on earth more mathematically certain that. Nor was that all. A wish he had often put up for the sake of his friends, namely, that all women went about in masks and men blindfold, for an instant he felt for himself.

There was a beauty he believed in. Beauty was a commodity, like wine or tobacco, and had its uses and value-the beauty that is content with its right to enslave one half of you only, and that your worst; that begins and ends with amorous hair and curledup roseleaf lips and ivory shoulders and flower-sweet fingers-things that drive a man midsummer mad, perhaps, but which leave him at liberty to scorn them in his sober hours. The stronger his nature the more certain is he not to sink into lasting slavery, but to smile and scoff at his short-lived folly, and to visit his self-contempt without much mercy on the dolls that could beguile him one hour.

Ichabod could forgive this girl her richly-shaded dark brown hair, head like a classic bust, and lodestar eyes; but why to these must she add that more intangible beauty that takes hold of the mind, and which Ichabod regarded much as our forefathers regarded the sin of witchcraft, and would thankfully have seen "selected" out of existence as the source of infinite unreason in the wisest of mankind. Somehow he feels at once as if his old weapon of disdain could not serve him against the spell of Ianthe Lee's subtle piquancy. But if he put it by, it was only with the intention of finding another.

Now, that wicked spirit Hammond had for the last half-hour been regaling the young lady with an account of Ichabod, and an abstract of his opinions, as Hammond understood them. The picture was so curious and amusing that the

girl had expressed a laughing wish to become acquainted with this oddity; and, as Hammond had taken her at her word, she said to herself now that she might as well find out how far he had been romancing according to his wont.

"Mr. Hammond tells me you are the greatest reformer he knows," she said, pleasantly. "He has been trying to explain your views to me, but did not seem very clear about it; so I said I should prefer to hear them from yourself. Will you enlighten me?"

"Hammond should have told you," said Ichabod, who was watching her as she spoke, with an impression as if her face were not strange to him, that mine is no ladies' philosophy. You would never listen to a word."

"Ah, but I should," she replied, piqued, as he intended. For with all his contempt-and it was profound-for her sex as the source of nine out of ten of the sentimental evils he had set his face against, he could not ignore half the population nor deny's woman's influence. It was only too formidable. Might it not happen that one of these creatures of impulse should be converted to Reason-when he, Ichabod, was Reason's mouthpiece? So he fearlessly met her violet eyes, and replied just to test her.

"Hammond called mine just now a root-and-branch philosophy. If it has a right to that name it is certainly the first. Our reformers amuse me. They clip the thistle and nettle heads, and flatter themselves they have done their work on the roots. They help to spread evils, and then set up hospitals for them. The stampingout process-the only one they never try-is the one I recommend."

"Then I see you don't believe in an imperfect world or original sin," she replied, laughingly, "or you

would have to begin by stamping out the earth and the inhabitants of it."

"I do not say that it would not be for the best. But luckily we are still free to doubt the necessity. You have only to think how entirely feeling rather than reason rules the world, to see how incalculable must be the change that might be wrought by the suppression of the former."

"Then do you take them for natural enemies-like the French and English?"

6

"If I could only turn the world into a Palace of Truth for you for ten minutes, you would never ask that question again. Then you would see yourself forced to take these high feelings' for what they are worth. Heroism, generosity, friendship, would appear as they are-masks for self-interest. Take friendship. Jonathan would perceive that his David thought it well to be in favour with the heir apparent. David that his Jonathan perhaps had private reasons for looking on him in the same light, and wished to be on good terms with the coming event.'

"Then pray, in your Palace of Truth, have no men and no deeds higher claim to our admiration than others?" she asked, astounded.

"The difference is so much slighter than you or anyone supposes," said he, insinuatingly. "If we were to take the good, or the pains men have worked, by which to measure their claims to our gratitude, the results would be very strange. Among those who have sown the largest crop of evils, we should find just those saints and philanthropists who have reaped the largest harvest of praise.'

"Are

you in earnest?" she said. Why not?" said he. "Take an instance, the strongest possible, if you like, an atrocious criminal,

say a secret poisoner. What harm has he done? Diminished the burden of the population by one; relieved a member from life that is only vexation of spirit at best, as all wise men have agreed, and through, let us suppose, a painless death, so contrived as to avert suspicion and the evil of a dangerous example. Put beside him the honourable and revered physician who cures, or half cures, hundreds from the effects of disease or accident, inflicts upon them long years of pain-slow death at last-while meanwhile these feeble members are consuming the sustenance that would otherwise have fallen to the strong and healthy, and in their feeble and sickly children creating the sources of infinite future evils by deteriorating the race. Which of the two is the guiltier at the bar of humanity?"

"Mr. Hammond told me his friend was mad," thought Miss Lee. "I begin to believe him now." Still, having provoked the conversation, she chose to humour the speaker.

"And what conclusion do you draw from this?" she asked. "That the physician of the future, I suppose, ought to make it his study not how to preserve life, but how best to destroy it?"

"You may draw what conclusions you please," he replied, evasively. "The only fact I wished to point was that we live upon shams, look where you will," and looking about himself his eyes chanced to fall upon Tony, who was again at Mrs. Adair's side, paying her assiduous court, which she took in good part, half-pleased, halfamused. "My young friend yonder, do you see? already an abject slave to his flattering imagination."

"Nay, indeed," said Miss Lee, with sudden animation, "never speak or think cavalierly of Mrs.

Adair. I know her well-do you? Such people are rare; so few, I can agree with you; but now and then you come across a nature like hers; and then we need no Palace of Truth to tell us that such natures put sunshine into life and leaven humanity better than a generation of detracting, sophistical theorists."

Ichabod replied with a glance of hostility. Ianthe was quite aware she had hoisted the enemy's flag, and a singular look passed between the two. Ichabod felt for a moment as if he were like the centripetal trying to convert the centrifugal force. But a fig for any theory that would allow a romantic female friendship to stop its mouth.

"Pray don't suppose," he said, with a covert smile, "that I deny the existence of the social instinct in yourself and Mrs. Adair."

"Social instinct!" Ianthe's eyes flashed, but she scarcely knew whether to laugh or be indignant.

Just at this moment Hammond, who had come up and been listening with thorough amusement to the dialogue, interposed

"Ichabod, will you take Miss Lee down to supper? There was a twinkle in his eye that betokened mischief. He was quite determined to quiz his oldest friend still further before the evening was out. Ianthe saw that a joke was in the wind as she took her saturnine cavalier's arm resignedly.

Mrs.

The supper-room was small. A little knot of guests were gathered there, the rest having already done justice to the refreshments. Adair was doing the honours of her fernery on the staircase to Tony and others. A sprinkling of choice spirits that remained at table were diverting themselves with sundry little exhibitions of comic talent. One preached a comic sermon; another proposed a comic toast; a third sang a comic ballad. As Ichabod went down

stairs, Hammond whispered urgently, "They're waiting for you. Mrs. Adair isn't there. I want you to deliver a short lecture. Of course, a practical man like yourself has always a speech ready for any emergency. Now's your time. Give them a taste of your eloquence."

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'Oh, but what am I to say? said Ichabod, indifferently.

"Oh, whatever you like. Speak your own words-what you've been saying to Miss Lee, only mind you're strong enough. strong enough. Too strong you can't be; so go at it, hammer and tongs. They're out-andouters, and prepared to hear you go any lengths, even of exaggeration.

So they were, and no wonder ; for Hammond, in one of those mad moods that come on towards two in the morning, had promised them to try and get a friend of his to deliver a comic lecture by a philosopher of the future.

Ichabod yielded, seeming to play into his hands. For those dozen guests, in the last phase of lobster salad and champagne cup, their ridicule or applause, he cared no more than for the chairs in which they sat. He would take the opportunity to deliver a parting blow at sensibility and its priestess, Ianthe Lee, at his side. As for the rest, if they wanted to laugh at him, he might turn the tables upon Hammond yet.

"Ladies and gentlemen," began Mr. Hammond, with gravity, "I have the honour of presenting to you my friend, Mr. Ichabod, well known in coming philosophical circles. He will favour us with a short lecture; I think the theme to-night is

"Hero Worship," said Ichabod, prompting him.

Hammond sat down, his face full of suppressed mirth.

Ianthe, on the other side, was

sparkling with another sort of animation.

Ichabod, standing up between, was as cold and unmoved as a statue. He cast his eye over his audience, so prepared to laugh by anticipation that they would imagine farce and mummery where there was none. He would only have to be serious and savage as he felt, and it would pass for the cleverest parody."

"Of all the strange superstitions by which mankind have ever suffered themselves to be degraded," he said, "this was the most monstrous as it was also the most widespread-Serpent Worship was rational in comparison. The peculiarity of snakes, their mysterious habits and deadly powers,

more

than account for the honours bestowed upon them. Tree worship is easily explained by their longevity. People who reverenced old age might adore the oak or a yew that had outlasted generations of men. Fire worship in a cold. country scarcely needs apology. The animal worship of the Indians and Egyptians had a grain of sense in it. Oxen are stronger than men and incomparably better for food. But for centuries after these and other superstitions had died out in all civilised countries, we find the old hero worship in full force. It was celebrated with no fixed rites and seems to have been particularly erratic in its outbursts and arbitrary in its choice of objects. But wherever the great-man-mania prevailed we find sect upon sect showering pans and hymns of praise on their anointed favourite, all full of the wildest expressions of devotion. Sacrifices were offered and called testimonials-they were given sometimes in gold and silver, sometimes in the form of memorial buildings, and statues of the demigods generally abounded in the public squares.

"The theory of the hero worshippers was founded on the marked differences in the powers and achievements of men. And they asserted the claim of the stronger physically and intellectually on the blind adoration of the weaker, as though the value. of a tree depended on the quantity of its berries whether wholesome or poisonous.

"For in sober truth their hero, whether priest, poet, or soldier, was perpetually being praised for doing things which if perpetrated by another were considered the vilest crimes. A Garibaldi butchered, indirectly, more patriots than ever perished in Austrian dungeons. Wycliffe and Luther, by encouraging men to sacrifice their life to their conscience, created the Inquisition and lit the fires of Smithfield, and are responsible for the death of multitudes of innocent people. Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, were allowed to tamper with morality, and even extolled in sermons for handling themes an ordinary man would be outlawed for daring to touch. The beauty they sung and loved and sought, broke more hearts than the ingratitude and cruelty they heaped with abuse and disgrace. It may sound almost incredible, but this form of superstition which now lingers only in remote districts and among an ignorant peasantry, and which all educated people look upon as equally irrational and immoral, prevailed all over Europe as late as the nineteenth century of our era."

He paused. The noisy forced laughter and applause that broke for a moment from the company was succeeded by rather a ghastly silence as Ichabod took his chair with a smile, and a little side glance of triumph at Ianthe, who made no pretence of laughing herself. The supper party fell to pieces somehow; whether Ichabod's

speech had spoilt the taste of the refreshments or not, it put an effectual check on further playful effusions. One by one the guests dropped off, and the room thinned. Only a few of the most determined supper-worshippers remained.

Hammond, feeling a little floored, had beaten a retreat with the majority. Ianthe then looked up at her neighbour.

"Mr. Ichabod," she said, with emphasis, "I respect you."

"Why, I wonder?" asked he, deprecatingly.

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Because you are consistent, and speak out. If only all pessimists had, like you, the courage of their opinions

"Well-what then?"

"Your school would soon have neither scholars nor professors." "By what law?" he asked scornfully.

"The survival of the fittest," she replied.

Ichabod looked up, surprised, not displeased, at her audacity.

"Do you know," he said, in an altered insinuating tone, "I seldom care to talk of these matters to a woman. As a rule she is not capable of understanding them, and the exception who is capable is determined beforehand not to take them in. That you could understand, I feel sure whether you would is another question. I know they are not pleasant or attractive."

"Oh, I think they have their fascination, like vertigo, something which draws a man down a precipice or into deep water."

"Young lady, they are ugly and grim, so we turn away or shut our eyes," he said, his face hardening again. "But they are true, and truth is a jewel, or used to be thought so.'

"Truth is a jewel," said Ianthe, "but is that a reason why we are never to look for it but in a toad's head ?"

Ichabod looked at her ready with a retort, but stopped; his reply had passed out of his mind. Suddenly it flashed upon him how and where he had seen her face before-its likeness, at least. It had spoilt his sleep one night at Mr. Saville's. It spoilt his speech now. He rose rather abruptly, and offered her his arm to leave the supper-room. It was growing late, the whole party seemed breaking up, and Ichabod the first opportunity laid hands upon Tony and carried him off. The young fellow was in rare spirits, and worshipped his heroine volubly all the way home; Ichabod from time to time putting in a word of remonstrance.

"She is fifty thousand times more charming off than on the stage," said Tony ecstatically.

"My dear boy, do be cautious how you use that positive verb to be," said Ichabod, rallying him. "This is a world where fifty thousand things seem for one that is."

"Very like," said Tony obstinately. "Then all the more honour to Mrs. Adair, who both seems and is, beauty, goodness, and genius personified."