“I could not help contrasting,” says Kohl, “the pleasing aspect of these streets with the close and noisy workrooms in woolen and cotton manufactories.  There the workpeople are all separated and classified according to age and sex, and marshaled like soldiers.  Their domestic and family ties are rudely broken.  There chance or exigency separates the young factory girl from her favorite companions, and dooms her to association with strangers.  There social conversation and the merry song are drowned in that stunning din of machinery, which in the end paralyzes even the power of thought.”

Our German friend is a little hard upon factory life.  Though not so picturesque, it does not, if candidly viewed, offer so very unfavorable a contrast to that passed by the Belgian Lace Workers.

* * * * *

[FROM BENTLEY’S MISCELLANY.]

THE TOMB OF LADY BLESSINGTON.

BY MRS. ROMER.

  “[Greek:  Eudeis all ou seio lelasmenoi esmen]!”
  “Thou sleepest, but we do not forget thee!”

It is too much the way of the world in this our civilized Europe to neglect the receptacles of the dead.  Those loved ones even, whose dwellings, while living, were thronged by admiring friends, are deserted when laid in their last narrow home.  The breath once gone,—­the last sad offices performed,—­the funeral pomp over,—­and the sepulchre closed,—­all the requisites of affection and respect appear to have been fulfilled, and the spot that holds the dust once so doted upon, is forever abandoned!  Witness the damp graves overgrown with rank nettles and thorns, the degraded tombstones, the illegible moss-covered epitaphs of our church-yards!  Witness the dreary oblivion of our over-crowded vaults, where the eye of affection has never shed a tear, the hand of friendship never scattered a flower over the mouldering relics they inclose!  It is not that the dead are forgotten—­it is not that their memory has ceased to be dear and sacred to their friends—­but it is that the gay and the worldly-minded shrink from the dark images called forth by the aspect of the grave; they recoil from the idea of familiarizing themselves with the inevitable spot where they must one day lie in “cold obstruction’s apathy;” they deem it fond folly to nourish grief by keeping before their eyes that which perpetually reminds them of the loss they have sustained, and thus they fly from the dwellings of the dead, and abandon what was once dearest to them to darkness and the worm.

A tenderer and more reverent spirit prevails in the East.  There the Cities of the Dead are the constant resort of the living.  The tombs of friends and kindred are as carefully tended, as regularly visited as their habitations were while yet they were dwellers upon earth.  The grave of a departed relative is a spot consecrated to sweet and solemn recollections, where the followers of Mohammed love to meditate and to pray.  In the mausoleum of the Viceroys of