OLD BLAZER'S HERO.'

Ix is almost a pity that Mr. Murray should waste his powers on a story so slight as this ; but how good it is to read ! We hardly know in modern fiction anything at once so original and so full of true humour as the conception of the character of Shadrach, the miner and village bard, who has the gift of rhyming, and is elated by it ; who even remarks that " theers gifts as nigh on iverybody can lay claim to, and theers gifts as is just gi'en here and theer ;" and whose immediate friends worship him for his gift; but who remains, nevertheless, a half-simpleton, shame- faced and slow of action, without vanity as without capacity, but as tractable and faithful as a collie-dog. This is how he makes his first appearance in a great kitchen where the family sit of an evening, and where the servant Hepzibah is engaged to him :—

" He entered with a propitiatory and apologetic aspect, smoothing his hair as if he were entering chapel, and, sitting on the extreme edge of the chair assigned to him, hid his fingers in the voluminous Cafe of his coat, and concealed them further between his knees, as if it were a point of etiquette, painfully to be observed, that the hands should be invisible. His eyes, which were round, pale grey, and as wonderingly wide open as a baby's, were caref ally directed to objects which did not come well within their sphere; as the shells on the high mantelpiece, the clock-fare to his left, and an almanack tacked to the wall on his right. Since he made it a point of honour with himself not to move his head whilst he regarded these thiuge, and care- fully refrained from looking at anything which it would have been easy and natural for him to look at, the effect, to a sympathising observer, was a little embarrassing. The greetings extended to him he answered in a deprecatory peacemaking sort of murmur, and altogether he was most exasperatingly humble and unobtrusive. The widow cleared her throat as if to speak, but Hepzibah held up the ball of worsted with an air of warning, and Shadraoh spoke in her stead. 'The night,' said Shadraoh, rolling his round eyes from the shells to the clock, and from the clock to the almanack the night is dark, the snow comes down, The wind is like the gaffer's frown; it stops the heart and chills the blood, An' does no mortal men no good.'—' Theer I' said Hepzibah, dropping her work into her lap, and laying her hands upon it with a look of answered expectation and wonder. 'Did you mek that up as you come along, Shadrach P she demanded.—' Finished it that instant minute,' returned Shadrach mildly. 'It's a gift,' he added, as I wouldn't tek no credit for, not if it was offered me. The highdears is put into the head. That's how it is. They'm put there.'—' Ah said Mister Edward, with great solemnity, 'that's how it is, I should suppose, Shadrach.'—' Yes, Mister Edward,' Shadrach answered. Theer's no account of the thing to be given, not by the cliverest. I'n heerd it said as Dr. Watts himself could niver mek out how it happened.'"

He lets out a secret incautiously, and is sharply reproved

"Still Shadrach thought it wisest to say nothing until the storm had blown itself out. When Hepzibah had been silent for something Iffre half-an-hour he broke in upon the clicking of the needles, the ticking of the clock, and the rambling of the wind: 'The tongue's a block of sore offence, And runs away with men's good sense ; And in this month of cold December I've sinned with that onrnly member. Hepzyber ! may the lemon be Of use to thee—of use to see"—' Shadrach,' said Hepzibah, with a sigh of admiration, it's wonderful 1"

Shadrach works like a man when the old mine which gives its

• ose Blazer's Hero. By DaYid Christie Murray. London: Ghetto sad Windr.

rather absurd name to the book is soddenly filled with water ; and when he had survived the struggle, made rhymes about it which he thought good enough to be printed in a newspaper :-

"' wonder thee'st Diver made up something about Master Edward and the Old Blazer.' Shadrach's face wreathed itself into a slow smile as he looked at her, but catching her eye jest as the smile was at the fall, he drew his features with a ludicrous suddenness to their original expression, and looked sideways on vacancy as if he saw a not particularly interesting ghost there. 'Ha!' cried Hepzibah, thee'st made up summat a'ready 1 The Bard's aspect, half shy, half boastful, proclaimed the truth of the guess. 'I've wrote down what I've done,' be answered. 'But it ain't fioished Not finished !' said Hepzibah. Why, as a general roan' things, Shadraoh, it's been your use to hit th' iron hot. And here's three month gone by !'—' Well,' the Bard explained, 'when I begun upon it, I settled up to have it done in a week's time or thereabout, and I went so far as walk into Armstrong's the printers, and price the printin' of a

Shadrach Hepzibah exclaimed, with a voice and manner which proclaimed that the idea half delighted and half appalled her. 'Yon never did 1—'1 did though,' Shadrach responded. 'I thought to pot 'em on sale at a penny apiece as bein' summat towards the widders and orphins.' Hepzibah dropped her sewing and surveyed the proportions of this enterprise with awe. 'But when I come to look at it,' Shadrach continued, 'I worn' t more than half content. It seemed to me as if it was a bit too rough dug out like, and I abode awhile to tek th' edges off on it.'"

He finally took the rhymes to a Birmingham editor, who did not print them, but read them gleefully and demanded an exact copy of them, thereby elevating Shadrach and Hepzibah to the seventh heaven. Shadrach, however, by-and-by had a grief. His master, the engineer who is "Old Blazer's hero," in the pain of a love- disappointment took to hard drinking, and Shadrach, in his grief and pity at the sight, drank to keep himself from bewailing :—

"This dreadful new departure could not remain hidden long from Hepzibah's eyes, and when she beheld it the staunch creature's heart seemed like to break at once. Shadrach,' she said, 'you can go home. Yoted better. Bat, oh ! to think that a man wi' gifts like yearn should demean himself to this, which is a thing as the brutes that perish would not do.' The wretched Shadraoh swayed, mud beamed upon her with a fatuous smile. 'Wass good talk& 1 said Shadrach. 'Does man's heart good.'—' I do' know what it does for a man's heart,' cried Hepzibah with sadden tears. 'I know it breaks a woman's. And Master Edward too! Then you, that was thought to be the soberest i' the parish! Go away, Shadrach, do; and God forgive thee V- ` That's a lilt too much,' Shadraoh protested, moved vaguely and stupidly by her tears. Tell you what it is, Hepzibah. It's Mist' Ned. That's what it is. Breaks your heart see a fine young chap like that.'—' Oh, you fool!' said Hepzibah bitterly. ' What's poor Mister Ned'a fault to you as you should go an' copy it 1 Go away, and never let me see you any more!'—' All right,' responded Shadrach. shall go to th' "Arms," and ask for Mister Ned. Said he wanted me to pay for a drink, because he saved my life—didn't he P So I will.'" The poor bard, who has only drank as a dog might if it could, out of sympathy and trouble, is cured in the most natural yet most unusual of all ways, marries Hepzibah, and

on his wedding-morning produces in all shamefaced simplicity this as his chef d'cetture —

"It takes a heart fired from above To risk your life for them you love ; What mast it be, although too late, To striv9 to save the life you hate! Yet such it was with Edward Blame, Who always bore the hero's name.

It was the Oct of Master Ned Which let his humble friend be wed, Because Hepzyber was so fond, Her never could unloose the bead. Till Master Ned should married be, Her would not wedded be to me.

I hope good luck may come to all, Whate'er their station may befall, And all about the English nation Be happy in their place and station ; As I am sure I am in mine

To be Hember's valentine."

We do not know if our readers will see it in extracts thus taken out of their setting, bat to us there is something in Shadrach of which the genius who created Mrs. Poyser would not have been ashamed.

We have said nothing of the story, because to us it is nothing but the framework for the picture of Shadrach ; and, indeed, there is little to say except that Hackett, the most prominent figure, a sottish village buck, gifted by Nature with a marvellous power of singing, is described with mach restrained power. A man like that would be just as bad as that and no more, and would in all probability, in some way or other, come to precisely that fate. We should have thought, is priori, that the desire for gain would have made a harder fight with the desire for drink ; but in real life it does not, as witness the biography of a hundred actors and singers, and it is real life that Mr. Murray desires to

paint, with wonderful success while he keeps among his villagers. It is his humour, however, which is his strength, as we saw in his last story, Aunt Rachel; and we only wish he would give us more of it, a story which it would take a day to read, yet which should be throughout as full of evidence of a separate and most rare gift as is this half-worked-out sketch, Old Blazer's Hero.