Flam from the same as a signal for the Cavalry to move, at the same instant the Battallion drums strike up a march & the whole step off together saluting the General on the March.

Jos. Harmar, Lt. Col. D. A. G."

Ay! here it is in sharpest contrast-the birth-death of Bourbonism, feudalism, slavery the death-birth of Democracy, liberty, freedom. The new centuries saluting the old. The "Gates, Lees, rough Yankee Generals with woollen night-caps under their hats presenting arms to the chivalry of France "-those "gold-mantled Figures walking still in black velvet cloaks, in high-plumed bonnets of feudal cut." Pathetic image this of the child still lying in its soft warm nest "within the royal tapestries," that brilliant world of the beautiful young Queen-mother with her "baths, boudoirs, peignoirs, Little and Grand Toilette, masquerades, theatricals, Fêtes des Mœurs," and all the other heart-breaking follies of a court intent only on "dancing its life-minuet over bottomless abysses divided from it by a film."

The smoke and blaze of cannon is surely a fitting welcome for this little son of Saint Louis, over whose innocent head the artillery of Heaven is already thundering ominously, while its lightnings reveal in fitful flashes a wide plain and the path across it which his race has been travelling for twelve hundred years, and stabs the darkness that still veils its frightful goal.

FRANCES COURTENAY BAYLOR.

(Conclusion in the next number.)

AN EPISODE.

I.

"My dear fellow, there is not a doubt that the Liberals will win. The party has been fooling about this Egyptian question, and of course the country likes a chance to grumble; but we have worked like niggers, and we shall have our reward!" "If work will do it, we ought to win. ourselves."

We have not spared

"You have not; you have overdone it altogether. Never mind; you have twenty pounds in your pocket, and a fortnight to spend it in. Take your fill of country air, since you like the product, and make your mind easy. We have the plum of equality on our side. It was a lucky phrase of yours that, and for attracting the manufacturing masses; they won't easily beat what it represents. Equality! Why, it's naturally what every rising man looks to for his prize, and it's the rising men who make a party. The 'plum of equality.' Hullo! you are off. Well, good-bye; take care of yourself, and don't look at a paper till you come back."

The train was moving out of the station. The last words which fell on the ear of the young man thus addressed were the "plum of equality." He was a big man, with broad shoulders and limbs capable of sustaining, it might have been supposed, a more than ordinary share of fatigue. But his hands were too white, his movements too languid, his clothes hung too loosely upon him for any intelligent observer to escape the impression that he was suffering from the universal malady of overstrain, with its accompanying depression of vitality.

"The plum of equality,'" he presently soliloquized aloud. "I wish I knew how much my father means of it all. I'd do the dirty work with pleasure, since dirty work has to be done, provided that we believe in what we are working for. But if it's all only to make a figure for yourself and to be on the winning side, then politics are a beastly career for an English gentleman." His eyes lit now and flashed out a generous young scorn.

"How can a man with three footmen believe in equality? How

can I believe in it if I travel first-class, and wear Poole's clothes, and have money to jingle in my pocket, while my brother-men in the other end of the train have none? And if I don't believe in it, how can I honestly work for it?"

"Bah!" he exclaimed. "Hang politics for the present. I have just sense enough left to know that I am overworked, and incapable of making a sane judgment in my actual condition. When I have oxygenated my blood by some of this pure country air, my ideas on the subject of equality will be clearer. How about my sketch-book? It is a jolly thing to have money in your pocket and time before you, and no restraint but your own will!"

So jolly was the prospect thus called up that for the next half hour he appeared to find ample satisfaction in whistling over an examination of the drawing materials which one of his bags contained. An attempt to make a slight sketch from one of the windows of the train was hardly successful. Then, as the fresh air and the motion did their work, he fell soundly and prosaically asleep in his corner.

He was wakened by the sound of a porter's voice: "Train goes no further, sir! Is this your station?"

"Station? I don't know. "Beech Hill!"

Where are we?"

"I never heard of it in my life, but it will do as well as anywhere else."

The porter was an old man, and he smiled benignantly.

"It's not much of a place for a young gentleman like you to amuse himself in. Unless"-as his eye fell on the drawing materials scattered upon the seat-"you are one of them artists. They lodge about in the cottages, and I've heard 'em tell that the old place is wonderful pretty; but I can't say as I see much in it myself."

"It will do. I suppose there's some sort of hotel?" "There's a public a couple of miles along the road. I don't know if you'd like it. It isn't not to say over-particular clean.” “I should not like it. Where are those cottages that the artists lodge in?"

'Well, there's not a great many, but there's a farm now up in the woods where I believe they'd take a lodger. They're very respectable, clean folk."

"All right! Keep the luggage till I send for it."

The young man had soon left the station, and was pacing the

soft, red earth of a woodland road which led upwards under the beeches.

He had purposely omitted to ask for any directions, and his inclination alone guided his footsteps. There had been rain in the morning, and the air was sweet with the keen purity of spring. Honey-scented buds were everywhere opening to the sun. In the trees there were gentle sounds of humming and twittering, which fell like music on the ear of the tired young Londoner. Glade after glade opened before him. The green light, tempered by silver gleams from the beech trunks, fell still upon unfrequented woodland paths. Sometimes a squirrel kept him company, leaping from bough to bough overhead. Sometimes a startled rabbit rustled the dry undergrowth close by and around the path with hurried scamper some few yards ahead, but he met no creature of his own kind.

The solitude had had time to become most oppressive, but perceptible enough for the young man to wonder faintly when and how it would end, when he came by a deserted saw-mill to a cleared space and a meeting of the ways. Over the cleared space grew a herbage of bright green, juicy grass, and, as he looked down one of the ways, he saw approach him a leisurely train of brindled cows. The road by which they came led upward from the valley; behind them where the road dropped out of sight there was a background of blue distance. The color of the scene caused him to bethink himself of his sketch-book. He drew it from his pocket, but somehow the picture would not compose. He shifted his position in order to get another view, and, instead of another view, he found another subject.

In a hollow just over the dip of the road there was a copse of ash-trees, and underneath their broken canopy the rays creeping down the black and silver stems fell upon a carpet of primroses and a primrose gatherer-a pale, blue figure bending over the flowers, and piling them in her up-gathered apron.

He had soon

A tree stump close at hand gave him a seat. made a slight sketch, and as the figure was that part of the picture which was least likely to remain for him to study, he gave it his chief attention. Thus he discovered that his primrose-gatherer was young, and that her movements were active and graceful. She was thoughtful, too, or so it pleased him to imagine, for she paused more than once in her occupation, and each time she re

turned, as by instinct, to the same attitude-one hand raised against the trunk of an ash-tree, her head bent a little towards the flowers—the attitude in which he decided to sketch her. He had been unusually successful in the disposition of his lines, and was busy with colors before she became aware of his presence. He saw her face for the first time when she looked up and perceived him. She smiled kindly. He smiled back again, and called to her to ask if she would stand yet a moment where she was.

She stood till he said, "Thank you; now I have what I wanted." Then, with her apron full of primroses, she came out of the copse, and prepared to follow the cows up the road.

He half expected

In order to do so, she had to pass him. that she would come and look at the sketch, but with quiet unconcern she was going by on the other side, when he rose and asked if she would care to see what he had drawn.

He saw her face again as she turned it towards him. It was kind, rather than pretty, yet pleasant to look at, fresh, rather sunburnt, perfectly healthy, and softly shaded by her wayward brown hair. There was something in the broad forehead and clear eyes which reminded him of the gentle benignity of her cows.

Her

"Thank you," she said. "Are you making a picture? voice was full and quiet, and sweet, still in it the same unconcern. He put the sketch-book in her hands, and smiled as he watched the color mount.

"For what else did you suppose that I asked you to stand?

"I did not suppose at all. I only thought that I could oblige you."

He had finished all that he meant to do. He was washing his brushes.

"You would oblige me again, a great deal, if you could tell me anything of a farm somewhere in this wood where they let lodgings."

"I can easily do that." of hospitality in her smile.

And this time there was all the pleasure "It must be my father's. We live just

up here a little way, and last summer we had a lodger."

"Do you know if your father would take a lodger, now?" "I think so. We made the rooms ready last week. But-" "But-what?"

She had paused as if stricken suddenly by a thought, and yet find