THE WHISPERING GALLERY.

SINCE Our last whispers on the subject, the practices of the Literary Pirates in America have received a curious illustration by the conflagration of the extensive establishment of the Messrs. Harper: an event attributed to some person having gone with a light into the warehouse for the purpose of stealing an "early copy" of Mr. James's" Morley Ernstein," of which a large impression was just ready for issue to the public. The coveted copy being of course intended to serve in the reprinting of a rival edition. It will henceforward be unnecessary to say more of the morality of a system which has been so strikingly illuminated.

The following letter, to the Editor, not being marked "Private" or "Confidential," he feels justified in making public.

"Sir,

"Allow me to say a few words on the Locking-In System on the Great Western Railway. I hardly know, though, whether I ought to engage in a controversy which is in such good hands as those of the facetious Minor Canon of St. Paul's. That Reverend Lock-Smith will pick the nuisance if any one can. Indeed, his picture of the horrid articles, all besmeared with the blood of future Victims, has already brought forward A Director,' with a

Why dost thou shake thy gory locks at me?

But the quotation, though apt, is no answer to the alleged probability of frightful and wholesale accidents from the practice; and the consequent necessity of building a new Lock's Hospital to receive the poor sufferers by contusions and burns,-to terminate, possibly, in Lock-jaw. The argument of a 'Shareholder,' that all our canals are locked, and yet nobody gets roasted by water-carriage, will not bear examination nor indeed will any of their logic, if we candidly consider the following illustration-namely, the dangerous nature of a loaded gun, with a cock, trigger, &c., and the perfect safety and harmlessness of the same weapon-without a lock.

"I am, Sir,

"P.S. The assertion that the passengers like being locked in must be one of Lockman's Fables."

P is for Politics-and we are not.

THE

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

THE GRIMSBY GHOST.

BY THE EDITOR.

CHAP. I.

IN the town of Grimsby

"But stop," says the Courteous and Prudent Reader, "are there any such things as Ghosts?"

Any Ghostesses!" cries Superstition, who settled long since in the country, near a churchyard, on a rising ground, “any Ghostesses! Ay, man-lots on 'em! bushels on 'em! sights on 'em! Why, there's one as walks in our parish, reg'lar as the clock strikes twelve-and always the same round-over church-stile, round the corner, through the gap, into Short's Spinney, and so along into our close, where he takes a drink at the pump,-for ye see he died in liquor.-and then arter he's squentched hisself wanishes into waper. Then there's the ghost of old Beales, as goes o' nights and sows tears in his neighbour's wheats— I've often seed un in seed time. They do say that Black Ben, the Poacher, have riz, and what's more, walked slap through all the Squire's steel-traps without springin on 'em. And then there's Bet. Hawkey as murdered her own hinfant-only the poor babby hadn't larned to walk, and so can't appear agin her."

But not to refer only to the ignorant and illiterate vulgar, there are units, tens, hundreds, thousands of wellbred and educated persons, Divines, Lawyers, military, and especially naval officers, Artists, Authors, Players, Schoolmasters and Governesses, and fine ladies, who secretly believe that the dead are on visiting terms with the livingnay, the great Doctor Johnson himself, affirmed solemnly that he had a call from his late mother, who had been buried many years. Ask at the right time, and in the right place, and in the right manner-only affect a belief, though you have it not-so that the party may feel. assured of sympathy and insured against ridicule, and nine-tenths of mankind will confess a faith in Apparitions. It is in truth an article in the creed of our natural religion-a corollary of the recognition of the immortality of the soul. The presence of spirits-visible or invi-; Aug.-VOL. LXV. NO. CCLX. 2 F

sible is an innate idea, as exemplified by the instinctive night terrors of infancy, and recently so touchingly illustrated by the evidence of the poor little colliery-girl, who declared that "she sang, whiles, at her subterranean task, but never when she was alone in the dark."

It is from this cause that the Poems and Ballads on spectral subjects have derived their popularity: for instance, Margaret's GhostMary's Dream-and the Ghost of Admiral Hosier-not to forget the Drama, with that awful Phantom in" Hamlet," whose word, in favour of the Supernatural, we all feel to be worth" a thousand pound." "And then the Spectre in Don Giovanni?'"

No. That Marble Walker, with his audible tramp, tramp, tramp on the staircase is too substantial for my theory. It was a Ghost invented expressly for the Materialists; but is as inadmissible amongst genuine Spirits as that wooden one described by old W. the shipownernamely, the figure-head of the Britannia, which appeared to him, he declared, on the very night that she found a watery grave off Cape Cod.

"Well-after that-go on."

CHAP. II.

In the town of Grimsby, at the corner of Swivel-street, there is a little chandler's-shop, which was kept for many years by a widow of the name of Mullins. She was a careful, thrifty body, a perfect woman of business, with a sharp gray eye to the main chance, a quick ear for the ring of good or bad metal, and a close hand at the counter. Indeed, she was apt to give such scrimp weight and measure, that her customers invariably manœuvred to be served by her daughter, who was supposed to be more liberal at the scale, by a full ounce in the pound. The man and maid servants it is true, who bought on commission, did not care much about the matter; but the poor hungry father, the poor frugal mother, the little ragged girl, and the little dirty boy, all retained their pence in their hands, till they could thrust them, with their humble requests for ounces or half-ounces of tea, brown sugar, or single Gloster, towards "Miss Mullins," who was supposed to better their dealings,-if dealings they might be called, where no deal of any thing was purchased. She was a tall, bony female, of about thirty years of age, but apparently forty, with a very homely set of features, and the staid, sedate carriage of a spinster who feels herself to be set in for a single life. There was indeed "no love nonsense" about her; and as to romance, she had never so much as looked into a novel or read a line of poetry in her life her thoughts, her feelings, her actions, were all like her occupation, of the most plain, prosaic character-the retailing of soap, starch, sandpaper, red-herrings, and Flanders brick. Except Sundays, when she went twice to chapel, her days were divided between the little back-parlour and the front shop-between a patchwork counterpane which she had been stitching at for ten long years, and that other counter work to which she was summoned, every few minutes, by the importunities of a little bell, that rang every customer in, like the new year, and then rang him out again like the old one. It was her province, moreover, to set down all unready money orders on a slate, but the widow took charge of the books, or rather the book, in which every

item of account was entered, with a rigid punctuality that would have done honour to a regular counting-house clerk.

Under such management the little chandler's-shop was a thriving concern, and with the frugal, not to say parsimonious habits of mother and daughter, enabled the former to lay by annually her one or two hundred pounds, so that Miss Mullins was in a fair way of becoming a fortune, when towards the autumn of 1838 the widow was suddenly taken ill at her book, in the very act of making out a little bill, which alas she never lived to sum up. The disorder progressed so rapidly that on the second day she was given over by the doctor, and on the third by the apothecary, having lost all power of swallowing his medicines. The distress of her daughter, thus threatened with the sudden rending of her only tie in the world, may be conceived; while, to add to her affliction, her dying parent though perfectly sensible, was unable, from a paralysis of the organs of speech, to articulate a single word. She tried nevertheless to speak, with a singular perseverance, but all her struggles for utterance were in vain. Her eyes rolled frightfully, the muscles about the mouth worked convulsively, and her tongue actually writhed till she foamed at the lips, but without producing more than such an unintelligible sound as is sometimes heard from the deaf and dumb. It was evident from the frequency and vehemence of these efforts that she had something of the last importance to communicate, and which her weeping daughter at last implored her to make known by means of signs.

"Had she any thing weighing heavy on her mind?"

The sick woman nodded her head.

“Did she want any one to be sent for ?"

The head was shaken.

"Was it about making her will?”

Another mute negative.

"Did she wish to have further medical advice?"

A gesture of great impatience.

"Would she try to write down her meaning?"

The head nodded, and the writing-materials were immediately procured. The dying woman was propped up in bed, a lead-pencil was placed in her right-hand, and a quire of foolscap was set before her. With extreme difficulty she contrived to scribble the single word MARY; but before she could form another letter, the hand suddenly dropped, scratching a long mark, like what the Germans call a Devotion Stroke, from the top to the bottom of the paper, her face assumed an intense expression of despair-there was a single deep groan -then a heavy sigh-and the Widow Mullins was a corpse!

CHAP. III.

"GRACIOUS! How shocking!" cries Morbid Curiosity. "And to die, too, without telling her secret! What could the poor creature have on her mind to lay so heavy! I'd give the world to know what it was! A shocking murder, perhaps, and the remains of her poor Husband buried Lord knows where so that nobody can enjoy the horrid discovery-and the digging of him up!"

No, madam-nor the boiling and parboiling of his viscera to detect traces of poison.

"To be sure not. It's a sin and shame, it is, for people to go out of the world with such mysteries confined to their own bosom. But perhaps it was only a hoard of money that she had saved up in private?"

Very possibly, madam. In fact, Mrs. Humphreys, the carpenter's wife, who was present at the death, was so firmly of that persuasion, that before the body was cold, although not the Searcher, she had exercised a right of search in every pot, pan, box, basket, drawer, cupboard, chimney-in short, every hole and corner in the premises.

"Ay, and I'll be bound discovered a heap of golden guineas in an old teapot."

No, madam-not a dump. At least, not in the teapot-but in a hole near the sink-she found

"What, sir?-pray what?"

Two black-beetles, ma'am, and a money-spinner.

CHAP. IV.

WELL, the corpse of the deceased Widow received the usual rites. It was washed-laid out-and according to old provincial custom, strewed with rosemary and other sweet herbs. A plate full of salt was placed on the chest-one lighted candle was set near the head, and another at the feet, whilst the Mrs. Humphreys, before mentioned, undertook to sit up through the night and "watch the body." A halfdozen of female neighbours also volunteered their services, and sat in the little back-parlour by way of company for the bereaved daughter, who, by the mere force of habit, had caught up and begun mechanically to stitch at the patchwork-counterpane, with one corner of which she occasionally and absently wiped her eyes-the action strangely contrasting with such a huge and Harlequin handkerchief. In the discourse of the gossips she took no part or interest, in reality she did not hear the conversation, her ear still seeming painfully on the stretch to catch those last dying words which her poor mother had been unable to utter. In her mind's eye she was still watching those dreadful contortions which disfigured the features of her dying parent during her convulsive efforts to speak-she still saw those desperate attempts to write, and then that leaden fall of the cold hand, and the long scratch of the random pencil that broke off for ever and ever the mysterious revelation. A more romantic or ambitious nature would perhaps have fancied that the undivulged secret referred to her own birth a more avaricious spirit might have dreamed that the disclosure related to hidden treasure; and a more suspicious character might have even supposed that death had suppressed some confession of undiscovered guilt.

But the plain matter-of-fact mind of Mary Mullins was incapable of such speculations. Instead of dreaming, therefore, of an airy coronet, or ideal bundles of bank-notes, or pots full of gold and silver coin, or a disinterred skeleton, she only stitched on, and then wept, and then stitched on again at the motley coverlet, wondering amongst her other