had been
summoned again by Mr. Clarkson. Another wonderful piece of carpeting had
gone out from the works, discovered by our agent before it had left our
warehouse. It was the Water-Lily pattern,--lilies sitting among green
leaves with sunshine playing in and out and among them. So dazzling it
seemed, that it shed a light all round the darkened walls of the
warehouse. It was priceless, he thought, a perfect unique. Better,
almost, that never such a pattern should appear again. It ought to
remain the only one in the world.

And it did so remain. The rival establishment built a new chimney to
their mill, which shut out completely all sunshine or hope of sunshine
from our narrow windows. This was accomplished before the next May, and
I showed Mr. Clarkson how utterly impossible it was for the most
determined sunbeam ever to mingle itself with our most inviting fabrics.
Mr. Clarkson pondered a long time. We might build our establishment a
story higher; we might attempt to move it. But here were solid changes,
and the hopes were uncertain. Affairs were going on well, and the
reputation of the mills was at its height. And the carpets of sunshine
were never repeated.

* * * * *

THE TWO TONGUES.

Whoever would read a profound political pamphlet under the guise of a
brilliant novel may find it in "Sibyl, or The Two Nations." The gay
overture of "The Eve of the Derby," at a London club, with which the
curtain rises, contrasts with the evening amusements of the _proletaire_
in the gin-palaces of Manchester in a more than operatic effectiveness,
and yet falls rather below than rises above the sober truth of present
history. And we are often tempted to bind up the novel of the dashing
Parliamenteer with our copy of "Ivanhoe," that we may thus have, side by
side, from the pens of the Right Honorable Benjamin Disraeli and Sir
Walter Scott, the beginning and the end of these eight hundred years of
struggle between Norman rule and Saxon endurance. For let races and
families change as they will, there have ever been in England two
nations; and the old debate of Wamba and Gurth in the forest-glade by
Rotherwood is illustrated by the unconscious satires of last week's
"Punch." In Chartism, Reform-Bills, and Strikes, in the etiquette which
guards the Hesperides of West-End society, in the rigid training which
stops many an adventurer midway in his career, are written the old
characters of the for