him! A long strife would be so fearful -and then if he did get angry with her, he could crush her to atoms.

CHAPTER XVI.

A LANDOWNER.

WHEN Judith had gone, Bernard felt he had a duty to fulfil. His conversation with Miss Conisbrough had brought it again to his mind. It was the duty of writing to Lizzie Vane, to acquaint her with his new fortunes-and hers, for of course she was to be the partaker for the future of all his joys and sorrows. distinctly felt it to be a duty was it not also a pleasure? As that thought occurred to him, he started up, muttering, "By Jove! of course it is!" And he seized pen and paper, and (scrawled off these lines, in the fulness of his heart :

He

"MY DEAREST LIZZIE: You will see from the date of this that I am in the house of my fathers. You will wonder, too, what I am doing here, after all I said to you about my determination never to enter it. What I have to tell you, my darling, is a very serious (matter for both of us. You remember my telling you last Monday about my accidental meeting with Mr. Aglionby of Scar Foot, my grandfather. On Wednesday last he died. They telegraphed for me to attend the funeral. He was buried this morning, and on his will being read, it turns out that he has left the whole of his property to me. I was astonished, I own, and in a measure gratified; one naturally is gratified at finding oneself suddenly rich when one had least reason to expect to be anything of the kind.

"But there are shades to the picture, and drawbacks to the advantages, and you, my dear Lizzie, with your tender heart, will easily understand when I explain that my joy is not unmixed. It seems that the Mrs. Conisbrough whom I told you about, and who lives with her daughters at Yoresett, the market town, had always been given to understand that she would inherit the property.

"My grandfather's will was made only the night before he died, in a fit of pique, for some reason which no one seems able to understand. They are entirely ignored-not even mentioned in it.

Mrs. Conisbrough and her eldest

daughter were present at the reading of the will. The poor lady has taken it very much to heart; her means are exceedingly small, and she thinks the will a most unjust one. (So do I, for that matter-an egregiously unjust will.) And she threatens to dispute it. She will have no chance, of course, but I know the worst she can do, and until feel my hands in a measure tied until I benefit. Meantime, she is ill upstairs in some compromise is come to for her this very house! her agitation having brought on an attack of the heart. She is attended by her daughter, for whom I feel very sorry. I feel sorry for them all. They are gentlewomen, and evidently have had a hard struggle all their lives. There is such a sad, patient, yet dignified expression upon Miss Conisbrough's face. She cannot but command respect and admiration. I wish you knew her. One dreams fast sometimes, and since this morning I have been dreaming of you settled here, and myself, having effected a compromise with Mrs. Conisbrough, and proved to her that I am not the rapacious upstart she takes me for-and of you and the Misses Conisbrough getting on very well together, and being great friends. I think this is not so foolish as most dreams. I see no reason why it should not come true. Miss Conisbrough is as far as possible from being forbidding, though she looks so grave, and I am sure your winning ways would soon make her love you. This is a most beautiful old place-very different from the din and dust of the town. To-morrow I must try to make a little sketch of the lake and the house, and send you them. As soon as I can snatch the time I shall run over to Irkford and see you, and discuss future plans. I can hardly realize yet that our wedding, which we thought must wait for so many years, need not now be long deferred-no longer than a certain wilful young woman chooses to put it off: Remember me to your mother; and heaven bless you, my own darling, is the wish of your faithful sweetheart,

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BERNARD AGLIONBY.'

His heart warmed as he wrote the words, and thought of his beautiful Lizzie, and cherished his little plan of mak

ing her and the Misses Conisbrough into great friends. Poor Bernard! He wrote out of the innocence and the fulness of his heart, not out of his knowledge of either men or women.

He had chosen to remain at Scar Foot rather than accept Mr. Whaley's invitation that he would return with him to Yoresett and be his guest. Mr. Whaley may easily be pardoned for not having surmised for a moment, what Aglionby's demeanor certainly did not suggest, the unspoken impulse which urged him to remain-the longing which lay deep at his heart, to become better acquainted, in silence and undisturbed, with this old place where his fathers had lived, and where now he was to live after them; to imbibe, as it were, some ideas of the life, of the home, that was to be his. Unspoken though it was, the sentiment, the desire, was there. Deep down in his rough heart, and crusted over with the bitterness which with him came too readily to the surface, there were wells of something very like romance and sentiment. Since this morning a thousand schemes had come crowding into his mind, a thousand not wholly selfish plans and purposes, which now he could carry out to his heart's content. All his poetic instincts had been cramped, if not warped, by the life he had led, but under his unpromising exterior they were there-they did exist; and it was they and they alone which had prompted him to refuse Mr. Whaley's invitation.

the garden just under his eyes, filled with homely flowers, and with the green field beyond, sloping down to the water's edge-it was, indeed, very fair for any one who had eyes to see! But to him it was more--it was a revelation ; there was the peculiar stillness of a country Sunday morning over it all; it was the end of the world. Most of us are acquainted with one sensation-that of arriving when it is dark at some seaside place of sleeping soundly all night; of awakening the next morning, and on looking out, finding oneself confronted by the open sea. That is a sensation which never grows old or stale. Something of the thrill and joy which attends its first time of being experienced, hangs also about each recurrence of it. It was with just such a sensation that Bernard Aglionby's eyes rested now on the prospect before him. Vague, unconscious contrasts were formed in his mind-this place and that Scar Foot on a Sunday morning, and 13 Crane Street on a Sunday morning! He opened the window, and inhaled the pure, frosty, fragrant air-Arcadian air. It was very early, he found, not yet six o'clock; but going to bed again was a thing not to be thought of; and he dressed, went downstairs, and out of doors, and walked to the lakeside with the feeling that he was in a dream. It was as wonderful to him, and certainly quite as agreeable, as her first ball to a girl of seventeen who has been brought up in strict seclusion. He wondered at the intensity of his own enjoyment, and its naïveté.

The air of the October morning was sharp; the sun was brilliant, the atmosphere clear; the view before him struck with a strange thrill upon him-a thrill half pleasure, half pain. The clear moors just opposite; the dimmer forms of the great fells behind them; the glittering silver surface of the little lake;

Bernard spent almost the whole of that day out of doors, literally exploring" with the avidity and the interest of a schoolboy who has found a promising place for birds'-nests. He walked completely round the lake, and thus, from under the village of Busk at the opposite side, he got a fine view of

Scar Foot, and gazed at it till he could gaze no longer.

He met a farmer's boy, and asked him the names of some of the great grey fells in the distance, and the boy told him, and added that there must have been rain in Lancashire, for "look at t' Stake," which, as Bernard saw, was flecked with irregular white lines. "All the becks is oot," added the boy, and Aglionby smiled. At Irkford-for miles around Irkford-the "becks" were black as ink, and foul as only the streams of a town can be with all manner of pollution.

He went in again, to his 'dinner, in the middle of the day, and sent a message by Mrs. Aveson to inquire after those ladies." The answer brought by the housekeeper was, "Miss Conisbrough's compliments, and she was quite well; but Mrs. Conisbrough was rather poorly this morning." On her own account, Mrs. Aveson added that Mrs. Conisbrough was terribly weak, and had to lie on her back as still as a mouse, or palpitations would come on again. Dr. Lowther had called, and said that complete rest was still necessary. Miss Conisbrough had been reading the Morning Service to her mamma, and she was going to have her dinner

with her upstairs. With this he had to be satisfied. Then, after dinner, he sat at the open window of the parlor for an hour or two smoking, and making believe to read a county newspaper, with which Mrs. Aveson had supplied him; but it was as if a spell drew hm out of doors, and he again set out for what he intended to be a short walk, but on what developed into a long, aimless ramble over hill and dale; he got by mistake on to the road which leads to the great waterfall at Hardraw Scar, which was thundering in indescribable splendor, hurling itself over the rocky ledge into its deep and dark and fearful basin below. Then he climbed a long road, over some great hills; discovered some vast and awful-looking "pots, crevasses of limestone, sinking for unknown depths into the ground-fearsome places indeed, bearing the unromantic title of "Butter-tubs ;" and a little farther on, found himself just beneath bleak Shunner Fell, gazing down into dark Swaledale, and in full view of such a“ tumultuous waste of huge hill-tops' as he had never seen before. Then he thought it was time to return, and retraced his steps downward, and by the light of the moon, homeward.-Temple Bar.

"SET a thief to catch a thief." Well even so! And "Honor among thieves"--you may always find the proverb and counter-proverb-is an equally noble sentiment. I am not going to lay bare the secrets of the prison-house.

Still, may not the ancient gladiator be allowed to haunt his former arena, to examine and criticize the combatants, to watch with interest the various throws ? And the old vocalist, who has quietly dropped, let us hope in good time, into the teacher of singing-is it unnatural that he should sometimes like to frequent the stalls, and make his own comments on his brethren still before the footlights? For he loves his art as much as ever; he understands its secrets perhaps better than ever-only- But

Yes there comes a time when we authors must accept the truth, that it is better for us, as well as our books, to be "shelved." We ought never to write at all unless we have something to say, and there are few things sadder than to see a writer, to whom the world has listened, and listened with pleasure, go on feebly repeating himself, sinking from originality into mediocrity, and then into the merest commonplace. "Stop in time," is the wisest advice that can be given to all who live by their brains. These brains-even if the strongest-will only last a certain time, and do a certain

quantity of work-really good work. Álas for those authors who have to live upon their reputation after their powers are gone.

But though the impulse of genius melts away, and even talent can be worn out in time, there is one thing which, among much lost, is assuredly gained, and that is experience. The quickness to detect faults won through fighting with our own, and the knowledge how to rectify these errors when found, are advantages we possess still, and should not lightly underrate. Therefore, if after having written novels for more than a quarter of a century, I have lately tried reading them, may I be allowed a few words which I trust none of my co-mates will misconstrue, nor their readers, and mine, misapprehend?

Novel-making-I use the word designedly, for it is a mistake to suppose that a novel makes itself-is not an impulse, but an art. The poet may be "born, not made;" but the novelist must make himself one, just as much as any carpenter or bricklayer. You cannot build a house at random, or without having learned the bricklayer's trade, and by no possibility can you construct a three-volume story, which shall be a real, enduring work of art, without having attained that mechanical skill which is as necessary to genius as the furnace to the ore and the lapidary's tool to the diamond. And since most long-experienced workmen are supposed to know something of their tools, and the way to use them, as well as to be tolerable judges of the raw material in which they have worked all their days, I do not apologize for writing this paper. It may be useful to some of those enthusiastic young people who think-as a fashionable lady once said to me"Oh how charming it must be to write a novel. Couldn't you teach me?" No; I was afraid not. And though work is genius-as some one has said, and not quite without truth-I could not advise my young friend to try.

Novel the word, coming from the Italian novella, implies something new a rifacciomento, or re-making, in an imaginative shape, of the eternally old elements of mortal life, joy and sorrow, fortune and misfortune, love and death. Also virtue and vice; though whether

the novel should illustrate any special moral, is a much-debated question

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Apparently, beyond some vague notions of virtue rewarded and vice punished, the old romancists did not consider a "moral" necessary. There is certainly no purpose" in the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments," or the Decameron of Boccaccio;" nor very much in Sir Charles Grandison. Probably less than none in "Tom Jones,' and others of the same age and class. Even the author of Waverley, the Shakspere of novelists, only teaches us, as Shakspere does, by implication. It has been left to modern writers to convert the novel into a sort of working steamengine, usable for all purposes; to express through it their pet theories of religion or morality, their opinions on social wrongs and remedies, and their views on æsthetic and philosophical subjects. From the art of cookery up-or down-to the law of divorce, anybody who thinks he has anything to say, says it in three volumes, mashed up, like hard potatoes, in the milk and butter of fiction.

A portion, however, of our modern novel-writers repudiate the idea of having any moral purpose whatever; and, truly, few of their readers can accuse them of it. Amusement pure and simple-not always either simple or pure, but always amusement-is their sole aim. They-that is, the cleverest of them-are satisfied to cut a bit at random out of the wonderful web of life, and present it to you just as it is, wishing you to accept it as such, without investigating it too closely, or pausing to consider whether the pattern is complete, what the mode and reason of the wearing, and whether you only see a part or the whole. That there is a whole- that life is not chance-work, but a great design, with the hands of the Divine Artificer working behind it all-so seldom comes into their calculations that they do not expect it to come into yours. Therefore, with a daring and sometimes almost blasphemous ingenuity, they put themselves to play Providence, to set up their puppets and knock them down, and make them between whiles "play such fantastic tricks before high heaven," that one feels heaven's commonest law of right and wrong would to them

be, to say the least, extremely inconvenient.

But to return. Certainly-whatever my fashionable young friend might think-no one can be taught to write novels. But to suppose that novelwriting comes by accident, or impulsethat the author has only to sit with his pen in his hand and his eyes on the ceiling, waiting for the happy moment of inspiration, is an equal mistake.

To make a novel that is, to construct out of the ever-changing kaleidoscope of human fate a picture of life which shall impress people as being life-like and stand out to its own and possibly an after generation, as such-this is a task that cannot be accomplished without genius, but which genius, unaided by mechanical skill, generally fails to accomplish thoroughly. Much of what is required comes not by intuition, but experience. "How do you write a novel?" has been asked me hundreds of times; and as half the world now writes novels expecting the other half to read them, my answer, given in plain print, may not be quite useless. The shoemaker who in his time has fitted a good many feet, need not hesitate to explain his mode of measuring, how he cuts and sews his leather, and so on. He can give a hint or two on the workmanship; the materials are beyond his power.

What other novelists do I know not, but this has been my own way-ab ovo. For, I contend, all stories that are meant to live must contain the germ of life, the egg, the vital principle. A novel "with a purpose" may be intolerable, but a novel without a purpose is more intolerable still-as feeble and flaccid as a man without a backbone. Therefore the first thing is to fix on a central idea, like the spine of a human being or the trunk of a tree. Yet as nature never leaves either bare, but clothes them with muscle and flesh, branches and foliage, so this leading idea of his book will be by the true author so successfully disguised or covered as not to obtrude itself objectionably; indeed, the ordinary reader ought not even to suspect its existence. Yet from it, this one principal idea, proceed all aftergrowths; the kind of plot which shall best develop it, the characters which must act it out, the incidents which will

express these characters, even to the conversations which evolve and describe these incidents, all are sequences, following one another in natural order; even as from the seed-germ result successively the trunk, limbs, branches, twigs, and leafage of a tree.

This, if I have put my meaning clearly, shows that a conscientiously written novel is by no means a piece of impulsive, accidental scribbling, but a deliberate work of art; that though in one sense it is also a work of nature, since every part ought to result from and be kept subservient to the whole, still, in another, the novel is the last thing that ought to be allowed to say of itself, like Topsy, "Spects I growed."

Not even as to the mere writing of it. Style or composition, though to some it comes naturally, does not come to all. When I was young, an older and more experienced writer once said to me,

Never use two adjectives where one will do; never use an adjective at all where a noun will do. Avoid italics, notes of exclamation, foreign words and quotations. Put full stops instead of colons; make your sentences as short and clear as you possibly can, and whenever you think you have written a particularly fine sentence, cut it out."

More valuable advice could not be given to any young author. It strikes at the root of that slip-shod literature of which we find so much nowadays, even in writers of genius. To these latter indeed it is a greater temptation; their rapid, easy pen runs on as the fancy strikes, and they do not pause to consider that in a novel, as in a picture, breadth is indispensable. Every part should be made subservient to the whole.

You must have a foreground and background, and a middle distance. If you persist in working up one character, or finishing up minutely one incident, your perspective will be destroyed, and your book become a mere collection of fragments, not a work of art at all. The true artist will always be ready to sacrifice any pet detail to the perfection of the whole.