Good day. Allow me, allow me." in Lyons satin and Genoa velvet.

And her ladyship passed on

Verily, verily man of iron, both of labour and of soul, you had said " Age of gingerbread and pap-spoons! and you might have added, of national debt, paper-money, funds, pension-list, and flashy novels into the bargain. The latter, like mushrooms, could only be nourished by a hot-bed like the first.

"Now, will you step this way?" and the civil official ushered the swart giant into the very presence of Mr. Proof himself, who, respectable and grave, sat writing at a library table. He looked at the velveteen coat, the bandana handkerchief, the ungloved hands, and then said, "Well, my man."

John began to untie the bundle, and meanwhile to state his business.

"Indeed! ah! Well! I never look at MSS. in the first instance. You should have left yours in the office.

But John drew a chair, sat down, and went to business about the book with imperturbable gravity, to which business Mr. Proof listened in perfect silence, for some minutes, with closed eyes and nodding head, and then rung a small bell upon the table, at which an adjoining door opened, and the polite gentleman entered.

"Mr. Snapp," spoke Mr. Proof, coolly, "just hear what this person wants. I can't understand him, and I have an important business-letter in hand, to Mr. Beaufort Montague, a third edition of his Warlike Knight' being immediately required."

"Step this way," spoke Mr. Snapp, to John, peremptorily, and without a bow. "Such business as you have can be settled by me.

""

"It can't," said John, "for I don't carry gingerbread ;" and so, re-tying his bundle with the same imperturbable gravity, he put on his hat, and walked coolly to the door. Here he turned, and looked hard at Mr. Proof.

"The times are coming, sir, when man to man will speak civilly, whatever may be the colour of his hands or coat. Ay, and a book be read, without being written upon hot-pressed paper, or without care whether a carriage or handkerchief brings it. Good day." And John was gone.

The second night after this, John's long walk was ended, and he turned into the hedge-girt lane wherein his cottage lay. Nell's listening ear recognised, in a minute, his iron tramp, and there, upon the threshold, she stood to receive him.

"Now," said John, heartily, after his first huge hug was over, "put by this box, little wife, and let me have some supper and a pipe. It is, as I told you, Nell, an age of gingerbread; nevertheless, one wherein much good work can be done, as you shall see!"

*

*

Time has rolled on as unceasingly as the furnace-maw gapes and hungers, as the belching flames are bright, or black, or lurid, or like the burning bush, or still more sacred pillar—as unceasingly as the molten flood pours forth into angular rigidity-as unceasingly as the roar keeps on, as the anvils ring, as the pits give forth, as the roadway and the tramway are full of life-as unceasingly as labour is developing the grandeur of its resources and the spirituality of its laws; so that it is now full forty years, on this bright June day, since the "Warlike Knight" reached its third edition. That has perished with its myriad ephemeral brethren. Not a figment is left of them; not a pinch of their mushroom dust! whilst all that was of nature is still young, divine, and infinite in its teachings of human love and human brotherhood! And the time is come and coming for the true Exaltation of the Pen in its great democratic and political relations. Oh, glorious time! Thank God for it! Thank God for it! Thank God for it!

Across this wold, now still more covered with huge furnaces and forges, troops of well-clad working men, waggons, gigs, and carriages, all pour onward to one huge building of Cyclopean labour, by its twenty lurid throats, and yet large enough withal to receive a gathered multitude. There are amongst this multitude, warpers and weavers, dyers and dressers, from Glasgow, Paisley, Leeds, Manchester; iron-workers, plate-workers, burnishers, designers, from Sheffield, Birmingham; dalemen, pitmen, woodmen, from Dean-forest; merchants, traders, shopkeepers, gentry, clergy, really-ennobled men of privileged aristocracy; and, greatest yet of all, the great immeasurable priesthood of the popular mind, here with the rest, to do service before the great altar, and say ALL HAIL to Genius and Democracy, as mighty and as infinite as the Cyclopean blast that taught it, and revealed itself unto itself by Nature teaching the grandeur of Nature!

It is the whim of the man, John Ironshaft, to receive this deputation of his countless worshippers in the very roar of this swart power itself, that all may know what he was, what he is, and the mightiness of the power he has ever worshipped!

In this building, some hundred feet long, and very many broad, the floor sanded, and on one side the sweltering furnaces (though on this great day of festival comparatively idle) a platform is raised; and on this, when the multitude are fairly wedged round, space scarcely left for many enthusiastic speakers, is seen John Ironshaft, giant-limbed, but grey-haired, and somewhat decrepit, from his untiring labour of body and mind, for he has done God's work with both, and that manfully; for, though possessor of where he stands, and of streets of houses, he has been, more or less, a swart worker to the present hour, and but a leader in the great army that nobly and daily serves by the essential and primæval condition of nature. Yes; though possessor of this honourable substance, he has not set himself apart as a capitalist, but has distributed it through high and well-paid wages-through untiring service in Parliament and Democratic Leagues-through patriotism to his country; not asking percentage for this thousand here, nor security for the thousand there-through lectures, through schools, through better-regulated dwellings through being a brother to his brother men; and yet best, and yet truest, through genuine service by an iron pen; and by and through these things developing two of the great truths of the "Coming Reformation:" That the individual constitutes his country, and can have no true interests apart from it; and that politics can be no more separated from a genuine literature than truth from truth. Therefore, the highest order of intellect is necessarily the priesthood, missioned to teach the sublime and ever-advancing doctrines of onward Time! After some speaking, the multitude listening eagerly, and John Ironshaft standing forth with seven young and stalwart men-the sons of that small Nell—a group of working men come forward, and reverently uncovering something they bring, show neither gold nor silver, but four or five folio volumes, magnificently bound in vellum, the cover edges decorated with filagree of light bronze work. Some one, priest himself, then opens the cover of one volume, and all behold, magnificently printed on the fly-leaf, "The Works of John Ironshaft, the Priest of the New Age, and the Humanities of Nature. Printed and Presented by the Working Classes of his Country."

John takes the volume, and, giant-nerved even as he is, in this his seventieth year, his voice falters like a sobbing child's.

This festival was, as I had hoped, men and brothers, more dedicated to the honour of our new and most magnificent democratic

literature, than personally to me as one of its assistant servants; otherwise I should have declined the apparent egotism of receiving such a gift before such an assembly. But, thanking you heartily for this touching and almost sublime evidence of your personal devotion to me, I thank you more for your recognition of great principles-for this strong evidence that I have spoken truth, and you have received it as such. As I have often told you in our Taxation and Universal Suffrage Leagues, there was a day when the merest ephemeral trash, so it applauded or disseminated conventional or aristocratical opinions, was eagerly received. Few or none of the giant brood of truths were allowed to heave themselves up from the depths of the People; and mostly, when condescendingly addressed, it was no more than to pander to their grossest tastes and worst ignorance. That day is passed; and literature, once debased to us, is, and will be, exalted by us. We shall absorb the aristocratic elements, and receive all into that grand sovereignty of democracy which refuses no truth. We are beginning, and we shall ultimately hear most marvellous and original music, from the roar of the furnace, from the flying of the shuttle, from the stroke of the hammer and the spade and the axe; we shall know that from darkness the divinest lights have to shine.

"John Ironshaft, in you we see this spiritual light,” a hundred voices cry.

"No, no; a man may do good work, my friends, without being a prophet. All I want to persuade you is, of the wonderful poetry that lies hidden in the common human heart, and how, like the molten stream before your sight this moment, it may be moulded at will-by bad teachers and bad political institutions into evilby fearless prophets, who count the signs of Time, into all the grandeur and progress that Time requires. Thus, without being, as I have said, this prophet, I have now through fifty years of my life endeavoured to speak and act as a man. The roar you hear, taught me the absoluteness of this manhood; I heard it ask for justice; I heard it delicately whisper truth; I heard it say things of human brotherhood and mercy made active; I heard it say, Political Injustice exists, and they that hear my voice poured from the Soul of Labour must convert this into Justice. Thus I have worked against taxation, gold monopoly, and for suffrage and advanced education. And I thank God I have worked. I thank God I have worked with swart hand and giant arm. I thank God that what now lies here magnificent in vellum, was bred behind

those bellows in soot and darkness. From such darkness let diviner light than mine yet shine. And yet, forgive me here for being egotistical; this darkness might have never shown true light, but for one that became mine-the mother of these sons. She it was that softened my rude nature, and led me to the service I have done; and even does still, though the summer flowers wave over her, my friends, and in winter time the holly leaves..."

The world knows the love-story that we know; and many a pilgrimage has been made, this very summer's morn, to the lonely grave and the first home of that noble love. Many here look down to button-hole in coat and waistcoat at the touching sign there carried, of a true woman, and a noble man, whose history has become the world's. John Ironshaft knows this, and sees this. More touching than all the rest is the strong evidence that he lives in the popular heart! He or she who lives there has some hope of immortality!

There is much to say; but John can say no more. Others now come forward and speak of his great life, its acts, and service; and one concludes his speech thus, with a quotation from a pen that has spread truth throughout the world: "Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new; but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, came at last Alfred and Shakspeare.'

John Ironshaft is as grand as Alfred was; and time has yet to show whether nature was in him as great as Shakspeare; but at least we here learn that the time is come for the EXALTATION OF THE PEN.

New Books.

THE BACHELOR OF THE ALBANY. By the Author of the "Falcon Family." 1 vol. post 8vo. Chapman & Hall.

A WARNING TO WIVES. By the Author of "Cousin Geoffry." 3 vols. post 8vo. T. C. Newby.

JANE EYRE; an Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell. 3 vols. post 8vo. Smith, Elder, & Co.

Ir anything were wanting to show the futility of criticism, the continuous crop of novels would suffice. They are chopped up in