the world, and was of mark in any society he entered.

When we find members of the party he had led to victory in the House of Commons rejoicing that his wings were Lord Lyndhurst, as he appears in the clipped and his influence neutralized by scattered notices in the journal, is a livehis removal to the Lords, can we much lier sketch. There are few hard words wonder that when he discovered this he about him, and much pleasant and lively meditated some reprisals? The want of talk recorded. His politics sat very confidence was not entirely on one side, lightly on him; he was not trammelled if this picture be true, nor could those by earnestness or enthusiasm of any expect party loyalty who failed to give it. kind; had a genial sparkling spirit which If Brougham was jealous of others, others was sympathetic with that of the journalwere jealous of him; and without be-ist, and no very fixed or unbending opinlieving, with Mr. Greville, that the insult (ions. It was new to us to know, as Mr. of being offered the post of attorney- Greville informs us, that Lord Grey general was the source of the discontent, would have made Lyndhurst chancellor we do not think the causes of the ulti- if he could. We cannot pause over the mate result require any mystery to be characteristic traces of this most accomsolved to ascertain them. Brougham plished and remarkable man which many was probably a restless uncomfortable pages of these volumes contain. They colleague, given to indiscreet remarks, are all refreshing and agreeable, and conand not prone to conceal or refrain from trast pleasantly with the sombre shades ridicule or contempt. In or out of sea- which Mr. Greville has frequently on his son his arrogant and imperious spirit palette. Sombre as they are, however, was impatient of control, and despised these are the tints in which a keen obinferior minds, the greatest mistake a server can hardly fail to depict what he man who aspires to leadership can com- sees around him in social and political mit. Finding himself only welcomed life. Mr. Greville's highest merit, as a because he could not be excluded, he chronicler of his times, seems to us to be naturally looked to strengthen his own his searching analysis of character. With position, perhaps not regarding much inimitable penetration and with great that of others who were ready to sacrifice felicity of style, he has drawn his conhim. All this does not necessarily imply temporaries as they were. It is the the imputation of perfidious conduct, rarest quality in a writer of history to although having thrown for the stake trace such portraits alike without conand lost, it is not surprising that he was cealment and without malice, and we not allowed his revenge. The retrospect doubt not that they will go down to is sad enough; but in the memory of posterity as they are depicted in these what he did, we had rather not remem-pages. ber what faint friends, more than open enemies, have sometimes accused him of doing.

To some persons it may apppear, however, that the main interest and merit of this work does not consist so much in O'Connell and Lyndhurst are the re- the author's anecdotes of distinguished maining portraits, both very well painted. men as in his narrative of the secret and O'Connell's rise and reign form very less familiar history of very important prominent features in the book; his im- and familiar events. The book begins in mense influence, his social position, and 1819- when the Holy Alliance, the Six extraordinary power of popular speaking Acts, and the highest of Toryism were in are first recounted. Then comes the the ascendant. It ends in 1837, when Clare election, and Mr. Greville con- every trace of them had perished. There cludes he will fail in the House. Then is no better or more graphic history of he speaks from the bar of the House, these remarkable events extant than is and Mr. Greville concludes that he will to be found in Mr. Greville's contemposucceed. The rest of his career, or at raneous memoranda - and his habit of least that which was the most important leaving his daily impressions uncanpart of it, is fully narrated, and the char-celled, while it impairs the accuracy of acter of the great agitator given in too his opinions, adds greatly to the vividminute detail for us to transcribe. Mr. Greville met him once in society, and says of him that there was nothing remarkable in his conversation, but that he seemed well bred and at his ease. O'Connell indeed was entirely a man of

ness of his book as a history. Nothing can be more interesting than to watch, through these faithful pages, the gradual decay of old abuse, and the rise of genuine constitutional popular influence. The squabbles of men and cabinets, and the

ancient and constitutional institutions.

and I tell you Trelyon."

I can't go with you, Mr.

"Oh, very well," said he, carelessly; "you needn't show your temper."

"My temper!" said Mabyn; but then she recollected herself, and smiled derisively, and went away to fetch her sister.

intrigues of party, as we now look back on them through a vista of forty or fifty years, important and absorbing as they were at the time, were but the indications of elements over which cabinets and statesmen had little power. But it is through that medium that we can trace most accurately the growth and progress of that great political revolution through When Wenna came outside into the which, in the space of fifteen years, this sunlight, and went forward to shake country passed, happier than its neigh-hands with him, with her dark eyes lit up bours, without anything which deserved by a friendly smile, it seemed to him that the name of popular tumult, and with in-not for many a day not certainly durcreased security and stability to all its ing all the time of her engagement with Mr. Roscorla - had he seen her look so pleased, happy, and contented. She still bore that quiet gravity of demeanour which had made him call her the little Puritan, and there was the same earnestness in her eyes as they regarded any one; but there was altogether a brighter aspect about her face that pleased him exceedingly. For he was very well disposed to this shy and yet matter-of-fact young person, and was alternately amused by the quaintness of her motherly ways in dealing with the people about her, and startled into admiration by some sudden glimpse of the fine sincerity of her nature. He had done more to please her he had gone to church several times, and tried to better his handwriting, and resolved to be more careful in speaking.of parsons in her presence - than he ever thought he could have done to please any

From The Cornhill Magazine.
THREE FEATHERS.

CHAPTER XVI.

SPRING-TIME.

THE spring-time had indeed arrived rapidly and imperceptibly; and all at once it seemed as if the world had grown green, and the skies fair and clear, and the winds sweet with a new and delightful sweetness. Each morning that Wenna went out brought some further wonder with it along the budding hedgerows, in the colours of the valley, in the fresh warmth of the air, and the white light of the skies. And at last the sea began to show its deep and resplendent summer blue, when the morning happened to be still, and there was a silvery haze along the coast.

Mabyn, 'is your sister at home? And do you think she could go up to the Hall for a little while, for my mother wants to see her? And do you think she would walk round by the cliffs for it is such a capital morning-if you came with her?"

woman.

So these two set forth on this bright and cheerful morning; and one would have said, to see them as they went, that two happier young folks were not within the county of Cornwall at that moment. Wenna had a pleasant word for every one that passed; and when they had gone by the mill, and reached the narrow path by the tiny harbour, where no more neighbours were to be seen, she appeared to transfer her abounding sympathy to all the objects around her, and she spoke to them, and laughed to them, so that all the world seemed to be friendly with her. Her sister used to say that her fingers tingled to the very tips with kindness; and at this moment she seemed as though she could have kissed her hand to all the birds and animals around, and wished them joy that they had so fine a morning.

Ho, ho! Mr. Porpoise," she laughed and said as she saw far below her a big fish slowly heel over in the blue water of the harbour; "don't you come too fat

up, or you won't like the stones in the stream, I know!"

Harry, wishing to say something very pleasant to his companion, "that Mr. Roscorla is having such fine weather on

There was a hawk hovering high in the air over Blackcliff-Trelyon was watch-his way out? I am sure you would have ing it keenly.

Oh, go away, you bad bird," she cried, "and let the poor little things alone!" And sure enough, at this moment, the motionless speck up there began to flutter its wings, and presently it sailed away over the cliff, and was seen no more. "Mother Sheep," she said to the inattentive custodian of two very small lambs with very thick legs and uncertain gait, "why don't you look after your children? you'll have them tumbling down the rocks into the sea in about a minute - that's about what you'll do !"

"Boom!" she said to a great humblebee that flew heavily by; and to a white butterfly that went this way and that over the warm grass on the hillside she called out, "My pretty lady, aren't you glad the summer is coming?"

She talked to the white and grey gulls that were wheeling over the sea, and to the cloughs flying hither and thither about the steep precipices of the cliff. They did not answer her; but that was no matter. From her childhood she had believed that she knew them all, and that they knew her; and that even the cliffs, and the sea, and the clouds regarded her, and spoke to her in a strange and silent fashion. Once she had come back from the mouth of the harbour on a sultry afternoon, when as yet the neighbours had heard nothing of the low mutterings of the distant and coming storm; and when her mother asked the child why she was so silent, she said, "I have been listening to God walking on the sea."

been very anxious if there had been any storms about. I hope he will be successful; he's a good sort of fellow."

No one who was not acquainted with this young gentleman could have guessed at the dire effort he had to make in order to pronounce these few sentences. He was not accustomed to say formally civil things. He was very bad at paying compliments; and as for saying anything friendly of Mr. Roscorla, he had to do it with a mental grimace. But Wenna was very familiar with the lad and his ways. At another time she would have been amused and pleased to observe his endeavours to be polite; and now, if she hastened away from the subject, it was only because she never heard Mr. Roscorla's name mentioned without feeling embarrassment and showing it. She murmured something about a hope that Mr. Roscorla would not find the voyage to Jamaica fatiguing; and then, somewhat hastily, drew her companion's attention to another porpoise which was showing itself from time to time outside the rocks.

I'd

"I wish Mr. Roscorla had made me your guardian in his absence," said this blundering lad, who was determined to be on his best behaviour. "I quite agree with Mabyn that you overwork yourself in doing for other people what the lazy beggars ought to do for themselves. Oh, I know more than you think. wake some of them up, if I had the chance. Why, they look on you as a sort of special providence, bound to rescue them at any moment. I was told only yesterday of old Mother Truscott having said to a neighbour, 'Well, if Miss Wenna won't help me, then the Lord's will be done.'

Well, they sat down on a seat which fronted the wide opening in the cliffs and the great plain of the Atlantic beyond, that was this morning of a light and sunny sea-green, with here and there broad purple stains of shadow as the "Oh, yes, I know," said his companion, summer clouds passed rapidly over the with some inpatience; "she is always sky from the west. In the warm sun-saying that. I said to her the other day, shine, the gorse on the hill behind them, when I got out of temper, Why, of - and the grass on the pasture-land, sweet- course the Lord's, will will be done; you ened the air. The wind blew fresh in don't suppose he wants your permission? from the sea; and as the green waves But if you'd only look after your own broke white along the rocks beneath house, and bestir yourself, and keep it them, the brisk breeze carried with it a smart, your husband wouldn't go on as flavour of salt from the fine clouds of the he does.' There's nothing I hate worse than that sort of pretended piety. Why, spray. when Abiathar Annot's boy died, I thought he'd be out of his senses with grief, and I went up to see if he was all right about the house, and to say a friend

The spring-time seemed to have given life and colour to the sea as well as to the land, for all the world was brilliant with the new brightness of the skies.

"And isn't it first-rate," said Master

ly word to him; and directly I went into | in which the first daisies of the spring the house he said to me, quite compla- had appeared. Then they went down cently, 'Well, Miss Rosewarne, you through some narrow lanes towards the know we must bow to the will of the Lord, and accept his chastenings as mercies.' 'Oh,' said I, 'if you take it that way, I've no more to say,' and I left the place. I don't believe in all that sort of

higher portion of Eglosilyan; and under the hedges were masses of pale primroses, and the purple blossoms of the ground-ivy, and the golden stars of the celandine. They drew near some of the cottages; and in the gardens the flowering currant was in bloom, and everywhere there was a scent of wallflower. They crossed the main thoroughfare of the village; it was empty but for the presence of a small boy, who, with a slate slung on one side and a bag made of carpet slung on the other, had apparently been sent home from school for some reason or other. The youthful scholar most respectfully took off his cap to Miss Wenna as she gave him a kindly greeting in passing.

"They say all that is owing to you," Trelyon remarked.

"All what?"

She suddenly stopped, recollecting to whom she was speaking. Were these proper confessions to be made to a young man who had such a godless hatred of parsons, and churches, and all good things; and whose conversion to more respectable ways she had many a time wished to attempt? She dropped that subject; and Master Harry was so resolved to be proper and virtuous that morning, that he took no advantage of what she had said. He even in an awkward fashion, observed that all pious people were not hypocrites; one had to draw distinctions. Of course there were pious people who were really sincere. He hoped Miss Wenna would not suspect him of being so prejudiced as not to know that. Miss Wenna was a little inclined to smile, but she controlled her countenance; and Master Harry, having paid these ingenuous compliments to virtue and religion, rose with a frank sigh of relief, proposed that they should continue their walk up the hill, and was Wenna was sufficiently surprised to soon engaged in telling her with a know that she had got the credit of the much gayer tone in his voice and with a courtesy shown to strangers by the return to his old impertinent careless- Eglosilyan folks; but even more sur- of some wild adventure in cliff-prised to learn that Master Harry had hunting which he and his faithful Dick deigned to engage in conversation with had encountered together. his mother. He also seemed to be taking his first lessons in civility.

ness

"The good manners of the people in this village. The women bob you a curtsey as you pass, the girls say goodmorning or good-evening, the boys take off their caps, even if you are a perfect stranger. But you don't suppose that happens in every village in Cornwall? My mother was speaking about it only this morning."

66

Oh," she said, "that boy ought to pay me every attention to make up for his bad conduct. He was once a sweetheart of mine, and he deceived me. He sold me for sixpence."

She sighed.

They seemed to be in no great hurry, these two. It was a morning that invited to idleness. They chatted about all sorts of things, or were silent, with equal and happy indifference, he watching the sea-birds, she stooping from time to time to pick up some tiny flower of pale yellow or purple. In this fashion they "It is true. He adopted me as his made their way up to the summit of the sweetheart, and every time I saw him he cliffs, and there before them lay the great promised to marry me when he grew up. plain of the windy sea, and the long wall But there came a change. He avoided of precipice running down into theme, and I had to catch him, and ask him southwest, and the high and bleak up. lands, marked by the square towers of small and distant churches. They struck across the fields to one of those churches - that which Master Harry had been persuaded to visit. The place was now silent enough two jackdaws sat on the slender weather-cock; the sunlight was warm on the silvery grey tower, and on the long green grass in the churchyard,

:

why. He confessed. I wasn't his sweetheart any more. His elder brother, aged ten, I think, had also wanted me for a sweetheart, and he had a sixpence; and sixpence was the price of a new sort of spinning-top that had just been put into the window at the post-office; and the elder brother proposed to the younger brother to take the sixpence and buy the top, and hand me over. 'So yü baint

my sweetheart anny mower,' said the
young gentleman, forgetting his good
English in his grief. But I think he has
a tender recollection of me even now."
"I'd have thrashed the little brute for
his meanness if I had been you," said
her companion, in his off-hand way.
"Oh no," she answered, with a meek
"wasn't he only doing as a
child what grown-up gentlemen are said
to do? When there is money on the one
hand and a sweetheart on the other,
doesn't the sweetheart suffer as a rule?"
"What can you know about it.?" he
said bluntly. "In any case, you don't
run any danger. Mr. Roscorla is not
likely to be tempted by bags of gold."

I say,

"I'm sick of her stalking about the house in the guise of a ghost- she all white, everything else black. Wenna, don't you think you could get her to dress like a human being?" "But if it is her wish, you ought to respect it."

"It's only a craze," he said, impatiently. "It may seem so to you," his companion said; "but she has her own reasons for it, and they deserve your sympathy, even though they may not convince you. And you ought not to speak in that harsh way of one who is so very good and gentle, and who is so considerate towards you."

66

66

Mr. Roscorla-always Mr. Roscorla. Wenna, who crimsoned deeply at the slightest reference to the relations between herself and her absent lover, began to be somewhat angry with this thoughtless lad, who would continually Oh, you always find excuses for peointroduce the name. What was his ob-ple," he said, roughly. Everybody ject in doing so? To show her that he should be considered, and respected, and never failed to remember her position, have their fine feelings praised and codand that that was his excuse for talking dled, according to you. Everybody is very frankly to her, as he would have perfect, according to you." done to a sister? Or merely to please "Oh dear, no," she said, quite humbly. her by speaking of one who ought to be "I know one or two people whose convery dear to her? She was not indebted duct and habits, and their manners, too, to him for this blundering effort of kind- might be very much improved indeed." ness; and on any less cheerful morning "I suppose you mean me?" he said. "And if I did?" she said boldly. might have visited him with one of those fits of formal politeness or of constrained" Don't you think, when you want your silence with which young ladies are ac-mother to be just as you would have her customed to punish too forward acquaint- to be, that she might turn round and say that there was a great deal more in you

ances.

But Miss Wenna had it not in her that she might wish to have altered? heart to be reserved on this pleasant You know her manner of life is not neforenoon; she good-naturedly overlooked | cessarily wrong merely because you can't As for yours the pertinacious mistakes of her compan- understand it. ion; and talked to him-and to the flowers, and birds, and trees around her with a happy carelessness until the two of them together made their way up to the Hall. Just as Master Harry opened the gate at the end of the avenue, and turned to let her through, he seemed for the first time to notice her dress. He made no scruple of stopping her for a moment to look at it.

"Oh, I say, I wish you could get my mother to dress like you!

'Go ahead!" he cried, with a loud and suddenly good-natured laugh. "Heap up all my sins on my head! I'm getting used to be lectured now. Please, Miss Puritan, would you like me to get a surplice and come and sing hymns in the choir ?"

Miss Puritan did not answer. There was no look of annoyance on her faceonly a certain calm reserve that told her companion that he had somehow wounded the friendly confidence that had The burst of admiration was so genuine sprung up between them during this that Miss Wenna-being only a girl. pleasant morning ramble. And at this was very much pleased indeed; and moment they reached the front of the blushed a little, and would rather have Hall, where Mrs. Trelyon came forward passed on. There was nothing, indeed, to greet her visitor, so that Master Harry remarkable about her costume about had no further opportunity just then of the rough light-grey dress with its asking her whether he had offended her, touches here and there of blue, nor yet land of making an apology. He listened