Chapter 7 BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON.

If Frank Lavender had been told that his love for his wife was in danger of waning, he would have laughed the suggestion to scorn. He was as fond of her and as proud of her as ever.

Who knew as well as himself the tenderness of her heart, the delicate sensitiveness of her conscience, the generosity of self-sacrifice she was always ready to bestow? and was he likely to become blind, so that he should fail to see how fair and frank and handsome she was? He had been disappointed, it is true, in his fancies about the impression she would produce on his friends; but what a trifle was that! The folly of those fancies was his own. For the rest, he was glad that Sheila was not so different from the other women whom he knew. He hit upon the profound reflection, as he sat alone in his studio, that a man's wife, like his costume, should not be so remarkable as to attract attention. The perfection of dress was that you should be unconscious of its presence: might that not be so with marriage? After all, it was better that he had not bound himself to lug about a lion whenever he visited people's houses.

Still, there was something. He found himself a good deal alone. Sheila did not seem to care much for going into society; and although he did not much like the notion of going by himself, nevertheless one had certain duties toward one's friends to perform. She did not even care to go down to the Park of a forenoon. She always professed her readiness to go, but he fancied it was a trifle tiresome for her; and so, when there was nothing particular going on in the studio, he would walk down through Kensington Gardens himself, and have a chat with some friends, followed generally by luncheon with this or the other party of them. Sheila had been taught that she ought not to come so frequently to that studio. Bras would not lie quiet. Moreover, if dealers or other strangers should come in, would they not take her for a model? So Sheila stayed at home; and Mr. Lavender, after having dressed with care in the morning-with very singular care, indeed, considering that he was going to his work-used to go down to his studio to smoke a cigarette. The chances were that he was not in a humor for working. He would sit down in an easy-chair and kick his heels on the floor for a time, watching perhaps the sunlight come in through the upper part of the windows and paint yellow squares on the opposite wall. Then he would go out and lock the door behind him, leaving no message whatever for those crowds of importunate dealers who, as Sheila fancied, were besieging him with offers in one hand and purses of gold in the other.

One morning, after she had been indoors for two or three days, and had grown hopelessly tired of the monotony of watching that sunlit square, she was filled with an unconquerable longing to go away, for however brief a space, from the sight of houses. The morning was sweet and clear and bright, white clouds were slowly crossing a fair blue sky, and a fresh and cool breeze was blowing in at the open French windows.

"Bras," she said, going down stairs and out into the small garden, "we are going into the country."

The great deer-hound seemed to know, and rose and came to her with great gravity, while she clasped on the leash. He was no frisky animal to show his delight by yelping and gamboling, but he laid his long nose in her hand, and slowly wagged the down-drooping curve of his shaggy tail; and then he placidly walked by her side up into the hall, where he stood awaiting her.

She would go along and beg of her husband to leave his work for a day and go with her for a walk down to Richmond Park. She had often heard Mr. Ingram speak of walking down, and she remembered that much of the road was pretty. Why should not her husband have one holiday?

"It is such a shame," she had said to him that morning as he left, "that you will be going into that gloomy place, with its bare walls and chairs, and the windows so that you cannot see out of them!"

"I must get some work done somehow, Sheila," he said, although he did not tell her that he had not finished a picture since his marriage.

"I wish I could do some of it for you," she said.

"You! All the work you're good for is catching fish and feeding ducks and planting things in gardens. Why don't you come down and feed the ducks in the Serpentine?"

"I should like to do that," she answered. "I will go any day with you."

"Well," he said, "you see, I don't know until I get along to the studio whether I can get away for the fore-noon; and then if I were to come back here, you would have little or no time to dress. Good-bye, Sheila."

"Good-bye," she had said to him, giving up the Serpentine without much regret.

But the forenoon had turned out so delightful that she thought she would go along to the studio, and hale him out of that gaunt and dingy apartment. She should take him away from town: therefore she might put on that rough blue dress in which she used to go boating in Loch Roag. She had lately smartened it up a bit with some white braid, and she hoped he would approve.

Did the big hound know the dress? He rubbed his head against her arm and hand when she came down, and looked up and whined almost inaudibly.

"You are going out, Bras, and you must be a good dog and not try to go after the deer. Then I will send a very good story of you to Mairi; and when she comes to London after the harvest is over, she will bring you a present from the Lewis, and you will be very proud."

She went out into the square, and was perhaps a little glad to get away from it, as she was not sure of the blue dress and the small hat with its sea-gull's feather being precisely the costume she ought to wear. When she got into the Uxbridge road she breathed more freely, and in the lightness of her heart she continued her conversation with Bras, giving that attentive animal a vast amount of information, partly in English, partly in Gaelic, which he answered only by a low whine or a shake of his shaggy head.

But these confidences were suddenly interrupted. She had got down to Addison Terrace, and was contentedly looking at the trees and chatting to the dog, when by accident her eye happened to light on a brougham that was driving past. In it-she beheld them both clearly for a brief second-were her husband and Mrs. Lorraine, so engaged in conversation that neither of them saw her. Sheila stood on the pavement for a couple of minutes absolutely bewildered. All sorts of wild fancies and recollections came crowding in upon her-reasons why her husband was unwilling that she should visit his studio, why Mrs. Lorraine never called on her, and so forth and so forth. She did not know what to think for a time; but presently all this tumult was stilled, and she had resolved her doubts and made up her mind as to what she should do. She would not suspect her husband-that was the one sweet security to which she clung. He had made use of no duplicity: if there were duplicity in the case at all, he could not be the author of it. The reasons for his having of late left her so much alone were the true reasons. And if this Mrs. Lorraine should amuse him and interest him, who ought to grudge him this break in the monotony of his work? Sheila knew that she herself disliked going to those fashionable gatherings to which Mrs. Lorraine went, and to which Lavender had been accustomed to go before he was married. How could she expect him to give up all his old habits and pleasures for her sake? She would be more generous. It was her own fault that she was not a better companion for him; and was it for her, then, to think hardly of him because he went to the Park with a friend instead of going alone?

Yet there was a great bitterness and grief in her heart as she turned and walked on. She spoke no more to the deer-hound by her side. There seemed to be less sunlight in the air, and the people and carriages passing were hardly so busy and cheerful and interesting as they had been. But all the same, she would go to Richmond Park, and by herself; for what was the use in calling in at the studio? and how could she go back home and sit in the house, knowing that her husband was away at some flower-show or morning concert, or some such thing, with that young American lady?

She knew no other road to Richmond than that by which they had driven shortly after her arrival in London; and so it was that she went down and over Hammersmith Bridge, and round by Mortlake, and so on by East Sheen. The road seemed terribly long. She was an excellent walker, and in ordinary circumstances would have done the distance without fatigue; but when at length she saw the gates of the Park before her, she was at once exceedingly tired and almost faint from hunger. Here was the hotel in which they had dined: should she enter? The place seemed very grand and forbidding: she had scarcely even looked at it as she went up the steps with her husband by her side. However, she would venture, and accordingly she went up and into the vestibule, looking rather timidly about. A young gentleman, apparently not a waiter, approached her and seemed to wait for her to speak. It was a terrible moment. What was she to ask for? and could she ask it of this young man? Fortunately, he spoke first, and asked her if she wished to go into the coffee-room, and if she expected any one.

"No, I do not expect any one," she said; and she knew that he would perceive the peculiarity of her accent; "but if you will be kind enough to tell me where I may have a biscuit-"

It occurred to her that to go into the Star and Garter for a biscuit was absurd; and she added wildly, "-or anything to eat."

The young man obviously regarded her with some surprise; but he was very courteous, and showed her into the coffee-room and called a waiter to her. Moreover, he gave permission for Bras to be admitted into the room, Sheila promising that he would lie under the table and not budge an inch. Then she looked round. There were only three persons in the room-one, an old lady seated by herself in a far corner, the other two being a couple of young folks too much engrossed with each other to mind any one else. She began to feel more at home. The waiter suggested various things for lunch, and she made her choice of something cold. Then she mustered up courage to ask for a glass of sherry. How she would have enjoyed all this as a story to tell to her husband but for that incident of the morning! She would have gloried in her outward bravery, and made him smile with a description of her inward terror. She would have written about it to the old man in Borva, and bid him consider how she had been transformed, and what strange scenes Bras was now witnessing. But all that was over. She felt as if she could no longer ask her husband to be amused by her childish experiences; and as for writing to her father, she dared not write to him in her present mood. Perhaps some happier time would come. Sheila paid her bill. She had heard her husband and Mr. Ingram talk about tipping waiters, and knew that she ought to give something to the man who had attended on her. But how much? He was a very august-looking person, with formally-cut whiskers and a severe expression of face. When he had brought back the change to her she timidly selected a half crown and offered it to him. There was a little glance of surprise: she feared she had not given him enough. Then he said "Thank you!" in a vague and distant fashion, and she knew that she had not given him enough. But it was too late. Bras was summoned from under the table, and again she went out into the fresh air.

"Oh, my good dog!" she said to him as they together walked up to the gates and into the Park, "this is a very extravagant country. You have to pay half a crown to a servant for bringing you a piece of cold pie, and then he looks as if he was not paid enough. And Duncan, who will do everything about the house, and will give us all our dinners, it is only a pound a week he will get, and Scarlett has to be kept out of that. And wouldn't you like to see poor old Scarlett again?"

Bras whined as if he understood every word.

"I suppose now she is hanging out the washing on the gooseberry bushes, and you know the song she always used to sing then? Don't you know that Scarlett carried me about long before you were born, for you are a mere infant compared with me? and she used to sing to me-

Ged' bheirte mi' bho'n bhas so,

Mho Sheila bheag òg!

And that is what she is singing just now in the garden; and Mairi she is bringing the things out of the washing-house. Papa is over in Stornoway this morning, arranging his accounts with the people there; and perhaps he is down at the quay, looking at the Clansman, and wondering when she is to bring me into the harbor. The castle is all shut up, you know, with cloths over all the wonderful things, and the curtains all down, and most of the shutters shut. Do you think papa has got my letter in his pocket, and does he read it over and over again, as I read all his letters to me over and over again? Ah-h! You bad dog!"

Bras had forgotten to listen to his mistress in the excitement of seeing in the distance a large herd of deer under certain trees. She felt by the leash that he was trembling in every limb with expectation, and straining hard on the collar. Again and again she admonished him in vain, until she had at last to drag him away down the hill, putting a small plantation between him and the herd. Here she found a large, umbrageous chestnut tree, with a wooden seat round its trunk, and so she sat down in the green twilight of the leaves, while Bras came and put his head in her lap. Out beyond the shadow of the tree all the world lay bathed in sunlight, and a great silence brooded over the long undulations of the Park, where not a human being was within sight. How strange it was, she fell to thinking, that within a short distance there were millions of men and women, while here she was absolutely alone! Did they not care, then, for the sunlight and the trees and the sweet air? Were they so wrapped up in those social observances that seemed to her so barren of interest?

"They have a beautiful country here," she said, talking in a rambling and wistful way to Bras, and scarcely noticing the eager light in his eyes, as if he were trying to understand. "They have no rain and no fog; almost always blue skies, and the clouds high up and far away. And the beautiful trees they have too! you never saw anything like that in the Lewis, not even at Stornoway. And the people are so rich and beautiful in their dress, and all the day they have only to think how to enjoy themselves and what new amusement is for the morrow. But I think they are tired of having nothing to do; or perhaps, you know, they are tired because they have nothing to fight against-no hard weather and hunger and poverty. They do not care for each other as they would if they were working on the same farm, and trying to save up for the winter; or if they were going out to the fishing, and very glad to come home again from Caithness to find all the old people very well and the young ones ready for a dance and a dram, and much joy and laughing and telling of stories. It is a very great difference there will be in the people-very great."

Bras whined: perhaps he understood her better now that she had involuntarily fallen into something of her old accent and habit of speech.

"Wouldn't you like, Bras, to be up in Borva again-only for this afternoon? All the people would come running out; and it is little Ailasa, she would put her arms round your neck; and old Peter McTavish, he would hear who it was, and come out of his house groping by the wall, and he would say, 'Pless me! iss it you, Miss Sheila, indeed and mir-over? It iss a long time since you hef left the Lewis.' Yes, it is a long time-a long time; and I will be almost forgetting what it is like sometimes when I try to think of it. Here it is always the same-the same houses, the same soft air, the same still sunlight, the same things to do and places to see-no storms shaking the windows or ships running into the harbor, and you cannot go down to the shore to see what has happened, or up the hill to look how the sea is raging. But it is one day we will go back to the Lewis-oh yes, we will go back to the Lewis!"

She rose and looked wistfully around her, and then turned with a sigh to make her way to the gates. It was with no especial sort of gladness that she thought of returning home. Here, in the great stillness, she had been able to dream of the far island which she knew, and to fancy herself for a few minutes there: now she was going back to the dreary monotony of her life in that square, and to the doubts and anxieties which had been suggested to her in the morning. The world she was about to enter once more seemed so much less homely, so much less full of interest and purpose, than that other and distant world she had been wistfully regarding for a time. The people around her had neither the joys nor the sorrows with which she had been taught to sympathize. Their cares seemed to her to be exaggerations of trifles-she could feel no pity for them: their satisfaction was derived from sources unintelligible to her. And the social atmosphere around her seemed still and close and suffocating; so that she was like to cry out at times for one breath of God's clear wind-for a shaft of lightning even-to cut through the sultry and drowsy sameness of her life.

She had almost forgotten the dog by her side. While sitting under the chestnut she had carelessly and loosely wound the leash round his neck in the semblance of a collar, and when she rose and came away she let the dog walk by her side without undoing the leash and taking proper charge of him. She was thinking of far other things, indeed, when she was startled by some one calling to her, "Look out, miss, or you'll have your dog shot!"

She turned and caught a glimpse of what sent a thrill of terror to her heart. Bras had sneaked off from her side-had trotted lightly over the breckans, and was now in full chase of a herd of deer which were flying down the slope on the other side of the plantation. He rushed now at one, now at another: the very number of chances presented to him proving the safety of the whole herd. But as Sheila, with a swift flight that would have astonished most town-bred girls, followed the wild chase and came to the crest of the slope, she could see that the hound had at length singled out a particular deer-a fine buck with handsome horns that was making straight for the foot of the valley. The herd, that had been much scattered, were now drawing together again, though checking nothing of their speed; but this single buck had been driven from his companions, and was doing his utmost to escape from the fangs of the powerful animal behind him.

What could she do but run wildly and breathlessly on? The dog was now far beyond the reach of her voice. She had no whistle. All sorts of fearful anticipations rushed in on her mind, the most prominent of all being the anger of her father if Bras were shot. How could she go back to Borva with such a tale? and how could she live in London without this companion who had come with her from the far North? Then what terrible things were connected with the killing of deer in a royal park! She remembered vaguely what Mr. Ingram and her husband had been saying; and while these things were crowding in upon her, she felt her strength beginning to fail, while both the dog and the deer had disappeared altogether from sight.

Strange, too, that in the midst of her fatigue and fright, while she still managed to struggle on with a sharp pain at her heart and a sort of mist before her eyes, she had a vague consciousness that her husband would be deeply vexed, not by the conduct or the fate of Bras, but by her being the heroine of so mad an adventure. She knew that he wished her to be serious and subdued and proper, like the ladies whom she met, while an evil destiny seemed to dog her footsteps and precipitate her into all sorts of erratic mishaps and "scenes." However, this adventure was likely soon to have an end. She could go no farther. Whatever had become of Bras, it was in vain for her to think of pursuing him. When she at length reached a broad and smooth road leading through the pasture, she could only stand still and press her two hands over her heart, while her head seemed giddy, and she did not see two men who had been standing on the road close by until they came up and addressed her.

Then she started and looked round, finding before her two men who were apparently laborers of some sort, one of them having a shovel over his shoulder.

"Beg your pardon, miss, but wur that your dawg?"

"Yes," she said eagerly. "Could you get him? Did you see him go by? Do you know where he is?"

"Me and my mate saw him go by, sure enough; but as for getting him-why the keepers'll have shot him by this time."

"Oh no!" cried Sheila, almost in tears, "they must not shoot him. It was my fault. I will pay them for all the harm he has done. Can't you tell me which way he will go past?"

"I don't think, miss," said the spokesman quite respectfully, "as you can go much furder. If you would sit down and rest yourself, and keep an eye on this 'ere shovel, me and my mate will have a hunt arter the dawg."

Sheila not only accepted the offer gratefully, but promised to give them all the money she had if only they would bring back the dog unharmed. She made this offer in consequence of some talk between her husband and her father which she had overheard. Lavender was speaking of the civility he had frequently experienced at the hands of Scotch shepherds, and of the independence with which they refused to accept any compensation even for services which cost them a good deal of time and trouble. Perhaps it was to please Sheila's father, but at any rate, the picture the young man drew of the venality and the cupidity of folks in the South was a desperately dark one. Ask the name of a village, have your stick picked up for you from the pavement, get into a cab or get out of it, and directly there was a touch of the cap and an unspoken request for coppers. Then, as the services rendered rose in importance, so did the fees-to waiters, to coachmen, to game-keepers. These things and many more sank into Sheila's heart. She heard and believed, and came down to the South with the notion that every man and woman who did you the least service expected to be paid handsomely for it. What, therefore, could she give those two men if they brought back her deer-hound but all the money she had?

It was a hard thing to wait here in the greatest doubt and uncertainty while the afternoon was visibly waning. She began to grow afraid. Perhaps the men had stolen the dog, and left her with this shovel as a blind. Her husband must have come home, and would be astonished and perplexed by her absence. Surely, he would have the sense to dine by himself, instead of waiting for her; and she reflected with some glimpse of satisfaction that she had left everything connected with dinner properly arranged, so that he should have nothing to grumble at.

"Surely," she said to herself as she sat there, watching the light on the grass and the trees getting more and more yellow-"surely I am very wicked or very wretched to think of his grumbling in any case. If he grumbles, it is because I will attend too much to the affairs of the house, and not amuse myself enough. He is very good to me, and I have no right to think of his grumbling. And I wish I cared to amuse myself more-to be more of a companion to him; but it is so difficult among all those people."

The reverie was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the grass behind, and she turned quickly to find the two men approaching her, one of them leading the captive Bras by the leash. Sheila sprang to her feet with a great gladness. She did not care even to accuse the culprit, whose consciousness of guilt was evident in his look and in the droop of his tail. Bras did not once turn his eyes to his mistress. He hung down his head, while he panted rapidly, and she fancied she saw some smearing of blood on his tongue and on the side of his jaw. Her fears on this head were speedily confirmed.

"I think, miss, as you'd better take him out o' the Park as soon as may be, for he's got a deer killed close by the Robin Hood Gate, in the trees there; and if the keepers happen on it afore you leave the Park, you'll get into trouble."

"Oh, thank you!" said Sheila, retaining her composure bravely, but with a terrible sinking of the heart; "and how can I get to the nearest railway station?"

"You're going to London, miss?"

"Yes."

"Well, I suppose the nearest is Richmond; but it would be quieter for you-don't you see, miss?-if you was to go along to the Roehampton Gate and go to Barnes."

"Will you show me the gate?" said Sheila, choosing the quieter route at once.

But the men themselves did not at all like the look of accompanying her and this dog through the Park. Had they not already condoned a felony, or done something equally dreadful, in handing to her a dog that had been found keeping watch and ward over a slain buck? They showed her the road to the Roehampton Gate, and then they paused before continuing on their journey.

The pause meant money. Sheila took out her purse. There were three sovereigns and some silver in it, and the entire sum, in fulfillment of her promise, she held out to him who had so far conducted the negotiations.

Both men looked frightened. It was quite clear that either good feeling or some indefinite fear of being implicated in the killing of the deer caused them to regard this big bribe as something they could not meddle with; and at length, after a pause of a second or two, the spokesman said with great hesitation, "Well, miss, you've kep' your word; but me and my mate-well, if so be as it's the same to you-'d rather have summut to drink your health."

"Do you think it is too much?"

The man looked at his neighbor, who nodded.

"It was only for ketchin' of a dawg, miss, don't you see?" he remarked slowly, as if to impress upon her that they had had nothing to do with the deer.

"Will you take this, then?" and she offered them half a crown each.

Their faces lightened considerably: they took the money, and with a formal expression of thanks moved off, but not before they had taken a glance round to see that no one had been a witness of this interview.

And so Sheila had to walk away by herself, knowing that she had been guilty of a dreadful offence, and that at any moment she might be arrested by the officers of the law. What would the old King of Borva say if he saw his only daughter in the hands of two policemen? and would not all Mr. Lavender's fastidious and talkative and wondering friends pass about the newspaper report of her trial and conviction? A man was approaching her. As he drew near her heart failed her, for might not this be the mysterious George Ranger himself, about whom her husband and Mr. Ingram had been talking? Should she drop on her knees at once and confess her sins, and beg him to let her off? If Duncan were with her or Mairi, or even old Scarlett Macdonald, she would not have cared so much, but it seemed so terrible to meet this man alone.

However, as he drew near he did not seem a fierce person. He was an old gentleman with voluminous white hair, who was dressed all in black and carried an umbrella on this warm and bright afternoon. He regarded her and the dog in a distant and contemplative fashion, as though he would probably try to remember some time after that he had really seen them; and then he passed on. Sheila began to breathe more freely. Moreover, here was the gate, and once she was in the high road, who could say anything to her? Tired as she was, she still walked rapidly on; and in due time, having had to ask the way once or twice, she found herself at Barnes Station.

By and by the train came in: Bras was committed to the care of the guard, and she found herself alone in a railway-carriage for the first time in her life. Her husband had told her that whenever she felt uncertain of her where-abouts, if in the country, she was to ask for the nearest station and get a train to London; if in town, she was to get into a cab and give the driver her address. And, indeed, Sheila had been so much agitated and perplexed during this afternoon that she acted in a sort of mechanical fashion, and really escaped the nervousness which otherwise would have attended the novel experience of purchasing a ticket and of arranging about the carriage of a dog in the break-van. Even now, when she found herself traveling alone, and shortly to arrive at a part of London she had never seen, her crowding thoughts and fancies were not about her own situation, but about the reception she should receive from her husband. Would he be vexed with her? Or pity her? Had he called with Mrs. Lorraine to take her somewhere, and found her gone? Had he brought home some bachelor friends to dinner, and been chagrined to find her not in the house?

It was getting dusk when the slow four-wheeler approached Sheila's home. The hour for dinner had long gone by. Perhaps her husband had gone away somewhere looking for her, and she would find the house empty.

But Frank Lavender came to meet his wife in the hall, and said, "Where have you been?"

She could not tell whether there was anger or kindness in his voice, and she could not well see his face. She took his hand and went into the dining-room, which was also dusk, and standing there told him all her story.

"This is too bad, Sheila!" he said in a tone of deep vexation. "By Jove! I'll go and thrash that dog within an inch of his life."

"No," she said, drawing herself up; and for one brief second-could he but have seen her face-there was a touch of old Mackenzie's pride and firmness about the ordinarily gentle lips. It was but for a second. She cast down her eyes and said meekly, "I hope you won't do that, Frank. The dog is not to blame. It was my fault."

"Well, really, Sheila," he said, "you are very thoughtless. I wish you would take some little trouble to act as other women act, instead of constantly putting yourself and me into the most awkward positions. Suppose I had brought any one home to dinner, now? And what am I to say to Ingram? for of course I went direct to his lodgings when I discovered you were nowhere to be found. I fancied some mad freak had taken you there; and I should not have been surprised. Indeed, I don't think I should be surprised at anything you do. Do you know who was in the hall when I came in this afternoon?"

"No," said Sheila.

"Why that wretched old hag who keeps the fruit-stall. And it seems you gave her and all her family tea and cake in the kitchen last night."

"She is a poor old woman," said Sheila humbly.

"A poor old woman!" he said impatiently. "I have no doubt she is a lying old thief, who would take an umbrella or a coat if only she could get the chance. It is really too bad, Sheila, your having all those persons about you, and demeaning yourself by amending on them. What must the servants think of you?"

"I do not heed what any servants think of me," she said.

She was now standing erect, with her face quite calm.

"Apparently not," he said, "or you would not go and make yourself ridiculous before them."

Sheila hesitated for a moment, as if she did not understand; and then she said, as calmly as before, but with a touch of indignation about the proud and beautiful lips, "And if I make myself ridiculous by attending to poor people, it is not my husband who should tell me so."

She turned and walked out, and he was too surprised to follow her. She went up stairs to her own room, locked herself in and threw herself on the bed. And then all the bitterness of her heart rose up as if in a flood-not against him, but against the country in which he lived, and the society which had contaminated him, and the ways and habits that seemed to create a barrier between herself and him, so that she was a stranger to him, and incapable of becoming anything else. It was a crime that she should interest herself in the unfortunate creatures round about her-that she should talk to them as if they were human beings like herself, and have a great sympathy with their small hopes and aims; but she would not have been led into such a crime if she had cultivated from her infancy upward a consistent self-indulgence, making herself the centre of a world of mean desires and petty gratifications. And then she thought of the old and beautiful days up in the Lewis, where the young English stranger seemed to approve of her simple ways and her charitable work, and where she was taught to believe that in order to please him she had only to continue to be what she was then. There was no great gulf of time between that period and this; but what had not happened in the interval? She had not changed-at least she hoped she had not changed. She loved her husband with her whole heart and soul: her devotion was as true and constant as she herself could have wished it to be when she dreamed of the duties of a wife in the days of her maidenhood. But all around her was changed. She had no longer the old freedom-the old delight in living from day to day-the active work, and the enjoyment of seeing where she could help and how she could help the people around her. When, as if by the same sort of instinct that makes a wild animal retain in captivity the habits which were necessary to its existence when it lived in freedom, she began to find out the circumstances of such unfortunate people as were in her neighborhood, some little solace was given to her; but these people were not friends to her, as the poor folk of Borvabost had been. She knew, too, that her husband would be displeased if he found her talking with a washerwoman over her family matters, or even advising one of her own servants about the disposal of her wages; so that, while she concealed nothing from him, these things nevertheless had to be done exclusively in his absence. And was she in so doing really making herself ridiculous? Did he consider her ridiculous? Or was it not merely the false and enervating influences of the indolent society in which he lived that had poisoned his mind, and drawn him away from her as though into another world?

Alas! if he were in this other world, was not she quite alone? What companionship was there possible between her and the people in this new and strange land into which she had ventured? As she lay on the bed, with her head hidden down in the darkness, the pathetic wail of the captive Jews seemed to come and go through the bitterness of her thoughts, like some mournful refrain: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; yea we wept when we remembered Zion." She almost heard the words, and the reply that rose up in her heart was a great yearning to go back to her own land, so that her eyes were filled with tears in thinking of it, and she lay and sobbed there in the dusk. Would not the old man living all by himself in that lonely island be glad to see his little girl back again in the old house? And she would sing to him as she used to sing, not as she had been singing to those people whom her husband knew. "For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion." And she had sung in the strange land, among the strange people, with her heart breaking with thoughts of the sea and the hills and the rude and sweet and simple ways of the old bygone life she had left behind her.

"Sheila!"

She thought it was her father calling to her, and she rose with a cry of joy. For one wild moment she fancied that outside were all the people she knew-Duncan and Scarlett and Mairi-and that she was once more at home, with the sea all around her, and the salt, cold air.

"Sheila, I want to speak to you."

It was her husband. She went to the door, opened it, and stood there penitent and with downcast face.

"Come, you must not be silly," he said with some kindness in his voice. "You have had no dinner. You must be hungry."

"I do not care for any: there is no use troubling the servants when I would rather lie down," she said.

"The servants! You surely don't take so seriously what I said about them, Sheila? Of course you don't need to care what the servants think. And in any case they have to bring up dinner for me, so you may as well come and try."

"Have you not had dinner?" she said timidly.

"Do you think I could sit down and eat with the notion that you might have tumbled into the Thames or been kidnapped, or something?"

"I am very sorry," she said in a low voice, and in the gloom he felt his hand taken and carried to her lips. Then they went down stairs into the dining-room, which was now lit up by a blaze of gas and candles.

During dinner of course no very confidential talking was possible, and indeed Sheila had plenty to tell of her adventures at Richmond. Lavender was now in a more amiable mood, and was disposed to look on the killing of the roebuck as rather a good joke. He complimented Sheila on her good sense in having gone in at the Star and Garter for lunch; and altogether something like better relations was established between them.

But when dinner was finally over and the servants dismissed, Lavender placed Sheila's easy-chair for her as usual, drew his own near hers, and lit a cigarette.

"Now, tell me, Sheila," he said, "were you really vexed with me when you went up stairs and locked yourself in your room? Did you think I meant to displease you or say anything harsh to you?"

"No, not any of those things," she said calmly: "I wished to be alone-to think over what had happened. And I was grieved by what you said, for I think you cannot help looking at many things not as I will look at them. That is all. It is my bringing up in the Highlands, perhaps."

"Do you know, Sheila, it sometimes occurs to me that you are not quite comfortable here? And I can't make out what is the matter. I think you have a perverse fancy that you are different from the people you meet, and that you cannot be like them, and all that sort of thing. Now, dear, that is only a fancy. There need be no difference if only you will take a little trouble."

"Oh, Frank!" she said, going over and putting her hand on his shoulder, "I cannot take that trouble. I cannot try to be like those people. And I see a great difference in you since you have come back to London, and you are getting to be like them and say the things they say. If I could only see you, my own darling, up in the Lewis again, with rough clothes on and a gun in your hand, I should be happy. You were yourself up there, when you were helping us in the boat, or when you were bringing home the salmon, or when we were all together at night in the little parlor, you know-"

"My dear, don't get so excited. Now sit down, and I will tell you all about it. You seem to have the notion that people lose all their finer sentiments simply because they don't, in society, burst into raptures over them. You mustn't imagine all those people are selfish and callous merely because they preserve a decent reticence. To tell you the truth, that constant profession of noble feelings you would like to see would have something of ostentation about it."

Sheila only sighed. "I do not wish them to be altered," she said by and by, with her eyes grown pensive: "all I know is, that I could not live the same life. And you-you seemed to be happier up in the Highlands than you have ever been since."

"Well, you see, a man ought to be happy when he is enjoying a holiday in the country along with the girl he is engaged to. But if I had lived all my life killing salmon and shooting wild-duck, I should have grown up an ignorant boor, with no more sense of-"

He stopped, for he saw that the girl was thinking of her father.

"Well, look here, Sheila. You see how you are placed-how we are placed, rather. Wouldn't it be more sensible to get to understand those people you look askance at, and establish better relations with them, since you have got to live among them? I can't help thinking you are too much alone, and you can't expect me to stay in the house always with you. A husband and wife cannot be continually in each other's company, unless they want to grow heartily tired of each other. Now, if you would only lay aside those suspicions of yours, you would find the people just as honest and generous and friendly as any other sort of people you ever met, although they don't happen to be fond of expressing their goodness in their talk."

"I have tried, dear-I will try again," said Sheila.

She resolved that she would go down and visit Mrs. Lavender next day, and try to be interested in the talk of such people as might be there. She would bring away some story about this or the other fashionable woman or noble lord, just to show her husband that she was doing her best to learn. She would drive patiently round the Park in that close little brougham, and listen attentively to the moralities of Marcus Aurelius. She would make an appointment to go with Mrs. Lavender to a morning concert; and she would endeavor to muster up courage to ask any ladies who might be there to lunch with her on that day, and go afterward to this same entertainment. All these things and many more Sheila silently vowed to herself she would do, while her husband sat and expounded to her his theories of the obligations which society demanded of its members.

But her plans were suddenly broken asunder.

"I met Mrs. Lorraine accidentally to-day," he said.

It was his first mention of the young American lady. Sheila sat in mute expectation.

"She always asks very kindly after you."

"She is very kind."

He did not say, however, that Mrs. Lorraine had more than once made distinct propositions, when in his company, that they should call in for Sheila and take her out for a drive or to a flower-show, or some such place, while Lavender had always some excuse ready.

"She is going to Brighton to-morrow, and she was wondering whether you would care to run down for a day or two."

"With her?" said Sheila, recoiling from such a proposal instinctively.

"Of course not. I should go. And then at last, you know, you would see the sea, about which you have been dreaming for ever so long."

The sea! There was a magic in the very word that could, almost at any moment, summon tears into her eyes. Of course she accepted right gladly. If her husband's duties were so pressing that the long-talked-of journey to Lewis and Borva had to be repeatedly and indefinitely postponed, here at least would be a chance of looking again at the sea-of drinking in the freshness and light and color of it-of renewing her old and intimate friendship with it that had been broken off for so long by her stay in this city of perpetual houses and still sunshine.

"You can tell her you will go when you see her to-night at Lady Mary's. By the way, isn't it time for you to begin to dress?"

"Oh, Lady Mary's!" repeated Sheila mechanically, who had quite forgotten about her engagement for that evening.

"Perhaps you are too tired to go," said her husband.

She was a little tired, in truth. But surely, just after her promises, spoken and unspoken, some little effort was demanded of her; so she bravely went to dress, and in about three-quarters of an hour was ready to drive down to Curzon street. Her husband had never seen her look so pleased before in going out to any party. He flattered himself that his lecture had done her good. There was fair common sense in what he had said, and although, doubtless, a girl's romanticism was a pretty thing, it would have to yield to the actual requirements of society. In time he should educate Sheila.

But he did not know what brightened the girl's face all that night, and put a new life into the beautiful eyes, so that even those who knew her best were struck by her singular beauty. It was the sea that was coloring Sheila's eyes. The people around her, the glare of the candles, the hum of talking, and the motion of certain groups dancing over there in the middle of the throng,-all were faint and visionary, for she was busily wondering what the sea would be like the next morning, and what strange fancies would strike her when once more she walked on sand and heard the roar of waves. That, indeed, was the sound that was present in her ears while the music played and the people murmured around her. Mrs. Lorraine talked to her, and was surprised and amused to notice the eager fashion in which the girl spoke of their journey of the next day. The gentleman who took her in to supper found himself catechised about Brighton in a manner which afforded him more occupation than enjoyment. And when Sheila drove away from the house at two in the morning she declared to her husband that she had enjoyed herself extremely, and he was glad to hear it; and she was particularly kind to himself in getting him his slippers, and fetching him that final cigarette which he always had on reaching home; and then she went off to bed to dream of ships and flying clouds and cold winds, and a great and beautiful blue plain of waves.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

GOLD.

A day of bright reflections on the pond,

And wavering shadows over moss and frond:

A wayward breeze, the summer's latest born,

Teased the stiff grain and bent the stately corn,

Or rocked the bird-nests in the prickly thorn.

Above, the lavish sun filled air with gold;

Again, below, on mimic waves it rolled,

And hid in lily cups. Her netted hair

Gleamed in the splendor, bright beyond compare,

Forming about her head a nimbus rare.

The velvet mullen raised its yellow head,

The buttercups like precious ore were spread:

Like golden shuttles flung by spirit hands,

Weaving invisible their magic strands,

Darted quick orioles in joyous bands.

Fond helianthus turned her fervent face,

Meek antirrhinum paled and grew apace;

Late dandelions, robed in cloth of gold,

With golden-rod, upsprung from out the mould,

And pensive, gold-eyed daisies pranked the wold.

As snowy, gold-rimmed cloudlets hide the sky,

So hid her eyelid's golden fringe her eye:

As every growing beauty of the earth

But figures forth great Nature's hidden worth,

So my love's charms from her pure heart had birth.

Pure heart of gold to me that day was given,

And promise true as gold made earth a heaven;

Then far away fled every doubt forlorn;

We felt for us the Golden Age reborn,

And envied none their gold from labor torn.

ITA ANIOL PROKOP.

GLIMPSES OF GHOST-LAND.

It is no longer the fashion to scoff at tales of the supernatural. On the contrary, there is a growing tendency to investigate subjects which were formerly pooh-poohed by most persons claiming to be well informed and capable of reasoning. It is, however, without propounding any theory or advancing any opinion that I record a few instances of apparently supernatural, or at least inexplicable, occurrences. I can vouch for the truth of nearly all the stories I am about to relate, one of them only not being either my personal experience or narrated to me by some one of the actors in the scene.

My first story shall be one that was told to me by an aged lady who was one of the friends of my youth, and who often mentioned this strange incident of her placid, yet busy life. She was a sensible, practical woman, the last person in the world likely to be led astray by an overheated imagination or deceived by hallucinations. Her early youth had been passed in the country, her father being a wealthy farmer. She had formed a close intimacy with the daughter of a gentleman living at some distance from her father's farm, and the two were seldom apart. An invitation given to my friend (whom I shall call Mrs. L--) to visit some relatives in a neighboring city caused a brief separation between the two girls, and they parted with many protestations of enduring affection. On the day appointed for Mrs. L--'s return she set out at the prescribed hour. The latter part of her journey was to be performed on horseback. On a bright sunny afternoon in June she found herself, about five o'clock, drawing near her father's house. Suddenly in the broad road before her she perceived a female form walking rapidly toward her, and, to her delight, recognized her friend coming, as she thought, to meet her.

"I will make her go back with me and take tea," was Mrs. L--'s thought as she whipped up her horse in her haste to greet the dear one, who was all the more beloved on account of their temporary separation. But as she approached the figure, and before she had had time to speak, or indeed to do more than notice that her friend looked very pale and ill, her horse, an unusually quiet, steady animal, seemed struck with sudden terror, reared, shied, and finally plunged into a hollow by the roadside, from which she had some difficulty in extricating him. When she did succeed in bringing him back to the level road she found, to her astonishment, that the young girl had disappeared. Around her lay the open fields, before her and behind her the road-all in the bright lustre of the summer afternoon-but no trace of the figure could she see. Completely mystified, she hastened home, there to learn that her friend had died suddenly that very morning.

The next incident I shall narrate was told me by a German gentleman whose mother was the heroine of the tale. His father had been appointed to some public office in a small German town, and among the emoluments of the place was the privilege of residing in a large, old-fashioned, but very handsome mansion. The husband and wife set off in high spirits to inspect their new abode, to which some portion of their furniture had already been transferred. They went from room to room, inspecting and planning, till they came to an apartment the ceiling of which was elaborately decorated with plaster Cupids, baskets of flowers, etc., modeled in high relief, and with a centre-piece of unusual size and magnificence. A small table, the only article of furniture the room contained, was placed directly under this centre-piece. The young wife, rather weary of her researches, was standing beside this table, and was leaning on it while she went on talking with her husband, when suddenly a loud, imploring voice called from down stairs, "Caroline! Caroline! come down to me-come!"

"Who can that be?" asked the husband in amazement. "I fastened all the doors and windows before we left the lower rooms."

Again came the loud call, this time with an accent of agonized entreaty: "Caroline! oh, Caroline! come down-do come!"

The young couple hesitated no longer, but hastened down stairs. There was no one there. Doors and windows were securely fastened, and the old house looked as solitary as when they had first entered it.

"Very strange!" said the gentleman. "But now that we are down here, Caroline, suppose we take a look at the garden?" So they sallied forth to examine that portion of their new domain, but scarcely had they entered it when they were startled by a loud crash within the house. Looking up, they saw volumes of what appeared to be smoke issuing from the window of the room they had just quitted, and fearing that the room was on fire, they quickly returned to it. There was no fire: what had appeared to be smoke was only a cloud of dust, for the massive and elaborately ornamented ceiling had fallen, and the heavy centre-piece had crushed to fragments the table against which the young wife had so lately been leaning. But for the warning voice her destruction would have been inevitable. My informant went on to state that the pieces of the shattered table were preserved as sacred relics by his parents, and that his mother always declared that she had recognized in the mysterious voice that of a dear relative long before deceased.

It was once my fortune to pass some weeks in a "haunted house." I was quite young then, a mere school-girl in fact, and the friend whom I came to visit was also very young; and both of us were too gay and frolicsome to care much for whatever was strange or startling in our surroundings. Not that we ever saw anything-my friend herself, the daughter of the house, had never done so-but the sounds we heard were sufficiently odd and inexplicable to fill us with astonishment, if not with terror. Twice during my visit I was roused from a sound slumber by a loud, heavy crash, resembling that which might be caused by the overthrow of a marble-topped washstand or bureau, or some other equally ponderous piece of furniture. The room actually vibrated, and yet a close scrutiny of that and the adjoining apartments failed to reveal any cause for the peculiar noise. It was a sound which could not possibly have been produced by cracking furniture, falling bricks, scampering rats, or any other of the numerous causes of supposed ghostly sounds. The room overhead was used as a linen-room, and was always kept locked; and besides, the noise (which I afterward heard on another occasion in broad daylight, when I was wide awake) was unmistakably in the room where we found ourselves. My friend told me that she had heard it very often-so often, in fact, that she had got quite used to it, and no longer felt any emotion save that of curiosity.

There was another room in which (also in broad daylight) I heard a strange crackling sound like the rustling of a large sheet of stiff paper or parchment turned slowly in the reader's hands. This noise also was one of frequent occurrence. Among the things seen by other members of the family was a light that glided over walls and ceiling in points inaccessible to outside light or reflection. Then there was a lady in black silk who had more than once been seen gliding about the house, but who always disappeared when accosted or followed. Three slow, solemn raps sometimes sounded at dead of night at the door of one member of the family, a skeptical and irascible old gentleman.

But, strange to say, all these uncanny sights and sounds portended nothing, and seemed to be utterly without a purpose or a cause. The house was a cheerful modern one, and the father of my friend was its first occupant; so there was nothing in the past to which these unearthly occurrences could refer. Nor were they warnings of coming misfortune. Neither death nor disaster ever followed in their train, and in due course of time the family ceased to trouble their heads about them-were not at all frightened, and scarcely even annoyed. There were other sounds which I did not myself hear, but of which I was told-stealthy footsteps that paced a certain corridor at dead of night; a sharp, rattling noise like hail dashing against the window-panes, and one or two other trifling yet equally unaccountable occurrences. Once, too, a young lady visiting the house heard in the next room to that in which she was loud and lamentable sounds, as of a woman weeping bitterly and in sore distress. She listened in considerable perplexity for some time, fearing to intrude on the sorrows of some member of the family; but at last she resolved to go and proffer aid, if not consolation. As he approached the door between the two rooms the sound suddenly ceased, and, to her amazement, she found the adjoining apartment not only empty, but with the door locked and bolted on the inside.

I once knew a young lady who, on going to pay a visit to a friend who had recently moved into a new house, was asked to walk up stairs, and on complying saw an old woman preceding her up the staircase. Supposing her to be one of the servants, she took but little notice of her, though struck by the peculiarity of her gait, a sort of jerky limp, as though one leg was shorter than the other. In the course of conversation with her friend she mentioned the old woman, and asked if she was the housekeeper. "Housekeeper? no," said the lady: "we have no such person about our house. You must have been mistaken." The visitor then described the person she had seen, and when she mentioned the peculiar limp her hostess seemed startled. After a pause she said: "No such person lives here now, but the woman who took care of this house before we rented it was exactly such a person as you describe, and was lame in just such a manner. But she died here about six weeks ago-I think in this very room-so your eyes must certainly have deceived you." The lady still persisted that she had seen the old woman; so the servants were called and the house thoroughly searched, but no intruder was discovered.

I have known several instances of persons who have seen the "fetch" or apparition of a living person, called in Germany the "Doppelg?nger;" yet, though such appearances are usually supposed to portend the death or illness of the person thus strangely "doubled," I have never yet heard of a case where any unpleasant consequences followed. For instance, an old friend of mine, a gentleman of undoubted veracity, once told me that on one occasion he entered his house about five o'clock in the afternoon, and ran up stairs to his mother's bed-chamber, where he saw her standing near the centre of the room, clad in a loose white gown and engaged in combing out her long black hair. He remained looking at her for some moments, expecting that she would speak to him, but she did not take notice in any way of his presence, and neither spoke nor looked at him. He then addressed her, but, receiving no reply, became indignant and went down stairs, where, to his amazement, he found his mother seated by the parlor window, dressed and coiffée as usual. It was some years before he would trust himself to tell her of what he had seen, fearing that she might consider it an omen of approaching death, and indeed, though not a superstitious man, he was inclined so to view it himself; but his mother lived for many years after the appearance of her wraith. I also knew a young gentleman to whom the unpleasant experience of beholding his own double was once vouchsafed. He had been spending a quiet evening with some young ladies, and returned home about eleven o'clock, let himself into the house with his latch-key and proceeded to his own room, where he found the gas already lighted, though turned down to a mere blue spark. He turned it up, and the full light of the jet shone on his bed, which stood just beside the burner, and there, extended at full length, lay-himself. His first idea was of a burglar or some such intruder. But his second glance dispelled that impression. He stood for some moments gazing at the prostrate figure with feelings which must have been anything but agreeable: he noticed little peculiarities of his own dress and features, and marked the closed eyelids and easy respiration of slumber. At length, plucking up courage, he attempted to pass his hand under the pillow to draw out a small revolver which he usually kept there, and as he did so he felt the pressure of the pillow as though weighed down by a reclining head. This completely unnerved him. He went out of the room, locking the door on the outside, and spent the remainder of the night on a sofa in the parlor. He did not re-enter his chamber till broad daylight, when, to his delight, he found that his ghostly visitor had vanished.

The next story on my list was narrated to me by one of the most sensible and intelligent women I ever met-a lady of great strength of character, joined to a fine and highly cultivated mind. During her childhood my friend (whom I shall call Mrs. X--) dwelt with her parents in a large, roomy house in the vicinity of one of our inland cities. The house was a double one, a solid, substantial structure built of stone, and had been purchased by her father a short time before the occurrences which I am about to relate. A wide lawn at the back of the mansion sloped down to the bank of a small stream, along the verge of which, without intervening bank or path, ran the terminating wall of the grounds. The stables were also situated at the foot of this lawn, and the back windows of these stables looked out on the water. Mrs. X-- had several brothers and sisters, all of whom, as well as herself, were still children at the period of which she spoke.

One summer evening her parents accepted an invitation to take tea with a friend, and went out, leaving the children at play in the library, a room which opened on the main hall on the ground floor. The front door was open, and as it grew dark a large hanging lamp which fully illuminated the hall was lighted, so that every part of it, as well as the staircase, was fully illuminated. Late in the evening the children were disturbed at their play in the library by the sound of heavy footsteps ascending the outer steps and then pacing along the hall. Imagining that it was their parents who had returned earlier than they expected, they rushed to the door to greet them, but to their astonishment they could see no one, though the heavy steps were still heard traversing the hall, ascending the staircase, and finally resounding on the floor of a room overhead. The children summoned the servants, who merely laughed at their story, till one of the maids, who had been busy up stairs, came down and said that her master and mistress must surely have returned, as she had heard them walking along the entry and afterward entering one of the rooms. Upon this, one of the men-servants went up stairs and made a careful search, but without rinding any one. In the midst of the excitement the lady and gentleman of the house returned home, and upon hearing the story the gentleman himself instituted a second and more vigorous search, which, like the first, was wholly without result.

Some time after this the children were playing under their nurse's care on the lawn at the back of the house one gray, dismal afternoon in the early autumn. The attention of the whole party was suddenly attracted by the figure of a man passing slowly outside of the stone wall that stretched along the foot of the lawn, and finally disappearing behind the stable. As he did so a tremendous uproar arose among the horses in the stable, and on examination one of them, a remarkably fine and docile animal, whose stall happened to be next the window that opened on the water, was found to be in a perfect ecstasy of terror, plunging, rearing and struggling to get loose in a manner that rendered the task of releasing and removing him anything but an easy or even a safe one. After the horse was got out of the stable and led away, the question arose, What had frightened him? Could the man they had seen passing behind the stable have done anything to terrify him? Then, for the first time, it dawned on the minds of the whole party that no human being could have walked where they had seen the passing figure, as the wall rose straight from the verge of the water, and there was no pathway between the wall and the stream, which in that spot was deep, though not very wide. Strange to say, the horse could never be induced to re-enter that stable, but always manifested signs of wild alarm and excitement when brought even to the door, though in all other respects he was perfectly gentle and tractable.

Owing to the size of the family, one of the large garret-rooms had been fitted up as a bed-room for one of the younger boys, who preferred having a chamber of his own to sharing the apartment of one of his brothers. He had not occupied it long before he began to complain of frightful dreams, and more than once he came trembling down stairs and took refuge in his mother's room, terrified by something horrible-what, he could not define, but something that came into his room at night and roused him from his slumbers. Thinking that the child was merely nervous and excitable, she changed the arrangements, put him to sleep in the bed-room of one of his brothers, and gave up the apartment in the garret to one of the servants. But in a very short time the complaints were renewed: the girl could not sleep on account of that vague, strange horror, which often drove her shrieking and half awakened from her bed. So the lady had the room dismantled, and used it as a lumber-room, and during the remaining years of her occupancy of the house was troubled no more.

As time passed on, the increasing exigencies of his growing family induced Mrs. X--'s father to purchase a house in town, and he accordingly rented his country-mansion to a childless pair, a clergyman and his wife. The new residents had not been long installed when a series of ghostly disturbances began in real earnest. I believe that nothing more was ever seen, but the kitchen at night, when all the family had retired, would at times become the seat of an appalling uproar of inarticulate voices and clashing dishes and dragging furniture. If any one was bold enough to venture down stairs, the noise would suddenly cease, and the kitchen itself never showed any trace of these unearthly revels, every plate, dish, cup and chair remaining in its accustomed place. Then, too, the footsteps of the invisible intruder were heard again, and often while the minister was writing in his study the steps would be heard coming through the door and across the room, and the unseen visitor would seat himself in the chair that usually stood opposite to that of the clergyman at the writing-table, when a sound as of the pages of a large book with stiff paper leaves being slowly turned would usually ensue. The minister often addressed his invisible companion, but never received any reply to his questions or his appeals.

On hearing these strange stories, Mrs. X--'s father determined upon trying to trace out the history of the house before it came into his possession. He learned that it had originally been occupied by the person who built it, a man of low origin, who, being looked upon as a pillar of the Church by the congregation to which he belonged, had been entrusted with the task of collecting certain sums due to it-whether actual income or subscriptions I do not now recollect. At all events, he never paid over the money, but launched out into sundry extravagances rather unusual for a man in his station of life, amongst which was the erection of this large and handsome house. But from the time the house was finished a blight seemed to fall upon his life. He gave up all his religious and regular habits, frequented evil company, took to drinking, and finally, in a fit of delirium tremens, hanged himself in the very garret room of which I have before spoken. The scenes at his funeral were said to baffle description. The corpse was laid out in the kitchen, and thither all his late boon-companions repaired and turned the sad ceremonial into a hideous orgy. Among other horrible deeds, they took the corpse from the coffin, propped it up in a chair and poured whisky down its throat.

The incidents which I have related happened when Mrs. X-- was a child, and she is now in the prime of womanhood. When she finished her story I recollected that scarce a year ago I had read in a Philadelphia paper an extract from one of the journals of the town near which this house stood, giving an account of an investigation which was then taking place of the cause of sundry strange disturbances occurring in this very house. The extract closed with the history of its builder and first occupant, tallying exactly with what she related to me, though with fewer details. So, after all these years, the perturbed spirit still refuses to rest.

The narrative with which I shall conclude this chapter of ghostly experiences is one for the truth of which I am not prepared to vouch, as I was neither an actor in its scenes nor was it related to me by one who was. Yet were the incidents of any other than a supernatural nature I should consider the authority from which I learned them as unquestionable.

A few years ago a lady in quest of summer lodgings for herself, her sister and her children (her husband being absent) was offered a large, old-fashioned house in the vicinity of one of our seashore resorts on highly advantageous terms. Having inspected the house and found it, though old, in good repair, she engaged it joyfully, and a few weeks after the date of her first negotiations she was settled there with her family. For some time nothing occurred to mar the peace of the household. The children enjoyed the fresh sea-breezes, their pleasant sports on the beach and the large airy rooms, while the ladies sewed and read and looked after household matters and took long walks after the fashion of most people during the summer season by the seaside. One night, when the mother was about to retire to rest, one of her younger children, a bright little boy, called to her from his sleeping-room. Fearing that he was ill, she hastened to him.

"Mamma," he said very earnestly, "I wish you would tell that strange woman to keep out of my room."

"What woman, dear?" asked his mother, convinced that he had been dreaming.

"I don't know her name, and I can't see her face because she wears a big sun-bonnet, but she comes and stands at the foot of my bed, and she frightens me."

"Well, never mind, dear. Go to sleep, and if ever she troubles you again, come into my room and sleep with me," answered the mother, still thinking that the child had been wakened by an uneasy dream. The little fellow, thus soothed and consoled, soon fell asleep, and slept soundly till morning. But a few nights afterward the child came running into his mother's room at dead of night, panting and terrified, and exclaiming, "Mamma! mamma! she has come again!" His mother took him into her arms, and soon caressed away his fears, but thinking that the child's uneasiness was caused by his sleeping alone, she had his bed moved into her own chamber, and fitted up the vacant apartment as a guest-chamber. Soon after this the servants began to complain of strange sights and sounds for which they could not account, and one burning July day the sister, who was seated by the parlor window, happened to say, "Oh, I am so warm!" when a voice, seemingly from the cellar, made answer, "And I am so cold!" Struck with amazement, she called, but no one replied, and subsequent investigation proved that there was no one in the cellar at that moment, nor could there have been, as its only door was always kept locked.

I cannot now recall the details of various strange occurrences which afterward took place, but will pass on to the final one, which may be considered as the déno?ment of the whole story. The lady of the house, a strong-minded, practical woman, had always sternly rejected the theory that the odd incidents that annoyed her had any supernatural origin; so, disregarding them wholly, she sent an invitation to an old friend of hers, a clergyman, to pay her a visit of some weeks' duration. Her invitation was accepted, and in due time her guest arrived and was put in possession of the spare bed-room. Night coming on, the whole household retired to rest. Early in the morning the active hostess rose to see that all was in order for the further entertainment of her guest, when, on going into the parlor to unfasten the shutters, what was her amazement to find him there extended on the sofa, and looking very ill, as though he had passed a wretched night! In answer to her anxious questioning he stated that on retiring to rest he had fallen into a profound slumber, from which he suddenly woke, and saw a woman wearing a large sun-bonnet, which completely concealed her face, standing beside his bed, the moonlight which shone into the room rendering every detail of her figure distinctly visible. Supposing that she was one of the servants who had come to his room to see that he was perfectly comfortable and wanted nothing, he spoke to her. What she replied, or how he first became convinced that the Thing before him was no form of flesh and blood, I cannot now remember; but I recollect two particulars of the interview: one was, that she told him to look for her in the cellar; the other, that he asked her why she wore a sun-bonnet, and she answered, "Because the lime has spoilt my face." At this his failing senses forsook him, and when consciousness returned his ghostly visitor had disappeared.

His hostess heard him in silence. As soon as breakfast was over she requested him to accompany her to the cellar. Careful examination soon revealed a spot where some of the stones with which it was paved had been removed and afterward replaced. Assistants with proper tools were procured, the stones were lifted, and after a few minutes of vigorous digging a mass of lime was disclosed, in which was found imbedded a quantity of calcined fragments of bone, which medical authority afterward pronounced to be portions of a human skeleton. These poor remains were carefully removed, placed in a box and interred in a neighboring cemetery, and the "woman in a sun-bonnet" was seen no more.

Subsequent investigation into the history of the old house revealed the following facts. It had originally been occupied by a retired sea-captain and his only son, the latter a wild, reckless youth of evil character and confirmed bad habits. A young girl went to live there as a servant, and for some months seemed well contented with her place, but afterward she became gloomy and unhappy, and was frequently seen in tears by the neighbors. At last she disappeared, and it was given out by her employers that she had gone to visit some friends at a distance, but she did not return, and suspicion was already directed toward the old man and his son, when one morning the house was found to be shut up, its inhabitants having found it expedient to remove as silently and secretly as possible. The girl was never heard of afterward. The discovery of the bones led to the supposition that the younger man had seduced her, had afterward murdered her to conceal his original crime, and that he had then buried the body in the cellar, taking the precaution to cover it with quicklime.

As I said at the beginning of this article, I neither wish to propound any theories nor to deduce any conclusions from the relations I have given. I can only reiterate my statement that they came to me from sources the reliability of which I cannot question. I have carefully excluded everything relating to the supernatural which I ever heard from the lips of ignorant and superstitious persons, and have only recorded such incidents as bore an added weight of evidence in the shape of the sense, intelligence and unquestionable veracity of their relators.

LUCY H. HOOPER.

AFTERNOON.

Small, shapeless drifts of cloud

Sail slowly northward in the soft-hued sky,

With blue half-tints and rolling summits bright,

By the late sun caressed; slight hazes shroud

All things afar; shineth each leaf anigh

With its own warmth and light.

O'erblown by Southland airs,

The summer landscape basks in utter peace:

In lazy streams the lazy clouds are seen;

Low hills, broad meadows, and large, clear-cut squares

Of ripening corn-fields, rippled by the breeze,

With shifting shade and sheen.

Hark! and you may not hear

A sound less soothing than the rustle cool

Of swaying leaves, the steady wiry drone

Of unseen crickets, sudden chirpings clear

Of happy birds, the tinkle of the pool,

Chafed by a single stone.

What vague, delicious dreams,

Born of this golden hour of afternoon,

And air balm-freighted, fill the soul with bliss,

Transpierced like yonder clouds with lustrous gleams,

Fantastic, brief as they, and, like them, spun

Of gilded nothingness!

All things are well with her.

'Tis good to be alive, to see the light

That plays upon the grass, to feel (and sigh

With perfect pleasure) the mild breezes stir

Among the garden roses, red and white,

With whiffs of fragrancy.

There is no troublous thought,

No painful memory, no grave regret,

To mar the sweet suggestions of the hour:

The soul, at peace, reflects the peace without,

Forgetting grief as sunset skies forget

The morning's transient shower.

EMMA LAZARUS.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

WASHINGTON'S BIRTHPLACE IN 1873.

Was George Washington born in Great Britain or America? Absurd as this question must sound to an American, it has been gravely discussed within the last few months by a writer in the London Notes and Queries, who has the effrontery to say that Washington's own brief assertion in a letter to the effect that he was born in Virginia cannot be conclusive. "No man's unsupported testimony," he adds, "as to the place of his birth would be taken in evidence in a court of justice, for his knowledge of the event must necessarily be from hearsay or from records." This is silly enough. I did not see the whole article, or learn by what arguments the writer endeavored to substantiate his doubts, if he really had any, as to the true birthplace of the Pater Patriae, but, feeling some interest in the matter, I cut out the slip containing the quotation just given, and enclosed it in a letter to a prominent gentleman living in Westmoreland not far from Wakefield, the estate on which the birthplace-or rather the site of it-is situated, with a request that he would reply to it. He did so promptly and almost indignantly.

"I am amazed," says he, "at the contents of the printed slip you send me. That any man of ordinary intelligence, living within the bounds of civilization, could be ignorant of or doubt the fact that General Washington was born in America, I did not for a moment suppose." He goes on to say that if Washington's biography, written by so many competent hands, and founded upon sources the most authentic, and particularly the Lives of Marshall, Sparks and Irving, were not sufficient to convince incredulity itself, he is at a loss to know what would. Certainly, he would not attempt the task himself. In addition to the well-known biographies, traditions and memoranda attest the fact beyond the possibility of enlightened doubt. Other credible and corroborative records are not wanting. "Had the question," he concludes, "been asked of Dr. Livingstone by some savage in the depths of the African jungles, it would not have been surprising; but to come from a writer in London, it is inexpressibly marvelous, and looks like a relapse into barbarism."

Among the memoranda alluded to is a fac-simile of the entry of the birth of Washington in the Bible of his mother, which is given in Howe's Historical Collections of Virginia, as follows:

"George Washington son to Augustine and Mary his Wife was Born 11'th Day of February 173-1/2 about 10 in the Morning and was Baptized the 3'th (sic) of April following M'r Beverley Whiting and Cap'n Christopher Brooks godfathers and M'rs Mildred Gregory God-mother."

There are no marks of punctuation, and Howe states that the original entry is supposed to have been made by Washington's mother. If so, the handwriting, not very unlike Washington's own, is unusually masculine, compact, even and clear for a woman's. Howe's book was published in 1836. At that time the old family Bible, a much dilapidated quarto with the title-page missing, and covered with the striped Virginia cloth so common in old days, was in the possession of George W. Bassett, Esq., of Farmington, Hanover county, who married a grand-niece of Washington. At that time, too, the birthplace, which had been destroyed previous to the Revolution, was much more plainly marked than it is now. From its associations, and from its natural beauties as well, the place was doubly interesting. Standing half a mile from the junction of Pope's Creek with the Potomac River, it commanded a view of the Maryland shore and of the course of the Potomac for many miles. The house was a low-pitched, single-storied frame dwelling, with four rooms on the first floor, and a huge chimney at each end on the outside-the style of the better class of houses of those days. A stone, placed there to mark its site by G.W.P. Custis, bore the simple inscription:

"HERE, ON THE 11TH OF FEBRUARY (O.S.), 1732, GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS BORN."

Such was its appearance in 1834 or '35, when Howe visited it. Its present condition may be gathered from what the writer of the letter in response to the London querist has to say about the site itself, that being all that is left of a place so memorable and so deserving of perpetuation:

"I have had no opportunity to obtain the sketch I promised you. Indeed, there is virtually no material to make a sketch of. The birthplace is now simply an old field lying waste, with indistinct vestiges of a human habitation. An old chimney stands which belonged to an outhouse (kitchen or laundry), some remains of a cellar, and the foundations of a house in which tradition states Washington was born. There was a stone slab, with a simple inscription, placed on the spot some sixty years ago by G. W: P. Custis, to denote the place, but it was long ago removed from its original position, mutilated and broken, so that only a fragment remains."

That a place of such interest-one might call it sacred-should be left to decay and obliteration is no new thing in Virginia. Enemies might well declare that neglect of her mighty dead is characteristic of the old commonwealth. The truth is, she has a great many dead to care for, and of late years all her time has been absorbed in the care of her living. But something has been done, or attempted to be done, to rescue Washington's birthplace from oblivion. As far back as 1858 an act was passed by the General Assembly of Virginia, accepting from Lewis Washington a grant of the "site of the birthplace of George Washington, and the home and graves of his progenitors in America," and appropriating five thousand dollars "to enclose the same in an iron fence," etc. Hon. Henry A. Wise, governor of Virginia at the time this act was passed, entered with zeal and alacrity upon the work, the execution of which was entrusted to him by the Legislature-went in person to Westmoreland, examined carefully the sites, negotiated with the owner of the adjacent farm for right of way, adopted a plan for the enclosures and tablets, and began a correspondence with mechanics and artisans at the North with a view to the speedy completion of the work, and-just then his term expired, the war soon followed, and the matter was of course dropped.

The money appropriated, together with the accrued interest, is now in the treasury of Virginia, and although Governor Walker in his late message did not bring the subject to the attention of the Legislature, the long-delayed work will be consummated sooner or later, and "a neat iron fence" with a few plain slabs will be erected on the hallowed spot. But it strikes the present writer that five thousand dollars, or even ten thousand dollars, form rather a small sum for such an object, and that "a neat iron fence" is not exactly the thing that the place and its memories demand. But not a dollar more may be expected of Virginia at this time. She owes too much, and has too little. If one of the many Northern gentlemen who are lavishing their hundreds of thousands on colleges and other charities would come to Westmoreland and put something a little better than a "neat iron fence" around the birthplace of Washington, he would do a noble deed for himself and for both sections of his lately estranged country.

R.B.E.

VICISSITUDES IN HIGH LIFE.

The London papers lately recorded the death of a lady who was the representative and last descendant, save one sister, of a house famous in English history. This was Lady Langdale, widow of Bickersteth, first and last Lord Langdale, and sister of Harley, last earl of Oxford. Lady Langdale had but one child, who married Count Teleki, a Hungarian nobleman, and pre-deceased her mother, dying childless. Lord Langdale was the son of Mr. Bickersteth, surgeon, of Kirby-Lonsdale, Westmoreland. He was brought up to his father's vocation, and traveled, as physician, with the earl of Oxford.

Impressed, no doubt, with Mr. Bickersteth's extraordinary abilities, Lord Oxford advised him to go to college and read for the law, which offered greater prizes than the medical profession. Accordingly, he entered at Cambridge, and in 1808 graduated as senior wrangler. Twenty-seven years later, in 1835, he married the daughter and heiress of his friend and patron, and the year following was created a peer.

His brother Edward was the celebrated evangelical leader in the Church of England. Bred to the law, he abandoned that profession for holy orders. Their nephew, son of their brother John, is the present bishop of Ripon.

The Harleys have been seated for six or seven centuries in Herefordshire, at Brampton-Bryan and Egwood, properties which in part remained in Lady Langdale's possession. By marriage! with the heiress of the Vaughans in the fifteenth century, they became possessed of Wigmore Castle, the ancient heritage of the extinct earls of Mortimer, and great estates which added to their consequence.

When Charles II. made a batch of peers on his restoration, the Harley of that day displayed a rare modesty. The king offered him a viscounty, but he declined the honor, "lest his zeal and services for the restoration of the ancient government should be reproached as proceeding from ambition, and not conscience;" and so scrupulous was he that his being made a knight of the Bath even was done without his knowledge, he being then at Dunkirk, and Charles inserting with his own hand his name in the list. But his son was destined for a higher dignity, for he it was who became in the tenth year of the reign of Charles II.'s niece, Queen Anne, earl of Oxford and Mortimer, being the famous Harley of that reign, linked in our memories with St. John Lord Bolingbroke, the Mashams, Marlboroughs, Swift, Addison, Pope, and the host of brilliant men which makes the reign of one of the feeblest women who ever sat on a throne a period of almost pre-eminent interest in English annals to men of cultivated mind subject to the influence of association. By Elizabeth Foley, daughter of the first Lord Foley, of Witley Court (sold, about thirty-five years ago, with the bulk of the Foley estates, for ￡990,000 to Lord Dudley, who married Lady Mordaunt's sister), the famous lord treasurer, Oxford, had one son, the second earl. He was the friend of Swift, to whom the dean addressed so many letters. A man of literary tastes, he spent a portion of his immense fortune in forming the finest library of the period, and it is to him the student is indebted for the magnificent collection known as the "Harleian," which subsequently became, by purchase, the property of the nation, and is deposited in the British Museum. He married the greatest heiress of the day, Lady Henrietta Cavendish-Holies, only daughter and heir of the duke of Newcastle (of the Holies creation-the present duke, a Pelham-Clinton, derives from a different descent). He left but one daughter. She married the second duke of Portland, grandson of Dutch William's pet page Bentinck, whom he imported into England, and loaded with honors and emolument until even the House of Commons of that day cried out loudly, "Enough! stop!" Through this lady the Bentincks got Welbeck, the duke of Portland's chief seat to-day.

Meanwhile, the Oxford honors and patrimonial estates in Herefordshire passed to the second earl's first cousin, and so on, in regular succession, until the earldom became extinct by the death of Lady Langdale's brother a few years ago. One of Lady Langdale's sisters married a General Bacon. At the time of the marriage he was but a poor captain, and his wealth did not much increase, whilst his family did, and his wife, the once beautiful Lady Charlotte, Byron's "Ianthe"-to whom he addressed the famous lines which form the prelude of Childe Harold, beginning,

Not in those climes where I have late been straying-

had to see her daughter a governess in the family of a Cornishman, once a common miner! One of her daughters is now married to the son of Lord Mount Edgecumbe's agent. It seems that the sisters could not forgive the mesalliance, as they deemed it, for Lady Langdale's will shows no bequest to the Bacons.

Lady Langdale had another sister, who married a son of Doctor Vernon-Harcourt, long archbishop of York, grandfather of "Historicus," the well-known political letter-writer of the London Times. This lady died about the same time as Lady Langdale. One sister only, the wife of a foreign nobleman, survives. She is the last of the Harleys of the great minister's line.

A GLASS OF OLD MADEIRA.

We had met in Europe some dozen years ago-I from Massachusetts, he from Carolina. We both looked grave for an instant as a friend presented us to each other, naming our respective residences, and then both laughed cheerily, and were good friends ever after. We enjoyed Tartuffe and the Mariage de Figaro in company with each other at the Theatre Francois, heard Mario, Grisi, Gratiano and Borghi Mamo in Verdi's Trovatore at the Opéra Italien, danced with les filles de l'Opéra at Cellarius's saloons, and had many a midnight carouse afterward at the Maison Doré. Nor had our time always been unprofitably spent. Toward Easter we journeyed together to Rome, and stood side by side before the masterpieces of Raphael and Domenichino in the Vatican, strolled by moonlight amid the ruins of the Coliseum, and drank out of the same cup from the Fountain of Trevi; often visited Crawford's studio, where then stood the famous group which now adorns the frieze of the Capitol at Washington, and by actual observation agreed in thinking his Indian not unworthy of comparison with the famous statue of the Dying Gladiator. We stood together on the Tarpeian Rock, and, looking down upon the mutilated Column of Trajan and all the ruins of ancient Rome, read out of the same copy of Horace the famous ode beginning, "Exegi monumentum aere perennius." We were both passionately fond of sculpture and of painting, and often sat for hours before the glorious Descent from the Cross of Daniel da Volterra in the Chiesa della Trinità dei Monti, the principal figure in which is said to have been sketched by Michael Angelo, and which, although less widely known, appeared to our minds equal in execution and superior in grandeur to any other painting in the world.

After our return to this country I happened to go South one winter, and spent a month with my friend on his plantation in the low country of Carolina. It seemed to be our fate to meet amid the ruins of the past. But the war had not then occurred, and we had many a hunt together, in which, after a glorious burst of the hounds through the open savannas, I brought down more than one noble buck. On other days we would drive with the ladies along the broad beach upon which stood the summer residences of the neighboring planters. And sometimes we would stroll lazily about the lanes of his estate, basking in the mellow sunshine in the midst of February, and chatting of Capri and Sorrento in a climate equal to that of Italy.

And we met again the other day in the streets of a Northern city. He looked older certainly, and very careworn, but his eye was as bright as ever and his voice as cheery.

"Come and dine with me," he said after we had given each other a hurried account of our present abodes and occupations. "You will find me in rather modest and decidedly airy lodgings, and I cannot offer you either wild-ducks or venison. A rasher of bacon and a glass of madeira as we chat over old times: what say you to the bill-of fare? You remember the old French adage, 'Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime, faut bien aimer ce que l'on a.'"

"A quelle heure, mon ami?"

"Four o'clock."

And at five that afternoon we were seated together, the remnants of our frugal repast removed, and on the scrupulously polished old mahogany table which separated us stood a cut-glass decanter of old Carolina madeira, the bouquet of which filled the room with its fragrance.

"Fill your glass, Harry: 'tis not the fragrance of the wine, but the sentiment connected with it, which prevents me from offering you a pipe. The odor of the best Virginia would seem to me a desecration. There are only a dozen bottles left in that cupboard. I never uncork one except for a near friend. 'Tis out of fashion now: hock and champagne have taken its place; but, do you know, I like it the better on that account. It reminds me of the past, and, though still a young man, it is one of my greatest pleasures to dwell on the picture which a glass of it never fails to recall to my imagination. You remember Woodlawn? For five-and-twenty years, during the whole of a long minority and subsequent travels abroad, those old bottles stood wreathed with cobwebs in the garret of the old mansion. You drank one with me in 1859. The rest were buried at the commencement of the war, and this is one of the few which survived it. There are not many of your compatriots to whom I would tell the story of its preservation, for it illustrates a feature of feudal attachment which they persistently refuse to believe possible.

"You remember the stately old negro who occupied the porter's lodge at Woodlawn, and who told you with such pride that he and his ancestors had always occupied a favored post near the great house? You remember, too, his grand air, fashioned after the gentlemen of the olden time, the contemporaries of Washington, Rutledge and Pinckney? And in what awe and reverence his fellow-servants stood of him! Well, when the war fairly began, and all hope of amicable adjustment was exhausted, I did what every true man on either side was bound to do-raised a company for the service, removed my family to an up-country farm, and left Old John in charge of my residence and interests in the low country. The Federal gunboats soon appeared upon the coast, entered the bay and ran up the rivers. Many of the younger people went off with them, but during the long and dreary four years which ensued Old John remained staunch at his post, cultivating the land as best he might, and sending constantly supplies of money and provisions to his mistress. At last the whole thing broke down: Lee surrendered, Johnston surrendered. Troops as well as gunboats swarmed in all directions. Not only regular soldiers, but raw negro levies, occupied the towns and were posted through the country. Stories were circulated that I was killed, that I was captured; and the latter statement was true. There were rumors that the land was to be divided among the negroes, and one dark night in the early summer of 1865 some drunken sailors, escaped from the gunboats lying in the bay, raised a mob of negroes from the various plantations and gutted nearly every house in the parish. Among others they came to mine eager for wine, and John was pointed out by some of the neighboring negroes as knowing where it was concealed. The sailors threatened his life: he refused to tell. They held a pistol to his head, but the old man remained staunch in his refusal. Provoked by his fidelity, at length they brutally beat him with the butts of their pistols until his gray hairs were dabbled in gore, and went off to other plunder, telling their followers to take what they wanted from my residence. But, bruised, bleeding and crippled though he was, Old John still defended his master's property, and sitting on the front steps of the house kept the whole crowd at bay by the firmness and dignity of his attitude. I heard of the affair first from a white man who lived in the neighborhood, and it was not until I asked him about it that he told me himself. The next day he gave to my own people the furniture remaining in the house to keep until I came back, but positively refused to allow them to take of the crops that had been gathered any more than was required for their subsistence, and this he regularly shared out to them at stated intervals. And when, after a long imprisonment and much enfeebled myself, I landed one evening at the wharf which leads up to the house, the first figure which met my sight was the old man faithfully guarding the barns. His eyesight was too dim for him to see me, but as soon as he heard my voice he seized my hand with passionate fervor, pressing it repeatedly to his lips and bedewing it with tears. Can you wonder if he has shared my fortunes ever since? But not at Woodlawn. The negroes generally were wild with the notion of freedom, and utterly ignorant of the practical meaning of the term. To me they were always civil and affectionate, but I preferred that some other than myself should teach them its rugged lesson, and immediately leased the place for a term of years to one better fitted than I to derive profit from it under the new system. The gentlemen and the negroes are the two classes upon whom the first results of the fearful revolution in society caused by the war fell with heaviest weight. Both were totally unprepared for it, and both have so far suffered cruelly. A year ago Old John died, faithful and cared for to the last. A few months ago the lease I had executed expired, and I visited the estate again. All the glamour of the past had disappeared. The home of my fathers knew me no more, and I have sold it. Cuffee, whom you remember as my body-servant, who followed me through the war, and bore me on his back from the battlefield upon which I was severely wounded, and who would have come with me here had circumstances permitted of my retaining his services,-Cuffee has taken to politics, and now represents the county in the Legislature of the State; and the last figure that I remember seeing as I left the place was that of old Sary, the sick nurse, her long black hair streaming in the wind (you remember she was an Indian half-breed), her feet bare, her petticoat ragged and limp, standing in the lane which leads from the house-her arms akimbo, a sort of miniature Meg Merrilies-screaming out to me, 'You left you own plantashun.' Yes, I have left my own plantation, and am grubbing out a modest and sometimes a rather precarious existence elsewhere. But for all that, it is more wholesome than mouldering among the ruins of a past that can never return. The fight has been fairly fought, and New England has won the day. Germany is up, France is down; Italy united, the pope existing on sufferance in the palace where erstwhile emperors did him homage. I don't quarrel with Fortune. Nay, in many things I dare say the world has benefited by the change. And so, when I take my children sometimes to look at Crawford's famous group, I even enjoy the spirit of pride with which they look upon the figure of America, and the zest with which they enjoy the vigorous onslaught of the pioneer on the forest tree; but my own eyes seek the Indian chieftain reclining in mute despair on the right of the group, and I have a strange sympathy with the fortune which his very attitude so forcibly indicates. Our battle of Dorking has been fought, and, whatever may be the fate of the next generation, all that is left to me of home or of country are the golden drops which sparkle in this tiny glass."

RAMBLER.

AT A MATINéE: A MONOLOGUE.

Oh Dear! I meant to be very early, people do look so cross when you squeeze by them. I don't think it is exactly proper, either, when they are men. Here is my seat, No. 10: that girl has piled all her waterproofs on it. Why don't she take them away quicker? and I wish she wouldn't grope about my feet for her overshoes.

I never sat right next to the orchestra before. What a convenient railing to hang my umbrella on! Provoking it should rain so to-day. There now! my waterproof is all disposed of, and I know my dress is all right, so I shall enjoy myself.

What a ridiculous girl beside me! Such a bunch of curls! The two young men on the other side look like gentlemen: the one this way especially nice-lovely eyes and moustache. I'll look round the house as far as I can without moving. Can't see much, though, for I'm so near the front. Why on earth didn't brother Bob put me where I could see the people?

Why, there's Lucy Morris! I can't bear that girl: her hair is almost the color of mine. A vacant seat beside her, too; so she came with some one. Wonder who it is? I hope she won't see me.

Oh, how funny! The musicians come up out of a hole just like the tame rats at the Museum, nasty things!-the rats, I mean. The man right in front of me has a trombone. I know what it is, because the name is written on his music. I'm so glad, for I never knew exactly what a trombone was until now. And what a funny instrument! He doesn't blow at all for ever so long, and then suddenly comes in with two or three toots.

But, good gracious! there's Dick Livingstone! I saw him come in at that door. I'm so glad I came! He asked me night before last at Mrs. Harris's if I was coming to the matinée, and of course I said "Yes," though I didn't have the slightest idea of doing so until he spoke. But what-! He has taken the seat by that Lucy Morris, and has given her a programme. I hate that girl!

There goes the curtain. What a stupid play! Why did I come? The damp will ruin my dress. Oh, that horrid girl! Well, of all the ridiculous acting I ever saw, this is the worst! I should think they would be ashamed to put such people on the stage. He is opening her fan. A fan to-day! absurd! I won't look again. How that man rants! I'm sure I don't know why I came: I might have known how poor it would be. Even I can see that Leicester and Mortimer have dresses at least a hundred years apart. I wonder if their legs are stuffed? Oh dear! that's hardly proper. What Dick can see to admire in that girl is beyond my comprehension. Such airs and graces!-all put on; and how she makes eyes at him! I can feel it behind my back.

How absurdly Queen Elizabeth is dressed! and what a fright she is! And I wore my new hat, too: he said he liked blue so much. I could just cry, I am so provoked. It's all her fault, I know. Oh! the play! Yes, Dudley is making love. Ridiculous! There, the curtain's down at last, and-what-! Dick is getting up: he looks as if he were saying good-bye. There's Lucy's uncle: he sits down beside her-he must have brought her. Oh, what a relief! After all, it was very natural for Dick to take the vacant seat, he is so thoughtful always. Lucy can talk pretty well sometimes, too. If she only had some idea of dress! There! I'm sure Dick saw me, but of course I shall take no notice.

Upon my word, the young man next me is admiring the girl's hair on the other side of me. It's hideous-red as a carrot, and stuck on at that. Thank Goodness! my hair hasn't a tinge of red in it-pure blonde cendré-but I have to pay awfully to match it. Wish I could tell that young fellow her hair is all stuck on. Hark! the nice one says,

"Why, it is all her own-I see it growing" "S-s-s-h!" says the other: "she'll hear you." "Loveliest hair I ever saw," continues No. 1: "pure gold, not a tinge of red-" It's my hair they are discussing. What a nice fellow he is! I'll just turn a little away, so he can study that curl which really does grow out of my head. It is worth all the trouble it gives me, for it makes the others seem so natural. I declare, he is looking right at me: suppose he should speak? I should die! Nonsense! he is bowing to a lady in the dress-circle. I know he'd like to do something for me. Brother Bob says girls can't be too careful. I might drop something. Not my handkerchief-that would be improper-but my opera-glass case: nothing could be said against that. Oh my! I haven't used my glasses yet, I'm so near the stage. I'll look round the house; so here goes. "Thank you, sir," with my sweetest smile and such a nice flutter. I saw him nudge his friend.

There goes the curtain again. Mary queen of Scots: I thought she was prettier. Oh, the act is really over; I actually forgot everything but the stage. My eyes are all wet. But it won't do to cry: they would be red. I don't quite like some of the words they use, though-they make one feel queer. Now, why couldn't they say "illegitimate child"? It means just the same; besides, it's longer.

I wonder how Dick Livingstone liked it? Mr. Livingstone, I should say. Brother Bob doesn't think it nice for girls to speak of young men by their first names. But then brothers are so particular about their own sisters, though, Goodness knows, they flirt enough with other people's. Bob and Kate Harris, for example, and yet he preaches at me!

Oh, the young men are going out. They push by as well as they can, but still they crowd unpleasantly. I am sure I've seen that nice one somewhere. They are going to stay away, too, I think, for they have taken their over-coats. If only Dick-Mr. Livingstone, I mean-

Oh, there's the curtain again. It's really quite interesting. I was mistaken about the actors: they do very well indeed. Queen Elizabeth is excellent, and so are they all. It shows how careful one ought to be not to judge too hastily. That's what mother always says. I won't do so again.

Well, that play is over-now for the comedy. Some one says it is still raining. I hate a waterproof, my figure looks so well in this suit. I might carry my cloak over my arm, but then I'm afraid the rain will ruin my dress. I must wear the waterproof and be a dowdy. I don't believe, after all, that it would hurt the underskirt, and then, with the umbrella up, I should have to take his arm. I shouldn't like to get this dress spoiled, either. I know mother wouldn't give me another. Brother Bob says men don't care so much about women's dress: they like to see a sensible girl. I don't believe that; besides, I have thick boots, and I'm sure that's sensible. I don't care: I won't wear the waterproof unless it is a perfect deluge. My goodness! I don't see Dick anywhere! Suppose, after all, he didn't come to meet me? and I gave him that flower at Mrs. Leslie's, too! I wish the thing was over.

But oh, what a pretty dress! and how sweet she is! I had no idea she could be so cunning, after being such a tragedy queen. The man on the stage actually kissed her. Bob says they don't really kiss, though.

I'm sorry it's over. Oh dear! I don't like being alone in such a crowd. Brother Bob wouldn't have let me come, I know, only he thought I should meet the Davidsons. No matter: I'll never tell him. I do believe Dick hasn't stayed, after all. I'll just put on my waterproof and thick veil, and go home and have a good cry.

Oh, Mr. Livingstone, how you startled me! I had no idea you were here. Yes, I am by myself: certainly you may escort me home. Take a walk in this pouring rain? Why, it's all sunshine!

C.A.D.

NOTES.

Wellnigh half a century has elapsed since the discovery of the beautiful Venus of Milo (the exact year was 1825), and yet now, for the first time, the endless discussions regarding two doubtful and interesting points in its history have been set at rest. These two points are-first, the original pose of the statue; and, secondly, the reason of its being armless. After so many years of dispute over these questions, it occurred at length to M. Jules Ferry to do what of course ought to have been done long ago-namely, go to the very spot whence the statue was exhumed, and there talk with all the surviving witnesses of the exhumation. M. Ferry not long since put his idea into execution, went to Milo, took into consultation with him M. Brest, son of the consul who procured the statue for France, and found and cross-questioned two Greeks who were present at the unearthing of the statue. M. Ferry has collected the details of his labors in an elaborate communication to the Académie des Beaux Arts, but a brief indication of the results obtained may be made as follows:

First, then, the Venus was found in 1825 at the foot of a little hill, where it had been covered up by successive crumblings of the earth above. The proprietor of the ground, wishing to clear a little more of the soil for his planting, chanced to strike the statue with his shovel. "It was on its base, erect," said the two Greek peasants to the French minister. "With one hand she held together her draperies, and in the other an apple"-the same, doubtless, that Paris had just given her. Such, very briefly, is the clear, short, definite, decisive story which puts an end to ten thousand disquisitions and hypotheses about the pose. The evidence thus given is that of people who actually saw what they describe. But, secondly, what of those "long-lost arms"? and how came they to be lost? The body of the Venus was formed of two blocks, and the arms were afterward fastened upon the trunk. When discovered, it was intact. M. Brest, the French consul, instantly bought the Venus for five hundred dollars, while the Turkish government on its part hurried off a small vessel to bring it away, offering the owner of the farm fivefold the French price, or something like two thousand five hundred dollars. A French aviso, sent by M. de Rivière, the ambassador at Constantinople, arrived on the scene at the very moment when the Turks had got possession of the statue, and were embarking it on their vessel. A dispute arose at once, and in the material as well as legal confusion the arms of the Venus, which had been detached for safer transportation, were missed. The people of the neighborhood got up a story that the arms were carried off by the Turkish vessel out of chagrin and spite, but this seems to be mere surmise where all else is clear.

* * *

The story of Demosthenes and the pebbles is familiar. Less familiar, we venture to say, is the theory that declamation is sometimes the cause of stammering; or, rather, that stuttering impels a man to talkativeness, and the yielding to this tendency fixes the habit of stammering and makes it worse. Hence it might plausibly be argued that it is the rostrum, or the very emotion of speaking in public, which makes some orators become stammerers. At all events, in Paris an institution has been founded expressly to remedy stuttering; and M. Chervin, its director, not long ago presented before a meeting of the learned societies at the Sorbonne some interesting statistics on his specialty. These statistics seem to show that stuttering is in direct proportion with the habit of speaking, and that the more one speaks the more one stutters. This is certainly an unexpected result of the restoration of freedom of speech in France. M. Chervin mentions a village of eighteen hundred souls where everybody, without exception, undeniably stutters. What strange dialogues, says Jules Claretie (who cites these points in l'Indépendance Belge), must take place there! A very curious fact is, that stammering is less frequent in the north of France than in the south. In the north-east it is least known, and most in the south-east. For example, all things being equal, for six stammerers in Paris there would be twenty-five in Lyons and seventy in Marseilles. The admitted garrulity or fluency of southern speaking is often the cause or the preface to stammering. Thus, comically concludes M. Claretie, oratorical habits threaten to make stammering become the order of the day, and for one Vergniaud there will be ten stutterers, and ten more stutterers for one General Foy. Nevertheless, in earlier days, Camille Desmoulins stammered, and yet spoke but little at the Convention. It does not appear that Charles Lamb was a garrulous person, and in the familiar experience of daily life we rarely find stutterers to be rapid talkers. Still, this latter fact really helps M. Chervin's theory, since we may conclude it is precisely because stammerers find that a very rapid utterance increases their defect that they force themselves to speak deliberately, and also not to tire the vocal muscles. Hence, apart from the jesting inference which M. Claretie, in French journalist's fashion, is bent son twisting out of the scientific statistics, there would appear to be a mutual influence, perfectly comprehensible, of rapidity in utterance and a tendency to stammering. We could not safely go on to generalize that only voluble people become stutterers, or that all stutterers are unusually garrulous and unusually eager in enunciation; but we may conclude that if they are thus careless and rattling in delivery, their peculiarity will be likely to grow more marked, and that accordingly a natural tendency to the same defect is developed by the same habits or necessities of much and rapid talking.

* * *

Two illustrations of nineteenth-century precocity, rather superior to the generality of anecdotes regarding the wisdom of the rising generation, we find in recent French papers. One of them is originated by the Moulin-à-Parole. Madame de B. was visiting, with her baby, her friend Madame X. After chattering three-quarters of an hour, without giving anybody else a chance to put in a word, Madame X. pauses, when Baby immediately takes up the burden of conversation. Madame X., getting tired at last, says, "Why do you talk so much, mignonne? It isn't nice for a little girl like you to do so." "Oh," replies Baby very graciously, "it is only so that mamma may rest!" A little lad furnishes the other instance of the premature sagacity of modern childhood. A famous merchant has four children, three daughters and a boy named Arthur. Two of the former die successively of consumption, and at the funeral of the second a friend of the family comes to offer his compliments of condolence, and, patting little Arthur's head, tells the poor lad the house must seem lonely to him now. "Yes," briskly replies Arthur, whom his father has brought up to accurate ideas, "here we children are reduced fifty per cent." Worthy to take charge of these children would have been the prudent bonne of whom Charivari speaks. The morning after engaging herself to Madame R. she hastened to that lady with her finger wrapped in a handkerchief, and in an agitated voice asked if the converts were real silver. "Why so, Nannette?" "Because, I just pricked my finger with a fork, and I know that if it is plated copper I ought to take the precaution of having the place bled." "Don't be alarmed," replies the lady, smiling despite herself at the young girl's innocence, "my plate is all solid." "Ah," says the bonne with a sigh of relief, "I am so glad!" The day after, the simple young lady disappeared with all the silver. It is not every bonne that would take such precautions.

* * *

Paris has always been famous among modern cities for its genius and industry in adding variety to its cuisine, either by the audacious invention of new dishes or the felicitous combination of old ones-either by discovering new sources of food or new methods of preparing it. It was a curious incident in the late history of the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a hard necessity-that after Saint-Hilaire and the hippophagists had struggled to introduce horseflesh as regular provender, the siege of Paris made horseflesh a prized rarity. But the zest resulting from the enforced diet of dogs, cats, rats and monkeys in bombardment days appears to have been so great that we now hear of an enterprise worthy to have a Brillat-Savarin to celebrate it-namely, the formation of a society under the presidency of the naturalist Lespars, designed to bring into vogue as eatable a great class of living creatures whose presence now inspires ordinary persons only with disgust. A naturalist who devotes himself to eating such creatures with a motive so philanthropic deserves our praise, though we may not be able to personally imitate his heroic example. Among the choice dishes mentioned by one paper as selected to figure at the first public banquet of M. Lespars are a plate of white worms, a bushel of grasshoppers, and a broil of magpies seasoned with the slugs that infest certain green berries. One regards this announcement with more or less incredulity; but little doubt seems to hang over the assertion that the dormouse has just been introduced into the list of French game-dishes. The puzzle for the cooks seems to be with regard to the proper sauce for the new delicacy; but this matter does not trouble the little chimney-sweeps, who find the animal so long associated in poetry and in fact chiefly with their own humble career, now rising to the dignity of game, and commanding a price for the table. Piedmont has thus far furnished the larger part of the displays of marmottes in Paris stalls. The chief trouble in making rats, magpies and other delicacies of that sort really popular amongst the poorer classes is that the latter do not possess adroit cooks to disguise the original flavor under aromatic adjuncts, nor yet the money to buy the necessary spices and side-dishes, nor the high grade of champagne wines with which the wealthy and noble patrons of "food reform" commonly wash down unpalatable viands.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Rousseau. By John Morley. 2 vols. London: Chapman & Hall.

It was in the natural course of things that modern criticism, ever aiming at a wider comprehension, a keener analysis, a greater independence of judgment and expression, should test itself anew on a subject affording so full a scope and so sure a touchstone as the life and writings of Rousseau. The character of Rousseau, with its strange blending of delicate beauty and repulsive infirmity, requires to be handled with the firm but tender and sympathetic touch which the nurse or the physician lays upon a child afflicted with sores. His career, with its alternations of obscurity and conspicuousness, of tumult and torpidity, of wretchedness and rapture, must be followed with an eye keen to detect the springs and alive to the subtle play of circumstance and impulse. His influence, if not more profound, more varied, extensive and direct than that of any thinker and writer since Luther, is to be traced in the whole history of his own and of later times, under manifold aspects and amid momentous changes of spirit and of form. In the case of most men who have helped to mould the ideas and direct the tendencies of an age, it would be difficult to determine what each has contributed to the general result, or to say with certainty that the work performed by one would not, if he had been wanting, have been equally accomplished by others. On the other hand, there are a few master-spirits-men not of an age but for all time-whose power has been so deeply infused, so generally and silently absorbed, that it would be vain to inquire how it has operated in detail. We cannot indicate the course or fix the limits of its action: we perceive only that without it our intellectual life must have been dormant or extinct. Rousseau belongs to neither of these classes. His power was not general but specific, not creative but stimulative, not a source of perennial light but the torch of a conflagration; yet it was original and independent, it did not co-operate but clashed with that of his contemporaries, and while it acted upon minds far higher and broader than his own, it received no aid except from disciples and imitators. Of the French Revolution we may say with precision and confidence that it owed primarily its peculiar character-its austere ideals and wild distortions, its illimitable aspirations and chaotic endeavors-to the extent to which the nation had become imbued with his spirit and theories. In regard to literature, it is not sufficient to point to a long list of celebrated writers, from Chateaubriand and De Sta?l to Lamartine and George Sand, whose works have reflected the characteristic hues of his sentiment and style; or to adduce particular instances of his influence upon writers of higher and more contrasted genius, such as Goethe and Byron, Schiller and Richter: what is to be noted, as underlying all such examples and illustrations, is the fact that a literature distinguished from that which had immediately preceded it by earnestness, simplicity and depth, by spontaneous and vivid conceptions and freedom from conventional restraints, had its beginning with him, appealing to emotions and ideas which he was the first to call into renewed and general activity. In education, in art, in modifications of religious opinion and of social life, the same force, if less measurable and distinct, is everywhere apparent either as an active participant or a strong original impulse.

It need hardly be said that, as productions of genius, the writings of Rousseau cannot hold any rank proportionate to the effect which they thus produced. They are not among the treasures that constitute our intellectual capital, the possessions which we could not lose without becoming bankrupt. They are rather among the instruments which, having served their purpose, may be laid aside, however interesting as mementoes or admirable as curiosities. Their highest qualities-their fervor, simplicity and grace-do not of themselves disclose the secret of their power. From the point of view of mere literary criticism we are apt to be more observant of their defects than their beauties. By the side of earlier and later models they are seen to be deficient in the very qualities-force of passion and depth of thought-by which they startled or enthralled contemporary readers.

If we turn to the man himself, we might imagine at the first glance that none could have been less fitted for the position of a leader of thought, a founder of systems and schools, the apostle of a new era. The career for which Nature seemed to have destined him, and which, in truth, he may almost be said to have followed, was that of a vagabond, or at the best a recluse. Of all the advantages we desire and anxiously seek for our children, Rousseau enjoyed none. Poverty, degradation and neglect weighed upon him from his birth. The evil in him was unchecked, the good unfostered, by any training hand. The opportunity and the faculty of acquiring any substantial nutriment from books seemed alike denied him. His intercourse with mankind through all his earlier and the greater part of his later life was confined to the ignorant, and with these alone was he ever able to hold any harmonious relations or any grateful interchange of sentiment. Physically, mentally and morally diseased, weak yet stern, sensitive but unpliant, equally devoid of courage and of tact, he could not come in contact with the world without suffering a shock and swift recoil that drove him back to the refuge of solitude-to the mute companionship of external Nature or the brooding contemplation of himself. Even the ideals which, despite his practical aberrations from them, he yet intensely worshiped, had, in his conception of them, little connection with the activities of life: truth, simplicity, order, purity and peace were ideas that occupied his soul only to fill it with a horror of reality, with yearnings for an idyllic repose, with dreams of a state which he persuaded himself had been the original condition of the race, in which virtue and right must prevail through the mere absence of occasion for wrong or temptation to evil.

Yet it is not in some radiance breaking through this cloudy environment, it is not in this or that faculty overcoming all obstacles, it is in the entirety of his nature as originally formed, and as moulded or marred by circumstance and fate, that we shall find the secret of that spell which he exercised over men of all classes and characters. The culture which might have sweetened and perhaps ennobled his life would have unfitted him for his mission. It would have brought him more or less into harmony with his age; and it was by his utter and vehement opposition to its habits and opinions that he turned the stream into a different channel. Not only his finer intuitions and purer tastes, but his unsatisfied desires, his errors, his remorse, urged him to make war upon it, as the step-mother that had sought to enervate or brutalize his mind while defrauding him of his inheritance. He held up the image of its corruption, shallowness and false refinement, and that of a life of simple manners and unperverted instincts. That he depicted this as the real life of a primitive epoch only gave greater pungency to the contrast. The eighteenth century, aroused to the consciousness of its own degeneracy, its false and artificial existence, readily accepted an idealized Geneva, an idealized Sparta, as the type of a primitive community, the model on which society was to be refashioned. What the "pure word of God" had been to the Reformers, that "Nature" became to the revolutionists in all departments of thought and action, in poetry and music as in philosophy and politics-a shibboleth to rally and unite all the elements of discontent and aspirations for change, a universal test by which to try all doctrines and systems. In either case, as was soon discovered, the test would itself admit of diverse interpretations; but in the mean while the solvent had taken effect, the authority of custom and tradition had been overthrown, old organizations had crumbled into dust.

That the agitation thus evoked should have produced many grotesque, many frightful results, cannot seem strange. Long before the lower strata had been reached the surface was in a state of ebullition. Polite society was delightfully thrilled with a feeling of its own depravity, and found in the novel sensation the zest that had been wanting to its jaded powers of enjoyment. Nor was it awakened from its illusions by the first eruption from below. In a transport of delirium it threw away, as if they had been idle gems, of use only when cast into the public treasury, the privileges and prerogatives that had formed the basis of the monarchy. Thenceforth the only effort was to secure a tabula rasa on which to rear that new and perfect state of which the model was at hand, if only the proper materials could be found and the foundations be laid. Of the men who acquired a temporary mastery, three only, by the massive force of practical genius, were able to free themselves from the fascination of the common ideal. But Mirabeau and Danton were overborne by the full tide, and Napoleon, when he arrested it in its languor, turned it into depths from which it emerged the other day to sweep away his column in the Place Vend?me.

In thus glancing at the vast proportions of the subject, we have wandered far from the range of Mr. Morley's work, which has a special purpose with well-defined limits. It is not a complete biography of Rousseau, much less a history of his times. It gives no full or vivid portraiture of character, no adequate narrative of events, no summary even of results. It is an analytical study, an examination of the life and works of Rousseau with a view to determine their precise nature and quality, rather than their relative value or bearings. Within these limits it exhibits ample knowledge and skill, combined with a searching but tolerant judgment. Without labored discussion or passionate apology, it clears away entangling prejudices and current misconceptions, to assume a position from which undistorted views may be obtained. At times, indeed, Mr. Morley carries his impartiality to the verge of indifference. His certificate of Grimm's "integrity" rests on very slender grounds, and the Memoirs of Madame d'épinay are subjected to no such scrutiny as the circumstances of their composition and preservation call for, before their statements can be accepted as authority. But whatever minor defects may be found in the book, the general spirit and execution are admirable. It is full of interest and suggestiveness both for readers to whom the subject may not be unfamiliar, and for those who may hitherto have neglected to explore it. Above all, it is valuable as marking the line to which English criticism has advanced, its capacity for treating complicated and delicate questions with clearness, frankness and entire fairness.

Pascarel: Only a Story. By "Ouida," author of "Tricotrin," "Folle-Farine," "Under Two Flags," etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

The genius of "Ouida" is sui generis, and must in part create the standards by which it is to be judged. Her works are so different from the common type of modern novels that they demand to be looked at from a different point of view. The present standard of excellence in prose fiction seems to be the conformity of character and incident to what is actually seen in life. It is a good test for all mere stories, but is manifestly not the test by which to gauge the recent works of "Ouida." She does not aim at this pre-Raphaelite delineation of men and things as they are. Her characters are idealizations: her later books are prose-poems, not only in the affluence and rhythm of their style, but in the allegoric form and purpose which, pervade them. This characteristic is plain enough in Tricotrin and Folle-Farine, but finds its most marked expression in Pascarel. "Only an Allegory" would be a more expressive sub-title for the book than "Only a Story," for the story is the mere thread which sustains and binds together a series of parables and crystallized truths. Most of these, indeed, she has embodied in former works, but nowhere as in Pascarel is the author's design to teach them made so manifest.

The book is almost wholly free from that extravagance of expression and recklessness of all established codes of taste which have diverted attention from her purpose, and led to a false estimate of the character and tendency of her writings. It has none of the hindrances, for instance, which prevent many from seeing the magnificence of the conception in Folle-Farine. Its object is to enforce the lesson that the only true greatness is that which loses sight of self-that Love, and Love alone, is, both in its insight and its purpose, divine. "Love sees as God sees, and with infinite wisdom has infinite pardon." "Laughter and love are all that are really worth having in the world," but to gain them "one must seek them first for others, with a wish pure from the greed of self." "The world owes nothing to so personal a passion as ambition." "The first fruits of a man's genius are always pure of greed." What makes a great artist is the "vital, absolute absorption of personality in his love of art." The experience of the donzella (which constitutes what there is of the story), a nobler, and, we think, a truer, type of womanhood than Viva, yet with a like over-estimate of the advantages of wealth and position, brings her to the conviction that Pascarel is right. These truths, however, find their most effective illustration in the wealth of Italian tradition and history with which the pages abound. "Here is the secret of Florence, sublime aspiration-the aspiration which gave her citizens force to live in poverty and clothe themselves in simplicity, so as to give up their millions of florins to bequeath miracles in stone and metal and color to the future." "In her throes of agony she kept always within her that love of the ideal, impersonal, consecrate, void of greed, which is the purification of the individual life and the regeneration of the body politic." "Her great men drew their inspiration from the very air they breathed, and the men who knew they were not great had the patience and unselfishness to do their minor work for her zealously and perfectly." The workmen who chiseled the stones and the boys who ground the colors "did their part mightily and with reverence." The unrivaled works of art which are the true greatness of Italy owe their existence to the self-forgetfulness of their makers. So the love of Italy is in its essence a love for that which is best and noblest in human nature-"the consecration of self to an object higher than self." This love, however, to be true, must be more than perception or sentiment-it must bear fruit in likeness to that which it admires. "Each gift which men receive imposes a corresponding duty." "We are Italians," says Pascarel after recounting the glories of Italian achievement: "great as the heritage is, so great the duty likewise." As a companion-book of Italian travel, Pascarel has a special value, suffused as it is throughout with the blended charm of picturesque beauty and magical associations that belongs to the country and the people.

* * *

Books Received.

The Great Events of History, from the Creation of Man till the Present Time. By William Francis Collier, LL.D., Trinity College, Dublin. Edited by an experienced American Teacher, New York: J.W. Schermerhorn & Co.

Words and their Uses, Past and Present: A Study of the English Language. By Richard Grant White. New edition, revised and corrected. New York: Sheldon & Co.

Manual of Land Surveying, with Tables. By David Murray, A.M., Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics in Rutgers College. New York: J.W. Schermerhorn & Co.

The Greatest Plague of Life; or, The Adventures of a Lady in Search of a Good Servant. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Snatches of Song. By Jeanie Morison (Mrs. Campbell of Ballochyle). London: Longmans, Green & Co.

The Life and Times of Philip Schuyler. By Benson J. Lossing, LL.D. New York: Sheldon & Co.

Lewis Arundel: A Novel. By Frank E. Smedley. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Our Forest Home. By the author of "Robert Joy's Victory." Illustrated. Boston: Henry Hoyt.

Philip Earnscliffe: A Novel. By Mrs. Annie Edwards. New York: Sheldon & Co.

Heart's Delight. By Mrs. Caroline E.K. Davis. Illustrated. Boston: Henry Hoyt. Henry Hoyt.