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and deprived of reason, wandering through the rooms of his palace, addressing imaginary parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly courts. I have seen his picture as it was taken at this time, hanging in the apartment of his daughter, the Landgravine of Hesse Homburg, -amidst books and Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over his breast, -the star of his famous Order still idly shining on it. He was not only sightless, -he became utterly deaf. All light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God, were taken from him. Some slight lucid moments he had; in one of which, the queen, desiring to see him, entered the room, and found him singing a hymn, and accompanying himself at the harpsichord. When he had finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding with a prayer for himself, that it might please God to avert His heavy calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to submit. He then burst into tears, and his reason again fled.

What preacher need moralize on this story; what words save the simplest are requisite to tell it? It is too terrible for tears. The thought of such a misery smites me down in submission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch Supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser of life, death, happiness, victory. "O brothers," I said to those who heard me first in America,-"O brothers! speaking the same dear mother tongue, -O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse, and call a truce to battle! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest; dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne, buffeted by rude hands; with his children in revolt; the darling of his old age killed before him untimely; our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, 'Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little!'

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'Vex not his ghost-oh! let him pass he hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer!'

Hush! Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, Trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, Dark Curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy!" William Makepeace Thackeray.

THE BIRTH OF DOMBEY.

Rich Mr. Dombey sat in the corner of his wife's darkened bedchamber in the great arm-chair by the bedside, and rich Mr. Dombey's Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket, carefully placed on a low settee in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new.

Rich Mr. Dombey was about eight-and-forty years of age. Rich Mr. Dombey's Son, about eight-and-forty

minutes.

Mr. Dombey, exulting in the long-looked-for event,— the birth of a son,-jingled his heavy gold watch-chain as he sat in his blue coat and bright buttons by the side of the bed, and said:

"Our house of business will once again be not only in name but in fact Dombey and Son; Dombey and Son! He will be christened Paul, of course. His father's name, Mrs. Dombey, and his grandfather's! I wish his grandfather were alive this day!" And again he said, "Dombey and Son."

Those three words conveyed the one idea of Mr. Dombey's life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light. Common abbreviations took new meanings in his eyes, and had sole reference to them. A. D. had no concern with anno Domini, but stood for anno Dombei-and Son.

He had been married ten years, and, until this present day on which he sat jingling his gold watch-chain in the great arm-chair by the side of the bed, had had no issue.

-To speak of. There had been a girl some six years before, and she, who had stolen into the chamber unobserved, was now crouching in a corner whence she could

see her mother's face. But what was a girl to Dombey

and Son!

Mr. Dombey's cup of satisfaction was so full, however, that he said: "Florence, you may go and look at your pretty brother, if you like. Do n't touch him!"

Next moment the sick lady had opened her eyes and seen the little girl; and the little girl had run towards her; and, standing on tiptoe, to hide her face in her embrace, had clung about her with a desperate affection very much at variance with her years. The lady herself seemed to

faint.

"O Lord bless me!" said Mr. Dombey, "I do n't like the look of this. A very ill-advised and feverish proceeding having this child here. I had better ask Doctor if he'll have the goodness to step up stairs again; " which he did, returning with the Doctor himself, and closely followed by his sister, Mrs. Chick, a lady rather past the middle age than otherwise, but dressed in a very juvenile manner, who flung her arms around his neck, and said:

"My dear Paul! This last child is quite a Dombey! He's such a perfect Dombey!"

"Well, well! I think he is like the family. But what is this they have told me, since the child was born, about Fanny herself. How is Fanny?"

"My dear Paul, there's nothing whatever wrong with Fanny. Take my word, nothing whatever. An effort is necessary. That's all. Ah! if dear Fanny were a Dombey! But I dare say, although she is not a born Dombey herself, she'll make an effort; I have no doubt she 'll make an effort. Knowing it to be required of her, as a duty, of course she 'll make an effort. And that effort she must be encouraged, and really, if necessary, urged to make. Now, my dear Paul, come close to her with me."

The lady lay immovable upon her bed, clasping her little daughter to her breast. The girl clung close about her, with the same intensity as before, and never raised her head, or moved her soft cheek from her mother's face, or looked on those who stood around, or spoke, or moved, or shed a tear.

There was such a solemn stillness round the bed, and the Doctor seemed to look on the impassive form with so much compassion and so little hope, that Mrs. Chick was

for a moment diverted from her purpose. But presently summoning courage, and what she called presence of mind, she sat down by the bedside, and said, in the tone of one who endeavors to awaken a sleeper,—

"Fanny! Fanny!"

There was no sound in answer but the loud ticking of Mr. Dombey's watch and the Doctor's watch, which seemed in the silence to be running a race.

"Fanny, my dear, here's Mr. Dombey come to see you. Won't you speak to him? They want to lay your little boy in bed, -the baby, Fanny, you know; you have hardly seen him yet, I think,—but they can't till you rouse yourself a little. Don't you think it's time you roused yourself a little? Eh?"

No word or sound in answer. Mr. Dombey's watch and the Doctor's watch seemed to be racing faster.

"Now really, Fanny my dear, I shall have to be quite cross with you if you do n't rouse yourself. It's necessary for you to make an effort, and perhaps a very great and painful effort, which you are not disposed to make; but this is a world of effort, you know, Fanny, and we must never yield when so much depends upon us. Come! Try! I must really scold you if you do n't. Fanny! Only look at me; only open your eyes to show me that you hear and understand me; will you? Good Heaven, gentlemen, what is to be done?"

The physician, stooping down, whispered in the little girl's ear. Not having understood the purport of his whisper, the little creature turned her deep, dark eyes towards him.

The whisper was repeated. "Mamma!"

The little voice, familiar and dearly loved, awakened some show of consciousness, even at that ebb. For a moment, the closed eyelids trembled, and the nostril quivered, and the faintest shadow of a smile was seen.

"Mamma! O dear mamma! O dear mamma!”

The Doctor gently brushed the scattered ringlets of the child aside from the face and mouth of the mother. And thus, clinging fast to that frail spar within her arms, the mother drifted out upon the dark and unknown sea that rolls round all the world.

Charles Dickens.

SCENE AT DOCTOR BLIMBER'S.

At length Mr. Dombey, one Saturday, when he came down to Brighton to see Paul, who was then six years old, resolved to make a change, and enroll him as a small student under Doctor Blimber.

Whenever a young man was taken in hand by Doctor Blimber, he might consider himself sure of a pretty tight squeeze. The Doctor only undertook the charge of ten young gentlemen, but he had always ready a supply of learning for a hundred, and it was at once the business and delight of his life to gorge the unhappy ten with it.

In fact Doctor Blimber's establishment was a great hothouse, in which there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys blew before their time. Mental green peas were produced at Christmas, and intellectual asparagus all the year round. No matter what a young gentleman was intended to bear, Doctor Blimber made him bear to pattern, somehow or other.

This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but the system of forcing was attended with its usual disadvantages. There was not the right taste about the premature productions; and they did n't keep well. Moreover, one young gentleman, with a swollen nose and an excessively large head (the oldest of the ten who had "gone through" everything), suddenly left off blowing one day, and remained in the establishment a mere stalk. And people did say that the Doctor had rather overdone it with young Toots, and that when he began to have whiskers he left off having brains.

The Doctor was a portly gentleman in a suit of black, with strings at his knees, and stockings below them. He had a bald head, highly polished; a deep voice; and a chin so very double, that it was a wonder how he ever managed to shave into the creases.

His daughter, Miss Blimber, although a slim and graceful maid, did no soft violence to the gravity of the Doctor's house. There was no light nonsense about Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short and crisp, and wore spectacles, and she was dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages. None of your live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be dead,—stone dead,

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