The world lies night-mared. And, for ever and ever,
The spurn'd and trampled man shall turn to me,
As to some glorious terror in the skies,
And shall cry out, "I thank thee, oh, Kabeel!
I thank thee for the deed which thou hast done,
And for the deed which I will do, thus taught
By thy supreme example!"—Oh, thou Night,
Now darkening: down from the utmost peak of Heaven,
And closing with black lids upon the west!
I charge thee, stare out with thy million eyes
To see the advent of this mystery, Death.
For Death is coming to wed the virgin world!
This hand holds Death! There shall be Death ere
morn!

A VERY LITTLE HOUSE.

IT was my fortune, not long ago, to spend
a few weeks with a certain Miss Oldtown—
a kind old maiden-lady, residing in one of
those miraculously small houses which
speculating builders are so profusely scattering
all over England. These little abodes haunt
the outskirts of all our towns, and occasionally
startle the traveller by appearing with
extraordinarily white, new, and glaring fronts,
between the tallest, oldest, and dingiest houses
in the very midst of the towns themselves.
They spring up in our lanes and our turnip
fields, and surround every railroad station,
presenting to the eye confusing rows of little
street doors, and little knockers, and little
stone steps, and little chimneys, and little
gardens; but, however numerous, they are all
inhabited as soon as built. It was long a question
with me, whether the inhabitants of these
little houses were real full-grown substantial
English people? How could they, and
their sofas, and tables, and piano-fortes get
into them through such tiny doors? Could
they stand upright in the sitting rooms?
Could they lie at full length in the bedrooms?
Where do they stow their spare
clothes, their coals, and the "few friends"
they so often invite to tea?

I could not answer these questions satisfactorily
until Miss Oldtown invited me to
stay with her. I packed up the smallest
trunk I could by any means persuade to contain
my clothes, and started for number
sixty-three, High Street, Knollington, Surrey,
fully determined to penetrate to the very
bottom of the mystery, or perish in the
attempt.

I alighted from the train, at the Knollington
station, and found myself in a very young
outskirt of the town. Buildings which had
evidently been once upon a time picturesque
cottages, had made themselves square and
smooth, and had put up smart window
blinds, and slate roofs, and were in short
aping their betters in every possible way.
Then I passed a very new church of very old
architecture, a new rectory of very uncomfortable
architecture, and a new school-house of
no architecture at all: then, of course, you
come to the inevitable "semi-detached villas"
that turn so sulkily away from each other, as
if they had been attached once but had
thought better of it and parted. They
are so bright, neat, new, and resplendent,
with such fine plate-glass windows, that
they make you feel quite shabby in your
travelling dress, and you long to hide your
diminished rays as you pass them. Then an ancient
house will come into sight: an old rambling
two-storied building, the first floor beginning
far below the present level of the street, and
the second threatening to fall down into it.
Then come poor shops, then grander ones;
then a few scattered private houses, neither
young nor old, rich nor poor—strange, dull,
silent, curtain-drawn places. Are they
warehouses? or what sort of people live in those
old fashioned, comfortable, independent-looking
buildings, that make blanks so often in
the busiest parts of the busiest street of our
country towns?

But I have nothing to do with them.
Miss Oldtown is my friend, and she lives in
one of the doll's houses of which there are
three in the very middle of the High Street,
squeezed into small gaps between the shops.
Two of these are on one side of the street, and
one—Miss Oldtown's—stands in solitary
grandeur on the other. It is intensely white, and
has about three feet and a half of lawn in front
of it, protected by intensely green iron railings.
It is three-storied, displaying three windows,
one above the other; the lowest containing a
canary cage with a very old canary—which I
long believed to be stuffed—inside it; the
next containing a small table supporting a
vase of artificial flowers, for the better display
of which the muslin blind is removed;
and the third permitting a glimpse of a toilet
looking-glass. These signs sufficiently indicate
to the intelligent observer, that on the
ground floor there is a small dining-room,
with a small kitchen behind it, and a smaller
scullery behind that; a small drawing-room
over the small dining-room, with a very
small bed-room behind it (my castle during
my visit); a small bed-room over the small
drawing-room, with a small cupboard called a
dressing-room behind it; and, over all, a small
loft, with a small window at the back, wherefrom
the small maid Susan, whose apartment
it is, enjoys an extensive view of small back
premises, scullery yards, wet linen, dirty
windows, chimneys and soot. In short, the
only difference between the rooms is that
which exists between the words small,
smaller, and smallest. The furniture is so
little, that one cannot help thinking it must
be very young and will grow up by and by,
and become stronger and more robust; and
everything is so tiny and delicate that, in the
midst thereof, one feels one's self a sort of
giant. A lion in a canary cage could not feel
more out of place than I did at first in Miss
Oldtown's house. I felt so much too large;
I was quite ashamed of my height (I am five
feet two), and began to think that I must