past; and yet blessings be upon it, if it has
been the price of the future!" The future was
happiness both to him and to Albertina.

As plain unostentatious man and wife,
they henceforth lived in the cottage part of
the year, and in the finest seasons took pleasant
tours to different parts of Europe.

The conclusion of the history of the great
political movement which caused the ultimate
downfal of the amiable "tyrant" of Hesse
Minnigissengen is soon told. By twelve
o'clock on the day upon which the Prince
fled there were eight princes of Hesse
Minnigissengen; that evening there were
exactly thirty-two. On the following morning,
the Prince's uncle—who had gladly
accepted his nephew's offer—sent over to
Minnigissenbourgh an armed force, consisting
of a corporal and ten men; which, in the brief
space of two hours, effectually, and for ever,
nipped the budding germs of the great
Minnigissenbourgh revolt.*
* The outline of this tale is taken from an amusing
French novellette.

THE BUILDER'S HOUSE, AND THE
BRICKLAYER'S GARDEN.

BY AN EYE-WITNESS AND SUFFERER.

I LIVE in a damp house. Nothing can cure
it. The form, or outline, of my house is in
the usual bad modern taste, or rather the
usual no-taste of the great mass of trading
builders of the day; and at the back there is
a bit of garden, enclosed by three walls, and
"laid out" for me in the usual no-taste of
hard straight lines. My second floor back
window commands a view of a long row of
new houses, which will inevitably be as damp
as my own. Each has its garden—all exactly
alike, and as hard-favoured and graceless as
mine. This is no sort of consolation to me.
On the contrary, by reason of my sympathy
with those who will become their tenants,
they multiply my own grief and indignation.
As I have watched the rise and progress of
the whole row, day by day, from the very
first brick (every morning during the
intervals of shaving), I am enabled to record
the same, in the hope that it may be of some
little public service.

I should premise, that by the term of
"builder," I do not so much refer to the
regularly trained master of the craft, who
often works under an architect, and always
upon sound regular principles (though he is
frequently guilty, like the rest), as to that
very large class, who, having risen by their
industry and skill as master bricklayers,
ought to have remained in that position, and
not to have started forward as the builders
of heaps of houses and innumerable streets,
filling our extensive suburbs with ill-drained,
incommodious, damp, and shapeless abodes.
"Living in a free country," of course this
cannot be prevented; the only way, therefore,
to bring about a salutary reform in these
matters, is to make the public more alive to
the evil, and more wary than people usually
are—in taking a house. It is more especially
needful to be cautious at this time, when the
expectation of a million or two of additional
visitors in London, from the provinces no less
than from the continent of Europe (Mr.
Thomas Miller, of Edinburgh, has put forth a
calculation that there will be seven millions of
visitors), is causing new blocks of houses, and
streets upon streets, to be "run up" with a
rapidity which may very well accord with the
new building principles of iron and glass, but
is very unsuitable to the old principles of
bricks and mortar.

But, to the point. I live in a damp house
—ugly in shape, with a shapeless garden—and
I have taken it for a lease of seven years. A
friend of mine recently took a house in the
country on a lease. It was in the summer
that he took it, as I did mine, and it was then
dry enough; but in winter was so damp
that he was obliged to shut it up, and
when he went to look at it in the spring,
mosses and fungus had grown from the
ceilings on the ground-floor, and a colony
of toadstools had risen up in the dining-room
corners. I am more fortunate than that.
By dint of fires in almost every room, I can
live in my house all through the winter; but
there is a thick mist and bloom upon the
painted walls and wainscoats—the walls of all
the rooms are so damp that prints mildew
upon them, and the paper bulges and wants
to be peeled off; while the painted stair-case
walls are covered over with caricatures and
other finger-drawings made by my children
in the moisture, as high as they can reach,
and these are duly obliterated by the rills
and streams that, every now and then, pour
down from above. Paper will not hold at all on
the walls of the ground-floor; there is a mist
or a fog in every room, except the kitchen,
and wherever there is a mat or a bit of
carpet laid down upon the bricks, it becomes
perfectly mouldy in the course of a week, and
covered over with red worms, and slugs, or
other creatures, who get through the crevices
beneath, and cling to it for warmth. Such is
the house, which I took one fine summer's
day on a seven years' lease; two only having
at present expired.

My garden is enclosed by five walls, of
unequal length and height, and, instead of the
beds and walks, being "laid out," with some
view to this necessary outline, and to hide it,
or make the best of it, the very reverse of
this is done;—the eye being either led up to
each wall by the bed or walk, repeating the
same angle, or else a bed is made having no
relation to anything, and a shapeless patch or
heavy lump in itself. Then, in digging in any of
these beds, the most unlooked-for impediments
have been encountered. Broken bricks, of
all sizes, and fragments of stone innumerable;
bits of wood (lying cross-ways beneath the