only sufficed to authorise the occupation of a
building, and the preparation for a great
useful work. For means to plant the roses in
the garden, and to plant the roses in the
cheeks of many children besides those who
come under their immediate care, the Hospital
Committee has support to find.

So large a piece of garden-ground waiting
for flowers, only a quarter of a mile from
Holborn, was a curious thing to contemplate.
When we looked into the dead house, built
for the reception of those children whom skill
and care shall fail to save, and heard of the
alarm which its erection had excited in the
breasts of some " particular " old ladies in the
neighbourhood, we felt inclined to preach
some comfort to them. Be of good heart,
particular old ladies! In every street, square,
crescent, alley, lane, in this great city, you
will find dead children too easily. They lie
thick all around you. This little tenement
will not hurt you; there will be the fewer
dead-houses for it; and the place to which it
is attached, may bring a saving health upon
Queen Square, a blessing on Great Ormond
Street!

Is it too much to hope that in a few years
there will not be many students at the
Adult Hospitals in London who will fail to
contribute animation, by their frequent
presence at the Child's Hospital, to these deserted
pavements of a bygone fashion ? Is it too
much to believe that the little beds in the
great house will never be suffered to remain
empty, while there are little shapes of pain
and unrest to lie down in them; or that the
wilderness in the garden will be taught to
bloom with recovered infant health ? Who
that knows how sweet a part of home the
children are—who that knows how ill our
hearts can spare one child to Death, far less
the dreadful and reproachful thought of one
in three—can doubt the end of this so sorely
needed enterprise! Its way to the general
sympathy and aid, lies through one of the
broadest doors into the general heart; and
that heart is a great and tender one, and will
receive it.

NORTHERN LIGHTS AND—SHADOWS.

WE may look at Legendary Superstitions
as relics of our heathen times; as fragments
of the world's old dress which lie about in
little black rags, looking shabby enough under
the light of Christianity. We may look at
them also as wild and wilful creations of the
mind, and dive after the psychological phenomena
which they expound. We may trace
the same legend with surprise from land to
land, and find it now and then connecting
regions so remote, as to suggest many
valuable thoughts to the ethnologist. In fact,
wise men may handle legends to good
purpose in a serious and learned way. Moralists
may dwell upon the ignorance which they
reveal, as having entered so largely into the
composition of the good old times; and may
point out the huge sum of injustice and
cruelty which must have attended the working
of a superstitious system, which founded
upon trivial accidents suspicions, accusations,
condemnations. Then, if we have legends in
store, they are such capital things that, if
the owner be not disposed at any time to
philosophise or to moralise over them, he may
amuse himself by laughing over them, if it so
please his fancy. We may dwell on quaint,
wild, and extravagant inventions, which
caught the common taste, and have been
repeated with reverent and simple faith, by
credulous and ignorant folk over their hearths.

That is the use which we mean now to
make of certain volumes recently published
on Northern Mythology, by Mr. Benjamin
Thorpe, in which volumes are collected for
the use of moralists, philosophers, or lovers
of amusement, a large mass of the popular
traditions and superstitions of Scandinavia,
North Germany, and the Netherlands. The
Scandinavian we shall not touch, lest they
tempt us into mythological discussion. With
the Netherlandish we shall not greatly
concern ourselves, because they are horribly low-
spirited. Any one might tell that they came
out of the Low Countries by their flat,
depressing character. They want lightness of
fancy and ingenuity; most of them are little
better than nightmares. We prefer, therefore,
to go for legends to our cousins of
North Germany. Great numbers of the
superstitions of North Europe, as might be
supposed, exactly correspond with notions
that prevail among the ignorant in England.
In North Europe, however, it is to be remembered
that " the masses " are instructed, and
that these old notions and sayings exist now
among them chiefly in the form of customs,
humours and pleasant tales; while, in England,
our untaught millions receive such things in
sober, heathenish good faith.

The attention of naturalists is respectfully
directed to the following fact, which
satisfactorily accounts for the whiteness of the
cliffs at Dover. There is a ship, say the North
Frisian mariners, called Mannigfual. The
Mannigfual is a ship much larger than the
Great Britain. Its deck is so long that the
captain gallops over it on horseback to give out
his orders. The sailor boys who climb the
rigging have so far to go up that they come
down old men with grey hair and beards;
and, because they could not live through the
years till they were greybeards without
eating, the blocks in the cordage are made
hollow, and contain spacious refreshment-
rooms.—If all the ship be built in this
proportion, and the captain does his duty by her,
we are bound to feel compassion for his horse.
—This splendid vessel once forsook the pool
of the Atlantic, and attempted to steer
through the British Channel. Between Dover
and Calais the straits were found to be so