The momentary sting of anger gave her courage to draw away her hand and turn to the door. Dr. Urquhart followed, full of penitence and shame for having brought that flush of pain to her cheek.

"Forgive me! it is so hard to part when we have lived near each other so long, and when you have been all the world to me. Oh! Miss West, surely the other is a passing fancy, you called it a fancy yourself; surely you can look back to a time when you thought more-kindly of me?"

Emmie stood for a minute with her hand on the door, and looked back into the bright Land of Beulah, where she had spent so many happy hours, and which in its comfort and home

liness, was such a contrast to the desolate rest of the house to-night. To leave it was like turning away from a haven of security to battle with storms outside, but she was too truthful and single-minded to deceive herself. It was not of Dr. Urquhart she had been used to think when she came up here in the dusky afternoons last winter, to sit in the fire glow and dream her girlish dreams, while Mrs. Urquhart nodded in her arm-chair. It was not his face that looked out of the dark corners in the guise of some romance hero whose fortunes she thought herself following; not his voice that said all the fine or tender things; she might be ever so much ashamed, now she knew whose likeness it was that had given reality to every pleasant tale; but she could not deceive herself into believing that it was some one else's, or set up a new image

for worship because it was convenient to do so.

"I have always thought kindly of you, but not in the way you mean. No, not once," she added, with an emphatic, sorrowful shake of the head, that shattered Dr. Urquhart's confidence, and froze his hopes more than all her previous words had done. It was all over then; he saw the door open and shut behind her without attempting another word. And when Mrs. Urquhart came back a few minutes later, smiling and confident, though a little surprised that the interview had lasted so short a time, she found him seated at his writingtable with his face buried in his hands, and had no need to ask any questions.

It was a great blow, all the greater because it was the first failure in his successful, hard-working life, yet the first bitter hour had hardly passed before the wholesomeness of the maxim on which Emmie had acted, began to be verified in him. Truth does not rankle if it is accepted bravely, and he soon began to be thankful that it was a bitter truth he had to take into his life, and not a fair deception. Emmie had judged him rightly; it was the reality of love he wanted, not its pale counterfeit, heart-understanding and comradeship, if any at all, to bear him through an anxious life. Even before he had brought himself to repeat one or two of her bitter truths to his mother, Emmie's prophecy had a dawning of fulfilment, and he acknowledged to himself that if things were so, she had done well by him to be so pitilessly truthful.

OUGHT private letters to an editor from his contributors to be published? Mr. Macvey Napier was editor of the Edinburgh Review for eighteen years, from 1829 to 1847. Among his correspondents during that period were some of the most distinguished men of the time: Macaulay, Brougham, Lytton, Jeffrey, Carlyle, Dickens, Thackeray, John Mill, and many others of less note. They wrote to him long lettersletters were as a rule longer then than they are now-proposing articles, deprecating corrections, expressing opinions about the work of their fellow-labourers, making themselves agreeable or disagreeable as the case might be, and occasionally throwing in scraps of gossip about

common

acquaintances, and the events of the day. It was Mr. Napier's practice to keep these documents, and a selection from them was recently printed by his son for private circulation. The privilege of reading them is now extended to all who choose to avail themselves of it. Many doubtless will avail themselves of the privilege, for the letters contain abundance of dainty morsels for the curious; but while we read and smile, it is impossible altogether to banish the thought that what we read was not intended for our inspection, and that much of it could only have been written in confidence. In fact it is only the confidential part of an editor's correspondence that possesses any lively interest for the general reader. The business communications which pass between editor and contributor have some value for the minute biographer, the close student of character and literary development, but for all but this small fraction of mankind the passage

1 Selection from the Correspondence of the late Macvey Napier, Esq. Edited by his Son, Macvey Napier.

of a few years, or even months, makes them flat and stale. What the multitude likes to pick out of such papers is precisely what the writers of them would have been most anxious to conceal from the general eye, their opinion of their own work, and their opinion of the work of their fellow-contributors. There is not so much of this in the selection from Mr. Napier's letters as there might have been if some of his correspondents had been less guarded, or if the selector had been less scrupulous in his choice; but there is a good deal, and it is undoubtedly the salt of the volume. Yet it is a troublesome question in rigid ethics whether the individual, who would as soon think of publishing his love-letters as his private letters to an editor, ought thus to be sacrificed for the amusement of the majority. All who love gossip, with a tender conscience, must be secretly glad that the owners of interesting confidential correspondence are seldom unwilling to take the responsibility of deciding this delicate point. Unhappily, it will not trouble the inheritors of the letters, telegrams, and post-cards of the present generation.

We are helped to get rid of any lingering scruples that we may feel about our right to enjoy the amusing lights in which some of Mr. Napier's correspondents are placed by the publication of their letters, by the fact that it is an act of justice to the editor himself. An editor in his lifetime gets but scant justice. He is lucky if he possess a self-approving conscience. Very rarely does a voice of approval reach him from the outside. Good-natured friends who write to congratulate him on his last number, invariably append some irritating "but" which turns the praise into bitterness. It is an excellent number

On one

on the whole, but why did he not draw his pen through such and such And how can he allow So-and-so to go on writing on subjects on which he does not know the merest rudiments? When people are displeased with anything in their periodical, they lay the blame upon the editor; when anything strikes them as particularly good, they wonder who wrote it. This is as it should be, but the poor editor,-to whom, it may be, some touch of the goodness is due, and who has been compelled to retain passages intensely objectionable to his own taste, out of regard for the feelings or the services of a valuable member of his staff,-is apt to think that hard measure is dealt out to him. The world knows nothing of his difficulties. occasion, when Mr. Napier was more than usually distracted and perplexed, and had taken the advice of his predecessor, Lord Jeffrey, that experienced and logical authority began his reply with a clear classification of the main considerations by which editor ought to be guided in deciding the all-important question of admission or rejection. These considerations were three in number-the effect upon the general body of the contributors, the effect upon the general body of readers, and the effect in the editor's deliberate opinion upon the advancement of what he believed to be right. Here alone is a sufficiency of embarrassing considerations for a hesitating mind, disturbed by circumstances from the healthy rule of trusting to its instincts, and Lord Jeffrey could probably have given many others of a more subtle and annoying kind. An editor, in fact, has all the worry of a police magistrate, without statutes to direct him, without the majesty of the law to hedge him round with respect, and with the paralysing disadvantage that many of the offenders who appear in his court are his own personal friends and indispensable associates.

an

It was due in common fairness that the world should have an oppor

tunity of seeing the difficulties with which Mr. Napier had to struggle, as the head of a famous organisation, and the dignity, firmness, and tact with which he maintained his position and did his duty. He came after a more famous man than himself in the management of the Edinburgh Review, and was placed in authority over other men of note who had been connected with the Review from its commencement. Very rare qualities indeed were needed to preserve the necessary discipline without estranging support essential to the very existence of the great quarterly. Mr. Napier's task was comparatively easy in dealing with outsiders who knocked at his door seeking admission. "There can be no more respectable vehicle," Mr. Carlyle once wrote, "for any British man's speculations than it (the Edinburgh Review) is and has always been." It was not only honourable to write for the Edinburgh Review, but profitable, for it paid liberally, as a respectable journal should. Hence, Mr. Napier's offers of contributions were numerous. All the highest talent of the country, with the exception of the attached fuglemen of the opposite party, was at his service. The large body of political indifferentists, of men of letters pure and simple, desired no more respectable, and could obtain no more profitable, vehicle for their speculations than the Edinburgh Review. But for successful dealing with his numerous volunteers Mr. Napier needed only a moderate share of two great gifts-caution in accepting, and courtesy in declining. He had a large share of both. When he was in doubt or difficulty, he seems to have consulted Jeffrey, with whom he remained on cordial terms. Jeffrey's advice was invaluable, and it was never obtruded, but always given with admirable regard to editorial rights and susceptibilities. It was with Jeffrey's advice that Mr. Napier fortified himself when writers of somewhat more advanced views, or more lively style than suited the

traditions of the Review, sought to make it a vehicle for their speculations. The opinions and tastes of the two men were so thoroughly in accord that there was no breach of continuity when the editorship passed from the one to the other. As shrewd, matter-of-fact men, they were both aware of the value of lively writing; but they had to consider also that the Review had reached decorous middle age, and was the organ of a triumphant party, and that it was of paramount importance that its contents, whether lively or dull, should be safe. When Charles Dickens wrote asking whether it would "meet the purposes of the Review to come out strongly against any system of education based exclusively on the principles of the Established Church," and proposing to show "why such a thing as the Church Catechism is wholly inapplicable to the state of ignorance that now prevails; and why no system but one, so general in great religious principles as to include all creeds, can meet the wants and understandings of the dangerous classes of society," one can imagine how the editor's mind was tossed between desire and fear. proposal was probably not considered safe. Dickens wrote again to propose an article on the Abolition of Capital Punishment. Jeffrey, who was one of Dickens's most enthusiastic admirers, was consulted, and approved of the idea; but the novelist wrote at the last moment to say that he was living in such a 66 maze of distractions," with "so many insuperable obstacles crowded into the way of his pursuits," that he could not possibly write the article in time for the next number.

The

With Thackeray Mr. Napier was hardly more fortunate. A review from his hand appeared in October, 1845, three years before the publication of Vanity Fair. The subject was N. P. Willis's Dashes at Life, in discussing which there was little room for conflicting with the political principles of the Review. But Thackeray ran against another rock

the severe taste of the editor. "From your liberal payment," he wrote, in acknowledging receipt of his honorarium, "I can't but conclude that you reward me, not only for labouring, but for being mutilated in your service. I assure you I suffered cruelly by the amputation which you were obliged to inflict upon my poor dear paper. I mourn still-as what father can help doing for his children ?—for several lively jokes and promising facetiæ, which were born and might have lived but for your scissors, urged by ruthless necessity." Jeffrey did not think much of the article even after all this pruning and trimming. The taste of the Edinburgh Review was very severe in some directions. Thackeray was not the only contributor who had to mourn the loss of his children, and it is curious to note the different forms in which they expressed their grief and anger. A youthful aspirant, such as G. H. Lewes was in 1842, is all submission and sweet reasonableness, even when an article is returned to him to be entirely rewritten. It is not "unpleasant to his feelings to submit to alterations;" he is "at all times anxious to alter and to receive criticism, however severe; " and he writes as if he meant it. The courteous Bulwer Lytton is not less complaisant; but though he thanks the editor with every appearance of cordiality for "smoothing his article into shape," and hopes that he will never hesitate to cut out what he does not like, he declares himself unable to understand some general hints as to his faults of style. Macaulay was equally generous in his professions of submission, but not so successful in concealing his feelings when the knife was actually applied. "I hope you will not scruple to exercise your prerogative," he writes. "You will not find me a refractory subject." But we find him soon afterwards complaining that "the passages omitted were the most pointed and ornamental sentences in the review." One contributor, and one only, made a clear and frank

bargain beforehand that his articles were not to be trifled with. When Mr. Carlyle was asked to write for the Review, he explained without the least flummery on what conditions he was willing to try his hand. My respected friend, your predecessor,' he wrote, "had some difficulty with me in adjusting the respective prerogatives of author and editor, for though not, as I hope, insensible to fair reason, I used sometimes to rebel against what I reckoned mere authority, and this partly perhaps as a matter of literary conscience; being wont to write nothing without studying it if possible to the bottom, and writing always with an almost painful feeling of scrupulosity, that light editorial hacking and hewing to right and left was in general nowise to my mind. In what degree the like difficulties might occur between you and me, I cannot pretend to guess; however, if you are willing, then I also am willing, to try." The sturdy independence of this understanding left no room for the petty wrangling over flowers of rhetoric and sallies of wit which embitter the relations between editor and contributor. Mr. Napier appears to have been an editor with whom it would have been difficult to quarrel satisfactorily. He was most painstaking in his courtesy, untiring in his efforts to make his alterations pleasant to the victim. Once, indeed, he threw the gentle-hearted Leigh Hunt into an agony by an incautious word. wrote to him gaily proposing a chatty" article on some subject. replied that he would be very glad to have a 66 gentlemanlike" article. But on the intercession of Macaulay, to whom the wounded essayist made complaint, Mr. Napier explained that he meant no offence, and explained it with such politeness, and so completely restored Leigh Hunt's easy temper, that he borrowed ten pounds from Macaulay a few days afterwards.

Hunt

very

He

But all Mr. Napier's worries with the mass of his contributors and applicants were as nothing compared with the one great embarrassment of his

editorship-his relations with "tremendous Harry Brougham." How to keep Brougham, and how to keep him within bounds, and how to keep him without losing Macaulay, were problems which gave Mr. Napier many anxious moments during his first ten years of office. He could not afford to lose either Brougham or Macaulay. Without them the Review would have been intolerably dull. The abundance of heavy matter to which the editor's severe taste and the restraints of his traditions condemned it, would have sunk the Review beneath the level of popular request if the supporting force, the buoyancy, the intense life and movement of their writing had been withdrawn. It seems strange to the present generation that the retention of Brougham's services should ever have been an object of such paramount importance. There is not much life in his contributions to the Edinburgh Review now. A back number with five of his articles in it-he boasted some thirty-five years after the commencement of the Review that he had written about a fifth of its whole bulk -is not a book that one takes from the shelf for a half-hour's refreshment and delight. But though Brougham's articles are dry bones to us, they had a vigorous life in their day. The pulse of the time beat violently-very violently-in them. We can see only the rusty machinery with which the stage thunder and lightning was manufactured, in the now deserted theatre, the tattered, moth-eaten robes in which the great actor draped himself; his contemporaries were filled with the excitement and passion of the play. There was no such incarnation of force, loud, tempestuous, overpowering force, in his time as Brougham. He is often called an "extraordinary" man, and extraordinary he was in all conscience. About the time when Mr. Napier came in contact with him, he was the greatest individual power in English political life. There was no parliamentary debater whose hostility was so much to be feared, and outside Parliament, among the masses of the people, there