palpable fogs, that you could cut with a knife, or
bottle up for future inspection. In those fogs
vessels ran each other down on the river;
link-boys were in immense request; carriages
and four drove into chemists' shops and over
bridges; and in the counting house of Messrs.
Bingo, Mandingo, and Flamingo, where I was
a small boy, copying letters, we burnt candles
in the rusty old sconces all day long. I saw
a fog, a real fog, the other day, travelling per
rail from Southampton; but it was a white
one, and gave me more the idea of a balloon
voyage, than of the fog de facto.

Gone with the fogs are the link-boys, the
sturdy, impudent varlets, who beset you on
murky nights with their flaming torches,
and the steady-going, respectable, almost
aristocratic link-bearers, with silver badges
often, who had the monopoly of the doors of
the opera, and of great men's houses, when balls
or parties were given. I knew a man once
who was in the habit of attending the nobilities'
entertainments, not by the virtue of an invitation,
but by the grace of his own indomitable
impudence, and by the link-boys' favour. An
evening costume, an unblushing mien, and a
crown to the link-boy, would be sufficient to
make that worthy bawl out his name and
style to the hall-porter; the hall-porter would
shout it to the footman; the footman yell it
to the groom of the chambers; while the
latter intoning it for the benefit of the lady
or gentleman of the house, those estimable
persons would take it for granted that they
must have invited him; and so bowing and
complimenting, as a matter of course, leave
him without restriction to his abominable
devices, in the way of dancing, flirting, écarté
playing, and supper-eating. Few and far
between are the link-boys in this present
1852. The running footmen with the
flambeaux have vanished these many years;
and the only mementos surviving of their
existence are the blackened extinguishers
attached to the area railings of some
old-fashioned houses about Grosvenor Square.
With the flambeaux, the sedan-chairs have
also disappeared; the drunken Irish chair-
men who carried them; the whist-loving old
spinsters, who delighted to ride inside them.
I have seen disjecta membra — venerable ruins,
here and there, of the sedan-chairs at Bath, at
Cheltenham, at Brighton; but the bones
thereof are marrowless, and its eyes without
speculation.

The old articles of furniture that I loved,
are things departed. The mirror, with its
knobby gilt frame, and stunted little branches
for candles, the podgy eagle above it, and
its convex surface reflecting your face in an
eccentric and distorted manner; the dumb
waiter, ugly and useful; the dear old spinnet,
on which aunt Sophy used to play those
lamentable pieces of music, the " Battle
of Prague" and the "Caliph of Bagdad;"
the old chiffonnier, the "whatnot," and the
" Canterbury;" the work-box, with a view of
the Pavilion at Brighton on the lid; the
Tunbridge ware, (supplanted now by vile,
beautifully-painted, artistical things of papier-
maché, from Birmingham, forsooth,)— gone,
and for ever.

Even while I talk. whole crowds of "things
departed" flit before me, of which I have
neither time to tell, nor you patience to hear.
Post-boys, wax-ends from the palace, "Dutch-
pugs, black footmen, the window-tax, the Palace
Court, Gatton, and Old Sarum!  What will go
next, I wonder?  Temple-Bar, Lord Mayor's
Day, or the "Gentleman's Magazine?"

Well, well: it is all for the best, I presume.
These trivial things that I have babbled of,
have but departed with the leaves and the
melting snow—with the hopes that are
extinguished, and the ambition that is crushed—
with dear old friends dead, and dearer friendships
severed. I will be content to sit on the
milestone by the great road, and, smoking my
pipe, watch the chariot of life, with Youth on
the box and Pleasure in the dicky, tear by
till the dust thrown up by its wheels has
whitened my hair, and it shall be my time to
be numbered among the things departed.

HOW CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME,
NEAR HAMBURG.

ABOUT three miles from Hamburg there is
an institution called the Rauhe Haus (the
Rough House), which consists in substance of
certain detached huts and buildings prettily
scattered among trees and flower-plots, all
tenanted by men and boys. Once upon a time—
and that no very distant time — there was here
but a single cottage, which, having no
resemblance to a marble hall, was styled the Rauhe
Haus.  There dwelt in it, with his mother, a
certain Pastor Wichern, who, having nothing
like a marble heart, received into his home
three outcast boys, that he might train and
save them. The energy of goodness made this
first act of benevolence a living seed. The
Rauhe Haus is now a famous institution, which
includes, upon its small domain of thirty acres,
Pastor Wichern and his wife, seven young
clergymen not yet in orders, thirty-five artisans
or " Brothers," and some master workmen;
five deaconesses, and a hundred children ;
about seventy of these being boys, and thirty
girls.

The children are of a class somewhat similar
to that which forms the congregation at our
Ragged schools. Quite similar we cannot say,
because anything quite like, or nearly like, the
misery of English pauper children, does not
exist in any other Protestant community in
the whole round of the world. Children are
not often taken to the Rauhe Haus out of a
prison, though they are sent thither when
convicted of small offences, instead of being
sent to gaol. The object at the Rauhe Haus
is not only, by a pure and Chiistian discipline,
to save these outcast children, and create
them into ministers of good, but also to