To its inmates each to-morrow
Shall bring in no tide of joy;
Born in darkness and in sorrow,
There shall stand the fated boy.
With a grief too loud to smother,

With a throbbing, burning head,
There shall groan some desperate mother,
Nor deny the stolen bread.

There the veteran, a poor debtor,

Mark'd with honourable scars, Listening to some clanking fetter,

Shall gaze idly through the bars;

Shall gaze idly, not demurring,

Though with thick oppression bow'd; While the many doubly erring

Shall walk honour'd through the crowd.

Yet these wrongs not long shall linger,
The benighted pile must fall;
For, behold! the fiery finger

Flames along the fated wall.

Let the blinded horse go round
Till the yellow clay be ground;
And no weary arms be folded
Till the mass to brick be moulded;
Till the heavy walls be risen,
And the fire is in his prison.
Capitol, and church, and gaol,
Like our kiln, at last shall fail;
Every shape of earth shall fade;
But the heavenly temple, made
For the sorely tried and pure,
With its Builder, shall endure.

THE fair boy Leonatus,

The page of Imogen,

It was his duty evermore
To tend the Lady Imogen;
By peep of day he might be seen

Tapping against her chamber-door,
To wake the sleeping waiting-maid;
She woke, and when she had array'd
The princess, and the twain had pray'd
(They pray'd with rosaries of yore),
They call'd him, pacing to and fro;
And cap in hand, and bowing low,
He enter'd, and began to feed

The singing birds with fruit and seed.

The brave boy Leonatus,
The page of Imogen,

He tripp'd along the kingly hall,
From room to room, with messages;
He stopp'd the butler, clutch'd his keys
(Albeit he was broad and tall),

And dragg'd him down the vaults, where wine In bins lay beaded and divine,

To pick a flask of vintage fine;

Came up, and clomb the garden wall,
And pluck'd from out the sunny spots
Peaches, and luscious apricots,
And fill'd his golden salver there,
And hurried to his lady fair.

The gallant Leonatus,
The page of Imogen,

He had a steed from Arab ground;
And when the lords and ladies gay
Went hawking in the dews of May,
And hunting in the country round,
And Imogen did join the band,

He rode him like a hunter grand,
A hooded hawk upon his hand,

And by his side a slender hound;
But when they saw the deer go by,
He slipp'd the leash, and let him fly,
And gave his fiery barb the rein,
And scour'd beside her o'er the plain.

The strange boy Leonatus.
The page of Imogen,
Sometimes he used to stand for hours
Within her room, behind her chair;
The soft wind blew his golden hair

Across his eyes, and bees from flowers Humm'd round him, but he did not stir: He fixed his earnest eyes on her,

A

pure and reverent worshipper,
A dreamer building airy towers;
But when she spoke he gave a start,
That sent the warm blood from his heart
To flush his cheeks, and every word
The fountain of his feelings stirr'd.

The sad boy Leonatus,
The page of Imogen,

He lost all relish and delight
For all things that did please before;
By day he wish'd the day was o'er,

By night he wish'd the same of night.
He could not mingle in the crowd,
He loved to be alone, and shroud
His tender thoughts, and sigh aloud,

And cherish in his heart its blight.
At last his health began to fail,
His fresh and glowing cheeks to pale;
And in his eyes the tears unshed
Did hang like dew in violets dead.

A heart within her very heart!

The dear boy Leonatus,
The page of Imogen.

She loved, but own'd it not as yet;
When he was absent she was lone,
She felt a void before unknown,

And Leon fill'd it when they met.
She call'd him twenty times a-day,
She knew not why, she could not say;
She fretted when he went away,

And lived in sorrow and regret.
Sometimes she frown'd with stately mien,
And chid him like a little queen;
And then she soothed him meek and mild,
And grew as trustful as a child.

a;

The neat scribe Leonatus, of Imogen:

The page

She wonder'd that he did not speak, And own his love, if love indeed It was that made his spirit bleed;

And she bethought her of a freak, To test the lad; she bade him write A billet to her heart's delight.

He took the pen with fingers weak, Unknowing what he did, and wrote, And folded up, and seal'd the note. She wrote the superscription sage, For Leonatus, lady's page."

66

The happy Leonatus,

The page of Imogen:

The page of Imogen no more,

But now her love, her lord, her life,

For she became his wedded wife,

As both had hoped and dream'd before. He used to sit beside her feet,

And read romances rare and sweet,
And, when she touch'd her lute, repeat
Impassion'd madrigals of yore;
Uplooking in her face the while,
Until she stoop'd with loving smile,
And press'd her melting mouth to his,
That answer'd in a dreamy bliss-

The joyful Leonatus,
The Lord of Imogen.

323

THERE was one main thread of painful experience in Nancy's married life, and on it hung certain deeply-felt scenes, which were the oftenest revived in retrospect. The short dialogue with Priscilla in the garden had determined the current of retrospect in that frequent direction this particular Sunday afternoon. The first wandering of her thought from the text, which she still attempted dutifully to follow with her eyes and silent lips, was into an imaginary enlargement of the defence she had set up for her husband against Priscilla's implied blame. The vindication of the loved object is the best balm affection can find for its wounds. A man must have so much on his mind," is the belief by which a wife often supports a cheerful face under rough answers and unfeeling words. And Nancy's deepest wounds had all come from the perception that the absence of children from their hearth was dwelt on in her husband's mind as a privation to which he could not reconcile himself. Yet sweet Nancy might have been expected to feel still more keenly the denial of a blessing to which she had looked forward with all the varied expectations and preparations, solemn and prettily trivial, which fill the mind of a loving woman when

she expects to become a mother. Was there not a drawer filled with the neat work of her hands, all unworn and untouched, just as she had arranged it there fourteen years ago—just, but for one little dress, which had been made the burial-dress? But under this immediate personal trial Nancy was so firmly unmurmuring, that years ago she had suddenly renounced the habit of visiting this drawer, lest she should in this way be cherishing a longing for what was not given.

Perhaps it was this very severity towards any indulgence of what she held to be sinful regret in herself, that made her shrink from applying her own standard to her husband. "It was very different—it was much worse for a man to be disappointed in that way: a woman could always be satisfied with devoting herself to her husband, but a man wanted something that would make him look forward more-and sitting by the fire was so much duller to him than to a woman."

And

always, when Nancy reached this point in her meditations - trying, with predetermined sympathy, to see everything as Godfrey saw it-there came a renewal of self-questioning. Had she done everything in her power to lighten Godfrey's

privation ? Had she really been right in the| resistance which had cost her so much pain six years ago, and again four years ago-the resistance to her husband's wish that they should adopt a child? Adoption was more remote from the ideas and habits of that time than of our own; still Nancy had her opinion on it. It was as necessary to her mind to have an opinion on all topics, not exclusively masculine, that had come under her notice, as for her to have a precisely marked place for every article of her personal property: and her opinions were always principles, to be unwaveringly acted on. They were firm, not because of their basis, but because she held them with a tenacity inseparable from her mental action. On all the duties and proprieties of life, from filial behaviour to the arrangement of the evening toilet, pretty Nancy Lammeter, by the time she was three-andtwenty, had her unalterable little code, and had formed every one of her habits in strict accordance with that code. She carried these decided judgments within her in the most unobtrusive way; they rooted themselves in her mind, and grew there as quietly as grass. Years ago, we know, she insisted on dressing like Priscilla, because "it was right for sisters to dress alike," and because "she would do what was right if she wore a gown dyed with cheesecolouring." That was a trivial but typical instance of the mode in which Nancy's life was regulated.

It was one of those rigid principles, and no petty egoistic feeling, which had been the ground of Nancy's difficult resistance to her husband's wish. To adopt a child because children of your own had been denied you, was to try and choose your lot in spite of Providence: the adopted child, she was convinced, would never turn out well, and would be a curse to those who had wilfully and rebelliously sought what it was clear that, for some high reason, they were better without. When you saw a thing was not meant to be, said Nancy, it was a bounden duty to leave off so much as wishing for it. And so far, perhaps, the wisest of men could scarcely make more than a verbal improvement in her principle. But the conditions under which she held it apparent that a thing was not meant to be, depended on a more peculiar mode of thinking. She would have given up making a purchase at a particular place if, on three successive times, rain, or some other cause of Heaven's sending, had formed an obstacle; and she would have anticipated a broken limb or other heavy misfortune to any one who persisted in spite of such indications. "But why should you think the child would turn out ill?" said Godfrey in his remonstrances. She has thriven as well as a child can do with the weaver; and he adopted her. There isn't such a pretty little girl anywhere else in the parish, or one fitter for the station we could give her. Where can be the likelihood of her being a curse to anybody?"

66

"Yes, my dear Godfrey," said Nancy who was sitting with her hands tightly clasped together, with yearning, regretful affection in her eyes. "The child may not turn out ill with the weaver; but then he didn't go to seek her, as we should be doing. It will be wrong-I feel sure it will. Don't you remember what that lady we met at the Royston Baths told us about the child her sister adopted? That was the only adopting I ever heard of: and the child was transported when it was twentythree. Dear Godfrey, don't ask me to do what I know is wrong: I should never be happy again. I know it's very hard for you-it's easier for me-but it's the will of Providence."

It might seem singular that Nancy-with her. religious theory pieced together out of narrow social traditions, fragments of church doctrine imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small experience—should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledge-singular, if we did not know that human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barriers of system.

Godfrey had from the first specified Eppie, then about twelve years old, as a child suitable for them to adopt. It had never occurred to him that Silas would rather part with his life than with Eppie. Surely the weaver would wish the best to the child he had taken so much trouble with, and would be glad that such good fortune should happen to her: she would always be very grateful to him, and he would be well provided for to the end of his life-provided for as the excellent part he had done by the child deserved. Was it not an appropriate thing for people in a higher station to take a charge off the hands of a man in a lower? It seemed an eminently appropriate thing to Godfrey, for reasons that were known only to himself; and by a common fallacy, he imagined the measure would be easy because he had private motives for desiring it. This was rather a coarse mode of estimating Silas's relation to Eppie: but we must remember that many of the impressions which Godfrey was likely to gather concerning the labouring people around him would favour the idea that deep affections can hardly go along with callous palms and scant means; and he had not had the opportunity, even if he had had the power, of entering intimately into all that was exceptional in the weaver's experience. It was only the want of adequate knowledge that could have made it possible for Godfrey deliberately to entertain an unfeeling project: his natural kindness had outlived that blighting time of cruel wishes, and Nancy's praise of him as a husband was not founded entirely on a wilful illusion.

"I was right," she said to herself, when she had

"Godfrey, if you had but told me this six years ago, we could have done some of our duty by the child. Do you think I'd have refused to take her in, if I'd known she was yours?"

At that moment Godfrey felt all the bitterness of an error that was not simply futile, but had defeated its own end. He had not measured this wife with whom he had lived so long. But she spoke again, with more agitation.

"And-O Godfrey-if we'd had her from the first, if you'd taken to her as you ought, she'd have loved me for her mother-and you'd have been happier with me: I could better have borne my little baby dying, and our life might have been more like what we used to think it 'ud be."

The tears fell, and Nancy ceased to speak. "But you wouldn't have married me then, Nancy, if I'd told you," said Godfrey, urged, in the bitterness of his self-reproach, to prove to himself that his conduct had not been utter folly. "You may think you would now, but you wouldn't then. With your pride and your father's, you'd have hated having anything to do with me after the talk there'd have been."

"But we can take Eppie now," said Godfrey. 'I won't mind the world knowing at last. I'll be plain and open for the rest o' my life.”

"It'll be different coming to us, now she's grown up," said Nancy, shaking her head sadly. "But it's your duty to acknowledge her and provide for her; and I'll do my part by her, and pray to Heaven to make her love me."

"Then we'll go together to Silas Marner's this very night, as soon as everything's quiet at the

THE window looked on a sky of flame,
On the rosy bloom of a rippling bay ;
Within we moved in an amber glow,

And purple even our shadows lay.

I lean'd by the curtain's folds and read
Wine-coloured words in a page of light;
Did the sunset only dazzle my eyes?

Did its brightness only confuse my sight?
I had been home from the East a month,
And you know what passes for beauty there,
And I read to listening English girls,
English beauties, and few so fair.

They were two cousins, Amy and Maud

(Seen in my dreams, oh! many a night)— Maud with her dark eyes dreamy and full, And fairy Amy rosy and bright.

Both so sweet and tender and true,

Both from a boy had been loved by me. And I often had thought, "Does either love? Am I more to either than friend may be?"

I read my Journal. That was their will:
Page after page of my Indian life,
Dull enough, slow enough, Heaven knows,
With little of peril and less of strife.
Page after page of the daily round,
Monotony stamp'd on every leaf—

See Page 89, Vol. II.]

Hunting a tiger, meeting a Thug,
Having a raid with a robber chief:

So ran the record, until at last

News of the Mutiny broke the spell,
And our regiment marched on the rebel foes,
And my Journal told what there befel.
And here, as I read, my wandering eyes
At the listening faces stole a glance-
At Amy, pale, and with parted lips,

At Maud as she dream'd on this new romance.

Then on I sped to the closing scene.

Where a Sepoy dagger was at my heart,
And I saw it glisten, and plunge, and then-
But Amy rose with a sudden start.

'No more! no more! Thank Heaven you live!"
It was her voice the silence broke,
And Maud looked up with a face surprised,
As if from a pleasant dream awoke.

I read no more. What need of the rest?
Enough in the sunset I had read.
She loved me, Amy! her gentle heart
Spoke in the cry that had told her dread.
She loved me! Faded the

rosy West,

Faded the bloom of the rippling bay; But night could not chill, nor the dark depress, While the thought of her love in my bosom lay