there for years, and was curious to see the changes, to note the new buildings which had risen, and all the signs of increasing prosperity. Devons was a trifle impatient at their detention among these urban sights; he was for leaving all semblance of the town behind them, and so he finally led his companion out beyond the college into more open country. They passed many strollers and riders; a gentle warmth was in the air; Spring was everywhere giving signs of her speedy and triumphant return, and it was a hardened heart, indeed, that could fail to respond to her advances.

"I wonder if the English spring brings quite as much deliverance as ours?” said Devons.

"Chaucer could not compare the English spring with ours, but he thought himself another man when it did come. Do you not remember the pretty passage where he seems to throw his books into the corner and goes out to meet the daisies?"

"Yes; well, indeed. And yet I am afraid that I never shall read Chaucer with the historic imagination, for I never can take him up without my mind recurring at once to the first lecture when I was so forward in speaking to you."

"Does that destroy your power of imagination?"

"No; it separates Chaucer, though, from other writers."

"It is a pity that you should have to associate him with those blank walls of the Institute."

“We'll associate him with this, then," he said. They had stopped by an old-fashioned fence, where they had turned aside from the road into a lane. There is nothing blank about this landscape, and you and I have moved here from the Institute. We have brought with us the best that those four walls had to give." Some steps behind them made them turn. "Why, that's the very professor who lectured to us," Devons said in a low tone, as a small party drew near. "It would be becoming in him to thank you for the favor you did him that first evening." The company sauntered past, and they were left alone again. Devons was half annoyed at the interruption, and half grateful for it. What his next words would have been he could scarcely say, and he was conscious of a strange search for just such words as would serve his purpose. The silence which they kept was by no means oppressive. "It would never come again," he said to himself, with a curious faculty of playing upon his own emotions. Marcia at length turned toward him with a smile.

"Well, shall we go on?"

"Which way shall we go?" he asked, for the sake of saying something. Then they stopped to listen, for they heard a voice singing

Devons knew it

a little farther down the road. in a moment, and made a movement to lead his companion away from it.

"Let them pass us," said she; and at that instant two people came round a bend in the road. There was no mistaking Shakespeare at any rate. He was swinging his stick and stepping along with all his familiar positiveness. Susanna was by his side, and it was from her that the song came, freely and melodiously. She stopped on seeing the two people. Marcia looked hard at her.

"So this is your friend, is it?" she said in a low voice to Devons—" this Irish girl?"

“Friend?” he repeated, in a half-hesitating way. Marcia's lip curled. "Yes, she is," he said, vehemently, his better nature coming back with a rush of shame as the pair came nearer. He stepped quickly forward.

66

'Susanna, have you walked out here?"

That I have, Richard. Is it such a weary way? Your merry heart goes all the day, your sad one tires in a mile-a.' Is that the sonnetwriting lady?" she added in a lower tone, looking curiously at Marcia. But Shakespeare had already recognized her, and had taken off his hat. Devons stepped back to Marcia's side.

"I'm your obadient servant, miss." "You know she's anonymous," said Devons, interrupting him.

"Ye're right, an' I'll only say wan worrd. If iver I find anny piece of the great Shakespeare's writing, I'll wrap it in the sonnet by the nameless leddy.-Come, Susanna," and, with a proud satisfaction of having made his most gallant speech, he stalked off. Devons laughed nervously when they were gone.

"Shakespeare could certainly pay you no higher compliment. I don't know that you thank me, though, for cutting him short, and I did not introduce his daughter to you."

He was going on with he scarcely knew what rattling talk, but Marcia checked him.

"Did you call that girl Susanna ? "
"Very likely."

"And did she call you Richard?" Her face flushed as she said the name.

"I never heard that word from you before," said he, trying gallantly to stem the current. "I have wished for it many a time. Is it too late for you to begin now?"

There was a singular consciousness with him, as if he were retreating slowly from a position which he had been on the eve of taking. She had turned from the fence, and was slowly walking back over the road by which they had come. She did not speak for a moment. Then she looked at him steadfastly.

"I never shall call you Richard."

The road back was a highway, and brought them soon to a horse railway. They took their seats in a car, which was soon crowded with passengers, separating them and rendering all conversation impossible. It was rather a relief than otherwise, for it was impossible for Devons not to know that there was left for him only such commonplaces as were open to any one. His lips had almost parted once to say words which could never be unsaid. A moment more and they were forever sealed. He walked quietly to the door with her. Her mother opened it, and a broad smile overspread her face.

"Good evening, Miss Church,” said Devons. "Good-by, Mr. Devons."

He turned and walked rapidly away. She entered the house, brushed past her mother, and locked the door of her room behind her.

A lover's quarrel is a not infrequent prelude to a more ardent protestation. But what if there is no quarrel, only a sudden separation with a rapidly widening gulf? Certain it is that Devons, looking across the afternoon, saw his morning's thoughts in a very remote perspective. A great possibility had been before him that day—a hard fact lay behind him. Two people-nay, one person-had passed in a moment between him and Marcia, and he knew that he had lost her. The very suddenness of the catastrophe might have had in it something whimsical could he have disengaged his own feelings from the spectacle, but the shock had at all events a certain petrifying effect upon his mind, preserving for him as in some insoluble form the movement which had been going on within him during the past few months, with this result, that he seemed able to detect arrested movements and sensations, and to discover the meaning of half-instinctive feelings. He led a solitary life for weeks, walking restlessly over the country and shunning the city as if it were something to dread. He never entered the library now, and indeed avoided people. He was not very well pleased with himself. There seemed to him to have been a failure in his nature. He had received abundant credit, yet all at once he discovered that he was bankrupt. It was not an agreeable discovery, and his pride resented the imperative conclusion that he had been pursuing a mistaken venture.

Yet he was of too frank a nature to bear long a period of prostration; so it came about that one afternoon he found himself slowly walking toward Half-moon Court. As he entered the court Susanna stepped forward to his side.

"Are you coming to see me?" she asked.

So ye did not know? I thought you had been sick. You did not come to us. Me father asked often to see you, but I did not know where to seek ye, and whan I saw ye a week ago ye would not see me." She spoke abruptly, and with an effort. "It would have been a comfort to him, for he set great store by you. I've cried my eyes out, Richard, and there are not many tears left for myself. I'd rather cry for others. It's ill weeping long over one's own troubles. He was not like other men. He was better. Ay," and the old ring came back to her voice, “the people about scorned him, and thought him a poor loon; but is there anny one of them that could forget himself for some greater man, and live, and think, and spake, as if his own poor mind and body were just nothing at all, at all? Is there anny one of them that could walk as honest and upright as he, who owed no man annything, and was willing to give up his own name, and live under the shadow of another? He was na more himself, but he just walked this earth full of gret thoughts and passions, and he'd niver mind the little paple and the little things that'd try to make sport of him. An' he loved his daughter, an' oh, his daughter loved him!"

The tears were rolling down her cheeks now, and she sat looking straight at Devons, with her large eyes filled with a reverent sadness.

"What comfort can I bring you?" he asked.

"It is a comfort to see you here," she said, simply. "I did na know I should iver see you again, and it was hard to lose iverything at wanst." She sat like a child on her low chair, looking earnestly at him. "You'll not leave me intirely?"

"I will not leave you at all if you will let me

THE

HE reign of George III. will always be remarkable for the development of British industry and British trade. The ability and ingenuity of a few great men placed new resources at the disposal of the nation, and by substituting the steam-engine for the hand of man, the road for the track, and the canal for the road, increased a hundred-fold the resources of the country, and its capacity for industrial enterprise. It is questionable whether great wealth and great prosperity are favorable to the cultivation of literature, science, and art. The noblest literature of Rome was, indeed, produced amid the prosperity and wealth which made the reign of Augustus Cæsar memorable. The Tuscan school flourished under the patronage of the wealthiest and the wisest of the Medici. But Raphael in modern history, and Virgil in the ancient world, owed more to the tone of society and to the tone of thought of the ages in which they lived than to the patronage of Augustus or the Medici. Horace did more to perpetuate the name of Mæcenas than Mæcenas did to cultivate the genius of the poet. This country has become much wealthier since the days of Elizabeth and the days of Anne. But it has failed to produce a second Shakespeare or a second Dryden.

The almost unanimous verdict of competent critics has pronounced the most brilliant era of English literature to have commenced with the age of Elizabeth and to have closed with that of Anne. The century and a half which is embraced in this period produced the three greatest masters of the English language-Shakespeare,

* A History of England from the Conclusion of the Great War in 1815. By Spencer Walpole. London, 1878.

Milton, and Dryden. But other writers, some of whom were hardly inferior to these, dignified this golden period of English literature. Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Raleigh, Cowley, Selden, Clarendon, Bunyan, Butler, Defoe, Swift, Addison, Pope, and Bolingbroke in various ways illustrated and enriched the noble language of their common country. A circumstance with which they had no direct connection themselves stereotyped the expressions which they used. The Bible was translated into English at the very time at which Shakespeare was writing. The Reformation placed the work in the hands of every Englishman who could read. The language of the Bible became the language of the nation; the expressions which its translators used became for ever part and parcel of English speech. An ordinary person can hardly read the pre-Reformation writers without a glossary. No one requires a key to enable him to appreciate the beauties of the Elizabethan dramatist or to understand Raleigh's " History of the World."

Success in any line of life usually leads to imitation. Where one man achieves fame, a hundred others think that they may become equally famous. Birmingham ware has in every age been foisted on a credulous public; and Brummagem has appeared in spurious literature and art nearly as frequently as in spurious silver and gold. The scholars of Raphael imitated with matchless fidelity the finish of their master; and an uncritical age, enchanted with the beauty of their pigments, forbore to notice their want of originality and power. Exactly the same thing occurred in literature in the eighteenth century. Few writers, indeed, had the hardihood to imitate the imagery of Shakespeare, the diction of Milton, or the vigor of Dryden. But

a dozen writers succeeded in copying the rhyth-
mical excellence of Pope. Though, however, they
caught the trick of Pope's style, they failed to
imitate the vigor of his language. Churchill,
the most successful of them all, attacked with
power and venom some of the vices of his time.
No satire was ever more severe than his de-
scription of Fitzpatrick, the nameless thing, in
the "Rosciad." But the "Rosciad " ranks as a
poem
below the "Dunciad." Three times in the
century, indeed, different writers, each of con-
siderable power, cast a temporary ray upon the
darkness which obscured the literature of Eng-
land. For the style and finish of their pieces,
Gray, Goldsmith, and Cowper have never been
surpassed. "The Elegy," "The Deserted Vil-
lage," and the "Lines on my Mother's Picture,"
are admirable examples of perfection in compo-
sition. But, though these pieces are evidently
the productions of intellects naturally of a high
order, and polished with the most careful cul-
ture, they have failed to place their authors in
the very first flight of English poets. The pol-
ish is almost too bright, and its brightness seems
designed to atone for the absence of higher quali-
ties. If, however, such authors as Gray, Cow-
per, or Goldsmith failed to attain the highest
rank in English literature, what shall be said of
the lesser poets, who were read and admired
during the same period?—

Augustus still survives in Maro's strain,
And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign.
Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing,
For nature formed the poet for the king.

During the first seventy years, then, of the eighteenth century, the literature of Britain gradually declined from the high position which it had occupied in the reign of Anne; but, during the latter portion of this period, at any rate, the gradual decadence of imaginative literature was accompanied with a remarkable development of reasoning, investigation, and research. The foremost thinkers of the time were no longer satisfied with accepting the theories which their predecessors had venerated as axioms, and the boldest inquiries were freely pushed into every branch of human knowledge. This intellectual activity was equally visible in England and Scotland. In physical science, Scotland produced Black and Hutton; England, Priestley and Cavendish; Scotland the land of his birth, England the country of his adoption, have an equal claim to the merit of John Hunter's profound investigations into the structure of men and animals. The glory attaching to the great inventions of the period belongs equally to the two countries. England produced the machines which revolutionized every branch of the textile industry; a

Scotchman discovered the motive power, without which these inventions would have been deprived of half their value.

The profound investigations which were made by Black, Priestley, and Cavendish in physical science; the knowledge of the anatomy of the lower forms of animals which John Hunter succeeded in acquiring; and the foundations which Hutton laid of the modern science of geology, had ultimately a prodigious effect on the thinking portion of British men and women. This effect will, however, be more conveniently considered in connection with the great religious movement which commenced toward the close of the first half of the nineteenth century, and which was in reality the reaction of the more superstitious portion of the community against the free thought which scientific investigation had produced. For the present, therefore, it is unnecessary to refer any further to the purely scientific investigations of the eighteenth century. But the same intellectual activity which animated Priestley and Black characterized also another class of thinkers, who exercised an enormous influence on the minds of succeeding generations. The decade in which Black was born gave birth to Adam Smith; and Adam Smith may be said to have changed the whole theory of government, and in this way to have contributed more than any other person to the great revolutions of the nineteenth century.

At the time of Adam Smith's birth the foremost statesmen and thinkers were of opinion that a legislature by wise laws could exercise a beneficial influence on its country's fortunes. The political arithmeticians of the previous century had adopted the erroneous notion that the precious metals, the most useless of all commodities, were the sole sources of wealth. In their view, consequently, a country could not be prosperous unless its exports showed a balance over its imports, which the foreigners had to pay for in gold. The acceptance of this theory logically led to the artificial encouragement of the export trade and to the artificial discouragement of the import trade. The first object was attained by the grant of bounties on the export of articles of British produce, the second by the imposition of import duties on articles of foreign produce. Both courses proved equally fatal to the home consumer, since the price of every commodity in common use was enormously raised by the system; in the long run they were equally fatal to the capitalist, since they induced him to invest his capital in undertakings which did not thrive naturally on the soil of Britain, but which had to be fostered, like tropical plants, by artificial methods.

Indirectly, the conclusions of the political

arithmeticians were even more disastrous. If every article of foreign produce had to be paid for by a sacrifice of British wealth, it naturally followed that the welfare of the nation depended on its being self-supporting. It seemed absolutely necessary, therefore, that the country should grow at least as much corn as it consumed. It seemed obvious that more land would be cultivated, and more corn would be grown, if the price of grain were high than if it were low; and a series of laws were in consequence passed to discourage the importation of foreign corn, and to raise the price of British corn. The same chain of reasoning induced politicians to conclude that the welfare of the country depended on labor being cheap. If wages rose, the British manufacturer would compete on less favorable terms with the foreigner. Cheap labor and dear corn were, therefore, the miserable objects which every patriot was bound to desire.

A creed of this sort was naturally acceptable to the ruling classes, to whom it was addressed. They were not likely to question conclusions which increased their rent-rolls and raised their own importance. They willingly accepted the welcome doctrine, and pushed the theories of the political arithmeticians to their logical extreme. For the sake of securing a favorable balance on the foreign trade of the country, they undertook to interfere in the commonest affairs of life. They endeavored to regulate the clothes which the living should wear, and the shrouds in which the dead should be buried. The Irish were to devote themselves to linen goods, the English were to have a monopoly of the woolen trade, pure cotton goods were not to be worn, and French silks were to be confiscated at the instance of any informer. When legislators thus attempted to regulate the ordinary details of domestic life, they naturally carried their principles into larger concerns. The carrying trade was to be confined to British ships; British ships were to be manned by British crews. Capitalists were only to charge specified rates of interest for the use of their capital. Every one entering a trade was to undergo an apprenticeship. The direct interference of the Legislature was, in short, visible in every affair of life, and the time of Parliament was occupied with minutely regulating the conditions on which every trade and every industry should be conducted.

The minute regulations which were in consequence made in every branch of industry would undoubtedly have materially interfered with the development of British trade which subsequently occurred. At the very time, however, at which the great inventions of Watt and Arkwright were being perfected, Adam Smith was engaged on the profound investigations which he made

into the true causes of the wealth of nations. Smith was born at Kirkcaldy in 1723; “The Wealth of Nations" was published in 1776; its author himself imagined that his fame would ultimately rest on a previous work—“The Theory of Moral Sentiments." His idea in this respect only proves how imperfectly he appreciated the importance of his own labors. For one person who has read "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" a thousand have probably read "The Wealth of Nations." The former work exercises, at the present time, no perceptible influence. The influence of the latter work has been continually increasing for one hundred years.

It was the object of The Wealth of Nations" to prove that the economical conclusions which had been universally accepted in the world were erroneous. Wealth, the author showed, was produced by labor, or—which is really the same thing-by capital, which is the accumulation of previous labor. The laborer and the capitalist were better judges than the state of the industries in which their capital and labor might most usefully be employed; and all interference with their freedom was therefore unnecessary and objectionable. The favorable balance of trade, which political arithmeticians had been intent on securing, was an object with which legislators had nothing to do. Importance had only been attached to it because the political arithmeticians had fixed their attention on the foreign trade of the nation, and had overlooked the internal or domestic trade, which was of more importance and a surer source of wealth. The chief rule of legislation should be to leave men to themselves. Every man was the best judge of his own interests, and what was true of each man taken singly was true also of any body of men in the nation.

The conclusions which Adam Smith thus expressed in "The Wealth of Nations" entirely subverted the ideas which had previously been fashionable. Protection had been the natural result of the doctrine which had been taught by Adam Smith's predecessors. Free trade was the logical consequence of the new teaching. The change was so great that the minds which had ripened into maturity under the influence of the old ideas were unable to grasp the full force of the new gospel. Even Fox, who in every respect was one of the most liberal of his generation, declared that "The Wealth of Nations' was "plausible and inconclusive "; while Tory statesmen, like Lord Ellenborough, thought the book so dull that they were absolutely unable to read it.* But younger minds, whose convictions on economical subjects were not already stereo

* Romilly, vol. iii., p. 52; Colchester, vol. ii., p. 71.