My words and acts were alien to the truth,
And only meant to mitigate the pain
Of destined disappointment: and as oft
You pleaded with me, Oh so tenderly!
And when you answer'd, 'smallest graft of love,
Engrafted on the full-affectioned heart,
So it contain the germ of sympathy,

Might grow and blossom into perfect flower;
That love by love is cherished, and becomes
At once adornment and result thereof!'
Well, well, I knew it, and as often yearn'd
To throw myself into your arms and cry,
'Oh, Arthur, I do love you'-as I do now!-
Oh, let me live my life out thus !-'tis said
A single moment, by some mystic power,
Or even fullness of the charm whereby
We dream a lifetime in a little hour,
Might be drawn out into eternity:
So may the joy and perfect happiness,
All sweetest comfort of a grace supreme,
The trust, the pride, and the fidelity

Of

my whole lifetime of most tender love,
Be concentrated in this little hour!
For O it cannot be that our life-streams
May ever mingle, and, as once I hoped,
Glide on through banks of flowers evermore;
The warning hath appear'd, and I shall die!
You know, as by my mother first I heard,
We come of superstitious ancestry;
And often I have sat down at her knee,
Close nestling by the hearth o' wintry nights,
And listened to some legend of our house
Till I have huddled closer to her feet,
And hid my face for terror in her lap,
Afraid to go to bed! She ever knows,
And often will predict long while before,
When any evil is about to fall

On those she loves; and, when my brother died,
Beheld him, though three thousand miles away,
Plainly as e'er she saw him here at home,
Stand at her bedside with a mournful look,
As telling her and bidding her farewell!—
But ever since the time, long years ago,
When she, named Edith too, whose portrait hangs
In what we call the haunted chamber still,

Affianced unto one she loved, was found
Dead in her bed upon her marriage morn,
Her spectre, pale and piteous as she lay,
(So runs the story handed down to us)
Hath hovered round our dwelling; and whene'er
O'er either of its inmates, near or far,

Evil is imminent, to one or other

At midnight doth appear: as when it came,
With a strange sound and rush that filled the room,
Startling my mother from her painful sleep,
Who dreamed, he absent, of my father dear,
[Whose sudden death did hap that selfsame hour]
And, gazing at her with that mournful look,
Stood pointing to his picture on the wall!
But when it comes with music it portends
Death to who hears: for no one ever heard it
And lived the year out till the night came round.
And I, O Arthur, Arthur, I beheld

The vision, and the unearthly music heard,
Plainly as aught I ever heard or saw,
One night within my chamber as I woke,
Breathing thy name, from out a fearful dream
Of thee and my fond love-and I shall die!
God knows I am not happy-not that I
Fear death, or that we shall not meet in heaven-
Yet is it hard to quit the world so soon,
With all my young affections and sweet hopes,
Sunn'd by thy love, just bursting into bloom,
And for all joy that ever can be mine,

For the fresh founts of love and groves of peace,

Look through the gates of death-This is my secret!
Which I had fain kept from you, telling you

I loved you not because I loved so much!
And may be it is better for us both;
At least I trust, although it is not much,
That it may solace you when I am gone,
To know I loved you from the very first-
Ay, had resolved, seeing it tell upon you,
And grieved you took my pouting so to heart,
To make confession of my tender love,
When, lo, that selfsame night the warning came,
I saw the dreadful vision, and I knew

My days were numbered, and that I should die!
Then sought to hide the secret in my heart;
But O how had I died, my love unknown!
July-VOL. CXLVII. NO. DXCV.

G

I am at rest now I have told you all;
And I will love you in that other world,
Free from the pain and jeopardy of this;
I feel that what is now, or seems to be,
Is but the shadow of its truth beyond,
And I shall die more happy that you know
Our love in my sure keeping till you come."

The story of my Edith by the stream.
We left the nook-for all the place did seem,
Grown full of sadness and the evening gloom,
Dark and as melancholy as a tomb—

And took our way in silence whence we came.
But, Oh, how changed! for nothing seemed the same
Through all the route, of landscape stream or sky,
As I beheld it but an hour gone by!

The river, erewhile flowing full of fun,
Beside us, as we walked and watched the sun
Turning its silver into golden fire,

Now at low ebb, between its banks of mire,
Covered with ooze and sprawl, went dying out,
Thick crawling in mid-channel round about,
Like a lithe reptile stealing towards the deep.
Past the hoar ruin on the "lover's leap,"
Past golden orchards and sheep-dotted hills,
Past garden terraces and the three mills,
Back to the town I left in sweet surmise,
We slowly wended with unconscious eyes;
And as we entered, sad, a distant tower,

As 'twere the ghost of death, knelled out the hour!
We parted: and I went, and the night through,
And many a night and day thereafter too!
Ceased not to ponder o'er and o'er, heart-riven,
The story of my Edith up in heaven.

ROBERT STEGGALL.

VALE AND CITY.

XXV.

The City, Paris. It seems scarcely possible that four years should have passed, my dear friend, since we last exchanged letters. Rousseau speaks somewhere of "l'affreuse rapidité du temps." Time has gone with rapidity during our years of the better intercourse than that of the pen, but I shall not apply his epithet to it. No! it was rather, on the part of the old scythe-bearer, a generous and ardent effort to keep pace with the many-changing fancies and feelings that we offered him to mow down, that made his passage so swift. With us he did not halt; and this it is which makes the seasons and months, when counted up, appear so many more than we had supposed them to be. Four springs, four autumns went by with no external change to us, more than that which Nature brought in passing on to summer and to winter; it is actually so! It is more than four years since I wrote to you last.

And where do I find myself now? In a world in which I was once before, but which is quite a changed world to me—that of Paris. I have no reason to think any government of importance to me, except that of my own country-you know I have told you so before, and it is quite a piece of English sense of justice to think so-yet I acknowledge that when I reflect that I am among a people who are under imperial rule, I feel as if something begins to weigh heavily on my shoulders: I don't like it. But our rule in England is imperial too? Yes, that of an imperial parliament a large thing, composed of many numbers, all very busy about the business and the interests of men; they care not for ideas, and would never trouble themselves with those of a woman. Now, here, government has squeezed itself into so small and low a compass that it fears even a woman's ideas. Have you not put some into my head which might be dangerous to me if discovered by the power that is, like all small things, vindictive when frightened? Let me, then, change the subject. But will it be changed? I hardly know. I meant to write to you when I was in London, for I was rather amused by something that came to my knowledge there, and concerning which I know what your comment will be just as if I heard you utter it vivâ voce. You have not, I think, quite forgotten my London boarding-house, from which I wrote you my first letter at the beginning of our correspondence. I have told you something of a German one since, and now I am going

to tell you of a French one. But to return to the first. It was altogether too commonplace for your taste. What I called "the town eclogue," going on in it was so vulgar you could take no interest in it. Spite of all that, I must tell you its conclusion. Well, perhaps not that yet, but how far it has proceeded. I had occasion to call at my former abode to make an inquiry about a person whom I had met there, and I found that the concern no longer went under the name it bore at that time. Pray recal what I told you of the aunt and niece, and of the two aspirants for the hand of the latter-a hand that might secure to him who could win it a comfortable sort of home for the remainder of his days. One of them has succeeded. Do you care to ask which? If you do, I reply that it is the undivorced man whose wife is living in the North of England, whose vow to her makes his present vow a sacrilege. Do you call him a villain, or by any other of the names used for those who are brought into the police-courts? Oh, no! You say, "Pooh! Call you that sacrilege, breaking of oaths, and so forth, looking on it as blameable? I admit that on the paltry scale on which it is done there is something disagreeable in it. If the vow had been taken not to outwit a woman, but a nation, we should find it a noble act; we should fall down in an ecstasy of adulation before the man who did it, and acknowledge the solemn grandeur of sacrilege by an emperor." All this I heard you very distinctly say, although you were so distant from me, as I turned from my former abode and thought of the changes since I lived there. I knew at once that you would compare the cheating man of the boarding-house with the cheating man of the empire.

Well, now, I have something to lay before you on these matters. Suppose the man of the boarding-house, becoming its master, proves to be an excellent manager of the concern, and a really good husband to its mistress, will that not be some palliation of his present iniquity? And suppose this man who had made himself sovereign of the French people proves a wise ruler, will that not be an excuse for his crime? What do you say? Do you boldly aver that the one can never be a good master of a house, and that the other cannot be a wise ruler of a people? I believe you doyou who read the future by the past and I believe that I am of your opinion, too. There is no doubt, however, that for a time the world will, as it does now, sound the praises of the good manager of the house and of the clever ruler of a restless people, and it may so sound them for five, ten, or even for fifteen years; then, if you and I live so long, what shall we see-rather, what shall we hear of? Of the betrayed wife having found out her husband—of her bringing against him a terrible action for bigamy; whilst from this country to ours come tidings that France is beginning to under