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preaching. I have shown you my whole life, as well as I can; where I have left any gaps, pray question me."

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Nothing further is needed," said Clodwig, rising, and quietly laying aside the sofa-blanket." Only one question. Have you never had the desire to marry, or has that not entered into your plans? "No, I shall not marry. I have heard so many men say, 'Yes, ideals, I had them too, but now I live in and for my family.' I will not sacrifice everything higher to the caprice of a pretty woman. I know that I am at variance with the world; I cannot dissemble, nor can I change my own way of thinking, nor bring others over to mine. I have set myself a difficult life-task, which can be best carried out alone."

"I give you my hand again. This hand shall never be withdrawn from you, so long as it has life. I had something else in view for you, but now I cannot and need not speak of it; I will subdue my own wishes. Enough; press on quietly and firmly towards your goal; whatever I can do to help you reach it, you have a right to demand. Remember you have a claim upon me in every situation and condition of your life. You cannot yet estimate what you have and are still giving me. Good night, my dear young friend."

The count hastily withdrew, as if to avoid any further emotion. Eric stood still, looking at the empty chair and the sofa-blanket as if all were a dream, until a servant came and in a very respectful manClodwig stepped quickly towards Eric ner conducted him to his room. and said:

The Pyramid and the Bible. By a Clergy-tects in the poor rhetoric of the London divine. man. Edmonston and Douglas.

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The book is, at all events, a "curiosity of literature," and well deserves perusal.

Co.

Spectator.

AMERICA as yet has no very deep fountains of poetry from which to draw. She gives us of her best as far as she can, and on the whole the gift is a worthy one. In this little volume there are several picces of real merit and beauty. Phoebe Cary writes verses about which we only regret the impossibility of inserting them at length. Mrs. Sigourney has lines which may stand side by side with our best hymns. Whittier and Pierpoint, too, have both contributed good verses; but there is only too much which rises at best to a very low level. Notwithstanding all that Emerson and others have said or written, it remains true that the inner depths of spiritual life have yet to be broken up in America, and till they are, with much of their poetry as with much of their theology, we must rest unsatisfied.

THIS is a very thoughtful and ingenious little volume. The writer, who does not give his name, has made a special study of all that has in recent times been written about the "Great Pyr- Lyra Sacra Americana. Sampson Low and amid by Taylor, Piazzi Smyth, and others. His information, consequently, is perfectly reliable, and it is remarkable to find how much matter the author puts into a few pages, while yet none of his statements suffer from the compression. That the Great Pyramid was erected by an anti-idolatrous monarch (Cheops) some 4,000 years ago; that it was constructed at a particular astronomical conjuncture, which could not be repeated until after the lapse of 25,000 years a period said to be represented by the united inches of the two diagonals of the base of the pyramid; that the sun's distance from the earth was known to the architect of the pyramid, and that thus, by special illumination, the calculations of the latest science were anticipated; that the solitary relic found in one of the two interior chambers of the pyramid, an arca, or chest, is a metrical standard with which our own English measures correspond, are a few of the affirmations made by this clergyman and endorsed by Professor P. Smyth in a prefatory note. course, if these and other statements could be scientifically demonstrated, the Great Pyramid would have an additional claim to being designated, as it was, one of the Seven Wonders of the World; but that the demonstration, if made, would indicate that the Millennium is even at the door is not so very clear to us. Our author accepts the antiquated notions about Edenic and Noahic dispensations in the past, and as far as we can gather, has fancies about the future not very different from those of Dr. Cummings. But in spite of these, he shows himself to be dominated by a sense of justice and of the fatherly goodness of the Almighty which one never de

Of

Spectator.

Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. By Rev. W.
Ware. Warne.

THIS is an old friend, well known and well loved in our youth, when it bore the name, which was, we believe, its original name, and which we cannot see any reason for changing, of "Letters from Palmyra." We have looked through the book again, and are happy to believe that our old liking was justified, not only by the interest of the story and by the picturesqueness of the writing, which are undeniable, but by its general fidelity to historical truth. It is a capital romance, and we should be sorry to think so ill of the rising generation as not to believe that it will please them. Spectator.

BOOK THE THIRD.

CHAPTER I.

MADELEINE LENDS A HAND.

santé. It was an unfortunate time for the mistress of the house to be invalided when Meriton was full of guests, and Julia had made a number of engagements. Stephen Haviland was one of that numerous class Ir is pleasant to persons of ill-condi- of men who are invariably out of temper tioned nature to know that they are objects when their wives are ill, who seem to reof envy. They like to excite that unamia- gard such illness as arising from the natuble feeling, and to keep it alive by the dis-ral perversity of women, and who make play of their exceptional advantages of everybody about them uncomfortable or wealth, beauty, wit, accomplishments, pop- such occasions. He was deeply concerned ularity, whatever it may be in which they about Julia, and indeed unnecessarily are favoured beyond their fellows. Again, alarmed, as Madeleine and her father enthere are persons so incapable of feeling deavoured to convince him; but he was envy, that they do not understand the ex- also angry with her, and vented his vexaistence of the passion, they do not recog- tion by proposing measures which would nise its manifestations; when its spite and have been eminently disagreeable to her. bitterness are evident and hateful to others, The house must be cleared, he said, to them they are merely puzzling, uncom- everyone must go; of course it was unfor fortable, unpleasant phenomena, felt with- tunate, but it could not be helped. There out being analysed. To the latter cate- was not the slightest occasion for anything gory Madeleine Burdett belonged. She of the kind, Julia maintained. The house knew that her cousins did not like her, but was so large and so well organised, everyshe did not know that they regarded her thing was arranged with such clock-work with envy which distorted every action of regularity, that there was not the least hers, magnifying girlish thoughtlessness in- reason for disturbing anyone because she to a crime, and assigning to the mere glee- had a heavy feverish cold, and must keep fulness and power of enjoyment proper her room for a few days. All their guests to her age and disposition, all the sinful- were intimate friends, and Mrs. Marsh was ness of inconsiderate levity and unprinci- in the house, to supply her place in any pled coquetry. She did not imagine that respect in which Madeleine might not suf they could not hear her make the request fice. concerning her drawing-lessons which she had addressed to Stephen Haviland, without setting it down to a desire to display her taste and accomplishments.

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So the people who were at Meriton remained there, and the projected amusements were all carried out, and Julia kept her room, sedulously cared for by MadeShe is afraid Captain Medway may not leine, who understood her ways, and had know she is an artist,' said Angelina to no scruple in leaving her to the tolerably Clementina; and the two professed them- frequent solitude to which she never obselves shocked at the omnivorous vanity ofjected, in illness or in health. Mrs. Marsh Madeleine, who never remembered Captain was in high good humour. She enjoyed Medway's existence when that officer was her span of seeming authority in her brothout of her sight. er's house 'little' and brief' as it was, exNeither did she, for some days, remem-ceedingly; and Madeleine quietly but ef ber the conversation she had had with her uncle, or that an artist was coming to Meriton. Her aunt was ill- a most unusual event; so unusual, indeed, as to cause a sensation disproportionate to its importance. Julia Haviland had sound health in general, and steady nerves. Her temper, though not naturally gentle or equable, was well under her control, and she never suffered from the discontent and irritability which are such large components in the delicacy' that renders so many women domestic nuisances. She valued health, and took care of herself. But Julia was ill now, for all that, and disliked being so all the more because she was so unaccustomed to it that she had none of the façons of a lady habituated to indulge in petite

fectually guarded against its being felt by anyone to be oppressive. Julia was not the sort of woman to feel at all sensitively that she was not much missed by her guests, and that they contrived to employ and enjoy themselves thoroughly, with no more reference to her than the regulation inquiry made every morning, and the regulation hopes and wishes. She knew she would have felt in their case precisely as they felt in hers, and she much preferred their polite indifference to her husband's sullen solicitude. There had been so much smoothness in the life of Julia Haviland for many years · she had so long lost sight of the rough paths through which her early years had led her that she now found it difficult to realise that things could ever go

wrong with her. On the whole, she had managed her husband wonderfully well, surprisingly easily, considering the materials she had to work on; but she felt a little misgiving about how she might be able to manage him in the future, if her health, strength, and vivacity were to fail her. She had not really repressed his self-will, or decreased his selfishness; she had merely kept them in check by the greater imperiousness of her own nature; and she thought if her strength, her capacity for caring to manage him, should fail, if the strange indifference to all things which sometimes came over her but passingly, should become a permanent state of mind with her, she would probably find him very troublesome to herself and to other people. It was natural that she should feel this general languor just now; it did not indicate the real decline of her characteristic strength, tact, and firmness, it was caused by illness, it would pass away with returning health.

From the windows of Julia's room she could see the flower-garden in which she had been used to walk with her husband's mother; and, lying on her sofa, weak, suffering, and alone, her thoughts would turn back to those far-distant days, and she would recall the victory she had then won without any exultation now; indeed, with weariness. After all, the love and the gratitude of the kind old lady had been the very best and most precious things which her success had brought her. She was not more sentimental or more credulous now than she had ever been; but she knew this for a fact. All through these years, during which she had been rich, prosperous, admired, beloved, in every sense successful, she had suffered, more or less frequently, from the inexorable ennui which is at the bottom of all human existence,' but less of late than in her youth. Was not this ennui, like the vague melancholy which is of the essence of youthful poetry, an attribute of youth? Does it not cease to be felt as time begins to move with the accelerated speed which we all recognise in middle age, when things are more commonplace and comfortable? It was time that she should be done with it, but she was not; it lurked in her path still, making her feel that her inmost spirit assented to the ancient faith of the Eastern sage, who held that silence was better than speech, sleep than pleasdeath than life.

ure,

In the pauses in life of which this was one, the vacuity of it makes itself felt, if indeed it be empty of the nobler aims, the purer emotions, by every nature largely en

dowed and passionate as Julia Haviland's was. When she was well and strong she did battle with this insidious ennui, whose harmfulness she knew; but she was ill and weak now; she could not fight with it, and it had its own way.

Frank Burdett understood her very well. He did not say so; he never officiously volunteered to put her moods into words, but he knew as much about them as any one but Julia herself could know. He applied himself to the judicious soothing of Stephen's apprehensions and temper, rightly considering that he could thus do Julia most good. 'He bores her,' said Mr. Burdett, with that candour which is wisely reserved for soliloquy; he fidgets her and he bores her. He is at a loss without her, and he does not like to feel that that is the case. The best thing I can do for her is to keep him away. It's the Haviland way. Whenever anything ailed me, Selina was awful.'

Though Julia was sufficiently ill to be confined to her room, and though she did not get better with such celerity as Stephen Haviland considered would have been the right thing, and what might have been expected of her, she was not too ill to feel interested in hearing all that was going on in the house. The sounds which told of life and stir and amusement, came but faintly and distantly to her quiet rooms, and disturbed her not at all. She liked to lie there with closed eyes and listen to them without any need for exerting herself. She liked Madeleine's visits, when the bright, happy young girl-who had seen so little of illness, and had so little notion of suffering that it never occurred to her to feel any uneasiness about Julia - would cheer her up with accounts of the day's proceedings, and occasionally with amusing sketches, full of fun, but quite devoid of malice, of the untiring exertions of Angelina and Clementina in the unvaried occupation of their lives-the pursuit of admirers who might be turned into husbands. There was something touching to a contemplative mind in the sustained and courageous industry, dash, and daring of their devotion to this noble avocation. Nothing daunted, nothing disheartened them. When the chase' got away, clean out of sight, they immediately looked out for another; and when, as had frequently happened, a rival carried off the prize, they regarded the circumstance with disdain, as the result of an unprincipled manoeuvre to which a wretched male victim had been sacrificed, expressed the deepest compassion for him, and turned their attention elsewhere. They

Madeleine made no answer to this remark beyond a blush and a look ef embarrassment which Julia observed.

did not very often get the chance of pur- men of his sort, he is very susceptible of suing this praiseworthy vocation at Meri- flattery, and I should not be at all surprised ton, but whenever the opportunity did if Angelina were to succeed in her devices, arise, they took the utmost advantage of it. if she only does the humble and devout The Honourable Herbert Bingham and worshipper with sufficient consistency, and Captain Medway were just at present the sticks to it long enough.' objects of the unremitting attention of the young ladies. Angelina had made up her mind to be Mrs. Bingham, and Clementina had resolved to be Mrs. Medway; and though the respective gentlemen did not 'see it,' and made their blindness perceptible to every one besides, the ingenuous Angelina and Clementina cherished their delusion, all unsuspecting, and afforded a great deal of not too good-natured amusement to the on-lookers at this very unequal game.

The enforced seclusion of Julia was not regretted by the Misses Marsh. They would have resented with indignation such an imputation as that they were afraid of their uncle's wife; but they were afraid of her; her perfectly polite but invincibly cold manner had a repressive effect upon them, and they preferred to carry on what they regarded as their flirtations, but which were in reality their aggressive attacks upon masculine freedom, out of the range of her steadily observant and contemptuous eyes. That she was, as they elegantly termed it, 'safe' for the present, was a subject of frequent confidential congratulations of each other on the part of the sisters, and they regarded their prospects as cheering and favourable.

'What's the matter, Maddy?' she asked. What makes you look as if you differed from me, for some reason specially known to yourself?'

Madeleine blushed again, and laughed uneasily. I hardly like to tell you, aunt,’ she said; it seems like such ridiculous conceit, it seems so like the sort of thing one laughs at the Marsh girls for; but — but I cannot help fancying that Herbert Bingham has made up his mind, in his high-and-mighty way, to confer the honour of his alliance on me.'

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Indeed!' said Julia; that is rather an awkward complication. What has made you think so?'

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It is so hard to tell you exactly,' Madeleine answered; but the impression is irresistible. One reason for my thinking this is his insufferable way of keeping perpetually beside me, and seeming impatient if I am ever occupied with anybody else. He was positively rude this evening when I was at the piano; interrupted me three times when I was speaking to Mr. Holmes, and took no more notice of him than if he was not there. He is exactly like his The idea of Angelina fixing on Herbert mother in that horrid way of " walking Bingham!' said Madeleine, on an occasion over people," as papa calls it. I should not when she had been relating the day's pro- have minded it so much to-night if he had ceedings to her aunt. He would be as-been rude to anyone except Mr. Holmes, tounded if he could be made to understand her presumption. He appears to me to think he does uncle Stephen a great honour by coming here, and nothing that Verner told us of his father and mother equals his pride and stiffness. They are not pleasant people to look forward to belonging to, certainly. He was speaking of Verner yesterday in such a slighting way, I longed to tell him what an improvement it would be to him to be just the least little bit in the world like his younger brother.' Julia smiled.

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But he is so different,' Madeleine continued; he is so selfish, and so little-minded, and so mean in all his ways. But Angelina sees all perfection in him.'

but it is such bad taste when there can be any doubt or question about the rank of one's guest.'

It is, indeed,' said Julia abstractedly. She was thinking if Madeleine should be right and a woman's instinct may generally be trusted in such matters-hat the true love of her niece and Verner Bingham would not be likely to run the smoother; as, in that case, Herbert would hardly act as their friend with Lord and Lady Bredisholine. Not that Julia really cared about their opinion, or had any doubt that she could render Stephen also indifferent to it when the fitting time should have arrived, but that she disliked the arising of a ditficulty, and here she foresaw one.

No, she doesn't, my dear,' said Mrs. I wish he would go away,' she said. Haviland; she sees the Honourable Mr.I fancied he only came here to fill up a Bingham, the future Lord Bredisholme, in gap in his time, until his father and mother him. I grant you that that is Angelina's release some unhappy people they are visitnotion of perfection. I fancy, like mosting from their presence, and return to Bre

disholme. He does not care for shooting, I mean. When Herbert Bingham succeeded does he ?' in interrupting him this evening, he stood apart, leaning against the window, and looking as absent-minded as if he were not one of us.'

Not in the least,' answered Madeleine; and papa can't bear to have him out with them, he makes himself so disagreeable. I confess I have beguiled him into remaining with us sometimes, just to get papa rid of him.'

And your filial duty may be rewarded by a coronet in perspective,' said Julia. What a pity you are not Angelina, or Angelina you! But seriously, you will have to be very careful,, Maddy; it would be very unpleasant to have to refuse Verner's brother-it would create an awkwardness for you afterwards.'

Madeleine made a pretty little movement with her head, which implied that she had perfect, undoubting, not-to-be-shaken faith in afterwards;' but she acquiesced in her aunt's caution, remarking that Angelina, who never let Mr. Bingham out of her sight if she could avoid it, would unconsciously render her invaluable assistance in preventing his making a fool of himself."

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What sort of person is this young artist, Mr. Holmes?' Julia asked after a pause, during which Madeleine had arranged her pillows, and rendered her sundry little services with a skilful hand. Your uncle seems to like him very much.'

'Well, you know, in a certain sense he is not,' said Julia.

'Yes, but I don't mean that,' said Madeleine. There is nothing about him to imply his feeling himself out of place in any society; you will understand what I mean when you see him. He is very clever, I am sure, in every way, and I don't think even Aunt Marsh could contrive to patronise him; and as for Angelina and Clementina, they do not like him at all.'

'No, I should fancy, from your description, he would not suit them. I suppose they would not have even tried their "prentice hand' on a mere artist. Mr. Holmes

is quite a young man, is he not??
Yes, I should think so,' said Madeleine.
He is so dark that it is not easy to tell
whether he is very young.'

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"Your uncle speaks of asking him to stay here when the Mitfords leave,' said Julia. So he said this morning; and you should have seen Aunt Marsh's face! She did not venture to say anything, but there was a great deal of the true Haviland eloquence in her glance. Artists, indeed!' and Ma'O, he's so nice!' replied Madeleine, al-deleine, who had a dangerous turn for most eagerly; he is very handsome very dark, with such keen black eyes, and such fine curly hair — one of the handsomest men I ever saw, I think; but rather sternlooking. I'm sure he is a proud man. Papa thinks him very handsome; he fancies he has seen him before; but Mr. Holmes does not remember ever to have seen him, and says it is most unlikely, as he has not been in England until last winter for years. Uncle Stephen showed you his drawings, aunt, did he not?'

'Yes, he brought me a portfolio full today which Mr. Holmes sent up from the village to amuse me. They are very fine indeed, as far as my judgment goes.'

O yes, beautiful! And he is so fond of his art; it is quite delightful to hear him talk about it; and he is so perfectly gentlemanly in his manners-almost too grave, in fact. I'm sure all one hears about the slang talk and the good-for-nothing ways of artists does not apply to him, at all events. His manners are as good- as good as Verner's, and he talks better than anyone here.' Quite a hero of romance!' said Julia, with a kind smile.

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mimicry, gave her face a certain sour-looking twist common to the Haviland physiog nomy in moments of irritation or offended dignity which made her aunt laugh, though she held up a rebuking finger.

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I had better go away, I think,' said Madeleine, with much penitence. Uncle Stephen will be coming to say good-night, and he will blame me for that flush on your cheeks, and if you cough!- but you mustn't cough, aunt, or I shall be banished altogether. Make haste and get well; I want you so much downstairs to keep Herbert Bingham at a respectful distance, to prevent Clementina getting an unqualified refusal from Captain Medway, and to hear your opinion of Mr. Holmes.'

She laid her bright, soft cheek fondly against her aunt's still beautiful face, and Julia held it there for a minute while she said,

'Nothing has been said to Mr. Holmes as yet, I suppose, about his giving you lessons?'

'No,' replied Madeleine; it will be time enough when we know him a little bet

ter.'

The opinions expressed by Stephen Haviland and Frank Burdett concerning the stranger were as favourable to him as Mad

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