ioned in the tower whence the pilgrim-war- of the realities which might be in the dis-
riors from Palestine refreshed their desert- pensation of the future for this most lovely
weary eyes with the gorgeous woodland and innocent, most credulous and pure, of
beauty of Warwickshire. It was a congen- God's creatures. What harm could come
ial home for the young girl, for youth was
not wanting there. The school, for such it
was, was tenanted by thirty young girls of
respectable parentage, who were maintained
and educated for a certain number of years.
The system of the institution was liberal,
admitting nothing squalid or pauper-like,
none of the dreadful soul-grinding, body-
degrading harshness and formality which
render some of the best-meant so-called
charities painful to see in these days. The
costume to which the Blue-gown girls were
restricted was pretty though quaint, and the
bright-blue dresses, white aprons and capes,
and brightly-polished buckled shoes, were
not discordant with the youthfulness of all,
and the good looks of a few. Mrs. Wood
settled down soon and satisfactorily to the
duties of her position, and her new home
afforded Alice much delight, qualified only
by the pain of the separation from Henry
Hurst. There was little incident in the
young girl's life during the tranquil years in
which she dwelt in the ancient City of the
Three Spires; but the formation of her
character, the development of her mind,
went on with steady, though almost un-
marked, progress. No one could have told
that her mother knew she was beautiful and
good, angelic in her innocence, and rarely
pure and poetic in her tastes. No one
could have discerned the intense and ab-
sorbing devotion with which the cold, re-
served woman regarded her only child, who
had observed the calm, impartial manner in
which she bore herself to Alice, in common
with her other charges. But Alice knew
it, and there was perfect union between the
mother and child in their quiet life. Per-
fect union, but only little companionship;
there was no room for that. The mother
could not enter the world of imagination, of
faith, of dreams, in which the child lived,
and she knew it; but the knowledge did
not part them. To her, the house they
lived in, and the surroundings, were pleas-
ant things materially clean, commodious,
quiet, respectable and her occupation
congenial; she liked its responsibilities, she
highly prized the independence it secured.
But though she knew that Alice liked these
things too, and grew each year more happy,
though more thoughtful, she had no notion
of the world of association, of reverie, of
delight which the girl conjured up for her-
self; she had, happily for her, no prescience
of the baseless fabric which was her child's
mental palace-home; no instinctive dread

to her Alice? the widow would think.
Though she had known much sorrow, Mrs.
Wood was strangely ignorant of the world;
and she argued that Alice was liked by
every one, though not quite understood -
and when she should be left alone, the trus-
tees would appoint her to fill her mother's
place. No misgiving, no comprehension of
the truth so hard for all mothers to learn,
that their children are on theirs for a very
short time, and of their destiny they are but
spectators, helpless and amazed, came to
this woman, otherwise as sensible and rea-
sonable as she was commonplace and indus-
trious. She, too, had her dream. But to
Alice life was a poem, and the surroundings
of her home enchanted places. She had
access to old books, and while yet a child
she loved them, and made companions of
them. In her turret-chamber she passed
many hours of delightful reverie, in which
the past days came again, the present van-
ished, and all that was beautiful, romantic,
and chivalrous in the medieval times lived
for her vivid and active fancy. When the
evening sun glinted upon the window, deep
set in the massive wall, and the shadows
flickered on the grass, she would sit with
her golden head resting on her arm, as it
lay on the carved-stone window-ledge, and
trace wondrous legends in the glorious stone
records of the ancient church. For her the
warrior monks trod with mailed feet the
cloisters, where grass and ferns were grow-
ing; processions of knights and ladies went
up into the solemn aisles of St. Michael,
supreme among the churches, as the great
archangel among the saints; and in the
pealing of the organ, the story of the spires,
angel-crowned, and rich with the sublime
fancies of the artist workmen of the past,
repeated itself in music. In the summer,
the girl would seek the shade of the old
cloisters, and pore over the half-effaced in-
scriptions on the mutilated, deserted tombs,
until she became quite an adept in such de-
cipherment; and in her fancy would re-
mould the historic dust, and marshal the
ancient dead among the ranks of her pa-
geant of romance. Every ancient nook in
the old city was familiar to her, and the
busy people knew her well, as she passed
on her quiet way among them, and betook
herself to some familiar and favourite spot,
there to study the books in which she found
the material for her dreams. The ideal
world in which the girl lived was a pure and
holy region, peopled by heroes, brave, gen-

1

tle, generous,
the old chronicles, redressors of wrong, and
devout as they were devoted; the women
who dwelt in it were the staid and saintly
matrons of the records on the tombs, or the
musing maidens of the troublous times, who,
'Still bending o'er their 'broidered flowers,

With spirit far away,'

the chivalrous gentlemen of | he who had been her playmate in childhood, who was to be her idol in girlhood, and her fate in womanhood—had the faculty of an artist without the soul. Alice Wood loved nature; Henry Hurst admired it. In him the sentiment never went beyond a semisensuous pleasure in form and colouring; in her it was intense, solemn, and devotional. The angels of God dwell in the leaves of every oak in the forests of Derry,' sang the exiled apostle of Iona; and even so were the splendid woodlands peopled to the pure fancy of Alice. Amid the temples of the trees her soul worshipped and rejoiced; and better than all poems' would have been the language of her heart if it could have been spoken; better than all poems' the revelations of her pale sweet face as she gazed upon the woodlands, to any one capable of interpreting them. That the world which contained those trees and those churches could be anything but good as well as beautiful, never occurred to Alice. I love the churches,' she said to Henry Hurst one day, because they are always the same, even as God is; and the trees, because they vary like ourselves. I love them when the first shoots come in the spring and the green leaves in the summer, when they wear the brown and gold of the autumn, and when the stems and branches are bare in the winter, when they let the moonbeams through, or are softly laden with the snow.'

embodied the faith, the constancy, and the patient suffering which seem to have made up the medieval ideal of a woman's existence. No evil or hurtful thing had any place in the drem-kingdom of this girl, who as a child had believed firmly in fairies, and many a time wearied her blue eyes in the moonlight, trying to see the good people.' Hers was an innocent and beautiful, and not by any means a useless, life. Alice did her appointed tasks punctually and well, and in her dreamy, unsophisticated nature selfishness had no place. Between her and the girls under her mother's care there was some companionship, but no camaraderie, and they felt, without either enmity or envy, that there was something which set her apart from them all, something more than her pale, clear, alabaster-like face, her blue eyes with their distant yearning look, her delicate limbs, and her golden hair. She would try at times to talk to them of the fancies that were in her; as, for instance, when a bevy of the girls would be permitted to wander with her on the beautiful commons lying beyond the town, and 'I will draw four portraits of one of feast their eyes upon the woods of Stitchall your particular pets, Alice, if you will seand Whitley. But she did not find the at-lect it; or I suppose I ought to say him,' said tempt very successful; they cared little for Dugdale, and were not to be aroused to enthusiasm by the fact that they might follow his footsteps along the windings of the Sherborne. They had not much respect for Shakespeare; and the mention of King Charles, which Alice could not suppress, when they rested under the elm which had stretched its giant branches over the tent The growth of the feeling which had reof the insulted sovereign, when the ancient placed the camaraderie of their childhood, city dishonoured herself by disowning him, between the boy and girl, had passed quite had a distasteful reminder of a history- unnoticed by Alice's mother, while it was lesson' in it, and manifestly bored them. perfectly well known to the girls under So, in her few and simple pleasures those Mrs. Wood's care, and to Henry Hurst's of the imagination -Alice Wood was very associates. They met, as a rule, weekly, much alone. She was by no means a mere when the boy would pass the whole of Sundreamer, but the peaceful ordering of her day with his friends; but as Henry grew life gave her a good deal of time for the older and had more liberty accorded him, sort of reading and the train of thought they were together much more frequently. she preferred, and gave to her character its The mother's unconciousness was not the salient features. She had no technical result of any concealment on Alice's part, knowledge of art, but her sense of beauty but simply of her own inaptitude to perwas keen, her enjoyment of it was intense. ceive anything with which she had so little She had the soul, but not the faculty, of an sympathy as the hopes and fancies of young artist; and her best-beloved companion-love. There was one person, beside, who

her companion jestingly, but in a tone of warm admiration; and Alice was delighted, and felt assured that these would be the very best and most immortal of pictures. For the girl loved him dearly, devotedly-absorbingly loved him after her fashion, and he loved her after his.

A HOUSE OF CARDS.

knew Henry Hurst well, and took a warm procured him instruction at his own exinterest in him, and who did not know that pense. He easily obtained permission for a feeling likely to influence their future Henry to be much with him, and he took lives had sprung up between the two child- infinite pains to cultivate his mind. In ish companions. This person was the Rev. this he succeeded; but Hugh Gaynor was Hugh Gaynor, the curate of Beckthorpe, a of an unsuspicious, guileless nature, and he clergyman who had come to the place had no idea that in the boy's case there exyoung, and was likely to all appearance to isted so great a discrepancy between the remain there till he became old. It suited intellectual and the moral nature. He saw Hugh admirably. The people about were that Henry Hurst received all the instrucpoor and ignorant, and in many ways op- tion which he gave him with avidity, and he pressed; but they lacked the peculiar char- had no suspicion that the religious teaching acteristic brutality which he had met with which it included was sifted from the mass elsewhere and was unable to endure, and he by this young, imbittered mind, and rehad found out early in the experiment that jected with scornful incredulity. Let he should probably do a great deal of good those who know what it means to have a among them. The rector was non-resident; father, talk about the fatherhood of God,' he was a gentleman of refined tastes, and Henry Hurst would think; 'I don't believe preferred continental life; and having a it. Nor did he, or believe anything except delicate, sentimental expression of counte- that he was the victim of injustice, and that nance, and an accommodating doctor, he the wisest man was the most selfish, the was permitted to indulge his inclinations wariest and most persistent in the pursuit without being interfered with or bothered' of his own interests, the least affected by by his bishop. The parsonage-house was the feelings, the cares, and the misfortunes let for a sum which materially assisted the of his fellow-men. rector to live in foreign parts,' after the found this out; he never knew that the Hugh Gaynor never fashion which he considered good for his boy's heart was quite unsoftened by his health and due to his position in society; kindness, his generosity, his solicitude; he and Hugh Gaynor lived in a pretty house never knew that a hard-to-be-disguised imon the confines of the parish, completely em- patience was the sentiment with which he bowered in trees, but which commanded a listened when the zealous and consistent fine open prospect of an extensive common, minister of God spoke to him of his eternal with its rich boundary of noble elms, the interests, or, as Henry Hurst mentally de'weed of Warwickshire.' The school at which Henry Hurst was not among the forms of human wickedness scribed it, talked shop.' Hypocrisy was educated was not far from Hugh Gaynor's with which Hugh Gaynor was well achouse, and the curate took a lively and quainted. Rough and bold crimes, and practical interest in its inmates, and, after the squalid vices, the stultified consciences, a time, in this boy in particular, of whom the contented ignorance of the poor, were he had soon heard all there was to know. all known to him, and he was accustomed The forlornness of the story had touched to dealing with them; but the workings of Hugh's kind heart, and hurt his sensitive this boy's mind he did not comprehend, and conscience. There must be a great wrong it gave Henry Hurst a cynical satisfaction done somewhere, or this could not be. to know how completely Hugh Gaynor was Very tenderly and considerately he ques- deceived. He would have been well pleased tioned Henry Hurst; and when he had if he could have believed that his friend learned all he had to tell him, he felt for talked to him merely professionally, mere him more keenly and more kindly than be- formula without faith. But he could not fore. No one in the world to care for the persuade himself that that pleasure was lad but one poor feeble woman, herself a within his reach; he was not a fool, and dependent, and this London lawyer, this without being one Mr. Eliot Foster, who never came to see doubted Hugh Gaynor. His life was too he could not have him, sent for him, or apparently did any- complete and enduring an answer to any thing except pay his school-bills, and make such doubt. So, being debarred from behim a moderate allowance of pocket-money. lieving him insincere, Henry Hurst set the This was a desolate state of things, and curate down as silly. Hugh Gaynor, who knew it would not be in his power permanently to remedy it, tried to improve it. He discovered the boy's taste and talent for drawing and painting, and being quite ignorant of art himself, rather over-estimated them, and

Hurst's occupation in life must be decided
The time was drawing near when Henry
upon. His communications with Mr. Eliot
Foster had been few and curt; but the law-
yer had been made aware that Henry had a
decided aversion to any kind of trade or

business, and a decided predilection for the | Alice. He immediately availed himself of profession of an artist. He had already, the permission, and did find her, seated, with through the influence of Hugh Gaynor, ob- her book and her work-basket, in a corner tained some employment in the humbler of the churchyard, at the foot of a fine ashbranches of art, such as designing patterns tree, whose towering branches formed shimand decorations, and executing small land-mering arches far above her head, through scape paintings, which were much talked which the varying lights played upon her of locally, and of which not only Alice felt golden hair. As Henry Hurst approached, very proud, but her mother also, for was his footsteps unheard upon the soft bright not the boy fulfilling her prediction? grass, the picture struck his keen artistic sense as very beautiful: the silent beauty of the spot, with its splendid surroundings of grand architecture, and its adornment of noble trees; the gray tombs and the little garden-graves, where slept the immemorial dead, and the babe who did but yesterday suspire;' and the motionless figure of the girl, who contrasted, in her gentle young beauty, with the cold obstruction' of death, and yet, in her quiet pensive grace, harmonised so perfectly with the scene. He stood still and looked at her fair face, with its downcast eyes and long lashes, its delicate colouring and sweet solemn expression, and for a little felt the full influence softening, purifying, and elevating-of her innocent loveliness. The next movement aroused her attention; she looked up and saw him, and before she could rise, he was by her side, and had seated himself on the grass.

Several years had passed away while the few events indicated here were taking place. The pretty children, whose beauty had attracted the condescending notice of Mrs. Fanshaw, were now respectively a lovely girl, and a handsome boy, on the verge of manhood, looking older than he really was, and with premature hardness and decision of character, who still realised to the full the description of his childhood that he had a clear head and a bad temper. The last days of Henry Hurst's residence at the Beckthorpe school had arrived, when one morning he received a short letter from Mr. Eliot Foster, in which he expressed a wish that Henry should repair to London on a certain day, and present himself at Gray's Inn. He took the letter at once to Hugh Gaynor, who congratulated him on the evident probability of his now being started in life according to his own wish, and hinted that he thought it likely he might now learn something respecting his parents. It is possible the secret may only have been maintained until you shall have arrived at years of discretion, Henry,' Hugh Gaynor said to him. If you are to hear it now, you must have courage, you know, for it may be very painful.'

The warning produced no effect on Henry Hurst; he had a fixed idea that he was unjustly debarred from a wealthy and luxurious place in the world, and the only feelings aroused by the hope that a solution of the long-mantained mystery was possible were curiosity and vindictiveness.

The same afternoon, Henry Hurst went to Coventry, and communicated the contents of Mr. Eliot Foster's letter to Mrs. Wood. She was prepared to learn them, having also heard from the lawyer. She dismissed him, after a short interview, saying she was busy, and he might go and find

From Fraser's Magazine.
LINES FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AT CHARTLEY.
CELUY vrainent n'a point de courtoisie
Qui en bon lieu ne montra son sçavoir,

And so you are really going to-morrow,' Alice said, after a long pause which had ensued on his telling her all the contents of Mr. Eliot Foster's letter, and all his own plans and hopes connected with it. When are you coming back?'

How can I tell?' said Henry. 'I don't know what he may want me to do, and of course I must do what I'm told — at first, at any rate. But I will come as soon as I can, Alice, my darling; and then I shall know what there is before me in life, and when I can come for you and tell you we are never to part again."

The beautiful colour deepened in the girl's face, and the light brightened in her eyes; and the two sat, with the emblems of death around them, close by the dwellings of the dead, hand-in-hand, and talked with all the lofty presumption and delicious enthusiasm of their glorious youth, of love and life, as though they two held, alone among mankind, the patent of immortality.

Estant requis d'escripre en poesie;

Il vauldroit mieux du tout n'en poinct avoir.
Les dieux, les cieulx, la mort, et la haine et l'envie
Sont sourds, irés, cruels, animés contra moy;
Prier, soufrir, pleurer, a chascun estre amye,
Sont les remedes seuls qu'en tant d'ennuye je voy.

From The Spectator, 22 August. THE COUNTRY OF THE LOST CAUSE.

thing in Southern progress is likely to balance. But the South is recovering from the war with the elasticity of a young country, THERE is a certain significance in the very and in a few years will be all the stronger name of the Lost Cause, by which citizens for the changes that have been forced on it. of the Southern States remember their late The mere abolition of slavery is an incalcustruggle. The old arrogant tone of the lable gain to the country. Four millions of slaveholding fire-eaters has been succeeded people are no longer anxiously on the watch for a time by prostration and despondency. for whatever may ruin their masters or free It was part of their weakness in the past themselves, while they have a direct interest that they lived in a world which they could in earning a livelihood and acquiring propnot understand, and drew their auguries of erty. Apologists of the old order point to success even more from a belief in the base- the fact that the production of cotton and ness of other people than from confidence rice has declined. They forget that a whole in their own strength. That Englishmen at system of new industries has been devellarge would face a cotton famine sooner than oped. All along the Southern seaboard ally their country with slavery; that public market gardens are springing up, and vegeopinion in France would prove stronger than tables and fruits are exported in large quanthe Emperor's wish to secure his position in tities to the Northern cities. It was part Mexico; that the North would shed blood of the slaveholding system to favour the and treasure like water in defence of the planting industries, to the exclusion of all national flag, were experiences the more others. We have heard of a property in painful because they had not been antici- Virginia where a lode of plumbago was used pated by the most acute Southern states- for manure as marl, the proprietor not men. Even after Lee's surrender there knowing its value and not caring to inquire. were men in the South who still thought Large deposits of phosphate of lime, exthat it was practicable and politic to assume tending over a tract of many miles in South a position of hectoring independence. Mod- Carolina, are now being worked for the first erate terms were rejected, and the States time, and have already proved a valuable proceeded to pass laws for enslaving the export. The rice flour that used to be labour of coloured men, while they were thrown away has proved to be an excellent left nominally free. The result has been food for stock. The real change, in fact, is deplorable for both sections of the Union. that while the Blacks refuse at present to The North was forced in honour to defend perform some of the more repulsive labours, the Blacks, and practically could only do so such as clearing the ditches on rise plantaby making them the depositaries of political tions, they are perfectly willing to work at power. The South is held down by military all ordinary employments, are anxious to force, and is governed by its old slaves. acquire land, and are finding out industries Coloured men divide or dominate in the of their own; while their masters are using State Houses of Legislature, and are aspir- their capital more thriftily. It seems certain ing to judgeships and governorships. Sel- that the general prosperity is returning. dom has a divine judgment on flagrant mis- Atalanta has been rebuilt on a larger scale rule been more visibly carried out, and it is than before; New Orleans is prospering; not wonderful if the leaders and veterans of Savannah is growing daily, and promises to the Southern secession feel it bitterly. In be a great commercial centre; and the new the late Democratic Convention in New railway from it to Apalachicola has been York nothing impressed observers more built entirely or chiefly by local subscripthan the unfamiliar modesty of the Southern tions. Of course, there are exceptions to delegates. Men like Rhett, Wade Hamp- this general revival. Charleston is a case ton, and Forrest, whose violence had pre-in point. The rice, plantations of South cipitated the war, or who had disgraced it Carolina were in great measure ruined by by savage license, were now scarcely to be Sherman's soldiers; and the temporary loss seen or heard in conference, and disclaimed all pretensions to dictate or indicate a policy. It seemed as if the country, which lately called itself an empire, had sunk to be a little less than a province.

It would not be safe, we think, to assume that these relations of North and South will be maintained. The trade of New York and the settlement of the Western States are, it is true, elements of strength that no

to the employer from the abolition of forced
labour has naturally been felt more where
the proportion of slaves was large. At first,
in South Carolina as elsewhere, a few North-
erners tried to settle in the State and re-
trieve the ruined properties. The Northern
statement is that wherever this experiment
has been tried the settler's life has been
threatened or his property has been wasted
by sudden fires. Southerners deny the