nessed is positively wonderful. Go where you like try to hide yourself in whatever country nook you can, and, within a week, someone is down upon you: the friend of a relation, or the relation of a friend, or the physician who attended you at Brighton, or some unexpected, undeniable historian of some part of your life, or of the life of someone connected with you."

"Mine is a short one to have any historian."

"Well," said Sir Henry. "What do you say to this sketch? Mr. MacAndrew, having selected you from among a large number of applicants for the important post of his foreign secretary, has reason to be satisfied with the penetration that directed his choice. You are not clever, and are unused to business, but you are forming under his eye into something creditable. At first you annoyed him very much by hanging continually about him, and worrying him with perpetual questions; but lately you seem to have taken kindly to his initiation, and your chief fault now is a disposition to gossip when you should be attending to business. Now, is this drawn from my own imagination, Guidone? or have I had some news uttered or concealed?"

"Concealed, I think," said Guy. "Why it is a photograph-only a negative all the lights are dark and all the shadows light."

"Those who are better acquainted than I am with the illustrious MacAndrew describe him as an unrivalled master of one figure of rhetoric."

"And that is'

the process, and even to increase her family," said Sir Henry. "My dear Guy, this is all as it should be. But, remember, going out in the world with a plunge as you have done, that if you ever feel a moment's hesitation, a want of advice, you may come to me as you would to your father, if he were spared to you."

"Indeed, Sir Henry, I will not fail to do so."

"The dangers to which a man of your habit and temperament are exposed, Guy, are not those which occur in your intercourse with men. You may seem, with them, placed at a disadvantage when compared to the pushing, thick skinned people who never think of anything but thrusting themselves forward; but it is only in the lower walks of life-in trade and trading intrigue, and, perhaps, in political intrigue— that this sort of thing succeeds in the long run. There is a faint compensation in human fortune, and it is not with those who most impudently seek her that the blind goddess loves to tarry longest."

"I have often felt annoyed with myself for letting other people push in to do what I knew that I could do better," said Guy. Sometimes I have found that patience was discreet, and the matter has come back to me after all."

66

Seeking you, not sought by you," said Sir Henry. "That is one main secret of success. Make people want you. Only then there arises another danger. It is all very well with men; but when the women take to it, it may become embarrassing."

"But no woman, no well-bred woman, can ever make advance to a man," said Guy.

"Can they not?" said the baronet, drily. "So much the better. But, Guy, remember this: a man brought up as you have been is free-I may say is entirely free

from the ordinary dangers that beset young men. A pure and refined taste, formed by constant intercourse with cultivated and wellbred women, is an almost absolute preservation against against the evil

of the coarser kind of female society."

"The very expression gives one a feeling of disgust," said Guy.

а

"That is it," said the baronet. "You are surrounded with panoply which is the more perfect because it is not assumed, but grows on you like the shell of a lobster. But then there is the danger per contra."

"What is that, Sir Henry?" asked the young man.

"This," said the baronet: "you form a high poetical ideal of woman. I do not say too highbut still the ideal is formed from the rarest and noblest specimens of the class, even if it does not somewhat improve upon them. Then, when you come in contact with anything visibly inconsistent with that ideal, you instinctively shrink from it. Thus you are preserved from danger in three cases out of four, or perhaps more. But when the difference is only comparative, when you meet any one who, being very quiet, or very clever, or very lovely in person, does not at once clash with the ideal, you are apt to invest her with the imaginary qualities in which she is really deficient. It is as if a man had seen an ivory statue, and then set forth on a pilgrimage through the world to find the original.

He would shrink at once from the negress, the Calmuck, the Chinese, the Esquimaux, and a great many others, but he would be so likely to cry out at the first Georgian or Circassian he saw- There she is!' and then she would turn out to be only a beautiful doll.”

"What is the best safeguard, then, against this kind of danger?

Danger, if I understand you aright, from one's own imagination."

"From your own, and from that of others," said Sir Henry. "For it is no vanity to bear in mind that attraction is generally-not always, but generally-mutual. Well, there is one very simple, very valuable rule of conduct - avoid tête-à-tête interviews."

66

They do not so often occur, I think."

"Rarely, unless they are sought," said Sir Henry; "and almost invariably they are easy to avoid. It may seem an ascetic recommendation-but it is not. My idea of practical wisdom is to keep out of difficulties-not to trust to the exertion of human virtue to overcome them. If a woman challenge a man, he must meet the challenge. He can no more sneak away, without a loss of self-respect, than he can turn his back on a man who shakes his fist at him. But avoid the occasion."

"But-but-one does like to have a tête-à-tête sometimes," said Guy.

"Understand me," said the baronet. "When you see the one whom, from your judgment as well as from your taste, you would like to present to Mrs. Carrington as a daughter, of course it is another matter. I am only referring to entanglements which the intelligence cannot oppose, but into which a sort of chivalrous feeling may lead a man before he is aware. But when you once find the right person, are really engaged, or mean to be so, you may go when you like-you have the herb moly-and may face Cerberus himself. Will you come to dinner?"

"I am going to take Parkesbury on my way down," said Guy, "and I only come to see you on my way to Parkesbury."

"Then I will not say a word more. I will not deprive Mrs. Car

rington of an hour of your society. You will know one day, Guy, even better than you do now, what it is to have had such a mother. There

is no training like that of a nobleminded, intellectual, and cultivated woman. It beats that of all the schools, and of both the universities."

CHAPTER XXII.

MOTHER AND SON.

THE great masters of drama and of fiction, who have been the fathers and founders of literature, have ever limited the flight of their fancy by certain prescriptive laws. Whether these laws have unconsciously sprung from the mere promptings of the instinctive dramatic genius, or have been wrought out by any process of delicate and subtle analysis, the result has been the same. The keen dissectingknife of Aristotle, and the graceful, but sharply-pointed pencil of Horace, have laid bare some of these rules to the student. There are others for which he has yet to search in the pages of the classic writers of dead and of living tongues, from the author of the tale of "Troy Divine," to the Ariosto of the North.

One of the first of the rules set before their faces by authors who have written, not for pence, but for long-enduring praise-not to serve the purpose of the hour, or to catch the whim of the day, but to attain a place among those whose works are immortal-has been to select a subject involving some degree of elevation or nobility of character in the principal actors. It is not the case that these have always been heroes and kings, but yet the heroic element, in some form, has never been entirely absent. And it is noteworthy how the genius of the greatest

entirely

master of English prose fiction always glows with a whiter heat, and how his pencil is always dipped in purer and fresher colours, when the heroes of his story rank high in the social scale. In his Louis the Eleventh, his James the First, his grand and yet truly feminine portrait of Queen Elizabeth, Scott has given us the masterpieces of his art, and has lent life and tone to characters to which Richie Moniplies, and Ludovic le Balafrè, Wayland Smith and Flibbertigibbet, serve as appropriate foils and contrasts.

The great comic writers are no exception to the rule, when once we pass the limit of an actual scenic piece. Even in the consistant self-glorification of Monsieur Jourdan there is an absence of the grossly vulgar. The wit of Molière never stooped to reproduce the mere argot of uninteresting low life. If we look to works of a less fugitive nature at least so far as plan and length of treatment is concerned-we shall find the same rule to apply. The coarseness of Falstaff is redeemed by his wit-he is, in his worst moments, the gentleman under a cloud, Sir John to all the world. The immortal hero of Cervantes is a well-bred, well-educated cavalier, afflicted with that one master aberration which gives to the whole history the comic, and yet the pathetic, force of its delineations. Even yet more strikingly is this displayed in that great English prose fiction which, pestilently caricatured as it has been by many feeble commentators, annotators, and admirers, stands alone in our literature-the epic of the man of the people, of the enthusiast who, in the gloom of Bedford Jail, knew how to inscribe his name on the imperishable roll of fame. If ever there was a case in which coarse, racy, and startling vernacular might have been employed

as the natural language of the writer, it is that of the Pilgrim's Progress. To its author the language of courts, and the tones of sovereigns, unless in so far as he had listened to the echoes of the Celestial City, were altogether unknown. To him the law and the bench of his country would appear little else than ermined forms of persecution and of injustice. Precluded, by his absolute unacquaintance, from sketching any of the actors in the higher walks of society, familiar from his cradle with those moving in the lowest, possibly in the most squalid scenes, exercising the humble and grimy occupation of a tinker, he yet drew no vulgar hero. If Christian is not a courtier, neither is he a boor. In him his painter, seizing what was human, has left out of sight what was distinctive of class. It is no slight triumph of the literary art of Bunyan, that no one pauses to inquire whether Christian was, or was not, a gentleman.

No

In the instance of another author, who in minute delicacy of touch, accuracy of observation, and full dramatic power of narration, excels both Cervantes and Bunyan, we find that proof of the excellence of a rule which is furnished by the exception. other reason can be assigned for the fact that Defoe, as a popular writer, as laying hold of the imagination, and of the loving memory, of the mass of readers, ranks so far behind the two other satirists. The only assignable cause is to be detected in the less felicitous choice of his subjects. Some of the heroines of Defoe rank among the most finished female portraits in literature. But they are portraits as well unpainted they are acquaintances better avoided.

With a selection of scenes and of characters that ever tend to

elevate the thoughts of the reader, with a tempering of comedy by keen and subtle wit, or by deep and unexpected pathos, and with the lighting up of the majesty of tragic drama by the snarl of a Thersites, or by the ridiculous garb in which a Fluellen attires his really noble sentiments, is combined, in all great writers, a correct appreciation of the true province of tragedy. No master of his art has considered misery, squalor, or pure malignity to be tragic. The selfish self-torture of a Giaour or a Childe Harold may be a very melodious grumble, but it is not tragedy, neither is it high art. element of perepetia, sudden change or sudden terror, the conflict of the better and the worse-chiefly of the future better and the present worse is needed to form the ingredient which distinguishes the tragic from the repulsive. Not only is Medea forbidden to slay her children before the people, but there must be some master passion fiercely evoked to induce her to slay them at all. Pure evil is not tragic, any more than pure coarseness is comic. And farce is not literature.

The

Again, there are certain scenes and certain emotions common to humanity, over which all great writers have, by one consent, drawn a respectful veil. Love, indeed, the great theme of poetry, as it is the mainspring of human life, has ever been so favourite a passion for the delineation of the artist, whether he work with the pen, the brush, or the chisel, that few would care to read a work of fiction from which that master motive was omitted. But then it is love in certain phases; love mingled with either the tragic or the comic element; love armed and triumphant, or despised, and yet constant and faithful; or arch, mischievous, and malicious. Love in

its purest and simplest phase no loftily imaginative author has chosen to depict. Literature in this respect has not advanced beyond the stage of those early and noble artists who thought it profane to represent the human figure entirely nude. With the failure of that reserve, although great beauty may be admirably depicted, the highest functions of the imagination cease.

You admire a gallery of marble nymphs; you look in vain among them for what is fairer than the nymph, and nobler than the goddess-the blushing, sparkling, modest, inconsistent, yet not inconsistent, woman. No writer of fiction worthy the name ever set forth the chronicle of the honeymoon. The novelist must leave the bride before the altar. To attempt to accompany them in the wedding chariot, or to pourtray the raptures of the lovers made happy, from observations taken through the back window of the vehicle, is worthy only of the lowest members of that class which is accustomed to regard all human life from the same elevated but unrespected perch. It is a point of view from which numerous readers, and more than one very popular writer of modern fiction, seem to have a natural aptitude for regarding things-especially things above them. People have, unfortunately, been but too much accustomed to laugh at scenes, uninteresting enough in themselves, because they have been presented from what may be called the dickey point of view. English literature has not risen in consequence.

No less sacred to the man of refined taste is the tie between the mother and the son, when that tie is of its finest woof. Filial affection, indeed, is as legitimate, and as ancient, an element of drama as is that passion which is more generally spoken of by the name of

love. In the literature of the Chinese the honour and observance due to parents rank as the first of human virtues. That filial virtue was regarded among the Greeks is evident from the touching tale of the best gift accorded by the god, at the prayer of their grateful mother, to Cleobis and Biton. But into the intimate confidence of mother and son, the joy of the widowed parent in welcoming her longabsent one home, the envious parsimony with which she grudges the flight of every moment that is given to their interview, the writer of fiction can only hastily and reservedly enter.

Gilbert followed his brother like a shadow. He had grown taller, and paler, and thinner during his absence.

"He misses you almost as much as I do, Guy," said Mrs. Carring

ton.

Gilbert's delight was extreme at the present Guy brought him from Paris. "Such a cane, mamma; no one in Parkesbury has such a cane. The top is gold, or silver gilt at the least; and it has a real brass ferrule with an iron end." Gilbert was also profuse in his commentaries on his former letter on the subject of Stump.

This brief monosyllable was the name of a tortoiseshell cat of remarkable outline, being an illegitimate or mongrel descendant of the famous tailless cats of the Isle of Man. The result of this impurity of descent was an unexpected modification in the distinctive feature of

the race. Stump was adorned with a semi-tail a truncated caudal appendage of about half the customary length, such as that which barbarism of taste, and the use of shears, render so common on the roofs of Lisbon. Only the Portuguese clip the ears of their cats, as well as their tails. Stump having now, for the first time, pro