bespoke feelings too deep and too holy for utterance, even in a song of praise.

Twelve months before, some of them had been attracted by the light thrown through the gloom in which they were sauntering, cold and wretched, to their naked homes; they had crawled, half tipsy, beneath the blazing windows; had listened to that hymn, but knew not the words, and understood not their power or purpose; had longed to be within, if only to appease hunger and to be warm for one rare, short hour. And now? They were within, clad, warmed, saved, blessed, hopeful, cheerful; and their hearts were swelling with a gladness that finds no vent but weeping. Surely, since the day when, at the base of the Babel tower, fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, kinsmen, tribes, strove, with mingled howls of dread and mad articulate shrieks, to speak a forgotten, a perished tongue, there never has been any noise so confused as that which follows the moment of pause after grace is said on such an occasion; a moment which serves to sever the earthly from the heavenly, and teaches us how near and yet how distant, and how different, is the one from the other. What a compound of sounds, over and above the common mixture of melodies to be heard in every crowd! But how admirably is every part of great Nature fitted to every other part! Only imagine what an appalling thing it would be to visit a scene like this in the ghost world, in the great Sheol of the Hebrews, for instance. To look upon six hundred bodily forms silently going through such an infinite variety of antics, and stowing away such handfuls of seeming substantialities! Well, then, is it not a wise arrangement of Nature, when six hundred people of all ages take a meat tea in one apartmentis it not a relief rather than otherwise, to have the clatter, and hum, and buzzes mixed up into one amazing and deafening compound of sound?

It would be invidious to institute too close an inquiry into the relative value of the ticket that admitted to the viands, and of the viands that were admitted to the interior of the ticket-holder. There is not any particular difficulty in forming a general notion of how matters stood, relatively, after a good half-hour's experiment; for a shilling, though it will go a good

way in muffins, has its natural limit somewhat sooner when ham and tea are taken into the account. In some quarters there were symptoms of discontent-generally, however, of such a kind as to be allayed by playful rebuke, or else by ultimate replenishment of desolate muffin-plates. Our friend Mr. Muggins offered himself a sacrifice to the popular appetite at his table, and ran some risk of realizing his own condition of the morning-" dying for it." What little leisure people could afford for such an occupation, was spent in wondering however Groggy could have squeezed his way into such a good spot for satisfying the desires of his nature. Once fairly ensconced and occupied, public wonder was diverted to the greatness of his capacity for ham, and the utter improbability of his ever getting out again in his swollen condition. This rotund individual ungratefully spent the strength he had appropriated from unlimited victuals in murmuring at official meanness. With lobster-like eyes, and cheeks flaming like a lobster boiled, he turned to the extent of a small angle, and confronting a pale slim waiter cornerwise, demanded, with terrifying emphasis, whether "they meant to starve 'em all?" Meekness is the true wisdom of the weak, and the slim waiter knew it. He answered, with a gentle sarcasm, "You've had your sixpenceworth, I'll be bound, old cock; so never you start crowing." The round man was cowed, then enraged; and seizing upon the affront as an excuse which he very much wanted for not staying to hear the speeches, he groped with his feet for his hat―roused bitter and lasting feuds from under the table by the reckless infliction of kicks from his hobnailed Bluchers-made one grand experiment in the getting-out line of policy-succumbed under the rising indignation of persons who neither would nor could bear his weight in the small of their backs—sank flop into his seat, settled his head into his apoplectic neck, and secretly resolved not to listen to a single word of the speeches. This incident was exceptional, thought not altogether a solitary one, if we are to believe the statement in the Arlton Journal, by one "Philologos," a lean light-haired philosopher, who made himself conspicuous all through the festival by casting eagle glances everywhere, and constantly

shouting "Waiter! waiter!" in tones horribly like "Fire! fire!" He said-and he ought to know-that the whole thing was shameful; and he should certainly summon all the white-rosette men before the next meeting of the committee.

The matronly and maidenly middle-aged presidents of trays reposed on their laurels (one at the back of each chair), while servitors, weary and reckless, made a clean sweep of the crockery, and we nearly said-crumbs; but, in good sooth, there were no crumbs left.

CHAPTER III.

THE SPOON IN THE CUP.

THEN, blushing girls listened, with averted head and vacant eye, to sweet nothings that came from somewhere behind; and, when any one looked, said "Don't !" and wondered when the speaking would begin, and where the Secretary was all that time. Now, though we fear the inquiry in this quarter was but a blind and make-believe, we will venture to reply that Mr. Sec. was at that moment pretty nearly where he had been all the evening-lolling at half length, and so taking up two seats and a half (as who should hinder him?) at the first table, in the place of honour, and of profit too. Of profit, it is said; for though in external seeming there was no difference between the viands on that table and those lower down, we happen to be in the secret, and can vouch for it, that the ham was thinner, and more of it; the muffins, by a well-regulated method of service, were hot-and-hot even to the last; and the tea had once been in China, and was in china then, and might, but for its quality, have been set down at 3s. 8d., it was so plentiful and strong. We would not insinuate anything to the disadvantage of the amiable Sec.; but as he alone possessed a knowledge of the programme of the evening, to the inquisitive fair around he was the idol of the hour-and it's really astonishing what quantities of food idols will on some occasions swallow. Whatever may have

F

been the precise amount of expansion that took place internally, at any rate, the process which had been going on for three-quarters of an hour, apart from the more public gaze, resulted in imparting greater breadth than ever to his serene and benevolent face; so that, when he rose from his recumbent posture, and shone out on the company below, there was an ill-suppressed murmur, or purring, which told how glad the "Friends of Home” were to see him once more. Gracefully inserting his finger and thumb in his white vestpocket, and feeling, as he well knew, for nothing, he proposed, in a voice serene and flat like his face, that if the Friends (a joke this!) had quite finished, they would sing the usual verse, which accordingly was performed this time with an effect the reverse of the former experiment. The band had complotted, and by their superior science, and not having to mind the words, they succeeded in beating the amateurs hollow; for even the bassoon had sat down before the finale of the general repeat, which hung upon the ear like the dying blast of an organ out of repair. Thus, with becoming gravity, the more serious part of the affair had been brought to a close; and now nothing remained but speeches and sleeping, unless indeed we may include listening and vociferation.

Let not the Friends of Home think that in this description there is anything to endanger the esteem in which they are so deservedly held; for it is a fact that in all large unselected assemblies, where food is introduced, there is sure to be much that is irresistibly droll; and, besides, out of the six hundred present, not more than half were members of the Society, as might be judged from the numerous cases in which, with a guilty wink, one had whispered to another, "that it was all as it should be, but, for that individual's part, a little of something short would have mended the tea;" and the repeated observations,of a very suspicious character, “that that ham was underdone, and too fat, and lay very cold on the stomach." Moreover, as was afterwards reported with grief by the amiable and vigilant Secretary, two short hours only had elapsed, and the tap-room of the "Justice's Wig," at the end of the yard, was more crowded than it had ever been before by enthusiastic and droughty disputants, who contrived

to recollect and illustrate the arguments of the evening by the aid of copious "goes" of brandy-and-water.

Quiet was at length restored (or, perhaps, we should be more accurate if we said, quiet was for the first time secured), and matters seemed to be coming to a point; but as in the regions of air a deep lull is often the space within which the fiercest storms are nursed, so on that terrene sphere, the platform, there were symptoms of an inevitable tempest, in the graceful investigation of a red book, which looked so like hymns, that the light-haired young man felt himself moved to cut a slit in the end of his cane, and, having scribbled a little note on his mother's back, to hand that missive, at sticklength, to the nearest member of the platform group, which communication produced so decided an effect, that we felt bound to procure a copy. It ran thus "Respected Sir [addressed to no one in particular],—A humble individual, who has observed with pain the manifest and unbecoming rivalry existing between the band of the Friends of Home and those Friends of Home themselves and others, takes leave to suggest that there be no more singing."-Signed "Philologos." The suggestion was received as it deserved; it was an extremely happy one on more accounts than the one specified; for the stranger gentleman, who was to be the star of the evening, had chosen a hymn of a very peculiar metre indeed, and the Secretary was ashamed to confess his fear that the band did not know a proper tune for it, and were hardly as yet skilled enough to be safely trusted with the dangerous licence of adapting a common to a long or a long to a peculiar metre.

THIS difficulty removed-this cloud dispersed there remained no reason why the amiable Secretary should not proceed to announce and induct the no less amiable chairman; and why should we not follow his example? We see no reason why. A slight sketch will answer for his bodily