Where a sick child doth watch, and so beguile
The pain-drawn lips to curve into a smile,
And brighten its dull eyes a little while.

And seeing all that one small drop might do,
He felt why cloister'd thus the blossom grew,
And why so late it wore the morning dew;

And, with a lighter heart, he went his way,
Trusting, at GOD'S own time, some golden ray
Would gleam on him, and touch his dark to day.

DOWN AMONG THE DUTCHMEN.

IT is a grievous thing—in a certain sense,
at least—to find this earth so terribly bent
upon being practical. The rush, no longer
march, of intellect is lopping away every
pleasing but unserviceable angularity; and is
bringing down, or up, the nations to one good
working level: eminently practical, but
unpoetic, unhandsome, and monotonous. This,
the wandering man, the Voyageur, with taste
for colouring and bits of picturesque, of all
others, feels most acutely. His occupation
is, in a manner, beginning to go; for the
world he fancies he has left behind, travels
abroad with him, and reappears at odd
corners and unexpected places; so that he
drags after him that lengthening chain, of
which such piteous complaint was long since
made—with a savour of flatness and staleness
and utter insipidity. Most especially does
this strike him in matters of costume and
local colouring; and he must admit to
himself with a sigh, that the hour is drawing on,
when the habiliments of all the tribes will
have subsided into the sober working dress
of black broadcloth; presenting one sickening
waste of coating, waistcoating, and their
inevitable adjunct: and never forgetting the
famous black hat, destined to ride eternally
a hideous show upon the head of mortal
man: the whole a hideous uniformity, and
brotherhood in ugliness. Saving always, that
in the hat Continental, as borne by our
foreign brothers, there shall be some shade of
difference: being known by that curious
sinuosity of brim, that queer droop fore and aft, and
shape pyramidical, which comes, no doubt,
of a certain yearning after the old, old shape,
the departed cocked; now passed away from
off the heads of men, and from off the face of
the earth.

To this uniform Internationality we are
now fast coming: to this complexion we must
come at last. Already does the Moslem
lounge through Pera, fitted uneasily with
the cosmopolitan garment; and at Cairo,
the Dog of a Christian need found no fears
of insult on the Frankish cut of his apparel.
The Howadji on the Nile is no longer
regarded with curiosity, and the Greek's snowy
petticoat has altogether fluttered away.
Even from the glittering Prado—most cruel
stroke this for our travelling Spanish colour-
men—are falling away the bright native
costumes; and the lace bonnet is encroaching
greedily on the famed mantilla. Second-
hand Parisian fashions, modelled on ancient
plates from the costume magazines, are the
desired of the Madrid beau monde. No more
could excellent but twaddlesome Doctor
Moore travel with his Noble Patron from
little court to little court, and find grist for
those weary letters of his; nor Tristam, the
facetious, though he lay in wait all day, on
that Moulines road, light on anything to
surprise him in his Nanette's pastoral
garments; nor in those of his Maria, whose
notes were the sweetest he ever heard.
From pole to pole; from Dan to Beersheba,
it may come to be all one dull uniform tint,
one unvarying monotony.

For all this dispiriting prospect, I do most
firmly believe that there is a pretty large
section of the English family holding to a
dreamy notion, that a certain sea-buffeted
nation still conserve their old rights and
usages, and look pretty much as they looked a
century ago. A sea-buffeted race, slow of
speech and motion, that seem, through a sort
of vis inertiæ, to have held back steadily, as
their neighbours were drawn forward, and
so to have retained a sort of pleasing rococohood,
and curiosity-shop aspect. Whence I
have gathered this notion, it would be hard
to say; but I am firmly persuaded that your
modern Dutchman must be grim and full-
faced, with broad-leafed hat, with starched
collar and white cord and tassels, with short
black cloak and jerkin, profuse sprinkling of
buttons and black silk bows about the junction
of the stocking and knee breech. I have
loose floating notions of burgomasters—
Burgomaster Six to wit—of Echevins, and of
the Hogen Mogen. Of the Grand Pensionary
—of Guilder sacks—and of that starched
collar and jerkin seen among the spice-grounds
and coffee-trees of Java and Ceylon.
Of Peter Stuyvesant, and those queer Dutch
governors, and their queerer little towns
beyond the Atlantic. There are hazy
reminiscences, too, of unscrupulous Captain
Hatteraick and his lugger, of his running cargos at
midnight, thus evading excise regulations—
something eminently romantic and
Adelphish in that unlawful running of cargo,
of the ankers and runlets thus set on shore.
I bethink me, too, at times, of certain dim
and awful diableric ocean legends associated
peculiarly with this nation. How on
certain nights, at periodic intervals, nights
of storm and fury when not a strip of canvas
can be spread with safety, the seaman
keeping third watch upon the forecastle has
seen afar off, the Phantom Ship bearing down
upon them, with every sail set. How the
thunder has pealed and the lightning flashed,
and how with bated breath he and his
brethren have watched through the darkness
for its coming, until another flash has
revealed it close upon them, passing silently
across their bows. Then a hasty glimpse of
ghastly men looking over the side with stony