their shops up; every pedagogue was voted a Squeers (and many suffered, no doubt, unjustly): but afterwards schoolboys' backs were not so much caned; schoolboys' meat was less tough, and more plentiful; and schoolboys' milk was not so sky-blue. What a kind light of benevolence it is that plays round Crummles and the Phenomenon, and all those poor theater-people, in that charming book! What a humor! and what a good humor! I coincide with the youthful critic whose opinion has just been mentioned, and own to a family admiration for Nicholas Nickleby.

One might go on, though the task would be endless and needless, chronicling the names of kind folks with whom this kind genius has made us familiar. Who does not love the Marchioness and Mr. Richard Swiveller? Who does not sympathize, not only with Oliver Twist, but his admirable young friend the Artful Dodger? Who has not the inestimable advantage of possessing a Mrs. Nickleby in his own family? Who does not bless Sairey Gamp, and wonder at Mrs. Harris? Who does not venerate the chief of that illustrious family, who, being stricken by misfortune, wisely and greatly turned his attention to "coals," the accomplished, the epicurean, the dirty, the delightful Micawber?

I may quarrel with Mr. Dickens's art a thousand and a thousand times: I delight and wonder at his genius; I recognize in it-I speak with awe and reverence— a commission from that Divine Beneficence, whose blessed task we know it will one day be to wipe every tear from every eye. Thankfully I take my share of

the feast of love and kindness which this gentle and generous and charitable soul has contributed to the happiness of the world. I take and enjoy my share, and say a benediction for the meal.

2. THE BACHELOR'S CANE-BOTTOMED CHAIR.

IN tattered old slippers that toast at the bars,
And a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars,
Away from the world and its toils and its cares,
I've a snug little kingdom up four pair of stairs.

To mount to this realm is a toil, to be sure,
But the fire there is bright, and the air rather pure;
And the view I behold on a sunshiny day
Is grand through the chimney-pots over the way.

This snug little chamber is crammed in all nooks, With worthless old knick-knacks and silly old books, And foolish old odds and foolish old ends,

Cracked bargains from brokers, cheap keepsakes from friends.

Old armor, prints, pictures, pipes, china (all cracked),
Old rickety tables, and chairs broken-backed, -

A twopenny treasury, wondrous to see:
What matter? 'tis pleasant to you, friend, and me.

No better divan need the Sultan require

Than the creaking old sofa that basks by the fire;
And 'tis wonderful, surely, what music you get
From the rickety, ramshackle, wheezy spinet.

That praying-rug came from a Turcoman's camp;
By Tiber once twinkled that brazen old lamp;
A Mameluke fierce yonder dagger has drawn
'Tis a murderous knife to toast muffins upon.

Long, long through the hours, and the night and the chimes,

Here we talk of old books, and old friends, and old

times;

As we sit in a fog made of rich Latakie,

This chamber is pleasant to you, friend, and me.

But of all the cheap treasures that garnish my nest,
There's one that I love and I cherish the best;
For the finest of couches that's padded with hair
I never would change thee, my cane-bottomed chair.

'Tis a bandy-legged, high-shouldered, worm-eaten seat,
With a creaking old back, and twisted old feet;
But since the fair morning when Fanny sat there,
I bless thee and love thee, old cane-bottomed chair.

If chairs have but feeling in holding such charms,
A thrill must have passed through your withered old

arms!

I looked, and I longed, and I wished in despair;
I wished myself turned to a cane-bottomed chair.

It was but a moment she sat in this place;
She'd a scarf on her neck, and a smile on her face,
A smile on her face, and a rose in her hair;

And she sat there and bloomed in my cane-bottomed

chair.

And so I have valued my chair ever since,

Like the shrine of a saint, or the throne of a prince; Saint Fanny, my patroness sweet I declare,

The queen of my heart and my cane-bottomed chair.

When the candles burn low, and the company's gone,
In the silence of night as I sit here alone, -
I sit here alone, but we yet are a pair;
My Fanny I see in my cane-bottomed chair.

She comes from the past, and revisits my room;
She looks as she then did, all beauty and bloom;
So smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair,
And yonder she sits in my cane-bottomed chair.

XX. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

LIFE AND WORKS.

AMONG the literary men of this generation, James Russell Lowell presents perhaps the most rounded example of American training and culture. He is at the same time distinguished as a scholar, and as a man of public affairs. While he has profited by the literatures of all nations, he has been the disciple of no one literary master, but has brought an art of his own to the creation of works that strikingly bear the impress of the national spirit and genius.

The subject of this sketch is descended from a line of Puritan ancestors running back to the early days of Massachusetts history. In every generation the Lowell family has produced men of solid, high-minded character; and the father of our poet was Dr. Charles Lowell, a distinguished divine. His mother, Harriet Spencer, belonged to a Scotch family settled in New Hampshire, and it is from her that James Russell inherits his poetic gift. We are told that her memory was a storehouse of minstrelsy and romance, which "she sung over the cradles of her children, and repeated in their early school-days, until poetic lore and feeling were as natural to them as the bodily senses."

James Russell Lowell was born Feb. 22, 1819, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a spacious three-story wooden house known as Elmwood. It is surrounded by ample grounds, one boundary of which touches on the beautiful Mount Auburn Cemetery, while a stone.