and passion, "The last glimpse of Erin!" The spell wrought at once: he was enchanted! He listened without a word of interruption till the close. Some other things were tried, but he broke out, "Ach! play Coulin again!" and after an interval was heard yet once again to order, "Play Coulin again!" For long after in our family that became a pleasant catchword: Play Coulin again!" calling up at once that interesting night, and the ever pleasant and original sage himself. It proved to me it was an old friend and favorite of his, which he could "growl" now and then in his own fashion. This little incident appears to me to offer a pleasant and dramatic scene. There was the great sage, rough and rude, but trying to be gracious and encouraging-in fact, in high good humor. Here also was the tremendous host-another habitual despotJohn Forster lui-même, who, when he chose, could be gentle; his ever-amiable, much-suffering dame. the three competing ladies. And then Carlyle's truly pathetic and yet highly humorous sketches of Irving "of the tongues" seems linked to me now by a family tradition. My good mother used to describe a scene on some Scottish steamer when she and her husband were touring it on the Lakes. The Prophet was the cynosure of all, and she would tell how my father, a politician and M. P., brought her to him, when he solemnly blessed her, I think, or went through some rite. Other ladies were proud to be saluted by him, in addition. His style, after her account, was certainly captivating enough. I think I may have told him this. At last it came about that the faithful, ever-useful Forster, who had busied himself all his life with other folks' business, who had arranged for their marriages, births, deaths, funerals, &c., in the most efficient man ner, himself came to die, in February, 1876. I attended, on one bleak morning, to see him to his last home. I cannot recall very distinctly who was there on that chilly morning. In J. F.'s stately drawing-room, where he had received many an important personage before "going down to dinner," there was now a meagre half-dozen, of whom two were business folk. Here, however, was a mournful-looking, semimonastic figure, James Antony Froude, little recking at the moment what storms, and troubles, and miseries even, were awaiting him a few years hence, on the score of Thomas of Chelsea and his dame. There were also the Lyttons, who were "legatees" under the will. When Dickens died he left to Forster in his honest, manly will, a valuable memorial, his gold watch, chain, and seals, which he himself had carried so long, heralding the bequest with the happy words: "To my trusty friend, John Forster." Nothing could be more appropriate, for to all his friends was John Forster "trusty." When Forster died, it was found that he had bequeathed this watch and chain to his also "trusty" friend, Thomas Carlyle. So thus had the little monitor been carried by no less than three distinguished men of letters. It might have been worthily preserved, duly shown and cherished for such memories. But this was not to be. Carlyle, it seems, had handed it over to his niece, she tells us, to do what she willed with it. In February, 1876, the very month and year in which the good Forster died, Mrs. Mary Carlyle Aitken tells us, "My uncle gave me the watch, &c., which had belonged to Charles Dickens. I gave away the watch, the seals, and the chain in my uncle's lifetime, without asking his permission." Had his permission been asked, would he have shown this indifference or the contrary? An interesting speculation. But a solution is readily found, and it even does credit to the sage's delicately sensitive heart. He had his own watch, a faithful companion, which he had carried for innumerable years, which he cherished affectionately, as though it had been one of his own loved kindred at Scotsbrig. It was doing its duty still, and would until his end. Why should he admit a rival? This The Contemporary Review. he had no notion of leaving locked up in drawer unwound, doing no duty in living a sham life. So he gave it away. Here is a typical illustration of the way in which trivial things were turned and twisted to Carlyle's prejudice. Had it come under Froude's ken, he would have taken a jaundiced view of the matter. Percy FitzGerald. AUDACIA. BY SIR J. H. YOXALL, M.P. When I consider the behavior of Audacia Faithorne I the more admire Mrs. Mary Home. "I am married," Mrs. Home informed Mr. Spectator by letter, "and have no concern but to please the man I love. He is the end of every care I have. He is almost the end of my devotions. Half my prayers are for his happiness. I love to talk of him, and never hear him named but with pleasure and emotion." After two centuries there still are foolish, happy wives like that; for instance, Marian, spouse to my neighbor Coelebs, at The Laurels. Audacia Faithorne would snort at that letter, and in a most disconcerting way. Audacia is Faithorne's daughter: it was she who committed arson upon the Heath; Faithorne is glad, now, or so he tells me, that his wife her mother is dead. We cannot complain of not being warned of the coming of the Audacias, however; twenty years back a woman writing under the name of a man told us that men "have overlooked the eternal wildness, the untamed primitive savage temperament, that lurk in the mildest, best women," and more than fifty years ago Sir Austen Feverel is reported to have said that "woman will be the last thing civilized by man." I confess that until lately I had thought it man who had been civilized by woman. But perceive Audacia running away from the fire, with difficulty, because of her foolish hobble-skirt and her prison of long, strait corset; observe her deliberately doing an act of crime, and then shirking the penalty in a most unsportsmanlike way. She had taken out no policy on the Heath Pavilion, she would draw no insurance money; which shows her lack of what is called the business instinct, as well as something else. "Revolt" she calls her behavior; all Vallambrosa Gardens, N. W., calls it revolting; Miss Virginia and her sister Josepha at The Nest cannot find adequate words in which to express their opinion of "such unladylike behavior, my dear!" seems that the policeman caught Audacia fire-raising at three-fifteen in the morning-a pretty time for a girl to be out of her bed, on the Heath, in the dark! It Faithorne says he can't control her, and doesn't know any man who could. The constable says that he caught Audacia hothanded; but she tergiversated in a way no blessed martyr would ever have condescended to do. "What are you doing here?" X. 91 inquired; "I've come to see the fire," she answered. Then she laughed; the Audacias always laugh. "I said, 'You will have to come to the police-station with me'; and she replied ‘All right.... Don't touch me!" The Audacias are always as chary as "the chaste beams of the watery moon"; this girl could fire a Pavilion, but scorns to allume a man. It appears that she had with her a saw, a hammer, a bunIdle of tow which smelled of paraffin, and three pieces of paper smeared with tar, all contained in a dressingbag which smelled strongly of pitch. These things she thinks she may touch and be touched by, without being defiled. Audacia hunger-struck, too did ever the holy martyrs kick away their pyres? Audacia scratched the policeman's hands, Audacia insulted and assaulted the magistrate. She picked up a local directory,-all directories are heavy, it is the hyphenated and fanciful names which swell them outand she flung it at the Magistrate's aged white head. He resembles Father Christmas, and is obviously ently will be able to keep the girl in bounds. She still goes to church, however; perhaps women will always do that. Hours come in every woman's life when she feels she must passionately worship, must feel the comforting prostration of prayer. The golden mys teries of the Romish altars will claim woman's knees the longest, I dare say -the trembling candle-flames, the swinging fumes, and the mystic celibacy of the ministrants. These affect the bodily emotions which she otherwise holds in check. But if ever the courageous and copiously expressive She whom Mr. Wells, Mr. Zangwill, and others of our moralist writers delight to encourage slips the anchor of religious faith, truly I do not know what else shall hold her, what shore she will drive to, or what mooring find. For she will swear by no mere man, as Marian does and Mrs. Mary Home did; she will lift no Psyche lamp to gaze with fond admiration upon the partner of her sleep. If she marries, any; nay, not such as the widow of Ephesus did, it is true, but a merry relict all the same, or so it seems, at present, to a sad eye. close on eighty years old, but no mat--she will make as glad-eyed a widow as ter. He might have been Audacia's great-grandfather mourning over her, he was so courteous and kind and sad, but no matter. She flung the compact, heavy book at his head, without a moment of warning. No matter. It goes without saying that she missed him; when Audacia went window-breaking all down Piccadilly she did not hit two plate-glass panes in ten. The most dangerous place when Audacia is throwing things is short leg, so to speak a little to the rear of her left elbow. The policeman seems to have held her by the elbow only, but she called him "a filthy-minded brute." Audacia as a parishioner of his makes the old Vicar of St. Swithin's feel very uncomfortable; I doubt if even the ascetic person in cassock and biretta who will get the living pres The good old Vicar says he pities the coming corporation of men. He laments the mutiny of the monstrous regiment of new women. "Why don't they marry?" he naively demands. He reads in an old book called "Heaven our Home," and looks forward to family reunion in the sky. If home is not any longer to be the earthly heaven, he asks, how can Heaven our Home continue to be realized? If, as jewellers fear, a permanent slump in the wedding-ring trade is impending, and such a drop in the birth-rate as shall make the RegistrarGeneral gasp, there may soon be no home our heaven nor Heaven our Home to look forward to, either at twenty-six on earth, or at six-andseventy in the sky. Faithorne argued with his daughter till he developed tonsilitis: Faithorne reasons loudly. "You must leave me to find my own soul," she answered, "in my own way. You don't suppose it is the vote itself I'm so keen on? The vote only stands for the soul of my poor sex." She often mentions her soul in a non-theological way. Observe that it is a new kind of soul she is seeking after, not the old-fashioned, separable, spiritual thing that used to flee to Heaven its home. As her father says, what is the soul, after all? One's soul is the sum and totality of one's being, surely? Is it not the accumulation of all the habits and remembrances of one's life? Are we not each of us building up our souls, as Jerry Balbus did The Laurels? Up to the point the building has developed can't you see the soul? Did not Da Vinci, Cooper, and La Tour depict the soul? the smile of it on the lip, and the gaze of it in the eye? To look at Audacia you would never think it was she who wrote to the Prime Minister threatening to kidnap and do him slowly to death with redhot hairpins. If the face, form, and mien reveal the soul, I really cannot understand Audacia writing that letter, or even throwing that book, for she is quite a charming, graceful girl to look at. One's soul is one's selfone's whole, interfused, comprehensive being, poor Faithorne used to say, before this trouble came upon him— study the face and the form, the mien and the mind, if you wish to know the soul. But what about this girl's? Long ago Newton and Kepler laid down the law of the attraction of bodies, but that is a gravitation which Audacia resists. By mutual studying of visible souls the gravitation of friendship or affection is born; the reciprocal cognizance of two souls inLIVING AGE VOL. LX. 3135 duces joint love or liking, or lukewarm esteem. But who is Audacia's affinity, poor man? The mutual election of two souls is generative-a thing which Audacia Vows she will never be. There is a touching of perispheres, an union of perispirits, and their child is love or loving friendship: when it happened to young men and young women in the Vicar's day it was called first love -that sweet certainty of an intimate, ineffable link. In my young day souls were still thought to be separate entities; but if souls be separable, have they sex, and which is Audacia's? It was the look and smile of Marian told Coelebs what she was-his complement in petticoats, his born comrade of other shape; at sight he knew her as sympathetic with his dormant domestic qualities, she would make a pleasant, giggling, devoted little wife and housewife, he felt sure of that on sight. Dutifully she would accept his prejudices and habitudes, be married at St. Swithin's and consent to go there with him on Sundays, although she was born a daughter of the Nonconformist camp. But Audacia?-she is the total nonconformist, amazing girl. When Audacia says she must find her own soul she means that she must discover herself to herself and to no man. Marian never had a self worth mentioning, Audacia thinks; Marian is parasitic, it seems-Audacia decides to be self-sufficingly a woman, she will live in no unholy matrimony. She means to be une femme forte, though the true femmes fortes are those whom home our heaven makes happy, Audacia. She vows herself to a barren severity, as nuns do; they do it in the name and for the love of God, but she in the name and for the glory of woman. She may break her vow-I do not know, and I am sure she does not know, quite what she is straining after, out of the villa gate, along a new avenue, totally out of bounds. The freedom of the garçonnière, can it be? The liberty of the passe-partout? Nay, not that; but she runs risks of that. It is a far cry from the harem to the forum, Audacia-it is a whole continent from the suttee to the Divorce Court, my girl; a dangerous, distant flight for wings untried. No, it is not the garçonnière and the passe-partout the Audacias are making for. "Don't touch me!" they cry instinctively-there are to be no more "little white geese" perhaps (as M. Brieux says), but the speckled ones will be no more numerous than they have been. As for night in home our heaven, woman can better live without man than man can without woman; not there lies the source of the feline acerbities the Audacias show us, like sudden unsheathed claws. Audacia's cheeky young lip would curl if she read of "The woman in me orying for the man, The mother in me crying for the child"; but she will break down and cry before long. "You say you love me!" some Audacias answer at present. "Love me in another way, then. Or do not love me at all." Many widows The Cornhill Magazine. are Audacialike-because of their failures in civilizing their late husbands, I suppose. No, it is not the garçonnière and the passe-partout they rave and fumble after; it is the lonely, cold dignity of the epicene. I will think no evil of women, however, be they Mary Homes or be they Audacias. Grant exceptions a place and phases a period, women are still and always will be what Ledyard found them to be in various climes more than a century ago. Listen, Audacia-listen to the high mark of your calling: "Among all nations they are the same, civil, kind, obliging, humane, tender beings." Shall they not all be so again? "Timorous and modest," the panegyric went on, "more liable to err than men"-certainly when aiming missiles "but also more virtuous, and performing more good actions. I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship to a woman, whether civilized or savage, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. With men it has often been otherwise." Rave, plot, and throw directories a while, Audacia, if you must. You will revert to type, as we all have to do,you will fail and break down, you will weep and lament and love. LUSTRAL WATERS. It had rained overnight, and the high winter sky was mackerel-barred with ladders of dove-colored cloud mounting with exquisite regularity of structure from the horizon to the zenith. There was no flaw in their continuity nor the slightest motion apparent in their ranks. Below them the hollow dome of the firmament enclosed a vault-like silence, an immense, Olympian calm. Pearl of the World, my mare, cast no shadow, and yet the earth seemed to hang in a diffused, tempered sunshine, in a golden mean between the gloom of an overcast day and the brilliancy of cloudless weather. To draw breath was a luxury; to ride at a walk, sniffing the pure odors of the Central Indian forest, the very summit of wellbeing. A long spell of duty in a wheat district had whetted my appetite for this. Wheat and linseed, linseed and wheat, with never a wild tree in view for miles, these had been |