have self-confidence enough to dispense with the shutting up. But be this as it may, certain it is that all the blandishments of the perambulatory beauties who frequent, like themselves, this favorite thoroughfare, are utterly cast away upon them.

As you would never guess who the beings are who thus move about as if spell-bound, and secured from all the influences, whether good or bad, of the scene of unceasing life and bustle that surrounds them, I had better tell you at once, lest the Governor should accuse me of having led you into another digression, and of intending to finish my letter before I have begun it. The pale pedestrians, then, that I have described to you, are spell-bound. The magic bâton of Marshal Jones has touched them, and they can no more, in fact, move out of the circle, that he has prescribed for them, than they can, in imagination, keep within. They are Rulers: that is to say, gentlemen who are enabled, by an amicable fiction of the law, to be in the King's Bench and out of it at the same time, by purchasing, (price twenty pounds) a sort of second-hand ubiquity, which gives them the privilege of shewing to all that part of the world who happen to pass this way, that they are in prison for debt; a fact which might otherwise have remained a profound secret to all but their creditors.

As to the mere inanimate features of this first of the six highways at which we are to glance, it is distinguished from its fellows by a paved foot-path, and by shops, every alternate one of which offers something either to eat or drink; on the understanding, that people in prison have little else to do. The intermediate ones are filled with Turner's blacking, second-hand music, bedding (to let), straw bonnets, stays, and faded millinery: the three latter emporiums presenting more attractions than meet the eye of any but the initiated. In the midst of all these, there is, of course, a pawnbroker's; without which, indeed, the occupations of all the rest would presently be gone.

Immediately opposite to the above, is the Kent Road,-wide, airy, and affecting the genteel,-being guiltless of all shops, and sacred to the afternoon retirements of elderly attorneys' clerks, middle-aged married gentlemen in the ordnance department, small capitalists who keep shops in the Borough, and the unlike ;-all of whom spend the summer afternoons in sighing after the Greenwich stages as they pass, and lamenting that their hard destiny does not allow them to dwell in a distant part of the country: ex. gr. Blackheath.

At a right angle with the above, on the west, winds away into a murky and mysterious distance, the way leading through Newington Butts to Kennington Cross and Common; which is broken, at its beginning, by a branch leading through Walworth. This point of view is altogether indescribable in any general terms, on account of its infinite variety of aspect. Suffice it, that the dingy and dilapidated grandeur of the Fishmongers' Alms-houses, at the right corner, and their dead silence, are agreeably contrasted, at the opposite corner, by the fair and flourishing freshness of Mrs. Fisher's noisy and moneymaking menagerie for all sorts of strange animals, the Elephant and Castle; while the other points of the view embrace every variety of ugly creation,-from the shed of the dealer in marine stores, upwards to the parish church. The way which I have described as branching off from this, luckily for the keeping and completeness of the view, is out of sight,-otherwise it would throw out a gleam of

comfort altogether inconsistent with that unity of effect which is so necessary to the true picturesque. The way in question has the associated merit of belonging to the pleasant village of Camberwell, and is occupied, first, by those humble votarists of nature who cannot do without either trees or trade, and who therefore put up with a little of the one, that they may have a little of the other; and farther on, by ruralists of the next rank, who can afford to have an establishment separate from their shops, and who choose it here because "stages to the city pass the door every ten minutes."

To the right of the above stretches away towards Westminster bridge, the Lambeth department of this quartier, and that which belongs, par excellence, to the " Rulers ;" chosen probably on account of its boasting Belvedere Places, that look out upon pools of green water and black mud, varied and interspersed here and there with ash heaps, dunghills, and pigstyes; or Prospect Rows, that range along the back premises of lime-dressers, bone-collectors, soot-merchants, and dealers in dogs' meat.

The only remaining way is that which we must now take, and which is called the Borough Road, on account of its leading into that busy receptacle of all that is passé in patterns, cuts, and colours-all that is old-fashioned and exploded in arrangement-all that is ugly in architecture and ornament; in short, that last resort of all who are fifty years behind their fellow traders in taste, spirit, and enterprise, and who, therefore, find themselves completely out of their element till they get into this fool's Paradise of those decennial visitors from the wilds of Kent and Sussex, who put up at the Plough, in the Borough, and fancy themselves in London. Unluckily for all purposes of the picturesque, this way which we are now to take has undergone a marvellous metamorphosis within the last two or three years; the left hand side of it having changed from cart sheds, cow-houses, cattle-pense, dust-heaps, and all the eleemosynary accumulations that such scenes are heir to, into little spruce-looking tenements a story and a half high, with arched windows, virandoed porticoes, Venetian blinds, white line curtains, and "lodgings to let;" while the opposite side of the way still remains a sort of fair for all that is foul in soiled linendrapery, to be sold "a bundred per cent. under prime cost." We will, therefore, about half-way down this road on the left, turn off without further remark, and crossing a newly made road, we shall find ourselves at once within view of the ambitious walls which constitute the only external architecture of the immediate object of our search.

As I now foresee that the Governor was not far from the truth in fancying I should not get to the beginning of this letter till I had finished it, I shall, in order to give him a fair opportunity of congratulating himself on his sagacity, devote the remainder to the immediate precincts of this paragon of prisons: leaving the interior, and all that it includes, to be treated of, as it deserves, in a separate epistle.

Perhaps that particular Belvedere Row (for there are a score in this neighbourhood) which flanks the wall of the King's Bench Prison, presents, with its adjuncts at either end, and the view on which it looks, as characteristic a specimen of squalid scampishness as need be of fered to the notice of those who would gain a notion of what those two words are intended to express, when applied to inanimate objects. It consists of perhaps twenty houses, the fronts of which are all built on

precisely the same plan; or rather the whole of which present but one uniform and undivided front. And yet, of all the separate tenements, no two bear the slightest resemblance to each other, on account of the infinite variety of purposes to which the various parts of them are applied, and the corresponding inscriptions and other indications which point those purposes out. Don't be alarmed. I'm not going to follow the example of my brother explorers, and copy out these inscriptions, &c. for your edification; but shall leave you to fancy the effect they produce, in connexion with the other indications of those various callings to which they refer merely giving you to understand that this row consists entirely of private houses; but that almost every separate window in every one of them begs the patronage of the passers-by to some profession or other-from Select Reading Rooms, and Subscription Coffee houses, down or rather up-in the attic, to "Shoes neatly made and mended, for ready money only." The little gardens, too, in front of these dwellings, give the occupiers an opportunity of varying their general appearance still more. I imagine that there never were any two English gardens alike, since the invention of the art, any more than there were ever two French ones not like! Of the first of these facts the specimens before us may be offered in proof. They each occupy a space of three yards by two; and yet each is as different from its neighbour as it is from all the rest; and what is more, each is completely indicative of the character and turn of mind of the cultivator. I must not wait to illustrate this, but hasten to finish my picture. The belvedere, then, from which this Row takes its name, consists, first of a carriage way, which has never been mended since it was left unmade, and which therefore offers to the eye a pleasing interchange of dry hillocks and wet mud-ponds, interspersed throughout with every variety of wheel ruts; beyond this, a range of black broken paling, which undergoes a periodical whitewashing every now and then, at the expense of Messrs. Warren, Hunt, and Turner; then, opposite the left extremity of the Row, the back entrance to the prison, and opposite the right extremity, the back of another row of tenements not greatly unlike the above; and finally, beyond these, and crowning and completing the view, the wall of the prison rises somewhere about half a mile "above the level of the sea" of adjacent housetops, and presents the best specimen of brick work (I would fain name its peculiar merit,) that this metropolis can boast. To shew you how the comforts of the prisoners are attended to in the minutest particulars, let me not forget to mention, that this wall is surmounted by an elegant iron cheveux-de-frise, for the purpose of preventing the community of cats, who are particularly clamorous in this neighbourhood, from disturbing the studies or troubling the repose of the favoured inmates. Such at least, I take to be the object of this singular arrangement for, what other purpose a cheveux-de-frise can answer on the top of a bare detached wall, two hundred feet high, is more than I can

guess.

Leaving you to admire the new and characteristic scenery in the midst of which I have placed you, let me now say adieu, for the preYour loving cousin, TERENCE TEMPLETON.

sent.

THE STRANGER IN LOUISIANA.*

WE saw thee, O stranger, and wept!

-We look'd for the Youth of the sunny glance,
Whose step was the fleetest in chase or dance!
The light of his eye was a joy to see,

The path of his arrows a storm to flee;

But there came a voice from a distant shore

-He was call'd-he is found 'midst his tribe no more!
He is not in his place when the night-fires burn,
But we look for him still-he will yet return!
-His brother sat with a drooping brow
In the gloom of the shadowing cypress bough,
We roused him-we bade him no longer pine,
For we heard a step-but the step was thine!

We saw thee, O stranger, and wept!

We look'd for the Maid of the mournful song;
Mournful, though sweet-she hath left us long.
We told her the youth of her love was gone,
And she went forth to seek him—she pass'd alone!
We hear not her voice when the woods are still,
From the bower where it sang, like a silvery rill,
The joy of her sire with her smile is fled,
The winter is white on his lonely head,

He hath none by his side when the waste we track,
He hath none when we rest-yet she comes not back!
We look'd for her eye on the feast to shine,
For her breezy step-but the step was thine!

We saw thee, O stranger, and wept!

We look'd for the Chief who hath left the spear,
And the bow of his battles forgotten here;
We look'd for the Hunter, whose bride's lament

On the wind of the forest at eve is sent;

We look'd for the First-born, whose mother's cry
Sounds wild and shrill through the midnight sky!

-Where are they?-Thou 'rt seeking some distant coast,-
Oh, ask of them, stranger!-send back the lost!
Tell them we mourn by the dark blue streams;

Tell them, our lives but of them are dreams!
Tell, how we sat in the gloom to pine,

And to watch for a step-but the step was thine !

F. H.

"An early traveller mentions a people on the banks of the Mississippi, who burst into tears at the sight of a stranger. The reason of this is, that they fancy their deceased friends and relations to be only gone on a journey, and being in constant expectation of their return, look for them vainly amongst those foreign travellers."-PICART's Ceremonies and Religious Customs.

"J'ai passé moi-même," says Chateaubriand in his Souvenirs d'Amerique, "chez une peuplade Indienne qui se prenait à pleurer à la vue d'un Voyageur, parce qu'il lui rappelait des Amis partis pour la Contrée des Ames, et depuis longtems en voyage."

RECOLLECTIONS OF ETON.

MAJESTIC Windsor! Can I pass you by without a call for old acquaintance sake ? Impossible. Your "distant spires" and "antique towers" positively forbid.-Time was when I invariably made it a rule with myself, in journeying from Oxford to London, to travel that road which would bring me nearest to Windsor and Eton-the scene of so many careless happy days, in the sunshine and buoyant season of youth; and now, when a lapse of years has separated me from it, when my migrations to and from the capital have run in a different direction, and broken the chain of communication I used to maintain with the cherished spot, surely I cannot, like an undutiful son, turn my back upon my foster-parent, as though I had never been a denizen of Long Chamber, never reposed under “Henry's holy shade.”

To forget, or be indifferent to the recollections of Eton, is a crime which can seldom or ever be laid to the charge of those who have grown up there. What Etonian was ever lukewarm in the panegyric of the scene of his boyish delights? or could ever admit the possibility of comparison between that school and any other ? He can have no such thought; and would consider such an admission as unpardonable in any of Eton's genuine sons. To the latest period of existence, the grey-headed Etonian will catch a spark of lingering fire from the subject, and his eye will beam with renovated lustre in reverting to the days when he urged the flying ball," and "cleft the glassy wave," in those favourite haunts.

It will surely be admitted that this place has some very obvious claims to the strong attachment with which its children are inspired. Its royal origin, its venerable antiquity, the beauty of its chapel, and its agreeable situation, combine to render it an interesting object to those unconnected further than by mere inspection as visitors. But to breathe for years the atmosphere of that classic spot-to frolic in the ample bounds of those green meadows which stretch (in the schoolboy's estimation) into a boundless extent-to muse and meditate, if that gentler mood be his, under the shade at the front entrance, enjoying the delicious fragrance of the lime-trees; to do all this for successive years, is to invest the spot with such a deep-felt interest as no time can diminish, no events erase; and not to feel this interest, is to have a heart more torpid than ever belonged to a true Etonian. I know that mine beat high as I entered the place after a long interval of years. I had been there child, boy, and almost man, (that is almost in the estimation of my friends, quite in that of my own). I had lived happy, and departed with a feeling of attachment and regret, which years since past have confirmed and heightened All my old sympathies and stronglyknit associations came rushing upon me as I drove gently round by the Christopher, and drew up under the shelter of the old limes. Here I quitted my gig to take a nearer view of every part of this scene of my juvenile adventures. Eleven o'clock school was just over; the noisy tide of boyish existence was pouring forth in large waves. The busy hum of the crowd, the high key of some voices more eager than others, the gradual dispersion of the various groups to their different sports, the bustle and animation of some, the pensive gravity of others, displayed an interesting contrast. I observed one here and there who