1 files changed, 9134 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/13440-0.txt b/13440-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7cd3457
--- /dev/null
+++ b/13440-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9134 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13440 ***
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.
+
+VOLUME XV., No. 85.
+
+PHILADELPHIA:
+
+J. B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO.
+
+
+
+January, 1875.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+THE NEW HYPERION.
+  FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.
+    XIX.--TYING UP THE CLEWS.
+
+FOLLOWING THE TIBER
+  TWO PAPERS.--1.
+
+THE PARADOX by CHARLOTTE F. BATES.
+
+THE LEADEN ARROW by EDWARD C. BRUCE.
+
+TWO MIRRORS by F.A. HILLARD.
+
+MALCOLM.
+  CHAPTER LXIV. THE LAIRD AND HIS MOTHER.
+  CHAPTER LXV. THE LAIRD'S VISION.
+  CHAPTER LXVI. THE CRY FROM THE CHAMBER.
+  CHAPTER LXVII. FEET OF WOOL.
+  CHAPTER LXVIII. HANDS OF IRON.
+  CHAPTER LXIX. THE MARQUIS AND THE SCHOOLMASTER.
+  CHAPTER LXX. END OR BEGINNING?
+
+THE STAGE IN ITALY by R. DAVEY.
+
+THREE FEATHERS BY WILLIAM BLACK.
+  CHAPTER XX. TINTAGEL'S WALLS.
+  CHAPTER XXI. CONFESSION.
+  CHAPTER XXII. ON WINGS OF HOPE.
+
+ON THE VIA SAN BASILIO by EARL MARBLE.
+
+A CHRISTMAS HYMN by T. BUCHANAN READ.
+
+THE PARSEES by FANNIE ROPER FEUDGE.
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP
+  A SWEDISH PROVINCIAL THEATRE.
+  VENETIAN CAFFÈS.
+  A NEW MEXICAN CHRISTMAS EVE.
+  ENGLISH BIBLE TRANSLATIONS.
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+  _Books Received._
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  CÆSAR'S PENNY.
+  THE THRONED CORPSE.
+  THE SKELETON IN ARMOR.
+  BRUSSELS.
+  FATHER JOLIET.
+  THE CATECHISM.
+  FRAU KRANICH.
+  "TO MY ARMS."
+  THE FUTURE OF FFARINA.
+  HOHENFELS' FAILURE.
+  READING THE CONTRACT.
+  INTERRUPTED REPOSE.
+  COALS vs. COATS
+  THE JESTER AT THE FEAST.
+  ST. GUDOLE, BRUSSELS.
+  SQUARE OF THE HÔTEL DE VILLE, BRUSSELS.
+  DIVERS DIVERSIONS.
+  THE MIMIC HUNT.
+  HOMEWARD BOUND.
+  CHARLES AND JOSEPHINE.
+  ARGUS AND ULYSSES.
+  "HAND IT OVER TO ART."
+  NEAR THE SOURCE OF THE TIBER.
+  CAPRESE.
+  LAKE THRASIMENE.
+  THE TIBER NEAR PERUGIA.
+  TODI.
+  CHURCH AND CONVENT OF SAINT FRANCIS, AT ASSISI.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW HYPERION.
+
+FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.
+
+
+XIX.--TYING UP THE CLEWS.
+
+
+[Illustration: CÆSAR'S PENNY.]
+
+In leaving Cologne for Aix-la-Chapelle you turn your back to the
+river--a particular which suited my mood well enough. The railway bore
+us away from the Rhine-shore at an abrupt angle, and in my notion the
+noble Germanic goddess or image seemed at this point to recede with
+grand theatric strides, like a divinity of the stage backing away
+from her admirers over the billowy whirlpool of her own skirts. As
+I dreamed we penetrated the tunnel of Königsdorf, which is fifteen
+hundred yards long, and which seemed to me sufficiently protracted to
+contain the slumber of Barbarossa. The thought gave me a useful hint,
+and I fell into a light sleep, while Charles and Hohenfels pervaded
+the darkness merely by their perfumes--the former with whiffs at a
+concealed bottle of Farina, the latter with a pastille counterfeiting
+the incense of the cathedral. In a couple of hours from the Hôtel de
+Hollande we reached Aachen, as the fond natives call the burgh so dear
+to Charlemagne. Deprived of that magnificent mirror, the Rhine, the
+pretty towns throughout this part of Germany seem but like country
+belles. We should hardly have paused at Aix but for the sake of
+affording a rest to Charles, who grew worse whenever lunch-time
+competed with railway-time. As for the dull little city, for us it was
+a wilderness, with the blank cleanliness of the desert, except in so
+far as it was informed and populated by the memory of Charlemagne.
+
+[Illustration: THE THRONED CORPSE.]
+
+Here he died, and entered his tomb in the church himself had founded.
+Into this sepulchre the emperor Otho III. dared to penetrate in the
+year 997, impelled by a motive of vile and varlet-like curiosity. They
+say the dead monarch confronted his living visitor in the great marble
+chair in which he had been seated at his own command, haughty and
+inflexible as in life, the ivory sceptre in his ivory fingers, his
+white skull crowned with the diadem of gold. The peeping emperor
+looked upon him with awe, half afraid of the mysterious and
+penetrating shadows that reached forth out of his rayless eyes. Before
+he left, however, he peered about, touched the sceptre and the throne,
+fingered this and that, and having, as it were, trimmed the nails and
+combed the beard of the great spectre, retired with a valet's bow.
+Observing that Charlemagne had lost most of his nose, he caused it
+to be replaced in gold very delicately chiseled and enchased. The
+sacrilege was repeated by Frederick Barbarossa in 1165, who went
+farther and forced Charlemagne to get up from his chair before him.
+The corpse, in rising, fell in pieces, which have been dispersed
+through Europe as relics. We saw such of them as remain here at the
+Chapelle. I was allowed, for about the equivalent of an American
+dollar, to measure the Occidental emperor's leg--they call it his arm.
+And then, as a makeweight in the bargain, the venal sacristan placed
+in my hands the head of Charlemagne.
+
+I thought Hohenfels would have sunk to the ground with disgust. He
+colored deeply and dragged me into the air. "I am ashamed of every
+drop of German blood in my veins," he cried. "What are we to think of
+the commerce of these wretches, for whom the very wounds of Cæsar are
+the lips of a money-box?"
+
+I had given back the skull, as Hamlet returns the skull of Yorick to
+the grave-digger, and was dusting my fingers with a handkerchief,
+as hundreds of Hamlets have dusted theirs. I said, "'Thrift, thrift,
+Horatio.'"
+
+"At Kreutzberg there are twenty monks on the counter! This morning, at
+St. Ursula's, it was the eleven thousand virgins, their skulls ranged
+like Dutch cheeses above our heads or in rows around the walls, with
+a battery-full of them in the neighboring apartment, like a
+cheesemonger's reserved magazine. Here, the very leader of modern
+ideas, the creator of our form of civilization, is shown for so
+many pennies to any grocer who wants to weigh the head of a king!
+Profanation! Barbarians! Philistines!"
+
+[Illustration: THE SKELETON IN ARMOR.]
+
+I turned rather hastily, while my hands were yet clammy with the
+skull, thinking that this accusation of Philistinism was aimed at me.
+But Hohenfels thought of nothing less than of a personality, being
+in his cloudiest mood of generalization. So I only concealed the
+handkerchief, while I said, as easily as I might, "You need not accuse
+your German blood, for I have lived long enough in my American's
+Paradise to know that civilized Paris is considerably worse in this
+particular respect, with the addition of a certain goblin levity
+particularly French. How often have I seen babies frightened by the
+skulls in the dentists' windows, with their cynical chewing action!
+It is said that a child sat next a dentist's apprentice once in an
+omnibus, and was observed to turn rigid, fixed and white, but unable
+to speak: he had sat on one of these skulls, and it had bitten him.
+Silver-mounted skulls set as goblets, in imitation of Byron, are to
+be seen at any of the china-shops rubbing against the chaste cheeks
+of the old maid's teacup. Skeletons are sold, bleached and with gilded
+hinges, to the medical students, who buy the pale horrors as openly
+as meerschaum pipes. Have I not often found young Grandstone
+supping among his doctors' apprentices of the Ober restaurant after
+theatre-hours, a skeleton in the corner filled with umbrellas like
+a hall-rack, and crowned with the triple or quintuple tiara of the
+girls' best bonnets? Ay, Mimi Pinson's cap has known what it is to
+perch on the bony head of Death. The juxtaposition is but an emblem.
+The sewing-girl, like Hood's shirtmaker, scarcely fears the
+'phantom of grisly bone.' Poor Francine! where have you taken _your_
+artisanne's cap to, I wonder? Are you left alone, all alone again, and
+thinking of the pretty solitude you have left behind you at Carlsruhe?
+Who uses those polished keys now?"
+
+Hohenfels interrupted me, complaining that my monologue was
+uninteresting and diffuse, and was interfering with the railway
+time-table. But I finished it in the car: "And the railway! What has
+a person of fixed and independent habits to do with railways but
+to growl at them? Before I was tempted upon the railway by that
+impertinent engineer at Noisy, I got up and sat down when I liked, ate
+wholesome food at my own hours, and was contented at home. Confusion
+to him who made me the victim of his engineering calculations!
+Confusion to Grandstone and his nest of serpents at Épernay! Did they
+not introduce me to Fortnoye, who has doubly destroyed my peace? Where
+are the conspirators, that I may pulverize them with my maledictions?"
+
+[Illustration: BRUSSELS.]
+
+This question--which Hohenfels called peevish as he buried himself in
+his book--was not answered until we had passed Verviers, Chaudfontaine
+and Liège. I was aroused from a sulky slumber in the station at
+Brussels by Hohenfels, who said, in his musical scolding way, like the
+busy wheeze of a clicking music-box, "You may say what you like, with
+your left-handed flatteries, in regard to Fortnoye, and you may praise
+Ariadnes and widows to the end of the chapter. You are sorry at
+this moment not to be at Épernay to see the destroyer of your peace
+married: you had rather assist at the making of a wife than at the
+making of a widow."
+
+I was just sending Fortnoye to the gloomiest shades of Acheron when a
+strong hand entered the carriage-door, helped me handsomely down the
+steps, and then began warmly to shake my own. Fortnoye!--Fortnoye
+in flesh and blood was before me. While my mouth was yet filled with
+maledictions he began to pour out a storm of thanks with all his own
+particular warmth, expressing the most effusive gratitude for the
+trouble I had taken in forsaking my route to be his wife's bridesmaid.
+That is what he called it. "She has but one other," said Fortnoye.
+At the same time I began to recognize other faces not unknown to me,
+crudely illuminated by the raw colors of the railway-lights. They
+all had black wedding-suits and enormous buttonhole nosegays of
+orange-flowers. I picked them out, with a particular recognition for
+each: 'twas the civil engineer of Noisy; the short gentleman named
+Somerard; James Athanasius Grandstone, with his saintly aureole upon
+him in the shape of a Yankee wide-awake; the nameless mutes, or rather
+chorus, of the champagne-crypt; in short, my nest of serpents in
+all its integrity. Still entangled with my slumbers, I hesitated
+to respond to the friendly hands that were everywhere thrust
+centripetally toward me.
+
+I looked blackly at Hohenfels. He was chuckling.
+
+At Heidelberg, making the acquaintance of M. Fortnoye
+contemporaneously with my departure, he had become more enthralled
+than he ever confessed to this radiant traveler--whom he called a
+packman, but regarded as a Mercury--and his pretty scheme of matrimony
+in motion. Even now, if I can believe my eyes, he goes up to the
+"vintner" and "peddler" of his objurgations, and meekly whispers into
+his ear with the air of a conspirator reporting a plot to his chief.
+Having engaged to produce me at the wedding of Fortnoye, and finding
+me unexpectedly recusant, he had adopted a little stratagem for
+bringing me to the scene while thinking to escape from it.
+
+"Thou too, Brutus!" I said, and gave it up. It only remained for me
+to return all round, after five minutes of petrified stupidity,
+the hand-grasps that had been offered from every quarter of the
+compass-box.
+
+Next morning, at an early hour, I was interrupted by a knock, just
+as Charles had buttoned my gaiters and the young man from the
+perruquier's (who had stolen in with that air of delicacy and of
+almost literary refinement which belongs to his gentle profession) had
+lathered me. A nick he gave my chin at the shock made my countenance
+all argent and gules, and the visitor entering saw me thus emblazoned,
+while the barber and Charles, "like two wild men supporters of a
+shield," could only stare at the untimely apparition.
+
+"Do you know him, Charles?" I asked, not recognizing my guest, and
+putting over my painted face a mask of wet toweling.
+
+"I know him intimately," replied my jester-in-ordinary: "I would thank
+Monsieur Paul just to tell me his name. Do you remember, monsieur, a
+sort of beggar, with a wagon and a stylish horse and a pretty wife,
+who limped a bit with his right hand, or perhaps his left hand? Does
+monsieur know what I mean? He used to come and see us at Passy; and
+monsieur even had some traffic with him in a little matter of two
+chickens."
+
+"Father Joliet!" I cried.
+
+"Present!" shouted the personage thus designated at my appeal to his
+name. I turned round, toweled, and he grasped my hands. The unusual
+hour, appropriate as I supposed only to some porter or other
+stipendiary visitor of my hotel, caused to shine out with startling
+refulgence the morning splendors in which Papa Joliet had arrayed
+himself. He wore a courtly dress, appropriate to the most formal
+possible ceremony; his black suit was glossy; his hat was glossy;
+his varnished pumps were more than glossy--they were phosphorescent.
+Gloves only were wanting to his honest hands.
+
+[Illustration: PERRUQUIER.]
+
+Soaped, napkined and generally extinguished, I could only stammer,
+"You here in Brussels? What a droll meeting!"
+
+"Wherefore droll?" asked Joliet, with a huge surprise, which lasted
+him all through his next sentence. "I come here to marry my daughter.
+Everything is ready; we count on your presence at the wedding; the
+lawyer has drawn up the contract; and the breakfast is now cooking at
+the best restaurant in the place."
+
+"Francine's wedding, my dear Joliet!" I exclaimed. And, going back to
+my apprehensions at her furtive disappearance from Carlsruhe, and
+to my conjectures of some amorous mystery between her and her Yankee
+traducer, Kraaniff, I added gravely, "It is very creditable!"
+
+"How, creditable--and droll?" repeated the honest man, evidently much
+surprised at my own accumulating surprises. "Did not you hear?"
+
+[Illustration: FATHER JOLIET.]
+
+"Not the faintest word," I said, "but I am none the less gratified to
+find this affair ending, as it should, in the presence of a lawyer. As
+for your wedding-invitation, my good friend, you are a little tardy in
+delivering it, for it is exactly to-day that I am obliged to attend at
+the marriage of one of my friends, M. Fortnoye."
+
+"Ah, that is a good joke!" cried Joliet, breaking into an explosion of
+laughter and clapping me pleasantly on the shoulder--an action which
+caused a slight frown on the part of Charles. "You always would have
+your jest, Monsieur the American! Tease me and scare me as much as
+you like: I like these hoaxes better before a wedding than after.
+Hold that," he added, extending his hand as if it were a piece of
+merchandise.
+
+I "held" it, and he went on, dwelling slowly on his words: "If you are
+at Henri Fortnoye's wedding you will be at Francine Joliet's also, for
+both of these persons are to be married at one church."
+
+"Impossible!" I exclaimed, dropping the hand and stepping back.
+
+"What! again?" said Joliet, his manly face visibly darkening. "Droll!
+and creditable! and impossible! Why impossible?" Then he dropped his
+head and looked angrily at the floor. "Ah, yes, even you," he said,
+his eyes still fixed on the boards, "believed that a French girl,
+trained as French girls are trained, would flirt and expose herself to
+remark; and all on account of such a man as your compatriot, the other
+American! Well! well! you ought to know your countrymen best."
+
+"I know of no harm," I interposed hastily. "I should always have
+thought Kraaniff hard to swallow as a mere matter of taste. I can but
+recollect, Father Joliet," I went on more seriously, "that the last
+time I met you you begged me not to talk of Francine if I would not
+break your heart. I have to add to this the news brought me from
+Heidelberg, that this Kraaniff was a serpent who had fascinated some
+young girl for an approaching meal.--How dare you, Charles," I cried
+suddenly, recalled to the consciousness of his presence by this
+souvenir of his oratory, "stand here staring? Show the young man out
+directly, and pay him."
+
+I will not answer for Charles's having got much farther away than the
+door. Joliet continued: "But his aunt knows him now for what he is.
+Kraaniff, say you? I call him Kranich, though he had better change his
+baptismal record than disgrace one of the best names in Brussels."
+
+[Illustration: THE CATECHISM.]
+
+"Frau Kranich, then, my old friend, is really his aunt?"
+
+"Madame Kranich, whom I have known in your parlor, is really
+Francine's godmother. Did you never know of all her secret kindness?
+That rigid lady would commit a perjury to deny one of her own good
+actions. Young Kranich has written her a letter confessing his lies.
+Don't you know? The very same day when you were determined to fight
+him in a duel--"
+
+"Certainly, certainly," I said, a little confused. "We will change the
+subject and leave my ferocity alone. Let us understand one another.
+In regard to Fortnoye's marriage, was there not some talk of a Madame
+Ashburleigh?"
+
+"I believe you. Madame Ashburleigh is the very key of the manoeuvre.
+Madame Ashburleigh--don't you perceive?--lost a child."
+
+"For that matter, she has lost four. I know the lady confidentially,
+and she told me their histories and present address. Lucia lies in
+Glasgow, Hannibal at Nice, and Waterloo sleeps somewhere hereabout, as
+well as another nameless little dear."
+
+"She is a good woman. She has collected all her proofs, and has come
+hither with them voluntarily--has perhaps already arrived. Brussels,
+where two of her marmots rest, is one of her most frequent stations.
+That censorious Madame Kranich made a scene, but she had to yield to
+conviction."
+
+"A censorious Madame Kranich! Is the young duelist married?"
+
+"What? No, no! It is Francine's guardian I speak of. Of late years she
+has become a sort of Puritan abbess, seeking the Protestant society
+which abounds in Belgium, and lamenting her husband, whom they say she
+used to drug with opium."
+
+"Then is she not Kranich's aunt?"
+
+"Oh yes, an aunt by marriage; but he is not her nephew: I will die
+before I call him so."
+
+"Listen," said I, "Father Joliet. You are as full of information as an
+oracle, but you are not coherent. This month past I have been hunting
+down a chimaera, a hydra with a dozen heads: each head shows me by
+turn the portrait of Fortnoye, or Francine, or yourself, or Kranich,
+or Mrs. Ashburleigh. Ever since Noisy I have been meandering through
+the folds of a mystery. My head is turning with it. If you want to
+save me from distraction, sit down in this chair and answer me a long
+catechism, without saying a word but in reply to my questions."
+
+[Illustration: FRAU KRANICH.]
+
+"I am sure I talk as plain as a professor. Look! You frightened me at
+first with your doubts and your impossibilities. You have only to make
+Kranich's aunt agree with Francine's guardian, and at the same time
+forgive Francine's husband for having assumed the undertaker's bill
+for Madame Ashburleigh's baby."
+
+"Yes, yes, my dear Joliet, you are clearer than Euclid." And I
+administered a category of questions. Joliet, with his fatherly joy
+bursting out of him in the longest of parentheses, kept quiet in his
+refulgent shoes and answered as well as he could.
+
+[Illustration: "TO MY ARMS."]
+
+Francine, he protested, had never been a flirt (I have met no
+Frenchmen who were ignorant of that one English word, to which they
+give a new value by pronouncing it in a very orotund manner, as
+_flort_). When she came to be ten or twelve, Frau Kranich--until then
+a well-preserved lioness with an appetite for society--ceased to give
+her dolls and promised to give her an education. At the same time, the
+banker's widow left Paris, and repaired with her charge to Brussels,
+where the little girl received some good half-Jesuitical, half-English
+schooling, of the kind suggested in the Brontë novels. Her diploma
+attained, Francine begged to accompany her English teacher back to
+London: she wished to become a _meess_, she said, and be competent to
+teach like a new Hypatia. She had hardly bidden her kind protectress
+adieu when Frau Kranich's nephew arrived at Brussels, exceedingly
+dissatisfied with his American business in the bar-rooms of the grand
+duke of Mississippi. A sordid jealousy of Mademoiselle Joliet's claims
+upon his aunt took possession of this prudent spirit. He took up a
+watch-post at a university town on the Rhine. He began to whisper
+vague exaggerations of her coquetries and liveliness, which the
+Protestant circle that revolved about Madame Kranich did not fail to
+bear in to her. This lady admired her nephew, sure that his want of
+manners was the sign of a noble frankness. She wrote to Francine,
+bidding her come immediately from London. The girl not replying, the
+hopeful nephew was put upon her track. He went away. His letters from
+England reported that Francine was no longer in that country, but was
+probably come back to Belgium, "I know not in what suburb of Brussels
+our very independent miss may this instant be hiding," he wrote.
+
+About the same time, in the circle of French exiles at Brussels,
+a young _romantique_ named Fortnoye was reported as weeping and
+lavishing statues over the grave of an unknown infant in the
+churchyard at Laaken. It was a delicious mystery. Kind meddlers
+approached the sexton, who said that all he knew of the babe's mother
+was that she was a beautiful lady from London. Kranich carried the
+story dutifully to his aunt, adding his own ingenious surmise: "Can
+Francine have become sufficiently Anglicised to contract secret
+marriages with roving revolutionists, and scamper about the country
+with ardent young Frenchmen in the style of Gretna Green?" In fact, it
+was really from London that Mrs. Ashburleigh was proceeding, for the
+purpose of taking care, in the Rhenish city where he was dying, of
+her handsome, dissipated, worthless husband. Taken suddenly ill at
+Brussels, she left her infant to the unequaled chill of a strange,
+unknown cemetery, hastening thence with tears and despair to the
+bedside where duty called her.
+
+Has my reader forgotten the dim, tear-swollen story which I heard--not
+at all improved in the telling--from my generous young friend
+Grandstone--how an impulsive Frenchman had laid to rest, in flowers
+and evergreens, the unnamed baby of a woman he had never seen? Jealous
+as I was of Fortnoye, I never could think without tenderness of this
+singular action. To make the tomb of this helpless Innocence the young
+man braved the curiosity of his comrades--despised the rumor, the
+obloquy, and, hardest of all, the jests. Well has the wise dramatist
+decided that Ophelia must needs be laid in Yorick's bed!
+
+Poor Francine, gay, frivolous, innocently vain of her little travesty
+of English behavior, found her accomplishments and graces received
+by her guardian's circle with incomprehensible coldness. Hurt and
+humiliated, she asked to pay a visit to her father. The honest rustic
+received her with a miserable confusion of doubt and severity, for
+her escapade to England had never pleased him, and her return from her
+godmother's home wore to him the air of a repudiation. At her father's
+house, however, she was discovered by Fortnoye, who had never heard
+the ingenious Kranich's theory of his own private wedding with
+Francine, and who thought to find in her the veiled unknown of the
+cemetery. He saw for the first time, in the flowery home at Noisy,
+that fresh ingenuous beauty, a little over-cast with disappointment.
+His generous nature was touched; and, with his talent for
+administration and planning, he conceived the idea of establishing
+Francine in the pretty bird's nest at Carlsruhe, distant alike from
+the strongholds of her calumniators, Belgium and France.
+
+Fortnoye now had an object in life. "There is a very young person in
+the cemetery of Laaken who is much in need of a chaperone," he said.
+The frank proofs of his own relations with this churchyard would
+not only do credit to his own reputation, but would gratify the best
+friends of Mademoiselle Joliet and at least one other lady. To attain
+these proofs he had to step over the coiling, writhing bodies of
+a whole nest of rumors. When he seized by the throat the especial
+slander that he himself was the husband of the babe's mother, he found
+written on its crest the signature of John Kranich. He sought the
+aunt. This lady gave him several interviews, the Lutheran prayer-book
+for ever in her hand. "Why does the dear girl not come to me?"
+she would say, weeping, but she refused to hear a word against her
+precious nephew, the personification of bluff frankness. As if to make
+crushing him impossible, young Kranich had now withdrawn to America,
+leaving his reputation in that best possible protection, the chivalry
+that is extended toward the absent. Fortnoye was baffled. "I will ask
+the baby at its tomb for its mother's and father's name," he cried.
+In the pretty God's Acre he found a fresh harvest of flowers and a
+new statue over the well-known grave. It was a pretty miniature of
+Thorwaldsen's Psyche, on which the proud copyist had inscribed his
+name. A respectful correspondence with Mrs. Ashburleigh, to whom
+he was guided by the sculptor, and who was now taking the waters at
+Wildbad, soon put the whole tangled story to rights. Fortnoye had the
+happiness of conducting Francine, by this time his affianced wife, to
+the good Frau Kranich, who, convinced that she had wrongly judged
+her, threw her arms ardently around her recovered jewel, letting the
+eternal little book fly from her hand like a projectile.
+
+[Illustration: THE FUTURE OF FFARINA.]
+
+"But the most singular part of the story," concluded Father Joliet,
+"is the letter which Fortnoye, after two or three quarrels, forced
+out of young Kranich when the latter had returned to Europe, full of
+triumph and debts, to take possession of his aunt for the rest of his
+life. Here it is," added the good man, opening a pocket-book. "The
+hand-writing is drunken, but the sense is clear as Seltzer-water.
+The scholars tell me _in vino veritas est_, but it appears to me that
+truth really comes out in the repentance and headache that follow."
+
+[Illustration: HOHENFELS' FAILURE.]
+
+"MY DEAR AUNT" (ran the letter which Charles had seen forced from the
+alligator after his unlucky game of dominoes): "You have known me as
+the soul of candor. It is this happy quality which compels me to state
+(for I am something of a Rousseau) that if I ever playfully accused
+your pretty pet Francine of being a flirt, I knew nothing about it.
+The best proof is that she absolutely refused to join her expectations
+with mine, though I am something of an Adonis. If you believed that
+she and the wine-peddler had made a match, I pity your credulity and
+ignorance of human nature. I am certain that neither the peddler nor
+myself would touch the enterprise until you had shown exactly what you
+would (pecuniarily) do. For my part, I have acted throughout on the
+most exact and advanced scientific principles. Intending to modify
+the spirit-trade in America, and especially to introduce the exclusive
+agency of the Farina essences, I found that the sinew particularly
+needed for this leap was capital. Desiring to absorb your bounties
+toward Francine, I at first proposed matrimony. This offer was made
+without any enmity toward the girl, as my next move was without
+affection, though it seems to be resulting to her benefit. I became
+her accuser as coolly as I had been her lover. Passion has nothing
+to do with the combinations of strategic genius: I am something of a
+Washington. My theory of her clandestine marriage was one of the most
+masterly fictions of the age--a plot worthy of Thackeray. If I could
+have succeeded in mutilating the statue in the graveyard, I might have
+carried it, while you would have admired my act of iconoclasm with all
+your Puritan nature. In the momentary abandonment of my plans, owing
+to the machinations of my enemies, you will conceive that I am not
+very rich. My college-debts and other expenses I am obliged to leave
+for your kind attention. The main point of this letter, which M.
+Fortnoye has persuaded me to set down as distinctly as in my present
+feeble state I can, is that Francine is a pretty little maid who has
+never passed by Gretna Green. There! that is my _credo_, and I will
+subscribe to it,
+
+"Your loving nephew, JOHN.
+
+"P. S. Address, with such an enclosure as your generosity will prompt,
+JEAN K. FFARINA, sole representative and cosmetical chemist in America
+on behalf of the Farinas of Cologne, at New Orleans where I am going
+to beat my adversaries like Old HIC--"
+
+At this point the tipsy scrawl became illegible.
+
+"This is not a very handsome apology. Did Fortnoye accept it?" I
+asked, turning over the clammy and malodorous epistle. At this inquiry
+the crack of the door widened and Charles appeared, on fire with
+enthusiasm, and so possessed with self-importance that he forgot the
+betrayal of his indiscretion.
+
+"I can reply to that question," said Charles. "When M. Fortnoye
+received the paper from the duelist he read it over and said, 'You
+have meant to impose on me, monsieur, with an incomplete confession.
+But, in return for your imperfect restoration of Mademoiselle Joliet's
+portrait, you have unconsciously set down such a masterpiece of
+yourself that I am certain your aunt will see you as she never did
+before.'"
+
+Charles, having thus added himself to our cabal without rebuke, took
+a lively interest in what followed. The proud father continued: "My
+son-in-law, after some business preliminaries, wrote me a handsome
+letter demanding what he had already effectively possessed himself of.
+I wrote to Francine, already returned to her duties, to be a good girl
+and make her husband obey her in all things."
+
+"That may have been," said I, "what made Francine take to laughing
+all day and all night, as I heard she did some little time after my
+departure from her house. The next news of her," I pursued, "was
+that she had been spirited away by some sly old kidnapper. I almost
+suspected Kranich."
+
+"The old kidnapper," said Joliet, laughing heartily at the compliment,
+"is the man now talking to you. I wanted to take Francine to her
+godmother. I turned the key in the door at Carlsruhe, set the
+geographers all upon their travels to explore new worlds, and we have
+been living ever since quite close to Madame Kranich, who treats me
+like an emperor."
+
+It was easy now to understand why the young Kranich, as soon as he
+could identify me as a protector of Francine, had been thrown off his
+guard and tempted to attack me with his clumsy abuse. It was not very
+mysterious, even, why he had wished all handsome girls to be drowned
+in the Rhine. For him a pretty damsel was simply a rival in trade.
+
+[Illustration: READING THE CONTRACT.]
+
+Had I stopped at Wildbad with the party of orpheonists, I should have
+encountered rather sooner the fatal beauties of Mary Ashburleigh. It
+was to meet her that Fortnoye had paused at that resort, considering
+her introduction to Frau Kranich almost indispensable to the success
+of his scheme. She had no hesitation in following the protecting angel
+of her lost child. "My object in this journey is a happy marriage,"
+she had told me when to my unworthy care her guardianship had been
+transferred. If I timorously suspected the marriage to be her own,
+whose fault was it but mine? My heart leaped up at the successive
+stages of this recital, its hopes confirmed by every additional fact:
+the Dark Ladye's hand was certainly free. Fortnoye, I should surmise,
+was not too desirous to abandon this magnificent companion at
+Schwetzingen; but the serpent, he knew, was left behind, in company
+with two or three of his and my friends: it was necessary to take
+the youth by the ear, as it were, and dismiss him from the country,
+without loss of time, to his future of counter-jumping. His dueling
+experience may be of some use to him among the bowie-knives of
+Louisiana. If his subsequent path is not strewn with roses, let him
+rejoice that it is at least lubricated with cologne-water.
+
+[Illustration: INTERRUPTED REPOSE.]
+
+An hour had passed, and into my room from his own adjoining one now
+ambled amicably my friend the baron. He greeted Joliet as an old
+friend. Many a smoking-match had they had in my garden at Marly. But
+Hohenfels this morning was in robes of state, with shoes that shone
+even beside old Father Joliet's, and as a concession to elegance he
+had abandoned his cavernous pipes in favor of cigarettes. A scroll of
+this description, flavored with his Cologne pastille and very badly
+rolled, was trying to exhale itself between his lips.
+
+"What a genius for conversation you have to-day, my Flemming! This
+hour I have rocked back and forth in bed, trying to understand your
+observations or to cover my ears and go to rest. Your tongue has been
+like the tongue of a monastery-bell summoning all hands to penance."
+But I had hardly spoken ten consecutive words. The ears of the baron
+were this morning quite muffled, I think, with the abundance of his
+hair, which he had evidently been dressing with an avalanche of soap
+and water, for the topknot was as harsh and tight as a felt. He had
+lemon-blossoms on his lappel and lemon kids on his fists.
+
+It was then I remembered that my bags were all in the steamer, where
+I had left them when surprised by Charles's indisposition. My tin box
+would possibly yield me a button-nosegay, but otherwise I might beat
+my breast, like the wedding-guest in the _Ancient Mariner_, for I
+heard the summons and was unable to attend in right attire. "We two
+must take you out in the street and dress you," said Hohenfels.
+
+Although I had never been dressed in the street, I yielded. It was a
+grand public holiday, and the sounds of festivity, which had floated
+into my chamber with the entrance of Hohenfels, were in full cadence
+outside. Everybody was pouring out to the city-gate, or returning from
+thence, where, in honor of some visit from the king of the Belgians
+and count and countess of Flanders, a festival was going on in
+imitation or rehearsal of the grand annual _kermesse_. These
+festivals, retained in Belgium with a delightful fidelity to the
+customs of antique Brabant, would fit the brush of Teniers better
+than the pen of a mere bewildered tourist. Still, I will try, copying
+principally from the reports of Charles (who contrives to peep at
+everything, with an interest whose amount is in ratio with the square
+of his distance from his master), to give a few features of the scene,
+which he spread in detail before the attentive Josephine during many
+an evening after.
+
+[Illustration: COALS vs. COATS]
+
+The principal fair-ground--though the occasion crammed the whole city
+with revelers--was just outside the gate. It was a veritable town in
+miniature, with a pattern of checker-board streets--Columbine street,
+Polichinelle street, Avenue des Parades, Place des Parades, Street of
+the Chanson, and the like. There were more than five hundred booths,
+all numbered--shops and restaurants. There were the Salon Curtius,
+the Ménagerie Bidel, the Bal Mabille, the Café Bataclan, the American
+Tavern. From one of the little costumers' shops, Charles--with
+a higher evincement of antiquarian taste than I should have
+expected--managed to bear away a pattern of wall-paper, which I
+afterward conferred on Mary Ashburleigh with great applause: it was
+Parisian of 1824, the epoch of Charles Dix, and was entirely covered
+with giraffes in honor of that puissant and elegant monarch. The above
+establishments were near the entrance, to the right.
+
+At the left were more attractions: another menagerie, a heap of
+ostensible gold representing the five milliards paid by France, a
+gallery of astonished wax soldiers representing the Franco-Prussian
+war, a cook-shop with "mythologic" confectionery. Farther on, in the
+Théâtre Casti, was exposed the "renowned buffoon Peppino," breveted by
+His Majesty the "king of Egypt;" then came the Chiarini Theatre; then
+the Théâtre Adrien Delille, an enchantingly pretty structure, where
+receptions were given by a little creature who should have sat under
+a microscope: she was "the Princess Felicia, aged thirteen, born at
+Clotat, near Marseilles, weighing three kilogrammes and measuring
+forty-six centimètres--a ravishing figure, admirably proportioned in
+her littleness and _tout à fait sympathique!"_
+
+The announcements were heard, it was thought by Charles, to the very
+centre of the city. A low-browed animal with rasped hair was shouting,
+"Messieurs and ladies, come and see--come and see the theatre of the
+galleys! The only one in the world! This is the place to view the real
+instruments of torture used on the prisoners---chains four yards long
+and balls of thirty-five pounds. All authentic, gentlemen and ladies.
+You will see the poisoners of Marseilles, Grosjon who killed his
+father, Madame Cottin who ate her baby. Come in, come in, gentlemen
+and ladies! Fifteen centimes! 'Tis given away! You enter and go out
+when you like. Come in! It is educational: you see vice and crime
+depicted on the faces of the criminals!"
+
+[Illustration: THE JESTER AT THE FEAST.]
+
+In another place a malicious Flemish Figaro explained the analogy
+betwen _een spinnekop_ and _eene meisie_, the perspiration streaming
+over his face; and my ancient minnesinger's blood stirred within me at
+the report of the pleasantries which were improvised by this Rabelais
+of the people, and I remembered that I too was a Flemming.
+
+The bands belonging to the different booths tried to play each other
+down, forming a stupefying charivari, with tributary processions that
+quite overflowed the city. The house of "confections" yielded me no
+broadcloth of a cut or dimension suitable to my figure. But my two
+friends chose me a hat, a light pale-tot (my second purchase in that
+sort on this eventful journey), a scented cambric handkerchief, a
+rosebud, and a snowy waistcoat, in which, as in a whited sepulchre,
+I concealed the decay of my toilet. These changes were judged to be
+sufficient for my accoutrement. They might have done very well, but on
+my way back I paused at a lace-shop window to inspect some present for
+Francine. A band, with many banners and figures in masquerade, swept
+past, followed by a shouting crowd. My friends lost me in a moment,
+and I lost my way. I turned into a street which I was sure led to the
+hotel, gave it up for another, lost that in a blind alley, and finally
+brought up in a steep, narrow cañon, where I was forced to ask a
+direction. The passer-by who obliged me was a man bearing a bag of
+charcoal. He answered with a ready intelligence that did honor to his
+heart and his sense of Progressive Geography. But he left on my white
+waistcoat, alas! a charcoal sketch, full of chiaroscuro and _coloris_,
+representing his index-finger surrounded with a sort of cloud-effect.
+My waistcoat had to be given over in favor of the elder garment
+buttoned up in the all-concealing overcoat.
+
+[Illustration: ST. GUDOLE, BRUSSELS.]
+
+The ceremonies of the day, I soon found, were to consist in an early
+and informal breakfast at the house of Frau Kranich; then the civil
+wedding at the mayor's office, followed by the usual church-service,
+from which the Protestant godmother of Francine begged to be excused;
+the day to wind up with a general dinner at a place of resort outside
+the city at four o'clock, the usual dining-hour in old Brabant.
+
+The early breakfast gave a renewal of my friendship with good Frau
+Kranich and a glimpse of the bride, with her sweet, patient, dewy face
+shadowed like a honey-drop in the gauzy calyx of her artisanne cap;
+for she was in the simplest of morning dresses--something gray, with
+a clean white apron. The quaint, old-fashioned house where we met was
+decorated with exquisite trifles, the memorials of the mistress's old
+fashionable taste, but scattered over the tables also were lecture
+programmes, hospital reports and photographs of eminent philosophers.
+As I took up for a plaything a gold pen-case, well used, which rested
+on a magnificent old fan, the Kranich said, with just a reminiscence
+of her former vivacity, "You find me much changed, Mr. Flemming. I
+used to be the grasshopper in the fable--now I am the ant."
+
+"I bless any change, ma'am," said I, "which increases your kindness
+toward this charming girl."
+
+"Dear Mr. Flemming," said pretty Francine, "how nice and shabby you
+look! You will do admirably to stand by a poor girl--so poor that she
+has hardly a bridesmaid. I hope you are as indigent as you were at
+Carlsruhe." Upon this I felt very fatherly, and clasped her waist from
+behind as I kissed her forehead.
+
+The lawyer, a professionally bland old man, with a porous bald head
+like an emu's egg, said as he was introduced, "Ah, I have heard of you
+before, monsieur. You are the man of the two chickens."
+
+Joliet was so enchanted with this rare joke, laughing and clapping
+all his nearer neighbors on the back, that I could not but accept it
+graciously. For this exceptional day, at least, I must bear my eternal
+nickname. Was not the maid now present whose dower had been hatched
+by those well-omened fowls? and was not the dower now coming to
+use? Hohenfels paired off with the notary, and discussed with that
+parchment person the music of Mozart, and, what would have been absurd
+and incredible in any Anglo-Saxon country, the scribe understood it!
+
+Our party had to wait but ten minutes for the groom and his men.
+Fortnoye, in a grand blue suit, with a wondrous dazzle of frilling
+on his broad chest, looked a noble husband, but was preoccupied and
+silent. His chorus supported him--Grandstone, Somerard, my engineer
+and the others--in dignified black clothes, official boutonnières
+and ceremonial cravats: they greeted Frau Kranich with awe, and
+bowed before the polished head of the lawyer with the parallelism of
+ninepins. My little group of fellow-travelers was almost complete.
+The young duelist, of course, was not expected or wanted. The Scotch
+doctor, Somerard told me, had been obliged to fly to London, where a
+mammoth meeting of the homoeopathic faith was in progress.
+
+The great feature of the breakfast came on when every crumb of
+breakfast had been eaten. Charles and the maid cleared away the table,
+and the notary stood up to read the marriage contract. The reading,
+ordinarily a dull affair, was in this instance vivified by curious
+incidents. In the first place, Frau Kranich. amending the injustice
+her over-credulity had caused, gave her _protègée_ a wedding-present
+of twenty thousand francs, accompanying the gift with some singularly
+tart remarks about her nephew: this sum was increased by the groom to
+sixty thousand. The second incident was when Joliet, amid the almost
+incredulous surprise of the whole table, raised the gift, by the
+addition of ten thousand, to seventy thousand francs: the money was
+the product of his former house and garden--that house of shreds and
+patches which had cost him ten francs. When it came to affixing the
+signatures, the notary appealed to Joliet for his name. He could
+not sign it, being gouty and half forgetful of pen-practice, but he
+responded to the question as bold as a lion: "John Thomas Joliet,
+baron de Rouvière," throwing to the lawyer a fine bunch of papers
+bearing witness to the validity of the title; after which he added, no
+less proudly, "wine-merchant, wholesale and retail, at the sign of the
+Golden Chickens, Noisy."
+
+[Illustration: SQUARE OF THE HÔTEL DE VILLE, BRUSSELS.]
+
+In truth, Joliet's father had rightfully borne the title of baron de
+Rouvière, but, ruined by '48, had abandoned the practice of signing
+it. Joliet resumed it for this special occasion, having every warrant
+for the act, but whispered to me that he should never so call himself
+in future, greatly preferring the enumeration of his qualities on his
+business-card.
+
+Poor Francine meanwhile had looked so timid and blushed so that Frau
+Kranich nodded to her permission of absence. She gave one glance at
+Fortnoye, buried her face in her hands, laughed a sweet little gurgle,
+and fled. When her presence was again necessary, she reappeared,
+drowned in white. We went to the mayor's office, where she lost a
+pretty little surname that had always seemed to fit her like a
+glove; then to the church, an obscure one in the neighborhood of Frau
+Kranich's house. But at the door of the sacred edifice the elder lady
+said, with much conciliatory grace in her manner, "I claim exemption
+from witnessing this part of the ceremony; and you, Mr. Flemming, must
+resume or discover your Protestantism and enter the carriage with
+me. I must show you a little of the city while these young birds are
+pairing."
+
+No objection was made to this rather strange proposal. The bride,
+between her father and husband, forgot that she had no friend of her
+own sex to stand near her. We arranged for a general meeting at the
+dinner.
+
+In the carriage she said, "I brought you away because I am devoured
+with uneasiness. Mrs. Ashburleigh wrote me that she would certainly
+be here for at least the principal part of the ceremony. I do not know
+what to make of it. It may be of no use, but we will scour the city.
+These throngs, this noise, make me uneasy. I fear some accident,
+having," she added with a smile, "one lone woman's sympathy for
+another lone woman."
+
+[Illustration: DIVERS DIVERSIONS.]
+
+I peered through the crowds at this, right and left, with
+inexpressible emotion. Perhaps this accidental sort of quest was that
+which destiny had arranged for the solution of my life-problem. To
+light upon Mary Ashburleigh in these festal throngs, perhaps wanting
+assistance, perhaps calling upon my name even now through her velvet
+lips, was a chance the mere notion of which made my blood leap.
+
+When Brussels gives herself over to holiday-making, she does it in
+a whole-souled and self-consistent way that has plenty of
+attractiveness. The houses seemed to have turned themselves inside
+out to replenish the streets. People in their best clothes, equipages,
+processions, bands, troops of children, filled the avenues. Some
+conjecture that there might have been a mistake about the church took
+us to the cathedral of St. Gudule. Here, amid the superb spectrums of
+the stained windows, we searched through the vari-colored throngs that
+covered the floor, but no familiar face looked upon us. Strange to
+us as the old, impassive monumental dukes of Brabant who occupy the
+niches, the people made way to let us pass from the doorway between
+the lofty brace of towers to the high altar, which is a juggler's
+apparatus, and has concealed machinery causing the sacred wafer to
+come down seemingly of its own accord at the moment when the priest is
+about to lift the Host. All was unfamiliar and splendid, and we came
+away, feeling as if our own little wedding-group would have been lost
+in so magnificent a tabernacle. The Grande Place, on which lay the
+wedge-like shadow of the high-towered Hôtel de Ville, was perhaps as
+thronged a honeycomb of buzzing populace as when Alva looked out upon
+it to see the execution of Egmont and Horn. Among all the good-natured
+Netherlandish countenances that paved the square there was none that
+responded to my own.
+
+We drove vaguely through the principal streets, and then, baffled,
+made our way to the faubourg in which is situated the zoological
+garden, toward which a considerable portion of the inhabitants was
+going even as ourselves. At the entrance our carriage encountered
+that of the bride and groom, and soon the whole party of the
+breakfast-table assembled by the gate, for the great coffee-rooms at
+which our meal was laid were close by the garden, and a promenade
+in this famous living museum was a premeditated part of the day's
+enjoyment. We entered the grounds in character, frankly putting
+forward our claims as a wedding-procession. That is the delightful
+French custom among those who are brought up as Francine had been:
+her father would have been heartbroken to have been denied the proud
+exhibition of his joy, and Fortnoye was too great a traveler, too
+cosmopolitan, to object to a little family pageant that he had seen
+equaled or exceeded in publicity in most of the Catholic countries
+on the globe. Francine, her artisanne cap for ever lost, her
+gleaming dark hair set, like a Milky Way, with a half wreath of
+orange-blossoms, the silvery gauzes of her protecting veil floating
+back from her forehead, strayed on at the head of the little parade.
+She was wrapped in the delicious reverie of the wedding-day. She was
+not yellow nor meagre, nor uglier than herself, as so many brides
+contrive to be. Her air of delicacy and tenderness was a blossom of
+character, not a canker of ill-health. Her color was hardly raised,
+though her head was perpetually bent. Fortnoye, holding her on his
+firm arm, seemed like a man walking through enchantments. Just behind,
+protecting Madame Kranich with an action of effusive gallantry that
+must have been seen to be conceived, walked the baron de Rouvière,
+his brave knotted hands, for which he had not found any gloves, busily
+occupied in pointing out the animated rarities that to him seemed most
+worthy of selection. The hilarious hyenas, the seals, the polar bears
+plunging from their lofty rocks, all attracted his commendation; and
+we, who walked behind in such order as our friendships or familiarity
+taught us, were perpetually tripping upon his honest figure brought to
+a halt before some object more than usually interesting. Exclamations
+of delight at the bride's beauty, politely wrapped in whispers, arose
+on all sides as we penetrated the throng: it was a proud thing to be
+a part of a procession so distinguished. My good Joliet beamed with
+complacency, and drove his little herd up and down and across and
+about till the greater part of the garden was explored. The zoological
+garden of Brussels has the beauty of not showing too obviously the
+character of a prison. It is extensive, umbrageous, and the poor
+captives within its borders have enough air and space around their
+eyes to give them a semblance of liberty. For the special feast-day
+on which we visited it the place had been arranged with particular
+adaptation to the character of the time. There were elephant-races and
+rides upon the camels free to all ladies who would make the venture.
+In addition to the zebras, gnus and Shetlands, there was that species
+of race-horse which never wins and never spoils a course, being
+of wood and constructed to go round in a tent, and never to arrive
+anywhere or lose any prizes. The pelicans were in high excitement, for
+all along their beautiful little river, where it winds through bowery
+trees, a profusion of living fish had been emptied and confined here
+and there by grated dams, so that the awkward birds had opportunity
+to angle in perfect freedom and to their hearts' content. In the
+more wooded part of the garden a mimic hunt had been arranged, and
+sportsmen in correct suits of green, with curly brass horns and baying
+hounds, coursed through the grounds, following a stag which, though
+mangy and asthmatic, may yet have been a descendant of the fawn that
+fed Genevieve of Brabant. We had re-entered one of the grand alleys,
+and were receiving again the little tribute of encomiums which the
+greater privacy of the groves had pretermitted--we were parading
+happily along, conscious of nothing to be ashamed of, our
+orange-blossoms glistening, our veil flying, our broadcloth and
+wedding-favors gleaming--when we met another group, which, though more
+furtively, bore that matrimonial character which distinguished our
+own.
+
+[ILLUSTRATION: THE MIMIC HUNT.]
+
+At the head walked Mr. Cookson & Jenkinson. He still wore that species
+of shooting-costume which he had made his uniform, but it was decked
+with roses, and his hands were encased in milk-white gloves: on his
+hands, besides the gloves, he had the two grammatical ladies from
+the Rhine steamboat in guise of bridesmaids. Behind him walked Mary
+Ashburleigh. And emerging from the skirts of Mary Ashburleigh's dress,
+with the embarrassed happiness of a middle-aged bridegroom, was--no?
+yes! no, no! but yes--was Sylvester Berkley. I will not expose what I
+suffered to the curiosity of imperfectly sympathetic strangers. I did
+not faint, and I believe men in genuine despair never do so. But
+I felt that weakness and unmanageableness of knee which comes with
+strong mental anguish, and I sank back impotent upon the baron, whose
+lingering legs repudiated the pressure, so that we both accumulated
+miserably upon Grandstone. My eyes closed, and I did not hear the Dark
+Ladye's salutations to Frau Kranich. But I awoke to see with anguish a
+sight that drew involuntary applause from all that careless crowd.
+
+It was the salute of the two brides. Imagine, if you can, two
+great purple pansies, flushed with all the perfumed sap of an Eden
+spring-time, threaded with diamonds of myriad-faceted dew,--imagine
+them leaning forward on their elastic stems until both their soft
+velvet countenances cling together and exchange mutually their
+caparisons of honeyed gems; then let them sway gently back, and
+balance once more in their morning splendor. Such was the effect when
+these two imperial creatures approached each other and imprinted with
+lips and palms a sister's salute. Mary Ashburleigh, whom the throng
+recognized as a natural empress, was arrayed this morning as brides
+are seldom arrayed, but with a sense of artistic obedience to her own
+sumptuous nature and personality. The royal purple of her velvets
+was cut, on skirt and bodice, into one continuous fretwork of heavy
+scrolls and leafage, and through the crevices of this textile carving
+shone the robe she carried beneath: it was tawny yellow, for she wore
+under her outward dress a complete robe of ancient lace, whose cobweb
+softness was more than half sacrificed--only perceived as the slashes
+of her velvets made it evident. It was such dressing as queens alone
+should indulge in perhaps, but Mary Ashburleigh chose for once to do
+justice to her style and her magnificence.
+
+I was leaning against a tree, stunned in the sick sunshine. I heard,
+while my eyes were closed, a sort of voluminous cloudy roll, and the
+Dark Ladye was beside me. She whispered quickly and volubly in my
+ear, "I tried to confide in you, but I could not get it spoken. Yet
+I managed to confess that my heart had been touched. It was only this
+summer--at the Molkencur over Heidelberg--he lectured about the ruins.
+'Twas information--'twas rapture! I found at once he was the Magician.
+We were quietly united at the embassy this morning. And now he can
+leave that dreadful consulate and has got his promotion, for he is
+to be _chargé_ here in Brussels. It is sudden, but we were positively
+afraid to do it in any other way, I am such a timid creature. When I
+saw the travelers' agent on the steamboat, I was at first struck with
+his manly British bearing and his resemblance to Sylvester. Then I
+found he had the matrimonial prospectus, and perceived he might be a
+link. He has managed everything beautifully. I had no idea--With his
+assistance you need no more mind being married than going into a shop
+for a plate of pudding. You must come up and be presented, to show you
+bear no malice."
+
+I cannot tell how I did it, but I allowed Sylvester and the agent to
+grasp my hands, one on either side. Berkley, as to his collar, his
+cravat, his face and his white gloves, presented one general surface
+of mat silver. He clasped me with some affection, but his intellect
+had quite gone, and he said it was a fine day.
+
+I did not rally in the least until after my fourth glass of champagne
+at the dinner. We made one party: indeed, Mrs. Ashburleigh had brought
+her husband hither in that expectation. Fortnoye vanished a minute
+to arrange the banquet-room; and as his wife rushed in to find him,
+followed by the rest of us, he snatched a great damask cloth from
+the table, and there was such a set-out of flowers and viands as has
+seldom been seen in Belgium or elsewhere. The table, instead of a
+cloth, was entirely laid with; young emerald vine-leaves: our places
+were marked, and at each plate was a gift for the bride, ostensibly
+coming from the person who sat there, but really provided by the
+forethought of Fortnoye. In front of my own cover two pretty downy
+chicks were pecking in a cottage made of crystal slats and heavily
+thatched with spun glass--the prettiest birdcage in the world. On the
+eaves was an inscription: "The Man of the Two Chickens." It happened
+that the little keepsake I had found for Francine consisted of
+wheat-ears in pearls and gold, adapted for brooch and eardrops; so
+I only had to drop them in beside the chickens and the present was
+appropriate and complete.
+
+I cannot tell of the effect as Mary Ashburleigh swept into that
+splendid banqueting-room, one long pyramid of velvet pierced with
+webbed interstices of light. If the largest window of St. Ursula's
+church had come down and entered the room, the spectacle could not
+have been so superb. One item struck me: the younger bride, of course,
+wore orange buds; but for the Englishwoman, a beauty ripe with many
+summers, buds and blossoms were inappropriate; she wore fruits: in
+the grand coronal of plaits that massed itself upon her head were
+set, like gems, three or four small, delicious, amber-scented mandarin
+oranges. With this piece of exquisite apropos did the infallible Mary
+Ashburleigh crown the edifice of her good taste. The two brides sat
+opposite each other. A small watch, which I had happened to buy at
+Coblenz, I managed to detach and lay on the Dark Ladye's plate as my
+offering. On a card beside it I merely wrote, "ANOTHER TIME!"
+
+Who knows? Perhaps Sylvester may fill and founder as the other has
+done. He looks miserably bilious and frightened.
+
+I had rather partake of a rare dinner than describe one. The wines
+alone represented all the cellars of the Rhine and the whole champagne
+country. Fortnoye, who gave the feast, entertained both Sylvester's
+party and his own with regal good cheer. Think not that Henri Fortnoye
+was the ordinary obfuscated, superfluous, bewildered bridegroom. On
+the contrary, assuming immediately the head of his own table, he took
+the responsibility of the party's merriment, and made the good humor
+flow like the wine. I know not how it was, but ere the meal was over
+I found myself joining in one of his choruses; Frau Kranich forgot
+her asceticism and exhumed all her youthful air of gayety; James
+Athanasius Grandstone promised the host to set his wines running in
+every State of America. But the prettiest moment was when the two
+brides rose and touched glasses, mutually and to the health of the
+company, apropos of a little wedding-song which Fortnoye had composed
+and was trolling at the head our willing chorus.
+
+[ILLUSTRATION: HOMEWARD BOUND.]
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+I have arrived at Marly, and, with the ssistance of much sarcasm from
+Hohenfels, am getting on with considerable spirit at my Progressive
+Geography. When man's Hope ceases temporarily to take a merely Human
+aspect, may it not suffer a fresh avatar and begin in a new and
+Geographical form its beneficent career? The Dark Ladye has sunk
+beneath my horizon, but speculations over the Atlantean and Lunar
+Mountains are still succulent and vivifying.
+
+[ILLUSTRATION: CHARLES AND JOSEPHINE.]
+
+I fled, lashed by a hundred despairs and by many symptoms of headache
+and dyspepsia, from the wedding-feast at Brussels. Charles and the
+baron of Hohenfels accompanied me. It was a night-train. The spectacle
+of so much wedded happiness was too much for me, too much for
+Hohenfels. The effect was, contrarily, rather stimulating to Charles,
+who has made a match with Josephine, and with her assistance is
+now listening, the tear of sensibility in his eye, to Mendelssohn's
+"Wedding March" as executed by the village organ!
+
+We passed Valenciennes, Somain, Donai, Arras, Amiens, Clermont, Criel,
+Pontoise--the last points of merely bodily travel that I shall ever
+make: here-after my itineracy shall be entirely theoretical. We took
+a carriage at Pontoise, and traversed the woods of Saint-Germain. As I
+neared home I bowed right and left to amicable and smiling neighbors,
+who waved me good-day from their doors. So did my Newfoundland,
+who broke his chain and leaped upon my shoulders, flourishing his
+tail--overjoyed to salute the returning Ulysses.
+
+[ILLUSTRATION: ARGUS AND ULYSSES.]
+
+In the British Museum, among the Elgin Marbles, Phidias has carved
+a pile of heaped-up marble waves, and out of them rise the arms of
+Hyperion--the most beautiful arms in the world. Homesick for heaven,
+those weary arms try to free themselves of the clinging foam. Another
+minute and surely the triumphant god will leap from his watery couch
+and guide with unerring hands the coursers of the Dawn! But that
+reluctant minute is eternal, and the divinity still remains incapable,
+clogged and wrapped in the embrace of marble waves. Yet the real
+sun every morning succeeds in equipping himself for his journey, and
+arrives, glad, at his welcome bath in the western sea.
+
+The inference I draw is: If you want a career to be eternal instead of
+transitory, hand it over to Art.
+
+[ILLUSTRATION: "HAND IT OVER TO ART."]
+
+The true moral of it all is, that we are all savage myths of the
+Course of the Sun. We disappear any number of times, but we rise and
+trail new clouds of glory, and our readers or our audiences perceive
+that it is the same old Hyperion back again. The youth who by the
+faithful hound, half buried in the snow, is found far up on the most
+inaccessible peaks of imagination, is perceived to grasp still in his
+hand of ice that Germanesque and strange device--_Auf Wiedersehen_.
+
+[ILLUSTRATION]
+
+
+
+
+FOLLOWING THE TIBER.
+
+
+TWO PAPERS.--1.
+
+
+[Illustration: NEAR THE SOURCE OF THE TIBER.]
+
+"Ecce Tiberum!" cried the Roman legions when they first beheld the
+Scottish Tay. What power of association could have made them see in
+the clear and shallow stream the likeless of their tawny Tiber,
+with his full-flowing waters sweeping down to the sea? Perhaps those
+soldiers under whose mailed and rugged breasts lay so tender a thought
+of home came from the northerly region among the Apennines, where a
+little bubbling mountain-brook is the first form in which the storied
+Tiber greets the light of day. One who has made a pilgrimage from its
+mouth to its source thus describes the spot: "An old man undertook to
+be our guide. By the side of the little stream, which here constitutes
+the first vein of the Tiber, we penetrated the wood. It was an immense
+beech-forest.... The trees were almost all great gnarled veterans
+who had borne the snows of many winters: now they stood basking above
+their blackened shadows in the blazing sunshine. The little stream
+tumbled from ledge to ledge of splintered rock, sometimes creeping
+into a hazel thicket, green with long ferns and soft moss, and then
+leaping once more merrily into the sunlight. Presently it split into
+numerous little rills. We followed the longest of these. It led us
+to a carpet of smooth green turf amidst an opening in the trees;
+and there, bubbling out of the green sod, embroidered with white
+strawberry-blossoms, the delicate blue of the crane's bill and dwarf
+willow-herb, a copious little stream arose. Here the old man paused,
+and resting upon his staff, raised his age-dimmed eyes, and pointing
+to the gushing water, said, _'E questo si chiama il Tevere a Roma!'_
+('And this is called the Tiber at Rome!') ... We followed the stream
+from the spot where it issued out of the beech-forest, over barren
+spurs of the mountains crested with fringes of dark pine, down to a
+lonely and desolate valley, shut in by dim and misty blue peaks. Then
+we entered the portals of a solemn wood, with gray trunks of trees
+everywhere around us and impenetrable foliage above our heads, the
+deep silence only broken by fitful songs of birds. To this succeeded
+a blank district of barren shale cleft into great gullies by many a
+wintry torrent. Presently we found ourselves at an enormous height
+above the river, on the ledge of a precipice which shot down almost
+perpendicularly on one side to the bed of the stream.... A little past
+this place we came upon a very singular and picturesque spot. It was
+an elevated rock shut within a deep dim gorge, about which the river
+twisted, almost running round it. Upon this rock were built a few
+gloomy-looking houses and a quaint, old-world mill. It was reached
+from the hither side by a widely-spanning one-arched bridge. It was
+called Val Savignone."[1] Beyond this, at a small village called
+Balsciano, the hills begin to subside into gentler slopes, which
+gradually merge in the plain at the little town of Pieve San Stefano.
+
+[Illustration: CAPRESE.]
+
+Thus far the infant stream has no history: its legends and chronicles
+do not begin so early. But a few miles farther, on a tiny branch
+called the Singerna, are the vestiges of what was once a place of
+some importance--Caprese, where Michael Angelo was born exactly four
+hundred years ago. His father was for a twelvemonth governor of this
+place and Chiusi, five miles off (not Lars Porsenna's Clusium, which
+is to the south, but Clusium Novum), and brought his wife with him to
+inhabit the _palazzo communale_. During his regency the painter of the
+"Last Judgment," the sculptor of "Night and Morning," the architect of
+St. Peter's cupola, first saw the light. Here the history of the Tiber
+begins--here men first mingled blood with its unsullied waves. On
+another little tributary is Anghiara, where in 1440 a terrible battle
+was fought between the Milanese troops, under command of the gallant
+free-lance Piccinino, and the Floren-tines, led by Giovanni Paolo
+(commonly called Giampaolo) Orsini; and a little farther, on the main
+stream, Città di Castello recalls the story of a long siege which it
+valiantly sustained against Braccio da Montone, surnamed Fortebraccio
+(Strongarm), another renowned soldier of fortune of the fifteenth
+century.
+
+[Footnote 1: _The Pilgrimage of the Tiber_, by Wm. Davies.]
+
+[Illustration: LAKE THRASIMENE.]
+
+As the widening flood winds on through the beautiful plain, a broad
+sheet of water on the right spreads for miles to the foot of the
+mountains, whose jutting spurs form many a bay, cove and estuary. It
+was in the small hours of a night of misty moonlight that our eyes,
+stretched wide with the new wonder of beholding classic ground, first
+caught sight of this smooth expanse gleaming pallidly amid the dark,
+blurred outlines of the landscape and trees. The monotonous noise and
+motion of the train had put our fellow-travelers to sleep, and when it
+gradually ceased they did not stir. There was no bustle at the little
+station where we stopped; a few drowsy figures stole silently by in
+the dim light, like ghosts on the spectral shore of Acheron; the whole
+scene was strangely unreal, phantasmal. "What can it be?" we asked
+each other under our breaths. "There is but one thing that it can
+be--Lake Thrasimene." And so it was. Often since, both by starlight
+and daylight, we have seen that watery sheet of fatal memories, but
+it never wore the same shadowy yet impressive aspect as on our first
+night-journey from Florence to Rome.
+
+Not far from here one leaves the train for Perugia, seated high on
+a bluff amid walls and towers. We had been told a good deal of the
+terrors of the way--how so steep was the approach that at a certain
+point horses give out and carriages must be dragged up by oxen. It was
+with some surprise, therefore, that we saw ordinary hotel omnibuses
+and carriages waiting at the station. But we did not allow ourselves
+to feel any false security: by and by we knew the tug must come. We
+set off by a wide, winding road, uphill undoubtedly, but smooth and
+easy: however, this was only the beginning; and as it grew steeper and
+steeper, we waited in trepidation for the moment when the heavy beasts
+should be hitched on to haul us up the acclivity. We crawled up safely
+and slowly between orchards of olive trees, which will grow wherever
+a goat can set its foot: beneath us the great fertile vale of Umbria
+spread like a lake, the encircling mountains, which had looked like
+a close chain from below, unlinking themselves to reveal gorges and
+glimpses of other valleys. Thus by successive zigzags we mounted
+the broad turnpike-road, now directly under the fortifications, now
+farther off, until we saw them close above us, with the old citadel
+and the new palace. And now surely the worst had come, but the carnage
+turned a sharp corner, showing two more zigzags, forming a long acute
+angle which carried us smoothly to the rocky plateau on which the city
+stands, and we bowled in through the old gate-way at a round trot,
+with the usual cracking of whips and rattling and jingling of harness
+which announces the arrival of travelers at minor places on the
+Continent.
+
+We were not comfortable at Perugia--and let no one think to be so
+until there is a new hotel on a new principle--but it is a place where
+one can afford to forego creature comforts. Of all the towns on the
+Tiber, so rich in heirlooms of antiquity and art, none can boast such
+various wealth as this. The moment one leaves the centre of the town,
+which is built on a table of rock, the narrow streets plunge down on
+every side like dangerous broken flights of stairs: they disappear
+under deep cavernous arches, so that if you are below they seem to
+lead straight up through the darkness to the soft blue heaven, while
+from above they seem to go straight down into deep cellars, but
+cellars full of slanting sunshine. And whether you look up or down,
+there is always a picture in the dark frame against the bright
+background--a woman in a scarlet kerchief with a water-vessel of
+antique form, or a ragged brown boy leading a ragged brown donkey, or
+a soldier in gay uniform striking a light for his pipe. As soon as
+you leave the live part of the town, with the few little _caffès_ and
+shops, and the esplanades whence the thrice-lovely landscape unfolds
+beneath your gaze, you wander among quiet little paved _piazzas_ with
+a bit of daisied grass in their midst, surrounded by great silent
+buildings, whence through some opening you descry a street which is a
+ravine, and the opposite cliff rising high above you piled close with
+gray houses overhung with shrubs and creepers, and little gardens in
+their crevices like weeds between the stones of a wall; or you come
+out upon a secluded gallery with tall, deserted-looking mansions on
+one hand--except that at some sunny window there is always to be seen
+a girl's head beside a pot of carnations or nasturtiums--and on the
+other a parapet over which you lean to see the town scrambling up the
+hillside, while a great breadth of valley and hill and snow-covered
+mountain stretches away below.
+
+Then what historical associations, straggling away across three
+thousand years to when Perugia was one of the thirty cities of
+Etruria, and kept her independence through every vicissitude until
+Augustus starved her out in 40 B.C.! Portions of the wall, huge smooth
+blocks of travertine stone, are the work of the vanished Etruscans,
+and fragments of several gateways, with Roman alterations. One
+is perfect, imbedded in the outer wall of the castle: it has a
+round-headed arch, with six pilasters, in the intervals of which are
+three half-length human figures and two horses' heads. On the southern
+slope of the hill, three miles beyond the walls, a number of Etruscan
+tombs were accidentally discovered by a peasant a few years ago. The
+outer entrance alone had suffered, buried under the rubbish of two
+millenniums: the burial-place of the Volumnii has been restored
+externally after ancient Etruscan models, but within it has been left
+untouched. Descending a long flight of stone steps, which led into the
+heart of the hill, we passed through a low door formerly closed by a
+single slab of travertine, too ponderous for modern hinges. At first
+we could distinguish nothing in the darkness, but by the uncertain
+flaring of two candles, which the guide waved about incessantly, we
+saw a chamber hewn in the rock, with a roof in imitation of beams and
+rafters, all of solid tufa stone. A low stone seat against the wall
+on each hand and a small hanging lamp were all the furniture of this
+apartment, awful in its emptiness and mystery. On every side there
+were dark openings into cells whence came gleams of white, indefinite
+forms: a great Gorgon's head gazed at us from the ceiling, and from
+the walls in every direction started the crested heads and necks of
+sculptured serpents. We entered one by one the nine small grotto-like
+compartments which surround the central cavern: the white shapes
+turned out to be cinerary urns, enclosing the ashes of the three
+thousand years dead Volumnii. Urns, as we understand the word, they
+are not, but large caskets, some of them alabaster, on whose lids
+recline male figures draped and garlanded as for a feast: the faces
+differ so much in feature and expression that one can hardly doubt
+their being likenesses: the figures, if erect, would be nearly two
+feet in height. The sides of these little sarcophagi are covered
+with _bassi-rilievi_, many of them finely executed: the subjects are
+combats and that favorite theme the boar-hunt of Kalydon; there was
+one which represented the sacrifice of a child. The Medusa's head,
+as it is thought to be, recurs constantly, treated with extraordinary
+power: we were divided among ourselves whether it was Medusa or an
+Erinnys with winged head. The sphinx appears several times: there
+are four on the corners of an alabaster urn in the shape of a
+temple, exquisite in form and features, and exceedingly delicate in
+workmanship. Bulls' heads, with garlands drooping between them, a
+well-known ornament of antique altars, are among the decorations. But
+far the most beautiful objects were the little hanging figures, which
+seemed to have been lamps of a green bronze color, though we were
+assured that they are _terra-cotta_: they are male figures of
+exquisite grace and beauty, with a lightness and airiness commonly
+given to Mercury; but these had large angel pinions on the shoulders,
+and none on the head or feet. There was not a scholar in the party,
+so we all returned unenlightened, but profoundly interested and
+impressed, and with that delightful sense of stimulated curiosity
+which is worth more than all Eurekas. With the exception of a few
+weapons and trinkets, which we saw at the museum, this is all that
+remains of the mighty Etruscans, save the shapes of the common red
+pottery which is spread out wholesale in the open space opposite the
+cathedral on market-days--the most graceful and useful which could
+be devised, and which have not changed their model since earlier days
+than the occupants of those tombs could remember.
+
+[Illustration: THE TIBER NEAR PERUGIA.]
+
+The conquering Roman has left his sign-manual everywhere, but one
+is so used to him in Italy that the scantier records of later ages
+interest us more here. Like every other old Italian town, Perugia
+had its great family, the Baglioni, who lorded it over the place,
+sometimes harshly and cruelly enough, sometimes generously and
+splendidly--protectors of popular rights and patrons of art and
+letters. Their mediaeval history is full of picturesque incident and
+dramatic catastrophe: it would make a most romantic volume, but
+a thick one. At length the Perugians, master and men, grew too
+turbulent, and Pope Paul III. put them down, and sat upon them, so to
+speak, by building the citadel.
+
+But time would fail us to tell of the Baglioni, or Pope Paul the
+Borghese, or Fortebraccio, the chivalric _condottiere_ who led the
+Perugians to war against their neighbors of Todi, or even the still
+burning memories of the sack of Perugia by command of the present
+pope. We can no longer turn our thoughts from the treasures of art
+which make Perugia rich above all cities of the Tiber, save Rome
+alone. We cannot tarry before the cathedral, noble despite its
+incompleteness and the unsightly alterations of later times, and full
+of fine paintings and matchless wood-carving and wrought metal and
+precious sculptures; nor before the Palazzo Communale, another grand
+Gothic wreck, equally dignified and degraded; nor even beside the
+great fountain erected six hundred years ago by Nicolo and Giovanni da
+Pisa, the chiefs and founders of the Tuscan school of sculpture; nor
+beneath the statue of Pope Julius III., which Hawthorne has made known
+to all; for there are a score of churches and palaces, each with its
+priceless Perugino, and drawings and designs by his pupil Raphael
+in his lovely "first manner," which has so much of the Eden-like
+innocence of his master; and the Academy of Fine Arts, where one may
+study the Umbrian school at leisure; and last, but not least, the Sala
+del Cambio, or Hall of Exchange, where Perugino may be seen in his
+glory. It is not a hall of imposing size, so that nothing interferes
+with the impression of the frescoes which gaze upon you from every
+side as you enter. Or no; they do not gaze upon you nor return your
+glance, but look sweetly and serenely forth, as if with eyes never
+bent on earthly things. The right-hand wall is dedicated to the sibyls
+and prophets, the left to the greatest sages and heroes of antiquity.
+There is something capricious or else enigmatical in the mode of
+presenting many of them--the dress, attitude and general appearance
+often suggest a very different person from the one intended--but the
+grace and loveliness of some, the dignity and elevation of others, the
+expression of wisdom in this face, of celestial courage in that, the
+calm and purity and beauty of all, give them an indescribable charm
+and potency. At the end of the room facing the door are the "Nativity"
+and "Transfiguration," the latter, infinitely beautiful and religious,
+full of quiet concentrated feeling. We were none of us critics: none
+of us had got beyond the stage when the sentiment of a work of art is
+what most affects our enjoyment of it; and we all confessed how much
+more impressive to us was this Transfiguration, with its three quiet
+spectators, than the world-famous one at the Vatican. Although
+there are masterpieces of Perugino's in nearly every great European
+collection, I cannot but think one must go to Perugia to appreciate
+fully the limpid clearness, the pensive, tranquil suavity, which
+reigns throughout his pictures in the countenances, the landscape, the
+atmosphere.
+
+[Illustration: TODI.]
+
+We found it hard to rob Perugia even of a day for a pilgrimage to the
+tomb of Saint Francis at Assisi, yet could not leave the neighborhood
+without making it. We took the morning-train for the little excursion,
+meaning to drive back, and crossed the Tiber for the first time on the
+downward journey at Ponte San Giovanni. We got out at the station of
+Santa Maria degli Angeli, so named from the immense church built over
+the cell where Saint Francis lived and died and the little chapel
+where he prayed. The Porzionuncula it was called, or "little share,"
+being all that he deemed needful for man's abode on earth, and more
+than needful. It was hither that he came in the heyday of youth,
+forsaking the house of his wealthy father, the love of his mother,
+a life of pleasure with his gay companions, and dedicated himself to
+poverty and preaching the word of God. One of our party had said that
+she considered Saint Francis the author of much evil, and as having
+done irreparable harm to the Italian people in sanctifying dirt and
+idleness. But apostles are not to be judged by the abuse of their
+doctrine; and although it cannot be denied that Saint Francis
+encouraged beggary by forbidding his followers to possess aught of
+their own, he enjoined that they should labor with their hands for
+several hours daily. And to me it seemed as if out of Palestine
+there could be no spot of greater significance and sacredness to any
+Christian than this, where in a sanguinary and licentious age a young
+man suddenly broke all the bonds of self, and taught in his own person
+humility, renunciation and brotherly love as they had hardly been
+taught since his Master's death. The sternness of his personal
+self-denial is only equaled by his sweetness toward all living things:
+not men alone, but animals, birds, fishes, the frogs, the crickets,
+shared his love, and were called brother and sister by him. The great
+and instantaneous movement which he produced in his own time was no
+short-lived blaze of fanaticism, for its results have lasted from the
+twelfth century to our own; and although we may well believe that the
+day is past for serving Christ by going barefoot and living on
+alms, the spirit of Saint Francis's doctrine, charity, purity,
+self-abnegation, might do as much for modern men as for those of six
+hundred years ago. Believing all this, we were not sorry that our
+uncompromising friend had stayed behind, and it was in a reverent
+mood that we left the little stone chamber--which shrinks to lowlier
+proportions by contrast with the enormous dome above it--and turned
+to climb the long hill which leads to the magnificent monument which
+enthusiasm raised over him who in life had coveted so humble a home.
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH AND CONVENT OF SAINT FRANCIS, AT ASSISI.]
+
+The cliff on which Assisi stands rises abruptly on the side toward
+the Tiber: long lines of triple arches, which look as if hewn in
+the living stone, stretch along its face, one above another, like
+galleries, the great mass of the church and convent, with its towers
+and gables and spire-like cypress trees, crowning all. It is this
+marriage of the building to the rock, these lower arcades which rise
+halfway between the valley and the plateau seeking the help of
+the solid crag to sustain the upper ones and the vast superimposed
+structure, that makes the distant sight of Assisi so striking, and
+almost overwhelms you with a sense of its greatness as the winding
+road brings you close below on your way up to the town. It is a triple
+church. The uppermost one, begun two years after the saint's death,
+has a magnificent Gothic west front and high steps leading from the
+piazza, and a rich side-portal with a still higher flight leading from
+a court on a lower level. As we entered, the early afternoon sun was
+streaming in through the immense rose-window and flooding the vast
+nave, illumining the blue star-studded vault of the lofty roof and the
+grand, simple frescoes of Cimabue and Giotto on the walls. Thence we
+descended to the second church, in whose darkness our vision groped,
+half blind from the sudden change; but gradually through the dusk we
+began to discern low vaults stretching heavily across pillars which
+look like stunted giants, so short are they and so tremendously
+thick-set, the high altar enclosed by an elaborate grating, the little
+side-chapels like so many black cells, and through the gloom a twinkle
+and glimmer of gold and color and motes floating in furtive sunbeams
+that had strayed in through the superb stained glass of the infrequent
+windows. The frescoes of Giotto and his school enrich every spandril
+and interspace with their simple, serious forms--no other such place
+to study the art of that early day--but a Virgin enthroned among
+saints by Lo Spagna, a disciple of Perugino's, made a pure light in
+the obscurity: it had all the master's golden transparency, like clear
+shining after the rain. From this most solemn and venerable place we
+went down to the lowest church, the real sepulchre: it was darker than
+the one we had left, totally dark it seemed to me, and contracted,
+although--it is in the form of a Greek cross--each arm is sixty feet:
+in fact, it is only a crypt of unusual size; and although here
+were the saint's bones in an urn of bronze, we were conscious of a
+weakening of the impression made by the place we had just left. No
+doubt it is because the crypt is of this century, while the other two
+churches are of the thirteenth.
+
+There are other things to be seen at Assisi; and after dining at the
+little Albergo del Leone, which, like every part of the town except
+the churches, is remarkably clean, my companion set out to climb up to
+the castle, and I wandered back to the great church. As I sat idly
+on the steps a monk accosted me, and finding that I had not seen the
+convent, carried me through labyrinthine corridors and galleries, down
+long flights of subterranean stone steps, one after another, until
+I thought we could not be far from the centre of the earth, when he
+suddenly turned aside into a vast cloister with high arched openings
+and led me to one of them. Oh, the beauty, the glory, the wonder of
+the sight! We were halfway down the mountain-side, hanging between the
+blue heaven and the billowy Umbrian plain, with its verdure and its
+azure fusing into tints of dreamy softness as they vanished in the
+deep violet shadows of thick-crowding mountains, on whose surfaces
+and gorges lay changing colors of the superbest intensity. Poplars and
+willows showed silvery among the tender green of other deciduous trees
+in their fresh spring foliage and the deep velvet of the immortal
+cypresses and the blossoming shrubs, which looked like little puffs
+of pink and white cloud resting on the bosom of the valley. A small,
+clear mountain-stream wound round the headland to join the Tiber,
+which divides the landscape with its bare, pebbly bed. It was almost
+the same view that one has from twenty places in Perugia, but coming
+out upon it as from the bowels of the earth, framed in its huge stone
+arch, it was like opening a window from this world into Paradise.
+
+Slowly and lingeringly I left the cloister, and panted up the many
+steps back to the piazza to await my companion and the carriage which
+was to take us back to Perugia. The former was already there, and in a
+few minutes a small omnibus came clattering down the stony street, and
+stopping beside us the driver informed us that he had come for us. Our
+surprise and wrath broke forth. Hours before we had bespoken a little
+open carriage, and it was this heavy, jarring, jolting vehicle which
+they had sent to drive us ten miles across the hills. The driver
+declared, with truly Italian volubility and command of language and
+gesture, that there was no other means of conveyance to be had; that
+it was excellent, swift, admirable; that it was what the signori
+always went from Assisi to Perugia in; that, in fine, we had engaged
+it, and _must_ take it. My companion hesitated, but I had the
+advantage here, being the one who could speak Italian; so I promptly
+replied that we would not go in the omnibus under any circumstances.
+The whole story was then repeated with more adjectives and
+superlatives, and gestures of a form and pathos to make the fortune
+of a tragic actor. I repeated my refusal. He began a third time: I
+sat down on the steps, rested my head on my hand and looked at the
+carvings of the portal. This drove him to frenzy: so long as you
+answer an Italian he gets the better of you; entrench yourself in
+silence and he is impotent. The driver's impotence first exploded
+in fury and threats: at least we should pay for the omnibus, for his
+time, for his trouble; yes, pay the whole way to Perugia and back, and
+his _buon' mano_ besides. All the beggars who haunt the sanctuary of
+their patron had gathered about us, and from playing Greek chorus
+now began to give us advice: "Yes, we would do well to go: the only
+carriage in Assisi, and excellent, admirable!" The numbers of these
+vagrants, their officiousness, their fluency, were bewildering. "But
+what are we to do?" asked my anxious companion. "Why, if it comes to
+the worst, walk down to the station and take the night-train back." He
+walked away whistling, and I composed myself to a visage of stone
+and turned my eyes to the sculptures once more. Suddenly the driver
+stopped short: there was a minute's pause, and then I heard a voice
+in the softest accents asking for something to buy a drink. I turned
+round--beside me stood the driver hat in hand: "Yes, the signora is
+right, quite right: I go, but she will give me something to get a
+drink?" I nearly laughed, but, biting my lips, I said firmly, "A
+drink? Yes, if it be poison." The effect was astounding: the man
+uttered an ejaculation, crossed himself, mounted his box and drove
+off; the beggars shrank away, stood aloof and exchanged awestruck
+whispers; only a few liquid-eyed little ragamuffins continued to turn
+somersets and stand on their heads undismayed.
+
+Half an hour elapsed: the sun was beginning to descend, when the sound
+of wheels was again heard, and a light wagon with four places and a
+brisk little horse came rattling down the street. A pleasant-looking
+fellow jumped down, took off his hat and said he had come to drive
+us to Perugia. We jumped up joyfully, but I asked the price. "Fifty
+francs"--a sum about equivalent to fifty dollars in those regions. I
+smiled and shook my head: he eagerly assured me that this included
+his _buon mano_ and the cost of the oxen which we should be obliged
+to hire to drag us up some of the hills. I shook my head again: he
+shrugged and turned as if to go. My unhappy fellow-traveler started
+forward: "Give him whatever he asks and let us get away." I sat down
+again on the steps, saying in Italian, as if in soliloquy, that
+we should have to go by the train, after all. Then the new-comer
+cheerfully came back: "Well, signora, whatever you please to give."
+I named half his price--an exorbitant sum, as I well knew--and in
+a moment more we were skimming along over the hard, smooth
+mountain-roads: we heard no more of those mythical beasts the oxen,
+and in two hours were safe in Perugia.
+
+
+
+
+THE PARADOX.
+
+
+  I wish that the day were over,
+    The week, the month and the year;
+  Yet life is not such a burden
+    That I wish the end were near.
+
+  And my birthdays come so swiftly
+    That I meet them grudgingly:
+  Would it be so were I longing
+    For the life that is to be?
+
+  Nay: the soul, though ever reaching
+    For that which is out of sight,
+  Yet soars with reluctant motion,
+    Since there is no backward flight.
+
+CHARLOTTE F. BATES.
+
+
+
+
+A NIGHT AT COCKHOOLET CASTLE.
+
+I.
+
+
+Cockhoolet was the name of the place: it was a farm of which the
+Ormistons were and had been tenants for several generations. A father,
+mother and five olive-branches made up the family. A healthy, happy,
+united, thriving family they were, and as such much respected. There
+were two sons and three daughters, the eldest of whom was Bessie,
+the "Rose of Cockhoolet," as she was called; for that she had all the
+beauty and sweetness of the rose was generally allowed, although
+there were people who could not be made to see this--people who were
+probably idiopts; not idiots--although they might have a streak
+of idiocy in them, too, perhaps--but idiopts, or persons who were
+color-blind. None of the young men of the district were color-blind.
+
+The clergyman of the parish in which Cockhoolet was situated, and at
+whose church the Ormistons attended, was an old man comparatively,
+whose sermons were old-fashioned, and not given forth with the fire
+of youth: he was not one you would have expected to be very popular,
+especially with the young; yet various young men from considerable
+distances were attracted to his church, and, generally speaking, they
+settled themselves in pews opposite the gallery in front of which
+sat Mr. Ormiston and his family. Any person who chanced to be in the
+vicinity, if of discerning powers, might have been conscious of the
+electricity in the air. Dull people neither saw nor felt it.
+
+Bessie Ormiston was not dull, but, being a modest girl, she would
+rather not have been stared at; and, being a good girl, she thought
+people might be better employed in church: still, she was only a girl,
+and it would not be the truth to say she was mortally offended. Did
+the person ever exist who was offended at an honest compliment? If
+he ever did, he ought to have been fed on sarcasm for the rest of his
+days.
+
+Not only was Bessie pretty--she was also rich. A grand-uncle had left
+her five thousand pounds, her brothers and sisters getting only one
+thousand each. There is no use in asking reasons for this: simply, the
+Rose was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Perhaps, indeed, the
+old man did not know he had so much money, for it was as residuary
+legatee that Bessie got the five thousand pounds, and it was not
+thought she would get anything like that: people remarked, in the
+language of the district, which was apt occasionally to be strong and
+graphic rather than elegant,--people remarked that "old Ormiston
+had cut up well." Five thousand charms added to those Bessie already
+possessed--not to mention that her father was a rich man--made her
+most miraculously charming: like Tibby Fowler of the Glen, whose
+perplexities of this kind have been embalmed in song, she had wealth
+of wooers, and wealth, it is well known, makes wit waver.
+
+It is a saying that an Englishman's house is his castle, but the
+phrase is understood to be figurative: Mr. Ormiston's house was his
+castle without a figure. Cockhoolet Castle is very old, at least one
+part of it is, having been built probably about the year 1400. A more
+modern part was built in 1527, while the most modern part of all was
+added in 1726: this last division of it is used as the farm-house.
+The rooms have been painted and papered in the present style of house
+decoration, and in the sitting-rooms, in addition to the little old
+windows, the thick walls have been pierced and a large bow-window put
+in with fine effect. There are three narrow stone staircases leading
+up the three divisions of the castle; there are long passages; there
+are sudden short flights of steps taking you up or down into all
+manner of cornered rooms; there is a hall which might hold the
+population of the county. Keeping up one of the spiral staircases,
+you come out on the roof, round which there is a walk guarded by a low
+stone coping: should you want to fling yourself over, you have ample
+opportunity. There are stone sentry-boxes where you can sit hidden
+from the wind and everything else, and look far and wide over the
+country, and down into the garden if you can do so without growing
+giddy. There is also a dungeon tenanted by nothing more subject
+to suffering than potatoes and other roots, for which it is a most
+favorable receptable, the walls being so thick and the roof so low
+that cold cannot get in in winter nor heat in summer: there is only a
+single narrow slit in the wall for the admission of light, but it is
+comforting to know that the doomed wretches who inhabited it in past
+ages had at least a temperate climate.
+
+There is the room Queen Mary Stuart slept in when she occasionally
+visited in the vicinity. The reader is perhaps not familiar with Queen
+Mary's name in connection with Cockhoolet Castle, but there may be
+other facts about her of which he is also ignorant. Does he know, for
+instance, that she had a daughter by her third marriage, whom, as an
+infant, she despatched to France to be reared in a nunnery, "that she
+may not," said the unhappy queen, "run the risk of having such a lot
+as I have"? Does he know that John Knox was possessed by a mad passion
+of love for Mary Stuart? It has always been thought otherwise--that
+in point of fact he held her in contempt; but as it is proverbial that
+"nippin' and scartin' (figurative of course) is Scotch folks' wooin',"
+there may be truth in the new discovery. But true or not true, it
+is enough to make the bold Reformer blush standing on the top of his
+pillar in the necropolis of Glasgow: perhaps he _is_ blushing, if he
+were near enough to see.
+
+Be that as it may, there is no manner of doubt that Mary Stuart
+honored Cockhoolet Castle by abiding under its roof when it suited her
+to do so. Have not I, the present writer, stood in the room she slept
+in--looked from the small windows set in the ten-foot thick wall from
+which she looked? Have I not gazed over the same country, up to the
+same skies, into the same moon at which she gazed? Could her face be
+more fair than that of the present Rose of Cockhoolet, her thoughts
+more innocent, her reveries more sweet, than those of Bessie Ormiston,
+who in the course of time had succeeded to the room which had been
+consecrated by royal slumbers?
+
+It is a matter of certainty that Mary Stuart planted a tree fast by
+Cockhoolet Castle--she would not have been herself if she had not done
+that--and a magnificent tree it is, very old and quite big enough
+for its age. The queen must have been fond of planting trees, and,
+considering the number she planted, it is astonishing how she found
+time for so many less innocent employments: she must have improved
+each shining hour, and, poor woman! she had not too many of these.
+
+There is a walk also, called the Lady's Walk, leading away from
+the castle up a bosky dell, where a burn amuses itself playing at
+hide-and-seek, but, like a little child, betrays its hiding-places by
+its voice, and comes out into the light again and laughs at its own
+joke. Did the queen ever wander here? did she ever "paidle in the burn
+when summer days were fine"? did its murmur ever soothe her ear?
+did she ever see her fair face in its pools, or drop bitter tears to
+mingle and; flow on with its waters?
+
+The burn has kept trotting through the dell for six thousand years,
+singing its song all the time, and its speed is as good and its voice
+as clear and musical as when the morning stars sang together and all
+the sons of God shouted for joy. Many a wild story it could tell if
+its murmur could be understood; but it is a murmur only--a murmur
+which crept into the ears of Cæsar's legions, of Queen Mary, of Bessie
+Ormiston, and will creep into yours, O reader! if you like to go
+and explore the Lady's Walk, when you can interpret the murmur for
+yourself, as all your predecessors no doubt did. In days of old it
+fed the moat, traces of which are to be seen round the castle still,
+although it has long since been filled up and covered, like the park
+of which it forms part, with rich natural pasture, soft, thick and
+velvety. In short, Cockhoolet had everything that a castle ought to
+have, and wanted nothing that a castle ought not to want, not even a
+ghost.
+
+It was not the ghost of Mary Stuart: that would have been too
+shocking--a ghost without a head, or having a head and a broad vivid
+ray of red encircling its neck. Such a ghost would have made every one
+who saw it lose his senses. Cockhoolet Castle had a ghost: so much was
+certain, but hitherto no one had ever either seen or heard it. How,
+then, was it certain? Why ask a question like that? Is it reasonable
+to pin a human being down to prove a ghost? Will not presumptive
+evidence do? Strange things had happened, must have happened, at
+the castle: is it for a moment to be supposed that these things had
+happened and all gone scot free?--in other words, that not one of them
+had left a ghost? It is not to be supposed.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+It was Christmas Day. Christmas Day is not solemnized and festivalized
+in Scotland as it is in England; still, the observance of it in some
+shape is creeping in more and more. It was Christmas, and Mr. and Mrs.
+Ormiston had gone to be present at a feast from which they were not
+expected to return till the following day. There were left at home the
+Rose, as head of the family for the time being; her sisters, Bell and
+Jessie, supposed to be little girls still, although the supposition
+made them very indignant; and her two brothers, John and William. A
+guest aad two servants made up the known inhabitants of the house.
+
+The guest was a young man who had arrived before the heads of the
+house left, and had been laughingly charged by them to see that the
+children did not work mischief. He was an old friend of the family; at
+least as old a friend as he was a man, and she had been in the world
+a quarter of a century. We shall call him Edwin: that name will do as
+well as another; indeed, better, for he might not like his own made
+public. It need hardly be said that among the rest young Edwin loved,
+and, like his namesake in the ballad, he never talked of love. This
+might be stupid, but the stupidity which springs from true modesty
+is not to be classed with the stupidity which springs from want of
+brains, even when, as is quite likely, the consequences are to the
+full as disastrous. Now, how is a young lady to understand or bring
+things to a bearing in a case like this? The Rose could not go up
+to Edwin and tell him she was not a goddess; neither could she say,
+"Although I have five thousand pounds--and you know it, and I know
+that you know it, and you know that I know that you know it--I am
+quite ready to believe that you love me, and would love me if I hadn't
+a farthing:" she could not say this, but she thought it, she worried
+herself thinking over it, and, being a sensible girl with a humble
+opinion of herself, she came to the conclusion that she had been
+altogether mistaken--that Edwin did not care for her, at least not
+as she cared for him, otherwise why should he not say so? "If," she
+thought--"if I were in his place and he in mine, neither money nor
+pride, nor anything else, would keep me silent." And the roses in
+her face deepened in color as she thought of her own silly folly in
+allowing her feelings to be drawn in, and she determined her folly
+should cease from that hour; which determination had the effect of
+bringing sharp, short speeches about Edwin's ears tinged with sarcasm
+that were meant to convey to him the conviction that she did not care
+a pin about him; and they answered the purpose admirably.
+
+  Love is a fickle game, which they
+  Whose stakes are deepest worst can play,
+
+Edwin was at Cockhoolet that Christmas Day by the same fatality that
+causes a moth to hover round a brilliant light; and when her sister
+told Bessie that Edwin had come and was putting his horse into the
+stable, she said, "Is Mr. Forrester here again? He must surely be dull
+at home." But of course she received him with friendly civility.
+
+Edwin employed the forenoon out of doors with the boys and two other
+visitors. A Mr. and Mrs. Parker arriving unexpectedly, who were
+anxious to see the castle, the afternoon was spent in going through
+every part of it from dungeon to roof.
+
+Bessie carried the keys: she was châtelaine, seneschal and cicerone,
+all rolled in one.
+
+Going up the narrow stairs, the party had to climb Indian file: in the
+passages they could spread out a little, and in some of the rooms in
+the uninhabited portion they had to walk circumspectly, as if they
+were crossing water on stepping-stones, for the flooring was wanting
+in some places, leaving a stretch of bare rafters. Bessie tripped
+lightly over them, and then turned to wait for the others. "Don't be
+frightened," she said: "these rafters are as sound as the day they
+were laid down. The flooring has not rotted: it must have been taken
+up for some purpose. They did not know how to scamp work in those
+days."
+
+"If we fall through, where shall we go?" inquired Mrs. Parker, looking
+down into what seemed deep mysterious darkness.
+
+"Oh, not very far; but don't fall: it won't be pleasant," said Bessie:
+"you would alight on very hard stones."
+
+Mr. Forrester got on the roof first, and handed up the ladies; and
+they all stood looking out over the country. It was not a cold, bleak,
+snowy day, as Christmas in northern latitudes has a right to be. The
+winter had been mild--one of a series of mild winters, overturning the
+old traditions of frosts and snow-storms that lasted for months,
+and to a great extent stopped traffic and labor, and made traveling
+difficult and wearisome. This Christmas was different. The year was
+dying with calmness and dignity, and with a smile on its face, as you
+might take the pale gleam of sunshine to be; and if you were a little
+sad in mood you could suppose there was a wistfulness in the smile
+that was spread over the still, soft face of Nature. Cockhoolet stood
+high, and the country immediately round it was flat, and much of it
+moorland.
+
+  If you climb to our castle's top,
+  I don't see where your eye can stop;
+  For when you've passed the corn-field country,
+  Where vineyards leave off flocks are packed,
+  And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,
+  And cattle-tract to open chase,
+  And open chase to the very base
+  O' the mountain.
+
+Strike out the vineyards and that description will apply very well
+to Cockhoolet; and in addition you ought to have seen from its roof
+Edinburgh and the sea; but on this day the sea wore a garment of mist,
+and had wrapped the metropolis in it also, as it not unfrequently
+does. You ought to have seen more than one range of hills too, yet
+except by eyes well acquainted with them their outlines could hardly
+be distinguished from the leaden gray clouds lying in bands along the
+horizon.
+
+But as the party stood on the roof the clouds began to rise, tower
+upon tower, against the sky, and the sun, who retires early at this
+season, went behind them, when, instead of the pale, wistful gleam he
+had been keeping up all day, he suddenly threw a deep bright golden
+border on all the edges of the dark misty battlements which had piled
+themselves like castles of the Titans: a big rift appearing at their
+base, there poured through it, filling up the space, a great belt of
+crimson rays streaked with gray, as if from burning ashes falling into
+it, and like the dense glow from a furnace, giving the idea that the
+cloud-building was on fire, and that the flames from below, shooting
+up inside the dark walls, were the cause of the brilliant illumination
+that shone round every pinnacle and coign of vantage. It was a grand
+and a curious sight. You could fancy the sun looking across to the
+old Castle of Edinburgh standing on its rock, and saying, "Can you
+do anything like this with all the gas and paddelle you can lay your
+hands on?" Precisely this idea struck Mrs. Parker, for she said, "I
+think that is as good a sight as the castle the night the prince was
+married."
+
+"That was a very good sight in its way," said Mr. Parker, "but we can
+hardly hope to compete with the sun, my dear: he has all his materials
+within himself, and we have to pay for them."
+
+"Do you know, Miss Ormiston," said Mrs. Parker, "one of the buildings
+they said had such a fine effect put me in mind of a trunk studded
+with brass nails--the initials of the happy pair in gas-jets looked
+like the name of the owner of the trunk. All the time I was on the
+street I could not get that notion out of my head; and I was sorry,
+for I am sure it cost a great deal of money to light it up, and I
+really wished to think it grand."
+
+"We were all in town that night," said John Ormiston--"papa and mamma,
+and the whole of us, and Mr. Forrester, who made eight."
+
+"I thought it a beautiful sight," said Bessie.
+
+"I never enjoyed anything more in my life," said Mr. Forrester, who on
+that occasion had been Miss Ormiston's escort through the streets, in
+which they lost their party, and had the supreme bliss of wandering
+together in the crowd, when Mr. Forrester almost forgot that Miss
+Ormiston was a goddess with five thousand earthly charms, and Miss
+Ormiston had compared his merits as a guide and protector with those
+of her brothers, and found he was much more considerate, and made her
+wish law, which they were often far from doing. In point of fact, a
+thaw had been very imminent, but, alas! since then a sharp frost had
+set in between them, as unaccountably as frosts frequently do set in.
+
+"I think, now," said Mrs. Parker, "a fine old castle like this ought
+to have had a grander name: don't you think so, Miss Ormiston?"
+
+"Yes, I do, and it had, originally. There was a monastery here at one
+time, over in that field with the trees in the corner of it: it was
+called the abbey of Cakeholy, and when the castle was built it got the
+name of Cakeholy Castle, after the abbey. The name Cakeholy, tradition
+says, arose from the fact that an extraordinary saint, whose wants had
+been relieved at the monastery, blessed all the bread that should ever
+be baked there, and the bread ever after had a great sustaining power
+in it; so that pilgrims from Edinburgh and the North, going to the
+southern shrines, all passed this way to get themselves supplied with
+the holy cakes. At the Reformation the abbey was destroyed, and became
+a ruin haunted by owls, so that, partly in derision and partly as
+suiting the altered circumstances, the common people corrupted the
+name into Cockhoolet; and in process of time it was given to the
+castle also, and stuck to it. That is the history of a name which is
+certainly neither romantic, nor high-sounding."
+
+"How interesting!" said Mrs. Parker. "If I were you, I would go back
+to the old name: there is a reverence about it there is not about the
+other. Only think of bands of pilgrims coming across the moor there!"
+
+"Yes, in their gowns and rope girdles, with wallets and
+scallop-shells," said Bessie. "It must have been a curious old world
+then: one could sit here and muse by the hour on all that has come and
+gone. I often bring up my work or my book here in summer and think of
+it."
+
+"I do like old things," said Mrs. Parker, "and old families and old
+names. Our name, for instance, has no smack of age about it, and it is
+so short and perky: it must have been given to some one who had to do
+with parks."
+
+"But parks may be a very old institution," said Bessie, "if we looked
+into the thing, though not so old as Forrester: that is an ancient
+name," glancing at Edwin, who was leaning against a sentry-box
+listening and watching the sun putting out the lights in his
+bed-chamber; "yet not nearly so ancient as Ormiston. I always feel
+it is fitting we should live in an old castle, we are so ancient
+ourselves."
+
+"Are we?" said John: "I never knew that before."
+
+"Ormiston," she said, "is perhaps as pure a Saxon word as now exists.
+It was during the Roman invasion our ancestor led an army through a
+dense mist against the invaders: just as he came up with them the sun
+shone out and the mist. The legions were taken by surprise, for the
+advancing enemy had been hidden by the mist, and they were utterly
+routed. The Saxon king--"
+
+"What was his name?" asked John.
+
+"John," she said, "don't seek to be wise above what is revealed. The
+king called our ancestor to the front and made him earl of Ormiston on
+the spot--'Gold-Mist-on;' that is, 'Be ever in the van;' and a proud
+race were the earls of Ormiston, and well they answered to the name.
+But their fortunes waned when the modern upstart, the Norman William,
+laid his greedy hands on everything for himself and his mob of
+pirates, and at present we are only middle-class people, but our blood
+must be the bluest of the blue."
+
+"Mine must be as blue," said Edwin, "for the Forresters came in with
+the trees, and the trees were early settlers."
+
+"But the mists were first by a very long time," answered Bessie.
+
+"I don't believe that story," said John. "I have read about the
+Cakeholy business somewhere, but you have made that Or-Mist-on affair
+out of your own head: isn't that true, Bessie?"
+
+"I am not bound to answer unbelievers, John."
+
+"Besides," said John, "Ormiston is far; liker French than Saxon."
+
+"Mr. Parker," said Bessie, "there was an abbot John of Cakeholy who
+flourished in the thirteenth century: his ghost is said to revisit its
+old habitation, or rather the place where it stood. I should like to
+meet it and have a talk over things; it would be very interesting."
+
+"Would you not be terrified?" asked Mrs. Parker.
+
+"If I saw what I believed to be a ghost, I should die of terror," said
+Bessie; "especially if I was alone and it was the dead of night; but I
+have no faith whatever in ghosts."
+
+"It is getting rather chilly," said Mrs. Parker.
+
+"Perhaps we had better go down now, then," Miss Ormiston said. "Mr.
+Forrester, would you come out of your brown study and let us pass?"
+
+"Certainly. I'll see you all safe off the battlements. I wasn't in a
+brown study: I was in a mist."
+
+"Then take care: people in a mist always think they are going the
+right way when they are going directly wrong."
+
+"If I only knew the right way!" he said.
+
+"That's true, Mr. Forrester," said Mrs. Parker. "If we only knew the
+right way; and people tell you to be guided by Providence, but I say
+I never know when it is Providence and when it is myself;" and she
+threaded her way down the narrow stairs, followed by the rest of the
+party.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+The dining-room, with its low roof, its crimson walls, dark furniture
+and handsome fire (the fires at Cockhoolet were always handsome:
+Bessie was the architect and superintended the building herself; they
+never looked harum-scarum nor meaningless nor thoughtless, nor as if
+they were not meant to burn; they combined taste, comfort, and, as a
+consequence, economy; everything tasteful and comfortable is in the
+long run economical), its table-cloth, glistening like the summit of
+the Alps and laden with good things, looked a place where people even
+not in love with each other might, unless naturally perverse, be very
+happy.
+
+Mrs. Parker, being from town, was in raptures with every country
+eatable, especially the scones, which she found were manufactured by
+Miss Ormiston herself.
+
+"And have they," asked Mr. Parker, "the sustaining power that the
+cakes made here of old had?"
+
+"If you eat enough of them you may get to Edinburgh to-night before
+you are very hungry," said John.
+
+"The abbey cakes were unleavened," Bessie explained, "which these are
+not, so that they are less substantial fare."
+
+"What do you raise them with?" asked Mrs. Parker.
+
+"Butter, milk and carbonate of soda," said Miss Ormiston.
+
+"We call Bessie a doctor of the Carbon," said John: "she makes very
+good scones, although you would hardly go from here to Canterbury on
+the strength of one of them."
+
+"Mr. Forrester, are you dull?" asked Jessie: "you are not saying
+anything."
+
+"I am too busy eating the holy cakes, Jessie," said Edwin: "your
+sister is a master in her art."
+
+"I say," Jessie went on, "are you ever dull at home? When I told
+Bessie that you had come she was surprised, and said that you must
+surely be dull at home. I am sorry for you if you are: you should come
+here oftener--we are never dull here."
+
+"Perhaps," said Edwin, "your sister thinks I come too often, as it
+is."
+
+Bessie was so deeply engaged pressing Mr. Parker to eat strawberry
+jam, with cheeks the color of the fruit, that of course she could not
+have heard what her sister had been saying.
+
+"Oh no, I don't think she thinks that at all," Jessie said: "we never
+think any one can come too often. Bessie, can Mr. Forrester come too
+often?"
+
+But still Miss Ormiston was so occupied with Mr. Parker that she did
+not hear.
+
+And Mrs. Parker said, "It is a most intensely interesting old place,
+this: do not people come to look at it?"
+
+"Oh yes," replied Bessie, "especially in summer: we generally have
+several parties every week. One of the servants takes them over the
+castle--grand people often, with carriages and livery servants."
+
+"Do you not keep a book for them to write their names in?"
+
+"No, we have never done that."
+
+"I would do it if I were you: it would be interesting to know who
+comes and how many. Why, very remarkable people may have been here
+without your knowing."
+
+"I doubt we are not sufficiently alive to our privileges," Bessie
+said.
+
+"It's fine moonlight," said the boys, who, seeing that they and every
+one had ceased eating, were impatient to be out again. "Come, Mr.
+Parker, we'll show you the echo: Mr. Forrester, come."
+
+"I'll go too," said Mrs. Parker; and they all went but the Rose, who
+stayed behind for a little to direct about household matters.
+
+The echo was a favorite with the boys, it gave such unlimited scope
+to their powers of shouting: it was the _sight_ they most enjoyed
+exhibiting to strangers. And it was an echo that could repeat every
+word of a sentence with such perfection that it was difficult to
+believe that it was not a human being shouting back from the
+other side of the park, where stood some houses inhabited by the
+farm-servants and their families.
+
+"Hallo, Abbot John! is that you?" shouted one of the boys, and
+the other cried, "Yes, I'm taking a walk," so quickly that the one
+sentence seemed the answer to the other, and both came back loud and
+distinct on the still night-air.
+
+"Are the Ormistons ancient? It's all fudge," shouted John.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Parker, "that's the most perfect echo I ever heard.
+I've no doubt the holy fathers of the Middle Ages knew of it, and used
+it in some shape to keep the superstitious people in awe."
+
+"It is awesome," said his wife, "here in the moonlight, with the old
+castle so near: if I were alone, positively I should feel eerie."
+
+"Are you dull at home, Mr. Forrester?" was sent out from the depths of
+Will's chest, and sent back again just as Bessie came out and joined
+the party.
+
+"Boys! boys!" she said, "don't be foolish."
+
+"Why, it was what you said yourself," her sister remarked.
+
+"_Are_ you ever dull?" the lad shouted again.
+
+"Often," answered Edwin, and "Often" came back instantly.
+
+"In that case, Mr. Forrester," said Mrs. Parker, "why don't you get a
+wife? There's no company for a young man like a good wife. Here's Miss
+Ormiston; I don't think you could do better."
+
+Think of the delicate wound of these young people being thus openly
+probed in broad moonlight in the presence of so many people! What
+could Mrs. Parker be thinking of? Not of her own love-passages surely,
+or, if she was, they must have been of a blunter order than those of
+the Rose and her lover.
+
+"Oh no," said Bessie in cool, indifferent tones: "Mr. Forrester knows
+better than that."
+
+"There!" said Edwin, "you see, Mrs. Parker, I have been refused."
+
+"'Faint heart never won fair lady,'" said Mrs. Parker.
+
+The boys hallooed this sentiment to the echo, and the echo took it up
+and sent it back so vigorously that even a timid man might have been
+inspired. "Mary Stuart," "Henry Darnley," "James Bothwell," the lads
+went on calling to the echo alternately--names which are not mere
+echoes even after three hundred years, but live on by sheer force of
+tragic romance. And it was possible that here, on this very spot, that
+historical trio had stood and laughed and talked and amused themselves
+as the young Ormistons and their visitors were doing. What words had
+they used to rouse the echo? If only it could be made to give them
+back now, what a wonderful echo it would be! The world would come
+to listen to it. Would it tell of the passions of love and ambition,
+grief and hatred, all hurrying their victims to their doom? or was the
+place sacred only to gentler memories and softer moods--the scene
+of enjoyment and freedom from care for however short a time? Who can
+tell?
+
+There was a woman in the village of Cockhoolet who was ninety-eight
+years old, having all her faculties not perhaps quite so fresh as when
+she was nineteen, but in wonderful preservation after having been in
+daily use for little short of a century. She was one of a long-lived
+race: her father had been eighty-nine when he died, and her
+grandfather ninety-nine. Now, it is perfectly possible--and, as the
+family had been on the spot for centuries, it is even probable--that
+her great-grandfather might have dug the hole in which Mary planted
+her tree, or he may have saddled the queen's horse when she went
+hunting, or stood by the roadside and lifted his bonnet as she and her
+gay train swept by. Or he may have been despatched upon royal errands
+through the subterranean passage which is said to exist all the way
+between Cockhoolet Castle and Edinburgh--the private telegraph of
+those days, when wires in the air or under the sea by which to send
+messages would have cost the inventors their lives as guilty of
+witchcraft. While shaking hands with this old woman and speaking to
+her, you lost sight of her and the present time and felt the air of
+the sixteenth century blow in your face. Mary came up before you in
+moving habit as she lived--the young Mary who caught all hearts, not
+heartless herself, and laid hold of mere straws to save herself as
+she drifted desperately with circumstances; not the woman who has been
+painted as an actor from first to last, as coming forth draped for
+effect at the very closing scene,--not that woman, but the girlish
+queen who laughed and called to the echo, and forgot the cares of a
+kingdom while she could.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+"They are a nice family, those Ormistons," said Mr. Parker to his wife
+as they drove to the railway-station in the moonlight.
+
+"Very," said Mrs. Parker; "and Mr. Forrester is a nice lad. I hope he
+and Miss Ormiston will make it out: I did my best for them."
+
+"They'll be quite able to do the best for themselves: it is always
+better to let things of that kind alone."
+
+"I don't know that," said Mrs. Parker: "if a little shove is all that
+is needed, it is a pity not to give it."
+
+"But what if your shove sends people separate? That's not what you
+intended, I fancy?"
+
+"No fear: people are not so easily separated as all that."
+
+"Well, we have had an uncommonly pleasant visit: I only wish the heads
+of the house had been at home."
+
+Either the attachment of this pair must have been pretty evident to
+ordinary capacities, or Mrs. Parker must have been of a matchmaking
+turn of mind; probably the latter, for Bessie at least was sure that
+no mortal guessed her secret; which was a great comfort to her, seeing
+that Edwin was so indifferent. Alas! there is no rose without a thorn,
+or if there is it is a scentless, useless thing, most likely incapable
+of giving either pleasure or pain.
+
+The Parkers had left early. When the young people went in-doors again
+it was only seven o'clock: the girls proposed a game at hide-and-seek,
+and Bessie seconded the proposal; for you see it would have been
+rather a formidable business to sit down and entertain Mr. Forrester
+all the evening with conversation, rational or otherwise; and although
+at the moment she was in the dignified position of lady of the castle,
+she could not the less enjoy a game amazingly.
+
+The theatre of operations was wisely restricted, because if they had
+gone all over the castle they might have hidden themselves so that the
+game would have been endless; therefore they kept to the under part
+of the inhabited region. At length, tiring of this, they changed their
+game to blindman's buff, and went to the kitchen to play it, there
+being more room and fewer obstacles there; besides that, it was empty
+of tenants at the time, the servants having gone to see some of the
+neighbors.
+
+It was a curious old kitchen, with a very low roof, and having a
+fireplace in a big semicircular stone recess. Many a boar's head had
+revolved there, and many a venison pasty had sent forth its fragrance
+to greet the tired hunters returning from the chase. The fire glowed
+in its deep recess like the eye of an old-world monster in a cavern,
+till one of the boys seized the poker and made it flame up, throwing
+its blaze out as far as it could for its walls, and making the kitchen
+and the group standing in it like a picture by Rembrandt.
+
+"Who's to be blind man first?" cried the girls.
+
+"Edwin: that will be the best fun," the boys said.
+
+"Very well, I sha'n't be long blind," said Edwin: "I shall soon catch
+some of you. Who'll tie the handkerchief?"
+
+"Bessie: she always ties it. Go and kneel to her, and she'll tie it so
+that you won't see."
+
+What must Mr. Forrester have felt while being blinded by the Rose?
+Only, he had long been accustomed to be if not blinded, at least
+dazed, by her. The boys led him into the middle of the floor and
+dispersed themselves into corners. While he stood in the attitude of
+listening intently, he was conscious of a very gentle movement near
+him, and instantly closed his arms round it, as he thought, and
+encountered empty air, while with a shout of laughter the children
+cried, "Bessie was too quick for you. There, quick! quick! Edwin!" He
+sprang to the corner the voices came from, and the boys rushed along
+the wall to avoid his arms spread out to catch them, when suddenly the
+doorbell rang.
+
+At the sound Edwin put up his hand to take off the handkerchief, but
+the boys cried, "Don't take it off: if it's any one, Bessie can speak
+to them in the dining-room: we don't need to stop our game."
+
+They were not aware that to Mr. Forrester the game without Bessie was
+like _Hamlet_ with the part of Hamlet left out.
+
+"Yes," said Bessie, "just go on, and I'll see who is at the door." As
+she left the kitchen she honored Mr. Forrester with a good long look:
+people can feel so much at ease looking at a blind person.
+
+The door was chained for greater security, and Bessie did not take
+off the chain: she merely opened the door as far as it would open, but
+seeing no one, she opened it fully and went out on the steps; still
+she saw no person, although she thought whoever rang the bell had not
+had time to get out of sight. Waiting a little without result, she
+went back to the kitchen.
+
+"Who was it?" cried the children.
+
+"No one," she said.
+
+"But the bell rang," said John.
+
+"Of course it did," Will corroborated.
+
+"And somebody must have rung it," John said.
+
+"Some one for a trick, I suppose," Bessie said, "although I don't know
+how he disappeared so fast."
+
+Without further remark the game was resumed. Edwin had caught John,
+and John had caught Bessie, and when he was putting the handkerchief
+round her eyes Mr. Forrester said, "You are making it far too tight,
+John: you are hurting your sister."
+
+"No fear," said John: "none of us have soft heads here. Is it too
+tight, Bessie?"
+
+"Rather, but I can bear it: go on."
+
+"I'll slacken it first," Edwin said.
+
+"Thank you, that will do. Now move off or I'll catch you." She went
+very vigorously to work, and sent them all flying round the kitchen,
+when the bell rang, and rang loudly, again.
+
+John darted to the door and flung it wide, sure that he would see the
+person who rang it, whether running away or not; but there was no
+one, and the whole party followed him out, and they surveyed round and
+round, but all was still and quiet and vacant, the moonlight making it
+impossible that any figure should be there without being seen.
+
+Now, if you lived in an ordinary house in an ordinary street in an
+ordinary town, an incident like this would create no surprise. It
+happens often: true, it is not a very new or bright joke, still it is
+a joke that boys and girls enjoy, and will continue to enjoy. But away
+in the country, at an old castle, with no house within a quarter of
+a mile of it, the case is very different. How was it to be accounted
+for?
+
+The Ormistons came in, the girls looking scared, and the boys laughing
+and saying that Mary Stuart or Darnley or Bothwell, whose names they
+had made so free with shouting to the echo, must have heard themselves
+called and were ringing the bell, although not allowed to show
+themselves; but even as they said it the boys would fain have whistled
+to keep their courage up.
+
+"I wish papa and mamma had been at home," said Bell.
+
+"Or if only the Parkers could have been persuaded to stay all night,"
+suggested Jessie.
+
+"Nonsense!" Bessie said. "Some one is playing us a trick, but we don't
+need to let it spoil our game;" and she put the handkerchief over
+her eyes. "Look here, Edwin: will you tie this? You do it better than
+John."
+
+"He doesn't," said John. "I believe he leaves it so that you can see.
+I'll do it. No, I won't make it too tight."
+
+"Don't you think, Jessie," Edwin asked, "that I could protect you, in
+case of danger, as well as the Parkers?"
+
+"I don't know. Perhaps if you were like yourself, but you're not like
+yourself."
+
+"He's as dull as ditch-water," said John.
+
+"But," said Jessie, taking his hand with a feeling of security,
+"you're better than nothing--a great deal better than nothing."
+
+"Thank you, Jessie, thank you! A man is the better for a little
+encouragement, you know;" and he looked at the Rose, but she was
+blind; which made her easier looked at, to be sure, but there was less
+chance of an answer, encouraging or otherwise.
+
+They had got up the spirit of the game again, and were going on
+briskly, when they were all brought to a stand by the bell ringing for
+the third time.
+
+"Don't stop," cried Bessie: "go on with the game and take no notice
+unless it rings again;" and as a leader who must show no fear she
+chased her sisters round the kitchen, making them flee to avoid being
+caught, when, as if in answer to her remark, the bell did ring again.
+
+This was too much. They all ran to the door, but neither human being
+nor ghost was to be seen.
+
+"I say," said John to his brother, "you and I will go out and watch.
+Edwin, you'll stay with the girls--they are frightened--and if the
+bell rings again we'll see who does it."
+
+"You have more need of Edwin than we have, John," Bessie said: "it
+will take you all to catch a ghost."
+
+"Come away, then," cried John; and he posted his sentinels at
+different angles, where each could have his eye on the door. The girls
+shut themselves in the house, and outside and in they awaited the
+result.
+
+There was no result.
+
+Ordinary sentinels can pace to and fro to make the moments go more
+quickly, but Edwin and John and William were compelled to stand
+without speech or motion, as to betray their presence would have been
+to defeat their purpose. At the end of half an hour their patience was
+worn out, and they came to the conclusion that whoever was playing the
+trick knew that they were watching; so they went in, and hardly were
+they in and the door shut when the bell rang again.
+
+John rushed from the kitchen, whither he had gone for something, but
+the others, being in the dining-room and nearer the door, reached it
+before him; and again nothing was to be seen but the still calm night,
+in which hung the moon with all her accustomed unimpassioned serenity.
+What cared she for ghosts? Perhaps she is only a ghost herself, else
+why, with all her pale quiet ways, does she never turn round and show
+herself thoroughly? No doubt she has reasons of her own, whether
+they are good or not: her sex is apt to be both capricious and
+persistent--two qualities which she possesses in perfection.
+
+The Ormistons and Edwin stood out on the broad walk before the door,
+none of them feeling very comfortable, if the truth must be told, but
+none of them showing their feelings except Bell and Jessie, who openly
+declared that they were very much frightened.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Bessie. "Who is going to be frightened at a silly
+trick?"
+
+"But it may be somebody wanting to get in to do us harm--kill us
+perhaps," suggested Bell.
+
+"People who want to get into a house for bad ends don't ring the front
+doorbell, or any bell," said Bessie.
+
+At this junction two figures appeared in the distance advancing along
+the road to the castle--soon made out to be the servants, so that they
+at least were guiltless in the affair.
+
+"It has not been them, you see," cried John.
+
+"No," Bessie said, "and you are not to say anything about it to them
+when they come: if they know anything of it, it will soon leak out;
+and if they don't tell, they will be quite frightened: they are as
+easily frightened as Bell or Jessie here."
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+All this time Mr. Forrester was feeling--not frightened certainly,
+but--perplexed; and while he could not but admire Miss Ormiston's
+coolness and courage, he could not help wishing that she had been just
+a little bit chicken-hearted: it would have been so delightful to have
+to act as protector and supporter. But there was no opening whatever
+for such a position: she took the mysterious affair into her own hands
+and pooh-poohed it entirely.
+
+They were accustomed to early hours at Cockhoolet, but when the time
+came for going to bed the girls declared they were too frightened to
+go up stairs alone. "It would be far better," they both said, "for us
+to stay here all together in this room till morning: we could sit up
+quite well."
+
+"Absurd!" said Bessie.
+
+"Well, we could not sleep even if we were in bed," they protested.
+
+"No fear," said the châtelaine. "If you were to sit up all night you
+would be like ghosts yourselves to-morrow morning. Come, I'll go with
+you and sit beside you till you sleep. But wait a minute till I come
+back."
+
+When they were bidding Mr. Forrester good-night he said to the girls,
+"If anything happens let me know."
+
+"Nothing will happen," said Bessie: "the bell is quiet now and the
+servants are sound asleep. I have just been looking at them, and the
+sooner we follow their example the better."
+
+"What are we to do if we hear the bell ring again?" John asked.
+
+"Nothing. Keep below the blankets, John," his sister said. "It will
+ring a loud peal indeed if you hear it: I think a cannon might be
+fired at your ear without disturbing you."
+
+"That's a mistake," said John, "I am a remarkably light sleeper: a fly
+on my nose will make me turn round any time."
+
+"I believe that, but it won't waken you. Good-night;" and she took
+a hand of each of her sisters and went off with all the dignity
+beseeming her position as head of the family and governor of the
+castle. Her presence being withdrawn, Edwin felt much as you do on a
+March day when the sun goes under a cloud, although he had not
+enjoyed the sun either, owing to the undercurrent of east wind that
+continually chilled him. He almost determined to give it up. Of what
+use was it? Evidently she did not care for him, and the words, "Mr.
+Forrester here again! he must surely be dull at home," sounded in
+his ears. Very east-windy they were; still, he loved her with a great
+love, and he could not give her up: he was in a mist, and could see
+neither to go back nor forward.
+
+"I say, Edwin," said John confidentially, "what do you think about
+this bell business? Of course one couldn't speak of it before the
+girls, they are frightened enough already--Bessie too, although she
+pretends not. What's your own private opinion about it?"
+
+"Oh, it must be a ghost," said Edwin: "they do things of that kind,
+you know--turn tables and rap and so on. I've been thinking I must be
+an unconscious medium."
+
+"Well," said John, "I, for one, don't believe in that kind of thing:
+if the spirits ever told anything worth hearing, or did anything worth
+doing, it might be different; but would Darnley or Bothwell or the
+abbot, or even any of the smaller fry of monks, come back here to ring
+a bell? I know in their place it's what I wouldn't do myself."
+
+"It would depend on where they are and how employed," said Edwin:
+"like some other people, they may be dull at home."
+
+"Ah, that's what Bessie said that's sticking in your throat. Man, it's
+no use minding what girls say: I never do.
+
+"The spirits must be deplorably dull if ringing a bell is a diversion
+to them."
+
+"They may enjoy mystifying us," said Edwin. "Who knows but they are
+listening just now, and laughing in whatever they may have instead of
+sleeves?"
+
+"I'm not frightened," said Will, "but I don't like subjects of this
+kind at bedtime, so I wish you wouldn't say any more about it."
+
+"It seems, however, that the bell was rung by invisible agency," said
+John.
+
+"Come, come, we'll stop talking and go to bed," Edwin said.
+
+"But, Edwin," said Will with big eyes, out of which he could not keep
+a frightened look, "do you think a spirit did it?"
+
+"No: it is a trick, and you'll find out who did it before long."
+
+"Well," said John, "it was a stupid trick, but cleverly done--very
+cleverly done, or whoever did it would not have escaped me."
+
+"I should not like to sleep alone to-night," Will said to his brother
+in confidence when they were in their own room, "and I don't believe
+you would either, although you don't say so. I wonder if Edwin likes
+it, away from every one too, in that room with the hole in its roof? I
+wonder papa does not get that hole mended?"
+
+"He has often spoken about it," said John, "but if I slept in that
+room I should rather like the hole. It's uncommon: every room hasn't a
+hole in its roof. If you couldn't sleep, for instance, you'd have only
+to stare at the hole, and you would doze off before you knew."
+
+"Staring at it would only keep me from sleeping," Will said: "I should
+always think something was looking at me through it."
+
+"What could look at you but light--moonlight or daylight from the room
+above? In the dark you would the hole."
+
+"Let's sleep," said Will; and, forgetting ghosts and bells and all
+influences, the two boys were soon asleep.
+
+It is to be hoped the girls were asleep also; indeed, there is little
+doubt the younger ones were. But Bessie, with the cares of a castle
+on her head, the mysteries of the evening to perplex her, and an
+unfortunate love-affair going more and more awry, how was it with her?
+
+And Edwin, in his remote room with its hole in the roof, how did he
+fare? He had gone up a stone staircase, through a long passage and
+down a short flight of steps, into a room large, somewhat low in
+ceiling, and, with the exception of the hole, most comfortably
+appointed. It felt warm, rather too warm, and he did not replenish
+the fire, preferring to let it go out. The room and the way to it
+were both very familiar to him, and, like John, he enjoyed the hole:
+staring at it made you sleep, and when not sleeping your fancy could
+play round it to any extent. On this night the light of the moon,
+shining in at the shutterless windows of the empty room above, fell
+across its floor, and gleamed down through the opening.
+
+A superstitious person with a talent for being eerie would have had
+nice scope for being frightened out of his senses in a situation
+like this--alone in a distant room of an old castle where bells rang
+mysteriously, and with borrowed moonlight peering down from above
+like a ghost looking for ghosts. But Mr. Forrester was not
+superstitious--not in the least. He feared nothing material or
+immaterial except--and it was a curious exception--except Bessie
+Ormiston; yet it is true he loved her, perfectly as he thought, but
+there was a flaw somewhere: it was not the perfect love that casteth
+out fear. The turning of a straw, however, might make it that, but
+who was to turn the straw? He feared to do it, and she would not.
+Notwithstanding these perturbed and cantankerous circumstances, these
+two people, being young and naturally sleepy, slept.
+
+How long he had been sleeping Edwin did not know, when he awoke
+suddenly, as if he had been startled by some noise. However, he might
+have been dreaming: he did not know. The fire was thoroughly out
+and black, there was no ray of light from the roof, and the
+window-curtains being closely drawn, if there was any light outside it
+was effectually shut out: the room was as dark as midnight.
+
+He rose, and finding his way to the table groped for a box of matches
+that he had noticed lying there, and lighted his lamp, when, looking
+at his watch, he found the hour to be half-past three. Before going to
+bed again he thought he would see what night it was. Accordingly,
+he opened the curtains and shutters and gazed forth. The moon had
+disappeared--which was not remarkable, as it was past her hour for
+retiring--and the night was very dark and hazy. But a remarkable
+object met his eye. But from an angle of the house, and toward the
+corner of the field which had been the site of the ancient monastery,
+there stood a column five or six feet in height of what through
+the haze appeared luminous vapor. It seemed such an altogether
+unaccountable thing, standing there, that Edwin pushed the window open
+and rubbed his eyes to get a better sight of it. He expected it would
+disappear in some way almost immediately, but it did not: there it
+stood, perfectly still and perfectly distinct, at the corner of the
+field, where there was absolutely nothing to cause it. He watched it
+for a considerable time, and as his eye got accustomed to peering into
+the darkness, he could see there was nothing near it, and not a sound
+disturbed the stillness of the night.
+
+"That's not a trick," he thought: "no one would think it worth while
+to play a trick, certain of being without an audience either to see or
+hear it. I question even if it is the abbot himself; or if he likes to
+air himself there in the middle of a winter night, he must be too hot
+at home, if not too dull."
+
+A filmy mantle of pale white vapor is surely a more likely garment for
+a spirit to snatch up and wrap round him when about to indulge in an
+earthly tour than the conventional and traditionary white sheet:
+in point of fact, for the sheet he must wait till he arrives in our
+world, and when he does arrive he must of necessity help himself to
+it; which I, for one, should be sorry to think any well-conditioned
+ghost would do; but light, pale shadowy light, lying about everywhere
+for the picking up, what so suitable as raiment for a being who has
+nothing to wear?
+
+It could not but occur to Edwin, Had the abbot come back to his old
+haunt on some errand? Had he a benevolent ghostly interest in its
+present inhabitants? Here was a work in which even a spirit of mark
+might engage without loss of dignity and with perfect propriety. He
+might turn tables on the perverse circumstances that kept two young
+people separate; and if marriages are made in heaven, an angel need
+not despise such a mission as making two lovers happy.
+
+"Well" thought Edwin, "if you are Abbot John, how do you like to see
+the dear old stones of your monastery built into dykes? or would you
+have preferred seeing them applied to villa purposes?" If it were
+the abbot, Edwin felt he would like to have that familiar kind of
+intercourse with him which in our country is known as twa-handed
+crack; and if it were not the abbot, he had a wonderful curiosity to
+know what it was--to have it accounted for. There it stood, apparently
+as firm and sure as the first moment he had seen it; and a cause it
+must have.
+
+Accordingly, he dressed himself with the intention of proceeding to
+the spot to interview the abbot and see what kind of stuff he was made
+of. Mr. Forrester took the lamp in his hand and opened the room-door
+softly: not that he thought any one would hear him, but soft sounds
+best become the stillness of the night. As he went down the stairs he
+became conscious of a cold air playing about, as if from an open door
+or window. He set his lamp on the stone sill of the passage-window,
+and had his hand on the key of the outer door to unlock it, when he
+heard a quick, sudden scream, apparently from the oldest part of
+the building. He listened intently for a second, but there was no
+repetition of it, and everything was perfectly quiet.
+
+"That was human," he said to himself; and seizing his lamp he ran
+along till he came to the door of the ancient keep, which was standing
+open: he took the way he and the rest of the party had gone the
+previous afternoon, and found the doors that were usually kept locked
+all open. Going on very hurriedly, he came to the room where the bare
+rafters were the only flooring, and at the other end of it he saw
+something like a white heap gleaming. He strode across instantly, and
+stooping with the light in hand discovered Bessie Ormiston lying in a
+dead faint just at the edge of one of the rafters: the least movement
+would have sent her down on the hard pavement below. He did not stop
+to think how she came to be there: setting his lamp where it would
+light him across the dangerous flooring, he lifted her up and threaded
+the passages and stairs in the darkness till he laid her safe on the
+dining-room sofa, still unconscious.
+
+Kneeling beside her in the darkness, he felt that her face and hands
+were very cold. He did not know what to do. If she had been any other
+person, he would have had his senses about him, but, being who she
+was, they had scattered themselves, and he felt dazed. The fire was
+not quite out, and he thought of smashing up a chair to make it burn,
+but searching in the coal-scuttle at the side, of the fireplace, he
+found both sticks and coals, and heaped them on: then he lighted the
+lamp that was still standing on the table. All this was the work of
+a minute or two. A fainting-fit was quite beyond the range of his
+experience, but he had some vague idea that in cases of the kind water
+should be dashed in the face or a smelling-bottle held to the nostrils
+or brandy poured down the throat; but none of these things were at
+hand, and as he looked at Bessie, hesitating what to do, he saw the
+color steal back to her face, and she opened her eyes and suddenly
+shut them. When she opened them again she took his presence as a
+matter of course, and said, "I sometimes walk in my sleep, I know, but
+I am not in the habit of fainting;" and she smiled, looking much more
+like the lily than the rose.
+
+"I hope not," he said.
+
+"It was the fright I got when I woke and saw where I was. I shouldn't
+have been frightened, for I knew the place as well as I know this
+room, and could have found my way back in the dark."
+
+"What can I get for you?--you must have something." It is an awkward
+thing when a nurse has to seek directions from a patient.
+
+"Nothing," she said: "I can take nothing, and I am quite well. I can't
+think how I was so foolish as to scream, and I am sorry for disturbing
+you."
+
+"You did not disturb me: if I had been asleep I should never have
+heard you."
+
+"I wish you had been asleep."
+
+"You might have fallen through the rafters and been hurt or perished
+of cold."
+
+"I shouldn't have fallen through the rafters: I should have come to
+myself and have walked back quite well alone; but I am not the less
+obliged to you."
+
+"I should say not," he said with a curl of sarcasm. "Then is there
+nothing I can do for you?"
+
+"Nothing, unless, indeed, you could get hot water for me to wash my
+feet in. Sleeping as I was, I had the good sense to put on a thick
+shawl, but I made my excursion barefoot: they say walking barefoot
+improves one's carriage."
+
+"Bessie, I never know what to make of you."
+
+"If you know what to make of yourself it's a great matter: sometimes
+people don't know that," she said, rather wearily.
+
+"I had better make myself scarce at present, probably?" he said.
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Then good-night. You won't faint again?"
+
+"No: good-night."
+
+He left the room and shut the door gently, but when a few paces away
+some impulse moved him to go back: she might faint again, and he would
+ask if he should send one of the servants to her.
+
+When he opened the door she was sitting with her face hidden in her
+hands. At the sound of the door opening she glanced up, and Edwin saw
+tears.
+
+She turned away instantly. He went up to her and said, "I did not mean
+to intrude. I forgot to ask if I should tell one of the servants to
+come."
+
+"No, you needn't."
+
+"Bessie," he said, "you are not well, and something is vexing you.
+Could you not tell me about it. I mean nothing but kindness."
+
+"I know you don't," she said almost fiercely, "and I hate kindness:
+it's an insult."
+
+He stood in blank astonishment, "An insult?" he said.
+
+"Yes, an insult; and if you were not obtuse you would see it. But you
+don't see and you don't feel, or you would never have tried to make
+any one care for you for whom you did not care a bit. But I won't care
+for you, and I don't."
+
+Off her guard, she had been stung into this. She was standing away
+from him, her head erect and her eyes gleaming through tears: Mary
+Stuart herself could not have been more effective.
+
+"Care for you! not care for you!" he said in a voice he could hardly
+control. "I have cared for you as I never cared for a thing on earth:
+I have loved and shall love you as I have never loved a human being."
+
+"How am I to believe it? Why did you not say it? Why did you not say
+it without making me ashamed of myself?"
+
+"Ashamed! Oh, Bessie, I only feared to annoy you."
+
+"Annoy!"
+
+He gathered her to him and kissed her.
+
+A castle all to themselves at four o'clock in the morning is a piece
+of fortune that rarely falls to lovers, and they need not expect it;
+but those great thick walls were no way taken by surprise: they had
+not been confidants of this kind of thing off and on for four or five
+hundred years to be taken by surprise now. Whether after such long
+familiarity with the old story they felt it any way stale, you will
+readily believe they did not say.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+"I've forgotten the abbot entirely," said Edwin when he had time to
+come to himself after the first draught of miraculous champagne. "I
+was on my way to investigate his ghost when I heard an unaccountable
+scream."
+
+"I never screamed before, and I don't think I shall ever scream again:
+I don't know how I have been so weak to-night."
+
+"Weakness always draws out kindness," said Edwin.
+
+"I would rather be weak than obtuse," said Bessie.
+
+"But it is better to be only obtuse than both. I know someone who was
+both."
+
+"Well, what was I to think, and what could I do?"
+
+"Nothing better than you did--make a declar--"
+
+"What were you saying about the abbot's ghost?"
+
+"I was on my way to have an interview with it when--"
+
+"What was it like, and where did you find it?"
+
+"It was like a column of light standing not far from the house near the
+corner of the abbey-field."
+
+"And you did not think of any explanation of the phenomenon?"
+
+"No, I did not: it seemed more mysterious even than the ringing of the
+bell."
+
+"To obtuse people it does."
+
+"I thought the abbot might be feeling without a home, and sympathized
+with him, I assure you, very heartily."
+
+"I can tell you what it is: the servants had to rise at three this
+morning to work. It is the light shining out from the laundry-window:
+I've seen it often enough."
+
+"Well, it was a providential ghost for you and Edwin."
+
+"[illegible]" said John when they were assembled at breakfast next
+morning, looking no worse for the excitement of the previous evening,
+having all slept well: if the bell had rung it had disturbed no one
+at all. Mr. Forrester and Bessie had not made any one the wiser of the
+well-timed appearance of the abbot's ghost which had played such an
+effective part in their previous night's drama,--"I say," he
+said looking at Mr. Forrester and then at Bessie, "there is some
+understanding between you two; you are always looking at each other,
+and when you entered the room this morning you [illegible], and
+started off [illegible] been caught. But I have [illegible] this
+time."
+
+Bessie realized that her secret had become common property, and
+blushed becomingly.
+
+Mr. Forrester said, "What have you suspected, John?"
+
+"That Bessie and you laid your heads together to make the bell ring
+last night to frighten us. Remember, I'm not stupid altogether."
+
+"I assure you, John, I had nothing to do with the ringing of the
+bell," Bessie said.
+
+"Nor had I," said Edwin.
+
+"That's queer, then," said John; "but I'm sure there's something of
+some kind between you two: you're planning something, I know. What is
+it?"
+
+"Wise people don't reveal their plans to every one till near the time
+for executing them, John," said Edwin.
+
+"Oh, very well," John answered: "you can keep them to yourselves.
+I dare say it's nothing of consequence;" and having finished his
+breakfast, John was off to his out-door business. The shortest cut
+to his destination--and he always took short cuts--was through the
+kitchen, and as he hastily brushed along the wall toward the door he
+was brought up suddenly by a loud peal of the bell, and he looked at
+one of the servants, who was working at the table, as much as to say,
+"Do you hear that?"
+
+She answered his look: "Yes, I ha'en, but there's naebody at the door.
+It was yu that rang the bell: ye cam against that bag of worsted
+clues for durning that I hung on the bell-wine yesterday. When onybody
+happens to touch it the weight o' 't gars the bell ring; I would hae
+to ta'en off."
+
+With this simple and inglorious explanation John rushed to the
+dining-room where he found Mrs. Forrester and the châtelaine in deep
+Conspiracy again; and to this hour the ghost of Cockhoolet is a matter
+(if you can use that word in connection with a ghost at all) of faith
+and not of sight.
+
+When Mrs. and Mrs Ormiston returned they found that their eldest
+daughter was engaged to be married, which surprised them as little as
+it did the old woman but moved them a good deal more.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEADEN ARROW.
+
+
+A wondrous half-century was that which forms an isthmus rather than a
+bridge between the Middle Ages and the times termed Modern. Exit
+the Last of the Barons--enter the printing-press. Exit Boabdil
+el Chico--enter Columbus and Da Gama. The plot thickened as the
+_cinquecenti_ hove in view. The last years were the most pregnant.
+While the last sigh of the Moor was dying into the murmurs of the
+Xenil, that solitary shout that will ring while earth lasts went up
+from the bows of the Pinta. Together came America and the sea-way to
+India and--the rifle. For in 1498, when Buonarotti was at his prime,
+Raphael, fifteen years old, had just taken his seat at the paternal
+easel, and the scenes of the _Lusiad_ were in progress, "barrels were
+first grooved at Venice."
+
+Who grooved them we are not told. The name of that artist has not
+survived, though we still remember his contemporary townsman, Titian.
+Strictly, he is not entitled to the immortality of an originator. That
+belongs to the unknown savage who, in the miocene era probably, first
+gave a twist to the feather of his arrow, thereby communicating to it
+a revolving motion at right angles to the line of flight, and making
+it an "arm of precision." But pre-historic artillery we may dismiss
+or leave to Milton. The blind bard omits to inform us whether the
+guns used in the great pounding-match between Lucifer and Michael
+were smooth-bores or rifles. The strong presumption is that they were
+exclusively the former, and that a well-served battery of Parrotts
+would have silenced them in fifteen minutes. By giving him a few
+pieces of the kind the poet would have further brightened the feather
+he sets in Satan's cap as the benefactor of mankind by inventing
+gunpowder and shortening wars. The bow he presents to us as an old and
+familiar weapon even at the date of that first and greatest of
+pitched battles. Its claim, as the parent of projectile implements,
+is recognized in the common etymology of _arcus, arcualia_--artillery.
+Arblast, arquebuse, blunderbuss, mark a humbler collateral descent
+in the same verbal family. The ballista, or fifty-man-power bow,
+constituted the heavy, and the individual article the light, artillery
+of twenty centuries ago. Slings and javelins, being for hand-to-hand
+fighting (David was near enough to hold an easy conversation with
+Goliath before bringing him down), can hardly be brought within
+the designation. The twang of either heavy or light was but a thin
+contribution to the orchestra of battle compared to "the diapason of
+the cannonade." How much we have lost in the absence of this element
+of tremendous noise from the conflicts of ancient days! What a tool
+it would have been in Homer's hands! How trivial, to the author of
+the book of Job, would have seemed the noise of the captains and
+the shouting! We cannot, indeed, quite suppress the fancy that some
+mightier counter-concussion must have filled the air at Thrasimene,
+when "an earthquake reeled unheededly away:" _Nemo pugnantium
+senserit_, avers Livy. But nothing is said of it. The old heroes died
+in silence, like the wolf "biting hard among the dying dogs."
+
+A well-known essay of a modern poet beautifully uses this piece of the
+modern machinery of his craft. Dryden here makes distance mellow the
+thunder of a naval fight into a musical undertone. The great sea-fight
+between the duke of York and the Dutch, fought within hearing of
+London, left "the town almost empty" of its anxious citizens, whose
+"dreadful suspense would not allow them to rest at home," but drew
+them into the eastern fields and suburbs, "all seeking the noise
+in the depth of silence." Dryden and three friends took a barge and
+descended the river. Once clear of the crowded port above Greenwich,
+"they ordered the watermen to let fall their oars more gently; and
+then, every one favoring his own curiosity with a strict silence, it
+was not long ere they perceived the air to break about them like the
+noise of distant thunder or of swallows in a chimney; those little
+undulations of sound, though almost vanishing before they reached
+them, yet still seeming to retain somewhat of their first horror which
+they had between the fleets. After they had attentively listened till
+such time as the sound by little and little went from them, Eugenius,
+lifting up his head and taking notice of it, was the first who
+congratulated to the rest that happy omen of our nation's victory."
+
+This, the eloquent eolian music of distant and unseen battle, was
+unheard by the ancient cities and their chroniclers and poets. It will
+grow again less familiar as rifled ordnance is introduced, with its
+thinner and sharper style of expression. Waterloo appears to have been
+heard farther than Sedan or Metz, although its pieces were but popguns
+compared with those that spoke the requiem of the Third Napoleon.
+And perhaps, if we allow for smallness in number and calibre, those
+employed by Robert the Bruce at the battle of Werewater in 1327--said
+to be the first recorded occasion in Europe--were more vociferous than
+their successors of to-day. Few and cumbrous they must indeed have
+been, since Edward III. could only bring four into the field at Crécy;
+and they did far less service than the twanging cloth-yard shaft in
+deciding the event of that conflict.
+
+It was not till centuries later that the rifle perceptibly exerted
+its treble voice in the multitudinous debates of the _ultima ratio_.
+Shrill as John Randolph's, its pipe, once set up, was very attentively
+and respectfully listened to. Like his, it spoke from the woods
+of America. "Stand your ground, my brave fellows," shouted Colonel
+Washington under the sycamores of the Monongahela on the 9th of
+July, 1755, "and draw your sights for the honor of old Virginia!"
+The colonial rifle covered the retreat of the British queen's-arm, if
+retreat such a rout as Braddock's could be called.
+
+It is about the same time that we find a British writer, who had
+witnessed the efficiency of the rifle as a companion implement to
+the axe in pushing European settlement on this continent, saying,
+"Whatever state shall thoroughly comprehend the nature and advantages
+of rifle-pieces, and, having facilitated and completed their
+construction, shall introduce into its armies their general use, with
+a dexterity in the management of them, will by this means acquire a
+superiority which will almost equal anything that has been done at
+any time by the particular excellence of any one kind of firearms,
+and will perhaps fall but little short of the wonderful effects which
+histories relate to have been formerly produced by the first inventors
+of firearms."
+
+This was written in 1748, at which time the rifle was used only by
+the hunters of the Alps and the hunters of the American backwoods;
+the latter having doubtless derived it from the former through German
+immigration. Bull's conservatism, however, was in the way. The lessons
+of Fort Duquesne, of Saratoga and of New Orleans were successively
+wasted on him. He did arm one regiment, the Ninety-fifth, with this
+weapon toward the close of the last century, but for a long time it
+stood alone in the royal service. Austria had previously maintained
+some corps of Tyrolese Jägers. The French fought through all the wars
+of their Revolution without having recourse to the rifle, save in the
+campaign of 1793. It is singular that the keen eye of Napoleon failed
+to detect its value, especially when we note the use he made of light
+troops. The fate of Nelson justifies the idea that a large body of
+good riflemen might have changed the issue of Trafalgar.
+
+Curiously enough, the French, who were the last to realize the merits
+of the rifle, were the first to institute those improvements which
+caused, within the present generation, its universal substitution
+for the musket. The Gallic pioneer was Delvigne, but his first
+improvements proved, as Pat might say, no improvement at all. The
+inconvenience of slow loading was the most obvious. Delvigne's remedy
+was to give the ball increased windage; in other words, to diminish
+its diameter comparatively with that of the bore. The ball thus went
+easily down to the shoulders of the chamber containing the charge.
+Arrived there, a smart rap with the ramrod moulded it to the grooves.
+But it also flattened the top, and forced the bottom partly into the
+chamber. Thus misshapen at birth, the bullet was cast upon the world
+to an erratic and fruitless career.
+
+In 1828 a second Frenchman took the tube in hand. Colonel Thouvenin
+abandoned the chamber, and filled up much of the place it had occupied
+with a cylindrical steel pillar, or _tige_, which projected from the
+breech-plug longitudinally into the barrel. This formed a little anvil
+whereon the bullet was to be beaten into the grooves. But the bottom
+was flattened, and the powder acted only on the periphery of the ball
+instead of the centre, tending thus to give it an oblique direction.
+
+Here Delvigne picked up the weapon for another trial. He accomplished
+far the most important advance yet seen--an advance relatively as
+great as Watt's separate condenser in the steam-engine. He retained
+the _tige_, but he _changed the spherical ball into a cylinder with a
+conical point_, as we now have it. In this he, in effect, reached the
+ultimatum of progress as regards the general form of the projectile.
+He assimilated it to Newton's solid of least resistance. That primeval
+missile, the arrow, had for unnumbered centuries presented to the
+eyes of men an illustration of a simple truth which scientific formula
+succeeded, scarce a couple of centuries since, in evolving. "The
+bridge was built," as the old sapper told his commander, "before them
+picters" (the engineer's designs) "came." The arrow-head describes, as
+it whirls through the air, a solid varying from a cone only so far as
+its edges vary from straight lines. This variation serves to blend the
+cone with the cylinder formed by the revolution of the arrow-head and
+the feather. The difference in length between the ball and the arrow
+is due to the necessities of the case. The least practicable length
+is best for both. The office of the spirally-wound feather in
+communicating a rotary motion, and thereby balancing, by an opposite
+force, the tendency of the missile to swerve in any given direction,
+is fulfilled by the spiral groove of the rifle. Of course, the
+ordinary smooth musket is unfitted to the conico-cylindrical ball.
+Discharged from such a barrel, there being nothing to keep the point
+in the direction of its flight, it soon tumbles over, like an arrow
+without a feather, and strikes wide of the mark.
+
+Delvigne's new gun came into use in 1840. The long matchlocks of the
+Arabs had been very worrying to the French in Algiers. It was a common
+pastime of the Ishmaelites to pick off the Gauls at a distance which
+left Brown Bess helpless. Protruded over an almost inaccessible crag,
+the former primitive instrument would plump its ball into the ranks
+of the Giaour in the dell below with a precision and an effect hardly
+requited by victories in the open field or by the cave-smokings of
+His Grace of Malakoff. Delvigne's arm was accordingly supplied to the
+Chasseurs d'Orléans, and in their hands served the desired purpose.
+The matchlock met its match.
+
+Under M. Delvigne's system, however, the ball was not always well
+forced into the grooves. The _tige_, too, made cleaning difficult:
+it often got crooked, and it sometimes broke off. A M. Tamisier
+did something toward removing the former difficulty by cutting
+very shallow grooves on the ball itself. The other called forth the
+ingenuity of the now famous Minié, who made his first appearance
+in 1847-1848, and whose name has attained the same kind of lethal
+immortality with the names of Shrapnell, Congreve and Rodman. M. Minié
+abandoned the _tige_ entirely. He scooped out the base of the ball and
+inserted into it an iron cup. This cup was driven into the ball by
+the explosion, and forced the soft lead into the grooves. The leading
+objection to the Minié ball in this form was that the device did its
+work too thoroughly. The iron was often driven so deep into the lead
+as to tear off the solid point and scatter the whole projectile into
+two or three pieces. This mitrailleuse-like distribution of disrupted
+spheres or leaden asteroids was obviated by the abandonment of the
+iron cup, the powder being left to act on the lead itself. Two or
+three channels cut around the neck of the bullet helped to keep
+the point in line, and aided at the same time the fastening of the
+cartridge. Thus came its final metamorphosis to the buzzing little
+torment that has been at intervals for the last twenty years flying
+over all the continents and perplexing the nations.
+
+It was not till 1852 that the Enfield rifle was settled on as the
+standard weapon of the British army. Machinery and machinists were
+imported for its fabrication from the United States, the appliances
+of our government armories being copied, and Colonel Bruton, of the
+Harper's Ferry Works, employed to set them going. Prior to that time
+all firearms of public or private manufacture, in England, had been
+made by hand, the interchangeability of all the parts of any given
+number of guns being an end accomplished in this country alone. The
+advantage of having every corresponding detail of each piece a fac
+simile of the same part in all the firelocks of an army must have been
+perceived from the time when such weapons were first invented;
+and nothing but the most inveterate conservatism, or the steadiest
+opposition of that stamp which mobbed threshing-machines and the
+spinning-jenny, could have so long staved off its practical adoption.
+
+Once awakened, however, England became, as she usually does, active,
+innovating and experimental enough. Rifled cannon, breech-loaders and
+armored ships--all the legitimate offspring of the Venetian barrel
+and its American employment--have kept her ever since in a ferment of
+boards, commissions and target-firing. But these would carry us
+beyond our prescribed limit into a boundless field of inquiry and
+description. It would be like passing from a notice of the tubular
+boiler of Stephenson's Rocket to a discussion of the vast railway
+system it begot.
+
+The Crimean war afforded the first test, on a large scale, in
+civilized warfare, of the issue between smooth and twist. How the
+conoidal bullet and rifled barrel, opposed at Inkermann to the
+antiquated Russian musket, tore through the dense columns which
+had forced their way to the brow of the plateau, driving the stolid
+Muscovites, "incapable of panic," back into the ravine pell-mell--how,
+at many periods of the siege of Sebastopol, the rifle-pits did more to
+cripple the defence than did the mortars and battering-guns--we need
+not recount. These pits, and the rope mantlets wherewith they obliged
+the Russians to cover their embrasures, were pronounced by Captain
+(since General) George B. McClellan, in his report of the United
+States Military Commission, about the only marked novelties of
+the siege. Of both, _mutatis mutandis_, he and his opponents made
+effective use in our civil war.
+
+Nor shall we pick our perilous way among the Sniders, Chassepots,
+Zündnadelgewehre, and Zündnadelbüchsen whose various charms absorb the
+military mind at this day. The debate among them is but as to the best
+utilization of the old arrow-theory. The oblong projectile, that goes
+singing on its winding way, is common to them all. Slipped in at the
+back door or rammed home at the front, delicately stirred up by the
+insinuating needle and its titbit of fulminate or bluntly ordered off
+by the snappish percussion-cap, it is the same obedient and faithful
+messenger, and goes on its appointed errand in much the same style.
+
+Under the ancient régime of the musket it required the soldier's
+weight in lead to kill him. Its point-blank range was about sixty
+yards, but precision even at that short distance it by no means
+possessed. At the battle of Fontenoy the English and French Guards,
+drawn up in opposite lines, conversed with each other prior to firing,
+like two groups of friends across the street. "Gentlemen of the French
+Guards, fire!" was the courteous invitation of the British commander.
+"The French Guards never fire first," was the reply. And not till then
+did punctilio come to an end. Such a colloquy in our day would need
+to be carried on with forty-horse power speaking-trumpets, or with the
+thunderous articulation of that between the bellowing Alps and echoing
+Jura. Even smooth-bore field-pieces, with point-blank of three hundred
+and twenty yards and service range of one thousand, have to keep their
+distance. It is a rare thing now for cannon to be captured by a charge
+of cavalry or the bayonet. The rifle destroys _quantum suff._ of their
+horses, and, their support overpowered, they remain a helpless prey.
+
+For this default of the blustering cannon in the trying of conclusions
+with its quiet little cousin, the natural remedy is to improve its
+interior in the same manner. This has been done, and with marvelous
+effect in some respects. But the rifled cannon, though extensively
+used both on sea and land, throwing shot and shell five miles, and at
+close range through iron plates a foot thick, cannot be yet styled a
+perfected weapon. It may be in a very few years, thanks to the ardent
+anxiety, on the part of the several peoples composing "the parliament
+of man, the federation of the world," to excel each other in the
+"brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art." At present it is maintained
+by very good American authority that for use under some conditions,
+at short or moderate range, the smooth gun of large calibre is more
+effective than a rifled gun throwing a missile of the same weight.
+Our monitors continue to be armed with the fifteen-inch Rodman, very
+recent experiments being cited to prove its penetrating effect on iron
+plates greater than that of the European rifled guns. This, of course,
+at very close range.
+
+The rifle is, in its simplest form, a more complex instrument than the
+smooth-bored piece, and will always require superior intelligence to
+manage it. The army which naturally possesses this requisite in the
+highest degree will best handle this decisive weapon, and be, other
+things equal, the strongest army. This consideration operates in favor
+of our people, among whom the rifle has always been in so much more
+constant and familiar use than with those of other countries. Our
+broad forests will have to be cleared and our mountain-chains,
+east and west, more densely settled than Switzerland, before the
+distinction of a nation of marksmen can be lost to us. So far, there
+is little evidence of this change. The deer and the wild-turkey are
+nearly as abundant on the Atlantic slope of the Alleghanies as they
+ever were. Probably there are more of both in Virginia than at the
+time of the settlement of Jamestown. Like the quail and the bee, they
+are favored by a certain advance of population and cultivation.
+
+Another species of aborigine does not similarly thrive in the path of
+the rifle. The Indian of the Plains is still troublesome occasionally,
+but far less so than when blue-coats and blunderbusses joined forces
+against him. The odds then were often on his side, for many of the red
+men were armed with the rifle, while the troops had but the musket and
+carbine. The appearance of the breech-loading rifle in the hands of
+the United States dragoons on the frontier just fifteen years ago let
+in new light upon the Camanche and Apache mind. Up to that period the
+badgering of a detachment of "heavies" was a favorite pastime with
+these gentry. They got up their "spring fights" with as much coolness
+and regularity as the early patriarchs of Texas are related to have
+done, and not merely, as in the case of the latter, in utter contempt,
+but directly at the expense, of the constituted authorities. Tying
+a bag of dried mule-meat and pounded corn to the peak of his saddle,
+fashioning a small supply of arrows, or balls if he boasted the
+spectre of a gun, coloring the inferior half of his frontispiece a
+rich vermilion and the upper a delicate green, with ramifications of
+lampblack coursing tastefully along the cheek-bones and the bridge of
+the nose, twisting a crane's feather into the tail of his horse, and
+giving his affectionate squaw a farewell kick, the cavalier of the
+prairie was ready for a raid on the Long-knives. Making a rapid
+night-march or two, he would carry the "latest intelligence from
+the Indian country" to the border ranches of Texas or New Mexico.
+Stampeding all the horses and mules that stood or ranged convenient,
+and under favorable circumstances some cattle and sheep, and
+"gobbling" on occasion some incautious Cyrion or Phyllis of the
+Western Arcadia, the marauder made for the mountains. By the time he
+had well passed the last outpost the hue-and-cry was at his heels,
+followed, after an easy-going delay, by the lumbering dragoon. The
+soldier, armed with ineffectual sabre and carbine, encumbered with
+a variety of traps about as useful as they, usually managed, if not
+forced to put back by stress of provisions, to come up with him in the
+gates of the hills. There an idle interchange of arrow and round ball
+between hollow and cliff wound up the eventful history of the chase.
+As a rule, no marked chastisement was inflicted on the Indian: he
+realized in peace the proceeds of his little speculation.
+
+Now, Minié, like the Harpagon of his countryman, has "changed all
+that." The retreating heathen flies to his hills in vain. They do not
+cover him, but the rifle does. Cantering to the summit of a knoll,
+he waves his compliments to the distant dragoon with a gesture of
+derision, more expressive than elegant, he has acquired from the
+white. Turning calmly to depart, as he sinks below the crest of the
+hill a sagittiform bullet, fired at five hundred yards' distance with
+all the science and talent purchasable with thirteen dollars a month
+and rations, plumps into the rump of his unhappy pony, and the Stoic
+of the woods is unhorsed. Reared on horseback, and weak in the legs
+from long addiction to that mode of locomotion, this is a _casus
+omissus_ in Lo's tactics. Scant time, however, has he for reflection.
+He gathers up himself and his drapery as well as circumstances will
+allow, and scuttles hurriedly off, a fluttering chaos of rags and
+feathers. It is too late. Heaven is on the side of the best artillery.
+A few minutes and the Philistines are upon him. Burnside's or
+Remington's last patent again lifts up its voice, and the triumph of
+civilization is complete.
+
+The prairie Indian, unlike his congener of the woods, has as yet been
+but partially able to substitute gunpowder for the bow. The advantage
+he has in the protection afforded him by the desolation of his
+waterless _mesas_ and sage-covered hills is thus in great measure
+neutralized. What, when he does possess the modern firearm, he is
+capable of doing with it, the achievements of the Modocs in their
+volcanic stronghold will attest. But these were few, and soon went
+down. The extinction of the tribes west and south of the Rio Grande
+and the Humboldt cannot be many years postponed. The red rover of that
+region will disappear as a combatant in the same way, and before the
+same weapon, as his brother nomad of Algeria, the earliest victim of
+the conoidal bullet. The spherical ball has done its appointed part
+in disposing of the aborigines east of the Mississippi, where forests
+covered the land and trees generally intercepted the sight at a
+hundred or a hundred and fifty yards. With the extension of Caucasian
+empire to the Plains came an extension of the range of vision, which
+necessitated an advance in the range of the rifle. The weapon of
+Sharpe figured for the first time in the van when the woods of
+Missouri were passed and the open plains of Kansas reached. There
+its office was, unfortunately, the strife of white against white. The
+largest possible range, the greatest possible number of shots in a
+given time, were demanded in a war wherein the opposing armies were
+seldom within five miles of each other, or more than one man hurt to
+five hundred charges of powder burned. How the Lenni Lenape must have
+opened their eyes at this reproduction of the drama of a century ago
+when the whites, English and French, were fighting each other for the
+possession of the Delawares' lands in Pennsylvania! The feeble remnant
+of the compatriots of Logan had "moved on," under pressure of a very
+urgent police, a thousand miles westward to a reservation not a great
+deal larger, when portioned out, than that last reservation allotted
+to all men; and the pale-faces who had hung upon his track he now saw
+fighting for that.
+
+From its warlike aspect it is pleasant to turn to the contributions
+of the rifle to peaceful amusement, if not peaceful industry.
+Contemptuously giving the go-by to its minutest phase in this
+field--the "parlor rifle," with a target against the chimney-piece
+or meandering, in feline form, along our neighbor's roof-tree--we go
+forth, with Snider and sunrise, to the forest fastness. Our companions
+throng, tall, bronzed, close-knit and sinewy, true children of
+the four-grooved, from frosty Caucasus, the Hartz, the Alps, the
+Dovrafjeld, the Grampians, the Himmalaya, the Adirondack, the
+Alleghany, the Nevada. The chamois, the ibex, the red deer, the
+Virginia deer, the wapiti, the gour, or the royal tiger may be the
+game in hand. The tiger we are accustomed to associate exclusively
+with the dank jungles of Lower India, but he climbs, each summer, the
+great passes of Central Asia, "the roof of the world," and makes his
+way to the frontier of Siberia, beyond 50° north.
+
+The equipment of the mountain-rifleman is characterized by simplicity
+and a strict attention to business. The nature of the ground over
+which he works inexorably prescribes this. The superfluities of the
+fox-hunter or the partridge-shooter with his dog-cart cannot be his.
+Hatchet, pouch, knife and knapsack, with alpenstock on occasion, about
+comprise his kit. He may be attended by a hound or two, but not a
+pack. He wants no yelling. He hears but
+
+              the Spirit of the Mist,
+  And it speaks to the Spirit of the Fell.
+
+For little hollows and little hills Scott's dogs, that
+
+        raved through the hollow pass amain,
+  Chiding the rocks that yelled again,
+
+may have been highly effective when his mediæval sportsmen, who
+carried no guns, could keep within a furlong of them. But in the
+depths of the great mountains, with point-blank range of six hundred
+yards and long pops of nearly twice that, they would be preposterous.
+Fancy the Quorndon or the Pytchley on the flanks of the Matterhorn!
+
+Chamois-hunting, the sporting specialty of the Swiss and the Tyrolese,
+appears to be dying out. The hunter of our day keeps it up rather as
+a tradition than as a practical pursuit. He rarely bags a "goat,"
+for goats are very few to bag, and those few even more supernaturally
+fleet and sure of foot and keen of nose than their less-hunted
+ancestors. Still, somewhere in that upper world of lilac-white that
+melts into the clouds in vast but distance-softened chasms of viscid
+ice and rifts of gray gneiss, there is an object for him. In some nook
+or on some crag of the square leagues of desert that swell around him
+a troop of the desiderated ruminants is grazing, if grazing it can
+be called where grass is none. He is very sure of that. Even from the
+door of his chalet he scans the slopes in the half hope of detecting a
+flock or a single goat. His father and his grandfather before him had
+looked forth from the same door on the same scene, snuffed the same
+"caller air," mentally shaped the same pretext for yielding to the
+same spirit of adventure begotten of the peaks and by going forth
+to battle with the solitude, and hunted patiently, sometimes with
+success, oftener without, the progenitors of the same quarry. So he
+prepares himself anew for the wild and perilous tramp. A day--two or
+three days--may pass without the compassing of a shot, or even hearing
+the whistle of the sentinel goat as he shrills the alarm far out of
+range and leads his fellows in twenty minutes to crags the hunter
+cannot reach in as many hours. Death crouches in the treacherous
+snow-crust beneath or the poised avalanche above. A false step or an
+inch's miscalculation of leap may make him a waif for the lämmergeier
+or land him among the buried villages of the last century. He toils
+on until success or starvation sends him home. In the former case he
+out-generals his shy game after a series of manoeuvres to which the
+deepest stratagems of our Indians are straightforwardness personified.
+He gets a long shot at a distance that would make the musket or
+buckshot as useless as a sabre. The certainty may be apparent that the
+animal, if hit mortally, must fall some hundreds of feet, perhaps into
+an inaccessible chasm. There is no help for that. Now or never! The
+short rifle, assisted by a portable rest, is called on for its best.
+The concentrated energy of the whole chase is thrown into the long and
+carefully calculated aim. A thin spurt of white smoke jets forth; a
+sharp report echoes "from peak to peak the rattling crags among;" half
+a dozen chamois whisk around the next rock-buttress, and "one more
+unfortunate" tumbles from the verge into vacancy. The labor of days is
+rewarded. Securing the scanty venison if he can, the hunter is off for
+his hillside burrow, advertising his approach by an exultant jodel of
+extra nerve-splitting power.
+
+In Great Britain the rifle, ancient or modern, like, indeed, any other
+firearm, has yet to establish itself as a democratic "institution."
+Her forests are not forests in our sense, and her mountain-dwellers
+know little of the rifle. In the duke of Athol's seventy-mile forest,
+with scarce a tree save planted larches, the stag roams by thousands,
+but of course the game-laws interpose, as they did eight hundred years
+ago, between him and the (biped) hind. He is still the reserved
+luxury of the Norman. So with the leagues of upland where His Grace of
+Sutherland has made the Highlander give place to the hart, the "lassie
+wi' the lint-white locks" to the Cheviot ewe--where, in short, the
+white Celt has been improved out of existence as remorselessly as the
+red man in America, and that in favor not of a superior race of men,
+but of _feræ naturæ_. Into these and similar districts, at stated
+seasons, sundry squads of gentlemen are turned loose. They either
+"pay their shot," as _Punch_ has it, in the shape of rent, or are the
+guests of the noble proprietors. Their devices for circumventing the
+antlered monarch of the waste are amply detailed by Scrope, Hawker,
+Herbert and also by the late Edwin Landseer doing the pictorial
+department with a success attributable chiefly to his management of
+landscape effect, for his dogs, deer and other animals from his Æsop's
+fable-like groups to his four duplicated lions in Trafalgar Square,
+belong--heretic that we are to say it!--properly to still life, their
+want of action and _verve_ placing them beneath comparison with the
+works of either one of a score of Flemish and French painters,
+from Rubens and Snyders down to Bonheur and Vernet. That his unsold
+pictures have brought, since his death, something like half a million
+proves nothing. Time was when the worthless canvases of West and
+Morland were equally transmutable into gold.
+
+Like other forms of British field-sports, deer-stalking is
+sufficiently intricate and artificial. It is obviously the occupation
+of men whose primary object is more to kill time than to kill deer.
+According to print, from type and plate, the stag, a reduced edition
+of the American wapiti, is, in the heart of a little kingdom of some
+hundreds of souls to the square mile, as little accustomed to the
+sight of man and as hard to approach as he would be on the head-waters
+of the Yellowstone. If five or six hours' worming, _ventre à terre_,
+up the bed of a mountain-torrent, with not even a rowan-bush to aid
+concealment, succeed in bringing the sports-man within two hundred
+yards of his unconscious game, it is a good day's performance. How,
+the dun deer's hide once perforated, the "tail" of game-keepers,
+beaters and volunteer hangers-on is gathered up, the comforting
+toothfu' of usquebaugh absorbed by the toilers of the brae, the victim
+"gralloched" and suspended across the inevitable gray Highland pony
+that makes such a capital "first light" for the foreground, and the
+line of triumphant march taken up for hunting-box, clachan or castle,
+have we not been told to repletion? The tool used on these occasions
+is up to the latest requirements of modern science. Whitworth and
+Lancaster, thanks to their projectile's being wedged in so tight as
+to cause an occasional misunderstanding it and the breech-plug as to
+which was expected to move, have grown unpopular. The style and the
+patentee vary every year or two or oftener, breech-loading and the
+elongated bullet being the only persistent features.
+
+Among the commonalty of Britain, within a very few years past,
+rifle-clubs and matches have been brought greatly into vogue under
+government encouragement. Austria, _tu infelix_ this time, having
+served unwillingly as an experimental target, with the most
+distinguished and gratifying success to the experimenters, at
+Solferino and Sadowa, gave a new impetus to the rifle movement in
+England, as France, a trifle later, did to the Battle-of-Dorking
+school of prophetic literature. Thus it happens that the rifle is
+taking its place gradually by the side of fat Durhams, gooseberries,
+lop eared rabbits and the Derby as a popular sensation. Johnny sends
+over a "team," evidently in his judgment a whole one, to "shoot the
+American continent." His next deputation ought to be sent, after
+vanquishing the "blarsted" Gothamites, to the recesses of the
+Alleghany, and pitted there against the woodsman with his ancient
+weapon carrying a round ball of seventy-five to the pound, five
+feet long and decorated with tin sights, double trigger and mayhap
+flint-lock. The adventurers would beat in the long run, but they would
+go home not wholly unlearned. Should they stay to a turkey-shoot,
+they would see in it the Occidental analogue of their own public
+matches--more picturesque, if not quite so prim and scientific.
+Strictly, it presupposes conditions non-existent in England--a
+community, for instance, first of hunters, and second of hunters with
+the rifle.
+
+This recreation, primarily belonging to localities where large game,
+such as deer and wild-turkeys, is found, has spread down to the
+cities, where it breaks out in a sporadic form about Christmas. But
+the hills are its home--the foot-hills, notably, of the Appalachian
+range, the domestic turkey not being very common higher up, nor its
+wild original ("original," we insist, _pace_ the _Agricultural Report_
+ornithologist, who finds an ineffaceable distinction in the fact that
+the tail-ring of the one is sometimes, and that of the other never,
+white!) lower down.
+
+We mind us of an ancient town in the Valley of Virginia, settled
+nearly a century and a half ago by riflemen, sheltered by them through
+a stormy infancy, and still steeped in the traditions of the implement
+in question. Spitted by the railway, the hub of many turnpikes, and
+surrounded by a thickly-peopled country, it is yet near enough to the
+mountains to receive from them each winter quite a delegation of their
+inhabitants. Last year wild-turkeys were shot within the corporate
+limits, a deer was chased within half a mile of them, and a fine
+specimen of _Felis Canadensis_ was killed in an orchard still nearer.
+
+Four miles west of the town the fertile limestone _carse_ swells into
+the shady hills, clad largely with pine, that form the long glacis of
+the Alleghanies. These hills are peopled principally by a hardy race
+not unlike the German woodsmen, whose blood, indeed, a great many of
+them share, as their surnames, though sadly thinned down into English
+spelling and pronunciation, denote. They inherit, likewise, their
+fancy for the rifle. Allied with the axe, which, like Talleyrand's
+supposititious frontiersman, they have not forgotten, it supplies them
+materially with sport and subsistence. Their land, where arable
+at all, being unproductive as a rule, wood-chopping is their most
+profitable branch of farming. A score or two of them drive into town
+daily, each with his four-, three- or two-horse cargo of wood. The
+pile is frequently topped off with a brace or two of ruffed grouse,
+there called pheasant, or a wild-turkey, less often a deer, and
+more often hares; which last multiply along the narrow intervales in
+extraordinary numbers. We have seen three sledge-loads of hares--say
+two thousand in all--on the street of a winter's day.
+
+This sappy and sapid contribution to its comfort and luxury the town
+often repays with a jug of whisky as an addendum to the cash receipts;
+although it must not be inferred from this that the hillmen are noted
+for a weakness in that direction. Generally, they are as sober as they
+are hard-working, independent and honest. The few who do take kindly
+to strong waters are so hardened by a life of toil and exposure
+that the enemy is a lifetime in bringing them down.. One little old
+hook-nosed fellow was an every-day feature of the road for fifteen or
+twenty years. In that entire period he was rarely, if once, seen to go
+out sober. He drove but two horses, which were apparently coeval with
+himself. Long practice had taught them perfectly how to accommodate
+themselves to their master's failing. The saddle-horse adapted his
+movements with vigilant dexterity to the rolling and pitching aloft.
+On more than one occasion the woodman was found lying in the road by
+the side or under the feet of his faithful and motionless team. Poor
+old Jack! thou hast "gone under," deeper than that, at last, leaving
+behind thee the savor of an honest name, slightly modified by that of
+corn whisky.
+
+The Hayfield Inn, a little hostelrie on the Northern "pike," is the
+scene of many a turkey-shoot. Between the hill and the road, at the
+foot of a ravine that runs down at right angles, room enough has
+been scooped out, partly by the rains and partly by the pick, for
+the house, offices and microscopic yard decorated with hollyhocks and
+larkspurs. Across the highway stands a capacious barn, with open space
+for wagons, and between it and the brook beyond stretches a narrow
+meadow, whence a vivid imagination has extracted the name of the
+caravanserai. The open space flanking the house and road is the
+rifle-course, so to speak. When occupied of a mellow October afternoon
+by a party of the autochthones, in their pea-jackets of blue or
+hickory homespun, it presents a gay and cheery spectacle. Festooning
+fence and tree around them, the Virginia creeper, or _Ampelopsis_,
+shames vermilion against the mass of pines that glooms skyward beyond.
+Other tints of vegetable decay fringe the brook where it winds from
+side to side of the long strip of grass, green from the autumnal rain.
+Little reck the assembled marksmen of Nature's stage-decorations. One
+group will be mentally weighing the turkeys, another discussing the
+distance--too long or too short for the peculiar powers of this or the
+other individual or his weapon. Around the rude target kneel two or
+three, scoring on it each man his "centre," above or below, to the
+right or left, of the true centre, to counteract the ascertained
+obliquity of his eye or his gun. Here a six-foot Stoic, the Nestor
+of the glen, is very formally going through the ceremony of loading.
+Another is slowly, and with the precision of an astronomer, adjusting
+the tin slides which protect his barrel from the glitter of the sun.
+The chatter of a bevy of country maidens ripples from over the way.
+The horses whinny under their square-skirted saddles, or stand "hard
+by their chariots champing golden corn," like the horses of Nestor,
+Agamemnon, Homer and Gladstone before Dr. Schliemann's Troy; the
+yearlings in the meadow alternately gaze and graze; the guinea-fowl
+now and then honors the shout over a good shot with its harsh but
+well-meant rattle; the rifle speaks at measured intervals; the
+prizes thin off to the remainder gobbler; and so, with the quiet
+characteristic of rifle-matches, the evening draws toward the dew. The
+smoke-whitened guns are carefully swabbed with tow and prepared for
+their rest as tenderly as infants. Dobbin is rescued from the (fence)
+stake to hie hill-ward with his master, cantering exultant or jogging
+grumly according to the result of the "event;" and the metropolis of
+Petticoat Gap--for such, in the vernacular and on the maps, is its
+unfortunate designation--relapses into virtuous repose.
+
+The implement employed at these rural reunions is rarely the
+breech-loader, or even the short gun. It promises to hold its ground
+for years yet, gradually yielding to the little modern tool. The
+essential characteristics of this we have described as they exist
+and will probably remain. Variations in the rifling and--where
+muzzle-loading is abandoned--in the appliances of the chamber will
+continue to be made, as they have heretofore been made without number
+numberless. The patterns now fashionable will give place to others,
+in their turn to be dropped like a last year's coat. Remington,
+Winchester and the rest will retire in favor of new contrivers,
+devoted, like them, to the simple task of facilitating the flight of
+the leaden arrow with its grooved feather in steel or iron. With them
+will rise and fall a parallel series of names on a broader and more
+sonorous field--the field of heavy artillery, the ponderous Wiard
+being full brother to the liliputian Sharpe. Rifled cannon certainly
+present problems far more complicated than the small-arm. They can
+by no means be considered, as yet, so near perfection. It is boldly
+maintained by many experts, both here and in England, that the
+"smashing" power at point-blank range of such smooth-bores as the
+Rodman 12-inch and 15-inch is greater than that of the rifle of
+the same weight. The question is so closely involved with that of
+armor-plates for ships and ports, and that with buoyancy and other
+naval requirements, and economy and stability on land, that a long
+period must elapse ere the reaching of fixed conclusions. Within the
+present generation wooden line-of-battle ships, with sails alone, have
+ruled the wave. These have given place to the steam-liners that began
+and closed their brief career at Sebastopol and Bomarsund; and the
+prize-belt is now borne, among the bruisers of the main, by the mob of
+iron-clads, infinitely diverse of aspect and some of them shapeless,
+like the geologic monsters that weltered in the primal deep. Which of
+these is to triumph ultimately and devour its misshapen kindred, or
+whether they are not all to go down before the torpedo, that carries
+no gun and fires no shot, is a "survival-of-the-fittest" question to
+be solved by Darwins yet to come. But it is tolerably safe to say that
+where the best shooting is to be done it will continue to be done with
+the conico-cylindrical missile, spirally revolving around the line of
+flight; that is, with the arrow-rifle.
+
+EDWARD C. BRUCE.
+
+
+
+
+TWO MIRRORS.
+
+  My love but breathed upon the glass,
+    And, lo! upon the crystal sheen
+  A tender mist did straightway pass,
+    And raised its jealous veil between.
+
+  But quick, as when Aurora's face
+    Is hid behind some transient shroud,
+  The sun strikes through with golden grace,
+    And she emerges from the cloud;
+
+  So from her eyes celestial light
+    Shines on the mirror's cloudy plain,
+  And swift the envious mist takes flight,
+    And shows her lovely face again.
+
+  When o'er the mirror of my heart,
+    Wherein her image true endures,
+  Some misty doubt doth sudden start,
+    And all the sweet reflex obscures,
+
+  There beams such glow from her clear eyes
+    That swift the rising mists are laid;
+  And, fixed again, her image lies,
+    All lovelier for the passing shade.
+
+F.A. HILLARD.
+
+
+
+
+MALCOLM.
+
+BY GEORGE MACDONALD, AUTHOR OF "ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD,"
+"ROBERT FALCONER," ETC.  CHAPTER LXIV.
+
+THE LAIRD AND HIS MOTHER.
+
+
+When Malcolm and Joseph set out from Duff Harbor to find the laird,
+they could hardly be said to have gone in search of him: all in their
+power was to seek the parts where he was occasionally seen, in the
+hope of chancing upon him; and they wandered in vain about the woods
+of Fife House all that week, returning disconsolate every evening to
+the little inn on the banks of the Wan Water. Sunday came and
+went without yielding a trace of him; and, almost in despair, they
+resolved, if unsuccessful the next day, to get assistance and organize
+a search for him. Monday passed like the days that had preceded it,
+and they were returning dejectedly down the left bank of the Wan
+Water in the gloaming, and nearing a part where it is hemmed in by
+precipitous rocks and is very narrow and deep, crawling slow and black
+under the lofty arch of an ancient bridge that spans it at one leap,
+when suddenly they caught sight of a head peering at them over the
+parapet. They dared not run for fear of terrifying him if it should be
+the laird, and hurried quietly to the spot. But when they reached
+the end of the bridge its round back was bare from end to end. On
+the other side of the river the trees came close up, and pursuit was
+hopeless in the gathering darkness.
+
+"Laird, laird! they've ta'en awa' Phemy, an' we dinna ken whaur to
+luik for her," cried the poor father aloud.
+
+Almost the same instant, and as if he had issued from the ground, the
+laird stood before them. The men started back with astonishment--soon
+changed into pity, for there was light enough to see how miserable the
+poor fellow looked. Neither exposure nor privation had thus weighed
+upon him: he was simply dying of fear. Having greeted Joseph with
+embarrassment, he kept glancing doubtfully at Malcolm, as if ready
+to run on his least movement. In few words Joseph explained their
+quest--with trembling voice and tears that would not be denied
+enforcing the tale. Ere he had done the laird's jaw had fallen and
+further speech was impossible to him. But by gestures sad and plain
+enough he indicated that he knew nothing of her, and had supposed her
+safe at home with her parents. In vain they tried to persuade him
+to go back with them, promising every protection: for sole answer he
+shook his head mournfully.
+
+There came a sudden gust of wind among the branches. Joseph, little
+used to trees and their ways with the wind, turned toward the sound,
+and Malcolm unconsciously followed his movement. When they turned
+again the laird had vanished, and they took their way homeward in
+sadness.
+
+What passed next with the laird can be but conjectured. It came to be
+well enough known afterward where he had been hiding; and had it not
+been dusk as they came down the river-bank the two men might, looking
+up to the bridge from below, have had it suggested to them. For in the
+half-spandrel wall between the first arch and the bank they might
+have spied a small window looking down on the sullen, silent gloom,
+foam-flecked with past commotion, that crept languidly away from
+beneath. It belonged to a little vaulted chamber in the bridge,
+devised by some vanished lord as a kind of summer-house--long
+neglected, but having in it yet a mouldering table, a broken chair
+or two and a rough bench. A little path led steep from the end of
+the parapet down to its hidden door. It was now used only by the
+game-keepers for traps and fishing-gear and odds and ends of things,
+and was generally supposed to be locked up. The laird had, however,
+found it open, and his refuge in it had been connived at by one of the
+men, who, as they heard afterward, had given him the key and assisted
+him in carrying out a plan he had devised for barricading the door.
+It was from this place he had so suddenly risen at the call of Blue
+Peter, and to it he had as suddenly withdrawn again--to pass in
+silence and loneliness through his last purgatorial pain.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1:
+  Com' io fui dentro, in un bogliente vetro
+  Gittato mi sarei per rinfrescarmi,
+  Tant' era ivi lo'ncendio senza metro.
+
+_Del Purgatorio_, xxvii. 49.]
+
+Mrs. Stewart was sitting in her drawing-room alone: she seldom had
+visitors at Kirkbyres--not that she liked being alone, or indeed being
+there at all, for she would have lived on the Continent, but that her
+son's trustees, partly to indulge their own aversion to her, taking
+upon them a larger discretionary power than rightly belonged to them,
+kept her too straitened, which no doubt in the recoil had its share
+in poor Stephen's misery. It was only after scraping for a whole year
+that she could escape to Paris or Homburg, where she was at home.
+There her sojourn was determined by her good or ill fortune at faro.
+
+What she meditated over her knitting by the firelight--she had put out
+her candles--it would be hard to say, perhaps unwholesome to think:
+there are souls to look into which is, to our dim eyes, like gazing
+down from the verge of one of the Swedenborgian pits.
+
+But much of the evil done by human beings is as the evil of evil
+beasts: they know not what they do--an excuse which, except in regard
+to the past, no man can make for himself, seeing the very making of it
+must testify its falsehood.
+
+She looked up, gave a cry and started to her feet: Stephen stood
+before her, halfway between her and the door. Revealed in a flicker
+of flame from the fire, he vanished in the following shade, and for
+a moment she stood in doubt of her seeing sense. But when the coal
+flashed again there was her son, regarding her out of great eyes that
+looked as if they had seen death. A ghastly air hung about him, as if
+he had just come back from Hades, but in his silent bearing there was
+a sanity, even dignity, which strangely impressed her. He came forward
+a pace or two, stopped, and said, "Dinna be frichtit, mem. I'm come.
+Sen' the lassie hame an' du wi' me as ye like. I canna haud aff o' me.
+But I think I'm deein', an' ye needna misguide me."
+
+His voice, although it trembled a little, was clear and unimpeded,
+and, though weak in its modulation, manly.
+
+Something in the woman's heart responded. Was it motherhood or the
+deeper godhead? Was it pity for the dignity housed in the crumbling
+clay, or repentance for the son of her womb? Or was it that sickness
+gave hope, and she could afford to be kind?
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Stephen," she said, more gently than he
+had ever heard her speak.
+
+Was it an agony of mind or of body, or was it but a flickering of the
+shadows upon his face? A moment, and he gave a half-choked shriek and
+fell on the floor. His mother turned from him with disgust and rang
+the bell. "Send Tom here," she said.
+
+An elderly, hard-featured man came.
+
+"Stephen is in one of his fits," she said.
+
+The man looked about him: he could see no one in the room but his
+mistress.
+
+"There he is," she continued, pointing to the floor. "Take him away.
+Get him up to the loft and lay him in the hay."
+
+The man lifted his master like an unwieldy log and carried him,
+convulsed, from the room.
+
+Stephen's mother sat down again by the fire and resumed her knitting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV.
+
+THE LAIRD'S VISION.
+
+
+Malcolm had just seen his master set out for his solitary ride when
+one of the maids informed him that a man from Kirkbyres wanted him.
+Hiding his reluctance, he went with her and found Tom, who was Mrs.
+Stewart's grieve and had been about the place all his days.
+
+"Mr. Stephen's come hame, sir," he said, touching his bonnet, a
+civility for which Malcolm was not grateful.
+
+"It's no possible," returned Malcolm. "I saw him last nicht."
+
+"He cam aboot ten o'clock, sir, an' hed a turn o' the fa'in' sickness
+o' the spot. He's verra ill the noo, an' the mistress sent me ower to
+speir gien ye wad obleege her by gaein' to see him."
+
+"Has he ta'en till's bed?" asked Malcolm.
+
+"We pat him infill 't, sir. He's ravin' mad, an' I'm thinkin' he's no
+far frae his hin'er en'."
+
+"I'll gang wi' ye direckly," said Malcolm.
+
+In a few minutes they were riding fast along the road to Kirkbyres,
+neither with much to say to the other, for Malcolm distrusted every
+one about the place, and Tom was by nature taciturn.
+
+"What garred them sen' for me, div ye ken?" asked Malcolm at length
+when they had gone about halfway.
+
+"He cried oot upo' ye i' the nicht," answered Tom.
+
+When they arrived Malcolm was shown into the drawing-room, where Mrs.
+Stewart met him with red eyes. "Will you come and see my poor boy?"
+she said.
+
+"I wull du that, mem. Is he verra ill?"
+
+"Very. I'm afraid he is in a bad way."
+
+She led him to a dark, old-fashioned chamber, rich and gloomy. There,
+sunk in the down of a huge bed with carved ebony posts, lay the
+laird, far too ill to be incommoded by the luxury to which he was
+unaccustomed. His head kept tossing from side to side and his eyes
+seemed searching in vacancy.
+
+"Has the doctor been to see 'im, mem?" asked Malcolm.
+
+"Yes, but he says he can't do anything for him."
+
+"Wha waits upon 'im, mem?"
+
+"One of the maids and myself."
+
+"I'll jist bide wi' 'im."
+
+"That will be very kind of you."
+
+"I s' bide wi' 'im till I see 'im oot o' this, ae w'y or ither,",
+added Malcolm, and sat down by the bedside of his poor distrustful
+friend. There Mrs. Stewart left him.
+
+The laird was wandering in the thorny thickets and slimy marshes
+which, haunted by the thousand misshapen horrors of delirium, beset
+the gates of life. That one so near the light and slowly drifting into
+it should lie tossing in hopeless darkness! Is it that the delirium
+falls, a veil of love, to hide other and more real terrors?
+
+His eyes would now and then meet those of Malcolm as they gazed
+tenderly upon him, but the living thing that looked out of the windows
+was darkened and saw him not. Occasionally a word would fall from him,
+or a murmur of half-articulation float up like the sound of a river
+of souls; but whether Malcolm heard, or only seemed to hear, something
+like this, he could not tell, for he could not be certain that he had
+not himself shaped the words by receiving the babble into the moulds
+of the laird's customary thought and speech: "I dinna ken whaur I cam
+frae--I kenna whaur I'm gaein' till.--Eh, gien He wad but come oot an'
+shaw Himsel'!--O Lord! tak the deevil aff o' my puir back.--O Father
+o' lichts! gar him tak the hump wi' him. I hae no fawvor for't, though
+it's been my constant compainion this mony a lang."
+
+But in general he only moaned, and after the words thus heard or
+fashioned by Malcolm lay silent and nearly still for an hour.
+
+All the waning afternoon Malcolm sat by his side, and neither mother,
+maid nor doctor came near them.
+
+"Dark wa's an' no a breath!" he murmured or seemed to murmur again.
+"Nae gerse nor flooers nor bees! I hae na room for my hump, an' I
+canna lie upo' 't, for that wad kill me. Wull I _ever_ ken whaur I cam
+frae? The wine's unco guid. Gie me a drap mair, gien ye please, Lady
+Horn.--I thought the grave was a better place. I hae lain safter afore
+I dee'd.--Phemy! Phemy! Rin, Phemy, rin! I s' bide wi' them this time.
+Ye rin, Phemy!"
+
+As it grew dark the air turned very chill, and snow began to
+fall thick and fast. Malcolm laid a few sticks on the smouldering
+peat-fire, but they were damp and did not catch. All at once the laird
+gave a shriek, and crying out, "Mither! mither!" fell into a fit so
+violent that the heavy bed shook with his convulsions. Malcolm held
+his wrists and called aloud. No one came, and, bethinking himself that
+none could help, he waited in silence for what would soon follow.
+
+The fit passed quickly, and he lay quiet. The sticks had meantime
+dried, and suddenly they caught fire and blazed up. The laird turned
+his face toward the flame; a smile came over it; his eyes opened wide,
+and with such an expression of seeing gazed beyond Malcolm that he
+turned his in the same direction.
+
+"Eh, the bonny man! The bonny man!" murmured the laird.
+
+But Malcolm saw nothing, and turned again to the laird: his jaw had
+fallen, and the light was fading out of his face like the last of a
+sunset. He was dead.
+
+Malcolm rang the bell, told the woman who answered it what had taken
+place, and hurried from the house, glad at heart that his friend was
+at rest.
+
+He had ridden but a short distance when he was overtaken by a boy on a
+fast pony, who pulled up as he neared him.
+
+"Whaur are ye for?" asked Malcolm. "I'm gaein' for Mistress Cat'nach,"
+answered the boy.
+
+"Gang yer w'ys than, an' dinna haud the deid waitin'," said Malcolm
+with a shudder.
+
+The boy cast a look of dismay behind him and galloped off.
+
+The snow still fell and the night was dark. Malcolm spent nearly two
+hours on the way, and met the boy returning, who told him that Mrs.
+Catanach was not to be found.
+
+His road lay down the glen, past Duncan's cottage, at whose door he
+dismounted, but he did not find him. Taking the bridle on his arm, he
+walked by his horse the rest of the way. It was about nine o'clock,
+and the night very dark. As he neared the house, he heard Duncan's
+voice. "Malcolm, my son! Will it pe your ownself?" it said.
+
+"It wull that, daddy," answered Malcolm.
+
+The piper was sitting on a fallen tree, with the snow settling softly
+upon him.
+
+"But it's ower cauld for ye to be sittin' there i' the snaw, an' the
+mirk tu," added Malcolm.
+
+"Ta tarkness will not be ketting to ta inside of her," returned the
+seer. "Ah, my poy! where ta light kets in, ta tarkness will pe ketting
+in too. This now, your whole pody will pe full of tarkness, as ta
+Piple will say, and Tuncan's pody tat will pe full of ta light." Then
+with suddenly changed tone he said, "Listen, Malcolm, my son! Shell pe
+ferry uneasy till you'll wass pe come home."
+
+"What's the maitter noo, daddy?" returned Malcolm. "Onything wrang
+aboot the hoose?"
+
+"Something will pe wrong, yes, put she'll not can tell where. No, her
+pody will not pe full of light! For town here, in ta curset Lowlands,
+ta sight has peen almost cone from her, my son. It will now pe no more
+as a co creeping troo' her, and shell nefer see plain no more till
+she'll pe come pack to her own mountains."
+
+"The puir laird's gane back to his," said Malcolm. "I won'er gien he
+kens yet, or gien he gangs speirin' at ilk ane he meets gien he can
+tell him whaur he cam frae. He's mad nae mair, ony gait."
+
+"How? Will he pe not tead? Ta poor lairt! Ta poor maad lairt!"
+
+"Ay, he's deid: maybe that's what'll be troublin' yer sicht, daddy."
+
+"No, my son. Ta maad lairt was not ferry maad, and if he was maad
+he was not paad, and it was not ta plame of him: he was coot always,
+howefer."
+
+"He wass that, daddy."
+
+"But it will pe something ferry paad, and it will pe efer troubling
+her speerit. When she'll pe take ta pipes to pe amusing herself, and
+will plow 'Till an crodh a' Dhonnaehaidh' ('Turn the Cows, Duncan'),
+out will pe come' Cumhadh an fhir mhoir' ('The Lament of the Big
+Man'). Aal is not well, my son."
+
+"Weel, dinna distress yersel', daddy. Lat come what wull come.
+Foreseein' 's no forefen'in'. Ye ken yersel' at mony 's the time the
+seer has broucht the thing on by tryin' to haud it aff."
+
+"It will be true, my son. Put it would aalways haf come."
+
+"Nae doubt. Sae ye jist come in wi' me, daddy, an' sit doon by the ha'
+fire, an' I'll come to ye as sune's I've been to see 'at the maister
+disna want me. But ye'll better come up wi' me to my room first," he
+went on, "for the maister disna like to see me in onything but the
+kilt."
+
+"And why will he not pe in ta kilts aal as now?"
+
+"I hae been ridin', ye ken, daddy, an' the trews fits the saiddle
+better nor the kilts."
+
+"She'll not pe knowing tat. Old Allister, your creat--her own
+crandfather, was ta pest horseman ta worlt efer saw, and he'll nefer
+pe hafing ta trews to his own lecks nor ta saddle to his horse's pack.
+He'll chust make his men pe strap on an old plaid, and he'll be kive
+a chump, and away they wass, horse and man, one peast, aal two of tem
+poth together."
+
+Thus chatting, they went to the stable, and from the stable to the
+house, where they met no one, and went straight up to Malcolm's room,
+the old man making as little of the long ascent as Malcolm himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI.
+
+THE CRY FROM THE CHAMBER.
+
+
+Brooding--if a man of his temperament may ever be said to brood--over
+the sad history of his young wife and the prospects of his daughter,
+the marquis rode over fields and through gates--he never had been one
+to jump a fence in cold blood--till the darkness began to fall; and
+the bearings of his perplexed position came plainly before him.
+
+First of all, Malcolm acknowledged and the date of his mother's death
+known, what would Florimel be in the eyes of the world? Supposing the
+world deceived by the statement that his mother died when he was born,
+where yet was the future he had marked out for her? He had no money to
+leave her, and she must be helplessly dependent on her brother.
+
+Malcolm, on the other hand, might make a good match, or, with the
+advantages he could secure him in the army, still better in the navy,
+well enough push his way in the world.
+
+Miss Horn could produce no testimony, and Mrs. Catanach had asserted
+him to be the son of Mrs. Stewart. He had seen enough, however, to
+make him dread certain possible results if Malcolm were acknowledged
+as the laird of Kirkbyres. No: there was but one hopeful measure, one
+which he had even already approached in a tentative way--an appeal,
+namely, to Malcolm himself, in which, while acknowledging his probable
+rights, but representing in the strongest manner the difficulty of
+proving them, he would set forth in their full dismay the consequences
+to Florimel of their public recognition, and offer, upon the pledge
+of his word to a certain line of conduct, to start him in any path he
+chose to follow.
+
+Having thought the thing out pretty thoroughly, as he fancied, and
+resolved at the same time to feel his way toward negotiations with
+Mistress Catanach, he turned and rode home.
+
+After a tolerable dinner he was sitting over a bottle of the port
+which he prized beyond anything else his succession had brought
+him, when the door of the dining-room opened suddenly and the butler
+appeared, pale with terror. "My lord! my lord!" he stammered as he
+closed the door behind him.
+
+"Well? What the devil's the matter now? Whose cow's dead?"
+
+"Your lordship didn't hear it, then?" faltered the butler.
+
+"You've been drinking, Bings," said the marquis, lifting his seventh
+glass of port.
+
+"_I_ didn't say I heard it, my lord."
+
+"Heard what, in the name of Beelzebub?"
+
+"The ghost, my lord."
+
+"The what?" shouted the marquis.
+
+"That's what they call it, my lord. It's all along of having that
+wizard's chamber in the house, my lord."
+
+"You're a set of fools," said the marquis--"the whole kit of you!"
+
+"That's what I say, my lord. I don't know what to do with them,
+stericking and screaming. Mrs. Courthope is trying her best with them,
+but it's my belief she's about as bad herself."
+
+The marquis finished his glass of wine, poured out and drank another,
+then walked to the door. When the butler opened it a strange sight
+met his eyes. All the servants in the house, men and women, Duncan and
+Malcolm alone excepted, had crowded after the butler, every one afraid
+of being left behind; and there gleamed the crowd of ghastly faces
+in the light of the great hall-fire. Demon stood in front, his mane
+bristling and his eyes flaming. Such was the silence that the marquis
+heard the low howl of the waking wind, and the snow like the patting
+of soft hands against the windows. He stood for a moment, more than
+half enjoying their terror, when from somewhere in the building a
+far-off shriek, shrill and piercing, rang in every ear. Some of the
+men drew in their breath with a gasping sob, but most of the women
+screamed outright; and that set the marquis cursing.
+
+Duncan and Malcolm had but just entered the bed-room of the latter
+when the shriek rent the air close beside, and for a moment deafened
+them. So agonized, so shrill, so full of dismal terror was it, that
+Malcolm stood aghast, and Duncan started to his feet with responsive
+outcry. But Malcolm at once recovered himself. "Bide here till I come
+back," he whispered, and hurried noiselessly out.
+
+In a few minutes he returned, during which all had been still. "Noo,
+daddy," he said, "I'm gaein' to drive in the door o' the neist room.
+There's some deevilry at wark there. Stan' ye i' the door, an' ghaist
+or deevil 'at wad win by ye, grip it, an' haud on like Demon the dog."
+
+"She will so, she will so," muttered Duncan in a strange tone.
+"Ochone! that she'll not pe hafing her turk with her! Ochone! ochone!"
+
+Malcolm took the key of the wizard's chamber from his chest and his
+candle from the table, which he set down in the passage. In a moment
+he had unlocked the door, put his shoulder to it and burst it open.
+A light was extinguished, and a shapeless figure went gliding away
+through the gloom. It was no shadow, however, for, dashing itself
+against a door at the other side of the chamber, it staggered back
+with an imprecation of fury and fear, pressed two hands to its head,
+and, turning at bay, revealed the face of Mrs. Catanach.
+
+In the door stood the blind piper with outstretched arms and hands
+ready to clutch, the fingers curved like claws, his knees and haunches
+bent, leaning forward like a rampant beast prepared to spring. In his
+face was wrath, hatred, vengeance, disgust--an enmity of all mingled
+kinds.
+
+Malcolm was busied with something in the bed, and when she turned Mrs,
+Catanach saw only Duncan's white face of hatred gleaming through the
+darkness. "Ye auld donnert deevil!" she cried, with an addition too
+coarse to be set down, and threw herself upon him.
+
+The old man said never a word, but with indrawn breath hissing through
+his clenched teeth clutched her, and down they went together in the
+passage, the piper undermost. He had her by the throat, it is true,
+but she had her fingers in his eyes, and, kneeling on his chest, kept
+him down with a vigor of hostile effort that drew the very picture of
+murder. It lasted but a moment, however, for the old man, spurred
+by torture as well as hate, gathered what survived of a most sinewy
+strength into one huge heave, threw her back into the room, and rose
+with the blood streaming from his eyes, just as the marquis came round
+the near end of the passage, followed by Mrs. Courthope, the butler,
+Stoat and two of the footmen. Heartily enjoying a row, he stopped
+instantly, and, signing a halt to his followers, stood listening to
+the mud-geyser that now burst from Mrs. Catanach's throat.
+
+"Ye blin' abortion o' Sawtan's soo!" she cried, "didna I tak ye to
+du wi' ye as I likit? An' that deil's tripe ye ca' yer oye
+(_grandson_)--He! he! _him_ yer gran'son! He's naething but ane o' yer
+hatit Cawm'ells!"
+
+"A teanga a' diabhuil mhoir, tha thu ag dènamh breug (O tongue of the
+great devil! thou art making a lie)," screamed Duncan, speaking for
+the first time.
+
+"God lay me deid i' my sins gien he be onything but a bastard
+Cawm'ell!" she asseverated with a laugh of demoniacal scorn. "Yer
+dautit (_petted_) Ma'colm's naething but the dyke-side brat o' the
+late Grizel Cawm'ell, 'at the fowk tuik for a sant 'cause she grat
+an' said naething. I laid the Cawm'ell pup i' yer boody (_scarecrow_)
+airms wi' my ain han's, upo' the tap o' yer curst scraighin' bagpipes
+'at sae aften drave the sleep frae my een. Na, ye wad nane o' me! But
+I ga'e ye a Cawm'ell bairn to yer hert for a' that, ye auld, hungert,
+weyver (_spider_)-leggit, worm-aten idiot!"
+
+A torrent of Gaelic broke from Duncan, into the midst of which rushed
+another from Mrs. Catanach, similar, but coarse in vowel and harsh
+in consonant sounds. The marquis stepped into the room. "What is the
+meaning of all this?" he said with dignity.
+
+The tumult of Celtic altercation ceased. The old piper drew himself up
+to his full height and stood silent. Mrs. Catanach, red as fire
+with exertion and wrath, turned ashy pale. The marquis cast on her a
+searching and significant look.
+
+"See here, my lord," said Malcolm.
+
+Candle in hand, his lordship approached the bed. At the same moment
+Mrs. Catanach glided out with her usual downy step, gave a wink as of
+mutual intelligence to the group at the door, and vanished.
+
+On Malcolm's arm lay the head of a young girl. Her thin, worn
+countenance was stained with tears and livid with suffocation. She was
+recovering, but her eyes rolled stupid and visionless.
+
+"It's Phemy, my lord--Blue Peter's lassie, 'at was tint," said
+Malcolm.
+
+"It begins to look serious," said the marquis.--"Mrs. Catanach! Mrs.
+Courthope!"
+
+He turned toward the door. Mrs. Courthope entered, and a head or two
+peeped in after her. Duncan stood as before, drawn up and stately, his
+visage working, but his body motionless as the statue of a sentinel.
+
+"Where is the Catanach woman gone?" cried the marquis.
+
+"Cone!" shouted the piper. "Cone! and her huspant will be waiting to
+pe killing her! Och nan ochan!"
+
+"Her husband!" echoed the marquis.
+
+"Ach! she'll not can pe helping it, my lort--no more till one will
+pe tead; and tat should pe ta woman, for she'll pe a paad woman--ta
+worstest woman efer was married, my lort."
+
+"That's saying a good deal," returned the marquis.
+
+"Not one wort more as enough, my lort," said Duncan. "She was only pe
+her next wife, put, ochone! ochone! why did she'll pe marry her? You
+would haf stapt her long aco, my lort, if she'll was your wife and
+you was knowing ta tamned fox and padger she was pe. Ochone! and she
+tidn't pe have her turk at her hench nor her sgian in her hose."
+
+He shook his hands like a despairing child, then stamped and wept in
+the agony of frustrated rage.
+
+Mrs. Courthope took Phemy in her arms and carried her to her own room,
+where she opened the window and let the snowy wind blow full upon her.
+As soon as she came quite to herself, Malcolm set out to bear the good
+tidings to her father and mother.
+
+Only a few nights before had Phemy been taken to the room where they
+found her. She had been carried from place to place, and had been some
+time, she believed, in Mrs. Catanach's own house. They had always kept
+her in the dark, and removed her at night blindfolded. When asked if
+she had never cried out before, she said she had been too frightened;
+and when questioned as to what had made her do so then, she knew
+nothing of it: she remembered only that a horrible creature appeared
+by the bedside, after which all was blank. On the floor they found
+a hideous death-mask, doubtless the cause of the screams which Mrs.
+Catanach had sought to stifle with the pillows and bed-clothes.
+
+When Malcolm returned he went at once to the piper's cottage, where
+he found him in bed, utterly exhausted and as utterly restless. "Weel,
+daddy," he said, "I doobt I daurna come near ye noo."
+
+"Come to her arms, my poor poy," faltered Duncan. "She'll pe sorry in
+her sore heart for her poy. Nefer you pe minding, my son: you couldn't
+help ta Cam'ell mother, and you'll pe her own poy however. Ochone! it
+will pe a plot upon you aal your tays, my son, and she'll not can help
+you, and it'll pe preaking her old heart."
+
+"Gien God thoucht the Cam'ells worth makin', daddy, I dinna see 'at I
+hae ony richt to compleen 'at I cam' o' them."
+
+"She hopes you'll pe forgifing ta plind old man, however. She couldn't
+see, or she would haf known at once petter."
+
+"I dinna ken what ye're efter noo, daddy," said Malcolm.
+
+"That she'll do you a creat wrong, and she'll be ferry sorry for it,
+my son."
+
+"What wrang did ye ever du me, daddy?"
+
+"That she was let you crow up a Cam'ell, my poy. If she tid put know
+ta paad blood was pe in you, she wouldn't pe tone you ta wrong as
+pring you up."
+
+"That's a wrang no ill to forgi'e, daddy. But it's a pity ye didna
+lat me lie, for maybe syne Mistress Catanach wad hae broucht me up
+hersel', an' I micht hae come to something."
+
+"Ta duvil mhor (_great_) would pe in your heart and prain and poosom,
+my son."
+
+"Weel, ye see what ye hae saved me frae."
+
+"Yes; put ta duvil will be to pay, for she couldn't safe you from ta
+Cam'ell plood, my son. Malcolm, my poy," he added after a pause, and
+with the solemnity of a mighty hate, "ta efil woman herself will pe a
+Cam'ell--ta woman Catanach will pe a Cam'ell, and her nainsel' she'll
+not know it pefore she'll be in ta ped with ta worstest Cam'ell tat
+ever God made; and she pecks his pardon, for she'll not pelieve He
+wass making ta Cam'ells."
+
+"Divna ye think God made me, daddy?" asked Malcolm.
+
+The old man thought for a little. "Tat will tepend on who was pe your
+father, my son," he replied. "If he too will be a Cam'ell--ochone!
+ochone! Put tere may pe some coot plood co into you--more as enough to
+say God will pe make you, my son. Put don't pe asking, Malcolm--ton't
+you'll pe asking."
+
+"What am I no to ask, daddy?"
+
+"Ton't pe asking who made you, who was ta father to you, my poy. She
+would rather not pe knowing, for ta man might pe a Cam'ell poth. And
+if she couldn't pe lofing you no more, my son, she would pe tie before
+her time, and her tays would pe long in ta land under ta crass, my
+son."
+
+But the remembrance of the sweet face whose cold loveliness he had
+once kissed was enough to outweigh with Malcolm all the prejudices of
+Duncan's instillation, and he was proud to take up even her shame.
+To pass from Mrs. Stewart to her was to escape from the clutches of a
+vampire demon to the arms of a sweet mother-angel.
+
+Deeply concerned for the newly-discovered misfortunes of the old man
+to whom he was indebted for this world's life at least, he anxiously
+sought to soothe him; but he had far more and far worse to torment him
+than Malcolm even yet knew, and with burning cheeks and bloodshot
+eyes he lay tossing from side to side, now uttering terrible curses
+in Gaelic and now weeping bitterly. Malcolm took his loved pipes, and
+with the gentlest notes he could draw from them tried to charm to rest
+the ruffled waters of his spirit; but his efforts were all in vain,
+and believing at length that he would be quieter without him, he went
+to the House and to his own room.
+
+The door of the adjoining chamber stood open, and the long-forbidden
+room lay exposed to any eye. Little did Malcolm think as he gazed
+around it that it was the room in which he had first breathed the air
+of the world; in which his mother had wept over her own false position
+and his reported death; and from which he had been carried, by
+Duncan's wicked wife, down the ruinous stair and away to the lip of
+the sea, to find a home in the arms of the man whom he had just
+left on his lonely couch torn between the conflicting emotions of a
+gracious love for him and the frightful hate of her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII.
+
+FEET OF WOOL.
+
+
+The next day, Miss Horn, punctual as Fate, presented herself at Lossie
+House, and was shown at once into the marquis's study, as it was
+called. When his lordship entered she took the lead the moment the
+door was shut. "By this time, my lord, ye'll doobtless hae made up yer
+min' to du what's richt?" she said.
+
+"That's what I have always wanted to do," returned the marquis.
+
+"Hm!" remarked Miss Horn as plainly as inarticulately.
+
+"In this affair," he supplemented; adding, "It's not always so easy to
+tell what _is_ right."
+
+"It's no aye easy to luik for 't wi' baith yer een," said Miss Horn.
+
+"This woman Catanach--we must get her to give credible testimony.
+Whatever the fact may be, we must have strong evidence. And there
+comes the difficulty, that she has already made an altogether
+different statement."
+
+"It gangs for naething, my lord. It was never made afore a justice o'
+the peace."
+
+"I wish you would go to her and see how she is inclined."
+
+"Me gang to Bawbie Catanach!" exclaimed Miss Horn. "I wad as sune gang
+an' kittle Sawtan's nose wi' the p'int o' 's tail. Na, na, my lord.
+Gien onybody gang till her wi' my wull, it s' be a limb o' the law. I
+s' hae nae cognostin' wi' her."
+
+"You would have no objection, however; to my seeing her, I
+presume--just to let her know that we have an inkling of the truth?"
+said the marquis.
+
+Now, all this was the merest talk, for of course Miss Horn could not
+long remain in ignorance of the declaration her fury had, the night
+previous, forced from Mrs. Catanach; but he must, he thought, put
+her off and keep her quiet, if possible, until he had come to an
+understanding with Malcolm, after which he would no doubt have his
+trouble with her.
+
+"Ye can du as yer lordship likes," answered Miss Horn, "but I wadna
+hae 't said o' me 'at I had ony dealin's wi' her. Wha kens but she
+micht say ye tried to bribe her? There's naething she wad bogle at
+gien she thoucht it worth her while. No 'at I 'm feart at her. Lat her
+lee! I'm no sae blate but--Only dinna lippen till a word she says, my
+lord."
+
+The marquis hesitated. "I wonder whether the real source of my
+perplexity occurs to you, Miss Horn," he said at length. "You know I
+have a daughter?"
+
+"Weel eneuch that, my lord."
+
+"By my second marriage."
+
+"Nae merridge ava', my lord."
+
+"True, if I confess to the first."
+
+"A' the same whether or no, my lord."
+
+"Then you see," the marquis went on, refusing offence, "what the
+admission of your story would make of my daughter?"
+
+"That's plain eneuch, my lord."
+
+"Now, if I have read Malcolm right he has too much regard for
+his--mistress--to put her in such a false position."
+
+"That is, my lord, ye wad hae yer lawfu' son beir the lawless name."
+
+"No, no: it need never come out what he is. I will provide for him--as
+a gentleman, of course."
+
+"It canna be, my lord. Ye can du naething for him, wi' that face o'
+his, but oot comes the trouth as to the father o' 'im; an' it wadna be
+lang afore the tale was ekit oot wi' the name o' his mither--Mistress
+Catanach wad see to that, gien 'twas only to spite me--an' I wunna hae
+my Grizel ca'd what she is not for ony lord's dauchter i' the three
+kynriks."
+
+"What _does_ it matter, now she's dead and gone?" said the marquis,
+false to the dead in his love for the living.
+
+"Deid an' gane, my lord? What ca' ye deid an' gane? Maybe the great
+anes o' the yerth get sic a forlethie (_surfeit_) o' grand'ur 'at
+they're for nae mair, an' wad perish like the brute beast. For
+onything I ken, they may hae their wuss, but for mysel', I wad warstle
+to haud my sowl waukin' (_awake_) i' the verra article o' deith, for
+the bare chance o' seein' my bonny Grizel again. It's a mercy I hae
+nae feelin's," she added, arresting her handkerchief on its way to her
+eyes, and refusing to acknowledge the single tear that ran down her
+cheek.
+
+Plainly she was not like any of the women whose characters the marquis
+had accepted as typical of womankind.
+
+"Then you won't leave the matter to her husband and son?" he said
+reproachfully.
+
+"I tellt ye, my lord, I wad du naething but what I saw to be richt.
+Lat this affair oot o' my han's I daurna. That laad ye micht work
+to onything 'at made agane himsel'. He's jist like his puir mither
+there."
+
+"If Miss Campbell _was_ his mother," said the marquis.
+
+"Miss Cam'ell!" cried Miss Horn. "I'll thank yer lordship to ca' her
+by her ain, an' that's Lady Lossie."
+
+What of the something ruinous heart of the marquis was habitable was
+occupied by his daughter, and had no accommodation at present either
+for his dead wife or his living son. Once more he sat thinking in
+silence for a while. "I'll make Malcolm a post-captain in the navy and
+give you a thousand pounds," he said at length, hardly knowing that he
+spoke.
+
+Miss Horn rose to her full height and stood like an angel of rebuke
+before him. Not a word did she speak, only looked at him for a moment
+and turned to leave the room. The marquis saw his danger, and striding
+to the door stood with his back against it.
+
+"Think ye to scare _me_, my lord?" she asked with a scornful laugh.
+"Gang an' scare the stane lion-beast at yer ha'-door. Haud oot o' the
+gait an' lat me gang."
+
+"Not until I know what you are going to do," said the marquis very
+seriously.
+
+"I hae naething mair to transac' wi' yer lordship. You an' me 's
+strangers, my lord."
+
+"Tut! tut! I was but trying you."
+
+"An' gien I had ta'en the disgrace ye offert me, ye wad hae drawn
+back?"
+
+"No, certainly."
+
+"Ye wasna tryin' me, then: ye was duin' yer best to corrup' me."
+
+"I'm no splitter of hairs."
+
+"My lord, it's nane but the corrup'ible wad seek to corrup'."
+
+The marquis gnawed a nail or two in silence. Miss Horn dragged an
+easy-chair within a couple of yards of him.
+
+"We'll see wha tires o' this ghem first, my lord," she said as she
+sank into its hospitable embrace.
+
+The marquis turned to lock the door, but there was no key in it.
+Neither was there any chair within reach, and he was not fond of
+standing. Clearly, his enemy had the advantage.
+
+"Hae ye h'ard o' puir Sandy Graham--hoo they're misguidin' him, my
+lord?" she asked with composure.
+
+The marquis was first astounded, and then tickled by her assurance.
+"No," he answered.
+
+"They hae turnt him oot o' hoose an' ha'--schuil, at least, an' hame,"
+she rejoined. "I may say they hae turnt him oot o' Scotlan', for what
+presbytery wad hae him efter he had been fun' guilty o' no thinkin'
+like ither fowk? Ye maun stan' his guid freen', my lord."
+
+"He shall be Malcolm's tutor," answered the marquis, not to be outdone
+in coolness, "and go with him to Edinburgh--or Oxford, if he prefers
+it."
+
+"Never yerl o' Colonsay had a better," said Miss Horn.
+
+"Softly, softly, ma'am," returned the marquis. "I did not say he
+should go in that style."
+
+"He s' gang as my lord o' Colonsay or he s' no gang at _your_ expense,
+my lord," said his antagonist.
+
+"Really, ma'am, one would think you were my grandmother, to hear you
+order my affairs for me."
+
+"I wuss I war, my lord: I sud gar ye hear risson upo' baith sides o'
+yer heid, I s' warran'."
+
+The marquis laughed. "Well, I can't stand here all day," he said,
+impatiently swinging one leg.
+
+"I'm weel awaur o' that, my lord," answered Miss Horn, rearranging her
+scanty skirt.
+
+"How long are you going to keep me, then?"
+
+"I wadna hae ye bide a meenute langer nor's agreeable to yersel'. But
+_I_'m in nae hurry sae lang's ye're afore me. Ye're nae ill to luik
+at, though ye maun hae been bonnier the day ye wan the hert o' my
+Grizel."
+
+The marquis uttered an oath and left the door. Miss Horn sprang to it,
+but there was the marquis again. "Miss Horn," he said, "I beg you will
+give me another day to think of this."
+
+"Whaur's the use? A' the thinkin' i' the warl' canna alter a single
+fac'. Ye maun do richt by my laddie o' yer ainsel', or I maun gar ye."
+
+"You would find a lawsuit heavy, Miss Horn."
+
+"An' ye wad fin' the scandal o' 't ill to bide, my lord. It wad come
+sair upo' Miss--I kenna what name she has a richt till, my lord."
+
+The marquis uttered a frightful imprecation, left the door, and,
+sitting down, hid his face in his hands.
+
+Miss Horn rose, but instead of securing her retreat, approached him
+gently and stood by his side. "My lord," she said, "I canna thole to
+see a man in tribble. Women's born till 't, an' they tak it an' are
+thankfu'; but a man never gies in till 't, an' sae it comes harder
+upo' him nor upo' them. Hear me, my lord: gien there be a man upo'
+this earth wha wad shield a woman, that man's Ma'colm Colonsay."
+
+"If only she weren't his sister!" murmured the marquis.
+
+"An' jist bethink ye, my lord: wad it be onything less nor an
+imposition to lat a man merry her ohn tellt him what she was?"
+
+"You insolent old woman!" cried the marquis, losing his temper,
+discretion and manners all together. "Go and do your worst, and be
+damned to you!"
+
+So saying, he left the room, and Miss Horn found her way out of the
+house in a temper quite as fierce as his--in character, however,
+entirely different, inasmuch as it was righteous.
+
+At that very moment Malcolm was in search of his master, and seeing
+the back of him disappear in the library, to which he had gone in a
+half-blind rage, he followed him. "My lord!" he said.
+
+"What do you want?" returned his master in a rage. For some time he
+had been hauling on the curb-rein, which had fretted his temper the
+more, and when he let go the devil ran away with him.
+
+"I thoucht yer lordship wad like to see an auld stair I cam upo' the
+ither day, 'at gangs frae the wizard's chaumer--"
+
+"Go to hell with your damned tomfoolery!" said the marquis. "If ever
+you mention that cursed hole again I'll kick you out of the house."
+
+Malcolm's eyes flashed and a fierce answer rose to his lips, but he
+had seen that his master was in trouble, and sympathy supplanted rage.
+He turned and left the room in silence.
+
+Lord Lossie paced up and down the library for a whole hour--a
+long time for him to be in one mood. The mood changed color pretty
+frequently during the hour, however, and by degrees his wrath
+assuaged. But at the end of it he knew no more what he was going to do
+than when he left Miss Horn in the study. Then came the gnawing of his
+usual ennui and restlessness: he must find something to do.
+
+The thing he always thought of first was a ride, but the only animal
+of horse-kind about the place which he liked was the bay mare, and her
+he had lamed. He would go and see what the rascal had come bothering
+about--alone, though, for he could not endure the sight of the
+fisher-fellow, damn him!
+
+In a few minutes he stood in the wizard's chamber, and glanced around
+it with a feeling of discomfort rather than sorrow--of annoyance at
+the trouble of which it had been for him both fountain and storehouse,
+rather than regret for the agony and contempt which his selfishness
+had brought upon the woman he loved: then spying the door in the
+farthest corner, he made for it, and in a moment more, his curiosity
+now thoroughly roused, was slowly gyrating down the steps of the old
+screw-stair.
+
+But Malcolm had gone to his own room, and, hearing some one in the
+next, half suspected who it was, and went in. Seeing the closet-door
+open, he hurried to the stair, and shouted, "My lord! my lord! or
+whaever ye are! tak care hoo ye gang or ye'll get a terrible fa'."
+
+Down a single yard the stair was quite dark, and he dared not follow
+fast for fear of himself falling and occasioning the accident he
+feared. As he descended he kept repeating his warnings, but either his
+master did not hear or heeded too little, for presently Malcolm heard
+a rush, a dull fall and a groan. Hurrying as fast as he dared with
+the risk of falling upon him, he found the marquis lying amongst the
+stones in the ground entrance, apparently unable to move, and white
+with pain. Presently, however, he got up, swore a good deal and limped
+swearing into the house.
+
+The doctor, who was sent for instantly, pronounced the knee-cap
+injured, and applied leeches. Inflammation set in, and another doctor
+and surgeon were sent for from Aberdeen. They came, applied poultices,
+and again leeches, and enjoined the strictest repose. The pain was
+severe, but to one of the marquis's temperament the enforced quiet was
+worse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII.
+
+HANDS OF IRON.
+
+
+The marquis was loved by his domestics, and his accident, with its
+consequences, although none more serious were anticipated, cast a
+gloom over Lossie House. Far apart as was his chamber from all the
+centres of domestic life, the pulses of his suffering beat as it were
+through the house, and the servants moved with hushed voice and gentle
+footfall.
+
+Outside, the course of events waited upon his recovery, for Miss Horn,
+was too generous not to delay proceedings while her adversary was
+ill. Besides, what she most of all desired was the marquis's free
+acknowledgment of his son; and after such a time of suffering and
+constrained reflection as he was now passing through he could hardly
+fail, she thought, to be more inclined to what was just and fair.
+
+Malcolm had of course hastened to the schoolmaster with the joy of his
+deliverance from Mrs. Stewart, but Mr. Graham had not acquainted him
+with the discovery Miss Horn had made, or her belief concerning his
+large interest therein, to which Malcolm's report of the wrath-born
+declaration of Mrs. Catanach had now supplied the only testimony
+wanting, for the right of disclosure was Miss Horn's. To her he had
+carried Malcolm's narrative of late events, tenfold strengthening
+her position; but she was anxious in her turn that the revelation
+concerning his birth should come to him from his father. Hence,
+Malcolm continued in ignorance of the strange dawn that had begun to
+break on the darkness of his origin.
+
+Miss Horn had told Mr. Graham what the marquis had said about the
+tutorship, but the schoolmaster only shook his head with a smile, and
+went on with his preparations for departure.
+
+The hours went by, the days lengthened into weeks, and the marquis's
+condition did not improve. He had never known sickness and pain
+before, and like most of the children of this world counted them the
+greatest of evils; nor was there any sign of their having as yet begun
+to open his eyes to what those who have seen them call truths--those
+who have never even boded their presence count absurdities.
+
+More and more, however, he desired the attendance of Malcolm, who was
+consequently a great deal about him, serving with a love to account
+for which those who knew his nature would not have found it necessary
+to fall back on the instinct of the relation between them. The marquis
+had soon satisfied himself that that relation was as yet unknown to
+him, and was all the better pleased with his devotion and tenderness.
+
+The inflammation continued, increased, spread, and at length the
+doctors determined to amputate. But the marquis was absolutely
+horrified at the idea--shrank from it with invincible repugnance.
+The moment the first dawn of comprehension vaguely illuminated
+their periphrastic approaches he blazed out in a fury, cursed them
+frightfully, called them all the contemptuous names in his rather
+limited vocabulary, and swore he would see them--uncomfortable first.
+
+"We fear mortification, my lord," said the physician calmly.
+
+"So do I. Keep it off," returned the marquis.
+
+"We fear we cannot, my lord." It had, in fact, already commenced.
+
+"Let it mortify, then, and be damned," said his lordship.
+
+"I trust, my lord, you will reconsider it," said the surgeon. "We
+should not have dreamed of suggesting a measure of such severity had
+we not had reason to dread that the further prosecution of gentler
+means would but lessen your lordship's chance of recovery."
+
+"You mean, then, that my life is in danger?"
+
+"We fear," said the physician, "that the amputation proposed is the
+only thing that can save it."
+
+"What a brace of blasted bunglers you are!" cried the marquis, and,
+turning away his face, lay silent.
+
+The two men looked at each other and said nothing.
+
+Malcolm was by, and a pang shot to his heart at the verdict. The men
+retired to consult. Malcolm approached the bed. "My lord!" he said
+gently.
+
+No reply came.
+
+"Dinna lea 's oor lanes, my lord--no yet," Malcolm persisted. "What's
+to come o' my leddy?"
+
+The marquis gave a gasp. Still he made no reply.
+
+"She has naebody, ye ken, my lord, 'at ye wad like to lippen her wi'."
+
+"You must take care of her when I am gone, Malcolm," murmured the
+marquis; and his voice was now gentle with sadness and broken with
+misery.
+
+"Me, my lord!" returned Malcolm. "Wha wad min' me? An' what cud I du
+wi' her? I cudna even hand her ohn wat her feet. Her leddy's maid cud
+du mair wi' her, though I wad lay doon my life for her, as I tauld ye,
+my lord; an' she kens 't weel eneuch."
+
+Silence followed. Both men were thinking.
+
+"Gie me a richt, my lord, an' I'll du my best," said Malcolm, at
+length breaking the silence.
+
+"What do you mean?" growled the marquis, whose mood had altered.
+
+"Gie me a legal richt, my lord, an' see gien I dinna."
+
+"See what?"
+
+"See gien I dinna luik weel efter my leddy."
+
+"How am I to see? I shall be dead and damned."
+
+"Please God, my lord, ye'll be alive an' weel--in a better place, if
+no here to luik efter my leddy yersel'."
+
+"Oh, I dare say," muttered the marquis.
+
+"But ye'll hearken to the doctors, my lord," Malcolm went on, "an' no
+dee wantin' time to consider o' 't."
+
+"Yes, yes: to-morrow I'll have another talk with them. We'll see about
+it. There's time enough yet. They're all coxcombs, every one of them.
+They never give a patient the least credit for common sense."
+
+"I dinna ken, my lord," said Malcolm doubtfully.
+
+After a few minutes' silence, during which Malcolm thought he had
+fallen asleep, the marquis resumed abruptly. "What do you mean by
+giving you a legal right?" he said.
+
+"There's some w'y o' makin' ae body guairdian till anither, sae 'at
+the law 'll uphaud him--isna there, my lord?"
+
+"Yes, surely. Well! Rather odd--wouldn't it be?--a young fisher-lad
+guardian to a marchioness! Eh? They say there's nothing new under the
+sun, but that sounds rather like it, I think."
+
+Malcolm was overjoyed to hear him speak with something like his old
+manner. He felt he could stand any amount of chaff from him now, and
+so the proposition he had made in seriousness he went on to defend in
+the hope of giving amusement, yet with a secret wild delight in the
+dream of such full devotion to the service of Lady Florimel.
+
+"It wad soon' queer eneuch, my lord, nae doobt, but fowk maunna min'
+the soon' o' a thing gien 't be a' straucht an' fair, an' strong
+eneuch to stan'. They cudna lauch me oot o' my richts, be they 'at
+they likit--Lady Bellair or ony o' them--na, nor jaw me oot o' them
+aither."
+
+"They might do a good deal to render those rights of little use," said
+the marquis.
+
+"That wad come till a trial o' brains, my lord," returned Malcolm:
+"an' ye dinna think I wadna hae the wit to speir advice; an', what's
+mair, to ken whan it was guid, an' tak it. There's lawyers, my lord."
+
+"And their expenses?"
+
+"Ye cud lea' sae muckle to be waured (_spent_) upo' the cairryin' oot
+o' yer lordship's wull."
+
+"Who would see that you applied it properly?"
+
+"My ain conscience, my lord, or Mr. Graham gien ye likit."
+
+"And how would you live yourself?"
+
+"Ow! lea' ye that to me, my lord. Only dinna imagine I wad be behauden
+to yer lordship. I houp I hae mair pride nor that. Ilka poun'-not',
+shillin' an' bawbee sud be laid oot for _her_, an' what was left
+hainet (_saved_) for her."
+
+"By Jove! it's a daring proposal!" said the marquis; and, which seemed
+strange to Malcolm, not a single thread of ridicule ran through the
+tone in which he made the remark.
+
+The next day came, but brought neither strength of body nor of mind
+with it. Again his professional attendants besought him, and he heard
+them more quietly, but rejected their proposition as positively as
+before. In a day or two he ceased to oppose it, but would not hear of
+preparation. Hour glided into hour, and days had gathered to a week,
+when they assailed him with a solemn and last appeal.
+
+"Nonsense!" answered the marquis. "My leg is getting better. I feel no
+pain--in fact, nothing but a little faintness. Your damned medicines,
+I haven't a doubt."
+
+"You are in the greatest danger, my lord. It is all but too late even
+now."
+
+"To-morrow, then, if it must be. To-day I could not endure to have my
+hair cut, positively; and as to having my leg off--pooh! the thing's
+preposterous."
+
+He turned white and shuddered, for all the nonchalance of his speech.
+
+When to-morrow came there was not a surgeon in the land who would have
+taken his leg off. He looked in their faces, and seemed for the first
+time convinced of the necessity of the measure.
+
+"You may do as you please," he said: "I am ready."
+
+"Not to-day, my lord," replied the doctor--"your lordship is not equal
+to it to-day."
+
+"I understand," said the marquis, and paled frightfully and turned his
+head aside.
+
+When Mrs. Courthope suggested that Lady Florimel should be sent for,
+he flew into a frightful rage, and spoke as it is to be hoped he had
+never spoken to a woman before. She took it with perfect gentleness,
+but could not repress a tear. The marquis saw it, and his heart was
+touched. "You mustn't mind a dying man's temper," he said.
+
+"It's not for myself, my lord," she answered.
+
+"I know: you think I'm not fit to die; and, damn it! you are right.
+Never one was less fit for heaven or less willing to go to hell."
+
+"Wouldn't you like to see a clergyman, my lord?" she suggested,
+sobbing.
+
+He was on the point of breaking out into a still worse passion, but
+controlled himself. "A clergyman!" he cried: "I would as soon see the
+undertaker. What could he do but tell me I was going to be damned--a
+fact I know better than he can? That is, if it's not all an invention
+of the cloth, as, in my soul, I believe it is. I've said so any time
+these forty years."
+
+"Oh, my lord! my lord! do not fling away your last hope."
+
+"You imagine me to have a chance, then? Good soul! you don't know any
+better."
+
+"The Lord is merciful."
+
+The marquis laughed--that is, he tried, failed, and grinned.
+
+"Mr. Cairns is in the dining-room, my lord."
+
+"Bah! A low pettifogger, with the soul of a bullock. Don't let me hear
+the fellow's name. I've been bad enough, God knows, but I haven't sunk
+to the level of _his_ help yet. If he's God Almighty's factor, and the
+saw holds, 'Like master, like man,' well, I would rather have nothing
+to do with either."
+
+"That is, if you had the choice, my lord," said Mrs. Courthope, her
+temper yielding somewhat, though in truth his speech was not half so
+irreverent as it seemed to her.
+
+"Tell him to go to hell. No, don't: set him down to a bottle of port
+and a great sponge-cake, and you needn't tell him to go to heaven,
+for he'll be there already. Why, Mrs. Courthope, the fellow isn't a
+gentleman. And yet all he cares for the cloth is that he thinks it
+makes a gentleman of him--as if anything in heaven, earth or hell
+could work that miracle!"
+
+In the middle of the night, as Malcolm sat by his bed, thinking
+him asleep, the marquis spoke suddenly. "You must go to Aberdeen
+to-morrow, Malcolm," he said.
+
+"Verra weel, my lord."
+
+"And bring Mr. Glennie, the lawyer, back with you."
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"Go to bed, then."
+
+"I wad raither bide, my lord. I cudna sleep a wink for wantin' to be
+back aside ye."
+
+The marquis yielded, and Malcolm sat by him all the night through. He
+tossed about, would doze off and murmur strangely, then wake up and
+ask for brandy and water, yet be content with the lemonade Malcolm
+gave him.
+
+Next day he quarreled with every word that Mrs. Courthope uttered,
+kept forgetting he had sent Malcolm away, and was continually wanting
+him. His fits of pain were more severe, alternated with drowsiness,
+which deepened at times to stupor.
+
+It was late before Malcolm returned. He went instantly to his bedside.
+
+"Is Mr. Glennie with you?" asked his master feebly.
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"Tell him to come here at once."
+
+When Malcolm returned with the lawyer the marquis directed him to
+place a table and chair by the bedside, light four candles, provide
+everything necessary for writing and go to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX.
+
+THE MARQUIS AND THE SCHOOLMASTER.
+
+
+Before Malcolm was awake his lordship had sent for him. When he
+re-entered the sick chamber Mr. Glennie had vanished, the table had
+been removed, and, instead of the radiance of the wax-lights, the cold
+gleam of a vapor-dimmed sun, with its sickly blue-white reflex from
+the widespread snow, filled the room. The marquis looked ghastly, but
+was sipping chocolate with a spoon.
+
+"What w'y are ye the day, my lord?" asked Malcolm.
+
+"Nearly well," he answered; "but those cursed carrion-crows are set
+upon killing me--damn their souls!"
+
+"We'll hae Leddy Florimel sweirin' awfu' gien ye gang on that gait, my
+lord," said Malcolm.
+
+The marquis laughed feebly.
+
+"An' what's mair," Malcolm continued, "I doobt they're some partic'lar
+aboot the turn o' their phrases up yonner, my lord."
+
+The marquis looked at him keenly. "You don't anticipate that
+inconvenience for me?" he said. "I'm pretty sure to have my billet
+where they're not so precise."
+
+"Dinna brak my hert, my lord," cried Malcolm, the tears rushing to his
+eyes.
+
+"I should be sorry to hurt you, Malcalm," rejoined the marquis gently,
+almost tenderly. "I won't go there if I can help it--I shouldn't like
+to break any more hearts--but how the devil am I to keep out of it?
+Besides, there are people up there I don't want to meet: I have no
+fancy for being made ashamed of myself. The fact is, I'm not fit for
+such company, and I don't believe there is any such place. But if
+there be, I trust in God there isn't any other, or it will go badly
+with your poor master, Malcolm. It doesn't look _like_ true--now does
+it? Only such a multitude of things I thought I had done with for ever
+keep coming up and grinning at me. It nearly drives me mad, Malcolm;
+and I would fain die like a gentleman, with a cool bow and a sharp
+face-about."
+
+"Wadna ye hae a word wi' somebody 'at kens, my lord?" said Malcolm,
+scarcely able to reply.
+
+"No," answered the marquis fiercely. "That Cairns is a fool."
+
+"He's a' that, an' mair, my lord. I didna mean _him_."
+
+"They're all fools together."
+
+"Ow, na, my lord. There's a heap o' them no muckle better, it may be;
+but there's guid men an' true amang them, or the Kirk wad hae been wi'
+Sodom and Gomorrah by this time. But it's no a minister I wad hae yer
+lordship confar wi'."
+
+"Who, then? Mrs. Courthope, eh?"
+
+"Ow na, my lord--no Mistress Courthoup. She's a guid body, but she
+wadna believe her ain een gien onybody ca'd a minister said contrar'
+to them."
+
+"Who the devil do you mean, then?"
+
+"Nae deevil, but an honest man 'at's been his warst enemy sae lang 's
+I hae kent him--Maister Graham, the schuil-maister."
+
+"Pooh!" said the marquis with a puff. "I'm too old to go to school."
+
+"I dinna ken the man 'at isna a bairn till _him_, my lord."
+
+"In Greek and Latin?"
+
+"I' richteousness an' trouth, my lord--in what's been an' what is to
+be."
+
+"What! has he the second sight, like the piper?"
+
+"He _has_ the second sicht, my lord, but ane 'at gangs a sicht farther
+nor my auld daddy's."
+
+"He could tell me, then, what's going to become of me?"
+
+"As weel 's ony man, my lord."
+
+"That's not saying much, I fear."
+
+"Maybe mair nor ye think, my lord."
+
+"Well, take him my compliments and tell him I should like to see him,"
+said the marquis after a minute's silence.
+
+"He'll come direckly, my lord."
+
+"Of course he will," said the marquis.
+
+"Jist as readily, my lord, as he wad gang to ony tramp 'at sent for
+'im at sic a time," returned Malcolm, who did not relish either the
+remark or its tone.
+
+"What do you mean by that? _You_ don't think it such a serious affair,
+do you?"
+
+"My lord, ye haena a chance."
+
+The marquis was dumb. He had actually begun once more to buoy himself
+up with earthly hopes.
+
+Dreading a recall of his commission, Malcolm slipped from the room,
+sent Mrs. Courthope to take his place, and sped to the schoolmaster.
+The moment Mr. Graham heard the marquis's message he rose without
+a word and led the way from the cottage. Hardly a sentence passed
+between them as they went, for they were on a solemn errand.
+
+"Mr. Graham's here, my lord," said Malcolm.
+
+"Where? Not in the room?" returned the marquis.
+
+"Waitin' at the door, my lord."
+
+"Bah! You needn't have been so ready. Have you told the sexton to get
+a new spade? But you may let him in; and leave him alone with me."
+
+Mr. Graham walked gently up to the bedside.
+
+"Sit down, sir," said the marquis courteously, pleased with the calm,
+self-possessed, unobtrusive bearing of the man. "They tell me I'm
+dying, Mr. Graham."
+
+"I'm sorry it seems to trouble you, my lord."
+
+"What! wouldn't it trouble you, then?"
+
+"I don't think so, my lord."
+
+"Ah! you're one of the elect, no doubt?"
+
+"That's a thing I never did think about, my lord."
+
+"What do you think about, then?"
+
+"About God."
+
+"And when you die you'll go straight to heaven, of course?"
+
+"I don't know, my lord. That's another thing I never trouble my head
+about."
+
+"Ah! you're like me, then. _I_ don't care much about going to heaven.
+What do you care about?"
+
+"The will of God. I hope your lordship will say the same."
+
+"No I won't: I want my own will."
+
+"Well, that is to be had, my lord."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By taking his for yours as the better of the two, which it must be
+every way."
+
+"That's all moonshine."
+
+"It _is_ light, my lord."
+
+"Well, I don't mind confessing, if I am to die, I should prefer heaven
+to the other place, but I trust I have no chance of either. Do you now
+honestly believe there are two such places?"
+
+"I don't know, my lord."
+
+"You don't know? And you come here to comfort a dying man!"
+
+"Your lordship must first tell me what you mean by 'two _such_
+places.' And as to comfort, going by my notions, I cannot tell which
+you would be more or less comfortable in; and that, I presume, would
+be the main point with your lordship."
+
+"And what, pray, sir, would be the main point with you?"
+
+"To get nearer to God."
+
+"Well, I can't say _I_ want to get nearer to God. It's little he's
+ever done for me."
+
+"It's a good deal he has tried to do for you, my lord."
+
+"Well, who interfered? Who stood in his way, then?"
+
+"Yourself, my lord."
+
+"I wasn't aware of it. When did he ever try to do anything for me and
+I stood in his way?"
+
+"When he gave you one of the loveliest of women, my lord," said Mr.
+Graham with solemn, faltering voice, "and you left her to die in
+neglect and her child to be brought up by strangers."
+
+The marquis gave a cry. The unexpected answer had roused the
+slowly-gnawing death and made it bite deeper.
+
+"What have _you_ to do," he almost screamed, "with my affairs? It was
+for _me_ to introduce what I chose of them. You presume."
+
+"Pardon me, my lord: you led me to what I was bound to say. Shall I
+leave you, my lord?"
+
+The marquis made no answer. "God knows I loved her," he said after a
+while with a sigh.
+
+"You loved her, my lord?"
+
+"I did, by God!"
+
+"Love a woman like that and come to this?"
+
+"Come to this? We must all come to this, I fancy, sooner or later.
+Come to what, in the name of Beelzebub?"
+
+"That, having loved a woman like her, you are content to lose her. In
+the name of God, have you no desire to see her again?"
+
+"It would be an awkward meeting," said the marquis.
+
+His was an old love, alas! He had not been capable of the sort that
+defies change. It had faded from him until it seemed one of the things
+that are not. Although his being had once glowed in its light, he
+could now speak of a meeting as awkward.
+
+"Because you wronged her?" suggested the schoolmaster.
+
+"Because they lied to me, by God!"
+
+"Which they dared not have done had you not lied to them first."
+
+"Sir!" shouted the marquis, with all the voice he had left.--"O God,
+have mercy! I _cannot_ punish the scoundrel."
+
+"The scoundrel is the man who lies, my lord."
+
+"Were I anywhere else--"
+
+"There would be no good in telling you the truth, my lord. You showed
+her to the world as a woman over whom you had prevailed, and not as
+the honest wife she was. What _kind_ of a lie was that, my lord? Not a
+white one, surely?"
+
+"You are a damned coward to speak so to a man who cannot even turn on
+his side to curse you for a base hound. You would not dare it but that
+you know I cannot defend myself."
+
+"You are right, my lord: your conduct is indefensible."
+
+"By Heaven! if I could but get this cursed leg under me, I would throw
+you out of the window."
+
+"I shall go by the door, my lord. While you hold by your sins, your
+sins will hold by you. If you should want me again I shall be at your
+lordship's command."
+
+He rose and left the room, but had not reached his cottage before
+Malcolm overtook him with a second message from his master. He turned
+at once, saying only, "I expected it."
+
+"Mr. Graham," said the marquis, looking ghastly, "you must have
+patience with a dying man. I was very rude to you, but I was in
+horrible pain."
+
+"Don't mention it, my lord. It would be a poor friendship that gave
+way for a rough word."
+
+"How can you call yourself my friend?"
+
+"I should be your friend, my lord, if it were only for your wife's
+sake. She died loving you. I want to send you to her, my lord. You
+will allow that, as a gentleman, you at least owe her an apology."
+
+"By Jove, you are right, sir! Then you really and positively believe
+in the place they call heaven?"
+
+"My lord, I believe that those who open their hearts to the truth
+shall see the light on their friends' faces again, and be able to set
+right what was wrong between them."
+
+"It's a week too late to talk of setting right."
+
+"Go and tell her you are sorry, my lord--that will be enough for her."
+
+"Ah! but there's more than her concerned."
+
+"You are right, my lord. There is another--One who cannot be satisfied
+that the fairest works of his hands, or rather the loveliest children
+of his heart, should be treated as you have treated women."
+
+"But the Deity you talk of--"
+
+"I beg your pardon, my lord: I talked of no deity. I talked of a
+living Love that gave us birth and calls us his children. Your deity I
+know nothing of."
+
+"Call Him what you please: _He_ won't be put off so easily."
+
+"He won't be put off, one jot or one tittle. He will forgive anything,
+but He will pass nothing. Will your wife forgive you?"
+
+"She will, when I explain."
+
+"Then why should you think the forgiveness of God, which created her
+forgiveness, should be less?"
+
+Whether the marquis could grasp the reasoning may be doubtful.
+
+"Do you really suppose God cares whether a man comes to good or ill?"
+
+"If He did not, He could not be good Himself."
+
+"Then you don't think a good God would care to punish poor wretches
+like us?"
+
+"Your lordship has not been in the habit of regarding himself as
+a poor wretch. And, remember, you can't call a child a poor wretch
+without insulting the father of it."
+
+"That's quite another thing."
+
+"But on the wrong side for your argument, seeing the relation between
+God and the poorest creature is infinitely closer than that between
+any father and his child."
+
+"Then He can't be so hard on him as the parsons say."
+
+"He will give him absolute justice, which is the only good thing. He
+will spare nothing to bring his children back to Himself, their sole
+well-being. What would you do, my lord, if you saw your son strike a
+woman?"
+
+"Knock him down and horsewhip him."
+
+It was Mr. Graham who broke the silence that followed: "Are you
+satisfied with yourself, my lord?"
+
+"No, by God!"
+
+"You would like to be better?"
+
+"I would."
+
+"Then you are of the same mind with God."
+
+"Yes, but I'm not a fool. It won't do to say I should like to be. I
+must be it, and that's not so easy. It's damned hard to be good. I
+would have a fight for it, but there's no time. How is a poor devil to
+get out of such an infernal scrape?"
+
+"Keep the commandments."
+
+"That's it, of course; but there's no time, I tell you--no time; at
+least, so those cursed doctors will keep telling me."
+
+"If there were but time to draw another breath, there would be time to
+begin."
+
+"How am I to begin? Which am I to begin with?"
+
+"There is one commandment which includes all the rest."
+
+"Which is that?"
+
+"To believe in the Lord Jesus Christ."
+
+"That's cant."
+
+"After thirty years' trial of it, it is to me the essence of wisdom.
+It has given me a peace which makes life or death all but indifferent
+to me, though I would choose the latter."
+
+"What am I to believe about Him, then?"
+
+"You are to believe _in_ Him, not about Him."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"He is our Lord and Master, Elder Brother, King, Saviour, the divine
+Man, the human God: to believe in Him is to give ourselves up to Him
+in obedience--to search out his will and do it."
+
+"But there's no time, I tell you again," the marquis almost shrieked.
+
+"And I tell you there is all eternity to do it in. Take Him for your
+master, and He will demand nothing of you which you are not able to
+perform. This is the open door to bliss. With your last breath you can
+cry to Him, and He will hear you as He heard the thief on the cross,
+who cried to Him dying beside him: 'Lord, remember me when Thou comest
+into Thy kingdom.'--'To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.' It
+makes my heart swell to think of it, my lord. No cross-questioning of
+the poor fellow, no preaching to him. He just took him with Him where
+He was going, to make a man of him."
+
+"Well, you know something of my history: what would you have me do
+now?--at once, I mean. What would the Person you are speaking of have
+me do?"
+
+"That is not for me to say, my lord."
+
+"You could give me a hint."
+
+"No. God is telling you Himself. For me to presume to tell you would
+be to interfere with Him. What He would have a man do He lets him know
+in his mind."
+
+"But what if I had not made up my mind before the last came?"
+
+"Then I fear He would say to you, 'Depart from me, thou worker of
+iniquity.'"
+
+"That would be hard when another minute might have done it."
+
+"If another minute would have done it, you would have had it."
+
+A paroxysm of pain followed, during which Mr. Graham silently left
+him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX.
+
+END OR BEGINNING?
+
+
+When the fit was over and he found Mr. Graham was gone, he asked
+Malcolm, who had resumed his watch, how long it would take Lady
+Florimel to come from Edinburgh.
+
+"Mr. Crathie left wi' fower horses frae the Lossie Airms last nicht,
+my lord," said Malcolm; "but the ro'ds are ill, an' she winna be here
+afore some time the morn."
+
+The marquis stared aghast: they had sent for her without his orders.
+"What _shall_ I do?" he murmured. "If once I look in her eyes, I shall
+be damned.--Malcolm!"
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"Is there a lawyer in Portlossie?"
+
+"Yes, my lord: there's auld Maister Carmichael."
+
+"He won't do: he was my brother's rascal. Is there no one besides?"
+
+"No in Portlossie, my lord. There can be nane nearer than Duff Harbor,
+I doobt."
+
+"Take the chariot and bring him here directly. Tell them to put four
+horses to: Stokes can ride one."
+
+"I'll ride the ither, my lord."
+
+"You'll do nothing of the kind: you're not used to the pole."
+
+"I can tak the leader, my lord."
+
+"I tell you you're to do nothing of the kind," cried the marquis
+angrily. "You're to ride inside, and bring Mr.--what's his name?--back
+with you."
+
+"Soutar, my lord, gien ye please."
+
+"Be off, then. Don't wait to feed. The brutes have been eating all
+day, and they can eat all night. You must have him here in an hour."
+
+In an hour and a quarter Miss Horn's friend stood by the marquis's
+bedside, Malcolm was dismissed, but was presently summoned again to
+receive more orders.
+
+Fresh horses were put to the chariot, and he had to set out once
+more--this time to fetch a justice of the peace, a neighbor laird. The
+distance was greater than to Duff Harbor; the roads were worse; the
+north wind, rising as they went, blew against them as they returned,
+increasing to a violent gale; and it was late before they reached
+Lossie House.
+
+When Malcolm entered he found the marquis alone.
+
+"Is Morrison here at last?" he cried, in a feeble, irritated voice.
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"What the devil kept you so long? The bay mare would have carried me
+there and back in an hour and a half."
+
+"The roads war verra heavy, my lord. An' jist hear till the win'."
+
+The marquis listened a moment, and a frightened expression grew over
+his thin, pale, anxious face. "You don't know what depends on it," he
+said, "or you would have driven better. Where is Mr. Soutar?"
+
+"I dinna ken, my lord. I'm only jist come, an' I've seen naebody."
+
+"Go and tell Mrs. Courthope I want Soutar. You'll find her crying
+somewhere--the old chicken!--because I swore at her. What harm could
+that do the old goose?"
+
+"It'll be mair for love o' yer lordship than fricht at the sweirin',
+my lord."
+
+"You think so? Why should _she_ care? Go and tell her I'm sorry.
+But really she ought to be used to me by this time. Tell her to send
+Soutar directly."
+
+Mr. Soutar was not to be found, the fact being that he had gone to see
+Miss Horn. The marquis flew into an awful rage, and began to curse and
+swear frightfully.
+
+"My lord! my lord!" said Malcolm, "for God's sake, dinna gang on that
+gait. He canna like to hear that kin' o' speech; an' frae ane o' his
+ain' tu!"
+
+The marquis stopped, aghast at his presumption and choking with rage,
+but Malcolm's eyes filled with tears, and, instead of breaking out
+again, his master turned his head away and was silent.
+
+Mr. Soutar came.
+
+"Fetch Morrison," said the marquis, "and go to bed."
+
+The wind howled terribly as Malcolm ascended the stairs and half felt
+his way, for he had no candle, through the long passages leading to
+his room. As he entered the last a huge vague form came down upon
+him like a deeper darkness through the dark. Instinctively he stepped
+aside. It passed noiselessly, with a long stride, and not even a
+rustle of its garments--at least Malcolm heard nothing but the roar
+of the wind. He turned and followed it. On and on it went, down the
+stair, through a corridor, down the great stone turnpike stair, and
+through passage after passage. When it came into the more frequented
+and half-lighted thoroughfares of the house it showed as a large
+figure in a long cloak, indistinct in outline.
+
+It turned a corner close by the marquis's room. But when Malcolm,
+close at its heels, turned also, he saw nothing but a vacant lobby,
+the doors around which were all shut. One after another he quickly
+opened them, all except the marquis's, but nothing was to be seen.
+The conclusion was that it had entered the marquis's room. He must
+not disturb the conclave in the sick chamber with what might be but "a
+false creation proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain," and turned
+back to his own room, where he threw himself on his bed and fell
+asleep.
+
+About twelve Mrs. Courthope called him: his master was worse, and
+wanted to see him.
+
+The midnight was dark and still, for the wind had ceased. But a hush
+and a cloud seemed gathering in the stillness and darkness, and with
+them came the sense of a solemn celebration, as if the gloom were
+canopy as well as pall--black, but bordered and hearted with purple
+and gold; and the terrible stillness seemed to tremble as with the
+inaudible tones of a great organ at the close or commencement of some
+mighty symphony.
+
+With beating heart he walked softly toward the room where, as on an
+altar, lay the vanishing form of his master, like the fuel in whose
+dying flame was offered the late and ill-nurtured sacrifice of his
+spirit.
+
+As he went through the last corridor leading thither, Mrs. Catanach,
+type and embodiment of the horrors that haunt the dignity of death,
+came walking toward him like one at home, her great round body lighty
+upborne on her soft foot. It was no time to challenge her presence,
+and yielding her the half of the narrow way he passed without a
+greeting. She dropped him a courtesy with an up-look and again a
+veiling of her wicked eyes.
+
+The marquis would not have the doctors come near him, and when Malcolm
+entered there was no one in the room but Mrs. Courthope. The shadow
+had crept far along the dial. His face had grown ghastly, the skin had
+sunk to the bones, and his eyes stood out as if from much staring into
+the dark. They rested very mournfully on Malcolm for a few moments,
+and then closed softly.
+
+"Is she come yet?" he murmured, opening them wide with sudden stare.
+
+"No, my lord."
+
+The lids fell again, softly, slowly.
+
+"Be good to her, Malcolm," he murmured.
+
+"I wull, my lord," said Malcolm solemnly.
+
+Then the eyes opened and looked at him: something grew in them, a
+light as of love, and drew up after it a tear; but the lips said
+nothing. The eyelids fell again, and in a minute more Malcolm knew by
+his breathing that he slept.
+
+The slow night waned. He woke sometimes, but soon dozed off again.
+The two watched by him till the dawn. It brought a still gray morning,
+without a breath of wind and warm for the season. The marquis appeared
+a little revived, but was hardly able to speak. Mostly by signs he
+made Malcolm understand that he wanted Mr. Graham, but that some one
+else must go for him. Mrs. Courthope went.
+
+As soon as she was out of the room he lifted his hand with effort,
+laid feeble hold on Malcolm's jacket, and, drawing him down, kissed
+him on the forehead. Malcolm burst into tears and sank weeping by the
+bedside.
+
+Mr. Graham, entering a little after, and seeing Malcolm on his knees,
+knelt also and broke into a prayer.
+
+"O blessed Father!" he said, "who knowest this thing, so strange to
+us, which we call death, breathe more life into the heart of Thy dying
+son, that in the power of life he may front death. O Lord Christ! who
+diedst Thyself, and in Thyself knowest it all, heal this man in his
+sore need--heal him with strength to die."
+
+A faint _Amen_ came from the marquis.
+
+"Thou didst send him into the world: help him out of it. O God!
+we belong to Thee utterly. We dying men are Thy children, O living
+Father! Thou art such a father that Thou takest our sins from us and
+throwest them behind Thy back. Thou cleansest our souls as Thy Son did
+wash our feet. We hold our hearts up to Thee: make them what they must
+be, O Love! O Life of men! O Heart of hearts! Give Thy dying child
+courage and hope and peace--the peace of Him who overcame all the
+terrors of humanity, even death itself, and liveth for evermore,
+sitting at Thy right hand, our God-brother, blessed to all ages.
+Amen."
+
+"Amen!" murmured the marquis, and, slowly lifting his hand from the
+coverlid, he laid it on the head of Malcolm, who did not know it was
+the hand of his father blessing him ere he died.
+
+"Be good to her," said the marquis once more.
+
+But Malcolm could not answer for weeping, and the marquis was not
+satisfied. Gathering all his force, he said again, "Be good to her."
+
+"I wull, I wull," burst from Malcolm in sobs; and he wailed aloud.
+
+The day wore on, and the afternoon came. Still Lady Florimel had not
+arrived, and still the marquis lingered.
+
+As the gloom of the twilight was deepening into the early darkness of
+the winter night he opened wide his eyes, and was evidently listening.
+Malcolm could hear nothing, but the light in his master's face grew
+and the strain of his listening diminished. At length Malcolm became
+aware of the sound of wheels, which came rapidly nearer, till at last
+the carriage swung up to the hall-door. A moment, and Lady Florimel
+was flitting across the room.
+
+"Papa! papa!" she cried, and, throwing her arm over him, laid her
+cheek to his.
+
+The marquis could not return her embrace: he could only receive her
+into the depths of his shining, tearful eyes.
+
+"Flory!" he murmured, "I'm going away. I'm going--I've got--to make
+an--apology. Malcolm, be good--"
+
+The sentence remained unfinished. The light paled from his
+countenance: he had to carry it with him. He was dead.
+
+Lady Florimel gave a loud cry. Mrs. Courthope ran to her assistance.
+"My lady's in a dead faint," she whispered, and left the room to get
+help.
+
+Malcolm lifted Lady Florimel in his great arms and bore her tenderly
+to her own apartment. There he left her to the care of her women and
+returned to the chamber of death.
+
+Meantime, Mr. Graham and Mr. Soutar had come. When Malcolm re-entered
+the schoolmaster took him kindly by the arm and said, "Malcolm, there
+can be neither place nor moment fitter for the solemn communication
+I am commissioned to make to you: I have, as in the presence of your
+dead father, to inform you that you are now marquis of Lossie; and
+God forbid you should be less worthy as marquis than you have been as
+fisherman!"
+
+Malcolm stood stupefied. For a while he seemed to himself to be
+turning over in his mind something he had heard read from a book, with
+a nebulous notion of being somehow concerned in it. The thought of his
+father cleared his brain. He ran to the dead body, kissed its lips as
+he had once kissed the forehead of another, and falling on his knees
+wept, he knew not for what. Presently, however, he recovered himself,
+rose, and, rejoining the two men, said, "Gentlemen, hoo mony kens this
+turn o' things?"
+
+"None but Mr. Morrison, Mrs. Catanach and ourselves--so far as I
+know," answered Mr. Soutar.
+
+"And Miss Horn," added Mr. Graham, "She first brought out the truth
+of it, and ought to be the first to know of your recognition by your
+father."
+
+"I s' tell her mysel'," returned Malcolm. "But, gentlemen, I beg o'
+ye, till I ken what I'm aboot an' gie ye leave, dinna open yer moo' to
+leevin' cratur' aboot this. There's time eneuch for the warl' to ken
+'t."
+
+"Your lordship commands me," said Mr. Soutar.
+
+"Yes, Malcolm, until you give me leave," said Mr. Graham.
+
+"Whaur's Mr. Morrison?" asked Malcolm.
+
+"He is still in the house," said Mr. Soutar.
+
+"Gang till him, sir, an' gar him promise, on the word o' a gentleman,
+to haud his tongue. I canna bide to hae't blaret a' gait an' a' at
+ance. For Mistress Catanach, I s' deal wi' her mysel'."
+
+The door opened, and, in all the conscious dignity conferred by the
+immunities and prerogatives of her calling, Mrs. Catanach walked into
+the room.
+
+"A word wi' ye, Mistress Catanach," said Malcolm.
+
+"Certainly, my lord," answered the howdy with mingled presumption and
+respect, and followed him to the dining-room. "Weel, my lord--" she
+began, before he had turned from shutting the door behind them, in the
+tone and with the air--or rather _airs_--of having conferred a great
+benefit, and expecting its recognition.
+
+"Mistress Catanach," interrupted Malcolm, turning and facing her,
+"gien I be un'er ony obligation to you, it's frae anither tongue I
+maun hear't. But I hae an offer to mak ye: Sae lang as it disna coom
+oot 'at I'm onything better nor a fisherman born, ye s' hae yer twinty
+poun' i' the year, peyed ye quarterly. But the moment fowk says wha
+I am ye touch na a poun'-not' mair, an' I coont mysel' free to pursue
+onything I can pruv agane ye."
+
+Mrs. Catanach attempted a laugh of scorn, but her face was gray as
+putty and its muscles declined response.
+
+"_Ay_ or _no_?" said Malcolm. "I winna gar ye sweir, for I wad lippen
+to yer aith no a hair."
+
+"Ay, my lord," said the howdy, reassuming at least outward composure,
+and with it her natural brass, for as she spoke she held out her open
+palm.
+
+"Na, na," said Malcolm, "nae forhan' payments. Three months o'
+tongue-haudin', an' there's yer five poun'; an' Maister Soutar o' Duff
+Harbor 'ill pay 't intill yer ain han'. But brack troth wi' me, an' ye
+s' hear o' 't; for gien ye war hangt the warl' wad be a' the cleaner.
+Noo quit the hoose, an' never lat me see ye aboot the place again.
+But afore ye gang I gie ye fair warnin' 'at I mean to win at a' yer
+byganes."
+
+The blood of red wrath was seething in Mrs. Catanach's face: she drew
+herself up and stood flaming before him, on the verge of explosion.
+
+"Gang frae the hoose," said Malcolm, "or I'll set the muckle hun' to
+shaw ye the gait."
+
+Her face turned the color of ashes, and with hanging cheeks and
+scared but not the less wicked eyes she hurried from the room. Malcolm
+watched her out of the house, then, following her into the town,
+brought Miss Horn back with him to aid in the last earthly services,
+and hastened to Duncan's cottage.
+
+But, to his amazement and distress, it was forsaken and the hearth
+cold. In his attendance on his father he had not seen the piper--he
+could not remember for how many days; and on inquiry he found that,
+although he had not been missed, no one could recall having seen him
+later than three or four days agone. The last he could hear of him was
+that about a week before a boy had spied him sitting on a rock in the
+Baillies' Barn with his pipes in his lap. Searching the cottage, he
+found that his broadsword and dirk, with all his poor finery, were
+gone.
+
+That same night Mrs. Catanach also disappeared.
+
+A week after, what was left of Lord Lossie was buried. Malcolm
+followed the hearse with the household. Miss Horn walked immediately
+behind him, on the arm of the schoolmaster. It was a great funeral,
+with a short road, for the body was laid in the church--close to the
+wall, just under the crusader with the Norman canopy.
+
+Lady Florimel wept incessantly for three days; on the fourth she
+looked out on the sea and thought it very dreary; on the fifth
+she found a certain gratification in hearing herself called the
+marchioness; on the sixth she tried on her mourning and was pleased;
+on the seventh she went with the funeral and wept again; on the eighth
+came Lady Bellair, who on the ninth carried her away.
+
+To Malcolm she had not spoken once.
+
+Mr. Graham left Portlossie.
+
+Miss Horn took to her bed for a week.
+
+Mr. Crathie removed his office to the House itself, took upon him the
+function of steward as well as factor, had the state-rooms dismantled,
+and was master of the place.
+
+Malcolm helped Stoat with the horses and did odd jobs for Mr. Crathie.
+From his likeness to the old marquis, as he was still called, the
+factor had a favor for him, firmly believing the said marquis to be
+his father and Mrs. Stewart his mother; and hence it came that he
+allowed him a key to the library.
+
+The story of Malcom's plans and what came of them requires another
+book.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STAGE IN ITALY.
+
+
+The Italians are undoubtedly the most theatre-loving people in the
+world. With them the play-house takes the place to a great extent of
+drawing-room and evening lounge. Almost every Italian family of any
+social position possesses a box at one of the principal theatres,
+where visits are received and many a scene from the _School for
+Scandal_ is enacted whilst the fair gossip-mongers flirt and sip
+ices. In winter the opera is the standard amusement of the fashionable
+world, while the favorite resort in summer is the _diurno_ or open air
+theatre, which is in the form of an amphitheatre, the stage with its
+accessories facing an unroofed enclosure, with the seats arranged in
+tiers one above another, and fenced off by an iron balustrade from a
+terrace which serves the purpose of a gallery. A vast covered corridor
+is nearly always to be found adjacent to the _diurno_, beneath which
+the audience can take refuge in case of a shower, walk between the
+acts and indulge in _bebite_--cooling drinks, such as sherbets and
+beer. The _abbonamento_ (or subscription) to a diurno costs from three
+to ten dollars for the season of thirty or forty representations. When
+a dramatic company is about to visit a city the manager first secures
+his _abbonati_, for according to their number he is able to regulate
+his expenses, as he counts little on chance spectators, and is sure to
+have almost always to play before the same audience.
+
+The lyric stage in Italy takes precedence of the dramatic, and in the
+large cities, Milan, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Rome and Naples, the
+production of a new opera is considered a national event, forming for
+many days previous to its production the chief topic of conversation
+in salons and _caffès_. No such enthusiasm is manifested in regard to
+the first representation of a new play; and although the house may be
+crowded and the author called before the curtain, he may deem himself
+happy if his drama is played four times during the season; whereas
+a popular opera will be given night after night for two months. An
+opera, if it has any merit, may be the means of carrying the fame of
+Italian genius to the farthest limits of the earth, but it is a chance
+if the comedy which pleases at Venice will be appreciated in the
+least degree at Rome or Naples, such are the variations in manners
+and customs, especially amongst the lower orders, between one Italian
+province and another. Hence, opera is greatly fostered and protected.
+There are a dozen musical _conservatori_, public and private, in each
+of the principal cities, for the training of singers, and prizes are
+accorded to them out of funds especially set apart for the purpose
+by the government, which also grants large annual subsidies to the
+leading lyric theatres, such as the Scala at Milan, the San Carlo
+at Naples, the Fenice at Venice, the Pergola at Florence, the Carlo
+Felice at Genoa, the Communale at Bologna, and the Apollo at Rome. The
+dramatic stage has none of these aids, the various companies have to
+pay their own expenses, and, whatever may be the merits of the artists
+who compose them, they scarcely ever obtain any special recognition
+from the government. Although the smallest Italian city possesses its
+theatre, and some of the capitals--Milan and Naples, for instance--at
+least a dozen, there is no training-school for the stage in any
+part of the country. Nor is there such an institution as the English
+Dramatic College, where decayed artists can retire when their day of
+glory is past and they have become poor and lonely. Each city has one
+theatre, the largest and most magnificent, reserved exclusively for
+operatic performances, and where the unmusical drama is scarcely ever
+tolerated. I once saw Ristori act in Metastasio's _Dido_ at the
+Scala for the benefit of the wounded during the war for Italian
+independence; but this was the only occasion in fifty years on which
+an actress had declaimed in that enormous edifice, and nothing
+but patriotic charity would have excused such an infringement of
+time-honored etiquette. When, therefore, the Italian opera-houses
+close for the season, they are never reopened for the accommodation
+of wandering "stars." The consequence of this is, that the drama is
+banished to the inferior theatres, and whilst thousands of francs are
+spent on the scenery of a new opera or ballet, the poor player has to
+content himself with an indifferent stage and wretched decorations. In
+short, to quote an observation made to me recently by Signor Salvini,
+"Theatrical affairs are just the opposite in Italy to what they are
+in America. In Italy the opera-bill is never changed more than three
+times in as many months: in America it varies almost every evening. In
+Italy the play-bill is renewed nightly, while in this country and
+in England a drama, if good, may have a run of over a hundred
+representations." Nothing surprised Salvini more during his stay in
+the United States than the splendor of the _mise en scène_ of some
+of the New York plays, but he accounted for it easily enough. The
+managers of most of the New York, Paris and London theatres do not
+hesitate to lavish large sums of money upon their decorations and
+scenery, because should the piece fail for which they were painted
+they can be used in some other. The Italian theatres are nearly always
+the property either of some nobleman or of a company of speculators,
+whose principal object is to make as much money out of them, and spend
+as little upon them, as possible. They are rented out for a month or
+so to one or other of the many troupes of actors which are constantly
+wandering about the country, and which bring their own scenery
+and dresses with them, generally of the cheapest and most tawdry
+description.
+
+A Tuscan proverb says, "_Figlio d'attore, attore_" ("The son of an
+actor is always an actor"); and this in Italy is pretty sure to be the
+case. The three greatest living actors, Salvini, Rossi and Majeroni,
+belong to families which have long been popular on the stage, and so
+do the actresses Ristori and Sedowsky. Signora Ristori made her début
+as an infant in the cradle, and was for years a member of a troupe the
+leading lady of which was her late mother, Signora Maddalena Ristori,
+a woman of great talent and merit, whose death at an advanced age
+has recently occasioned her celebrated daughter poignant grief. There
+still exists in Italy a Venetian troupe of comedians whose ancestors
+were the first interpreters of the comedies of Goldoni, and several of
+them claim descent from players who enacted the tragedies and comedies
+of serious classical literature before the courts of Lucrezia Borgia
+and Leonora d'Este. In glancing over an Italian play-bill one is
+invariably struck by the fact that many of the artists bear the same
+name, and are evidently connected by ties of consanguinity or of
+marriage. In the Ristori troupe, for instance, there are several
+actors calling themselves by the same name as that great artist, and
+who are doubtless of her family. The Salvini company embraces, besides
+the two brothers Tommaso and Alessandro, several Piamontis, two or
+three Piccininis and two Colonellos. I once knew in Italy a manager
+named Spada who directed a little troupe of buffo actors consisting
+of his grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, three or four
+uncles and aunts, two brothers, and one or two sisters, in addition to
+himself, his wife and children. Such facts are in part accounted for
+by the social status--or rather want of status--of the profession.
+Down to within a very recent period ecclesiastical censures weighed
+heavily upon all actors, and Christian burial was denied them unless
+during their final illness they had formally declared their intention
+to abandon the stage in case of recovery. So severe a condemnation on
+the part of the clergy naturally produced a strong prejudice against
+those who connected themselves in any way with the stage; and it is
+only recently that in Italy, a land where social changes are slow, the
+doors of her somewhat formal society have been opened to admit even
+persons so distinguished in every sense of the word as are Ristori,
+Piamonti, Salvini and Rossi. The social unfriendliness of the
+audiences--who can applaud so enthusiastically that a stranger
+witnessing for the first time their noisy demonstrations would easily
+believe every man and woman in the theatre ready to die for the sake
+of the admired artist--is doubtless the cause of the patriarchal
+system observable in the formation of Italian dramatic companies. The
+members thereof prefer adopting their fathers' profession rather
+than enter another where they would be constantly mortified by being
+pointed at as the children of actors.
+
+A little research into the history of the stage in Italy will
+enlighten the reader as to the true cause both of the harsh
+condemnation of the Church and of the prejudice of society against
+this great profession. The plays of the old Romans were proverbially
+loose both in their plots and dialogues, and Juvenal has spoken of the
+actors of his time with the bitterest contempt. During the Middle Ages
+the members of the various religious confraternities monopolized the
+stage with their sacred dramas and mysteries, and the "profane stage,"
+as an Italian writer calls it, was so degraded that more than once
+both the Church and State had to use their influence to put down
+performances which were too infamous to be here described. When the
+Renaissance came the drama was reinstated in the position it occupied
+during the days of Roman civilization, but the plays of this period
+were merely imitations of the Latin comedies; and if we may judge by
+the most celebrated of them which still exists--the _Mandragora_ of
+Macchiavelli, for example--far exceeded their models in obscenity.
+When Benedict XIV. ascended the pontifical throne he established a
+severe censorship, and inaugurated the harsh system to which I have
+already alluded, with the effect of banishing immoral productions
+from the stage, though without improving its intellectual tone. In the
+eighteenth century Goldoni appeared and gave to the world his graceful
+comedies, which were followed by the lyric dramas of Metastasio and
+the lofty tragedies of Alfieri. Since then there has been a succession
+of able dramatists--Monti, Gozzi, Manzoni, Pellico, Ippolito d'Asti,
+etc.; and as the class of plays acted was elevated, so the character
+of the performers was also improved. From being dissolute they became
+generally respectable; and at present it may be safely asserted that
+a better-conducted, more frugal or industrious class of men and woman
+can scarcely be found than are the Italian players. That class of
+actresses with whom their profession is only a means of displaying
+their beauty and splendid but often ill-gotten robes and jewelry, is
+little known in Italy, Such persons would be scarcely tolerated either
+by their comrades or by the public. Indeed, although within the past
+few years, owing to the unsettled state of affairs, a great many plays
+of questionable morality have been acted, especially in Rome, still
+the tone of the performances usually witnessed in an Italian theatre
+is greatly above the average of what even Americans applaud; and a
+French play has to go through more careful pruning for the Italian
+stage than for ours.
+
+The Italian actors have always been in the habit of forming themselves
+into troupes, or, as they call them, _compagnie_, placed under the
+direction of one person, who is both manager and principal performer.
+They divide these troupes according to the various kinds of acting;
+thus, there are companies of tragic, melodramatic and comic actors,
+but it is very rare to find a combination of tragedy and comedy in
+the same entertainment. There are at present about eighty different
+troupes of actors in Italy, including those devoted to the marionnette
+and dialect performances. The principal are the "Salvini," "Ristori,"
+"Majeroni," "Sedowsky," and "Rossi" for tragedy, the "Bellotti Bon"
+for high comedy, and the "De Mestri" for farce and vaudeville. The
+"Ristori," "Salvini" and "Rossi" troupes have been the round of the
+world. The "Bellotti Bon" has, I believe, never quitted Italy. It is a
+remarkable combination of well-trained actors, devoted exclusively
+to the representation of modern society plays and dramas, mostly
+translated or adapted from the French. Bellotti-Bon, the director,
+is not excelled in his own line even on the stage of the Théâtre
+Français. His company is rich, and its scenery and dresses are
+tasteful. The late Signora Cazzola, formerly the leading lady of this
+troupe, was perhaps the best high-comedy and dramatic actress Italy
+has produced. Signer Salvini informed me that Alexandre Dumas _fils_
+told him he preferred this lady's interpretation of the _rôle_ of
+Marguerite Gauthier (Camille) in _La Dame aux Camélias_ to that of
+Madame Doche, who created the part. She produced a great effect when
+the dying Camille looks at herself in the glass for the first time
+after her long illness. Instead of screaming or fainting, as is usual
+with most actresses who undertake the character, Signora Cazzola stood
+for a long time gazing intently at the havoc disease had wrought upon
+her lovely countenance. Then, with a deep sigh and an expression
+of intense agony, she turned the mirror with its back toward her,
+implying that she could never again endure the pain of seeing herself
+reflected upon its truth-telling surface. On the toilette-table was
+a vase full of camellias--those beautiful but scentless flowers which
+were emblematic of her brilliant but artificial life. Taking one of
+these in her hand, she plucked it to pieces leaf by leaf, and when
+the last petal fell to the ground went quietly back to her bed, there
+hopelessly to await the coming on of death. Her parting with Armand
+was very pathetic, and her death, although harrowing and true to
+Nature, was not revolting, its horrors being moderated by artistic
+good sense and delicacy. This great artiste died young, worn out by
+the strong emotions she not only represented, but actually felt.
+
+Signora Cazzola, together with Virginia Marini and Isolina Piamonti,
+was a pupil of Signor Salvini. Virginia Marini is well considered in
+Italy, and used to be the leading lady in the Salvini troupe. She now
+directs a company of her own, and has been succeeded in her former
+position by the estimable Signora Piamonti, whom Salvini declares to
+be one of the most versatile artistes he has ever known, equally good
+in the highest tragedy or the liveliest farce. Her Dalilla in _Samson_
+was much admired in America, but her rendering of the _rôle_ of
+Francesca di Rimini in the tragedy of that name is perhaps her
+greatest performance.
+
+Signora Sedowsky is undoubtedly the greatest tragic actress of Italy.
+She is perhaps less stately and grand than Ristori, but in fire and
+depth of feeling she greatly surpasses this eminent tragédienne. Her
+Phèdre is pronounced by excellent judges equal to that of Rachel.
+Signora Sedowsky was born at Naples, and is the proprietress of three
+large theatres in that city. She is the wife of a wealthy nobleman.
+Notwithstanding her rank, she still keeps on the stage, but is
+received with honor in the first society. She has never acted out of
+Italy, and very rarely beyond the walls of Naples.
+
+The superlative merits of Signora Ristori are so well known in America
+that the mere mention of her name is sure to recall some of the most
+delightful evenings ever spent by many of my readers. Her genius and
+beauty, her majesty and glorious method of declamation, have won her
+a foremost rank in her profession, and her virtues and nobility of
+conduct the esteem of all who have ever known her. There are indeed
+few women more estimable than Adelaide Ristori, Marchioness Capranica
+del Grillo. It may be a matter of surprise to some who are not aware
+of the fact when I tell them that in Italy Ristori is more famous in
+comedy than in tragedy. She is inimitable in such parts as the hostess
+in Goldoni's clever comedy of _La Locandiera_.
+
+Of all Italian actors, Gustavo Modena was the most renowned. He is to
+the stage of his native land what Garrick was to that of England, and
+his conception of the various parts in classic drama, his "points,"
+and even his dress, have become traditional, and are almost invariably
+retained by his followers. I never saw him act, but I once heard him
+recite in a private _salon_ his famous _rôle_ of Saul in Alfieri's
+tragedy of that name. In person he was tall and largely built, His
+countenance was not prepossessing, and, like Michael Angelo, he had a
+broken nose. His eye could assume a terrific aspect, and his voice
+was rich, powerful and varied in its tone. At times it rolled like
+thunder, while at other moments it was as soft and tender as the
+sweetest notes of a flute. Signor Modena died some years ago. He was
+the master of Salvini, and to him that illustrious actor does not
+hesitate to attribute much of his fame.
+
+Rossi, the only living rival of Salvini, is still a young man, and
+doubtless has great talents. I think him even more impetuous and
+ardent than Salvini, but he is less intellectual, and his elocution is
+decidedly inferior.
+
+Majeroni is an actor of the same school, but he is becoming old, and
+has a tendency to rant.
+
+Tommaso Salvini, our late visitor, is of Milanese parentage, and was
+born in the Lombard capital on January 1, 1830. His father, as I have
+already said, was an able actor, and his mother a popular actress
+named Guglielmina Zocchi. When quite a boy he showed a rare talent
+for acting, and performed in certain plays given during the Easter
+holidays in the school where he was educated, with such rare ability
+that his father determined to devote him to the stage. For this
+purpose he placed him under the tuition of the great Modena, who
+conceived much affection for him. The training received thus early
+from such able hands soon bore fruits, and before he was thirteen
+Salvini had already won a kind of renown in juvenile characters. At
+fifteen he lost both his parents, and the bereavement so preyed upon
+his spirits that he was obliged to abandon his career for two years,
+and returned once more under the tuition of Modena. When he again
+emerged from retirement he joined the Ristori troupe, and shared with
+that great actress many a triumph. In 1849, Salvini entered the army
+of Italian independence, and fought valiantly for the defence of his
+country, receiving in recognition of his services several medals of
+honor. Peace being proclaimed, he again appeared upon the stage in a
+company directed by Signer Cesare Dondini. He played in the _Edipo_
+of Nicolini--a tragedy written expressly for him--and achieved a great
+success. Next he appeared in Alfieri's _Saul_, and then all Italy
+declared that Modena's mantle had fallen on worthy shoulders. His
+fame was now prodigious, and wherever he went he was received with
+boundless enthusiasm. He visited Paris, where he played Orasmane,
+Orestes, Saul and Othello. On his return to Florence he was hospitably
+entertained by the marquis of Normanby, then English ambassador to the
+court of Tuscany, and this enlightened nobleman strongly encouraged
+him to extend his repertory of Shakespearian characters. In 1865
+occurred the sixth centenary of Dante's birthday, and the four
+greatest Italian actors were invited to perform in Silvio Pellico's
+tragedy of _Francesca di Rimini_, which is founded on an episode in
+the _Divina Commedia_. The cast originally stood on the play-bills
+thus: Francesca, Signora Ristori; Lancelotto, Signor Rossi; Paulo,
+Signor Salvini; and Guido, Signor Majeroni. It happened, however, that
+Rossi, who was unaccustomed to play the part of Lancelotto, felt timid
+at appearing in a character so little suited to him. Hearing this,
+Signor Salvini, with exquisite politeness and good-nature, volunteered
+to take the insignificant part, relinquishing the grand _rôle_ of
+Paulo to his junior in the profession. He created by the force of his
+genius an impression in the minor part which is still vivid in
+the minds of all who witnessed the performance. The government of
+Florence, grateful for his urbanity, presented him with a statuette of
+Dante, and King Victor Emmanuel rewarded him with the title of knight
+of the Order of the Saints Maurice and Lazarus. Later he received from
+the same monarch a diamond ring, with the rank of officer in the Order
+of the Crown of Italy. In 1868, Signer Salvini visited Madrid, where
+his acting of the death of Conrad in _La Morte Civile_ produced such
+an impression that the easily-excited Madrilese rushed upon the stage
+to ascertain whether the death was actual or fictitious. The queen,
+Isabella II., conferred upon the great actor many marks of favor,
+and so shortly afterward did King Louis of Portugal, who frequently
+entertained him at the royal palace of Lisbon.
+
+Signor Salvini's recent visit to America I need scarcely mention: its
+triumphs are still fresh in the memory of the public, and the only
+drawback to its complete success was the unhappy fact that the eminent
+artist did not appeal to his audiences in their own language.
+
+I know of nothing more remarkable than the difference which exists
+between the Salvini of the stage and the Salvini of private life, the
+one so imposing, impetuous and fiery, the other so gentle, urbane, and
+even retiring. He is a gentleman possessing the manners of the good
+old school--courtly and somewhat ceremonious, reminding one of those
+Italian nobles of the sixteenth century of whom we lead in the novels
+of Giraldo Cinthio and Fiorentino--_uomini illustri, e di civil
+costumi_. His greeting is cordial and his conversation delightful,
+full of anecdote and marked with enthusiasm for his art. When I first
+became acquainted with him I was of opinion that his interpretation of
+Hamlet was based only upon the translated text, but in the course of
+a very long conversation on the subject I discovered that he was well
+acquainted (through literal translations) not only with the text, but
+also with the notes and comments of our leading critics. In speaking
+of the part in which he is altogether unrivaled he said, "I am of
+opinion that Shakespeare intended Othello to be a Moor of Barbary or
+some other part of Northern Africa, of whom there were many in Italy
+during the sixteenth century. I have met several, and think I imitate
+their ways and manners pretty well. You are aware, however, that the
+historical Othello was not a black at all. He was a white man, and
+a Venetian general named Mora. His history resembles that of
+Shakespeare's hero in many particulars. Giraldo Cinthio, probably for
+better effect, made out of the name Mora, _moro_, a blackamoor; and
+Shakespeare, unacquainted with the true story, followed this old
+novelist's lead; and it was well he did so, for have we not in
+consequence the most perfect delineation of the peculiarities of
+Moorish temperament ever conceived?" The costumes worn by Salvini in
+this play are copied from those depicted in certain Venetian pictures
+of the fifteenth century in which several Moorish officers appear. It
+took him many years to master this _rôle_, and he assured me he could
+not play it more than three times in succession without experiencing
+terrible fatigue. "It is a matter of wonder to me," he observed, "that
+English actors can play a great character like this so many nights in
+succession; and, above all, that they retain self-possession whilst
+the fidgety noise of scene-shifting is going on behind them. To avoid
+this, I have been obliged to cut _Othello_ into six acts, and to make
+many changes in _Hamlet_." The intensity of feeling with which he
+throws himself into the part he is representing was especially evident
+on the occasion of his playing Saul. After the performance I was
+invited to go behind the scenes to speak with him, and was surprised
+as well as pained to find him utterly exhausted. I could not help
+saying, "How can you exert yourself thus to please so few people?"
+There were scarcely four hundred persons assembled to see this sublime
+performance. He answered with honest simplicity, "They have paid their
+money, and are entitled to the best I can do for them; besides that,
+when I am on the stage I forget the world and all that is in it, and
+live the character I represent." "You will," said I, "make a grand
+Lear." "Yes," he replied, "I think I shall be able to make something
+out of the old king. I have been reading the tragedy for some time,
+but it will still take me two years to study it thoroughly."
+
+Salvini related to me several anecdotes which show how quick he is to
+master any difficulties accident throws in his way. "Once I bought,"
+he said, "a play of a poor young writer which I thought I could make
+something of; but when we came to rehearse it for the last time before
+representation, it seemed to me utterly flat and unprofitable. The
+piece was called _La Suonatrice d'Arpa_ ('The Harp-Girl'). The actors
+all said the last act was so stupid that we should make a _fiasco_. I
+at last hit upon an idea. We had, however, only a few hours to execute
+it in. I changed the story: instead of the play ending happily, I made
+the father kill his daughter accidentally, and then die of grief. All
+the dialogue had to be improvised by the leading actress and myself.
+I played the father, and Signora Piamonti the daughter. Such was the
+success of our invention that the piece was played eight nights in
+succession, and a rival actor, hearing of the triumph achieved by _The
+Harp-Girl_, bought from the author for a handsome sum the privilege of
+acting it in certain districts which were not included in my purchase
+of the drama. Not being aware of the alterations we had made, and
+performing it according to the letter of the text, he made _un fiasco
+solenne_--a dead failure."
+
+After the first performance of _Zaïre_ I took the liberty of observing
+to Salvini that a superb piece of "business" which marks his acting
+in the last act was not to be found in the text. "Oh," he replied,
+"I will tell you the origin of it. I was playing at Naples, and one
+night, when I threw the body of my murdered wife upon the ottoman in
+the last act, my burnouse fell off and fixed itself to my waist like
+a tail. I saw at once that if I was not careful I should provoke
+laughter, and instantly imagined that I would pretend to believe the
+clinging drapery was the wounded Zaïre grasping me behind. I appeared
+to dread even to look round, lest I should encounter her pallid face.
+I hesitated, I trembled, and when with a supreme effort I at last
+grasped the burnouse and cast it from me, I still lacked the courage
+to ascertain what it really was, and stood shivering before the
+white heap it made upon the floor. Finally, just as I thought public
+curiosity to know what I was going to do began to grow weary, I
+stooped down and seizing the white mantle dashed it from me with
+contempt, showing by the gesture that I had discovered what it was,
+and felt anger that such a trifle should thus alarm a bold man who had
+committed murder." This pantomime obtained for Salvini at the New York
+Academy of Music one of his greatest ovations.
+
+When asked why he did not learn English, "Ah!" he replied, "I am too
+old; and even if I mastered it, I could not control my knowledge of
+it. When excited I should be lapsing into Italian, which would be very
+absurd. You asked me the other day why I do not play Orestes. I should
+make a queer young Greek with an Apollo-like figure now-a-days! The
+time was when I looked the part and acted it well, and then I liked
+to play it. I must leave it, with many other good things, to younger
+men." Speaking about dramatic elocution, he said, "The best method is
+obtained by close observation of Nature, and above all by earnestness.
+If you can impress people with the conviction that you feel what you
+say, they will pardon many shortcomings. And, above all, study, study,
+study! All the genius in the world will not help you along with any
+art unless you become a hard student. It has taken me years to master
+a single part."
+
+Salvini's visit to America has been fruitful of a double good. He has
+shown forth the splendor of Italian genius, even revealing to us new
+marvels in that mine of wealth, the works of the greatest Bard of
+the English-speaking race; and he has gone back to Italy to tell
+her people of things he has seen in the New World which his great
+compatriot discovered--as wonderful in their way as any related by
+Othello to Desdemona's willing ear.
+
+R. DAVEY.
+
+
+
+
+THREE FEATHERS.
+
+BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "A PRINCESS OF THULE."
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+TINTAGEL'S WALLS.
+
+
+What was the matter with Harry Trelyon? His mother could not make out;
+and there never had been much confidence between them, so that she
+did not care to ask. But she watched, and she saw that he had, for
+the time at least, forsaken his accustomed haunts and ways and become
+gloomy, silent and self-possessed. Dick was left neglected in the
+stables: you no longer heard his rapid clatter along the highway, with
+the not over-melodious voice of his master singing "The Men of
+Merry, Merry England" or "The Young Chevalier." The long and slender
+fishing-rod remained on the pegs in the hall, although you could hear
+the flop of the small burn-trout of an evening when the flies were
+thick over the stream. The dogs were deprived of their accustomed
+runs; the horses had to be taken out for exercise by the groom; and
+the various and innumerable animals about the place missed their doses
+of alternate petting and teasing, all because Master Harry had chosen
+to shut himself up in his study.
+
+The mother of the young man very soon discovered that her son was
+not devoting his hours of seclusion in that extraordinary museum of
+natural history to making trout-flies, stuffing birds and arranging
+pinned butterflies in cases, as was his custom. These were not the
+occupations which now kept Master Harry up half the night. When she
+went in of a morning, before he was up, she found that he had been
+covering whole sheets of paper with careful copying out of passages
+taken at random from the volumes beside him. A Latin grammar was
+ordinarily on the table--a book which the young gentleman had brought
+back from school free from thumb-marks. Occasionally a fencing-foil
+lay among these evidences of study, while the small aquaria, the cases
+of stuffed animals with fancy backgrounds and the numerous bird-cages
+had been thrust aside to give fair elbow-room.
+
+"Perhaps," said Mrs. Trelyon to herself with much
+satisfaction--"perhaps, after all, that good little girl has given him
+a hint about Parliament, and he is preparing himself."
+
+A few days of this seclusion, however, began to make the mother
+anxious; and so one morning she went into his room. He hastily turned
+over the sheet of paper on which he had been writing: then he looked
+up, not too well pleased.
+
+"Harry, why do you stay in-doors on such a beautiful morning? It is
+quite like summer."
+
+"Yes, I know," he said. "I suppose we shall soon have a batch of
+parsons here: summer always brings them. They come out with the hot
+weather--like butterflies."
+
+Mrs. Trelyon was shocked and disappointed: she thought Wenna Rosewarne
+had cured him of his insane dislike to clergymen--indeed, for many a
+day gone by he had kept respectfully silent on the subject.
+
+"But we shall not ask them to come if you'd rather not," she said,
+wishing to do all she could to encourage the reformation of his ways.
+"I think Mr. Barnes promised to visit us early in May, but he is only
+one."
+
+"And one is worse than a dozen. When there's a lot you can leave 'em
+to fight it out among themselves. But one!--to have one stalking about
+an empty house, like a ghost dipped in ink! Why can't you ask anybody
+but clergymen, mother? There are whole lots of people would like to
+run down from London for a fortnight before getting into the thick of
+the season: there's the Pomeroy girls as good as offered to come."
+
+"But they can't come by themselves," Mrs. Trelyon said with a feeble
+protest.
+
+"Oh yes, they can: they're ugly enough to be safe anywhere. And why
+don't you get Juliott up? She'll be glad to get away from that old
+curmudgeon for a week. And you ought to ask the Trewhellas, father and
+daughter, to dinner: that old fellow is not half a bad sort of fellow,
+although he's a clergyman."
+
+"Harry," said his mother, interrupting him, "I'll fill the house if
+that will please you; and you shall ask just whomsoever you please."
+
+"All right," said he: "the place wants waking up."
+
+"And then," said the mother, wishing to be still more gracious, "you
+might ask Miss Rosewarne to dine with us: she might come well enough,
+although Mr. Roscorla is not here."
+
+A sort of gloom fell over the young man's face again: "I can't ask
+her--you may if you like."
+
+Mrs. Trelyon stared: "What is the matter, Harry? Have you and she
+quarreled? Why, I was going to ask you, if you were down in the
+village to-day, to say that I should like to see her."
+
+"And how could I take such a message?" the young man said, rather
+warmly, "I don't see why the girl should be ordered up to see you as
+if you were conferring a favor on her by joining in this scheme. She's
+very hard-worked; you have got plenty of time; you ought to call on
+her and study her convenience, instead of making her trot all the way
+up here whenever you want to talk to her."
+
+The pale and gentle woman flushed a little, but she was anxious not to
+give way to petulance just then: "Well, you are quite right, Harry:
+it was thoughtless of me. I should like to go down and see her this
+morning; but I have sent Jakes over to the blacksmith's, and I am
+afraid of that new lad."
+
+"Oh, I will drive you down to the inn. I suppose among them they
+can put the horses to the wagonette," the young man said, not very
+graciously: and then Mrs. Trelyon went off to get ready.
+
+It was a beautiful, fresh morning, the far-off line of the sea still
+and blue, the sunlight lighting up the wonderful masses of primroses
+along the tall banks, the air sweet with the resinous odor of the
+gorse. Mrs. Trelyon looked with a gentle and childlike pleasure on
+all these things, and was fairly inclined to be very friendly with the
+young gentleman beside her. But he was more than ordinarily silent
+and morose. Mrs. Trelyon knew she had done nothing to offend him, and
+thought it hard she should be punished for the sins of anybody else.
+
+He spoke scarcely a word to her as the carriage rolled along the
+silent highways. He drove rapidly and carelessly down the steep
+thoroughfare of Eglosilyan, although there were plenty of loose stones
+about. Then he pulled sharply up in front of the inn, and George
+Rosewarne appeared.
+
+"Mr. Rosewarne, let me introduce you to my mother. She wants to see
+Miss Wenna for a few moments, if she is not engaged."
+
+Mr. Rosewarne took off his cap, assisted Mrs. Trelyon to alight, and
+then showed her the way into the house.
+
+"Won't you come in, Harry?" his mother said.
+
+"No."
+
+A man had come out to the horses' heads.
+
+"You leave 'em alone," said the young gentleman: "I sha'n't get down."
+
+Mabyn came out, her bright young face full of pleasure.
+
+"How do you do, Mabyn?" he said coldly, and without offering to shake
+hands.
+
+"Won't you come in for a minute?" she said, rather surprised.
+
+"No, thank you. Don't you stay out in the cold: you've got nothing
+round your neck."
+
+Mabyn went away without saying a word, but thinking that the coolness
+of the air was much less apparent than that of his manner and speech.
+
+Being at length left to himself, he turned his attention to the
+horses before him, and eventually, to pass the time, took out his
+pocket-handkerchief and began to polish the silver on the handle of
+the whip. He was disturbed in this peaceful occupation by a very
+timid voice, which said, "Mr. Trelyon." He turned round and found that
+Wenna's wistful face was looking up to him, with a look in it
+partly of friendly gladness and partly of anxiety and entreaty. "Mr.
+Trelyon," she said, with her eyes cast down, "I think you are offended
+with me. I am very sorry: I beg your forgiveness."
+
+The reins were fastened up in a minute, and he was down in the road
+beside her. "Now look here, Wenna," he said. "What could you mean by
+treating me so unfairly? I don't mean in being vexed with me, but in
+shunting me off, as it were, instead of having it out at once. I don't
+think it was fair."
+
+"I am very sorry," she said. "I think I was very wrong, but you don't
+know what a girl feels about such things. Will you come into the inn?"
+
+"And leave my horses? No," he said, good-naturedly. "But as soon as I
+get that fellow out, I will; so you go in at once, and I'll follow you
+directly. And mind, Wenna, don't you be so silly again, or you and I
+may have a real quarrel; and I know that would break your heart."
+
+The old pleased smile lit up her face again as she turned and went
+in-doors: he meanwhile proceeded to summon a hostler by shouting his
+name at the pitch of his voice.
+
+The small party of women assembled in the parlor were a trifle
+embarrassed: it was the first time that the great lady of the
+neighborhood had honored the inn with a visit. She herself was merely
+quiet, gentle and pleased, but Mrs. Rosewarne, with her fine eyes and
+her sensitive face all lit up and quickened by, the novel excitement,
+was all anxiety to amuse and interest and propitiate her distinguished
+guest. Mabyn, too, was rather shy and embarrassed: she said things
+hastily, and then seemed afraid of her interference. Wenna was
+scarcely at her ease, because she saw that her mother and sister were
+not; and she was very anxious, moreover, that these two should think
+well of Mrs. Trelyon and be disposed to like her.
+
+The sudden appearance of a man with a man's rough ways and loud voice
+seemed to shake these feminine elements better together, and to clear
+the air of timid apprehensions and cautions. Harry Trelyon came into
+the room with quite a marked freshness and good-nature on his face.
+His mother was surprised: what had completely changed his manner in a
+couple of minutes?
+
+"How are you, Mrs. Rosewarne?" he cried in his off-hand fashion. "You
+oughtn't to be in-doors on such a morning, or we shall never get you
+well, you know; and the doctor will be sending you to Penzance or
+Devonport for a change. Well, Mabyn, have you convinced anybody yet
+that your farm-laborers with their twelve shillings a week are better
+off than the slate-workers with their eighteen? You'd better take your
+sister's opinion on that point, and don't squabble with me. Mother,
+what's the use of sitting here? You bring Miss Wenna with you into the
+wagonette, and talk to her there about all your business-affairs, and
+I'll take you for a drive. Come along. And of course I want
+somebody with me: will you come, Mrs. Rosewarne, or will Mabyn? You
+can't?--then Mabyn must. Go along, Mabyn, and put your best hat on,
+and make yourself uncommonly smart, and you shall be allowed to sit
+next the driver--that's me."
+
+And indeed he bundled the whole of them about until they were seated
+in the wagonette just as he had indicated; and away they went from the
+inn-door.
+
+"And you think you are coming back in half an hour?" he said to his
+companion, who was much pleased and very proud to occupy such a place.
+"Oh no, you're not. You're a young and simple thing, Mabyn. These two
+behind us will go on talking now for any time about yards of calico
+and crochet-needles and twopenny subscriptions, while you and I, don't
+you see, are quietly driving them over to Tintagel--"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Trelyon!" said Mabyn.
+
+"You keep quiet. That isn't the half of what's going to befall you. I
+shall put up the horses at the inn, and I shall take you all down to
+the beach for a scramble to improve your appetite; and at the said inn
+you shall have luncheon with me, if you're all very good and behave
+yourselves. Then we shall drive back just when we particularly please.
+Do you like the picture?"
+
+"It is delightful: oh, I am sure Wenna will enjoy it," Mabyn said.
+"But don't you think, Mr. Trelyon, that you might ask her to sit here?
+One sees better here than sitting sideways in a wagonette."
+
+"They have their business-affairs to settle."
+
+"Yes," said Mabyn petulantly, "that is what every one says: nobody
+expects Wenna ever to have a moment's enjoyment to herself. Oh, here
+is old Uncle Cornish--he's a great friend of Wenna's: he will be
+dreadfully hurt if she passes him without saying a word."
+
+"Then we shall pull up and address Uncle Cornish. I believe he used to
+be the most thieving old ruffian of a poacher in this county."
+
+There was a hale old man of seventy or so seated on a low wall in
+front of one of the gardens, his face shaded from the sunlight by a
+broad hat, his lean gray hands employed in buckling up the leathern
+leggings that encased his spare calves. He got up when the horses
+stopped, and looked in rather a dazed fashion at the carriage.
+
+"How do you do this morning, Mr. Cornish?" Wenna said.
+
+"Why, now, to be sure!" the old man said, as if reproaching his own
+imperfect vision. "'Tis a fine marnin', Miss Wenna, and yü be agwoin'
+for a drive."
+
+"And how is your daughter-in-law, Mr. Cornish? Has she sold the pig
+yet?"
+
+"Naw, she hasn't sold the peg. If yü be agwoin' thrü Trevalga, Miss
+Wenna, just yü stop and have a look at that peg: yü'll be 'mazed to
+see en. 'Tis many a year agone sence there has been such a peg by me.
+And perhaps yü'd take the laste bit o' refrashment, Miss Wenna, as yü
+go by: Jane would get yü a coop o' tay to once."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Cornish, I'll look in and see the pig some other time:
+to-day we sha'n't be going as far as Trevalga."
+
+"Oh, won't you?" said Master Harry in a low voice as he drove on.
+"You'll be in Trevalga before you know where you are."
+
+Which was literally the case. Wenna was so much engaged in her talk
+with Mrs. Trelyon that she did not notice how far away they were
+getting from Eglosilyan; but Mabyn and her companion knew. They were
+now on the high uplands by the coast, driving between the beautiful
+banks, which were starred with primroses and stitchwort and red
+dead-nettle and a dozen other bright and tender-hued firstlings of the
+year. The sun was warm on the hedges and the fields, but a cool breeze
+blew about these lofty heights, and stirred Mabyn's splendid masses of
+hair as they drove rapidly along. Far over on their right, beyond the
+majestic wall of cliff, lay the great blue plain of the sea; and there
+stood the bold brown masses of the Sisters Rocks, with a circle of
+white foam round their base. As they looked down into the south the
+white light was so fierce that they could but faintly discern objects
+through it; but here and there they caught a glimpse of a square
+church-tower or of a few rude cottages clustered on the high plain,
+and these seemed to be of a transparent gray in the blinding glare of
+the sun.
+
+Then suddenly in front of them they found a deep chasm, with the white
+road leading down through its cool shadows. There was the channel of
+a stream, with the rocks looking purple amid the gray bushes; and
+here were rich meadows, with cattle standing deep in the grass and the
+daisies; and over there, on the other side, a strip of forest, with
+the sunlight shining along one side of the tall and dark-green pines.
+As they drove down into this place, which is called the Rocky Valley,
+a magpie rose from one of the fields and flew up into the firs.
+
+"That is sorrow," said Mabyn.
+
+Another one rose and flew up to the same spot.
+
+"And that is joy," she said, with her face brightening.
+
+"Oh, but I saw another as we came to the brow of the hill, and that
+means a marriage," her companion remarked to her.
+
+"Oh no," she said quite eagerly, "I am sure there was no third one: I
+am certain there were only two. I am quite positive we only saw two."
+
+"But why should you be so anxious?" Trelyon said, "You know you ought
+to be looking forward to a marriage, and that is always a happy thing.
+Are you envious, Mabyn?"
+
+The girl was silent for a moment or two. Then she said, with a sudden
+bitterness in her tone, "Isn't it a fearful thing to have to be civil
+to people whom you hate? Isn't it, when they come and establish a
+claim on you through some one you care for? You look at them--yes, you
+can look at them--and you've got to see them kiss some one that you
+love; and you wonder she doesn't rush away for a bit of caustic and
+cauterize the place, as you do when a mad dog bites you."
+
+"Mabyn," said the young man beside her, "you are a most unchristian
+sort of person this morning. Who is it you hate in such a fashion?
+Will you take the reins while I walk up the hill?"
+
+Mabyn's little burst of passion still burned in her cheeks and gave
+a proud and angry look to her mouth, but she took the reins all the
+same, and her companion leapt to the ground. The banks on each side of
+the road going up this hill were tall and steep: here and there great
+masses of wild flowers were scattered among the grass and the gorse.
+From time to time he stopped to pick up a handful, until, when
+they had got up to the high and level country again, he had brought
+together a very pretty bouquet of wild blossoms. When he got into his
+seat and took the reins again he carelessly gave the bouquet to Mabyn.
+
+"Oh, how pretty!" she said; and then she turned round: "Wenna, are you
+very much engaged? Look at the pretty bouquet Mr. Trelyon has gathered
+for you."
+
+Wenna's quiet face flushed with pleasure when she took the flowers,
+and Mrs. Trelyon looked pleased and said they were very pretty. She
+evidently thought that her son was greatly improved in his manners
+when he condescended to gather flowers to present to a girl. Nay, was
+he not at this moment devoting a whole forenoon of his precious time
+to the unaccustomed task of taking ladies for a drive? Mrs. Trelyon
+regarded Wenna with a friendly look, and began to take a greater
+liking than ever to that sensitive and expressive face and to the
+quiet and earnest eyes.
+
+"But, Mr. Trelyon," said Wenna, looking round, "hadn't we better turn?
+We shall be at Trevenna directly."
+
+"Yes, you are quite right," said Master Harry: "you will be at
+Trevenna directly, and you are likely to be there for some time. For
+Mabyn and I have resolved to have luncheon there, and we are going
+down to Tintagel, and we shall most likely climb to King Arthur's
+Castle. Have you any objections?"
+
+Wenna had none. The drive through the cool and bright day had braced
+up her spirits. She was glad to know that everything looked promising
+about this scheme of hers. So she willingly surrendered herself to
+the holiday, and in due time they drove into the odd and remote little
+village and pulled up in front of the inn.
+
+So soon as the hostler had come to the horses' heads the young
+gentleman who had been driving jumped down and assisted his three
+companions to alight: then he led the way into the inn. In the doorway
+stood a stranger, probably a commercial traveler, who, with his hands
+in his pockets, his legs apart and a cigar in his mouth, had been
+visiting those three ladies with a very hearty stare as they got out
+of the carriage. Moreover, when they came to the doorway he did not
+budge an inch nor did he take his cigar from his mouth; and so, as it
+had never been Mr. Trelyon's fashion to sidle past any one, that young
+gentleman made straight for the middle of the passage, keeping
+his shoulders very square. The consequence was a collision. The
+imperturbable person with his hands in his pockets was sent staggering
+against the wall, while his cigar dropped on the stone. "What the
+devil--!" he was beginning to say, when Trelyon got the three women
+past him and into the small parlor. Then he went back: "Did you wish
+to speak to me, sir? No, you didn't: I perceive you are a prudent
+person. Next time ladies pass you, you'd better take your cigar out of
+your mouth or somebody'll destroy that two-pennyworth of tobacco for
+you. Good-morning."
+
+Then he returned to the little parlor, to which a waitress had been
+summoned: "Now, Jinny, pull yourself together and let's have something
+nice for luncheon--in an hour's time, sharp. You will, won't you? And
+how about that Sillery with the blue star--not the stuff with the gold
+head that some abandoned ruffian in Plymouth brews in his back garden.
+Well, can't you speak?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the bewildered maid.
+
+"That's a good thing--a very good thing," said he, putting the shawls
+together on a sofa. "Don't you forget how to speak until you get
+married. And don't let anybody come into this room. And you can let my
+man have his dinner and a pint of beer. Oh, I forgot: I'm my own man
+this morning, so you needn't go asking for him. Now, will you remember
+all these things?"
+
+"Yes, sir; but what would you like for luncheon?"
+
+"My good girl, we should like a thousand things such as Tintagel never
+saw, but what you've got to do is to give us the nicest things you've
+got: do you see? I leave it entirely in your hands. Come along, young
+people."
+
+And so he bundled his charges out again into the main street of the
+village; and somehow it happened that Mabyn addressed a timid remark
+to Mrs. Trelyon, and that Mrs. Trelyon, in answering it, stopped for
+a moment; so that Master Harry was sent to Wenna's side, and these two
+led the way down the wide thoroughfare. There were few people visible
+in the old-fashioned place: here and there an aged crone came out to
+the door of one of the rude stone cottages to look at the strangers.
+Overhead the sky was veiled over with a thin fleece of white cloud,
+but the light was intense for all that, and indeed the colors of the
+objects around seemed all the more clear and marked.
+
+"Well, Miss Wenna," said the young man gayly, "how long are we to
+remain good friends? What is the next fault you will have to find with
+me? Or have you discovered something wrong already?"
+
+"Oh no," she said with a quiet smile, "I am very good friends with you
+this morning. You have pleased your mother very much by bringing her
+for this drive."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" he said. "She might have as many drives as she chose;
+but presently you'll find a lot of those parsons back at the house,
+and she'll take to her white gowns again, and the playing of the organ
+all the day long, and all that sham stuff. I tell you what it is: she
+never seems alive, she never seems to take any interest in anything,
+unless you're with her. Now, you will see how the novelty of this
+luncheon-party in an inn will amuse her; but do you think she would
+care for it if she and I were here alone?"
+
+"Perhaps you never tried?" Miss Wenna said gently.
+
+"Perhaps I knew she wouldn't come. However, don't let's have a fight,
+Wenna: I mean to be very civil to you to-day--I do, really."
+
+"I am so much obliged to you," she said meekly. "But pray don't give
+yourself unnecessary trouble."
+
+"Oh," said he, "I'd always be civil to you if you would treat me
+decently. But you say far more rude things than I do--in that soft
+way, you know, that looks as if it were all silk and honey. I do think
+you've awfully little consideration for human failings. If one goes
+wrong in the least thing, even in one's spelling, you say something
+that sounds as pleasant as possible, and all the same it transfixes
+one just as you stick a pin through a beetle. You are very hard, you
+are--mean with those who would like to be friends with you. When it's
+mere strangers and cottagers and people of that sort, who don't care
+a brass farthing about you, then I believe you're all gentleness
+and kindness; but to your real friends the edge of a saw is smooth
+compared to you."
+
+"Am I so very harsh to my friends?" the young lady said in a resigned
+way.
+
+"Oh, well," he said, with some compunction, "I don't quite say that,
+but you could be much more pleasant if you liked, and a little more
+charitable to their faults. You know there are some who would give a
+great deal to win your approval; and perhaps when you find fault they
+are so disappointed that they think your words are sharper than you
+mean; and sometimes they think you might give them credit for trying
+to please you, at least."
+
+"And who are these persons?" Wenna said, with another smile stealing
+over her face.
+
+"Oh," said he rather shamefacedly, "there's no need to explain
+anything to you: you always see it before one need put it in words."
+
+Well, perhaps it was in his manner or in the tone of his voice that
+there was something which seemed at this moment to touch her deeply,
+for she half turned and looked up at his face with her honest and
+earnest eyes, and said to him kindly, "Yes, I do know without you
+telling me; and it makes me happy to hear you talk so; and if I am
+unjust to you, you must not think it intentional. And I shall try not
+to be so in the future."
+
+Mrs. Trelyon was regarding with a kindly look the two young people
+walking on in front of her. Whatever pleased her son pleased her, and
+she was glad to see him enjoy himself in so light-hearted a fashion.
+These two were chatting to each other in the friendliest manner:
+sometimes they stopped to pick up wild flowers: they were as two
+children together under the fair and light summer skies.
+
+They went down and along a narrow valley, until they suddenly stood
+in front of the sea, the green waters of which were breaking in upon a
+small and lonely creek. What strange light was this that fell from
+the white skies above, rendering all the objects around them sharp its
+outline and intense in color? The beach before them seemed of a pale
+lilac, where the green waves broke in a semicircle of white. On their
+right some masses of ruddy rock jutted out into the cold sea, and
+there were huge black caverns into which the waves dashed and roared.
+On their left and far above them towered a great and isolated rock,
+its precipitous sides scored here and there with twisted lines of red
+and yellow quartz; and on the summit of this bold headland, amid
+the dark green of the sea-grass, they could see the dusky ruins--the
+crumbling walls and doorways and battlements--of the castle that is
+named in all the stories of King Arthur and his knights. The bridge
+across to the mainland has, in the course of centuries, fallen away,
+but there, on the other side of the wide chasm, were the ruins of the
+other portions of the castle, scarcely to be distinguished in parts
+from the grass-grown rocks. How long ago was it since Sir Tristram
+rode out here to the end of the world, to find the beautiful Isoulde
+awaiting him--she whom he had brought from Ireland as an unwilling
+bride to the old king Mark? And what of the joyous company of knights
+and ladies who once held high sport in the courtyard there? Trelyon,
+looking shyly at his companion, could see that her eyes seemed
+centuries away from him. She was quite unconscious of his covertly
+staring at her, for she was absently looking at the high and bare
+precipices, the deserted slopes of dark sea-grass and the lonely
+and crumbling ruins. She was wondering whether the ghosts of those
+vanished people ever came back to this lonely headland, where they
+would find the world scarcely altered since they had left it. Did they
+come at night, when the land was dark, and when there was a light
+over the sea only coming from the stars? If one were to come at night
+alone, and to sit down here by the shore, might not one see strange
+things far overhead or hear some sound other than the falling of the
+waves?
+
+"Miss Wenna," he said--and she started suddenly--"are you bold enough
+to climb with me up to the castle? I know my mother would rather stay
+here."
+
+She went with him mechanically. She followed him up the rude steps
+cut in the steep slopes of slate, holding his hand where that was
+possible, but her head was so full of dreams that she answered him
+when he spoke only with a vague yes or no. When they descended again
+they found that Mabyn had taken Mrs. Trelyon down to the beach, and
+had inveigled her into entering a huge cavern, or rather a natural
+tunnel, that went right through underneath the promontory on which the
+castle is built. They were in a sort of green-hued twilight, a scent
+of seaweed filling the damp air, and their voices raising an echo in
+the great hall of rock.
+
+"I hope the climbing has not made you giddy," Mrs. Trelyon said in her
+kind way to Wenna, noticing that she was very silent and distrait.
+
+"Oh no," Mabyn said promptly. "She has been seeing ghosts. We always
+know when Wenna has been seeing ghosts: she remains so for hours."
+
+And, indeed, at this time she was rather more reserved than usual all
+during their walk back to luncheon and while they were in the inn;
+and yet she was obviously very happy, and sometimes even amused by
+the childlike pleasure which Mrs. Trelyon seemed to obtain from these
+unwonted experiences.
+
+"Come, now, mother," Master Harry said, "what are you going to do for
+me when I come of age next month? Fill the house with guests--yes, you
+promised that--with not more than one parson to the dozen? And when
+they're all feasting and gabbling, and missing the targets with their
+arrows, you'll slip quietly away, and I'll drive you and Miss Wenna
+over here, and you'll go and get your feet wet again in that cavern,
+and you'll come up here again and have an elegant luncheon, just like
+this. Won't that do?"
+
+"I don't quite know about the elegance of the luncheon, but I'm sure
+our little excursion has been very pleasant. Don't you think so, Miss
+Rosewarne?" Mrs. Trelyon said.
+
+"Indeed I do," said Wenna, with her big, earnest eyes coming back from
+their trance.
+
+"And here is another thing," remarked young Trelyon. "There's
+a picture I've seen of the heir coming of age--he's a horrid,
+self-sufficient young cad, but never mind--and it seems to be a day of
+general jollification. Can't I give a present to somebody? Well, I'm
+going to give it to a young lady who never cares for anything but what
+she can give away again to somebody else; and it is--well, it is--Why
+don't you guess, Mabyn?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean to give Wenna," said Mabyn naturally.
+
+"Why, you silly! I mean to give her a dozen sewing-machines--a baker's
+dozen--thirteen. There! Oh, I heard you as you came along. It was all,
+'Three sewing-machines will cost so much, and four sewing-machines
+will cost so much, and five sewing-machines will cost so much. And a
+penny a week from so many subscribers will be so much, and twopence a
+week from so many will be so much;' and all this as if my mother could
+tell you how much twice two was. My arithmetic ain't very brilliant,
+but as for hers--And these you shall have, Miss Wenna--one baker's
+dozen of sewing-machines, as per order, duly delivered, carriage
+free--empty casks and bottles to be returned."
+
+"That is very kind of you, Mr. Trelyon," Wenna said--and all
+the dreams had gone straight out of her head so soon as this was
+mentioned--"but we can't possibly accept them. You know our scheme is
+to make the sewing club quite self-supporting--no charity."
+
+"Oh, what stuff!" the young gentleman cried. "You know you will give
+all your labor and supervision for nothing: isn't that charity? And
+you know you will let off all sorts of people owing you subscriptions
+the moment some blessed baby falls ill. And you know you won't charge
+interest on all the outlay. But if you insist on paying me back for
+my sewing-machines out of the overwhelming profits at the end of next
+year, then I'll take the money. I'm not proud."
+
+"Then we will take six sewing-machines from you, if you please,
+Mr. Trelyon, on those conditions," said Wenna gravely. And Master
+Harry--with a look toward Mabyn which was just about as good as a
+wink--consented.
+
+As they drove quietly back again to Eglosilyan, Mabyn had taken her
+former place by the driver, and found him uncommonly thoughtful. He
+answered her questions, but that was all; and it was so unusual to
+find Harry Trelyon in this mood that she said to him, "Mr. Trelyon,
+have you been seeing ghosts, too?"
+
+He turned to her and said, "I was thinking about something. Look here,
+Mabyn: did you ever know any one, or do you know any one, whose face
+is a sort of barometer to you? Suppose that you see her look pale and
+tired or sad in any way, then down go your spirits, and you almost
+wish you had never been born. When you see her face brighten up and
+get full of healthy color, you feel glad enough to burst out singing
+or go mad: anyhow, you know that everything's all right. What the
+weather is, what people may say about you, whatever else may happen
+to you, that's nothing: all you want to see is just that one person's
+face look perfectly bright and perfectly happy, and nothing can
+touch you then. Did you ever know anybody like that?" he added rather
+abruptly.
+
+"Oh yes," said Mabyn, in a low voice: "that is when you are in love
+with some one. And there is only one face in all the world that I look
+to for all these things, there is only one person I know who tells you
+openly and simply in her face all that affects her, and that is our
+Wenna. I suppose you have noticed that, Mr. Trelyon?"
+
+But he did not make any answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+CONFESSION.
+
+
+The lad lay dreaming in the warm meadows by the side of a small and
+rapid brook, the clear waters of which plashed and bubbled in the
+sunlight as they hurried past the brown stones. His fishing-rod lay
+beside him, hidden in the long grass and the daisies. The sun was hot
+in the valley--shining on a wall of gray rock behind him, and throwing
+purple shadows over the clefts; shining on the dark bushes beside
+the stream and on the lush green of the meadows; shining on the trees
+beyond, in the shadow of which some dark red cattle were standing.
+Then away on the other side of the valley rose gently-sloping woods,
+gray and green in the haze of the heat, and over these again was the
+pale blue sky with scarcely a cloud in it. It was a hot day to be
+found in spring-time, but the waters of the brook seemed cool and
+pleasant as they gurgled by, and occasionally a breath of wind blew
+over from the woods. For the rest, he lay so still on this fine,
+indolent, dreamy morning that the birds around seemed to take no note
+of his presence, and one of the large woodpeckers, with his scarlet
+head and green body brilliant in the sun, flew close by him and
+disappeared into the bushes opposite like a sudden gleam of color shot
+by a diamond.
+
+"Next month," he was thinking to himself as he lay with his hands
+behind his head, not caring to shade his handsome and well-tanned face
+from the warm sun--"next month I shall be twenty-one, and most folks
+will consider me a man. Anyhow, I don't know the man whom I wouldn't
+fight or run or ride or shoot against for any wager he liked. But of
+all the people who know anything about me, just that one whose opinion
+I care for will not consider me a man at all, but only a boy. And that
+without saying anything. You can tell, somehow, by a mere look, what
+her feelings are; and you know that what she thinks is true. Of course
+it's true--I am only a boy. What's the good of me to anybody? I could
+look after a farm--that is, I could look after other people doing
+their work--but I couldn't do any work myself. And that seems to me
+what she is always looking at: 'What's the good of you, what are you
+doing, what are you busy about?' It's all very well for her to be
+busy, for she can do a hundred thousand things, and she is always at
+them. What can I do?"
+
+Then his wandering day-dreamings took another turn: "It was an odd
+thing for Mabyn to say--'_That is when you are in love with some
+one_.' But those girls take everything for love. They don't know how
+you can admire, almost to worshiping, the goodness of a woman, and how
+you are anxious that she should be well and happy, and how you would
+do anything in the world to please her, without fancying straight away
+that you are in love with her, and want to marry her and drive about
+in the same carriage with her. I shall be quite as fond of Wenna
+Rosewarne when she is married, although I shall hate that little brute
+with his rum and his treacle. The cheek of him, in asking her to marry
+him, is astonishing. He is the most hideous little beast that could
+have been picked out to marry any woman, but I suppose he has appealed
+to her compassion, and then she'll do anything. But if there was
+anybody else in love with her, if she cared the least bit about
+anybody else, wouldn't I go straight to her and insist on her shunting
+that fellow aside? What claim has he on any other feeling of hers but
+her compassion? Why, if that fellow were to come and try to frighten
+her, and if I were in the affair, and if she appealed to me even by a
+look, then there would be short work with something or somebody."
+
+He got up hastily, with something of a gloomy and angry look on his
+face. He did not notice that he had startled all the birds around from
+out of the bushes. He picked up his rod and line in a morose
+fashion, not seeming to care about adding to the half dozen small and
+red-speckled trout he had in his basket.
+
+While he was thus irresolutely standing he caught sight of a girl's
+figure coming rapidly along the valley under the shadow of some ash
+trees growing by the stream. It was Wenna Rosewarne herself, and she
+seemed to be hurrying toward him. She was carrying some black object
+in her arms.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Trelyon," she said, "what am I to do with this little dog? I
+saw him kicking in the road and foaming at the mouth; and then he got
+up and ran, and I caught him--"
+
+Before she had time to say anything more the young man made a sudden
+dive at the dog, caught hold of him and turned and heaved him into the
+stream. He fell into a little pool of clear brown water: he spluttered
+and paddled there for a second, then he got his footing and scrambled
+across the stones up to the opposite bank, where he began shaking the
+water from his coat among the long grass.
+
+"Oh, how could you be so disgracefully cruel?" she said, with her face
+full of indignation.
+
+"And how could you be so imprudent?"' he said quite as vehemently.
+"Why, whose is the dog?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"And you catch up some mongrel little cur in the middle of the
+highway--He might have been mad."
+
+"I knew he wasn't mad," she said: "it was only a fit; and how could
+you be so cruel as to throw him into the river?"
+
+"Oh," said the young man, coolly, "a clash of cold water is the best
+thing for a dog that has a fit. Besides, I don't care what he had or
+what I did with him, so long as you are safe. Your little finger is of
+more consequence than the necks of all the curs in the country."
+
+"Oh, it is mean of you to say that," she retorted warmly. "You have no
+pity for those wretched little things that are at every one's mercy.
+If it were a handsome and beautiful dog, now, you would care for that,
+or if it were a dog that was skilled in getting game for you, you
+would care for that."
+
+"Yes, certainly," he said: "these are dogs that have something to
+recommend them."
+
+"Yes, and every one is good to them: they are not in need of your
+favor. But you don't think of the wretched little brutes that have
+nothing to recommend them, that only live on sufferance, that every
+one kicks and despises and starves."
+
+"Well," said he with some compunction, "look there! That new friend of
+yours--he's no great beauty, you must confess--is all right now. The
+bath has cured him. As soon as he's done licking his paws he'll be off
+home, wherever that may be. But I've always noticed that about you,
+Wenna: you're always on the side of things that are ugly and helpless
+and useless in the world; and you're not very just to those who don't
+agree with you. For after all, you know, one wants time to acquire
+that notion of yours--that it is only weak and ill-favored creatures
+that are worthy of the least consideration."
+
+"Yes," she said rather sadly, "you want time to learn that."
+
+He looked at her. Did she mean that her sympathy with those who were
+weak and ill-favored arose from some strange consciousness that she
+herself was both? His cheeks began to burn red. He had often heard her
+hint something like that, and yet he had never dared to reason with
+her or show her what he thought of her. Should he do so now?
+
+"Wenna," he said, blushing hotly, "I can't make you out sometimes. You
+speak as if no one cared for you. Now, if I were to tell you--"
+
+"Oh, I am not so ungrateful," she said hastily. "I know that two or
+three do; and--and, Mr. Trelyon, do you think you could coax that
+little dog over the stream again? You see he has come back again--he
+can't find his way home."
+
+Mr. Trelyon called to the dog: it came down to the river's side, and
+whined and shivered on the brink.
+
+"Do you care a brass farthing about the little beast?" he said to
+Wenna.
+
+"I must put him on his way home," she answered.
+
+Thereupon the young man went straight through the stream to the other
+side, jumping the deeper portions of the channel: he caught up the dog
+and brought it back to her; and when she was very angry with him for
+this mad performance, he merely kicked some of the water out of his
+trousers and laughed.
+
+Then a smile broke over her face also. "Is that an example of what
+people would do for me?" she said shyly. "Mr. Trelyon, you must keep
+walking through the warm grass till your feet are dry; or will you
+come along to the inn, and I shall get you some shoes and stockings?
+Pray do, and at once. I am rather in a hurry."
+
+"I'll go along with you, anyway," he said, "and put this little brute
+into the highway. But why are you in a hurry?"
+
+"Because," said Wenna, as they set out to walk down the
+valley--"because my mother and I are going to Penzance the day after
+to-morrow, and I have a lot of things to get ready."
+
+"To Penzance?" said he with a sudden falling of the face.
+
+"Yes. She has been dreadfully out of sorts lately, and she has sunk
+into a kind of despondent state. The doctor says she must have a
+change--a holiday, really--to take her away from the cares of the
+house--"
+
+"Why, Wenna, it's you who want the holiday--it's you who have the
+cares of the house," Trelyon said warmly.
+
+"And so I have persuaded her to go to Penzance for a week or two, and
+I go with her to look after her. Mr. Trelyon, would you be kind enough
+to keep Rock for me until we come back? I am afraid of the servants
+neglecting him."
+
+"You needn't be afraid of that: he's not one of the ill-favored--every
+one will attend to him," said Trelyon; and then he added, after a
+minute or two of silence, "The fact is, I think I shall be at Penzance
+also while you are there. My cousin Juliott is coming here in about a
+fortnight to celebrate the important event of my coming of age, and I
+promised to go for her. I might as well go now."
+
+She said nothing.
+
+"I might as well go any time," he said rather impatiently. "I haven't
+got anything to do. Do you know, before you came along just now, I was
+thinking what a very useful person you were in the world, and what
+a very useless person I was--about as useless as this little cur. I
+think somebody should take me up and heave me into a river. And I was
+wondering, too"--here he became a little more embarrassed and slow of
+speech--"I was wondering what you would say if I spoke to you, and
+gave you a hint that sometimes--that sometimes one might wish to cut
+this lazy life if one only knew how, and whether so very busy a person
+as yourself mightn't--don't you see?--give one some notion--some sort
+of hint, in fact--"
+
+"Oh, but then, Mr. Trelyon," she said quite cheerfully, "you would
+think it very strange if I asked you to take any interest in the
+things that keep me busy. That is not a man's work. I wouldn't accept
+you as a pupil."
+
+He burst out laughing. "Why," said he, "do you think I offered to mend
+stockings and set sums on slates and coddle babies?"
+
+"As for setting sums on slates," she remarked with a quiet
+impertinence, "the working of them out might be of use to you."
+
+"Yes, and a serious trouble too," he said candidly. "No, no--that
+cottage business ain't in my line. I like to have a joke with the
+old folks or a romp with the kids, but I can't go in for cutting out
+pinafores. I shall leave my mother to do my share of that for me; and
+hasn't she come out strong lately, eh? It's quite a new amusement for
+her, and it's driven a deal of that organ-grinding and stuff out of
+her head; and I've a notion some o' those parsons--"
+
+He stopped short, remembering who his companion was; and at this
+moment they came to a gate which opened out on the highway, through
+which the small cur was passed to find his way home.
+
+"Now, Miss Wenna," said the young man--"By the way, you see how I
+remember to address you respectfully ever since you got sulky with me
+about it the other day?"
+
+"I am sure I did not get sulky with you, and especially about that,"
+she remarked with much composure. "I suppose you are not aware that
+you have dropped the 'Miss' several times this morning already?"
+
+"Did I, really? Well, then, I'm awfully sorry; but then you are so
+good-natured you tempt one to forget; and my mother she always calls
+you Wenna Rosewarne now in speaking to me, as if you were a little
+school-girl, instead of being the chief support and pillar of all the
+public affairs of Eglosilyan. And now, Miss Wenna, I sha'n't go down
+the road with you, because my damp boots and garments would gather the
+dust; but perhaps you wouldn't mind stopping two seconds here, and I'm
+going to go a cracker and ask you a question: What should a fellow in
+my position try to do? You see, I haven't had the least training for
+any one of the professions, even if I had any sort of capacity--"
+
+"But why should you wish to have a profession?" she said simply. "You
+have more money than is good for you already."
+
+"Then you don't think it ignominious," he said, with his face lighting
+up considerably, "to fish in summer and shoot in autumn and hunt in
+winter, and make that the only business of one's life?"
+
+"I should if it were the only business, but it needn't be, and you
+don't make it so. My father speaks very highly of the way you look
+after your property; and he knows what attending to an estate is. And
+then you have so many opportunities of being kind and useful to the
+people about you that you might do more good that way than by working
+night and day at a profession. Then you owe much to yourself, because
+if every one began with himself, and educated himself, and became
+satisfied and happy with doing his best, there would be no bad conduct
+and wretchedness to call for interference. I don't see why you should
+be ashamed of shooting and hunting and all that, and doing them as
+well as anybody else, or far better, as I hear people say. I don't
+think a man is bound to have ambition and try to become famous: you
+might be of much greater use in the world, even in such a little
+place as Eglosilyan, than if you were in Parliament. I did say to Mrs.
+Trelyon that I should like to see you in Parliament, because one has
+a natural pride in any person one admires and likes very much, and one
+wishes--"
+
+He saw the quick look of fear that sprang to her eyes--not a sudden
+appearance of shy embarrassment, but of absolute fear--and he was
+almost as startled by her blunder as she herself was. He hastily came
+to her rescue. He thanked her in a few rapid and formal words for her
+patience and advice; and, as he saw she was trying to turn away and
+hide the mortification visible on her face, he shook hands with her
+and let her go.
+
+Then he turned. He had been startled, it is true, and grieved to see
+the pain her chance words had caused her. But now a great glow of
+delight rose up within him, and he could have called aloud to the blue
+skies and the silent woods because of the joy that filled his heart.
+They were but chance words, of course. They were uttered with no
+deliberate intention: on the contrary, her quick look of pain showed
+how bitterly she regretted the blunder. Moreover, he congratulated
+himself on his rapid piece of acting, and assured himself that she
+would believe that he had not noticed that admission of hers. They
+were idle words: she would forget them. The incident, so far as she
+was concerned, was gone.
+
+But not so far as he was concerned. For now he knew that the person
+whom, above all other persons in the world, he was most desirous to
+please, whose respect and esteem he was most anxious to obtain, had
+not only condoned much of his idleness out of the abundant charity of
+her heart, but had further, and by chance, revealed to him that she
+gave him some little share of that affection which she seemed to shed
+generously and indiscriminately on so many folks and things around
+her. He, too, was now in the charmed circle. He walked with a new
+pride through the warm, green meadows, his rod over his shoulder: he
+whistled as he went, or he sang snatches of "The Rose of Allandale."
+He met two small boys out bird's-nesting: he gave them a shilling
+apiece, and then inconsistently informed them that if he caught them
+then or at any other time with a bird's nest in their hands he would
+cuff their ears. Then he walked hastily home, put by his fishing-rod,
+and shut himself up in his study with half a dozen of those learned
+volumes which he had brought back unsoiled from school.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+ON WINGS OF HOPE.
+
+
+When Trelyon arrived late one evening at Penzance he was surprised
+to find his uncle's coachman awaiting him at the station: "What's the
+matter, Tobias? Is the old gentleman going to die? You don't mean to
+say you are here for me?"
+
+"Yaäs, zor, I be," said the little old man with no great courtesy.
+
+"Then he is going to die if he sends out his horse at this time o'
+night. Look here, Tobias: I'll put my portmanteau inside and come on
+the box to have a talk with you--you're such a jolly old card, you
+know--and you'll tell me all that's happened since I last enjoyed my
+uncle's bountiful hospitality."
+
+This the young man did: and then the brown-faced, wiry and surly
+little person, having started his horse, proceeded to tell his story
+in a series of grumbling and disconnected sentences. He was not nearly
+so taciturn as he looked: "The maäster he went sün to bed to-night:
+'twere Miss Juliott sent me to the station, without tellin' en. He's
+gettin' worse and worse, that's sure: if yü be for giving me half a
+crown, like, or any one that comes to the house, he finds it out and
+stops it out o' my wages: yes, he does, zor, the old fule!"
+
+"Tobias, be a little more respectful to my uncle, if you please."
+
+"Why, zor, yü knaw en well enough," said the man in the same surly
+fashion. "And I'll tell yü this, Maäster Harry, if yü be after
+dinner with en, and he has a bottle o' poort wine that he puts on
+the mantelpiece, and he says to yü to let that aloän, vor 'tis a
+medicine-zart o' wine, don't yü heed en, but have that wine. 'Tis the
+real old poort wine, zor, that yür vather gied en--the dahmned old
+pagan!"
+
+The young man burst out laughing, instead of reprimanding Tobias, who
+maintained his sulky impassiveness of face.
+
+"Why, zor, I be gardener now, too: yaäs I be, to save the wages.
+And he's gone clean mazed about that garden--yaäs, I think. Would yü
+believe this, Maäster Harry, that he killed every one o' the blessed
+strawberries last year with a lot o' wrack from the bache, because he
+said it wüd be as good for them as for the 'sparagus?"
+
+"Well, but the old chap finds amusement in pottering about the
+garden--" said Master Harry.
+
+"The old fule!" repeated Tobias, in an under tone.
+
+"And the theory is sound about the seaweed and the strawberries;
+just as his old notion of getting a green rose by pouring sulphate of
+copper in at the roots."
+
+"Yaäs, that were another pretty thing, Maäster Harry, and he had the
+tin labels all printed out in French, and he waited and waited, and
+there bain't a fairly güde rose left in the garden. And his violet
+glass for the cucumbers: he burned en up to once, although 'twere fine
+to hear'n talk about the sunlight and the rays and such nonsenses. He
+be a strange mahn, zor, and a dahmned close'n with his penny-pieces,
+Christian and all as he calls his-sen. There's Miss Juliott, zor,
+she's go-in' to get married, I suppose; and when she goes no one 'll
+dare spake to 'n. Be yü going to stop long this time, Maäster Harry?"
+
+"Not at the Hollies, Tobias. I shall go down to the Queen's to-morrow:
+I've got rooms there."
+
+"So much the better--so much the better," said the frank but
+inhospitable retainer; and presently the jogtrot old animal between
+the shafts was pulled up in front of a certain square old-fashioned
+building of gray stone which was prettily surrounded with trees. They
+had arrived at the Rev. Mr. Penaluna's house, and there was a young
+lady standing in the light of the hall, she having opened the door
+very softly as she heard the carriage drive up.
+
+"So here you are, Harry; and you'll stay with us the whole fortnight,
+won't you? Come in to the dining-room--I have some supper ready for
+you. Papa's gone to bed, and he desired me to give you his excuses,
+and he hopes you'll make yourself quite at home, as you always do,
+Harry."
+
+He did make himself quite at home, for, having kissed his cousin and
+flung his topcoat down in the hall, he went into the dining-room and
+took possession of an easy-chair.
+
+"Sha'n't have any supper, Jue, thank you. You won't mind my lighting
+a cigar--somebody's been smoking here already. And what's the least
+poisonous claret you've got?"
+
+"Well, I declare!" she said, but she got him the wine all the
+same, and watched him light his cigar: then she took the easy-chair
+opposite.
+
+"Tell us about your young man, Jue," he said. "Girls always like to
+talk about that."
+
+"Do they?" she said. "Not to boys."
+
+"I shall be twenty-one in a fortnight. I am thinking of getting
+married."
+
+"So I hear," she remarked quietly.
+
+Now he had been talking nonsense at random, mostly intent on getting
+his cigar well lit, but this little observation rather startled him.
+"What have you heard?" he said abruptly.
+
+"Oh, nothing--the ordinary stupid gossip," she said, though she was
+watching him rather closely. "Are you going to stay with us for the
+next fortnight?"
+
+"No, I have got rooms at the Queen's."
+
+"I thought so. One might have expected you, however, to stay with your
+relations when you came to Penzance."
+
+"Oh, that's all gammon, Jue," he said: "you know very well your father
+doesn't care to have any one stay with you--it's too much bother.
+You'll have quite enough of me while I am in Penzance."
+
+"Shall we have anything of you?" she said with apparent indifference.
+"I understood that Miss Rosewarne and her mamma had already come
+here."
+
+"And what if they have?" he said with unnecessary fierceness.
+
+"Well, Harry," she said, "you needn't get unto a temper about it, but
+people will talk, you know; and they say that your attentions to that
+young lady are rather marked, considering that she is engaged to be
+married; and you have induced your mother to make a pet of her. Shall
+I go on?"
+
+"No, you needn't," he said with a strong effort to overcome his anger.
+"You're quite right--people do talk, but they wouldn't talk so much
+if other people didn't carry tales. Why, it isn't like you, Jue! I
+thought you were another sort. And about this girl, of all girls in
+the world!"
+
+He got up and began walking about the room, and talking with
+considerable vehemence, but no more in anger. He would tell her what
+cause there was for this silly gossip. He would tell her who this
+girl was who had been lightly mentioned. And in his blunt, frank,
+matter-of-fact way, which did not quite conceal his emotion, he
+revealed to his cousin all that he thought of Wenna Rosewarne, and
+what he hoped for her in the future, and what their present relations
+were, and then plainly asked her if she could condemn him.
+
+Miss Juliott was touched: "Sit down, Harry: I have wanted to talk
+to you, and I don't mean to heed any gossip. Sit down, please--you
+frighten me by walking up and down like that. Now, I'm going to talk
+common sense to you, for I should like to be your friend; and your
+mother is so easily led away by any sort of sentiment that she isn't
+likely to have seen with my eyes. Suppose that this Miss Rosewarne--"
+
+"No, hold hard a bit, Jue," he said imperatively. "You may talk till
+the millennium, but just keep off her, I warn you."
+
+"Will you hear me out, you silly boy? Suppose that Miss Rosewarne
+is everything that you believe her to be. I'm going to grant that,
+because I'm going to ask you a question. You can't have such an
+opinion of any girl, and be constantly in her society, and go
+following her about like this, without falling in love with her. Now,
+in that case would you propose to marry her?"
+
+"I marry her!" he said, his face becoming suddenly pale for a moment.
+"Jue, you are mad! I am not fit to marry a girl like that. You don't
+know her. Why--"
+
+"Let all that alone, Harry: when a man is in love with a woman he
+always thinks he's good enough for her; and whether he does or not
+he tries to get her for a wife. Don't let us discuss your comparative
+merits: one might even put in a word for you. But suppose you drifted
+into being in love with her--and I consider that quite probable--and
+suppose you forgot, as I know you would forget, the difference in your
+social position, how would you like to go and ask her to break her
+promise to the gentleman to whom she is engaged?"
+
+Master Harry laughed aloud in a somewhat nervous fashion: "Him? Look
+here, Jue: leave me out of it--I haven't the cheek to talk of myself
+in that connection--but if there was a decent sort of fellow whom that
+girl really took a liking to, do you think he would let that elderly
+and elegant swell out in Jamaica stand in his way? He would be no
+such fool, I can tell you. He would consider the girl first of all.
+He would say to himself, 'I mean to make this girl happy; if any one
+interferes, let him look out!' Why, Jue, you don't suppose any man
+would be frightened by that sort of thing?"
+
+Miss Juliott did not seem quite convinced by this burst of scornful
+oratory. She continued quietly, "You forget something, Harry. Your
+heroic young man might find it easy to do something wild--to fight
+with that gentleman in the West Indies, or murder him, or anything
+like that, just as you see in a story--but perhaps Miss Rosewarne
+might have something to say."
+
+"I meant if she cared for him," Trelyon said, looking down.
+
+"Granting that also, do you think it likely your hot-headed gentleman
+would be able to get a young lady to disgrace herself by breaking her
+plighted word and deceiving a man who went away trusting in her?
+You say she has a very tender conscience--that she is so anxious to
+consult every one's happiness before her own, and all that. Probably
+it is true. I say nothing against her. But to bring the matter back to
+yourself--for I believe you're hot-headed enough to do anything--what
+would you think of her if you or anybody else persuaded her to do such
+a treacherous thing?"
+
+"She is not capable of treachery," he said somewhat stiffly. "If
+you've got no more cheerful things to talk about, you'd better go to
+bed, Jue. I shall finish my cigar by myself."
+
+"Very well, then, Harry. You know your room. Will you put out the lamp
+when you have lit your candle?"
+
+So she went, and the young man was left alone in no very enviable
+frame of mind. He sat and smoked while the clock on the mantelpiece
+swung its gilded boy and struck the hours and half hours with unheeded
+regularity. He lit a second cigar, and a third; he forgot the wine.
+It seemed to him that he was looking on all the roads of life that lay
+before him, and they were lit up by as strange and new a light as
+that which was beginning to shine over the world outside. New fancies
+seemed to awake with the new dawn. For himself to ask Wenna Rosewarne
+to be his wife! Could he but win the tender and shy regard of her eyes
+he would fall at her feet and bathe them with his tears. And if this
+wonderful thing were possible--if she could put her hand in his
+and trust to him for safety in all the coming years they might live
+together--what man of woman born would dare to interfere? There was a
+blue light coming in through the shutters. He went to the window:
+the topmost leaves of the trees were quivering in the cold air far up
+there in the clearing skies, where the stars were fading out one by
+one, and he could hear the sound of the sea on the distant beach, and
+he knew that across the gray plain of waters the dawn was breaking,
+and that over the sleeping world another day was rising that seemed to
+him the first day of a new and tremulous life, full of joy and courage
+and hope.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE VIA SAN BASILIO.
+
+
+In Rome, 1851; a cold, dreary day in December--one of those days in
+which a man's ambition seems to desert him entirely, leaving only its
+grinning skeleton to mock him. Depressing as was the weather to a man
+who had cheerfulness as a companion by which to repel its blustering
+attacks, and raise his mind above the despondency it was calculated
+to produce, how much more so to one whose hope had gone out as a
+flickering lamp in a sudden gust of wind, and the sharp steel of whose
+ambition had turned to pierce his own heart!
+
+Such a man, on the day mentioned, was walking along the Via San
+Basilio. He was small in stature, poorly clad, and so thin, and
+even cadaverous, that the casual observer might have been under
+apprehension lest a gust of wind a little stronger than the average
+might blow him entirely away; yet his air and manner were proud and
+haughty, and what little evidences of feeling peered through the signs
+of dissipation too apparent on his naturally attractive face were
+those of genuine refinement. He was accompanied by a cicerone, or
+servant, as villainous-looking a fellow as one often meets, even in
+Italy, where an evil expression is so often seen stamped on handsome
+features.
+
+Along the Via San Basilio the two men walked until they stood opposite
+the door of No. 51. Sacred ground this, and historical as well. Art
+had her votaries here, as the tourist of to-day will find she still
+has, at whose shrines pilgrims from afar and from near worshiped, and
+grew better and stronger for their ministrations. Crawford, then
+at the acme of his fame, had his constantly-thronged studio in the
+immediate vicinity, while those at No. 51 embraced, among others, that
+of Tenerani, the famous Italian sculptor, whose work is always in such
+fine dramatic taste, although he never sacrifices his love and
+deep feeling of reverence for Nature, combining that with the most
+delightful charms of Greek art. Among this artist's most noted works
+will be remembered his "Descent from the Cross," which tourists
+visiting the Torlonia chapel in the Lateran never gaze upon without
+a thrill. The house was owned and also occupied by Bienaimé, a French
+sculptor who afterward became famous.
+
+In the immediate vicinity stands the famous Palazzo Barberini, begun
+by Urban VIII. (Maffeo Barberini), who sat in the pontifical chair
+from 1623 to 1644, and finished by Bernini in 1640. This palace
+contains many paintings of historical interest by Raphael, Titian,
+Guido, Claude and others. The one by the first-mentioned artist is a
+Fornarina, and bears the autograph of the painter on the armlet. But
+the picture that attracts the most attention here is one of world-wide
+reputation, copies, engravings and photographs of which are everywhere
+to be met with--Guido's Beatrice Cenci. A great divergence of opinion,
+as is well known, exists in regard to the portrait. It bears the
+pillar and crown of the Colonnas, to which family it probably
+belonged. According to the family tradition, it was taken on the night
+before her execution. Other accounts state that it was painted by
+Guido from memory after he had seen her on the scaffold. Judging from
+the position in which the poor girl's head is represented, one would
+more readily give credence to the latter story, and think the artist's
+memory had preserved her look and position as she turned her head for
+a last look at the brutal, bellowing crowd behind.
+
+In the piazza of the palace is a very beautiful fountain, utilized
+by one of the oldest Roman statues, representing a faun blowing water
+from a conch-shell.
+
+But we must return to the Via San Basilio, and the two wayfarers we
+left standing in front of No. 51. After gazing a moment at the number
+to assure themselves that they were right, they entered, and knocked
+at the first door, which was opened by the occupant of the apartment.
+He was an artist and a man of very marked characteristics. Seven
+years later Hawthorne wrote as follows of him: "He is a plain, homely
+Yankee, quite unpolished by his many years' residence in Italy. He
+talks ungrammatically; walks with a strange, awkward gait and stooping
+shoulders; is altogether unpicturesque, but wins one's confidence
+by his very lack of grace. It is not often that we see an artist
+so entirely free from affectation in his aspect and deportment.
+His pictures were views of Swiss and Italian scenery, and were most
+beautiful and true. One of them, a moonlight picture, was really
+magical--the moon shining so brightly that it seemed to throw a
+light even beyond the limits of the picture; and yet his sunrises and
+sunsets, and noontides too, were nowise inferior to this, although
+their excellence required somewhat longer study to be fully
+appreciated."
+
+After this introduction by our sweet and quaint romancer, the reader
+will hardly need be told that the two strangers stood in the presence
+of America's now illustrious artist, George L. Brown. But one seeing
+him then, as he stood almost scowling at the two strangers, would
+hardly have idealized him into the artist whose pencil has done so
+much of late years to give American art a distinctive name through his
+poetical delineations of the rare, sun-tinted atmosphere that hovers
+over Italian landscapes. However, our apology for him must be that the
+day was raw and blustering, and that he had no sooner caught sight
+of the men through his window, as they hesitatingly entered the door,
+than his suspicions were aroused.
+
+The Italian acted as spokesman, and inquired if there were any rooms
+to let in the building. Brown, thinking this the easiest way of
+ridding himself of the visitors, went in search of the landlord, who
+came, and after a moment's conversation the whole party entered the
+studio, much to its owner's displeasure.
+
+The cicerone did most of the talking, though now and then the other
+made a remark or two in broken Italian. But this was only for the
+first few moments. He soon became oblivious of all save art, of which
+one could see at a glance he was passionately fond. One of Mr. Brown's
+pictures--a large one he was then engaged on--particularly attracted
+his attention. He drew closer and closer to the canvas, examining it
+with a minuteness that showed the connoisseur, and finally remarked:
+"It is very fine in color, sir, and the atmosphere is delicious. Why
+have I not heard of you before?" examining the corner of the canvas
+for the artist's name, but speaking in a tone and with an air that
+gave Brown the impression he was indulging in the random flattery so
+current in studios. So, ignoring the question, he asked with a slight
+shrug of the shoulders, "Are you an artist?"
+
+"I paint a little," was the reply, with an air of modesty which Brown
+mistook for the bashful half-assertion of some daubing amateur.
+
+Just then the cicerone came forward and announced that the bargain was
+completed and the room ready for occupancy.
+
+"I shall be happy--no, _happy_ is not a good word for me--I shall be
+glad to see you in my studio when I have moved in, and perhaps you may
+see some things to please you."
+
+So saying, the stranger departed, leaving Brown not a whit better
+impressed with him than at first.
+
+The next morning the two called again, when the gentleman made an
+examination of the room selected the day before, having met Mr. Brown
+in the hall-way and invited him in. On entering, the new occupant took
+from his pocket a piece of chalk and a compass and made a number of
+circles and figures on the floor to determine when the sun would shine
+in the room. Brown watched him with a certain degree of curiosity and
+amusement, and finally, concluding he was half crazy, returned to his
+own studio.
+
+The next day the cicerone called alone to see about some repairs, when
+Brown hailed him: "_Buono giorno. Che è questo_?" ("Good-day. Who is
+that?")
+
+"_Non sapete_?" ("Don't you know?"), was the Italian's response. "Why,
+that is the celebrated Brullof."
+
+Brown started as though shot. First there flashed through his brain
+the remembrance of how cavalierly he had treated the distinguished
+artist, and then a quick panorama of his recent history, which had
+been the gossip of studios and art-circles for some time back. "I must
+go to him," he said, "and apologize for not treating him with more
+deference."
+
+"_Non, signore_," was the cicerone's response. "Never mind: let it
+rest. He is a man of the world, and pays little heed to such things.
+Besides, he is so overwhelmed with his private griefs that he has
+probably noticed no slight."
+
+However, when the great Russian artist took possession of his studio
+his American brother of the pencil made his apology, and received this
+response; "Don't waste words on so trivial a matter. Do I not court
+the contempt of a world that I despise to my heart's core? Say no more
+about it. Run in and see me when agreeable; and if you have no better
+callers than such a plaything of fate as I, maybe you will not refuse
+me occasional admittance."
+
+The Russian artist now shunned notoriety as he had formerly courted
+it. Little is known of his history beyond mere rumor, and that only in
+artistic circles. He was born at St. Petersburg in 1799 or 1800, and
+gave himself to the study of art at an early age, becoming an especial
+proficient in color and composition. One of his most widely-known
+works is "The Last Days of Pompeii," which created great enthusiasm a
+quarter of a century ago. This, however, was painted during his career
+of dissipation, and its vivid coloring seemed to have been drawn from
+a soul morbid with secret woes and craving a nepenthe which never
+came.
+
+The young artist was petted and idolized by the wealth and nobility
+of St. Petersburg, where he married a beautiful woman, and became
+court-painter to the czar Nicholas about the year 1830. For some years
+no couple lived more happily, and no artist swayed a greater multitude
+of fashion and wealth than he; but scandal began to whisper that
+the czar was as fond of the handsome, brilliant wife of the young
+court-painter as the cultivated people of St. Petersburg were of the
+husband's marvelously colored works; and when at last the fact became
+known to Brullof that the monarch who had honored him through an
+intelligent appreciation of art had dishonored him through a guilty
+passion for his wife, he left St. Petersburg, swore never again to
+set foot on Russian soil or be recognized as a Russian subject, and,
+plunging headlong into a wild career of dissipation, was thenceforth a
+wanderer up and down the continent of Europe.
+
+It was when this career had borne its inevitable fruit, and he was but
+a mere wreck of the polished gentleman of a few years previous, that
+Brullof came to the Via San Basilio, where, as soon as the fact
+became known, visitors began to call. Among the first were the Russian
+ambassador and suite, who were driven up in a splendid carriage, with
+liveried attendants; but after the burly Italian had announced to his
+master who was in waiting, the door was closed, and with no message in
+return the representatives of the mightiest empire on the globe
+were left to withdraw with the best grace they could muster for the
+occasion. Similar scenes were repeated often during the entire Roman
+season. He saw but few of his callers--Russians, never.
+
+The Russian and the American artists became quite intimate during the
+few months they were thrown together, and Mr. Brown has acknowledged
+that he owes much of the success of his later efforts to hints
+received from the self-exiled, dying Russian.
+
+"Mr. Brown," he said on one occasion, while examining the picture on
+the artist's easel, "no one since Claude has painted atmosphere as you
+do. But you must follow Calamé's example, and make drawing more of
+a study. Draw from Nature, and do it faithfully, and with your
+atmosphere I will back you against the world. That is bad," pointing
+to the huge limb of a tree in the foreground: "it bulges both ways,
+you see. Now, Nature is never so. Look at my arm," speaking with
+increased animation, and suddenly throwing off his coat and rolling
+up his shirt-sleeve. "When you see a convexity, you will see concavity
+opposite. Just so in Nature, especially in the trunks and limbs of
+trees."
+
+This criticism made such an impression on Brown that it decided him
+to go into more laborious work, and was the foundation of his habit
+of getting up at daybreak and going out to sketch rocks, trees and
+cattle, until he stands where he now does as a draughtsman.
+
+The painting which Brullof had first admired, and which had induced
+him to compare Brown to Claude in atmospheric effects, was a view of
+the Pontine Marshes, painted for Crawford the sculptor, and now in
+possession, of his widow, Mrs. Terry, at Rome.
+
+During this entire season the penuriousness exhibited by Brullof is
+one of the hardest phases of his character to explain. Though he was
+worth at least half a million of dollars, his meals were generally of
+the scantiest kind, purchased by the Italian cicerone, and cooked and
+eaten in his room. Yet a kindness would touch the hidden springs of
+his generosity as the staff of Moses did the rock of Horeb.
+
+Toward the close of the Roman season, Brullof, growing more and more
+moody, and becoming still more of a recluse, painted his last picture,
+which showed how diseased and morbid his mind had become. He called it
+"The End of All Things," and made it sensational to the verge of that
+flexible characteristic. It represented popes and emperors tumbling
+headlong into a terrible abyss, while the world's benefactors
+were ascending in a sort of theatrical transformation-scene. A
+representation of Christ holding a cross aloft was given, and winged
+angels were hovering here and there, much in the same manner as
+_coryphées_ and lesser auxiliaries of the ballet. A capital portrait
+of George Washington was painted in the mass of rubbish, perhaps as
+a compliment to Brown. In contradistinction to the portrait of
+Washington were seen prominently those of the czar Nicholas and the
+emperor Napoleon; the former put in on account of the artist's own
+private wrong, and the latter because at that time, just after the
+_coup d'ètat_, he was the execration of the liberty-loving world.
+
+In the spring the Russian artist gave up his studio, and went down
+to some baths possessing a local reputation situated on the road to
+Florence, where he died very suddenly. Much mystery overhangs his last
+days, and absolutely no knowledge exists as to what became of his
+vast property. His cicerone robbed him of his gold watch and all
+his personal effects and disappeared. His remains lie buried in the
+Protestant burying-ground outside the walls of Rome, near the Porto
+di Sebastiano. His tomb is near that of Shelley and Keats, and
+the monument erected to his memory is very simple, his head being
+sculptured upon it in _alto relievo_, and on the opposite side an
+artist's palette and brushes.
+
+EARL MARBLE.
+
+
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS HYMN.
+
+  The air was still o'er Bethlehem's plain,
+    As if the great Night held its breath,
+  When Life Eternal came to reign
+    Over a world of Death.
+
+  The pagan at his midnight board
+    Let fall his brimming cup of gold:
+  He felt the presence of his Lord
+    Before His birth was told.
+
+  The temples trembled to their base,
+    The idols shuddered as in pain:
+  A priesthood in its power of place
+    Knelt to its gods in vain.
+
+  All Nature felt a thrill divine
+    When burst that meteor on the night,
+  Which, pointing to the Saviour's shrine,
+    Proclaimed the new-born light--
+
+  Light to the shepherds! and the star
+    Gilded their silent midnight fold--
+  Light to the Wise Men from afar,
+    Bearing their gifts of gold--
+
+  Light to a realm of Sin and Grief--
+    Light to a world in all its needs--
+  The Light of life--a new belief
+    Rising o'er fallen creeds--
+
+  Light on a tangled path of thorns,
+    Though leading to a martyr's throne--
+  Light to guide till Christ returns
+    In glory to His own.
+
+  There still it shines, while far abroad
+    The Christmas choir sings now, as then,
+  "Glory, glory unto God!
+    Peace and good-will to men!"
+
+ROME, Christmas, 1871.
+
+T. BUCHANAN READ.
+
+
+
+
+THE PARSEES.
+
+
+Hanging in my study is a noteworthy portrait, generally the first
+object observed by those who enter. It is an exquisite painting on
+glass, the work of Làng Quà, the best artist China has produced in our
+day, and it delineates the form and features of a singularly handsome
+young man. But it is the quaint Parsee garb that first attracts
+attention; and the weird romance that attaches to the history of the
+Fire-worshipers gives this work of art its real value, rather than
+its lines of beauty or the celebrity of the painter's name. This
+delicately-featured portrait _may_ depict the countenance of Musaljee
+Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, the first-born son and heir of the late Sir
+Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, baronet, of Bombay, India. That he really sat for
+this portrait I cannot, however, positively assert, since I obtained
+the painting from an English officer, who bought it of the artist, but
+had "forgotten the strange, outlandish name of the Indian nabob," as
+he said. It is certainly the portrait of a _Parsee_--true to the life
+in features and garb, and it bears a striking resemblance to the young
+Musaljee when about eighteen years of age. He was not then a personage
+of any great celebrity, though the worthy son of a most remarkable
+sire, the latter long known and honored in Europe for his liberal and
+enlightened charities, and especially for his munificent donations,
+that saved the lives of thousands of British subjects, during the
+terrible famines that occurred in India between the years 1840 and
+1846. It was in grateful recognition of this noble philanthropy that
+Queen Victoria conferred upon him the honor of a baronetcy, sending
+out a nobleman to act as her proxy in the presentation of a sword
+which had been handled by more than one British monarch. Sir Jamsetjee
+was the first East Indian who ever received a title from a European
+sovereign. During the terrible famines alluded to he not only
+distributed daily from his own palace a plentiful supply of food to
+all who came, but he made also large donations of provisions to the
+English governor of Bombay for the supply of his starving troops.
+When, subsequently, pestilence followed in the footsteps of famine,
+this true-hearted philanthropist, overstepping all prejudices of creed
+and clan, built and endowed at his own expense a free hospital for the
+sick of all nations and religions. Temporary bamboo cottages at first
+received the sick till there was time for the erection of the present
+elegant structure, which is built in the Gothic style, and is capable
+of accommodating some six or eight hundred patients, besides nurses
+and attendants. The physicians have been from the beginning of the
+enterprise all English, as are many of the nurses, and the supplies in
+every department are the very best the country can furnish. Since the
+death of the noble founder, the son, who inherits his name and title,
+has continued to foster with loving devotion the institution
+which stands as a lasting monument of the fame and virtues of his
+illustrious sire. The conception of such a charity tells not only of a
+generous heart, but of far-reaching intelligence, while the energy and
+perseverance of both father and son in carrying on, year after year,
+so vast a system of benefactions, challenge our warmest admiration.
+
+The name of the late Sir Jamsetjee stood for more than a score of
+years at the very head of the list of merchant-princes and ship-owners
+in Bombay, where he was born, and where his ancestors for many
+generations resided. He came of an old and wealthy family, who trace
+their genealogy back to the Parsee exodus of the eighth century; and
+it is said that the "sacred fire" has never once during all that time
+burned out upon their altar. Sir Jamsetjee himself, though probably
+faithful in the observance of the actual requirements of his creed,
+was assuredly less strict than the majority, and being a man of large
+intellect, cultivated mind and great independence of character, he did
+not hesitate to borrow from other nations any customs, institutions or
+inventions that might tend to the improvement of his own people.
+His stately mansion was built and furnished in European style; his
+children, even his daughters, were carefully educated in foreign as
+well as native lore; and his own associations were with refined and
+cultivated people, without any regard to their nation or creed. It was
+while visiting at his house, in familiar intercourse with his family,
+and with other Parsees of similar position, that I gleaned many
+items of interest concerning the history and practices of the
+Fire-worshipers. Other facts were added from time to time during
+several years of frequent association with these singular people, in
+whose glorious though unsuccessful struggles for home and liberty it
+is impossible not to feel an interest.
+
+As a race, the Parsees are intelligent, active and energetic. With
+business capacities far above the average, they are usually successful
+in amassing wealth, while they are extremely benevolent in dispensing
+their gains for both public and private charities. For private
+benefactions they have, however, little call among themselves, since a
+Parsee pauper would be an unheard-of anomaly. Their style of living is
+princely but peculiar. In the reception-rooms of the wealthy--and most
+of the Parsees in the city of Bombay are wealthy--one finds a
+rather quaint mingling of Oriental luxury and European
+elegance--brightly-tinted Persian carpets placed in Eastern fashion
+over divans strewn with embroidered cushions and jewel-studded
+pillows, among which recline, with genuine Oriental indolence, some of
+the members of the family; while in another part of the same room
+half a dozen more may be grouped about a table of marble and rosewood,
+occupying velvet chairs that have traveled unmistakably from London
+or Paris. French mirrors and Italian statuettes may have for their
+_vis-à-vis_ the exquisite mosaics, the massive gold vases and the
+costly bijouterie of the Orient, strewn so profusely around as to
+startle unaccustomed eyes; and a genuine Meissonier will be just as
+likely to be placed side by side with a Persian houri as anywhere
+else. The Parsees drive the finest Arab steeds, but on their equipages
+there is a more lavish display of ornament than we should deem quite
+in accordance with good taste. The same is true in regard to personal
+decoration. They wear immense quantities of costly jewelry, and nearly
+all their garments are of silk, generally richly embroidered in gold,
+and often with the addition of precious stones. Even little children
+wear only silk, infants from the very first being wrapped in long,
+loose robes of plain white silk that are gradually displaced by others
+more elaborate and costly; while the toilette of a Parsee lady in full
+evening-dress is often of the value of a hundred thousand rupees (or
+forty-five thousand dollars). The female costume consists of silk or
+cotton skirts gathered full round the waist, and long, loose robes
+of silk, lace or muslin, all more or less decorated according to the
+wealth of the wearer. The dress of the men is composed of trousers and
+shirts of white or colored silk and long caftans of muslin, with the
+addition of a fanciful little scarf fringed at the ends, and worn
+jauntily across one shoulder and under the other arm. Their caps are
+made of pasteboard covered with gay-colored silk, embroidered and
+studded with precious stones or pearls. The form of a Parsee's shirt
+is a matter of vital importance, both in regard to respectability and
+religion. It must have five seams, neither more nor less, and be made
+to lap on the breast exactly in a certain way. Both sexes wear around
+the body a double string, which they loosen when at prayer, and which
+a Parsee is never, under any circumstances, permitted to dispense
+with. No engagement or business transaction is legally binding if by
+any chance this talismanic cord was left off by either party when the
+contract was made. The cord is first placed on children when they have
+completed their ninth year, and this serves to mark the most important
+epoch of their lives. Before the investiture the eating of food with
+Christians or heathen does not defile the juvenile Parsee, and girls
+may even go about in public with their fathers; but after the bestowal
+of the sacred cord the girls must be kept in seclusion and the boys
+eat only with their own people.
+
+Only the most liberal Parsees will permit those of other creeds to eat
+under the same roof with themselves, and even these never eat at the
+table with their guests. The table is first covered for the visitors,
+and they are waited on with the utmost assiduity, often by the members
+of the family in addition to the servants. When the guests leave the
+board not only is the cloth changed, but the table itself is washed
+before being recovered: salts, castors and other similar articles are
+all emptied and washed, and the table newly laid in every particular.
+Small flat cakes are distributed round the board to do service as
+plates, and the various dishes arranged in the centre within reach of
+all. The family then wash hands and faces and the father says a short
+prayer, after which all take their seats and the meal begins. Neither
+knives nor forks are used, but the meat is torn from the bones with
+the fingers only, and with the left hand each one dips, from time to
+time, bread, meat or vegetables into the broth or gravy as he wishes,
+and then tosses it into his mouth, without allowing his fingers to
+touch his lips. This requires some dexterity, and children are not
+permitted at the family board till they have learned thus to acquit
+themselves. If, however, the fingers of any one, child or adult,
+should chance to come in contact with the lips, though ever so
+slightly, he is required to leave the table instantly and perform
+his ablutions over again, or else to take the dish from which he was
+eating to himself, and touch no other during the meal. In drinking
+they exercise the same caution, adroitly throwing the liquid into the
+mouth or throat without touching the lips with the cup or glass. The
+left hand is the one with which food is always taken; and the reason
+assigned is, that the right, having of necessity to perform most
+labor, is more frequently brought in contact with things unclean.
+
+I once made a voyage with an American lady and gentleman in a Bombay
+ship that was owned and commanded by a wealthy Parsee merchant, though
+the real sailing-master and mate were Englishmen. Our party ate at one
+table, and the Parsee nabob had his own in solitary state. I was then
+quite a youthful wife, and, as my husband was not of the party, the
+Parsee supposed me unmarried, and overwhelmed me with the most gallant
+attentions, among which were frequent invitations to our party to dine
+in his cabin. But, though he would stand at my side all the time I
+was eating, fill my cup or glass with his own hands, and urge me to
+partake of certain dishes that were favorites of his own, nothing
+could induce him to eat or drink in our presence, even after we had
+left the table. And I learned afterward that the costly service of
+rare china, silver and glass from which we had eaten and drunk at his
+table, though carefully laid aside, was never again used by the owner.
+One evening, as we sat on the upper deck inhaling the balmy air, he
+invited me to smoke. Of course I declined, and when he insisted I told
+him that it was contrary to the customs of good society in our country
+for ladies to use tobacco in any form. He laughed heartily, and said,
+"Did you suppose I would ask a lady to pollute her fragrant breath
+and dewy lips with so foul a thing as vile tobacco? Taste and see." He
+brought his splendid hookah, which I found filled with the "fragrant
+spices of Araby" perfumed with attar of roses, while a long slender
+tube rested in a vessel of rose-water at my feet; and the fumes were
+certainly as agreeable as harmless. But this, my first experiment in
+smoking, cost my Parsee friend three hundred dollars, the estimated
+value of his gold-mounted hookah, with its complicated array of tubes
+and vessels of the same precious metal, none of which he durst ever
+use again.
+
+As we sat chatting together in the bright moonlight our ears were
+suddenly greeted by the sound of sweet music--wild, unearthly melody
+that seemed to rise from the very depths of the ocean just below our
+feet. At first it was only a soft trill or a subdued hum, as of a
+single voice: then followed what seemed a full chorus of voices of
+enchanting sweetness. Presently the melody died away in the distance,
+only, however, to burst forth anew after a brief interval. All the
+time we were being regaled with the music we could see nothing to
+enlighten us as to its source, and were inclined to pronounce it a
+trick played by our fun-loving sailing-master. He, however, denied all
+agency in the matter, but counseled us to "keep a close look-out on
+the lee bow" if we wanted to see a mermaid. We had noticed a sort of
+thrilling motion on the lower deck, not unlike the sensation produced
+by the charge of an electro-galvanic battery; and this, the Parsee
+captain gravely assured us, was the mermaids' dance, and their efforts
+to drag down our ship. "But I'll catch one of them yet--see if I
+don't," he said energetically as he caught up something from the deck
+and ran forward, and was presently, with two of the Lascars, leaning
+over the bow. Half an hour afterward he returned, and with a merry
+laugh laid in my lap two little brown fish, informing me that they
+were singing-fish, and that the music we had heard had been produced
+by shoals of these tiny vocalists then clinging to the bottom of our
+ship. Our Parsee friend told me that the Arabs and Persians always
+speak of the singing-fish as "tiny women of the sea;" but he had
+never heard our version of their long hair, and their twining it about
+hapless sailors to drag them down to their coral caverns beneath the
+ocean's wave. He showed me how to preserve the fish by drying in the
+sun after repeated anointings with an aromatic oil, which he gave me
+for the purpose; and I have still in my cabinet these two specimens as
+a reminder of the incident.
+
+The manner in which the Parsees dispose of their dead seems to us too
+shocking to be tolerated by a people so gentle and refined. But they
+have grown familiar with a custom that, generation after generation,
+has been observed by their race till it has ceased to be repugnant.
+They call it "consigning the dead to the element of air." For
+this purpose they have roofless enclosures, the walls of which are
+twenty-five or thirty feet high, and within are three biers--one each
+for men, women and children. Upon these the bodies of the dead are
+laid, and fastened down with chains or iron bands. Presently birds
+of prey, so numerous within the tropics and always waiting to devour,
+pounce upon the corpse and quickly tear the flesh from the bones,
+while the skeleton remains intact. This is afterward deposited in
+a pit dug within the same enclosure, and which remains open till
+completely filled up with bones; after which another is dug, and
+when the enclosure can conveniently contain no more pits a new one is
+selected and prepared. None but priests and bearers of the dead may
+enter, or even look into, these walled cemeteries. The priests, by
+virtue of their holy office, are preserved from defilement, but the
+bearers are men set apart for this express purpose, and they are
+considered so unclean that they may not enter under the roof of any
+other Parsee or salute him on the street. If in passing a bearer do
+but touch one's clothes accidentally, he is subject to a heavy fine,
+while he who has been thus contaminated must bathe his entire
+person and burn every article of raiment he wore at the time of his
+defilement.
+
+I was anxious to visit one of their temples, but this, Sir Jamsetjee
+assured me, was impossible, as none but the initiated are allowed
+even to approach the entrance, still less to get a glimpse of what is
+passing within. He, however, volunteered the information that, so far
+as the sanctuary itself was concerned, there was little to be seen,
+only naked walls, bare floors, and an altar upon which burns the
+sacred fire brought with the Parsees from Persia, and which, he said,
+had never been extinguished since it was kindled by Zoroaster from the
+sun four thousand years ago. Of the form of service I could not induce
+the baronet to speak, but I learned afterward from my ship-friend that
+the altar is enclosed by gratings, within which none but the priest
+may enter. He goes in every day to tend "the eternal fire," when he
+must remain for the space of an hour, repeating certain invocations,
+with a bundle of rods in his hand to repel any unclean spirits that
+should venture to approach the sacred fire. Meanwhile, the assembled
+multitudes prostrate themselves without and offer up their silent
+adoration. "Yet, after all," musingly said the Parsee, "the universe
+is the throne of the invisible God, of whom fire is but the emblem,
+and we worship Him most acceptably with our eyes fixed on the east
+when the sun rides forth at morning in his celestial chariot of fire."
+This form of worship those curious in such matters may see on any
+bright morning at Bombay, where whole crowds of Parsee men, women and
+children rush out at sunrise to greet the king of day and offer up
+their morning oblations. I was not surprised at the avowed preference
+of my Parsee friends for out-door worship, since it is well known that
+the ancient Persians not only permitted few temples to be erected to
+their gods, and held in abhorrence all painted and graven images, but
+they laid it to the charge of the Greeks, as a daring impiety, that
+"they shut up their gods in shrines and temples, like puppets in a
+cabinet, when all created things were open to them and the wide world
+was their dwelling-place." It was probably religious zeal, even more
+than revenge against the Greeks, that induced the burning of the
+temple at Athens by Xerxes, led on, as he may have been, by the
+fanatical zeal of the Magi who accompanied him.
+
+Plutarch speaks of the Persians, in common with the Chaldeans and
+Egyptians, as worshipers of the sun under the name of Mithra, whom
+they regarded as standing between Ormuzd, "the author of good," and
+Ahriman, "the author of evil," occupied alternately in aiding the
+former and subduing the latter. So do the Parsees of our own day
+regard him; and their only hope for the ultimate triumph of Ormuzd is
+in constant sacrifices and prayers and propitiatory offerings to the
+sun as the fire that is to burn out and utterly consume all evil
+from our earth. Fire is to the Parsees now, as it has ever been, the
+holiest of all holy things, carried about by princes and great men for
+safety; by warriors, as that which is to give them the victory over
+their foes; and by all, as their sole and ever-present deity. Sir
+Jamsetjee assured me that the _intelligent_ Parsees regard the sun
+and fire as only the symbols that are to remind them of the God
+they worship. But there can be no doubt that the mass of the Parsees
+literally worship the sun and the "sacred fire;" and hence arise the
+utter repugnance many of them have to celebrating their religious
+rites within closed walls, and the decided preference ever shown for
+out-door worship. I have often heard them say that the Fire-god
+shows his aversion to confinement by drooping when he is shut up, and
+growing vigorous just in proportion as free scope is given him.
+The sun appears everywhere on the shields and armor of the ancient
+Persians, as on some of the old-time monuments that have come down
+to us; while occasionally Mithra is depicted as a youthful hero, with
+high Persian cap, his knee on a prostrate bull, into whose heart he
+seems plunging a dagger--symbolically, "the power of evil" in
+complete subjection to the victorious sun, and about to be for ever
+annihilated.
+
+Zoroaster (called by the Persians _Zerduscht_) was not, the Parsees
+say, the _founder_ of their sect, but only the reviser and perfecter
+of the system as it now exists among them. Living in the reign of
+Darius Hystaspes, he was the contemporary, probably an associate,
+of the prophet Daniel. Before the advent of this reformer the Magi
+acknowledged two great First Causes--i.e., the light and the darkness,
+the former the author of all good, the latter of every evil, moral
+and physical--and these they believed were at perpetual war with each
+other. Zoroaster taught, as he may have learned from Daniel, that
+there was One greater still, who created both the light and the
+darkness, making both to subserve His own will. He also inculcated the
+duty of building temples for the preservation of the sacred fire from
+storm and tempest, when "by sudden extinction of the light the powers
+of darkness do gain often a signal victory." The Parsees hold in
+supreme veneration the name of Zoroaster as the most noted of all
+their Magi for wisdom and virtue. They believe that the sacred fire
+was lighted by him miraculously from the sun--that it has burned
+steadily ever since, and can never go out till it has consumed all
+evil from the earth and the good has become universally triumphant.
+They claim also that from the reforms wrought by Zoroaster there was
+never the slightest change in any of their observances until about
+twelve centuries ago, when Persia was overrun and conquered by the
+Mohammedan Arabs. But not the fiercest persecution could induce
+the Fire-worshipers to change their religion for that of the
+Koran. Preferring liberty and their altars in a foreign land to the
+alternative of apostasy or persecution at home, the aboriginal Persian
+inhabitants fled to other lands, settling immense colonies in Surat
+and Bombay, where their descendants form in our day a large and
+valuable element of the population. Their integrity, industry and
+enterprise are proverbial all over the East; and while they live
+strictly apart from all other races, the Parsees are never wanting in
+sympathy and help for those who need them. Dwelling amid nations
+who are almost universally destitute of veracity, the Parsees are
+eminently truthful; surrounded by polygamists and sensualists, they
+maintain habits of purity and virtue; and accustomed to every-day
+association with those who make a boast of cheating, my memory fails
+to recall the case of a single Fire-worshiper who was not strictly
+upright and honorable in his dealings.
+
+Commencing with the worship of the sun, and of fire as his emblem, the
+Parsee grew into a sort of reverence for the elements of air, earth
+and water. The air must not be contaminated by foul odors, and of
+necessity no filth could be tolerated anywhere in house, street or
+suburb; and to this reverence for the purity of the atmosphere may
+be traced the absolute cleanliness for which Fire-worshipers are
+everywhere noted. As the earth must receive no defilement, the Parsees
+would deem it sacrilege to deposit therein their dead for corruption
+and decay; and hence have doubtless originated their strange rites
+of sepulture, as they believe that the body is thus more readily and
+rapidly reduced to its original elements. Streams of water, even the
+tiniest rivulets, are deemed too holy to be desecrated by washing
+or spitting in them, and still less would they make the water the
+receptacle of offal of any sort. To each of these elements, as well as
+to the fire, the Parsees still make oblations on their high-days.
+It is true that their ceremonies now are less imposing than those
+described by Xenophon, when a thousand head of cattle were immolated
+at a single festival, four beautiful bulls presented to Jupiter, or
+the sky, and a magnificent chariot, drawn by white horses crowned with
+flowers and wearing a golden yoke, was offered to the sun; while the
+king in his chariot was escorted by princes and great nobles,
+two thousand spearmen marching on either side, and three
+hundred sceptre-bearers, armed with javelins and mounted on
+splendidly-caparisoned horses, bringing up the rear. But those
+jubilant days have passed: the Fire-worshipers are in exile, and
+have no king to lead them, either in battle against their foes or in
+triumphal processions in honor of their gods. Yet is Parseeism not
+dead, nor even on the decrease. Sacrifices, numerous and costly, are
+still piled upon their altars, the finest cattle are dedicated to
+their gods, the flesh being cut up and roasted for the people, while
+the Magi cast the caul and a portion of the fat into the fire as
+emblematic of the souls of the victims being imbibed by the gods,
+while the grosser portions are rejected.
+
+The sacrifices and those who offer them are always crowned with
+flowers, but the pontifical robes of the Magi, though of pure white
+silk, are severely plain in style and utterly devoid of ornament. In
+their lives the Magi claim to practice a rigid asceticism, making the
+earth their bed and subsisting wholly on fruit, vegetables and
+bread, besides submitting to frequent painful penances from fasting,
+scourging and the endurance of fatiguing exercises. "Wine, women and
+flesh" they are commanded to eschew as "special abominations to those
+who aspire to minister before the gods." The most remarkable feast of
+the ancient Parsees was one called by them the "sack-feast." On the
+appointed day a condemned malefactor was clothed in royal robes,
+seated on a kingly throne and the sceptre of regal power placed in
+his hand. Princes and people bowed the knee in mock homage before
+this king of a day, and he was suffered to glut his appetite with all
+manner of sensual delights till the sun went down, and then he was
+cruelly beaten with rods, and forthwith executed. (Were the crown and
+sceptre, the purple robe and mock reverence, that were the antecedents
+of the Redeemer's crucifixion, a reproduction of this barbarous
+custom?) The modern Parsees, though recognizing this feast as a
+legitimate part of their worship, say that they have not observed it
+since their flight from Persia in the eighth century, because since
+then, being under a foreign yoke, they have had no jurisdiction over
+human life, and durst not sacrifice even those who chanced to be
+in their power. This may be one reason for the renunciation of this
+barbarous practice of the olden time, but there has been wonderful
+progress in civilization during the last twelve hundred years; and
+certain it is that scenes of cruelty that suited the ferocious
+tastes of the eighth century could not possibly be repeated in the
+nineteenth.
+
+FANNIE ROPER FEUDGE.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+A SWEDISH PROVINCIAL THEATRE.
+
+
+It is not so magnificent as the Scala and San Carlo, and still, after
+seeing both those famous theatres, I must confess I preferred that
+of Carlstad to either. It is small and different in form from the
+generality: it reminded me, in fact, of a hall in a certain New
+England town where I used to go to the panorama as a child. There
+was a gallery like that in which the men and boys sat who tramped the
+loudest and kissed their hands, to the confusion of their neighbors,
+when the lights were turned down to enhance the effect of the burning
+of Moscow; only, at my panorama the gallery was unfashionable on
+account of the noisy male element, whereas at Carlstad it was the
+dress-circle. We--a party of Americans, the only foreigners in the
+house that night--occupied orchestra-stalls, as I presume the two or
+three front benches in the parquet may be called. There was a white
+cape in our vicinity, as well as one in the balcony; so our seats were
+probably as fashionable as those in the first and only circle; but
+behind us, stretching out to the doors and in under the gallery, was a
+dense mass unrelieved by opera-cloaks of any description; and that was
+the region of the unpretending---of those who came simply to enjoy, to
+see and not to be seen.
+
+As we spent a good part of a day at Carlstad, I should, perhaps,
+relate something more of the place than merely how we went to
+the theatre there; but that delightful evening effaced all other
+impressions, and after the interval that has since elapsed _Fleur
+de Thé_ and our commissioner are the only things that have retained
+somewhat of their original savor.
+
+The railway from Stockholm to Christiania ceased at Carlstad on Lake
+Wener, which gave us a day's drive to Arvika to strike the track
+again; and while we stood consulting where we were to get carriages,
+and whether we should go directly on, there came up a flourishing
+specimen of the genus _valet de place_, who took possession of us and
+laid out a plan that he had apparently prepared over night for our
+especial benefit. It is a way those persons have, and one that gives
+them a tremendous advantage over travelers weakened by a long journey,
+that they act as if they were there by appointment to meet you, or as
+if you had telegraphed precisely what you wished to do, and they were
+merely carrying out your intentions. "You want to go to the Black
+Eagle Hotel: I take you there. You would like to dine: you can have
+dinner at the hotel, or I shall show you a nice restaurant." We had
+not expected to find a member of the great European brotherhood just
+there in a little town in the heart of Sweden, and, taken unawares,
+fell an easy prey. However, they do not invariably succeed in that
+way: sometimes, if their officiousness is excessive, their English
+very exasperating and the traveler a little fractious as well as
+tired, they get the tables turned on them. A lady just arrived
+at Genoa, when halfway to the hotel with one of these persuasive
+personages snatched her bag out of his hand and walked into the rival
+albergo because he said with an aggravating accent, "I sall get you
+a ticket for de steam-er." "No you sha'n't, either: I have got
+it myself," she said; and so they parted company, to his infinite
+amazement. My friend--it was a friend of mine--turned back, on
+second thoughts, to offer the man something for having carried her
+belongings, but he put on offended dignity and declared that he didn't
+want her money. She was rather sorry afterward that he didn't do
+violence to his feelings and take it; and so, no doubt, was he.
+
+Our Carlstad commissioner beguiled the length of the way to the
+inn, at which we were a little inclined to grumble, by pointing out
+everything of note in our walk through the town. We had been reading
+up in the train, and knew that Carlstad was the capital of a district,
+had five thousand inhabitants, and was nearly destroyed by fire in
+1865; but he, a son of the place, and seeing in his mind's eye its
+rising glory when the railroad should be completed, did not let us
+off with that. We had to look and admire just where he told us. "Wide
+streets," he would say in his finely-chopped English. "Houses all very
+high--new since the fire. See here! there's the telegraph-office."
+
+At which, to answer in the style he understood best, we must have
+responded, "Oh, I say! Well. Very good! All right!"
+
+"You shall go to the theatre if you want to," he remarked at last,
+in that sweet, protecting way peculiar to his class from the habitual
+confounding of _can, shall_ and _will_, and that put us into good
+humor directly. To go to the theatre would be just the thing.
+
+"Oh yes, everybody goes," he said. It was a Danish company--very good
+actors--very pretty piece; but we rather expected to care more for the
+_everybody_ than either the piece or the actors; and so it proved.
+
+We went early, and established ourselves in the orchestra-stalls, as
+already stated, while our guardian accepted an unpretending seat
+for himself, where he remained in readiness to tow us home after the
+performance. And then the spectators began to come in, and positively
+some of the very people who used to be at the panorama. I know there
+was a lady in front of me, in Mechanic Hall, who wore her hair in
+just such a little knot--_pug_ is, I think, the classic name for that
+coiffure--and her dress cut as low in the throat and adorned with
+precisely such a self-embroidered collar as the lady rejoiced in who
+occupied the seat before me at the theatre. That she was one of the
+fashionables of Carlstad could be seen in the lofty pose of that pug,
+and in the curious structure of ribbon and lace that sat astride of
+it and hung down at each side. Her husband, a small, rather dried-up
+gentleman, had the look of a town oracle who was oppressed at home,
+and her daughter was one of the prettiest girls in the house. The
+overgrown boy, the son and heir, was not pretty: he sat beside his
+sister and kept nudging her. I could not exactly understand what he
+said in Swedish, but I know it must have been of this nature: "There's
+Jim Davis over there. Look, sister, look!"
+
+Sister only glanced at him with a reproving air of "Don't push me so,"
+and then gazed steadfastly in the other direction; but she was not
+left long in peace. Tom's elbow began again in a minute: "He's looking
+right at you, all the time. You'd better turn round and bow to him."
+And the color would creep up in her cheeks, do all she could to
+prevent it, so that she had to lean across mamma and say something to
+her father, just so as not to bow to Mr. Davis, which would have been
+such a simple thing to do, after all.
+
+Everybody who came in nodded and spoke to everybody else, and then
+shook hands across the seats; and we felt quite out of our element
+under the inquiring but superior glances that fell to our lot. It was
+all very well for us to make our little observations and smile at
+each other on the sly: we had the consciousness all the while of not
+belonging to the first society in Carlstad, and of being viewed as
+intruders in that select circle.
+
+We had been studying one family party after another as the seats
+filled around us, for the audience collected by families, when, with a
+little rustle and stir attending her progress, and a whispering behind
+her as she advanced, the Bride appeared, for she had arrived from
+Stockholm by our train. It was the first time any one had seen her
+since she started on the wedding-tour, and the bows and smiles she
+dealt out on every side were not to be numbered. Our pretty girl got
+one--they were school-friends--and the horrid boy another, which he
+barely answered with a solemn nod of his head, being as shy of her,
+apparently, in her blue silk and white cape, as his sister was of Mr.
+Davis. It was really a very pretty dress of the Bride's, and one that
+made our traveling costumes look uncommonly shabby: it was taken up
+behind in the approved style, and only needed a bustle to have been
+truly effective. Doubtless she had seen plenty of those articles in
+Stockholm, only her husband said, "I hope, dear, you will never put on
+one of those horrid things;" and she told him certainly not if he did
+not like them; but I think she found afterward she needed one for
+that blue dress, and sent for it at the first opportunity. The young
+husband was not got up for show, knowing very well that no one would
+mind him, but he looked beamingly happy; and if he was not in a
+dress-coat with a flower in his buttonhole, like the _habitués_ of
+the Comédie Française or the Italiens, he understood how they use an
+opera-glass there. The glass was a new acquisition that he had brought
+home with him, and after practicing with it at the Royal Theatre in
+the capital, he was fully prepared to stand up between the acts, with
+his arm behind him in a negligently graceful attitude, and study
+the balcony. His acquaintances there must have found it rather
+embarrassing, for it was not a usual thing in Carlstad to look at
+one's friends through an opera-glass: he was the only person who did
+it, and they probably all talked about it when they went home.
+
+We were so occupied with our surroundings that we hardly thought of
+the piece, though it was given with considerable spirit, if I remember
+rightly. The sailors were fine, jolly tars, and the Chinese ladies
+and gentlemen toddled about in flowered dressing-gowns and talked
+with their thumbs, as it would appear the inhabitants of the Celestial
+Empire usually do; but the house did not allow itself to be betrayed
+into unseemly enthusiasm. There was an involuntary laugh now and then,
+and once somebody said _bravo_, but as a general thing a discreet
+reticence prevailed, and the actors might have gone through the piece
+on their heads in an extravagant desire to elicit signs of approval:
+they would only have received a cool little round of applause when the
+curtain fell.
+
+We, at all events, had no hesitation in telling the commissioner that
+we had enjoyed ourselves immensely; and so, it appeared, had he. He
+was even bold enough to call it a very fine company, and as we walked
+back to the hotel at half-past nine in broad daylight, he told us what
+they were going to play the next evening, possibly in the hope that we
+should stay for it and he should get another seat. That was out of the
+question, however, sorry as we were to disappoint him. He had to tuck
+us into the carriage the following day, and let us drive away and
+leave him bereft of his charges. "You shall have a good ride," were
+his parting words, kind and fatherly as he was to the last; and so we
+had. But we found no one again to care for us so tenderly as our
+old friend, nor did any one take us to the theatre throughout the
+remainder of the journey. G.H.
+
+
+
+
+VENETIAN CAFFÈS.
+
+
+It is years since so lovely an autumn as that of 1874 has been seen
+in Europe: people say not since the last great comet year, and they
+credit the erratic visitor of last summer with the exceptional beauty
+of the weather. As in the case of other marked comet years, the
+vintages of which still bring extraordinary prices, Italy has had
+exceptionally fine harvests of all kinds this year. The grain has been
+abundant, the vintage has been superb, the olives have escaped the
+danger of unseasonable frosts, and the still more important crop of
+foreigners seems to be pretty well assured. The charming weather in
+October and November made the interesting blossoms sprout plentifully;
+and boat-loads and train-loads came in with an abundance promising an
+unusually fine winter for _la bella Italia_. Venice, indeed, may be
+said to have pretty well housed her crop in this kind already. It has
+been a magnificent one, and the Queen of the Adriatic admits that due
+homage has been done to her. The _forestieri_ season sets in earlier
+in her case than in her sister cities. The real "Carnival de Venice"
+is in August, September and October now-a-days, let the calendar say
+what it may. Some flaunting of gaudy-colored calico, some dancing on
+the Piazza of St. Mark, there may be on the eve of Lent in obedience
+to old usages, but the dancing that really glads the Italian heart is
+the dancing for which the _forestiere_ pays the piper, and the true
+Lenten time is that when his beneficent presence is wanting.
+
+Venice, then, has already brought her Carnival to a conclusion; and
+it has been a splendid one. English, Americans, Germans, all came in
+shoals--all thronged the galleries, the churches and the palaces in
+the morning, sauntered or bathed on the outer shore of the Lido in the
+afternoon, and met at Florian's in the evening. "What is Florian's?"
+will be asked by those who have never been at Venice--by some such,
+at least. For probably the fame of the celebrated _caffè_ may have
+traveled across the Atlantic, just as many who have never crossed
+it westward are no strangers to the name of Delmonico. Florian's,
+however, in any case, deserves a word of recognition. It is the
+principal, largest and most fashionable caffè on the Piazza di San
+Marco. But the singular and curious specialty of the place is that it
+has never been closed--no, not for five minutes--day or night, for
+a period of more than a hundred and thirty years! Probably it is the
+only human habitation of any sort on the face of the globe of which
+that could be said.
+
+But the caffè in itself is in many respects a specialty of Venetian
+life, and has been so since the days of Goldoni. The readers of his
+comedies, so abundantly rich in local coloring, will not have failed
+to observe that the caffè plays a larger part in the life of Venice
+than is the case in any other city. Probably no Venetian passes
+a single day without visiting once at least, if not oftener, his
+accustomed caffè. Men of business write their letters and arrange
+their meetings there. Men of pleasure know that they shall find their
+peers there. Mere loafers take their seats there, and gaze at the
+stream of life, as it flows past them, for hours together. And, most
+marked specialty of all, Venice is the only city in Italy where the
+native female aristocracy frequents the caffè. Indeed, I know no place
+in all the Peninsula where so large an amount of Italian beauty may
+be seen as among the fashionable crowd at Florian's on a brilliant
+midsummer moonlight night.
+
+Venice is of all the cities in the world the one which those who have
+never seen it know best. The peculiarities of it are so marked and so
+unlike anything else in the world, and the graphic representations of
+every part of the city are so numerous and so admirably accurate, that
+every traveler finds it to be exactly what he was prepared to see, and
+can hardly fancy that he sees the Queen of the Adriatic for the first
+time. I may therefore assume, perhaps, that my readers are acquainted
+with the appearance of that most matchless of city spaces, the Piazza
+di San Marco. They will readily call to mind the long series of
+arcades that form the two long sides of the parallellogram which has
+the gorgeous front of St. Mark's church occupying the entirety of one
+of the shorter sides. Well, about halfway up the length of the piazza
+six of the arches on the right hand of one facing St. Mark's church
+are occupied by the celebrated caffè. The six never-closed rooms,
+corresponding each with one of the arches of the arcade, are very
+small, and would not suffice to accommodate a twentieth part of the
+throng which finds itself at Florian's quite as a matter of course
+every fine summer's night. But nobody thinks of entering these
+smartly-furnished little cabinets save for breakfast or during the
+hours of the day. Some take their evening ice or coffee on the seats
+under the arcade, either immediately in front of the cabinets
+or around the pillars which support the arches, and thus have an
+opportunity of observing the never-ceasing and ever-varying stream of
+life that flows by them under the arcade. But the vast majority of the
+crowd place themselves on chairs arranged around little tables set out
+on the flags of the piazza. A hundred or so of these little tables
+are placed in long rows extending far out into the piazza, and far on
+either side beyond the extent of the six arches which are occupied by
+the caffè itself. A London or New York policeman would have his very
+soul revolted, and conclude that there must be something very rotten
+indeed in the state of a city in which the public way could be thus
+encumbered and no cry of "move on" ever heard. Assuredly, it is
+public ground which Florian, in the person of his nineteenth-century
+representative, thus occupies with his tables and chairs. Probably,
+if a Venetian were asked by what right he does so, the question would
+seem to him much as if one asked by what right the tide covers the
+shallows of the lagoon. It always has been so. It is in the natural
+order of things. And how could Venice live without Florian's?
+
+But it is not Florian's alone which is thus a trespasser on the domain
+of the public. The other less celebrated caffès do the same thing.
+One immediately opposite to Florian's, on the other side of the
+piazza--Quadri's--has almost as large a spread of chairs and tables
+as Florian himself. But it is a curious instance of the permanence of
+habits at Venice, that though at Quadri's the articles supplied are
+quite as good, and the prices exactly the same, the fashionable
+world never deserts Florian's. The only difference between the
+two establishments, except this one of their customers, that is
+perceptible to the naked eye, is that at Quadri's beer is served,
+while Florian ignores the existence of that plebeian beverage, which
+assuredly was never heard of in Venice in the days when he began his
+career and formed his habitudes.
+
+I am tempted to endeavor to give the reader some picture of the scene
+on the piazza on a night when (as is the case almost every other
+evening) a military band is playing in the middle of the open space,
+and the cosmopolitan crowd is assembled in force--to describe the
+wonderful surroundings of the scene, the charm of the quietude broken
+by no sound of hoof or of wheel, the soft and tempered light, the gay
+clatter, athwart which comes every fifteen minutes the solemn mellow
+tone of the great clock of St. Mark with importunate warning that
+another pleasant quarter of an hour has drifted away down the stream
+of time. It is a scene that tempts the pen. But the well-dressed
+portion of mankind is very similar in all countries and under all
+circumstances, and perhaps my readers may be more interested in a few
+traits of the popular life of Venice, which the magnificent Piazza
+of St. Mark is not the best place for studying, for some of the
+most characteristic phases of it are absolutely banished thence. The
+strolling musician or singer, who may be heard every night in other
+parts of the city, never plies his trade on the piazza. Mendicancy,
+which is more rife at Venice, I am sorry to say, than in any other
+Italian city, except perhaps Naples, is not tolerated on the piazza.
+
+But if we wish for a good specimen of the truly popular life of
+Venice, it will not be necessary to wander far from the great centre
+of the piazza. Coming down the Piazzetta, or Little Piazza, which
+opens out of the great square at one end, and abuts on the open lagoon
+opposite the island of St. George at the other, and turning round the
+corner of the ducal palace, we cross the bridge over the canal, which
+above our heads is bridged by the "Bridge of Sighs," with its "palace
+and a prison on each hand," as Byron sings, and find ourselves on the
+"Riva dei Schiavoni"--the quay at which the Slavonic vessels arrived,
+and arrive still. The quay is a very broad one, by far the broadest in
+Venice, paved with flagstones, and teeming with every characteristic
+form of Venetian life from early morning till late into the night.
+There are two or three hotels frequented by foreigners on the Riva,
+for the situation facing the open lagoon is an exceptionally good one;
+and there are three or four caffès at which the cosmopolitan and not
+too aristocratic visitor may get an excellent cup of coffee (for the
+Venetians, thanks to their long connection with the East, know
+what coffee is, and will not take chiccory or other such detestable
+substitutes in lieu of it) for the modest charge of thirteen
+centimes--just over two cents--and study as he drinks it the moving
+and ever-amusing scenes enacted before his eyes. His neighbor perhaps
+will be an old gentleman, the very type of the old "pantaloon" whose
+mask was in the old comedy supposed to be the impersonation of
+Venice. There are the long, slender and rather delicately-cut features
+terminating in a long, narrow and somewhat protruding chin; the high
+cheek-bones, the lank and sombre cheeks, the high nose, the dark
+bright eye under its bushy brow. He is very thin, very seedy, and
+evidently _very_ poor. But he salutes you, as you take your seat
+beside him, with the air of an ex-member of "The Ten;" his ancient
+hat and napless coat are carefully brushed; his outrageously high
+shirt-collar and voluminous unstarched neckcloth, after the fashion of
+a former generation, though as yellow as saffron, are clean; and his
+poor old boots as irreproachable as blacking--which can do much, but,
+alas! not all things--can make them. His expenditure of a penny will
+entitle him not only to a cup of coffee, as aforesaid, but also to a
+glass of fresh water, which has been turned to an opaline color by
+the shaking into it of a few drops of something which the waiter drops
+from a bottle with some contrivance at its mouth, the effect of which
+is to cause only a drop or two of the liquor, whatever it may be, to
+come out at each shake. Our old friend is also entitled, in virtue of
+his expenditure, to occupy the chair he sits on for as many hours as
+he shall see fit to remain in it. And after the coffee, which must
+be drunk while hot, has been despatched, the sippings of the opaline
+mixture aforesaid may be protracted indefinitely while he enjoys the
+cool evening-breezes from the lagoon, the perfection of _dolce far
+niente_, and the amusement the life of the Riva never fails to afford
+him. An itinerant vender of little models of gondolas and bracelets
+and toys made out of shells comes by, seeking a customer among the
+folk assembled at the caffè. He does not address Pantaloon, for of
+course he knows that there is nothing to be done in that line with
+him. But spying with a hawk's glance a _forestiere_ among the crowd,
+he strolls up to him, holding up one of his gimcrack bracelets
+daintily--and he thinks temptingly, poor fellow!--between his finger
+and thumb. "Un franco! Un sol franco! è una beleza per una contesa!"
+("One franc! only one franc! It would be beautiful on the arm of a
+countess!") he murmurs in his soft lisping Venetian, which abolishes
+all double consonants, and supplies their place by prolonging the soft
+liquid sound of the preceding vowel. One franc! It is wonderful how
+the thing, worthless as it is, can be made even by the most starving
+fingers for such a price. Yet after dangling his toy for a minute, and
+gazing, oh, so wistfully! the while out of his big haggard eyes, he
+says, "Seventy-five centimes! half a franc!" and still lingers ere he
+turns away with a sigh, a weary movement of his emaciated figure and a
+longing look on his poor hollow face that make one feel that the
+drama we are witnessing is not all comedy. But it is all supremely
+interesting to our neighbor, Si'or Pantaleone. He has been keenly
+watching the attempted deal, and no doubt wished that his countryman
+might succeed. But there was no element of tragedy in the matter for
+him, a condition of semi-starvation is too much an ordinary, every-day
+and normal spectacle. He looked on more as a retired merchant might
+look on at the progress of a bargain for the delivery of a shipload
+of grain. Presently, a middle-aged woman and a girl of some fourteen
+years station themselves in front of the audience seated outside the
+caffè. The elder woman has a guitar, and the girl a violin and some
+sheets of music in her hand. The woman has her wonderful wealth of
+black hair grandly dressed and as shining as oil can make it. She
+has large gilt earrings in her ears, a heavy coral necklace, and a
+gaudy-colored shawl in good condition. Whatever might be beneath
+and below this is in dark shadow--"et sic melius situm." She is not
+starved, however, for, as she prepares to finger her guitar, she shows
+a well-nourished and not ill-formed arm. The young girl has one of
+those pale, delicate, oval faces so common in Venice: she also has a
+good shawl--an amber-colored one--which so sets off the olive-colored
+complexion of her face as to make her a perfect picture. This
+couple do not in any degree assume an attitude of appealing _ad
+misericordiam_. They pose themselves _en artistes_. The girl sets
+about arranging her music in a business-like way, and then they play
+the well-known air of "La Stella Confidente," the little violinist
+really playing remarkably well. Then the elder woman comes round with
+a little tin saucer for our contributions. No slightest word or look
+of disappointment or displeasure follows the refusal of those who give
+nothing. The saucer is presented to each in turn. I supposed that
+the application to Si'or Pantaleone was an empty form. But no. That
+retired gentleman could still find wherewithal to patronize the fine
+arts, and dropped a centime--the fifth part of a cent--into the dish
+with the air of a prince bestowing the grand cross of the Golden
+Fleece. Then comes a dealer in ready-made trousers, which Pantaloon
+examines curiously and cheapens. Then a body of men singing
+part-songs, not badly, but to some disadvantage, as they utterly
+ignore the braying of half a dozen trumpets which are coming along the
+Riva in advance of a body of soldiers returning to some neighboring
+barracks. Then there are fruit-sellers and fish-sellers and
+hot-chestnut dealers, and, most vociferous of all, the cryers of
+"Acqua! acqua! acqua fresca!" There, making its way among the numerous
+small vessels from Dalmatia, Greece, etc. moored to the quay of the
+Schiavoni, comes a boat from the Peninsular and Oriental steamer,
+which arrived this morning from Alexandria, with four or five
+Orientals on board. They come on shore, and proceed to saunter
+along the Riva toward the Grand Piazza, while their dark faces and
+brightly-colored garments add an element to the motley scene which is
+perfectly in keeping with old Venetian reminiscences.
+
+T.A.T.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW MEXICAN CHRISTMAS EVE.
+
+
+It is Christmas Eve in Albuquerque. Blazing fagots of mesquite-roots
+placed on the surrounding adobe walls illuminate the old church on
+the plaza. There is a grand _baile_ at the fonda, to which we and our
+"family are most respectfully invited." The sounds of music already
+invite us to the ball-room. We enter. The floor is full; a hundred
+couples are gliding through the graceful "Spanish dance," or "slow
+waltz," as it is termed here. Not a few blue-and-gold United States
+uniforms are to be seen in the throng. A full-uniformed major-general
+of volunteers adds the éclat of his epaulettes to the occasion. The
+ranchos have poured in their señoras and señoritas, and three rows of
+the dark-eyed creatures sit ranged around the room.
+
+The Mexican women look their best in a ball-room. Their black eyes,
+black hair and white teeth glisten in the light; they are dressed
+in the gayest of gay colors; ponderous ornaments of gold, strongly
+relieved by their dusk complexions, shed around them a rich barbaric
+lustre. Not that they eschew adventitious means to blanch their
+sun-shadowed tints. For days some of the señoras and señoritas have
+worn a mask of a white clayey mixture to give them an ephemeral
+whiteness for this occasion. Those who could procure nothing else have
+worn a pasty vizard kneaded of common clay, to effect in some degree
+a like result by protecting their faces from the sun and wind. Should
+you visit New Mexico, and as you ride along slowly in the heat of
+midday meet a señorita who gazes at you with a pair of jet black eyes
+through a hideous, ghastly mask of mud or mortar, do not be frightened
+from your accustomed propriety. The señorita is preparing her
+_toilette de bal_.
+
+The New Mexican women cannot be considered pretty, generally speaking.
+In artistic symmetry of feature, in purity of complexion, they are
+not to be compared with our countrywomen. These can bear the searching
+light of day, when delicacy of detail can be distinguished and
+appreciated. Those look their best in the artificial light of the
+ball-room. There the blue-black hair, the brilliant black eyes, the
+well-traced eyebrows, the magnificently white and regular teeth, the
+richly-developed forms, produce a general effect before which our
+blond and delicate beauties seem pale and _fades_. But the Mexican's
+coarser skin--her _teint basané_--is too plainly visible in the light
+of the sun: you should see her only by the lamps. It is doubtless
+rather from an instinct of coquetry than from any other feeling that
+in the day-time the Mexican women shroud their dusky traits in the
+folds of their _rebosas_, leaving only one pilot eye to look upon the
+outer world.
+
+No introductions are necessary at the public bailes. Saunter around
+the room, inspect the show of expectant partners, and when you see one
+who suits your fancy ask her to dance, without more ado. If she be not
+engaged she will at once accept your proffered arm. She will not
+say anything. Ten to one she will not breathe a syllable during your
+evolutions. Conversation is not the forte of the señoritas. But she
+will smile and smile, and you will have no reason to complain of her
+waltzing. The Mexican _caballero_, when he seeks a partner, will
+not put himself out so far as to have any words about it. He merely
+beckons the chosen one, as the sultan might throw the handkerchief,
+and she comes to him at once.
+
+Each dance concluded, you lead your partner to a sort of bar where
+refreshments are furnished, and ask her whether she will take _vino_
+or _dulces_--wine or candies? She will take _dulces_--"Gracias,
+señor!" This is _de rigueur_. You pay for them of course, and
+conduct her to her seat. She pours the _dulces_ into the awaiting
+pocket-handkerchiefs of the old people, her _comadres_, and of her
+younger brothers and sisters.
+
+In a little room adjoining the ball-room, with door invitingly open,
+is the shrine of _monte_. The revelry of the ball-room is unheeded by
+the preoccupied votaries of the changeful deity as they sit around the
+green table watching the dealer as he turns the cards, and nervously
+fingering their little piles of red or white "chips." We have no
+business and no pleasure here. Let us merely look in and pass on.
+
+Waltzes, "round" and "slow," are the _pièces de résistance_ of a
+Mexican baile: quadrilles are not relished by the dusky danseuses.
+There are some New Mexican dances which do not lack prettiness. Of
+these, the Cuna is the most popular. It commences with a see-saw
+movement suggestive of its name--cuna- or cradle-dance. For the rest,
+the waltz enters much into its composition.
+
+The orchestra generally consists of one or more violins and a guitar
+or two. The New Mexican guitar is strung conversely: the base-string
+is where we put the treble, and _vice versâ_. The strings are
+generally struck with the thumb-nail or with a piece of horn or wood
+like the ancient _plectrum_. This produces a harsh metallic sound,
+without any rotundity. Few New Mexican fiddlers or guitar-players are
+capable of playing in any time except dancing time, and the character
+of the baile, funeral and sacred music is the same. The only
+distinction is the addition of a continuous _tremolo_ to the latter
+two, which produces the same unpleasant effect on the nerves as a
+comic song chanted by the shaky, cracked, piping and quavering voice
+of senility. As the fiddles invariably play their parts in funerals as
+well as on festive processions, it requires some familiarity with the
+customs of the country to distinguish one from the other. The music
+to-night is much better than the ordinary baile music. A native
+harpist adds the music of his many strings; and not bad music either,
+though he does not know a quaver from a semibreve, and his harp is of
+his own manufacture. The sameness, however, caused by playing always
+and everything in the same key is perceptible. But dancing critics are
+not disposed to be very severe.
+
+The enjoyment of the evening is at high pressure. The dancers are
+swinging, surging, spinning through the Spanish dance. Everybody who
+can find a partner and a place on the floor--there are many who cannot
+find the latter--is dancing. It is a gay, a brilliant scene. All is
+going as merrily as a whole chime of marriage-bells when a deep and
+solemn peal from the church close by breaks in over the music, the
+laughter and the dancing. It is midnight! It is the _Noche Buena_,
+and the bell summons the faithful to the midnight mass. The effect is
+electric. The last twirl of the waltz is suspended, half executed. The
+dancers stop as suddenly as if they were puppets moved and stilled by
+the cunning of some wire-pulling hand. A general rush is made for the
+church: in a moment the ball-room is empty. The church is filled as
+instantaneously, and the wildly gay dancers of a moment ago are now
+kneeling, hushed and down-bent, in devotional attitudes.
+
+The scene is impressive: the bright ball-toilettes contrasted in a
+"dim religious light," the sudden change of place and mood, from gay
+to grave, from ball-room to sanctuary, strikes a stranger's eye with
+thrilling effect. At the conclusion of the service the dancers return
+to the ball-room, to change from grave to gay, and dance _ad libitum_
+till daylight.
+
+J.T.
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH BIBLE TRANSLATIONS.
+
+
+The first complete translation of the Bible into our language was
+made about the year 1380 by John de Wycliffe, or Wickliffe. There are
+several manuscript copies of it in the Bodleian and other European
+libraries. This great work unlocked the Scriptures to the multitude,
+or, as one of his antagonists, bewailing such an enterprise, worded
+it, "the gospel pearl was cast abroad and trodden under foot." Long
+before the appearance of this translation various versions of portions
+of the Bible had appeared, specimens of which, of every century from
+the reign of Alfred to Chaucer's time, are preserved in the British
+Museum and elsewhere. Sir Thomas More says: "The Holy Byble was longe
+before Wycliffis daies by virtuose and well-learned men translated
+into the English tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion
+and soberness well and reverently read." This statement is further
+corroborated by Foxe, the martyrologist, who remarks: "If histories
+be well examined, we shall find both before and after the Conquest, as
+well before John Wickliffe was borne as since, the whole body of the
+Scriptures by sundry men translated into this our country tongue."
+Wycliffe's Bible was first printed at Oxford in 1850, previous to
+which the New Testament appeared in 1721 and was reprinted in 1810.
+
+In 1526, William Tyndale completed and published in English his
+translation of the New Testament. He also translated and printed
+the Pentateuch and the book of Jonah, and was preparing them for
+publication when he was put to death in Flanders, being strangled and
+burnt for heresy. Tyndale's translation, with his latest revisions
+(1534), was republished in the English Hexapla in 1841. A copy of his
+translation of the Pentateuch which had belonged to Bishop Heber was
+sold in 1854 for $795. Four years later another copy sold for within
+twenty dollars of that amount.
+
+The first English translation of the entire Bible was made by Miles
+Coverdale, who afterward became bishop of Exeter, and was printed in
+folio in the year 1535. In 1538 a second edition of Coverdale's Bible
+was printed at Paris, but the Inquisition interfered and committed the
+whole edition of twenty-five hundred copies to the flames. No perfect
+copy of Coverdale's version is known to exist, but one lacking
+the original title-page and first leaf was sold in 1854 for $1725.
+Another, at the Perkins' sale, in June, 1873, brought $2000.
+
+Two years after the appearance of the first edition of Coverdale's
+Bible, John Rogers, the first martyr in Queen Mary's reign, published
+his version of the Scriptures. He made some emendations, but the text
+is chiefly that of Tyndale and Coverdale. It was printed by Grafton
+and Whitchurch in 1537, and the title runs: "The Byble, which is all
+the holy Scripture: in which are contayned the Olde and Newe Testament
+truely and purely translated into Englysh by Thomas Matthew." For
+safety, Rogers assumed the name of Matthew, whence it is known as
+Matthew's Bible. Seven hundred and fifty dollars have been paid for a
+copy.
+
+The third version of the Bible, known as Taverner's, was published
+in 1539. Richard Taverner was a learned man who published many
+translations during the sixteenth century. Horne says of his
+translation, "This is neither a bare revisal of Cranmer's Bible nor
+a new version, but a kind of intermediate work, being a correction of
+what is called 'Matthew's Bible.'"
+
+The first edition of Cranmer's Bible, the printing of which was begun
+in Paris in 1538 and completed in London in 1540--the Inquisition
+having interposed by imprisoning the printers and burning the greater
+part of the impression--is excessively rare. Cranmer's Bible--or the
+Great Bible, as it was called--is Tyndale's, Coverdale's and Rogers's
+translations most carefully revised throughout. This was the first
+sound and authorized English version; and as soon as it was perfected
+a proclamation was issued ordering it to be provided for every parish
+church, under a penalty of forty shillings a month. A second edition
+of Cranmer's Bible appeared in 1560, a copy of which brought, at a
+recent sale in England, the sum of $610.
+
+The Genevan version of the Bible was made by several English exiles
+at Geneva in Queen Mary's reign--viz., Cole, Coverdale, Gilby, Knox,
+Sampson, Whittingham and Woodman--and was first printed in 1560.
+It went through fifty editions in the course of thirty years. This
+translation was very popular with the Puritan party. In this version
+the first division into verses was made. It is commonly known as the
+"Breeches Bible," from the peculiar rendering of Genesis iii. 7--"
+breeches of fig-leaves." To the Geneva Bible we owe the beautiful
+phraseology of the admired passage in Jeremiah viii. 22. Coverdale,
+Matthew and Taverner render it, "For there is no more treacle at
+Gilead?" Cranmer, "Is there no treason at Gilead?" The Genevan first
+gave the poetic rendering, "Is there no balm in Gilead?"
+
+In the year 1568 another translation appeared, which is
+indiscriminately known as "Matthew Parker's Bible," the "Bishops'
+Bible" and the "Great English Bible." This version was undertaken and
+carried on under the inspection of Matthew Parker, second Protestant
+archbishop of Canterbury. Of the fifteen translators, six were
+bishops, hence this edition is often called the Bishops' Bible, though
+it is sometimes designated the Great English Bible, from its being a
+huge folio volume. In 1569 it was published in octavo form. There is a
+well-preserved copy of the first edition of Matthew Parker's Bible in
+the possession of a gentleman residing in New York City. This was
+the authorized version of the Scriptures for forty years, when it was
+superseded by our present English Bible.
+
+The English Roman Catholic College at Rheims issued in the year 1582
+a translation of the New Testament, known as the "Rhemish New
+Testament." It was condemned by the queen of England, and copies
+imported into that country were seized and destroyed. In 1609 the
+first volume of the Old Testament, and in the following year the
+second volume, were published at Douay, hence ever since known as the
+Douay Bible. Some years since Cardinal Wiseman remarked that the names
+Rhemish and Douay, as applied to the current editions, are absolute
+misnomers. The publishers of the edition chiefly used in this country
+state that it is translated from the Latin Vulgate, "being the edition
+published by the English College at Rheims A.D. 1582, and at Douay in
+1609, as revised and corrected in 1750, according to the Clementine
+edition of the Scriptures, by the Rt. Rev. Richard Challoner,
+bishop of Debra, with his annotations for clearing up the principal
+difficulties of Holy Writ."
+
+Theodore Beza translated the New Testament out of the Greek into the
+Latin. This was first published in England in 1574, and afterward
+frequently. In 1576 it was "Engelished" by Leonard Tomson,
+under-secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham, and was afterward
+frequently annexed to the Genevan Old Testament. The following is a
+copy of the title-page of the New Testament, _verbatim et literatim_:
+"The New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ, translated out of Greeke
+by Theod Beza: with brief summaries and expositions upon the hard
+places by the said authour, _Ioach Amer and P Loseler Vallerius_.
+Engelished by L Tomson. Together with the Annotations of _Fr Junius_
+upon the Revelation of S. John. Imprinted at London by the Deputies
+of Christopher Barker, Printer to the Queene's Most Excellent
+Majestie--1599." The volume opens with a primitive version of the
+Psalms in verse, then follow the Old Testament, the Apocrypha and the
+New Testament, as in Bibles of the present day.
+
+The version of the Scriptures now in use among Protestants was
+translated by the authority of King James I., and published in 1611.
+Fifty-four learned men were appointed to accomplish the work of
+revision, but from death or other causes seven of the number failed
+to enter upon it. The remaining forty-seven were ranged under six
+divisions, different portions of the Bible being assigned to each
+division. They entered upon their task in 1607, and after three years
+of diligent labor the work was completed. This version was generally
+adopted, and the former translations soon fell into disuse. The
+authors of King James's version of the Bible included the most learned
+divines of the day; one of whom was master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
+Chaldee, Syriac and fifteen modern languages.
+
+Among other rare and highly-coveted editions of the Bible is one
+printed in England in the seventeenth century, in which the important
+word _not_ was omitted in the seventh commandment, from which
+circumstance it has ever since been known as "The Adulterer's Bible."
+Another edition, known as the Pearl Bible, appeared about the same
+time, filled with errata, a single specimen of which will suffice:
+"Know ye not the ungodly _shall inherit_ the kingdom of God?" Bibles
+were once printed which affirmed that "all Scripture was profitable
+for _de_struction;" while still another edition of the sacred volume
+is known as the "Vinegar Bible," from the erratum in the title to the
+twentieth chapter of St. Luke, in which "Parable of the Vineyard" is
+printed "Parable of the Vinegar."
+
+J.G.W.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+Life and Labours of Mr. Brassey, 1805-1870. By Sir Arthur Helps,
+K.C.B. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+The "captains of industry," who constitute in our day so distinct and
+notable a class of worthies, are doubtless as well entitled to have
+their achievements recorded and their fame sounded throughout the
+lands as were the doughty men of war who of old were deemed the only
+fitting heroes of chronicle and epic. Few of them, however, can
+hope to have their deeds commemorated by a "veray parfit, gentle
+knight"--of the quill, not of the sword, albeit the letters which
+he writes after his name would once have indicated the possession of
+military rank and distinction. Sir Arthur Helps is not a man of few
+words or of a very stern or passionate temperament. It is the graces
+of chivalry, not its fiery ardor, that he cultivates and reflects,
+and though "arms and the man" have often been his theme, the soft and
+delicate strain was ever more suggestive of the pastoral pipe than
+of the bardic lyre. Essayist, historian, biographer, novelist, he is
+always intent to smooth away the asperities of his subject, and, like
+some stately grandame enthroned in high-backed chair, he remembers
+that his simple auditors are to be not merely entertained by the
+matter of his discourse, but impressed by the suave tones and
+high-bred prolixity of the speaker. With a dignified courtesy unknown
+in these latter times--when biographers and historians do not scruple
+to take liberties with their heroes to the extent even of designating
+them by nicknames--the subject of the present memoir is introduced to
+us as _Mr_. Brassey, a form not only adopted on the title-page, but
+preserved in the body of the work, where we read that "Mr. Brassey
+was born November 7, 1805," that "Mr. Brassey, at twelve years of age,
+went to a school at Chester," and that, being afterward articled to
+a surveyor, "Mr. Brassey was permitted by his master" to assist in
+making certain surveys. It is only from a side whisper to the American
+public, which is honored with a preface all to itself, that we are
+permitted to learn that the great contractor owned to the Christian
+name of Thomas. Besides the two prefaces there is a dedication to
+the queen, an introduction telling how Sir Arthur Helps made the
+acquaintance of Mr. Brassey and what impressions he received from the
+interview, and a preliminary chapter containing a brief outline of
+Mr. Brassey's character as "a man of business;" so that we get at the
+substance of the book by a process like that which in a well-conducted
+household precedes the carving and distribution of a Christmas cake,
+any eagerness we might feel to "put in a thumb and pull out a plum"
+being kept in check by a proper amount of ceremony and tissue-paper.
+
+Plums, however, there are, though not perhaps in full proportion to
+the frosted coating, or of just the kind that are best agglutinated by
+the biographical dough. Of anecdote or gossip, glimpses of "life and
+manners" or personal details, there is nothing. Nor can we justly take
+exception to this. On the contrary, it gives a unity to the subject by
+excluding whatever had no relation to the enterprises with which Mr.
+Brassey's name is connected, and which absorbed his time and thoughts
+to a degree that can have left him but little opportunity for
+intercourse with mankind except in a business capacity. It is these
+enterprises--not in their entirety or with reference to the objects
+with which they were designed, but as evidences and illustrations
+of the working force, mental and physical, demanded for their
+execution--that form the real subject of the book, the matter of which
+has been chiefly furnished by the various agents entrusted with the
+immediate supervision of the labor and outlay of the capital employed.
+The details thus brought together afford perhaps a more vivid idea of
+the industrial energy and activity of the nineteenth century, and
+of the resources they have called into play, than could have been
+obtained from a survey of any other field in which the like qualities
+have been displayed. It was chiefly with railway enterprises, and this
+almost from their inception, and to an extent far beyond the rivalry
+of any other constructor, that Mr. Brassey was engaged; and the
+railway system, not only by its own immense demands on capital, labor
+and inventive skill, but still more by the stimulus and aid it has
+given to industrial enterprises of every kind, must be regarded as the
+main lever of a material progress that has outstripped the conceptions
+and possibilities of all previous ages. With the development of a
+system so different in its nature from the great undertakings of any
+former period came the need of the contractor, entrusted with the
+direction and laden with the full responsibility of works which no
+government "boards" or similar machinery would have been competent to
+carry through under the conditions imposed by the novel circumstances
+of the movement and the exacting spirit by which it was impelled. To
+attain the foremost place in the new career thus created demanded,
+obviously, no ordinary powers--special knowledge of various kinds,
+equal facility in mastering details and grasping a general plan, tact
+in the choice and management of subordinates, courage and promptness
+in encountering unforeseen obstacles and disasters, and skill and
+clearheadedness in the general control of enormous and intricate
+financial interests. To these qualities must be added in the present
+case what is not so invariably associated with the names of succesful
+contractors--a faithfulness and integrity which merited and received
+the fullest confidence. Whether working at a gain or at a loss, Mr.
+Brassey was ever resolute to execute his engagements to the letter,
+and he declined to make demands for extra compensation when his
+contracts proved unprofitable, though it was customary with him to
+make good the losses of his sub-contractors. He amassed a colossal
+fortune, not through excessive gains, but by a small profit--"as
+nearly as possible three per cent."--which accrued to him from all his
+enterprises taken as a whole, and the accumulations consequent on an
+inexpensive mode of life.
+
+The railways constructed by Mr. Brassey, generally in partnership
+with some other contractor, between the years 1834 and 1870, comprised
+between six and seven thousand miles in all parts of the globe,
+including Australia and in almost every civilized country except
+Russia and the United States. "There were periods in his career during
+which he and his partners were giving employment to 80,000 persons,
+upon works requiring £ 17,000,000 of capital for their completion."
+Yet a large part of his time and of the time of his agents was
+spent in the investigation of schemes which he either decided not to
+undertake or for which he tendered unsuccessfully. It was necessary at
+times to transport materials, a large staff of employés and an army
+of laborers from one country to another. In some cases works were
+prosecuted in regions occupied or threatened by hostile armies, in
+others under all the embarrassments and gloom of a great financial
+revulsion. In countries where commercial transactions were usually
+very limited the great difficulty was to obtain coin for the payment
+of wages, while in others there was the danger of the supply of labor
+failing through the enticements of superabundant capital or the more
+dazzling temptations of gold-digging. It is needless to mention the
+usual accidents and impediments to which all such undertakings are
+liable, and which the skill and ingenuity of the modern engineer never
+fail to overcome; but it is certainly not a little remarkable, when
+the multiplicity of Mr. Brassey's contracts is remembered, as well
+as the early period from which they date, to find that they were
+invariably completed within the specified time.
+
+
+
+Personal Reminiscences of Barham, Harness and Hodder. (Bric-à-Brac
+Series, edited by Richard Henry Stoddard.) New York: Scribner,
+Armstrong & Co.
+
+Why we should love so dearly a fresh anecdote of a literary celebrity,
+a new quip by Talleyrand, a new stutter of Lamb's, a new impertinence
+of Sheridan's, may be not hard to understand, but it is rather hard to
+defend, any regard being paid to our dignity. The best stories about
+that particular line of authors who have possessed _bonhomie_ and
+become classic for it are long since told. What remains is the dregs.
+Yet the other day we found ourselves smiling with real delight over
+a new "bit" of Cowper. It was merely that his barber, being late with
+the poet's wig, said, "Twill soon be here, it is upon the road;" and
+that Cowper had smiled, with a "Very well, William," or a "Very fair,
+Thomas." The _mot_, like most of the stories that crop up now, was not
+good; it did not exhibit the author of "John Gilpin" in a brilliant
+light; it was not even uttered by the poet--he had merely smiled at
+it; yet it had the effect of rekindling the vapid embers about the
+dear old hearthstone of Olney, and the shy, gentle creatures that used
+to disport there among the hares when nobody was looking became for a
+moment more real from the citation. Now, the question is, What is
+the superiority of a new piece of gossip like this, which involves
+no witticism and confers no wisdom, over the next bit of history that
+will be exchanged between the heroines of the alley-gate? When Mrs.
+Jones tells Mrs. Baker that Mrs. Briggs has delivered a daughter, and
+that Mr. Briggs said he had rather she had given him a wooden leg, the
+epigram is quite as good as a _Bric-à-Brac_ anecdote, the people are
+quite as worthy as Cowper's barber, and the effect upon the history
+of letters quite as close and important. With this demurrer, we will
+apply ourselves for a moment to Mr. Stoddard's last collection, which
+of course we relish as much as anybody. We could wish that, after
+discharging his very well-executed duty of writing the preface, he
+could find some further time for elucidating the text. The present
+book being about three people, whose memoirs are taken from three
+volumes, it is confusing to the reader to find on a page headed
+"Rogers" or "Scott" a foot-note about what "my father" said or
+what "my friend" remembered, without anything to point out that
+the authority is other than Mr. Stoddard's father or friend. Other
+peculiarities, too, suggest that the pretty little volume is clipped
+instead of edited: on page 134 we find that "William, who had lived
+many years with Hook, grew rich and saucy. The latter used to assert
+of him that for the first three years he was as good a servant as ever
+came into a house; for the next two a kind and considerate friend;
+and afterward an abominably bad master." And on page 240, that when
+_Rogers_ was condoled with about the death of an old servant, he
+exclaimed, "Well, I don't know that I feel his loss so much, after
+all. For the first _seven_ years he was an obliging servant; for the
+second _seven_ years an agreeable companion; but for the last seven
+years he was a tyrannical master." This duality of epigrams seems to
+show a discrepancy somewhere; or are we to believe that the wits of
+the Regency used to drive their jokes as hired hacks, like the livery
+carriages employed by faded dowagers in Hampton Court? The rest of the
+little book is perhaps free from duplicates. It is a good one to turn
+over for an hour in the cars, which is perhaps all it claims to be.
+The anecdotes are good old familiar anecdotes, but it is pleasant to
+have them strung on a thread. We are reminded that the original
+Bride of Lammermoor was a Miss Dalrymple; that the "laughing Tom"
+of Thackeray's "Ballad of Bouillabaise" was Thomas Frazer, Paris
+correspondent of the _Morning Chronicle_; that the dramatist of
+_Nicholas Nickleby_, so savagely assaulted by Dickens in the course of
+the work, was a Mr. Moncrief, who would never have prepared the story
+for the stage if Dickens had intimated his objection.
+
+
+
+
+_Books Received._
+
+
+The American Educational Annual: A Reference Book for all matters
+pertaining to Education. Vol. I., 1875. New York: J.W. Schermerhorn &
+Co.
+
+The Song-Fountain: A Vocal Music-book. By Wm. Tillinghast & D.P.
+Horton. New York: J.W. Schermerhorn & Co.
+
+My. Sister Jennie: A Novel. By George Sand. Translated by T.S.
+Crocker. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+Democracy and Monarchy in France. By Charles Kendall Adams. New York:
+Henry Holt & Co.
+
+Egypt and Iceland in the year 1874. By Bayard Taylor. New York: G.P.
+Putnam's Sons.
+
+Elements of Geometry. By W.H.H. Phillips, Ph. D. New York: J.W.
+Schermerhorn & Co.
+
+The Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe. By Amanda M. Duglas. Boston:
+William F. Gill & Co.
+
+The Lily and the Cross: A Tale of Acadia. By Prof. James De Mille.
+Boston: Lee & Shepard.
+
+Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible. By John W. Haley, M.A. Andover:
+Warren F. Draper.
+
+History of the United States. By George Bancroft. Vol. X. Boston:
+Little, Brown & Co.
+
+Roddy's Romance. By Helen Kendrick Johnson. New York: G.P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+My Life on the Plains. By Gen. G.A. Custer, U.S.A. New York: Sheldon &
+Co.
+
+American Wild-Fowl Shooting. By Joseph W. Long. New York: J.B. Ford &
+Co.
+
+Hazel-Blossoms. By John Greenleaf Whittier. Boston: James R. Osgood &
+Co.
+
+Losing to Win: A Novel. By Theodore Davies. New York: Sheldon & Co.
+
+Linley Rochford: A Novel. By Justin McCarthy. New York: Sheldon & Co.
+
+A First Book in German. By Dr. Emil Otto. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
+
+What of the Churches and Clergy? Springfield, Mass: D.E. Fisk & Co.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875., by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13440 ***