gives credit to for working hard in an industrious état for their income, privately lead the lives of gentlemen; and many gentlemen whom we envy on account of their ostensible otiose existence, labour perchance in secret much harder than ourselves. Numbers would shrink if their employment was known, and numbers more would be extremely indignant if any other than their own was assigned to them.

The schedule stated that the professions of wives, or sons and daughters, living with and assisting their parents, needed not to be inserted. There was no mention at all made of the professions of faithless lovers, election candidates, and false friends; probably these were imagined to be of so little value as to be utterly beneath notice.

But although the commissioners were pleasantly minute and clear in their instructions for filling up their circulars, they will still be wide away from the real statistics of the population, when all the bills are returned and the totals properly added. What industrious enumerator, we would ask, did, with praiseworthy indefatigability, leave a schedule at the temporary habitations of the thousand individuals who on the Monday in question were located upon Ascot Heath, in anticipation of the approaching races? Who dared to penetrate into the mysteries of the yellow caravans there collected, or invade the Bohemian seclusion of the tilted hovels? What account was taken of the roadside tent-holders, and the number of the families of these real "potwallopers ?" Is the following paper relating to these people, which has fallen into our hands, the mislaid document of a careless enumerator of the Sunning-hill district, or is it an attempt to play upon our credulity:

But there were many, many others, who were excluded from the privilege of registering their names amongst the population of their country. The unfortunate individuals who slept throughout the night in the stony precincts of the police-office lock-up cells, were deprived of this honour. Even admitting that the police had received instructions to take down the names of the stray-flocks under their charge, the ends of the commissioners were still defeated, for it was not probable that the Hon. Clarence Piercefield, who had kicked the head waiter at the Cider-cellars, for telling

him not to join in the glees so loudly-who had thrashed the cabman in Holborn who had climbed up behind King Charles at Charingcross, and who, finally, upon being pulled down again by the police and taken into custody, had given his name as Thomas Brown,-it was not probable, we repeat, that this honourable gentleman would see any occasion to alter the name in the schedule, or recant his alleged profession of "medical student." His rightful appellation found no place in the paper, no more than the hundreds who slept out altogether that night, from the wretched, shivering, poverty-stricken occupiers of the embryo coal-cellars of future houses in the neighbourhood of railway termini, to the tipsy gentleman who tumbled by mistake into a large basket of turnip-tops and onions in Covent Garden-market, and slept there until morning, dreaming that he was the inhabitant of an Eastern paradise, with houris pelting roses at him. Even the ill-used Mr. Ferguson, whom everybody has heard of, but nobody knows, failing in all his attempts to procure a lodging for the night, found no place in the strictly-worded schedule. The real name of Mr. Ferguson is Legion, yet he found a lodging nowhere. And many returns of the erratic youth of respectable families must prove, that their very fathers did not know they were out, to say nothing of their mothers on the other hand, probably many more would be found wanting in the real numbers, were circumstances narrowly inquired into.

It is fortunate for the correctness of the statistics that Sunday was the day fixed upon for enumerating the population. Had it been any other, the numbers who slept in the house would have materially swelled the lists. The House of Commons might have furnished an imposing array of names every night in the week to begin with. The various literary institutions and scientific meetings of the metropolis, on their respective nights, would not have been behind hand; and even the theatres, might have sent in a tolerably fair muster-roll of slumberers, according to the nature of their performances.

We presume that the guards of mail-coaches, drovers who were going to the Monday's markets, watchmen of houses, newly-buried relations, and medical men attending Poor Law Unions, will be allowed a future opportunity of registering their names; for none of these individuals were ever known-at least we believe not-to sleep or abide one night in their houses. Are these hardworking and useful classes of society to be accounted as nothing to be placed in a scale even beneath " persons sleeping over a stable or outhouse," who, although not worthy to be inserted along with their betters in the schedule, are, at all events allowed a paper to themselves? The care that arranged the manner of enumerating the population ought to have put forward plans for taking the census of the always-out of-doors portion of the English on the night in question, hackney-coachmen included; and a space might, at the same time, have been appropriated in the schedule for "those who were not at home, but ought to have been." We will not dwell upon the material difference this important feature would have made to the calculations in many points. We give the commissioners a peep at the fallacy of their plans, and we leave it to them to remedy it. All we have to add, in conclusion is, that we sent in our own name according to the prescribed ordinance, but it was not

ROCKET.

FRANK HEARTWELL; OR, FIFTY YEARS AGO.

BY BOWMAN TILLER.

CHAPTER III.

A RIGID search after Mr. Heartwell was instituted under the superintendence of two of the most efficient officers of the Bow Street establishment. The evidence given by the coachman was proved to be strictly correct, except that a small portion of time was unaccounted for between the period of his having-as he stated-set the lieutenant down in Ormond Street, and his arrival at the coach-stand in Covent Garden, which according to the deposition of the waterman was much later than would have been required to traverse the distance between the two places. But Simpson's explanation was that, having by request driven his fare very quick to Ormond Street, he merely walked his horses to Charles Street in order to cool them.

Nothing whatever having been elicited that day which was calculated to throw any light on the mysterious affair, Mr. Brady with his witnesses appeared before Mr. Bond on the following morning at the time appointed, when the officers made their reports, and were instructed to persevere. The Bank Agent deposed that he had paid over to the lieutenant at the office of Mr. Brady, and in the presence of the lawyer and his clerk, a thousand guineas in gold, and bank-notes to the amount of fourteen thousand pounds, besides securities and deeds, relating to property supposed to be of considerable value in the East Indies, all which had belonged to the lieutenant's uncle, who had died without issue and intestate: he produced the receipt for the charge he had delivered, and stated that he had earnestly advised the lieutenant to deposit the whole in the hands of his professional man to invest for him to the best advantage; but though Mr. Heartwell perfectly assented to the propriety of such a step, yet he expressed himself so desirous of displaying his newly acquired fortune to his wife, that as a matter of course he (the agent) offered no further argument against it.

Shipkins, the clerk, corroborated the statement of Mr. Brady; but in addition, mentioned that the lieutenant had declared that it was his intention to resign his appointment to the seventy-four for the purpose of remaining at home with his family, but that it would be necessary for him in the first instance to visit Portsmouth.

The officers used their utmost vigilance, and the Secretary of State offered a large reward to any one who could render information of the fate of the missing officer. Ben was despatched to Portsmouth to make inquiry whether his master had been seen in that neighbourhood, or on board the ship; but no clue was obtained.

Days-weeks-months passed away, and Mrs. Heartwell experienced an unmitigated state of anxiety and suspense. Yet though doubts prevailed that she should never behold him again, she determined never to clothe herself in the semblance of mourning till she had proof that he was dead.

Young Frank partook of the feelings of his mother; but the elasticity of boyhood does not long retain the acuteness of sorrow; the delightful changes which Nature is constantly presenting to the ardency of youth

and

"All is beautiful, for all is new,"

superseded the grief which preys upon more advanced age, when the heart knoweth its own bitterness; and whilst the mother was pining and weeping over her heavy affliction, Frank forgot in the joys of amusement that there was anything like unhappiness in the world. He was a bold, freehearted, jovial lad, who loved to frolic over the gardens and grounds round the British Museum. Nor was Ben inactive in either promoting the mirthful indulgences of the lad, although there might be a little mischief in progress, or seeing that fair-play was exercised when pugnacity or wrong led to pugilistic encounters. It is true that the fond parent in her solicitude would expostulate, and on some occasions reprove; but the ready acknowledgment of error which Frank always made when in the wrong, and the argument of Ben, "Bless you, my lady, you can't never go for to rig out an ould figure-head upon young shoulders-besides, what's the odds, so as you're happy?" soon produced reconciliation and pardon.

It has been said "Sweet are the uses of adversity;" but it is hard to contemplate the approach of poverty with its train of evils that no mortal influence can subdue; and such was the case with Mrs. Heartwell. Daily she saw her resources decreasing-the pay of the lieutenant was stopped; she could not claim her widow's pension, for she had no proof of her husband's death; there were no relations to whom she could apply in her distress for assistance or counsel. Mr. Brady had sent in a heavy bill for law business, and pressed for payment; difficulties in short accumulated on all sides. One, and only one, of her former associates continued to visit her; and this was an elderly man of unattractive manners, who claimed a distant relationship. He seldom spoke but when addressed; and his remarks were generally of a caustic and misanthropic cast, rendering him an object not only of dislike to many, but of fear to some. He was poor, but how he lived no one knew; and yet on more than one occasion he had spoken of important affairs even in the state, that displayed a tolerably accurate knowledge of persons and things far above his station in society in short, he was a mystery that set conjecture at defiance. Such was Mr. Unity Peach; in age between fifty and sixty; a large round face, with a great bushy wig upon his head, and one eye covered over with a black patch, the other grey and cold without expression; he was stout made, short, and with limbs like a giant, though he complained of feebleness and debility. He seldom uttered one word of cheering kindness, yet when asked for his advice he would give it; and it was seldom known to fail in its beneficial results. To Frank and the seaman he was an object of aversion that they did not care at all times to conceal; yet, with a perverseness that seemed congenial to his character, if there was any individual to whom the old man could be attached, it was Ben Brailsford.

:

"You are hurrying on to ruin," said Mr. Unity Peach one day, in