"Is that the sort of thing people do now?" he asked. "I really only ask for information."

"I don't understand," said Maud.

"I mean girls travelling alone with young men."

Maud flushed angrily, but thought better of it and laughed. "Don't be anxious on my account," she said. "I shall outrage no one's sense of propriety."

Arthur felt he had done his share, and subsided again.

"Of course you know best," he said. "I only suggested it in case it had not occurred to you. So Carlingford is going too, is he? I thought he meant to stop here longer?"

"No, he's going to begin work at once. He says he has got hold of the spirit of the thing. He is so delightfully certain about everything."

"A little dogmatic sometimes, isn't he?" asked Arthur.

"No; dogmatists have always a touch of the prig about them. He has none of that."

Arthur Wrexham put his feet upon a chair.

"I think he is just a little barbarous," he said. "Doesn't he ever make your head ache?"

"No, I can't say that he does," said Maud slowly. "I think he is one of the most thoroughly satisfactory people."

"He is so like a sort of mental highwayman sometimes," said her brother. "He makes such sudden inroads on one's intelligence. He catechises one about the Propylæa. trying, especially if you know nothing about it."

Maud laughed.

That is so

"Oh well, if your purse is empty, you need not fear highwaymen," she said.

A fortnight afterwards they both left for Marseilles by the same boat. She sailed on Sunday morning, and Arthur Wrexham and Manvers came down to the Piræus to see them off. Manvers and Tom took a few turns about the upper deck and talked, while Arthur sat down in Maud's deck-chair and was steeped in a gentle melancholy.

"So in about a year's time you will see me," said the former. "I shall be in London next winter. At present I feel like an Old Testament prophet in his first enthusiasm of prophecy. I wonder if they ever had any doubts about the conclusiveness of their remarks. I at least have none. I won't exactly name the day when you will become a convert, but I will give you about a year. Consequently when you see me next, our intercourse may be less at a discord."

"I hope it won't," remarked Tom; " and I don't believe it will.”

VOL. CVIII.

D

"It's always nice to disagree with people, I know," said the other; "it adds a sauce to conversation. But I don't mind abandoning that. You really will do some excellent work when you come round.”

"I am going to do an excellent Demeter mourning for Persephone," said Tom.

Manvers lit another cigarette from the stump of his old one.

"I did an Apollo, I remember," he said. "I wish you would do an Apollo, too. I have mine still; it serves as a sort of milestone. It has finely developed hands and feet, just like all those Greek statues."

"And you prefer neat shoes now," said Tom.

'Why, yes. Whether Apollo has finely-developed feet or not he wears shoes or boots, the neater the better. I hate seeing a man with untidy boots. But even untidy boots are better than none at all. Hark, there's that outrageous bell warning me to leave the boat. Good-bye, Tom. Athens will be very dull without you. I shall cultivate Mrs. Trachington."

"Do, and make a statuette of her. She is a very modern development. Good-bye, old boy."

It was a raw December day when they slid into Victoria Station, and a cold thick London fog was drifting sluggishly in from the streets. Any desire that Maud may have felt for English grey was amply realized. The pavement under the long glass vault was moist with condensed vapour, and the air was cold in that piercing degree which is the peculiar attribute of an English thaw. The Chathams were in London, and Lady Chatham had "worked in" the landau with such success that she just arrived at the platform when the train drew up. She was immensely friendly to Tom, and remarked how convenient it was that they had arranged to come together.

Tom said good-bye to them at their carriage door. Just as they drove off Maud leant out of the window.

"You've no idea how I have enjoyed the journey," she said. "You are at Applethorpe, aren't you? Come and see us soon."

Arthur Hugh Clough.

"BEHOLD, this dreamer cometh!"

In such a light as this is Clough regarded by the majority of those few readers to whom his name is known at all. To the intensely practical mind his poems have never appealed. The "exorbitant demand" for definiteness, of which George Meredith speaks, is not confined to youth; human nature, in all stages of its development, is impatient of delay, and looks eagerly for certainties, welcoming with loud acclaim the man of prompt conclusions, perfect self-reliance, and absolute confidence in his own decisions. Such qualities do men require in their leaders. And rightly—for uncertainty, even that higher uncertainty which is born, not of weakness, but of strength, and of reverence for the absolute truth, paralyses a man's arm, and unfits him to guide wavering wills and weak hearts, such as the best of us are conscious of at times. His very reverence for Truth silences him ; he will not speak, lest his imperfect conception of her attributes should retard her ultimate triumph. He looks into the mysteries of life, and acknowledges them to be too hard for him; and his only resource is to wait, with such patience as he can command, for what shall be revealed. So he stands apart; he has no definite creed to give his fellow-men; and only the very strongest souls can walk uprightly by uncertain lights. Of these was Clough, and even from his lips there falls sometimes a word which shows how heavily the burden of suspense weighed upon him. But only now and again; in the main he kept steadily on his way, holding fast to the one comfort he could conscientiously allow himself.

"It fortifies my soul to know

That, though I perish, Truth is so,
That howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change.
I steadier step when I recall
That if I slip, Thou dost not fall."

This was the faith that kept Clough's life manly and useful in the midst of doubt and perplexity, and saved him from falling into dreamy aimlessness. His story is mainly interesting as the record of the development of a mind acknowledged to be, by those whose opinion is worth having, a remarkably original one. To the student of character it must have interest, and the reader who has grasped in any measure the spirit of his works will be fain to watch eagerly the phases of that thought which crystallised into such striking words; for only through knowledge of a man's individuality do we fully gather the meaning of his words. Clough was born in Liverpool, on New Year's Day, 1819. His father was a cotton merchant, his mother the daughter of a banker in Pontefract. Arthur was the third of four children, and when he was four years old his family removed to Charleston in the United States. In this picturesque town, in a large house overlooking the sea, his childhood was passed. His father was frequently obliged to travel to Europe in the interests of his business, and during these absences her little son became Mrs. Clough's constant companion. She seems to have been a woman of considerable intellect, romantic, and full of enthusiasm, admirably fitted to train the mind of a clever child. She read with him ancient and modern history, the Greek hero-stories, and some of the Waverley novels, and communicated to him her own admiration for courage and uprightness. When his father was at home, he taught the boy Latin and arithmetic. His sister describes how he was accustomed to do his sums "lying on the bales of cotton in his father's warehouse."

In this unconventional way his education was begun. At nine years of age, however, his father took him to England and placed him at a school at Chester. A year later came a change which marked an epoch in his life. He was placed at Rugby, under the care of Dr. Arnold.

No one can doubt that the strong and vigorous character of the high-minded master had a most important influence on Clough's after-life. As he rose in the school, which he did rapidly, it became possible for Dr. Arnold to take notice of him, and his experienced eye soon recognised the signs of intellectual power. He took the boy under his especial care, and Arthur, cut off by distance from his own people, gave to him all the affection of a most warm and loving nature. He threw himself heart and soul into Arnold's plans for the school, and worked hard to raise the moral tone among his school fellows, and so counteract the evil tendencies inevitably to be found in such an institution. At first he had been somewhat silent and reserved, reading, and taking

long walks, but not caring to join in the ordinary games of the playground. As he grew older, however, he exerted himself to take part in these sports, perhaps because he realised that thorough comradeship with his fellows was the surest way of winning that influence over them which he desired to use for their benefit. He was for a long time editor of the Rugby Magazine, and contributed, among other things, some poems, which, in the judgment of some critics, far surpassed, in vigour and finish, the boyish productions of Byron. These verses have, however, been omitted from the volume of his writings. He was greatly admired by his schoolfellows, and a story is told that on the day he left Rugby almost every boy in the school contrived to shake hands with him at parting.

His health suffered from the double strain of his mental and moral work at Rugby. Until the last year of his school-life, during which his parents came to settle again in England, he had had no home to go to in the holidays, which had been spent at the houses of relatives, pleasantly enough, but not restfully. He had never been very strong, and it was at one time feared that his health would break down entirely. However, he seemed to recover himself, and in November, 1836, he gained the Balliol scholarship, the highest honour a schoolboy could obtain. In the October following he went into residence at Oxford.

And now began the second era of his life. Hitherto, as was natural, he had accepted Arnold's views without much question, and with all the enthusiasm of youth. He was strongly attached to the church his hero represented; it held for him everything that was true and beautiful. But the great master had taught his boys to think for themselves, to work out their own salvation, though the process often led them to conclusions diametrically opposed to his own.

With this habit of intellectual independence, and yet with such a strong bias, Clough was thrown into the Oxford world at a time when the excitement of Newmanism, which of all things Arnold most dreaded, was at its height. It was impossible that the sensitive, thoughtful youth, mentally developed beyond his years, should not be affected by it. His letters at this period give some glimpses of what was passing in his mind, and show also that he did make an effort to avoid the endless discussion of theological subjects, "the most exhausting exercise in the world," as he says he found it. His friend Ward was of opinion that had he been able to do so, and to confine his thoughts during that early period to his classical and mathematical studies, his mind would have attained a fuller and more satisfactory development.