POPULAR LITERATURE Science and Arts. CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS. No. 366. SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1861. There is no flock, however watched and tended, about whose should-be occupant there is a silence in the domestic circle, and only an unpleasant whisper elsewhere. Like many other whispers, however, this circulates much more universally than any outspoken report. The name which we become most familiar with when we have made the acquaintance of his brethren and often enough before we have made it -is poor Dick's. The Disgrace to the Family is generally a Dick. Godfathers and godmothers in one's baptism should look to this. Tom, too, is rather a dangerous sort of name to give a lad; but Alexander is safe enough; and as for James-I never even so much as heard of a James going wrong, except in the Stuart family. Nobody ever calls Dick, Richardthat is, not since it happened, you know '-except his mother. My poor dear Richard,' she says, when she speaks of him at rare times to his earthly father, and at all times when she prays for him, as she does continually, to his Father which is in Heaven. Dick has all the world against him except his mother and I always did like Dick, and always shall; a weakness, which-being a James myself, and out of the reach of any possible sympathy with the young reprobate is not a little creditable. 'Well,' say I, to the friends of the family, since you are always saying, "He was born bad, you see;" and as I know that he had a bad name given to him at the baptismal font, would it not have been flying in the face of Predestination, if he had not "turned out bad" also? Why, of course it would.' me. 6 Although people talk about It,' and 'That bad business,' it must be confessed that the youth is not often made a castaway for his first fault. His usual course is to commit a long list of misdemeanours, culminating in some offence, which, although serious, VOL. XV. PRICE 1d. would not of itself have placed him outside the pale of forgiveness. I have known a young gentleman's character to be irreproachable up to the age of fourteen years, at which epoch he committed an atrocious and unextenuated child-murder; but he was not a favourite of mine either before or after that event, and his Christian name (or what is accustomed to pass for such in Wales, his native country) was Cadwallader. He, however, be pleased to observe, was by no means a Black Sheep-which may, after all, be merely a healthy variety of the species--but one that had an evil disease in him, fatal to all his kind-the Rot; not in the foot, indeed, as in the quadruped's case, but at his heart. The Black Sheep proper (which, however, is an adjective but rarely applicable to him) is often only black outside; of an external appearance obviously objectionable indeed, but, within, very tolerable mutton. I have in my time known not a few of these unfortunates, and my kindliness towards them has led several (they being confiding creatures, who always wear their hearts upon their sleeves, of which circumstance the daws take great advantage) to reveal to me the history of their lives. Out of which several narratives, I am about to compile the following biography, for the good of my species (as well as for other reasons which need not be here set down); just as the warning beacon-fire, lit upon some wave-fretted promontory on stormy nights, is not made up of a single tree, marked from the first for such a purpose by the cruel axe, but out of many. If, in one single bark, bearing full sail upon those fatal breakers, the careless steersman shall perceive its flame, and seize the flapping helm while there is time, thereby preserving ship and cargo, it will be well indeed: but if, evoked by this tiny danger-signal, one life-boat, that would else have lain securely in harbour, be induced to put out to the driving vessel, and give her aid, ere she become an utter wreck, it will be better still. A little help is often all she needs, although she looks in such a sad plight to us, on land. And for endeavour of this sort, be sure, whether it succeed or not, the rescuer may count securely on one day getting salvage. CHAPTER I. A FAMILY GROUP. Richard Arbour was the fifth child and the third son of parents who considered their quiver sufficiently stocked with that sort of missile before his advent, which, moreover, occurred somewhat unexpectedly. The wind of a not particularly joyful dawn blew free in the silken sail of his infancy, three weeks or so before that little shallop was expected upon the great ocean of life. The hypocrisy of Welcome, Little Stranger,' would not perhaps have been inscribed upon his pincushion, no matter what notice of his arrival might have been vouchsafed beforehand, but, as it was, there were absolutely not enough pins; there was a total insufficiency of flannel; and as for his cradle, it was a something knocked up out of his eldest brother's wheel-barrow (who never forgave that appropriation of his property), and looked, even when it was fitted up, and en grande tenue, a great deal more like an Indian 'tikinigan' than a Christian bassinette. His mother, poor thing, was glad perhaps to look upon his little mottled carcass; but nobody who had met his papa at 2 A. M. on that gusty December morning at the doctor's door, with his silk umbrella blown inside out, and one shoe and one slipper on, would have dreamed of congratulating him. mouth, without any lips, sandy hair, sandy whisk- How differently does Paterfamilias treat the first and fifth of these post-nuptial incidents! In the former case, our medical man,' not yet become 'our family doctor,' is warned to keep himself from distant journeys, in anticipation of the important event; while that awful woman with the bundle-for we never yet saw one of her class with box or bag is welcomed into the house, like the monster horse into Troy, bringing subjugation and desolation with her for weeks and weeks before it is absolutely necessary. Then the husband-not yet Head of the Family-perhaps a couple of volumes and a half, to impose banished once more into Bachelordom and a turn-up bedstead, starts up o' nights with night-cap behind ear, and thinks he is wanted to fetch Dr Neversleep a score of times before the real occasion, which commonly takes place when he is out of the way; spending an hour, perhaps, with some friend of his youth, and a cigar-an accident which afflicts the new-made father with the acutest pangs of conscience. But when such an affair has happened four times already, Paterfamilias takes it quieter a good deal; doesn't see any particular cause for hurry; declines to devote his mansion to Lucina until the last extremity; and (as we have seen) has eventually not even time to select his shoes of swiftness. Mr Benjamin Arbour was a tender-hearted husband too, and in his ardent anxiety, scarcely felt the cold at all until he had reached home again, when getting into a damp bed in the attic chamber-for there was no fire for him to sit up by anywhere, except where his presence was forbidden-he became conscious that, as a gentleman subject to spitting of blood from the lungs, he had not been doing an entirely prudent thing. His teeth chattered so when Dr Neversleep came up to tell him the news, that that physician ascribed the phenomenon to marital anxiety, and at once hastened to allay it. 'It's all right, Mr Arbour,' exclaimed he cheerfully; 'it's all right, and it isn't twins.' 'Is it a bub-bub-bub-bub?' inquired the father, as though his teeth were castanets. 'Yes, it's a boy,' replied the doctor, in a tone of commiseration. 'That's just like my luck,' quoth the disgusted parent; they cost just twice as much as girls, and I have to teach 'em.' Mr Benjamin Arbour might have spared himself this last reflection, for he was not fated to become tutor to his fifth offspring at all. The damp attic and the slippered foot together were too much for the poor gentleman, and he was carried off by consumption within a few weeks of the birth of his third boy. Our hero may therefore be said to have commenced his career in this world by committing parricide. That was the view his eldest brother and sisterAdolphus and Maria-always took of it. These were not nice young people. Adolphus had an enormous upon them, just as they tricked the world, until the very last, in actual life? No. No Reader, however Gentle, would endure, after so many weeks of prostrate adoration of these idols, to be informed that their feet were, after all, but of the commonest clay, and (by a too obvious corollary) that he himself had been but a benighted worshipper. Johnnie Arbour, the second boy, with his applecheeks and beady eyes, was a good-natured lad enough-so long as you did not vex him. He would never covet or desire another boy's toys, nor permit another boy to get beyond coveting his. Having considerable independence of character, and not being desirous of a playmate-brother Dolly, perhaps, having given him an unfavourable opinion of that sort of article he had not been anxious for the new arrival ; but since he had made his appearance, he was prepared to put up with him, as with the multiplication table, stale bread on Monday mornings, the transitory nature of lollipops, or any other necessary evil. But Margaret, rare pale Margaret,' our Maggie, everybody's Maggie [Ah, how Dick's manner used to change when he spoke to us of her and of his mother! No angry scorn about him then, and with the voice that had grown hoarse with paying back scorn for scorn to half the world, become as soft and gentle as a woman's!]-Maggie, we say, hailed 'ittle buddy's' advent with rapture, holding it highest treat to stand afar off and see him in his tub-poor papa's footbath-or to be suffered to delicately dint his cheek with her tiny finger. Maggie was frail as a lily, and almost as white; but if any mortal creature, from King Herod to a sausage-maker, had threatened to harm that baby, she would have drawn bodkin, and done battle with her life. As for our hero's mother, we are introduced to the sweet lady at an evil time, when the gentle eyes are red with weeping, and the delicate frame is tried with watching; but she is fair, as Maggie's mother should be, even yet. Her only earthly consolation, now that the dark shadow of death has crossed the threshold, and points towards the lover of her youth-the sharer of life's hopes and fears, so long, that all existence that has been passed by her away from him seems but as a dream is her new-born infant. As he lies, after the manner of the luxurious ancients, upon his ivory couch, and takes his meals recliningly, he little |