search of prey. In 1845, a small species of whale, the beluga or white whale, was taken above Rochester bridge.

"The serpentine course of the river is very great, near Snodland; the banks being of silt, the current is constantly wearing away its sides and accumulating a deposit on the opposite shore. As we approach the gorge bounded by the range of chalk hills, the scenery becomes truly fine. A steep escarpment on one side, and a sloping hill on the other, dotted with the juniper bush, and the short turf of the chalk wolds, looking like a carpet of green, save where a chalk pit shows the brilliant white rock, and relieves the water-worn bank of its monotony. Few persons are aware of the lovely scenery of this part of the Medway. Halling, with the ruins of its episcopal palace; Burham church, grey with lichens, and the turret decked with a mantilla of ivy; and soon, towering in the air, are seen the ruins of Rochester castle, mighty in its old age, and telling of its strength when its history of siege and battle is remembered.

"The brine of the ocean now mingles with the once sparkling waters, which like young life, had issued from its primrose-decked and mossy nook. The man of war now comes upon this shifting scene, and the sea-gull hovers with silent wing over her flitting shadow-a sudden wheel and plunge to the ripple, and the prize is seized! Then with a quivering spring she shakes the brine-drops from her spreading wing. Wider spreads the bosom of the increased waters, and the receding banks fall back to allow the stream to pass away into, and blend with, the boundless ocean, which receives its tribute with the becoming majesty of that mighty element, which though the powerful agent of change, is in itself—

'Unchangeable, save to the wild wind's play."

THE LIVING RILL.

OUR last number concludes with a letter from a child, the same little Barbara whom hitherto we have mentioned as scarcely more than an infant. Her letter, written, of course, at a later period, describes more eloquently than we could do, the joyful progress of her earlier years, in which she had no other society, but a kind, though ignorant widowed nurse, excepting one, by most persons accounted a fool, and scarcely by any suspected to have been endowed with a wisdom, which exceeds that which human cunning by its greatest intellectual efforts ever devised. For. has not the prophet said "The wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men, shall be hid?"

Jocelyn, as we have said, was by many accounted a fool; and in all present things, valued by men, he was so: but he was wise in the best sense of that term, for Horace had given him his own little bible and made him promise to read a portion of it every day, and this he had not only done, but had prevailed on nurse to have his little Barbara taught to read it, and the village school mistress had been hired to come for an hour each day for this purpose; but whenever any one asked him a question, by way perchance of gauging the depth of his understanding, his constant peroration of "Horace told me" cut the process short, before it came to any thing farther of a conversation.

And yet, in what passage of our Living Rill do we find that any channel carried on the sparkling waters, with less disturbance than that in which its bed was by most accounted incapable of preserving the poorest stream which ever flowed from human ingenuity?

But thus was Jocelyn made able to do, and having fulfilled the part appointed him, in conveying the Living Rill to a certain point, was permitted to deliver it uncontaminated, and all pure and sparkling and fresh as it had come to himself through the ministry of his friend, to his dearest little Barbara, the only human being with whom he had held real communion of mind and heart since Horace's death.

Before the actual death of Jocelyn, a somewhat haughty and peremptory letter had been received from Barbara's parents desiring that she should be removed forthwith to an establishment for young ladies, located at that time in a certain square at the

west end of the great metropolis, kept by three sisters, Mrs. St. Leger, and the Misses Greatorex.

Mr. Watson, to whom this letter was addressed, did not mention it to Barbara till after the funeral, and the poor little girl was overwhelmed for a time by the information; but she afterwards said to Mr. Watson, “I ought to be very glad, sir, ought I not; that my dear, dear uncle never heard anything about this?"

Were we to enter into anything like a full description of the many parting scenes with the nurse and Cæsar, and the farewells taken by little Barbara of the many places where she had often sat and talked with her beloved uncle, we might fill sheets of paper and be no nearer our end.

We must go on, then, to say that Mr. Watson after having most faithfully promised to take care of nurse and Cæsar, himself took her up to London: was kind to her by the way as the kindest of fathers, and made the journey last two days and a half; to give her more time to recover her spirits, after she had taken the last look at the groves of Barwell.

The old gentleman had tears in his eyes when he bade adieu to the little lady, in the smart vestibule of the establishment; and when the door was closed after him, she could restrain herself no longer, but burst into an agony of tears, notwithstanding the presence of more than one smart servant who was waiting to usher her to the school-room; for it was evening, and there was company in the drawing-room, and the staircase and vestibule were already lighted up.

Poor little Barbara could never give any account of her first introduction into this new life, more distinctly, or even as much so, as a person could relate a dream, everything was so new, and everything seemed to glare so in the strong light of the lamps, and the staircase was so steep, and the room into which she was introduced, looked so wide and strange with its many forms and tables, and empty too; for all the scholars were with their master in the drawing-room, and there was only one lady in the room, who jumped up when the servant calling her "Ma'm'selle" introduced Miss Rokeby just arrived.

This lady ran up to her immediately, and whilst she examined her well, said many words to her, not one of which she under

stood and how should she, these being the first French words she had ever heard? But before she could make out the cause of her being so puzzled, first one and then two more ladies came swimming into the room, coming up to her with great state. So entirely had Barbara hitherto lived out of the world, that the fashions (which did not travel into the country at the speed they now do), were quite new and strange to her; and so taken by surprise was she at the figures which gathered about her, that she was hardly able to answer when spoken to, even in English.

It may perchance gratify some of those who were not in existence till many years after the time of which this part of our narrative treats, to have some ideas given to them, respecting the sort of figures which were gathered round poor little Barbara. When first she looked upon her new instructresses, they all seemed very tall to her, being set on high heeled shoes, they all wore their hair highly powdered and pomatumed, frizzed out at the sides, and hanging in stiff curls about the ears and down the backs. Each one wore a cap of gauze or tiffany covered with ribbons, artificial flowers, and feathers; for it happened that this was one of the public nights of the establishment, when much company came to see the young ladies dance. They wore full and long dresses of figured and flowered muslins, which were open before, shewing richly adorned petticoats, and trailed behind along the floor, and they wore sashes of various bright colors, so high above their natural waists that they seemed to have none. Their cheeks looked too of so bright a carnation, that poor Barbara thought they must be particularly healthy.

Mrs. St. Leger was the first of the three sisters who spoke to the little one, and though she spoke somewhat haughtily, she spoke kindly also, sitting down to be more on a level with her, ordering tea to be brought for her, and whilst they were waiting for it, she asked her many questions about her journey, and other things of no great matter; and then the youngest Miss Greatorex asked her if she would go down and see the ladies dance, for which she was immediately taken up by her eldest sister.

"Really Philippa," said Mrs. St. Leger, 'I wonder at you! surely you would not produce the dear child, till we have set her in something like order. She is in deep mourning, I see; but only observe the length of that waist! just what our grandmothers

wore a hundred years ago, and bombazine is not a proper dress for any child in public. We must get her a black crape over a lutestring slip, and that horrid waist and that tight cuff must be exterminated."

"Or what say you, sister St. Leger?" remarked Miss Greatorex, "to a white crape over a white lutestring for our public days;" and the Miss Lushingtons, the only girls in the school, who were not several years older than Barbara—were spoken of as having had such dresses when they were in mourning for their mamma.

This discussion was brought to a speedy termination by a loud sob and violent gush of tears from the little girl, in consequence of which, when some refreshment had been administered to her, she was put to bed by an inferior teacher, in a large room indeed, but in a single bed, of which there were as many as six in the room. If little Barbara wept herself to sleep that night, it was no more than many a child has done when first leaving home, the dulce, dulce domum of that little boy who, as the story has it, pined and died for grief at some public school, with longings for his home; though it is not unseldom that tears have been shed, on leaving that very place of education, which was first visited with so much scrrow.

Barbara slept so long and so heavily in the morning, that she did not wake till all her companions were gone down, and her breakfast was indulgently brought up to her. As soon as she was dressed, a teacher came to summon her to Mrs. St. Leger, who required her presence in her dressing room, where she generally gave some instruction to a select few, whilst her maid was dressing her hair. The highly ornamented toilette table, the many bottles, and various mirrors, the trinket boxes, and gay dresses scattered about, presented a scene so new to Barbara, that she was unusually ill-prepared for the examination, of what Mrs. St. Leger called her savoir faire,-in plain English, the state of her acquirements, which was there and then to be enacted, no persons being present but her maid and the two little Miss Lushingtons, one of whom was older by a year than Barbara, and another as much younger.

This examination was concluded with so much address by the experienced mistress, that Barbara, had she possessed much more worldly prudence than she really could boast of, would have been