the mountains. tell. And there was light-hearted Bridget, who was the young housemaiden. This lass of the mountains was so laughterloving that she could afford even to laugh at the ghosts of Monasterlea. Her polished red cheeks would dimple, and her black eyes glitter, to hear the very mention of their fearful freaks. It was her delight to come rushing into the kitchen of a dark evening, panting and laughing, and declaring that the great stone angel had risen up and kissed her, or that a terrible apparition had accosted her in the cloisters and invited her out for a walk. Yet in spite of all the strange influences of the place, the little flower from Italy grew hardily and freshly in the moorland soil. It was a curious occurrence which first drew little May towards her visionary uncle. blooming little maiden and the aged ascetic became the fastest of simple-hearted friends. And thus out of its many odd elements Miss Martha's household contrived to make a cheerful and harmonious whole. As for her, she had her farm to attend to; and her house and her servants, besides her two children, Felix and May. She was a very happy woman, who felt herself a power for the protection of the weak. She had known what it was to lead a lonely life; but now she was in right good company. NOISES. "BE not afeard; the isle is full of noises." Yes; and not only the enchanted home of Prospero, but the whole habitable globe, and prosaic, work-a-day life itself, are noise-ful. 66 I am speaking only, now, of the noises of common life; of those of the street, the house, the workshop, and the field; and, knowing them to be as innumerable as the hairs on the head, or the sands in the glass, you will not complain if, within the narrow space at my disposal, I only tabulate and comment upon a very few. For there are "sounds and sweet airs that give delight, and hurt not ;" and, sometimes, a thonsand twangling instruments will hum about our ears;" and sometimes there are utterances savage and discordant as those of Brute Caliban, when the Spirits pinched him for bringing wood in slowly; or, light and joyous as those of the Dainty Ariel; or, hoarse and drunken as those of Trinculo ; or, solemn and sonorous as those of the Royal Magician; or, low and melodious as those of Ferdinand wooing Miranda. Every one of these vocal phases is susceptible of a thousand subdivisions. In the organ of One night at last she got up in her sleep love alone there are myriads more stops and made her way through the long dark than ever Father Schmidt dreamt of; and cloister of the chapel. There was no light Swift's "little language" to Stella is no within but the glimmer of the sanctuary more the same piccolo as Steele's twitterlamp. The old man believed that he sawings to his " Prue" than the tremendous a white-robed angel approaching to comfort and bear him company. His cry of surprise awakened the child, who, looking wildly around her, shuddered a few moments, and then fled to him, clinging round his neck in her fear. The child had feared him. His looks struck her with awe. She shrank from him, and dreaded to pass the door of his room. Nevertheless, she fretted about him. She wakened in the night and wept to think of him prostrate on the cold flags upon the chapel floor. She mourned to see him touch no food. She hid little cakes in his pocket, hoping that he might find them and eat them. The old friar soothed her kindly. Absentminded as he was, he could not but gather from her sobbing account that anxiety and sympathy for him had caused her to wander in her sleep. He carried her in his arms to her chamber door. Next morning she flew to meet him with smiles: and the compass of diapason in Mirabeau's outpourings to Sophie is identical with the passionate wail of Heloise to Abelard. 66 Then, let me come to the common noises, and, in a brief span, endeavour to discern which are the sounds usually most agreeable, and most unpleasant to humanity. I say usually;" for I think there is a tolerable unanimity among us as to sounds which please the car, and sounds which jar upon it. There are deep-rooted prejudices, almost monomaniacal in their tendency, in certain peculiarly constituted organisa tions, against certain noises; just as there are violent abhorrences to certain colours, and odours, and even names. Of these I may treat hereafter; but I must premise that our experiences of sound being necessarily based on our own personal sensations, it may eventually appear to the reader that I am the prejudiced and monomaniacal person, and that what to me may be delicate nutriment is to other people ratsbane. And first of sounds that are dreadful. Let me ask you a question. Do you like the roaring of wild beasts? Some three or four years since it was my ugly errand to go down into Kent to see a murderer hanged in the interior of Maidstone Jail. It was to be the first private execution under a freshly passed act of parliament; and although in my time I had seen, in the way of business, half a score of felons hanged in front of Newgate and elsewhere, this prospect of witnessing the strangling of a fellow-creature in a back-yard made me exceedingly nervous and wretched. Do not for an instant imagine that I am about to indulge in a digression descriptive of the horrible scene 1 beheld. What I have to say relates exclusively to the Philosophy of Noises. Two old and dear friends of mine, bent on the same errand, accompanied me to Maidstone; and we did our best to make ourselves, during the evening preceding the execution, as cheerful as we could under the circumstances, and to stave off that ugly spectre of a Man in a Cell, who, do what we would, was ever present to our mind's eye. We dined, and smoked, and tried to chat; but the conversation hung fire; and the cigars had an ugly habit of going out, rekindle them as we might, never so often. At last we went out for a stroll. It was fair-time at Maidstone; and towering amidst the booths and roundabouts, in a great area not far from the prison, had been drawn up the caravans of our old familiar friend Wombwell of the menagerie. We paid our fees, and went in. The lions were in fine form; the tigers were in admirable rages; and the hyenas were, as usual, choking in spasms of hysterical merriment. They were all wide awake; and the gas, and a large, noisy, and nut-throwing audience made them still more wakeful. They were fiercely hungry, too-feeding time, to increase the attraction, having been postponed until nine o'clock. And, when the wheelbarrows with the shin-bones of beef did come round, you may imagine, and I need not describe, the pandemoniacal row which ensued. Only, I may mark, that tremendous above the yelling, shrieking, bellowing, grunting, wailing, and gnashing of teeth of the savage brutes, could be heard the roaring of the lions. The noise, perhaps, was one which might have amused some people, even if they had been fain to stop their ears to avoid being stunned; but, while I listened, there suddenly flashed across my mind the remembrance of a certain passage in a book called Oliver Twist, in which Sikes remarks, "It was Bartlemy time when I was shopped." The ruffian goes on to describe how in his Newgate cell he could hear the fifing and drumming and squib-and-cracker-exploding in the fair in Smithfield; and how the noises nearly drove him to dash his brains out against his dungeon wall, in frenzy. Straightway, my thoughts turned from Newgate to Maidstone Jail. Man in the Cell: could he hear the roaring of the lions; and what impression could those sounds have made on his distempered brain? For no human creature, I take it, who is going to be hanged, is quite sane. That story of the lions will not bear dwelling on any more in print; but do you weigh and ponder over it, and perchance you will come to understand the shrinking horror which I felt then, and, remembering the noises, feel now. That Α How are you affected by the noise of "machinery in motion," as the Exhibition phrase goes? As I put the query on paper I rise from my chair; grind my teeth; pace the room in agony; lean my fevered brow against a cool marble mantelpiece, and, on the cook knocking at the door, to ask what I would like for lunch, I am afraid that I say something very rude to her. There is some "machinery in motion" over against my study window, which is at the back of the house. speculative builder, who is running up terraces, crescents, and gardens by the score in the suburb where I dwell, has erected a range of workshops at the bottom of my garden, where all his carpentry and joinery work is done; and he has further marred the prospect by raising a colossal chimney, which, in defiance of the Smoke Consumption Act, belches forth volumes of fiery fumes all day long. Can't I indict that builder as a nuisance-for obstructing my light and air? No; I am told. that he is too far off. But ah! how I should like to indict him for his noises! He has gotten-I know he has a drivingwheel with an endless strap on the tire. That wheel is driving me to distraction; that strap has entered into my soul. has set up a circular saw-twenty circular He young rogue intersperses his professional chant with catcalls suggestive of the threepenny gallery, and with refrains culled from the anthology of the music- halls. Iron hoops again-hoops are "in" just nowespecially when the conductor rattles a whole gamut of noises on the metallic circle with a metallic rod, make a detestable noise. A hansom cab at full speed over freshly laid macadam is an abomination; and under any circumstances the noise made by a railway carrier's van is wellnigh unbearable. saws, I should say. They are sawing my heart in twain. I shudder at the shrill, screaming, ceaseless whirr. I can hear the innocent planks screaming as the merciless teeth eat into their very marrow. I can see-in imagination-the clouds of sawdust rising around. Oh! he can saw his planks into the most symmetrical curves, and the most shapely beadings, no doubt; but I should like to be behind that saw, with a hammer. And yet, how strange are likings and dislikings! With circular saw on the brain, I rush to the front of the house, desperate; but there, oddly enough, I ex- There can be very little difference of perience no nervous discomfort when I opinion, I should say, as to the repulsivehear the costermonger crying his "fine ness of the sounds made by the tearing of savoys," his turnips and his carrots. I calico, the creaking of doors, the passing shudder not, when the donkey-man who of a wet finger over silk, the endeavour to sells fish expatiates in prolonged bawl on remove an obstinate glass stopper from a the virtues of his fresh cod and "fine bottle, or the scraping of slate-pencil. Concheap soles." The sweep is rather a melo- cerning sounds the bare thought of which dious person than otherwise, with an excel- is sufficient to set your teeth on edge, it is lent baritone voice. The four o'clock not necessary to say much more. The "tunmuffin-woman, with her tinkling bell, fills ing up" of stringed instruments in an orme with comfort and joy. I could tolerate chestra is likewise obviously disagreeable the milkman if he cried his wares in an to any person having an ear for music; honest and rational fashion; but the man yet Donizetti the famous composer, whose who comes at three o'clock utters a caco- brother was "maître d'orchestre" to the phonous cry sounding like " Yahoop;" and Sultan Mahmoud, used to relate that the the milkwoman, who is due at three-thirty cacophonous scraping of "the bowels of -she is presumably of Welsh extraction, the cat with the hair of the horse," was the and has a pair of legs like the balustrades musical performance in which the Comin the background of a carte de visite-puts mander of the Faithful was wont to take her arms akimbo, and in accents as gruff the greatest delight. As regards other as those of a corporal-major in the Life musical noises, the point of their being Guards, says "Cuckoo!" Now "yahoop" agreeable or the reverse may be conand "cuckoo!" have nothing, I surmise, sidered moot. I decline to offer any dogin common with "Milk O!" I am wait-matical opinion concerning organ grinding. ing for "afternoon cresses!" a pretty innocent noise, when I am driven to the back of my residence again by the diabolical screech of the knife-grinder's wheel-as dire an infliction in its way as the circular saw. The wretch with the wheel-he will be Ixion I hope some day-who infests my neighbourhood, is an orator, forsooth; and instead of succinctly delivering himself of his message to the community launches into a long round running, "Ave you hany knives, scissors, razors, penknives, table himplements to grind, or heven humberellas to mend O!" and a murrain on him! There are times when the worst ground and on this side homicide. The sound of the postman's knock is to some a death knell; to others a thing of joy. But some definite rules may be laid down with respect to our friend with the peremptory rat-tat. In the country the postman's knock is generally a boon; in town it is generally a bore. Nine young people out of ten like to hear the postman's knock; eleven out of a dozen of middleaged people wish the General Post Office and its employés at Jericho; and-now that post-cards are established-at Hong Kong, to boot. The noise of Baby is unmistakably one that cannot be dogmatised upon: save to this extent, that to all women the cries of all infants are delicious. Childless men would like to burke baby; Paterfamilias winces under the torture, but endures it smilingly. One bachelor, indeed, I once knew, and a remarkably crusty bachelor he was-I will call him Mr. Ferox-who professed to take huge delight in the uproar of the nursery. "I like to hear babies cry," he would say, with a hideous grin; "but then I like to hear a pig being killed, and a schoolboy being caned. They're all suffering. Why do babies cry? Because they've got the stomach-ache. They're suffering, ha ha!" The noise of a grand pianoforte. Humph! The point is moot again. Stay. A pianoforte in your own house, or over the way, may be tolerable. But next door, with a very thin partition-wall, and the performer yet in the rudimentary stages of the valse from Faust. Horror! With regard to the accordion, and its sisterfiend the concertina, I can only regard them as instruments of which the possession should not be permitted by the Law of the Land. Nay; I regard the accordion as remotely an immoral instrument. Note this, that whenever a shopboy robs the till, or a junior clerk embezzles the petty cash, it is invariably discovered that among the articles purchased by the criminal from his ill-gotten funds, have been a pistol and an accordion. To dismiss musical noises, I hazard a suspicion, that most of us have a furtive fondness for the banjo. The truth is, that the banjo is a kind of lute, and the lute is a kind of fiddle: the most exquisite of musical instruments, and one whose notes awaken nothing but mirth, and jollity, and sympathy, and gratitude in the human breast. It was upon a fiddle that old Timotheus played when he made Alexander weep at the recital of the woes of Darius. It was with the sweet notes of a fiddle that Orpheus charmed the brutes, and won Eurydice back from Hades. It was not, as the legends idly relate, the retrospection of Orpheus that caused him may to lose his wife again. 'Twas Eurydice's fault. The imprudent young woman had acquired a piano under the "three years' system," and looking back for it was seized upon by Pluto, and relegated to Tartarean shades for ever. There are some very beautiful noises at sea. The voice of the waves is to my ear always eloquent, and, moreover, even when the sea is at its roughest, always friendly. It is very good on a sea voyage to linger late on deck, and listen to the noise of the waters churning among the paddle-wheels; it is very good to look down into the engine-room and listen to the labouring of the mighty cylinders, the dull thud of the piston-rods; the rasping of the fuel, shovelled to and fro; the clanging of the furnace doors. That is the kind of "machinery in motion" I like. Yet sea-life has its ugly noises. That awful yawning and creaking of every joist, and panel, and plank in your cabin during a gale! That dreadful noise of the sailors' holystoning the deck at early morning! That abominable grinding, tumbling, grumbling screw-a giant worm, which seems to be corkscrewing itself through your vitals-a worm that will not die until it has propelled the good ship to the destined haven. The noises of the country are so numerous, that I should require many more pages than the Conductor of this journal would be willing to allot to me, for a bare mention of one tithe of the commonest rural sounds. But pray note this, and remember that although I may be a Goth, a Vandal, or a Hun, I claim at least the merit of candour. I am not an enthusiatic admirer of the nightingale, and deem him, indeed, a very overrated songster. I prefer the blackbird; and I would give a hundred nightingales, if I had them, for one lark. After this it will not astonish you to be told that I think the frog a very harmless little fellow, whose croaking is always cheerful, and is sometimes even harmonious, and that I utterly detest the much-vaunted lowing of kine. That lowing seems to me the most despairing moan possible of conception. It seems to say, "What have we done, these many thousands of years past, that we are never to be anything more than Beef?" A sheep has a brief chance of felicity as a pet lamb. But nobody pets a calf. We fatten him up against the time when the Prodigal Son shall come home. As regards pigs "in extremis," I have already recorded the dictum of Ferox; but ere the fiat has gone forth for their conversion into pork, the noises of the curly-tailed race are very comfortable to hear. In the cottage from whose back garden you hear the complacent grunting of Piggy, you may be sure that the ice-pudding of starvation is not the staple dish. I hate cats, and will say nothing about either their purring, their mewing, or their swearing sounds; but, touching dogs-the majority of whose noises are much loved by mankind-I think that one of the most appalling, sickening and shameful sounds it is possible to hear, is the long drawn out howl of anguish of a dog that has been kicked by some brute of a human being. There is much to be said about bells; but it depends very much on the character of the bell, whether we affect it or not. The school-bell gives out as disagreeable a sound to a boy as the passing-bell does to an old man. The sound of church-going bells in the country is exceedingly sweet to hear. In London, church-going bells areI say it with all due deference-a grievous and a painfully increasing nuisance. Joybells and wedding-bells are very nice to hear, no doubt; when you have anything to be joyful for, or when somebody of whom you are very fond is going to be married. Indeed, I have heard of folks so charitable as to rejoice at the sound of their enemies' wedding-bells. On the whole, considering noises broadly, I hold that the two merriest and most consoling sounds of common life are the squeak of PUNCH and the clink of a blacksmith working at his forge. The Rooty, tooty, tooty, toi-o-i," means harmless, honest, unsophisticated gaiety:-the "sunshine of the breast," the lightness of heart of which not all the grim ascetics that ever preached shall ever deprive humanity, and the “Clink, clink, clink," the blast of the bellows, the roar of the fire, mean Work, cheerful, robust, productive Work, obedient to Heaven's command, and bringing Heaven's bread. NOVEL NAMES. THERE is no quotation for which we feel so decided a repulsion, as that well-hacked quotation, that blunt, bent, jagged old saw, which works laboriously,-"What's in a name ?" Your "Foolometer" when busy with the rude carpentry he calls conversation, delights to rasp and flourish with this instrument. How many a snug, baldheaded, shining-faced bore has served up this quotation, "all hot," as though it were a rare, even a new dish: "What's in a name ?" to be surely followed by a complacent smile or laugh. And nobody really agrees with the Divine William on this point. The gentleman who exchanged Bugg for "Norfolk Howard," did not go with the bard; and we have all rather a weakness for a fair-sounding title. But there are two classes who differ "the whole sky" from the bard (or swan), and would intrude into that delicious garden scene with a serious protest. The answer of the public and the publishers to the question and following explanation, "What's in a name? the rose by any other name would smell as sweet," would be bluntly that "the name was everything;" that all young ladies fling down contemptuously on the counter the work that Messrs. Smiths' assistant offers, if it be furnished with a disagreeable title. In this case, though the rose may smell as sweet, no one will take the trouble to smell it. It is difficult to analyse this feeling. Though we may be pleasant on the novelreading young ladies, the impression affects even the sage and whiskered pundit. The truth is, we confide, and always will confide, in human nature. We assume that the story and its title will faithfully reflect each other. They rarely do, however, for, as a rule, when the last chapter is "knocked off," the author devises half a dozen good titles, one of which is chosen after experiment and debate; chiefly in the test of its effect on the publisher, possibly a plain man, who says "I like that,' or "I don't like that at all." The more flashy and sensational the better the effect. Sometimes, in the case of a serial story, the name has to be selected "at the other end," before the story has fairly started; but here again it has little relation to the subject matter, as the title is selected before the story has been written. The philosophy of novel-writing might fairly engage the speculation of a mind like that of Mr. John Stuart Mill, and with this philosophy the theory of names is not indistinctly connected. The list of writers is now swelled to hundreds, and why the most feeble-minded of either sex thinks he or she can sit down and tell a story, and secure an audience to listen, seems incomprehensible. The evil, however, will soon cure itself, for where all are story-tellers, the difficulty will be to find those who will listen. In the competition for an audience, titles are at a premium, and the ingenious variety of nomenclature, as Doctor Johnson might phrase it, more than compensates for other deficiencies. An analysis of a vast |