pecuniary loss, in consequence of defective sanitary arrangements."

We have said the poor classes themselves can do much to better their own condition in respect of the dwellings they inhabit. But they cannot do all. In the first place, the owners of house property must provide better tenements; for poor people cannot build their own. And we have shown how, in this way, rich men might prove great benefactors of the people. But the poor, where they have the choice between a dwelling situated in a healthy, and one in an unhealthy locality, ought to choose the former. They have this very often in their power, and do not exercise the choice. There is perhaps a difference of sixpence a week in the rental, and, not knowing the advantages of health, not having the intelligence to discern the well-known characteristics of an unwholesome locality, they take the latter dwelling. But the money they have to pay for physic, doctor's bills, and loss of wages, far more than exceeds the pittance weekly saved by the cheaper rent, not to speak of the loss of comfort, the want of cleanliness, and the depression of spirits, which is inevitable where foul air is breathed.

Were the working-classes generally to shun unwholesome districts, and rent only such tenements as are calculated to fulfil the requirements of a wholesome, cleanly home, the owners of inferior property would soon be compelled to improve the character of their dwellings, and raise them to the general standard; for they are in the predicament of merchants who, if they find themselves in the possession of goods that will not sell, must make haste to convert them into goods which will find a market. Thus, the poor themselves might do much to improve the character of the Homes provided for their class.

Let us briefly describe what a Home should be,— such a Home as every working-man ought to possess. A Home should be built on ground which has been thoroughly well drained, and, if in a town, the streets without ought to be efficiently paved and sewered. This is requisite, in order that the air surrounding the Home should be dry, pure, and wholesome. There ought also to be efficient provisions for the removal of all vegetable and animal refuse from the neighbourhood of the dwelling.

The Home within should be free of cellarage, except for purposes of stores, or coals, or such like; but there should be no cellar kitchens nor sculleries. One roomy living-room on the ground floor, clean and well kept, is better than a cellar kitchen and a spare best room, no matter how nicely furnished. Attached to the ordinary living-room should be a back kitchen, or scullery, with conveniences for washing, &c.; and at the back of the house, there ought to be the usual out-buildings for purposes of family cleanliness. This is the style of house which will be found to suit the wants and means of working men in most of the large towns of England.

But over this lower, or ground floor, there should be the lodging-rooms, perhaps the most important part of a house. No working man with a family, should be satisfied with fewer than two of such sleeping-rooms, and many ought to have not less than three. This is absolutely necessary, in order to that separation of the sexes which is so indispensable to the proper upbringing of a family in notions of decency, virtue, and self-respect. Generally speaking, working men attend too little to this provision, and the result is a low moral tone, which is productive of frightful moral evil in many ways.

A house such as this may be provided at no greater cost than that of the existing dwellings; and it will let for an equal, if not a greater sum. It is really a fact, that to build a wholesome dwelling costs no

more than an unhealthy one; what is wanted on the part of the builder is, a knowledge of sanitary conditions, and a willingness to provide the proper accommodation. The space of ground covered by the dwelling is the same in both cases, and the quantity of bricks and mortar need be no greater. Dry air is of the same price as foul air, and light costs nothing in cottage dwellings. Damp and wet about a house are far more costly than the opposite conditions; and it is as easy ventilating a house well as ill. For the rest, it depends upon the housewife.

A Home of this kind, presided over by a thrifty, cleanly woman, may be the abode of comfort, of virtue, and of happiness. It may be the scene of every ennobling relation in family life. It may be endeared to a man by many delightful memories, where heavenly voices wander around him in the affectionate voices of his wife, his children, and his neighbours. Such a Home will be regarded, not as a mere nest of common instinct, but as a training-ground for young immortals, a sanctuary for the heart, a refuge from storms, a sweet resting-place after labour, a consolation in sorrow, a pride in success, and a joy at all times.

May the time come soon, when every working man in our land may be provided with such a Home!

1. MOTHER AND SON.

WITHIN half a mile of the then fashionable village of R-, some forty years ago, stood Pendarves Grange, a structure of half-ornamental, half-utilitarian architecture; in truth, built for pleasure, with an eye to business at the same time. In the rear of the building was a large paddock, upon the borders of which were several homesteads and farm-buildings; in the front of the house, the ground was carved into a large and handsome lawn, one end of the green sward was embossed with a large flower-bed, and over this hung the bow-window of the drawing-room, in which sat a lady, whose graceful figure, mounted, as it seemed by Nature, with pale, but such exquisitely chiselled features, that she bore no distant resemblance to the chaste figures of purest Parian with which the room abounded. Mrs. Pendarves sat gazing pensively upon the lawn. Did she turn for a moment from the pleasing picture of Nature before her, it was but to gaze more intently upon the full-length portrait of her husband it was a change from the sunny present to the sunnier past. With such earnestness would she fix her eyes, that her very soul seemed to peer through them upon the canvas, and yet such a soft, sweet light was emitted from them from within, that they gave one an idea of orbs of molten memories. From the portrait she would again turn to Nature, as if she were her sole confidante, to and with whom alone she could vent her sighs and hold communion. This lady lived but in the past, ber mere existence stood in the present; her face spoke little to the common, but much to the close, observer; the wellproportioned features were, to the eye, as immovably fixed as those of a piece of sculpture; her lips, one would have thought, must have been formed for the escapade of sighs, so slowly did they part; the gushing softness from her dark hazel eyes alone lent a tint, a shade, that might prevent one from describing the whole as the face of a goddess with its expression gone.

It is an autumnal evening; the last deep colouring

of the sun is encasing itself in the darker shades of night, as if the very sky is sensible of the chilling effect, and, like the lady, wished to give a last lingering gaze at the glorious hunter's moon, now at its full, and in its immense brilliancy rivalling the wondrous orb from which it borrows its existence. Mrs. Pendarves draws a shawl closely around her and looks once more at the round world of molten silver above her, closes the long French windows, and touches a small hand-bell. A servant enters with the lights. "Where is your master, James?" asks the lady.

"Out, ma'am, at least I believe so, ma'am," replied the man, in a hesitating tone.

"That will do, James," and the servant leaves the

room.

The sky becomes overcast, a few large drops of rain fall heavily against the window. Mrs. Pendarves once more opens the window, but now upon the shadows of night; a cloud is passing over the moon, her features are as immovable as ever, except a slight tremor of the lips; again she summons the servant, and repeats her former question, "Where has your master gone, James?"

"Don't know, indeed, ma'am," again replies the servant, with increased hesitation of manner.

"Take his riding-coat, meet him, the rain will soon fall in torrents," said the mistress, as if not noticing the man's answer.

"But, ma'am—” "Go at once, or you will be too late," said Mrs. Pendarves, anticipating his reply, and pointing expressively to the door, and then, without further noticing the servant, she (almost mechanically) takes up a book, murmuring to herself, "Is this subterfuge? I trust not ;" but in such a calm tone, that the words may be but spoken from the page before her, -she attempts to read, it is vain,-she returns once more to the window,-listens; the clouds have passed away; it has been but a passing shower, and is now over, and the full moon is in all its brilliancy once more, the rattling of the wheels of a vehicle is heard up the avenue; she opens the casement; it is he, her son; a minute, and he is in the room; a tall, slim, young man, with a profusion of light curls over a large but irregular brow, -the likeness is hers, but a much-softened, nay, almost a more effeminate

one.

He stands before her; the anxiety for his safety which had during the last half-hour slightly ruffled her features, being removed, she looks as placid as ever, and "Hugo!" is all she utters; but this is more than sufficiently expressive to the son, and he clasps his mother round the neck, "Mother, dear mother, do not be angry." Returning his embrace, she asks,

"Did James meet you, Hugo?"

"He did; he came straight to me."

"Thank Heaven it is no subterfuge upon your part, my dear boy! he told me he knew not where you were."

"Indeed!" replied Hugo; "then I will reprimand him."

"No, my son, no. It is scarcely worth while; it is a habit of his class,-with such as he, falsehood is but a small peccadillo, but in a gentleman, a vice."

"Again that word class, mother. I fear you make too great a distinction; truth can, surely, be no birthright," replied Hugo.

"It ought not, Hugo; but that it is, to a great extent, I fear, is beyond denial; the poor have fewer real motives for the truth than the rich."

"And yet, dear mother, I could point out some among the poor who shame our class in truth, ay, and in earnestness for virtue," replied Hugo,

Fixing her immovable and beautiful features exactly opposite her son's face, so that an ether,—a

something at least of affection, which seemed to gush from her eyes, and play, glory-like, around her face, should add to the influence she felt conscious she possessed over his mind, she replied, "And yet, my dear boy, I would that you did not so warmly advocate the cause of the common people; it is scarcely taste, and somewhat approaching hypocrisy, in a gentleman,-for it is impossible that the refined can have affinity with the coarse."

"What, mother, does the fresh-hewn diamond contain the less purity because its brilliancy awaits but the touch of the lapidary? Is its value the less intrinsic?"

"Indeed, my son, it is,-much of its pureness and value is given to it by the lapidary, without whose labour it would be valueless."

"Then Heaven must bless those lapidaries of social life who clear away the dross from the human mind, and polish the rich intellect, the educators, the teachers, then, must surely hold some affinity with these same diamond lapidaries, must they not?" replied Hugo, with enthusiasm.

"Alas! Hugo, the office of teacher is, in all cases, a sorry one, and but too frequently paid with the grossest ingratitude. Have naught to do with it, my son; there are but a favoured few who can touch pitch, ungloved, without soiling their hands."

"The heart and brain, my dear mother, may point out the road by example and precept; but earnestness and good will in the cause are the birth-right duties of superiors, who ought to guide and lend a helping hand through the difficulties which beset the miry paths of the poor."

"To attempt the task, Hugo, is to court ingratitude and defy Nature herself, who ever lends genius to those of her sons whom it is her will to rescue from obscurity; and to convince me to the contrary, would be as difficult as to break you of your bad habit of lamp-light reading, to which I must now leave you," said Mrs. Pendarves, leaving the room.

Although strange sounding to the masses of the present day, the reasoning of Mrs. Pendarves was that of the tone of her class of that time, and one which, we fear, is not entirely eradicated from the social system of the present age of universal progress. Such reasoning from the lips of his mother had much weight with Hugo, and had often before damped his ardour for the good cause of progress.

The young man sat alone, not reading as was his wont, but thinking; he was vexed, perplexed; a hundred resolutions were crumbling up in the words of his mother, his dear mother, whom, until that evening, he had idolized,- -we use the past tense, for an event had happened, that tended to wear away this feeling, at least its intenseness. Hugo sat for some time in close reverie; it might have been that he was pondering over his past life, a life which, as it affects materially the main action of our history, we cannot do better than give the reader a glimpse of.

II.-WHO THEY WERE,-AND WHAT THEY WERE.

The Pendarves were an old family, so called, we believe, because the first ancestor upon the family record had left, in the form of an entailed estate, tangible proofs of his having been born a long time before his descendants. This ancestor, in fact, found, or founded, the silver spoon (its crest, by the way) of the family. From him, down to the time of Hugo's father, a kind of metempsychosis of property had been going on through a long line of Pendarves, all of whom had prided themselves upon being true old English gentlemen. They were a proud race, indomitably so, though the chance inheritance of the family fortune of being born both lucky and rich,

doubtlessly fostered, if it did not create, this pride. However, towards the middle of the eighteenth century, the family property having been so much handled, began to look a little soiled and shabby. As time wore on, matters did not improve, and during the lifetime of the father of Hugo, the entail was cut off. For a long period prior to this event, the Pendarves family had been slowly trailing down the inclined plane of their fortunes; but no sooner had they become divested of their dead weight, than they travelled to its terminus with redoubled velocity,the immediate result of which was, that Charles Pendarves (the father of Hugo) inherited a trifling property of a hundred a year. Now, had this gentleman been born like the majority of mortals, without the expectancy of an hereditary gold spoon in his mouth, a ready-made hundred a year would, at least, have kept him from starving; but, being a man of birth, he felt his inheritance to be a cruel mistake; for, clearly, he, being a Pendarves, had had as much right to have been born when the estate yielded five thousand a year, as any of his predecessors. The sum, then, was not enough to keep, though more than sufficient to ruin, him: it was like giving a pet child a bite at a sugar-stick and then taking it away. Instead of living within his own, he thought up to the fortunes of his ancestors. Seven years of town life spent, nominally, in search of imaginary briefs, but really among his fellow-men of birth, sadly reduced his slender inheritance, and placed him in that cruel position, that he had serious thought of exchanging the silver spoon for a more appropriate crest,-viz. an empty and bottomless purse falling through a hole in a pocket. He sought the shore so refreshing to the troubled, he breathed the invigorating air of Boulogne-sur-mer, at which place, like many another reckless heartling, he endeavoured, upon the principle of counter-irritants, we suppose, to repair a wound in his heart, by a last savage attack upon his shadowy finances he married a lady, "rich and rare in natural gems, but nothing more. For one year he ran the gauntlet of genteel misery,-a moving statue, propped upon one side by pride, and upon the other by love, a kind of elegant promenade upon spikes. The next year brought proof that the course of true love makes exceptions, as well as every other course, to its rule, it did run smooth. A relation of Mrs. Pendarves died in the United States, leaving them a handsome property in money, which she inherited as heir-at-law. A homestead was bought, and duly named Pendarves Grange, and for seven years Charles Pendarves practised that violence to his feelings, that habit of self-restraint, which none know who have not edeavoured to live within their income. From the marriage at Boulogne to the proper close of these preliminary biographies, we know but of two events which occurred likely to interest the reader,-the first being the birth of a son and heir, and the latter, the sudden death of Charles Pendarves. Poor Hugo,-this was a sudden and terrible calamity,-left now to the sole control of his mother, a woman of indomitable pride and strong prejudices, the love which had been shared between father and child had become centred in one object alone; and so strong was this maternal love, that Mrs. Pendarves would have willingly died for the good of her child; but that good must have been of her own idealizing. Proud of the name she bore, she was determined that its imagined purity should not be sullied with what she deemed a mean idea, and it was with jealous assiduity she watched each idea as it grew in the child's brain. She alone had sown the seeds, as she alone was to realize the fruits: she framed the plastic clay in moulds of her own making; like many other mothers, she was at work for years in developing a great fact,—a new, a model

man she felt love in the work, and she was not insensible to pride in its progress. She may have treated the child occasionally like a pet lap-dog, but it was not from any selfish motive, at least so she thought. Deeply deploring the loss of her husband, she excluded herself from society in determined widowhood; relations or connections of her own or her husband's she had not; as for acquaintances, she determined to make none, and well she kept her resolution. If the necessity of society for her son's sake ever flitted through her mind, it was lost momentarily in the ocean of happiness she had promised herself in the culture of the boy's mind.

The usual routine of infant education he passed under his mother's guidance, his playmate was his nurse alone, for he was carefully excluded from the society of other children for fear of measles and other childish disorders,-being excluded also from sharing in the sports of the little man and womanhood of his own age, he became unlike every other child; his ideas became modelled after his mother's; childhood, in reality, he cannot be said to have had; he had one jump from his cradle into manhood. Naturally possessing a suavity of manner, and a kindness of disposition, he wanted not the adventitious assistance to over sensitiveness in the form of a private tutor of highly dreamy temperament, who Mrs. Pendarves, in her over-precaution against his picking up the vices of other young men in a college life, procured him.

By the time he was seventeen, Mrs. Pendarves had made rare work in her son's heart; she had found a luxuriantly fertile soil, and had so crowded it with seeds of goodly origin that their very clustering and entanglements caused disease, and they began to wither ere they had observably grown, so many goodly roots had been sown, that the soil weakened. Modelled from his mother, Hugo idolized his model. The kind parent but little imagined the evil she had unwittingly sown in her child's heart. She had observed the growth of pride with pleasure (it was especially a twig of her own planting); she had felt uneasy at the symptoms of restlessness he began to exhibit, which may account for the anxiety she had exhibited as to his whereabouts in the opening of our story, for she was woman of the world enough to know that a rolling disposition gathers evil as it rolls, even as the snowball snow.

Great and noble capabilities were cramped and confined by the iron rule of habit which had made him lean upon his mother, longing, while he feared, to act for himself. Imbued with a strong feeling of filial love, and torn with a restlessness for freedom, he had inward heart-burnings and jealousies of all who were free; proud of what he knew not, except it might be the possession of money and an old name. Like a hideous nightmare, a soul-heaviness sat upon his chest; he was struggling to be free, and feeling his manhood, he longed by doing, by action, to prove it, and yet, from habit, he felt unequal to the task; and what was more terrible to his highly-wrought state of mind, he felt that a failure must result in morbid melancholy, -with these feelings, his mind a temple of boisterous elements, we present Hugo Pendarves to the reader.

We left him in a reverie, he rises,-goes to his desk,-takes out some paper, and pens a note; it is carefully revised and addressed; he then stealthily opens the door,--a servant is ready, to whom he says, "Give this in the morning, early, James."

"Yes, sir; without missus's knowledge, of course," replied the man. To which question, Hugo answered What, then, was there in the man's question to call the red blood across Hugo's face?

not.

III.-FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

The principal street in the large village of Rforms a line of handsome shops and private dwellinghouses, at the end of which is a row of small houses, each of them opening from the parlour directly into the street so that, as you pass the open door, the contents of the room are exposed to view. In the front parlour of one of these sat a tall, robust man, of middle age; his form was more erect than usual with his class; his eyes, of dark hazel, were deeply set, and peered from under the overhanging ridge which formed the edge of a square and lofty brow, the two sides of which were arched, the brow was of pure paleness, which, contrasting with his otherwise bronzed features, lent a marked peculiarity to his whole contour; the smallness of his mouth, with the almost too thin lips, which were compressed, gave an impression of amiability and chaste thought which appeared to contradict the threatening severity of the contracted skin and indentations between the eyes. By his side sat a young woman, a softened, and, as it were, faint copy of the man.

Of late years John Lisborne's health had failed; and, to recover it, he had taken the small cottage in the village of R In his art of glass engraving he boasted a perfection beyond denial, a sufficient proof of which was the large vase he then had in hand representing the battle of Arbela, between Alexander and Darius. Upon this favourite work the chief portion of his time was now employed. The vase stood upon the table by the side of the design (a copy of a great picture reduced by his daughter) from which he was working it, and which the father and daughter were busily engaged in comparing together, when a man entered the room and placed a letter in Maude's hand, which Maude, after perusing, placed in her father's hand.

Indeed," said Mr. Lisborne, with astonishment, laying the letter upon the table. "He but little knows father and daughter, who asks this of you, Maude; however, he will be here as usual this morning, and I will return it." Without further remark, the two proceeded with their examination of the vase and drawing. Two hours later our friend Hugo enters the room.

"You are earlier than usual, Mr. Pendarves. I am scarcely ready to give you your lesson. However, before preparing for our work, permit me to return this epistle with a strict injunction that it may be the last of its kind sent here," said Mr. Lisborne, as he handed the astounded Hugo his own letter.

"My dear Mr. Lisborne-"

"Make your excuses in that direction, Mr. Pendarves, I have some pressing business for the next hour," replied John, cutting short Hugo's reply by pointing in the direction of Maude, and leaving the

"You appear astonished, Mr. Pendarves," said Maude.

"Astonished indeed, can I be otherwise at receiving a delegated reply to a question so purely addressed to yourself alone," replied Hugo,

And, pray, Mr. Pendarves, from whom could the answer to so delicate a request so well come, as from the father of the female to whom it was made?" replied Maude, with an air of offended womanhood.

Unquestionably you may be right, my dear Miss Lisborne; but yet, so trivial a request."

"Trivial, you term it; is it a trivial request for a young man of fortune to ask the daughter of a mere

artisan to stroll about country lanes with him without her parents' knowledge? According to the notions in which you have been educated, Mr. Pendarves, we are lowly because we are poor, that is, because chance has not rained money upon us, that same chance which, in the same moment, fits one child's head in a coronet and leaves another to be covered by the clouds. Poverty may make vice, but we have not reached that standard yet, sir; we are to that exactly what you deem yourself to us. No, sir, as yet, unappeased hunger has never pinched us. lowly, lowliness has its claim to pride as well as loftiness. No, believe me, Mr. Pendarves, there is yet some truth in the old axiom, that we must not only be, but seem virtuous to those among whom we live."

If we are

"But Maude-for I will not call you Miss Lisborne, -why this prudery? Are we not old friends; at least, if not so, say you do not despise me," said Hugo, taking her hand.

'Nay, stay, Mr. Pendarves, this must really go no further. You are getting most abominably romantic, and that I really despise. Let a plain man speak to a plain woman in a plain manner, and the reverse. And allow me to state the case, which is just this:You, a gentleman of fortune and birth-the first of which I admire, from its power of doing good, as much as I despise the latter in the usual abuse of its acceptation,-you, with these two bars to the friendship of an artisan's daughter, call one day upon my father; you profess to admire his art and artistic power. Your ingenuousness pleased him as much as it amused me. A pretence is not long wanting to call again, and again you find the artisan at work at his art. Now, sir, did you not call to see the artisan's daughter? Stay, sir," said Maude, answer a plain question in a plain manner. You stand upon the turret top of an aerial battlement: descend at once, sir." This was uttered in such a half-bantering, half-serious tone, that poor Hugo stood in a manner dismayed. At last, finding his voice, he exclaimed, "Then, by heaven--"

"Silence, Mr. Pendarves, or I leave the room. Answer me-yes or no," said Maude.

"Then, yes-and no," replied Hugo; "and, believe me, Miss Lisborne, Maude, torn within myself, disgusted with ennui-"

"Ennui," said Maude, interrupting him, "plain words, sir, for plain people; call it laziness, sir, pure laziness; that is what the second and third classes name the worst of vices among them."

Well, laziness, then, if you will," replied the more and more astonished Hugo. "Disgusted with this sad life of mine, chance led me to an acquaintance with your father, and, in his art, I, for the first time, found an object to interest me. I sought to learn it. Your father agreed to teach me; and, in seeking to learn this art, I found I must say it, Maude-a person to love. Can you blame me?"

From

"I believe you," returned Maude; "did I not do so, I should consider you like most of your class under similar circumstances-a compound of waste humanity just dashed with a tincture of what the world calls folly, because it dare not use the plainer term villany. Now, listen to me, Mr. Pendarves. the moment I saw you, I admired your figure and features as I should those produced by the sculptor and why not?" she said, noticing a glance of satisfaction in the eyes of Hugo, "I believe there is more to admire in the sculpture of nature than art. I mean no flattery. But, to proceed, an hour or two's conversation taught me to respect you,-and not the less so that you did not use towards me the common cant of patronizing falsehoods called gallantry, which, had you done, I should have hated you. I soon saw, for that is an art in which all

women are educated by nature, that you admired. I regretted do not interrupt, but hear me -Watching the growth of this admiration, I discovered your innermost feelings;-with all your advantages of birth and fortune, I saw something was wrong within,that you were pining for an activity that, in all probability, when once immersed in, be it what it might, you would abuse. I soon found you to be a species of scapegoat to your own contending emotions; and you are now neither good nor bad, but either, as the case may be. Your virtues-what you have as yet developed of them-I admire, although they are but mediocre, as they have never been face to face with temptation, the only true test of good. Your talents, for you have them,-I bow to with respect and esteem; but your want of that pillar of the mind, self-reliance, I tremble at. I soon discovered the effect of employment upon your mind, and regretted that it should be mixed with admiration for myself. Soon slander became busy at your frequent visits; I cared not much for this, but endeavoured to allay it with the truth. Hence the reason of my father's insisting, and my begging of you to inform your proud mother of the real purpose of your visits. But this must now end, Mr. Pendarves; we leave this place speedily-perhaps in a day or so, and well that it is so, for this epistle of yours bespeaks the necessity. You have misunderstood me; and if you think me pert, or impertinent, believe that it was my father's teaching. With the rest of my sex I have mixed but little, nor do I wish; feeling, perhaps foolishly so,too small an interest in bonnets and ribbons to please them with my company."

To describe the feelings of Hugo at the close of this address, would be akin to impossible; numerous were the sensations busy within him,-admiration, vexation that she should have discovered his weakness; he stood before her, as it were, in pieces, and ready for reconstruction, did he know but how to apply the discordant elements. Was birth nothing, that a mere artisan's girl-but then, such a oneshould smile with derision upon it? Was fortune

and station nothing, that workers for living--whom he had been taught to believe were a different race from those born with ready-made livings-should esteem it nothing? Was education, the education of a gentleman, -with its classics and mathematics, and logic, and dead and living languages, to afford no counter reply, no means of refutation, to a mere peasant girl who happened to have had a better education than usual, and the power of applying it? Like a ship standing out at sea, with her sails full bent, Maude stood before him prepared for a dauntless battle with every difficulty that should attempt to obstruct her voyage through life. So young, so lowly, and yet so fearless; it was insolence,--presumption, and yet he had never remembered seeing a copy of insolence or presumption in such a form. To be as plain as Maude herself, he felt ridiculous, and at the same time madly scornful at his own mind, which allowed the admission. The girl seemed to scorn a marriage with him even before he had prof fered it; forsooth, he had never even thought of such a thing; it was without the circle of his possible imaginings. He to marry a peasant girl, and that girl to stand side by side with his proud mother! no, he had never dreamt it. He was no worse than other young men of similar position, though, in this peculiar point, Maude's own pride had not even permitted her to think him worse. The idea of marriage for the first time entered his brain; to be united to such a being, one so overpowering, so eloquent, so earnest for his own good, now came within the scope of his possible. At that moment his mother fell from her

throne in his heart: he fell at Maude's feet, offered her his fortune, his hand, everything, in a fit of desperation. Have her he must, cost what it might, was the feeling with which he asked her for herself. Hugo knew her not. If she had ever disliked him, it was most when cringing at her feet; she loved not spaniels, though they took the form of men. It would have puzzled the most acute observer to have read the workings of that girl's mind as she gazed upon Hugo at her feet. The course which she had taken, and had intended as repulsive, had as effectively the very contrary, as would the most lavish allurements. She was puzzled,-not for an answer, but the speech to convey her exact meaning. Chance came to her relief: a proud figure stood in the doorway, its scornful eyes flashed with indignation. Hugo no sooner caught the glance than, thickly uttering "Mother," he stood for a moment transfixed. The lady pointed to a carriage in the road, and, without deigning other notice than a mere glance at Maude, moved from the doorway. With his face suffused with crimson, Hugo followed, saying to the astonished Maude, "This shall be explained to-morrow, dear Maude." "Leave me, sir; you have deceived me," said she; adding, as she erected her head, "You have condescended to a falsehood; upon no pretence whatever must this house be troubled with Yon your presence. No reply, Mr. Pendarves. proud woman need fear but little danger to her darling from me. Leave, sir."

With the object of his fears awaiting him without, and that of his love repulsing him from within, Hugo left the place, and was soon in the carriage by his mother's side.

No sooner had he left the room than Maude's high spirit felt relief in a burst of tears. She, whose motives were as pure as human motives could be; who had allowed Hugo to visit alone for the purpose of the study of her father's art, and that with the express understanding that Mrs. Pendarves had given her full concurrence. The glance of that proud lady had spoken volumes to the heart of Maude: she saw she had been deceived-that Hugo had falsely told her of his mother's knowledge. And the position in which Hugo had been seen with her. To have her actions so misconstrued as she felt assured they were by Mrs. Pendarves,-it was well nigh more than she could bear. That was a sorry night with Maude, and baffled the consoling powers of her father and counsellor. But the next morning brought fresh trouble in the form of a letter from Hugo, offering marriage, and imploring an instantaneous and speedy one; the reply to which we shall discover in the next chapter.

THOUGHTS ON THE TIMES.

A

WE are everywhere struck by the materialism of the age. It meets us in conversation and literature, and elbows us in religion. It interrupts us with its monitions and deductions in natural history, in poetry, in metaphysics, in philosophy, and in the general science of the globe. "It is all with a purpose,' until we are quite bored with the utility of things. On all sides the spirit meets us; on all sides it obtrudes itself,-called for and uncalled for,-before us. book on natural history praises the industry of some worthy member of the brute creation, and then adds, "Go thou and do likewise." Dr. Johnston adduces his zoophytes and busy sea-animals, "compared to which the labours of intellectual man sink to insignificance." A lazy man is nothing to an energetic zoophyte. An industrious flea is a model for imitation-would we were all fleas !