Russia is thus a nuisance, a pest, a noxious
animal, a species of monstrously overgrown
vermin, a ravenous crab whose carapace, or
body-shell, is composed of large portions of the
continents of Europe and Asia, with two
grasping claws, called Sebastopol and Cronstadt,
ready to seize the first convenient prey,
and annex it as a material guarantee of
future plunder and partitions of Poland.
The Pope Emperor, with proper papistical
assumption and arrogance, gives himself
out for, and perhaps believes himself to
be, a sort of sacred scarabæus, whose office
is to mould the globe which he has clutched
in the embrace of his holy claws. This worthless,
case-hardened beetle has crept into the
midst of the European clock-work, preventing
it from keeping good time, and hindering
many of its internal movements. Shall we
wonder if some tooth, or cog, of the
machinery catch the intruder, crush him, and
utterly break him up on the wheels whose
equilibrium he has thus destroyed?

Once upon a time, there was a tolerably
healthy Body, with no other complaint than
a tendency to plethora, whose Members had
heard of the famous revolt raised against the
Belly by a former generation of Members two
or three thousand years ago. They thought
they would get up a little insurrection of
their own, and manage it better than their
ancestors. Their pride had taken serious
offence, because a certain central ruling
Power, who called himself the Heart, had
urged upon them that, in his eyes, all the
Members were of equal rank. They loudly
murmured that the stream of life should be
forced to flow through all alike. The Legs
said—"Shall we receive blood that has mingled
with the Feet, who have walked in the dirt!"
The Arms said—"Shall we who labour, receive
blood from the Legs, who do nothing
but carry burdens?" The Hands said—
"Shall we—who are artists, musicians, sculptors
—shall we deign to admit the slightest
admixture from the Arms, who are merely
vulgar workmen?" The Head said—"Shall
I, who think and govern, suffer contamination
by arterial introductions from all sorts of
inferior Members?—from the Feet, who daily
plod through the mire,—from the Legs, who
earn their livelihood by a porter's trade—
from the Arms, who are artisans, and barely
that—from the Hands, whom I patronize,
and to whom I give commissions for works of
art? No! Sooner let me perish, than stoop
to such degradation as that!" So they each
decided to keep themselves quite to themselves,
and to get up a private and exclusive
circulation, that should be strictly confined
within their own circle. For a little while—
a very little while—all went apparently well.
But soon, each Member became livid and cold,
a clammy sweat broke out over their surface,
and a deadly crisis was fast impending, when
the Heart spoke out in severe and threatening
tones of warning.

"Fools! know ye not that ye are one?
That ye are many Members of one Body,
though all Members have not the same office,
and that ye are every one Members one of
another? The life of one is the life of all,
and the blood of one is the blood of all.
Cease, then, your impious jealousies. Receive
cheerfully the common life-blood, from whatever
quarter it may travel through your
veins. Only obey the dictates of the Heart,
and ye shall live; ye shall not die!"

BY RAIL TO PARNASSUS.

I AM a poor clerk, who, being out of
employment, was on that morning travelling to
Southampton to present myself to the firm of
Heavahoy Brothers, in some little hope of
procuring occupation in their counting-house.
To my eyes things were dreary down below,
for I am thirty-five years old, and do not
see my way yet to a marriage with poor Lucy
Jane whose first love-letter to me was dated
in the year one thousand eight hundred and
thirty-nine. I have been earning my own
living for seventeen years, and have saved up
to this date eighty-one pounds two shillings
and ninepence. Nevertheless, Lucy Jane's
friends, who are exceedingly respectable,
consider me unable to keep myself, and still less
able to keep a wife. What does the great
world care about that? Nothing at all, to be
sure, and yet it is to my purpose to say so
much, for I desire it to be seen whether I
had not full reason to be dismal on that
morning of which I speak. Hopes and fears
as to the success of my application to the
Heavahoys had kept me awake all night.
There are foreign agencies connected with
their house for which my ambition was, if I
once entered the service of the firm, to become
qualified. With a view to some such opening
I had been learning Spanish. My hope had
come to be that I might some day carry Lucy
Jane to Buenos Ayres, or some other distant
place. No matter. I lay awake all night
and rose, unrefreshed, at an uncomfortable
hour. I left a half eaten breakfast to hurry
to the Waterloo Road, running through rain
in close May weather, with a great coat on
my back, a carpet-bag in one hand and an
umbrella in the other. I arrived at the station
hot, damp, weary, wretched, and took my
place in a third-class carriage with a
discontented man close at my elbow and a crowd
of noisy market people round about. I looked
forward to the journey with dread. I was
eager to be at the other end, and we were bound
to lag on the road, stopping at every station.

The first bell had rung. Suddenly it
occurred to me that I would have a book. It
was long since I had added one to the small
stock from which I got solace of evenings in
my lodgings. I had saved two shillings in
cab-hire, and I was saving more than five
shillings by travelling third-class. For my
run through the wet and my discomfort on