half in fun, to Rushbrook, that he should blue was as treacherous as the emerald go him halves in the whole stretch, Carra- green of the moss-pits. When it did not dale and Baragoil, grouse and deer, while subside into one of its fits of sullen steady they kept house together at the Lodge. weeping, or fly out in one of its savage The pair have become great allies. Rush- windy bursts of temper that lasted for days, brook jumped at the idea; and what began there was a charm in its very fickleness. It in joke ended in earnest. Then Barrington was the frowns that made you so keenly enyou know all about his good-luck by the joy the smiles, and in your memories you way persuaded them to take him into the carried away the sunshine and forgot the partnership, conditionally on his obtaining storm. leave of absence from his uncle."

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--

Highland neighbours, and quite at your door! It's seven miles of hill to Baragoil, if it's a yard!"

"Fully. Nothing at all, you see. Well, Hugh, we'll look for you by the eleventh at latest. It's no use asking you sooner; and, moreover, I don't think we shall be there ourselves many days before."

What

The country was grandly savage. "By Jove, I'm delighted to hear we shall cultivation there was looked pitiably conhave such pleasant neighbours. It's some-scious of a false position, and its rickety exthing in the Highlands to have the materials istence generally ended in a premature for a rubber at your door." death. Here and there you saw some misguided patch of oats, where the sand or peat had been lightly stirred round a keeper's cottage, strongly fenced against the marauding deer, who regarded, as a supreme delicacy, the crop a Saxon donkey would have sneered at. Killoden, although no forest, lay surrounded by the sacred haunts of the red deer, and seduced by its rich mountain pastures, they might be seen in the grey morning, streaming homewards ghostlike, over the passes. Through the day venturesome harts were to be found lying out in the enemy's country, although sheep, or sheep-dogs, kept them ever on the alert, and the friendly grouse-cocks made the stalking them more uncertain work than was altogether pleasurable.

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You generally travel unattached, George. May we not as well go down together? We'll make up a party with Barrington and McAlpine, and pick up Rush

brook en route."

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Well, no; I think not," hesitated George. "The fact is, the Governor begins to fight shy of these long journeys, and I promised to do the dutiful this time, and take him and the girls in charge."

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Quite right too. Very well, then, we meet at Killoden on the eleventh; that's arranged. Now that my mind's made up, I shall be horribly put out if anything comes to upset my plans."

There was luxurious shooting for elderly gentlemen in the deep heather by the lakes and streams, where the well-broke shooting pony picked his way demurely, while the setters ranged and quartered to the wave of the keeper's hand. There were the higher and Nor were these by any means mere words more distant beats, sore strains on muscles of civility. All other attractions apart that flaccid from City pavements, but where the the visit might have for Hugh, an invitation air came breathing round the sportsman in to Killoden was not a thing to be lightly de-a rush of health, and where, even wrestling clined. There were lower-lying moors, up the brae in the teeth of the bitter blast, where you might have bloodier days and you drew indomitable strength from the very heavier bags, but nowhere could you enjoy enemy that set you so hard. If you never in a higher perfection the poetry of sport. bagged a feather, richly repaid toil it was — The place was a wild jumble of mountain Highland scenery should be enjoyed with and valley, hill and corrie, lying high on the gun, as Lowland landscapes from the the water-shed of the Atlantic, -a very saddle. There were gorges where mounpalace of the storms where the doors stood tain streams came leaping down rocky stairgenerally ajar; a reservoir of water when cases, tumbling and flashing into pools of the sluices were raised, with scarce a warn- black water in white cascades of foam, past ing, on the sunniest of summer days. A rocks glowing with orange lichens, and dead calm, deepening, if possible, to a boulders cushioned with velvet moss. Here deader stillness, a fitful puff or two, a black you shot your way up some cul-de-sac to cloud that glided swiftly up against the sun, the foot of the grey precipice that stopped a rush of wind, a thunder-shower tumbling it; there you dropped down into some hillin sheets of water, and again a flood of locked nook, entering it with dogs and warm, mellow sunshine, that found every-death, waking its echoes with the horrid thing brighter than before: that was the sort breech-loader, and scaring the lotus-picking of thing you had there, weather as change- covey from the calm enjoyment of life in the ful as the scenery, skies whose sapphire heathery Eden.

As you rose ridge on ridge, you opened | their minutest incident long-forgotten stalks; hill on hill, buttresses of the grim old giants again he snapped wild shots at grouse topof geographical name, with their bare scalps, ping the hill-crest, and black-game shooting weather-driven foreheads, and the gaunt rocket-like down the wind. He breathed rocky shoulders that tore huge rents through Highland air in his den in Harley Street, their mantles of green and purple. Moun- and in the thickening wreaths of his cigartain hares, sheltered by myriads in their smoke saw the Atlantic mists stealing round stony skirts, and ptarmigan flitted about in him from the hills. In short, hugging himflocks among the grey wrinkles time had self in the prospect of a holiday, he felt all worn in their features. And all the pictur- the premonitory symptoms of a mal d'Ecosse esque "vermin" life was there. Highland and a holiday longing that went on gradufoxes kenneled in the cairns, and from the ally growing until it threatened to be a rocks and the fallen boulders you heard the grave disease. Possibly the prospects of cry of the marten and mountain cats. The the society to be enjoyed at the Lodge, with raven hovered over the gorges with sullen no arrière-pensèe of work neglected, or dragcroak; the peregrine's breast glinted on the ging back from the collar, might have shivered cliffs above; a pair of ospreys had counted for something in his dreams of pleasestablished their household gods on the ure; but if there was danger impending to truncated rocks in the lake below; while, his peace of mind he altogether declined to greatest of all, soared and swooped the look it in the face. He meant to leave his golden eagle, hunting to supply the larder cares behind him, and began to shake himon the ledge where the grim pledges of his self clear of them at once. The moment he flinty nuptial couch sat gaping in their rocky consented to slip the string the bow seemed cradle. to fly back of itself. Almost for the first time since he had taken to it, business became an effort and a drudgery; he began to count the days and then the hours; and we question whether, in his frame of mind, the prudent Mr. Childersleigh would not have found sophistry to persuade himself that a crisis in the money-market was a thing of no consequence whatever.

All this, and much more besides, came rushing vividly on Hugh's mind when he gave George his promise to go and enjoy it. As he sat dallying with his cigar after his friend had left him, he might have been in a Western opium-smoker's heaven, his mind detached itself so absolutely to go wandering among the old scenes and the familiar hunting-grounds. Again he rehearsed to

WHAT a thing it is to be a popular lecturer! | Never mind what you say, the whole world listens. I wonder where, upon the civilized areas of the globe, that discourse of Professor Tyndall's upon haze and dust has not been, or will not be read. But, divested of its show, it was a poor affair; never, perhaps, did the Professor tell so little that was new to such an audience as that which assembled on the occasion; and never did the daily press so echo and extol him. Yet when Dr. Angus Smith, of Manchester, a week or so after, told a select gathering in that city, of his all but exhaustive labours on the organic particles of the air, the public prints, except the technical journals, echoed not a word. Dr. Smith has been, for a quarter of a century, an air and breath analyzer. He has not merely shown in gross the "atoms" which Daniel Culverwell says the sun "makes dance naked in his beams," but he has examined them in detail; studied their forms, and determined their characters. He has told us what we take into our lungs qualitatively and quantitatively how the air is charged with tiny scraps of whatever material is being knocked about in the working

places of our neighbourhood-coal in the mining
districts, cotton in the spinning districts, hay and
straw in the agricultural districts, stone and horse
refuse in the busy streets, iron in the railway
carriage. In these, he says, "we breathe rolled
plates of metallic iron, which are large enough to
be seen by the naked eyc. And mingled with
all are those mysterious dormant germs of plant
and animal life, which, after a few days' steep-
ing in water, throw off their torpor and appear
as living plants and animalcules! Then he has
shown us what we cast out from our lungs-
the sewage of the atmosphere and told of the
wonderful scene of life which is developed in a
drop of condensed breath from the wall of a
crowded room. More than all, he has examined
the very bearing-poiuts of these pervading atoms
upon plagues and pestilences. Twenty-five
years of research like this ought not to be put in
the background, while a popular lecturer comes
to the front and dazzles his listeners with the.
inevitable" electric lamp" into the belief that
it is casting light upon things unknown till it
shone.
Gentleman's Magazine.

From The Saturday Review. THE PARSON OF THE OLD NOVELISTS.

In the modern rage for historical gossip, the passion for intruding into old-world secrets and realizing, obsolete manners, it is remarkable how little we can get to know of the social life of the clergy of but a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago. The most curious and determined investigation always comes to a stop here. We hear a great deal about the politicians, the wits, the squires, the courtiers, the actors, the beaux and belles, the footmen, the waitingwomen of the last century, but the social life of the clergy is still all but a terra incognita. It has no historian, no diarist, no chronicler; and-perhaps what more than all accounts for the blank-it has no fiction devoted to its delineation; none, that is, in comparison with the enormous mass of literature dedicated to the portrayal of clerical life and character in our own time. Mr. Trollope alone, the self-constituted bard and laureate of the clergy, presents more pictures of clerical character than the whole fiction of the world up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Accustomed as people now are to get their ideas of the class, beyond their own limited experience, from the novelist, they naturally turn to the pages of fiction for information as to a past period. There is not indeed an absolute blank. But the invariable reference, by every inquirer, to Parson Adams and Parson Trulliber shows how circumscribed is the field. Richardson, to be sure, has his parsons, but he throws none of his invention and an undue share of his prose into them. They are mere conventionalities, and tell us nothing, being simply reflections of the virtues or the villanies of their patrons and employers. Dr. Bartlett, Sir Charles Grandison's monitor in youth," lives in his patron's house, conducts family worship, sings his praises with tears in his eyes, and provides him an amanuensis in the person of his nephew. The ruffian abductor Sir Hargrave has his snuffy priest ready to mumble the marriage service over the terrified and fainting Harriet Byron, had not the opening words of the service given her frantic strength enough to dash the book out of his hands with the well-known cry, No dearly beloveds." Clarissa has her venerable pastor, Dr. Lewin, a worthy divine; her cruel relations have their sycophantic, pedantic, time-serving tool, Mr. Brand; but not one of them has made himself a name. Goldsmith's Dr. Primrose we feel to be himself; we can scarcely accept any part of his delightful book as a picture of manners; it is

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the one novel from which we do not require this sort of truth. Even the plays of the time that come down to us tell us nothing. Parson Adams resents the scraps of wit against the clergy quoted from plays of his day, and wonders Government does not interfere; but few of these survive. The real wits, little respect as they showed for morals, as a rule let religion and the parson alone, probably because the parson occupied no place in the mind of the fashionable world. The clergy, as a body, were not interesting to the readers and critics of the period. Wherever there are good livings there will be men of family and social consideration; but the wits wrote for London and of London, and knew uncommonly little about the more dignified components of country society. Their stock idea of the parson seems to have belonged to the curate order of the profession, the chaplain, and perhaps the Ordinary of Newgate. To the mass of the people, on the other hand, especially the rustic population, the clergy then represented religion and learning, at a time when learning was reverenced more than it has been since, and Latin was a mystery, an innocent, nay salutary, branch of the black art. A great deal was taken for granted and excused in a man who was an adept. Our readers will remember Addison's story to the point; but his characteristic humour expresses itself in so terse a form that we may indulge them by quoting it entire :

I have heard of a couple of preachers in a country town who endeavoured which should outshine one another, and draw together the largest congregation. One of them, being well versed in the Fathers, used to quote every now and then a Latin sentence to his illiterate hearers, who it seems found themselves so edified by it, that they flocked in greater numbers to this learned man than to his rival. The other, finding his congregation mouldering every Sunday, and hearing at length what was the occasion of it, resolved to give his parish a little Latin in his turn, but, being unacquainted with any of the Fathers, he digested into his sermon the whole book of Que Genus, adding such explications to it as he thought might be for the benAs in presenti, which he converted in the same efit of his people. He afterwards entered upon manner to the use of his parishioners. This in a very little time thickened his audience, filled his church, and routed his antagonist.

And even where there was not a pretence of learning, the parson who was good company found tolerant judges; their reverence not exacting consistency. The Connoisseur tells us of the sporting parson arriving full gallop at the church doors, where all the

congregation awaited him, giving his assigns to the captain's wit over the parbrown scratch bob " a shake, clapping on son's we know

were

ran.

And this captain "all daub'd with gold lace" falls foul at once of the shabby cassock and rumpled band:

his surplice, and giving entire satisfaction Dear madam, be sure he's a fine-spoken man, to both parish and squire, both in desk and Do but hear on the clergy how glib his tongue pulpit, the squire inviting him to dinner, where jovial toasts were only interrupted by the bell for the second service. The literary interests of remote districts mainly sustained, however, by the clergy, and we read of a little centre of intellectual activity a club of parsons who assembled every Saturday at the nearest market town to be shaved, to exchange sermons, and to discuss the monthly reviews.

Whenever you see a cassock and gown, A hundred to one that it covers a clown, Observe how a parson comes into a room, &c. No satirist of that date ever supposes that Authors of the eighteenth century wrote, a woman can turn her thoughts on a parson however, at a time when rustics and rural till her forty-fifth year. He is the pis-aller pursuits were the ridicule of fine people; of the old maid of genteel life. Even the when Millamant nauseated walking as a devotee who disturbs good company by country diversion; and "loathed the coun- her scruples is not led up to them by the try and everything belonging to it," and the parson. He has had no influence over her. parson certainly not less than his surround- The gospel gossips of the Spectator are Disings. They wrote, too, in an age of fine senters, and the Lady Prue who goes to clothes, when language separated the cleric hear Whitfield accepts his teaching, but from the laity by this one distinction. When expects the half-hour of his sermon to cona parson is under discussion we are never done her four hours' flirtation with the allowed to forget his clothes. Thus the his- colonel. Not that this argument goes very tory of Parson Adams's cassock accompa- far. Swift in his pudding-sleeves broke nies his own. It had got a rent in climbing some female hearts. The captain's red coat over a stile ten years before the story be- only gives him five minutes' start in the fagins, and by the end of it scarcely a rag vour of fair eyes, but a start which the parremains. That word cloth accounts for a son of that day could not overtake. As it great deal of oblivion in the great world. was, an authoress somewhat later on in the At a time when gentlemen glittered in scar-century shows an exceptional tenderness let and gold lace, the inevitable gown and for the cloth. Miss Fielding, in her Ophelia, cassock stood at a disadvantage; and when makes an interesting young parson a preswords were not only worn but drawn, the tender to the hand of her heroine - a great compulsory submission to snub and insult promotion as times then went. Of course which the cloth exacted was a still greater he is refused in favour of the libertine hero, disqualifier. When wit and repartee were and of course her aunt had taken his timid everything in conversation, it needed a dou-advances as intended for herself, and is fuble allowance of wit to shine in pudding-rious accordingly at the dénouement; but sleeves. That it did shine we know, but Mr. South is intended to be interesting, and the gown was an incubus to the clergyman in gay society, and a constant butt for the dull joker. His cloth was a continual consciousness to Swift; that he made capital of it-"the old wig" of clerical cut and “rusty gown" - does not the less prove that the consciousness was an irksome one. Being once present at a discussion on the personal appearance of Julius Cæsar, "For my part," said Ambrose Philips, a vain man and neat dresser, "I should take him to bave been of a lean make, pale complexion, extremely neat in his dress, and five feet seven inches high". an exact description of Philips himself. And I, Mr. Philips," should take him to have been a plump man, just five feet five inches high, not very neatly dressed in a black gown with pudding-sleeves." The supremacy he

said Swift,

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not ridiculous, in the reader's eyes, which is a testimony to the inherent feminine sympathy with the clerical profession.

As for Fielding's (her brother's) standing representatives of the class, we may allow the ladies some excuse for holding aloof from the curates if they in the remotest degree resembled these types. Trulliber is voted an exaggeration, yet it is impossible not to suspect much literal truth in that scene where he entertains his brother parson Adams, and snatches the cup of ale from his hands, reproving Mrs. Trulliber, who stands behind his chair (her plase at meal times) for helping their guest when he had called first. No, sir, no, I should not have been so rude to have taken it from you, if you had caal'd vurst; but I'd have you krow I'm a better man than to suffer the best be in the kingdom to drink before