"Ah, well! It is natural that you should laugh at me; but, somehow, I did not expect it from you."

man I take her to be, I think I could do there might yet be hope for him. What something with her. I have never supposed would she advise him to do? "Go home, her to be a bad woman, - never. I will Mr. Finn," she said, "and write a sonnet think of it." Then Lady Glencora left her to her eyebrow. See if that will have any husband, and did not consult him after-effect." wards as to the course she would pursue. He had his budget to manage, and his speeches to make. The little affair of the Duke and Madame Goesler, she thought it best to take into her own hands without any assistance from him. "What a fool I was," she said to herself, "to have her down there when the Duke was at Matching."

"Do not be angry with me. What I mean is that such little things seem to influence this Violet of yours."

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Do they? I have not found that they

do so. 99

66

'If she had loved Lord Chiltern she would not have quarrelled with him for a few words. If she had loved you, she would not have accepted Lord Chiltern. If she loves neither of you, she should say so. I am losing my respect for her."

"Do not say that, Madame Goesler. I respect her as strongly as I love her." Then Madame Goesler almost made up her mind that she would have the coronet. There was a substance about the coronet that would not elude her grasp.

Madame Goesler, when she was left alone, felt that now indeed she must make up her mind. She had asked for two days. The intervening day was a Sunday, and on the Monday she must send her answer. She might doubt at any rate for this one night, the Saturday night, and sit playing, as it were, with the coronet of a duchess in her lap. She had been born the daughter of a small country attorney, and now a duke had asked her to be his wife,and a duke who was acknowledged to stand above other dukes! Nothing at any rate Late that afternoon, while she was still could rob her of that satisfaction. What- hesitating, there came another caller to the ever resolution she might form at last, she cottage in Park Lane. She was still hesihad by her own resources reached a point tating, feeling that she had as yet another of success in remembering which there night before her. Should she be Duchess would always be a keen gratification. It of Onnium or not? All that she wished would be much to be Duchess of Omnium; to be, she could not be; but to be Duchbut it would be something also to have re- ess of Omnium was within her reach. Then fused to be a Duchess of Omnium. During she began to ask herself various questions. that evening, that night, and the next morn- Would the Queen refuse to accept her in ing, she remained playing with the coronet her new rank? Refuse! How could any in her lap. She would not go to church. Queen refuse to accept her? She had not What good could any sermon do her while done aught amiss in life. There was no that bauble was dangling before her eyes? slur on her name; no stain on her characAfter church-time, about two o'clock, ter. What though her father had been a Phineas Finn came to her. Just at this small attorney, and her first husband a Jew period Phineas would come to her often; banker! She had broken no law of God or sometimes full of a new decision to forget man, had been accused of breaking no law, Violet Effingham altogether, at others which breaking or which accusation need minded to continue his siege let the hope stand in the way of her being as good a of success be ever so small. He had now duchess as any other woman! She was sitheard that Violet and Lord Chiltern had in ting thinking of this, almost angry with truth quarrelled, and was of course anxious herself at the awe with which the proposed to be advised to continue the siege. When rank inspired her, when Lady Glencora was he first came in and spoke a word or two, announced to her. in which there was no reference to Violet Effingham, there came upon Madame Goesler a strong wish to decide at once that she would play no longer with the coronet, that the gem was not worth the cost she would be called upon to pay for it. There was something in the world better for her than the coronet, if only it might be had. But within ten minutes he had told her the whole tale about Lord Chiltern, and how he had seen Violet at Lady Baldock's, — and how

|

"Madame Goesler," said Lady Glencora, "I am very glad to find you."

"And I more than equally so, to be found," said Madame Goesler, smiling with all her grace.

"My uncle has been with you since I saw you last?"

"Oh yes;; -more than once if I remember right. He was here yesterday at any rate."

"He comes often to you then?"

"Not so often as I would wish, Lady | you wished to offend me. But do not drive Glencora. The Duke is one of my dearest me too far." friends."

"Yes, indeed. The sweetest child! God never gave me anything half so pre- him of all his friends, to embitter his future cious as that."

gain, that the temptation to do him an in- which I can adduce myself. You have jury, if I thought it one, is not strong. For nearly driven me into it, by telling me that your little boy, Lady Glencora, I think your I should degrade his house. It is almost fears are premature." As she said this, incumbent on me to prove that you are there came a smile over her face, which wrong. But you had better leave me to threatened to break from control and almost settle the matter in my own bosom. You become laughter. "But, if you will allow had indeed." me to say so, my mind will not be turned against this marriage half so strongly by any arguments you can use as by those

After a while Lady Glencora did leave her, to settle the matter within her own bosom, having no other alternative.

SIR RICHARD MAYNE, Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, died on Sunday, at the age of 73. When only 38 years old, and a rising barrister, he was selected by Sir Robert Peel to organize a police for London, till then almost unprotected. In the teeth of the most bitter criticism, he, in conjunction with Colonel Rowan, organized the Force on its present basis, making London from 1829 to about 1862 the most secure capital in Europe, or perhaps in the world. During the last six years the violent criminals of the metropolis, aided by causes discussed elsewhere, proved almost too strong for his little army of order, but for more than a generation the cool barrister maintained real peace and security through a city which is a kingdom at an expense of 3s. 6d. a head a year. In his youth, and prime, and green old age, we doubt if the country ever had a more successful servant than Sir Richard Mayne, to whom it gave nothing but a moderate salary, a K. C. B., and some strictly official esteem.

Spectator, 2 Jan.

which we are often compelled to borrow. And
we doubt if any English writer now living writes
so pure a classical English as was written by Na-
thaniel Hawthorne.
Spectator, 26 Dec.

THE REV. Henry Ward Beecher is notoriously a bold man, and he has lately been doing a bold thing. While we in England have been having a fight over scientific lectures on Sunday evening, and some of the friends of such lectures have been taking their stand on the legal right to establish such things for the instruction of people, while others have been taking shelter under the title of Recreative Religionists, Mr. Beecher has been able, unmolested, to get a scientific gentleman to deliver physiological lectures on Sundays in the school-house (schoolchurch we should probably call it in England) belonging to his place of worship at Brooklyn. It has been justly said that this innovation is enough to make his father turn in his grave. London Review.

THE American Minister, Mr. Reverdy Johnson, distributed yesterday week the prizes awarded by the Birkbeck Institute to pupils of both sexes. WITH regard to the emphatic protest made by After commenting, as he was in duty bound, on Mr. Sims Reeves against the high musical pitch the importance of feminine culture, and also at present existing in England, the Musical awarding the usual compliments to the memory Times informs us that a reformation is about to of Lord Brougham and Dr. Birkbeck, Mr. Rev- be attempted. "During the ensuing season a erdy Johnson, speaking of America and England series of six concerts will be given, at St. James's with a touch of true American humour, -not Hall, in which the standard French pitch will be the less humourous because what he said may adopted. These concerts will consist exclusively have had its truth, went on to remark that of sacred music (and mostly of oratorios), and "not only are our institutions identical, but we Mr. Sims Reeves has pledged himself to sing at speak the same language; and although we each performance. Amongst the works to be speak it better than you do, we understand each given, Handel's 'Jephtha' will be one of the other, and by and by you will be able to speak most interesting, not only on account of its bethe language as well as we do." It has really ing almost a novelty to a London audience, but been shown, we believe, that a great many of because the tenor part is so peculiarly fitted to what we call Americanisms are good old English the grandeur and power of Mr. Reeves' style idioms used in their good old English sense. and voice. There will be a carefully-chosen But even the true Americanisms have the fla- band of between fifty and sixty performers, and vour of an originality, a strength, and youth the chorus will consist of Mr. Joseph Barnby's which are not very visible in England, and choir," London Review.

There was a frantic bustle in the alders and willows, and almost as frantic in the great meadow, where the girls from the convent caught hold of each other, chattered together, tittered, teased one another, and laughed.

THE sparrows in the alders and willows on the shore of the convent-island twittered and chattered noisily together, they had so much to say to each other about what they Apart from her noisy companions, and had experienced during the day; and who frequently passing under the alder-trees knows whether their to-day was not a where there was such a merry gathering much longer interval of time than ours? of the birds, walked a girl slender in form One puffed up by his experience-perhaps and graceful in movement, with black hair we should say her experience, for the feathers had lost their colors from agesat quietly in the crotch of a bough, comfortably resting against the trunk; he echoed and re-echoed his delight at the splendid time he enjoyed over the river, under the closely-trimmed branches of a shady linden, in the vineyard by the shore.

and brilliant eyes, accompanied by a tall and majestic woman in a nun's dress, whose bearing had an expression of quiet and decisive energy. Her lips were naturally so pressed together, that the mouth seemed only a narrow streak of red. The entire brow was covered with a white kerchief, and the face, the large eyes, the small eyebrows, the sharp nose, the closely pressed lips, and the projecting but rather handsome chin, had something commanding and immovable.

The waiter there had long delayed removing the remnants of an English breakfast, and there were cakes, the pieces, alas! too large, abundance of eggs, honey, and sugar; it was a feast without parallel." He considered that the real joy of existence had its first beginning when one wished to know nothing more of all other things, and had supreme satisfaction in eating and drinking alone. Only in mature life did one really come to that perception.

Others would listen to nothing from the swaggering fellow, and there was an irregular debate, whether lettuce seeds or young cabbage-heads were not much better than all the cooked-up dishes of men. A young rogue, fluttering around his roguish mate, reported to her that behind the ferryman's house, there hung from the garretwindow a bulging bag full of flax-seed; if one only knew how to rip open the seam a little, one could gradually eat up all the tidbits, but it must be kept a profound secret, else the others would come too; and hemp-seed, it must be acknowledged, was just the most precious good which this whole round earth could furnish. The rogue was of the opinion that her delicate bill was exactly the nice thing to pick open the seam; it was the most contemptible baseness in human beings, to hang up in the open air just the most tempting dainties all fastened and tied up.

A late-comer, flying up in breathless haste, announced that the scarecrow, standing in the field, was nothing but a stick with clothes hung upon it.

"Because the stupid men believe in scarecrows, they think that we do too," laughed he, and flapped his wings in astonishment and pity at the manifest simplicity.

Honored mother," began the maiden, you have read the letter from Fräulein Perini ?" The nun it was the superior-only turned her face a little; she seemed to be waiting for the maiden-it was Hermanna Sonnenkamp― to speak further.

As Manna, however, was silent, the superior said:

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Herr von Pranken is then to make us a visit. He is a man of good family and good morals, he seems a wordling, but he is not one exactly. He has, indeed, the impatience of the outside world; I trust, however, that he will not press his wooing as long as you are here our child, that is to say, the child of the Lord."

She spoke in a very deliberate tone, and now stopped.

"Let us go away from here; the noise of the birds above there allows one hardly to hear herself speak."

They went by the churchyard, in the middle of the island, to the grove growing near a small rocky ledge, which the children called the Switzerland of the island; there they sat down, and the superior continued:

"I am sure of you, my child, that you will decline hearing a word from Herr von Pranken that has any reference to protestations of love, or to the soliciting your hand in marriage."

"You know, honored mother," replied Manna, -her voice was always pathetic, and as if veiled with tears, "you know, honored mother, that I have promised to take the veil."

"I know it, and I also do not know it,

for what you now say or determine is for of the sunset sky, the violet haze of the us like a word written in the sand, which mountains, and the river glowing in the the wind and the footsteps of man may red beams of evening, she shut her eyes efface. You must go out again into the again, and made a repellant movement with world; you must have overcome the world, her hand, as if she would have said, — I before you renounce it. Yes, my child! will have nothing of thee; thou shalt be the whole world must appear to you like naught to me; thou art only a doll, a lifeyour dolls, which you tell me of, forgot- less thing, on which we waste our love. ten, valueless, dead, -a child's toy, upon which it is scarcely conceivable that so much regard, so much love, should be lavished."