state chamber for great occasions. When Mr. Molyneux was ushered in, he found Mrs. Eastwood seated on a hard chair before the table, with a large inkstand and all her housekeeping books before her. He was amused by the pose, being clever enough to perceive that it, at least, was not quite genuine, but he lacked the power to go further, and immediately made a vulgar estimate of her, such as vulgar-minded men invariably make of women whose youth and good looks are waning. Mr. Molyneux was a great speaker, a powerful pleader, but a vulgarminded man notwithstanding. He was loosely made and loosely dressed, with a certain largeness and breadth about him which impressed his hearers as if it had been a moral quality-and his face was loquacious, especially the mouth, which had large lips, and lines about them bearing token of perpetual motion. These lips, and the peculiar way in which, in repose, they closed upon each other, were enough to prove to any spectator that his powers of speech were not to be despised. It was not an eloquent mouth. There is a great difference between powerful loquacity and real eloquence. He was not eloquent. A lofty subject would have disconcerted him, and when he attempted to treat an ordinary subject in a lofty way, his grandeur became bathos, and called forth laughter when tears were intended. But he was tremendously fluent, and he was popular. He did almost what he liked with the ordinary British jury, and his name in a bad case was almost as good as a verdict of acquittal.

When this man was ushered in by Brownlow with an importance befitting the occasion, Mrs. Eastwood momentarily felt her courage fail her. She knew him but slightly, and had never come into much personal contact with him, and she had that natural respect, just touched by a little dread of him, which women often entertain for men of public eminence who have gained for themselves a prominent place in the world. Nor did he do anything to diminish her agitation. He looked at her with cool grey eyes which twinkled from the folds and layers of eyelids that surrounded them, and with a half sarcastic smile on his face; and he called her "ma'am," as he was in the habit of doing when he meant to bully a female witness. Mrs. Eastwood, striving vaguely against the feeling, felt as if she too was going to be cross-examined and | to commit herself, which was not a comfortable frame of mind.

"So our children, ma'am, have been making fools of themselves," he said, with a twinkle of his eyes, after the preliminary observations about her health and the weather were over. He followed the words with a chuckle at the folly of the idea; and Mrs.. Eastwood, who was anxiously determined to fill the part of "mère noble," was taken aback, and scarcely knew what to reply.

"They have taken a step," she said, breathless, "which must very seriously affect their happiness

"Just so," said Mr. Molyneux, "and you and I must see what can be done about it. Ernest is not a bad fellow, ma'am, but he is sadly imprudent. He plunges into a step like this, without ever thinking what is to come of it. I suppose he has told you what his circumstances are?"

Mrs. Eastwood replied by a somewhat stiff inclination of the head.

'Precisely like him," said his father, chuckling. "Not a penny to bless himself with, nor the least idea where to find one; and accordingly he goes and proposes to a pretty girl, and makes up his mind, I suppose, to set up housekeeping ing directly - Heaven help him! — upon nothing a year."

"This is not what he has said to me," said Mrs. Eastwood. "In the first place, though frankly avowing that he had nothing beyond his allowance from you — I have understood from him that by greater diligence in the pursuit of his profession

Mrs. Eastwood was interrupted here, by a low "Ho, ho!" of laughter from her visitor a very uncomfortable kind of interruption. To tell the truth, feeling that things were against her, and determined not to let down Nelly's dignity, she had taken refuge in a grandeur of expression which she herself was conscious might be beyond the subject. No woman likes to be laughed at; and Mrs. Eastwood grew twenty times more dignified, as she became aware of the levity with which the other parent treated the whole affair.

"Ho! ho! ho! I recognize my boy in that," said Mr. Molyneux. "I beg your pardon, but Ernest is too great a wag to be resisted. Greater diligence in the pursuit of his profession! He ought to be made Lord Chancellor on the spot for that phrase. Are you aware, my dear ma'am, that he has never done anything, that boy of mine, in the pursuit of his profession, or otherwise, since he was born?"

"Am I to understand, Mr. Molyneux," | gain, we had better know exactly what said Mrs. Eastwood, slightly tremulous we mean on either side. I did not want with offence and agitation, "that your Ernest to marry now, and in case he did object is to break off the engagement between my daughter and your son?” "Nothing of the sort, ma'am ; nothing of the sort," said Mr. Molyneux, cheerfully. "I have no objections to your daughter; and if it did not happen with her, it would happen with some one else. It is for both our interests, though, that they don't do anything foolish. What they intend is that we should pay the piper

"You must do me the favour to speak for yourself, and your son," said Mrs. Eastwood, with spirit. "My child has no such idea. She has never known anything about such calculations; and I am sure she will not begin now."

"I beg your pardon, and Miss Nelly's pardon," said the great man with an amused look. "I did not mean to reflect upon any one. But if she has not begun yet, I fear she will soon begin when she is Ernest's wife. They can't help it, ma'am. I am not blaming them. Once they are married, they must live; they must have a house over their heads, and a dinner daily. I've no doubt Miss Nelly's an angel; but even an angel, when she has weekly bills coming in, and nothing to pay them with, will begin to scheme.

Such a thing appears to me quite impossible," said Mrs. Eastwood, in a flutter of suppressed indignation, and then she added, pausing to recover herself: "I must say at once, Mr. Molyneux, that if this is the way in which you are disposed to look at the matter, I should prefer to end the discussion. My daughter's happiness is very dear to me; but her credit, and my own credit, ought to be still more dear"

Perhaps your son does, sir!" cried Mrs. Eastwood, exasperated. "You ought to know him best."

marry, he ought to have looked higher.
I don't mean to be unpleasant, but I
should have liked him to look out — let
us say, brutally for more money. He
has cost a deal of money in his day; and
he ought to have brought in more. It is
very likely, indeed, that your views were
of a similar character. In that case, in-
stead of wrangling, we ought to agree.
Miss Nelly might have done better
"A great deal better," said the mother,
firmly, and with decision.

66

Exactly so. At bottom we mean the same thing, though I may speak too roughly; but, like a couple of young fools, they have gone and run their heads into a net. Privately, I admire your daughter very much," said Mr. Molyneux, with a certain oily change in his tone-a confession that the present subject under treatment was not to be bullied, but required more delicate dealing; "and though I say it that shouldn't, my son Ernest is a fine young fellow. They will make a handsome couple just the kind of thing that would be delightful in a novel or in a poem-where they could live happy ever after, and never feel the want of money. But in this prosaic world things don't go on so comfortably. They have not a penny; that is the question that remains between you and me.”

Nelly has five thousand pounds; and he has - his profession," said Mrs. Eastwood, with a certain faltering in her voice. "Well, well, well," said the wise man. "If we were all in a state of innocence, five thousand pounds would be something; and if we were a little wickeder, his profession might count; but the world is not so litigious as might be desired. My son is too grand to demean himself to criminal cases like that inconsiderable mortal, his father. And do you mean them to live in London, my dear ma'am, upon Miss Nelly's twopence-halfpenny a year?"

'Indeed, I am not so foolish," cried Mrs. Eastwood; "beside thinking it wrong as a matter of principle. He must work, of course, before he can marry. He must have at least the prospect of a sufficient income before I should ever give my consent."

Of course, I know him best; and, of course, that is his object — to get as much as he can out of me," said Mr. Molyneux, pausing upon the pronoun. "Since you don't like it, I will leave the other side "A sufficient income earned by Erout of the question. I have known Er- nest!" said Mr. Molyneux, with, again, nest these eight and twenty years, and I that detestable “Ho, ho!" "Pardon me, ought to know what stuff he is made of. my dear Mrs. Eastwood; but when I see Now, as there are two parties to this bar-how that boy has imposed upon you! No

- believe me, who know him better, that | mine to some extent what I should give if anything is to come of it, it must be him." done by you and me."

"I do not understand, Mr. Moly

"I quite believe it," he said, relapsing into carelessness just touched with contempt. "Ladies seldom understand such matters. If you will tell me the name of your solicitor, perhaps it would be better for me to talk the matter over with him."

"What is there to talk over?" said Mrs. Eastwood, once more roused into indignation. "I think, Mr. Molyneux, that we are speaking different languages. Nelly has her little fortune -as you know- and I am willing to allow her to wait till Ernest is in a position to claim her. I should not allow this without your approval, as his father. But as, so far, you have given your approval, what more does there remain to say ?"

The great lawyer looked at his simple antagonist with a kind of stupefaction.

"We are indeed talking two different languages," he said. "Tell me who is your solicitor, my dear lady, and he and I will talk it over ·

"In a matter so important," said Mrs. Eastwood, plucking firmness from the emergency, "I prefer to act for myself." Perhaps at this moment she achieved the greatest success of her life, though she did not know it. Mr. Molyneux was struck dumb. He stared at her, and he scratched his head like any bumpkin. He could not swear, nor storm, nor threaten, as he would sometimes do with the hapless people in the witness-box. He was obliged to be civil, and smooth-spoken, and to treat her with a certain degree of politeness; for though he believed that Ernest might have done better, he had no desire to defy his son, who was, in his way, a formidable opponent, and he did not quite venture, knowing the sort of young man he had to deal with, to break off the match, or do anything violent tending that way.

"What I might be able to give my daughter?" said Mrs. Eastwood, in surprise; "but I have nothing to do with it. I give her nothing she comes into it by her grandfather's will."

"The five thousand pounds yes, yes, I understand all about that," said Mr. Molyneux, with a mixture of disgust and weariness. This infinitesimal, but always recurring, morsel of money bored him. But he tried to keep his temper. He explained the duty of parents in such an emergency with great fulness. If a sacrifice had to be made, it must, he pointed out, be a mutual sacrifice. The question was not of five thousand pounds, or five thousand pence, but how to "make up an income " for the young people. Without an income there could be no marriage; it was not a matter of feeling, but of arrangement; if the one side did so much, the other side would do so much more. The great man explained the position with all his natural wealth of words, and with all the ease of wealth, to which a hundred or two more of expenditure in a year mattered comparatively little. But Mrs. Eastwood, who, as the reader is aware, had enough, but not too much, listened with a dismay which she could scarcely disguise. She, who had been obliged to put down her carriage, in order to free her son, was not in a position to give large allowances to either son or daughter. She made the best effort she could to maintain her ground.

"I should have thought that your son, in your profession, in which you are so eminent ." she began with an attempt to propitiate her amicable adversary, who had changed the question so entirely from what appeared to her its natural aspect.

She

"In my profession, ma'am, a man stands on his own merits, not his father's," Mr. Molyneux answered, interrupting her with brusque decision. What was poor Mrs. Eastwood to do? "Then I must try what can be done by could not give to Nelly without being unplainer language," he said, hiding his be- just to her other children, and yet how wilderment under a specious appearance was she to have the heart to crush Nelly's of candour. "We must throw away all happiness by refusing? A vision of her circumlocution. Let us be reasonable. child, hollow-eyed and pale, casting paI will give my son so much a year, if you thetic glances at her, which would be will give your daughter so much a year. worse than reproaches, flitted before her That is what it comes to. If we do this, eyes. Girls have died ere now of separathere may be some possibility for them; tion from their lovers, and Nelly (the but without this, nothing can be done; mother thought) was the kind of girl to and of course, the allowance which you break her heart without a complaint. might be able to give her would deter-' Could she risk the breaking of Nelly's

heart for a miserable question of money? and children, brother and sister, the first This was an influence infinitely more sub- thing it does in most cases is to make a tle and potent than Mr. Molyneux's elo- rent and division. It calls out the sense quence. While he talked the good moth- of self and personal identity, it breaks er fought it out in her own bosom. She the soft silken bonds of nature, and turns gave her consent that he should see her the hands a little while ago so closely solicitor and talk over the matter with a linked almost against each other. Nelly sort of despairing acquiescence and that thought her mother was hard to her desperate trust in Providence which Ernest, and Ernest thought his future springs up in an oppressed soul when mother-in-law was already developing the driven to its last resources. Something true mother-in-law character, and was might "come in the way." Nothing about to become his natural enemy. He could be resolved upon at once; neither could not help giving hints of this to his to-day nor to-morrow could call for imme- betrothed, which made Nelly unhappy. diate action, and something might come And then her mother would find her cryin the way. ing, and on asking why, would be assailed with pitiful remonstrances.

From Fraser's Magazine. LECTURES ON MR. DARWIN'S PHILOSO

PHY OF LANGUAGE.

BY PROFESSOR MAX MULLER.

FIRST LECTURE,

DELIVERED AT THE KOYAL INSTITUTION,
MARCH 22, 1873.

Spencer. Nor does it seem right to use the name of Darwinism in that vague and undefined sense in which it has been used so frequently of late, comprehending under that title not only the carefully worded conclusions of that great observer and thinker, but likewise the bold generalizations of his numerous disciples. I shall PHILOSOPHY is not, as is sometimes mention only one, but a most important supposed, a mere intellectual luxury; it point, on which so-called Darwinism has is, under varying disguises, the daily evidently gone far beyond Mr. Darwin. bread of the whole world. Though the It is well known that, according to Mr. workers and speakers must always be Darwin, all animals and plants have defew, those for whom they work and speak scended from about eight or ten progeniare many; and though the waves run tors. He is satisfied with this and dehighest in the centres of literary life, the clines to follow the deceitful guidance of widening circles of philosophic thought analogy, which would lead us to the adreach in the end to the most distant mission of but one prototype. And he shores. What is thought-out and written | adds that even if he were to infer from down in the study, is soon taught in the analogy that all the organic beings which schools, preached from the pulpits, and had ever lived on this earth had dediscussed at the corners of the streets. scended from some one primordial form, There are at the present moment materi- he would hold that life was first breathed alists and spiritualists, realists and ideal- into that primordial form by the Creator. ists, postivists and mystics, evolutionists Very different from this is the conclusion and specialists to be met with in the proclaimed by Professor Haeckel, the workshops as well as in the lecture- most distinguished and most streuuous rooms, and it may safely be asserted that advocate of Mr. Darwin's opinions in the intellectual vigour and moral health Germany. He maintains that in the of a nation depend no more on the estab-present state of physiological knowledge, lished religion than on the dominant the idea of a Creator, a Maker, a Lifephilosophy of the realm.

giver has become unscientific; that the admission of one primordial form is sufficient; and that that first primordial form was a Moneres, produced by selfgeneration.

No one who at the present moment watches the state of the intellectual atmosphere of Europe, can fail to see that we are on the eve of a storm which will shake the oldest convictions of the world, I know, indeed, of no name sufficiently and upset everything that is not firmly comprehensive for this broad stream of rooted. Whether we look to England, philosophic thought, but the name of France, or Germany, everywhere we see, "Evolutionary Materialism" is perhaps in the recent manifestoes of their phil- the best that can be framed. I am afraid osophers, the same thoughts struggling that it will be objected to by those who for recognition thoughts not exactly imagine that materialism is a term of renew, but presented in a new and start-proach. It is so in a moral sense, but no ling form. There is everywhere the same real student of the history of philosophy desire to explain the universe, such as would use the word for such a purpose. we know it, without the admission of In the historical evolution of philosophy, any plan, any object, any superintend- materialism has as much right as spiritence; a desire to remove all specific bar-ualism, and it has taught us many lessons riers, not only those which separate man for which we ought to be most grateful. from the animal, and the animal from the To say that materialism degrades mind plant, but those also which separate or- to the level of matter is a false accusaganic from inorganic bodies; lastly, a de- tion, because what the materialist means sire to explain life as a mode of chemical by matter is totally different from what action, and thought as a movement of the spriritualist means by it, and from nervous molecules. what it means in common parlance. The It is difficult to find a general name for matter of the materialist contains, at least these philosophic tendencies, particularly potentially, the highest attributes that as their principal representatives differ can be assigned to any object of knowlwidely from each other. It would be un- edge; the matter of the spiritualists is fair to class the coarse materialism of simply an illusion; while, in common Büchner with the thoughtful realism of parlance, matter is hardly more than