Mary considers her a treasure, as I have told you; but she has bid me declare to you that she will not allow her to come here unless you promise to treat her at all points as a lady." Lady Helen opened her eyes and looked aghast. "What! make her an equal ?" she exclaimed. "Bring one's dressmaker into one's drawing. room! How ridiculously like Mary's notions! Janet, love, what do you think of such a proposal ?" to find us the very thing we want. The dressmaker, you remember, whom you and I have quarrelled about!" "I like flounces, you know," said the Honourable Madge, sitting down by Mrs. Hazeldean with a confidential air. They furnish the figure so much, especially when it is thin. And I have always been as thin as a whippingpost. Members of noble families are often observed to be thin." And Miss Madge shook out all her little fluttering frills, and drew up her figure, which, indeed, had somewhat the outlines of a broom "Rather high a price to pay for the making of a gown, I think," said Miss Janet, with that curl coming over her lips, "to have the seam-stick. stress at one's elbow at the dinner-table." "But then it is not the case of merely making a gown," said Lady Helen; "my maid can turn out a neat gown when necessary. This is a case of style and ornament and fashion, my darling. It were worth some little sacrifice to secure such results. But then, as you say, to have one's seamstress at the dinner-table! Dear Margaret, are there no other terms to be made than these?" "You shall be flounced up to your neck, if you have the fancy," said Lady Helen; who, to do her justice, was always indulgent and considerate with this cousin whom she sheltered. But, dear Margaret," she continued, "I trust there will be no mistake about the attainments of this young person. Poor Mary, you know, had never much taste for style, even in the world. I should like to see a specimen of the young woman's work before I made the final arrangements to bring her here." Mrs. Hazeldean laughed heartily. "What a trouble I have brought to you!" "Dolls!" cried the Honourable Madge, she said. "But I said nothing about a dinner-clapping her mittens together in excitement; table. Mary will be satisfied, I dare say, if "dolls, my dear Helen, would be the plan. you keep her little friend from amongst the Fit them as if they were women, flounce them and trim them. Copy them from the fashionbooks and send them in a box." servants." I can Lady Helen heaved a sigh of relief. "I can readily promise that," she said, An excellent plan, I declare!" said Lady gratefully, "and I will engage to show her Helen. "I will write about it to Mary myself." kindness and attention. Let me see. Mrs. Hazeldean's business had now come give her a couple of rooms in the east tower, to a conclusion. "I think it will be better to above Madge. And, by the way, that reminds to say nothing about Lady Humphrey," she reme that poor Madge will expect to be invited flected, as she retraced her steps down the to this conclave." glen. A bell having been rung and a message sent, a fourth lady made her appearance in the room. This lady was of age uncertain, of looks illfavoured, and in manner of the style known as 'flighty." She wore a short yellow gown of Chinese silk, trimmed with rows of little flounces to the knee. She wore sandalled shoes and mittens, and beautiful large clocks upon her stockings. She wore a band going round her head, fastened by a little brooch upon her forehead. In this brooch was a tiny miniature of her lover of bygone days, who had been drowned in the deep seas on his way home to make her his wife. This lady was a second cousin of Lady Helen; not mad, as had sometimes been startlingly proved, but a little more than "odd," to say the least. She was the Honourable Madge M'Naughten by name, and never forgot the dignity of her title. It had come to her late in life, without bringing any lightening of a poverty that had half-crazed her youth. But it had soothed her so much that, after its acquisition, she had consented to accept the bounty of her cousin, Lady Helen. And she was known to all comers, never as Miss M'Naughten, but always, for her satisfaction, as the "Honourable Madge." "Now, Madge," said Lady Helen, "we are going to have a talk. Here is Margaret going So letters came flying from Glenluce to the Mother Augustine."I think they will treat her fairly; we must try and make her happy," wrote Mrs. Hazeldean. But Lady Helen's letter was all about the dolls. Therefore Hester set to work to furnish specimens of her skill. Pretty scraps of silks and satins were procured for her, some well-shaped little dolls, and some pictures out of the latest book of fashions. Sometimes she brought her sewing to a little table in the convalescent ward, by the bedside of the young milliner who loved to talk about the country. Hester also might be sent away to live among fresh hills. Would the sick girl tell her more about the mountains? And the sick girl told her more. And the time sped pleasantly by. And the little dolls were clothed and sent away. And the dolls did their duty. Judging from her letters Lady Helen's cup of happiness was now full. She was anxious only to receive the young dressmaker under her roof. If propriety had permitted it she could almost have taken her into her arms. Lady Humphrey was duly informed of the Mother Augustine's exertions, and their success. I will not pause to expose her private feelings on the occasion; neither have I time to repeat the thanks which she poured out in the convent parlour. The only thing which it is necessary to relate is the fact that she insisted that her dear Hester, so soon to be torn away from her, should pay her at least a short visit at Hampton Court before her departure. This Hester unwillingly agreed to. Yet why should it have been unwillingly? Was ever doating mother more careful and fond than Lady Humphrey was daily proving herself now? If Hester had been about to become a bride, this good friend could not have furnished her with a more generous trousseau. She should not be a shabby Hester going to live among fine people; she should not want for a becoming gown to appear in, when that time should arrive, which Lady Humphrey foresaw, when a glimpse of her pretty face should be desired in a castle drawing-room. She should not be kept away in the background through the need of fitting attire; she should be furnished at all points and for all seasons like a lady. And Hester was confounded and overwhelmed with much bounty. Had she ever, indeed, been sufficiently grateful to Lady Humphrey? Had it not been her own perverse nature which had hindered her loving this friend? Now, when the hour of separation, perhaps for ever, was drawing near, her heart swelled in regret, and reproached her with sore pain. And there were many little instructions and advices to be given. "You will write to me constantly, of course, my dear love?" said Lady Humphrey; "and you will always speak of me kindly, will you not, my little Hester ?" turn pale, all is peace in the neighbourhood of Glenluce. But Sir Archie Munro may be implicated-may be suspected of encouraging the people elsewhere to rebellion. Do you understand me, dear Hester ?" "I understand," said Hester, faintly. "In case such things were proved against him he must be seized-perhaps hanged," said Lady Humphrey. "But it may lie with you and me to avert this danger from his head." "How ?" asked Hester, fearfully. Sir "By watching over his interests," said Lady Humphrey, with enthusiasm. "I am here, you see, in London, and I have friends," she added mysteriously. "You watch well over Archie's movements at Glenluce. Write me constantly, and describe events without reserve. Thus kept constantly informed of all his doings, I shall be able, from my knowledge of facts, to keep all danger and suspicion from his path." The very vagueness of this speech gave it an especially terrible meaning for Hester. She had heard of troubles in Ireland, but she had not thought about them until now. And she was to do so great a service to these friends who had been so good to her. And this was Lady Humphrey, whom she had feared, who was enabling her to do it. Oh, how stupid, and blind, and unfeeling, she had been! "You must remember, my little Hester, that this is a secret between you and me," said Lady Humphrey, by-and-by, having watched some time in silence how her instructions had been received, how they had sunk in and settled down, with a great hold, in Hester's mind. "Oh, Lady Humphrey !" said Hester, blush-" You will promise never to repeat what I have ing guiltily, but with sincere pain for the past, and a desire to be very loyal in the future. "I may not have been wise, my love," said Lady Humphrey, "but I have acted for the best, as far as I could see. And I wish to warn you, my dear, that these people to whom you are going are possessed by a prejudice against me. We were friends in former days, but mischief was made between us. Yet long absence has not deprived me of all interest in their fate." Lady Humphrey paused. Hester was silent and surprised, not knowing what to say. just said to you. It would be terrible to give a hint of it to our dear friend, the Mother Augustine. It would needlessly alarm and give her pain. You will promise ?"" "I promise," said Hester, solemnly; then laid hold of Lady Humphrey's hand and kissed it. "God bless you, Lady Humphrey!" she said. "You are a good, good woman Pierce Humphrey arrived one evening to bid adieu to little Hester. He had written to her apologising for his conduct at the ball, and she 66 And you, too, dear Hester," Lady Hum-had long ago forgotten the offence; so also, it phrey continued, presently, "you also must feel would seem, had he himself. an interest in these good people, who have been so kind to you-in that dear lady of the convent, and in her brother, who did you so important a service." "So you are going to Glenluce, little Hester?" said Mr. Pierce. "You are going to live under the roof with my Janet. What a friendship you and she will strike up!" "Yes," said Hester, readily. Oh, no!" said Hester, quickly. "That is "Well, then, my love, I will entrust you with not likely, indeed; for you know I am not going a secret," said Lady Humphrey, lowering her as a lady." voice and with an air of deep concern. "There "Pooh! nonsense!" said Pierce Humphrey, is a way in which you and I can be of use to laughing. "You could not be anything else, if these worthy people. We can save them, per-you tried. Yes, you and she will surely be good haps, from trouble-from destruction." friends. And I think you will say a word for me, little Hester?" "Can we ?" said Hester, with open amazed eyes. "You know, my dear love, that the country of Ireland to which you are going is disturbed by revolutionary troubles-nay, you need not "That I will," said Hester, smiling, "if I am allowed to have a chance." 66 'Nay, I think you will make a chance," said Pierce, coaxingly. "You must talk to her about me, and you will write to me. That you will, like a good kind girl. And you will tell me how she speaks of me, and what she thinks of that great baronet, Sir Archie Munro. You will promise to do this ?" "I will do it if I can," said Hester, doubtfully. "That means that you will do it. And look here," said Pierce Humphrey, "if she seems at all to listen to you, you must give her back this ring; it is her own, which I gave her once, and which she returned to me in a letter. You must tell her that I sent it to her; and if that does not touch her heart," said foolish Pierce, with a great sigh, "I am sure I know of nothing else that will." After some doubts and difficulties, half expressed, but strongly felt, Hester was simple enough to consent to take the ring. And soon after this she returned to the Mother Augustine; and then there arose the question of how to ship her off to Ireland. FARM AND COLLEGE. THAT part of the holding of a farmer or landowner which pays best for cultivation is the small estate within the ring fence of his skull. Let him begin with the right tillage of his brains, and it shall be well with his grains, roots, herbage and forage, sheep and cattle; they shall thrive and he shall thrive. "Practice with science" is now the adopted motto of the Royal Agricultural Society. Amateur farming by men whose real business lies in other trades, and who, without any true scientific training, play with a few of the results of science, cannot pay and never ought to pay. The farmer's occupation is the oldest, the most necessary, and, when rightly pursued, one of the worthiest a man can follow. Of late years it has risen to the dignity of a liberal profession, and the young Englishman may go through part of his special training for it in a well appointed college. This is the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester. After fighting an uphill fight for twenty years, it stands now upon higher ground than any other institution of its kind. There is, indeed, no other of its kind in England; but of institutions for the practical and scientific training of the farmer out of England; among the agricultural academies in France, Germany, and elsewhere; not one, we believe, is at the same time satisfactory and self supporting. The Imperial Model Farm and School of Agriculture at Grignon, founded in 1826, and the chief of several established by Louis Philippe, receives subvention from the State, and the pupils upon its one thousand two hundred acres are under highly qualified teachers paid by the French Government. The German academies and experimental stations are also endowed by their governments. In Ireland, again, our own Government has founded agricultural schools. Anunendowed agricultural school, founded in 1821 at Bannow, Wexford, only lived seven years. But since that time the Commissioners of National Education have made agricultural training schools part of their system. The chief of these training schools is at Glasnevin, where there are also thirty acres of botanic garden; and a year ago the Museum of Irish Industry was reconstructed and opened on a seven years' probation as a Government school of science with a department of agriculture. Our English college, founded six and twenty years since, not by Government, but by working farmers, when a fashion had come up for recognising the new need of scientific training to their business, has not received one farthing of public money. It had to find its own way in the world, and paid so heavily for the experience by which it profits now, that there is a charge to be met of some twelve hundred a year, interest on debt incurred in its young days. For the last twenty years the college has paid this out of its earnings, while providing liberally from the same source for the minds and bodies of its students. Abandoning illusions and endeavours to achieve desirable impossibilities, it has attained a degree of efficiency which brings visitors from France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, and the United States to look into its system. It draws pupils also from distant parts of the old world and of the new. To this condition of a widely recognised efficiency the Farmers' College has attained, and it is working on towards yet higher attainable results. The number of students has, of late years, been steadily rising, and now mounts to seventy, which is within ten of the largest number that can be accommodated in the handsome gothic building set up by the sanguine founders of the institution. In a few years there will not be room for all applicants. A case in its natural history museum shows how greatly the yield of wheat may be improved by the use of picked seed. When there can be a preliminary examination for the picking of the best prepared and aptest minds, and more or less exclusion of the weak and idle, the tillage of brains in the Cirencester College, already so successful, will show finer and more uniform results. British farming always has been in the front rank of that form of industry. A Book of Husbandry, written more than three centuries ago by one of Henry the Eighth's judges of the Common Pleas, at a time when cultivated herbage and edible roots were unknown in England, is said to contain little that is not permanently true about the cultivation of corn, and clearly to point out errors of practice which have been transmitted from the untaught father to his untaught son, even to this day, in some English districts. Twenty-three years after the printing of that book of Fitzherbert's, husbandry came to honour of verse in Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, a book which indicates many a then recent increase to our agricultural wealth. Hops, introduced early in the century, had become a common crop; hemp and flax also were common crops; and carrots, cabbages, turnips, and rape, were grown for the kitchen. Clover, and probably also turnips, came to England in the reign of Charles the First, through Sir Richard Weston, who had been ambassador to the Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia, and who wrote a discourse on the husbandry of Brabant and Flanders. In sixteen 'eighty-four we have the first notice of turnips as a food for sheep; but even at the time when George the Third came to the throne, clover and turnips, essential as they are to the modern farming system, were scarcely cultivated by our common farmers in the north. It was at the end of the Stuart time, when we first begin to hear of the sheep eating turnips, that potatoes began to attract attention. Raleigh, who brought the plant from Virginia, had established it in Ireland, thence it had passed into Lancashire, where, at the end of the reign of Charles the Second, we learn "they are very numerous, and now they begin to spread all the kingdom over. They are a pleasant food, boiled or roasted, and eaten with butter and sugar." Population increased, commerce and the arts added continually to the wealth and power of the nation, farms were enlarged, and so much new land was brought into use, that whereas before the reign of George the Third the whole number of enclosure bills that had been passed was only two hundred and forty-four, there were passed within that reign more than three thousand. In seventeen 'seventy-seven the Bath and West of England Society, for the encouragement of "Agriculture, Arts, Manufacture, and Commerce," came into existence, and began to hold its meetings. It met to exhibit breeding stock and implements, and offered premiums for reports on subjects affecting agriculture in the West of England. Six years later, that is to say, in seventeen 'eighty-three, the " Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland" was instituted, for the encouragement of Highland Agriculture, Fisheries, and Commerce. This was the year in which the country was relieved of the baneful pressure of the American War. It was the time, also, of Robert Bakewell's fame as an improver of the breeds of sheep and cattle. His improvement upon the long-horned cattle has been superseded by the application of his own principles to the short-horn or Durham breed; but the new race of sheep that he perfected, the Leicesters, still adds to the wealth of the country. The Bakewells of Cirencester go a step farther, and are for the intellectual breeding of an improved race of farmers. What is called alternate husbandry, alternation of green crops with grain crops, came also in those days into use. In seventeen 'eightyeight the Swede turnip was accidentally discovered, and soon was in general cultivation. Swing ploughs and threshing machines were no longer rarities. Five years after the discovery of the Swede turnip a National Board of Agriculture" was established, and remained alive for twenty years, collecting statistical information and drawing up special surveys, documents which would have been more serviceable if they had been less extensive and less expensive. Agriculture next throve upon blood manure in the wars of the French Revolution. Scientific farming may be said to have begun in the first year of the last century, when Mr. Jethro Tull, a Berkshire gentleman, reasoned to himself that plants feed on minute particles of earth taken up by their rootlets, and, therefore, began sowing his crops in rows or drills, so wide apart as to admit of tillage by plough and hoe in the intervals. His purpose was to break up the soil into what he called "pasture" for the roots, and to eradicate the weeds which would steal part of "this terrestrial matter." He formed his land into broad ridges, with two or three rows of his crop upon each, then used horse-hoeing between the ridges and hand-hoeing between the rows. Jethro Tull was a generation ahead of his time, and his book upon Horse-hoeing Husbandry, produced vehement controversy. But in our own day his reputation has come up and ripened. His book appeared in seventeen 'thirty-one, eight years after the formation of our first Agricultural Society-"the Society of Improvers on the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland." The Earl of Stair, one of its most active members, Seventeen 'ninety-five brought us a deficient is said to have been the first man who grew harvest, and Napoleon's cutting off of our turnips in Scotland. He had a turnip head. supply of foreign grain. The price of wheat But this society also was before its time, and was nearly doubled. Upon this followed the lived only for twenty years. Mr. Maxwell, Bank Restriction Act, suspending cash payanother of its active members, who gave lec-ments, and introducing unlimited speculation tures upon agriculture, published at its death a volume of its Select Transactions, and in that volume occurs the first mention of a threshing machine. It was patented, worked by water power, and recommended by the society as enabling one man to do the work of six. upon credit. The high price of wheat stimulated farmers to produce as much of it as possible, by improving arable land, reclaiming wastes, and ploughing up their pastures; the green crop of the new system of alternate busbandry more than compensating for the pasturThe Royal Dublin Society, founded in 1737, ages thus withdrawn. This lasted for twenty had for one object the encouragement of agri-years. Wheat that in the preceding twenty years culture. It still holds an annual cattle show, and has of late years established an Order of Associates in Agriculture. Holders of it are entitled to wear blue blossoms of speedwell in their button-holes. had sold for less than fifty shillings a quarter, rose till in eighteen hundred and twelve it came to one hundred and twenty-six shillings. The people suffered but the farmers throve, and agriculture made rapid advances. Within that period of twenty years the rental of land in Scotland advanced from two million to five million and a quarter. Since that terrible war period there has been rapid and great increase of population asking to be fed, there has been great increase of wealth and great increase of knowledge. Law has struck off fetters with which it had crippled enterprise. The steam engine was first applied to a threshing machine in eighteen hundred and three; there were several machines so worked fifteen or eighteen years later. Steam on the farm, steam on the railway, making transit of stock easy, the marvellous development of mechanical inventions, and a still more marvellous development of the great science of organic chemistry, which has given a true basis to the practice of farming, have secured during the present century the progress of agriculture; although the majority of farmers, scattered over the land in much inevitable isolation from the great collective life of men, have kept pace slowly with the movements of their day. Society had been formed in 'thirty-seven; the Sir Humphrey Davy was the first chemist who took a real hold upon the agricultural mind, and this was when, in eighteen 'twelve, he lectured before the Board of Agriculture, and showed that agricultural chemistry had for its study all changes in the arrangements of matter connected with the growth and nourishment of plants; the comparative values of their produce as food; the constituents of soils; the manner in which lands are nourished by manure, or rendered fertile by the different processes of cultivation. But the great stir in this direction began with the publication, in eighteen 'forty, of Baron Liebig's work on They proceeded accordingly to wait upon Chemistry in its application to Agriculture and landowners and occupiers; upon their own Physiology. Liebig's writings obtained a re- particular great man at Oakley Park, Earl markably wide popularity. Everybody con- Bathurst, and upon the other chief men of the cerned in the management of farms was bitten district. They held meetings also at various by Liebig, and talked potash and nitrogenous market towns. Mr. Brown gave nearly the manure. It was the fashion to believe that whole of the next year to the work he had this great chemist had found the master key to begun. At a public meeting held in Cirencesagricultural success. There was a wholesome ter in April, 'forty-four, it was moved by an little mania for agricultural chemistry. The earl-the late Earl Ducie-and seconded by a most wonderful immediate results of all kinds tenant farmer, that an institution ought to be were expected from what Liebig called offering provided in which "The rising generation of a small piece of the philosopher's stone as an farmers may receive instruction at a moderate oblation to the God of the Dunghill. But expense in those sciences a knowledge of which when these immediate results didn't follow, the is essential to successful cultivation, and that a more empty of those who had gone with the farm form part of such institution." crowd turned back. Nevertheless an impulse Lord Bathurst offered a farm of more than four had been given to true progress in the right hundred acres for a long term of years, and an direction. In eighteen 'forty-two a body of adjacent building site for ninety-nine years; a Mid Lothian tenant farmers started an "Agri- society was formed for the establishment and cultural Chemistry Association," and employed management of an agricultural college, the ina chemist to conduct experiments for them. terest of noblemen and landowners in distant Their zeal died out in a few years, but the parts of the kingdom was raised to subscription Highland Agricultural Society kept up the point, and a proposed capital of twelve thousand chemical researches. The Agricultural College pounds was thus obtained. In March, 'fortyat Cirencester originated in the same way in the five, a charter of incorporation was secured; but same year 'forty-two. There was not only the as it was now found that twelve thousand pounds Liebig mania in all its freshness and strength, would not do all that was expected to be done, but the tendency to work by association was it was provided by the deed of settlement that then strengthening among the farmers as this capital should be doubled. Additional among other bodies of men. The Yorkshire exertions did not quite succeed in doubling it, Then |