'Twas a scandal and shame to the business-like street,
One terrible blot in a ledger so neat:
The shop full of hardware, but black as a hearse,
Aud the rest of the mansion a thousand times worse.

Outside, the old plaster, all spatter and stain,

Looked spotty in sunshine and streaky, in rain;
The window-sills sprouted with mildewy grass,
And the panes from being broken were known to be
       glass.

On the ricketty signboard no learning could spell
The merchant who sold, or the goods he 'd to sell;
But for house and for man a new title took growth
Like a fungus; the Dirt gave its name to them both.

Within, there were carpets and cushions of dust,
The wood was half rot, and the metal half rust,;
Old curtains—half cobwebs—hung grimly aloof;
'Twas a spiders' Elysium from cellar to roof.

There, king of the spiders, the Dirty Old Man
Lives busy and dirty us ever he can;
With dirt on his fingers and dirt on his face,
For the Dirty Old Man thinks the dirt no disgrace.

From his wig to his shoes, from his coat to his shirt
His clothes are a proverb, a marvel of dirt;
The dirt is pervading, unfading, exceeding,
Yet the Dirty Old Man has both learning and breeding.

Fine dames from their carriages, noble and fair,
Have entered his shop—less to buy than to stare;
And have afterwards said, though the dirt was so
         frightful,
The Dirty Man's manners were truly delightful.

But they pried not upstairs, through the dirt and the
         gloom,
Nor peeped at the door of the wonderful room
That gossips made much of, in accents subdued,
But whose inside no mortal might brag to have
        viewed.

That room—forty years since, folk settled
       and decked it.
The luncheon's prepared, and the guests are expected
The handsome young host he is gallant and gay,
For his love and her friends will be with him to-day.

With solid and dainty the table is drest,
The wine beams its brightest, the flowers bloom their
         best;
Yet the host need not smile, and no guests will
         appear,
For his sweetheart is dead, as he shortly shall hear.

Full forty years since, turned the key in that door.
"Tis a room deaf and dumb 'mid the city's uproar.
The guests, for whose joyance that table was spread
May now enter as ghosts, for they're every one dead

Through a chink in the shutter dim lights come
         and go,
The seats are in order, the dishes a-row;
But the luncheon was wealth to the rat and the
          mouse
Whose descendants have long left the Dirty Old
           House.

Cup and platter are masked in thick layers of dust;
The flowers fall'n to powder, the wines swath'd in
          crust;
A nosegay was laid before one special chair,
And the faded blue ribbon that bound it lies there.

The old man has played out his parts in the scene,
Wherever he now is, I hope he's more clean;
Yet give we a thought free of scoffing or ban
To that Dirty Old House and that Dirty Old Man.

TIT FOR TAT.

THE village of Nimporte, in the Département
de la Vigne, gives birth to a fine, strong,
male infant, whom it takes the trouble to
have baptized Jacques by the Curé whom,
it subsequently feeds with milk, and soup,
and bread, and salad, and wine, and meat,
all the good things of the pots à feu of
France—whom it sends to the Communale
school, to learn reading, and writing, and a
catechism which would sadly puzzle you and
me—whose bodily powers it trains by the
gymnastic exercises of the plough, the flail,
the farmyard, and the ball-room,—and whom
it supplies with tobacco, coffee, drops of eau-de-vie,
and domino money, till he attains the
age of one-and-twenty.

At the same epoch, the village of Cowthorpe,
in the Central Riding of Yorkshire,
has also a thrifty baby, which it christens
John, and rears on exactly the same principles
as Nimporte has brought up Jacques
to man's estate—with merely a few alterations
in the details—till he likewise reaches
his happy majority.

The philo-progenitive task having proceeded
thus far, and the respective fatherlands
having each nursed and trained a
strapping son—then, Nimporte and Cowthorpe
—seeing that they neither of them
have fields or vineyards wanting arms and
hands to cultivate them, nor sick and aged
people requiring relations and children to
maintain them, nor pretty girls wishing for
husbands to come and many them—then,
Nimporte and Cowthorpe, having no further
use for Jacques and John, set them face to
face on a certain patch of level ground, with
strict injunctions to knock one another on
the head; which they forthwith effectually
execute. That is war! Herr Teufelsdröckh's
appeal to the absurd in Sartor Resartus is
beautiful, even in the shape of this feeble
translation from the difficult original.

Such then is war, when analysed into its
component elements! A walk which I was
taking, not many weeks ago, suggested to my
mind the true bearings of taxation, that is, of
certain modes of taxation, which are still
maintained by zealous advocates.

Every man, I suppose, who has lived in
the world for thirty or forty years, has a
little private picture-gallery in his head, consisting
of landscapes, portraits, and perhaps a
few history pieces. He can shut his eyes,
and, with a mental catalogue in hand, can
make the whole series pass before him, in all
the vividness and variety of dioramic effect.
It is very like amusing one's self, though at
a cheaper rate, with those magnificent folios
and artistic gleanings of travel, which are