quite a different family,-one of later origin and less importance. Latimers with 'i's' are common enough; but the 'y' is our distinction, as the chief line in direct descent from the Saxons who fought under Harold. One would really think, Beresford," added the lady in a sudden testiness, "that you had never glanced at the genealogical tree in your father's library."

This parchment pedigree it would indeed have been difficult to overlook; and Mr. Etough, who was even then laying down the law in the aforesaid apartment with his inimitable first finger, and one of whose professional perfections it was to see everything within the range of vision, noticed that it was an amended and corrected edition of an older tree, containing fewer sprouts. Midway was a collateral shoot, ending in the glorious old Bishop of Worcester, who died in the fire at Oxford for the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, and whose dying words of triumph injured Popery more than could his life for a century; for they have reverberated through every land and every age where the English tongue is spoken, and stirred up Christian hearts, as with the sound of a trumpet, to do battle valiantly for God's truth.

Is their need ended, in this England? Alas! that we should say, Never was the need for them greater; never was the spirit of their speaker more wanting.

But to return to Mr. Latymer's genealogical tree. It did not ascend quite so far as that of the Highland chief, whose ancestors had "a boatie o' their ain upon the flood;" and at the Saxon end it certainly sprang from tillers of the soil. Even the famous bishop's father was only a yeoman "having four pound a year estate;" but it was a very different thing to claim kin with a yeoman of Queen Mary's time than to be allied to the same grade in Queen Victoria's time.

Beresford would have defended herself in the matter of her pedigree, had not her youngest brother just then burst into the room.

"Mamma, Mr. Chetwynd has been

here for the last hour, and he's going away, and he wants to see you.'

Mrs. Latymer considered a moment. She was a tremendously lazy lady, and fast accumulating the penalty of her inertness in greater plumpness than was picturesque.

"No, dear Oliver. Tell him I am not so well to-day; my neuralgia is teasing me. Or, stay. Beresford, would you mind going down to make my apologies?"

The Rev. Oriel Chetwynd was very musical. As Miss Latymer approached the drawing-room, she heard him playing softly on the piano some Gregorian airs; and when salutations were over, and the message given from the mistress of the mansion, they began to talk about the airs. It was a natural consequence that he should play them again, and yet once more, and express his yearnings to introduce them into the parish choir, which was verily in a state most primitive; and finally offer to teach them to Beresford. He was a young gentleman who had a knack of forgetting time and place in the pleasure of the moment; and it was a pleasure to have a clever girl like Miss Latymer as even a half-hour's pupil in the art he loved; to see her speaking face and splendid eyes light up under the influence of a new thought of his kindling. Being amiable and selfish, he enjoyed it to the utmost, and never in the least singed his butterfly wings: he was far too well built up in the armour of self-conceit to suffer from the shafts of splendid eyes.

The piano and commentary continued, until Mr. Lancelot Latymer, coming in from shooting with a full bag and several dogs, marched into the drawing-room in his boots fresh from the November ploughed lands, and, after a brief recognition, threw himself on a sofa.

Beresford coloured at this gaucherie before the refined and fastidious curate, who was himself a most faultless specimen of attire, and had manners as neat as his dress. But Mr. Chetwynd took his leave almost immediately, remarking that he had a sick call to make, and would do

"I don't look upon tutors as gentlemen," spoke up the ignorant haughtiness of her brother.

Beresford bit her lips; for the quick temper that always accompanies quick intelligence like hers had its retort ready. Unfortunately, her reticence lasted but for a moment.

"Such a splendid day's sport as we had," continued Lancelot. "Seven brace of cock, and eleven of partridge. If you were to see the delight of the dogs!"

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"I daresay," observed Miss Latymer dryly. It was just fit amusement for dogs. You know I hate hearing of the wholesale slaughter of innocent birds." And she closed the piano abruptly. "I think the making sport' of the agonies and death of God's beautiful and happy creatures is inhuman."

Wherein the present writer fully agrees with Beresford.

"Come now, don't be crusty," said easy-tempered Lancelot. yawning. 'I'm too tired to fight. Play me a tune, like a good girl, and I'll say no more on a certain subject."

But his sister marched out of the room without vouchsafing an answer; for which she had anything but an easy conscience afterwards, when she saw him from a lobby window lounging about the stables, smoking in company with the grooms.

One of her most earnest desires was to have influence over her brothers, and to do them good. For Beresford was religious to a certain degree, and deemed herself quite a Christian. But her "unfortunate temper," as she was wont to style it

to herself in secret, generally came athwart her good designs.

Did the reader ever notice how people with "a temper," as it is called, seem to consider the acknowledgment of the fact as excuse enough for its indulgence? I have heard an ebullition of spleen or anger stigmatised as it richly deserved by the sinner himself, yet no serious attempt made to suppress a recurrence of the same an hour subsequently. But this was not the case with Beresford. She felt humbled when she met her brother's handsome inanimate face at dinner, even though he did whisper, "Hope we're in better humour now?" She tried to be very pleasant and cheery, to wear off the impression, chiefly be cause she had an object to gain afterwards.

Mr. Chetwynd's wish to see Mrs. Latymer had arisen from a proposition he wanted to make about forming a musical society or choral class in the neighbourhood. Now as this would of course involve a recognition of Mr. Charley's family, and a certain amount of intimacy with them, the matter was subjected to a very grave discussion.

My principle is," observed Mrs. Latymer, "that the gentlemen of a family are really of no consequence in such acquaintanceships; but the ladies-the ladies are the objectionable part. One cannot get rid of them; one must entertain them more or less. I wonder how many there are at Woodlawn?"

"I have seen two girls in church with their mother," said Beresford; "and really they looked very nice and lady-like."

"Oh, appearance is nothing," said Mrs. Latymer, as she had before averred that for respectability a magistrate's position was nothing. "I regret to say that I have seen aristocratic features on very plebeian personages. Manner-manner is the thing."

"Or rather," put in her husband, twirling his eye-glass in his lofty way, "there is an indefinable something about good birth, as incommunicable as the aroma of good wine; something by which it is

signalised and distinguished; an autograph which can never be forged."

He thought he would write down that original reflection in his morocco note-book by-and-bye.

"Well, I am sure," observed Lancelot, as he raised his great length to its full height, leaving the table, "I'd take the Earl of Bar-sinister for a prize-fighter, if I didn't know to the contrary,-such a breadth of jaw and little twinkling eyes."

"Just as I remarked," said his mother: 46 appearance goes for nothing. But blood, lineage, descent, these are everything."

"I know this," added Lancelot, "that young Charley is a real good fellow, and gave me the shooting over his father's lands."

"To curry favour, of course. Very artful, and well managed," said portly Mrs. Latymer.

"And one of the girls is uncommonly pretty," was Lancelot's Parthian shaft as he closed the door, with a quizzical glance at his sister.

"Has Lancelot been visiting there?" asked Mrs. Latymer somewhat anxiously.

"Not that I know of, mamma," answered Beresford.

"Why, mamma, you know it will not affect Lancelot in the least; he does not sing, and very rarely cares to spend an evening in the drawingroom, and hates ladies' company of all things."

"I think," said the master of Kyle, who rather prided himself on a deliberative disposition, "we will not hastily decide on the matter; but you and myself, Ursula, will pay a single formal morning visit to these business people, after which we can determine the degree of intimacy that may be desirable; though I rather agree with your mother, Berry, in fancying that it may probably be none of any sort."

The chapter read by Mr. Latymer that night at family prayer contained such verses as these:

"Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord; though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished."

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

"Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.

He read these words in his usual sonorous and commanding tones: never did it strike him that they could in the least be applicable to himself, or that they are as literally and awfully true as any other portion of God's Inspiration.

One of a race sunk in the lowest superstition and most deplorable vices a race whose total absence of religious idea led to their primary name-Caffres-"men without belief;" in which name the Arab traders to Mozambique expressed what seemed to them the most wonderful fact about these southern tribes. "In all ages and all climates man has erected monuments, in accordance with his progress in the arts, to express his religion, or to shelter his worship. Nothing of the kind is seen here: not even a conse

crated stone, like that which Jacob set up at Luz, till he was able to build an altar." The Zulus are literally "men without belief;" and, so far as a simple reader can judge, it would appear that the Bishop of Natal is rapidly approximating to this condition of mind.

Although the Zulu Caffre is thus a man without religion, he resembles his brethren, the sceptics of Europe, in being by no means free from superstition. He thinks that the departing spirit is transformed into a small harmless snake, and takes up its abode in the thatch of the hut where it lived as a man. 66 These snakes are considered guardian angels," says Rev. G. H. Mason, in his little book called "Zulu Land," "and if any misfortune befals a family or an individual, the report goes forth directly that somebody has offended or hurt one of the sacred reptiles." This is often made a cover for dishonesty, as Zulu servants will say, with exemplary gravity, if any valuable article is missing, and inquired after by the owners, that some strange native has stolen it, but that their guardian snake would fetch it back next morning; and the article has duly appeared.

Witchcraft is another matter of Zulu superstition. By it the chiefs maintain their despotic power; and crimes innumerable are committed under its cover. A complete science is kept up by witch-doctors in the properties of poisonous seeds and roots, so that an Enyanga, as said professor is called, is a formidable foe, as being master of the most deadly poisons in the world. And the continual disclosures made to these witch-doctors by the various individuals seeking their paid agency against some stronger neighbour, enables the chiefs, through them, to keep up a systematic espionage over all that is going on in the colonynot only amongst their own people, but at the capital, among the colonists, and with the neighbouring tribes... The dread of witchcraft is, perhaps, the greatest torment that Caffres undergo: it is plainly the device, if not the power of Satan;

and we know that the Son of Man was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil.'

But how, if the native is taught that the blessed book in whose pages these words appear, is an unreliable record, which may or may not be true? Christianity could no longer be to him a rock, but a quicksand.

Some years since, before the Bishop of Natal startled England by his sceptic theories, he appeared as an advocate of polygamy in heathen converts. His own arithmetic ought to have told him that the deplorable practice was caused chiefly by the perpetual wars amongst savages slaying such numbers of men that the women were largely in excess; and that, if under British rule and British peace the custom were allowed, the fact of one man having five wives would leave four other men without any. This is taking it simply on statistical grounds, without reference to its utter repugnance from the spirit of Christianity. "I am certain," writes the above quoted Rev. G. H. Mason, who was a minister under Dr. Colenso, "that it were better for a missionary never to set foot on heathen soil than to baptise nominal converts, without a clear understanding that they for ever renounce polygamy." And he tells a touching story of a poor woman whose worthless husband reverted to his former habits, though he had been baptised and married at a Wesleyan station; and who was compelled to give up to the new wife her home, a neat cottage in a garden, procured mainly by her own exertions: by existing Caffre usage she was obliged to yield up "all the numberless little articles of domestic use, such as teacups, tumblers, knives, plates, clothes, earned by her patient industry in early life; while she herself was condemned to the deepest servitude for the remainder of her days-hoeing and breaking up the soil, or carrying produce day by day for sale." Mr. Mason thinks that "no stone should be left unturned until polygamy, or at least an increase to the number of existing wives, is forbidden within the borders of Her

Majesty's dominions." And again

he says: "It is hopeless to introduce civilised habits amongst the people so long as polygamy is the national saving's-bank wherein all the native wealth is invested." This allusion is explained by the custom of buying wives, universally prevalent, and making them do all the work, while the husband hunts, or otherwise amuses himself. A quarter of a million heathen Zulus live in the colony of Natal, bound by this ruinous custom. "Nine-tenths of them have never heard of a living God, and think that the world is governed by a species of witchcraft: they have never heard of a resurrection, but think the spirit of a departed brother is converted into a snake, to hover about the abodes of its former relatives, and act the part of a guardian angel."

An interesting experiment, which has now arrived at the dignity of an established success, was made by Rev. Mr. Allison, of the Wesleyan Missions, by the purchase of a sixthousand-acre farm, within a few miles of Marizburg, chief town of Natal Colony, and its being worked by a number of Christianised Zulus. They combined on the principle of English land societies for the purchase, and called their farm Edendale. "At the present moment, these enterprising people have their substantial stone dwellings and wellploughed fields, with the power of buying and selling at pleasure. They have erected a church, schoolhouse, and water-mill. Every day witnesses the arrival of wagon-loads of Edendale produce at the Marizburg

market. It is quite a sight to see the wagons returning, on a summer evening, packed with the wives and families of these Edendale Caffres; all clad in British manufactured goods, and carrying on their countenances an unmistakeable air of contentment and joyous prosperity."

All attempts to civilise the Zulus without Christianity have resulted in signal failure. Great numbers of them are servants or labourers in the colony; but a sufficiency of food, and the comforts of civilised life, seem only to have called forth vice into fuller blossom. The prisons were full of native convicts; insolence and extortion the universal complaints. They became more depraved by intercourse with the white man. "For my own part," continues Mr. Mason, I seem to behold a chaos of confusion in the present condition of South Africa, which nothing but Christianity can correct. Religion

and the Bible will alone introduce the subject of responsibility in the sight of God. And the tidings of a Saviour's love, and of a future life, will be the surest barrier against those vices which always follow close on the footprints of civilization. Religion will break down their present barbarous usages; the introduction of universal industry will follow as a matter of course, and at length bring forth a genuine civilisation."

To which we would add that the religion must not be of that lifeless type which is identified with Bishop Colenso.

THE LATE A. A. PROCTER.