We have endeavoured to give a general review of this important and suggestive work. It is, however, a work of which extracts give but a faint notion, and it must be read throughout before a just opinion can be formed of the continuous labour, of the strict adherence to duty, and of the exceeding intelligence devoted to British interests, which this portion of the "Life of the Prince Consort" reveals to us.

We said at the commencement of this article, that Mr. Theodore Martin had been very fortunate in having to portray the life of one who was so deeply interested in, and so thoroughly conversant with, most of the principal events of his time. There is, however, one drawback We have not dwelt much upon the against which the author has had to conpurely domestic details which are detend. The prince consort's character was scribed in this volume. These are, howof that tempered, proportionate, and thor-ever, peculiarly fascinating, and, through oughly well-conditioned nature, which the writer's skill, they have the special does not admit of any of those violent charm of being felt, rather than insistcontrasts which are wont, especially at ed on. Throughout the narrative it is first sight, to make a character interesting. The world in general is much fas-clearly to be seen that the prince concinated by what is picturesque in charac- and a kind master; such a man, in short, sort was a good husband, a good father, ter. A hero such as Cortes, pious and as may be adopted by fathers for their unscrupulous, polite and cruel, amiable own model, and set as an example before and fierce, inevitably amuses, astonishes, their sons. and attracts us. The reader likes to read about these strange contrasts, and, perhaps, plumes himself upon the fact that if he has not the greatness, at least he has not the inconsistency, of the hero of the story.

the conclusion of this first volume, and We congratulate the biographer upon look forward with hopefulness to the future volume or volumes, with which he may favour us. At the same time, we cannot help remarking upon one of his In reality there was something in the prince consort's character which entirely that he entirely effaces himself in his singular merits as a biographer, namely, relieved its noble gravity and consistency work, and that the reader is never withAs we have intimated before, he was one drawn from the contemplation of the life of the most humorous of men- - humorof the hero by any prominence of the ous. in contradistinction to witty; and the kind of humour was peculiarly British. when we pause to reflect on the imprespersonality of the biographer. It is only It pervaded all descriptions he gave of sion as to the prince, his character, and anything that he had seen; it was lam- influence, which has been left upon our bent and not forked; and in short was of minds, that we appreciate the skill and the kind that does not admit of repetition. artistic reserve which have produced so Moreover, as the prince had a great living and harmonious a picture from the dislike to giving pain, and to saying complicated materials with which he has anything that was ill-natured, his humour had to deal. never expressed itself in those short, sharp, sayings, which are easily recollected and readily repeated. Still, this humorous nature of the prince formed a great and ever-present relief to the somewhat stern quality of virtue which was always to be perceived in him as the groundwork of his character.

From The Cornhill Magazine. CHARLIA.

I HAD fallen ill (very injudiciously for As an instance of this sternness, we my own comfort) so far on in the autumn may mention the feelings of the prince that, when I was ordered to the sea, the as regards the conduct of Louis Philippe northern bathing-places were beginning in the disastrous business of the Span- to grow empty. "To imbibe iodine," ish marriages. It is evident that the said my doctor; which is to be recomqueen was inclined to forgive that con-mended as a far more majestic prescripduct; but the prince could not, feeling tion than that of merely breathing seathat "if truth had deserted the rest of the air; and my niece, who had come to my world, it ought to find a resting-place in help, was evidently much impressed, and the bosoms of kings." respected the ailments which required so

erudite a remedy far more than she had
done before.

"Very bad for him, poor little man scrofulous, I daresay," said I, prosai

cally.

She was a widow, with three young children, and was glad of the opportunity "Oh, auntie; how can you say it's to give her two little girls a change to the bad!" cried Janet, her eyes sparkling lovely spot in Wales which was chosen with wrath at my want of poetry. "And as our destination. There were glorious he's hung up little strings with knots to views of blue mountain ranges, and them, and he makes her that's the stretches of green and purple sea with kitty-do her 'gymnacks' every day up endless varieties of colour, for us, the them. And when she's tired he makes elders; sea-weeds and pebbles, and her go to sleep in a hammock he's made plenty of shipping to delight the young for her with string, and he's hung it up ones; and drives for us all, as I began in the window, only think!" After gradually to improve, up into mountain which we had in the little lame boy to glens and green lanes, where the haw-tea. Another day it was "Look at thorn berries were as red as the fuchsias that old crooked gentleman, with a comin the cottage-gardens. Even a pass "forter and two sticks. Sarah says he was was not quite out of reach of the strong once in the horse-soldiers-only think! -and rode at the savages somewhere a great way off, and spitted 'em on his great sword like so many toads."

ones.

"But toads are not made to be spitted. I hope you don't think so, dear?" said I, somewhat anxiously.

"Oh, no! auntie, and Willy doesn't neither; for I never heard him say so." Willy was her brother, and an authority without appeal in her eyes on all points of morals and manners.

Our time passed very pleasantly; the place thinned every day, but this was no grief to us. The smart young ladies with indescribable hats, the drabby old ones with trailing gowns, were rather amusing at first to watch, but when the novelty wore off of their garments, fearful and wonderful to behold in combinations of colours and shape, and of the jackets and hats of the men, which seemed to have been chosen from an ascetic desire to After this we always had a kindly nod make themselves hideous, it was rather a from the paralytic old colonel to his adrelief to get rid of them all. The few mirer. Janet was not exactly a flirt, but "nice people kept theirselves to their-she decidedly preferred the society of selves," as my old maid observed, while gentlemen as more amusing. we were quite sufficient for our own

amusement.

So we went on till we knew the biographies, mythical or real, of half our neighWe had a great many acquaintances, bours, including that of our landlord, a however, of one kind or another; for the silent, rather stern-looking man, who youngest of my niece's children, aged went off every morning (to "something eight, was a young person of a most in the Customs," said Janet) in a coat social turn of mind. She knew every dog somehow reminding one of a naval uniand cat by its name in all the lodging- from. Soon we heard how Mr. Davies houses near. The old washerwoman who had been in the royal navy, and the name spread her clothes on the beach to air, of his ship, and of his captain, and of the and fastened them down with stones, was model he had made of the "Warspite," her particular friend. "I can help to pin and many interesting particulars concernthem tight for her, you know." We knewing her tonnage. Also of the only daughall about the milk-woman's little girl | ter of the house who had been at "such through her, and the mother of the don- ja genteel school on the other side the key-chair driver, demoralized as usual by mountains" (it was evident here how very the shifting population of a watering-faithful was the report), "and her name place. "A bad little chap," said his un-is Charlia (wasn't it a funny name?), beprejudiced parent.

There was a small boy with a hip complaint three doors from us, in whom she took a lively interest. "He's the son of a sailor, mummie, and he's seven years old. Auntie, do hear; you're not listening. And his name's Jem; and he's brought up a pussy what was going to be drowned, and he gives it half his milk."

cause the captain's name was Charles, and he was her godfather. And Mr. Davies says, 'I want my little girl back very badly' he calls her his little girl, and she's eighteen, auntie! Isn't it funny? And she sings so beautifully, he says, 'The Men of Harlech,' andAll through the Night.' I want to hear her so much and it has a chorus. Don't

you think she may come home before we | End street was like a tomb -a morne go, because I want very much to see her? silence reigned in the dismal little shops. Do ask Mr. Davies to fetch her, auntie." The grocer looked like an undertaker, I am afraid my interest in Miss Charlia, the little linen-draper folded up my fourin spite of her curious name, was not at pennyworth of buttons and a pair of mufall thought up to the mark by the ardent fetees with a sigh, and a long hopeless Janet. side-look at a group of five sailors lounging past, who were staring in at the smart ties still hanging in her nearly empty windows, but evidently regarding them as works of art, not objects to purchase; and she grew almost hysterical as she described to me "the long empty months of winter, ma'am ; so cold and so dreary coming on, ma'am, without a soul to buy anything." I should think that trade was never very lively in the little town, but the stationer's wife, who sold yellow shilling novels, and Calvinistic Methodist

We had gone on very happily for three weeks, when my niece heard suddenly that her only boy was ill with scarlatina at school. Scarlatina means scarlet fever in an anxious mother's ears, and she was of course longing to be off. I was so much better that I could not think of keeping her. She offered to leave the little girls, but she wanted the nurse with her, for the sake of the invalid-I saw that she distrusted me and my old maid, and would have been haunted by a perennial nightmare of Janet carried off by tracts-envelopes at three for a halfthe tide when " dabbling," and Mary "catching her death of cold" in the autumn wind. I would not hear of any body's staying for my sake, and they were all off next day - Janet, with a child's love of change, almost as glad to go away as she had been to come to the place.

"You'll be after us very soon, dear," cried my niece, rather uneasily, as she looked her last out of the fly at me standing by the wicket gate a little disconsolately.

It was with rather a pang that I saw them depart. I had "assumed a courage" which I did not quite possess for being left alone, so far from everybody I had ever known. I even tried to get a reprieve from the hard-hearted doctor, who was, however, inexorable as to the number of the necessary doses of iodine. I was still far from strong, the October weather was beautiful, and there was really no excuse for not lasting out till the end of the "cure."

penny, and sixpenny photographs, spoke as if a death had taken place after a period of splendid dissipation, while she deplored the shortness of the season. "It never had been so short before; the gales, too, had been so strong, and had come on earlier than usual."

I found that every year the season always was the shortest ever known, the gales always had been the strongest, and always came on "much earlier than usual." This year, too, "the Londoners hadn't come as many as sometimes," she said sadly. I wondered how many "Londoners "" ever reached that remote spot.

In short, life began to grow rather depressing by force of sympathy, and in spite of the extreme beauty of the autumn tints on the twisted trees which fringed the rocky point on one side of us, and came down quite to the water's edge-in spite of the glories of the purple mountains and the sea with its regiment of little white horses which came prancing mer The place grew thinner and thinner. rily up to the beach-I wished ardently Even the old paralyzed colonel and the for some more human interest as I came child with the bad hip were gone, and his in next evening at dusk to my solitary poor spoiled kitten went mewing about tea. It is sad to have nobody even to as disconsolately as the rest of us. The whom one can say, "How beautiful it lodging-houses were nearly empty, and is!" began dolefully to close up their eyes, The tray was brought in by my landlike the hybernating race they were. lady: she was a pleasant, sweet-temOne put up uncompromising green Vene-pered-looking woman, with a faded air of tian shutters; the next, where all hope gentility about her who "had only just had not quite fled, was satisfied with pull- begun to let lodgings; from difficulties," ing down all its white blinds; while the she told me. The house was a pretty plaster bow-window round the corner still little old place, quite at the beginning of hung out a despairing sign of "apart-the town and at the end of a quiet grey ments for the chance visitors who, row, with trailing jessamine up the front tempted by the cheapness of lodgings, and a Virginian creeper gorgeous in colmight still be caught. The one West- our. A "pleasure-ground,' fully thirty

"

feet wide, lay between it and the road, clear that she had never regretted her filled with fuchsias and red geraniums, choice-she had joined him at different and pleasant old-fashioned flowers be- stations, but her many babies had never sides. I had fallen in love with it when flourished, and died one after the other, first we arrived, and it had helped to settle our choice of lodgings. She sighed as she put down my tea and told me that the little maid-of-all-work was gone home after her hard summer, and that my old maid had just hurt her foot getting over a stone stile.

"Father's gone to fetch my daughter home to stay altogether now, and they won't be back to-night," she said in a sort of sad, trailing tone.

It was evident that, for some reason or other, she wanted sympathy, so I uttered some commonplaces about her pleasure in having her child home again, after a long absence I understood, and so forth.

till at length the precious Charlia was born; soon after which her husband had been wounded, and had retired on the smallest of pensions, eked out by a little appointment in the Customs. Things had been always tight" with them, she said, and now house-rent and provisions all went up, and salaries and pensions kept down, so they had been obliged to let their spare rooms. I suspect she was a bad manager, and I know she was quite above taking advantage of the lodgers' tea and sugar, or of such other common little means of advancing her interests.

"Charlia's schooling had been so very expensive. The two ladies have grown old, and only took four boarders, and She was evidently very nervous about treated them quite as themselves; and something. "Things were very differ- Miss Amelia, that's the youngest, has ent at home to what Charlia had been bad health. She had been once just used to lately. Life was very contrairy, going to make a very good marriage to and a great deal to put up with, and now, she'd perhaps be hurt against them all, she was afraid. They'd spent all they could for her, and now she was not hardly sure .. Shall I bring candles, ma'am?" she broke off suddenly.

"No!" said I; "sit down by the fire and tell me all about it, if you don't mind telling."

And then the poor soul sat down in the most uncomfortable chair she could find, in spite of my remonstrances, and began to pour out her troubles in the dusk, which is always favourable to confidences. I only answered at intervals: “Dear, dear! How sad! No, really! Yes, indeed!" There are many people to whom it is the greatest relief to talk on uninteruptedly for hours, and to whom it is the truest kindness to listen, in intelligent silence, for as long a time as you can spare.

There is always something pathetic in a human history, and it was a comfort to her to explain that she had never thought to keep lodgings, and how she was the daughter of a man with some small government appointment in a crown colony. She had evidently been both pretty and pleasing in her time. A queen's ship had touched at the port, and one of the warrant-officers had wooed and won her. The "Warspite " was only to be there a month to refit-ten days to make acquaintance; ten days to woo and wed; ten days of married life, and then a long parting. He was a good man, and it was

the cousin of a baronet! only she didn't. I don't quite know how it was, but she told Charlia all about it; and she was much tried, and she was very kind, and liked to have the girl about her, and taught her singing and she was very clever, and made poetry and such beautiful wax flowers! and was very fond of Charlia."

Bad poetry and wax flowers; two of the greatest of abominations in my eyes! Altogether Miss Amelia did not sound to me at all like an ideal instructor of youth. "And Charlia had profited so much and her music, and her bead-work, and the use of the globes, and the velvet-painting."

66

Why did you call her Charlia?" interrupted I, a little weary of this enumeration of accomplishments.

"We'd lost so many little ones, and father did want a boy so much; and his captain's name was Charles." The reasons were not all very relevant, but they did quite as well as better ones.

"And why have not you had her back before, when you wanted help so much all this summer?" said I.

66

"Oh! this isn't fit work for her," said the poor mother. Only now I really don't know whether it wouldn't have been best if we'd had her here at home with us; but her aunt and uncle-he's a rich shipowner down at the port, and got no end of trade; and they've no children, and they're so fond of Charlia; and always wanting to have her with them, and

her singing and all; and
girl, that she is, poor child
And she launched out again in her child's
praises, before the end of which there
was a call for her by the washerwoman,
and evidently I had not yet got at the
trouble.

she's a good her, as he says he does, he'll take up; for all. "and then her father would see, perhaps. There's not much harm in him, I daresay." She wandered from side to side in her judgment as her mind reverted to the contradictory arguments of her two beloved ones. "They say he's a loose hand, and he's such a way with him he can wind folk round his finger, and that's not a safe one to deal with if he hasn't got much of a conscience along with it."

The next day Charlia arrived. I had felt a great prejudice against her for thus leaving all the burden of life upon her poor mother, while she amused herself with aunts and uncles, and bead-work, and music, and "globes." "She must be a selfish young puss," I had decided in my own mind. But there was no trace of this in the girl's looks and ways when I saw her. She was grave and gentle, and very obliging; and had run up and down stairs a dozen times for me before she had been many hours in the house.

"Have you ever seen him yourself?" said I, anxiously, wishing to get, if possible, some direct evidence..

"Yes! he came in one evening when I was with the Pritchards, and we were having tea. He's a personable young fellow; and he stood about a bit and joked; and wouldn't Charlia sing for a fair wind for him, he said; she that could She was tall and slight, with a pale wile the birds off the boughs. They told complexion and dark hair, and a dreamy father he couldn't take his ears off of her look in her very dark brown eyes, which when she sung, he thought so much of seemed to be looking at something far her-it's perhaps a year back it began, away beyond you. She took a great I believe! But her father says she fancy for me, and she looked so unhappy mustn't think any more about it," the that it went to my heart eighteen mother ended, bracing herself up. ought to look bright, or at least hopeful; and she seemed thoroughly dispirited. Her education had clearly not fitted her for her home-life, poor child.

With his strict ideas of naval discipline, where to command is to receive silent and implicit obedience at whatever cost, it seemed to me that he expected Her trouble soon came out. She had poor Charlia to cut off her past life at fallen in love with the captain of a mer-his word, like the branch of a tree, and chant vessel, belonging to her uncle the shipowner, which had been coming and going for about a year to and from the small port where she had been staying.

"He's a wild young chap, I'm afraid," her mother told me next day: “ we hear no good of him, though I can't quite say it's very bad," she added, poor woman, wistfully; evidently torn in pieces by her desire to be just to both father and child. "Father's been making no end of inquiries," she sighed, "and doesn't like what he hears; and he's fetched her home to be out of Captain Roberts' way; and he's settled she sha'n't have anything more to do with him. And he told a bit of his mind, he says, to his sister, for letting things go so far for Charlia, with one who hasn't the fear of the Lord before his eyes."

The old man was a strong Calvinistic Methodist, like so many of the Welsh, and an earnestly religious man, to whom all lightness was an abomination.

"Evan's as good a man and as loving a father as can be, but he won't see her soul lost by consorting with godless men," sighed the poor woman; "but, as I tell Charlia, surely if the man cares for

to feel nothing more in the matter — not in the least calculating how much she would suffer-and that her previous training had not in the least prepared her for this. Poor Charlia! Anyhow, the affair had taken sad hold of her dreamy imagination.

When I came into the little sittingroom next morning, which she was by way of dusting, she was standing with the cloth in her hand, quite lost. She started when she saw me and went on with her work, half wailing a sad old Welsh lament upon the "Massacre at Rhyddlan."

A day or two after, at dusting-time, before breakfast, I found her in my little bow-window, which commanded the best view of the sea in the house. She was looking out at a brigantine, trim and smart, which swung slowly past with the tide, not far from the shore, while a man on board waved his cap once or twice. As she turned, her face and eyes shone with a light which almost startled me.

"So that's Captain Roberts' ship, Charlia, is it?" said I gently, putting my hand on her shoulder.

She turned away with a blush. "Shall