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The eyes of evil angels, looking from the invisible world, have seen many sights of agony in this dark earth, but never did their gaze rest on a sight more terrible than this.

That wretched girl was a thing of sale, on whose swollen lips any ruffian might press his kiss-these criminals, all, had shared her loathsome love—and yet she was a SISTER, and yet the man with the bowed head and writhing bosom was her BROTHER!

And then delirious with brandy and opium, she told in her mad way, the story of her life, looking all the while into Larry's face, but unconscious that he was her brother. "Larry, why did you stay so long?" she placed her hands upon his brow but did not know him: "Mother was dead and buried; winter came on; I was poor and had no friends. One cold night I sat in my desolate home, drawing the ragged cloak yet closer to my bosom. He appeared-yes he offered me wealth, a home if I would wed him. I was so poor, so cold, so miserable, I could not refuse. In that wretched room, we were married! Married! Larry why did you stay so long?"

A dark thought poisoned the rude brother's heart. She had fled from the generous husband; she had sold herself to shame. And then placing her hands upon his brow,-looking at him without seeming to know him--she went on :

"And

"I was married," she said with an accent of despair, that quivered through her brother's heart like a bolt of ice. not married. He had a wife living. He robbed me of all that makes a woman holy, though she is clad in rags. He thrust me forth into the streets, and-" she paused. Burst into wild laughter, as the light of the candle met her leaden gaze. And then went on—“I starved on for three days, in the streets without a home. Sunday came; I was very hungry, very cold, indeed I did not know what I was doing for I wandered into a large church crowded with people. Some knelt before an altar tasting bread and wine. One man handed the cup from lip to lip. It was my husband. I, you see I was mad Larry--I started forward, called him by name, clutched him by the arm. I only remember that the communion cup fell from his hand, and that I was dragged out by violent arms, and shut up in a dark place where I remained.-Larry, why did you stay so long?" She was dying. Her soul was departing from that body of disease and pollution to a better no! no! Not to a better world or a better form, for there are Reverend men who assure us, that this soul, now departing from the body, which had been polluted by a holy Elder, who lifted the communion cup on Sabbath day, was now going forth to, eternal darkness. Yes, after the black night of this world, she was going to the blacker night of we dare not write the word. We are but human; we cannot say it.

Yet it was a sad thing to witness, the going forth of that young soul! Perchance-pious people who serve the devil six days in the week, and give the seventh to your God, do not read this sentence for it is blasphemous-perchance, the same JESUS, who looked from his cross, where he was stretched in bitter agony, and smiled upon the Magdalene, who wept in silence, at its foot, now gazed from Heaven and gently whispered to the passing soul," Alice, come up higher!"

And the rude brother who gazed upon her now; was there not a horrible intensity in his agony?

He had seen men wear away by starvation, he had been in a solitary boat on the ocean, when a living man was slaughtered day by day, to feed his brothers' hunger, he had seen death in the ghastliest shape it ever takes, by fever, steel, or poison, but this last hour of a wrecked and polluted girl, was more terrible

than all.

"Alice!" he shouted in her freezing ear "I must know this husband's name. If there's a God, I will know it. Tell it to me now-with your last breath, or if you die with that secret untold, I swear, to rend it from your heart. Alice! Alice! your husband's name!"

The lamp gave one faint flutter and went out.

By its last gleam, the brother beheld those flashing eyes shine with one solitary glance of consciousness. At last she knew him!

All was dark now; the hands which he grasped grew suddenly cold; he placed his ear to her lips, to ascertain whether the last breath had borne her spirit home, and that breath fanned his cheek, uttering in one gasp, a fatal name:

Then she was dead.

The name of her "HUSBAND❞—she gasped it as she died. The darkness came in mercy, and rested like a pall upon her dead face, and so she slept at last, this Sister of that vast Sisterhood, to whom your civilization offers virtue and starvation with one hand; and with the other, bestows bread purchased with the leagues of pollution, a life of shame and a grave in Potter's field.

Editor's Department.

THOMAS CARLYLE.

When DR. JOHNSON was first told that BOSWELL intended to write a life of him, the irascible Ursa Major stormily threatened to prevent the posthumous calamity by taking his. We can readily conceive that CARLYLE might entertain a similar, though less vehement wrath toward any enterprising critical individual, who should endeavor to gauge him and report his general mental and moral capacities. Far, therefore, be such an attempt from us. We may, nevertheless, in calling the attention of our readers to the portrait that adorns and honors our present number, venture to say how he appears to us across the broad Atlantic, especially in view of the little probability existing that what is said will ever meet his eye. As to the portrait, we say every thing, when we say that it is satisfactory, that it must be so to the intensest admirer of the original. It is the face of a man who could conceive Sartor Resartus and write the Hero Worship. Calm, serene and profound as the slumbering ocean, it is perhaps as capable of stormy agitation. Gentle in expression as the countenance of a child, it has yet the square form and strong lines that denote energy and iron firmness. It has the compressed mouth that gives such peculiar strength to the countenance of WASHINGTON, without the same depth of unsmiling calmness that makes us hold back in awe of him. It rather looks as though waiting to relax its folds into a smile of genial sympathy, or the broadest and most cordial burst of Caledonian mirthfulness. The deep and thoughtful eye is not without a laughing twinkle in the corner of it. It is indeed a face full of the most genuine pathos, combined with the truest humor, a combination found only in great spirits, and with which his books abound. It is withal a right Scotch face, that would stamp its wearer as a native of the "land o'cakes" without the evidence of his broad north-country dialect. We have never seen any other representation of it than this, yet it seems familiar and true.

Mostly, when we first see the portraiture of a man whom we have not known except by his writings, it is with a feeling of surprise or disappointment. It seems strange, sometimes mean and unworthy, at all events with no correspondence to our ideal. Here the case is different, at least with us. It looks as the face of THOMAS CARLYLE ought to look.

Probably, some of our readers may not sympathize with us in the profound admiration for this author which the foregoing remarks sufficiently indicate, and to which we willingly plead guilty. There is certainly a wide difference of opinion among his readers as to his powers and merits. This fact is significant in itself. That a man's writings shall make parties in the community, and have their qualities widely and vehemently discussed, indicates with certainty that there is something in them. They are neither mere droning stupidities, nor yet mere frothy verbiage. These things, under a merciful Providence, soon find deserved oblivion, and afflict the sight of men but for a short season. Each goes to its place speedily, and is followed by the sighs of none, except the astonished author, who, alone of men, cannot understand why it should be so. But when a book, or series of books, at once arrests general attention, and becomes in all quarters a topic of conversation, discussion and even violent disputation, it is for no other reason than because there is really stuff in it. The very peculiarity of CARLYLE's style would undoubtedly attract notice, but any notoriety arising from that cause would be most ephemeral. It is peculiar enough, but we are of those who consider that a man's style is like his face, the best that the fates have given him and entirely his own. We therefore never quarrel with a man's style, provided it is his own and not borrowed or stolen. If it is the best, most direct and earnest expression of his thought of which he is capable, it will be the one he can best use. Nay, more : it is the only one which, as an honest and true man, he has a right to employ. That CARLYLE's is his readiest and genuine expression there can be no doubt. The very intense life of his sentences will prove this. The man who can read them, and feel their vitality passing into his own soul and brain, and then pronounce their style an affectation, must himself have been so long accustomed to false pretences as to have lost the faculty of recognizing the true. this peculiarity involves no sacrifice of strength or beauty. The English language has never been moulded into more glowing eloquence or more exquisitely tender pathos, than in some of his pages. His works are no less characterized by force of thought, than by strength of expression. Novel and startling thoughts, ideas that reach far into immensity, glimpses of most profound philosophy are put forward with a directness and vehemence that almost startle the reader from his seat. Many a time has

But

the perusal made us start from our easy indolence of posture, and close the book, until we could welcome and scan the gigantic proportions of the stranger, who would incontinently lead us out into whole new fields of thought and speculation. We are not done with these books, when we come to the last page. They have entered into our mental being and have become part of us. We should say they are "eminently suggestive,"-so thought-awakening are they,—had not the same thing been said lately of every body else that can scribble. They are not books to be read after the wine on a summer afternoon, nor with head thrown back, and slippered feet on the evening hearth. The reader must stand up face to face with the author's spirit and listen entranced, as did the wedding-guest to COLERIDGE'S Ancient Marinere; and like him, he will come from the interview a wiser, though not like him a sadder man. This arises in part from the suddenness with which great thoughts are made to flash upon him, unexpected and apparently out of place, until the whole scope of the work is comprehended. Some magnificent deduction falls upon us like an avalanche, yet when we look back we can see where thought by thought and fact by fact are piled as silently as the snow-flakes on the mountain; and we wonder that we did not see it coming. Still, the style is what no rhetorical formulist and builder of empty word-heaps by the square and plummet, would admit as a legitimate specimen of the narrative or the didactic. His narrations appear fragmentary, disjointed, sometimes inverted. The French Revolution is a series of brilliant and glowing paintings,―a picture gallery of the great events of a most confused and chaotic time, of which no authentic connected narrative can well be given. His more speculative writings partake of the same character. There is no logic-chopping, no syllogising according to rule. He is no Attorney, engaged in special pleading before the bar, and as little is he a Judge, charging his jury with a nice balancing of his stock of facts, and precedents and decisions. He is rather a poet, giving way to the burning thought that presses for utterance, in words melodious if not measured, just as it stands in his own mind, and then leaving it. Sometimes he is oracular. He speaks from the tripod. He utters his Delphic saying, and then closes his lips in silence. Let him that is wise understand it. The seed is sown and will doubtless somewhere fall on good ground. The supernal influences that watch and cherish whatever is true, will care for it that it one day springs up to bear its hundred-fold. One of the points in which we think it will be admitted that CARLYLE especially excels, is the delineation of individual charHere also the same peculiarity of style is manifest. His pictures are never Daguerreotypes,-dull gray insipidities, that need to be stared at from this side or the other with shaded

acter.

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