It is probably not pride alone that induces him to persist in that change of name, and makes him regard as perpetual the abandonment of the one that he took from his forefathers, and with which he had once identified his vaulting ambition; for shortly after he had quitted his brother's house, Oliver read in the weekly newspaper, to which he bounded his lore of the times in which he lived, an extract from an American journal, wherein certain mention was made of an English adventurer, who, amongst other aliases, had assumed the name of Leslie that extract caused Oliver to start, turn pale, look round, and thrust the paper into the fire. From that time he never attempted to violate the condition Randal had imposed on himnever sought to renew their intercourse, nor to claim a brother. Doubtless, if the adventurer thus signalized was the man Oliver suspected, whatever might be imputed to Randal's charge that could have paled a brother's cheek, it was none of the more violent crimes to which law is inexorable, but rather (in that progress made by ingratitude and duplicity, with Need and Necessity urging them on,) some act of dishonesty, which may just escape from the law, to sink, without redemption, the name. However this be, there is nothing in Randal's present course of life which forebodes any deeper fall. He has known what it is to want bread, and his former restlessness subsides into cynic apathy.

ideas and repute from the dead Leslie, as Leslie had filched them from the living Burley.

While what may be called poetical justice has thus evolved itself from the schemes in which Randal Leslie had wasted rare intellect in baffling his own fortunes, no outward signs of adversity evince the punishment of Providence on the head of the more powerful offender, Baron Levy. No fall in the Funds has shaken the sumptuous fabric, built from the ruined houses of other men. Baron Levy is still Baron Levy the millionaire; but I doubt if at heart he be not more acutely miserable than Randal Leslie, the usher. For Levy is a man who has admitted the fiercer passions into his philosophy of life; he has not the pale blood and torpid heart which allow the scotched adder to doze away its sense of pain. Just as old age began to creep upon the fashionable usurer, he fell in love with a young opera-dancer, whose light heels had turned the lighter heads of half the élégans of Paris and London. The craft of the dancer was proof against all lesser bribes than that of marriage; and Levy married her. From that moment his house, Louis Quinze, was more crowded than ever by the high-born dandies whose society he had long so eagerly courted. That society became his curse. The baroness was an accomplished coquette; and Levy-with whom, as we have seen, jealousy was the predominant passion was stretched on an eternal rack. His low estimate of human nature-his disbelief in the possibility of virtue-added strength to the agony of his suspicions, and provoked the very dangers he dreaded. His sole self-torturing task was that of the spy upon his own hearth. His banquets were haunted by a spectre; the attributes of his wealth were as the goad and the scourge of Nemesis. His gay cynic smile changed into a sullen scowl-his hair blanched into white-his eyes were hollow with one consuming care. Suddenly he left his costly house-left London; abjured all the society which it had been the joy of his wealth to purchase; buried himself and his wife in a remote corner of the provinces; and there he still lives. He seeks in vain to occupy his days with rural pursuits; he to whom the excitements of a metropolis, with all its corruption and its vices, were the sole sources of the turbid stream that he called Once he found a well-worn volume running the "pleasure!" There, too, the fiend of jealousy round of delighted school-boys-took it up, and still pursues him; he prowls round his demesnes recognized Leonard's earliest popular work, which with the haggard eye and furtive step of a thief; had once seduced himself into pleasant thoughts he guards his wife as a prisoner, for she threatens and gentle emotions. He carried the book to his every day to escape. The life of the man who had own lodgings-read it again; and when he re-opened the prison to so many is the life of a jailer. turned it to its young owner, some of the leaves His wife abhors him, and does not conceal it; and were stained with tears. Alas! perhaps but the still slavishly he dotes on her. Accustomed to the maudlin tears of broken nerves, not of the freest liberty--demanding applause and admiration awakened soul-for the leaves smelt strongly of as her rights-wholly uneducated, vulgar in mind, whiskey. Yet, after that reperusal, Randal Leslie coarse in language, violent in temper the beautiturned suddenly to deeper studies than his ha- ful Fury he has brought to his home, makes that bitual drudgeries required. He revived and in-home a hell. Thus, what might seem to the sucreased his early scholarship; he chalked the perficial most enviable, is to their possessor most outline of a work of great erudition, in which the hateful. He dares not ask a soul to see how he subtlety of his intellect found field in learned and acute criticism. But he has never proceeded far in this work. After each irregular and spasmodic effort, the pen drops from his hand, and he mutters," But to what end? I can never now raise a name. Why give reputation to-John Smith!" Thus he drags on his life; and, perhaps, when he dies, the fragments of his learned work may be discovered in the desk of the usher, and serve as hints to some crafty student, who may filch

He lodges in the town near the school, and thus the debasing habit of unsocial besotment is not brought under the eyes of his superior. The dram is his sole luxury-if it be suspected, it is thought to be his sole vice., He goes through the ordinary routine of tuition with average credit; his spirit of intrigue occasionally shows itself in attempts to conciliate the favor of the boys whose fathers are wealthy--who are born to higher rank than the rest; and he lays complicated schemes to be asked home for the holidays. But when the schemes succeed, and the invitation comes, he recoils and shrinks back-he does not dare to show himself on the borders of the brighter world he once hoped to sway; he fears that he may be discovered to be -a Leslie! On such days, when his task work is over, he shuts himself up in his room, locks the door, and drugs himself into insensibility.

spends his gold-he has shrunk into a mean and niggardly expenditure, and complains of reverse and poverty, in order to excuse himself to his wife for debarring her of the enjoyments which she anticipated from the Money-Bags she married. A vague consciousness of retribution has awakened remorse, to add to his other stings. And the remorse coming from superstition, not religionsent from below, not descending from abovebrings with it none of the consolations of a genu

326

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

The Count di Peschiera was not deceived in the
calculations which had induced him to affect re-
pentance, and establish a claim upon his kinsman.
Ile received from the generosity of the Duke di
Serrano an annuity not disproportioned to his
rank, and no order from his court forbade his re-
turn to Vienna. But, in the very summer that
followed his visit to Lansmere, his career came to
an abrupt close. At Baden-Baden he paid court
to a wealthy and accomplished Polish widow; and
his fine person and terrible repute awed away all
rivals save a young Frenchman, as daring as him-
self, and much more in love.
given and accepted. Peschiera appeared on the
A challenge was
fatal ground, with his customary sang-froid, hum-
ming an opera air, and looking so diabolically gay
that the Frenchman's nerves were affected in spite
of his courage. And, the trigger going off before
he had even taken aim, to his own ineffable aston-
ishment, he shot the count through the heart,
dead.

ine repentance. He never seeks to atone-never Miss Sticktorights. It was two years before Frank dreams of some redeeming good action. riches flow around him, spreading wider and wider of Beatrice saddened his spirits, but sobered his His recovered the disappointment with which the loss -out of his own reach. however misplaced and ill-requited, if honestly conceived and deeply felt, rarely fails to advance habits and awoke his reflection. the self-education of man. An affection. and serious; and, on a visit to Hazeldean, met at a county ball Miss Sticktorights, and the two Frank became steady young persons were instantly attracted towards each other, perhaps by the very feud that had so long existed between their houses. The marriage settlements were nearly abandoned, at the last moment, by a discussion between the parents as to the Right of Way. But the dispute was happily appeased by Mr. Dale's suggestion, that as the proposed marriage, all cause for litigation both properties would be united in the children of would naturally cease, since no man would go to law with himself. Mr. Sticktorights and Mr. Hazeldean, however, agreed in the precaution of inserting a clause in the settlements (though all the lawyers declared that it could not be of any legal avail), by which it was declared that if, in Sticktorights' estate devolved on some distant scion of the Sticktorights family, the right of way default of heritable issue by the said marriage, the from the wood across the waste land would still remain in the same state of delectable dispute in which it then stood. There seems, however, little chanse of a lawsuit thus providently bequeathed to the misery of distant generations-since two sons seek on the terrace where Jackeymo once watered and two daughters are already playing at hide-andthe orange-trees, and in the Belvidere where Riccabocca had studied his Machiavel.

Beatrice di Negra lived for some years after her brother's death in strict seclusion, lodging within a convent-though she did not take the veil, as she at first proposed. In fact, the more she saw of the sisterhood, the more she found that human regrets and human passions (save in some rarely gifted natures) find their way through the barred gates and over the lofty walls. up her abode in Rome, where she is esteemed for Finally, she took a life not only marked by strict propriety, but active benevolence. She cannot be prevailed on to accept from the duke more than a fourth of the annuity that had been bestowed on her brother; but she has few wants, save those of charity; and when charity is really active, it can do so much with so little gold! She is not known in the gayer circles of the city; but she gathers around her a small society, composed chiefly of artists and scholars, and is never so happy as when she can aid some child of genius-more especially if his country be England.

self to the pomp of his principalities and his title of duke. Jemima accommodated herself much Riccabocca was long before he reconciled himher native Hazeldean simplicity at heart, and is adored by the villagers around her, especially by more readily to greatness, but she retained all the young of both sexes, whom she is always ready to marry and to portion;-convinced, long ere this, of the redeemable qualities of the male The squire and his wife still flourish at Hazel- to satirize woman and wedlock, and deem himself dean, where Captain Barnabas Higginbotham has-thanks to his profound experience of the one, sex by her reverence for the duke, who continues taken up his permanent abode. The captain is a and his philosophical endurance of the other-the confirmed hypochondriac, but he brightens up now only happy husband in the world. His chief and then when he hears of any illness in the fami- amusement of late has been in educating the son ly of Mr. Sharpe Currie, and is then heard to with whom, according to his scientific prognostics, murmur, "If those seven sickly children should go Jemima presented him shortly after his return to off, I might still have very great-EXPECTATIONS. For the which he has been roundly scolded by the Italian proverbs full of hard-hearted, worldly ." his native land. The sage began betimes with his squire, and gravely preached at by the parson. wisdom, and the boy was scarce out of the hornUpon both, however, he takes his revenge in a book before he was introduced to Machiavel. But fair and gentlemanlike way three times a-week at somehow or other the simple goodness of the phithe whist-table, the parson no longer having the losopher's actual life, with his high-wrought pacaptain as his constant partner, since a fifth now trician sentiments of integrity and honor, so coungenerally cuts in at the table-in the person of teract the theoretical lessons, that the Heir of that old enemy and neighbor, Mr. Sticktorights. Serrano is little likely to be made more wise by The parson, thus fighting his own battles unallied the proverbs, or more wicked by the Machiavel, to the captain, observes with melancholy surprise than those studies have practically made the prothat there is a long run of luck against him, and genitor, whose opinions his countrymen still shame that he does not win so much as he used to do. with the title of "Alphonso the good." Fortunately that is the sole trouble-except Mrs. Dale's little tempers, to the which he is ac- know what had become of Randal. He never customed--that ever disturbs the serene tenor of traced the adventurer to his closing scene. The duke long cherished a strong curiosity to the parson's life. We must now explain how Mr. once (years before Randal had crept into his Sticktorights came to cut in at the Hazeldean present shelter), in a visit of inspection to the hoswhist-table. Frank has settled at the Casino with pital at Genoa, the duke, with his peculiar shrewda wife who suits him exactly, and that wife wasness of observation in all matters except those

But

which concerned himself, was remarking to the heads and say,
I
officer in attendance," that for one dull honest
man, whom fortune drove to the hospital or the
jail, he had found, on investigation of their antece-
dents, three sharp-witted knaves who had thereto
reduced themselves," when his eye fell upon a
man asleep in one of the sick wards, and, recog-
nizing the face, not then so changed as Oliver had
seen it, he walked straight up, and gazed upon
Randal Leslie.

"Old Pompley will go off in a fit of apoplexy; a great loss to our society; genteel people the Pompleys! and very highly connected." "

6

The vacancy created in the borough of Lansmere by Audley Egerton's death, was filled up by our old acquaintance, Haveril Dashmore, who had unsuccessfully contested that seat on Egerton's first election. The naval officer was now an admiral, and perfectly reconciled to the constitution, with all its alloy of aristocracy.

66

"An Englishman," said the official. He was brought hither insensible, from a severe wound on Dick Avenel did not retire from Parliament so the head, inflicted, as we discovered, by a well- soon as he had anticipated. He was not able to known chevalier d'industrie, who declared that persuade Leonard, whose brief fever of political the Englishman had outwitted and cheated him. ambition was now quenched in the calm fountain That was not very likely, for a few crowns were of the Muse, to supply his place in the senate; all we could find on the Englishman's person, and and he felt that the house of Avenel needed one he had been obliged to leave his lodgings for representative. He contrived, however, to dedebt. He is recovering-but there is fever still." vote, for the first year or two, much more of his The duke gazed silently on the sleeper, who was time to his interests at Screwstown than to the tossing restlessly on his pallet, and muttering to affairs of his country, and succeeded in baffling himself; then he placed his purse in the official's the over-competition to which he had been subhand. "Give this to the Englishman," said he; jected, by taking the competitor into partnership. "but conceal my name. It is true-it is true- Having thus secured a monopoly at Screwstown, the proverb is very true"-resumed the duke, Dick, of course, returned with great ardor to his descending the stairs. "Più pelli di volpi che di former enlightened opinions in favor of free trade. asini vanno in Pellicciaria." (More hides of He remained some years in Parliament; and foxes than of asses find their way to the tanner's.) though far too shrewd to venture out of his depth Dr. Morgan continues to prescribe globules for as an orator, distinguished himself so much by grief, and to minister infinitesimally to the mind his exposure of "humbug" on an important comdiseased. Practising what he prescribes, he swal-mittee, that he acquired a very high reputation lows a globule of "caustic" whenever the sight as a man of business, and gradually became so in of a distressed fellow-creature moves him to com- request amongst all members who moved for “Sepassion-a constitutional tendency which, he is lect Committees," that he rose into consequence; at last convinced, admits of no radical cure. For and Mrs. Avenel, courted for his sake, more than the rest, his range of patients has notably ex- her own, obtained the wish of her heart, and was panded; and under his sage care his patients received as an acknowledged habituée into the cirunquestionably live as long-as Providence pleases. cles of fashion. Amidst these circles, however, No allopathist can say more. Dick found that his home entirely vanished; and when he came from the House of Commons, tired to death, at two in the morning, disgusted at hearing forever that Mrs. Avenel was not yet returned from some fine lady's ball, he formed a sudden resolution of cutting Parliament, fashion, and London altogether; withdrew his capital, now very large, from his business; bought the remaining estates of Squire Thornhill; and his chief object of ambition is in endeavoring to coax or bully out of their holdings all the small freeholders round, who had subdivided amongst them, into poles and furlongs, the fated inheritance of Randal Leslie. An excellent justice of the peace, though more severe than your old family proprietors generally are;-a spirited landlord, as to encouraging and making, at a proper per-centage, all permanent improvements on the soil, but formidable to meet if the rent be not paid to the day, or the least breach of covenant be heedlessly incurred on a farm that he could let for more money, -employing a great many hands in productive labor, but exacting rigorously from all the utmost degree of work at the smallest rate of wages which competition and the poor-rate permit;-the young and robust in his neighborhood never stinted in work, and the aged and infirin, as lumber worn out, stowed away in the work-house-Richard Avenel holds himself an example to the old race of landlords; and, taken altogether, is no very bad specimen of the rural civilizers whom the applica tion of spirit and capital raise up in the new.

The death of poor John Burley found due place in the obituary of "literary men.' Admirers, unknown before, came forward, and subscribed for a handsome monument to his memory in Kensall Green. They would have subscribed for the relief of his widow and children if he had left any. Writers in magazines thrived for some months on collections of his humorous sayings, anecdotes of his eccentricities, and specimens of the eloquence that had lightened through the tobacco-reek of tavern and club-room. Leonard ultimately made a selection from his scattered writings, which found place in standard libraries, though their subjects were either of too fugitive an interest, or treated in too capricious a manner, to do more than indicate the value of the ore had it been purified from its dross and subjected to the art of the mint. These specimens could not maintain their circulation as the coined money of Thought, but they were hoarded by collectors as rare curiosities. Alas, poor Burley!

The Pompleys sustained a pecuniary loss by the crash of a railway company, in which the colonel had been induced to take several shares by one of his wife's most boasted "connections," whose estate the said railway proposed to traverse, on paying £400 an acre, in that golden age when railway companies respected the rights of property. The colonel was no longer able, in his own country, to make both ends meet at Christmas. He is now straining hard to achieve that feat in Boulogne, and has in the process grown so red in the face, that those who meet him in his morning walk on the pier, bargaining for fish, shake their

From the wrecks of Egerton's fortune, Harley, with the aid of his father's experience in business, could not succeed in saving, for the statesman s

sole child and heir, more than a few thousand | " Egerton! Egerton! Leonora the first wife of pounds; and but for the bonds and bills which, the Right Honorable Audley Egerton!' Ha! I when meditating revenge, he had bought from voted for him. She married the right color. Is Levy, and afterwards thrown into the fire-paying that the date? Is it so long since she died? dear for that detestable whistle-even this surplus Well, well! I miss her sadly. But wife says we would not have been forthcoming. shall both now see her soon; and wife once thought Harley privately paid out of his own fortune the we should never see her again-never; but I al£5000 Egerton had bequeathed to Leslie; per-ways knew better. Thank you, sir. I'm a poor haps not sorry, now that the stern duty of ex- creature, but these tears don't pain me-quite posing the false wiles of the schemer was fulfilled, otherwise. I don't know why, but I'm very hap to afford some compensation even to the victim py. Where's my old woman? She does not who had so richly deserved his fate; and pleased, though mournfully, to comply with the solemn request of the friend whose offence was forgotten in the remorseful memory of his own projects of revenge.

mind how much I talk about Nora now. Oh, there she is! Thank you, sir, humbly; but I'd rather lean on my old woman-I'm more used to it; and-wife, when shall we go to Nora?"

So

Leonard had brought Mrs. Fairfield to see her Leonard's birth and identity were easily proved, parents, and Mrs. Avenel welcomed her with unand no one appeared to dispute them. The bal- looked-for kindness. The name inscribed upon ance due to him as his father's heir, together with Nora's tomb softened the mother's heart to her the sum Avenel ultimately paid to him for the surviving daughter. As poor John had said— patent of his invention, and the dowry which Har-She could now talk about Nora:" and in that ley insisted upon bestowing on Helen, amounted talk, she and the child she had so long neglected to that happy competence which escapes alike the discovered how much they had in common. anxieties of poverty and (what to one of contem- when, shortly after his marriage with Helen, plative tastes and retired habits are often more Leonard went abroad, Jane Fairfield remained irksome to bear) the show and responsibilities of with the old couple. After their death, which wealth. His father's death made a deep impres- was within a day of each other, she refused, persion upon Leonard's mind; but the discovery that haps from pride, to take up her residence with he owed his birth to a statesman of so great a re- Leonard, but she settled near the home which he pute, and occupying a position in society so con- subsequently found in England. Leonard respicuous, contributed not to confirm, but to still, mained abroad for some years. A quiet observer the ambition which had for a short time diverted of the various manners and intellectual develophim from his more serene aspirations. He had ment of living races-a rapt and musing student no longer to win a rank which might equal Helen's. of the monuments that revive the dead-his exHe had no longer a parent, whose affections might perience of mankind grew large in silence, and be best won through pride. The memories of his his perceptions of the Sublime and Beautiful earlier peasant-life, and his love for retirement-brightened into tranquil art under their native in which habit confirmed the constitutional ten- sky.

ready-armed, and seek, like the fabled goddess, to take constant part in the wars of men. And such are, perhaps, on the whole, the most vigorous and lofty writers; but Leonard did not belong to this

dency-made him shrink from what a more worldly On his return to England he purchased a small nature would have considered the enviable advan-house amidst the most beautiful scenes of Devontages of a name that secured the entrance into the shire, and there patiently commenced a work in loftiest sphere of our social world. He wanted not which he designed to bequeath to his country his that name to assist his own path to a rank far noblest thoughts in their fairest forms. Some more durable than that which kings can confer. men best develop their ideas by constant exer And still he retained in the works he had pub-cise; their thoughts spring from their brain lished, and still he proposed to bestow on the works, more ambitious that he had, in leisure and competence, the facilities to design with care, and complete with patience, the name he had himself invented, and linked with the memory of the low-class. Sweetness and serenity were the main born mother. Therefore, though there was some wonder, in drawing-rooms and clubs, at the news of Egerton's first unacknowledged marriage, and some curiosity expressed as to what the son of that marriage might do-and great men were prepared to welcome, and fine ladies to invite and bring out, the heir to the statesman's grave repute-yet wonder and curiosity soon died away; the repute soon passed out of date, and its heir was soon forgotten. Politicians who fall short of the highest renown are like actors; no applause is so vivid while they are on the stage-no oblivion so complete when the curtain falls on the 1 last farewell.

characteristics of his genius; and these were deepened by his profound sense of his domestic happiness. To wander alone with Helen by the banks of the murmurous river-to gaze with her on the deep still sea-to feel that his thoughts, even when most silent, were comprehended by the intuition of love, and reflected on that translucent sympathy so yearned for and so rarely found by poets-these were the Sabbaths of his soul, necessary to fit him for its labors; for the Writer has this advantage over other men, that his repose is not indolence. His duties, rightly fulfilled, are discharged to earth and men in other capacities than those of action. If he is not seen among Leonard saw a fair tomb rise above Nora's those who act, he is all the while maturing some grave, and on the tomb was engraved the word of noiseless influence, which will guide or illumine, WIFE, which vindicated her beloved memory. He civilize or elevate, the restless men whose noblest felt the warm embrace of Nora's mother, no longer actions are but the, obedient agencies of the ashamed to own her grandchild; and even old thoughts of writers. Call not, then, the Poet John was made sensible that a secret weight of whom we place amidst the Varieties of Life, the sorrow was taken from his wife's stern, silent sybarite of literary ease, if, returning on summer heart. Leaning on Leonard's arm, the old man eves, with Helen's light footstep by his musing gazed wistfully on Nora's tomb, and muttering-side, he greets his sequestered home, with its

trellised flowers smiling on from amidst the lonely | savage critic has seized on it, and mangled, discliffs in which it was embedded;-while, lovers torted, deformed it, confounded together defect still, though wedded long, they turn to each and beauty in one mocking ridicule; and the other, with such deep joy in their speaking eyes, beauties have not yet found an exponent, nor the grateful that the world, with its various distrac- defects a defender; and the publisher shakes his tions and noisy conflicts, lay so far from their head, points to groaning shelves, and delicately actual existence-only united to them by the hints that the work which was to be the epitome happy link that the writer weaves invisibly with of the sacred life within life, does not hit the the hearts that he moves and the souls that he in- taste of the day. Leonard thinks over the years spires. No! Character and circumstance alike that his still labor has cost him, and knows that unfitted Leonard for the strife of the thronged he has exhausted the richest mines of his intellect, literary democracy; they led towards the develop- and that long years will clapse before he can ment of the gentler and purer portions of his recruit that capital of ideas which is necessary to nature to the gradual suppression of the more sink new shafts and bring to light fresh ore; and combative and turbulent. The influence of the the deep despondency of intellect, frustrated in happy light under which his genius so silently and its highest aims, has seized him, and all he has calmly grew, was seen in the exquisite harmony before done is involved in failure by the defeat of of its colors, rather than the gorgeous diversities the crowning effort. Failure, and irrecoverable, of their glow. His contemplation, intent upon seems his whole ambition as a writer; his whole abjects of peaceful beauty, and undisturbed by existence in the fair Ideal seems to have been a rude anxieties and vehement passions, suggested profitless dream, and the face of the Ideal itself only kindred reproductions to the creative faculty is obscured. And even Norreys frankly, though by which it was vivified; so that the whole man kindly, intimates that the life of a metropolis is was not only a poet, but, as it were, a poem-a essential to the healthful intuition of a writer in living idyl, calling into pastoral music every reed the intellectual wants of his age. For every great that sighed and trembled along the stream of life. writer supplies a want in his own generation, for And Helen was so suited to a nature of this kind, some feeling to be announced, some truth to be she so guarded the ideal existence in which it revealed; and as this maxim is generally sound, breathes! All the little cares and troubles of the as most great writers have lived in cities, Leonard common practical life she appropriated so quietly dares not dwell on the exceptions; it is only sucto herself the stronger of the two, as should be cess that justifies the attempt to be an exception a poet's wife, in the necessary household virtues to the common rule; and with the blunt manhood of prudence and forethought. Thus, if the man's of his nature, which is not a poet's, Norreys sums up genius made the home a temple, the woman's with " What then? One experiment has failed: wisdom gave to the temple the security of the fit your life to your genius, and try again." Try fortress. They have only one child-a girl; they again! Easy counsel enough to the man of ready call her Nora. She has the father's soul-lit eyes, resource and quick combative mind; but to and the mother's warm human smile. She assists Leonard, how hard and how harsh! "Fit his life Helen in the morning's noiseless domestic duties; to his genius!". renounce contemplation and she sits in the evening at Leonard's feet, while he Nature for the jostle of Oxford Street!-would reads or writes. In each light grief of childhood that life not scare away the genius forever? Pershe steals to the mother's knee, but in each young plexed and despondent, though still struggling for impulse of delight, or each brighter flash of pro- fortitude, he returns to his home, and there at his gressive reason, she springs to the father's breast. hearth awaits the Soother, and there is the voice Sweet Helen, thou hast taught her this, taking that repeats the passages most beloved, and prophto thyself the shadows even of thine infant's life, esies so confidently of future fame; and graduand leaving to thy partner's eyes only its rosy ally all around smiles from the smile of Helen. light! And the profound conviction that Heaven places human happiness beyond the reach of the world's contempt or praise, circulates through his system and restores its serene calm. And he feels that the duty of the intellect is to accomplish and perfect itself to harmonize its sounds into music that may be heard in heaven, though it wake not an echo on the earth. If this be done, as with some men, best amidst the din and the discord, be it so ; if, as with him, best in silence, be it so too. And the next day he reclines with Helen by the seashore, gazing calmly as before on the measureless sunlit ocean; and Helen, looking into his face, sees that it is sunlit as the deep. His hand steals within her own, in the gratitude that endears beyond the power of passion, and he murmurs gently, "Blessed be the woman who consoles.

But not here shall this picture of Helen close. Even the Ideal can only complete its purpose by connection with the Real. Even in solitude the writer must depend upon Mankind.

Leonard at last has completed the work, which has been the joy and the labor of so many years the work which he regards as the flower of all his spiritual being, and to which he has committed all the hopes that unite the creature of to-day with the generations of the future. The work has gone through the press, each line lingered over with the elaborate patience of the artist, loath to part with the thought he has sculptured into form while an improving touch can be imparted by the chisel. He has accepted an invitation from Norreys. In the restless excitement (strange to him since his first happy maiden effort), he has gone to London. Unrecognized in the huge metropolis, he has watched to see if the world acknowledge the new tie he has woven between its busy life and his secluded toil. And the work came out in an unpropitious hour: other things were occupying the public; the world was not at leisure to heed him, and the book did not penetrate into the great circle of readers. But a

The work found its way at length into fame, and the fame sent its voices loud to the poet's home. But the applause of the world had not a sound so sweet to his ear, as when, in doubt, humiliation, and sadness, the lips of his Helen had whispered "Hope! and believe."

Side by side with this picture of Woman and Consoler, let me place the companion sketch.