Tiverton the beautiful tulle fabrics whose
prosperity and progress in Nottinghamshire were
menaced by the machine-breakers of his day—
those workmen-conservatives who brought into
the field of labour the determination to resist all
innovations. The fulling-mills on the Exe have
been turned to the grinding of corn, the breaking
of bones, the sawing of timber, the manufacture
of paper, and, for the most part, have become
auxiliaries to agricultural interests.

On the whole, the results have been beneficial.
Capital has sought, labour has found, and
enterprise has encouraged, new engagements and
employments, more profitable and productive than
those which have been abandoned. Though the
value of some species of property has been
deteriorated, there has been a great augmentation
in the value of the whole. The wages of
labour have been raised, the population has
doubled, and the sum total of social happiness
has undoubtedly received a large addition.

The Devonshire woollen trade, though it has
abandoned its old central seat, is still successfully
carried on in some of the neighbouring
localities, where manufacturers have availed
themselves of the many modern mechanical
improvements which, though they have superseded,
or rather supplemented, manual labour in some
of its applications, have given it additional and
more remunerative employment in others.
Emancipation and freedom, instead of privilege and
protection, are becoming the watchwords of all
industry. The legislative props which supported
the rottenness of old monopolies are one after
another removed; the dams and sluices which
diverted the free waters from social to sinister
interests, are gradually disappearing;

                                                 —all the past
Melts, mist-like, into brighter hours, and these
Are morn to more.

THE STRENGTH OF A LITTLE FLOWER.

THIS INCIDENT IS RELATED IN THE "EXPERIENCES
OF A PRISON MATRON."

FROM the wicked woful streets
The prisoner is come
To do penance for wicked and woful deeds,
With the prison for a home.

She is callous, hard, and bold,
Reared in the ways of sin,
From her soul the woman seems driven out
And the devil entered in.

She has no belief in love,
You can rule her but by fear,
Speak to her gently in Christian-wise,
The reply is an oath or jeer.

Dark night had fallen down
On the darker night within
The prison's hard unflinching walls
That enclosed that world of sin.

I, in my nightly round,
Paused by that woman's door.
The silence of her stormy cell
Astonished me far more
Than oath or ribald shout or song
Her lips were wont to pour.

Propped on her sturdy arms
Her dark and sinful face
Was bent above the table bare;—
At once I marked the place

Whereon her gaze was fixed,
And there before her lay,
A daisy she had plucked by stealth
From out the yard that day.

And while I gazed, her face
Contracted as in pain,
And o'er her coarse and swarthy cheeks
Down fell the tearful rain.

And on her linkëd arms
Her heavy head fell low,
And sobs convulsed the woman's frame,
Bent with its load of woe.

Months upon months went by,
When one day I, by chance,
Took up the Bible in her cell,
And through the leaves did glance:

Between the pages spread,
The withered daisy lay.
God has a language of His own
We cannot write or say.

TWO GENTLEMEN USHERS.

ONE day, in the neighbourhood of Regent-
street, I was attracted by a lamp, projected
from one of the houses, bearing the words
"Scholastic Agency" upon it. Although diffident
as to the high class of appointments
likely to be met with here, I made bold to
enter, for I had been told that the best way
to read quietly and grind for Oxford was to
get quarters as tutor in a school. Up-stairs
I went, as directed by a hand and writing on
the wall, and in a room upon the first landing
found many persons assembled. There was a
table in the middle, at which sat a gentleman,
who reminded one of the men we occasionally
see playing the cornet-à-piston on the edge of
the pavement. He had a round head, covered
with long dirty black and grey hair, a moustache
and imperial. Near the window was a desk, at
which was seated a youth, busily engaged in
making entries into a book which lay before
him. The sofa and chairs were entirely occupied
by persons of depressed aspect, who looked
like foreign patriots awaiting sentence, yet
uncertain as to whether they were to be hanged
for treason or restored to freedom by a noble-
minded conqueror. The gentleman at the table
was "Professor Crotter;" the youth was his
clerk; the company assembled were members
if the noble army of ushers; or, as they would
put it, "gentlemen of the scholastic profession,"
waiting to be engaged by "principals" who were
in other rooms, and had at the moment other
gentlemen with them under examination.

The whole company of the unoccupied gentlemen
stared at me when I entered; their passive
countenances making a faint and melancholy
endeavour to express astonishment.

The gentleman at the table rose, made a
respectable shopman's bow, and desired me to
take a seat. I did so, and began to state my