Then sickened with alarm as she feared he had sunk to rise no more. again when surmounting the crest of the wave, she saw him fearlessly lessening the distance between them, a re-action took place in her bosom, and fervently she prayed to the Omnipotent to stretch forth his hand and save. The pleasures of past enjoyments never seem so precious and valuable as when the extreme of peril threatens dissolution. Home, friends, and those beloved cling round the very soul as if to bind it more firmly to existence, and to render more arduous the struggle of separation from the body. Helen experienced this as the seas came breaking over the cutter, and she beheld her relatives upon the shore. But her principal remembrances were devoted to Frank; and as the swimmer approached, and his features became more distinct, she fancied she could trace a resemblance to him of whom she was thinking; the bare conjecture caused a sudden thrill through every vein; but when she heard the voice of her lover as he ascended to the deck and gained the taffrail, even the appalling danger was almost forgotten in the sudden delight of her heart at his noble and generous conduct. His presence re-assured her; his soothing language allayed her fears; and though the sea at intervals broke over them, yet there was now a confidence in her bosom, for Frank was with her. But no time was to be lost; the young midshipman feared that his own strength would not bear him out to carry her to the shore; the wreck of the main-boom was floating alongside, and he resolved to lash Helen to the spar. At first she shrunk from the hazard, but Frank clasped her in his arms, pressed her to his heart, and fervently imploring the blessing of Omnipotence upon his efforts, at once proceeded to his perilous undertaking; he succeeded in lashing Helen to the boom, impressed upon her mind the absolute necessity of clinging fast to her support, and then with his knife was cutting away the jaw-rope, as the body of a female floated up the space that had been covered by the skylight-she was dead. Helen did not see her, and Frank, without delay, separated the boom from the wreck. Then springing into the sea, he directed the course of its drift for the shore, where the agonized father and the anxious seamen beheld what was passing, and waited in excited expectation for the result. The raft bore up its burthen well, and Frank swimming close to her cheered the terrified girl as they neared the land, and the waves dashed over them with resistless fury. The spectators calculating the precise spot where they would take the ground, hastened thither, and more than one brave fellow rushed through the surf to lend his officer a hand. They were in the breakers; the boiling and bubbling foam was raging around them—the noise of the waters was hissing and howling in their ears, when Frank cut away the lashing that sustained Helen, and disengaged her from the spar, lest she should be injured by the concussion as it struck the rocks: supporting her by one arm, he manfully plied the other; two of the seamen kept near him; a heavy sea rolled them over, but Frank, though almost exhausted, still maintained his hold; the next minute they were washed up upon the shore, and, raised on the shoulders of the people, were carried to dry land. Extreme, indeed, was the joy of Mr. Wendover as he clasped his child, and implored blessings on her deliverer, whom in his wet condition, with his hair hanging about his face, the merchant did not recognize, but to whom he promised payment of the large reward which he had offered, supposing that alone to have been the motive for going to the rescue of Helen. Frank made no reply, for ignorant of Mr. Wendover's forgetfulness, he imagined that he must be known, and he felt indignant at money being offered for saving one who was far more precious to him than his own life. Helen was carried to the hut where her mother had already been kindly cared for, and the merchant never left his child, who, at first, sank into insensibility through terror and fatigue, and on her recovery gazed wildly round, and called upon Frank as her rescuer from death. Mr. Wendover at first considered it the ravings of a disordered imagination; but when grown more calm his daughter assured him of the fact, the merchant exclaimed, "The hand of Providence is in this; he above all others is the man I wish to see, nor will I any longer oppose your affection; he has a second time saved my child, and he is worthy of her." Wishing to atone for his neglect, he went himself in search of Frank, but young Heartwell, after seeing Helen in security, had quitted the place with his people, and was some distance on his way to Plymouth. One of the seamen of the cutter accompanied them, and from him the young officer learned that they were on their way round to the Thames when the gale caught them. At the time the yacht struck the rocks and the boat was launched, a favourite servant of Miss Wendover's was in the cabin ; Helen had generously hastened down with the captain to fetch her up. Whilst thus engaged, the rope that held the boat parted—the cabin was nearly filled-Helen was forced by the captain to the deck and lashed to the taffrail he himself was washed overboard; and Frank rightly conjectured that the body he had seen floating was that of the drowned servant. Mr. Wendover would have sent messengers after young Heartwell, but, as he purposed removing his family as soon as conveyances could be procured, he thought the delay of a day or two could not be of much consequence; but when the time arrived, and Helen was all delight at the prospect which was opening before her, they ascertained that the frigate had sailed only a few hours before for the Mediterranean. A THEATRICAL CURIOSITY. ONCE in a barn theatric, deep in Kent, A famed tragedian-one of tuneful tongue Appeared for that night only-'twas Charles Young. As Rolla he. And as that Innocent, The Child of hapless Cora, on there went A smiling, fair-hair'd girl. She scarcely flung A shadow, as she walked the lamps among So light she seem'd, and so intelligent ! Or else I'm blow'd if you don't have me down!" SLIDING SCALES. THE most remarkable sliding-scale of which Fiction has any record is the rainbow on which Munchausen, with such inimitable ease, effected his railroad descent from mid-air; but Fact has her extraordinary sliding-scales too. Take a modern example in the one which carried Napoleon from Moscow to Elba, equalled only by that which bore him afterwards from Waterloo to St. Helena. Life in its several stages is but a succession of sliding-scales. Take a bird's-eye view of society, and what do you see but two classes; one endeavouring to slide up an ascent, and another endeavouring not to slide down. The world, instead of being represented as round as an O, might more aptly be figured by the letter A, which is composed of two inclined planes; the way up being narrow and hard to climb, but the way down being broad and open enough. There is the moral sliding-scale and the intellectual sliding-scale. On the one, we see a man passing, by regular degrees, from a meanness to a degradation; from a little shabbiness to a great crime; from a lie thought to a lie acted; from an evasion to a shuffle; from a shuffle to a swindle; from swindling to consummate depravity; from the first sixpence penu. riously saved to the heaped hoards of avarice. On the other, we see the mind gradually drawn out from weakness to power; from dulness to brilliancy; from the frivolous dreams of childhood to the conceptions of a gigantic imagination; the heavy schoolboy ripening into the lively poet; the reckless truant settling into the wise and thoughtful student. There is the sliding-scale of fortune, the slidingscale of manners, the sliding-scale of appetite; penury slides into affluence, rustic modesty becomes town-bred impudence, the gourmand eats himself down to a dry crust. It is sad enough to see a gentlemen slide off his saddle-horse, and take to drawing a truck; but these declensions will happen, and they are not so distressing as it is to see a philosopher turning footman, an orator turning twaddler, or a patriot turning toady. Then there is the sliding-scale theatrical. By what a natural and unerring sliding-scale does some popular tragedian come down at last from Richard the Third to the Lord Mayor! "I wore that very dress as Romeo," said a London player, of small parts, "when I starred it in the provinces." The romantic beauty of Juliet declines into the grotesque rheumatism of the Nurse. We say nothing of the tradesman's scale, which is an affair of weights; nor of the scale-musical, which is one of measures. But of the sliding-scale which is best understood, and perhaps most freely acted upon in every great city and small town, our marginal series of "scenes from real life" will afford the best exemplification; and so we direct the reader to them. SKETCHES HERE, THERE, AND EVERYWHERE. BY A. BIRD. A STAGE-COACH RACE. In cities POOR Macadam! his honoured dust will soon be forgotten! it is buried, or soon will be, in wood; and few of the millions who glide and slide over the wooden pavement, will think of the "Colossus of Roads," whose dust it covers like a coffin. Our course is no longer "o'er hills and dales, through woods and vales," which the many-handed Macadam made smooth and easy. Our carriage, placed like the toy of a child, goes without horses. The beautiful country-the cheerful" public,” with its porch, its honeysuckle and roses the sign which bade the ". weary traveller rest on the seat beneath the spreading elm;-these are no more!―This is the iron age-fire and steam are as the breath of our nostrils we speak by the flash of lightning-we have given life to emptiness, and fly upon the wings of a vacuum-our path is through the blasted rock, the cold dark dreary tunnel-through cheerless banks, which shut us from the world like a living grave-on-on-on-we speed! The dying must die! The burning must burn! There is no appeal-no tarrying by the way. Like the whirlwind we are hurried to our end. The screech of women in despair is drowned by the clash, the din, the screech of the "blatant beast," the mad monster which man has laid his finger on, and tamed to his uses. This is all very fine, and, doubtless, il faut marcher avec son siècle, if we do not wish to be left behind in the race that is before us. Doubtless, too, our children, like calves born by the side of a railroad, will look on these things as a matter of course, and let them pass with high-bred indifference. And if, as most assuredly will be the case, some of these children should become mothers in due course of time, we can fancy them so philosophized by force of habit, so inured to the wholesale smashing and crashing of the human form divine, that, should a door fly open and let an infant drop, the mama will sit quiet till the next station cries Halt! and then merely request that a man and basket be despatched to pick up the pieces left some seven miles off! * "Chi lo sa!" as the Neapolitans say in cases of extreme doubt and difficulty; "chi lo sa," say I; and having been born before the earth was swaddled up in iron, or the sea danced over by iron ships, I confess a sneaking fondness for the highways, and byways, and old ways of old England; and, when not pressed for time, I delight in honouring the remains of poor old Macadam. A fortnight ago, having occasion to visit Somerset, I found myself *Not long since a man, heedless or drunk, fell asleep upon a railroad; the train arrived, and literally cut him to pieces. "I suppose, sir, we had better get the man together?" said a labourer, soon after the accident had occurred. "By all means," answered he in authority. Death is but death, we allow ; but death by the railroad is not only wholesale but frightfully terrific. To avoid the chance of such accidents, when possible, is an imperative duty, and every road which crosses a railroad should be over or under it. We need only refer to two recent accidents caused by the want of such prevention. en route, at Cheltenham-a place, by the way, which always reminds me of miscellaneous articles stored in a second-hand shop; it is sure to come into use once in seven years. There I was for the night, luxuriously lodged in this Anglo-foreign town, this self-styled "queen of wateringplaces," this city of salt-or salts, as some malicious pluralists will have it-there I was, and long ere morning broke, I had decided upon cutting the rail and coaching it to Bristol; in other words, as time was not an object, I would not go some fifty miles round to save it. I was soon seated by my old friend, "coachee." Coachee was a character sui generis, of a race which will soon be extinct; I had known him in the “palmy days" of the road, and remembered the time when he, with his pair, was selected to tease and oppose the prettiest four-inhand that ever trotted fourteen miles an hour. 66 It was, if I'm not mistaken, in 1832, that "The Exquisite" first started from Exeter to Cheltenham, and weighing the coach, the cattle and coachman together, never was a turn-out more worthy of the title. To oppose this with a pair was a bold conception, but "coachee" was an old stager; "what man dared do" he dared, and did it well. 'Strange changes, Mr. Coachee, since you and I first knew each other," said I to my right hand friend, as soon as we had cleared the rattle of the stones. Coachee turned his head slowly round, and looked me full in the face ; he drew in such a sigh, and put on such a look of miserable scorn, that I felt for the silent sufferer. Yet was I dumbfounded by his silence; I had looked for the jibes and jests which were wont to put us outsides in a roar, but to see "coachee" turned into a man of mute sorrow, was a character so new and unnatural, that-extremes will meet-I burst into a hearty fit of laughter. Coachee attempted to preserve the penseroso, and with ill-feigned gravity tried to reprove me, by saying," You may laugh, sir, but it's no joke for us as loses." With what tact I could bring to bear, I revived the memory of former days, the coachman's golden age! I spoke of "the Exquisite," and asked if he did not once beat it with his pair. "So you've heard tell of that, have you?" And Alexander never chuckled half so much to hear his praises sung, as coachee did at the thoughts of his victory. I told him I had heard of it from others, but never from his own mouth, which was half the battle. There needed but little persuasion to make him tell his own story. 66 "It's all as true as I am sitting on this here box, and this is how it came to pass. It was one Sunday evening that some of us whips had met to crack a few bottles. The Exquisite' had just been put upon the road, and who should be there but Mr. Banks as drove it, and who should be there too but I as was started to oppose it. Well, it so happened I hadn't a single passenger booked inside nor out, for Monday! Well, thinks I, Mr. Banks, if I and my coach can't give you the go-by tomorrow, I don't know inside from out, and so I told him. 'That's your opinion is it, Mr. Bond?' said Mr. Banks, with a smile, and a sniff at a pink in his button-hole. Yes, Mr. Banks,' says I; 'and what's more, I'll stick to it, and here's a sovereign to back it.' Will. Meadows, him as used to drive the Hi-run-dell,' he thought he'd do me; so he claps down his bit of gold, and the bet was made. There's an end of that, said · |