While such panics prevail, as all veracious chronicles show they do, amongst mankind, who shall presume ungallantly to laugh at thy innocent objects of terror, oh, womankind! or, childhood, even at thine! All have their favourite antipathies. Gentlemen ere now have been appalled at the sight of a black-bottle; many a lady yet looks aghast at the intrusion of a black-beetle; while the child still screams, affrighted at the idea of black-bogy. Leaving the first to the satirist, and the last to the schoolmaster, let us picture to the eyes of ladies a scene, in which every fair reader almost must have been, at least _once_ in her life, an actress. We will suppose that scene to be a lady's "finishing establishment"--for there are no schools now--the school went out of fashion with the shop, and the "establishment" came in with the "depôt" and the "emporium." The group is the prettiest possible, as a specimen of still-life; there is not a whisper, scarcely a motion; the superior is silently calculating the amount of her Michaelmas accounts; the assistant is mutely wondering whether young Ariosto Jackson, whom she met at Northampton last holidays, will again be there at the next breaking up; and several young ladies, in process of tuition, are learning irregular verbs by heart, reading treatises abstrusely scientific, and thinking all the time of nothing; when--all of a sudden--but no, that is not the word--quicker than lightning, transformed as by magic, the scene presents to the eye but one image of consternation--to the ear but one note of terror and dismay. In the centre of the sacred apartment has been detected a small sable intruder. A cry of horror from one young lady--"Oh! my good gracious, there's a great black _beadle_!" brings every other young lady's heart into her mouth. In an instant the room resounds with wild piercing screams. Every chair has its pedestalled votary of Fear, its statue of Alarm exquisitely embodied; the sofa boasts a rare cluster of affrighted nymphs--more agonised by far than if they had been, by some wicked bachelor of a magician, locked for life into a nunnery. The lady-president, to exhibit an example of presence of mind, has leaped upon a chair for the purpose of pulling the bell; she at the same time conveys a lesson of industry, for she agitates it like a "ringer" pulling for a leg of mutton and trimmings. The bell-rope breaks, and the other is out of reach. The screams increase; the servants are summoned by more names than they were ever christened by. "Cook, Sarah, Betsy, Betsy, Jane, Cook, Sarah," are called, together with several domestics who have long since gone away.