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he was unsuccessful. For a while he never got out of the last thousand of the ten or twelve thousand candidates who aspired as he aspired.

ward.

If he

The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumed tincture of the rose. But when Titania speaks of "killing cankers in the musk-rose buds," or the poet sings in the "Sonnets" that "loathsome Time went on, however, and by the help canker lives in sweetest bud," the refer- of the most untiring assiduity he began towards the middle of his life to be reence is to a parasitic worm. Since the days when Montgomery cham-garded as a promising student. pioned the cause of the lily, the ranks of continued to progress in the same ratio, that fair flower in our own country have there was yet some likelihood that ere been strengthened by a vast reinforcement he was fifty he might meet with his re from foreign climes. The giant lily (Lilium giganteum or cordifolium) is as hardy as the hemlock, and soars to the height of eight or ten feet under favorable circum. stances; the Isabella lily (L. testaceum), of hybrid origin, almost equals it in stature, and is distinguished from all others by its delicate apricot hue; while of Lilium auratum, the gold-rayed lily of Japan, the most gorgeous plant that will endure our trying climate, it is worth recording that the variety platyphyllum is by far the finest and the most permanent, coming up year after year in the same spot, whereas the other varieties generally perish in the second or third season.

to

Gardeners love to prose about their pur suit; 'tis such a seductive hobby, and ambles along so easily that it were easy strain the reader's patience; so only one other point in the decoration of grounds will be here alluded to. Statuary is seldom used in the decoration of gardens now, yet of all places where it can be seen to advantage it is there. It gives a feeling of repose which is an indispensable quality in garden scenery, and in return receives tranquil attention, which can seldom be bestowed on it in public places. With trees, flowers, fair statues, greensward, and song of birds, what pleasant resting places the pilgrims of life may make for themselves!

HERBERT MAXWELL.

From The Cornhill Magazine.
THE CANDIDATE.

SENG was forty-five years of age, and
one of the most painstaking students of
his time of life to be found in Peking.
For the past thirty years he had regu-
larly entered his name in the great civil
service examinations which take place
throughout the empire. Hard indeed had
he striven to qualify himself for the honor
of official employment. But he was, alas,
by nature rather dull, and year after year

Seng was the more stimulated to persevere inasmuch as he was not at ease in his home circle. His father was dead. His mother was blind, and of an unamiable disposition. Indeed, she was more than unamiable; by some aberration of heart she began to scoff at her son, and upbraid him for his deficiency of intellect. She also behaved very badly indeed to her daughter-in-law, the student's wife.

Herein Seng appears to have shown some indiscretion. He married a girl with enchanting teeth and eyes, but next to no brains. This was a manifest contravention of the natural law which impels intellectual man a mere doll of a girl for a a dull man to seek a clever wife, and an helpmate.

less

ness.

It would have mattered the even if it had not been a positive convenience — had not Madame Seng (as we will call the old lady, Seng's mother) become much incapacitated by her blindAs it was, she desired a daughterin-law whom she could rely upon to do everything connected with the house, from buying rice to dusting the domestic effigies, as well as to be infinitely patient and long-suffering under the abuse and even blows which she loved to bestow upon subordinates.

Seng's wife, however, was not such a girl. She suited Seng, and Seng suited her, because he was at all times fairly civil towards her. She took the greatest possible care of her teeth, and daily washed her eyes with a celebrated perfumed water warranted to preserve their brightness. For the rest, she was content so she could avoid her mother-in-law's voice and the cane with which latterly, in her old age, the blind woman was often wont to pursue her. Vain was it for Seng, in response to his mother's complaints, to dole forth moral maxims for his wife's improvement. The copy-book phrases were excellently spoken, but they fell on unfertile soil. And, moreover, when Seng perceived through his spectacles how snow-white were his spouse's pretty teeth, and with what an attractive lustre her eyes

sparkled towards him, even he was, more often than not, tempted to caress when he meant to scold.

This sort of thing exasperated the mother-in-law immeasurably. Latterly she became very bitter, and would run amuck about the house with the cane in her hand, beating this way and that, and calling her daughter-in-law many opprobrious names. The girl would stand in an alcove and watch the old woman's proceedings quite calmly, and without either the wish or the thought of taunting her. But when the swish of the cane approached in her direction, she would gently step through the window of the alcove, not forgetting even to bolt it from the outside lest an accident should happen. The old woman would continue her malevolent rushes to and fro until she was exhausted. Then Seng's wife would return, and, with soothing words, try to assuage the poor blind creature's animosity against her; and when she was more than commonly exhausted, she would take her upon her knee as if she were a baby, and rock her until her strength and indignation had recovered themselves.

Such scenes as these became very common in the house. They moved poor Seng to tears more than once, and he might have been heard muttering to himself a string of precepts enjoining the duty of filial love and forbearance under all circumstances. But there can be no doubt all this agitation at home affected his chances at the examinations. His depression was something terrible when the lists had appeared, and he realized that he had gained no ground-or as good as none during the previous twelve months.

When Seng reached the ripe age of forty his mother died. This was a sad blow to the poor man. Not that he would have been inconsolable for his mother's loss in itself; for he had schooled himself into the assurance that she had long exhausted the pleasures of existence. But, as a matter of fact, with her vanished the means of the household support. It was an iniquitous thing. The old woman, from mere spite, had bequeathed such estate as she had to the heads of a certain pagoda on a hill over against her house. They were to build her a fine tomb, with a south aspect, on another neighboring hill, to keep her memory green for a period.

Never was there such a hard and extraordinary calamity. It was of a kind, too, that smote poor Seng in his tenderest part. His mother had insulted him for

ever and ever. She had not had confidence in him and his regard for the sacred law which enjoins a son to do all he can for his parents, dead or alive.

Moreover, how was he to know that the same unnatural feeling which had prompted this cruel diversion of the family estate would not perpetuate itself to his detriment in the spiritual world? In other words, the awful thought came to him that his mother's ghostly part would oppose him in his literary efforts, and also do its best to make him completely miserable in all the concerns of his life.

"And this evil," he moaned, "is to come upon one who never failed to kowtow night and morning at your venerable feet, O my mother!"

In the fervor of his grief the poor fellow actually forgot himself so far as to weep, with his head bent on his wife's shoulder, she tenderly stroking his brow the while, and whispering words of comfort about the forthcoming examination.

"You will become a high and mighty official," she said. "I wish to prophesy it."

Hearing this, Seng braced himself, and, with the light of heroic endeavor in his eyes poor eyes, weakened by his incessant studies-he clasped his wife to his breast, and began an eloquent oration, in which much was said about the priceless value of unwearying application and the virtues that arise in the heart after twenty years of literary exercises.

"I will forget the past. I will be young forever until I succeed, and when these sad hours are gone, we shall look back upon them as salutary aids to that eternal contentment which shall abide with us as the result of a competence!"

Thus, urged by necessity and his own fading ambitions, Seng threw himself into the strife of the examinations with a consuming earnestness. He was never without slips in his hand, and even in his sleep he repeated his phrases without knowing it.

So enthralling grew his passion for print that if, in walking the streets, he saw upon the ground but a morsel of paper with the character upon it, he would fall into a noble passion. Having picked it up, and execrated the careless person who had cast it aside, he would then bear it reverently to the corner of the street, and, with an ejaculatory sentence from Confucius or one of the Five Ancient Classics, deposit it in the receptacle there prepared for such precious litter.

In spite of Seng's labors, however, year

after year went by, with failure ever in their | ods of profit and loss. At the time of the train. The thought of his mother, and great examination he backs candidates in the possibility that she was still working a series, even as the Italian with a spare mischief for him, often depressed him im- half-franc backs the numbers his superstimeasurably. But he struggled on bravely, tion and the latest popular dream-book and at length made really substantial urge him to favor with his suffrages. progress in the lists. A compassionate mandarin employed him in the mean time as a sort of fifth-rate clerk. The wage was ridiculous, but Seng and his wife made it suffice. They trusted to the future to recompense them.

This brings us to Seng's forty-sixth year, which found him in Peking, and a hot favorite for the honors of the examination that was impending. The mandarin in whose service he was had entrusted him with a commission of some delicacy. He was to bribe a superior as astutely as possible for a certain purpose. It was by no means a task to our friend's taste, but he sighed and fulfilled it, so skilfully indeed that he gained the regard of the sinner; and then he turned himself to his slips and moral exercises with the zeal and sprightliness of a boy.

"It shall be this year or never," he said to himself. He said it also to his tutor, who had great confidence in him, and who did not scruple, over innumerable cups of tea, to whisper it abroad that Piseng was as sure of a place this year as man could be.

And so it happened that, as the fame of Seng's indefatigable industry and more than usually strenuous efforts at his studies became noised abroad in the parlors of professors and the back streets of Peking, the public began to fancy him as a winning card.

Great, then, was the run upon the series in which the name of Piseng appeared. Word of this was of course soon brought to our friend, who abode with his wife in a small house in a mean part of the city.

"They shall not be disappointed," said Seng, with ill-concealed elation. "There are virtues of different kinds, but of these the pre-eminent ones are as follows

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All day long he gave himself over to his labors. His wife was as anxious as he was. For the time she thought less about her lovely, almond-shaped eyes and white teeth than about the issue of the dreaded examination. Indeed the result of this seemed to her almost of more consequence than the flat-browed little boy babe which she bore upon her lap, and which had signalized the past year by coming into the world to bless her.

It was absurd that they should starve as underlings in a mandarin's household when Seng had the ability at length to become, may be, a mandarin himself.

Now Piseng was our friend's full name, but for brevity's sake he was generally known by the ordinary name of Seng. In the schools, however, he was of course entered in full, and the prefix "Pi" gave People took to stopping Seng in the him a certain distinction which the multi-streets, and paying him wonderful complitude of other candidates with names as common as our Smith, Brown, Robinson, Jones, etc., by no means enjoyed.

As the time came on for the great examinations to begin, the influx of students into the imperial city made a perceptible difference in the population of the streets. It also caused proportionate excitement among the students themselves, their kindred, and the various proprietors of the lotteries, who were now to reap their annual harvest of cash and taels from the speculative inhabitants of the city. And this is one of the many odd features of life in the far East, as contrasted with life among ourselves.

In the south of Europe the lotteries are concerned with inanimate numbers. You invest your money on these in a series, and thus you lose it- much more often than not. With us horse-racing seems on a par with the lotteries. But the exalted Chinaman is not content with such meth

ments. They also implored him, of his infinite courtesy, to oblige them by succeeding as a candidate. They were interested in his success or failure to the extent of an indefinite number of taels.

This was of course exceedingly pleasant from one point of view. It was the kind of thing that could not fail to encourage a sanguine student. But, on the other hand, though at first Seng took it as a high honor, and would blush when his virtues and application were so elaborately extolled to his face, by and by he began to feel that there was a responsibility about his position which affected his nerves.

"It is dreadful, my peacock eye," he said to his wife one day when he felt very tenderly towards her, "it is dreadful to understand that upon my own unaided achievements depends the happiness or the disappointment of so many of my fellow-creatures."

"But why need it be? Is it not their

own affair? You do not ask them to believe you so sure of a place," urged the girl.

"No, I do not. But you perceive it is the same thing, do you not? or you would if your intelligence were of the masculine order. And is it not written in the fifth section of the third chapter of the eightand-twentieth volume of the great master that that; but upon the whole I need not perplex my mind with the memory of unnecessary learning. It is rare indeed that this part of the great master's collected writings are made use of in the schools."

"I cannot see that you are to blame in any way!"

"Nor are you asked to interest yourself so deeply in what is, perchance, beyond you. Behold the beginning and the end for which thou wast created!"

With these words Seng pointed to the Ichild of which he was the father. There was no answering so forcible a rejoinder. In his heart our friend was, however, in very much doubt after all as to his ability to win for his unknown friends the money they had invested upon him. He felt that his learning was of a halt and lame kind, and he knew only too well that unless the conditions were all in his favor he should not show at his best. With advancing years certain bodily distresses had come upon him. That leaden dragon, indigestion, in particular, harassed him, and tied up the mouth of his wallet of memory only too often.

"I pray that I may succeed, but I cannot tell. I cannot tell. As a person of priceless wisdom said in the reign of — in | the reign of It was during the Ming dynasty, but I cannot recollect the vener able individual's name, nor his exact words, though I have a diamond-clear sense of their significance."

So the days crept on until it was the eve of the opening of the great competition. Peking palpitated with the sound of repeated phrases, and with the throbbing of the hearts of the thousands of expectant students.

Seng was washing his face preparatory to eating his frugal supper when a visitor of distinction was announced. Countless were the obeisances the visitor's servant offered to Seng, and Seng requited them to the visitor himself.

The latter then expressed his wish to see our friend by himself, and to say something for his private ear. It was easily arranged. And immediately, without preamble, the visitor stated that he had come

to do his utmost to induce Seng to withdraw from the examination.

"I am able, most learned sir, to propose to you the sum of ten thousand taels as a compensation for your obliging sacrifice.” "Ten thousand taels !" exclaimed Seng, with natural surprise.

"It is true. I need not disguise it from a person of your perspicacity. The public have backed you-pardon the unscholarly phrase, I entreat - have backed you to such an extent that rather than pay up your series, most respected Piseng, we will endow you with this stupendous sum. You do not surely think it too little, by the side of the beggarly five hundred taels of income which may be the reward of your intellect-breaking success."

"Oh no," said Seng. "It is indeed a great deal of money, but—"

"And by no means a dishonest proposal, most virtuous sir, to whom all the injunctions of our most sapient and excellent ancestors are as familiar as your wife's face, if I may be pardoned for mentioning it for the sake of the simile."

"It is not very honest," demurred the perplexed Seng; "but still I have heard of more unpardonable deeds."

"Infinitely more unpardonable deeds are daily committed in the kingdom, and not so much as one house-fly says you are to blame' to the persons who are guilty of them. But how far removed from the borderland of guilt is the action I am empowered to suggest to you, oh long-suffering sir? You are to sacrifice yourself, Piseng, for the good of others. Instead of reaping honor and a certain position (much over-estimated though this assuredly is), you bow your head to some destitute youth who is your inferior in mind-power, and you say to him, with a heart over-crowded with generosity: Take, my brother, the reward that would have been mine. I give it freely to you, and retire into private life to enjoy the fruits of my life-long acquaintance with virtue and noble sentences.'

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"The ten thousand taels will be in cash, I presume, not in land?" asked Seng hesitantly, and with a hurried look round about him.

"In the most undoubted of papers, great sir. They shall be turned into silver, it so it please you. Then your self-renunciatory mind has decided?"

Seng thought earnestly for a minute. By accepting this proposal he would be saved anxiety for the rest of his life. Even as an official there would be no end, but death, to the harassments and future

examinations before him. Then there was his child, so pink and white, and likely to have a large appetite.

"I will receive the ten thousand taels," said Seng, "and having them, I will quit Peking at once. It shall suffice for me henceforward that I pursue the three happinesses of long life, wealth, and a family of sons. My constitution, though impaired, may yet suffice for the first and last of these desirable ends. As for the wealth, your esteemed consideration and my own self-sacrifice in the present matter may serve as a stepping-stone to it. I have said."

"Most discreet Piseng," was the other's reply, and after a few more words he withdrew, promising that the money should be sent that same night.

In effect it was sent, and received, and the following morning, instead of sitting down to a tiresome desk, our friend, with his wife and child, and the money in portable form, set out for Canton, where he proposed to begin a new life devoted to commerce instead of official honor.

This desertion of literature for commerce was a sad drop in the world for our poor friend. As a student of the character, and a disciple of the great Confucius and Mencius, he was an aristocrat of the Flowery Land, though poor as a harbor coolie or a chair porter. But in taking to trade he degraded himself below the unlettered worker in the fields. The worst of it was that he ascribed this perversion of his better nature, not to his own unrighteous and lazy instincts, but to his mother's untiring and discontented spirit. He proposed, however, to assuage the ghost's malignancy by paying a nice little sum to one of the most learned doctors of Feng-Shin (or ghost lore) in the country. If it were necessary to move the old lady's bones, even that also should be done, though the cost might be great.

in regard to its treatment of his religious views. On the one hand these attacks seemed to call for a rejoinder, and on the other to forbid it. It was futile to reason with critics who demanded of me an inspired as well as circumstantial knowledge of the life I had been called upon to depict, and were prepared to decline my unsupported authority for any one of its facts; who had framed for themselves a scheme of what that life must be, and measured not only my competence but my sincerity as a biographer by the degree in which I carried it out. I could only appeal from the unreason and the uncharitableness of the one class of judges to the more sympathetic justice of another; and the predominating kindness with which my work had been received rendered such an appeal superfluous. From the point of view of my own interest it seemed best that I should remain silent.

But my critics were not the only class with which I was concerned. They had awakened me to the probable existence of large groups of men and women whose faith in Mr. Browning was bound up with his supposed allegiance to the literal forms of Christianity, and had been wounded by my exposition of its error; and I felt with deep regret that, in wounding that faith, I had rendered myself responsible, not only to those who held it, but to him whose memory it enshrined. It occurred to me that the irritation which my statements had aroused was due in part to their brevity, in part also to their impersonal character; and that if I had made them at more length, and with more effort to explain and justify them, they might have carried more weight, and caused less pain in the proceeding. It seemed still possible to rectify the mistake, and at a great sacrifice of personal inclination I determined to do so. I sketched out the contents of an article which set forth in more detail what I understood to be Mr. Browning's faith, the reason he had given me for so understanding it, the positive and negative evidence in my favor to be discovered in the works. But meanwhile these very conclusions had been in the main endorsed by two important representatives of the Church press; and since then a critique of the "Life and Letters THE RELIGIOUS OPINIONS OF ROBERT in the London Quarterly Review has in

It need hardly be added that the backers of the Piseng series in the examinations were exceedingly wroth with Seng. But they had no redress.

From The Contemporary Review.

BROWNING.

BY MRS. SUTHERLAND ORR.

IT has for some time been an anxious question with me whether or not I should make some answer to the attacks directed against my memoir of Robert Browning,

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vested them with the authority of a very important Protestant sect. The writer, it

As the Contemporary Review is read in America only allude in this paper to certain English reviewers as well as in England, it may be well to specify that I of my book.

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