little hope that such will be the case-the two houses, it is reasonable to suppose, will meet in uncompromising opposition on most of these questions; or should one give way to the opinion of the other, that one will be the House of Peers, who will thus vote themselves the tools of the Commons. The Peers themselves, and a certain class of politicians have canted much about the House of Peers being the safeguard of the Monarch against popular encroachments on the prerogative, but to any one, who is at all acquainted with the constitutional history of his country, this assumption of the Peers can appear very little better than ridiculous. Whenever a Bill has come before them that was cal culated to militate against their interest, or they imagined was likely to do so, (such as the Reform Bill) this favourite cry was sure to be heard, indeed it has proved the most efficacious instrument in guarding some of their most absurd privileges from the attacks of common sense. But whenever their power was really needed to support the King, how has that power been exercised? They voted the exclusion of the bishops from their house when episcopacy was the best support of the throne; condemned Strafford to death; and ultimately they deprived Charles I. of the command of the military and naval forces of the kingdom, denied him the privilege of appointing the great officers of state, restricted his power in granting titles and conferring pardons, and in a word reduced the prerogative to a mere sound, and the functions of Royalty to an empty pageant, and forced Charles to exclaim "that his towns were taken from him, his ships, his army, his money, and nothing remained to him but a good cause and the hearts of his loyal subjects." Alnwick. H. P. AWAKE, MY HARP. AWAKE, my harp, once more awake Awake to-day-I will not break Thy slumbers on the morrow! For thou and I must bid adieu,— My hours to come are short and few,— Oh! oft, when rumour's accents fell For her my native shores I left Of ev'ry joy, save one, bereft- Mid storm and sunshine that was near,- My exile o'er, I sought again Awake, my harp, once more awake Awake to-day-I will not break My hours to come are short and few,— AER. HOSPITAL CASES-CONSUMPTION. Ir is melancholy to reflect on the universal dominion and certain fatality of this scourge of our island. Every plan which human ingenuity has devised for its cure has been vain; and in attempting to combat it, the physician is but fighting a retreating battle with Death. Worse than the sentence against the first-born of Egypt, it is continually "weding away" our best and our loveliest; nor have we any token, that the destroying angel may pass by our thresholds!-As when that sore affliction fell upon the Egyptians, there is a great lamentation in the land, "for there was not a house in which there was not one dead."-Insidious also as fatal, it spreads its meshes around those in the full vigour of manhood and the fairest bloom of beauty; and as it closes in upon the victims, causes a thousand hearts to wither, whose happiness had emanated from hopes of their future success. Manly genius and female loveliness are its common prey;-and bright as stands Britain in science and literature, and fair as her daughters are reckoned, how much higher both in genius and beauty would her children appear, were this peculiar scourge of her coasts removed! About one in five of the deaths which occur in Great Britain have been ascribed to Consumption: about 55,000, in England alone, annually. It is as provoking to the physician, as universal in its fatality; for active measures cannot be had recourse to, and he must tread the beaten track which has always yet led to-Death. He may prescribe medicines, and advise change of climate; but he knows well that the demon has clutched his prey, and will not leave it until it sinks lifeless beneath his grasp. This fatal yet beautiful disease has been often made the subject of poetry. Wilson, who, as Johnston said of Goldsmith,-beautifies every thing he touches, and Irving and Wordsworth have exquisitely described it in its more lovely forms. In their hands, it is like a stately edifice which is beautiful to the eye, shrouded in its green mantle of ivy and crowned with the thousand wild flowers which breathe their spiritual sighs to the evening, but which, to the wanderer amid the "glimmer and gloom" of its ruined arches, affords but the smell of noisome weeds, and the spectacle of grandeur and beauty fast passing away. It is in the Hospital only that Consumption can be contemplated in all its horrors. Look down that long array of couches where misery in all her shapes may be seen ;-from the "moping madman and the idiot gay," to the wretch whose glassy eye and livid features bear the impress of death;-Consumption claims as her own MOST of the mockeries of human form which met your gaze! Mark the shrug of the physician, as he passes them with some vain question, and mutters "Phthisis confirmata" to the students around. In the female wards, in the space of twenty beds, you may trace Consumption in all its stages. A blind man might tell, from the slight hard cough of the disease in its incipient state, down to the low thick difficult expectoration of the advanced stage, the various states of the patients. But mark the difference of the forms of the disease. Some are pale, crushed, beaten down, as it were, like broken and soiled lilies, with leaden eyes and long pale transparent fingers clutching the very bed clothes for support; others are feebly attempting to read or sew, while a few, flushed and excited, are laughing and even-alas! jesting with the misery of their fellow-sufferers !-misery, which they are themselves doomed in no long time to undergo! It is affecting, even to the most superficial observer, to notice the appearance of the patients at different times in the day. Walk round the wards in the morning, and you find them weak, pale, hopeless:-visit them in the evening, when the exacerbation of the hectic fever, which attends consumption, takes place, and you see them full of hope and confidence, framing schemes of future pleasures; busied with the anticipation of approaching convalescence; and many of them so beautiful, of so exquisite a complexion, and with eyes of such lustre that you yourself can scarcely imagine that disease can so exactly simulate health and loveliness. But so it is. I have a brief tale of common misery to tell connected with this disease. The circumstances of the case created much sympathy at the time, and though those who were then my fellow-students are now dispersed over the world, I yet doubt not but this record may meet the eyes of some who beheld the sufferings and death of poor Ellen Rainals. She was a native of Denmark. Her father was a merchant whose extensive concerns kept him constantly engaged at a seaport town some distance from home, and thus his daughter has risen from childhood to the slender beauty of womanhood, without the opportunity of weakening or destroying by her affectionate attentions a love of money which had become the ruling passion of the old man's life. The sole companion of Ellen Rainals, during her youthful years, was a brother, -a boisterous sporting lad, who, except the day was foul, was rarely by his sister's side for half an hour together. Sometimes his excursions lasted for weeks, and during all that period his sister was left at home with a few books or her harp to cheat the time away. Yet he was kind to her in his way, and Ellen learnt to bear with patience and even to love the boisterous glee so different from her own gentle disposition. Her mother was long since dead, and she could now think with calmness of that sad bereavement. In this I would fain describe Ellen Rainals such as I knew her before her misfortunes, but a painter might as well attempt to give an idea of mind by shape and colour. She seemed all spirits. Endowed with a naturally retiring mind, her want of all society had increased this disposition to a degree almost painful to behold. In the innocence, and almost in the ignorance (so far as the workings of worldly minds were concerned) of a child, she had reached the first bloom of a lovely woman;-the transparent complexion peculiar to her countrywomen, took the hue of her passing thoughts and feelings as naturally as the placid lake reflects the passing sunshine or cloud;—a perfect child of nature, it seemed as natural for her to smile and to be happy, as for a flower to look bright and beautiful. It was not to be expected that she had acquired much knowledge;-but that which her mind had naturally led her to love and to acquire, was well fitted to increase the enchantment which dwelt about her. With the poets, particularly the wild old bards of her native land, she was familiar, in the knowledge of flowers she was much skilled,-these, and music, of which she was passionately fond, were her whole accomplishments. Such was Ellen Rainals when I first saw her, during a short visit to the part of the country where she dwelt. It was some years afterwards when I beheld her in her last illness, and dreadful indeed was the change which had taken place in her fortunes. I learned the particulars of her story, partly from herself, and partly from the wretch who had destroyed her for he too finished his life in the Hospital, after a career which might even be considered as an expiation for his crimes. Of him I will speak in a future chapter,-meantime, I will retain the form of narrative in tracing Ellen to the close of her life. Among her father's commercial friends was a Mr. L- an English merchant reputed to be of great wealth, if that term can be applied to a man addicted to extensive speculations, and consequently liable to ruin on the failure of any of his schemes. This gentleman's son, in the course of his travels, called on old Rainals, who not choosing to be encumbered with an idle young man, and yet wishing to conciliate his favour, dispatched him to his country house where Ellen and her brother resided. The frank gentlemanly address of the young Englishman won the heart of young Rainals,-they coursed, shot and fished together, they explored the old ruined towers with which that part of the country so much abounds; and Ellen on their return would explain to them the story, and sing them the old ballad connected with the former tenants of the wasted strongholds. Many weeks wore away in this manner, and the Englishman found himself a fixed inmate at Lewistadt. He had plighted his faith to Ellen and won her's in return, with the free consent of her father; who considered that the son of the rich English merchant might be of service to him in his speculations. But he was destined to a severe punish ment for his unnatural selfishness. Young L-knew that his father's affairs were in a most precarious situation, and that he was at this very time gathering together all sums of money which he could procure without rousing suspicion,-in order to secure something from the ruin which was impending. Influenced by this knowledge, the young man pressed Ellen to name an early day for their nuptials;-and shortly after departed for Copenhagen with her as his wife. But the old Danish stockjobber was not a man to be hurried in his disbursements. Some suspicion respecting old L's affairs had already transpired, and he refused to pay down Ellen's portion. Meantime the young couple sailed for England, where the first news which greeted them was the failure of the great English merchant, and his departure with certain sums of money-no one knew whither. And now commenced the misfortunes of poor Ellen Rainals. So soon as her husband discovered that Ellen's father was determined not to assist them, but on the contrary sent him an abusive letter containing an unpaid bill of large amount, which was due to him by the firm, of which his father was the head, and in which he himself had a share,—and when after various enquiries he was unable to discover the retreat of the absconded merchant, the young man gave himself up to all manner of dissipation, and soon involved himself in complete ruin. But why should I dwell on the misery which these unhappy young creatures suffered during many months of the most abject poverty? I saw, as I have before said, the closing scene of the young man's life, and it was dreadful to behold his wasted and prematurely wrinkled face working with the pangs of shame and agony of soul, as with all the bitter eloquence of remorse, he poured out curses on himself, for the misery with which he had bowed down the young spirit of his gentle and uncomplaining wife. It appeared, that urged by want, and love of those gratifications which money alone could procure, and which he had long been accustomed to enjoy, he had joined a gang of desperate characters, and been engaged in the perilous situation of a passer of base coin-the most dangerous and, it appears, the worst remunerated occupation connected with forging. He had been at length detected, but escaped from the police by the assistance of some of his accomplices, and after skulking about the city for some days, succeeded in getting out of the country. There are few hearts, so hardened by vice and wretchedness, as not to be susceptible of moments of good and pure feeling. Even this poor wretch seemed to have been overcome by the remembrance of his young wife-" a stranger in a strange land," without a friend to help or means to support her, and now in the last months of pregnancy. He wrote her a penitent and incoherent letter, detailing his crimes and the necessity for his banishment, and enclosing her a small sum of money. She never heard of him more !-Oh! who may paint the sickness of soul, the utter loathing of life which this poor foreign girl felt, as day after day, alone and almost famishing, she looked out from her squalid apartment upon the bustle and noise and cheerfulness of a populous city? Or who may imagine the utter loneliness and desolation of heart, in which she lay down upon her miserable pallet, drenched with the bitter tears which silently streamed over her faded cheek, throughout her uncompanioned night? |