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ture indeed, ever toiling harder and growing more fastidious as he feels the years before him grow fewer, until finally by continual exertion is brought on a fatal malady and death, which, if he would but have consented to take his ease, the doctors think he might have averted.

But Leighton's indomitable character would yield to nothing less than death. Turning over the portfolios we see it written more legibly than if it were set down in a journal. Here was a man pursued with ambition to excel, clearheaded, sparingly emotional, a man of intellect and iron will. If he was not exactly a poet in the sense of displaying a warm sympathy with human nature, he was eminently so in the sense that he had a cult and love for beauty. He had an ideal, which he pursued with an unswerving passion. It was his habit and his creed to keep his pictures generally impersonal, but now and again his heart appeared in them, and once at any rate the springs of his innermost life were committed to canvas in a picture which was the type of his general mental attitude, viz., "The Spirit of the Summits."

S. P. COCKERELL.

From The Speaker.

THE FRENCH WIFE.

Squire Barnard of Castle Barnard was a man filled with the fulness of life. He looked round upon his castle and his pastures, his park-land and his plough-land, and had no more thought to his latter end than the man in the Scriptures. He had an ancient house, from the windows of which he surveyed three counties, and which had been his father's before him, and would be his son's after him. He had the land-hunger and the house-hunger for his own possessions. He was incredibly proud, under his rough exterior, of his name and his race. He was a redfaced, blustering, overbearing man; handsome, if you like the sort-blue

eyed, red-haired, white-toothed. His friends said that the heart of him was as sound as a nut; others, and these with no cause of disaffection towards him, held him a man whose will was born to over-ride the wills and the rights of the weak. His dogs and his horses knew the lash of his whip, but loved him withal. His servants held him honest, although his face in the stable-yard and the cattle-byre was as good as a high wind.

There was one he was never rough with-his French wife. She was little, and merry as a squirrel, with bright, dancing brown eyes, and a pretty manner of appeal that went to one's heart. She hung on Squire Barnard's life like a rose on his coat. She was always prattling to him, or nestling by him with her little brown hand in his great paw, or perched on his chair-arm whispering in his ear some innocent jest, at which he would shout his big laugh and swear that there was never such a girl.

She was more babyish and more witching than her two boys-solemn, serious-eyed, brown-skinned children, beautiful in roundness and health. Those boys were the crown of Squire Barnard's pride. They were called Pierre and Antoine-Peter and Antony the squire said, were names good enough for him. He had them riding their ponies before they were three years of age, and he was as proud of their pluck as he was of their health and beauty.

He had found his French wife abroad -no one quite knew where. It was certain that, she seemed to have no relatives; at least, no one out of France ever came to visit her. There was a rumor that Squire Barnard had eloped with her a foolish rumor perhaps; but Nelly Egan, a housemaid at Castle Barnard, swore to the conversation she had heard one morning when she was dusting the inner library and the squire and his wife in the outer had not seen or heard her presence because of the heavy curtains drawn across the arch between.

The squire was at his papers, his

lady as usual seated on the arm of his chair. For a miracle, she was silent, and after a time the squire seemed to notice so unusual a happening, for Nelly heard him say:

"What, my chicken, silent so long! I shall think thy music is out of season with the blackbird's and the lark's."

She answered nothing, and then, according to Nelly, who must have had her eye between the curtains, he swung her on to his knee, and laid her down on his shoulder as if she were a bit of a child. Then he swore a great oath, which Nelly was too good a Presbyterian to record, that he would have no tears; yet, for all that, he pulled out his big bandanna, and mopped away at the French wife's eyes affectionately.

"It is the birthday of my mother, Robert," she said in broken English, that fell from her lips as prettily as the drops of water from a fountain.

"And what then? I have a birthday in a week from now; and whatever thou askest of me I shall give thee. Is that enough, child?"

He gathered her up closer in his arms, and held her against his rough cheek.

"I would go into France, if I might, and pray my mother's pardon. She is a word. old, and I left her without What would we do, thou and I, if some day our sons should do the like?"

"Thy lady-mother would have none of me," the squire said, with a tremble of anger in his voice, "because I prayed as my fathers had prayed before me. Hast Why dost thou think of her? thou not me?"

"Yes, yes, Robert," answered the French wife timidly, and lifting a hand to stroke his cheek. "I ought not to weep having so dear a husband."

"And thy lads, thy gift to me. Come to the terrace to see them. Antony is playing with his ball, and Peter, when I last saw him, was setting his pony to jump the sunk fence."

"Oh, my boy," cried the French wife, getting up and running fast to the door. "He will kill himself! Why dost

thou not bid him, Robert, that he should be careful?"

"Nay," said the squire, following and detaining her, "I will not have my boys taught fear. I would rather to see them dead than afraid. I will let thee go when thou hast gained courage."

The French wife, indeed, was fluttering in his grasp like a snared bird, and turning great eyes of appeal upon him; but though he caught her in his arms and held her close, he was merciless to her. Only when she had promised him not to frighten the boy did he let her go, and then he went with her.

It was Nelly, again, who heard this scrap of conversation between them when she ought to have been minding her own business. The squire had been away, and on his return had brought his wife a barbaric piece of jewellery. It was his custom to load her with gems and gold. She was thanking him, with her heart in her eyes, and the children were rolling together with the dogs on the hearth-rug. His glance fell upon them, and pride leaped into his eyes.

"Thou hast given me the boys," he said, pointing at them. "I have a right to love thee."

"Thou wouldst love me without the boys, Robert?" she said in alarm.

"I don't know that I could love a What childless woman, even thee. would become of the land, then? Be content, my pretty. Thou art the mother of brave sons, and I adore thee."

Not so long after this, as time goes, Squire Barnard and his cousin James met over a card-table. The two men hated each other, and both were inflamed by drink. Squire Barnard was the loser and was savage. Insult after insult he flung into his cousin's pale, sneering face, which had a look of triumphant malice that almost maddened him. His ill-luck continued, and he grew wilder and more savage. He played his cards amid a shower of oaths, and his insults to the man opposite increased so that James Barnard's veins swelled in his forehead, his lips worked, and into his little grey

eyes there came a greenish light like that in the eyes of a beast when he is about to spring.

"I can bear with thee, Cousin Robert," he said at last, with icy deliberation, and tasting the words as if they were delicious. "One day thou wilt come to an end of thy passions by a fit, and Castle Barnard will be mine, and thou wilt be forgotten."

"Thine, thou devil!" shouted Squire Barnard, his eyes starting from their sockets. "And what of my bonny lads?"

James Barnard hissed a word between his teeth at which the other man fell back and panted hard. For a moment he looked as dazed as the bull in the arena when he has lost much blood and feels the sharp stab of the spear. Then, with an infuriated roar, he sprang at his enemy.

If he had once caught him by the throat, James Barnard would have had small chance of ever succeeding to Castle Barnard, but by this time the fine gentlemen who had been watching the scene with lazy amusement thought it time to interpose, and he was caught by a dozen strong hands and dragged backward out of the room. Robert Barnard remembered no more till he awoke some hours later and found Dr. Holmes bending above him.

"Too choleric, my friend," said the physician. "You must learn to keep quiet. This time I have averted a fit of bleeding, but next time I am not sure how next time will go."

"You heard what he said, doctor?" asked Robert Barnard. The doctor nodded his head gravely.

"I heard it. It may be malice. He has set it afloat that Armstrong the counsellor tells him that the marriage is nothing in law, and the children cannot succeed. It is not that madame is a Papist, though there is some such law on the statute-book. We might look for that to be repealed in time. But it is something of the French law, something about the permission of the parents. It would be strange if such a thing should unmake a lawful marriage, but the fellow seems sure."

"I will go to Armstrong and ask," said the squire, stretching his great, hairy arms for his clothes. He was still pale from the shock as much as the recent bleeding.

The doctor said nothing. He was too wise a man to try to keep the squire against his will, and he felt that the suspense was more killing to the man than any foolhardiness could

be.

An hour later Squire Barnard staggered out of Armstrong's office with a face like a ghost. He flung himself into the saddle and turned for home. As he went his horse's hoofs made the sparks fly out of the stones; and as he dashed up the street, frightening children and upsetting barrows-for it was fair-day-a shower of curses followed him.

A couple of miles from home the way led him past the Inch Farm. Susan McElligott, his tenant's daughter, was grinding flour at a quern. Mechanically the squire's eyes fell upon her. She was as tall as himself, and splendidly built. Her bare arms shone like rosy marble. Below the opening of her bodice at the neck her full bosom rose and fell. Her red hair was red-gold in the sun, and her downy skin was faintly bedewed with perspiration. The squire looked at her, and then trembled all over with a violent impulse.

"If I took her to church," he muttered in his beard, "she would give me sons, and James Barnard would never rule in my stead."

He flung himself from his horse, and marched up to the astonished girl. "Will you take me for your husband?" he said.

The girl's eyes, blue as sapphires. narrowed themselves between the red gold lashes.

"What, Squire Barnard, is it to marry a man already married?"

"Married? Not I, my girl. They can outwit a man with their accursed French laws, no matter how honest he be. I am no more married than you.” "But madame?"

The squire blenched. "Do not speak

of her. I am not married. Is not that enough?"

The girl dropped her quern. "Come in to my father and say to him what you have said to me. If you are not mad, I will give you your answer."

Between Andrew McElligott and the squire it was settled, and within a very short space of time the two stood up before the minister in a neighboring county and were made man and wife.

Squire Barnard returned to Castle Barnard as meek as a whipped dog, and like the ghost of his strong triumphant self. The French wife and her boys were gone-Armstrong the counsellor had arranged all that-and Susan McElligott reigned in her stead, and ruled Castle Barnard with the cruelty and the caprice of a tyrant who has been born a slave.

The French wife went no further than Ballymolena, the county town, not distant five miles from the gates of Castle Barnard. There she crept with her two lads into the pretty cottage the squire had provided for her, too stunned, it would seem, to refuse the bread from his hands.

But she had not been a year abandoned when the croup seized on the beautiful round children. They said she stood over them when they were dying, dry-eyed, and even praised the Lord aloud that he had snatched the innocent from shame.

When Robert Barnard heard they were dying, he came creeping to her door-post praying that he might see them; but she shut the door in his face. God had put a new spirit into the French wife.

When the little ones were laid side by side under the shamrock sod of Ballymolena graveyard, she turned her back on the cottage, and took up her abode some distance away. After that she accepted no more of Robert Barnard's charity. She offered herself to teach music and French to the children of gentlefolk in those parts, and, papis: though she was, feeling ran so high in her favor that she had more pupils than she could well handle.

But the night the children died Susan McElligott, as she was always called in those parts, was delivered of a dead

son.

It was but the beginning of Robert Barnard's punishment. Child upon child came into the world dead, or lived a few days before its tiny breath flickered out. For long the nursery was silent, and the dust gathered thickly on the toy soldiers and the rocking-horses that had belonged to the children of the French wife. The last child Susan McElligott bore him, a boy, lived. But alas! as he grew up to manhood a want in his mind revealed itself. He was quite gentle and intelligent about some things, but something had been left out of his mind at the making—something that should enable him to take his place among other men, and to carry on the business of this world. He inherited from his father, curiously enough, the love of the land, and it was his harmless delight to spend days measuring it with instruments, and afterwards making colored maps of it. At the schoolhouses of the district he would come begging an urchin to carry his strange tools for him over miles of bog and mountain.

He was the last of the Barnards of Castle Barnard.

KATHARINE TYNAN.

From Belgravia.

ON ANAGRAMS.

The ingenious transpositions of the letters forming the name of a person or thing, and their re-arrangement so as to represent some word or sentence containing a suitable comment upon the original name, are briefly known as anagrams. These are forms of literary trifling, which have been practised from times of great antiquity, but they reached their zenith in France during the period preceding the Revolution. In this latter period, of course their manufacture was regarded merely as an elegant accomplishment, but centuries before they were looked upon as

a species of augury, and soothsayers but an anagram upon his genuine were wont to ascribe such destinies or characteristics to persons as were to be found in the words evolved from their names.

The old Hebrew augurs placed great faith in their virtue as indications of what fortune had in store, and in this they were followed by Plato, together with the philosophers who succeeded him. It is surprising also to observe that even the Puritan writers commended attention being given to these trifles. That they were utilized for more than purely mundane purposes, is sufficiently plain from a couplet contained in an elegy by Cotton Mather, on the death of John Wilson, the first pastor of Boston, New England. wrote:

He

His care to guide his flock and feed nis lambs,

By words, works, prayers, psalms, almus and anagrams.

We may fairly gather that anagrams have, from an indefinitely early date, attracted a considerable amount of attention, not only from men of commanding intellects, but also from the leisured and cultured dandies who surrounded the courts of England and France. Courtiers sought to curry favor with their patrons by exercising their petty wits in manufacturing anagrams from their mis-spent ingenuity by either adding or omitting a few letters.

On

Such performances as these authorize the serious-minded Elizabethan judge, Sir Julius Cæsar, marking a certain packet of papers belonging to him in no uncertain characters, "Trash." being opened, this proved to be a collection of these far-fetched witticisms. Addison also satirizes an ardent lover who occupied himself for six months in concocting anagrams on his lady's name, only to find that, his task being completed, he had by some means or other mis-spelt it.

Voltaire would not have agreed with Addison in thus despising these small flowers of wit, for the pseudonym by which he is now so widely known is

name. His proper name was Arouet, and his signature was Arouet 1. j. (le jeune, the younger.) Regarding the letters "u" and "j" as equivalent to "v" and "i" respectively, in the way they were regarded in those days, we get the anagram of Voltaire. He himself was so pleased with the change that he at once adopted it, and to such effect that comparatively few people are aware now that it was not his correct title. Voltaire itself willon examination be found to resolve itself into O, alte vir―(Oh! noble man!) One or two less important instances of the same thing may be adduced. Barry Cornwall, poet, is an anagrammatized version of Bryan Waller Proctor; Alcuinus is a disguise of Calvinus, the "v" and "u" being again used as identical letters, whilst Alcofribas Nasier is but a variation of the great François Rabelais. The above instances support the statement that many men of rank, in their pursuits, have no objection to utilize anagrams of their names for the purposes of pseudonyms.

Some of the most elaborate anagrams extant have been composed on subjects of a religious or quasi-religious nature. The Jesuits seem to have been particularly active in these pursuits. In a book by Joseph Zoller, a member of the order of St. Benedict, who lived in 1712, there are no fewer than one hundred anagrams on the sentence "Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum!" ("Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord with thee!") It is obviously impossible to touch upon all; it must suffice to mention two. The first is "Ave pura Regina, summo amanti dilecta," which may be translated: Hail pure Queen, beloved by the Most High. The second form runs thus: "Virgo serena, pia, munda et immaculata," i.e., Virgin serene, pious, pure and spotless.

Some years ago a competition was started for a prize to be awarded for the best anagrams upon the names of the seven bishops. They were anagrammatized in no less than two hundred and twelve different ways, of which none were absolutely accurate,

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