year. It seems a dream to think that
I, too, have startled the woods with my
pistols, who now hurriedly and sadly tread
the broad flagstones of the London
pavement; that I, too, have reached my door,
giddy and burning, not with drink, but
with the excitement of the night's scene; and
that I have started from my pillow, when, in
the first deep sleep, I was sung awake by the
ghosts of last night's melodies, by the
reproduction of the music in an excited brain, the
plaintive ballading notes of—

"Ich hab' erfahren dass zwey jnnge junge Lent,
Ih hab' erfahren class zwey junge junge Lent,
Sich die Treue gebrochen."

"They tell me that two young young lovers,
They tell me that two young young lovers,
Their faith have broken."

There is a charm in those sounds—for I hear
them now—I hear them through all the
thundering noise of Piccadilly. This is not
imagination—the sounds are real! The love
and the sorrow of old days is upon me! You
poor little shivering Hessian girls! I went
out to forget my loneliness, and in the roar of
excited London, to take up from my heart
some token of the love and sorrow of old
days. I have found it in the sounds of home.
You come from a cellar in some dismal court
in Whitechapel. While you sing your native
songs to those that understand them not, you
think of your landlord's threats, and your
mother's anxious looks, and of your father,
who earns a shilling a-day, pent up in a cask
curing hareskins. Your voices tremble with
the cold, and the thought of your lightless,
supperless New Year's Eve. What is your clay's
gathering? Twopence, three half-pence, two
farthings, in your little frost-bitten hands?
It takes not much to drain an exile's purse;
but the little I have is yours, and welcome.
No thanks! Sing that song again, and let
me take it home with me, as a cheer and a
comfort to the German Exile's dark days in
London.

THE TRUE TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND.

WE all remember Tom Tiddler's Ground,
upon which, in our childhood, we used to
poach, "picking up gold and silver." At page
three hundred and fifty of our second, and
at page five hundred and ninety-five of
our third volume, it will be found that
we have called attention to the wealth
derivable from chemical products obtained
out of peat. As a source of wealth, the Irish
bogs are almost inexhaustible; and as a source
of comment in the pages of Household Words,
they are by no means exhausted yet. It is
pleasant to feel, as we have of late been
feeling, that we have on hand quite a little
glut of hopeful Irish subjects; of industrial
efforts from within, for the regeneration of
the country. There is the Small Proprietors'
Society, which has been recently commenced
by Irish gentlemen, in a most temperate and
able manner, with no reference to party
politics, but with the most earnest reference
to the well-being of the people. That has a
claim upon our space, which, we by no means
intend to put aside. Then, there is the Irish
Amelioration Society, with its works at
Derrymullen, county Kildare; and there are
also other enterprises for the extraction ot
gold, in the shape of peat fuel and charcoal,
out of Irish bogs. Ireland made really a
respectable display of industrial efforts at the
late Exhibition; and, the Repeal agitation
being defunct, it is pleasant to see that
industry and the employment of resources are
being now regarded as the true solution of the
Irish difficulty. Nature has scattered cheques
for very large amounts all over the Irish soil;
the bogs are very handsome cheques—but
until of late, there have been few to suggest
picking them up, and getting them converted
into cash.

In that desert corner of the Exhibition,
Class I., Mining and Mineral Products,
behind an ornament of Irish peat and potatoes,
the solitary wanderer might detect a little
pigeon-hole containing cakes. Not macaroons,
but cakes of more importance to society;
dark little compact cakes, clean and smooth
as chocolate, but not so good to eat; they
were in fact bog bannocks. They were baked
by the Great Peat-working Company of
Ireland, after the manner patented by Messrs.
Gwynne and Hays. According to this patent,
the wet peat, by the application of centrifugal
force, is dried almost immediately after it is
taken from the bog, and means are applied
also for the destruction of its fibrous texture.
Heat is then applied, whereby there becomes
developed in the peat its tarry constituent; it
is then compressed, so that it shall acquire
the density of coal; and the whole series of
processes comes to an end so rapidly, that
from the state of wet peat to the state of
hard polished cake, the period of transition
is not more than half an hour. These cakes are
peat fuel.

Peat fuel is said to produce a heat so
equably diffusible, as to beget more steam
than coal, when used under a boiler. It is used
by steamers plying on the Shannon, and for
engines generally in sundry places; where,
whatever may be the truth of the assertion
that it produces more steam, it is quite certain
that the boilers fired by it, last twice as long
as those fired in the usual way by coal. To
distillers, brewers, soap-boilers, sugar-refiners,
and others, as an advertisement might say,
this fuel is highly to be recommended; while
to families its cheapness, its prompt ignition,
and the ready and agreeable diffusion of heat
from it, make it really an advantageous
substitute for coal. Let us hint, too, that Irish
peat fuel may yet play an important part in
the development of steam communication
between Ireland and America.

Bog bannocks may be converted into charcoal;