or Miss Bipont's John making sheep's eyes at Mrs. Treeby's Elizabeth over his prayer-book? or Miss Bipont herself, with her solemn starched old visage? or the shivering children, with their timid glances at the reading-desk? or Mrs. Jenkinson bending over her gorgeous church-service, and repeating the responses so fervently? or Mr. Reefer watching his love as the sunlight rests on her glossy hair? or old Treeby in a corner of the pew growling almost audibly against the cold? or the drowsy clerk? or the parson himself gabbling through the Litany and looking daggers at the children at the same time? But there they all kneel together, and the same sun pours in and bathes them in his light, making no distinction between good and evil-thankful and unthankful.

About one, however, there can be no mistake. Absorbed in her own deep emotions, heedless of what others are about, and almost unconscious of their presence, Maria's soul goes forth in all its strength to keep the feast; her whole spirit and body is prostrate in a homage of penitence, and gratitude, and adoration, before the holy child Jesus. What is this fretting harassing world to her, whilst faith can raise her to gaze on the very Christ of God himself? It retreats and disappears, powerless to assault, powerless to distress, powerless even to whisper in her ear threats of future annoyance, when she shall have come down out of the mount with God. And what will it be when she has to celebrate this wondrous nativity in a different place, and stands face to face with the subject of it, who will break upon her vision as "the bright and morning star," more glorious and dazzling in His radiance than that sun which is now flooding her with his beams? Surely the mere anticipation is compensation for every burden that her spiritshoulders have to bear. Would that she could believe that all now kneeling with her were possessed of as bright a hope and calm a peace! Perhaps mingling with the serenity of her worship may be some misgivings as to the complete propriety of rejoicing so much in that letter of Lady Boulder's some doubts as to whether, in congratulating herself that her daughters were going to Ashleigh, she may not, after all, be glorying in their entrance into a sphere of heartless worldliness, and exposure to a host of temptations, from which she and they alike ought to shrink. Perhaps, too, the thought may be flashing across her, that in the excitement of the moment she had quite forgot about her son coming home. The service proceeds-a strangely-conducted service indeed! The vicar rattles through the second lesson, and seems to have a strange fancy for calling "burial" "bewrial;" the decrepit harmonium mumbles away at the Jubilate like an old man who has lost all his teeth; and then the vicar is going to put himself in the proper position for saying the Creed. But instead of turning himself, the

vicar pauses, and making the hard lines in his face look as hard and harsh as he can, fixes his wrathful regards on the Sundayschool. "Mr. Franklin," he says, addressing the austere man, "keep those boys quiet, will you; I won't have my congregation disturbed in the House of God." And then he begins, "I believe," &c. There is, of course, a great deal of trembling on the part of the boys at this, and a great deal of frowning and nudging on the part of the austere man, and a great deal of staring on the part of the congregation; but they none of them think that there is something more to come. The vicar having finished the Creed turns round, and again pauses before proceeding with the next part of the service, and again fixes his eyes on the children. And suddenly, without a word uttered, he has left the reading-desk, seized poor pale little Griffiths by the cuff of the neck, given him one good shake, opened the church door and turned him out, and is back in the reading-desk once more, gazing round at his people and twitching his head to one side, as much as to say, "I think I know my duty to my congregation pretty well." "Let us hope that, having thus relieved his feelings, the reverend gentleman finds that he can pray with something like devotion. When the prayers are ended our friend leaves the reading-desk to change his gown, followed by the clerk, whose semi-dormant faculties are by this time partially aroused. But there happens to be no vestry, and so the vicar has to proceed to an empty pew next to Miss Bipont's, over the door of which his black gown is hanging ready for him, and, standing in the aisle, he has to submit to be robed and disrobed in full sight of his congregation. This operation is the cause of much mirth to some of the people, although the greater number must have witnessed it scores of times. The men in the gallery titter; the women giggle; John, underneath, makes telegraphic signs to Elizabeth, and pulls a face like the vicar's, when that gentleman, not being satisfied with the way in which his gown is being put on, screws his head round and scolds the clerk in dumb-show. Mr. Hawkes's sermon is limited to the space of ten minutes, which perhaps is rather fortunate than otherwise, for the sermon is neither very spiritual nor very grammatical, whoever may be the author of it; and if it be true that you cannot have too much of a good thing, it may also possibly be true that cannot have too little of a bad.

you

To think that such a man should stand at the communion-table and dispense the elements! To think of the communicants who knelt to receive them! Mr. Hawkes complained that so many of the parish had left him and joined the Dissenters. Men and women, for the most part, when they lrave any religious impulse at all, which seeks for some outward expression, like that expression to be active and lively.

Mr. Hawkes was cold himself, his sermons were cold, and even the beautiful service itself as he conducted it had the life utterly taken out of it; therefore the majority of the devoutly disposed in his congregation deserted to Mr. Bulrush's little chapel at the other end of the village, where they had their emotions kept in a most gratifying ferment by that bland young minister's warm and stimulating eloquence. Unfortunately, in avoiding Scylla they had run foul of Charybdis. The air of Mr. Bulrush's chapel was as hot as that of the parish church was cold; it forced a good deal of pious but feverish and unhealthy sentiment; and the result to a great many was that, mistaking this comfortable excitement for vital godliness in themselves, they began to mistake cant for religion, and, under cover of an upward look and a phrase from Scripture, to do a great many mean and dishonest things. As to the vicar of Marshward and his Christmas morning service, it may be thought by some that the picture is intended to be a caricature of the church of which Mr. Hawkes is a priest, and that it is drawn by an enemy of that church. I am no enemy of the Church of England, but a member of her, and one who, loving her with my whole soul, would be her honest friend. She needs to be thoroughly overhauled and to be thoroughly purged that everybody connected with her will allow; nor can any good be achieved by that foolish blind partiality by which some people are influenced, bywinking at her faults, by healing her hurt slightly, and crying, "Peace, peace, when there is no peace." Surely it is the bounden duty of every one who has her interests and her welfare in any degree at heart to call attention to such flaws and blemishes as come under his notice; for are not all within her pale in a certain sense prophets, and prophets whose business it is to warn faithfully? Her priesthood is the first matter to be adjusted; there is too much of going into the priest's office simply for the sake of a piece of bread, and there are sons of Belial, besides Mr. Hawkes, who cause the people to abhor the offering of the Lord. Alas, that there are not more Bickersteths, and Marshes, and Powers, and Oxendens to minister at every altar within her realm, and to take away the reproach from her name; that there are not more of such men as I have known, whose lives were so many passionate devotions to her cause, so many willing and absolute dedications to the service of her great spiritual head!

Feb.-VOL. CXLIV. NO. DLXXVIII.

THE two friends had now expended their allotted time at Tivoli, and purposed leaving for Rome on the next morrow. Carlo was sitting near the Siren's Grot "just to make one more sketch," and Giacomo had left him "just to take one more look at the temple." This done, Giacomo entered the court of the inn, and observed an empty carriage being drawn by a couple of panting horses to the stable-yard. The host (lazily lounging against the porch, while his wife was busy with double duty) informed his Italian guest that an English family had just arrived from Rome with luggage that indicated some stay at the hotel-apparently a gentleman of importance, with a very important wife, and a daughter "bellissima."

The young Italian's Anglo susceptibilities were so instantly excited, that he at once felt a reluctance to think of the morrow's departure. A moment back his mind had been so full of the "horribly beautiful" of the Siren's Cave, that it had no room for an idea besides; but he was now about to behold the "beautiful" alone, and in that form to which, in a young man's eye, even the Corinthian graces of Vesta's own temple must submit. He had an intuitive sense of something at hand that might affect his future destiny.

On entering the common reception-room he first perceived the back of an elegantly dressed female, who sat upon a chair gazing outwards from the window on the striking scenery before her, and who made not the least movement for several minutes. Meanwhile he addressed himself in English to a middle-aged gentleman of decidedly British aspect, who responded with more than English amenity, saying he had not expected to be first spoken to at Tivoli by one of his own countrymen.

"I cannot claim the honour of being your compatriot," said Giacomo, "but I am an admirer of your country, and always happy to meet an Englishman, though I am, by blood as well as by birth, an Italian."

At this the sitting lady quietly turned her face from the

window with an expression of interest and surprise, rendering her beauty still more beautiful; for Giacomo's admiring gaze made it evident that, in his estimate, the innkeeper had not overspoken her loveliness.

"My daughter, signore," said the Englishman. "We have just arrived here in pursuit of the beauty so abundant in your interesting country, but which is so especially charming in the particular neighbourhood of Tivoli."

"And," said the Italian, taking advantage of a pause, "you leave a country boasting at least a rival equivalent of beauty in amount, but which, as I can avouch, occasionally presents examples of loveliness which more than rival Italy's best."

This immediate and complimentary rejoinder might be taken as referring to other than scenic beauty, since Giacomo bowed to the lady as he uttered it; but the modest gentleness and deferential respect of the speaker's manner precluded the least seeming of more freedom than habitual gallantry might exhibit. The lady gracefully bowed in return, and turning her chair from the window, spoke of the just claims of Tivoli to the celebrity it possessed.

Giacomo was not unacquainted with the particular bearing which so distinguishes the well-bred English lady, but he had never seen it so marked as now. Let it be, however, said, the manner of the Italian was equally noted by the lady herself as being more like that of a highly polished Englishman than she had ever before remarked in a foreigner, while his English was not only correct, but elegant. He might be some three or four and twenty years of age, and as they stood conversing together in the bay of the window, an artist might have thought how well they would "compose" unitedly in one frame. The lady was of that classic order of beauty which an Apelles, rather than a Lawrence, would have chosen, and the gentleman, equally removed from the conventional model of modern Italy, resembled the darker order of handsome Englishmen, or, in short, one who might have been the issue of Anglo-Italian alliance. He had much the complexion of the lady, eyes of a darker grey blue, hair of a darker brown; he just sufficiently topped the tall lady in height, having that amount of the athletic fitting the man who might become her protector; for however common it may be to see a vast preponderance of altitude and bulk of husbands over their wives, the converse is-but of that we may say nothing, since there is (at least in the ideas of little men) an elevation of mind or a strength of spirit which sometimes lifts a pigmy husband so up or out of his shoes that his great wife looks downcast, in absolute despair of measuring his commanding position. In the example before us there was an equalising presentment so