stationary-some moving hither and thither-emitting from time to time loud pantings, and glaring with inward fire.

"Behold!" said Deepone, "the stable of the fiery steeds."

The prince looked on stupefied. Presently one of the iron horses advanced close to him. He shrunk from the awful power manifest in the grinding motions of its huge metal limbs.

"Lo!—our charger: mount, and let us depart for the castle of Bullyana."

Deepone who uttered these

was, he mounted tremblingly. The iron horse uttered a loud

Were it not his faithful friend words, the prince would never have mustered sufficient courage to approach the terrible monster. As it Deepone took his place beside him. neigh of eagerness-shrill indeed as a whistle-and then panting with its glowing breath, it shot swiftly away.

How terrible was its progress!-Over vast plains, and by dimlyseen cities-pausing not-faultering not-flying with one continuous rush-leaving behind swift birds and animals-on, on, bounded the wondrous steed. For some time Prince Jocund had no breath to speak; the rapidity of the flight deprived him of it, and he clung, instinctively to Deepone, who regulated by an iron bridle, the motions of the horse.

"This is awful!" he said at last. "I have heard of a horse, possessed by one of my royal relations-you may perhaps have read about it in the Arabian Nights,' a work which contains accounts of many remarkable adventures and facts-which had a curious characteristic. It was of wood, yet it could fly: now this seems as wonderful; it is of iron, yet it can run.”

"Truly," said Deepone, with a smile, "the marvels are similar.'

"Now," continued the prince, "my kinsman's horse could fly over that mountain we are approaching."

"And mine," replied Deepone, "can plunge beneath it."

He had no sooner spoken when, with a loud scream, and a cold rush of wet air, the iron horse, leaving the open light and the warm sun, plunged into the hill-side, and swept furiously in utter darkness, through the very bowels of the mountain.

The prince, fairly frightened, spoke not, until they emerged from this subterraneous way as suddenly as they had entered it. Then he said solemnly: "The horse of iron is greater than the horse of wood."

"I know not the name of your wooden steed," replied Deepone. This animal is called LOCOMOTIVE.

And now they were approaching Bullyana's Castle. The air grew dim and the country seemed covered with a blurring and blotting haze. But whereverLocomotive" went it brightened, the wonderful horse threw out bursts of vivid flame which lightened all around, and a dim army of phantom shapes, some of them looming amid the retiring darkness like old carriages and waggons of different descriptions, flew tumultuously before the iron horse. It seemed that they could not endure the gleam of his brightness, nor the fury of his rush.

"See,"

said Deepone, "how the dim forms of this land of ignorance and prejudice flee before us."

As he spoke, the far-off towers of the Castle of Bullyana appeared; they were at first but indistinctly seen on account of the unhealthy haze, but as "Locomotive " advanced, his riders beheld a countless swarm of the retainers and subjects of the Fairy Bullyana, drawn up in battle array across the path with the purpose, as it seemed, of disputing their progress. For a moment the prince was discouraged, when he looked at the numbers opposed to him; but at the same instant he descried the Princess Cherrylips (he knew her immediately, for the Sun's portraits are unfailing) waving her hand to him from the top of the Castle tower. Then indeed, he shouted an involuntary war-cry, which was returned by the host before him. Truly they appeared somewhat formidable. Right in the track stood the Fairy Bullyana bearing the sceptre of her empire, in shape like a gallows. On either hand were stationed her dragons, Ignorance and Prejudice : behind the Fairy was a species of shrine inclosing an idol horrible to behold, and on the shrine was written the Shibboleth of the Idolatry

THE GOOD OLD TIMES.

All around were disposed a countless multitude-worshippers of the Fairy and the Idol, many bearing banners inscribed" Protection," the "Old Constitution," and other unmeaning gibberish, probably, however, understood by those who carried them.

And thus they waited the onset. It soon came. With the rush of all heaven's whirlwinds-with the roar of all heaven's artillerythe awful steed thundered over the array-crushing it—annihilating it-dashing to dust the Fairy and the Temple, and the Idol, leaving but the memory of the opposing host as of old bad things which were. And as the armies of Bullyana were thus destroyed, the Castle

fell and mouldered away, with a loud roaring noise; ramparts and citadels vanished away, and, amid the whirl of the dissolution, Jocund leaped triumphantly to the ground and clasped the Princess Cherrylips, unharmed amid the destruction around.

Then, lo! a beaming light shone gloriously forth, investing as it were the Prince, the Princess, and Deepone in its splendour. The last remnants of the palace of Bullyana melted before its pure brightness; and a loud voice ringing like a thousand trumpets proclaimed

DEEPONE IS WISDOM: Prince JOCUND is ENTERPRISE; and the PRINCESS CHERRYLIPS is SUCCESS.

WISDOM and ENTERPRISE ever win SUCCESS.

*

We hope the moral of our Fairy Tale is sufficiently obvious. To those who, like ourselves, look with hope and triumph and mighty aspirations on the progress of our kind, we would proclaim loudly, rejoicingly, the great absorbing truth, that the elements of the Fairy Fiction of one age, are but the material of the everyday life of the next!

A. B. R.

THE SICK LADY.

BESIDE that sunny window-seat,
See where a pillow'd lady lies,
Forth gazing on the garden sweet,
With glazed and melancholy eyes;
Gambolling on the velvet grass,

A troop of boys she doth behold,
Outside the jasmine-bowered glass,

Which shields her from the morning cold.

That lady's lands stretch far and wide,

And heaps of gold and gems has she!

And yet, to be a peasant's bride,
She 'd give her riches to the sea!
In company with that blithe band,
To toss her limbs in healthful play,
The title to her teeming land,

Without a sigh she 'd sign away!

The family board at eve is spread,
And all the household crowd to eat :
Yet she must turn her hand and head
From pleasant drink and dainty meat ;
The gleesome laugh disturbs her brain,
The sweet song wounds her sharpen'd ear,
The gnawing worm of ceaseless pain
Poisons the joy and carks the cheer.

And not her aching head alone,

And tortured side, her spirit rend;
She feels that every smother'd groan
Is echoed on from friend to friend;
She feels her sad, continual sighs,

Creeping, like cold airs, through the place;
She knows that, on the day she dies,
Shadows will fall from many a face!

Look on her ye, whose beds of death
Must yet be strewn on garret floors-
What boots it that her dying breath
Winds to the skies through gilded doors?
Oh, never dream that mirror'd halls
Make happier the hearts they hide,

Than the most lowly cabin walls,

Where Health is welcome to abide !

R. M.

THE HEDGEHOG LETTERS.

CONTAINING THE OPINIONS AND ADVENTURES OF JUNIPER HEDGEHOG, CABMAN, LONDON; AND WRITTEN TO HIS RELATIVES AND ACQUAINTANCE, IN

VARIOUS PARTS OF THE WORLD.

LETTER XXIII.-To MRS. HEDGEHOG, OF NEW YORK.

DEAR GRANDMOTHER,-Of course, you must have heard of the potato blight. There are some subjects that women don't want newspapers to teach 'em about, and "potatos is one." I can't tell how your red Yorks and kidneys may be in your part of the world with us, they 're things to weep over. But of course your potatoes are all right: you've done nothing to bring down rot upon 'em from heaven. But it's very different with us, grandmother. Our potato blight was got up by her Majesty's Ministers,

and-would you think it ?-consented to by her blessed Majesty! It is now as plain as light that the Grant to Maynooth has done it all! One William Ferrie-who writes in a hair shirt with a girdle of tenpenny nails next his skin-has let out the terrible secret in the Witness, an Edinburgh paper (Nov. 8). He groans as follows:

Had we set ourselves to consider by what display of His sovereignty the Lord could most thoroughly and very severely have distressed Ireland, whilst yet He in some degree afflicted also both England and Scotland, in token of his indignation at the sin of their joint rulers in enacting that which, whilst it insulted Him, was justified on the plea that it would benefit Ireland, could we have conceived a more effectual one than the blasting of the potato crop !

There

Now, Grandmother, this, I know, is stuff after your own heart. Popery is at the root of the rot! The Lord has been insulted; and his terrible vengeance is a blight upon potatos! can be no doubt that this is the fact a fact so after the good old times! Nevertheless, for my part, I think it rather hard that Protestant potatos-potatos that, if they could talk, would cry no surrender "should suffer equally with potatos of Roman Catholic principles. I know it's very conceited in me to give an opinion against men like William Ferrie,-men, who always bawl and scribble (I've heard 'em in their pulpits, as well as read their stuff in print,) as if they were nothing less than livery servants to Providence, and knew all the household secrets! And Willy Ferrie, depend on 't, is a flunky after this fashion.

A rotten potato is a rotten potato-at least, so I should have thought it, afore I'd been taught better by ranting Willy; but now, I can see into the thing just as well as if Erasmus Wilsonthe magician of the microscope-had lent me his glass, and his eyes and brains into the bargain. I can see into the decayed parts, for I won't bother your dear head with hard words (though when a man's got 'em for the first time, he likes to sport 'em)-and can behold nothing but, what you used to call, "the murdering papishes." I've a 'tato before me, as rotten as the heart of any talking 'tato that ever spouted blarney in the face of starvation. Well, with the microscope, I can see the Old Woman in Scarlet, with her toe polished with holy kisses-cardinals and abbots, and friars, and priests in white and red and gold, and canopies, and dolls of the virgin, and saints, and little boys swinging censers. I can see all this, by the assistance of Willy Ferrie,-all of it in one potato,