lift her tenderly up into a comfortable position;
her daughter's hands might bathe her
face; but she knew them not. She would
never recognise them again, till they met in
Heaven.

Before the morning came all was over.

Then Margaret rose from her trembling
and despondency, and became as a strong
angel of comfort to her father and brother.
For Frederick had broken down now, and all
his theories were of no use to him. He
cried so violently, when shut up alone in his
little room at night, that Margaret and
Dixon came down in affright to warn him to
be quiet; for the house-partitions were but
thin, and the next-door neighbours might
easily hear his youthful passionate sobs, so
different from the slower trembling agony of
after-life, when we become inured to grief,
and dare not be rebellious against the
inexorable doom, knowing who it is that
decrees.

Margaret sate with her father in the room
with the dead. If he had cried, she would
have been thankful. But he sate by the bed
quite quietly; only from time to time he
uncovered the face, and stroked it gently,
making a kind of soft inarticulate noise, like
that of some mother-animal caressing her
young. He took no notice of Margaret's
presence. Once or twice she came up to kiss
him; and he submitted to it, giving her a
little push away when she had done, as if
her affection disturbed him from his absorption
in the dead. He started when he heard
Frederick's cries, and shook his head:—
"Poor boy! poor boy! " he said, and took no
more notice. Margaret's heart ached within
her. She could not think of her own loss in
thinking of her father's case. The night was
wearing away, and the day was at hand,
when, without a word of preparation,
Margaret's voice broke upon the stillness of the
room, with a clearness of sound that started
even herself: ''Let not your heart be
troubled," it said; and she went steadily on
through all that chapter of unspeakable
consolation.

THE GREAT RED BOOK.

I SING a book. Not that famous Livre
Rouge—that historical red-book which was
found behind the secret panel in the palace
at Versailles, when Marie Antoinette was
rescued by the Count de Fersen from the
infuriated mob that sought her in her
bedchamber to slay her. Not Webster's Royal
Red-book, as performed in the Theatre Royal
Adelphi, in a vaudeville form, with a strong
family likeness to the "Almanach des Vingt-
cinq mille Adresses." Not the Court Guide,
that slim, hot-pressed epitome of gentility.
Not the dog's-eared, greasy, dingy red book,
whose original cost was twopence, but which,
by the mysterious agency of "tick," is made
to become the representative of pounds—the
red book that the housekeeper wots of, and
that the unsatisfied butcher shakes vengefully.
Nor the Red Book specially so called,
containing a list of every government situation,
with the names of the holders thereof, from
the Prime Minister to the hall-porter. But a
Great Red Book, ornamented with the royal
arms in gold,—a book not unlike outwardly
one of her Majesty's mail-coaches;—a book
now in the fifty-sixth year of its age;
enormously large, prodigiously thick, wondrously
heavy;—a book that if it held the
biographies and characters of men as well as
their names would be the greatest repertory
of human knowledge in the world; a book
really marvellous in conception, execution,
and actual existence—in a word, the Post-
office London Directory for eighteen hundred
and fifty-five.

The old mail coach—peace be, as pleasant
memories are, to its ashes—is gone. The
valiant old scarlet vehicle with its four blood-
horses, so brave in ribbons on May-day; so
defiant of footpads and highwaymen, in the
blunderbuss of its guard, and the pocket
pistols of its coachman—so blatant of its
royalty and its maildom in the loud
fanfaronade of its horn, so exorbitant in its
charges, so boastful of its speed, and yet, oh!
so slow—that coach is gone to the limbo of
"flying" coaches, post chaises, and stage-
waggons. The royal mail carried ofttimes
peers of the realm inside; bankers, quakers,
and old ladies. Outside rode tradesmen,
servants, clerks, and governesses; and the
four blood-horses drew for the nonce,
representatives of the court, finance, commerce,
small trades, and genteel professions. In the
boot were the fate-pregnant letter-bags,—the
bags that had held ten million hopes, fears,
promises, smiles, tears, lies, and false witnesses—
the bags that held in sealing-waxed foolscap, the
counterfeit presentment of the quarrels of royal
dukes, and the loves of Dusty Bob and Black
Sal, of fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers,
maids, wives and widows. The Royal Mail
starts no more in its glorious unity of scarlet
and gold from St. Martin's-le-Grand. A
mechanical, shrieking, whistling, smoking,
panting steam-engine has superseded the
coach and blood-horses. A man in a guernsey
and a fur cap, smelling woundily of train
oil, reigns in the stead of the bluff coachman.
A railway guard, ah, me! a prosaic rider in
breaks, and blower of whistles, has pushed
the mail guard, in his scarlet frock and tops
with his horn and blunderbuss, from his box.
I could weep when I think of this pleasant
old institution departed, were I not consoled
in descrying a sort of fanciful resemblance to
the Royal Mail in the Great Red Book before
me. It has the scarlet and gold, the Royal
arms, the Post-office imprimatur. Its
advertisements in the daily press may serve for its
horn; the copyright act securing it from
piracy may pass for its protective blunderbuss;
and its thousands of pages, recording