the end, seemed dusk and heavy, as if a ray of sunshine had never rested on its waters. The room itself was large and dark, and had that peculiar air of discomfort which belongs to "ready furnished apartments:" every thing looks as if it had been bought at a sale, and there is an equal want of harmony both in the proportions and colours. The idea involuntarily occurs of how the chairs had encircled other hearths; of how, around the tables, had gathered family groups, broken up by the pressure of distress and of want. All the associations are those of poverty; and of all human evils, poverty is the one whose suffering is the most easily understood: even those who have never known it, can comprehend its wretchedness. Hunger, cold, and mortification, the disunion of families; the separation of those the most fondly attached; youth bowed by premature toil; age wasting the little strength yet remaining:—these are the familiar objects which surround poverty.
Ethel did not thus closely examine the causes of the weight upon her spirits; she only
