took a walking-stick solemnly into his hand,
and sat down before them with cheeks puffed
out and ridiculous dignity.
He was mad.

V.

THE game was up for Coram, just as she
was winning, too; which was the more
provoking. In a comfortable and select
establishment for lunatics Old Gringe sojourned
for the remainder of his days, having at last
to be measured for a strait-waistcoat; he
gave so much trouble. In this uneasy
garment he one day raved out of the world,
with all his sins upon his head; leaving not
so much as a ghost of a will behind him.
So little Jen got all. And, if any care to
know what she did with it, we can tell them
that she did not forget those two wild step-
sisters, Sue and Sal; nor would she have
forgotten Tom and Gill, only they had gone
to the dogs long before. She even offered a
share of her wealth to wicked Coram; who
actually went out as a governess in respectable
families where there were widower
fathers.

MINERVA BY GASLIGHT.

LADIES tell us that they do not look well
by gaslight, except when their daylight
charms are questionable. Minerva, being
commonly regarded as a studious and sallow
dame, may be one of those who ought
to look well under gas. But the common
opinion about Minerva is a libel on the
ruddiest and cheeriest, the busiest and
happiest of all the goddesses. She stands for
wholesome occupation of the mind. There
are, to be sure, people who spend their lives
in covering their persons in flimsy attire, and
in enveloping their minds with the dust off
old books; whose hearts leap up at the sight
of black letter, because it is crooked, and
not because there lie throbbing under it the
straggles and the aspirations of the far-off
past. The motives to the effort made by
generation after generation, for the rolling
of the great stone of human society up to
its present place on the hill of Difficulty, at
the top of which, we take for granted,
there is everything that mankind desires.

The true Minerva, the true spirit of study,
is no crabbed genius with fishy eyes and
a mask of dirty parchment. She is radiant
with hope: blooming with exercise. She
kindles enthusiasm in the youth who puts his
shoulder to that heavy stone. She believes
in work; but it is in happy work that she
believes: in work done for the love of man,
woman, and child; in work done for the love
of all that is bright and pure, and holy; in
work done for the love of God who (let us
ever thank Him for it!) made this world a
work-a-day one.

Upon a steady, practical spirit of work
among men, the progress of society depends.
There are many aids to it in England, and
we do not forget fifty others, because to-day
we make mention of only one. There is a
college in London—King's College—which
formally takes Religiously and Wisely for its
motto, and makes a direct effort to animate
with spiritual thoughts its course of study.
Most of the religious bodies in this country
have institutions in which they speak to the
young after the manner of their hearts, and
there is the same matter in all who do this
earnestly.

King's College, London, has long been opening
its doors during daylight to class after
class; prompt to supply any special instruction
of which a want is indicated as society moves
onward. It trains the scholar and the
surgeon or physician. Years ago, when the
profession of the engineer became important,
it opened a department for the engineer and
architect, which was at once widely accepted
as the answer to a want. It provided law
courses, when the better training of young
lawyers was demanded. It opened a military
department when the neglected education of
the officer became an evil, asking for its
remedies. In this spirit the college worked,
and its Minerva was a wholesome goddess,
handsome enough in the sunshine. Then it
occurred to somebody within the college
walls that the machinery of education, working
steadily till sunset, still did not perform
all that it might.

When all doors of colleges were locked,
and the great public libraries were closed,
young men with aspirations hardly to be
satisfied were thrown loose on the solitary
lodgings or the streets of London; young
men who had been withdrawn from school as
soon as they had really learnt the use and
need of mental training, who had been
distributed among the public offices and counting-
houses there to toil and dream of heights
that they might climb if they were not
denied equipment for the difficult ascent.
"Let us open doors to these," said Mr. J. W.
Cunningham, the college secretary; and his
proposal was, in due time, heartily responded
to by the Principal, adopted by the Council,
backed by the Professors. It was an opening
not only of college doors; but it was an opening
of doors into a higher life for hundreds of
men who have since shown how prompt and
how able they were to pass over the threshold
when the bolts were once withdrawn. The
evening classes at King's College were, in this
spirit, opened for the first time in the month
of October, eighteen hundred and fifty-five.
That was the first month of college by
gaslight in the Strand.

In justice to other institutions labouring
in a good cause, we must say at once that
these are not the only evening-classes open to
young men in London. There are such
classes at Crosby Hall, and they are well
conducted; but they set up a different and
lower standard of education, and they offer