favourite art," said Herr Simrock. "It to their common sleeping apartment, enis often the case that the true artist is a tertaining him with a description of their fool in matters of every-day life." day of festivity. "Those are silly fancies," answered Beethoven, again laughing. "Helen is always talking so. The true artist is as much a man as others, and proves himself so; will thrive like the rest of the world, and take care of his family. I know all about it; money-money's the thing! I mean Louis to do well; and that he may learn to do well I spare not trouble-nor the rod either, when it is necessary! The boy will live to thank me for my pains." Here the conversation was interrupted, and the subject was not resumed. The hours flew lightly by; it struck nine, and the festive company separated, to return to their homes. Carl and Johann were in high glee as they went home; they sprang up the steps before their father, and pulled the door bell. The door was opened, and a boy about twelve years old stood in the entry, with a lamp in his hand. He was short and stout for his age; but a sickly paleness, more strongly marked by the contrast of his thick black hair, was observable on his face. His small grey eyes were quick and restless in their movement, very piercing when he fixed them on any object, but softened by the shade of his long dark lashes; his mouth was delicately formed, and the compression of his lips betrayed both pride and sorrow. It was Louis Beethoven. Now, Louis," said little Johann, as they finished their account, "if you had not been such a dunce, our father would have taken you along; but he says he thinks that you will be little better than a dunce all the days of your life-and self-willed and stubborn besides." 66 Don't talk about that any more," answered Louis, "but come to bed." "Yes, you are always a sleepy head," cried they both, laughing; but in a few moments after getting into bed, both were asleep, and snoring heartily. Louis took the lamp from the table, left the apartment softly, and went up stairs to an attic chamber, where he was wont to retire when he wished to be out of the way of his teasing brothers. He had fitted up the little room for himself as well as his means permitted. A table with three legs, a leathern chair, the bottom partly out, and an old piano, which he had rescued from the possession of rats and mice, made up the furniture; and here, in company with his beloved violin, he was accustomed to pass his happiest hours. He was passionately fond of solitude, and nothing would have better pleased him than permission to take long walks in the country, where he could hear the murmur of streams and the rustling of foliage, and the surging of the winds on the mountains. But he had not that liberty. His only recreation was to pass a few hours here in his favourite pursuit, indulging his phantasies and reveHallo, Nightcap!" cried Carl, laugh-ries, undisturbed by his noisy brothers, or ing, "is it you? Cannot you open your his strict father's reproof. eyes? They are just behind us!" "Where are my father and mother?" asked he. Without answering his brother, Louis came to meet his parents, and bade them Good evening." His mother greeted him affectionately; his father said, while the boy busied himself fastening the door, Well, Louis, I hope you have finished your task?" "Very good; to-morrow I will look and see whether you have earned your breakfast." So saying, the elder Beethoven went into his chamber; his wife followed him after bidding, her sons good night Louis more tenderly than any of them Garland Lohaun withdrew with their brother M The boy felt, young as he was, that he was not understood by any one of his family, not even excepting his mother. She loved him tenderly, and always took his part when his father found fault with him; but she never knew what was passing in his mind, because he never uttered it. How could he, shy and inexperienced, clothe in words what was burning in his bosomwhat was perpetually striving after language more intense and expressive than human speech? But his genius was not long to be unappreciated. The next morning, a messenger came from the Elector to Beethoven's house. bringing an order for him to repair immer diately to the palace, and bring with him his son Louis. The father was surprised; not more so than the boy, whose heart beat with undefined apprehension as they entered the princely mansion. A servant was in waiting, and conducted them without delay, or further announcement, to the presence of the Elector, who was attended by two gentlemen. The Elector received old Beethoven with great kindness, and said, "We have recently heard much of the extraordinary musical talents of your son Louis. Have you brought him along with you?" Beethoven replied in the affirmative, stepped back to the door, and bade the boy come in. "Come nearer, my little lad?" cried the Elector, graciously; "do not be shy. This gentleman here, is our new court organist-Herr Kneefe; the other is the famous composer, Herr Yunker, from Cologne. We promised them both they should hear you play something; and think you may venture upon a tune before them. The late Master von Eden always spoke well of you." "Yes, he was pleased with me!" murmured the boy softly. The prince smiled, and bade him take his seat and begin. He sat down himself in a large easy chair. Louis went to the piano, and without examining the pile of notes that lay awaiting his selection, played a short piece; then a light and graceful melody, which he executed with such ease and spiritnay, in so admirable a manner, that his distinguished auditors could not forbear expressing their surprise; and even his father was struck. When he left off playing, the Elector arose, came up to him, laid his hand on his head, and said encouragingly "Well done, my boy! we are pleased with you! Now, Master Yunker," turning to the gentleman on his right hand, "what say you?" "Your Highness!" answered the composer, "I will venture to say the lad has had considerable practice with that air, to execute it so well." Louis burst into a laugh at this remark; the others looked surprised and grave; his father darted an angry glance at him, and the boy, conscious that he had done something wrong, became instantly silent. The Elector himself laughed at the comical scene. "And pray what are you laughing at, my little fellow?" asked he. The boy coloured and looked down as he replied, "Because Herr Yunker thinks I have learned the air by heart, when it occurred to me just now while I was playing." "Then," returned the composer, "if you really improvised that piece, you ought to go through at sight a motiv I will give you presently." "Let me try," answered Louis. "If his gracious Highness will permit ," said the composer. me,' Permission was granted. Yunker wrote down on paper a difficult motiv, and handed it to the boy. Louis read it over carefully, and immediately began to play it according to the rules of counterpoint. The composer listened attentively, his astonishment increasing at every turn in the music; and when at last it was finished in a manner so spirited as to surpass his expectations, his eyes sparkled, and he looked on the lad with keen interest, as the possessor of a genius rarely to be found. "If he goes on in this way," said he, in a low tone, to the Elector, "I can assure your Highness that a very great counterpointest may be made of him." Kneefe observed with a smile, "I agree with the master; but it seems to me the boy's style inclines rather too much to the gloomy and melancholy." "It is well," replied his Highness, smiling, "be it your care that it does not become too much so. Herr von Beethoven," he continued, addressing the father; "we take an interest in your son; and it is our pleasure that he complete the studies commenced under your tuition, under that of Herr Kneefe. He may come to live with him after to-day. We will take care that he wants for nothing; and his further advancement, also, shall be cared for. You are willing, Louis, to come and live with this gentleman?" The boy's eyes were fixed on the ground; he raised them, and glanced first at Kneefe, and then at his father. The offer was a tempting one; he would fare better and have more liberty in his row abode. there was his father! whom he had always loved; who, spite of his severity, had doubtless loved him, and now stood looking But upon him earnestly and sadly. He hesitated no longer, but seizing Beethoven's hand, and pressing it to his heart, he cried, "No, no! I cannot leave my father." "You are a good and dutiful lad," said his Highness. "Well, I will not ask you to leave your father, who must be very fond of you. You shall live with him, and come and take your lessons of Herr Kneefe; that is our will. Adieu! Herr von Beethoven." From this time Louis lived a new life. His father treated him no longer with harshness, and even reproved his brothers when they tried to tease him. Carl and Johann grew shy of him, however, when they saw what a favourite he had become. Louis found himself no longer restrained, but came and went as he pleased; he took frequent excursions in the country, when the lessons were over, which he enjoyed with more than youthful pleasure. art. His worthy master was astonished at the rapid progress of his pupil in his beloved "But, Louis," said he, one day, "if you would become a great musician, you must not neglect everything besides music. You must acquire foreign languages, particularly Latin, Italian, and French. These are all necessary, that you may know what learned men have said and written upon the art. You must not fancy all this knowledge is to come to you of itself; you must be diligent, and devote yourself to study, and be sure of being well repaid in the end. For, without such cultivation, you can never excel in music; nay, even genius left to itself is but little better than blind impulse. Would you leave your name to posterity as a true artist, make your own all that bears relation to your art." Louis promised, and kept his word. In the midst of his playing he would leave off, however much it cost him, if the hour struck for his lessons in the languages. So closely he applied himself, that in a year's time he was tolerably well acquainted, not only with Latin, French, and Italian, but also with the English. His father marvelled at his progress not a little; for years he had laboured in vain, with starvation and blows, to make the boy learn the first principles of those languages. He had never, indeed, taken the trouble to explain to him their use in the acquisition of the science of music. The best understanding was now established between father and son; and the lad's natural generosity and warmth of heart being unchecked by undue severity, his kindly feelings overflowed upon all around him. This disposition to love his friends, and to enjoy life, remained with the artist to the end of his days. The benevolent Master Simrock was much pleased at his good fortune, and withal somewhat surprised, for spite of his compassionate espousal of the boy's cause, he looked upon Louis rather as a dull fellow. Now, his opinion was quite changed; and to show his good will, he sent him several presents, and insisted on his coming frequently to his lodgings, to drink a glass of Rhenish in company with his old friend. "We were both mistaken in the lad," he would say to old Beethoven; "he abounds in wit and odd fancies, but I do not altogether like his mixing up in his music all sorts of strange conceits; the best way, to my notion, is a plain one. Let him follow the great Mozart, step by step; after all, he is the only one, and there is none to come up to him-none!" And Louis's father, who also idolized Mozart, always agreed with his neighbour in his judgment, and echoed-" None ! " Linen CHEMICAL TRANSMUTATIONS. can be converted into sugar; sugar into alcohol (spirits) and carbonic acid; alcohol can be changed into ether and water; sugar can also be converted into oxalic acid, also into pure charcoal (carbon) and water. Alcohol (spirits) will readily change into vinegar (acetic acid). Starch may be transmuted either into gum, alcohol, sugar, acetic or oxalic acid, as well as many other substances, to which, however, the chemists have given such hard names that we cannot find a pen strong enough to write them. skeletons of sufferers still mouldered. They made the flesh creep with horror. Deep down in the dark, damp, reptiled earth, some partially covered with water, moisture dripping from the walls, chains heavy enough to paralyse muscles and nerves, fixed to rings in stone pillars or massive stone walls; and no means of health, decency, or repose. Ah! how could mortal men-subjects themselves to temptations and sin, having human hearts in their bosoms-devise for their brethren such dire places, or such tortures as were often inflicted in them! But it was done in ignorance of the gospel, which commands us to overcome evil with good," and stays the merciless hand with "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." 66 Soon after, I came to London, and was walking slowly by the walls of that celebrated prison, Newgate, when I saw a number of street outcasts-boys and girls, men and women, gathering on each side the prison entrance, with eager yet softened looks and subdued manners, as if some new and strange influence had touched their hearts, and hallowed them. A few respectable persons were also waiting there; and thus a narrow lane was formed from the prison entrance to the door of a very plain IN an ancient English city, I once inspected what had been the town prison until a very recent date. The cells had been dens of filth, disease, and despair; suggesting horrible ideas; utterly unfit for human lodgement; almost destitute of air, light, and water. Confinement in these was so frightful, that few prisoners could have survived | any length of time, without becoming more or less insane, savage as caged beasts, or afflicted with incurable disorders. Hardly any distinction was made between prisoners for debt and prisoners for crime, or between the untried-who might, and often were, innocent-and those who had been found guilty; whilst those who had fallen from integrity for the first time to the commis-quaker's carriage. As I approached, I sion of small offences met with no forbearance. The maintenance of the prisoners came mostly from without; hence those who had few or very poor friends were often the venerable Quakeress was regarded as in a lamentable condition, for want of necessary food and clothing; whilst others might be seen rioting in intemperance. No scenes could be more awful to a reflective mind or feeling heart, than those which had been acted within the gloomy walls of the City Prison: strifes, murders, suicides, crimes of every sort, curses, blasphemies, revilings, lamentations, wailings, shriekings, sobbings, ravings-innocence becoming wickedness-wickedness sinking deeper and deeper into the abysses of infamy! This is not an exaggerated picture of the prison treatment of criminals during many bygone centuries. In the same city, I visited the ruins of one of those immense and ponderous feudal castles which the Norman Conqueror, and his adherents and successors reared to maintain their ill-gotten power. I looked down upon the dungeons of that castle, where the heard the whispered name of Mrs. Fry; and I cannot describe to you with what grateful reverence-almost amounting to adoration she came out of the prison, and entered her carriage. I heard a sob-I saw tearsand the words of one poor, lost creature reached my heart, to fasten there for ever: "Ah! if there were more like her, there would not be so many poor souls cast away!" Now, my dear young friends, as my space is nearly run out, I cannot enter into the story of what Mrs. Fry did for poor prisoners; nor what John Howard did before her. You must read all about it elsewhere. That our prisons are not still a disgrace to humanity, and to the nation, is mainly due to those honoured names. You will readily infer, that when the state of the prisons was so bad, the criminal laws must have been bad also. Indeed, they have been so bad, that it is enough to make one's hair stand on end with horror to contemplate what they have done. Under the 7 early Norman kings and chiefs, might was right, and will was law; but when Normans and Saxons were amalgamated, and the country settled, the criminal laws still were very much what the kings or particular justiciaries pleased to make of them. It was in the article of high treason that the laws were most loose and sanguinary; and it was a common thing for a man to be torn from his family, and put to a cruel death, merely for a few hasty words against the chief powers of the State. Tortures for treasonable charges were employed to an extent now hardly credible. We find it difficult to believe that Englishmen could be found with hearts hard enough to torment their fellows on racks-in pillorieswith thumb-screws, knee-crushers, and such like demoniacal contrivances. Death for slight offences was another dread feature of the old criminal laws. An Act of William III. made it a capital offence to steal privately in a shop to the value of five shillings. Sixty-six years ago-no longer!— ninety-seven persons were executed in one year in London for no greater offence! Twenty of them suffered at one time. Could any barbarism exceed this? Not till 1810 was any attempt made to obtain a repeal of this atrocious law. And how was the attempt met? Why, by failure, in 1810, in 1811, and in 1816. In this last year, Samuel Romilly, the most eminent lawyer of his time, an eloquent. statesman, and a genuine Christian, fought a good fight for the reform of the criminal laws. He showed in Parliament, that the statute was inconsistent with the spirit of the times, and repugnant to the law of nature; that juries were constantly evading the law, by contriving, with pious fraud, to find the property of less value than was required by the statute; that a great number of persons of very tender age had recently been sentenced to death for pilfering in shops-and a child was then in Newgate, not ten years of age, condemned to die for this offence! Very well, Sir Samuel; but the Lord Chief Justice of England, together with the Lord Chancellor and the Recorder of London, were agreed that the law was very proper, and absolutely necessary; and "it was intended to enforce it strictly in future." The House of Lords threw out the Bill. Think, my children, this was only in 1816; a boy or girl of ten years of age could then be hung for stealing five shillings' worth of goods from a shop! This Death punishment was also inflicted for stealing to the amount of forty shillings in a dwelling-house, on board ships in navigable rivers, or in bleaching-grounds. A friend of mine, who is not above sixty years old, remembers having often seen from two, to a dozen or more men, hung up at one time in the country town in which he lived, for sheep-stealing or similar offences. Before 1808, the picking of a pocket to the value of five shillings was a capital offence, which has taken many men, women, and children to the scaffold. and several similar statutes were repealed through the humane exertions of Sir Samuel Romilly, who persevered, amidst neglect, calumny, the frowns of power, and the indifference of the people. His name will ever shine among those of England's philanthropic reformers. During two or three centuries highway robberies of every description were capital. In the time of Henry VI., more persons were executed in England in one year for highway robbery, than the whole number executed in France in seven years. In the reign of Henry VIII, seventy-two thousand thieves were hanged; being at the rate of two thousand a year! Who then would wish for the old times back again? How many of these persons were tempted from want, and from various sufferings! how many were innocent entirely! For the system of conviction was as bad as all the rest. It was the interest of officers of the law to convict, and even to make thieves; for they had rewards in proportion. In 1816 only thirty-five years ago-three officers of police were detected in having conspired to induce five men to commit a burglary, for the purpose of obtaining the rewards upon their conviction. Since that time the nation has advanced with giant strides on the path of reform, in everything relating to the criminal laws, committee after committee of the House of Commons having startled the comfortable people of England with their discoveries of the frightful evils that existed. Thus did a committee describe the Police System of 1816 and 1817 :-"If a foreign jurist had then examined the condition of the metropolis, as respected crime, and the organization of its police-and if, |