infuse a sanguine
joyousness into her soul. How glad would she be, if they did but open to
her. Is not the Allwise, through the beauties of His works, holding her
up, while man only is struggling to pull her down?

And while Maria wanders homeless about the streets of Charleston, we
must beg you, gentle reader, to accompany us into one of the great
thoroughfares of London, where is being enacted a scene appertaining to
this history.

It is well-nigh midnight, the hour when young London is most astir in
his favorite haunts; when ragged and well-starved flower-girls, issuing
from no one knows where, beset your path through Trafalgar and Liecester
squares, and pierce your heart with their pleadings; when the Casinoes
of the Haymarket and Picadilly are vomiting into the streets their frail
but richly-dressed women; when gaudy supper-rooms, reeking of lobster
and bad liquor, are made noisy with the demands of their
flauntily-dressed customers; when little girls of thirteen are dodging
in and out of mysterious courts and passages leading to and from
Liecester square; when wily cabmen, ranged around the "great globe,"
importune you for a last fare; and when the aristocratic swell, with
hectic face and maudlin laugh, saunters from his club-room to seek
excitement in the revels at Vauxhall.

A brown mist hangs over the dull area of Trafalgar square. The bells of
old St. Martin's church have chimed merrily out their last night peal;
the sharp voice of the omnibus conductor no longer offends the ear; the
tiny little fountains have ceased to give out their green water; and the
lights of the Union Club on one side, and Morley's hotel on the other,
throw pale shadows into the open square.

The solitary figure of a man, dressed in the garb of a gentleman, is
seen sauntering past Northumberland house, then up the east side of the
square. Now he halts at the corner of old St. Martin's church, turns and
contemplates the scene before him. On his right is that squatty mass of
freestone and smoke, Englishmen exultingly call the Royal Academy, but
which Frenchmen affect contempt for, and uninitiated Americans mistake
for a tomb. An equestrian statue of one of the Georges rises at the east
corner; Morley's Hotel, where Americans get poor fare and enormous
charges, with the privilege of fancying themselves quite as good as the
queen, on the left; the dead walls of Northumberland House, with their
prisonlike aspect, and the mounted lion, h