[Lady Clara Newcome.]

her out and stone her.

*

*

Poor Lady Clara! I fancy a better lot for you than that to which fate handed you over. I fancy there need have been no deceit in your fond, simple, little heart, could it but have been given into other keeping. But you were consigned to a master whose scorn and cruelty terrified you; under whose sardonic glances your scared eyes were afraid to look up, and before whose gloomy coldness you dared not be happy. Suppose a little plant; very frail and delicate from the first, but that might have bloomed sweetly and borne fair flowers, had it received warm shelter and kindly nurture; suppose a young creature taken out of her home, and given over to a hard master whose caresses are as insulting as his neglect; consigned to cruel usage; to weary loneliness; to bitter insulting recollections of the past; suppose her schooled into hypocrisy by tyranny-and then, quick, let us hire an advocate to roar out to a British jury the wrongs of her injured husband, to paint the agonies of his bleeding heart (if Mr Advocate gets plaintiff's brief in time, and before defendant's attorney has retained him), and to shew society injured through him! Let us console that martyr, I say, with thumping damages; and as for the woman-the guilty wretch!-let us lead So Lady Clara flies from the custody of her tyrant, but to what a rescue? The very man who loves her, and gives her asylum, pities and deplores her. She scarce dares to look out of the windows of her new home upon the world, lest it should know and reproach her. All the sisterhood of friendship is cut off from her. If she dares to go abroad, she feels the sneer of the world as she goes through it, and knows that malice and scorn whisper behind her. People, as criminal, but undiscovered, make room for her as if her touch were pollution. She knows she has darkened the lot and made wretched the home of the man she loves best, that his friends who see her treat her with but a doubtful respect, and the domestics who attend her with a suspicious obedience. In the country lanes, or the streets of the country town, neighbours look aside as the carriage passes in which she is splendid and lonely. Rough hunting companions of her husband's come to the table: he is driven perforce to the company of flatterers and men of inferior sort; his equals, at least in his own home, will not live with him. She would be kind, perhaps, and charitable to the cottagers around her, but she fears to visit them, lest they too should scorn her. The clergyman who distributes her charities, blushes and looks awkward on passing her in the village, if he should be walking with his wife or one of his children.'

Could anything more sternly or touchingly true be written? The summation of Clara's miseries, item by item, might have been made by Swift, but there is a pathos and moral beauty in the passage that the dean never reached. The real hero of the novel is Colonel Newcome-a counterpart to Fielding's Allworthy. The old officer's high sense of honour, his simplicity, his never-failing kindness of

through the knavery of others-and his death as a 'poor brother' in the Charterhouse, form altogether so noble, so affecting a picture, and one so perfectly natural and life-like, that it can scarcely be even recalled without tears. The author, it was said, might have given a less painful end to the good colonel, to soothe him after the buffetings of the world. The same remark was made on Scott's treatment of his Jewess Rebecca, and we have no doubt Mr Thackeray's answer would be that of Scott-'A character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp is degraded rather than exalted by an attempt to reward virtue with worldly prosperity. Such is not the recompense which Providence has deemed worthy of suffering merit.' The best of Mr Thackeray's female portraits-his highest compliment to the sex-is in this novel. Ethel Newcome, in her pride and sensibility-the former balancing, and at last overcoming, the weaknesses induced by the latter-is drawn with great delicacy and truth; while in the French characters, the family of De Florac and others, we have an entirely new creation -a cluster of originals. The gay roué, Paul de Florac-who plays the Englishman in top-boots and buckskins-could only be hit off by one equally at home in French and in English society. Of course there are in The Newcomes many other personages and classes-as the sanctimonious fop, the coarse and covetous trader, the parasite, the schemer, &c.

who are drawn with the novelist's usual keen insight and minute detail, though possessing fewer features of novelty or interest. Those who have traversed leisurely the fable-land of The Newcomes, have found it, as Mr Thackeray's critic in the Quarterly Review observed, as healthful as it is beguiling; and it is through its more sterling quali ties that he has won for his book a loving admiration in many a home where genius alone would have been faintly welcomed.' The author's decided success now led to the republication of his early pieces-the Miscellanies: Prose and Verse, taken from Fraser, Punch, and other journals; and critics and general readers were busied in tracing the first developments of that genius which was not fortunate enough to obtain speedy recognition. The same characteristics were found in all-the easy, idiomatic style, the clear, manly thought, the innate proneness to satire-but all in his later works ripened and mellowed by the fifteen years' sun and shade that had passed over the writer. Recurring again to the pleasant and profitable trade of lecturing, Mr Thackeray crossed the Atlantic, taking with him four more lecturesThe Four Georges-which, after being delivered in the United States in 1855-56, were, on his return, repeated in London, and in most of the large towns in England and Scotland. The Hanoverian monarchs afforded but little room for eulogistic writing or fine moral painting; and the dark shades-the coarseness, immorality, and heartlessness that pervaded the courts of at least the first, second, and fourth of the Georges-were exhibited without any relief or softening. George III., as the better man, fared better with the lecturer; and the closing scene when old, blind, and bereft of reason, the monarch sank to rest, was described with great pathos and picturesque effect. The society, literature, manners, and fashion of the different periods were briefly touched upon-somewhat in the style of Horace Walpole; and we believe Mr Thackeray contemplates, among his future tasks, expanding these lectures into memoirs of the different reigns. The novelist now

aimed at a different sort of public distinction. The representation of the city of Oxford becoming vacant, he offered himself as a candidate-the advocate of all liberal measures-but was defeated by the present member, Mr Cardwell (July 1857), the numbers being 1085 to 1018. Before the close of the year Mr Thackeray was at the more appropriate and, we should think, congenial occupation of another serial. The Castlewood family was revived, and in The Virginians we had a tale of the days of George II. -of Chesterfield, Queensberry, Garrick, and Johnson-the gaming-table, coffee-house, and theatre, but with Washington, Wolfe, and the American war in the background. As a story, The Virginians is defective. The incidents hang loosely together and want progressive interest, but the work abounds in passages of fine philosophic humour and satire. The author frequently stops to moralise and preach sotte voce to his readers, and in these digressions we have some of his choicest and most racy sentences. Youth and love are his favourite themes. There is a healthy natural world both within and without the world of fashion-particularly without. Mere wealth and ton go for nothing in the composition of happiness, and genuine, manly love is independent of the sunshine of prosperity. Few, however, have strength of mind to renounce the shams and discern the realities of life, and thus arise mistakes, misunderstandings, and misery. Such is part of the creed here inculcated-and inculcated in the blandest of Mr Thackeray's moods. We quote a few of his 'mottoes of the heart' and satirical touches.

[Recollection of Youthful Beauty.]

When cheeks are faded and eyes are dim, is it sad or pleasant, I wonder, for the woman who is a beauty no more, to recall the period of her bloom? When the heart is withered, do the old love to remember how it once was fresh, and beat with warm emotions? When the spirits are languid and weary, do we like to think how bright they were in other days; the hope how buoyant, the sympathies how ready, the enjoyment of life how keen and eager? So they fall-the buds of prime, the roses of beauty, the florid harvests of summer-fall and wither, and the naked branches shiver in the winter.

[Indifference of the World.]

The world can pry out everything about us which it has a mind to know. But there is this consolation, which men will never accept in their own cases, that the world doesn't care. Consider the amount of scandal it has been forced to hear in its time, and how weary and blasé it must be of that kind of intelligence. You are taken to prison, and fancy yourself indelibly disgraced? You are bankrupt under odd circumstances? You drive a queer bargain with your friends and are found out, and imagine the world will punish you? Psha! Your shame is only vanity. Go and talk to the world as if nothing had happened, and nothing has happened. Tumble down; brush the mud off your clothes; appear with a smiling countenance, and nobody cares. Do you suppose society is going to take out its pocket-handkerchief and be inconsolable when you die? Why should it care very much, then, whether your worship graces yourself or disgraces yourself? Whatever happens, it talks, meets, jokes, yawns, has its dinner pretty much as before.

[Lackeys and Footmen in the Last Century.] Lackeys, liveries, footmen-the old society was encumbered with a prodigious quantity of these. Gentle

men or women could scarce move without one, sometimes two or three, vassals in attendance. Every theatre had its footmen's gallery; an army of the liveried race hustled round every chapel-door. They swarmed in anterooms, they sprawled in halls and on landings, they guzzled, devoured, debauched, cheated, played cards, bullied visitors for vails [or gratuities]. That noble old race of footmen is well-nigh gone. A few thousand of them may still be left among us. Grand, tall, beautiful, melancholy, we still behold them on levee days, with their nosegays and their buckles, their plush and their powder. So have I seen in America specimens, nay, camps and villages, of Red Indians. But the race is doomed. The fatal decree has gone forth, and Uncas with his tomahawk and eagle's plume, and Jeames with his cocked-hat and long cane, are passing out of the world where they once walked in glory.

[The English Country Gentleman.]

To be a good old country gentleman, is to hold a position nearest the gods, and at the summit of earthly felicity. To have a large unencumbered rent-roll, and the rents paid regularly by adoring farmers, who bless their stars at having such a landlord as his honour; to have no tenant holding back with his money, excepting just one, perhaps, who does so just in order to give occasion to Good Old Country Gentleman to shew, his sublime charity and universal benevolence of soul; to hunt three days a week, love the sport of all things, and have perfect good health and good appetite in consequence; to have not only a good appetite, but a good dinner; to sit down at church in the midst of a chorus of blessings from the villagers, the first man in the parish, the benefactor of the parish, with a consciousness of consummate desert, saying, 'Have mercy upon us miserable sinners,' to be sure, but only for form's sake, and to give other folks an example:-a G.O.C.G. a miserable sinner! So healthy, so wealthy, so jolly, so much respected by the vicar, so much honoured by the tenants, so much beloved and admired by his family, amongst whom his story of grouse in the gun-room causes laughter from generation to generation; this perfect being a miserable sinner! Allons donc! Give any man good health and temper, five thousand a year, the adoration of his parish, and the love and worship of his family, and I'll defy you to make him so heartily dissatisfied with his spiritual condition as to set himself down a miserable anything. If you were a Royal Highness, and went to church in the most perfect health and comfort, the parson waiting to begin the service, until your R.H. came in, would you believe yourself to be a miserable, &c.? You might, when racked with gout, in solitude, the fear of death before your eyes, the doctor having cut off your bottle of claret, and ordered arrow-root and a little sherry-you might then be humiliated, and acknowledge your shortcomings and the vanity of things in general; but in high health, sunshine, spirits, that word 'miserable' is only a form. You can't think in your heart that you are to be pitied much for the present. If you are to be miserable, what is Colin Ploughman with the ague, seven children, two pounds a year rent to pay for his cottage, and eight shillings a week? No; a healthy, rich, jolly country gentleman, if miserable, has a very supportable misery; if a sinner, has very few people to tell him so.

We add one specimen of Mr Thackeray's verse, which differs very little from his prose: the colour and flavour are the same.

The Ballad of Bouillabaisse. A street there is in Paris famous,

For which no rhyme our language yields, Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name isThe New Street of the Little Fields;

And here's an inn, not rich and splendid,

But still in comfortable case; The which in youth I oft attended, To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse.

This Bouillabaisse a noble dish isA sort of soup or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes,

That Greenwich never could outdo; Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffern, Soles, onions, garlic, roach and dace; All these you eat at Terré's tavern, In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.

Indeed, a rich and savoury stew 'tis ;
And true philosophers, methinks,
Who love all sorts of natural beauties,

Should love good victuals and good drinks. And Cordelier or Benedictine

Might gladly, sure, his lot embrace, Nor find a fast-day too afflicting,

Which served him up a Bouillabaisse.

I wonder if the house still there is?
Yes, here the lamp is, as before;
The smiling red-cheeked écaillère is
Still opening oysters at the door.
Is Terré still alive and able?

I recollect his droll grimace;
He'd come and smile before your table,
And hoped you liked your Bouillabaisse.
We enter-nothing's changed or older,

'How's Monsieur Terré, waiter, pray?' The waiter stares and shrugs his shoulder'Monsieur is dead this many a day.'

'It is the lot of saint and sinner,

So honest Terré's run his race.' 'What will Monsieur require for dinner?' 'Say, do you still cook Bouillabaisse ?'

'Oh, oui, Monsieur,' 's the waiter's answer; 'Quel vin Monsieur désire-t-il?' 'Tell me a good one.' 'That I can, sir: The Chambertin with yellow seal.' 'So Terré's gone,' I say, and sink in

My old accustomed corner-place; 'He's done with feasting and with drinking, With Burgundy and Bouillabaisse.'

My old accustomed corner here is,
The table still is in the nook;
Ah! vanished many a busy year is,
This well-known chair since last I took.
When first I saw ye, Cari luoghi,

I'd scarce a beard upon my face,
And now a grizzled, grim old fogy,
I sit and wait for Bouillabaisse.

Where are you, old companions trusty,
Of early days here met to dine?
Come, waiter! quick, a flagon crusty-

I'll pledge them in the good old wine.
The kind old voices and old faces

My memory can quick retrace; Around the board they take their places,

And share the wine and Bouillabaisse. There's Jack has made a wondrous marriage; There's laughing Tom is laughing yet; There's brave Augustus drives his carriage; There's poor old Fred in the Gazette; On James's head the grass is growing: Good Lord! the world has wagged apace Since here we set the claret flowing,

656

And drank, and ate the Bouillabaisse.

Come, fill it, and have done with rhymes:
Fill up the lonely glass, and drain it
In memory of dear old times.
Welcome the wine, whate'er the seal is;
And sit you down and say your grace
With thankful heart, whate'er the meal is.

-Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse !

The leading features of Mr Thackeray's genius are well sketched in the following extract from Brimley's Essays: 'Mr Thackeray's humour does not mainly consist in the creation of oddities of manner, habit, or feeling, but in so representing actual men and women as to excite a sense of incongruity in the reader's mind-a feeling that the follies and vices described are deviations from an ideal of humanity always present to the writer. The real is described vividly, with that perception of individuality which constitutes the artist; but the description implies and suggests a standard higher than itself, not by any direct assertion of such a standard, but by an unmistakable irony. The moral antithesis of actual and ideal is the root from which springs the peculiar charm of Mr Thackeray's writings; that mixture of gaiety and seriousness, of sarcasm and tenderness, of enjoyment and cynicism, which reflects so well the contradictory consciousness of man as a being with senses and passions and limited knowledge, yet with a conscience and a reason speaking to him of eternal laws, and a moral order of the universe. It is this that makes Mr Thackeray a profound moralist, just as Hogarth shewed his knowledge of perspective by drawing a landscape throughout in violation of its rules. So, in Mr Thackeray's picture of society as it is, society as it ought to be is implied. He could not have painted Vanity Fair as he has, unless Eden had been shining brightly in his inner eyes. The historian of snobs indicates in every touch his fine sense of a gentleman or a lady. No one could be simply amused with Mr Thackeray's descriptions or his dialogues. A shame at one's own defects, at the defects of the world in which one was living, was irresistibly aroused along with the reception of the particular portraiture. But while he was dealing with his own age, his keen perceptive faculty prevailed, and the actual predominates in his pictures of modern society. His fine appreciation of high character has hitherto been chiefly shewn (though with bright exceptions) by his definition of its contrary.' The critic then remarks that in the two leading characters of Esmond the novelist displays his true nature without the mask of satire and irony. This is also the case in The Newcomes and The Virginians-the characters in whom the reader is most interested are honourable and generous.

THE REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY.

As a novelist, poet, theologian, and active philanthropist, MR KINGSLEY, rector of Eversley, Hampshire, is one of the most remarkable and meritorious men of his age. His views of social reform verge upon Chartism, and in some instances are crude and impracticable in the present state of society;

but his zeal, disinterestedness, and unceasing perseverance in seeking to remedy evils which press upon the working-classes, no one doubts or questions, while the genius he has brought to bear on his various duties and tasks reflects honour on our literature. Mr Kingsley is a native of Devonshire, born at Holne Vicarage, near Dartmoor, in 1819. He studied at King's College, London, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, and intended to follow the profession of the law. He soon, however, abandoned this pursuit, and entered the church, obtaining first the curacy, and then the rectory of Eversley, which he has invested with a European interest and fame. Mr Kingsley's first appearance as an author was in the character of a dramatic poet. In 1848 he published The Saint's Tragedy, or the story of Elizabeth of Hungary, landgravine of Thuringia, and a saint of the Romish calendar. This poem is a sort of protest against superstitious homage and false miracles, but it gives also a vivid picture of life in the middle ages, and is animated by a poetical imagination. His next work was one of fictionAlton Locke, Tailor and Poet: an Autobiography, two volumes, 1850. The design of this tale is to shew the evils of competition and the grievances of the artisan class. The hardships which drove Alton to become a Chartist, and his mental struggles as he oscillated between infidelity and religion, are powerfully depicted, though the story is, in some respects, a painful one, and in parts greatly exaggerated. Mr Kingsley's remedy for the evils of competition and the tyranny of masters in large towns is the adoption of the associative principle among the workmen-combining capital and labour-and in the case of the tailors and a few other trades, the scheme was tried. The same social topics are discussed in Mr Kingsley's Yeast, a Problem, 1851, which is devoted more particularly to the condition of the agricultural labourers, and is written with a plainness and vehemence that deterred fastidious readers. Mr Kingsley put his views into a more definite shape in a lecture on the Application of Associative Principles and Methods to Agriculture, published also in 1851. But in this tract the author's denunciation of large towns and mill-owners, and his proposal to restore the population to the land, are erroneous both in theory and sentiment. The earth,' he says, 'hath bubbles, and such cities as Manchester are of them. A short-sighted and hasty greed created them, and when they have lasted their little time and had their day, they will vanish like bubbles.' Such Christian Socialism' as this would throw back society into ignorance and poverty, instead of solving the problem as to the rich and the poor. Phaethon, or Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers, 1852, and Hypatia, or New Friends with an Old Face, 1853, were Mr Kingsley's next works. These were followed by a series of lectures, delivered at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh, on Alexandria and her Schools, 1854; and in the following year our author took a higher and more genial position as a man of letters by his novel of Westward Ho! and his delightful little treatise of Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore. In his Westward Ho! Mr Kingsley threw himself into the exciting and brilliant Elizabethan period, professing to relate the Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the county of Devon, in the reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth; rendered into modern English by Charles Kingsley.' Here we have Raleigh, Drake, Hawkins, and the other great names of Devonshire once more in action; we have adventures in the Spanish main and South American continent, the memorable chase

and defeat of the Spanish Armada, the plots of Jesuits, the pride of Spaniards, English burghers, Puritans, seamen, and soldiers-an endless variety of incidents and characters, with descriptions of scenery which for rich colouring and picturesqueness are almost unrivalled. Believing that the Protestantism of the Elizabethan age was all-important to the cause of freedom as well as true religion, Mr Kingsley gives no quarter to its opponents, and has marred the effect of parts of his narrative by frequent and bitter assaults on the Romish Church. In the delineation of passion-especially the passion of love, as operating on grave and lofty minds like that of Amyas Leigh-Mr Kingsley is eminently successful. He is more intent on such moral painting and on the development of character, than on the construction of a regular story. But the most popular passages in his tale-the most highly wrought and easily remembered-are his pictures of wild Indian life and scenery. In these we have primeval innocence and intense enjoyment, in connection with the gorgeous, unchecked luxuriance of nature-as if the pictorial splendour of the Fairy Queen had been transported to this wild Arcadia of the west. Passing over some sermons and occasional tracts, we come to Mr Kingsley's next novel, Two Years Ago, published in 1857. This work is of the school or class of Alton Locke, exhibiting contrasts of social life and character, with references to modern events, as the gold-digging in Australia, the Crimean war, and the political institutions of the United States. The story is deficient in clearness and interest, but contains scenes of domestic pathos and descriptions of external nature worthy the graphic pencil and vivid imagination of its author. Reverting again to poetry-though few of his prose pages are without some tincture of the poetical element-Mr Kingsley, in 1858, published Andromeda, and other Poems, a classic theme adopted from a Greek legend, and expressed in hexameter verse, carrying the reader

Over the sea, past Crete, on the Syrian shore to the southward.

The poetry of Mr Kingsley, like that of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, is rather a graceful foil to his other works, than the basis of a reputation; but we quote a pathetic lyric of the sea which, set to music by Hullah, has drawn tears from many bright eyes, and perhaps-what the author would value more-prompted to acts of charity and kindness:

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands

In the morning gleam as the tide went down, And the women are weeping and wringing their hands, For those who will never come back to the town. For men must work and women must weep, And the sooner it's over the sooner to sleep, And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.

[Scene in the Indian Forest-Sir Amyas Paulet pursues Two of his missing Seamen.]

Forth Amyas went, with Ayacanora as a guide, some five miles upward along the forest slopes, till the girl whispered, 'There they are;' and Amyas, pushing himself gently through a thicket of bamboo, beheld a scene which, in spite of his wrath, kept him silent, and perhaps softened, for a minute.

On the further side of a little lawn, the stream leaped through a chasm beneath overarching vines, sprinkling eternal freshness upon all around, and then sank foaming into a clear rock-basin, a bath for Dian's self. On its further side, the crag rose some twenty feet in height, bank upon bank of feathered ferns and cushioned moss, over the rich green beds of which drooped a thousand orchids, scarlet, white, and orange, and made the still pool gorgeous with the reflection of their gorgeousness. At its more quiet outfall, it was half-hidden in huge fantastic leaves and tall flowering stems; but near the water-fall the grassy bank sloped down toward the stream, and there, on palm-leaves strewed upon the turf, beneath the shadow of the crags, lay the two men whom Amyas sought, and whom, now he had found them, he had hardly heart to wake from their delicious dream.

For what a nest it was which they had found! The air was heavy with the scent of flowers, and quivering with the murmur of the stream, the humming of the colibris and insects, the cheerful song of birds, the gentle cooing of a hundred doves; while now and then, from far away, the musical wail of the sloth, or the deep toll of the bell-bird, came softly to the ear. What was not there which eye or ear could need? And what which palate could need either? For on the rock above, some strange tree, leaning forward, dropped every now and then a luscious apple upon the grass below, and huge wild plantains bent beneath their load of fruit.

There, on the stream bank, lay the two renegades from civilised life. They had cast away their clothes, and painted themselves, like the Indians, with arnotta and indigo. One lay lazily picking up the fruit which fell close to his side; the other sat, his back against a cushion of soft moss, his hands folded languidly upon his lap, giving himself up to the soft influence of the narcotic coca-juice, with half-shut dreamy eyes fixed on the everlasting sparkle of the water-fall

While beauty, born of murmuring sound,
Did pass into his face."

Somewhat apart crouched their two dusky brides, crowned with fragrant flowers, but working busily, like true women, for the lords whom they delighted to honour. One sat plaiting palm-fibres into a basket; the other was boring the stem of a huge milk-tree, which rose like some mighty column on the right hand of the lawn, its broad canopy of leaves unseen through the dense underwood of laurel and bamboo, and betokened only by the rustle far aloft, and by the mellow shade in which it bathed the whole delicious

scene.

Amyas stood silent for awhile, partly from noble shame at seeing two Christian men thus fallen of their own self-will; partly because-and he could not but confess that a solemn calm brooded above that glorious place, to break through which seemed sacrilege even while he felt it duty. Such, he thought, was Paradise of old; such our first parents' bridal bower! Ah! if man had not fallen, he too might have dwelt for ever in

such a home-with whom? He started, and shaking off the spell, advanced sword in hand,

The women saw him, and sprang to their feet, caught up their long pocunas, and leaped like deer each in front of her beloved. There they stood, the deadly tubes pressed to their lips, eyeing him like tigresses who protect their young, while every slender limb quivered, not with terror, but with rage. Amyas paused, half in death. admiration, half in prudence; for one rash step was But rushing through the canes, Ayacanora sprang to the front, and shrieked to them in Indian. At the sight of the prophetess the women wavered, and Amyas, putting on as gentle a face as he could, stepped forward assuring them in his best Indian that he would harm no one.

"Ebsworthy! Parracombe! Are you grown such savages already, that you have forgotten your captain? Stand up, men, and salute!' Ebsworthy sprang to his feet, obeyed mechanically, and then slipped behind his bride again, as if in shame. The dreamer turned his head languidly, raised his hand to his forehead, and then returned to his contemplation. Amyas rested the point of his sword on the ground, and his hands upon the hilt, and looked sadly and solemnly upon the pair. Ebsworthy broke the silence, half reproachfully, half trying to bluster away the coming storm.

'Well, noble captain, so you've hunted out us poor fellows; and want to drag us back again in a halter, I suppose?'

'I came to look for Christians, and I find heathens; for men, and I find swine. I shall leave the heathens to their wilderness, and the swine to their trough.

Parracombe !'

'He's too happy to answer you, sir. And why not? What do you want of us? Our two years' vow is out, and we are free men now.'

'Free to become like the beasts that perish? You are the Queen's servants still, and in her name I charge you' "With the

Free to be happy,' interrupted the man. best of wives, the best of food, a warmer bed than a duke's, and a finer garden than an emperor's. As for clothes, why the plague should a man wear them where he don't need them? As for gold, what's the use of it where Heaven sends everything ready-made to your hands? Hearken, Captain Leigh. You've been a good captain to me, and I'll repay you with a bit of sound advice. Give up your gold-hunting, and toiling and Take moiling after honour and glory, and copy us. that fair maid behind you there to wife; pitch here with us; and see if you are not happier in one day than ever you were in all your life before.'

'You are drunk, sirrah! William Parracombe ! Will you speak to me, or shall I heave you into the stream to sober you?' 'Who calls William Parracombe?' answered a sleepy voice.' 'I, fool!-your captain.' 'I am not William Parracombe. He is dead long ago of hunger, and labour, and heavy sorrow, and will never see Bideford town any more. turned into an Indian now; and he is to sleep, sleep, sleep for a hundred years, till he gets his strength again, poor fellow'

He is

'Awake, then, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light! A christened Englishman, and living thus the life of a beast!'

Christ shall give thee light?' answered the same unnatural, abstracted voice. 'Yes; so the parsons say. And they say, too, that he is Lord of heaven and earth. I should have thought his light was as near us here as anywhere, and nearer too, by the look of the place. Look round,' said he, waving a lazy hand, and see the works of God, and the place of paradise, whither poor weary souls go home and rest, after their masters in the wicked world have used them up, with labour and sorrow, and made them wade knee-deep in blood--I'm tired of blood, and tired of gold. I'll march no more;