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Thy star ascends. Oh, far from falling, Stillness of death upon thee, divinest!

Across the abyss of nameless humanity,
The ages call thy spirit illustrious.
To heights where sit in solemn council
Gods of the soil of our sacred country.

Thy star ascends: and Dante amazedly To Virgil saith-"Our heroes of fantasy Were less than he."-But Livy, smiling, "He is of history, oh my poets!"

In him, the bold and patient Ligurian, Lives on the line of Hesperian citizens; With lofty look, he stands for justice Bathed in the beams of a bright ideal.

Oh Lion-heart!-In fiery ebullience
Of Etna's caves, or thunder of cataracts
From Alpine heights thou beatest alway
Full in defiance of beast and tyrant!

But calmly too in heave of cerulean Seas, or the balmy breath of the flowertime,

When suns of May shed sweet effulgence Over the mighty who sleep in marble.

From The Gentleman's Magazine.
THE BONDAGER.

A NORTHUMBRIAN SKETCH OF THIRTY
YEARS AGO.

"My bairn, I feel kind o' troubled like, for the preacher body he kept tellin' us we maun gan' into wor closets to pray, and wors is that small and that full o' taties naebody could manage it ony gait," and Betty Best sighed as she stretched her poor old feet in front of the fire that Sunday afternoon, and looked wistfully towards her gaunt middle-aged daughter, appealing for a little light on her problem.

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made from the wild crab, or "scrab" as it is locally called, and proud she was of its garnet-like clearness.

As she pressed down the last cover, however, she spoke: "I dinent ken aught about closets, though maybe's the Lord will hear us; whether or no, I mind I did ask him to send us a good crop when I was plantin' them taties, we the and sure enough never had likes on't; but I dee like to see yon man get into the pulpit; he always has that nice an' white shirt breast, and his coat is that fine and black and shiny, it looks gae fittin,' and eh, but he does thump the good book fair wonderful," and with this exposition of her views of preaching Jane returned to her task.

Sunday afternoon though it was, she felt no burden on her conscience by reason of its mundane characterrather, indeed, unconsciously prided herself because it was a "nice tidy job, and she could do it in a clean white apron." The function had almost a sort of sanctity about it and partook of a religious character.

Sunday was principally marked to Jane by the fact that she could wear a white apron all day, instead of the coarse sacking wrapper proper to fieldwork.

Jane wrought the "Bondage" on the farm where her brother was "hind," and worked from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M.. for the handsome sum of fifteen-pence, and when the weather wasn't too rough, Jane was wonderfully contented too, and no more thought of questioning the rightness of it than she did that of the hours of rising and the setting of the sun itself.

Jane could neither read nor write, and was not clever enough to have found out for herself that if everybody left off working twelve hours and only worked eight, poverty would be no more, and the pure streams of national prosperity would forthwith run wherever directed, even uphill if the pipes were laid on proper Socialistic principles!

Ah! well, the world moves and we with it, and if Contentment must needs

die to give birth to Progress, so let it be. Perhaps no human being has a right to be contented with so little as poor Jane possessed.

Her life had known no great joy, not even the blossoming time of youthful love, for "virtue" is too often a very stern and almost sordid thing below a certain level of intellectual cultureeither it means a prudent and too often loveless marriage, or a life of old maidenhood unsoftened and unsweetened by any recollection of the happy pairing time which ought by rights to come to all.

Love in its higher aspects is a plant that needs culture for its development, needs something of leisure, something of freedom from lower cares (if a man or woman hasn't bread and cheese, he or she thinks of bread and cheese first and companionship second)-needs, too, a touch of self-consciousness and a sense of individuality-"I must be I" -before there comes any wish for mental union. In fact, mind must exist before it can unite itself to mind.

"Love" to Jane meant ruin and shame, as she had seen it in some of her girl companions, while her view of marriage was expressed naïvely enough when speaking of that of a comparatively wealthy woman: "What call had she to marry? She'd plenty to keep herself!" and apparently folly could no farther go in Jane's maiden mind.

But though joy had been unborn, her life had held one great passion; a love deep as that of sex, tender and selfdenying as that of motherhood itself.

Ever since the day when, a girl of eight, her baby brother had been given her to hold and to nurse, "Wor Dan" had meant all the world to Jane.

And a bonny child he had beensturdy and strong, and "wilful as a lad bairn should be," and a heavy weight for poor underfed Jane to carry in his petticoat days, when, their mother working in the fields, the little girl had to be nurse and housekeeper and cook, and carry dinners to the field-workers, with the chubby youngster astride her

back, or slung in a shawl so as to leave her hands free for basin and for basket.

How proud she was of him, too, so proud she forgot his weight, forgot even that he hurt her when his hard little fists beat her shoulders or tugged at her hair, as he cried, "Jenny do faster-Dan 'ants to twot," and the tired, willing steed tried to trot forthwith.

Dan was a man now, and a strong, good-looking chap, too; and though he had not been in a hurry about it, he was doing a bit of courting on his own account at last, and Jane had his supper to keep waiting while the milkmaid at the farm took longer to fill her cans in the byre than she was wont to do, and the old mother by the ingle muttered to herself that "Dan should hae more sense than let his hasty-puddin' spoil for all the lasses that ever were made," and that "no good would come o' such a fly-by-thesky as Sally was like to be.

Autumn wore on and winter came, and a terribly severe one it was. Snow fell heavily very early, and lay for weeks on the outlying farms where food grew scarce for man and beast, and it was difficult to get fresh supplies in the blocked condition of the roads.

There was no field work proper, but Jane had to help in foddering the cattle and herding the sheep, and many a weary plunge she had with backloads of hay or aprons full of cut turnips, while her limbs ached and her fingers grew benumbed.

But the worst was yet to come. Dan the stalwart, Dan the beautiful, Dan "the man-body," took cold. How, no one knew, and soon he lay gasping for breath and groaning as the sharp cutting pain of pleurisy darted through his body.

There was much of the baby still in the big, strong man, and he was all unused to suffering, and as night fell the pain grew worse.

The nearest medical man lived seven miles away, and the roads were barely passable, while telegraph-wires were

things as far removed.

They kept cold, and pitiless as that of Dante's "Inferno" itself.

early hours at the farm, and the lights were all out, and Dan, "Bonny Dan," might die before the morning.

Meanwhile they did what they could, and if the remedies were not of the best, they were, at all events, numerous enough, beginning with "peppermint waters," and ending with a dinner-plate heated in the oven and laid where the pain was worst.

Still no relief came, and the strong young fellow turned his cheek to the pillow and wept like a child.

"Eh, my man, my bonny man, dinna, now dinna. I'll gan to Horton mysel, but ye shall hae a bottle frae the doctor," and Jane took her thin, old shawl and her woollen bonnet from the peg behind the door and stepped out into the night.

Dare she waken them at the farm and ask the master to send? But there was nobody to go, for Dan and she were the only workpeople that lived near, for Jim the plough-boy had gone to his mother's "buryin'," and the farmer was getting an old man himself, and not too kindly either, it must be confessed. "Sally? No. Sally might like a good-looking chap like Dan well enough to fetch and carry for her, but catch her turning out of her warm bed to do aught for him," thought Jane, comforting herself amid her suffering with the thought that no one could love Dan as she did, and maybe she wasn't far wrong. Any how, she needed all her love before the night was over.

The woman was very tired to start with, for she had tried to do both Dan's work and her own, "so that the poor beasts should not want their meat," and in her care for them had well-nigh forgotten food for herself.

Her clothes were thin and worn, and her shoes were heavy, yet far from water-tight, and the roads she had to travel alternated between bits that were hard and frost-bound, but comparatively passable where the wind had swept them clear, and others inches thick of snow, where it lay in the hollows, and the air was keen and

It was well on to ten o'clock when she started, and the night was dark save for the stars, and the gleam of the unsmirched icy snow.

Such a night in the country is the acme of loneliness. The world itself seemed dead and the wind alone left to mourn. Not a sound of bird nor beast to break the stillness; and the solitary wayfarer may travel miles without meeting another human creature.

Jane was prosaic enough, and yet weird new thoughts came to her in that night's walk.

Strange, she hardly knew what the night was like till then, for all her forty years of country life, for she had been wont to go to bed at sundown, and, weary and sleepy, had never thought of rising to look from her window at midnight storm or midnight calm.

How far off the sky seemed, and how big the dark, threatening clouds that told of more snow yet to come. Did God live up there, and would Danher Dan-have to go all the way up there by himself? And would God ken who he was, and not be hard on him, for he'd never had much schoolin'? And maybe Dan would forget his manners, as he used to do when he met the parish priest, and not think to pull his forelock till she minded him what the Quality looked for.

God was, in Jane's mind, not so very unlike the "priest," only bigger and older; and, in her heart, she thought, kinder, for "He had heard her when she prayed for a good crop o' taties. and that was good of him, seein' he'd such a lot o' things to mind, and sae many folks speakin' to him that could make 'grand prayers.' Eh! Would he happen to listen if she asked him to spare Dan?"

One moment she knelt beneath the stars in the piercing cold, and all her soul went out in a cry for help to the Power she knew so little, but yet felt was good.

Then, a little more hopeful, a little stronger even, as it seemed, in body, she went on her way.

It was slow work at best, and the drifted snow was toilsome; the woman's breath came in short, hard gasps at times, and there was a sound in her ears like church bells far away, and she wondered what it meant.

Once or twice she staggered, but never for one moment thought of relinquishing her purpose.

At last she reached the village and roused the man she sought. "It's Dan -wor Dan-ye maun come, for he's gae bad," she sobbed, and leaned against the door-post as she spoke; and the doctor, weary though he was. looked once into the woman's face and knew it was no light case that had brought her there.

"Poor soul-poor soul; sit down a bit and rest. You are not fit to walk back," he said. But Jane had done her work and turned to go.

"Ye'll ride your mare, doctor; she'll travel faster wantin' the gig, for the snow's gae thick in places and barely passable," and the wisdom of her counsel stopped his offer of a seat by his side.

Back into the night the woman went, and the darkness was deeper, and the cold more pitiless. No sound, no human footsteps, only by and by the doctor passed her on his horse, and spoke a kindly word, but did not wait her reply, and, indeed, she had no voice to answer.

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her intensity of love, the tired woman managed the last mile or two almost in a state of trance. She grew unconscious of all that surrounded her-of the cold, the darkness, and even of her own body, and seemed to herself to be already present where her loved one lay.

"He is easier now, and I'll try and come again to-morrow," said the doctor, who had remained longer than usual at the cottage, fighting Deat} with his own hands, for the old mother was far from an efficient nurse.

Even as he spoke the latch was lifted, and Jane entered. Her eyes were set -her lips drawn across her teeth, and she looked tall and straight and white as one already dead, yet her pallid lips tried to form a question. Tried, but tried in vain.

"Yes, there is hope-hope assuredly," the doctor said, answering that pathetic appeal; but even as he spoke he laid the woman on the low tressle bed and tried to feel the pulseless wrist.

The hours passed, and the woman lay apparently unconscious-though the doctor was still in the little home trying every means he knew to keep the ebbing life-for Death, great Death, was hovering near.

Morning broke, and Dan lay sleeping like a child, his breathing peaceful, and his hot and feverish forehead cool and moist; but Jane's face looked strangely grey in that early light of dawn. Then her eyes unclosed and her lips murmured one word just audible to the doctor, as he stooped over her, "Dan!"

"Dan will pull through now, my woman," he answered; but his voice had a quiver in it that surprised himself.

A smile-a gleam of joy-"Eh, God did hear then, bless him, and heaven maun be nearer then I thought, the music is that sweet."

Then there was silence, and another soul was freed from earthly bondage forevermore.

ISABELLA WEDDLE.

From Longman's Magazine. ANOTHER ARCADY. Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes Angulus ridet.-Hor. Od. II. vi. That little nook of the world on each side of and among the Black Mountains, which separate Herefordshire and Brecknockshire, seems to those who know it best to be a survival from an other century; a patch of the England of a hundred years ago set down in the England of to-day. "I know not how it is, but some of us in this century find ourselves possessed by an insatiable yearning not to speculate upon the future but to get into touch with the past." Here, indeed, we can study the past with something like success; and not only are the "minor antiquities of the generations immediately preceding ours" unfolded for us in every farmhouse and cottage, but nature too is seen 'at its best-inanimate nature in the great solemn mountain wastes and green hillsides, animate nature in the wealth of life in every hedgerow and field and tree.

And this green wilderness takes our imagination by storm in its very aloof ness from all that makes up the world of to-day. What seems to me its greatest want is indeed its greatest charm. It is just because it offers nothing that is new, nothing that is exciting, nothing that is of to-day more than of yesterday, only "the old loved things," that the remembrance of it comes back to us in crowded London streets like a sea breeze, like a gale that bestows much more than a momentary bliss. Thought, and human life and its conditions, are forever changing; and while we are still pondering over what seems to be the problem or the book of to-day, some new problem has arisen before the other has been set at rest, and there is a life and stir in the very air. But the world of nature is so different from all this! It makes no imperious demands on our time or on our thoughts. We leave it and come back to it and find it as we left it, except for the season's difference except that the tender green of spring leaves has turned to yellow, and the summer birds have gone away.

It wears the same face to us as it did to Homer. "The sighing of the coming south wind," "the beating of the willows upon the shore," "streams downfalling through the rocky glens," sound to us as they did to Virgil; the goldfinches sing the same song above the hedge to-day as they sang to him in his Italian summers so long ago. The

daisies pied and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight

now as they did when Shakespeare looked on them in the fields by Stratford. Or, leaving poetry, White's beautiful "Selborne" will never grow old, never cease to have a place in the world's affections, because the little lives therein so gracefully discoursed of will not change as the centuries go by.

And then this green wilderness has those other charms which appeal to some more strongly than even the charms of nature can do. We all remember how Dean Stanley wrote of the Alps as "unformed, unmeaning lumps;" unless history or great fiction had left its impress on scenery, it was nothing to him. And Scott too, in the words of Professor Shairp, was one who "locked on the earth most habitually as seen through the coloring with which historic events and great historic names had invested it." But in many minds this feeling works in a still more subtle way, "and it is this: wherever men have been upon earth, even when they have done no memorable deeds, and left no history behind them, they have lived and they have died, they have joyed and they have sorrowed; and the sense that men have been there and disappeared leaves a pathos on the face of many a now unpeopled solitude." And these are the things which give an additional charm to the solitudes of which I write, although they are not wholly unpeopled; these traces of a vanished humanity in the shape of pathetic old farmhouses, grey and gaunt now; of some ruined priory almost hidden in wild brushwood; of some little whitewashed

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