as quietly and coolly as a company of mechanicians would take out the machinery of a steam boat and substitute a new engine in place of the old one. But Europeans are not up to this kind of work. The majority of them had no hand in adjusting the mechanism of their governments in the first instance, and being themselves unable to start a screw here, and loosen a spring there, they are gradually prone to smash the machine at once to pieces when they undertake to re-model it. From the quiet mode in which the Chartists commenced their operations, it seemed originally as if better things might have been expected from them, but the accounts brought by the Liverpool of the scenes of violence and incendiarism recently exhibited at Birmingham, with the preposterous proposal upon the part of the Chartists for a Grand Holiday, would prove them to be about as rascally and absurd a set of would-be-political tinkers as ever any country was afflicted with. Their great numbers as a party, indeed, give something of the dignity of terror to their proceedings; but it is this feature only which prevent them from being most ludicrously contemptible. Think only of a set of men undertaking one of the gravest and most elevated offices that a body of social beings can assume-the construction of a political fabric which shall supersede all others with their countrymen :-think of them passing months and even years in sage debate and solemn council:-think of them slowly and gradually maturing their operations, until the civilized world are anxiously watching for their first development in action, expecting when their numbers shall have reached a certain limit that they will assume a position which will at once enable them to hold the balance of power between the great political parties of their country!—and then only view this grand association of Hampdens, and Sidneys, and Solons, and Lycurguses, turning out in a body to break the windows and plunder the shopmen of a manufacturing town! And

next capping these feats of school-boy malice and petit-larceny prowess, by the genuine school-boy proposition for “a grand holiday throughout the month of August!!!”

α

Verily, John Bull, you have a good many and eccentric members among your queer family, but we dreamed not that you bred up such a set of absurd and mischievous mountebanks. Had you but whipped them well, John, and sent them to bed without their tea occasionally, these overgrown children would never have brought shame and sorrow upon your old age.

The disreputable conduct of these rash and silly people will in England have no slight effect in bringing into contempt the noble cause which they have so presumptuously espoused. We 66 say presumptuously," for they seem in the main to be wholly ignorant of the true means of ad

vancing that cause. We confess, however, that for our own part we view their infatuated conduct with full as much of sorrow as anger.

THE UTILITARIAN.

BY JOHN NEAL.

WE were walking together in a broad, unfrequented street of Philadelphia. All at once we heard a strange uproar a great way off, growing louder and louder every moment; and before we could imagine the cause, a boy at the head of the street cried out, "Here they come! here they come !" The people rushed out of their houses, another and another took up the cry, and it flew by us like the signal of a telegraph. And then all was still as death, frightfully still, and the next moment a pair of large, powerful horses came plunging round the corner at full speed, with the fragments of a carriage rattling and ringing after them.

"The child! the child! oh, my God, the poor child!" shrieked a woman at a window near me; and on looking that way, I saw a child in the street, holding out its arms to a female who was flying toward it, her eyes dilated with horror, her garments flying loose, and her cry such as I had never heard issue from mortal lips.

I sprang forward to save the child-the little creature was right in the way of the horsesand I should have succeeded, but for a strong hand that arrested me and pulled me back by main force, at the very instant the carriage bounded by in a whirlwind of dust, overthrowing mother and child in its career.

"The woman! the woman!" shrieked the

people far and wide; “save her, save her!"

At this new cry, the man who had held me back with the hand of a giant, flung away from my grasp, and, pursuing the furious animals round the next corner, where they had been partially stopped by a waggon loaded with flour, and stood leaping and plunging in their harness, and trying to disengage themselves from what I now perceived to be a human being, a female who had been caught by her clothes in the whirling mass-leaped upon them with the activity and strength of one who might grapple with Centaurs in such a cause; and, before I could get near enough to help him, plucked one of the hot and furious animals to the earth, first upon his knees, and then over upon his side, in such a manner as to deprive the other of all power. The next moment I was at his side, leaving the poor child I had snatched up to be taken care of by a stranger, and lifting the mother of the child from the midst of danger so appalling, that, but for the example set me by my companion, I never should have had the courage to interfere even to save what now appeared to be one of the loveliest women I had ever seen. The multitude were aghast

with fear; but as for the extraordinary man who had thrown himself head foremost upon what was regarded by everybody there, as no better than certain death, he got up after I had liberated the woman, brushed off the dust from his clothes, and would have walked away, as if nothing had happened, I do believe, had I not begged him to go with me where we might see after the child, and examine its hurts; for the horses appeared to me to touch the body with their hoofs, and I was quite sure that a wheel struck it as it bounded by, the fire flashing from the rocky pavement with every blow.

The child was very much hurt, and the mother delirious, though in every other respect unharmed. A wheel had passed over the little creature's body in such a way as to leave me no hope of its recovery, though I instantly bled it myself, and determined to watch by it to the last; and the mother had escaped as by a miracle, with but two or three slight lacerations, though it appeared upon fuller inquiry, that she had run directly before the horses with a view to turn them aside, there being no other hope, and that she had been caught by the projecting shaft and lifted along at the risk, every moment, as she clung by the bridle, of being trampled to death. But she escaped and recovered; and the poor child, who was just beginning to speak plain, was now the sole object of solicitude with

me.

"Chamber, George muss die, George want to die," said the poor little patient thing, after it had lain above twenty-four hours without speaking above its breath, and almost without moving.

The nurse, who sat near him, burst into tears; and I, even I, though accustomed to every shape of trial and horror, was obliged to go to the window. Her name was Chambers, and the child had been to her, from the day of its birth even to that day, as her own child.

"Chamber, George muss dit up," said the dear little creature again, as the hour drew nigh which I had felt my duty to prepare the mother for. 66 George muss die, George want to die."

For the first time, I saw a tear in the eye of that imperturbable stranger who had saved the mother's life. He turned away from the bed with a shiver, and, going to the door, spoke to the nurse in a tone of considerable emotion, bidding her make ready for the worst, though to be sure he had still some hope.

A word now of the character and behaviour of this man, before I proceed further with my little story. I had met him about a month before in a dissecting room, where, in the absence of the lecturer, a question arose about the structure and purpose of a part of the eye. The class were all talking together; and for

myself, though I paid great attention to the subject, I confess that I was never so bewildered in my life. In the midst of the uproar, a tall, bony, hard visaged man, with a stoop in the shoulders, and the largest hand I ever saw, whipped out a small penknife, and, taking up the eye of a fish that lay near, proceeded to demonstrate with astonishing clearness and beauty of language. While he was occupied in this way, with our whole class gathered round him, and listening to him open-mouthed, the professor entered without being observed, and, coming softly before the new lecturer, stood there, with a look of growing delight and amazement spreading itself over his features and agitating his whole body, as the awkward being before us proceeded with what was indeed a demonstration.

After he had got through, and I need not stop here to describe the scene that followed, the explanation, or the issue, we were all inquiring of each other who he was, and where he had come from. But all we could hear amounted to nothing. He had been at Philadelphia about six months. He had travelled much, read much, and thought more; he was learned in a way peculiarly his own; he was indefatigable, he had given his body by will to be dissected after death, and he was a Utilitarian. But what a Utilitarian was, nobody knew. Some believed it to be

a new religious faith, whose followers bore that name; others that it meant either a sort of free-masonry or infidelity. But he, when he was asked, told them it was nothing but Jeremy Benthamism. But who was Jeremy Bentham? Nobody knew, at least nobody knew with any degree of certainty.

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Why did you stop me," said I to him, as we sat together by an open window, looking out upon the sky and water of the Jersey shore, the green trees, and the far hills, and wondering about the cause of that peculiarity in the atmosphere which attends our Indian summer; the little boy on a bed near us, breathing, though awake, as children breathe when they are asleep, and the mother-it made me a better man to look at this woman, so meek, so fair, with such a calm, beautiful propriety in whatever she did; so sincere withal, and so affectionate to her boy. "Why did you stop me," said I, looking at her as she sat afar off, with her large hazel eyes fixed on the little sufferer, and a drop of unquenchable brightness gathering in each," Why did you stop me, I say?" addressing myself to Abijah Ware.

Well, then, but for you, I might have rescued the child."

"Perhaps and you might have thrown away another life to no purpose."

"Well, and so might you, when you risked yours."

from the pillow where the mother lay with her head resting by that of her child, and her mouth pressed to his cheek.

But my imperturbable companion proceeded. "The truth is, my dear Sir, that you were never made for a hero; you are not strong enough, nor, I might say," leaning forward to peep either into the widow's eyes, or into a dressing glass, that stood near, I don't know which, "nor ugly enough. Had you not kept me employed in holding you, I might have saved the child-poor boy, and I should."

"But your life is far more valuable than mine," said I, with a flourish of my right hand, expecting of course to be contradicted.

"True. But I am unfashionably put together, I am older than you, and my name is Abijah."

old are you?"

"How old am I!"

"Yes-out with it."

I made no reply.

"About five and twenty, I suppose, are

you?"

"Well, what if I am?

What has that to

You

do with my saving or not saving the child?" "Much. I am a Utilitarian, I say. are grown up; your life is worth more to society than-much more, I say—”

The mother stooped to kiss the forehead of her little one.

"More than forty such lives." "How so?"

"How so! It has cost some thousands to raise you."

I looked up. The man was perfectly serious. He had a pencil in his hand, a bit of paper on the table, and was ciphering away at full speed.

"Yes, Sir," continued he. "The risk was out of all proportion to the probable advantage or profit; and therefore I stopped you.'

God forgive Utilitarians, thought I, if they are capable of such things before they put forth a hand to save a fellow creature-a babe in the path of a wild horse. For my own part, I should as soon think of stopping to do the case in double fellowship, as to calculate the proportion of the risk to the hope of profit here.

He understood me, I dare say; for he shifted his endless legs one over the other, drew a long breath, and quietly laughed in my face.

"You acted like a boy," said he. "The chance I know how to calculate such chances to a single hair-was fifty to one against your saving the child.'

"Well, Sir-”

"And fifty to one, perhaps more, against your saving yourself; and so I concluded to save you, in spite of your teeth."

Here a low, hysterical sobbing was heard

widow.

"And what is more, the risk would have been little or nothing for me; to you it would have been a matter of life and death. I am what may be called a strong man."

"A hero, therefore," said I, referring to his remark of a moment before.

"I might have been a hero, perhaps, for my brother Ezra and I, we are twins, and he is decidedly a hero."

I could not help saying, "Do you resemble each other?"

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"Very much, though Ezra is the handsomer of the two. By the by, I must give you a little anecdote of brother Ezra. One day, as he turned a corner in Baltimore, I think it was, a man met him, who made a full stop in the highway, threw up his hands with affected amazement at the ungainly creature before him-brother Ezra, by the by, is not the handsomest man that ever was—and cried out, 'Well, by George! if you ar'nt the ugliest feller ever I clapped eyes on!' At which our Ezra, instead of knocking him head over heels, as anybody but a hero, with such strength, would have done, merely said to him, 'I guess you never saw brother 'Bijah.'”

I laughed heartily at the story; and yet more heartily at the look of brother 'Bijah as he told it. And as for the widow, she appeared for a single moment to forget her boy, her poor and helpless boy, in her anxiety to avoid laughing with me.

"But you risked your life, Sir," said I, "in a case ten thousand times more dangerous, the very next moment after you had interfered to stop me." "True.

But it was to save the life of a

"Well, but why a woman, if you would not suffer me to save a child?"

"Because I am a Utilitarian." "Well, what does that prove?"

"You shall see. Suppose the perfection of the species to depend upon a certain union

X

of physical and intellectual properties, which may be represented by "Nonsense; what have we to do with algebra here?"

66

By x, I say, or if you please, if you prefer arithmetic, by the number 100. Now youth may go for so much," making a mark on the paper before him; "health for so much," making another; "beauty for-let me see, widow, I begin to have some hope of your child."

The woman started upon her feet, and stood with her eyes lighted up, her cheek flushed, hands locked and lifted, waiting for him to finish; but he only looked at her and proceeded with the calculation.

"Beauty for so much, maturity for so much; and valour, wisdom, courage, virtue-widow you may sit down-for all the rest say 85. Now when I see such a being, whether male or female, though sex may be put down for something here, about to lose herself or himself, about to throw herself or himself away, I instantly subtract the sum at which I have estimated myself, that is, between sixty-three and sixty-four, as you may see by this paper," handing me his pocket-book, where the calculation stood on the first page, "from the sum of one hundred, or less, according to the value of the object, and if I am satisfied that the risk is a fair one, the probabilities not more than enough to outweigh the certain profit of saving a life so much more valuable than my own, I save it."

"I understand nothing of your theory," said I, "and as little of your calculation. But this I do understand, this I know, that you have encountered a risk for the safety of that woman there, which I never saw, never hope to see, voluntarily encountered by any human being for the safety of another."

"That will depend upon the progress of our faith. If Utilitarians multiply, such things will be common."

I was just going to cry, Pho! but I forbore, and at the cost of a sore lip for a week.

"And now," said he, getting up and going to the child, which had just waked from a sweet sleep, and feeling its pulse, " I think I may say to you now, widow Roberts-I think,

I

say, but I would not have you too sure-I think your child is safe."

up

The woman caught his huge hand to her mouth before he could prevent it, and fell upon her knees, and wept and sobbed as if her heart would break; and the child, putting out both its little fat hands, kept patting her on the head, and saying, "Poor mutter ky; George moss well now, tonny ky, mutter."

My hero withdrew his hand, I thought with considerable emotion, kissed the child, made a sweep at me in the form of a bow, and walked straightway out of the room without opening his mouth.

He was no sooner off than the nurse entered,

and we examined the child. There was, to be sure, a surprising alteration for the better. He breathed freely, the stupor had passed off, and his eyes were clear as crystal. But then -who should say ?-death might be at work in them nevertheless.

Let me pass over the following four weeks, at the end of which period I thought proper to hold counsel with my friend the Utilitarian, about the safety and propriety of marrying a widow.

"You merely suppose the case for argument sake?" said he.

"To me !"

"Yes, to you, if you marry the widow. What are you rubbing your hands for?"

"Marry the widow! What on earth do you mean?" cried I, with a flutter of joy, and a thrill at the very idea, which I cannot stop to describe.

"Hear me through, Joseph. You have come to ask me what I would do in your case?"

"You are right, I have."
"Well, were I you I would

marry her." "But why don't you marry her yourself." "I! For three reasons. "What are they?"

"In the first place, I am not you." "Good-the next?"

"In the next place, she would not have me."

"Pho!" said I; though to tell you the truth, reader, I thought as he did, notwithstanding the beautiful widow was for ever sounding his praises to me, whenever we were alone together. But I could always see a good way into a millstone; and whether she romped with her boy

before me, half smothering him with kisses, or talked of her preserver, that heroic manthat heroic Abijah, I longed to say, but I was afraid, there was no laughing at such a man before such a woman-I could see through the whole.

"But in the third place?" continued I. "Well, in the third place, I am not worthy of her."

"How so?"

"But you are, my friend"-his rich, bold voice quavered here, and I began to feel rather dismal "you are; and my advice to you is -but stop. Are you not already married?" I laughed and shook my head.

66

Very well. Then I advise you to lose no time in securing that woman. You deserve her; you are young and handsome, healthy and rich. Take her and save her." "Save her! what do you mean ? "Save her from growing old, where it is not safe—I speak freely to you for any such woman to live. She is poor, she is proud, she is far away from all that know her."

"Why! you appear to be acquainted with her history."

"No, am ignorant of her history; I know nothing of her beyond what you and I have gathered from our five or six weeks' acquaintance with her at the bedside of her boy."

"But you know my family; and that, as a prudent man, it will be my duty to inquire into her history; that is-you understand me -provided such a thing should ever enter my head as to-"

"Fiddle de dee ! Go to her and ask her what she is good for, and whether she is any better than she should be."

I

"I would have you behave like a man. would have you go to the beautiful widow, and offer yourself to her; and if she is the woman I take her to be, that will be enough to bring out as much of her history and character as you will have any desire to know. There, there-go, and Heaven speed you."

I went. I offered myself to the widow, and was flatly, though kindly, refused. That was about as much as I could well stomach, and I do not know that I should ever have got over it, but for a little gratuitous intelligence

Did you offer yourself to her after she told you this?" Why do you ask?”

"I ask it for your sake; for yours, my dear friend. I long to have you one of us; but I fear you want the courage. It requires prodigious manhood to be a Utilitarian." "Well be it so, I did not offer myself after this; but I did before."

"I pity you. How you have rewarded her candour, how gloriously you have repaid her truth! She might have deceived you, but she forbore; she told you the truth, and you forsook her. She proved herself worthy of you, and you abandoned her accordingly."

His emotion surprised me. He got up,

and walked the floor with a tread that shook the whole house.

I.

"You do not understand the matter," said "She refused me before I knew this, and told me her story afterwards, not so much as a reason for it, I do believe, as to convince me of what she called her good faith, respect, and gratitude."

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Young man," said Abijah Ware, "you are throwing away that which would be of