"You deserve to be happy," said his lordship; "I wish we could define happiness." "It is to have the love of a true woman, and to be indifferent to the opinion of the world," said Kalmat. "And to live in the shadow of the Indian's Olympus ?" "Yes," said Kalmat, "where thought is as free as the winds, and you make your own heaven in your own way.” "Could one buy an estate there and cultivate it, and build a place like dear old Grassnook, and live one's own life, without molestation ?" "Aye, truly," said Kalmat; "a life that princes might envy; nay, more, a life that poets might pray for, the life that is nearest perfection this side of Paradise." "We must talk to my wife concerning these things. And what about the children? How could we educate them ?" "Easily," responded Kalmat; "be your own tutor, and let Nature have a voice in the curriculum.” "Ah! you are a poet." "I had been a madman else." "We are all a little mad they say." "If to be tied down to common ways be sanity," said Kalmat, "let you and I, my friend, be a little mad." "The poet, the dreamer, has a world of his own when this is dark and weary." "He alone," said Kalmat, "understands the true secrets of life, the requirements of the heart, the blessings of Nature." "But in ignoring the realities of life he is apt to make special miseries for himself." "You wish to argue yourself out of the whisperings of that still small voice that tells you some years of absence is necessary to your own peace of mind and the comfort of your wife.” "It may be so. Do you not think it would be coward-like to fly?" "You have resigned your position in Her Majesty's household, you have for the time being committed social death, you have satisfied the envious and malicious; think you they will tolerate even a just resurrection, so soon after the burial?" "You reason well; and for that matter my heart is sick of the empty round of so-called social duties. We were never happier, Mary and I, than we were at Grassnook when we had a day or two alone, enjoying our own society, boating, driving, visiting the children at their studies, or looking through old music books and hunting up old tunes and ancient ballads. With her I could live the life of a scholar, a student; but we should lack sympathising friends. You say there are wise, broad-minded men in that golden land, though they have lived long outside the pale of civilisation. I would like to see that almost legendary country at all events." "You shall—let me be your guide; I know it even better than I knew the northern meadows in the days of my youth." The vessel bounded on. Behind her a passenger steamer came panting; the pier was filling with spectators. The customary uniform, and the short-frocked fishwomen were there; and they raised a cry of admiration as the Fairy glided in between the jetties and was moored at the packet station. "You will land at once," said Kalmat, "and go straight to the hotel; all good fortune go with you. I will join you by-and-by." "Nay, will you not come with me?" said Lord St. Barnard, hesitating. "No; I have the luggage to see to, and the captain to chat with, and a great deal of business to manage." "Au revoir then," said his lordship, stepping ashore and making his way with a beating heart to the hotel. The passenger steamer came puffing and snorting into port, and Kalmat, having tipped the captain and crew of the Fairy, lighted his pipe and sat down upon a bale of goods to watch the voyagers land. (To be concluded next month.) TABLE TALK. BY SYLVANUS URBAN, GENTLEMAN. WHAT a complicated study is this system of representative government! If we regard the voting power of the country as a gigantic machine, whose business it is, when the right time comes, to manufacture a Parliament and an Administration; and if we, so to speak, walk round the machine and endeavour to ascertain what are its adaptations to the business it has to perform, we can hardly fail to be impressed with the idea that it is a wonderfully rude contrivance. Let me hasten to say-before my fellow-countrymen come down upon me as a heretic, an outer barbarian in the matter of social science, incapable of appreciating the beauty of free institutionsthat I am not expressing a political opinion. I am looking at this big electoral engine of ours from the point of view-shall I say?-of an engineer; and, doing so, I cannot help marvelling at the apparent disproportion, and, seemingly, slight adaptability, of the means to the end. Of course I am bound to entertain great respect for any given thousand of electors; and I am compelled to acknowledge that, taken in the mass, they perform their functions in a tolerably satisfactory way but it is not in this synthetical manner that the engineer would make his survey of the machine. He would examine every wheel, every spindle, every crank, every little bit of steel, and describe the part that each performs in the business. So I resolve the thousand electors, the ten thousand, the large constituency, the small constituency, the majority, and the minority, into units; and having done that, I am amazed at the total result of the part they play in the splendid electoral operation. I hope I do not entertain an exceptionally mean opinion of my fellow creatures; but so far as I can judge, stepping from class to class, from parish to parish, from group to group, among my brother-electors, there are wonderfully few of them out of every hundred who seem, when you put them to the proof, to have any really trustworthy conception of the grave considerations involved in this matter of governing a great empire. Go among them, rich or poor, educated and ignorant, and hear what they have to say on the questions of the day. Put them to the test, not as to their vague and general views, but as to their opinions in detail, and in the vast majority of instances I think you would feel an instinctive tendency to shudder at the thought of putting all those units together and nothing else whatever-as the constituent elements of a mighty engine whose business it is to manufacture an Imperial Government and to inspire it with the power and capacity to govern society and to keep civilisation going. Happily, the whole thing does work well, on a principle, I suppose, similar to the principle of averages; by which, notwithstanding the uncertainty of human life, a fixed number of persons out of every million under given conditions will be sure to die in a year. But inasmuch as the weakness, the uncertainty, and the vagaries of the units are the things most patent to common observation, I am almost surprised that we should, so early in the history of society, have arrived at the point of putting our trust in so seemingly unsafe, though really sound and scientific, a machine as the representative system. THE tendency on the part of municipal corporations to present addresses to royal personages upon the slightest provocation is one of old standing, and is not in these modern days to be repressed even by the coolness with which Majesty openly hands the unread address to its body-servant. Perhaps the practice reached the perfection of absurdity when the bewigged town clerks of municipalities, accompanied in state by the begowned mayors and councillors, approached his high and mighty Majesty the Shah of Persia during his recent visit, and read him out a long address, his high and mighty Majesty meanwhile taking it all as a matter of course, playing with his royal moustaches, and looking as if he perfectly understood what was being said to him, a little grave pleasantry in which the town clerk, mayor, and corporation were not backward in indulging on their own parts when, presently, the Shah addressed them in the Persian tongue. The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh have accepted similar compliments with more graciousness than did the object of Canon Kingsley's special reverence, Queen Elizabeth. If all that history relates be true Her Majesty frequently broke forth in cries of impatience with honest corporate officials anxious to touch the hem of her garment. Passing through Coventry on one occasion the Queen was met by the mayor and corporation, who humbly begged leave to read the following loyal address : We men of Coventree Are very pleased to see To which the Queen thus sweetly replied: My Gracious Majestee Is very wroth to see Ye men of Coventree. Good Lord! what fools ye bee! I THINK I may say I am glad to find among the letters of the month further communications on points of literary history and biography raised by my friend Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke in his admirable "Recollections of John Keats," which I had the pleasure of printing in my February number, even though there may be the elements of dispute, and even of personal warmth, in some portions of the correspondence. On the question raised by the editor of the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette as to whether Keats's City residence was in the Poultry or in Fenchurch Street there is no room for anything but the most friendly exchange of speculations on the one side and recollections on the other. From Genoa Mr. Clarke replies to my Hackney correspondent, saying, "When I described John Keats's London residence to have been 'in the Poultry,' I am confident of being correct; whereas, to the words, and opposite to one of the City company's halls-the Ironmongers,'—I added the words, if I mistake not;' for I do not feel sure as to the identity of a large edifice which I remember as facing Keats's lodging." 66 QUESTIONS of greater personal interest are involved in the matter of a letter which I have received from Mr. F. W. Haydon, son of the great painter. The passage in the "Recollections of John Keats" to which Mr. Haydon refers appears on page 198 of the February number of the Gentleman's, and he asks me to "contradict "by which, perhaps, he means, give him leave to contradictFirst, the statement that Leigh Hunt all but introduced' my father to the public in the Examiner.'" "My father," says Mr. Haydon, "had been established in London for nearly six years, had painted, exhibited, and sold his first picture, had nearly completed his second picture, and he had commissions for further pictures to follow, and had made the personal acquaintance of Lord Stafford, Lord Mulgrave, Sir George Beaumont, Mr. Thos. Hope, Lord Grosvenor, and other distinguished patrons of art before he had the honour of being introduced to Mr. Leigh Hunt by Sir David Wilkie, or had even conceived the idea of writing upon art for a newspaper." -Secondly, my correspondent calls attention to Mr. Cowden Clarke's |