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the springs of a selfish or even merely weak and self-indulgent nature.'* In carrying out this moral purpose, Mrs Craik displays eloquence, pathos, a subdued but genial humour, and happy delineation of character. Of all her works, John Halifax (of which the eighteenth edition is now before us) is the greatest favourite, and is indeed a noble story of English domestic life.

Death of Muriel, the Blind Child.-From 'John Halifax.' John opened the large Book-the Book he had taught all his children to long for and to love and read out of it their favourite history of Joseph and his brethren. The mother sat by him at the fireside, rocking Maud softly on her knees. Edwin and Walter settled themselves on the hearth-rug, with great eyes intently fixed on their father. From behind him the candle-light fell softly down on the motionless figure in the bed, whose hand he held, and whose face he every now and then turned to look at-then, satisfied, continued to read. In the reading his voice had a fatherly, flowing calmas Jacob's might have had, when the children were tender,' and he gathered them all round him under the palm-trees of Succoth-years before he cried unto the Lord that bitter cry (which John hurried over as he read): If I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved. For an hour, nearly, we all sat thus, with the wind. coming up the valley, howling in the beech-wood, and shaking the casement as it passed outside. Within, the only sound was the father's voice. This ceased at last; he shut the Bible, and put it aside. The group that last perfect household picture-was broken up. It melted away into things of the past, and became only a picture for evermore.

Now, boys, it is full time to say good-night. There, go and kiss your sister.' Which?" said Edwin, in his funny way. We've got two now; and I don't know which is the biggest baby.' 'I'll thrash you if you say that again,' cried Guy. Which, indeed! Maud is but the baby. Muriel will be always sister.' 'Sister' faintly laughed, as she answered his fond kiss-Guy was often thought to be her favourite brother. Now, off with you, boys; and go down-stairs quietly-mind, I say quietly.'

They obeyed-that is, as literally as boy-nature can obey such an admonition. But an hour after, I heard Guy and Edwin arguing vociferously in the dark, on the respective merits and future treatment of their two sisters, Muriel and Maud.

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dreams, in which I pictured over and over again, first I went to bed; but all night long I had disturbed the night when Mr March died, then the night at Longfield, when the little white ghost had crossed by my bed's foot, into the room where Mary Baines' dead boy lay. And continually, towards morning, I fancied I heard through my window, which faced the church, the faint, distant sound of the organ, as when Muriel used to play it.

Long before it was daylight I rose. As I passed the boys' room, Guy called out to me: 'Halloa! Uncle Phineas, is it a fine morning? for I want to go down into the wood and get a lot of beech-nuts and fir-cones for sister. It's her birthday to-day, you know.' It was for her. But for us-O Muriel, our darling, darling child!

Let me hasten over the story of that morning, for my old heart quails before it still. John went early to the room up-stairs. It was very still. Ursula lay calmly asleep, with Baby Maud in her bosom; on her other side, with eyes wide open to the daylight, lay-that which for more than ten years we had been used to call blind Muriel.' She saw now.....

nursery-the same little curtainless bed where, for a Just the same homely room-half bed-chamber, half a week past, we had been accustomed to see the wasted figure and small pale face lying, in smiling quietude, all day long.

It lay there still. In it, and in the room, was hardly any change. One of Walter's playthings was in a corner of the window-sill, and on the chest of drawers stood the nosegay of Christmas roses which Guy had brought for his sister yesterday morning. Nay, her shawl-a white, soft, furry shawl, that she was fond of wearing-remained still hanging up behind the door. One could almost fancy the little maid had just been said 'good-night' to, and left to dream the childish dreams on her nursery pillow, where the small head rested so peacefully, with that pretty babyish nightcap tied over the pretty curls. There she was, the child who had gone out of the number of our children-our earthly children-for ever.

The Château of La Garaye.-From 'Fair France.
Mrs Norton's poem has made well known that touch-

wife, whom a sudden accident changed into a crippled
invalid for life; how they turned their house into a
hospital, and both gave themselves to the end of their
days to the duty of succouring the afflicted, with not
only their personal fortune, but personal care. They
quitted entirely the gay world in which they were born,
and hid themselves in this far-away nook among their
sick, whom they personally tended. For this end they
is reported to have been a famous oculist. They died-
both studied medicine and surgery; and the comtesse
happily almost a quarter of a century before the brutali
ties of the Revolution destroyed the fruit of their labours,
and made the Château of La Garaye the ruin it is

John and I sat up late together that night. He could not rest, even though he told me he had left the mothering story of a devoted husband and his beautiful loving and her two daughters as cosy as a nest of woodpigeons. We listened to the wild night, till it had almost howled itself away; then our fire went out, and we came and sat over the last fagot in Mrs Tod's kitchen, the old Debateable Land. We began talking of the long-ago time, and not of this time at all. The vivid present-never out of either mind for an instantwe in our conversation did not touch upon, by at least ten years. Nor did we give expression to a thought which strongly oppressed me, and which I once twice fancied I could detect in John likewise; how very like this night seemed to the night when Mr March died; the same silentness in the house, the same windy whirl without, the same blaze of the wood-fire on the same kitchen ceiling. More than once I could almost have deluded myself that I heard the faint moans and footsteps overhead; that the staircase door would open, and we should see there Miss March, in her white gown, and her pale, steadfast look.

or

'I think the mother seemed very well and calm to

night,' I said hesitatingly, as we were retiring.

She

is, God help her-and us all!' 'He will.' That was all we said.

* North British Review, November 1858.

now. . . .

It is that most touching form of ruin-no castle, not of even a baronial mansion, only a house. The gates cultivated her medicinal plants, are broken and lichenthe garden, where the lady of La Garaye may have covered; the gnarled apple-trees still bear fruit in their old age, and that day were a picture of rosy plenty; but Round the shattered windows, from which many a sick over everything is thrown the shade of desolation. face may have looked out, gazing its last on this beautiful world, and many another brightened into health as it caught its first hopeful peep at the half-forgotten

world outside; round these blank eyeless windows, climb gigantic brambles, trailing along heavy with fruit, as large and sweet as mulberries. Once more we gathered and ate, almost with solemnity. It was a subject too tender for much speaking about-that of a life, which, darkened for ever, took comfort in giving light and blessing to other lives sadder than its own-a subject that Dickens might have written about-Dickens, whom, as I set down his name here, I start to remember, has been these twenty-four hours-only twenty-four hoursone of us mortals no more, but a disembodied soul:

Oh, the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change!

Yet how soon shall we all become shadows-those who are written about, and those who write-shadows as evanescent as the gentle ghosts which seem to haunt this ruined house, this deserted, weed-covered garden, which scarcely more than a century ago was full of life-life with all its burdens and all its blessedness, its work and suffering, pleasure and pain, now swept away together into eternal rest!

The Last Look of England.-From ' Hannah. There is a picture familiar to many, for it was in the Great Exhibition of 1851, and few stopped to look at it without tears-'The Last Look of Home,' by Ford Madox Browne. Merely a bit of a ship's side-one of those emigrant ships such as are constantly seen at Liverpool, or other ports whence they sail-with its long row of dangling cabbages, and its utter confusion of cargo and passengers. There, indifferent to all, and intently gazing on the receding shore, sit two persons, undoubtedly a man and his wife, emigrants bidding adieu to home for ever. The man is quite brokendown, but the woman, sad as she looks, has hope and courage in her face. Why not? In one hand she firmly grasps her husband's; the other supports her sleeping babe. She is not disconsolate, for she carries her 'home'

with her.

In the picture the man is not at all like Bernard certainly; but the woman is exceedingly like Hannah in expression at least, as she sat on the deck of the French steamer, taking her last look of dear old England, with its white cliffs glimmering in the moonlight, fainter and fainter every minute, across the long reach of Southampton Water.

on deck. The boat seemed to be passing swiftly and
silently as a phantom ship through a phantom ocean;
she hardly knew whether she was awake or asleep, dead
or alive, till she felt the soft breathing of the child in her
arms, and with a passion of joy remembered all.
A few minutes after, Hannah, raising her head as
high as she could without disturbing Rosie, saw a sight
which she had never seen before, and never in all her
life may see again, but will remember to the end of her
days.

Just where sea and sky met, was a long, broad line
of most brilliant amber, gradually widening and widen-
ing as the sun lifted himself out of the water and shot
his
dark zenith. Then, as he climbed higher, every floating
rays, in the form of a crown, right up into the still
cloud-and the horizon seemed full of them-became of
a brilliant rose hue, until the whole heaven blazed with
colour and light. In the midst of it all, dim as a dream,
but with all these lovely tints flitting over it, Hannah
saw, far in the distance, the line of the French shore.

MRS OLIPHANT.

The tales illustrative of Scottish life by MRS OLIPHANT (née Margaret O. Wilson), have been distinguished by a graceful simplicity and truth. One of the first is in the form of an autobiography, Passages in the Life of Mrs Margaret Maitland of Sunnyside, 1849. The quiet pathos and domestic incidents of this story Parish probably suggested to Mrs Oliphant the are not unworthy of Galt, whose Annals of the outline of her tale. In 1851, Merkland, a Story of Scottish Life, appeared, and sustained the reputation of the authoress. There is here a plot of stirring interest and greater variety of characters, though the female portraits are still the best drawn. Adam Græme of Mossgray, 1852, presents another series of home pictures, but is inferior to its predecessors. Harry Muir, 1853, aims at inculcating temperance, and is a powerful pathetic tale. The hero is one of those characters common in life, but difficult to render interesting in fiction —a good-natured, pleasant youth, easily led into evil as well as good courses. Magdalen Hepburn, a Story of the Scottish Reformation, 1854, may be considered a historical romance, as Knox and other characters of his age are introduced, and the most striking scenes relate to the progress of the Reformation. The interior pictures of the authoress are still, however, the most winning portion of her works. Lilliesleaf, 1855, is a concluding series of Passages in the Life of Mrs Margaret Maitland, and the authoress has had the rare felicity of making the second equal to the first portion. Zaidee, a Romance, 1856, is in a style new to Mrs Oliphant. The scene is laid partly in Cheshire and partly abroad, and the It happened to be a most beautiful night for crossing heroine, like Jane Eyre, is an orphan, who passes -the sea calm as glass, and the air mild as summer, through various trying scenes and adventuresthough it was in the beginning of November. Hannah nearly all interesting, though in many instances could not bear to go below, but with Rosie and Grace highly improbable. Two shorter tales, Katie occupied one of those pleasant cabins upon deck, sheltered Stewart and The Quiet Heart, have been pubon three sides, open on the fourth. There, wrapt in lished by Mrs Oliphant in Blackwood's Magazine. countless rugs and shawls, Rosie being in an ecstasy at Almost every year has borne testimony to the the idea of going to bed in her clothes, all under the talents and perseverance of this accomplished tars' (s was still an impossible first consonant to the baby tongue), she settled down for the night, with her lady. Among her recent works of fiction are child in her arms, and her faithful servant at her Agnes, 1867; The Brownlows, 1868; The Ministers Wife, 1869; Chronicles of CarlingWhen she woke it was no longer moonlight, but day-ford; Salem Chapel, 1869; John, a Love Story; light, at least daybreak; for she could discern the dark Three Brothers; Son of the Soil, 1870; Squire outline of the man at the wheel, the only person she saw Arden, 1871; Ombra, 1872; At His Gates, 1872;

Bernard sat beside her, but he too was very silent. He meant to go back again as soon as he had seen her and Rosie and Grace safely landed at Havre; but he knew that to Hannah this farewell of her native land was, in all human probability, a farewell for good.' Ay, for good, in the fullest sense; and she believed it; believed that they were both doing right, and that God's blessing would follow them wherever they went; yet she could not choose but be a little sad, until she felt the touch of the small, soft hand which, now as ever, was continuously creeping into Tannie's. Then she was content. If it had been God's will to give her no future of her own at all, she could have rested happily

in that of the child and the child's father.

feet. ...

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Innocent, 1873; May, 1873; For Love and Life, of refinement what sentiment existed between the Mr Damerel was perfectly 1874; A Rose in June, 1874; The Story of cottagers and the curate. Valentine and his Brothers, 1875; Whiteladies, kind and courteous to everybody, gentle and simple, 1875; The Curate in Charge, 1876; &c. Mrs who came in his way, but he was not fond of poor Oliphant has been more versatile than any other people in the abstract. He disliked everything that was unlovely, and alas! there are a great many unlovely of our living female novelists. She has tried the things in poverty. pure character story, with which, indeed, she may be said to have started in Kate Stewart, a tale of Fifeshire (to which county she belongs), and since then she has been sensational, domestic, and psychological by turns. Her critical and historical papers in Blackwood are ably and finely written. In her novels, Mrs Oliphant has great powers of construction, knowledge of human nature, and penetration, added to extensive knowledge of society, and the modes and manners of foreign countries. Her Salem Chapel, which first raised its author to wide popularity, is an excellent specimen of the story of character, full of shrewd observation; and the same remark applies to The Chronicles of Carlingford. In The Squire of Arden and in Madonna Mary, we have the novel of society and plot; whilst in such tales as At His Gates we find plot and sensation most prominent, and in Agnes, The Minister's Wife, Innocent, and Valentine and his Brother, we have what are really psychological stories, in which the morbid or exceptional type of character is a main element. Mrs Oliphant, however, takes care to accompany all such effects with enough of relief and variety of other characters and situations to maintain general interest. For example, the Italian child Innocent-half idiot-is thrown into such situations as introduce us to many characters in whom we are deeply interested, though they never overshadow the chief figure; and in the father of 'Valentine and his brother,' we are introduced to various Scotch characters and to sketches of fine society abroad. In pathos, we think this accomplished novelist deficient that is, inferior to herself in other respects-and occasionally careless as to style. She rambles into long-winded sentences and paragraphs in which repetition is frequent. But for this defect, her tale of Whiteladies would have been a most powerful story of motive and conscience, worthy of Hawthorne. The Curate in Charge is one of the happiest of her long file of creations. It may be considered an exposé of the evils of patronage in the church; and, though cynical, possesses scenes of true pathos-such as the death of the old curate, and the efforts of his daughters afterwards to support themselves. Mrs Oliphant's latest novel, Phabe, Junior, is no less interesting and life-like.

The rectory garden at Dinglefield is a delightful place. The house is on the summit of a little hill or rather tableland, for in the front, towards the green, all is level and soft as becomes an English village; but on the other side the descent begins towards the lower country, and from the drawing-room windows and the lawn, the view extended over a great plain, lighted up with links of the river, and fading into unspeakable hazes of distance, such as were the despair of every artist, and the delight of the fortunate people who lived there, and were entertained day by day with the sight of all the and soft prolonged twilights. Mr Damerel was fond of sunsets, the mid-day splendours, the flying shadows, saying that no place he knew so lent itself to idleness as this. Idleness! I speak as the foolish ones speak,' he would say, 'for what occupation could be more ennobling than to watch those gleams and shadows-all nature spread out before you, and demanding attention, though so softly that only they who have ears hear? I allow, my gentle Nature here does not shout at you, and compel your regard, like her who dwells among the Alps for instance. My dear, you are always practical-but so long as you leave me my landscape I want little more.'

6

An English Rector and Rectory.

'Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things. Let the child alone-she will never be young again if she should live a hundred years!'

These words were spoken in the garden of Dinglefield Rectory on a very fine summer day a few years ago. The speaker was Mr Damerel, the rector, a middle-aged man, with very fine, somewhat worn features, a soft benignant smile, and, as everybody said who knew him, the most charming manners in the world. He was a man of very elegant mind as well as manners. He did not preach often, but when he did preach all the educated persons of his congregation felt that they had very choice fare indeed set before them. I am afraid the poor folk liked the curate best, but then the curate liked them best, and it mattered very little to any man or woman

Thus the rector would discourse. It was very little perfect order, swept and trimmed every morning like more he wanted-only to have his garden and lawn in a lady's boudoir, and refreshed with every variety of flower: to have his table not heavily loaded with vulgar English joints, but daintily covered, and oh! so daintily served; the linen always fresh, the crystal always fine, the ladies dressed as ladies should be: to have his wine, of which he took very little, always fine, of choice vintage, and with a bouquet that rejoiced the heart: to have plenty of new books: to have quiet undisturbed by the noise of the children, or any other troublesome noise such as broke the harmony of nature : he declared, at once shorten the life and take all pleasure and especially undisturbed by bills and cares, such as, out of it. This was all he required: and surely never man had tastes more moderate, more innocent, more virtuous and refined.

The little scene to which I have thus abruptly introduced the reader took place in the most delicious part of the garden. The deep stillness of noon was over the sunshiny world; part of the lawn was brilliant in light; the very insects were subdued out of their buzz of activity by the spell of the sunshine; but here, under the lime-tree, there was grateful shade, where everything took breath. Mr Damerel was seated in a chair which the comfort of soft cushions with such a rustic appearhad been made expressly for him, and which combined

ance as became its habitation out of doors; under his feet was a soft Persian rug in colours blended with all the harmony which belongs to the Eastern loom; at his side a pretty carved table, with a raised rim, with books upon it, and a thin Venice glass containing a rose.

Another rose, the Rose of my story, was half-sitting, half-reclining on the grass at his feet-a pretty, light figure, in a soft muslin dress, almost white, with bits of soft rose-coloured ribbon here and there. She was the eldest child of the house. Her features I do not think were at all remarkable, but she had a bloom so soft, so delicate, so sweet, that her father's fond title for her, 'a Rose in June,' was everywhere acknowledged as appropriate. A rose of the very season of roses was this Rose. Her very smile, which came and went like breath, never away for two minutes together, yet never lasting beyond the time you took to look at her, was flowery too, I can scarcely tell why. For my own part, she always reminded me not so much of a

garden rose in its glory, as of a branch of wild roses all blooming and smiling from the bough, here pink, here white, here with a dozen ineffable tints... In all her life she had never had occasion to ask herself was she happy? Of course she was happy! Did not she live, and was not that enough?

Fiction and Biography.-From 'Agnes.'

Most

2;

1865; The Belton Estate, 1866; The Last Chronicle of Barset, 1867; The Claverings, 1867; Lotta Schmidt and other Stories, 1867; He Knew he was Right, 1869; Phineas Finn, 1869; AnEditor's Tales, 1870; The Vicar of Bullhampton, 1870; Ralph the Heir, 1871; Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite, 1871; The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson; The Eustace Diamonds, 1872-3; The Golden Lion It has always been my opinion that, as the great of Grandpere, 1872-3; Harry Heathcote of Ganvalue of fiction lies in its power of delineating life, goil, Lady Anna, Phineas Redux, 1874; The there may be cases in which it may assume to a cer- Way We Live Now, and Diamond Cut Diamond, tain extent the form of biography; I do not mean of 1875; The Prime Minister, 1876; &c. Besides autobiography, which is sufficiently common in novels; the above works of fiction, Mr Trollope has writbut that the writer of fiction may occasionally be per- ten The West Indies and the Spanish Main, a mitted to supplement the work of the serious biographer pleasing volume of travels and description, pub-to depict scenes which never could be depicted as happening to any actual individual, and to reveal senti- lished in 1859; North America, 2 vols., 1862 ments which may be in many minds, but which none Hunting Sketches, 1865; Travelling Sketches, would care in their own person to give expression to. 1866; Clergymen of the Church of England, 1866 I do not believe that there ever was, or could be, in (these last three works were reprints from the this world a wholly true, candid, and unreserved biog- Pall Mall Gazette); British Sports and Pastimes, raphy, revealing all the dispositions, or even, without 1868; Australia and New Zealand, 2 vols., 1873. exception, all the facts of any existence. Indeed, the Mr Trollope was for about three years editor of thing is next to impossible; since in that case, the sub-Saint Paul's Magazine, and he has contributed ject of the biography must be a man or woman with-largely to other periodicals. out reserve, without delicacy, and without those secrets Mr Trollope is emphatically a 'man of the which are inevitable even to the most stainless spirit. Even fiction itself, which is less responsible, can in time,' the very antipodes of imaginative writers many instances only skim the surface of the real. like George MacDonald. He is a realist, a painter people must be aware, in their own experience, that of of men and manners of the present day, a satirist those passages of their lives which have affected them within a certain range, ready to make use of any most they could give only the baldest description to type that may present itself, and seem charactertheir friends; and that their saddest and supremest istic as a product of the special conditions of the moments are hidden in their own hearts, and never find present century. He is rather conservative and any expression. It is only in the region of pure inven- High Church, his best portraitures being those of tion that the artist can find a model who has no secrets the clergy. Who can ever forget Mr Slope, Dr from him, but lies all open and disclosed to his in- Grantly, Bishop Prowdie or Mrs Prowdie? Ladies vestigation. of rank, aspiring members of parliament (Irish and English), habitues of the clubs, Australian stockmen, female adventurers-all of these, and The most prolific novelist of the present times- many more, he has taken up, and so set them in far exceeding Scott and Dickens in the number of midst of their surroundings, that his pictures look his works-is MR ANTHONY TROLLOPE, second like photographs, and they seem to be produced son of the late Mr T. A. Trollope, barrister, and as easily as the photographer throws off his scenes of Mrs Trollope, noticed in a previous page as a and portraits. Mr Trollope is eminently practical distinguished authoress. Anthony was born April and also public-minded, for his characters fre24, 1815, and was educated at Winchester and quently refer to great public questions, and suggest Harrow. Having obtained an appointment in the political changes. His humour is peculiar to General Post-office, he rose high in the service, himself, dry, direct, and with no infusion of sentiand was despatched to Egypt, America, and other ment. In his excellent story, The Small House of countries, in order to arrange postal conventions. Allington, he will not allow sentiment to suggest He retired from the service in 1867, having made even the slightest poetical justice in reference to a handsome competency by his literary labours, his beautiful and brave, but unfortunate heroine, which he was enabled to carry on during the Lily Dale. The reality of his subsidiary charbusiest portions of his life by means of the invalu-acters, and his manner of seizing on peculiar able habit of early rising. It was while stationed traits without dwelling on them, so as to suggest in Ireland, in the surveyor's department of the oddity, separate him entirely from the school of Post-office, that Mr Trollope commenced his Dickens, whilst his dislike of moralising, and his career as an author. In 1847 he published the trick of satire, separate him as distinctly from the first of his long file of novels-an Irish story en- school of Thackeray, in whom tenderness always titled The Macdermotts of Ballycloran. This was lies alongside the cynical touches and bitterness. followed, a twelvemonth afterwards, by another Irish tale, The Kellys and the O'Kellys, or Landlords and Tenants. Conscious of his powers, and sure of readers, Mr Trollope continued to pour "Don't you ever," said a friend of mine to Mr Trollope, "find a forth works of fiction, among which are the follow- difficulty in beginning?" "Not at all-why should I? I sit down ing: La Vendée, 1850; The Warden, 1855; Bar-in a quarter of an hour." Nothing seems to disturb the even tenor to write, and what difficulty is there? I do just four hundred words chester Towers, 1857; The Three Clerks, 1858; of Mr Trollope's pen. The other day, going out to Australia round Doctor Thorne, 1858; The Bertrams, 1859; Castle the Cape, he had a cabin fitted with a desk, and wrote novels at sea just as usual for a certain time and a certain number of pages Richmond, 1860; Framley Parsonage, 1861; Orley every morning. He published about one every two months for Farm, 1861; Tales of All Countries, 1861; Rachel some time after he returned to England. But Mr Trollope's ruling Ray, 1863; Can You Forgive Her? 1864; The passion is not novel-writing, but the hunting-field, and the last time I met him, in the vestibule of the Garrick Club, his arm was in a Small House at Allington, 1864; Miss Mackenzie, sling from a bad fall with the Berkshire hounds.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE.

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* In a lecture delivered in Natal by the Hon. Mr Broome, secretary to the colony, and republished in the literary journal Evening Hours, is the following:

Mr Trollope's style is clear, natural, sometimes eloquent, and without any trace of artifice.

The Archdeacon's Sanctum and the Old Church.

No room could have been more becoming for a dignitary of the church. Each wall was loaded with theology; over each separate book-case was printed in small gold letters the names of those great divines whose works were ranged beneath; beginning from the early fathers in due chronological order, there were to be found the precious labours of the chosen servants of the church down to the last pamphlet written in opposition to the consecration of Dr Hampden; and raised above this were to be seen the busts of the greatest among the great-Chrysostom, St Augustine, Thomas à Becket, Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop Laud, and Dr Philpotts. Every application that could make study pleasant and give ease to the over-toiled brain was there: chairs made to relieve each limb and muscle; reading-desks and writing-desks to suit every attitude; lamps and candles mechanically contrived to throw their light on any favoured spot, as the student might desire; a shoal of newspapers to amuse the few leisure moments which might be stolen from the labours of the day; and then from the window a view right through a bosky vista, along which ran a broad green path from the rectory to the church, at the end of which the tawny-tinted fine old tower was seen with all its variegated pinnacles and parapets. Few parish churches in England are in better repair, or better worth keeping so, than that at Plumstead Episcopi; and yet it is built in a faulty style; the body of the church is low-so low that the nearly flat leaden roof would be visible from the churchyard, were it not for the carved parapet with which it is surrounded. It is cruciform, though the transepts are irregular, one being larger than the other; and the tower is much too high in proportion to the church: but the colour of the building is perfect; it is that rich yellow gray which one finds nowhere but in the south and west of England, and which is so strong a characteristic of most of our old houses of Tudor architecture. The stonework is also beautiful; the mullions of the windows and the rich tracery of the Gothic workmanship are as rich as fancy can desire; and though in gazing on such a structure, one knows by rule that the old priests who built it, built it wrong, one cannot bring one's self to wish that they should have made it other than it is.

A Low-church Chaplain.-From Barchester Towers.? Mr Slope soon comforted himself with the reflection, that as he had been selected as chaplain to the bishop, it would probably be in his power to get the good things in the bishop's gift, without troubling himself with the bishop's daughter; and he found himself able to endure the pangs of rejected love. As he sat himself down in the railway carriage, confronting the bishop and Mrs Proudie, as they started on their first journey to Barchester, he began to form in his own mind a plan of his future life. He knew well his patron's strong points, but he knew the weak ones as well. He understood correctly enough to what attempts the new bishop's high spirit would soar, and he rightly guessed that public life would better suit the great man's taste, than the small details of diocesan duty.

He, therefore-he, Mr Slope-would in effect be bishop of Barchester. Such was his resolve; and to give Mr Slope his due, he had both courage and spirit to bear him out in his resolution. He knew that he should have a hard battle to fight, for the power and patronage of the see would be equally coveted by another great mind -Mrs Proudie would also choose to be bishop of Barchester. Slope, however, flattered himself that he could out-manoeuvre the lady. She must live much in London, while he would always be on the spot. She would

558

necessarily remain ignorant of much, while he would know everything belonging to the diocese. At first, doubtless, he must flatter and cajole, perhaps yield in some things; but he did not doubt of ultimate triumph. If all other means failed, he could join the bishop against his wife, inspire courage into the unhappy man, lay an axe to the root of the woman's power, and emancipate the husband.

order;

Such were his thoughts as he sat looking at the sleeping pair in the railway-carriage, and Mr Slope is not the man to trouble himself with such thoughts for nothing. He is possessed of more than average abilities, and is of good courage. Though he can stoop to fawn, and stoop low indeed, if need be, he has still within him the power to assume the tyrant; and with the power he has certainly the wish. His acquirements are not of the highest but such as they are, they are completely under control, and he knows the use of them. He is gifted with a certain kind of pulpit eloquence, not likely indeed to be persuasive with men, but powerful with the softer sex. In his sermons he deals greatly in denunciations, excites the minds of his weaker hearers with a not unpleasant terror, and leaves an impression on their minds that all mankind are in a perilous state, and all womankind too, except those who attend regularly to the evening lectures in Baker Street. His looks and tones are extremely severe, so much so that one cannot but fancy that he regards the greater part of the world as being infinitely too bad for his care. through the streets, his very face denotes his horror of the world's wickedness; and there is always an anathema lurking in the corner of his eye.

As he walks

In doctrine, he, like his patron, is tolerant of dissent, if so strict a mind can be called tolerant of anything. With Wesleyan Methodists he has something in common, but his soul trembles in agony at the iniquities of the Puseyites. His aversion is carried to things outward as well as inward. His gall rises at a new church with a high-pitched roof; a full-breasted black-silk waistcoat is would not, in his view, more foully desecrate the church with him a symbol of Satan; and a profane jest-book seat of a Christian, than a book of prayer printed with red letters, and ornamented with a cross on the back. observances are his. Sunday, however, is a word which Most active clergymen have their hobby, and Sunday The 'desecration of the Sabbath,' as he delights to call never pollutes his mouth-it is always 'the Sabbath' it, is to him meat and drink-he thrives upon that as policemen do on the general evil habits of the community. It is the loved subject of all his evening discourses, the source of all his eloquence, the secret of all his power over the female heart. To him the revelation of God appears only in that one law given for Jewish observance. To him the mercies of our Saviour speak in vain. To him in vain has been preached that sermon which fell from divine lips on the mountain: 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth'-'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.' To him the New Testament is comparatively of little moment, for from it can he draw no fresh authority for that dominion which he loves to exercise over at least a seventh part of man's allotted time here below.

Mr Slope is tall, and not ill made. His feet and hands are large, as has ever been the case with all his family, but he has a broad chest and wide shoulders to carry off these excrescences, and on the whole his figure is good. His countenance, however, is not specially prepossessing. His hair is lank, and of a dull, pale reddish hue. It is always formed into three straight lumpy masses, each brushed with admirable precision, and cemented with much grease; two of them adhere closely to the sides of his face, and the other lies at right angles above them. He wears no whiskers, and is always punctiliously shaven. His face is nearly of the same colour as his hair, though perhaps a little redder: it is not unlike beef-beef, however, one would say, of a bad quality. His forehead is capacious and high, but

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