mechanical triumphs we have won; they are well enough, and show-to borrow the words of a distinguished American, whom, during his too brief career, we held unrivalled by any experimenter in the Old World for the depth as well as the daring of his investigations that some things can be done as well as others.

Our specialty is of somewhat larger scope. We profess to make men and women out of human beings better than any of the joint-stock companies called dynasties have done or can do it. We profess to make citizens out of men, not citoyens, but persons educated to question all privileges asserted by others, and claim all rights belonging to themselves, the only way in which the infinitely most important party to the compact between the governed and governing can avoid being cheated out of the best rights inherent in human nature, as an experience the world has seen almost enough of has proved. We are in trouble just now, on account of a neglected hereditary melanosis, as Monsieur Trousseau might call it. When we recover from the social and political convulsion it has produced, and

eliminate the materies morbi,—and both these

events are only matters of time,

perhaps we shall have leisure to breed our own milliners. If not, there will probably be refugees enough from the Old World, who have learned the fashions in courts, and will be glad to turn their knowledge to a profitable use for the benefit of their republican patronesses in New York and Boston.

We have run away from our subject farther than we meant at starting; but an essay on legs could hardly avoid the rambling tendency which naturally belongs to these organs.

A VISIT TO THE AUTOCRAT'S

LANDLADY.

BY THE SPECIAL REPORTER OF THE "OCEANIC MISCELLANY."

HE door was opened by a stout, red-armed

TH

lump of a woman, who, in reply to my question, said her name was Bridget, but Biddy they calls her mostly. There was a rickety hatstand in the entry, upon which, by the side of a school-boy's cap, there hung a broad-brimmed white hat, somewhat fatigued by use, but looking gentle and kindly, as I have often noticed good old gentlemen's hats do, after they have worn them for a time. The door of the dining-room was standing wide open, and I went in. A long table, covered with an oil-cloth, ran up and down the length of the room, and yellow wooden chairs were ranged about it. She showed me where the Gentleman used to sit, and, at the

last part of the time, the Schoolmistress next to him. Their chairs were like the rest, but it was odd enough to notice that they stood close together, touching each other, while all the rest were straggling and separate. I observed that peculiar atmospheric flavor which has been described by Mr. Balzac (the French story-teller who borrows so many things from some of our American leading writers), under the name of odeur de pension. It is, as one may say, an olfactory perspective of an endless vista of departed breakfasts, dinners, and suppers. It is similar, if not identical, in all temperate climates; a kind of neutral tint, which forms the perpetual background upon which the banquet of to-day strikes out its keener but more transitory aroma.

I don't think it necessary to go into any further particulars, because this atmospheric character has the effect of making the dining-rooms of all boarding-houses seem very much alike; and the accident of a hair-cloth sofa, cold, shiny, slippery, prickly, or a veneered sideboard, with a scale off here and there, and a knob or two missing, or a portrait, with one hand half

under its coat, the other resting on a pious-look

ing book,

these accidents, and such as these,

make no great difference.

The landlady soon presented herself, and I followed her into the parlor, which was a decent apartment, with a smart centre-table, on which lay an accordion, a recent number of the "Pactolian," a gilt-edged, illustrated book or two, and a copy of the works of that distinguished native author, to whom I feel very spiteful, on account of his having, some years ago, attacked a near friend of mine, and whom, on Christian principles, I do not mention, though I have noticed, that, where there is an accordion on the table, his books are apt to be lying near it.

The landlady was a "wilted" (not exactly withered), sad-eyed woman, of the thin-blooded sort, but firm-fibred, and sharpened and made shrewd by her calling, so that the look with which she ran me over, in the light of a possible boarder, was so searching, that I was half put down by it. I informed her of my errand, which was to make some inquiries concerning two former boarders of hers, in whom a portion