inflict. The unhappy creature had been
beaten with rods (willow canes split each
into three), and in the frenzy of her agony
and shame had immediately after her liberation
from the police-den of torture, rushed
to the river with the intention of committing
suicide.

The hair-dresser, than whom a kinder-
hearted seizer of ringlets never existed, would
not allow this poor waif and stray to depart
out of his house. Learning by degrees her
unhappy story, he offered her an asylum, and
treated her as one of his own children. She
went on improving for a time; but, by degrees
she fell into a sable melancholy. When I
saw her, she had been mad for eighteen
months.

I have done, now, for very sickness, with
the judicial police. I have heard some curious
tales, in my time, about the Austrian police,
and about the Neapolitan police, which all
plain men know to be intolerably abominable.
The employés of the Rue de Jerusalem are
not wholly immaculate, I believe; nay, under
our honest, hard-working, plain-sailing
Scotland Yard régime, we have had policemen who
have stolen geese, and others who have broken
into houses. But, as grand masters of the art
and mystery of villany; as proficients in
lying, stealing, cruelty, rapacity, and
impudence; I will back the Russian police against
the whole world of knavery.

WINTER

"A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament."

THE heath was brown upon a thousand hills,
The rank weeds rotted in the slender brooks;
The plumy fern had wither'd to the root,
And o'er-ripe hazels slipp'd their shrivell'd husks.
The solemn woods -- the deep and secret woods—
Their closest thickets open to the sky,
Now sway'd their lean, lank branches drearily,
And sang wild dirges for their summer prime.
Then rose, with sough and swell, the sighing wind,
And sweeping through the hollow forest glades,
Snatch'd from the trembling boughs their few last
leaves,

And, building funeral-piles round root and log,
Far in the distance died with hollow moan.
There grew upon the air a doleful voice;
A mournful wail, a melancholy cry;
As from some potent spirit sorely wrung
By loth submission to unkindly fate:
A mournful cry, which every hill and vale
Re-echo'd drearily with added grief.
Then floated through the sky a noble form,
Yet somewhat wan and pale. A radiant form,
Though half his rays were veil'd in clinging
mist;

His eyes were hidden by his trembling hands,
And his fair head droop'd on his mighty breast,
While from his lips there came the same sad cry,
Tremulous, wild, uncertain, full of woe.

"O I am failing, failing day by day:
My strength wanes fast, and all my cherish'd beams
Have faded to a wan and feeble gleam.
Where is my russet mantle tipp'd with gold,
The robe I wore upon the morning hills?
Fallen from my shoulders! For the subtle mist,
The vapour chill, the yellow glaring fog,
Now wreathe around me, and I seem to men
An angry, boding meteor, red as blood.

"Where is the splendour of my noonday prime,
That bathed the silent hills and dreamy woods
In welling waves of clear and golden light?
Where is the kingly garb I wore at eve,
Deep-dyed with purple and a crimson hue,
The flush of pride at my own loveliness?
Gone! gone! And, in their stead, the insolent
clouds—

Who some few courses since did quake and flee,
Lest haply they should feel my meanest ray—
Now stain my beauty with their jealous breath,
And shoot such shafts of rain before my face
That I grow blind, and grope amid the heavens,
And journey on in gloom, and doubt, and fear.
I feel the coming of mine ancient foe:
He whom in early spring my golden darts
Smit to the death, and drove, all weak and faint,
To seek the covert of his desert caves.
But these, his ministers— the mist, the fog,
The blinding clouds, the rain, the hail, the snow,
The nor'-wind shrieking from the far-off hills,
Wet with the breath of lonely waterfalls—
Are sent to chase me from my rightful throne,
And o'er my kingdom throw a funeral-pall!
Now must I seek me out some other clime,
Where Winter never comes with chilly breath,
And leave this pleasant land I love so well
A prey to bitter frost and long keen nights!"

He pass'd away. Then, for a little space,
Was silence, and I listen'd hush'd in awe,
Till from fair Nature's deepest shrine there came
Sweet voices, very sad and sorrowful,
That cried, " Our joy is fled!" Atween the trees,
And all across the plains they wailed low.
Through the dim mountain-clefts, around the crags,
Drear moanings went, that swoon'd adown the
vales;

And the sheer cataract, leaping lost in spray,
Gave answer mournfully, "Our joy is fled!"
Shrill blew the wind, and smote the haggard woods
Till every naked bough rock'd to and fro,
And rattled serely, as the bones of one
Long wasted by disease who nears his death.
A gloomy shadow fell; the air grew dense;
The distant hills loom'd high and strangely near;
Then, from the north, vast shapes of boiling mist
Came surging o'er the sky; and straight the scene
Lost in a moment all familiar look.
Now high, now low, the eddying masses roll'd,
Pile heap'd on pile in wild confusion blent,
Filling with dim dismay the vault of Heaven.
Down whirl'd with giddy round the flakes of
snow;

Then sounded loud and shrill the sleety wind;
For they were herald ministers of him
Before whose coming fled that glorious form.
And now he came—the dreaded one—all hoar,
In mantle, black with thunder-clouds, array'd;
A thousand storms deep-scarr'd upon his brow;
His frozen locks fierce shaking through the air,
And in his eyes the gleam of frost-night stars,
That wheresoe'er it fell brought deadly chill.
The swiftest fountain stood a shaft of ice;
The fleetest brook flow'd still and silently;
The earth grew rigid as a seven days' corse