tervals, from daybreak until nearly the dusk of evening, during which we had made good our advance towards Arrah several miles, in the face of all opposition. Our band consisted of 160 of H. M. 5th Fusileers, 13 volunteers, and 36 gunners with three field guns; while opposed to us were an armed multitude having three of the best fighting regiments in the native army for their nucleus. It was no easy matter to succeed in such an enterprise; yet more easy, perhaps, and certainly far more to a soldier's taste, than battling in the field of literature, as I am now doing, in defence of whatever reputation may have been (I hope not undeservedly) acquired by myself and coadjutors.

It happened, a few days after this battle, that the course of events took the same force, under the same leader, to encounter one of the most formidable chiefs of the mutiny, in his jungle stronghold at Jugdespore, and, in reporting the successful result of our operations, Captain L'Estrange expressed himself as follows:-" Under all the "circumstances, a feeling of doubt, if "not of apprehension, as to the success

"of our expedition, might have pervaded

I troops less confident than ours were "in the judgment, talent, and courage "of our leader."

Had the "Competition Wallah's" story been literally true, such a feeling of confidence as that here described could scarcely have existed.

Should these explanations be found inconveniently long, it may be urged in extenuation that, while it requires only a very few words to make an erroneous assertion, it can seldom be refuted effectually without entering into minute details. A soldier's best and often his only wealth is his reputation, which must be beyond suspicion. Probably few military men, with their correct ideas of discipline, will have been misled in this matter; and I hope that those of my friends who deemed some explanation desirable may now be satisfied, and that the general reader will not grudge the space occupied by so stale a topic.

ATHENEUM CLUB,

January 8th, 1864.

V. E.

BY HENRY KINGSLEY, AUTHOR OF

CHAPTER XXIII.

JAMES BURTON'S STORY: THE HILLYARS AND THE BURTONS AMONG THE TOMBS.

My brother Joe had at one time made a distinct request to my father that he should learn the trade, in which he was backed up by my mother, for the rather inscrutable reason that any trade was better than coopering. It was a perfectly undeniable proposition, but was somewhat uncalled-for, because the question with Joe was not between smithwork and cooper-work, but between hand-work and head-work-whether he should become an artizan or a scholar.

It was that busybody Emma that persuaded him in the end, of course, by quietly depreciating me, and by flattering Joe's intellect. During the time that the matter was in debate, she assumed a pensive air, and used to heave little sighs when she looked at Joe, and was so misguided once as to dust a chair I had been sitting in.

After this I was taken with a sudden affection for her, and, having made my face seven times dirtier than usual, had embraced her tenderly. I also put a cinder in her tea, which brought matters to a crisis, for we both burst out laughing; and I called her a stuck-up humbug, which thing she acknowledged with graceful humility, and before I had time to turn round had made me promise to add my persuasion to hers, and persuade Joe to become a scholar.

I did so, and turned the scale.
No. 54.-VOL. IX.

Joe

continued at school, first as pupil, and secondly as an underteacher, until he was sixteen, at which time it became apparent to Mr. Faulkner that Joe,was giving promise of becoming a very first-rate man indeed.

He expressed this opinion to Mr. Compton, who called upon him one day for the purpose of asking him his opinion. of Joe. A very few days after he came to my father, and said that Sir George Hillyar begged to take the liberty of advising that Mr. Joseph Burton should remain where he was a short time longer;. after which Sir George "would have great pleasure in undertaking to provide employment for those extraordinary talents which he appeared to be developing."

"Well," said Joe, with a radiant face ; "if this ain't-I mean is not-the most ex-tra-awdinary, I ever."

I said that I never didn't, neither. My father whistled, and looked seriously and inquiringly at Mr. Compton.

"I don't know why," answered Mr. Compton, just as if my father had spoken. "Erne's —, I mean," continued he, with a stammer, at which Miss Emma got as red as fire, "I mean Erne's friend's brother there, Reuben's cousin-Law bless you! fifty ways of accounting for it. But, as for knowing anything, I don't, and, what is more, old Morton the keeper don't know, and, when he don't know, why, you know, who is to?"

"Certainly, sir," said my father. "So

G G

old Morton he don't know nothink, don't he? Well! Well!"

However, this was very good news indeed. We should have Joe with us for some time longer, and the expectation of the first loss to the family circle was lying somewhat heavy on our hearts. And then, when he did leave us, it would be with such splendid prospects. My mother said it would not in the least surprise her to see Joe in a draper's shop of his own-which idea was scornfully scouted by the rest of us, who had already made him prime minister. In the meantime I was very anxious to see Erne and thank him, and to know why Miss Emma should have blushed in that way.

Erne evidently wanted to see me for some purpose also, for he wrote to me to ask me to meet him at the old place the next Sunday afternoon.

The "old place" was a bench which stood in front of Sir Thomas More's monument, close to the altar rails of the old church. We promised that we would all come and meet him there.

It is so long ago since we began to go to the old church, on Sunday afternoon in winter, and in the evening in summer, that I cannot attempt to fix the date. It had grown to be a habit when I was very, very young, for I remember that church with me used at one time to mean the old church, and that I used to consider the attendance on the new St. Luke's, in Robert Street, more as a dissipation, than an act of devotion.

My mother tells me that she used first to take me there about so and someaning a period when I was only about fourteen months old. My mother is a little too particular in her dates, and her chronology is mainly based on a system of rapidly - recurring eras: a system which, I notice, is apt to spread confusion and dismay among the ladies of the highly-genteel rank to which we have elevated ourselves. However, to leave mere fractions of time, of no real importance, to take care of themselves, she must have taken me to the old church almost as soon as my retina began to carry images to my brain, for I can remember Lord and Lady Dacre, with

their dogs at their feet, before I can remember being told by Mrs. Quickly, that the doctor had been for a walk round the parsley bed, and had brought me a little brother from among the gooseberry bushes: which was her metaphorical way of announcing the fact of my brother Joe's birth.

At first, I remember, I used to think that all the statues were of the nature of Guy Fawkes, and were set up there to atone for sins committed in the flesh. From this heretical and pagan frame of mind I was rescued by learning to read; and then I found that these images and monuments were not set up for warning, but for example. I began to discover that these people who had died, and had their monuments set up here, were, by very long odds, the best people who ever lived. I was, for a time, puzzled about those who had their epitaphs written in Latin, I confess. Starting on the basis, that every word in every epitaph was strictly true, I soon argued myself into the conclusion that the Latin epitaphs were written in that language for the sake of sparing the feelings of the survivors; and that they were the epitaphs of people about whom there was something queer, or, at all events, something better reserved for the deci sion of the scholastic few who understood Latin. At a very early age I became possessed with the idea that when Mrs. Quickly died it would become necessary, for the sake of public morality, to write her epitaph in Latin. I can't tell you how I came to think so. I never for a moment doubted that such an excellent and amiable woman would have a very large tomb erected to her by a grateful country; but I never for a moment doubted that it would become necessary to have a Latin inscription on it.

But conceive how I was astonished by finding, when I was a great fellow, that the Latin inscriptions were quite as complimentary as the English. Joe translated a lot of them for me. It was quite evident that such people as the Chelsea people never lived. So far from Latin being used with a view of hiding

any little faux pas of the eminent deceased from the knowledge of the tenpound householders, it appeared that the older language had been used merely because the miserable bastard patois, which Sakespeare was forced to use, but which Johnson very properly rejected with decision, was utterly unfit to express the various virtues of these wonderful Chelsea people, of whom, with few exceptions, no one ever heard. It used to strike me, however, that, among the known or the unknown, Sir Thomas More was the most obstinately determined that posterity should hear his own account of himself.

My opinion always was, that the monuments which were in the best state were those of the Hillyars and of the Duchess of Northumberland. There are no inscriptions on these, with the exception of the family names. The members of the family are merely represented kneeling one behind the other with their names-in the one case above their heads, in the other, on a brass beneath. The Dacres, with their dogs at their feet, are grand; but, on the whole, give me the Hillyars, kneeling humbly, with nothing to say for themselves. Let the Dacres carry their pride and their dogs to the grave with them if they see fit; let them take their braches, and lie down to wait for judgment. Honest John Hillyar will have no dogs, having troubles enough beside. He and his family prefer to kneel, with folded hands, until the last trump sound from the East, or until Chelsea Church crumble into dust.

I always loved that monument better than any in Chelsea Old Church. 'Tis a good example of a mural monument of that time, they say, but they have never seen it on a wild autumn afternoon, when the sun streams in on it from the south-west, lights it up for an instant, and then sends one long ray quivering up the wall to the roof, and dies. What do they know about the monument at such a time as that? Still less do they know of the fancies that a shock-headed, stupid blacksmith's boy

-two of whose brothers were poets, and whose rant he used to hear-used to build up in his dull brain about it, as he sat year after year before it, until the kneeling figures became friends to him.

For I made friends of them in a way. They were friends of another world. I found out enough to know that they were the images of a gentleman and his family who had lived in our big house in Church Street three hundred years ago; and, sitting by habit in the same place, Sunday after Sunday, they became to me real and actual persons, who were as familiar to me as our neighbours, and yet who were dead and gone to heaven or hell three hundred years before-people who had twenty years' experience of the next world to show, where I had one to show of this present life; people who had solved the great difficulty, and who could tell me all about it, if they would only turn their heads and speak. Yes, these Hillyars became real people to me, and I, in a sort of way, loved them.

I gave them names in my own head. I loved two of them. On the female side I loved the little wee child, for whom there was very small room, and who was crowded against the pillar, kneeling on the skirts of the last of her big sisters. And I loved the big lad who knelt directly behind his father, between the knight himself, and the two little brothers, dressed so very like blue-coat boys, such quaint little fellows as they were.

I do not think that either Joe or Emma ever cared much about this tomb or its effigies. Though we three sat there together so very often for several winters, I do not think it ever took their attention very much; and I, being a silent lad, never gave loose to my fancies about that family monument even to them. I used to find, in the burst of conversation which always follows the release of young folks from church, that we all three, like most young people, had not attended to the sermon at all; but that our idle fancies, on those wild winter afternoons,

had rambled away in strangely different directions. I always used to sit between the two others, upright, with my head nearly against the little shield which carries the date, "Anno, 1539." Soon after the sermon had begun I used to find that Joe's great head was heavy on one shoulder, while Emma had laid her cheek quietly against the other, and had stolen her hand into mine. And so we three would sit, in a pyramidal group, of which I was the centre, dreaming.

I used to find that Joe would be building fancies of the dead who lay around us, of what they had done, and of what they might have done, had God allowed them to foresee the consequences of their actions; but that Emma had been listening to the rush of the winter wind among the tombs outside, and the lapping of the winter tide upon the shore-thinking of those who were tossed far away upon stormy seas, only less pitiless than the iron coast on which they burst in their cruel fury.

I cannot tell how often, or how long, we three sat there. But I know that the monument had a new interest to me after I made Erne Hillyar's acquaintance, and began to realize that the kneeling figures there were his ancestors. I tried then to make Erne the living take his place, in my fancy, among the images of his dead forefathers and uncles; but it was a failure. He would not come in at all. So then I began trying to make out which of them he was most like; but he wasn't a bit like any one of them. They none of them would look round at you with their heads a little on one side, and their great blue-black eyes wide open, and their lips half-parted as though to wait for what you were going to say. These ancestors of his were but brass after all, and knelt one behind the other looking at the backs of one another's heads. Erne would not fit in among them by any means.

But one day, one autumn afternoon, as I sat with Emma on one side, and Joe on the other, with my back to Sir

Thomas More's tomb and my face to Sir John Hillyar's, thinking of these things, I got a chance of comparing the living with the dead. For, when the sermon was half way through, I heard the little door, which opens straight from the windy wharf into the quiet chancel, opened stealthily; and, looking round, I saw that Erne had come in, and was sending those big eyes of his ranging all over the church to look for something which was close by all the time. I saw him stand close to me, for a minute, moving his noble head from side to side as he peered about him, like an emu who has wandered into a stockyard; but, as soon as he had swept the horizon, and had brought his eyes to range nearer home, he saw me. And then he smiled, and I knew that he had come to find us.

And after service we walked out together. And the sexton let us into that quiet piece of the churchyard which overlooks the river, and we stood there long into the twilight, talking together as we leant against the low wall. Erne stood upon the grave of the poor Hillyar girl who had died in our house, as his habit was, talking to me and looking at Emma. The time went so quick that it was dark before we got home; but we all discovered that it was a very capital way of having a talk together, and so, without any arrangement at all, we found ourselves there again very often Once Emma and I went along with Frank; but Frank, having eaten a dinner for six, went to sleep, and not only went to sleep but had the nightmare, in a manner scandalously audible to the whole congregation, in the first lesson. Emma had to take him out, and, when I came out at the end of the service, I found that Erne and Emma were toge ther by the river-wall, and no one else but Frank. He had seen her coming out, and had stayed with her for company. It was very kind of him, and I told him so. He called me an old fool.

The Sunday afternoon on which we were to meet Erne was a wild and gusty one, the wind sweeping drearily along the shore, and booming and rush