once, à la becquée,"" which, forwant of a better phrase, we translate "chicken fashion."

M. Delbruck, with commendable zeal, at once toils up the hill of Montmartre, and finds there one Madame Vandervin, who makes him witness of her mode of procedure, which was to gather the children about her lap, and feed them in turn. Duly armed with precedent, our projector descends, returns, and conquers.

It is worthy of note, that the little half-moon benches are divided by partitions into stalls. It is, no doubt, useful in securing each his due space, and avoiding cause of quarrel; but it is amusing to see the French system of order applied on so minute a scale. This system of stalles especially is found in Paris, in every place of amusement, and in every omnibus, down to the little one drawn by four goats, which runs, with juvenile passengers, up and down the Champs Elysées.

It must be borne in mind that the institution | novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper offwe have described is the model, not the actual crèche. It is, however, in its main features, founded on fact; the garden, the cage of singing-birds, the uniform of the nurses, and one or two other subordinate, although important matters, being all that distinguishes most of the institutions in operation from the standard we have presented. These could be added, with the exception, perhaps, of the garden, at inconsiderable expense.

Charles Lamb, in one of his Essays, gives a picture of the children of the poor, drawn in darker colors than it seems to us needful to use in treating the same topic here. Among the extremely destitute, however, of our large cities, the sketch may, we fear, be often realized.

6

"Poor people,' said a sensible old nurse to us once, do not bring up their children; they drag them up.' The little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in their hovel is transformed betimes into a premature reflecting person. No one has time to dandle it, no one thinks it worth while to coax it, to soothe it, to toss it up and down, to humor it. There is none to kiss away its tears. If it cries, it can only be beaten. It has been prettily said that a babe is fed with milk and praise.' But the aliment of this poor babe was thin, unnourishing-the return to its little baby tricks, and efforts to cngage attention, bitter, ceaseless objurgation. It never had a toy, or knew what a coral meant. It grew up without the lullaby of nurses; it was a stranger to the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the attractive

hand contrivance to divert the child, the prattled nonsense (best sense to it), the wise impertinences, the wholesome lies, the apt story interposed, that puts a stop to present sufferings, and awakens the passions of young wonder. It was never sung to; no one ever told to it a tale of the nursery. It was dragged up, to live or die as it happened. It had no young dreams-it broke at once into the iron realities of life. A child exists not for the very poor as any object of dalliance; it is only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little hands to be betimes inured to labor. It is the rival, till it can be the co-operator, for food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his diversion, his solace: it never makes him young again, with recalling his young times. The children of the very poor have no young times."

How happy a contrast does the crèche present to this sad, though exquisitely touched picture! There, as the statistics of these institutions prove, the child is happy and contented. It has its cheap little toys, and better amusement in play-fellows of its own age. If it cries, its wants are relieved, its troubles soothed; if it is tired, it is gently sung and swung to sleep. Its mother may come to nurse it, or if she do not, others will supply the kindly office of providing nourishment. Its chances of life are as good, the statistics show, as those of children brought up at home in affluence, and it is probably quite as happy. The parental tie is not weakened, for it is only at the hours when it can not be supplied that the crèche proffers its aid.

THE NEWCOMES.*

he was tipsy every night: that he was engaged,

MEMOIRS OF A MOST RESPECTABLE FAMILY. in his sober moments, with dice, the turf, or worse

WIT

BY W. M. THACKERAY.

CHAPTER XXI.

IS SENTIMENTAL BUT SHORT.

amusements: and that his head was so turned by living with Kew and Belsize, that the little rascal's pride and arrogance were perfectly insufferable. Ethel would indignantly deny these charges; then perhaps credit a few of them; and she looked at Clive with melancholy eyes when he came to visit his aunt; and I hope prayed that Heaven might mend his wicked ways. The truth is, the young fellow enjoyed life, as one of his age and spirit might be expected to do; but he did very little harm, and meant less; and was quite unconscious of the reputation which his kind friends were making for him.

:

There had been a long-standing promise that Clive and his father were to go to Newcome at Christmas and I dare say Ethel proposed to reform the young prodigal, if prodigal he was, for she busied herself delightedly in preparing the apartments which they were to inhabit during their stay-speculated upon it in a hundred pleasant ways, putting off her visit to this pleasant neighbor, or that pretty scene in the vicinage, until her uncle should come and they should be enabled to enjoy the excursion together. And before the arrival of her relatives, Ethel, with one of her young brothers, went to see Mrs. Mason; and introduced herself as Colonel Newcome's niece; and came back charmed with the old lady, and eager once more in defense of Clive (when that young gentleman's character happened to be called in question by her brother Barnes), for had she not seen the kindest letter, which Clive had written to old Mrs. Mason, and the beautiful drawing of his father on horseback and in regimentals, waving his sword in front of the gallant -th Bengal Cavalry, which the lad had sent down to the good old woman?-He could not be very bad, Ethel thought, who was so kind and thoughtful for the poor. His father's son could not be altogether a reprobate. When Mrs. Mason, seeing how good and beautiful Ethel was, and thinking in her heart, nothing could be too good or beautiful for Clive, nodded her kind old head at Miss Ethel, and said she should like to find a husband for her-Miss Ethel blushed, and looked handsomer than ever; and at home, when she was describing the interview, never mentioned this part of her talk with Mrs. Mason.

WITHOUT wishing to disparage the youth of other nations, I think a well-bred English lad has this advantage over them, that his bearing is commonly more modest than theirs. He does not assume the tailcoat and the manners of manhood too early: he holds his tongue, and listens to his elders: his mind blushes as well as his cheeks: he does not know how to make bows and pay compliments like the young Frenchman; nor to contradict his seniors as I am informed American striplings do. Boys who learn nothing else at our public schools, learn at least good manners, or what we consider to be such-and, with regard to the person at present under consideration, it is certain that all his acquaintances, excepting perhaps his dear cousin Barnes Newcome, agreed in considering him as a very frank, manly, modest, and agreeable young fellow. My friend Warrington found a grim pleasure in his company; and his bright face, droll humor, and kindly laughter, were always welcome in our chambers. Honest Fred Bayham was charmed to be in his society; and used pathetically to aver that he himself might have been such a youth, had he been blest with a kind father to watch, and good friends to guide, his early career. In fact, Fred was by far the most didactic of Clive's bachelor acquaintances, pursued the young man with endless advice and sermons, and held himself up as a warning to Clive, and a touching But the enfant terrible young Alfred did: anexample of the evil consequences of early idle-nouncing to all the company at dessert, that Ethel ness and dissipation. Gentlemen of much higher was in love with Clive-that Clive was coming rank in the world took a fancy to the lad. Čap- to marry her-that Mrs. Mason, the old woman tain Jack Belsize, introduced him to his own at Newcome, had told him so. mess, as also to the Guard dinner at St. James's; and my Lord Kew invited him to Kewbury, his Lordship's house in Oxfordshire, where Clive enjoyed hunting, shooting, and plenty of good company. Mrs. Newcome groaned in spirit when she heard of these proceedings; and feared, feared very much that that unfortunate young man was going to ruin; and Barnes Newcome amiably disseminated reports among his family that the lad was plunged in all sorts of debaucheries: that

* Continued from the May Number.

"I daresay she has told the tale all over Newcome!" shrieked out Mr. Barnes. "I daresay it will be in the Independent next week. By Jove, it's a pretty connection-and nice acquaintances this uncle of our's brings us!" A fine battle ensued upon the receipt and discussion of this intelligence: Barnes was more than usually bitter and sarcastic: Ethel haughtily recriminated, losing her temper, and then her firmness, until, fairly bursting into tears, she taxed Barnes with meanness and malignity in forever uttering stories to

that reverence for Mr. Wordsworth, what did it mean? Had he not written Peter Bell, and been turned into deserved ridicule by all the reviews? Was that dreary Excursion to be compared to Goldsmith's Traveler, or Doctor Johnson's Imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal? If the young men told the truth, where had been the truth in his own young days; and in what ignorance had our forefathers been brought up?

that she knows every thought in her daughter's | Ulysses he could understand; but what were heart, I think she pretends to know a great deal these prodigious laudations bestowed on it? And too much ;-nor can there be a wholesomer task for the elders, as our young subjects grow up, naturally demanding liberty and citizen's rights, than for us gracefully to abdicate our sovereign pretensions and claims of absolute control. There's many a family chief who governs wisely and gently, who is loth to give the power up when he should. Ah, be sure, it is not youth alone that has need to learn humility! By their very virtues, and the purity of their lives, many good-Mr. Addison was only an elegant essayist, and parents create flatterers for themselves, and so live in the midst of a filial court of parasites and seldom without a pang of unwillingness, and often not at all, will they consent to forego their autocracy, and exchange the tribute they have been won't to exact of love and obedience for the willing offering of love and freedom.

Our good Colonel was not of the tyrannous, but of the loving order of fathers: and having fixed his whole heart upon this darling youth, his son, was punished, as I suppose such worldly and selfish love ought to be punished (so Mr. Honeyman says, at least, in his pulpit), by a hundred little mortifications, disappointments, and secret wounds, which stung not the less severely, though never mentioned by their victim.

shallow trifler! All these opinions were openly uttered over the Colonel's claret, as he and Mr. Binnie sat wondering at the speakers, who were knocking the gods of their youth about their ears. To Binnie the shock was not so great; the hard-headed Scotchman had read Hume in his college days, and sneered at some of the gods even at that early time. But with Newcome the admiration for the literature of the last century was an article of belief: and the incredulity of the young men seemed rank blasphemy. “You will be sneering at Shakspeare next," he said: and was silenced, though not better pleased, when his youthful guests told him, that Doctor Goldsmith sneered at him too; that Dr. Johnson did not understand him, and that Congreve, in his own day and afterwards, was considered to be, in some points, Shakspeare's superior. "What do you think a man's criticism is worth, sir," cries Mr. Warrington, "who says those lines of Mr. Congreve, about a church

'How reverend is the face of yon tall pile,

Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads, To bear aloft its vast and ponderous roof, By its own weight made stedfast and immovable; Looking tranquillity. It strikes an awe And terror on my aching sight'-et cæterawhat do you think of a critic who says those lines are finer than any thing Shakspeare ever wrote ?" A dim consciousness of danger for Clive, a terror that his son had got into the society of heretics and unbelievers, came over the Colonel—and then presently, as was the wont with his modest soul, a gentle sense of humility. He was in the wrong, perhaps, and these younger men were right. Who was he, to set up his judgment against men of letters, educated at College? It was better that Clive should follow them than him, who had had but a brief schooling, and that neglected, and who had not the original genius of his son's brilliant companions. We particularize these talks, and the little incidental mortifications which one of the best of men endured, not because the conversations are worth the remembering or recording, but because they presently very materially influenced his own and his son's future history.

Sometimes he would have a company of such gentlemen as Messrs. Warrington, Honeyman, and Pendennis, when haply a literary conversation would ensue after dinner; and the merits of our present poets and writers would be discussed with the claret. Honeyman was well enough read in profane literature, especially of the lighter sort; and, I daresay, could have passed a satisfactory examination in Balzac, Dumas, and Paul de Kock himself, of all whose works our good host was entirely ignorant,-as indeed he was of graver books, and of earlier books, and of books in general-except those few which we have said formed his traveling library. He heard opinions that amazed and bewildered him. He heard that Byron was no great poet, though a very clever man. He heard that there had been a wicked persecution against Mr. Pope's memory and fame, and that it was time to reinstate him: that his favorite, Dr. Johnson, talked admirably, but did not write English: that young Keats was a genius to be estimated in future days with young Raphael and that a young gentleman of Cambridge who had lately published two volumes of verses, might take rank with the greatest poets of all. Doctor Johnson not write English! Lord Byron not one of the greatest poets of the world! Sir Walter a poet of the second order! Mr. Pope attacked for inferiority and want of imagination! Mr. Keats and this young Mr. Tennyson of Cambridge, the chief of modern poetic literature! In the midst of the artists and their talk the What were these new dicta, which Mr. Warring-poor Colonel was equally in the dark. They aston delivered with a puff of tobacco-smoke: to saulted this academician and that; laughed at which Mr. Honeyman blandly assented and Clive Mr. Haydon, or sneered at Mr. Eastlake, or the listened with pleasure? Such opinions were not contrary-deified Mr. Turner on one side of the of the Colonel's time. He tried in vain to con- table, and on the other scorned him as a madman strue Enone; and to make sense of Lamia.-nor could Newcome comprehend a word of