One of the most touching instances of the “maternal instinct,” as it has been called, in children, came under my notice a few months ago. A wretched woman, with an infant in her arms, mother and child in very tatters, solicited the alms of a nursery-maid passing with a child, clothed in the most luxurious manner, hugging a large wax doll. The mother followed the girl, begging for relief “to get bread for her child,” whilst the child itself, gazing at the treasure in the arms of the baby of prosperity, cried, “Mammy, when will you buy me a doll?” I have met with few things more affecting than the contrast of the destitute parent begging her bread (the misery seemed real) and the beggar’s child begging of its mother for a “doll!” [Illustration: “Would solace the child by playing upon a diabolic fiddle” ] This mental abstraction on the part of little George was but too often forced upon the observation of the worthy Hans, the young doll-maker constantly giving the looks and limbs of hobgoblins to the faces and bodies of dolls, intended by the father to supply the demand for household dolls of the same staid and prudish aspect, of the same proportion of members, as the dolls that had for two hundred years soothed and delighted the little maidens of Hildesheim. It is a fact hitherto unknown in England, that in the Museum of Hildesheim—a beautiful, though somewhat heavy building of the Saxon order—there are either eleven or twelve (I think twelve) demon dolls made by young Wieland, and to this day shown to the curious—though the circumstance has, strangely enough, remained unnoticed by the writers of Guide Books—as faithful portraits of the supernatural inhabitants of the Hartz Mountains. I am told, however, that within the last three years, one of the figures has been removed into a separate chamber, and is only to be seen by an express order from the town council, in consequence of its lamentable effects on the nerves of a certain German princess, who was so overcome by the exhibition, that it was very much feared by the whole of the principality—extending in territory at least a mile and a quarter, and containing no less than three hundred and twenty subjects—the territory would pass to a younger brother, or, what is worse, be the scene of a frightful revolution, an heir direct being wanted to consolidate the dynasty. This unfortunate event, though, possibly, fatal to the future peace of the said principality, is nevertheless a striking instance of the powerful imagination or rather of the retentive memory of the young Wieland. The doll, like all the others, is a true copy from diabolic life. How the painful story attached to it should have escaped all the foreign correspondents of all the newspapers is a matter of surpassing astonishment.