States, the great fact now of importance is the action of Delaware and Missouri-as well as Marylandborder Slave States, since Lincoln's Emancipation Prodamation. In the face of that, their elections have gone in unrestrained ballot largely for the Union, and for the policy of the President. So would Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, if free elections had been held. Even yet, however, demagogism is not dead in some parts of the Northand it threatens chaos. We think we ought to have the God-speed of all honest men to aid our deliverance from it, for England's sake, and for the world's sake, as well as our own. We regard it as a question, not whether the South shall secede or not from the North, but whether the South shall ride over and ruin the whole progress and civilisation of the country, or whether like a maniac broken loose in a rage, it shall be disarmed, and checked, and held, until it may again move' clothed, and in its right mind.' We do not see how a separation could be settled upon, or where, in the absence of natural, or race, or even institutional boundaries (since the Union border now is slaveholding), its line could be fixed; and we do see, that even if in the end some such a compromise, some recognition of another confederacy should have to come after the war, it will only really end the war, not to recommence immediately, if the slave-power which began it shall have been humbled and essentially disarmed. If the English knew well the Southern character, they would wish no other result.

Now, my dear friend, I know that you have, as you deserve to have, a great influence; I would wish, however, even if you had none whatever, that one in England, for whom I have such an attachment as time and distance cannot destroy, should at least not be without such information and assurances as I could furnish, to prevent his judging too unfavourably of my country in this its fearful crisis. Please to forgive, therefore, my illustrating the 'spread eagle' so largely, since I really am much in earnest.

It appears to us that all our correspondent's pleadings regarding the origin of Secession and the character of Secessionists would be with little hesitation conceded in England. As too often happens in controversy, the English view of the subject appears to be perseveringly ignored, or has never been apprehended in America. The English mind looks to the actual state of the case, as divided interests and war have made it. It sees one portion of the country determined for separation and independence, and as yet able to maintain itself in its new position against all the force which the residuary states have been able to bring against it. Be it right or be it wrong, here is a great fact, inferring that either the war on the part of the North is a dreadful and sanguinary war, waged in vain, or one that, at the best, will end in the subjugation, if not extermination of the one people by the other. England, not feeling the importance of the political end in view-the maintenance of a certain vast amount of territory in one government -seeing no reason why two great states should not co-exist on a territory such as in Europe is divided among a dozen, with no better boundaries-is unable to justify the carrying on of a destructive war for such a purpose; on the contrary, deprecates and deplores it, and would fain see it cease by the withdrawal of the northern armies. Such really is the English view mainly. If Federal Americans are to dispute on the subject with England, they should take up this view, and, if they can, shew its fallacy: they are but wasting breath in declaiming on any other point.

A candid American should meanwhile see that England is only exercising a natural right in forming her own opinion on the merits of the war. He might further be called upon to admit that England, whatever her opinion, has maintained a perfect neutrality

throughout the contest, notwithstanding powerful temptations to mingle in it. But apparently it is vain, while the war lasts, to expect that any conduct whatever on the part of a nation which does not take their part, or pronounce in their favour, is to be judged justly by Unionist Americans. Their reception of the news that England refused to join France in a mediation which would have virtually been a declaration for the South, was with equal comicality and truth anticipated by Punch.

Special incidents in the war, such as Butler's infamous' conduct at New Orleans, M'Neil's shooting of the ten innocent prisoners, the suspension of liberty of speech in the North itself, are viewed in England as but the necessary consequences of the false position into which the American government has been brought by a war which it would have been better (as far as can be seen) never to have waged. We can respond to one of the remarks of our correspondent as to the real attachment on the part of America to England. We thoroughly believe that, underneath all the fury expressed by the Trains and the Clays, there is an affection for England in the American heart. Let us go on to say that England-though she has often winced under American menace and abuse in the past, was not too well treated by America when her own back was at the wall in 1854-5, and must continue to think the present war a Great Mistake-has never ceased to feel a proud interest in the progress of the transatlantic republic, as mainly an extension of her own grand nationality, and would be truly happy to felicitate her on a restoration of the Union as it was, if that she could deem possible.

THE LAST OF THE ROUSING STAVES. THE instruments of church-discipline which came into use after the Reformation had banished bell, book, and candle from the Protestant half of Europe, were many and various. From Geneva to Stockholm, the first, and almost the second century of Protestantism were distinguished not only by stiff controversy, high-handed intolerance, and matchless resolution to do or suffer, but also by singular ingenuity in the methods of clerical government. Church books and parish records prove that something very like inquisitorial superintendence of both morals and orthodoxy was generally practised; and setting aside Geneva, where Calvin and his Institutes reigned without opposition, the northern lands seem to have excelled all others in devices for keeping the laity in order. They certainly did excel in strict Sabbaths and long sermons.

Scotland has been credited with a pre-eminence in those respects: her kirk laws against the hoods, under which inattentive ladies might drop asleep before the fifth doctrine was raised, and the compurgators, duly sent forth in search of Sunday walkers, evince that the credit was not given without cause. But still further north-that is to say, in Denmark and Sweden-there was a mode of keeping people wide-awake in their pews authorised by the ruling powers, and in general use as late as thirty years ago. The instruments of attention to which we refer were called the Rousing Staves. They consisted of two long sticks, with round knobs at the end, neither very light nor smooth; and with each or both of them the clocker or beadle of northern churches, a man in considerable authority, had a right to punch or poke up any person who might appear to be sleeping during the long Lutheran service. The rousing staves were an institution much dreaded, and often complained of, particularly by the fairer part of congregations, as a spiteful clocker could make them tell with

some effect on fragile pieces of finery in the shape of caps and bonnets. The danger in which those treasured articles stood was believed to keep many an eye from closing. Clockers in the north have much the same repute as beadles among ourselves, but like everything long murmured against, the rousing staves were at length put out of use, and consigned to the curiosity department of old churches, where they may still be seen by inquiring travellers. The incident which led to their dismissal from public service in Sweden, is said to have occurred in the following

manner.

The large isle of Gottland, lying out in the Baltic between Russia and Sweden, and a province of the latter since the days of the Teutonic Knights, is considered the Devonshire and Montpellier of the north, because wheat can be grown there, walnut trees come to fruit, and the apples of the isle are famous on all the Baltic shores. Yet Gottland boasts only one town, the old and ruinous Wisby, one of those channels of commerce from which the stream has turned away for centuries, leaving it literally, as well as metaphorically, high and dry on the ridge of a rocky steep rising boldly from the Baltic, and overlooking landward a district of fertile farms and orchards. Before London had attained the wealth and magnitude of her Tower Hamlets, Wisby was the Venice of the north, through which the trade of the famous Hanse Towns with Novgorod and the East flowed in full tide, filling its streets with business, and its harbour with ships. But the eastern trade waned away from Novgorod and the Hanse Towns as more southern ways were discovered, and finally flitted in the beginning of the seventeenth century, moving first to Holland, and afterwards to England. Amsterdam and Rotterdam, London and Bristol, grew rich and great by that traffic, while Wisby's harbour got deserted and half choked with sand; its streets became grass-grown, its fortifications fell to mossy ruins, and itself settled into the obscurity of a small, quiet, out-of-the-world place, where news and fashions came late, and everybody had plenty of time for his own business, and a good deal for his neighbour's too.

The town had reached the dullest of its days about thirty years ago; a faint revival has supervened since then; steam has brought trade and travellers to every corner of the Baltic; but at the time referred to, the population of Wisby had decreased to a few hundreds, thinly scattered among its once busy streets, many of which had been turned to fields and gardens. Its shipping consisted of two or three smacks, plying between it and the mainland of Sweden, a voyage of some fifty miles; and one or two merchantmen, which went down the Sound as far as Hamburg, and up the Gulf as far as Petersburg. Wealth and speculation had departed from it; but the old town could shew, as it can to this day, many a row of empty and decaying warehouses, many a strongly built and quaintly ornamented mansion, the dwellings of princely merchants, or the halls of powerful guilds, and many a stately church of the true medieval mould, rich and Gothic carving, tombs of famous northern men, and memorials of the great Hanseatic time. Some of their choirs sufficiently accommodated the congrega, tion; some of them had neither minister nor people; but decidedly the best attended and most fashionable in Wisby was the Teuton Church, an edifice built by the Teutonic Knights in the fourteenth century, when they were lords of Gottland, and in friendly relations with the Hanse Towns. It had suffered least from time and decay, was known to be the warmest-a consideration in Swedish winters-had the best living attached to it, was believed to get the best preacher, and had a man for its clocker named Job Stork.

Whoever bestowed his baptismal name upon him, had not done so from foreknowledge, for Job was as destitute of the virtue of patience as any clocker could

be; but his surname was singularly appropriate to the high and solitary life he had led for fifty years in the old church-tower, where the hospitality of the Teutonic order had fitted up two small rooms for the entertainment of travellers. The time of such comers was long over in Wisby; the clocker, being an unmarried man, not afraid of silence and solitude, devoted to the care of the church, and sure of its tower standing against all the Baltic storms, got the two rooms to dwell in, and made his nest there as high as any stork in the north. Such guest-chambers are to be found in many of the old Swedish churches; they were mainly intended for the accommodation of travelling clergy, and were not uncomfortable lodgings, as the old world went; but nobody in all Wisby would have chosen to dwell so high and lonely above church and churchyard except Job Stork. From the uppermost windows, people could see the smoke of his solitary fire rise through the still air when winter days were clear and frosty. Nightly passengers on the quiet streets caught the gleam of his candle far up, like a twinkling star. There Job lived, unlike his winged namesake, without companion and without visitors. The man was old, not rich, and a clocker; his duties, or his mode of performing them, made him no friends; nobody cared to climb up the long, corkscrew stairs which led to his habitation but Axel Stronzberg, and being mate of one of the merchantmen, he was in town only at mid-winter, when hard frost closes the Sound, and suspends the navigation of the Baltic.

and

Axel was not alone Job's only visitor, but his only friend, the one being, out of all mankind, for whom the clocker had care or kindness, and the only one from whom he got any. The merchantman's mate, unusual as such cases are in Sweden, was the only son of the minister under whom Job came into office-the great Dr Stronzberg, as he was accustomed to call him, a man of some note in his time and place for hard controversial preaching and deep scholarship in Lutheran theology. Moreover, he had been Job's patron and friend, got him made clocker, stood by him in all his disputes with the women and boys of the congregation for too early closing of doors, and too ready use of the rousing staves; and Job alone was aware of the doctor's efforts to make a minister and successor of his son. If not well directed, they had been energetic; but young hearts are often too strong for old heads. Axel would not be a scholar, would not be a divine-disliked learning of all kinds except navigation, being bent on a sailor's life; after three unwilling reclamations from his chosen course, finally ran away at the legal age, and apprenticed himself to the captain of the merchantman. The old minister said it was plainly the work of Providence, though he had not found it out before. Axel might not have made a good preacher, but he would make a good sailor, and should have his blessing if he deserved it, which, except his theological books, was all Dr Stronzberg had to leave. They were both left to Axel in process of time. The doctor slept beside his predecessors in the ministers' corner of the churchyard. There was great difficulty in satisfying the congregation with his successor; they had been used to such high preaching, and become such judges of sound doctrine. The bishop got sundry appeals and objections to answer; but at length the Rev. Joshian Skram, a student of Lund, and a preacher of repute for stiff divinity, was comfortably settled among them, took possession of manse and pulpit, and being a bachelor, was expected to choose a spouse out of his flock.

That just and reasonable expectation seemed in the fair way of fulfilment before the Rev. Joshian was quite warm in his parish. The great merchants and noble families of Wisby's wealthy days were now to be heard of only through their tombs and escutcheons; but the town had its

rank, fashion, and beauty, nevertheless, and in the Teuton Church all these were represented by the Gripals. Their parent stock had come from the province of Wermland, in continental Sweden; in Wisby, they were corn-merchants, and throve by the business. The last head of the family had left a widow with four sons and two daughters, all well provided for the sons in the corn-trade, the daughters with good portions of rix-dollars. As corn was almost the only trade Wisby had, and portioned girls were rather rare in its bounds, the Gripals stood high in their neighbours' esteem as well as their own. The four sons, being the elders of the house, had all married into families both influential and numerous; the Gripals' connection, therefore, mustered strong. The widow was as proud a dame as Wisby had ever held in the time of its Hanseatic grandeur: one of her ancestors had been magistrate in Wermland; her family bomark or crest was a ship in full sail; she had silver-plate and jewellery beyond the most of the towns-people, a house of her own, without one decayed timber in it, though its wooden walls had stood against the storms of two hundred winters, being built for an ancient burgomaster; but the widow's chief wealth and pride were believed to be her two well-portioned, yet unmarried daughters. Gertrude, the eldest, was a model of Gottland prudence and industry; her housekeeping powers, and the linen she had spun, were things not to be pretended to by any young lady in Wisby, though most of them knew, and were not apt to let slip out of people's memories, that Gertrude had a considerable squint, a sour look, and a sharp tongue. To her younger sister, Kerin, nature and inclination had assigned triumphs of a different order: her golden hair, fair rosy face, and bright blue eyes, made the girl a true type of northern beauty; she was the pearl of all the Gripals, and the belle of the Teuton Church. The one sister being useful, and the other ornamental, serious people might have expected that the young minister's eye-if it did turn to the Gripals' pew-should rest on the invaluable Gertrude; but serious people are sometimes out in their calculations, for in spite of the housekeeping and the linen, not to speak of other suitabilities, it became manifest, as such things do, to the entire congregation, that the Rev. Joshian had lost his heart to the pretty Kerin. The widow had been consulted on the subject, and had no objections-what Gottland lady could object to a minister? Everybody was surprised, everybody talked about it, and at length everybody agreed that the Rev. Joshian could do nothing better.

There were two dissenters, however, from that general verdict, but being interested parties, their votes would have counted for nothing, if they had ventured to make them public, which could not be done with propriety, for the one was Job Stork, and the other was Axel Stronzberg. Axel had been a minister's son, was a rising young man, and mate of the merchant-ship in which the Gripals sent their best paying ventures down the Gulf and up the Sound. All winter, when the Baltic passes were closed, he sat in the Teuton Church; and these considerations had been sufficient to make him and Kerin acquainted. Her family had known and partly acknowledged Axel too. Like all old-fashioned and decaying places, Wisby was particularly wanting in eligible young men. The widow and the entire connection had concluded that Axel might come to be captain of the ship, and Kerin might do worse than think of him; so he had been tacitly encouraged, allowed to make friendly calls at the Gripals' house, asked to their coffee and supper parties, and permitted to do all manner of little business for the family. Job Stork hated the Gripals cordially, and with all his heart, for, being high and mighty in the church and town, they set at nought his clocker authority; made him open the door to them, though full five minutes late; insisted on

having their pots of live-charcoal brought out and in on the winter Sundays, to the display of their grandeur, and the eclipse of his; and they had even been heard to say, that they would sleep, if they thought proper, in spite of him and the rousing staves. The war between them was old, and often renewed. In Dr Stronzberg's time, Job generally got the best of it, and would have triumphed exultingly, but for Axel's sake.

When it became evident to the trusty clocker that his patron's son, and the only friend his crusty old heart had left to cling to, was thinking seriously of widow Gripal's pretty daughter, and also that Kerin, with her beauty and her rix-dollars, was smiling on his serious thoughts, the Gripals were one and all taken into Job's particular favour; their high mightiness, their pots of live-charcoal, and even their threatenings to sleep, received a toleration never before accorded; the clocker actually bowed down before them, made haste to open the door, though the five minutes had more than elapsed, and never looked at their pew when the sermon happened to be long and the weather heavy. Job had his hopes, for Axel had taken him into confidence. The minister's son and merchantman's mate had no one else to confide in; his father had been a stranger in the town, having come direct from Upsala, and people remain strangers long in those out-of-the-way corners of the north. His own life, spent mostly on the Baltic waves, had given him some acquaintances, but no friends in Wisby except the clocker. To Job, therefore, were imparted his hopes and fears, chances and calculations, the tokens for good which Kerin and her family vouchsafed to him. They were of the tacit and intangible kind with her, as well as with the rest of the Gripals; for Kerin, like most acknowledged belles, was a bit of a coquette, thought a good deal of Axel, did not believe there was anybody else in the world whom she could marry, but expected more worship and service, courtship and hanging-on, than the honest sailor was disposed to give even to the pearl of the Gripals. Up in those old tower-rooms, fitted up by the Teutonic Knights for their travelling priests and brothers, Job and he discussed the pros and cons of his prospects many a long winter evening. The young man was sometimes driven to the very borders of despair by the flights and fancies of his idol. There is nothing like a spoiled young woman for trying a man's patience; but the old clocker believed in the fortunate destiny of his minister's son, had omens and dreams on the subject sufficient to cheer up the most desponding lover, and held fast his happy auguries after the young minister was fairly settled in manse and pulpit-after the congregation had begun to observe in the church, and whisper out of it-after the Rev. Joshian had been known to call on the widow more frequently than his clerical duties required-and even till Axel came up the corkscrew stair with a packet of his own letters, a lock of hair, and a ring, returned to him by Kerin, with a brief message that her mother had strictly commanded her to give up his acquaintance, and it would be better for both that they should meet no more. The glory and honour of the minister's attentions, her mother's clutch at the better offer, and the determination of all the Gripals to see her made Mrs Dr Skram, had overborne Kerin's truth to herself and to poor Axel. Their engagement had been secret, without the usual formalities, and might be privately broken and set aside; she had been advised, scolded, ordered to do so; and Kerin had done it. People remarked that the belle of Teuton Church did not look so blithe or rosy that season, though the minister's choice had become public by this time. Widow Gripal was looking prouder, and Gertrude more sour than ever.

Axel had gone out to sea, saying a girl who could change so soon was not worth grieving for, but sad

and sore at heart, and talking of leaving his ship at Hamburg for a long cruise to the East or West Indies. The clocker remained in his tower rooms and church duties; but the sight of those returned letters had made him an altered man to the Gripals. If he hated them once, Job now detested, abhorred, and vowed vengeance on the entire family and name. No such wrong had ever been done to man as they had perpetrated; there was no tribunal at which they could be made to answer for it. The propriety and necessity of keeping the whole matter quiet had been urged upon him by Axel, and was manifest to Job. Was not the Rev. Joshian, chief cause and mover of the iniquity, also his superior? Might not Axel get laughed at among the young men of the town? These considerations kept the clocker from declaring his casus belli; but all Wisby, as well as the Teuton Church, was soon made aware that he had wrath of no common kind in an uncorked phial ready for the Gripals. Their getting in at the church-door, if one second too late, was a business of such difficulty, that it generally required the minister's interference. The charcoal pots were kept out if possible, and sometimes overturned by very remarkable accidents, and it was known to the whole congregation that Job Stork was on the qui vive literally to catch the Gripals napping. The small boys, always observant lambs in any flock, had a whisper about his having leaded the rousing staves, and made their knobs sharp and rough. The women, who had got new finery that summer were careful against leaning forward or shutting their eyes, in consequence. The Gripals said they were above sleeping, or anything of the kind, under such a sound and eloquent minister. In old Dr Stronzberg's time, it was different; one might have been excused for taking a nod, though, for their parts, they did not think it right to sleep in church at all; but Job had better mind what he was about, and not quarrel with his betters, as another clocker could be found in Wisby.

The war and the courtship went on all summer; that season was too short on the Baltic coast and isles to bring either to a conclusion. When the winter came back, the betrothal of Kerin and the minister had not taken place, but was daily expected by the friends of both parties. Job had caught none of the Gripals asleep; they had found no tangible cause for endeavouring to oust him out of his fifty years' office; and back came Axel, not gone to the East or West Indies. He wanted to see the old church and town once more, and Job knew he wanted to see Kerin. The old man's wrath boiled higher than ever against her and her family as he observed the hold which the faithless fair one kept on his one friend's heart, and he could neither give help nor yet satisfaction.

Why didn't you take to somebody else,' he said in his own crusty fashion-'somebody that would know the value of a minister's son, and a lad likely to be made captain? I would get married before Christmas, if it was only to shew the jilt how little I thought of her. And why didn't you take to some other friend than me somebody that could talk to the great folks of the town, and help you to a match?'

I want no better friend, Job, and I want no help of the kind. I will never marry, but go abroad, and seek my fortune; it won't be worth seeking, may be; but I don't blame Kerin; she was right to obey her mother.' Then seeing the anger which began to blaze in the old man's eyes, Axel changed the subject to one which was at that time occupying the mind of all Wisby. Like all quiet and out-of-the-way towns in the north, it was mightily given to theology. Points of doctrine were extensively canvassed; preachers had their orthodoxy to look to. In common with the rest of Sweden, the town was legally and ostensibly Lutheran, but the controversy which rent the churches of the Reformation had never died within

its bounds, though the authorities had long ceased to meddle with or fan the smouldering fire. The strife had dwindled down with trade and population, till the hostile camps were reduced to the Teuton Church, and that of St Nicholas, a fabric decidedly more out of repair, more thinly attended, and chargeable from the first of its reform-days with Calvinistic tendencies. It had got a new minister as well as the Teuton. The reverend men had found themselves in opposition ex officio, and the only mode of signalising themselves they had was to carry it briskly forward. Reflections on each other's sermons had accordingly been made in private and public, after a serious and critical fashion, as became Swedish divines. Their respective hearers had come out much stronger, having the credit of the ministers and the repute of their churches at heart. The Teutons declared there was downright rank Calvinism preached in St Nicholas; the St Nicholas' people insisted that popery was being set up in the Teuton Church. Having little other cause of excitement, the old town buzzed about the Rev. Joshian and his rival; a course of opposition sermons was in consequence preached in both churches; and it was now made known, chiefly through the Gripals, who had his entire confidence, that the Rev. Joshian was preparing a discourse which should extinguish and annihilate for ever the St Nicholas' pretensions to orthodoxy.

The sermon was looked for and surmised over as an event from the fall of gloomy Martinmas. Like all great efforts, it required time; but the work was done at last. The Gripals had got a permission, and Job a command, to make Wisby aware that on the following Sunday the extinguishing of St Nicholas was to be accomplished, and how should that Sunday fall but on St Lucia's Day, the 13th of December, in old northern almanacs, reckoned the shortest day of the year. For that reason, it had been dedicated, in the saint-honouring time, to the virgin martyr, St Lucia, among whose good deeds it is recorded that she was in the habit of bringing provisions, before other people were astir in the morning, to those Christians who sought refuge in the Roman catacombs from Diocletian and his tenth persecution; that she was discovered, and brought to martyrdom for that benevolent business; and the populace, if not the church, in northern lands cele brated her festival with the commemorative ceremony of a breakfast, to which people were waked up, hours before daylight, by a young girl of the household, representing the saint, and crowned for the occasion with a wreath of tallow-candles. As every saint, like the classic gods, had his or her peculiar territory, the province of Wermland was noted in Catholic times for its devotion to the patroness of early breakfasts. When Lutheranism had banished shrines and relics from the land, its villages continued to practise the ancient ceremonial, associated with looking through the window at the breakfasttables, to find out who should die within the year, and discovering people's matrimonial chances by the emblems of trades and callings hidden under upturned pots, to be lifted by the unwary. Everybody in Wermland, or who had come out of it, owned and kept St Lucia's Day, papistical as it was thought by the rest of Sweden. The Gripals did not press the fact on their neighbours' attention, but they made no concealment of it, and young people of their acquaintance used to go to try their fortunes at the early breakfast. They did so the morning of that eventful Sunday, when the Rev. Joshian's church was not filled, for no congregation in Wisby could do that, but fuller than it had been seen for many a year, with an earnestly expectant congregation. The Gripals were there in great force. Were they not sharers in his zeal and glory? Nay, the widow and her daughters absolutely appeared to monopolise

the latter from the Rev. Joshian. Besides their German cloth gowns with silver buttons, they had each got a new bonnet. Now, bonnets were rare things in Wisby at the time of our story; the seniors of the town frowned upon them as articles of foreign luxury and extravagance, calculated to increase the vanity and undermine the morals of the fair sex. The stiff poked caps of their grandmothers were believed to be their only safeguard. But a milliner had come, some said from Stockholm, some from Paris, it was no matter which to the serious Gottlanders; she had set up her camp, and opened fire in one of the long-deserted shops-tradition said it had been an undertaker's; but there bonnets were made and shewn, and the Gripals were her first patrons. Their head-gear took the attention of the younger hearers; the elder took note of the manuscript in the Rev. Joshian's hands-northern preachers generally read their sermons-and remarked that the discourse, whatever might be its quality, was likely to be long enough, for they had never seen so much paper. Their prophecy proved true beyond their expectations.

The Gottland day in mid-winter dawns about nine o'clock, and closes at three; the congregation had assembled in the second hour of daylight, but the process of extinguishing St Nicholas' was still going on, when the twilight fell dim and heavy on the ancient church of the Teutonic Knights. From doctrine to doctrine, from point to point, the Rev. Joshian had pursued his adversary; and whether the dread of the rousing staves or the controversial excitement kept his hearers lively and attentive, certain it was that Job found no opportunity for the exercise of his clocker powers; nobody slept or appeared to do so; and though he had looked round on all sides from his stool of office well placed for observation in the centre aisle, and particularly convenient to the Gripals' pew-Job had not caught so much as a small boy winking. The Gottland powers of sitting out long sermons must have been remarkable. But just as the twilight was deepening into night, and the Rev. Joshian was believed to be coming to a close, that candles might not be wanted-an extravagance never allowed in the Wisby churches-there came to the clocker's ear an unmistakable snore. It was from the Gripals' pew. Let romantic readers remember that the proud widow and the prudent sister sat there as well as the fair Kerin. At all events, a snore it was: there was somebody asleep, Job could not see who; but the opportunity was not to be lost; his rousing staff sounded on the back of the pew. What he wanted in light, Job would make up in energy. Then there was a poking among clothes and bonnets, a sound of some garment being rent, a smothered exclamation, followed by a chorus of screams from the Gripals, which all the women found themselves called on to join, till such a din arose as was never heard in the church since the knights built it. Some thought the edifice was on fire, some that the enemy of mankind—a traditional terror of whom still lingered within the old walls of Wisby-had taken advantage of the gathering gloom to oppose the Rev. Joshian. What the minister himself thought, was never made public; if he spoke at all, his voice was utterly drowned in the shrieks of women, the exclamations of men, and a desperate scuffle which somebody was making to get the rousing staff out of Job's hand. The clocker was not disarmed without a stiff struggle; he held fast by the staff, while the rending sound and the shrieks of the Gripals rose louder at every tug. At length, with a tremendous twist, a backward shove, and Let go, you old fool!' in the deep, full tones of Axel Stronzberg, his weapon was wrenched away; and as the city-watch-then commencing their nightly rounds-walked in with their lanterns, the merchantman's mate was beheld disengaging the torn and long-drawn remains of Kerin Gripal's envied bonnet from the rousing staff, the|

roughened knob of which had caught in the darkness on some of its ribbons or lappets, and that piece of woman's pride was now reduced to sundry remnants of straw-plait and rags. At that sight, or with the nameless terrors that had seized upon her, Kerin fainted--what else could a belle do under such circumstances; and Axel Stronzberg was next seen conveying her out of the church in the most considerate manner, while the widow and elder sister, who had nobody to take such pains with them, followed, still screaming at the tops of their voices, and declaring they should never get the better of the fright.

Northern people have the advantage of being easily pacified. When the watchmen's lanterns had thrown light on the subject, the congregation recovered their composure; even the Gripals' connection sat themselves down in their pews again, desperately ashamed of their relations, and silently vowing vengeance against Job Stork; while the Rev. Joshian, having re-arranged his manuscript, and found his place in it by one of the lanterns retained for the purpose, calmly continued his discourse, and finished off his rival preacher as if nothing had happened. But everybody knew that the Rev. Joshian was in black displeasure, and would not allow the interruption of his extinguishing sermon to pass without strict inquiry and stern rebuke. Job got the first attack, as might be expected; but the clocker stood stoutly up for his own innocence and rectitude: it was his duty not to let people sleep in church; the Gripals were all snoring-had he not heard them— enough to keep the whole aisle from hearing a word of the sermon-they that should have set an example of respect to the minister and his sound doctrine. And he had given one of them a poke, to rouse them in the quietest way. If his staff did catch on the young woman's bonnet, it was dark, and he couldn't help it. Then the Gripals were taken to task. What business had they to sleep in the midst of the sermon? Were not the nights long enough for them? Could not they postpone snoring till they got to bed? Strange to say, the entire family denied the charge of making any nasal sound whatever: they were gentlewomen, and never did such a thing; they did not sleep at all; they had heard all the heads; it was Job's malice; he wanted to disgrace the family; and nothing but his being put out of office and banished the town would satisfy them. Job stuck to the snore with equal firmness; they were every one in full blast, he asserted; and no wonder. Had they not been up soon after twelve keeping St Lucia's? Didn't the whole town know their papistical practices? A nice family for a minister to think of connecting himself with; he should let the bishop hear all about it, if they turned him out of his place. Witnesses of respectability were examined on both sides; all in the vicinity were clear on the snore except Axel Stronzberg, who admitted having fallen asleep, and being roused by the screams, for which he got a rebuke en passant. The Rev. Joshian was in a rebuking humour, and the case was strong against the Gripals. They had been up at St Lucia's early breakfast: it was got out of Kerin how she had worn the wreath of candles; put a blue ribbon, a piece of canvas, and a book under different pots, not on her own account, but just to see what husband Gertrude should get; and she, the bride-elect, together with her whole family, had fallen asleep in the midst of the Rev. Joshian's summing-up of arguments, got her bonnet torn, and occasioned an uproar in the church.

What man or preacher could pass lightly over such offences? The Rev. Joshian, stirred up perhaps by the clocker's insinuations, was severe beyond the Gripals' endurance. The widow and her eldest daughter gave him word for word, it was said. Kerin cried a good deal at first; but when he pleased