your only attendants, beastly, lazy, impudent
Hottentots; the only people you meet, a
sulky brute of a Dutchman, who scarcely
condescends to shake hands, and say, 'Goeden
dag?'—all this is to me very sickening, to say
nothing of the awful waste of time and
energy, spent in moving about like a snail,
with your house on your back. Light waggons,
with mules, are the things for this country;
they are already superseding bullock-waggons
at the Cape, and will here if my example is
followed."

INFANCY AND AGE.

SWEET is the light of infancy, and sweet
The glimmering halo round the brows of age!
But mystic more than beautiful are both!—
Mystic with angels' smiles and far-shed gleams
Of something much diviner than the full
Meridian,—something strange with wondrous
grace!
And both are kin. The faint horizon round
Which travels the dim globe from West to East
And binds in a ring of tender amethyst
The dying splendour with the dawning rose,
Is but the effluence of that which crowns
Their passage thro' the world; consummate day!
From angels' arms they come, to angels' arms
They go; young eyes that greet the growing beams,
And weary lids that watch them wink and fade,
Behold the same soft twilight of the sky;
The difference is but of morn and eve.
Fresh morn and fading eve! twin mothers dear,
Whose bosoms give the milk of mortal hours
To one and to the other, evermore—
Eternity, nursing them both as babes!
And both are babes!—one rock'd in the lap of life
And one in the lap of death!

LONDON SPARROWS.

A NICE light dinner at my club, to-day—no
politics after it—too wise for that—bad for
digestion at my age. I will go home at once.
As the evening is fine, I will take Cockspur
Street in my way, in order to have a look
at the window of Squires' (late Colnaghi and
Puckle's) print-shop. How it shines with rich
effects of light and shade!

Now, let me see. What is that? My
spectacles. So, I thought it was his. Carlo
Dolce's "Madonna colle Stelle." How
beautiful! how more than beautiful! A divine
light, like an inward tear, gleams in the eye,
as though the soul were melting with grief,
too sacred to be allowed to gush forth upon
the cheek, far less to fall upon the earth.
Moreover, the deep sorrow is tempered with
a resigned and loving sweetness—a looking
upward to One whose presence to her inspired
vision, or rapt and devout imagination, gives
balm and consolation to her mute heart's
anguish. A window full of prints like this,
and those of Paul and Dominic Colnaghi, and
one or two others——

But what is this fidgetting behind me—this
twitching at my coat-skirts? I turn round.
Nobody is behind me. There is nobody close
to me. Some people passing by—but not
near. I must have fancied it.

Anything new in the window, since I last
came by. Yes—"Les Saintes Femrnes vont
au tombeau du Christ." The painter, judging
by those two heads, for I don't recollect the
design—must be Raphael. Let me see—my
spectacles again. "Charles Landell, pinxit!"
Astonishing audacity! The deliberate
imitation in style and character of two of the
heads, and the direct robbery of the third!
This latter one is Raphael's "St. Anne."
Why, I know it as well as I know my own
face, and better. It is in Raphael's "Holy
Family" entitled "La Perle," and was, some
years ago, in possession of the King of Spain.
The cool and barefaced way in which artists
continually purloin——

There, again!—certainly something pushed
along close behind me; yet there's no crowd,
nor any one at my side. To be sure, at the
other end of the window-front there is a
little urchin looking in at a print. It could
not have been he. How earnestly he gazes
at Raphael's "Madonna, with the infant
Christ!" But now I look again at him, what a
face he has! what bad features and expression.
How can he feel any sympathy with what he
gazes upon. It must be mere curiosity. Yet
how intent he seems. He is very diminutive,
and cannot be above eight or nine years of
age; yet he has the face of a bad man of
fifty. He has a sallow complexion, a retreating
forehead, with dirty light hair, very
coarse and short. No cap; so that I see the
shape of his head, which is very small, and
compressed in front and at the sides, and
rises behind very high, and expands. His
nose is mean and pinched, with a sharp ridge,
his eyes very small, his cheek-bones and the
lower jaw, very large for such a child; his
mouth also is large, and projects, and his
chin juts out sharply—the little Tartar.
But what is this on the other side of me, and
close under my elbow? Another poor little
imp of about ten years of age. How
extremely plain—not to say ugly—street-
children often are! Their hard life and the
characters of their parents, causes it. This
child, who is now staring in at the window
upon a print of Sir Robert Peel, and flattening
his nose against the glass, has a forehead
"villanous low," with dark eyes, and short
dark hair, and his diminutive face, both in
features and expression, is uncommonly like
one end of a cocoa-nut.

What a sad lot for these children to be left
thus,—perhaps even turned adrift by their
parents, to wander about the streets, and pick
up, here and there, a precarious crumb!
And now, as I turn round, I see three others,
apparently in the same wretched outcast
condition—two boys and a girl. The elder boy
seems not to care much about it; he has, no
doubt, become more accustomed to his lot.
He is between twelve and thirteen. His voice