all other workmen; and as even fine clothes are not enough of themselves, it is necessary that he should also have fine manners; and not having such advantages of seeing polite society as his neighbour the barber, his gentlemanly manners are always less fine than grotesque... A village smith hears wellnigh as much gossip as a village barber; but he develops into an entirely different sort of man. He is not bound to please his customers by his talk; nor does his profession leave his breath free enough to talk fluently or much; and so he listens in grim and swarthy independence; strikes his iron while it is hot; and when, after thrusting it into the fire, he bends himself to the bellows, he drops, in rude phrase, a brief judicial remark, and again falls sturdily to work... Again, the shoemaker may be deemed, in the merely mechanical character of his profession, near of kin to the tailor. But such is not the case. He has to work amid paste, wax, oil, and blacking, and contracts a smell of leather. He cannot keep himself particularly clean; and although a nicely finished shoe be all well enough in its way, there is not much about it on which conceit can build. No man can set up as a beau on the strength of a prettily-shaped shoe; and so a beau the shoemaker is not, but, on the contrary, a careless, manly fellow, who, when not overmuch devoted to Saint Monday, gains usually, in his course through life, a considerable amount of sense.

The professional character of the mason varies a good deal in the several provinces, according to the various circumstances in which he is placed. He is in general a blunt, manly, taciturn fellow, who, without much of the Radical or Chartist about him, especially if wages be good, and employment abundant, rarely touches his hat to a gentleman... His employment is less purely mechanical than many others: he is not like a man ceaselessly engaged in pointing needles or fashioning pin-heads. On the contrary, every stone he lays or hews demands the exercise of a certain amount of judgment for itself; and so he cannot wholly suffer his mind to fall asleep over his work. When engaged, too, in erecting some fine building, he always feels a degree of interest in marking the effect of the design developing itself peacemeal, and growing up under his hands; and so he rarely wearies of what he is doing... Further, his profession has this advantage, that it educates his sense of sight. Accustomed to ascertain the straightness of lines at a glance, and to cast his eye along plane walls, or the mouldings of entablatures or architraves, in order to determine the rectitude of the masonry, he acquires a sort of mathematical precision in determining the true bearings and position

of objects, and is usually found, when admitted into a rifle club, to equal, without previous practice, its second-rate shots. He only falls short of its first-rate ones, because, uninitiated by the experience of his profession in the mystery of the parabolic curve, he fails, in taking aim, to make the proper allowance for it... The mason is almost always a silent man: the strain on his respiration is too great, when he is actively employed, to leave the necessary freedom to the organs of speech; and so at least the provincial builder or stone-cutter rarely or never becomes a democratic orator. I have met with exceptional cases in the larger towns; but they were the result of individual peculiarities, developed in clubs and taverns, and were not professional. Hugh Miller.

THE SWINE-GENERAL OF NASSAU.

EVERY morning at half-past five o'clock, I hear, as I am dressing, the sudden blast of an immense long wooden horn, from which always proceed the same four notes. I have got quite accustomed to this wild alarm, and the vibration has scarcely subsided, and is still ringing among the distant hills, when, leisurely proceeding from almost every door in the street, behold a pig... Some from their jaded, careworn, dragged appearance are evidently leaving behind them a numerous litter; others are great, tall, monastic, melancholy-looking creatures which seem to have no other object left in this wretched world than to become bacon; while others are thin, tiny, light hearted, brisk, petulant piglings, with the world and all its loves and sorrows before them. Of their own accord these creatures proceed down the street to join the herdsman, who occasionally continues to repeat the sorrowful blast from his horn.

Gregarious, or naturally fond of society, with one curl of their tails, and with their noses almost touching the ground, the pigs trot on, grunting to themselves and to their comrades, halting only whenever they come to anything they can manage to swallow.

I have observed that the old ones pass all the carcasses, which, trailing on the ground, are hanging before the butchers' shops, as if they had given their word of honor not to touch them; the middle-aged ones wistfully eye this meat, yet jog on also, while the piglings, who (so like mankind) have more appetite than judgment, can rarely resist taking a nibble; yet, no sooner does the dead calf begin again to move, than, from

the window immediately above, out pops the head of a butcher, who, drinking his coffee whip in hand, inflicts a prompt punishment sounding quite equal to the offence.

As I have stated, the pigs generally speaking, proceed of their own accord; but shortly after they have passed, there comes down our street a little bareheaded, barefooted stunted dab of a child about eleven years old. This little goblin page, the whipperin, attendant, or aide-de-camp, of the old pig-driver, facetiously called the "swine-general," is a being no one looks at, and who looks at nobody. Whether the hotels are full of strangers or empty, whether the promenades are occupied by princes or peasants, whether the weather be good or bad, hot, or rainy, she apparently never stops to consider: upon these insignificant subjects it is evident she never for a moment has reflected... But such a pair of eyes have, perhaps, seldom beamed from human sockets! The little intelligent urchin knows every house from which a pig ought to have proceeded; she can tell by the door being open or shut and even by the foot marks whether the creature has joined the herd, or whether having overslept itself, it is still snoring in its sty: a single glance determines whether she shall pass a yard or enter it; and if a pig from indolence or greediness be loitering on the road, the sting of the wasp cannot be sharper or more spiteful than the cut she gives it. As soon as, finishing with one street, she joins her general in the main road, the herd slowly proceed down the town.

Besides the little girl who brings up the rear, the herd is preceded by a boy of about fourteen, whose duty it is not to let the foremost, the more enterprising, or, in other words, the most ravenous pigs advance too fast.

In the middle of the drove, surrounded like a shepherd by his flock, slowly stalks the "SWINE-GENERAL," a wan, spectre-looking old man, worn out, or nearly so, by the arduous and every-day duty of conducting, against their wills, a gang of exactly the most obstinate animals in creation. A single glance at his jaundiced, ill-natured countenance is sufficient to satisfy one that his temper has been soured by the vexatious contrarieties, and "untoward events" it has met with... In his left hand he holds a staff to help himself onwards, while round his right shoulder hangs one of the most terrific whips that could possibly be constructed. At the end of a short handle turning upon a swivel, there is a lash about nine feet long, formed like the vertebræ of a snake, each joint being an iron ring, which, decreasing in size, is closely connected with its neighbour by a band of hard greasy leather... The pliability, the weight, and the force of this iron whip render it an

argument which the obstinacy even of the pig is unable to resist; yet, as the old man proceeds down the town, he endeavors to speak kindly to the herd, and as the bulk of them precede him, jostling each other, grumbling and grunting on their way, he occasionally exclaims in a low, hollow tone of encouragement, "Nina, Anina "... If any little savory morsel causes a contention, stoppage, or constipation on the march, the old fellow slowly unwinds his dreadful whip, and by merely whirling it round his head, like reading the Riot Act, he generally succeeds in dispersing the crowd; but if they neglect this solemn warning, if their stomachs prove stronger than their judgment, and if the group of greedy pigs still continue to stagnate, "ARRIFF!" the old fellow exclaims, and rushing forward, the lash whirling round his head, he inflicts with strength which no one could have fancied he possessed, a smack that seems absolutely to electrify the leader ... As lightning shoots across the heavens, I observe the culprit fly forwards, and for many yards continuing to sidle towards the left; it is quite evident that the thorn is still smarting in his side; and no wonder, poor fellow; for the blow he received would almost have cut a piece out of a door.

As soon as the herd get out of the town, they begin gradually to ascend the rocky barren mountain which appears towering above them, and then the labors of the Swine-general and his staff become greater than ever: for as the animals from their solid column begin to extend or deploy themselves into line, it is necessary constantly to ascend and descend the slippery hill, in order to outflank them; "ARRIFF!" vociferates the old man striding after one of his rebellious subjects; "ARRIFF!" in a shrill tone of voice is re-echoed by the lad as he runs after another. However, in due time the drove reaches the, courteously so called, pasture-ground which is devoted to this day's exercise: the whole mountain being thus consumed by patches in regular succession. Sir F. Head.

A STONE.

HERE is a common pebble, a flint; such as a little boy kicks before him as he goes, by way of making haste with a message, and saving his new shoes.

"A stone!" cries a reader, 66 a flint! the very symbol of a miser! What can be got out of that?"

The question is well put; but a little reflection on the part of our interrogator would soon rescue the poor stone from the

comparison. Strike him at any rate, and you will get something out of him: warm his heart, and out come the genial sparks that shall gladden your hearth, and put hot dishes on your table. This is not miser's work... A French poet has described the process, well known to the maid-servant, when she stoops, with flashing face, over the tinder-box on a cold morning, and rejoices to see the first laugh of the fire:

The prudent sexton, studious to reveal
Dark holes, here takes from out his pouch a steel;
Then strikes upon a flint. In many a spark
Forth leaps the sprightly fire against the dark;
The tinder feels the little lightning hit,

The match provokes it, and a candle's lit.

We shall not stop to pursue this fiery point into all its consequences, to show what a world of beauty or of formidable power is contained in that single property of our friend Flint, what fires, what lights, what conflagrations, what myriads of clicks of triggers; awful sounds before battle, when instead of letting his flint do its proper good-natured work of cooking his supper, and warming his wife and himself over their cottagefire, the poor fellow is made to kill and be killed by other poor fellows, whose brains are strewed about the place for want of knowing better.

But to return to the natural, quiet condition of our friend, and what he can do for us in a peaceful way, and so as to please meditation; what think you of him as the musician of the brooks? as the unpretending player on those watery pipes and flageolets, during the hot noon, or the silence of the night? Without the pebble the brook would want its prettiest

murmur.

A noise as of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.

Quiet as a stone! Nothing certainly can be more quiet than that. Not a syllable or a sigh will a stone utter, though you watch and bear him company for a whole week on the most desolate moor in Cumberland. Thus silent, thus unmoved, thus insensible to whatever circumstances might be taking place, or spectators might think of him, was the soul-stunned old patriarch of the gods. We may picture to ourselves a large, or a small stone, as we please, Stone-henge or a pebble. The simplicity and grandeur of truth do not care which. The silence is the thing; its intensity, its unalterableness.