with Blast. Half-a-dozen times the words were at his lips, and then the fear of the chance of detection kept him dumb. And then again he repented that he had not risked the peril, that he might at once have known the fate of his mother. He had heard no word of her. Was she dead? Remembering what was her life, he almost hoped so. Yet she was the only creature of his blood; and, if still living, it would be to him some solace-something to link him anew to her to snatch her old age from the horrors that defiled it. With these thoughts, St. Giles took his way up the Strand, and feeling a strange pleasure in the daring, was soon in Bow-street. He approached the office: the judg ment-seat where he was arraigned for his maiden theft. There at the door, playing with his watch-chain-with almost the same face, the same cut clothes, the same flower in his mouth, of fifteen years before-stood Jerry Whistle, officer and prime thief-taker. A sort of human blood-hound, as it seemed expressly fashioned by madam nature, to watch and seize on evil-doers. He appeared to be sent into this world with a peculiar nose for robbers; scenting them through all their doublings, though they should put seas between him and them. And Jerry performed his functions with such extreme good-humour, seized upon a culprit with such great goodnature, that it appeared impossible that death should end a ceremony so cordially began. Jerry Whistle would take a man to Newgate as to a tavern; a place wherein human nature might with the fattest and the strongest enjoy itself.

As St. Giles approached Whistle, he thought that worthy officer, learned as he was in human countenances, eyed him with a look of remembrance; whereupon, with a wise boldness, St. Giles stepped up to him, and asked the way to Seven Dials. Straight ahead, my tulip, and ask again," said Jerry; and he continued to suck his pink and chink his watch-chain.

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In a few minutes, St. Giles was in Short's Gardens. He looked upwards at the third floor; where his first friend, Mrs. Aniseed, had carried him to her gentle-hearted lord, Bright Jem. It was plain they were tenants there no longer. The windows, always bright, were crusted with dust; two were broken, and patched with paper. And there was no flower-pot, with its three-pennyworth of nature from Covent-garden; no singing-bird. St. Giles, with a sinking of the heart, passed on. It was plain he had lost a part of something that, in his hours of exile, had made England so fair a land of promise to him. He turned his steps towards Seven Dials.

He would look at the shop of the muffin-maker of course he could not make himself known-at least not just now-to that sweet-and-bitter philanthropist, Capstick: but it would be something to see how time had dealt with him. A short space, and St. Giles approached the door; the very threshold he had crossed with basket and bell. Capstick had departed; no muffin graced the window. The shop was tenanted by a small undertaker; a tradesman who had to higgle with the poor for his price of laying that eye-sore, poverty, in the arms of the maternal earth who, least partial of all mothers, treats her offspring all alike. "Can he be dead?" thought St. Giles, for the moment unconsciously associating his benefactor with the emblems of mortality; as though death had come there, and edged the muffin-maker out. Ere he could think another thought, St. Giles stood in the shop. The master, whistling a jig of the time, was at his work, driving tin tacks into a baby's coffin. The pawnbroker would have another gown a blanket, it might be-for those tin tacks; but that was nothing: why should wealth claim all the pride of the world, even where pride is said to leave us at the grave?

"Do you know whether Mr. Capstick 's alive?" asked St. Giles of the whistling workman.

66 Can't

say, I'm sure," answered the undertaker. know I've not yet had the luck of burying him."

66

"I only

"I mean the muffin-maker, who lived here before you," said. St. Giles; "you knew him?"

"I've heard of him, but never seen him-never want. He was a tailor as was ruined last here. I say,"-cried the undertaker, with an intended joke in his eye-"I say, you don't want anything in my way?

St. Giles, making no answer, stept into the street. He then paused. Should he go forward? He should have no luck that, day, and he would seek no further. And while he so determined, he moved towards his native nook-the fetid, filthy corner, in which he first smelt what was called the air. He walked towards Hog Lane.

Again and again did he pass it. Again and again did he approach St. Giles's Church, and gaze upon the clock. It was only ten; too early-he was sure of that to present himself in St. James's-square. Otherwise he would first go there, and return to the Lane under cover of the night. He then crossed the way, and looked up the Lane. He saw not a face he knew.

All he

had left were dead; and new tenants, other wretches, fighting against want, and gin, and typhus, were preparing new loam for the church-yard. No: he would not seek now. He would come in the evening-it would be the best time, the very best.

With this feeling, St. Giles turned away, and was proceeding slowly onward, when he paused at a shop-window. In a moment, he felt a twitch at his pocket, and turning, he saw a child of some eight or ten years old, carrying away a silk handkerchief that Becky, in exchange for the huswife, had forced upon him. How sudden, and how great was St. Giles's indignation at the villain thief! Never had St. Giles felt so strongly virtuous! The pigmy felon flew towards Hog Lane; and in a moment, St. Giles followed him and stood at the threshold of the house wherein the thief had taken shelter. St. Giles was about to enter, when he was suddenly stopt by a man-that man was Tom Blast.

"Well, if this isn't luck!" said Blast spreading himself in the door-way, to secure the retreat of the thief. "Who'd ha’· thought we should ha' met so soon?"

"All's one for that,' said St. Giles. and the young thief 's here, and you know it.

"I've been robbed,

66 A thief here! Mind what you're about, young man do mind what you say, afore you take away the character of a honest house. We've nothin' here but our good name to live upon, and so do mind what you're about." And Blast uttered this with such mock earnestness, looked so knowingly in the face of St. Giles, that, unconsciously, he shrank from the speaker; who continued: "Is it likely now, that you could think anybody in this Lane would pick a gentleman's pocket? Bless your heart! we're all so honest here, we are," and Blast laughed.

"I thought you told me,' said St. Giles, confused, "that you lived somewhere away at Horsleydown."

"Lor love you! folks as are poor like us have, you know, a dozen town-houses; besides country ones under hedges and haystacks. We can easily move about: we haven't much to stop us. And now, to business. You've really lost your handkercher?"

""Tisn't that I care about it," said Giles, "only you see 'twas given me by somebody."

"Given! To be sure. Folks do give away things, don't they? All the world's gone mad, I think; people do so give away. St. Giles's heart fell at the laughing, malignant look with which Blast gazed upon him. It was plain that he was once again in

the hands of his master; again in the power of the devil that had first sold him. "Howsomever,' continued Blast, "if you've really been robbed, and the thief's in this house, shall I go and fetch a officer? You don't think, sir, do you "-and Blast grinned and bowed his head-" you don't think, sir, as how I'd pertect anybody as had broke the laws of my native land? Is it likely? Only say the word. Shall I go for a officer?"

66

66

"No; never mind-it doesn't matter. Still, I've a fancy for that handkercher, and will give more than its worth for it." Well, that's like a nobleman, that is. Here, Jingo! cried Blast, stepping a pace or two into the passage, and bawling his lustiest "Jingo, here's the gen'lman as has lost the handkercher you found; bring it down, my beauty." Obedient to the command, a half-naked child-with the very look and manner of St. Giles's former self-instantly appeared, with the stolen goods. in his hand. 'He's sich a lucky little chap, this is," said Blast -" nothin's lost hereabout, that he doesn't find it. Give the fogle to the gen❜lman; and who knows? perhaps, he'll give you a guinea for it." The boy obeyed the order, and stood with open hand for the reward. St. Giles was about to bestow a shilling, when Tom Blast sidled towards him, and in an affected tone of confidence, said "Couldn't think o' letting you do sich a thing." "And why not? asked St. Giles, becoming more and more terrified at the bold familiarity of the ruffian. Why not?" 'Tisn't right; not at all proper; not at all what I call natral' and here Blast whispered in St. Giles's ear-" that money should pass atween brothers."

66

"Brothers! cried St. Giles.

66

"Ha, sir!" said Blast, taking his former manner,-" you don't I know what a woman that Mrs. St. Giles was! She was a good soul, wasn't she? You must know that her little boy fell in trouble about a pony; and then he was in Newgate, being made all right for Tyburn, jist as this little feller was born. And then they took and transported young St. Giles; and he never seed his mother-never know'd nothin' that she'd got a little baby.'

66

'And she's dead!" cried St. Giles.

You didn't

"And, this I will say," answered Blast, "comfortably buried. She was a good soul-too good for this world. know St. Giles, did you?" said Blast with a laugh.

66

Why do you ask?" replied the trembling transport. "Because if you did, you must see the likeness.

Come here,

Jingo," and Blast laid one hand upon the urchin's head, and with the other pointed out his many traits of resemblance. "There's the same eye for a fogle-the same nose- -the same everything. And oh, isn't he fond o' ponies, neither! just like his poor dear brother as is far away in Botany Bay. Don't you see that he's the very spit on him?" cried Blast.

"I can't say how should I know ?" answered St. Giles, about to hurry off; and then he felt a strange interest in the victim, and paused and asked-" Who takes care of him, now his mother's gone?"

"He hasn't a friend in the world but me," said Blast.

"God help him!" thought St. Giles.

And I though you'd never think it"-continued Blast," I love the little varmint, jist as much as if I was his own father."

A FEW WORDS CONNECTED WITH OPTIMISM.

THE other day we lit upon a passage in Hegel's Encyclopædia,* so admirably fitted to prevent all misunderstanding in the subject of optimism, so clear, and at the same time so concise, that we resolved to extract and translate it. Here it is:

"Discontented striving vanishes, when we acknowledge that the final purpose of the world is just as much fulfilled, as it is perpetually fulfilling itself. This is, in general, the position of the man, while youth thinks that the world consists of the bad only, and that something totally different must be made out of it. Religious consciousness on the other hand, considers the world as governed by a Divine Providence, and therefore as answering to that, which should be. However, this concord between the 'is' and the should be' is not a stiff, processless concord; for the good, the final purpose of the world is only, while it perpetually produces, and indeed the difference between the spiritual and natural world consists in this, that while the latter only constantly returns back upon itself, in the former there is certainly-a progress." Part 1. s. 234.

* A work so called, because it contains a system for arranging the whole sphere of science, and not to be mistaken for an "Encyclopædia" in the ordinary sense of the word.