Mrs. Guinness went back and watched them from the shop-window. "It is as I thought," she said triumphantly.

Peter nodded. She came behind him, leaning on his shoulder. "It was only proper for me to speak to him of—of—" It was fifteen years since Hugh's name had passed between them.

"Whatever was necessary to protect you and Catharine," he said quietly. She pressed her hands on his forehead beneath his wig, and presently he drew one of them down and held it to his lips, thinking how forbearing she had been with his boy. Mrs. Guinness went up stairs then and knelt down by the bed. She was rather fond of the exercise which she called praying—taking a larger image of herself into her confidence. Her one idea of Him was that He could provide comfortably here and elsewhere for herself and Catharine. But to-day her conscience irritated her like a nettle. Could it be that she was at soul tricky? Could God hold her, rigorous church-member, fond wife and mother as she was, guilty of this boy's blood? Nettles, however, do not sting very deeply. She rose presently, unfolded her work, and sat sewing and singing a hymn, a complacent smile on her good-humored face.

Down in the shop Peter had taken out the violin again, and was playing some nameless old air, into the two or three monotonous notes of which had crept an infinite stillness and longing. He often played it, but only when he was alone, for he would not allow Kitty to hear any but merry, vivacious music.

CHAPTER IV.

Meanwhile, Catharine and Mr. Muller walked down the street in absolute silence, Kitty bearing herself with her usual grave politeness, though there was a quizzical laugh in her eyes. "Lover? My lover?" she thought. But she did not blush, as some other innocent girls would have done. She had never talked an hour in her life to a young man, or heard from other girls their incessant chirping of "he—he," like that of birds in spring wooing their mates. Her nearest acquaintance with lovers was old Peter's rendering of Romeo or Othello. She remembered them well enough as her eye furtively ran over the jaunty little figure beside her. "Is his hose ungartered, his beard neglected, his shoe untied?" she thought. "Pshaw! he is not Orlando, any more than I am Rosalind." Her mother had been mistaken, that was all: she let the matter slip easily past her. There was a certain tough common sense in Catharine that summarily sent mistakes and sentimental fancies to the right about.

Mr. Muller, finding the words he wished to speak would not come at once, and ashamed of jogging on in silence, began to overflow with the ordinary ideas of which he was full. They passed the grape-packing house. "Eight thousand boxes despatched last season, Catharine! And there is the Freedmen's Agency. Three teachers supported, five hundred primers furnished to Virginia alone since January, and I really forget the number of Bibles. But the world moves: yes indeed. And I think sometimes Berrytown moves in the van."

"I've no doubt of that," said Kitty politely. "Dear me! Five hundred spelling-books!" But she felt humiliated. She had neither picked grapes nor taught freedmen. What thin wisps of hair these women had stopping to speak to Mr. Muller! She put her hand suddenly to the back of her head.

"Those are employees in the canning-house," he said as they passed on. "One is educating herself as a short-hand reporter, and the other has a lecture ready for next winter on Shakespeare's Women."

"What admirable persons they must be! Ah! now I have it right!" setting her hat higher on the light chestnut coils. Mr. Muller looked, and his eye rested there. She knew that, though the back of her head was toward him. But lover? Nonsense! He meant no doubt to propose that she should go into the typesetting business or stenography.

Now, to tell Kitty's secret, she had had her love-affair her mother knew nothing about, which made her purblind in this matter. It was this: There was a certain cave (originally a spring-house) behind the walnut trees, quite covered over with trumpet-vines and partridge-berries. She had a bench there, from which she could see only the shady old house and the sun going down. When she was a child of about eight, alone all day long, year in and out, she had taken down this bench, and working stealthily and blushing terribly, had made it large enough for two. She never allowed anybody, not even Peter, dearest of all, to come into the cave or sit on the bench afterward. What her childish fancy of an unknown friend was, or how it grew and altered with her years, only she knew, though after she was grown she told her father of a certain Sir Guy in some of his crusading stories in whom she had believed as a fact. "I actually thought he would come to woo me," she said laughing, "and I had a castle where I sat and waited for him. There never was a child so full of absurd fancies."

But she never said where the castle was, and she was fond still of sitting alone for hours on the old bench, over which the shade grew heavier year by year, and the moonlight crept with more mysterious glitter. She came in sometimes when she had been there in the evening, and the sound of old Peter's violin alone broke the silence, with her cheeks feverish, as though there had been an actual presence with her to share her secret thoughts. The only living being she had ever taken into her hiding-place was, oddly enough, a baby of whom she was fond. It happened to fall asleep in her arms one day, and Catharine stole out with it and sat on the old seat, feeling its warm breath on her breast. The girl was shaken by an emotion which she did not understand: her blood grew hot, her breath came and went, she stroked the baby's hand and foot, kissed it, glanced about her with eyes guilty yet pure.

But it is certain Kitty had no thought of her cave this afternoon. Mr. Muller and his affairs were quite another matter. There was an awkward silence. Mr. Muller was collecting his forces: he cleared his throat. "Catharine—" he said.

"Ah, William!" cried a clear, well-toned voice behind them. He turned, half annoyed and half relieved, to meet a young lady in gray, stepping alertly from the doorway of the Water-cure House.

"Maria? This is my sister Maria, Miss Vogdes."

The lady looked at Kitty—a steady, straightforward look—then held out her hand. It was a large, warm, hearty hand, and gripped yours like a man's. Kitty took it, but felt like shirking the eyes. She had no mind to be so weighed and measured. She had an uncomfortable consciousness that her inner nature was all bared and sorted by this agreeable young woman in this first moment to the last odd and end in it, though she could not have put the consciousness into words.

"Going to the school, William? I am."

"Well—yes, we will go there." He turned irresolutely, and they walked together down the plank pathway, Kitty with an oppressive sense of having fallen into the clutch of one of the Primal Forces, who was about to settle her destiny for her; in which she stumbled almost on the truth. Miss Muller was quite aware of the fact of her brother's visits at the book-shop, and their motive. She glanced at her watch: she could give herself half an hour to find out what stuff was in the girl, though it hardly needed so long. "A good type of the Domestic Woman in the raw state," she thought. (She always jotted down her thoughts sharply to herself, as a busy shopkeeper makes entries in his day-book.) "Pulpy, kissable. A vine to which poor William would appear an oak. A devoted wife, and, if he died, a gay widow, ready to be a fond wife to somebody else."

"What do you mean to make of yourself, Miss Vogdes?" she snapped suddenly, just as Kitty was counting the hen-coops of the society in the field they were passing, and wondering how she could contrive to get a pair of their Cochin Chinas.

"To make?" stammered Kitty ("I knew she would take me by the throat somehow," she thought)—"of myself?—Why, I am Peter Guinness's daughter."

"You poor child!" Miss Muller laughed. It was a very merry, infectious laugh. She laid her hand on Kitty's shoulder gently, as though she had been a helpless kitten. "Now you see how our social system works, William. Ask a boy that question, and his answer comes pat—a doctor, carpenter, what not. In any case, he has a career, an independent soul and identity. This poor girl is—Peter Guinness's daughter, is content to be that. Though perhaps," turning sharply on her, "she thinks of the day when she will be the wife of somebody, the mother of children. Those, two ideas are enough to fill the brains of most women."

Mr. Muller colored, and smiled significantly to himself. Catharine looked at her with a grave suspense, but made no answer.

"Yes," Miss Muller went on, a certain heat coming into her delicate face, "that contents the most of them—to be the fool or slave of a lover or a husband or son. 'The perfume and suppliance of a minute—no more but that.'"

She walked on in silence after this, and Catharine scanned her quietly. She was not at all the mad woman Mrs. Guinness had always described her—not at all what Kitty had fancied a lecturer on woman suffrage, a manager of the Water-cure and a skillful operating surgeon must be. She was little, pretty, frail, with a very genuine look and voice—almost as young as Kitty, and far more tastefully dressed. Catharine eyed her wonderful coiffure with envy, and was quite sure those rosy-tipped, well-kept fingers never had anything to do with cutting up dead babies.

Mr. Muller at the moment was comparing the two girls critically. The point on which he dwelt longest was that his sister's eyes, fine, limpid and brown, were those of an actress, acting to herself very probably. They went through the whole imperative mood—exhorted, commanded, entreated in five minutes: even a certain woeful sadness which came into them at times, and was there now, was quite bare and ready to be seen of all men.

"She is always on review before herself: she is conscious of herself from head to foot," he thought with shrewdness only born out of long knowledge. "Her very toes, I've no doubt, say to each other, 'I, Maria.'"

As for his future wife, her eyes were given her to see with, nothing more. "And she looks out with them, never in," he reflected complacently. For he had come by this time to regard her as his future wife. It seemed quite natural when Maria presently took Kitty in hand as one of the family, and began to manage for her as she did for them all, from Grandfather Hicks down to the dog Tar.

"I think, William, Miss Vogdes has the maternal instinct largely developed," looking at her face and the shape of her head as a naturalist would at a new bug. "You could find work for her in here," unlatching the gate of the Reformatory school. "She could serve humanity here just as well as if she had more—more—well, we'll say stamina."

"Precisely what I thought of," cheerfully. "You've hit the nail on the head about her, Maria." He was a peaceable, affectionate fellow at bottom. He had never hoped that his sister would tolerate Kitty, and women's squabbles in a family he abhorred, like every other man; and here she was extending a hospitable greeting, finding work for Kitty already. Io triumphe!

"Suppose you show Miss Vogdes the institution, sister?" he said, rubbing his eye-glasses and putting them on again in a flutter of pleasure and cordiality.

Miss Muller nodded authoritatively, and he fell into the background.

"You'll observe, Miss Vogdes," with a laugh and shrug, "Berrytown has given its best of aesthetic instincts here: five square stories painted white, with green shutters; pebble walks; six straight evergreens to testify of the Beautiful. Inside—here we are! Parlor: yellow-pine floors, spotless; green paper blinds in the windows, that hang stirless the year round. This is the kitchen: white boards, shining caldrons. William, show the soup."

Mr. Muller gravely held up a ladleful: "Beef and cabbage. To each child we allow per diem three parts of animal food, three purely farinaceous, four vegetable. The proper scale, I hold, of healthful nourishment," putting back the ladle. He had not spilled a drop.

"Dining-room," continued Miss Muller: "more white boards; shining tin plates; these three hundred little figures in blue jeans ranged against the wall are the—the patients. Now observe." Mr. Muller rapped once, they raised their hands; twice, they clasped them; three times, they rattled off the Lord's Prayer; the next moment they were shoveling their soup into their mouths in silence.

"Miss Vogdes does not approve their religious teaching, William. You see," turning to her, "how they need a real motherly care. You could give it to them."

But Kitty, who perhaps did "want stamina," and who was more of a child than any before her, made no answer. Vice and disease faced her as never before: those hundreds of hungry eyes fenced her in.

"Are you sick?" said Mr. Muller anxiously, seeing her face. "It is the smell of the soup, perhaps. Come out of this. Let me pass, Maria. You forget how foolishly tender her life has been: she never probably looked at crime before. Come out to the fresh air."

"You'd better stay," said Maria coolly, aside. "These children will plead your cause with such a girl as that better than you can do or have done, I take it. Now, my dear," putting Kitty's hand between her own, "this is my brother's work, in which he wishes you to join him. Put it to yourself whether it is not your duty. You're very young; you've dreamed a good deal, most likely: this wakening to the fact that there is work in the world besides marrying and nursing babies revolts and shocks most young girls. Yet here it is." Her voice was very gentle, and sincere in every cadence, the words true: there lay the terrible grinding power of them. "Talk over your future life with William, my dear. There is the matron. I must go and see about that charge for pepper she made last month. Pepper for these children's stomachs, indeed!"

Mr. Muller drew Catharine's hand in his arm. "I did not mean to bring you here to-day," he said, nervously mopping his face with his handkerchief. "Maria is so fond of managing! But—but it was as my wife I wanted your help."

"My wife." Kitty was not surprised. At eighteen one reasons as the bird flies. Since she passed the six straight evergreens yonder she had learned that life was not an old book-house, a few sad and merry tunes, meals, and a bench to dream on. It was work—for Christ. Not far-off pagans, but little children with sin and disease heavy upon them, asking her to take it away.

She might want stamina or any other intellectual power, but her emotions were hot and near the surface: these children and their misery wounded and bruised her as they had never done Mr. Muller or his sister: her sense of duty and affection for her God, too, was as real and urgent with her as that of a dog for his master.

"Take me home now," she said quietly.

"But, Catharine—This is no answer. And my love for you is of such long standing!" pleaded the little man, whose mouth, being once opened by his passion, found it difficult to close. He forgot, too, the hundreds of eyes staring at him over the soup-spoons.

"Shall we go out?" said Kitty with an impatient laugh, which would not be polite. "There's too much beef here. And cabbage."

They passed Miss Muller, who nodded down on Catharine from the heights of brusque sincerity of the Woman's Rights people: "Come and see me, my dear. You and I shall get on very comfortably, I dare say;" to which Kitty replied with her old-fashioned manner, which had a fine courteous quality in it, whether it meant anything or not.

They were out in the street again. The sun was still hot and glaring. Past the new row of Morse's blue-painted shops, down the factory alley, all along the cinder path, Mr. Muller pressed and urged his suit. She heard every word with sharp distinctness.

The children: her work for Christ. Under all was a dull consciousness that this thing had been coming on her since the day, years ago, when she had suffered conviction at a revival and been converted. All His followers must give their lives to His service. Give their lives! These were words which to the poor little girl had always been terribly real, never a hackneyed form. Now the time had come, there was a dreadful wrenching at her heart.

"Oh, God! oh, my God! I want to do what's right!" cried Kitty silently, looking away to the farthest horizon.

Mr. Muller remembered by this time some of his long-planned endearing speeches, and used them. But he could not bring a blush to her cheek. She did presently look straight at him, her eye passing quickly and critically over the neat paunchy little figure in its fashionably-cut coat and tight-fitting trowsers. When she was a girl of ten she had fancied that Dr. Brownlee would be her future husband—the actual Sir Guy. She would listen Sunday after Sunday to the gray-bearded old fellow dealing the thunders of Sinai from the pulpit overhead, in a rapt delight, thinking how sweet it would be to be guided step by step by so holy and great a man. Long after she grew out of that, indeed only a year or two ago, she used to tremble and grow hot to her finger-tips when young Herr Bluhm, the music-master, went by the gate. A nod of his curly bullet head or the tramp of his sturdy cowskin boots along the road made her nerves tingle as never before. "What was this that ailed her?" she had asked herself a dozen times a day. All Mr. Muller's love-making did not move her now as one note of Bluhm's voluntaries on the organ had done. She had thought him Mendelssohn and Mozart in one: the tears came now, thinking of that divine music. But one day Mrs. Guinness had brought him in, being a phrenologist, to "feel Kitty's head." She felt the astonished indignation yet which stunned her from his thick thumb and fore finger as they gripped and fumbled over her head as if she had been a log of wood. But what could poor Bluhm know of the delicate fancies about himself in her brain as he measured it, which his heavy paws, smelling of garlic and tobacco, were putting to flight? "Philoprogenitiveness—whew! this little girl will be fond of children, madam. Tune, time!—has no more notion of music than a frog."

"At least," thought Catharine now, "Mr. Muller is a gentleman. I shall never feel disgust for him."

They had reached the gate now. He waited. "I shall not come in. I've confused and startled you, Catharine. You want time to think," he said gently.

"I understand, oh, I quite understand. But I never thought of myself as your wife," she said quietly. "It would be better you gave me time."

"Good-bye, then, my—my darling."

"Good-bye."

She stood looking over the gate, the walnut branches dark overhead, a level ray of sunlight on her strange alluring eyes and full bosom. Mr. Muller lingered, smoothing his hat before he put it on.

"She has not at all the intellectual power of Maria," he thought. "Maria's the sort of woman I ought to have chosen, I suppose," being a reformer, first of all, in the very grain. But the silly thought of holding her hand or kissing her lips came to him at the moment, and tormented him thereafter with a feverish desire.

CHAPTER V.

Catharine stood a long time by the gate.

"Don't question the child," said Peter to her mother. He would not even look at her when she came in, but fidgeted about, his leathery jaws red as a girl's at the thought that Kitty loved and was beloved.

"Is supper over? I'm hungry," was all she said. They watched her furtively as she ate.

"It's prayer-meeting night, Catharine," said Mrs. Guinness when she was through, taking her bonnet from the closet.

"I'm not going."

"Mr. Muller will miss you, my dear."

"Mr. Muller never has enough of prayer-meetings," recklessly, "but I have. I prefer going to bed to-night;" and she went up stairs.

Before her mother was gone, however, she began to change her dress, putting on one which, when the cape was not worn, left her shoulders and arms bare. She shook down her hair after the fashion of a portrait in the book-shop of Kitty Clive, Peg Woffington or some other ancient beauty more amiable than discreet. There was a delicious flavor of wickedness in the taking out of every hairpin. Then she came down to Peter where he sat smoking.

"In the dark, father? I'll light the candles;" which she did, scolding Jane savagely between-times. "We'll have some old plays to-night, father," bringing a book which her mother had forbidden, and then bringing his sheepskin-lined chair up to the table. Peter eyed her furtively as he puffed out his cigar to the last ash. On the stage or in the ball-room he had never seen, he thought, a finer woman than Catharine; and the old man's taste in beauty or dress or wine had been keen enough when he was a young blood on the town. He was annoyed and irritable.

"Catharine," he said sharply "bring your shawl: the night is chilly." But he read the plays with outward good-humor, and with an inward delight and gusto, which he would not betray. All his youth—that old Peter Guinness, for whom each day's bumpers had been frothed so high—came back in the familiar exits and entrances. The words were innocent enough as he altered them in reading for Kitty, though a good deal disjointed as to meaning; but she was not critical—forced herself to take an interest in his stories of Burton and Kean, and how he first saw old Jefferson.

"I suppose," moving uneasily on her stool at his feet, "that this now is 'the world, the flesh and the devil!' But," viciously snapping her eyes, "I like it, I like it! I wish I could think of something else to do."

In the middle of Peter's croaking of "Poor Yarico," to show her how Catalani sang it on the London boards, she jumped up and went to the window. People were coming home from prayer-meeting, husbands and wives together.

"I suppose every woman must marry, father?" she said.

Peter looked doubtfully at her over his spectacles, opened his mouth and shut it once or twice. "I judge that is the highest lot for a woman," he said slowly, "to be the wife of a good man."

"A good man? Oh yes, good enough!" and with that she flung herself down on the floor, and, putting her head on Peter's knee, cried as if her heart would break. For Kitty was never in the habit of carrying her pain off into solitary places: when she cried it must be with her head on somebody's knee.

* * * * *

This chapter of Catharine's history every wide-awake young woman among our readers has doubtless finished for herself: she knows the closing-in process by which society, expediency, propinquity, even moral obligations, hedge many a man and woman and drive them into marriage.

In the weeks that followed she saw but one path open to her: in it lay her work for Christ and her woman's birthright to be a wife and mother (for Kitty, ever since she was a baby nursing dolls, had meant to be both).

She spent most of her time shut up with her Bible and hymn-book, sometimes praying over them, sometimes sticking in her forefinger and opening at chance verses to try her fortune about this affair. During this time she was usually unnaturally humble and meek, but there were days when her temper was intolerable.

"Don't come complaining to me," said Peter testily to her mother. "The child's a good child enough. But when you force her to stretch her heart over three hundred vicious little imps, no wonder it breaks."

"Kitty's a free agent," she replied calmly.

Kitty was a free agent, and at the end of two weeks she accepted Mr. Muller.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]



THE GLACIERS OF PARADISE.

Spring is waking, and the Yokul lifts on high his glittering shield, Far and wide in sunny splendor gleams the ice-engirded field, And the swelling freshet murmurs gay spring-ditties as it flows, Till its noisy life it mingles in the ocean's grand repose; And in silence, Dream-fraught silence, O'er its course the billows close.

On the strand they gayly played, where the trembling birch trees grow, Children both with golden ringlets and with cheeks like maiden snow, Wherein blushed fresh spring-like roses—blushed and hid, and blushed again, While they plucked the shining pebbles, smooth-worn by the stormy main; And in silence, Rippling silence, Chants the sea its old refrain.

She, the fair and gladsome maiden, raised her head and called his name: He was deep-eyed, light and slender, shy of mien and slight of frame. Like a laughing brook she skipped to and fro along the strand; He was grave, like nodding fern-leaf, gently by the breezes fanned, Which in silence, Pensive silence, Grows upon the brooklet's sand,

"Ragnas," said she, "when God's angels visit will this world of ours, They descend, so mother told me, on the Yokul's shining towers. Now, if I should die, then promise thou wilt climb the peaks of ice, And my hand I'll reach to help thee up to God's bright paradise." But in silence, Wondering silence, Gazed he in her innocent eyes.

It was summer: thrush and linnet sung their gladsome summer-lay; Through the fir trees' cooling vista rose the cataract's white spray; And the light blue smoke of even o'er the darksome forests fell— Rose and lingered like a lover loath to bid his love farewell; And in silence, Wistful silence, Shed its peace o'er sunlit dell.

On the pleasant hillside sat they, where the silvery birches grow, And th' eternal sun of midnight bathed them in its fitful glow— She a maid of eighteen summers, fresh and fair as Norway's spring; Tall and dark-browed he, like pine-woods in whose gloom the Hulders[1] sing, When in silence, Deep-toned silence, Night lets droop her dusky wing.

It was now that he must leave her, and the waves and tempest breast: Heavy-hearted sat they, gazing on the Yokul's flaming crest; And she spoke: "O Ragnas, never, while yon airy peak shall gleam O'er our home, shall I forget thee or our childhood's blissful dream, Until silence, Death and silence, Freeze my heart and memory's stream."

Up he sprang, and boldly looked he toward the midnight-lighted west, Seized her white, soft hand and pressed it closely to his throbbing breast, And the love his childhood fostered, and in youth made warm his blood, Trembled on his lips as trembles bursting flower in freezing bud: Ah, but silence, Fateful silence, Held the mighty feeling's flood.

Years had passed with autumn's splendor, like a glistening shower of gems; Doubly rich the sunlight streamed from the Yokul's diadems; Once again in joyful rapture he his native vale beheld, For the love long years had fostered whispered still of faith unquelled, Spite of silence, Hapless silence, That the timid tongue had spelled.

And his boat shot swiftly onward: well the rowers plied their oar, Till a heavy tolling reached them from the church-tower on the shore; And a solemn train of barges slowly wound their pensive way Through the hushed waves that glittered o'er their image in the bay; And the silence, Listening silence, Dimmed the splendor of the day.

O'er the barge that now drew nearer countless virgin lilies wept, Telling that some white-souled maiden in the snowy bower slept. Dumb he stood, and gazed in terror on the shroud and lilies sweet, And a dread foreboding filled him, and his heart forgot to beat; And in silence, Deathlike silence, Fell he at the boatman's feet.

So the parish-people told me; and as years went rolling by Oft they saw him sadly staring on the flaming sunset sky; Watched the purple-stained Yokul, half in joy and half in pain, As if hoped he there to see her coming back to earth again; Mourned his silence, Fateful silence, That had rent two lives atwain.

Till at length one Sabbath morning—deep-voiced church-bells shook the air— While in festal garb the church-folk wandered to their house of prayer, Reached their ears a hollow thunder from the glaciers overhead, And huge blocks of ice came crashing downward to the river's bed, And in silence, Wrathful silence, Down the seething stream they sped.

Ah, the breathless hush that followed! for amid the icy waste They a human shape discerned, madly, as by demons chased, Up the crystal ledges climbing, pausing now where ice-walls screen From the blast, then upward springing o'er abyss and dread ravine, Until silence, Glittering silence, Reigned amid the icebergs' sheen.

They have searched for him, they told me, sought him far and sought him near: Ne'er a trace was found to tell them of his grave so lone and drear; But the legend goes that angels swift the shining ether clove, And with them his youth's beloved bore him up to God above, Where shall silence, Deepest silence, Never sunder hearts that love.

HJALMAR HJARTH BOYESEN.

[Footnote 1: The Hulder is the spirit of the forest, and is represented as a virgin of wonderful beauty. She plays her loor, a long birch-bark horn, at evening, and is the protecting genius of the cattle.]



THACKERAY'S "GRAY FRIARS."

There is an eloquent passage in one of Victor Hugo's novels in which the writer affectionately apostrophizes the Paris of his youth—those quaint old streets of the Quartier Latin so redolent of the happy associations which cling to the springtide of life. Were Thackeray living now, he would, we fancy, experience emotions very similar to those of his French confrere should he try to find his beloved "Gray Friars," which lives enshrined in the most pathetic scene he ever penned, and is ever and anon coming before us in the pages of his several stories. It is but a few years since the author of Vanity Fair passed away, yet already Gray Friars' surroundings are no longer those with which he was familiar.

Descending Holborn Hill five years ago, you found yourself, when at the foot of that celebrated thoroughfare, at Snow Hill, just at that point where the words, "Here he is, father!" struck upon the parental ears of Mr. Squeers as his son and heir manfully "went for" Smike. Turning to the left, instead of proceeding up Newgate street, a circuitous street took you to Smithfield, so long associated with stakes and steaks. Thence, when half-way through the forest of pens, you turned sharp off to the left, and then, after another hundred yards by a turn to the right, found yourself in a long narrow lane, called Charter-House lane. This brought you presently to some iron gates admitting you to a quaint and not very mathematical quadrangle, such as you would never have dreamed of stumbling upon there. This is Charter-House Square, which, still intensely respectable, was once eminently fashionable. At one corner of it is a little recess known as Rutland Square, for on this site once stood the abode of the dukes of that ilk, and near to it is a stately mansion with a high pitched roof which was in days long gone the residence of the Venetian ambassador. A garden occupies the centre of the square. Everything is neat, orderly and severely dull, the most dissipated tenants of the square being boarding-house keepers of a highly sedate description. The secret of all this tremendous respectability is to be found in the contiguity to the Charter-House itself, a portion of whose buildings abut on the square, which, with many of the streets adjoining, belongs to this wealthy institution. Four years ago the place was so secluded that a stranger to London might have walked around the spot a dozen times without suspecting its existence, and living in one of its comfortable old mansions supposed himself in the cathedral close of a provincial city. The entrance to the Charter-House itself is under an archway through venerable oaken portals, which are said—and there seems no reason to question the statement—to be the identical gates of the monastery which occupied the ground in the time of Henry VIII. This monastery had been a religious house of the Carthusians.[2] The order first came to England in 1180, and was seated at a place called Witham Priory[3] in Somersetshire, to this day known as Charter-House Witham. There Henry II. founded and endowed a monastery. The London branch of the establishment at Witham was founded by Sir Walter de Manni, seigneur de Manni in Cambrai, France, who was made a knight of the Garter by Edward III., in reward for gallant services. Manni founded the house in pious commemoration of a decimating pestilence, on which occasion not fewer than fifty thousand persons are said to have been buried within the thirteen acres which he bought and enclosed, and a gentle eminence known as the "hill" in the play-ground, separating what was called "Upper Green" from "Under Green," is said to owe its shape to the thousands of bodies buried there. Manni died in 1371: his funeral was conducted with the utmost pomp, and attended by the king and the princes of the blood.

A hundred and fifty years rolled on without aught very momentous to interrupt the daily routine of the monks of Charter-House, who, had there not been a woman in the case, might possibly be the occupants of the ground to this day. When, however, Henry's fancy for Anne Boleyn led him to look with favor on the Reformation, the Charter-House, in common with other such establishments, came in for an ample share of Thomas Cromwell's scrutinizing inquiries. And a sad fate its occupants had. Required to take the oath of allegiance to Henry VIII., they refused. Froude, who gives them an extended notice, says: "In general, the house was perhaps the best ordered in England. The hospitality was well sustained, the charities were profuse. Among many good, the prior, John Haughton, was the best. He was of an old English family, and had been educated at Cambridge. He had been twenty years a Carthusian at the opening of the troubles of the Reformation. He is described as small of stature, in figure graceful, in countenance dignified: in manner he was most modest, in eloquence most sweet, in chastity without stain."

On the 4th of May, 1535, Haughton was executed with all the horrors attending the punishment of death for high treason in those barbarous times. He and his companions, certain monks of Sion Priory, died without a murmur, and Haughton's arm was hung up under the archway of the Charter-House beneath which the visitor drives to-day, to awe his brethren. The remnant never gave in. Some were executed; ten died of filth and fever in Newgate; and thus the noblest band of monks in the country was broken up by Henry's ruthless hand.

The Charter-House was then granted to two men, by name Bridges and Hall, for their lives, after which it was bestowed in 1545 on Sir E. North. North's son sold it to the duke of Norfolk, who resided there, on and off, until decapitated in 1572. The duke was beheaded by Elizabeth for intriguing with Mary queen of Scots, and the papers proving his offence are said to have been found concealed beneath the roof of the stately mansion he had erected for himself at the Charter-House.

Before the duke came to grief that most erratic of sovereigns was a visitor at his house—as indeed where was she not?—coming thence from Hampton Court in 1568, and remaining a day with him; and when her successor, James I., came to take up her English sceptre, he, mindful of what the Howards had suffered for their sympathy with his mother's cause, came straight thither from Theobalds, his halting-place next to London, and remained on a visit of four days.

From the duke of Norfolk the Charter-House passed to his eldest son by his second wife, Lord Thomas Howard, who was created by James I. earl of Suffolk;[4] and he about 1609 sold it to Mr. Thomas Sutton.

Sutton's career was remarkable. It was said of the late earl of Derby that even had he been born in a shepherd's cot on Salisbury Plain, instead of in the purple at Knowsley, he would still have proved himself a remarkable man. In local phraseology, he was "bound to get on," and so was Thomas Sutton. The son of a country gentleman at a place called Knaith in Lincolnshire, he inherited early in life a good property from his father, and spent some time in traveling abroad. Then he became attached to the household of the duke of Norfolk, probably as surveyor and manager of that great peer's vast estates, and in 1569, when a serious disturbance broke out in the north of England, he repaired thither, and greatly distinguished himself in aiding to quell it. He then received the appointment of master-general of ordnance for the North for life.

Whilst in the North he found another mode of making hay whilst the sun shone. Soon after his arrival he bought a lease of the bishop of Durham of the manors of Gateshead and Wickham, and worked the collieries on these properties to such good purpose that, on coming up to London in 1580 he brought with him two horse-loads of money, and was reputed to be worth fifty thousand pounds—a great sum in those days.

About 1582 he increased his wealth by marriage, and commenced business as a merchant in London. His large amount of ready money—a commodity especially scarce in those days—soon enabled him to carry on very large commercial operations; and amongst other sources of wealth he probably derived considerable profit from his office of victualer of the navy. In 1590, finding himself without prospect of children, he withdrew from business, and retired to the country, having already invested largely in real estate. Although very frugal, there are sufficient evidences of his liberality to the poor on his property; and it seems not improbable that his charitable schemes now began to take definite form, for after his death a credible witness stated that Sutton was in the habit of repairing to a summer-house in his garden for private devotion, and on one of these occasions he heard him utter the words: "Lord, Thou hast given me a large and liberal estate: give me also a heart to make use thereof."

About 1608, when he had quite retired from the world, he was greatly exercised by a rumor that he was to be raised to the peerage—an honor which it was contemplated to bestow with the understanding that he would make Prince Charles, subsequently Charles I., his heir. This was a court intrigue to get his money, but an urgent appeal to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and the earl of Salisbury, prime minister, appears to have put an end to trouble in the matter. He died on the 12th of December, 1611, at the age of seventy-nine, leaving immense wealth, and on the 12th of December, 1614, his body was brought on the shoulders of his pensioners to Charter-House Chapel, and interred in a vault ready for it there, beneath the huge monument erected to his memory.

"The death-day of the founder is still kept solemnly by Cistercians. In their chapel, where assemble the boys of the school and the fourscore old men of the hospital, the founder's tomb stands, a huge edifice emblazoned with heraldic decorations and clumsy, carved allegories. There is an old hall, a beautiful specimen of the architecture of James's time. An old hall? Many old halls, old staircases, old passages, old chambers decorated with old portraits, walking in the midst of which we walk as it were in the early seventeenth century. To others than Cistercians, Gray Friars is a dreary place possibly. Nevertheless, the pupils educated there love to revisit it, and the oldest of us grow young again for an hour or two as we come back into those scenes of childhood.

"The custom of the school is that on the 12th of December, the Founder's Day, the head gown-boy shall recite a Latin oration in praise Fundatoris Nostri, and upon other subjects; and a goodly company of old Cistercians is generally brought together to attend this oration; after which[5] ... we adjourn to a great dinner, where old condisciples meet, old toasts are given and speeches are made. Before marching from the oration-hall to chapel the stewards of the day's dinner, according to old-fashioned rite, have wands put into their hands, walk to church at the head of the procession, and sit there in places of honor. The boys are already in their seats, with smug fresh faces and shining white collars; the old black-gowned pensioners are on their benches; the chapel is lighted, and Founder's tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, heraldries, darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows and lights. There he lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the great Examination Day. We oldsters, be we ever so old, become boys again as we look at that familiar old tomb, and think how the seats are altered since we were here; and how the doctor—not the present doctor, the doctor of our time—used to sit yonder, and his awful eye used to frighten us shuddering boys on whom it lighted; and how the boy next us would kick our shins during service-time; and how the monitor would cane us afterward because our shins were kicked....

"The service for Founder's Day is a special one. How solemn the well-remembered prayers are!... how beautiful and decorous the rite! how noble the ancient words of the supplication which the priest utters, and to which generations of fresh children and troops of bygone seniors have cried Amen under those arches!"[6]

Having resolved to found a charity which should provide both for young and old, Sutton, who had ample reason fully to appreciate the unprincipled and grasping character of the court, proceeded to take every precaution that sagacity and ingenuity could suggest to keep his money secure from the hands of such harpies as Carr and "Steenie," and hedge it round with every bulwark possible. Perhaps he consulted "Jingling Geordie," then planning his own singular scheme,[7] on the point, and got him to persuade the king, always vain of his scholarship, that it would well become him to become patron of an institution having for one of its main objects the education of youth in sound learning. Be this as it may, the fact is certain that a degree of royal and other powerful protection was somehow secured for the institution which for all time prevented its funds from being diverted to other purposes.

Sutton's bequest of the bulk of his estate to charitable uses was not unnaturally viewed with strong disapprobation by his nephew, one Simon Baxter, for whom he had, however, not neglected to provide, who brought a suit to set aside the will. However, notwithstanding that he had Bacon for his counsel, he failed to interfere with his uncle's disposition of his estate; the court holding that the claims of kinship had been sufficiently recognized.[8]

In the same year, 1614, the institution opened. The rules and orders for its government may yet be seen, bearing the autograph signature of Charles I., then prince of Wales. From that time almost every man in the country, of the first rank of eminence by birth or fortune, has been a governor, and the name of Cromwell may be seen not far from that of Charles on the roll. Up to about 1850 the patronage was vested exclusively in the governors. Amongst these were always included—though not necessarily—the sovereign, the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London. The remainder were men eminent in Church or State, "the master of the hospital,"[9] who must not be confounded with the school-master, being the only official member. The sovereign had two nominations to the other governors' one. Thackeray makes the great marquis of Steyne a governor, and shows how little Rawdon Crawley benefited by that august personage's patronage: "When Lord Steyne was benevolently disposed he did nothing by halves, and his kindness toward the Crawley family did the greatest honor to his benevolent discrimination. His lordship extended his goodness to little Rawdon: he pointed out to the boy's parents the necessity of sending him to a public school; that he was of an age now when emulation, the first principles of the Latin language, pugilistic exercises and the society of his fellow-boys would be of the greatest benefit to the boy.... All objections disappeared before the generous perseverance of the marquis. His lordship was one of the governors of that famous old collegiate institution called the White Friars. It had been a Cistercian convent in old days, when Smithfield, which is contiguous to it, was a tournament-ground. Obstinate heretics used to be brought thither, convenient for burning hard by. Harry VIII., the Defender of the Faith, seized upon the monastery and its possessions, and hanged and tortured some of the monks who could not accommodate themselves to the pace of his reform. Finally, a great merchant bought the house and land adjoining, in which, and with the help of other wealthy endowments of land and money, he established a famous foundation hospital for old men and children. An extern school grew round the old almost monastic foundation, which subsists still with its Middle-Age costume and usages; and all Cistercians pray that it may long flourish. Of this famous house some of the greatest noblemen, prelates and dignitaries of the land are governors; and as the boys are very comfortably lodged, fed and educated, and subsequently inducted to good scholarships at the university and livings in the Church, many little gentlemen are devoted to the ecclesiastical profession from their tenderest years, and there is considerable emulation to procure nominations for the foundation.

"It was originally intended for the sons of poor and deserving clerics and laics, but many of the noble governors of the institution, with an enlarged and rather capricious benevolence, selected all sorts of objects for their bounty. To get an education for nothing, and a future livelihood and profession assured, was so excellent a scheme that some of the richest people did not disdain it, and not only great men's relations, but great men themselves, sent their sons to profit by the chance."

A boy on the foundation received his education entirely free. Whilst within the walls he was clothed in black cloth at the expense of the house, and even had shirts and shoes provided for him. His only expenses were a fee to the matron of twenty-five dollars a year, and the cost of books, stationery, etc., the whole amounting to a sum less than one hundred dollars a year. On leaving school for college he received an allowance—four hundred dollars for three years, and five hundred dollars for the fourth.

There may have been a time when much of the patronage was improperly bestowed, but this certainly was not the case in our day. The majority of the boys on the foundation were the sons of well-born and often distinguished gentlemen of small means, and the sort of perversion of patronage to which Thackeray alludes had ceased to take place. When some of the places on the foundation were thrown open, it was a subject of general remark that several of the boys who got scholarships were those whose parents could perfectly have afforded to give them a first-class education.

Probably there will some day be a reaction in England in this matter. The prevalent present plan is to give every advantage to the clever boy (which means a boy who has a faculty for acquirement, but often lacks those qualities most needed to make him a valuable citizen), and to let those who are not so bright at book-learning, and need every aid, scramble along as they can. It was certainly not the system which Sutton designed, and there are not a few who, without being by any means bigoted conservatives, consider that the utter indifference displayed of late years to the intentions of founders is quite unjustifiable, and offers little encouragement to those who would be disposed to make similar bequests.

At Oxford, for instance, nearly every scholarship is now thrown open to general competition. This sounds very fine, but is in utter disregard of the fact that the founder in most instances was induced to bequeath his money with the view that those who came from the part of the country to which he himself belonged should benefit. Of course, time had rendered necessary certain changes, but these have been sweeping to a degree which is inconsistent with a due regard to the wills of the dead, and meanwhile no one seems disposed to admit that the public schools or universities turn out men one whit better than in days gone by, or indeed do more for the general education of the people.

Recently a sweeping change has been made at the Charter-House, which had seemed to be almost proof against innovation. So far as nominating boys to the foundation, the governors' patronage will, after one more term apiece, be at an end, and the privilege of participating in Button's benefits will be open to all boys who have been for some months members of the school, and are clever enough to beat their fellows in competition. The governors reserve, however, their right of nominating aged or disabled men, whose number now, we believe, amounts to one hundred.

A school-day at Charter-House began at eight, with what we called "first school." Prayers, lasting about five minutes, took place in the large school-room. These were read by a "gown-boy" monitor. The lessons at first school consisted entirely of repetition—repeating Latin poetry, and occasionally prose. As each boy finished his repetition—the boys being taken up in the order in which they were numbered the previous day—he left the school and went to breakfast. Breakfast consisted of an almost unlimited supply of hot rolls and butter and milk, but this was supplemented in the case of almost every boy by edibles purchased with his pocket-money. For those who had the privilege of fagging this was recognized and allowed, and in regard to the rest it was connived at, and marmalades, potted meats and such-like relishes freely circulated, being supplied for the most part by the servants, who drove a lively trade in such comestibles.

Toasting was brought to the very highest perfection. Never before or since have we tasted anything of its kind so good as a buttered roll toasted. It was a French roll buttered all over outside, and then skillfully grilled until the outside was a rich crisp brown. This was brought by the fag to his master "hot and hot," and, being cut open, eaten with butter. The rooms were warmed by immense open fireplaces, there being no limit to the expenditure of coal, which was prodigious.

In our time (1847-1853) there was an immense deal of fagging, which has been, we believe very properly, much diminished. Under boys were called in to perform many menial offices which should have been done by servants. The task-work which by "gown-boys" was most disliked was what was called being basonite. This duty devolved upon the twelve junior boys occupying what was known as "the under bedroom." To this hour we recall with horror how on a gloomy, foggy, wintry Monday morning we remembered on waking that it was our basonite week—for a fresh set of three went to work each Monday morning—and that we must get up and call the monitors. This basonite duty consisted of the most elaborate valeting. Each monitor's clothes were brushed, warm water was fetched and poured out for him, and everything so arranged that he might lie in bed up to the last possible moment, and then one small boy being ready with his coat, another with his waistcoat, and a third with his cap—be able to dress in five minutes and rush into school. At midday, when the monitors washed their hands for dinner, similar work had to be done, and again in the evening, when they washed their hands for supper. The only set-off to all this was that each monitor had been a basonite, and each basonite had a very good chance of becoming a monitor. But it was carrying the fagging system to far too great an extent, and the practice is now greatly modified.

The domestic arrangements were in many respects rough and comfortless, and so intensely conservative were the ruling powers in these respects that complaint or remonstrance scarcely received any attention. On the other hand, the utmost liberality prevailed in most matters. The foundation scholars' dinner, for instance, was provided in a long, low, old-fashioned, oak-paneled hall, admirably adapted for the purpose. The food was excellent in quality, unlimited in quantity, and very comfortably served. The only drawback was want of variety, and the perennial reappearance of raspberry tartlets every Wednesday at length provoked a mutiny against that form of pastry, the order being passed down that no one was to touch it.

An upper boy had two fags, the inferior of the two being called his tea-fag. A good feeling nearly always subsisted between master and fag, inasmuch as the former generally selected a boy he liked; and indeed in many cases the connection engendered a warm and lasting regard between the parties. The fag had access to his master's study, could retreat there to do his lessons in quiet, and not unfrequently was assisted in them by his master.

Those who came off worst were dirty boys: no mercy was shown them. One such we can recall—now a very spruce, well-appointed government official—whose obstinate adherence to dirt was marvelous, seeing what it cost him.

There are always some bullies among a lot of boys, but serious bullying was uncommon, and not unfrequently a hideous retribution befell a bully through some "big fellow" resolving to wreak on him what he inflicted on others. We can recall one very bright, brilliant youth, now high in the Indian civil service, whose drollery when bullying was irresistible, even to those who knew their turn might come next. "Come here, F——," we remember his saying to a fat youth of reputed uncleanness: then dropping his voice to a tone of subdued horror and solemnity, "I was shocked to hear you use a bad word just now." "No indeed, B——," protested the trembling F——. "Ah, well, I'm certain that you are now thinking it; and, besides, at any rate, you look fat and disgusting; so hold down your hands;" and poor F—— retired howling after a tremendous "swinger"—i.e. swinging box on the ear.

The school was divided into six forms, the sixth being the highest. Below the first form were two classes called upper and lower petties. Up to 1850, classics were the almost exclusive study, but the changes then made in the curriculum of studies at Oxford rendered attention to mathematics absolutely necessary. Much less stress was laid upon Latin verses at Charter-House than at Eton, and a Latin prose composition was regarded as the most important part of scholarship, inasmuch as a certain proficiency in it is a sine qua non at Oxford. French was taught twice a week by a master of celebrity, who, however, did not understand the art of dinning learning into unwilling boys. It rarely happens in England that boys acquire any real knowledge of French at school: those who gain the prizes are almost invariably boys who have resided abroad and picked up the language in childhood. Music was taught by Mr. Hullah, and attendance on the part of gown-boys was compulsory. Drawing and fencing were extras.

Very great importance was attached to the annual examination, which was conducted by examiners specially appointed by the governors. The result, which was kept a close secret until "Prize Saturday," was as eagerly looked forward to as the Derby by a betting man. The different forms were divided into classes, as at Oxford, according to merit, and the names printed along with the examination papers in pamphlet form. After this examination boys went up to the form above them, each boy usually remaining a year in each form. The system of punishment was as follows. A book called the "Black Book" was kept by the school monitor of the week, there being four gown-boy—that is, foundation—monitors who took the duty of school monitor in rotation. A boy put down for three offences during the same week was flogged, but the end of each week cleared off old scores. The entries were in this wise:

Name of Boy. Offence. By whom put down. Robinson 1 Idle Dr. Saunders. Smith 1, 2 Talking in School Mr. Curtis.

"Go and put your name down," a master would say. "Oh please, sir, I'm down twice." "Then put it down a third time." Then would follow entreaties, which, unless the delinquent had been previously privately marked down for execution, would probably avail. When a flogging offence was committed a boy was put down thus:

Robinson 1, 2, 3 Impertinent Mr. ——.

The flogging varied much in severity according to the crime. The process was precisely the same as at Eton. Partially denuded of his nether garments, the victim knelt upon the block, the monitor standing at his head. The birches were kept in a long box which served as a settee, and were furnished periodically by the man who brought the fire fagots. Now and again the box would, by the carelessness of the functionary called "the school-groom," be left open, and it was then considered a point of honor on the part of an under boy to promptly avail himself of the opportunity to "skin" the rods—i.e. draw them through a piece of stuff in such a way as to take the buds off, after which they hurt very much less.

Serious offences, such as insubordination and gross disobedience, were punished by a flogging with two birches, which was too severe a punishment. The degree of pain varied very much according to the delicacy of skin, and no doubt some boys—one of our comrades had been flogged about twenty-five times—did not feel much after many floggings, becoming literally case-hardened; whereas, we have known a boy compelled to stay in bed two or three days from the effects of a flogging which would have left little mark upon the "twenty-fiver." When a victim issued from the flogging-room the questions from an eager throng were, "How many cuts, old fellow? Did it take much? You howled like the devil!"[10]

The monitors were furnished with small canes, which they were permitted to use with moderation, but nothing like the horrible process of "tunding," as at Winchester, was known. The theory of entrusting this power to monitors is, that if you do not give certain boys the right to punish, might will be right, whilst the monitors, being duly made to feel their responsibility, will only punish where punishment is properly due, and will serve as a protection to the weak.

There was a half-holiday every Wednesday and Saturday. Every Saturday upper boys who had friends might go out from Saturday till Sunday night, and lower boys were allowed to do the same every other Saturday. These events were of course greatly looked forward to from week to week. Not the least agreeable feature was the probable addition to pocket-money, for in England it is the custom to "tip" school-boys, and we have ourselves come back joyous on a Sunday evening with six sovereigns chinking in our pockets. Alas, no one tips us now! Then there was the delight of comparing notes of the doings during the delightful preceding twenty-four hours. Thus, whilst Brown detailed the delights of the pantomime to which Uncle John had taken him on Saturday night, Robinson descanted on the marvels of the Zoological Gardens, with special reference to the free-and-easy life of monkeydom, and Smith never wearied of enlarging on the terrors and glories of the Tower of London. Altogether, there were fourteen weeks' holiday in the year—six weeks in August, five at Christmas and three at Whitsuntide, with two days at Easter.

There were several beds in each bedroom, and there was a very strict rule that the most perfect order should prevail—in fact, lower boys were forbidden to talk; but talk they always did, and long stories, often protracted for nights, were told; and for our part, we must confess that we have never enjoyed any fictions more than those.

Evening prayers took place in the several houses at nine, after which the lower boys went to bed. A junior master—there was one to each house—always attended at prayers, which were read by a monitor. Before prayers names were called over and every boy accounted for.

Although in the midst of brick and mortar, two large spaces, containing several acres, were available for cricket, whilst foot-ball—and very fierce games of it, too—was usually played in the curious old cloisters of the Chartreuse monks which opened on "Upper Green." The grass-plot of Upper Green was kept sacred from the feet of under boys except in "cricket quarter," as the summer quarter was termed. It was rolled, watered and attended to with an assiduity such as befalls few spots of ground in the world. The roof of the cloisters was a terrace flagged with stone, and on the occasion of cricket-matches a gay bevy of ladies assembled here to look at the exploits of the young Rawdon Crawleys and Pendennises of the day. Immediately opposite the terrace, across the green, on the immensely high blank wall, was the word "Crown" rudely painted, and above it what was intended as a representation of that sign of sovereignty. This had a history. It was said to have been written there originally by "the bold and strong-minded Law," commemorated by Macaulay in his Warren Hastings article, who became Lord Ellenborough, and the last lord chief-justice who had the honor of a seat in the cabinet. It was probably put up originally as a goal for boys running races, and for nearly a century was regularly repainted as commemorative of a famous alumnus who was so fondly attached to the place of his early education that he desired to be buried in its chapel, and an imposing monument to his memory may be seen on its walls. Between Upper and Under Greens, on the slight eminence to which we have alluded, stood "School," a large ugly edifice of brick mounted with stone, which derived an interest in the eyes of those educated there from the fact that the names of hundreds of old Carthusians were engraven on its face; for it was the custom of boys leaving school to have their names bracketed with those of friends; and when Brown took his departure his name was duly cut, with a space left for Robinson's name when the time of his departure came.

These stones have now exchanged the murky air of London for that of one of the pleasantest sites in Surrey. Charter-House School has, after passing two hundred and sixty years in the metropolis, changed its location, and must be looked for now on a delightful spot near Godalming in Surrey. The governors very wisely determined about five years ago that boys were much better in country than in town, and, having ample funds, took measures accordingly. Last October the new buildings were ready for the boys' reception, and they met there for the first time. The stones, however, were, with a sentiment most will appreciate, removed, in order to connect the past with the present, for the Charter-House must ever have many tender ties binding it to the site of the old monastery with its rich historic memories; and however famous may be the men who go forth from the new ground which Sutton's famous foundation occupies, it must derive a great part of its fame for a long time to come from the place which sent out into the world Addison, Steele, Thirlwall, Grote, Leech and Thackeray, not to mention a host of names of those who in arms and arts have done credit to the place of their education.[11]

The home for aged and infirm or disabled men will remain where it has always been. This establishment has indeed been a welcome refuge to thousands who have known better days. Men of all ranks and conditions, who have experienced in the afternoon of life contrary winds too powerful for them to encounter, have here found a haven for the remnant of their days. Some have held most important positions, and a lord mayor of London, who had received emperors at his table, was a few years ago one of Sutton's "poor brethren." The pensioners were always called cods by the boys, probably short for codgers. Each had a room plainly furnished, about one hundred and fifty dollars a year, rations, and a dinner every day in the great hall. The boys, who did not often know their names, gave them nicknames by which they became generally known. Thus three were called "Battle," "Murder" and "Sudden Death;" another "Larky," in consequence of a certain levity of demeanor at divine service. These old gentlemen were expected to attend chapel daily. Every evening at nine o'clock the chapel bell tolled the exact number of them, just as Great Tom at Christ Church, Oxford, nightly rings out the number of the students. Being for the most part aged men, soured by misfortune and failure, they are naturally enough often hard to please and difficult to deal with.

No passage in Thackeray's writings is more deeply pathetic than that in which he records the last scene of one "poor brother," that Bayard of fiction, Colonel Newcome: "At the usual evening hour the chapel-bell began to toll, and Thomas Newcome's hands outside the bed feebly beat time. And just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said, 'Adsum!' and fell back. It was the word he used at school when names, were called; and lo, he whose heart was as that of a little child had answered to his name and stood in the presence of the Master."

AN OLD "GOWN-BOY."

[Footnote 2: The original seat of the Carthusian order was at Chartreux in Dauphiny, where it was founded by Saint Bruno.]

[Footnote 3: Witham, which is not far from Fonthill, became in 1763 the property of Alderman Beckford, the millionaire father of the celebrated author of Vathek.]

[Footnote 4: Lord Suffolk probably applied the purchase-money (thirteen thousand pounds) to help build the palace, called Audley End or Inn, he raised in Essex. It stands on abbey-land granted by Henry VIII. to his wife's father, Lord Audley of Walden, near Saffron-Walden in Essex, and was generally regarded as the most magnificent structure of its period, although Evelyn gives the preference to Clarendon House, that grand mansion of the chancellor's which provoked so much jealousy against him, and came to be called Dunkirk House, from the insinuation that it was built out of the funds paid by the French for Dunkirk. Abbey-lands are supposed by many to carry ill-luck with them, and quickly to change hands. Audley End has proved no exception to this hypothetical fate. Only a portion of it now remains, but this, though much marred by injudicious alterations, is amply sufficient to show how grand it was. It has long since passed out of the hands of the Howards, and now belongs to Lord Braybrooke, whose family name is Nevill. A relation of his, a former peer of the name, edited the best edition of Pepys' Diary, in which and in Evelyn is frequent reference to Audley End.]

[Footnote 5: The order of proceedings was subsequently inverted.]

[Footnote 6: The Newcomers: "Founder's Day at Gray Friars." On one of the last Founder's Days of his life Thackeray came with a friend early in the day, and scattered half sovereigns to the little gown-boys in "Gown-boys' Hall."]

[Footnote 7: Heriot's Hospital at Edinburgh.]

[Footnote 8: Simon Baxter was his only sister's son. Sutton had left him an estate which in 1615 he sold to the ancestor of the present earl of Sefton for fifteen thousand pounds—equal to about seventy-five thousand pounds now—and a legacy of three hundred pounds.]

[Footnote 9: This was a post which Thackeray coveted, and had he lived might possibly have filled. The master's lodge, a spacious antique residence, lined with portraits of governors in their robes of estate, by Lely, Kneller, etc., would in his hands have become a resort of rare interest and hospitality.]

[Footnote 10: In what is known as "The Charter-House Play," which describes some boyish orgies and their subsequent punishment, the latter is described in the pathetic lines:

Now the victim low is bending, Now the fearful rod descending, Hark a blow! Again, again Sounds the instrument of pain.

Goddess of mercy! oh impart Thy kindness to the doctor's heart: Bid him words of pardon say— Cast the blood-stained scourge away.

In vain, in vain! he will not hear: Mercy is a stranger there. Justice, unrelenting dame, First asserts her lawful claim.

This is aye her maxim true: "They who sin must suffer too." When of fun we've had our fill, Justice then sends in her bill, And as soon as we have read it, Pay we must: she gives no credit.

There is some rather fine doggerel too, in which the doctor—the Dr. Portman Pendennis—apostrophizes a monitor in whom he had believed, but finds to have been as bad as the rest. The Doctor (with voice indicative of tears and indignation):

Oh, Simon Steady! Simon Steady, oh! What would your father say to see you so?— You whom I always trusted, whom I deemed As really good and honest as you seemed.

Are you the leader of this lawless throng, The chief of all that's dissolute and wrong?

Then with awful emphasis:

Bad is the drunkard, shameless is the youth Who dares desert the sacred paths of truth; But he who hides himself 'neath Virtue's pall, The painted hypocrite, is worse than all!

In acting this play the manner of the real doctor (Mr. Gladstone's old tutor, now dean of Peterborough) was often imitated to the life, which of course brought down the house.]

[Footnote 11: In his curious London and the Country, Carbonadoed and Quartered into severall Characters (1632), Lupton writes under the head of

"CHARTER-HOUSE.

"This place is well described by three things—magnificence, munificence and religious government. The first shows the wealth of the founder; the second, the means to make the good thing done durable; the third demonstrates his intent that thus established it.... This one place hath sent many a famous member to the universities, and not a few to the wars. The deed of this man that so ordered this house is much spoken of and commended; but there's none (except only one—Sion College) that hath as yet either striven to equal or imitate that, and I fear never will."]



A PRINCESS OF THULE

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON."

CHAPTER IV.

ROMANCE-TIME.

Early morning at Borva, fresh, luminous and rare; the mountains in the south grown pale and cloud-like under a sapphire sky; the sea ruffled into a darker blue by a light breeze from the west: and the sunlight lying hot on the red gravel and white shells around Mackenzie's house. There is an odor of sweetbrier about, hovering in the warm, still air, except at such times as the breeze freshens a bit, and brings round the shoulder of the hill the cold, strange scent of the rocks and the sea beyond.

And on this fresh and pleasant morning Sheila sat in the big garden seat in front of the house, talking to the stranger to whom she had been introduced the day before. He was no more a stranger, however, to all appearance, for what could be more frank and friendly than their conversation, or more bright and winning than the smile with which she frequently turned to speak or to listen? Of course this stranger could not be her friend as Mr. Ingram was—that was impossible. But he talked a great deal more than Mr. Ingram, and was apparently more anxious to please and be pleased; and indeed was altogether very winning and courteous and pleasant in his ways. Beyond this vague impression, Sheila ventured upon no further comparison between the two men. If her older friend had been down, she would doubtless have preferred talking to him about all that had happened in the island since his last visit; but here was this newer friend thrown, as it were, upon her hospitality, and eager, with a most respectful and yet simple and friendly interest, to be taught all that Ingram already knew. Was he not, too, in mere appearance like one of the princes she had read of in many an ancient ballad—tall and handsome and yellow-haired, fit to have come sailing over the sea, with a dozen merry comrades, to carry off some sea-king's daughter to be his bride? Sheila began to regret that the young man knew so little about the sea and the northern islands and those old-time stories; but then he was very anxious to learn.

"You must say Mach-Klyoda instead of Macleod," she was saying to him, "if you like Styornoway better than Stornoway. It is the Gaelic, that is all."

"Oh, it is ever so much prettier," said young Lavender with a quite genuine enthusiasm in his face, not altogether begotten of the letter y; "and indeed I don't think you can possibly tell how singularly pleasant and quaint it is to an English ear to hear just that little softening of the vowels that the people have here. I suppose you don't notice that they say gyarden for garden—"

"They!" As if he had paid attention to the pronunciation of any one except Sheila herself!

"—but not quite so hard as I pronounce it. And so with a great many other words, that are softened and sweetened, and made almost poetical in their sound by the least bit of inflection. How surprised and pleased English ladies would be to hear you speak! Oh, I beg your pardon—I did not mean to—I—I beg your pardon—"

Sheila seemed a little astonished by her companion's evident mortification, and said with a smile, "If others speak so in the island, of course I must too; and you say it does not shock you."

His distress at his own rudeness now found an easy vent. He protested that no people could talk English like the people of Lewis. He gave Sheila to understand that the speech of English folks was as the croaking of ravens compared with the sweet tones of the northern isles; and this drew him on to speak of his friends in the South and of London, and of the chances of Sheila ever going thither.

"It must be so strange never to have seen London," he said. "Don't you ever dream of what it is like? Don't you ever try to think of a great space, nearly as big as this island, all covered over with large houses, the roads between the houses all made of stone, and great bridges going over the rivers, with railway-trains standing? By the way, you have never seen a railway-engine!"

He looked at her for a moment in astonishment, as if he had not hitherto realized to himself the absolute ignorance of the remote princess. Sheila, with some little touch of humor appearing in her calm eyes, said, "But I am not quite ignorant of all these things. I have seen pictures of them, and my papa has described them to me so often that I will feel as if I had seen them all; and I do not think I should be surprised, except, perhaps, by the noise of the big towns. It was many a time my papa told me of that; but he says I cannot understand it, nor the great distance of land you travel over to get to London. That is what I do not wish to see. I was often thinking of it, and that to pass so many places that you do not know would make you very sad."

"That can be easily avoided," he said lightly. "When you go to London, you must go from Glasgow or Edinburgh in a night-train, and fall fast asleep, and in the morning you will find yourself in London, without having seen anything."

"Just as if one had gone across a great distance of sea, and come to another island you will never see before," said Sheila, with the gray-blue eyes under the black eyelashes grown strange and distant.

"But you must not think of it as a melancholy thing," he said, almost anxiously. "You will find yourself among all sorts of gayeties and amusements; you will have cheerful people around you, and plenty of things to see; you will drive in beautiful parks, and go to theatres, and meet people in large and brilliant rooms, filled with flowers and silver and light. And all through the winter, that must be so cold and dark up here, you will find abundance of warmth and light, and plenty of flowers, and every sort of pleasant thing. You will hear no more of those songs of drowned people; and you will be afraid no longer of the storms, or listen to the waves at night; and by and by, when you have got quite accustomed to London, and got a great many friends, you might be disposed to stay there altogether; and you would grow to think of this island as a desolate and melancholy place, and never seek to come back."

The girl rose suddenly and turned to a fuchsia tree, pretending to pick some of its flowers. Tears had sprung to her eyes unbidden, and it was in rather an uncertain voice that she said, still managing to conceal her face, "I like to hear you talk of those places, but—but I will never leave Borva."

What possible interest could he have in combating this decision so anxiously, almost so imploringly? He renewed his complaints against the melancholy of the sea and the dreariness of the northern winters. He described again and again the brilliant lights and colors of town-life in the South. As a mere matter of experience and education she ought to go to London; and had not her papa as good as intimated his intention of taking her?

In the midst of these representations a step was heard in the hall, and then the girl looked round with a bright light on her face.

"Well, Sheila?" said Ingram, according to his custom, and both the girl's hands were in his the next minute. "You are down early. What have you been about? Have you been telling Mr. Lavender of the Black Horse of Loch Suainabhal?"

"No: Mr. Lavender has been telling me of London."

"And I have been trying to induce Miss Mackenzie to pay us a visit, so that we may show her the difference between a city and an island. But all to no purpose. Miss Mackenzie seems to like hard winters and darkness and cold; and as for that perpetual and melancholy and cruel sea, that in the winter-time I should fancy might drive anybody into a lunatic asylum—"

"Ah, you must not talk badly of the sea," said the girl, with all her courage and brightness returned to her face: "it is our very good friend. It gives us food, and keeps many people alive. It carries the lads away to other places, and brings them back with money in their pockets—"

"And sometimes it smashes a few of them on the rocks, or swallows up a dozen families, and the next morning it is as smooth and treacherous and fair as if nothing had happened."

"But that is not the sea at all," said Sheila: "that is the storms that will wreck the boats; and how can the sea help that? When the sea is let alone the sea is very good to us."

Ingram laughed aloud and patted the girl's head fondly; and Lavender, blushing a little, confessed he was beaten, and that he would never again, in Miss Mackenzie's presence, say anything against the sea.

The King of Borva now appearing, they all went in to breakfast; and Sheila sat opposite the window, so that all the light coming in from the clear sky and the sea was reflected upon her face, and lit up every varying expression that crossed it or that shone up in the beautiful deeps of her eyes. Lavender, his own face in shadow, could look at her from time to time, himself unseen; and as he sat in almost absolute silence, and noticed how she talked with Ingram, and what deference she paid him, and how anxious she was to please him, he began to wonder if he should ever be admitted to a like friendship with her. It was so strange, too, that this handsome, proud-featured, proud-spirited girl should so devote herself to the amusement of a man like Ingram, and, forgetting all the court that should have been paid to a pretty woman, seem determined to persuade him that he was conferring a favor upon her by every word and look. Of course, Lavender admitted to himself, Ingram was a very good sort of fellow—a very good sort of fellow indeed. If any one was in a scrape about money, Ingram would come to the rescue without a moment's hesitation, although the salary of a clerk in the Board of Trade might have been made the excuse, by any other man, for a very justifiable refusal. He was very clever too—had read much, and all that kind of thing. But he was not the sort of man you might expect to get on well with women. Unless with very intimate friends, he was a trifle silent and reserved. Often he was inclined to be pragmatic and sententious, and had a habit of saying unpleasantly bitter things when some careless joke was being made. He was a little dingy in appearance; and a man who had a somewhat cold manner, who was sallow of face, who was obviously getting gray, and who was generally insignificant in appearance, was not the sort of man, one would think, to fascinate an exceptionally handsome girl, who had brains enough to know the fineness of her own face. But here was this princess paying attentions to him such as must have driven a more impressionable man out of his senses, while Ingram sat quiet and pleased, sometimes making fun of her, and generally talking to her as if she were a child. Sheila had chatted very pleasantly with him, Lavender, in the morning, but it was evident that her relations with Ingram were of a very different kind, such as he could not well understand. For it was scarcely possible that she could be in love with Ingram, and yet surely the pleasure that dwelt in her expressive face when she spoke to him or listened to him was not the result of a mere friendship.

If Lavender had been told at that moment that these two were lovers, and that they were looking forward to an early marriage, he would have rejoiced with an enthusiasm of joy. He would have honestly and cordially shaken Ingram by the hand; he would have made plans for introducing the young bride to all the people he knew; and he would have gone straight off, on reaching London, to buy Sheila a diamond necklace even if he had to borrow the money from Ingram himself.

"And have you got rid yet of the Airgiod-cearc[12] Sheila?" said Ingram, suddenly breaking in upon these dreams; "or does every owner of hens still pay his annual shilling to the Lord of Lewis?"

"It is not away yet," said the girl, "but when Sir James comes in the autumn I will go over to Stornoway and ask him to take away the tax; and I know he will do it, for what is the shilling worth to him, when he has spent thousands and thousands of pounds on the Lewis? But it will be very hard on some of the poor people that only keep one or two hens; and I will tell Sir James of all that—"

"You will do nothing of the kind, Sheila," said her father impatiently. "What is the Airgiod-cearc to you, that you will go over to Stornoway only to be laughed at and make a fool of yourself?"

"That is nothing, not anything at all," said the girl, "if Sir James will only take away the tax."

"Why, Sheila, they would treat you as another Lady Godiva!" said Ingram, with a good-humored smile.

"But Miss Mackenzie is quite right," exclaimed Lavender, with a sudden flush of color leaping into his handsome face and an honest glow of admiration into his eyes. "I think it is a very noble thing for her to do, and nobody, either in Stornoway or anywhere else, would be such a brute as to laugh at her for trying to help those poor people, who have not too many friends and defenders, God knows!"

Ingram looked surprised. Since when had the young gentleman across the table acquired such a singular interest in the poorer classes, of whose very existence he had for the most part seemed unaware? But the enthusiasm in his face was quite honest: there could be no doubt of that. As for Sheila, with a beating heart she ventured to send to her champion a brief and timid glance of gratitude, which the young man observed, and never forgot.

"You will not know what it is all about," said the King of Borva with a peevish air, as though it were too bad that a person of his authority should have to descend to petty details about a hen-tax. "It is many and many a tax and a due Sir James will take away from his tenants in the Lewis, and he will spend more money a thousand times than ever he will get back; and it was this Airgiod-cearc, it will stand in the place of a great many other things taken away, just to remind the folk that they have not their land all in their own right. It is many things you will have to do in managing the poor people, not to let them get too proud, or forgetful of what they owe to you; and now there is no more tacksmen to be the masters of the small crofters, and the crofters they would think they were landlords themselves if there were no dues for them to pay."

"I have heard of those middlemen: they were dreadful tyrants and thieves, weren't they?" said Lavender. Ingram kicked his foot under the table. "I mean, that was the popular impression of them—a vulgar error, I presume," continued the young man in the coolest manner. "And so you have got rid of them? Well, I dare say many of them were honest men, and suffered very unjustly in common report."

Mackenzie answered nothing, but his daughter said quickly, "But, you know, Mr. Lavender, they have not gone away merely because they cease to have the letting of the land to the crofters. They have still their old holdings, and so have the crofters in most cases. Every one now holds direct from the proprietor, that is all."

"So that there is no difference between the former tacksman and his serf except the relative size of their farms?"

"Well, the crofters have no leases, but the tacksmen have," said the girl somewhat timidly; and then she added, "But you have not decided yet, Mr. Ingram, what you will do to-day. It is too clear for the salmon-fishing. Will you go over to Meavig, and show Mr. Lavender the Bay of Uig and the Seven Hunters?"

"Surely we must show him Borvabost first, Sheila," said Ingram. "He saw nothing of it last night in the dark; and I think, if you offered to take Mr. Lavender round in your boat and show him what a clever sailor you are, he would prefer that to walking over the hill."

"I can take you all round in the boat, certainly," said the girl with a quick blush of pleasure; and forthwith a message was sent to Duncan that cushions should be taken down to the Maighdean-mhara, the little vessel of which Sheila was both skipper and pilot.

How beautiful was the fair sea-picture that lay around them as the Maighdean-mhara stood out to the mouth of Loch Roag on this bright summer morning! Sheila sat in the stern of the small boat, her hand on the filler. Lufrath lay at her feet, his nose between the long and shaggy paws. Duncan, grave and watchful as to the wind and the points of the coast, sat amidships, with the sheets of the mainsail held fast, and superintended the seamanship of his young mistress with a respectful but most evident pride. And as Ingram had gone off with Mackenzie to walk over to the White Water before going down to Borvabost, Frank Lavender was Sheila's sole companion out in this wonderland of rock and sea and blue sky.

He did not talk much to her, and she was so well occupied with the boat that he could regard with impunity the shifting lights and graces of her face and all the wonder and winning depths of her eyes. The sea was blue around them; the sky overhead had not a speck of cloud in it; the white sand-bays, the green stretches of pasture and the far and spectral mountains trembled in a haze of sunlight. Then there was all the delight of the fresh and cool wind, the hissing of the water along the boat, and the joyous rapidity with which the small vessel, lying over a little, ran through the crisply curling waters, and brought into view the newer wonders of the opening sea.

Was it not all a dream, that he should be sitting by the side of this sea-princess, who was attended only by her deerhound and the tall keeper? And if a dream, why should it not go on for ever? To live for ever in this magic land—to have the princess herself carry him in this little boat into the quiet bays of the islands, or out at night, in moonlight, on the open sea—to forget for ever the godless South and its social phantasmagoria, and live in this beautiful and distant solitude, with the solemn secrets of the hills and the moving deep for ever present to the imagination, might not that be a nobler life? And some day or other he would take this island-princess up to London, and he would bid the women that he knew—the scheming mothers and the doll-like daughters—stand aside from before this perfect work of God. She would carry with her the mystery of the sea in the deeps of her eyes, and the music of the far hills would be heard in her voice, and all the sweetness and purity and brightness of the clear summer skies would be mirrored in her innocent soul. She would appear in London as some wild-plumaged bird hailing from distant climes, and before she had lived there long enough to grow sad, and have the weight of the city clouding the brightness of her eyes, she would be spirited away again into this strange sea-kingdom, where there seemed to be perpetual sunshine and the light music of the waves.

Poor Sheila! She little knew what was expected of her, or the sort of drama into which she was being thrown as a central figure. She little knew that she, a simple Highland girl, was being transformed into a wonderful creature of romance, who was to put to shame the gentle dames and maidens of London society, and do many other extraordinary things. But what would have appeared the most extraordinary of all these speculations, if she had only known of them, was the assumption that she would marry Frank Lavender. That the young man had quite naturally taken for granted, but perhaps only as a basis for his imaginative scenes. In order to do these fine things she would have to be married to somebody, and why not to himself? Think of the pride he would have in leading this beautiful girl, with her quaint manners and fashion of speech, into a London drawing-room! Would not every one wish to know her? Would not every one listen to her singing of those Gaelic songs? for of course she must sing well. Would not all his artist friends be anxious to paint her? and she would go to the Academy to convince the loungers there how utterly the canvas had failed to catch the light and dignity and sweetness of her face.