withheld my hand. I bent closer; my God! it was
the child's face itself, stained red, blood-red, as
the hot thick rain that had poured on my own,
that night of horror!

My wild shrieks, which I could not control,
brought up the servants, and I was carried back
to bed.

Another long dreary night of mingled terror
and stupor; another lingering at the portal of
death; another awaking. Harry was kneeling
by my bed when I opened my eyes and looked
round dreamily at first, then with recovering
consciousness.

"The child, Harry?" were the first words I
could whisper; " I dreamt it was dead, tell me
the truth."

He shook his head.

"It is gone; quite quietly; it is at rest. The
doctor tells me it could not have lived. It is
better so: think, Mary, of what life must have
been to it." I knew it was better so. But oh, it
was cruelly hard to bear!

Shortly after that Harry came into some
property unexpectedly, and immediately threw up
his appointment, and we came home.

I have now two other children, beautiful,
strong, and fair; but even while looking at them
with joy and pride, I cannot but sigh when I
think of the little blighted life of my first-born.

OLD STORIES RE-TOLD.

THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT ( JANUS
WEATHERCOCK), THE POISONER.

ONE of those pleasant winter evenings, when
fires burn frosty blue, and hearts grow warmer
as the weather grows colder. It is an evening
soon after the ascent to the throne of his Most
Gracious Majesty King George the Fourth.

A pleasant, merry, and highly intellectual
party are dining at the house of the publishers
of that clever periodical, the London Magazine,
in Waterloo-place, to celebrate the new
proprietorship. The cloth has been removed, the
glasses sparkle in the light of the wax-caudles,
the wine glows ruby and topaz in the fast-
revolving decanters, the oranges gleam golden,
the crystallised fruits glitter with jewelled frost,
the chesnuts, tight in their leather jackets, are
hoarding their warm floury meal for the palates
of poets and thinkers, puns are flashing in the air
like fireworks, smart sayings are darting past
like dragon-flies, even the gravest faces glow
and brighten. A ring of brilliants the party
resembles, for there is no one round the well-spread
table but has a name in the world of letters or in
the world of fashion. There is Charles Lamb,
now busy with his Elia, the finest essays ever
written: a little grave man in black, bul with the
face of a genius; Hazlitt is glorying in a Titian,
upon which he is expatiating; Thomas Hood,
with a face like that of an invalid Plato, is
watching for a pun like a fly-fisher waiting for
his cast. The Rev. H. Cary (the translator of
Dante), the mildest and gentlest of men, is ex-
plaining a passage of the Inferno to that fine,

vigorous Scotch poet, Allan Cunningham the
sculptor. Mr. Procter ( Barry Cornwall), in his
own kind, cheery way, is defending a fine passage
in Ben Jonson from the volatile flippancy of the
art-critic and gay dilettante of the magazine —
to wit, Janus Weathercock, otherwise Thomas
Griffiths Wainevright.

He is a fop and a dandy, but is clever, has a
refined taste, and is the kindliest and most, light-
headed creature in the world. He has run
through one fortune, has been in some dragoon
regiment, and no doubt distinguished himself
against the French— if he ever met. them.
He is on the wrong side of thirty, and
records his military career by that exquisitely
blue undress military coat he wears, all braided
and befrogged down the front. His cravat is
tied to a nicety. His manner most gallant,
insinuating, and winning. His face, however, is
by no means that of the mere dandy. His head
is massive, and widens at the back. His eyes
are deeply set in their orbits. His jaw is square
and solid. He seldom looks the person he talks
to full in the face. He has his hair curled every
morning (a stray ringlet or so left free), and
slightly stoops. His expression is at once
repelling and fascinating.

He is ubiquitous. Go to the Park, and you
observe him in his phaeton, leaning out with
his cream-coloured gloves and Jiis large turned-
down wristbands conspicuous over the splash-
board. Go to old Lady Fitzrattle's ball the same
evening, and you will see the fascinating creature
with the belle of the evening, gracefully revolving
in the waltz. In the club library he is
conspicuous; at the supper-party he is the
merriest and the gayest. He has fortunately
left us portraits of himself both at the coffee-
house and at home.

Let us see the charming man at nine o'clock
on a November evening, 1822. The diners at
George's Coffee-house, 213, Strand, then the
great resort of Kentish lawyers and men from
the Temple, are all gone but three — two young
barristers in the last box but one from the fire,
and next to them a fashionably dressed man
with the exquisite cravat, the square jaw, and
the deep-set eyes, that we at once recognise.
George's was famous for its soups and wines,
and Mr. VVainewright has dined luxuriously.
A bottle of the rarest wine he has sipped away
with supercilious pleasure. He now holds to
the candle, in an affected manner, displaying
carefully his white jewelled fingers, a little glass
of eau de vie de Dantzig, and is languidly watching
the little flakes, or, as he would call them,
"aureate particles," float, and glimmer in the
oily and glutinous fluid like scales of goldfish.
The voices in the next box catch his ear;
lie listens. The one Templar is reading to the
other with unction an article by Janus Weathercock
in the last London Magazine.

"Soothed into that desirable sort of self-
satisfaction so necessary to the bodying out those
deliriously voluptuous ideas perfumed with
languor which occasionally swim and undulate
like gauzy clouds over the brain of the most