gone, and the audience begin to breathe
again, and whisper " Wonderful! " He goes
back to the singers' room, drinks one glass of
wine, swallows a biscuit as though it were a
pill, and tails into a stony sleep upon the
ottoman.

This man, with the sinewy vigorous frame
worn into rocks and caverns of bone, as if by
the volcanic upheaving of his soul within;
with the huge, Medusa-like head; the swelling
veins in his forehead; the eyes like abysses;
the face seamed, and scarred, and worn in
tempests of study, hunger, cold and misery;
looks as if he had newly come from some
combat with the demon, and had been
victorious, but had suffered horribly in
the fray. A dozen years ago Panslavisco
had as much genius, and played as learnedly,
sweetly, gracefully, boldly, nervously, wildly,
as he does now. But he played in a
garret, where he had no friends, no fire,
no body-linen, no bread, and where his land-lady
bullied him for his rent. Viragos
squabbling over a disputed right in a wash-tub
in a back-slum, have heard as fascinating
harmonies through a garret window held up
by a bundle of firewood, as princesses of the
blood hear now in the Nineveh Rooms.
Panslavisco has taught the harp to butchers'
daughters for scraps of meat; has fiddled in
low dancing-rooms, and played the piano-forte
at quadrille-parties, for a morsel of
bread. Now, they are all come. Fortune,
fame, sycophants to admire, beautiful women
to smile, lords to say, Come and dine. They
are all too late. They cannot bring back the
young wife, dead in a long slow agony; the
little children who faded one by one; they
cannot bring back the time when the man
had a heart to love and hope, and was twenty-one
years of age.

But, Heaven be good to us all. What have
I to do with this, unless to say with
Montaigne, Que sais-je? If I go to a concert
and pay half-a-guinea to hear a man play
upon a harp, am I to dogmatise upon
his inward feelings or his life? For all I
know, Panslavisco's morose, mysterious
exterior may be but a fastidious envelope, and
he may be, after all, a cheery, happy man. I
hope so.

The last concerted piece in the programme
has been performed, and the critics go home
to write out their opinions on Papadaggi's
grand morning concert. Much bonnet-adjusting,
music-hunting-for, and a little
flirtation, take place in the singers' room.
The imbecile young man falls savagely upon
the remnants of the wine and biscuits, and
becomes maudlin in a moment. Papadaggi
flits about joyfully with a cash-box, and a
slave of the lamp follows him with the check-boxes.
The concert is over. Papadaggi
asks the stars of the afternoon to come home
and dine with him. Some accept; some plead
other engagements. He wakes Panslavisco,
and asks him. The harpist does not decline
the invitation categorically.  He simply says
"Pay me, and let me go."

Let me go too.  Licet?

         CATCH-PENNIES.

THE edges of certain pavements in London
have become regular markets for
catch-pennies.

These catch-pennies are often so ingenious
and cheap as to deserve a better generic
name. There is a man who sometimes stands
in Leicester Square, who sells microscopes at
a penny each. They are made of a common
pill-box; the bottom taken out, and a piece
of window-glass substituted. A small eye-hole
is bored in the lid, and thereon is placed
the lens, the whole apparatus being painted
black. Upon looking through one of these
microscopes I was surprised to find hundreds
of creatures, apparently the size of earth-worms,
swimming about in all directions;
yet on the object-glass nothing could be seen
but a small speck of flour and water,
conveyed there on the end of a lucifer-match from
a common inkstand, which was nearly full of
this vivified paste. Another microscope
exhibited a single representative of the animal
kingdom showing his impatience of imprisonment
by kicking vigorously. Though I must
confess to a shudder, I could not help admiring
the beauties of construction in this little
monster, which, if at liberty, would have excited
murderous feelings, unfavourable to the
prolongation of its existence. The sharp-pointed
mouth, with which he works his diggings;
his side-claws, wherewith to hold on while
at work; and his little heart, pulsating
slowly but forcibly, and sending a stream of
blood down the large vessel in the centre of
his white and transparent body, could also be
seen and wondered at. When the stock of
this sort of game runs short, a common
carrot- seed is substituted; which, when
looked at through a magnifier, is
marvellously like an animal having a thick body
and numerous legs projecting from the
sides; so like an animal that it has
been mistaken by an enthusiastic philosopher
for an animal created in, or by, a chemical
mixture in conjunction with electricity.

I bought several of these microscopes
determined to find out how all this could be
done for a penny. An eminent microscopist
examined them, and found that the magnifying
power was twenty diameters. The cost
of a lens made of glass, of such a power,
would be from three to four shillings. How,
then, could the whole apparatus be made for
a single penny? A penknife revealed
the mystery. The pill-box was cut in two,
and then it appeared that the lens was made
of Canada balsam, a transparent gum,
The balsam had been heated, and carefully
dropped into the eye-hole of the pill-box. It
then assumed the proper size, shape,
transparency, and polish, of a very well ground glass