Franco-German war, especially during the three great days before Metz, towards the close of the siege of Paris, or the campaign of Aurelles de Paladine and Chanzy on the Loire, in which a sudden turn in the fortune of arms seemed probable, seemed imminent, and when, nevertheless, I pinned my faith to Moltke's genius, and staked, as it were, the Times' reputation on the German's complete final victory; and then my good editor came to me late in the evening pale with anxiety, begging me not to be rash, not too confident, for he had seen this, and he had heard that, and competent judges, whom he named, among others Colonel B, had assured him that we were venturing too far, and that events would soon contradict our statements and demolish our theories, greatly to the loss of the Times prestige. When Paris surrendered, and Moltke and I had triumphed over prostrate France, my dear Delane drew a long breath and wrote to me a kind letter of congratulation, stating how glad he was that he had trusted me, that I had always been right in my forecast, and had not, by one single false step during that long warlike crisis, misled the English reading public. I have still the letter before me, and I value it far more highly than any Red or Black Eagle that Bismarck could have bestowed upon me.

gent notion of a political situation in a remote capital.

Mr. Gallenga makes some suggestive remarks on the social revolution which has been accomplished since the period of his first stay in England. “Men," he tells us, "then travelled little; the women seldom left home except for their three weeks' sea-bathing at Herne Bay or Broadstairs. They seldom saw the inside of a theatre, and few of them were great readers, for Mudie was not yet, nor Westerton, nor the Grosvenor or the London Library, and books were hard to borrow and dear to buy." When Mr. Yates first knew London, Butcher Hall Lane had not disappeared, Alton Ale houses abounded to the east of Temple Bar, Almack's was in its zenith, the Adelaide Gallery had just been taken by Laurent, the Holborn Restaurant was a swimming bath, Vauxhall, though in its decadence, "dingy, dear, and absurdly expensive," was popuWaterloo Place, the park was full of pro: lar, the overland route was on view in digious dandies, cheap chop-houses and foreign eating-houses were in vogue, Paddy Green was in his patriarchal bloom. There was none of the display, luxury, and glitter of these latter times, but there was much comfort, much geniality, and an amount of sociability, and a facility for cheap amusements now unknown. Bohemia then occupied a recognized and considerable place in the map of London. Mr. Sala was brought from Rool's oystershop to be presented to the Duke of Sutherland, then Marquess of Stafford, who was loud in praise of "Colonel Quagg's Conversion," at the Fielding Club. Robert Brough was denouncing the sham culture of pseudo-classicists in his lyrics, and published in his "Songs of the Governing Classes" a passionate attack upon social distinctions with the refrain,

When, therefore, Mr. Gallenga says, "I might also feel tempted to flatter myself that my career as a journalist was not an absolute failure," he speaks with unnecessary diffidence and modesty. In talking of "the cut and dry manner which has become almost the technical and conventional style of the press, especially since the invention of electric wires has sunk the correspondent's business to the level of that of the mere telegraph clerk," he will be held by competent judges to be in error. The influence of telegraphy upon the style of the special and war correspondent has certainly not been hostile, still less fatal, to vigor and picturesqueness; witness the marvellous despatches of Mr. Cameron and Mr. Forbes. On the other hand, it has probably robbed the resident correspondent in foreign capitals, and therefore the press generally, of some That self-same boast, I'm a gentleman. of its own authority. Instead of the wellweighed and instructive letters on foreign Mr. Edmund Byng, Mr. Yates's godfather, affairs, which used to be highly profitable entertained the most select of guests with reading, and which have now almost en- the plainest and best of dinners, and tirely disappeared from journalism, the young men, "who to-day sit down to soup, Times, the Morning Post, the St. James's fish, entrées - then called 'made dishes Gazette, and the Globe alone being per- — a roast, a bird, a sweet, a savory, and mitted by inexorable exigencies of space a bottle of claret, would then have been occasionally to publish them, we have content with a slice off the joint, a bit of to be content with telegraphic despatches cheese, and a pint of beer." Even Mr. which are admirable as viewy condensa Yates, when he first married, as he “could tions of the latest news, but which have not afford to give his friends good wine, little permanent value, and which scarcely and would not give them bad," regaled help the average reader to form an intelli- them on bitter ale. Lucky friends! though

'Tis a curse to the land, deny it who can,

one may hope that if, even in this degen- gentleman whose admiration was almost erate epoch, Mr. Yates were starting too legibly visible for so very public an afresh he would be not so far borne away occasion. Borroughdale, on his side, was by the vicious contagion of fashion as to primed and loaded, full cock, ready for an endeavor to sap the digestion of his com- avowal. It was nothing absolutely pany by the loaded acidity which is called nothing to him who might be listenclaret, and the abominable decoctions of ing; how many people might be looking sugar and petroleum known as cham- on; like a man bent upon some forlorn pagne. London, Lord Beaconsfield re- hope he had come to that point when to marked some months before his death, go on is immeasurably easier than to turn which was once a very dull place, is now back. He would know his fate, he vowed a very amusing place, and so from one to himself, before he left the house that point of view it is. But the impression evening, nay, before he left that easy-chair left upon the reader who was not per-upon which he was then sitting. Even sonally acquainted with the metropolis he, however, needed some starting point, during the first decade of the Victorian some vantage-ground, however slight, era, as he lays down Mr. Yates's volumes, from which to launch his declaration. It is, that if we have gained considerably we was not very long, however, before he have also lost not a little. There is much discovered one. which is cheap and nasty now; there was much which was cheap and pleasant then. "Timmins's little dinners" had not be come regular events, and the trail of Mrs. Ponsonby de Tompkins was not over us all. In yet another respect, of a far more important character, was there a distinc- "Yes, is it not? It belonged to my tion between the epoch when Mr. Yates mother," she answered, a blush, evoked commenced his active existence and the partly by his manner, partly by the recolpresent. No such central figures in lit-lection called up by the bracelet, crossing erature - Dickens, Thackeray, Macaulay -as existed then exist now. The general average of literary productiveness has immensely increased, but the stimulating influences of individual genius, placed upon a high pedestal, have disappeared. Literature, and especially periodical literature, has become more highly organized, and therefore more of a business. The result has been favorable to the social and moral welfare of the literary class, but it has involved the sacrifice of not a little freshness and of a great deal of fun.

T. H. S. ESCOTT.

From Macmillan's Magazine. BORROUGHDALE OF BORROUGHDALE. "For every man hath a talent if he do but find it." JOHN LOCKE.

CHAPTER III.

(continued.)

"What a lovely bracelet that is of yours!" he exclaimed. "I never noticed it before. That one, I mean," touching with his finger a broad band of gold clasped with three brilliants which Miss Holland wore upon her left wrist.

her cheek. It had been parted with in the days of their poverty, and lately found again and redeemed with some little difficulty by herself.

Borroughdale noticed the blush, and it lent him additional ardor.

"There is one uncommonly like it at home," he said. "It belonged to my mother, too. I wish you would have it, Miss Holland," he added audaciously. "You might wear it upon your other wrist."

This, it will be owned, for a shy man was pretty well! Katherine Holland, however, was determined, if possible, to ignore what this evening seemed the extraordinary and unprecedented signifi. cance of his manner; so, although rather to her own annoyance she blushed again, she answered lightly,

"Thank you very much, Lord Borroughdale, but I am afraid I couldn't well wear your bracelet, could I ? ”

66

Why not?"

For one,

"Well, for several reasons. because it wouldn't belong to me," she answered.

"It would if I gave it to you."

KATHERINE HOLLAND felt a little bewilderment. It was almost as if a new acquaintance had presented himself. The young man who had sat so often tête-à-tête "Yes, but then you couldn't well do with her in her aunt's drawing-room, that, could you? If it was your mother's, hardly daring to lift his eyes to her face, it is no doubt part of your family jewels. seemed an utterly different personage I have heard that they are particularly from this bold-eyed, confident-toned young fine."

was in momentary terror lest he should begin again upon the same subject; this, however, happily, he abstained from doing, and having found Mrs. Holland, and listened in stoical silence to her elaborate explanation as to the causes that had detained her down-stairs, he volunteered to go in search of their carriage, and having found it, and put the two ladies into it, he stood back so as to allow them to drive away.

honestly. Did Miss Holland say she wasn't going ever to be at home to me in future?"

The prim parlor-maid, utterly taken aback by his so much uncalled-for vehemence, opened her mouth and her eyes to their widest extent, and for the moment completely lost her starched demeanor in the extremity of her astonishment.

"Why good laws a mussy me, my lord, in course not! Miss Holland she never said nothing of the sort - leastways not to me. She and Mrs. Holland have only gone to the Soho Bazaar, as I heard missus say she wanted some new hearthbrooms!"

"Oh, that's all right," Borroughdale answered, rather ashamed of his own impetuosity. "You can keep the sovereign, you know; and - er- - look here, you can say I'll probably be at the Institution tomorrow evening," he added, as he turned away for the second time.

After all this it need hardly be said that the next afternoon he called at the house in Bayswater. His mood, however, had completely changed in the interval; that overmastering determination, which had seemed strong enough at the time to move mountains and to carry him over a thousand obstacles, had completely gone, and he had fallen back upon all his previous fluctuations of despondency. Oddly enough, now that he was thus seriously and strenuously in love, those more obvious and impersonal advantages which had previously seemed so perilously to Next evening, accordingly, he duly ap overweight any suit he might prefer, had peared in Albemarle Street, arriving late, become of little or no account in his mind. after the lecture had already begun, and He hardly thought of them in summing thereby earning for himself not a few unup the probabilities for or against a suc- uttered maledictions from the owners of cessful issue in his suit. His own stupid- the various skirts and feet over which he ity, his awkwardness, his general incapac ruthlessly trampled on his way to his seat. ity for social purposes, all seemed so A place had been reserved for him bemany rocks which rose up menacingly, at tween Professor Holland and his niece times absolutely forbidding his hoping Mrs. Holland did not care for lectures that that issue would be other than dis- into which he dropped, and sat staring astrous. It was in this desponding mood | blankly into the arena with the expression that he rang the door-bell that afternoon of a man who has just lost or is expecting at Mrs. Holland's house, nor was his to lose every farthing which he possesses previous gloom lightened upon being in- in the world.

formed by the prim parlor-maid with that The lecture was a brilliant one, deair of satisfaction with which such mes-livered by one of the greatest of living sages generally are delivered, that the

ladies were not at home.

Borroughdale stood still, staring blankly for a moment at the woman, as if in so saying she had uttered something preposterous, something utterly inconceivable, and unheard of; then he turned and slowly descended the steps, and, still like a man in a dream, got into his phaton, which was waiting at the door, and mechanically gathered up the reins in his hands. Just as the horses were beginning to get into motion, however, he suddenly checked them, flung down the reins so hurriedly that it was as much as the groom, who was mounting, could do to get to their heads in time, and bounced up the steps again.

I say -er- - look here, my good girl," he exclaimed breathlessly, "here is a sovereign for you, and tell me the truth

proficients in that line, and was received with reiterated bursts of applause not unmingled with laughter. As far as Borroughdale, however, was concerned, it might just as well have been uttered in the tongue of the Cherokees or of the dwellers in Cochin China for any single intelligent idea which adhered to him during its utterance; all his thoughts, every idea which he had in his head, being solely and absolutely concentrated upon one point. How was he to get an answer to this ill-fated, this all-important question of his? That it behoved him, being a man and having once spoken, to get such an answer, and, moreover, to get it quickly, was clear to him; but how his first effort having so egregiously failed — he was to do this was more than he could see. Indeed he shrank from again, as it were in cold blood, adventuring his fate,