Ethnological Researches of the learned
German: to their good parent was allowed the
usor of the Remains of the admired Henry
Bunter, M.D. (with anatomical plates), in
lieu of the vigorous Perry Letters. The
Scientific Travels, with meteorological tables,
temperatures, age of the moon, &c. &c., it is
well known reached a widow member of the
society. While the great Mr. Whilkers was
put off with light magazines! Wretched
Hoblush! Well may you chant Ai! ai! from
the Greek chorus, in the dead of the night.

For only conceive for an instant how it
stood with that Honourable sprig, Miss
Begley. Not so long before, there had been
a tart discussion betwixt her and Reverend
Hoblush on matters of religion, and with
an antagonistic fury. That divine, it was
whispered, fancied exceedingly the air of
Saint Barnabas; was not disinclined to the
burning of artificial light: but the Honourable
Virgin! Was not her cousin the scriptural
Bishop of Mull and Skye? Conceive,
then, be it said again, when the Remains of
Reverend Daniel Budge, some time minister of
Zion Chapel—the wildest of dissenters, a
straggler in doctrine, an unctuous open air
divine—who before now had not grown dizzy
upon a mild elevation of a tub—was sent to
her, with Reverend Alfred Hoblush's
compliments! Wretched man! Ai! ai! for
thee again! Better thou hadst never been
born!

It is almost superfluous to mention, that the
name of the Honourable Virgin was at once
peremptorily withdrawn. In her just excitement,
she demanded restitution of moneys;
forgetful, good soul! that she had omitted
handing in to the Honorary Secretary the
amount of her yearly subscription.

Again, how was it with the Misses Caiphas 1
Had not Captain Tilbury been bidden
expressly to dinner, to give a lecture, as it were,
upon Pumpkins and Melons, and to point
out resemblances to brother officers in the
illustration?  Was it wonderful that the
gloom and ill-humour of the Captain settled
with interest upon the devoted head of
Hoblush? Ai! ai! once more for the
miserable curate! When he got alone among
the infuriated damsels they went nigh to
tearing him in pieces with those gentle
tongues of theirs.

At the next committee meeting there was
a storm—a riot. Hoblush was mobbed as at
a railway meeting. In a strange absence of
mind, every man and woman shrieked to
have his or her money back. They had never
paid; but the trusting Hoblush had paid a
whole year in advance.

With time, things did not mend. With
the second box came only more lumber.

But the result to Brookrudder society was
the most disastrous part of the whole. That
social system became of a sudden convulsed
to its centre. It was shaken and broken into
schism. Naturally enough, the Lady
Whilkers espoused—figuratively, of course—
the Reverend Alfred Hoblush. Naturally
enough, too, the Honourable Virgin Begley,
went into open hostility. The oriflamme was
unfurled. There were two camps formed;
to the one side or to the other, as they listed,
men and women clove. Between the two
stools, Reverend Alfred Hoblush fell to the
ground and dislocated his back.

In this fashion, the Brookrudder Book
Society became extinct, collapsing noisily,
like a bursten wind-bag.

TEN ITALIAN WOMEN.

IN thirteen hundred and forty-seven the
wife of Giacomo Benincasa, a poor dyer of
Siena, became a mother for the twenty-fifth
time, bringing into the world, as her present
and last contribution to the Sienese population,
a pair of sickly little girls, one of whom
died a few days after its birth; but the
other lived and became diseased and famous.
From an early age this diseased, cataleptic
child showed signs and symptoms of the
extraordinary grace that was in her; at
seven devoting herself to perpetual maidenhood,
beseeching the Blessed Virgin to give
her son to her for a husband; and at twelve
importuning the Mantellate di Santo Dominico
—the Cloaked-Women of Saint Dominic—
to receive her as one of them, so that she
might more thoroughly carry out her vow.
They, not being an inclosed order, but each
living in her own house, had made it a strict
rule to admit only widows and elderly
persons among them; but, in consideration of
the young Caterina's piety and ugliness, they
relaxed this rule for her benefit, granted her
prayer, admitted her as a Mantellata, and,
from that hour, the fortune of the various
Dominican orders was made. Her confessor,
too, the Blessed Raimondo di Capua, was a
Dominican, and in his clever hands young
Caterina's cataleptic availabilities were
developed to the utmost, and a blow struck at
the supremacy of the Franciscans from which
they have never quite recovered. For this
exaltation of the Dominicans, and consequent
depreciation of their rivals, the
Franciscans, was the hidden political meaning of
the saintship of Caterina Benincasa, the dyer's
daughter of Siena.

Opening into what was formerly the living
room of the family, but which is now a
hallowed chapel with Virginea Domus
engraved above it, ingenuous visitors are still
shown a small dark closet nine feet long by
six wide, wherein is neither window nor
chimney, neither light nor air, but which
served Caterina for her bed chamber all the
years of her self-torturing life. Here, on the
bare brick floor, resting her head on a stone
pillow, the future saint indulged in her
trances and her ecstacies, her catalepsy and
her sufferings, her dreams, and her visions;
and here she held her daily interviews with