Mr. Gradgrind was troubled and asked how?

"Sir," was the reply; " yor son will tell yo
how. Ask him. I mak no charges: I leave
none ahint me: not a single word. I ha' seen
an spok'n wi' yor son, one night. I ask no
more o' yo than that, yo clear me—an I
trust to yo to do't."

The bearers being now ready to carry him
away, and the surgeon being anxious for his
removal, those who had torches or lanterns,
prepared to go in front of the litter. Before
it was raised, and while they were arranging
how to go, he said to Rachael, looking upward
at the star:

' Often as I coom to myseln, and found it
shinin on me down there in my trouble, I
thowt it were the star as guided to Our
Saviour's home. I awmust think it be the
very star!"

They lifted him up, and he was overjoyed
to find that they were about to take him in
the direction whither the star seemed to him
to lead.

"Rachael, beloved lass! Don't let go my
hand. We may walk toogether t' night, my
dear!"

"I will hold thy hand, and keep beside
thee, Stephen, all the way."

"Bless thee! Will soombody be pleased
to coover my face!"

They carried him very gently along the
fields, and down the lanes, and over the wide
landscape; Rachael always holding the hand in
hers. Very few whispers broke the mournful
silence. It was soon a funeral procession.
The star had shown him where to find the
God of the poor; and through humility, and
sorrow, and forgiveness, he had gone to his
Redeemer's rest.

IMITATION.

WE copy each other more than most of us
are aware; and what is further significant, a
very large portion of all that we do is simply
copying. A very few thinkers can cut out
work for a large body of doers; an original
artist with pen or pencil can supply wherewithal
to many an engraver, draughtsman,
and printer who is to follow him; the
designer of a new pattern can set hundreds
of copyists to work, who realise his idea upon
metal or cloth; the patentee of a really new
and efficient invention sets to work the
imitative brains of a small fry of inventors, who
endeavour to avail themselves of some of the
advantages of the great invention by a
colourable modification of some of the details.

If any one would really know what an
imitative race we are, let him watch the
course of the ordinary mechanical employments,
and trace the action of the imitative
principle. Mr. Babbage places this matter
before us in a curious and instructive light,
showing how largely the dexterous fingers of
man are employed in producing fac-similes.

Fac-simile by printing. Here the cunning
workman copies from hollow lines in one
class of productions, and from raised lines
in another. A laborious artist will spend
a year or two in cutting lines upon a sheet of
copper; or he employs a still harder
metal—steel, to permit the taking of a greater
number of impressions; or a humbler
artist punches dots and lines in the surface
of a pewter or zinc plate for the music-
publisher; or the surface of a copper cylinder
is cut into an ornamental device suitable for the
pattern of a muslin dress; or a cylinder is cut
with a device for embossing leather or cloth; or
a perforated plate may so admit the action
of chemical liquids as to produce the
pattern of a bandanna handkerchief. In all
these cases the real work done is a copy,
an imitation, a fac-simile, from sunken
lines; and how it is with raised lines, every
one knows. The types for common printing
are raised lines or surfaces: the
stereotype plates obtained from such types,
are copies, intended themselves to produce
copies; the wood-engraving; the blocks used by
paper-stainers; the blocks which impart pattern
to oil-cloth and painted table-covers; the blocks
employed in the better kind of calico-printing
all belong to a system of raised lines for
printing , or the production of copies.
When we copy a letter by any one of the
numerous copying machines, or print from
a lithographic stone or a zincographic plate,
or steal a printed page by the anastatic
process, or copy shells and leaves by the
nature-printing process, or transfer a pattern
to blue earthenware from thin printed paper
—what do we, in effect, but print or copy
from chemical lines?

Fac-simile by casting. A truly wide world
of imitation. We make a mould in sand
by means of a hand-made model; we pour
molten iron into the mould, and we obtain
a cannon, a cylinder, a pipe, a fender, a
flat-iron, a stove-grate, a girder, a railing, a
scraper, all copies. We use steel instead
of iron, and obtain an infinity of polished
castings. We employ a mixed metal of copper
witli tin or with zinc, and we produce brass
candlesticks and chandeliers, brass ornaments,
brass guns, bronze statues, and bells—copies
also. We call to our aid the softer metal,
and summon into existence armies of useful
articles in tin, lead, pewter, Britannia metal,
and the like. We use a cold solution instead
of a hot molten mass—cold plaster of Paris
instead of hot metal, and obtain by
casting, plaster statues, and thousands of
copied beauties from the works of the greatest
geniuses. We pour melted wax into moulds,
and produce those superb copies of humanity
which adorn the windows of the perruquier's
shops; we pour melted stearine into moulds,
and there come forth excellent candles; we
pour liquid clay into moulds, and our Copelands
and Mintons show us their delicate
Parian statuettes and translucent
table-porcelain.