spring. Welcome the fair flower of promise that blooms amidst the snow. Welcome the sweet-scented violet that thrives without the care of man. Welcome the many tinted crocus that makes the barren garden gay. Welcome the brave blithe song of the birds, which, while the trees are yet leafless, heralds the season of bud and blossom and leaf. Welcome the growing glory of the sun. Welcome the lengthening of the day. But in the cold, dark midwinter night, welcome most of all the rest, the joy, the bliss of home.

A glance at Mrs. Clayton's parlour might well inspire such thoughts as the above, for though poorly furnished it was truly homely. The house is small, one of a long row in a London suburb south of the Thames. A brass plate on the street door announces that Mrs. Clayton teaches music and singing. The parlour, which serves for morning-room, music-room, dining-room, and drawing-room, is cosy, though the furniture appears to have been chosen without the slightest regard to harmony of colour or unity of design. People who live in mansions, and who furnish their dwellings irrespective of cost, frequently display a broker's-shop taste; but Mrs. Clayton had to buy her furniture second-hand, and with no other consideration than cheapness. The carpet is a faded green, the window curtains

are red, and the table cover is a plaid, in which there is a broad blue stripe. A huge unsightly piano occupies nearly a third of the room. There is a clock which was new when our grandmothers were in their girlhood, and were warbling sweet English ditties to the accompaniment of the harpsichord. This ancient time-piece is in a tall, gaunt mahogany case, and records the passing away of the moments with a deep, solemn, resonant tick, tick, tick. On one side of the fireplace Mrs. Clayton, who has complained of head-ache, is lying on a sofa, shading her face with a hand-screen. On the opposite side, lolling in a large easy-chair, is Mrs. Clayton's only child, a girl nearly fourteen years old, with big lithesome limbs, eyes dark and flashing, and long, nut-brown hair, profuse and wayward. The mother frequently turns her head to look at the clock. Alice holds a book in one hand, and with the other strokes the sleek coat of the cat, who is gratefully purring.

"There, Miss Pussy, you must curl up on the rug, for I am tired of nursing you. And, mother, I do wish you would play or sing just a little, for it is so dull to be for ever reading. I am sure, mother, that something lively would do your head good."

"I could not bear music to-night," said Mrs. Clayton. "Besides, Alice, it is your bed-time."

"Why, mother, it is only just on the stroke of eight, and the old clock is always fast at bed-time; besides, I am so wide-awake, and could not sleep for hours to come, and as Martha is out for her holiday, you ought to let me sit up with you."

"Not to-night, Alice."

"Well, mother, you are unkind. It is too bad when I am going on for just fourteen to be bundled off to bed like a long-clothes baby bunting, or a chit of a child.”

"Sleep while you can, Alice. Years of little sleep and long watching may be your fate, though I pray not."

"Oh, mother, how dreadful dull you are to-night! Let me sit up with you till nine."

"I cannot, and will not. You must go to bed now."

There was an unwonted harshness in the voice that grated on the ear and vexed the spirit of the child. Alice pouted, lighted her candle, and stooped over her mother for the nightly kiss.

"God bless you, Alice, and have mercy upon you."

Alice wondered what ailed her mother. Sorrow unto heartsickness is a mystery to the young.

When the girl had left the room Mrs. Clayton rose from the sofa, stirred the fire, put on coals, and swept the hearth.