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He had succeeded effectually in arresting Purkiss's attention now. That gentleman stared across at him in stupid amaze

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Mr. Hugh Childersleigh's rivalry in love or might show itself in many profitable ways: anything else." he should have the pleasure of paining Maude, who, however much she might dislike it, would scarcely take the responsibility of opposing herself to a match so eligible and especially if there were any shadow of truth in Hemprigge's suspicions, the marriage could not fail to irritate Hugh intensely, although possibly at the cost of trouble between him and the managing Director. "However that's Hemprigge's own look-out," he thought; and then he added aloud,

Yes," Hemprigge went on deliberately, I see I have surprised you, and I don't wonder at it. Mind, I don't say he means anything as yet; indeed I am quite certain he did not when I last saw them together. But I could see what he was blind to that she was something less than indifferent to him and who can tell me how things may be working round down there? He's the very man circumstances might tempt to a folly."

Nonsense, Hemprigge; the last man in the world, I should say.'

"Well, Hemprigge, whether or not you alarm yourself unnecessarily about Hugh, makes little difference to me. As I said, I am quite willing to help you, if you will only show me how. As it happens, I go down to Scotland in a day or two, so at any rate I can report how the land lies; and when my people return to town you must come often to The Cedars' and fight your own battle."

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"Pardon me, Childersleigh, you don't know him. You have never had occasion to watch and study him as I have. He'll work and scheme, and scheme and work; then he is precisely the fellow to throw "The very thing I should have asked of away everything for a woman and a fancy. you if I had dared. What I want is an opWhat's that play - All for Love, or the portunity to carry her before anything ocWorld Well Lost. Worldly as he is, I can curs to bring Childersleigh to know his own imagine Childersleigh the hero of a piece mind. Then I hope I may count on your like that. I repeat I can figure circum-influence with your father later if the young stances that would make Miss Winter's po- lady gives her assent." sition-she'd be as much of a drag on him as she would be a help to me- an irresistible temptation to him to defy and scandalize the world he seemed to live and labour for."

"Granting it to be possible, which I don't, you must know, that nothing is more unlikely. You do Miss Winter injustice. I am sure she is far too shrewd to wait for miracles; she won't miss the shadow for the substance."

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"You are so very sensible yourself, Childersleigh, you can't conceive other people doing foolish things. She has always had some romantic notion of what he did for her at the time old Miss Childersleigh died, and that confounded grand seigneur air of his is just the thing to fool a woman." To this Purkiss answered nothing. He sat abstracted, as Hemprigge had done earlier in the evening. These unexpected confidences had taken him aback and landed him in a dilemma. On the one hand there was nothing he would have liked better than to see Hugh compromise his brilliant reputation for sagacity and mar his great prospects by a foolish marriage, but with all the faith he felt in Hemprigge's perspicacity, the idea seeemed at once too wild and pleasing ever to realize itself. On the other hand, if he could help Hemprigge to the lady, he should earn a gratitude which

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Certainly," mused Purkiss, absent again. "Look here, Hemprigge," he went on, after a pause, "I'll do something more for you if you like. Find an excuse and run down with me to Killoden. Arrange some urgent business for the benefit of my father and Hugh - tell the young lady what you please. Women like that sort of thing, they tell me; though, thank heaven, I don't pretend to know anything at all about it. Chivalrous and all that. Then strike while the iron's hot."

The pleasing hope of preparing a mauvais coup right and left, of doing an evil turn to his sister and kinsman, and arranging them a disagreeable surprise, was like an inspiration for Purkiss, wonderfully brightening his faculties.

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Eh-what? That would be a bold step indeed - too bold, I fear - and might give Childersleigh the alarm. He is so diabolically distrustful. Yet after all, he must know what I intend, sooner or later; and perhaps the sooner the better. He'll be the more unprepared. As for a pretext, I have a dozen excellent ones ready to my hand. He won't be deceived, I daresay; but I can't help that, we must risk something at every game."

Hemprigge had insensibly glided into an unfriendly tone in speaking of the absent chairman. It might be born of the thought

of their possible rivalry; perhaps he felt it! "The evening of the day after to-
gave him his best hold on the sympathies morrow."
of Purkiss.

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As luck will have it, there's a meeting "Yes, there are a good many matters of the Board that very day, and a part of that ought to be discussed quietly between the proceedings shall be the arranging a us," he went on, gravely; "matters where satisfactory apology for my chief. Again my own judgment runs counter to what I a thousand thanks, Childersleigh; you suspect his to be, and much too compli- shall not find me ungrateful. To Wedcated and delicate to be satisfactorily dis- nesday evening then, and at Euston cussed by letter. You start, you say "Square."

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From The Athenæum.

A SUB-WAY IN CENTRAL AFRICA.

to Korosko the country was so peculiar that I asked him whether in his varied travels he had ever seen anything like it. I will give a short description of what the country was. It rose in a succession of ridges as regularly as the waves of the sea; the heights were of slate, and the valleys. of sand. In crossing these ridges, the camels walked over the edges of the slate in single file, for the path was narrow and very rugged. Once in the valleys we were sur

DR. LIVINGSTONE's last letters, published 8th November, 1869, in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, mention that "tribes live in underground houses in Rua. Some excavations are said to be thirty miles long, and have running rills in them - a whole district can stand a siege in them. The writings' therein, I have been told by some of the people, are drawings of animals, and not letters, other-rounded, as if within a fortress, by walls of wise I should have gone to see them. People very dark, well made, and outer angle of eyes slanting inwards."

Also, in his letter to Sir Bartle Frere, Dr. Livingstone mentions "there is a large tribe of Troglodytes in Rua, with excavations thirty miles in length, and a running rill passing along the entire street. They ascribe these rock-dwellings to the hand of the Deity. The writings in them are drawings of animals; if they had been letters, I must have gone to see them. People very black, strong, and outer angles of eyes upwards."

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slaty rock, say 400 feet high; no exit visible, and the horizon a jagged outline of peaks. Such then was the valley of Dullah, where I asked Manua if he had ever seen any country resembling it: his reply was, This country reminds me of what I saw in the country to the south of the Lake Tanganyika, when travelling with an Arab's caravan from Unjanyembeh. There is a river there called the Kaoma, running into the lake, the sides of which are similar in precipitousness to the rocks before us." I then asked, Do the people cross the river in boats ? "No, they have no boats; and We are not told where Rua exactly even if they had, the people could not land, stands, but that it is the most northerly as the sides are too steep: they pass underpoint hitherto reached by the great explorer, neath the river by a natural tunnel, or suband the point to which he had followed the way. He and all his party went through it waters from 10° and 12° south latitude. In on their way from Toowemba to Ooroongoo, a map, published in Capt. Speke's "What and returned by it. He described its led to the Discovery of the Nile," the terri- length, as having taken them from sunrise tory of Uruwa is marked down as about 100 till noon to pass through it, and so high, miles to the west of the centre of Lake that if mounted upon camels they could not Tanganyika; this territory is half-way across touch the top. Tall reeds, the thickness of the continent of Africa, and traders for a walking-stick, grew inside; the road was ivory and copper have reached it from Zan- strewed with white pebbles, and so wide — zibar. I conclude that Capt. Speke's Uruwa 400 yards that they could see their way and Dr. Livingstone's Rua are one and the tolerably well while passing through it. same place; but if the latter is not able to The rocks looked as if they had been planed bring us home an account of this great sub- by artificial means. Water never came way, it is so marvellous surpassing any through from the river over-head; it was subterraneous passage we know of in Na-procured by digging wells. Manua added, ture, that I hope some traveller may be enterprising enough to go and report on its position and appearance in our day.

In the mean time, I may describe how I came to hear of a similar, or the same, tunnel, said to be on the highway between Loowemba (Lobemba) and Ooroongoo (Marungu) near the Lake Tanganyika.

Capt. Speke and I had amongst our followers a native named Manua, who had travelled most of the routes in Central Africa. He was intelligent, observant, and, besides being a good companion, he knew the names and uses of nearly all the plants we met with. He and I conversed a great deal on the objects around us, and while our party, all mounted on camels, were crossing the Nubian Desert - from Aboo Ahmed

that the people of Wambweh take shelter in this tunnel, and live there with their families and cattle, when molested by the Watuta, a warlike race, descended from the Zooloo Kafirs.

The two accounts are similar in every respect except as to its length and the manner of procuring water. Dr. Livingstone's informant made the Subway thirty miles in extent; my informant marched through it in six hours, say fifteen miles, and saw no running rill within it; but a wet season would account for this. I, therefore, have not the slightest doubt that such a place exists, and that it is no excavation or anything formed by man. How, therefore, can such a place of such vast extent have originated? I infer from the stratifications of slate which

I saw in the Dullah Valley that in the case of the Tanganyika tunnel the strata there have been so displaced as to form within a natural pointed arch or a channel underneath the stratification.

Manua did not mention that there were any writings or figures upon the stone, but be described them as black or dark, and as if their surfaces had been made smooth and flat, thereby giving me the idea that they were most probably slate, if not basalt. The natives look on it as an m'zimo or sacred spot. J. A. GRANT.

From The Saturday Review. THE PARSON OF THE NINETEENTH CEN

TURY AS SHOWN IN FICTION.

ally casting off the trammels of old prescriptions, the counteracting influence of French ideas told on literary society, and religion was unfashionable. Miss Edgeworth, severe moralist as she professed herself, and little disposed to enthusiasm, still shows the Church of her day on its repulsive side. At best, the clergy, in her eyes, are only respectable and humane dispensers of parish relief; they have no share in the thought of the day. When she speaks of professions she does not include the clerical. The clergy stand at the antipodes of progress and enlightenment. Buckhurst Falconer in her most characteristic novel, Patronage, has some good in him till he is forced by his necessities into the Church in hope of a fat living, which he loses, however, through too much wit, to the sycophant Sloak. Upon this reverse he is driven to So long as the ideal parson did not in- marry the inevitable old maid graced by terest the ladies he could occupy no leading the epithets "beldam" and "curmudgeon," place in romance. He was necessarily sub- and is promoted by her bishop brother to ordinate, or, to excuse giving him a more a deanery, where he presently accquires a prominent part, there must be in him an el-" stomach which knows canonical hours," ement of the grotesque, low, or ridiculous, which is always less attractive to women than to men. A single change in either of two opposite directions would suffice to alter this. Something of the reproach which hung about the clerical office in George Herbert's time as a mean employment,' which, as he said, made clergymen "meanly valued," still clung to the rustic parson. By sinking the external disabilities of his profession by means of such secularities as easy and polished manners, a coat of fashionable cut, and a general air of knowing the world, the parson might become interesting as any other man; he might show himself as much at home in the drawingroom or ball-room as his predecessor did with pipe and tankard in the tavern. Or he might appeal to woman's spiritual nature as no other man could, and awaken her religious enthusiasm. But in the eighteenth century enthusiasm had an ill name among orthodox divines; and with awkward or pedantic manners, and a garb distinct not only in colour but in form, rusty and snuffy when it was not smug, where even the wig had to be clerical, the parson had no equivalent to offer to the feminine imagination for all the personal attractions which her fancy missed in him. Wesley and his followers, having separated themselves from the Church, had no effect on the society of that day. "Stay in the world," he said to a professor" who did not go his lengths, "there is your sphere; they will not admit such as me." And though time was working its usual transformations and the clergy were gradu

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and a shameless cupidity for the temporalities of his office. The authoress allows to her model heroine "a just and becoming sense of religion," but she is raised by divine philosophy far above all illiberal prejudices. Caroline would certainly never lower these high pretensions by asking questions as to the denomination of her magnificent and perfect Count. Hannah More wrote a novel, and of course has an ideal rector, but he falls into the old deifying strain towards his squire, which is familiar only in books, and apologizes for his loquacity when set upon that theme; while she mentions curates only to keep them, or rather their wives, in their places. Mr. Jackson, to be sure, is a humble, diligent assistant, but his wife has to be reminded that between the higher and lower clergy there are the same distinctions of ranks as with the laity, and is snubbed for her miserable ambition that her daughter's music should excel that of the rector's daughters.

It was left to Miss Austen to invest the English clergyman with charm enough to be a hero. Whatever low views she may be charged with, however her delineations may come short of that ideal priest, that embodiment of self-devotion, sweetness, and austerity which ladies have since achieved, the meed which Mr. Ruskin accords with grudging fairness to Claude is due also to her. She "set the sun in Heaven," she first ventured to make the parson of fiction interesting to the young imagination of her own sex. We are not aware that man or woman had done this before. Even she did

PARSON OF THE 19TH CENTURY AS SHOWN IN FICTION.

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not make this venture at once. In her first complished a whip as he was a partner. novel, Pride and Prejudice (written, won- How happy is Catherine in his curricle, derful to think, at one-and-twenty), she fol- drawing favourable comparisons between lowed a lead. Delightful as Mr. Collins is, him and the inimitable John Thorpe ! he has a touch of Richardson's Elias Brand, Henry was never tempted to transgress the and perhaps is nearer caricature than any decorum of his profession, "yet he drove other of her characters. She wrote for so well, so quietly, without making any disreaders who she knew did not care for par- turbance, without parading to her or swearsons. Even his coming was not interest-ing at them, and then his hat sat so well, ing to the more volatile of the sex. The and the innumerable capes of his great coat letter which announced him woke no curi- looked so becomingly important." The osity in Lydia or Kitty. 'It was next to picture offends such readers as look in a impossible that he should come in a red novel for the support of their own views, coat, and it was long since they had received but in so far as Miss Austen raised the sopleasure from the society of a man in any cial clerical standing, she incidentally other colour." Charlotte Lucas, indeed, helped on the social weight of the parson in makes up to him, but in all but age she other things. From the ridiculous to the is the stock old maid viewing in him her sublime is a much longer journey than the only chance. But Miss Austen was essen- return route, but this was one step of the tially an observer. She wrote from what way. As years passed on she shows a much she knew, and the clergy whom she knew keener appreciation of the pastoral office. were different beings from any she found in As a girl she had taken all for granted, but fiction. In Sense and Sensibility she takes in Edmund Bertram we are shown a clergycourage and ventures, apologetically as it man sensitive of duty and setting his callwere, to make the profession attractive, at ing foremost, not as writers with this aim least to her sensible heroine. Edward Fer- would do now, but making it clear that it rars has not spirit for fashionable life. His was foremost. Miss Austen had no ideal temper is serious, his taste literary. He characters. Every portrait is a likeness, enters the Church because it favours these not of an individual, but of a class. To set tendencies and gives him something to do. up a model parson would have seemed to His brother Robert, one of Miss Austen's her an impossible presumption. To wish fine family of fools, represents the world's her to have done so is as great a mistake as sense of his brother's step. "He laughed to regret her declining the task of glorifying most immoderately. The idea of Edward's the House of Coburg. being a clergyman and living in a small par- Except as thus taking the initiative, we sonage-house diverted him beyond measure; can scarcely class Miss Austen among the and when to that was added the fanciful im- crowd of fair wielders of the pen who have agery of Edward reading prayers in a white since taken the clergy under their adoring surplice and publishing the banns of mar- patronage. The worship is unquestionably riage between John Smith and Mary Brown, on the decline. The fall may be headlong, he could conceive nothing more ridiculous." but feminine sentiment for many a year has She is here satirizing a very common joke found no more congenial theme and object of the period. In Northanger Abbey, which than the high-minded and high-born curate comes third, she takes a step in advance. or youthful rector, endowed with all the gifts Edward Ferrars has a sheepish air with him, of nature and fortune, and bent on sacrificbut Henry Tilney is a wit, a man of fashioning them all in the lowliest service-a sharp as well as sense, and, though good and amiable, embodies the authoress's own sense of folly and absurdity. She does not feel it to be in the novelist's province to show him in Miss Brontë, too, was a clergyman's his pastoral character: she combats a preju- daughter, finding in the order attractive dice; her object is to prove that a clegy- subjects for her pencil, though here the parman may be the readiest, best-mannered, allel stops. A life-long grudge against one most witty and distinguished man of the clergyman was clearly a main impulse with company, and the most agreeable partner her in attempting authorship at all. Jane in the world at a country dance. Nothing Eyre was probably planned to avenge - in can be more easy and graceful than his talk her portrait of Mr. Brocklehurst, the directwith Catherine in the ball-room, nothing ing genius of Lowood-the supposed more playfully satirical of ball-room man- wrongs of a sister. But in Shirley we find ners. The reader may remember his in- her satire more lenient, and even genial. genious parallel between a country dance Helmore, the rector, is very much her favorand marriage. And he was manly as ac-lite. His Wellington physiognomy, his

contrast of graces and base surroundings only to be figured by Miss Coutts's Columbia Market in Shoreditch.

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