“They are gone.  Was it a vision that had visited his waking dreams?  The spell is dissolved; he is still on earth, and earthly thoughts and worldly crimes return and weigh down his soul.”

“The fetters of vice are not broken in a moment; they may yield sometimes like wax, but they close again, and the link is adamant.  His foster-mother came to say her last farewell.  He shuddered as she entered.  He felt the presence of his evil genius, and wished she had spared him this.  This, too, was transient; her influence, though disarranged by the vision of the last few moments, was not broken.  He was again enslaved.  The summons for execution was answered by her hysteric sobs and wild ravings, and her loud shrieks rang through the cell as De Lawrence impressed his last kiss.”

The incidents of the previous sketch contain little, if any, extravagance or affectation, and it would be better for men, if we could charge the author of “Clouds and Sunshine” with overcolouring the sufferings which await the spendthrift.  It is painful to own that such cases are but too common in society.  Think of an extravagant man married to an extravagant woman—­the mean and contemptible conduct to which they are driven—­the insolence and cruelty with which they are baited through large towns, hunted down into an obscure cottage in the country, or chased into exile.  Think of the hateful reflections which, sooner or later, must overtake such sufferers—­either in their moody solitude in the country, or amidst the forced delights of a crowded city on the continent.  In the one all nature is free, whilst the debauchee frowns on her laughing landscapes; in the other, conscience and her busy devils are at work—­yet thousands thus embitter life’s cup, and then repine at their uncheery lot.  With such men, all must be Clouds—­a winter of discontent—­for who will envy their Sunshine.

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

* * * * *

NOSES.

Observations on the Organ of Scent.  By William Wadd, Esq., F.L.S.

  “Non cuicunque datum est habere nasum.”—­MARTIAL.

  “I have a nose.”—­PROBY.

It has often struck me as a defect in our anatomical teachers, that in describing that prominent feature of the human face, the organ of scent, they generalize too much, and have but one term for the symmetrical arch, arising majestically, or the tiny atom, scarcely equal to the weight of a barnacle—­a very dot of flesh!  Nor is the dissimilarity between the invisible functions of the organ, and the visible varieties of its external structure, less worthy of remark.  With some, the sense of smelling is so dull, as not to distinguish hyacinths from assafoetida; they would even pass the Small-Pox Hospital, and Maiden-lane, without noticing the knackers; whilst others, detecting instantly the slightest particle of offensive matter, hurry past the apothecaries, and get into an agony of sternutation, at fifty yards from Fribourg’s.