sult his physician. Thousands, with a ling the ground instead of the air; indeed, strange lack of confidence in the implicit direction of the Church, have risen from their knees with the king's words on their lips: What then? what rests? Try what repentence can: What can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent? and so in despair have given up the attempt. There is a passage in one of Cardinal Manning's smaller devotional works, which exactly meets this wretched case. He bids the sinner who, like the king, protests, "What can it, when one cannot repent?" not to heed such callousness, nor to be waiting for some emotional gust of sorrow, but hie at once to the tribunal of penitence. Only those who have tried it know the all but supernatural change that is wrought. This the guilty king would not do, which is implied in his refusal to make "satisfaction." Had this intention been in his mind, it may be said that his state of callousness was more seeming than real, and he would have found his heart touched. His dissuasion of Hamlet from indulging in excess of grief is orthodox enough: To do obsequious sorrow: but to perséver Fie! 'tis a fault to Heaven, A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, To reason most absurd; whose common theme Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, From the first corse, till he that died to-day. This must be so. it seemed to come out of the earth itself, the body of the bird being hidden by the grass. This black wing flapped and Happed, but could not lift itself— a single wing of course could not fly. A rook had dropped out of the elm and was lying helpless at the foot of the tree-it is a favorite tree with rooks; they build in it, and at that moment there were twenty or more perched aloft, cawing and conversing comfortably, without the least thought of their dying comrade. Not one of all the number descended to see what was the matter, nor even fluttered half-way down. This elm is their clubhouse, where they meet every afternoon as the sun gets low to discuss the scandals of the day, before retiring to roost in the avenues and treegroups of the park adjacent. While we looked, a peacock came round the corner of the barn; he had caught sight of the flapping wing, and approached with long, deliberate steps and outstretched neck. "What's this? What's this?" he inquired in bird language. "My friends, see here!" Gravely, and step by step, he came nearer and nearer, slowly, and not without some fear, till curiosity had brought him within a yard. In a moment or two a peahen followed and also stretched out her neck-the two long necks pointing at the black, flapping wing. A second peacock and peahen approached, and the four great birds stretched out their necks towards the dying rook-a "crowner's quest " upon the unfortunate creature. If any one had been at hand to sketch it, the scene would have been very grotesque, and not without a ludicrous sadThese few reflections illustrate what we ness. There was the tall elm tinted with have been contending for: which is not yellow, the black rooks high above flying that Shakespeare was a Catholic-in-in and out, yellow leaves twirling down, deed, the only logical proof to be drawn from a man's writings would be a positive profession of faith but that the spirit of his writing is more than consistent with his being a Catholic. From Chambers' Journal. OUTSIDE LONDON. BY RICHARD JEFFERIES, AUTHOR OF "The Gamekeeper at home," ETC. THERE was something dark on the grass under an elm in the field by the barn. It rose and fell; and we saw that it was a wing- a single black wing, strik the blue peacocks with their crests, the red barn behind, the golden sun afar shining low through the trees of the park, the brown autumn sward, a gray horse, orange maple bushes. There was the quiet tone of the coming evening — the early evening of October-such an evening as the rook had seen many a time from the tops of the trees. A man dies, and the crowd goes on passing under the window along the street without a thought. The rook died, and his friends, who had that day been with him in the oaks feasting on acorns, who had been with him in the fresh-turned furrows, born perhaps in the same nest, utterly forgot him before he was dead. With a great common cawa common shout-they suddenly left the tree in a bevy and flew towards the park. | you have fed him every day and come to The peacocks, having brought in their take an interest in him—after you have verdict, departed, and the dead bird was left alone. In falling out of the elm, the rook had alighted partly on his side and partly on his back, so that he could only flutter one wing, the other being held down by his own weight. He had probably died from picking up poisoned grain somewhere, or from a parasite. The weather had been open, and he could not have been starved. At a distance, the rook's plumage appears black; but close at hand it will be found a fine blue-black, glossy, and handsome. These peacocks are the best "rainmakers" in the place; whenever they cry much, it is sure to rain; and if they persist day after day, the rain is equally continuous. From the wall by the barn, or the elm-branch above them, "Pa-ong, pa-ong" resounds like the wail of a gigantic cat, and is audible half a mile or more. In the summer I found one of them, a peacock in the full brilliance of his colors, on a rail in the hedge under a spreading maple bush. His rich-hued neck, the bright light and shadow, the tall green meadow grass, brought together the finest colors. It is curious that a bird so distinctly foreign, plumed for the Asiatic sun, should fit so well with English meads. His splendid neck immediately pleases, pleases the first time it is seen, and on the fiftieth occasion. I see these every day, and always stop to look at them; the color excites the sense of beauty in the eye, and the shape satisfies the idea of form. The undulating curve of the neck is at once approved by the intuitive judgment of the mind, and it is a pleasure to the mind to reiterate that judg. ment frequently. It needs no teaching to see its beauty-the feeling comes of itself. How different with the turkey-cock | which struts round the same barn! A fine big bird he is, no doubt; but there is no intrinsic beauty about him; on the contrary, there is something fantastic in his style and plumage. He has a way of drooping his wings as if they were armorplates to shield him from a shot. The ornaments upon his head and beak are in the most awkward position. He was put together in a dream, of uneven and odd pieces that live and move, but do not fit. Ponderously gawky, he steps as if the world was his, like a "motley" crowned in sport. He is good eating, but he is not beautiful. After the eye has been accustomed to him for some time-after seen a hundred turkey-cocks, then he may become passable, or, if you have the fancier's taste, exquisite. Education is requisite first; you do not fall in love at first sight. The same applies to fancy pigeons, and indeed many pet animals, as pugs, which come in time to be animated with a soul in some people's eyes. Compare a pug with a greyhound straining at the leash. Instantly he is slipped, he is gone as a wave let loose. His flexible back bends and undulates, arches and unarches, rises and falls as a wave rises and rolls on. His pliant ribs open; his whole frame "gives" and stretches, and closing again in a curve, springs forward. Movement is as easy to him as to the wave, which melting, is re-moulded, and sways onward. The curve of the grey. hound is not only the line of beauty, but a line which suggests motion; and it is the idea of motion, I think, which so strongly appeals to the mind. We are often scornfully treated as a nation by people who write about art, because they say we have no taste; we cannot make art jugs for the mantelpiece, crockery for the bracket, screens for the fire; we cannot even decorate the wall of a room as it should be done. If these are the standards by which a sense of art is to be tried, their scorn is to a certain degree just. But suppose we try another standard. Let us put aside the altogether false opinion that art consists alone in something actually made, or painted, or decorated, in carvings, colorings, touches of brush or chisel. Let us look at our lives. I mean to say that there is no nation so thoroughly and earnestly artistic as the English in their lives, their joys, their thoughts, their hopes. Who loves nature like an Englishman? Do Italians care for their pale skies? I never heard so. We go all over the world in search of beauty-to the keen north, to the cape whence the midnight sun is visible, to the extreme south, to the interior of Africa, gazing on the vast expanse of Tanganyika or the marvellous falls of the Zambesi. We admire the temples and tombs and palaces of India; we speak of the Alhambra of Spain almost in whispers, so deep is our reverent admira. tion; we visit the Parthenon. There is not a picture nor a statue in Europe we have not sought. We climb the moun tains for their views and the sense of grandeur they inspire; we roam over the wide ocean to the coral islands of the far Pacific; we go deep into the woods of the West; and we stand dreamily under the Pyramids of the East. What part is there of the English year which has not been sung by the poets? all of whom are full of | its loveliness; and our greatest of all, Shakespeare, carries, as it were, armfuls of violets, and scatters roses and golden wheat across his pages, which are simply fields written with human life. of food, and the late warmth of the autumn sun lighting up their life. They know and feel the different loveliness of the seasons as much as we do. Every one must have noticed their joyousness in spring; they are quiet, but so very, very busy in the height of summer; as autumn comes on they obviously delight in the occasional hours of warmth. The marks of their little feet are almost sacreda joyous life has been there- do not obliterate it. It is so delightful to know that something is happy. This is art indeed art in the mind and soul, infinitely deeper, surely, than the construction of crockery, jugs for the mantelpiece, dados, or even of paintings. The hawthorn hedge that glints down The lover of nature has the highest art in the slope is more colored than the hedges his soul. So, I think, the bluff English in the sheltered plain. Yonder, a low farmer who takes such pride and delight bush on the brow is a deep crimson; the in his dogs and horses, is a much greater hedge as it descends varies from brown man of art than any Frenchman preparing to yellow, dotted with red haws, and by with cynical dexterity of hand some col- the gateway has another spot of crimson. ored presentment of flashy beauty for the The lime-trees turn yellow from top to salon. The English girl who loves her bottom, all the leaves together; the elms horse- and English girls do love their by one or two branches at a time. A horses most intensely is infinitely more lime-tree thus entirely colored stands side artistic in that fact than the cleverest by side with an elm, their boughs interpainter on enamel. They who love na mingling; the elm is green except a line ture are the real artists; the "artists" are at the outer extremity of its branches. A copyists. St. John the naturalist, when red light as of fire plays in the beeches, exploring the recesses of the Highlands, so deep is their orange tint in which the relates how he frequently came in contact sunlight is caught. An oak is dotted with with men living in the rude Highland way buff, while yet the main body of the -forty years since, no education then foliage is untouched. With these tints whom at first you would suppose to be and sunlight, nature gives us so much morose, unobservant, almost stupid. But more than the tree gives. A tree is nothwhen they found out that their visitor ing but a tree in itself; but with light and would stay for hours gazing in admiration shadow, green leaves moving, a bird sing. at their glens and mountains, their de- ing, another moving to and fro - in aumeanor changed. Then the truth ap-tumn with color-the boughs are filled peared: they were fonder than he was with imagination. There then seems so himself of the beauties of their hills and much more than the mere tree; the timlake; they could see the art there, though|ber of the trunk, the mere sticks of the perhaps they had never seen a picture in their lives, certainly not any blue and white crockery. The Frenchman flings his fingers dexterously over the canvas, but he has never had that in his heart which the rude Highlander had. The path across the arable field was covered with a design of birds' feet. The reversed broad arrow of the fore claws, and the straight line of the hinder claw, trailed all over it in curving lines. In the dry dust, their feet were marked as clearly as a seal on wax their trails wound this way and that, and crossed as their quick eyes had led them to turn to find some thing. For fifty or sixty yards the path was worked with an inextricable design; it was a pity to step on it and blot out the traces of those little feet Their hearts so happy, their eyes so observant, the earth so bountiful to them with its supply branches, the wooden framework is animated with a life. High above, a lark sings, not for so long as in spring-the October song is shorter- but still he sings. If you love color, plant maple; maple bushes color a whole hedge. Upon the bank of a pond, the brown oak-leaves which have fallen are reflected in the still, deep water. It is from the hedges that taste must be learned. A garden abuts on these fields, and being on slightly rising ground, the maple bushes, the brown and yellow and crimson hawthorn, the limes and elms, are all visible from it; yet it is surrounded by stiff straight iron railings, unconcealed even by the grasses, which are carefully cut down with the docks and nettles, that do their best, three or four times in the summer, to hide the blank iron. Within these iron railings stands a row of arbor vita, upright, and stiff likewise, and among them a few other evergreens; and that is all the shelter the lawn and flowerbeds have from the east wind, blowing for miles over open country; or from the glowing sun of August. This garden belongs to a gentleman who would certainly spare no moderate expense to improve it, and yet there it remains, the blankest, barest, most miserable-looking square of ground the eye can find; the only piece of ground from which the eye turns away; for even the potato-field close by, the common potato-field, had its color in bright poppies, and there were partridges in it, and at the edges, fine growths of mallow and its mauve flowers. Wild parsley, still green in the shelter of the hazel stoles, is there now on the bank, a thousand times sweeter to the eye than bare iron and cold evergreens. Along that hedge, the white bryony wound itself in the most beautiful manner, completely covering the upper part of the thick brambles, a robe thrown over the bushes; its deep-cut leaves, its countless tendrils, its flowers, and presently the berries, giving pleasure every time one passed it. Indeed, you could not pass without stopping to look at it, and wondering if any one ever so skilful, even those sure-handed Florentines Mr. Ruskin thinks so much of, could ever draw that intertangled mass of lines. Nor could you easily draw the leaves and head of the great parsley - commonest of hedge plants- the deep-indented leaves, and the shadow by which to express them. There was work enough in that short piece of hedge by the potato field for a good pencil every day the whole summer. And when done, you would not have been satisfied with it, but only have learned how complex, and how thoughtful and farreaching, nature is in the simplest of things. But with a straight-edge or ruler, any one could draw the iron railings in half an hour, and a surveyor's pupil could make them look as well as Millais himself. Stupidity to stupidity, genius to genius; any hard fist can manage iron railings; a hedge is a task for the greatest. spirals and exquisitely defined flowers, are Is Scarcely two hundred yards from these cold iron railings, which even nettles and docks would hide if they could, and thistles strive to conceal, but are not permit ted, there is an old cottage by the roadside. The roof is of old tile, once red, now dull from weather; the walls some tone of yellow; the folk are poor. Against it there grows a vigorous plant of jessa. mine, a still finer rose, a vine covers the lean-to at one end, and tea-plant the corner of the wall; besides these, there is a yellow flowering plant, the name of which I forget at the moment, also trained to the walls; and ivy. Altogether, six plants grow up the walls of the cottage; and over the wicket gate there is a rude arch a framework of tall sticks-from which droop thick bunches of hops. It is a very commonplace sort of cottage; nothing artistically picturesque about it, no effect of gable or timber-work; it stands by the roadside in the most commonplace way, and yet it pleases. They have called in nature, that great genius, and let the artist have his own way. In Italy, the art-coun. try, they cut down the ilex trees, and get the surveyor's pupil with straight-edge and ruler to put it right and square for them. Our over-educated and well-to-do people set iron railings round about their Those, therefore, who really wish their blank pleasure-grounds, which the potatogardens or grounds, or any place, beauti- field laughs at in bright poppies; and ful, must get that greatest of geniuses, actually one who has some fine park nature, to help them, and give their artist grounds has lifted up on high a mast and freedom to paint to fancy, for it is nature's weather-vane! a thing useful on the seaimagination which delights us as I tried board at coastguard stations for signallto explain about the tree, the imagination, ing, but oh! how repellent and straight and not the fact of the timber and sticks. and stupid among clumps of graceful For these white bryony leaves and slender | elms! From All The Year Round. COPTIC MONASTERIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. IN TWO PARTS. PART I. So much attention has lately been directed towards Egypt, that most subjects connected with it have been pretty fully discussed. Some extracts from the diary of M. Sonnini (a French naval engineer and naturalist, who, just one hundred years ago, travelled in Upper and Lower Egypt for the sake of scientific research) may, however, prove interesting. In those days, Egyptian travel was by no means so safe and easy as in our times, and M. Sonnini passed through many unpleasant episodes ere he reached the famous Lakes of Natron. He describes his delight when, wearied by the frightful monotony of the desert across which he had been travelling, he at length reached a chain of hills furrowed by deep gorges, and on reaching their summit (a toilsome ascent, over soft fine sand), he beheld at a distance of about six leagues a parallel range, and in the valley that intervened a vast sheet of water, its banks covered with shrubs, and with a prodigious number of wild duck of many different species, while rosy flamingoes stalked to and fro in the shallows among green aquatic plants and tall reeds - reeds which are greatly prized by the peasants for making pipestems. The leaves are used for making mats. sun The French visitor learnt that the lakes vary greatly in size, according to the season. Sometimes they dry up, so that only two small pools remain, while at other times both overflow, and unite to form one great lake. When the two lakes separate, and their waters subside, the ground which they have inundated, and now leave exposed, is covered with a sediment, which is crystallized and hardened by the - this is the natron. There are also thick banks of rock salt of dazzling white ness. The thickness of these layers of salt varies according to the longer or shorter continuance of the waters on the ground. Where they have lain but a little while, the natron lies in thin cakes, almost like snowflakes. Sometimes this substance forms on the surface of the waters so thickly that camels can walk over it, as we might walk over ice. At other times the waters are clear and limpid. The principal harvest of the natron is gathered in the month of August, when it is raised from the ground by the aid of iron tools, and is packed in camel-loads, and so transported to the Nile, where it is shipped for Cairo. On the shore of one of the lakes, a small house was pointed out to M. Sonnini, as that wherein St. Maximous, a saint held in much reverence by the Copts, was born. Leaving the lakes, the traveller proceeded in a south-west direction across sand entirely covered with hardened natron, which rendered the march exceedingly fatiguing both to men and beasts. At length he came in sight of a large building, in which, secluded from the wicked world, dwelt a brotherhood of Coptic monks. Describing this monastery, M. Sonnini says that he cannot believe that a situa tion more horrible and forbidding could be found on the earth. Built in the middle of the desert, its walls, though very high, cannot in the distance be distinguished from the sands, having the same reddish color and naked aspect. There is no apparent entrance. Not a tree, not a plant of any size, is to be seen. No road leads to it; no trace of man is to be observed near it; or if, perchance, a human footprint is visible, it is quickly blown over by the ever-shifting sands, or else effaced by the track of wild boars or other wild animals, the rightful dwellers in such hateful solitudes. Such, he says, is the harsh and repulsive appearance of this retreat, which is inhabited by a most useless race of ascetics. As he drew near the monastery, his Arab escort went forward to endeavor to obtain admission, a favor which was not always readily granted to strangers. While the tired traveller and his servants with the camels lagged behind, suddenly they became aware of a cloud of dust rapidly approaching them, and in a few moments found themselves surrounded by a troop of wild Bedouins. Resistance being hopeless, they were immediately captured and stripped; clothes, property, and money were all taken, and the luckless traveller deemed that he had indeed fallen. on evil days as he saw these lords of the desert begin to quarrel over his goods. Greatly, however, to his astonishment and satisfaction, the robber chief presently came up to him and restored his clothes, watch, and various other articles, and he then learned that Hussein, his own Arab escort, having seen the approach of the Bedouins, had returned with all speed, and happily possessed so much influence as to be able to induce the new comers to |