The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-09 00:00:00

alteration in the system of government pursued in
the Western Provinces will be introduced by this

change of governors.

AUSTRIA.
The Neue Freie Presse of to-day says :

." The

reply of Prussia to the note of Austria in reference
to the port of Kiel has arrived here. It accepts, in
theory, the proposal of compromise made by Aus-
tria, which is, that a portion of the Prussian marine
should be transferred to Kiel, and a corresponding
reduction made in the Prussian army of occupation
in the Duchies."

SPAIN.

MADRID, MAY 8.

Senor Reyes, an attache of the Peruvian Em-
bassy at Madrid, set out yesterday for Peru with
the ratification of the treaty between Spain and

that country.

LITERATURE.

Charles Dickens's Serial Story.

Our Mutual Friend. By Charles Dickens. No

XIII. Chapman and Hall.

Having had for some little time past a presen-
timent (how suggested to us, we can't for the
life of us conjecture) that Old Betty Higden,
who had set off armed with her itinerant
basket, and young Lizzie Hexam, who had mysteri-
ously disappeared no body could tell in which direc-
tion, would probably come across each other later
on, somehow, somewhere, in their respective wan-
derings—we wake up now to the recognition, in the
opening chapter of this thirteenth number of Our
Mutual Friend, of the realisation of that same odd pre-
sentiment. The chapter is entitled significantly
" The End of a Long Journey." It forms an
affecting companion picture to that earlier
chapter in the previous volume descriptive (ah ! so
exquisitely !) of the end of a Very Short Journey
indeed—the fore-shortenedlife, that is, of poor Little
Johnny in one of the wards of the Hospital for Sick
Children. A companion picture—descriptive of
the close at last of the long, long, thrifty, toilsome
life of poor old Betty Higden herself, my Lords
and Gentlemen and Honourable Boards ! Her
death at last—not in the Union—that evil at least
she has escaped—faithful, in her fight against its
coming, even to the end ! But—instead of in the
Union—in the light of day, under the open face of
Heaven, in the brightness and freshness of the early
morning—with (as it seems to her) a very double of
the " boofer lady" herself, bending over her ten-
derly—Lizzie Hexam, in truth—the realisation of
our presentiment ! Read the dialogue between
them, as it is given below! Before reading which
dialogue, however, it should be premised that
Lizzie turns out: to have become a worker at
a paper mill, on the bank of the stream of which
mill she is, here, during the dialogue, kneeling
by the side of poor old, dying Betty Higden, then
but faintly recovering from that last touch of
" the numbness" that appears (by way of a coup
de grace) to have stricken her into a state of uncon-
sciousness overnight !
The darkness gone, and a face bending down.
" It cannot be the boofer lady ?"
"I don't understand what you say. Let mo wet your
lips again with this brandy. I have been away to fetch it.
Did you think that I was long gone ?"
It is as the face of a woman, shaded by a quantity of rich
dark hair. It is the earnest face of a woman who is young
and handsome. But all is over with me on earth, and this
must be an angel.
" Have I been long dead ?"
"I don't understand what you say. Let me wet your
lips again. I hurried all I could and brought no one back
with me lest you should die of the shock of strangers."
" Am I not dead ?"
"I cannot understand what you say. Your voice is so
low and broken that I cannot hear you. Do you hear me?"
Yes."

"Do you mean Yes ?"
" Yes."

"I was coming from my work just now, along the path
outside (I was up with the night hands last night), and I
heard a groan, and found you lying here."
" What work, deary ?"
" Did you ask what work ? At the paper-mill."
" Where is it ?"
" Your face is turned up to the sky, and you can't see it.
It is close by. You can see my face, here, between you
and the sky ?"
" Yes."

" Dare I lift you ?"

"Not yet."

"Not even lift your head to get it on my arm ? I will
do it by very gentle degrees. You shall hardly feel it."
" Not yet. Paper. Letter."
" This paper in your breast 2"
" Bless ye !"
"Let me wet your lips again. Am Ito open it? To
read it ?"

. She reads it with surprise, and looks down with a new
expression and an added interest on the motionless face she
kneels beside.

" I know these names. I have heard them often."
"Will you send it, my dear ?"

" I cannot understand you. Let me wet your lips again
and your forehead. There. 0 poor thing, poor thing !"
These words through her fast-dropping tears. "What was
it that you asked me ? Wait till I bring my ear quite
close."

"-Will you send it, my dear ?"
" Will I send it to the writers ? Is that your wish ?
Yes, certainly.'
" You'll not give it up to any one but them ?"
"No. Most solemnly."
"Never to the Parish !" with a convulsed struggle.
"No. Most solemnly."
" Nor let tho Parish touch me, nor yet so much as look
at me !" with anothet struggle.
"No. Faithfully." _ _

A look of thankfulness and triumph lights the worn old

face. The eyes, which have been darkly fixed upon the
sky, turn with meaning in them towards the compassionate
face from which the tears are dropping, and a smile is on
the aged lips as they ask :
" What is your name, my dear ?"
" My name is Lizzie Hexam."
"I must be sore disfigured. Are you afraid to kiss me?'
The answer is, the ready pressure of her lips upon the
cold but smiling mouth.

"Bless ye ! Now lift me, my love."
Lizzie Ilexam very softly raised the weather-stained grey
head, and lifted her as high as Heaven !

The chapter immediately following the one that
closes with this affecting incident, opens impressively
with these words from the Burial Service—" We
give thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased
thee to deliver this our sister out of the
miseries of this sinful world!" The author of "Our
Mutual Friend," adding thereupon wittily, no
loss than with the tenderest sympathy—" So read
the Reverend Frank Milvey in a not untroubled
voice, for his heart misgave him that all was not
right between us, and our sister—or say our sister-
in-Law—Poor Law !" Before her last touch of the
numbness—when sinking down at nightfall on what
turns out to be her death place—poor old Betty Hig-
den has exclaimed, clasping her withered hands, " I
humbly thank the Power and the Glory that I have
come to my journey's end." And when she has,
a few hours afterwards, actually come to that
end of it—to the end that ought to be marked
(but is not) with a last milestone, recording the
exact length of the weary way that has been tra-
versed—as chief mourner of all, there comes shamb-
ling up to the open grave poor blundering Sloppy !
Sloppy, of whom we find it mentioned here—
among other things, very excusably—(" our sister
having been more than a mother to him")—that
"it cuts him deep to think," now, that it comes into
his wretched head, he might have sometimes turned
" a little harder for her !" Sloppy, fairly breaking
down at last in his grief with the doleful apostrophe,
" 0, Mrs. Higden, Mrs. Higden, you was a woman
and a mother and a mangler in a million million "
A charming scene takes place in this same chapter
—nay, we ought rather to say a charming " confi-
dence " takes place there, between the two
.young
heroines of the story! Who, by the way, have never
met previously—Bella Wilfer (who prettily italicises
a word by putting one of her dimples under it !),
Bella Wilfer evidently enough the beloved of
John Harmon, otherwise Rokesmith—and Lizzie
Hexham no less evidently the beloved of Eugene
Wrayburn : the most ridiculous fellow in the world,
this last, according to Mortimer Lightwood's esti-
mate of him ; according to our own, one of the
most delightful among the more loveable creations
of the genius of our Novelist. From first to last
the conversation between the two girls, as here
related to us, is the prettiest thing well imagin-