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fly is to th' horse: she's got the right venom to sting him with the right venom to sting him with.'

her pink and white neckerchief, tucked into her low 'Match!' said Bartle; 'ay, as vinegar matches one's plum-coloured stuff bodice; or how the linen butter- teeth. If a man says a word, his wife 'll match it with making apron, with its bib, seemed a thing to be a contradiction; if he's a mind for hot meat, his wife 'll imitated in silk by duchesses, since it fell in such match it with cold bacon; if he laughs, she'll match charming lines; or how her brown stockings and thick-him with whimpering. She's such a match as the horsesoled buckled shoes, lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have had when empty of her foot and ankle; of little use, unless you have seen a woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she would not in the least resemble that distracted kitten-like maiden. Hetty's was a springtide beauty; it was the beauty of young frisking things, round-limbed, gamboling, circumventing you by a false air of innocence-the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you a severe steeple-chase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in the middle of a bog.

Poor Hetty's vanity and beauty led her to ruin. She agrees to marry Adam Bede, but at length goes away to seek her former lover, Arthur Donnithorne, the gentleman, and to hide her shame. The account of her wanderings and her meditated suicide is related with affecting minuteness and true pathos. Hetty is comforted by the gentle Methodist enthusiast, Dinah Morris, who at last becomes the wife of Adam Bede. The other characters in the novel are all distinct, well-defined individuals. The vicar of the parish, Mr Irvine; the old bachelor schoolmaster, Bartle Massey; and Mr and Mrs Poyser of the Hall Farm, are striking, lifelike portraits. Mrs Poyser is an original, rich in proverbial philosophy, good sense, and amusing volubility. The following is a discussion on matrimony, the interlocutors being the schoolmaster, the gardener, and Mr and Mrs Poyser :

Adam.'

Dialogue on Matrimony.

'What!' said Bartle, with an air of disgust. Was there a woman concerned? Then I give you up, 'But it's a woman you'n spoke well on, Bartle,' said Mr Poyser. Come, now, you canna draw back; you said once as women wouldna ha' been a bad invention if they'd all been like Dinah.'

I meant her voice, man-I meant her voice, that was all,' said Bartle. 'I can bear to hear her speak without wanting to put wool in my ears. As for other things, I daresay she's like the rest o' the women-thinks two and two'll come to five, if she cries and bothers enough

about it.'

Ay, ay!' said Mrs Poyser; 'one 'ud think, an' hear some folk talk, as the men war 'cute enough to count the corns in a bag o' wheat wi' only smelling at it. They can see through a barn-door, they can. Perhaps that's the reason they can see so little o' this side on 't.'

Martin Poyser shook with delighted laughter, and winked at Adam, as much as to say the schoolmaster was in for it now.

'Ah;' said Bartle sneeringly, 'the women are quick enough-they're quick enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows 'em himself.'

'Like enough,' said Mrs Poyser; 'for the men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting's tongue ready; an' when he out wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'. Howiver, I'm not denyin' the women are foolish : God Almighty made 'em to match the men.'

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'Yes,' said Mrs Poyser, 'I know what the men likea poor soft, as 'ud simper at 'em like the pictur o' the sun, whether they did right or wrong, an' say thank you for a kick, an' pretend she didna know which end she stood uppermost, till her husband told her. That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly: he wants to make sure o' one fool as 'll tell him he's wise. But there's some men can do wi'out that-they think so much o' themselves a'ready-an' that's how it is there's old bachelors.'

'Come, Craig,' said Mr Poyser jocosely, 'you mun get married pretty quick, else you'll be set down for an old bachelor; an' you see what the women 'ull think on you.'

'Well,' said Mr Craig, willing to conciliate Mrs Poyser, and setting a high value on his own compliments, I like a cleverish woman—a woman o' sperrita managing woman.'

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'You're out there, Craig,' said Bartle dryly; 'you're out there. You judge o' your garden-stuff on a better excel in-for what they can excel in. You don't value plan than that; you pick the things for what they can your peas for their roots, or your carrots for their flowers. Now that's the way you should choose women; their cleverness 'll never come to much-never come to much; but they make excellent simpletons, ripe and strong flavoured.'

'What dost say to that?' said Mr Poyser, throwing himself back and looking merrily at his wife.

'Say!' answered Mrs Poyser, with dangerous fire kindling in her eye; 'why, I say as some folk's tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin', not to tell you the time o' the day, but because there's summat wrong i' their own inside.'

Of similar style with Adam Bede, and with no The Mill on the Floss, and in 1861 Silas Marner, diminution of power or reality, appeared in 1859 not inferior to any of its predecessors. Silas is a weaver, a Dissenter, wronged and injured, a solitary unhappy man. 'You were hard done by once, Mr Marner, and it seems as if you'll never know the rights of it; but that doesn't hinder there being a rights, Master Marner, for all it's dark to you and me.' And this moral is evolved out of a painful but most interesting and powerful story. The fourth novel of the author was of a more ambitious cast: in 1863 was published Romola, an historical novel of Italian life in the days of Savonarola, a highly-finished, eloquent, artistic work, and by a select class considered the greatest intellectual effort of the author. however, not so popular as its predecessors, and the author returned to the familiar English scenes. Felix Holt, the Radical, appeared in 1866. The title, and what by courtesy must be regarded as the main plot, have reference to politics, but most of the incidents and illustrations of character relate to religious and social peculiarities rather than to the party feelings of Tories, Whigs, or Radicals. Though inferior in sustained interest to the other English tales of the author, Felix Holt has passages of great vigour, and some exquisitely drawn characters-we may instance that of Rufus Lyon, a Dissenting minister-and also some fine, pure, and natural description. The next novel of this brilliant series was Middlemarch, a

It was,

modern romance.

Study of English Provincial Life, 1871-2. In 1876 appeared Daniel Deronda, a story of modern English life. The heroine of this story, a haughty capricious beauty, and some sketches in it of Jewish life and character, are as striking and original and powerfully drawn as anything in Besides these prose fictions, George Eliot has sent forth an elaborate dramatic poem, The Gypsy Queen, 1868, which abounds in subtle philosophical thought, and in scenes and lines of great beauty, yet has no strong prevailing interest. A second poetical work, Agatha, a Poem, appeared in 1869.

George Eliot, we may add, is rich in reflective power and in the delineation of character. She also infuses into her writing a deep personal teaching which has laid hold of the most thoughtful, while hardly militating against the taste of careless or popular readers. This is distinctly seen in her Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. In these we have a strong belief in the past as a great determining element in character and possibility. The same feature occurs in The Spanish Gypsy, in which the heroine fails to detach herself from a past that is, in certain respects, opposed to her highest aspirations. George Eliot has skilfully balanced depth of thought with ripe humour and invention. In her latest works she seems fond of drawing into her descriptions scientific and philosophical phrases, which occasionally seem out of place; there is also at times a slight touch of masculine coarseness in her metaphors and illustrations. The exquisite singer falls into a false note! But what are these to the fascination of her style and her characters, and her features of English scenery and life? And we may also instance the learning and imagination so prominent and so finely blended in Romola, which revives Italian life of the time of Savonarola.

Spring-Bright February Days.

Bright February days have a stronger charm of hope about them than any other days in the year. One likes to pause in the mild rays of the sun, and look over the gates at the patient plough-horses turning at the end of the furrow, and think that the beautiful year is all before one. The birds seem to feel just the same: their notes

are as clear as the clear air. There are no leaves on the trees and hedgerows, but how green all the grassy fields are! and the dark purplish brown of the ploughed earth and of the bare branches is beautiful too. What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or rides along the valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so when in foreign countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me like our English Loamshire—the rich land tilled with just as much care, the woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows. I have come on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not in Loamshire: an image of a great agony-the agony of the cross. It has stood perhaps by the clustering apple blossoms, or on the broad sunshine by the corn-field, or at a turning by the wood where a clear brook was gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this world who knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image of agony would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish; perhaps a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing shame; understanding no

more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath; yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness. Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you come close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow in it: no wonder he needs a suffering God.-Adam Bede.

It was in the prime
Of the sweet spring-time.
In the linnet's throat
Trembled the love-note,
And the love-stirred air
Thrilled the blossoms there.
Little shadows danced,
Each a tiny elf,
Happy in large light,
And the thinnest self.

It was but a minute
In a far-off spring,
But each gentle thing,
Sweetly wooing linnet,
Soft-thrilled hawthorn tree
Happy shadowy elf
With the thinnest self,
Love still on in me;
O the sweet, sweet prime
Of the past spring-time.

Spanish Gypsy.

Ruined Castles on the Rhine.

From The Mill on The Floss. Those ruins on the castled Rhine have crumbled and

mellowed into such harmony with the green and rocky steeps, that they seem to have a natural fitness, like the mountain pine; nay, even in the day when they were built, they must have had this fitness, as if they had been raised by an earth-born race, who had inherited from their mighty parent a sublime instinct of form. And that was a day of romance ! If those robber-barons were somewhat grim and drunken ogres, they had a certain grandeur of the wild beast in them-they were forest boars with tusks, tearing and rending, not the ordinary domestic grunter; they represented the demon forces for ever in collision with beauty, virtue, and the gentle uses of life; they made a fine contrast in the picture with the wandering minstrel, the soft-lipped princess, the pious recluse, and the timid Israelite. That was a time of colour, when the sunlight fell on glancing steel and floating banners; a time of adventure and fierce struggle-nay, of living religious art and religious enthusiasm: for were not cathedrals built in those days, and did not great emperors leave their western palaces to die before the infidel strongholds in the East! Therefore it is that these Rhine castles thrill me with a sense of poetry; they belong to the grand historic life of humanity, and raise up for me the vision of an epoch. But these dead-tinted, hollow-eyed angular skeletons of villages on the Rhine oppress me with the feeling that human life-very much of it-is a narrow, ugly, grovelling existence which even calamity does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its bare vulgarity of conception; and I have a cruel conviction that the lives these ruins are the traces of, were part of a gross sum of obscure vitality, that will be swept into the same oblivion with the generations of ants and beavers.

Saint Theresa-Unfulfilled Aspirations.

From Middlemarch.

Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on

the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order. That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of farresonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet, and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardour alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.

Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile, the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favourite love stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness, tremble off, and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognisable deed.

Detached Thoughts. Comprehensive talkers are apt to be tiresome when we are not athirst for information, but, to be quite fair, we must admit that superior reticence is a good deal due to the lack of matter. Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling, will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.

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used to call God's birds, because they do no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?

O the anguish of that thought, that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them, for the light answers we returned to their plaints or their pleadings, for the little reverence we shewed to that sacred human soul that lived so close to us, and was the divinest thing God has given us to know!

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather, we who read it are no longer the same interpreters. Melodies die out like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them.

The finest language, I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as 'light,' 'sound,' 'stars,' music-words really not worth looking at, or hearing in themselves, any more than 'chips' or 'sawdust :' it is only that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and beautiful.

MRS CRAIK (MISS MULOCK).

In 1849 appeared The Ogilvies-' a first novel,' as the authoress timidly announced, but without giving her name. It was instantly successful, and appreciated as a work of genius, written with deep earnestness, and pervaded by a deep and noble philosophy.' The accomplished lady who had thus delighted and benefited society by

The

her first novel' was DINAH MARIA MULOCK,
born at Stoke-upon-Trent, Staffordshire.
success of her story soon led to others, and we
subjoin a list of the works of this authoress-a
list which gives a picture of a wonderfully active
literary career and prolific genius: NOVELS: The
Ogilvies, 1849; Olive, 1850; The Head of the
Family, 1851; Agatha's Husband, 1853; John Hali-
fax, 1857; A Life for a Life, 1859; Mistress and
Maid, 1863; Christian's Mistake, 1865; A Noble
Life, 1866; Two Marriages, 1867; The Woman's
Kingdom, 1869; A Brave Lady, 1870; Hannah,
1871. MISCELLANEOUS WORKS: Avillion and
other Tales, 1853; Nothing New, 1857; A
Woman's Thoughts about Woman, 1858; Studies
from Life, 1861; The Unkind Word and other
Stories, 1870; Fair France, 1871; Sermons Out of
Church. CHILDREN'S BOOKS: Alice Learmont, a
Fairy Tale; Rhoda's Lessons, Cola Monti, A Hero,
Bread upon the Waters, The Little Lychetts,
Michael the Miner, Our Year, Little Sunshine's
Holiday, Adventures of a Brownie. Besides the
above, this authoress has written a number of
poetical pieces, and translated several works.

In 1865 Miss Mulock was married to Mr George Lillie Craik, publisher, son of the Rev. Dr Craik, Glasgow, and nephew of Professor Craik. As a moral teacher, none of the novelists of the present day excels Mrs Craik. She is not formally didactic-she insinuates instruction. A too prolonged feminine softness and occasional sentimentalism constitute the defects of her novels, though less prominent in her later works than in her first two novels. Her mission, it has justly been remarked, is to shew 'how the trials, perplexities, joys, sorrows, labours, and successes of life deepen or We could never have loved the earth so well if we wither the character according to its inward bent had had no childhood in it-if it were not the earth-how continued insincerity gradually darkens where the same flowers come up again every spring, that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass-the same redbreasts that we

All knowledge which alters our lives, penetrates us more when it comes in the early morning: the day that has to be travelled with something new, and perhaps for ever sad in its light, is an image of the life that spreads beyond. But at night the time of rest is near.

and corrupts the life-springs of the mind-and how every event, adverse or fortunate, tends to strengthen and expand a high mind, and to break

the springs of a selfish or even merely weak and self-indulgent nature.'* In carrying out this moral purpose, Mrs Craik displays eloquence, pathos, a subdued but genial humour, and happy delineation of character. Of all her works, John Halifax (of which the eighteenth edition is now before us) is the greatest favourite, and is indeed a noble story of English domestic life.

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dreams, in which I pictured over and over again, first the night when Mr March died, then the night at Longfield, when the little white ghost had crossed by my bed's foot, into the room where Mary Baines' dead boy lay. And continually, towards morning, I fancied I heard through my window, which faced the church, the faint, distant sound of the organ, as when Muriel used to play it.

I went to bed; but all night long I had disturbed

Long before it was daylight I rose. As I passed the boys' room, Guy called out to me: 'Halloa! Uncle Phineas, is it a fine morning? for I want to go down into the wood and get a lot of beech-nuts and fir-cones for sister. It's her birthday to-day, you know.' It was for her. But for us-O Muriel, our darling, darling child!

Death of Muriel, the Blind Child.—From 'John Halifax.' John opened the large Book-the Book he had taught all his children to long for and to love and read out of it their favourite history of Joseph and his brethren. The mother sat by him at the fireside, rocking Maud softly on her knees. Edwin and Walter settled themselves on the hearth-rug, with great eyes intently fixed on their father. From behind him the candle-light fell softly down on the motionless figure in the bed, whose hand he held, and whose face he every now and then turned to look at-then, satisfied, continued to read. Let me hasten over the story of that morning, for my In the reading his voice had a fatherly, flowing calm-old heart quails before it still. John went early to the as Jacob's might have had, when the children were tender,' and he gathered them all round him under the palm-trees of Succoth-years before he cried unto the Lord that bitter cry (which John hurried over as he read): 'If I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.' For an hour, nearly, we all sat thus, with the wind coming up the valley, howling in the beech-wood, and shaking the casement as it passed outside. Within, the only sound was the father's voice. This ceased at last; he shut the Bible, and put it aside. The group that last perfect household picture-was broken up. It melted away into things of the past, and became only a picture for evermore.

Now, boys, it is full time to say good-night. There, go and kiss your sister.' 'Which? said Edwin, in his funny way. We've got two now; and I don't know which is the biggest baby.' 'I'll thrash you if you say that again,' cried Guy. Which, indeed! Maud is but the baby. Muriel will be always sister.' 'Sister' faintly laughed, as she answered his fond kiss-Guy was often thought to be her favourite brother. Now, off with you, boys; and go down-stairs quietly-mind, I say quietly.'

They obeyed-that is, as literally as boy-nature can obey such an admonition. But an hour after, heard Guy and Edwin arguing vociferously in the dark, on the respective merits and future treatment of their two sisters, Muriel and Maud.

asleep, with Baby Maud in her bosom; on her other room up-stairs. It was very still. Ursula lay calmly side, with eyes wide open to the daylight, lay—that which for more than ten years we had been used to call blind Muriel.' She saw now.

....

Just the same homely room-half bed-chamber, half a nursery-the same little curtainless bed where, for a week past, we had been accustomed to see the wasted figure and small pale face lying, in smiling quietude, all day long.

It lay there still. In it, and in the room, was hardly any change. One of Walter's playthings was in a corner of the window-sill, and on the chest of drawers stood the nosegay of Christmas roses which Guy had brought for his sister yesterday morning. Nay, her shawl-a white, soft, furry shawl, that she was fond of wearing-remained still hanging up behind the door. One could almost fancy the little maid had just been said 'good-night' to, and left to dream the childish dreams on her nursery pillow, where the small head rested so peacefully, with that pretty babyish nightcap tied over the pretty curls. There she was, the child who had gone out of the number of our children-our earthly children-for ever.

The Château of La Garaye.—From 'Fair France?
Mrs Norton's poem has made well known that touch-

wife, whom a sudden accident changed into a crippled
invalid for life; how they turned their house into a
hospital, and both gave themselves to the end of their
days to the duty of succouring the afflicted, with not
only their personal fortune, but personal care. They
quitted entirely the gay world in which they were born,
and hid themselves in this far-away nook among their
sick, whom they personally tended. For this end they
is reported to have been a famous oculist. They died—
both studied medicine and surgery; and the comtesse
happily almost a quarter of a century before the brutali-
ties of the Revolution destroyed the fruit of their labours,
and made the Château of La Garaye the ruin it is

John and I sat up late together that night. He could not rest, even though he told me he had left the mothering story of a devoted husband and his beautiful loving and her two daughters as cosy as a nest of woodpigeons. We listened to the wild night, till it had almost howled itself away; then our fire went out, and we came and sat over the last fagot in Mrs Tod's kitchen, the old Debateable Land. We began talking of the long-ago time, and not of this time at all. The vivid present-never out of either mind for an instantwe in our conversation did not touch upon, by at least ten years. Nor did we give expression to a thought which strongly oppressed me, and which I once twice fancied I could detect in John likewise; how very like this night seemed to the night when Mr March died; the same silentness in the house, the same windy whirl without, the same blaze of the wood-fire on the same kitchen ceiling. More than once I could almost have deluded myself that I heard the faint moans and footsteps overhead; that the staircase door would open, and we should see there Miss March, in her white gown, and her pale, steadfast look.

or

"I think the mother seemed very well and calm tonight,' I said hesitatingly, as we were retiring. She is, God help her-and us all!' 'He will.' That was all we said.

* North British Review, November 1858.

now...

It is that most touching form of ruin-no castle, not even a baronial mansion, only a house. The gates of the garden, where the lady of La Garaye may have cultivated her medicinal plants, are broken and lichencovered; the gnarled apple-trees still bear fruit in their old age, and that day were a picture of rosy plenty; but Round the shattered windows, from which many a sick over everything is thrown the shade of desolation. face may have looked out, gazing its last on this beautiful world, and many another brightened into health as it caught its first hopeful peep at the half-forgotten

world outside; round these blank eyeless windows, climb gigantic brambles, trailing along heavy with fruit, as large and sweet as mulberries. Once more we gathered and ate, almost with solemnity. It was a subject too tender for much speaking about-that of a life, which, darkened for ever, took comfort in giving light and blessing to other lives sadder than its own-a subject that Dickens might have written about-Dickens, whom, as I set down his name here, I start to remember, has been these twenty-four hours-only twenty-four hoursone of us mortals no more, but a disembodied soul:

Oh, the solemn and strange Surprise of the change!

Yet how soon shall we all become shadows-those who are written about, and those who write-shadows as evanescent as the gentle ghosts which seem to haunt this ruined house, this deserted, weed-covered garden, which scarcely more than a century ago was full of life-life with all its burdens and all its blessedness, its work and suffering, pleasure and pain, now swept away together into eternal rest!

on deck. The boat seemed to be passing swiftly and silently as a phantom ship through a phantom ocean; she hardly knew whether she was awake or asleep, dead or alive, till she felt the soft breathing of the child in her arms, and with a passion of joy remembered all.

A few minutes after, Hannah, raising her head as high as she could without disturbing Rosie, saw a sight which she had never seen before, and never in all her life may see again, but will remember to the end of her days.

Just where sea and sky met, was a long, broad line of most brilliant amber, gradually widening and widening as the sun lifted himself out of the water and shot dark zenith. Then, as he climbed higher, every floating his rays, in the form of a crown, right up into the still cloud-and the horizon seemed full of them--became of a brilliant rose hue, until the whole heaven blazed with colour and light. In the midst of it all, dim as a dream, but with all these lovely tints flitting over it, Hannah saw, far in the distance, the line of the French shore.

MRS OLIPHANT.

The Last Look of England.-From Hannah' The tales illustrative of Scottish life by MRS There is a picture familiar to many, for it was in the OLIPHANT (née Margaret O. Wilson), have been Great Exhibition of 1851, and few stopped to look at it distinguished by a graceful simplicity and truth. without tears 'The Last Look of Home,' by Ford One of the first is in the form of an autoMadox Browne. Merely a bit of a ship's side-one of biography, Passages in the Life of Mrs Marthose emigrant ships such as are constantly seen atgaret Maitland of Sunnyside, 1849. The quiet Liverpool, or other ports whence they sail-with its long row of dangling cabbages, and its utter confusion of cargo and passengers. There, indifferent to all, and intently gazing on the receding shore, sit two persons, undoubtedly a man and his wife, emigrants bidding adieu to home for ever. The man is quite brokendown, but the woman, sad as she looks, has hope and courage in her face. Why not? In one hand she firmly grasps her husband's; the other supports her sleeping babe. She is not disconsolate, for she carries her 'home'

with her.

In the picture the man is not at all like Bernard certainly; but the woman is exceedingly like Hannah in expression at least, as she sat on the deck of the French steamer, taking her last look of dear old England, with its white cliffs glimmering in the moonlight, fainter and fainter every minute, across the long reach of Southampton Water.

Bernard sat beside her, but he too was very silent. He meant to go back again as soon as he had seen her and Rosie and Grace safely landed at Havre; but he knew that to Hannah this farewell of her native land was, in all human probability, a farewell for good.' Ay, for good, in the fullest sense; and she believed it; believed that they were both doing right, and that God's blessing would follow them wherever they went; yet she could not choose but be a little sad, until she felt the touch of the small, soft hand which, now as ever, was continuously creeping into Tannie's. Then she was content. If it had been God's will to give her no future of her own at all, she could have rested happily

in that of the child and the child's father.

It happened to be a most beautiful night for crossing -the sea calm as glass, and the air mild as summer, though it was in the beginning of November. Hannah could not bear to go below, but with Rosie and Grace occupied one of those pleasant cabins upon deck, sheltered on three sides, open on the fourth. There, wrapt in countless rugs and shawls, Rosie being in an ecstasy at the idea of going to bed in her clothes, all under the tars' (s was still an impossible first consonant to the baby tongue), she settled down for the night, with her

child in her arms, and her faithful servant at her feet. ...

When she woke it was no longer moonlight, but daylight, at least daybreak; for she could discern the dark outline of the man at the wheel, the only person she saw

pathos and domestic incidents of this story are not unworthy of Galt, whose Annals of the outline of her tale. Parish probably suggested to Mrs Oliphant the In 1851, Merkland, a Story of Scottish Life, appeared, and sustained the reputation of the authoress. There is here a plot of stirring interest and greater variety of characters, though the female portraits are still the best drawn. Adam Græme of Mossgray, 1852, presents another series of home pictures, but is inferior to its predecessors. Harry Muir, 1853, aims at inculcating temperance, and is a powerful pathetic tale. The hero is one of those characters common in life, but difficult to render interesting in fiction —a good-natured, pleasant youth, easily led into evil as well as good courses. Magdalen Hepburn, a Story of the Scottish Reformation, 1854, may be considered a historical romance, as Knox and other characters of his age are introduced, and the most striking scenes relate to the progress of the Reformation. The interior pictures of the authoress are still, however, the most winning portion of her works. Lilliesleaf, 1855, is a concluding series of Passages in the Life of Mrs Margaret Maitland, and the authoress has had the rare felicity of making the second equal to the first portion. Zaidee, a Romance, 1856, is in a The scene is laid style new to Mrs Oliphant. partly in Cheshire and partly abroad, and the heroine, like Jane Eyre, is an orphan, who passes through various trying scenes and adventuresnearly all interesting, though in many instances highly improbable. Two shorter tales, Katie Stewart and The Quiet Heart, have been published by Mrs Oliphant in Blackwood's Magazine. Almost every year has borne testimony to the talents and perseverance of this accomplished lady. Among her recent works of fiction are -Agnes, 1867; The Brownlows, 1868; The Ministers Wife, 1869; Chronicles of Carlingford; Salem Chapel, 1869; John, a Love Story; Three Brothers; Son of the Soil, 1870; Squire Arden, 1871; Ombra, 1872; At His Gates, 1872;

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