man. It is, believe me, a pleasing picture to look on John Howard labouring, with heart and soul, amongst the fever-stricken wretches in the pestilential jails; and we feel a tightening about the heart, and a tear glistens in our eye, perhaps, when we read the story of Miss Nightingale flitting, like an angel of Hope and Light, amidst the bruised and dying soldiers; but we comfort ourselves, after the fit of admiration is over, with the reflection that, after all, we cannot all be John Howards and Florence Nightingales, and, with this "flattering unction" applied to our consciences, return to our old selfish ways. And, besides this, I am inclined to think that the man who will persist in making you the confidante of his private griefs and misfortunes, is certainly somewhat of a bore. Jean Jaques Rousseau's Confessions are very charming things for a little while, but one soon gets awearied of the everlasting egotism which prompted the man to lay bare the innermost recesses of his not over-clean heart to our inspection. In reading that prince of egotists Sterne's Sentimental Journey, we are inclined to forget, for a moment, everything of the man's hateful character in our intense admiration of his picturesque writing; but we soon get sick of the everlasting selfish compassion, and, like a chill blast on the warmth of our esteem comes the bitter reflection that "the man who could weep over a dead donkey could leave a living mother to starve." Now I scarcely think that any one will find fault with the true type of Englishman as erring in this respect; you may travel from week's end to week's end with the same man in the same omnibus, you may both occupy the same seat and be bound to the same destination, and, with the exception, perhaps, of passing your fare to the conductor, or a solitary remark on the weather, he will not exchange another word with you, but retreat behind the fastness of a damp Times, and survey you, ever and anon, with that injured look of respectability that the well-to-do Briton assumes, as much as to say "Yes, here I am; have as perfect a right to travel in this 'bus as you have, and pay my way." How different on the Continent! Frenchmen will talk; if they have nothing sensible to talk about, they talk nonsense and make it appear charming. In the time that an Englishman is taking mental stock of you, and putting you down, by the expression of his face, as a pickpocket or an escaped lunatic, the Frenchman has formed an intimate acquaintance, and is chatting away as volubly and confidentially as though he had known you for years. Many a dreary dinner at a table-d'hote have I speculated on as about to prove a miserable purgatory of cold soup and stale fish and sullen silence, till the magic charm of the foreign element has melted the stiff reserve of the milords Anglaises, and made them laugh and become genial in spite of themselves. And now to return once more to my very scattered sheep, my fellow-travellers, whom I fallaciously promised in the commencement of this disjointed article that I would illustrate in my own style of peculiar philosophy, which is not spiteful and bitter enough, I hope, to be cynical, nor lazy enough to be epicurean, nor hopeless enough to be stoical. I take it that to the real observer of life there are fewer more interesting objects of common occurrence than the omnibus drivers, the conductors, and the people who ride inside and outside these conveyances. They have a character " peculiar to themselves," as the newspaper puff's say anent light wines, as peculiar as that of the cabmen. Imprimis, your omnibus-driver is a philosopher, and when he is disposed to be communicative a most valuable acquaintance; for, from his elevated coign of vantage on the box he surveys mankind with calm indifference. For the ludicrous phase of the driver's character, for his wordy combats with his fellow-drivers, for his satirical comments on his fares, I would recom mend my readers to open "John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character," and there will he find a rich treat-there will be seen every shade of driver-character, from the stout satirical Jehu, who describes his opponent as walking about to save his funeral expenses, to that immortal character who upbraids the slowness of his passengers in making their exit in the following hint to the conductor: "Now then, Jem, quick vith that lot; any one vould think you was a 'pickin' 'em out like vinkles vith a pin." Certainly the wittiest and most natural part of the whole of poor Leech's immortal works are those which depict the omnibus-drivers and their satellites. But our game is not at present with the driver, but the passengers who patronize his commodious vehicle, who ride every morning to the City or elsewhere, to their daily avocations, "for the comparatively small sum of fourpence," and return by the same in the evening. 66 The omnibus which I patronize, and have for years, and in which I make my way to the City, for what purposes and on what business concerns not the reader, let it suffice that it is, as Slender would say, "indifferent honest." The driver with whom from long acquaintance, I have struck up a species of alliance, offensive and defensive, is a character in his way, and has condescended, in a mysterious tone and between the puffs of his pipe, to inform me that he is a married man, with some small children (I am afraid he called them "kids," but you see he is not an extremely polished man), and that he intends, come a year or two, to relinquish the reins, and sink into the comparative oblivion of a cottage at Islington, where his old woman keeps (and here I am again afraid he meant the partner of his bosom). "You see, sir," said he, "I allays looked out for a rainy day, and laid a little by. As long as I can get my pipe o'baccy and a pint of beer to moisten it, I don't care." He then would hint, with great mystery, at some indefinite sum of money, which no earthly persuasion would induce him to put a name to. The only bad trait in his character is the persistent way in which he bul lies the hapless conductor, a young gentleman | And so thinks the poor wearied lady as she sets of no particular wit, with an outline of a face "sketchy" as the young man in Dickens' novel, and weak straggling hair. It seems to me that nothing that this young man can do satisfies the Rhadamanthus on the box. "Now, Jim! 'going to be all day with that change?" "Lady made a mistake, Bill," rejoins the victim. "Made a mistake!" yells my friend, with a world of withering scorn in the words: "ye carnt reckon no more than one of them there 'osses." What with the persecution of the inquisitor, his master; what with the getting his life endangered and his temper soured by the pokes he gets from impatient passengers, and the fierce verbal altercations with stern old women, he has a sorry time of it I expect. And perhaps, after all, his life is a romance, if one only knew it; and from his hardly-earned pence he, being a good son, may support an old woman, like his master; and, perchance, the rough and flinty road he travels may be bounded by the dear object of his ambition-the driver's box. And now for the passengers. Of course one might as well count the sands on the yellow seashore as endeavour to depict every type of character; but there are always in every class of people some distinct types, to which it is possible to refer others. Now, we will suppose, this fine September morning, that you and I are the only insides; let us wait and see what we shall see : 66 forth on her thankless daily journey, to be repelled and treated like the commonest drudge; she, who in the dawn of her childhood and the blush of her girlhood, was the idol of a wealthy father's heart, and whose every scarce-formed wish was anticipated; she who had scarcely any idea of the misery of those who struggle for bread, till the blow came, and her father was prostrated with it from a jovial, hale man to the stricken heart-broken wretch, whose last days she now cheers to the best of her poor ability, and the hard reality was forced upon her that she must enlist herself in that forlorn hope the last effort of poor gentility-a dailygoverness's situation. The reader can imagine the rest. Happy for the dear creature whose eye rests on this page if she has not been driven to the terrible strait herself-the advertisement paid for with the last poor coins, and answered," after many days," and the employment of the lady brilliantly educated, who can execute the "Moonlight Sonata" with the best, and is thoroughly versed in the mysteries of half-a-dozen modern languages, in hammering the elements of French into the stupid offspring of some ill-bred parvenue, who is desirous of concealing her own want of courtesy in a distant and chilling air of patronage, which sometimes condescends to ask the poor governess to lunch, and parades before her the comforts and elegancies of a home which might have been hers. Little does the unthinking reader, who casts his eye over the advertisement sheet of the Times, and sees the myriad applications for the post of daily or nursery governess reflect, on the miserable history shadowed there: "Has been well educated," or, what is still more pathetic, “Has never been out before." The first appeal of the tenderly-raised home-flower to the storms and troubles of adversity. Charing Cross is reached, and the governess fades from our view, threading her way timidly amidst the motley crowd of honest men and thieves, intensely respectable women, and women who have every attraction but respectability, and all the shifting figures who throng the dangerous streets of the "City of Extremity."" Good luck go with thee, poor faded flower! Mayest thou find kind treatment for this day at least; and may he, the brave boy, who left thee in thy days of prosperity, soon return, to bless thee with the full reality of that home which illusory hope had promised thee through all the weary years! and which though "round absence has grown the weed of custom" may blossom yet, in the happy time to come. "Charing Cross, please?" says a quiet silvery voice, and the conductor is at once charmed into politeness; and following the voice comes a ladylike pale girl, with a roll of music in her hand, and a weary expression of face. Daily governess," you mutter into my ear, and I can safely affirm that you have guessed rightly. Everything about her tells the same tale: the dress, with some poor, faded remnants of the old gentility; the gloves, stitched and mended; and, under a plain bonnet, the pale-worn face, with that pitiful look in the large brown eyes, and that nervous twitching of the mouth which indicate the daily governess, which tell their own sad tale of struggles against insult and want-of insult from purse-proud vulgar employers; of insult from great, lazy, talking menials, who speak of the governess as "that young pusson;" of insult from insolent or stupid pupils; of insult so bitter that the other alternative, cruel absolute want, seems almost a relief. Am I not telling you an old tale? am I not wearying you with details, which are well known? The story of human misery and lost fortunes and blighted hopes is no novelty; but one gains nothing by noticing only the lights of a picture, and disregarding the grey solemn shadows. Ah! it is"Expecting respectable people to break their "A sorrow's crown of sorrow, The next character who appears on the scene is a very different type to the last: her advent is heralded by a storm of reproaches and revilings hurled at the head of the unoffending conductor, because he will not stop quite still. necks!" And the next thing we see is the respectable person herself, squeezing into the omnibus, with a multiplicity of packages and reticule baskets, and reminding us forcibly of | Mrs. Gamp, proceeding to that immortal feast with her friend "Betsey Prig." Rage and exertion have deprived the respectable woman of breath, for a moment, and she flutters down defiantly into the best seat, and proceeds to shake out her skirts and to settle her bonnet firmly on her head, and to put on her spectacles. And when all this is done I have done my inspection too, and at once set her down as that particular abhorrence of mine, the respectable British matron-a well-known type of traveller, who makes the lives of railway porters wretched by reason of the bullying way in which she makes them attend to her luggage; who will persist in following every box and trunk, and seeing them safely packed; who is in everybody's way, and is finally discovered to have dropped her purse, and immediately threatens every passenger with the "police;" who is pretty sure to be in the middle of a crowd, helpless and somewhat tearful; who always loses her way in the Crystal Palace, and is obliged to be set right by the police; and who resembles the wind, in that no mortal knows whence she came nor whither she is going. "The Unprotected Female" is pretty well known by this time, as a peculiar type of English womanhood, and you have only to read Mr. Trollope's novelette to form an idea of the very satisfactory manner in which the "unprotected" takes care of herself and her interests. Certes, if the unprotected lady were young and interesting she would not need protectors long in this age of chivalry, much as Burke may regret that "the age of chivalry is past;" but as she is generally of a very uncertain age indeed, with stern, Minerva-like front and awful deportment, with a wonderful bonnet of a past age, and grey, nodding, corkscrew curls, the youths of our great metropolis are often tempted into calling her "a hold guy," and extracting much pleasure from her mishaps, as is the playful manner of the city arabs. Tis useless, I opine, to form a romance about this fellow-traveller of mine: she may be anything she may be the mistress of a third-rate school, where for the moderate sum of 10s. the quarter young ladies are taught deportment, with much torture of the backboard, and the use of the globes, whatever that may be; and a very bad time, I am afraid, the young disciples have of it. Let the hapless maidens dare to look askance at any prepossessing youth; let them be detected in a flirtation with the drawingmaster; let them only import curious delicacies for supper, and speedy and condign punishment is their sure meed. She may be the better-half of some unfortunate clerk in the city, and play the role of Mrs. Caudle with stern vigour: if so I pity that unfortunate clerk when my ladyfriend has once got her eye on him; many a sleepless night does he enjoy; many a stern lecture for daring to smoke or drink, or talk to a bachelor-friend, or committing any peccadillo to which hen-pecked husbands are prone. : All this time the subject of these remarks, when she is not employed in glowering, in a sternly forbidding manner, at your humble servant, as who should say ""Tis no use speaking to me, young man; I am proper, that's what I am!" has been doing battle to the death with the conductor-prodding him in the waistcoat, and badgering him about the stoppages, strongly affirming that she has passed her destination; and finally, on her departure, presenting him with a tract entitled "The Converted Conductor; or, Why do you Swear?" "Blest if "Vy, indeed?" sighs the victim. she wouldn't make a parson swear. such a hold cat." Never see And now, thinking I have done my duty to the ladies-Place aux Dames has been my mottoI will turn me to the sterner sex, with these two bits of advice: To my first passenger be as courteous as possible: she will understand it, and reward you with a grateful smile withal, which will do your heart good. To the unprotected female be calmly indifferent (ten to one, if you are affable she will set you down as a polite thief); and when she offers you a tract, decline it with thanks, and hint that you are a tract-distributor yourself. As the types of my lady-companions vary, so do those of the men. One or two, however, may serve as examples of a class. There is one young fellow among my fellow-passengers today, in whom I take a great interest. It does not take two glances to tell me that he is a Frenchman, and he carries his history in his face. Pale and jaded, he seems like the governess; with that same earnest, wearied look in his dark eyes, as if he were almost tired of straining his eyes towards the distant object of his ambition. Let me make a history for him. We will call him Alphonse: most Frenchmen in England, especially waiters, seem to be named Alphonse. Half-a-dozen years gone by, there was not a cleverer or more promising musician in all the Conservatoire than my young friend. To send him there his parents had striven and scraped, in the dear old homestead in Normandy, bowered in its wealth of apple-trees, and surrounded by many a green meadow dappled by the sturdy oxen. "From his childhood," these worthies will tell you, that cher Alphonse was a musician, singing ere he could speak almost-and to hear him play the violin, Dieu! it was wonderful." He was a Mozart to them, poor souls! and the tears would start into their eyes as Alphonse played some piece of his own composition; and the end of it was that to the Conservatoire Alphonse was sent, to try and rival Gounod and Chopin, nothing ever entirely ruins your Frenchman's spirits. with a few pounds in his pocket, the tears of his mother wet on his cheek, and his own little Marie's kiss still tingling on his lips. I find that I am already transgressing my Very successful was his career there, and his limits, and have not nearly done with my fellowexecution far above mediocrity: and in an evil travellers, who are beginning to crowd the omhour some musical amateur suggested his going nibus. A scant word must suffice for them at to London and trying his fortune, under present. They are all here: The stolid merchant the impression that in England a foreigner has with his Telegraph, just purchased from the only to land to make his fortune-that daring young newsvendors, who perform such fallacious hope, that crooked things will astounding feats in jumping on and off the "come round" in time. And to England omnibus whilst in full career. The countryman he went, and carried his darling opera in his in London-not the stage countryman, I beg to pocket-to meet what? To see that the market mention, such a thing never existed, any more was overstocked already; that the opera- than the stage Yorkshireman-but the genuine house, which echoed to the delicious melody of article, who does not slap his waistcoat, and say Gounod's "Faust" and Meyerbeer's "Prophète,' 'Dang it!" but sits in a helpless fashion, with had no place for his talent. Play the violin he a sheepish look on his honest young face, evimight: there was room for him in the dently very much puzzled with all he sees, and orchestra, with fifty others; and into the very desirous to get back to the sheep and cows, orchestra of the Italian he carried his after the din and hurly-burly of the metropolis. shattered hopes and almost broken heart, and The sunburnt sailor, with the parrot in a cage kept body and soul together, in a strange tied up in a smart bandana; and the blue broadcountry, by the scanty pittance eked out to him. cloth coat, just purchased from some outfitter. Gone all the pleasant dreams; tumbled and pros- There will be glad hearts in some house totrate the chateaux en Espagne which his dear night, mark me; for the mariner assures the opera was to procure for him and Marie; faded well-nigh all the bright mirage, and there was left but the for a dozen year; and I'd like to see the company that he hasn't been home " hard certainty that he must descend to the mother, bless her old heart!" And last, but common drudgery of the orchestra, and teach not least, the hard-worked city curate, with the the English demoiselles the elements of that last book from Mudie's, determined to enjoy an music which was his idol. No night is there hour's well-earned relaxation. I charitably hope though unrelieved by a single star, and Hope that he will not be disappointed, as books are very is not quite faded, yet he may scrape enough to plentiful, but good ones rare; and, as my fellowreturn to his beloved France, and marry the love travellers plunge with me into the crowded of his youth. To this intent he lodges in some streets, I feel thankful to them for having afcheap hotel, in that paradise of Frenchmen, forded a suckling philosopher some amusement: Leicester Square, and practises the stern- if the reader of this article feel the same I shall est economy, and takes a twopenny ride be fully content. H. J. S. in my omnibus, when he fondly hoped to have ridden to the opera in a barouche. I feel an honest liking for this young exile, which I certainly do not for many of his dirty, debauched brethren, male and female, who haunt the Haymarket and prowl about Regentstreet; though, in all conscience, I may be wrong in this history, and my young friend may be a very villanous character. One of the most ingenious, childlike faces I ever saw, belonged to the keeper of a noted night-house in the Haymarket; and I have seen many a man, whose virtues and excellent character were of the highest degree, yet whom Gall or Spurzheim, after one look at his head, would have declared the greatest malefactor unhung, and have been laughed to scorn for their pains. With a graceful bow, the Frenchman, on whose career I have been speculating, bids me good-day, in a sweet, soft voice-a voice that we deem an excellent thing in a woman, and meet with 80 rarely in the blustering, self-confident Briton. He will put by his earnings to-night, when his work is done, and then write a long letter to Marie, and set to work on his humble fare, with a sparkling chanson of Beranger on his lips; for YOUNG GIRLS. To our thinking there is no more exquisite creature on the earth than a girl from twelve to fifteen years of age. There is a period in the summer's morning, known only to early risers, which combines all the tenderness of the dawn with nearly all the splendour of the day. There is, at least, fall promise of the dazzling noon; but yet the dewdrop glistens on the half-opened flower, and yet the birds sing with rapture their awakening song. So, too, in the morning of a girl's life there is a time like this, when the rising glory of womanhood sparkles from the thoughts of an infant, and the elegance of a queenly grace adorns the gambols of babyhood. Unconsciousness has all the effect of the highest breeding; freedom gives her elegance, and health adorns her with beauty indeed, it seems to be the peculiar province of her sex to redeem this part of life from oppro brium. OBSERVATIONS ON THE GROWTH OF TREES. BY HARLAND COULTAS. A tree is indisputably the noblest form which vegetable matter assumes on the face of the earth. There is something noble and majestic in one that has stood for centuries. It has braved a thousand storms, and looks as if it could brave a thousand more. When we look at its massive stem, its far-extended branches, and then think of its smallness and feebleness at the commencement of its life-that it was once enclosed within a little seed buried beneath the soil over which it now spreads, we cannot but feel that we have before us one of the most beautiful and wonderful of the works of God, and an astonishing display of the effects of those secret, silent, and ever-active forces with which He has endowed matter. The tons of solid timber contained within that tree have been drawn from the earth and atmosphere, and are the result of the slow unfolding of those vital powers with which the seed was originally endowed by the Creator. Yet we pass these beautiful living fabrics every day of our lives without a thought. They are perpetually challenging observation, and should one of greater strength or symmetry of form than the rest be so fortunate as to attract our notice for a few minutes, we see nothing in it but a chaos of irregularly formed and numberless branches, a sense-confounding confusion. We intend, however, to show that a principle of order is there; and, to render it palpable to the eye, we shall prove that the tree is a world in miniature-that it is a community of little plants mutually dependent on each other, and as much distinguished by their individual peculiarities and the influence of favourable or unfavourable circumstances on them, as the individuals associated together in a town or city. We shall prove that these little plants work together in building up the tree, and how the amount of labour done by them every year, on the season's growth, has been registered not only in the wood of its stem, but also on its exterior bark. We shall establish these facts and others equally interesting, and we hope so to influence our readers that for the future they shall never look at a tree without admiration and thoughtfulness, but view them with the same feelings of pleasure with which we regard them. The First Year's Growth.-If we plant a beech-nut in the ground at the temperature of 32° Fahrenheit, it remains inactive until it finally decays; but if the earth is moist and above the temperature of 32°, and the nut is effectually screened from the action of the light, its growth is no longer suspended; its outward envelopes soften, swell, and are finally ruptured by the vital movements of the embryo, which elongates downwards by its radicle, or young root, and upwards by its plumule, or young stem, lifting the cotyledons, or seed-leaves, above the earth's surface. These leaves speedily enlarge, and by exposure to the light acquire a green hue, so that they ultimately assume quite a different appearance from that which they had when they were wrapped up within the folds of the testa, or outward envelope of the nut. They are two in number, opposite, thick, and fleshy, are attached to the embryo, and contain a store of starch, which, converted by the oxygen of the air into sugar and dextrine, contributes to the development of the first pair of atmospheric leaves put forth by the young embryo and to the extension of the roots in the soil. The cotyledonary leaves are therefore only temporary appendages of the vegetable axis. They foster the growth of the first pair of atmospheric leaves, which are parasitic on them until sufficiently developed to draw their own supplies of food from the atmosphere; hence, at the end of a certain time, they fade and fall, having performed their allotted functions, whilst the atmospheric leaves take the form peculiar to the plant, and remain permanently attached to its stem. These leaves elaborate the fluids and gases absorbed into the interior of the plant from the earth and atmosphere much more perfectly than the cotyledons, and contribute to the upward growth of the young axis, to the development of the next pair of atmospheric leaves, and to the increase of the number of radicles in the soil. The growth of the plant, feeble during the cotyledonary stage of development, is now considerably accelerated, and increases with every fresh growth of the axis and succeeding pairs of leaves. The sap continues to ascend from the roots to the leaves during the spring, but, as the season advances, it is gradually arrested and turned away from the leaves into new channels, in consequence of the development of the buds within their axis, and of the growth of the bud, with which the shoot or vegetable axis terminates. Thus the ascentional movement of the sap to the leaves in spring is succeeded by a movement of the sap towards the buds about the end of summer, which is designated as the autumnal sap. In proportion as the current of sap is diverted from the leaves to the buds, the internodes, or naked intervals of stem between the leaves, become shorter, the leaves approximate, and finally cease to form, whilst those which were put forth in the earlier part of the season and are fully grown gradually change their colour-a sure prestige of their approaching fall. The current of sap continues flowing to the buds till the close of the season of growth; and, the lateral and terminal buds |