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There was a hurly-burly of noisy apprentices and saucy footmen in the gallery; a clattering of sticks, much handing about of snuff-boxes, and the hum of criticism and comment in the pit; with the prattling and tattling of pretty, bare-shouldered women and over-dressed beaux in the boxes. Above all rose the shrill cries of the venders of fruit and playbills: "Chase some oranges! Chase some numparels! Chase a bill of the play!" (Chase for choose, or for purchase?)

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My good kind friends," said Mrs. Fanshawe, apostrophising her audience from the hole in the drop, am I never to see you more? Ah, you'll not miss me more than I shall miss you."

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Come, Dolly."

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Yes, yes-in a pretty blue coat and a scarlet waistcoat, and buckskins and threadstockings as white as daisies, and plated buckles in his shoes. But you can't see all that. O George, my George!-my darling, my darling!" She was greatly excited and agitated.

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CHAPTER IV.

MOTHER MEDLICOTT helped her to change her dress.

"You're trembling like a leaf, my pretty one! Come, take heart. Don't let them see you've been crying. Here, a dab more rouge! That's better. You mustn't give way, you know. Rouse yourself, Dolly. In half an hour more the play will be over, and you'll be free; and then you can cry your eyes out, if you must."

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Free!" she echoed dreamily. "No, I shall never be free, mother. You don't know what it is to have a man's life on your conscience."

"Fiddlestick! Talk sense, or I won't listen to you. Here, put on your bracelets. How this pink train becomes you! You never looked prettier, Dolly. Only smile a little- -ever so little. You're playing comedy, you know; · -no tragedy airs. Don't look as if you were going to be hanged."

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To be hanged?" Mrs. Fanshawe cried with a scream.

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You're talking nonsense again, Dolly." Mrs. Medlicott eyed her friend in some alarm.

Hush, Dolly! Are you mad?" "He's sitting there to see my last ap"Nonsense? He risked his life for me, pearance, as he saw my first. Bless his and lost it, mother; was that nonsense? sweet face and his bonny eyes and his He loved me, mother, with his whole heart; pretty tender smile! - A mere boy! Show was that nonsense? I was more dear to him mercy, my lord; he meant no wrong to him than anything in this world or the -the poor fond, dreaming, gentle soul! next; he perilled his soul for me, poor Look, look, mother, don't you see? Now, boy; was that nonsense? O my darling as he turns his head, see- the purple mark

round his neck!"

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Geordie, is that what they say of you? loved him, mother, as I can never love another. We were boy and girl together, and all-in-all to each other. How happy we were for a time! But O, how short a time it seems, looking back on it now after all these years. Five minutes, not more than that- while one can count ten-the striking of a clock-and then - A simple country lad, mother, that was all, born in my own village, but with a brave, true, tender heart. I was a stroller in a barn, and he followed me from place to place;

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Dolly, Dolly, why speak of this? What good can it do?

66 I came up to London," the actress went on, not heeding the interruption, but talking in a curious abstracted way, "and Geordie followed me. But the place scemed to turn his brain. He grew pale and pined; grew jealous of me, though I loved him still, Heaven knows I did. He was angry that they applauded me as they did, bless them! said they sought to take me from him, and that I had ceased to care for him now, when the town gallants were crowding round me. Then, one day, he poured a heap of jewelry and goldsmith's rubbish into my lap. Poor boy, he had better have kept to his flowers! What had he to do with jewelry ?"

'He had stolen it?" asked Mrs. Medlicott, interested in spite of herself.

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"God knows. Don't ask me. They said he did." She hid her face. "I saw him step into the cart at Newgate, with the rope about his neck. There were two carts full, but I could only see Geordie. He was white as a sheet, dressed in his best, and holding a Prayer-book in his hand. God bless you, Geordie!' I cried, and he heard me; and the good, kind crowd made way for me to go near to him and kiss him, and stick a posy in his buttonhole. Some kind soul lifted me up, and I put my arms round his neck. I wouldn't have unlocked them again, but they made me. I was torn from him when the cart moved on, and the clergyman began to read the service to the poor creatures. I followed all the way to Tyburn-tree. I was half-fainting, and footsore, and terribly jostled by the crowd. I couldn't get near to speak to him again. But I waved my hand to him. He saw me, and smiled such a strange, wan, heart-breaking smile, O, mother, it nearly killed me to see it! His arms were pinioned then; and then that monster with the grimy face and the wildbeast mouth he had been spitting tobacco, and laughing and joking all the - he put his black hands roughly on the poor boy-O God! You know what happened next, mother, without my telling you."

way

"Silvia!" She was called; and rapidly drying her eyes, hurried on to the stage.

CHAPTER V.

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"POOR Dolly!" Mrs. Medlicott was watching the actress from the wings. But she bears up bravely. She's almost herself again. They won't notice that anything's the matter."

She had been a little "out" at first, and missed a cue or two. Her manner was wanting in its usual force and dash. The audience hardly perceived any change in her, however. Many things happen on the stage, mistakes or otherwise, which audiences often fail to note.

Yet one thing an attentive spectator might have taken heed of. Mrs. Fanshawe's eyes were constantly fixed upon one particular part of the theatre; the front row of the pit indeed, on the left side of the theatre looking from the proscenium.

"He's there still," she whispered to Mrs. Medlicott when she left the stage for a few moments.

"Who's there still ?"

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George!"

Hush, it is fancy, the merest fancy." The comedy concluded amidst great applause. Sergeant Kite spoke the epilogue with effect. The times had happily not arrived for the absurdity of calls before the curtain.

"Well, Dolly, how it is with you now?" Mrs. Fanshawe was trembling violently. "Did you see him?" she asked. "Just as the curtain fell? He beckoned me. He held his hand up high above his head. I could not be mistaken, mother. I saw his fingers move. I must go to him." "Go to him?"

"He cannot come to me, you know, mother," she said in a heart-broken voice.

"This is madness, Dolly. Be calm, for mercy's sake. Here's some one you know. Rouse yourself. The writer of the letter has come for an answer to his offer."

Mrs. Fanshawe turned. A tall, handsome gentleman in black velvet stood beside her. A bright star gleamed upon his breast, and a blue ribbon crossed his waistcoat.

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"My lord," she began in a strangelytroubled voice then she swayed to and fro. "I thank your lordship-I-O God, have mercy! She reeled and fell senseless at his feet.

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A crowd of players, carpenters, and stage-servants hurried round.

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Stand back!" he said in a voice of command. 'Give her air. She's fainted, poor soul."

Mrs. Medlicott had raised her friend's head. "How lucky I've got my flask in my

pocket!" said the old woman, with something of a blush. She was afraid of the comments of the ill-natured upon the fact of a bottle being in her pocket. "Just a taste of cordial will do her all the good in the world. Come, Dolly dear. Alack! her teeth are tight clenched. What can be the matter with her?"

"A doctor!" cried the man in black velvet, "a hundred pounds to the first man that brings a doctor!"

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"Dorothy," he said in a moved voice. Speak to me, Dorothy." He wiped her forehead with his laced handkerchief and fanned her with his hat.

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"Poor gentleman! murmured Mrs. Medlicott, he loves her. There's an honest tender heart beats in his bosom, that's worth more than the star outside it. Dolly, darling, won't you speak to poor old mother Medlicott?

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God bless you; you loved her." Mrs. Medlicott, hardly knowing what she was doing, wrung his hand. "Our poor Dolly's gone from us. The sweetest, cleverest creature that ever trod the stage. And she might have been a countess ! To think of that! It was her last appearance,' as she said. I ought to have known it. There was death in her face when I spoke to her hours ago. I couldn't think what it was made me look at her so. I know now. There was death in her face for all its bright life and wonderful prettiness. My poor darling Dolly!"

"Clear the stage, please, for the farce!" cried the prompter, who probably hardly knew the worst that had happened. 'Come, bustle, bustle!"

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"I'm in a nice humour for farce-acting," said Mrs. Medlicott. "I shall make nothing of Termagant to-night. I could sit down and cry my eyes out. But it must be done, I suppose."

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She wiped away her tears, though they fell again as fast she could wipe them away.

"Well, it's only for a little while, and then I shall hear my cue, I suppose, and go and join Dolly. Please God there's some odd corner in heaven can be found for a poor old actress to rest her weary bones in. There goes the bell. The curtain's up. I'm ready, prompter. Mother Medlicott's at her post as usual."

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From The Examiner. LITERARY AND SOCIAL JUDGMENTS.*

claimer than a reasoner, but Mr. Carlyle
cannot be dismissed thus lightly as a writer
who never 66
reasons, in the strict sense of
the term." Certainly, he never states

THE contents of the volume before us stand forth in agreeable contrast to the very ordinary essays, dissertations, and every argument in the form of a syllogism, disquisitions which have flooded the literary subtle, reasoning, too subtle, perhaps, but his writings abound in pages of close, world of late. Mr. Greg wields his pen with the vigour and skill of a practiced for ordinary mortals. It is pleasant, howwriter; his sentences, well-rounded and ever, after reading so much denunciation to sonorous, strike upon the ear with a power differ very widely from us, as to the value find that, in the main, Mr. Greg does not and effect which strongly excite the imagination, if they do not always convince the and moral effect of Mr. Kingsley's powerunderstanding. His diction is singularly apt and felicitous; and his style, with its wealth of words and profuseness of illustration, at times reminds one of the matchless manner of Macaulay. If we were disposed to be hypercritical, we might say that the style of Mr. Greg is faulty only in being too continuously rhetorical.

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pen:

We have spoken freely and without stint of Mr. Kingsley's errors and offences, because he is strong and can bear it well; because he is somewhat pachydermatous, and will not feel it much; because it is well for a man who habitually speaks of others in such outrageous terms to have his own measure occasionally meted out to him in return; because, also, one who sins against so much light and knowledge deserves to be beaten with many stripes; and because, finally, on a his merits. But we should grieve to have it beprevious occasion we did such ample justice to lieved that we are insensible to his remarkable and varied excellences, or to part from him otherwise than in a spirit of thorough and cordial appreciation. In spite of much that is rant, and of much that would be twaddle, if it were not so energetic, there is such wonderful "go" in him, such exulting and abounding vigour, and he carries you along with a careering and facile rapidity which, while it puts you out of breath, is yet so strangely exhilirating, that old and young never fail to find pleasure in his pages. He may often wonder, but he never sleeps. He has, how

We prefer the author's literary judgments to his social papers, although at times we differ from him very widely in the former. We do not think, for instance, he is quite just in his estimate of Kingsley and Carlyle. While acknowledging the resistless fascinations of their works, and the many great and noble qualities of the two men, he draws attention to what he considers their prominent offences against taste and decency. He complains that both are contemptuous and abusive towards their adversaries far beyond the limits of gentlemanly usage; that "both indulge in terms of scorn and vituperation such as no cause can justify, and no correct or Christian feeling could inspire;" and ends his accu-ever, far higher claims on our admiration than sation by asserting that "Mr. Carlyle slangs like a blaspheming pagan, Mr. Kingsley like a denouncing prophet.". Now, in case we may be accused of making capital by quoting garbled extracts, we will own that, in the next paragraph, the author bears testimony to the beautiful and pathetic tenderness discernible in both these writers. But judging Mr. Greg by his own remarks, we fear he stands condemned. Does he call it abuse, scorn, or vituperation, when he says that Mr. Carlyle "slangs like a blaspheming pagan?" We certainly allow that when either writer does go in for denouncing hypocrisy and cant, falsehood and shams, he wields his weapons with terrible force, but, to our mind, is never guilty of the brutality of a Junius or a Swift. Again, when Mr. Greg asserts that "both are declaimers not reasoners," we must once more beg to differ from him. Mr. Kingsley we allow to be more of a de

Literary and Social Judgments. By W. R. Greg. Trubner.

And in an age like this, of vehement desires and any arising from these merely literary merits. feeble wills, of so much conventionalism and so little courage, - when our favourite virtue is indulgence to others, and our commonest vice is indulgence to self, when few things are heartily loved, and fewer still are heartily believed,

- when we are slaves to what others think, and wish, and do slaves to past creeds in which we have no longer faith, slaves to past habits in which we have no longer pleasure, slaves to past phrases from which all the meaning has died out,

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when the ablest and tenderest minds are afraid to think deeply, because they know not where deep thought might land them, and are afraid to thorough action might entail, act thoroughly, because they shrink from what - when too many lead a life of conscious unworthiness and unreality, because surrounded by evils with which they dare not grapple, and by darkness which they dare not pierce; in such an age, amid such wants and such shortcomings, we owe a deep debt of gratitude to a crusader like Mr. Kingsley, whose faith is undoubting, and whose courage is unflinching; who neither fears others nor mistrusts himself; who hates with a destructive and aggressive animosity whatever is evil,

mean, filthy, weak, hollow, and untrue; who
has drawn his sword and girded up his loins for
a work which cannot be passed by, and which
must not be negligently done; whose practice
himself, and whose exhortation to others is, in
the words of the great German,

Im halben zu entwöhnen,
In ganzen, guten, wahren, resolut zu leben.

rary work of any importance, which at once obtained a wide notoriety and made her still more famous. During the Reign of Terror she sought refuge in England, and at Richmond established a small but agreeable society. Here were to be seen daily Talleyrand, M. de Narbonne, M. d'Arblay, Miss Burney, and several English friends. In 1795 she returned to Paris; but when Napoleon became first Consul he at once banished Madame de Staël. Then followed fourteen years of wanderings in Italy, Germany, England, Russia, far away from her beloved Paris. Probably this was the most wretched period of her life; but to those years of misery we owe her most brilliant literary performances - De la Littérature,' De l'Allemagne,' and 'Corinne. Greg sums up in a few words the general verdict of the great men of all countries, as to the impression which her genius and manners created:

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Mr.

She seems to have excited precisely the same emotions in the minds both of German literati and of English politicians vast admiration and not a little fatigue. Her conversation was brilliant in the extreme, but apt to become monologue and declamation. She was too vivacious for any but Frenchmen: her intellect was always in a state of restless and vehement activity; she seemed to need no relaxation, and to permit

But to the essays on the lives, literary productions, and characteristics of three representative French writers - Madame de Staël, Chateaubriand, and M. de Tocqueville we turn with greater interest. Mr. Greg's estimate of Madame de Staël, the most brilliant authoress of the Revolution, we conceive to be singularly truthful; and the whole essay shows that he has carefully studied his subject. He is not led away by insular prejudices, to condemn conduct which is to a great extent the result of French education, habits, and modes of thought. Madame de Staël, perhaps more than any other great personage of her period, must be studied only in conjunction with her surroundings. She lived and wrote in stirring and eventful times, when the minds of all were strangely moved by the great social problems which the French Revolution started and fostered. The remarkable daughter of a remarkable man, she was introduced at an early age to the no repose. most celebrated literary men of the time, In spite of her great knowledge, her who crowded to the Parisian salons, and wit, and her singular eloquence, she nearly alprofound and sagacious reflections, her sparkling made them the most brilliant in Europe. ways ended by wearying even her most admiring Her precocity was absolutely marvellous, auditors; she left them no peace; she kept them while her powers of acquisition appeared to on the stretch; she ran them out of breath. be almost unlimited. She wrote a drama And there were few of them who were not in a at the age of twelve, and acted in it with condition to relish the piquant mot of Talleyrand, some young friends. Her brilliant conver- -who, when some one hinted surprise that he sation, her vivacity and great quickness at who had enjoyed the intimacy of such a genius repartee and badinage, gathered round her as Madame de Staël could find pleasure in the even at that early age the most celebrated society of such a contrast to her as Madame of the many literary lions who frequented Grant-answered in that deliberate and gentle her father's salon. Among these were Mar- voice which gave point to all his sharpest sayings, montel, Baron Grimm, the Abbé Raynal, "Il faut avoir aimé Madame de Staël pour saand lastly, the historian Gibbon, ever after-vourer le bonheur d'aimer une bête !” wards her warm friend and admirer. At Schiller, writing to Goethe, remarks that the age of twenty, Mdlle Necker calmly "the clearness, decidedness, and rich vimade a mariage de convenance with Baron de Staël, the Swedish ambassador, a man much older than herself, and one with whom such a woman could have little in common. In marrying the Baron she seems to have ignored domestic happiness altogether; and, as Mr. Greg remarks, probably solaced herself with the proverb: "Paris est le lieu du monde où l'on se passe le mieux de bonheur." For the next three years she remained at Paris, the centre of a most brilliant circle of wits, authors, statesmen, and philosophers. During this period appeared the Lettres sur Rousseau,' her first lite

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vacity of her nature, cannot but affect one favourably. One's only grievance is the altogether unprecedented glibness of her tongue; you must make yourself all ear to follow her." Goethe, in his Dichtung und Wahrheit,' has also left his estimate of the brilliant Frenchwoman. After enlarging on "the great qualities of this high-thinking and high-feeling authoress," he goes on to say that her peculiar passion was to philosophise in society—that is, to talk with vi vacity about insoluble problems. Byron has a paragraph in his Diary and Correspondence which is more eulogistic of her

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