"All very well," said he, "but please to tell me where I shall find you when I come home."

"Oh, I shall be jogging along somewhere, depend."

"With your mind made up concerning every event five years before it happens? If you had my choice to make, you think, I suppose, that you would decide in a minute which road to fame and fortune you would choose." Mr. Leonhard used his cane as vehemently while he spoke as if he were a conductor swinging his baton through the most exciting movement.

"I don't understand your perplexity, that is the fact," said she with wonderful candor; "but then I have been trained to do one thing from the time I could wink."

"It was expected of me that I should rival the greatest performers," said Leonhard with a half-sad smile. "If I go abroad now, as you advise—"

"Advise? I advise!"

"Did you not?"

"Not the least creature moving. Never!"

"If you did you would say, 'Keep to music.'"

"I should say, 'Keep to architecture.' Then—don't you see?—I should have all your pupils."

"That would matter little: you have long had all that I could give you worth the giving, Miss Ayres."

Were these words intent on having utterance, and seeking their opportunity?

In the midst of her lightness and seeming unconcern the young lady found herself challenged, as it were, by the stern voice of a sentinel on guard. But she answered on the instant: "The most delicious music I have ever heard, for which I owe you endless thanks. I have said architecture; but I never advise, you know."

"She has not understood me," thought Leonhard, but instead of taking advantage of that conclusion and retiring from the ground, he said, "Perhaps I must speak more clearly. I don't care what I do or where I go, Miss Marion, if you are indifferent. I love you."

What did he read in the face which his dark eyes scanned as they turned full upon it? Was it "I love you"? Was it "Alas!"? He could not tell.

"You are pledged to love 'the True and the Beautiful,'" said she quite gayly, "and so I am not surprised."

Leonhard looked mortified and angry. A man of twenty-two declaring love for the first time to a woman had a right to expect better treatment.

"I have offended you," she said instantly. "I only followed out your own train of thought. You may have half a dozen professions, and—"

"I am at least clear that I love only you," he said. "I hoped you would feel that. It is certain, I think, that I shall confine myself to the studies of an architect hereafter. I will give no more lessons. And shall you care to know whether I go or stay?"

Miss Ayres answered—almost as if in spite of herself and that good judgment for which she had been sufficiently praised during her eighteen years of existence—"Yes, I shall care a vast deal. That is the reason why I say, 'Go, if it seems best to you'—'Stay, if you think it more wise.' I have the confidence in you that sees you can conduct your own affairs."

"If I go," he cried in a happy voice, in strong contrast with his words, "it will be to leave everything behind me that can make life sweet."

"But if you go it will be to gain everything that can make life honorable. I did not understand that you thought of going for pleasure." Ah, how almost tender now her look and tone!

"Say but once to me what I have said to you," said Leonhard joyfully, confident now that he had won the great prize.

"Now? No: don't talk about it. Wait a while, and we will see if there is anything in it." What queer lover's mood was this? Miss Marion looked as if she had passed her fortieth birthday when she spoke in this wise.

"Oh for a soft sweet breeze from the north-east to temper such cruel blasts!" exclaimed Leonhard. "Was ever man so treated as I am by this strong-minded young woman?"

"Everybody on the grounds is looking, and wondering how she will get home with the intemperate young gentleman she is escorting. Did you say you were going to talk with your friend Mr. Wilberforce about going abroad with him for a year or two?"

"I said no such thing, but perhaps I may. I was going to write, but it may be as easy to run down to Philadelphia."

"Easier, I should say."

So they talked, and when they parted Leonhard said: "If you do not see me to-morrow evening, you will know that I have gone to Philadelphia. I shall not write to let you know. You might feel that an answer was expected of you."

"I have never been taught the arts of a correspondent, and it is quite too late to learn them," she answered.

Miss Marion will probably never again feel as old as she does this afternoon, when she has half snubbed, half flattered and half accepted the man she admires and loves, but whose one fault she clearly perceives and is seriously afraid of.

The next day Leonhard sat staring at Wilberforce's letter with a face as wrinkled as a young ape's in a cold morning fog. After one long serious effort he sprang from his seat, and I am afraid swore that he would go down to Philadelphia that very afternoon. Therefore (and because he clung to the determination all day) at six o'clock behold him passing with his satchel from the steps of the Granby House to the Grand Division Depot. He was always going to and fro, so his departure occasioned no remark. He supposed, for his own part, that he was going to talk with his friend Wilberforce, and his ticket ensured his passage to Philadelphia; and yet at eight o'clock he found himself standing on the steps of the Spenersberg Station, and saw the train move on. At the moment when his will seemed to him to be completely demoralized the engine-whistle sounded and the engine stopped. Utterly unnerved by his doubts, he slunk from the car like an escaping convict, and looked toward the narrow moonlit valley which was as a gate leading into this unknown Spenersberg. The path looked obscure and inviting, and so, without exchanging a word with any one, he walked forward, a more pitiable object than is pleasant to consider, for he was no coward and no fool.



CHAPTER II.

IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.

About the time that Leonhard Marten was paying for his ticket in the depot at A——, how many events were taking place elsewhere! Multitudes, multitudes going up and down the earth perplexed, tempted, discouraged. What were you doing at that hour? I wonder.

Even here, at this Spenersberg, was Frederick Loretz—with reason deemed one of the most fortunate of the men gathered in the happy valley—asking himself, as he walked homeward from the factory, "What is the use?"

When he spied his wife on the piazza he seemed to doubt for a second whether he should go backward or forward. Into that second of vacillation, however, the voice of the woman penetrated: "Husband, so early? Welcome home!"

The voice decided him, and so he opened his gate, passed along the graveled walk to the piazza steps, ascended, wiping the perspiration from his bald head, dropped his handkerchief into his hat and his hat upon the floor, and sat down in one of the great wide-armed wooden chairs which visitors always found awaiting them on the piazza.

His wife, having bestowed upon him one brief glance, quickly arose and went into the house: the next moment she came again, bringing with her a pitcher of iced water and a goblet, which she placed before him on a small rustic table. But a second glance showed her that he was suffering from something besides the heat and fatigue. There was a look on his broad honest face that told as distinctly as color and expression could tell of anguish, consternation, remorse. He drank from the goblet she had filled for him, and said, without looking at his wife, "I have brought you the worst news, Anna, that ever you heard." She must have guessed what it was instantly, but she made neither sign nor gesture. She could have enumerated there and then all the sorrows of her life; but for a moment it was not possible even for her to say that this impending affliction was, in view of all she had endured, a light one, easy to be borne.

"It has gone against us," said Mr. Loretz, picking up his red silk handkerchief and passing it from one hand to another, and finally hiding his face within its ample dimensions for a moment.

"Do you mean the lot?" Her voice wavered a little. Though she asked or refrained from asking, something had taken place which must be made known speedily. Wherefore, then, delay the evil knowledge?

He signified by a nod that it was so.

"And that is in store for our poor child!" said the mother.

Mr. Loretz was now quite broken down. He passed his handkerchief across his face again, and this time made no answer.

Then the mother, with lips firmly compressed, and eyes bent steadily upon the floor, and forehead crumpled somewhat, sat and held her peace.

At last the father said, in a low tone that gave to his strong voice an awful pathos, "How can the child bear it, Anna? for she loves Spener well—and to love him well!"

"Oh, father," said the wife, who had by this time sounded the depth of this tribulation, and was already ascending, "how did we bear it when we had to give up Gabriel, and Jacob, and dear little Carl?"

"For me," said the man, rising and looking over the piazza rail into the gay little flower-garden beneath—"for me all that was nothing to this."

"O my boys!" the mother cried.

"We know that they went home to a heavenly Parent, and to more delight and honor than all the earth could give them," the father said.

"It rent the heart, Frederick, but into the gaping wound the balm of Gilead was poured."

"There is no man alive to be compared with Albert Spener."

"I know of one—but one."

"Not one," he said with an emphasis which sternly rebuked the ill-timed, and, as he deemed, untruthful flattery. "There is not his like, go where you will."

"Ah, how you have exalted him above all that is to be worshiped!" sighed the good woman, putting her hands together, and really as troubled and sympathetic, and cool and calculating, as she seemed to be.

"I tell you I have never seen his equal! Look at this place here—hasn't he called it up out of the dust?"

"Yes, yes, he did. He made it all," she said. "It must be conceded that Albert Spener is a great man—in Spenersberg."

"How, then, can I keep back from him the best I have when he asks for it —asks for it as if I were a king to refuse him what he wanted if I pleased? I would give him my life!"

"Ah, Frederick, you have! It isn't you that denies now—think of that! Remind him of it. Who spoke by the lot? Where are you going, husband?"

Mr. Loretz had turned away from the piazza rail and picked up his hat. His wife's question arrested him. "I—I thought I would speak with Brother Wenck," said he, somewhat confused by the question, and looking almost as if his sole purpose had been to go beyond the sound of his wife's remonstrating voice.

"Husband, about this?"

"Yes, Anna."

"Don't go. What will he think?"

"Nobody knows about it yet, except Wenck, unless he spoke to Brother Thorn."

"Oh, Frederick, what are you thinking?"

"I am thinking"—he paused and looked fixedly at his wife—"I am thinking that I have been beside myself, Anna—crazy, out and out, and this thing can't stand."

"Husband, it was our wish to learn the will of God concerning this marriage, and we have learned it. The Lord——"

"I will go back to the factory," said Mr. Loretz, turning quickly away from his wife. "I must see if everything is right there before it gets darker." He had caught sight of the tall figure of a woman at the gate when he snatched up his hat so suddenly and interrupted his wife. Then he turned to her again: "Is Elise within?"

"No, husband: she went to the garden for twigs this afternoon."

"She had not heard?"

"No. It is Sister Benigna that is coming. Must you go back?" She poured another glass of water for her husband, and walked down the steps with him; and coming so, out from the shade into the sunlight, Sister Benigna was startled by their faces as though she had seen two ghosts.

Two hours later, Mr. Loretz again turned his steps homeward, and Mr. Wenck, the minister, walked with him as far as the gate. They had met accidentally upon the sidewalk, and Mr. Loretz must of necessity make some allusion to the letter he had received from the minister that day acquainting him with the allotment which had made of him so hopeless a mourner. The good man hesitated a moment before making response: then he took both the hands of Loretz in his, and said in a deep, tender voice, "Brother, the wound smarts."

"I cannot bear it!" cried Loretz. "It is all my doing, and I must have been crazy."

"When in devout faith you sought to know God's will concerning your dear child?"

"I cannot talk about it," was the impatient response. "And you cannot understand it," he continued, turning quickly upon his companion. "You have never had a daughter, and you don't understand Albert Spener."

"I think," said the minister patiently—"I think I know him well enough to see what the consequence will be if he should suspect that Brother Loretz is like 'a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed.'"

Yet as the minister said this his head drooped, his voice softened, and he laid his hand on the shoulder of Mr. Loretz, as if he would fain speak on and in a different strain. It was evident that the distressed man did not understand him, and reproof or counsel was more than he could now bear. He walked on a little faster, and as he approached his gate voices from within were heard. They were singing a duet from The Messiah.

"Come in," said Loretz, his face suddenly lighting up with almost hope.

Mr. Wenck seemed disposed to accept the invitation: then, as he was about to pass through the gate, he was stayed by a recollection apparently, for he turned back, saying, "Not to-night, Brother Loretz. They will need all the time for practice. Let me tell you, I admire your daughter Elise beyond expression. I wish that Mr. Spener could hear that voice now: it is perfectly triumphant. You are happy, sir, in having such a daughter."

As Mr. Wenck turned from the gate, Leonhard—our Leonhard Marten—approached swiftly from the opposite side of the street. He had been sitting under the trees half an hour listening to the singing, and, full of enthusiasm, now presented himself before Mr. Loretz, exclaiming, "Do tell me, sir, what singers are these?"

Mr. Loretz knew every man in Spenersberg. He looked at the stranger, and answered dryly, "Very tolerable singers."

"I should think so! I never heard anything so glorious. I am a stranger here, sir. Can you direct me to a public-house?"

To answer was easy. There was but the one inn, called the Brethren's House, the sixth below the one before which they were standing. It was a long house, painted white, with a deep wide porch, where half a dozen young men probably sat smoking at this moment. Instead of giving this direction, however, Loretz said, after a brief consultation with himself, "I don't know as there's another house in Spenersberg that ought to be as open as mine. I live here, sir. How long have you been listening?"

"Not long enough," said Leonhard; and he passed through the gate, which had been opened for the minister, and now was opened as widely for him.

* * * * *



CHAPTER III.

HIGH ART.

The room into which Mr. Loretz conducted Leonhard seemed to our young friend, as he glanced around it, fit for the court of Apollo. Its proportions had obviously been assigned by some music-loving soul. It occupied two-thirds of the lower floor of the house, and its high ceiling was a noticeable feature. The furniture had all been made at the factory; the floor-mats were woven there; and one gazing around him might well have wondered to what useful or ornamental purpose the green willows growing everywhere in Spenersberg Valley might not be applied. The very pictures hanging on the wall—engraved likenesses of the great masters Mozart and Beethoven—had their frames of well-woven willow twigs; and the rack which held the books and sheets of music was ornamented on each side with raised wreaths of flowers wrought by deft hands from the same pliant material.

At the piano, in the centre of the room, sat Sister Benigna—by her side, Elise Loretz.

It seemed, when Elise's father entered with the stranger, as if there might be a suspension of the performance, but Loretz said, "Two listeners don't signify: we promise to make no noise. Sit down, sir: give me your bag;" and taking Leonhard's satchel, he retired with it to a corner, where he sat down, and with his elbows on his knees, his head between his hands, prepared himself to listen.

Sister Benigna said to her companion, "It is time we practiced before an audience perhaps;" and they went on as if nothing had happened.

And sitting in that cool room on the eve of a scorching and distracted day, is it any wonder that Leonhard composed himself to accept any marvel that might present itself? Once across the threshold of the Every-day, and there is nothing indeed for which one should not be prepared.

If in mood somewhat less enthusiastic than that of our traveler we look in upon that little company, what shall we see?

In the first place, inevitably, Sister Benigna. But describe a picture, will you, or the mountains, or the sea? It must have been something for the Spenersberg folk to know that such a woman dwelt among them, yet probably two-thirds of her influence was unconsciously put forth and as unconsciously received. They knew that in musical matters she inspired them and exacted of them to the uttermost, but they did not and could not know how much her life was worth to all of them, and that they lived on a higher plane because of those half dozen wonderful notes of hers, and the unflagging enthusiasm which needed but the name of love-feast or festival to bring a light into her lovely eyes that seemed to spread up and around her white forehead and beautiful hair like a supernatural lustre. There was a fire that animated her which nobody who saw its glow or felt its warmth could question. Without that altar of music—But why speculate on what she might have been if she had not been what she was? That would be to consider not Benigna, but somebody else.

She was accompanying Elise through Handel's "Pastoral Symphony." Elise began: "He is the righteous Saviour, and He shall speak peace unto the heathen." At the first notes Leonhard looked hastily toward the window, and if it had been a door he would have passed out on to the piazza, that he might there have heard, unseeing, unseen. While he sat still and looked and listened it seemed to him as if he had been engaged in foolish games with children all his life. He sat as it were in the dust, scorning his own insignificance.

The young girl who now sat, now stood beside her, must have been the child of her training. For six years, indeed, they have lived together under one roof, sharing one apartment. Within the hour just passed, that has been said by them toward which all the talk and all the action of the six years has tended, and the heart of the girl lies in the hand of the woman, and what will the woman do with it?

Perhaps all that Benigna can do for Elise has to-day been accomplished. It may be that to grow beside her now will be to grow in the shade when shade is needed no longer, and when the effect will be to weaken life and to deepen the spirit of dependence. Possibly sunlight though scorching, winds though wild, would be better for Elise now than the protecting shadow of her friend.

Looking at Elise, Leonhard feels more assured, more at home. She has a kindly face, a lovely face, he decides, and what a deliciously rich, smooth voice! She is rather after the willowy order in her slender person, and when she begins to sing "Rejoice greatly," he looks at her astonished, doubting whether the sound can really have proceeded from her slender throat. He is again reminded of Marion, but by nothing he hears or sees: poor Marion has her not small reputation as a singer in A——, yet her voice, compared with this, is as wire—gold wire indeed—wire with a color of richness at least; while Elise's is as honey itself—honey with the flavor of the sweetest flowers in it, and, too, the suggestion of the bee's swift, strong wing.

Into the room comes at last Mrs. Loretz. It is just as Elise takes up the final air of the symphony that she appears. She would look upon her daughter while she sings, "Come unto Him, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and He shall give you rest. Take His yoke upon you, and learn of Him," etc. Chiefly to look upon her child she comes—to listen with her loving, confident eyes.

But on the threshold of the music-room she pauses half a second, perceiving the stranger by the window: then she nods pleasantly to him, which motion sets the short silvery hair on her forehead waving, as curls would have waved there had she only let them. She wears a cap trimmed with a blue ribbon tied beneath her chin, and such is the order of her comely gown and apron that it commands attention always, like a true work of art.

She sits down beside her husband, and presently, as by the flash of a single glance indeed, has taken the weight and measure of the gentleman opposite. She likes his appearance, admires his fine dark face and his fine dark eyes, wonders where he came from, what he wants, and—will he stay to tea?

Gazing at her daughter, she looks a little sad: then she smooths her dress, straightens herself, shakes her head, and is absorbed in the music, beating time with tiny foot and hand, and following every strain with an intentness which draws her brows together into a slight frown. Elise almost smiles as she glances toward her mother: she knows where to find enthusiasm at a white heat when it is wanted. With the final repetition, "Ye shall find rest to your souls," the dame rises quickly, and hastening to her daughter embraces her; then passing to the next room, she pauses, perhaps long enough to wipe her eyes; then the jingle of a bell is heard.

At the ringing of this bell, Sister Benigna rose instantly, saying, "Welcome sound!" Loretz also came forth from his corner. He was about to speak to Leonhard, when Benigna took up the trombone which was lying on the piano, and said, "I am curious to know how many rehearsals you have had, sir. It is time, Elise, that our trombonist reported."

Loretz, casting an eye toward his daughter, said, "Never mind Sister Benigna. Our quartette will be all right." Then he turned to Leonhard: it was not now that he felt for the first time the relief of the stranger's presence. "We are going to take food," said he: "will you give me your name and come with us?"

Leonhard gave his name, and moreover his opinion that he had trespassed too long already on the hospitality of the house.

To this remark Loretz paid no attention. "Wife," he called out, "isn't that name down in the birthday book—Leonhard Marten? I am sure of it. He was a Herrnhuter."

"Very likely, husband," was the answer from the other room. "Will you come, good people?" The good people who heard that voice understood just what its tone meant, and there was an instant response.

"Come in, sir," said Loretz; and the invitation admitted no argument, for he went forward at once with a show of alacrity sufficient to satisfy his wife. "This young man here was looking for a public-house. They are full at the Brethren's, I hear. I thought he could not do better than take luck with us," he said to her by way of explanation.

"He is welcome," said the wife in a prompt, business-like tone, which was evidently her way. "Daughter!" She looked at Elise, and Elise brought a plate, knife and fork for "this young man," and placed them where her mother indicated—that is, next herself. Between the mother and daughter Leonhard therefore took refuge, as it were, from the rather too majestic presence opposite known as Sister Benigna. He should have felt at ease in the little circle, for not one of them but felt the addition to their party to be a diversion and a relief. As to Dame Anna Loretz, thoughts were passing through her mind which might pass through the minds of others also in the course of time should Leonhard prove to be a good Moravian and decide to remain among them. They were thoughts which would have sent a dubious smile around the board, however, could they have been made known just now to Elise and her father and Sister Benigna; and what would our young friend—from the city evidently—have looked or said could they have been communicated to him? Already the mind and heart of the mother of Elise, disconcerted and distracted for the moment by that untoward casting of the lot, had risen to a calm survey of the situation of things; and now she was endeavoring to reconcile herself to the prospect which imagination presented to the eye of faith, If she had perceived in the unannounced appearing of the young gentleman who sat near her devouring with keen appetite the good fare before him, and apologizing for his hunger with a grace which ensured him constant renewal of vanishing dishes,—if she had perceived in it a manifestation of the will of Providence, she could not have smiled on Leonhard more kindly, or more successfully have exerted herself to make him feel at home.

And might not Mr. Leonhard have congratulated himself? If there was a "great house" in Spenersberg, this was that mansion; and if there were great people there, these certainly were they. And to think of finding in this vale cultivators of high art, intelligent, simple-hearted, earnest, beautiful!

CAROLINE CHESEBRO'.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]



THE IRISH CAPITAL.

The metropolis of Ireland about the middle of the last century was the fourth in Europe in point of size. Since then it has made little progress in comparison with many others. Yet it is a large place, covering a great area, and holding a population which numbers some three hundred thousand souls.

It may further be said that notwithstanding the withdrawal, consequent on the Union, of the aristocratic classes from Dublin, the city has improved more in the last fifty years than at any previous period. Dublin, at the Union, and for some time after, was a very dirty place indeed. To-day, although, from that antipathy to paint common to the whole Irish nation—which can apparently never realize the Dutch proverb, that "paint costs nothing," or the English one, that "a stitch in time saves nine"—much of the town looks dingy, it is, as a whole, cleaner than almost any capital in Europe, so far as drainage and the sanitary state of the dwellings are concerned. And here we speak from experience, having last year, in company with detective officers, visited all its lowest and poorest haunts.

The cause of this sanitary excellence is that matters of this kind are placed entirely in the hands of the police, who rigorously carry out the orders given to them on such points. It is devoutly to be hoped that a similar system will ere long be in vogue in the towns of our own country.

The noblesse have now quite deserted the Irish capital. Besides the lord-chancellor, there is probably not a single peer occupying a house there to-day. Houses are excellent and very cheap. An immense mansion in the best situation can be had for a thousand dollars a year. The markets are capitally supplied, and the prices are generally about one-third of those of New York. Not a single item of living is dear. But, notwithstanding these and many other advantages, the place has lost popularity, has a "deadly-lively" air about it, and, it must be admitted, is in many respects wondrously dull, especially to those who have been used to the brisk life of a great commercial or pleasure-loving capital.

"Cornelius O'Dowd" paid a visit to Dublin in 1871 after a long absence, and said some very pretty things about it. Never was the company or claret better. Well, the fact was, that while the great and lamented Cornelius was there he was feted and made much of. Lord Spencer gave him a dinner, so did other magnates, and his sejour was one prolonged feasting; but nevertheless the every-day life of the Irish capital is awfully and wonderfully dull, as those who know it best, and have the cream of such society as it offers, would in strict confidence admit. From January to May there is an attempt at a "season," during the earlier part of which the viceroy gives a great many entertainments. These are remarkably well done, and the smaller parties are very agreeable. But politics intervene here, as in everything else in Ireland, to mar considerably the brilliancy of the vice-regal court. When the Whigs are "in" the Tory aristocracy hold off from "the Castle," and vice versa. Dublin is generally much more brilliant under a Tory viceroy, inasmuch as nine-tenths of the Irish peerage and landed gentry support that side of politics. The vice-reign of the duke of Abercorn, the last lord-lieutenant, will long be remembered as a period of exceptional splendor in the annals of Dublin. He maintained the dignity of the office in a style which had not been known for half a century, and in this respect proved particularly acceptable to people of all classes. Besides, he is a man of magnificent presence, and has a fitting helpmate (sister of Earl Russell) and beautiful daughters; and it was universally admitted that the round people had got into the round holes, so far as the duke and duchess were concerned.

The lord-lieutenant's levees and drawing-rooms take place at night, and are therefore much more cheerful than similar ceremonials at Buckingham Palace. His Excellency kisses all the ladies presented to him. The vice-regal salary is one hundred thousand dollars, with allowances, but most viceroys spend a great deal more. There are in such a poor country, where people have no sort of qualms about asking, innumerable claims upon their purses.

The office of viceroy of Ireland is one which prime ministers find it no easy task to fill. Just that kind of person is wanted for the office who has no wish to hold it. A great peer with half a million of dollars' income doesn't care about accepting troublesome and occasionally anxious duties, from which he, at all events, has nothing to gain. For some time Lord Derby was in a quandary to get any one who would do to take it, and it may be doubted whether the marquis of Abercorn would have sacrificed himself if the glittering prospect of a coronet all strawberry leaves (for he was created a duke while in office) had not been held before his eyes. The vice-regal lodge is a plain, unpretending building. It is charmingly situated in the Phoenix Park (1760 acres), and commands delightful views over the Wicklow Mountains. Within, it is comfortable and commodious. The viceroy resides there eight months in the year. He goes to "the Castle" from December to April. The Castle is "no great thing." It is situated in the heart of Dublin. Around it are the various government offices. St. Patrick's Hall is a fine apartment, but certainly does not deserve the name of magnificent, and is a very poor affair compared with the reception-saloons of third-rate continental princes.

The Dublin season culminates, so far at least as the vice-regal entertainments go, in the ball given here on St. Patrick's Day (March 17). On such occasions it is de rigueur to wear a court-dress. Even those who venture to appear in the regulation trowsers admissible at a levee at St. James's are seriously cautioned "not to do it again."

Though Dublin is now deserted by the aristocracy, most of the grand-seigneur mansions are still standing. Leinster House, built about 1760, and said to have served as a model for the "White House," was in 1815 sold by the duke to the Royal Dublin Society. Up to 1868 the duke of Leinster[1] was Ireland's only duke, and the house is certainly a stately and appropriate ducal residence.

It must, however, be confessed that there is something decidedly triste and severe about this big mansion. A celebrated whilom tenant of it, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, appeared to think so, for in 1791 he writes to his mother, after his return from the bright and sunny atmosphere of America: "I confess Leinster House does not inspire the brightest ideas. By the by, what a melancholy house it is! You can't conceive how much it appeared so when first we came from Kildare. A country housemaid I brought with me cried for two days, and said she thought that she was in a prison." It was at Leinster House that "Lord Edward"—he is to this day always thus known by the people of Ireland, who never think it needful to add his surname—after having joined "the United Irishmen," had interviews with the informer Reynolds, who, it is believed, afterward betrayed him.

Lady Sarah Napier, mother of Sir William Napier, the well-known historian of the Peninsular War, and other eminent sons, was aunt to Lord Edward, being sister of his mother. These ladies were daughters of the duke of Richmond, and Lady Sarah was remarkable as being a lady to whom George III. was passionately attached, and whom, but for the vehement opposition of his mother and her entourage, he would have married. In a journal of this lady's I find the following interesting account of the search for her nephew: "The separate warrant went by a messenger, attended by the sheriff and a party of soldiers, into Leinster House. The servants ran to Lady Edward, who was ill, and told her. She said directly, 'There is no help: send them up.' They asked very civilly for her papers and for Edward's, and she gave them all. Her apparent distress moved Major O'Kelly to tears, and their whole conduct was proper."

Lady Edward Fitzgerald (whose husband had served under Lord Moira in America) was at Moira House on the evening of her husband's arrest. Writing from Castletown, county Kildare, two days after that event, Lady Louisa Connolly, Lord Edward's aunt, says: "As soon as Edward's wound was dressed he desired the private secretary at the Castle to write for him to Lady Edward and tell her what had happened. The secretary carried the note himself. Lady E. was at Moira House, and a servant of Lady Mountcashel's came soon after to forbid Lady Edward's servants saying anything to her that night." She continued, after Lord E.'s death, to reside at Moira House till obliged by an order of the privy council to retire to England, where she became the guest of her husband's uncle, the duke of Richmond.[2]

Lady Moira, who so kindly befriended Lady Edward, was unquestionably a very remarkable woman, and had considerable influence, politically and socially, in the Dublin of her day. Although an Englishwoman, she became in some respects ipsis Hibernis Hibernior, and for a very long period prior to her death never quitted the soil of Ireland. Had the Irish aristocracy generally been of the complexion of those who assembled in the more intimate reunions at Moira House, the history of that country during the past century would have been a widely different one. The members of that brilliant circle were thorough anti-Unionists, and Lord Moira and his sons-in-law, the earls of Granard and Mountcashel, proved that they were not to be conciliated by bribes, either in money or honors, by entering their formal protest against that measure on the books of the Irish House of Lords.

When the delegates on behalf of Catholic claims came to London in 1792, it was this enlightened Irish nobleman who received them, and who, in the event of the minister declining to admit them, intended as a peer to have claimed an audience of the king. Lord Moira both in the English and Irish Houses of Peers denounced the oppressive measures of the government, and his opposition gave so much offence that the English general Lake was reported to hayer declared that if a town in the North was to be burnt, they had best begin with Lord Moira's, causing him so much apprehension that he removed his collection, which was of extraordinary value, from his seat, Moira Hall, in the county Down, to England.

The celebrated John Wesley visited Lady Moira at Moira House in 1775, "and was surprised to observe, though not a more grand, a far more elegant room than he had ever seen in England. It was an octagon, about twenty feet square, and fifteen or sixteen high, having one window (the sides of it inlaid throughout with mother-of-pearl) reaching from the top of the room to the bottom: the ceiling, sides and furniture of the room were equally elegant." It was here that two of the greatest members of their respective legislatures—Charles Fox and Henry Grattan—first met in 1777, and Moira House continued to be the scene of splendid entertainments up to the death of the first Lord Moira, in 1793. Wesley concludes his letter about Moira House by asking, "Must this too pass away like a dream?" Whether like a dream or no, it certainly has been signally the fate of this whilom proud mansion to pass from the highest to the very humblest almost at a bound. For some years after Lady Moira's death (in 1808) the house was kept up by the family, but in 1826 it was let to an anti-mendicity society. The upper story was removed, the mansion was stripped throughout of its splendid decorations—some of the furniture is now at Castle Forbes, the seat of the earl of Granard, Lady Moira's great-grandson, a worthy descendant—and the saloons which were wont to be thronged with the most brilliant and splendid society of the Irish metropolis in its heyday are now the abode of perhaps the very poorest outcasts who are to be found in the whole wide world.

The district in which Moira House stands has long ceased to be fashionable. The mansion stands close to the Liffey, a few yards back from the road. An elderly man who has charge of the mendicity institution for whose purposes the house is at present used, told me that he remembered it when kept up by the family, although its members were not actually residing there. What is now a fearfully dreary courtyard, where the outcasts of Dublin disport themselves, was then, he said, a fine garden with splendid mulberry trees, which he, being a favorite with the gardener, was permitted to climb—a circumstance which had naturally impressed itself on his childish memory. I told him that I had heard that long after the difficulties of the first marquis—who lent one hundred thousand pounds to George the Magnificent when that glorious prince was at the last gasp for L s. d.—had compelled him to part with his large estates; in the county Down, he had retained possession of this mansion, and that it had even descended to the last marquis, whose wild career concluded when he was only six-and-twenty; but the old man thought it had passed from them long before. He remembered, he said, the last peer (with whom the title became extinct) coming to Dublin, because he had an interview with him about some furniture for his yacht, my informant being at that time in business, and he thought he should have heard if the property had been still retained. I asked if the marquis had exhibited any interest as to the old historical mansion of his family. "Not the slightest," he replied.

Hardy, in his well-known life of Lord Charlemont, says: "His (Lord Moira's) house will be long, very long, remembered: it was for many years the seat of refined hospitality, of good nature and of good conversation. In doing the honors of it, Lord Moira had certainly one advantage above most men, for he had every assistance that true magnificence, the nobleness of manners peculiar to exalted birth, and talents for society the most cultivated, could give him in his illustrious countess."

Powerscourt House, a really noble mansion in St. Andrew street, is now used by a great wholesale firm, but is so little altered that it could be fitted for a private residence again in a very brief time. The staircase is grand in proportion, and the steps and balustrades are of polished mahogany, the last being richly carved.

Tyrone House is now the Education Office, and Mornington House, where Wellington's father resided, and where or at Dangan—for it is a doubtful point—the duke was born, is also used for government purposes.

The great squares of Dublin are St. Stephen's Green, Rutland, Mountjoy, Merrion and Fitzwilliam Squares. The first of these dates from the latter half of the seventeenth century, and is probably in a far more prosperous condition now than it ever was before. If we are to judge by Whitelaw's history, it presented in 1819 an aspect such as no public square out of Dublin—the enclosure of Leicester Square, London, excepted—could present. "Of that kind of architectural beauty," he says, "which arises from symmetry and regularity, here are no traces." Some houses were on a level with the streets, others were approached by a grand perron. The proprietors were of all degrees: here was the great house of a lord, there a miserable dramshop. The enclosure consisted of no less than thirteen acres, making Stephen's Green the largest public square in Europe. It was simply a great treeless field, with an equestrian statue of George II. stuck in the middle of it. The principal entrance to the ground is described as "decorated with four piers of black stone crowned with globes of mountain granite, once respectable, but exhibiting shameful symptoms of neglect and decay." There had been a gravel walk called the "Beaux' Walk," from its having been a fashionable resort, "but," says Whitelaw, "the ditch which bounds it is now usually filled with stagnant water, which seems to be the appropriate receptacle of animal bodies in a disgusting state of putrefaction." At night this charming recreation-ground was illumined by twenty-six lamps, at a distance of one hundred and seventy feet from each other, stuck on wooden poles. Such an account of the grand square of Dublin does not make one surprised to learn that the main approach to it from the heart of the city was of a very miserable description.

In reading Whitelaw's history of Dublin it is impossible not to be struck with the fact that it records a degree of neglect and indifference on the part of the people and the local authorities to beauty, decency and order such as could scarcely be found in another country. In the centre of Merrion Square was a fountain of very ambitious expense and design, erected to the honor of the duke and duchess of Rutland, a lord and lady lieutenant. The fountain was only finished in 1791, but "from a fault in the foundation, or some shameful negligence in the construction, is already cracked and bulged in several places; and though intended as a monument to perpetuate the memory of an illustrious nobleman and his heroic father (the famous Lord Granby), is, after an existence of only sixteen years, tottering to its fall." Mr. Whitelaw continues: "Unhappily, a savage barbarism that seems hostile to every idea of order or decency, of beauty and elegance, prevails among but too many of the lower orders; and hence the decorations of almost every public fountain have been destroyed or disfigured: the figure, shamefully mutilated, of the water-nymph in this fountain has been reduced to a disgusting trunk, and the alto relievo over it shows equal symptoms of decay, arising partly from violence, and partly, perhaps, from the perishable nature of the materials." Truly a forcible picture of art and the appreciation thereof in Ireland!

During the last century some Italians came to Dublin, who left their mark upon the interior decorations of rich men's houses. Many of the old houses retain the beautiful mantelpieces designed and executed by these accomplished artists. A leading house-fitter of Dublin has, however, bought up a good many, and they are finding their way to London, where it is to be hoped they may produce a revolution in taste, for London mantelpieces are, as a rule, hideous. Some of these specimens of art have been bought by wealthy Irishmen and transferred to their country-houses. One nobleman, Lord Langford, whose ancestral home was wrecked in the rebellion of 1798, has lately been restoring it, and bought up many of the Dublin mantelpieces.

The ornamentation of Belvedere House, in Gardener Row, is particularly elaborate and in wonderfully good repair.

Irish family history contains few sadder stories than that of the first countess of Belvedere. Lord Belvedere was a man of fashion who much frequented St. James's, and indeed owed his elevation, first to a barony and then to an earldom, to the favor of that highly uninteresting monarch, George II. Leaving his wife sometimes for long periods at Gaulston, a vast and dreary residence (since pulled down) in Westmeath, he betook himself to London, and Lady Belvedere at such times lived much with her husband's brother, Mr. Arthur Rochfort, and his family. It is said that some woman with whom Lord Belvedere had long been connected was determined to make mischief between him and his wife. Eight years after their marriage, Lady Belvedere was accused of adultery with Mr. Rochfort: in an action of crim. con. damages to the extent of twenty thousand pounds were given, and the defendant was obliged to fly the country. For many years he lived abroad, but at length ventured to return, when his brother caused him to be arrested, and he died in confinement, protesting to the last, as did Lady Belvedere, his innocence. For Lady Belvedere a terrible punishment for her alleged misdeeds was in store. Her husband quitted Gaulston for a cheerful retreat in another part of the county, and henceforth that gloomy mansion became the prison-house of the unhappy countess.

When her imprisonment commenced Lady Belvedere was twenty-five. For eighteen years she remained a prisoner. Her husband often visited Gaulston, but uniformly avoided all personal communication with her. Once she succeeded in speaking to him, but her entreaties were in vain, and thenceforward, whenever he was about the grounds at Gaulston, the attendant accompanying Lady Belvedere in her walks was instructed to ring a bell to give warning of her approach. At length, after twelve years of captivity, Lady Belvedere contrived to escape, but Lord Belvedere, who had been apprised of the fact, reached her father's house in Dublin before her, and she found that his representations had weighed so strongly with Lord Molesworth—who had married a second time—that orders had been given that she was not to be admitted. She then took a very unfortunate step by repairing to the house of her friends, the wife and family of the brother-in-law with whom she had been accused of being guilty of misconduct, Mr. Rochfort himself being in exile. She was presently seized and reconveyed to Gaulston, where a much more rigorous treatment was henceforth pursued toward her. At length her husband's death set her free.

Lady Belvedere passed the rest of her days in peace and comfort at the house of her daughter and son-in-law, Lord and Lady Lanesborough. She did not long survive her husband, and on her deathbed, after partaking of the holy communion, affirmed with a most solemn oath her perfect innocence of the crime for which she had suffered so much.

But perhaps in many respects Charlemont House has the most interesting recollections connected with it of all the grand-seigneur mansions of the Irish metropolis. It was here that the first earl of Charlemont, the best specimen of a nobleman that Ireland has to boast of, passed the greater portion of his later life. Lord Charlemont's name is to be found in all the memoirs of eminent political and literary men of his time. He was the friend of Burke and Johnson, a popular member of the club, and a munificent patron of literature and art. But more than all this, he stuck bravely to his country, and to no man in Ireland did the Stopford motto, Patriae infelici fidelis, more correctly apply. Had more of his order been like him, what a different country might Ireland have been!

I found Charlemont House full of painters and glaziers. The mansion, which was retained in statu quo by the late earl, although, for fifty years no member of the family had slept there, has now been sold to the government, and is being prepared for the accommodation of the survey department. The mouldings of the beautiful ceilings are still extant in some of the rooms, although what once was gilt is now white-wash. The library is much as it was, minus the very valuable collection of books, which were sold some time since by the present earl, and fetched a large sum, albeit many of the most valuable were destroyed in a fire which broke out at the auctioneer's where they were deposited in London.[3]

With his friend Edmund Burke, Lord Charlemont maintained a close correspondence. One of Burke's published letters relates to an American gentleman, Mr. Shippen, whom he was introducing to the hospitalities of Charlemont House, and whom he describes as very agreeable, sensible and accomplished. "America and we," he concludes, "are not under the same crown, but if we are united by mutual good-will and reciprocal good offices, perhaps it may do almost as well. Mr. Shippen will give you no unfavorable specimen of the New World."

From the middle of the last century Henrietta street,[4] on the north bank of the Liffey, was the residence of many of the leading members of the aristocracy. The street is a cul-de-sac, with the King's Inn (the Temple and Lincoln's Inn of Dublin) at the farther end. The houses are extremely spacious and richly ornamented; in fact, far finer in point of proportion and design than ordinary London houses of the first class.

Through the politeness of a gentleman who possesses half the street, I went over some of the houses, which are extremely spacious, and contain beautifully-proportioned rooms richly ornamented with carving and moulding. In what was formerly Mountjoy House I found a dining-room whose cornices and ceilings were of the most elegant design and execution. This house had seen many curious scenes. It was formerly the town-house of the earl of Blessington—whose second title was Viscount Mountjoy—to whom the whole street belonged. The founder of this family, Luke Gardiner, rose from a humble origin by energy and intrigue, and his son married the heiress of the Mountjoys. It was occupied up to 1830 by the last earl of Blessington, husband of the celebrated literary star. Soon after their marriage Lady Blessington accompanied her husband to Ireland, and he invited some of his friends who were ignorant of the event to dine at his house in Henrietta street. These latter were somewhat startled when he entered the room with a beautiful woman leaning on his arm whom he introduced as his wife. Among the guests was a gentleman who had been in that room only four years before, when the walls were hung with black, and in the centre, on an elevated platform, was placed a coffin with a gorgeous velvet pall, with the remains in it of a woman once scarcely surpassed in loveliness by the lady then present in bridal costume. This was the first Lady Blessington.

The last of the Irish noblesse in this street was Lady Harriet, widow of the Right Hon. Denis Bowes-Daly, on whom Grattan passed such warm eulogies, and who was the original of Lever's happiest creation, The Knight of Gwynne.

It has been a frequent subject of conjecture why the Phoenix Park was so called. The best explanation seems to be that on a site within its boundaries there formerly stood, close to a remarkable spring of water, an ancient manor-house. The manor was called Fionn-uisge, pronounced finniske, which signifies clear or fair water, and this term easily became corrupted into Phoenix. The land became Crown property in 1559, and was made into a park in 1662. It was immensely improved and put into its present shape by the earl of Chesterfield, author of the Letters—one of the best viceroys Ireland ever had—about 1743. The area is seventeen hundred and sixty acres. With the exception of Windsor and our own Fairmount, no public park in the world can compare with it. The ground undulates charmingly, the views are extensive and beautiful.

Grouped around the Phoenix Park are many beautiful seats: the finest is Woodlands. This belonged formerly to the Luttrells, a notorious family, the head of which was raised to the Irish peerage as earl of Carhampton. It was with a Lord Carhampton that his son declined to fight a duel, not at all because he was his father, but because he "did not consider him a gentleman." Early in the century, Woodlands, then known as Luttrellstown, became the property of Luke White, one of the most remarkable men that Ireland has produced. In 1778, Luke White was in the habit of buying cheap odds and ends of literature from a bookseller, named Warren, in Belfast to peddle about the country. In 1798 he loaned the Irish government, then in great difficulty, a million of pounds! Mr. Warren, who found him very punctual and exact, used to permit him to leave his pack behind his counter and call for it in the morning. No one would then have dreamed that the greasy bag was to lead to such results. By degrees, White scraped together some means. He used to take odd volumes to a binder in Belfast and employ him to get the "vol." at the beginning and end of an odd volume erased, so as to pass it off among the unwary as a perfect book, and generally furbish it up. Then he used to sell his literary wares by auction in the streets of Belfast. The knowledge he thus acquired of public sales procured him a clerkship with a Dublin auctioneer. He opened first a book-stall, and then a regular book-shop, in Dawson street, a leading thoroughfare of Dublin. There he became eminent. He sold lottery-tickets, speculated in the funds and contracted for government loans. In 1798, when the rebellion broke out, the Irish government was desperately in need of funds. They came into the Dublin market for a loan of a million, and the best terms they could get were from Luke White, who offered to take it at sixty-five pounds per one hundred pound share at five per cent.—not unremunerative terms.

At the time of his death, in 1824, he had long been M.P. for Leitrim, and his son was member for the county of Dublin. He left property worth a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars a year. Eventually almost the whole of it devolved on his fourth son, who some years ago was created a peer of the United Kingdom as Lord Annaly.

The family has probably spent more than a million and a half of dollars on elections. It has always been on the Liberal side. The present peer has property in about a dozen counties, and is lord-lieutenant of Langford, whilst his younger son holds the same high office in Clare.

The University of Dublin consists of a single college—Trinity. This edifice forms a prominent feature in the Irish metropolis. It stands in College Green, almost opposite to the Bank of Ireland, the former legislative chambers. Since the Union, Trinity College has been but little resorted to by men of the upper ranks of Irish society, although it has certainly contributed some very eminent men to the public service—notably, the late unfortunate governor-general, Lord Mayo, and Lord Cairns, ex-lord-chancellor of England. Trinity is one of the largest owners of real estate in the country. The fellowships are far better than those of the English universities. The provost, who occupies a large and stately mansion, has a separate estate worth some fifteen thousand dollars a year, which he manages himself.

Trinity has a very fine library. It is one of the five which by an act of Parliament has a right to demand from the publisher a copy of every work published. The origin of the library is quite unique. It dates from a benefaction by the victorious English army after its defeat of the Spaniards at Kinsale in 1603, when they devoted one thousand eight hundred pounds—a sum equivalent to five times that money at present rates—to establish a library in the university, being, it may be presumed, instigated by some eminent personage, who suggested that such a course would be acceptable to the queen, who had founded the university.

Dr. Chaloner and Mr. (afterward Archbishop) Ussher were appointed trustees of this donation; "and," says Dr. Parr, "it is somewhat remarkable that at this time, when the said persons were in London about laying out this money in books, they there met Sir Thomas Bodley, then buying books for his newly-erected library in Oxford; so that there began a correspondence between them upon this occasion, helping each other to procure the choicest and best books on moral subjects that could be gotten; so that the famous Bodleian Library at Oxford and that of Dublin began together."

The private collection of Ussher himself, consisting of ten thousand volumes, was the first considerable donation which the library received, and for this also, curiously enough, it was again indebted to the English army. In 1640, Ussher left Ireland. The insurgents soon after destroyed all his effects with the exception of his books, which were secured and sent to London. In 1642—when the troubles between King and Parliament had broken out—Ussher was nominated one of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, but having offended the parliamentary authorities by refusing to attend, his library was confiscated as that of a delinquent by order of the House of Commons. However, his friend, the celebrated John Selden, got leave to buy the books, as though for himself, but really to restore them to Ussher. Narrow circumstances subsequently caused him to leave the library to his daughter, instead of to Trinity. Cardinal Mazarin and the king of Denmark made offers for it, but Cromwell interfered to prevent their acceptance. Soon after, the officers and, soldiers of Cromwell's army then in Ireland, wishing to emulate those of Elizabeth, purchased the whole library, together with all the archbishop's very valuable manuscripts and a choice collection of coins, for the purpose of presenting them to the college. But when these articles were brought over to Ireland, Cromwell refused to permit the intentions of the donors to be carried into effect, alleging that he intended to found a new college, in which the collection might more conveniently be preserved separate from all other books. The library was therefore deposited in Dublin Castle, and so neglected that a great number of valuable books and manuscripts were stolen or destroyed. At the Restoration, Charles II. ordered that what remained of the primate's library should be given to the university, as originally intended.

One of the most extraordinary persons who ever occupied the position of provost, or indeed any position, was John Hely Hutchinson. He was a man of great ability, and perfectly determined to succeed, without being troubled with any very tiresome qualms as to the means he employed in the process. Such an officeholder as this man the world probably never saw. He was at the same time reversionary principal secretary of state for Ireland, a privy councilor, M.P. for Cork, provost of Trinity College, Dublin, major of the fourth regiment of horse, and searcher of the port of Strangford. When he was appointed provost—a situation always filled since the foundation by a bachelor—there was great indignation amongst the fellows, and to appease them he ultimately procured a decree permitting them to marry—a privilege which they, unlike their brethren at Oxford and Cambridge, enjoy to this day. His position as provost did not prevent his righting a duel with a Mr. Doyle, but neither was hurt. Mr. Hutchinson had a great dislike to a Mr. Shrewbridge, one of the junior fellows, who had shown opposition to him. Mr. Shrewbridge died, and the under—graduates attributed his death to the provost's having refused him permission to go away for change of air. A thoroughly Hiber-man emeute was the consequence. The provost ordered that the great bell, which usually tolls for a fellow, should not toll, and that the body should be privately buried at six A.M. in the fellows' burial-ground. The students immediately posted up placards that the great bell should toll, and that the funeral should be by torchlight. They carried the point. Almost all the students attended the corpse to the grave in scarfs and hatbands at their own expense, and when the funeral oration was pronounced they flew in wild excitement to the provost's house, burst open his doors and smashed the furniture to pieces. The provost had a hint given him, and with his family had retreated to his house near Dublin. It was subsequently stated on good authority that Mr. Shrewbridge could not in any case have recovered.

Any one who takes an interest in the most original writer—not to say, man—of the eighteenth century will not fail to find his way to "the Liberties," as that queer district is called which surrounds St. Patrick's Cathedral. Some years ago the present writer made his way into the great deserted deanery—the then dean resided in another part of the city—got the old woman in charge of the house to open the shutters of the dining-room, and gazed at the original portrait of Jonathan Swift, which hangs there an heirloom to his successors. Of the precincts of his cathedral he writes to Pope: "I am lord-mayor of one hundred and twenty houses,[5] I am absolute lord of the greatest cathedral in the kingdom, and am at peace with the neighboring princes—i.e., the lord-mayor of the city and the archbishop of Dublin—but the latter sometimes attempts encroachments on my dominions, as old Lewis did in Lorraine."

Again, he writes to Dr. Sheridan: "No soul has broken his neck or is hanged or married; only Cancerina is dead.[6] I let her go to her grave without a coffin and without fees."

St. Patrick's, which was, in a deplorable state during Swift's deanship, and indeed for a century after, is now restored to its original magnificence. Indeed, it may be doubted whether it is not in a condition superior to what it ever was. This superb work has been effected entirely by the princely munificence of the Guinness family, the great stout brewers of Dublin; and Mr. Roe, a wealthy distiller, is now engaged in the work of restoring Christ Church, the other Protestant cathedral.

I paid a visit to the Bank of Ireland, the edifice on which the hopes of so many patriotic Irishmen have been centred, insomuch as it is the old Parliament-house. The elderly official who conducted us over the building took us first through the bank-note manufacturing rooms, where we espied in a corner a queer wooden figure draped in a queerer uniform. Demanding its history, he said that the clothes had belonged to an old servant of the establishment, and were discovered after his decease a few years ago. Formerly the Bank of Ireland was guarded by a special corps of its own, and the ancient retainer, who had been a member of this very commercial regiment, was proud of it, and had kept his dress as a cherished memorial. When George IV. came to Ireland, on his celebrated popularity-hunt, in 1821—previous to which no English monarch had visited Ireland since William III.—he graciously condescended to give the bank a military guard, which has since been continued. On the day I went I found a number of soldiers of the Scots Fusileer Guards occupying the guard-room. The officer on duty receives an allowance of two dollars and a half for his dinner. At the Bank of England he gets instead a dinner for himself and a friend, and a couple of bottles of wine.

The interior of the Parliament-house is almost the same as when Ireland had her own separate legislature. The House of Lords is in precisely the condition in which it was left in 1801. It is a large oak-paneled, oblong chamber of no particular beauty, and might very well pass for the dining-hall of a London guild. There is a handsome fireplace, and the walls are in great part covered with two fine pieces of tapestry representing the battle of the Boyne and the siege of Derry, King William, "of glorious, pious and immortal," etc., being of course the most conspicuous object in the foreground. The attendant stated that a special clause in the lease of the buildings, to the Bank of Ireland Company stipulated that the House of Lords was to remain in statu quo. Perhaps it may return some of these days to its former use. The House of Commons, a large stone hall of stately dimensions, is now the cash-office of the bank. There seemed nothing about it architecturally to call for special notice. I mooted the probability of the Parliament being restored, but found, rather to my surprise, that the attendant was by no means disposed to regard such a step with unqualified approval. It would be a blessing if the country was fit to govern itself, he said, or words to that effect, but looking at the religious dissension and political bitterness existing in the country, he feared that it wouldn't do yet a while; and I suspect he's right. Ireland is a house divided against itself: fifty years hence it may resemble Scotland. Meanwhile, there is no doubt whatever that a measure giving both Ireland and Scotland something in the nature of State legislatures would find favor with many English M.P.s, who greatly grudge having the valuable time of the imperial legislature wasted over a gas-bill in Tipperary or a water-works scheme for Dundee. The bank seemed to me to be guarded with extraordinary care. I went all over the roof, on which a guard is mounted at night. At "coigns of vantage" there is a bullet-proof palisading, with peepholes through which a volley of musketry might be poured. I should fancy that extra precautions have probably been taken since the Fenian emeutes of the last ten years.

Dublin swarms with soldiers, constabulary and police. The metropolitan police is divided into six divisions, each two hundred strong. Its men are, I believe, beyond a doubt the very finest in the world in point of physique. Numbers of them are six feet two or three inches high, and they are broad and athletic in proportion. Indeed, the magnificence of some of them who are detached for duty at certain "great confluences of human existence" is such that you see strangers standing and gaping at the giants in sheer amazement. The metropolitan police is quite distinct from the constabulary, and under a different chief.

Outside the bank, in College Green, is the celebrated statue of William III. Its location has been more than once changed, and it is now placed where the officer on guard at the bank can keep an eye upon it. This fearful object, which would make a Pradier or Chantrey shudder, is painted and gilt annually. It has long served as a bone of contention between Protestant and Papist, and has come off very badly several times at the hands of the latter—a circumstance which probably accounts for one of the horse's legs being about a foot longer than the rest—half of that limb having been renewed after it had been lost in one of the many free fights in which this remarkable quadruped has seen service. The greatest proprietor of real estate in Dublin is the young earl of Pembroke, son of the late Right Hon. Sidney Herbert, so well known in connection with the Crimean war, who was created, shortly before his death, Lord Herbert of Lea. His estate, which is the most valuable in Ireland, comprises Merrion Square and all the most fashionable part of the Irish metropolis, and extends for several miles along the railway line running from Kingstown, the landing-place from England, to the capital. The property also includes Mount Merrion, a neglected seat about four miles from the city. This mansion, which might easily be made delightful, commands a charming view over the lovely bay, and is surrounded by a small but picturesque park containing deer. It was, with the rest of Lord Pembroke's estate, formerly the property of Viscount Fitzwilliam, who founded the Fitzwilliam Museum in the University of Cambridge.

Lord Fitzwilliam was a somewhat eccentric person. His nearest relation had displeased him by some very trivial offence, such as coming down late for dinner, so he determined to leave his estate to his distant cousin, Lord Pembroke. Falling ill, Lord Fitzwilliam, desired that Lord Pembroke might be summoned from London. Word came back that it was unfortunately impossible for him to leave England immediately. Presently news arrived from Dublin that Lord Fitzwilliam was dead, and had bequeathed all—the property is now three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year—to Lord Pembroke, with remainder to his second son. By the death of the late Lord Pembroke the English and Irish properties have become united, and are to-day worth not less than six hundred thousand dollars a year! It is this young nobleman who has lately written The Earl and The Doctor.

REGINALD WYNFORD.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The Fitzgeralds, of which family the duke of Leinster is chief, became Protestant in 1611, when George, sixteenth earl of Kildare, coming to the title and estates when eight years old, was given in ward, according to the custom of the time, to the duke of Lenox (then lord privy seal), who bred him a Protestant.]

[Footnote 2: In June, 1798, the corpse of Lord Edward Fitzgerald was conveyed from the jail of Newgate and entombed in St. Werburgh's church, Dublin, until the times would admit of their being removed to the family vault at Kildare. "A guard," says his brother, "was to have attended at Newgate the night of my poor brother's burial, in order to provide against all interruption from the different guards and patrols in the streets: it never arrived, which caused the funeral to be several times stopped on its way, so that the funeral did not take place until nearly two in the morning, and the people attending were obliged to stay in church until a pass could be procured to permit them to go out."]

[Footnote 3: Lord Charlemont had a seat called Marino, beautifully situated within a few miles of Dublin. There is within the grounds an exquisite building erected from designs of Sir William Chambers. It is a small villa, in its arrangements suggesting a maison de joie. The furniture is just as it was, and although sadly out of repair, the visitor can easily judge how exquisite the place must once have been. There is a superb mantelpiece, richly mounted in bronze and inlaid with lapis lazuli.]

[Footnote 4: The occupants of Henrietta street in 1784 included—the primate (Lord Rokeby); the earl of Shannon; Hon. Dr. Maxwell, bishop of Meath; the bishop of Kilmore; the bishop of Clogher; Right Hon. Luke Gardiner, M.P.; Viscount Kingsborough; Right Hon. D. Bowes-Daly, M.P.; Sir E. Crofton, Bart.

Twenty years later, Dublin was nearly deserted by the aristocracy on account of the Union. Up to that time nearly all the peers, except those really English, seem to have had residences in Dublin. In 1844, Lords Longford, De Vesci and Monck were the only peers who had houses there.]

[Footnote 5: The precincts, including a portion of the Liberties, were then entirely under the jurisdiction of the dean of St. Patrick's.]

[Footnote 6: It was a part of the grim and ghastly humor of this extraordinary man,

"Who left what little wealth he had To found a home for fools or mad, And prove by one satiric touch No nation wanted it so much,"

to give nicknames, of which Cancerina was one, to the poor old wretches he met in his walks, to whom he gave charity.

Amongst Cancerina's sisters in misery were Stompanympha, Pullagowna, Friterilla, Stumphantha.]



THE MAESTRO'S CONFESSION.

(ANDREA DAL CASTAGNO—1460.)

I.

Threescore and ten! I wish it were all to live again. Doesn't the Scripture somewhere say, By reason of strength men oft-times may Even reach fourscore? Alack! who knows? Ten sweet, long years of life! I would paint Our Lady and many and many a saint, And thereby win my soul's repose. Yet, Fra Bernardo, you shake your head: Has the leech once said I must die? But he Is only a fallible man, you see: Now, if it had been our father the pope, I should know there was then no hope. Were only I sure of a few kind years More to be merry in, then my fears I'd slip for a while, and turn and smile At their hated reckonings: whence the need Of squaring accounts for word and deed Till the lease is up?... How? hear I right? No, no! You could not have said, To-night!

II.

Ah, well! ah, well! "Confess"—you tell me—"and be forgiven." Is there no easier path to heaven? Santa Maria! how can I tell What, now for a score of years and more, I've buried away in my heart so deep That, howso tired I've been, I've kept Eyes waking when near me another slept, Lest I might mutter it in my sleep? And now at the last to blab it clear! How the women will shrink from my pictures! And worse Will the men do—spit on my name, and curse; But then up in heaven I shall not hear.

I faint! I faint! Quick, Fra Bernardo! The figure stands There in the niche—my patron saint: Put it within my trembling hands Till they are steadier. So! My brain Whirled and grew dizzy with sudden pain, Trying to span that gulf of years, Fronting again those long laid fears. Confess? Why, yes, if I must, I must. Now good Sant' Andrea be my trust! But fill me first, from that crystal flask, Strong wine to strengthen me for my task. (That thing is a gem of craftsmanship: Just mark how its curvings fit the lip.)

Ah, you, in your dreamy, tranquil life, How can you fathom the rage and strife, The blinding envy, the burning smart, That, worm-like, gnaws the Maestro's heart When he sees another snatch the prize Out from under his very eyes, For which he would barter his soul? You see I taught him his art from first to last: Whatever he was he owed to me. And then to be browbeat, overpassed, Stealthily jeered behind the hand! Why that was more than a saint could stand; And I was no saint. And if my soul, With a pride like Lucifer's, mocked control, And goaded me on to madness, till I lost all measure of good or ill, Whose gift was it, pray? Oh, many a day I've cursed it, yet whose is the blame, I say?

His name? How strange that you question so, When I'm sure I have told it o'er and o'er, And why should you care to hear it more?

III.

Well, as I was saying, Domenico Was wont of my skill to make such light, That, seeing him go on a certain night Out with his lute, I followed. Hot From a war of words, I heeded not Whither I went, till I heard him twang A madrigal under the lattice where Only the night before I sang. —A double robbery! and I swear 'Twas overmuch for the flesh to bear.

Don't ask me. I knew not what I did, But I hastened home with my rapier hid Under my cloak, and the blade was wet. Just open that cabinet there and see The strange red rustiness on it yet.

A calm that was dead as dead could be Numbed me: I seized my chalks to trace— What think you?—Judas Iscariot's face! I just had finished the scowl, no more, When the shuffle of feet drew near my door (We lived together, you know I said): Then wide they flung it, and on the floor Laid down Domenico—dead!

Back swam my senses: a sickening pain Tingled like lightning through my brain, And ere the spasm of fear was broke, The men who had borne him homeward spoke Soothingly: "Some assassin's knife Had taken the innocent artist's life— Wherefore, 'twere hard to say: all men Were prone to have troubles now and then The world knew naught of. Toward his friend Florence stood waiting to extend Tenderest dole." Then came my tears, And I've been sorry these twenty years.

Now, Fra Bernardo, you have my sin: Do you think Saint Peter will let me in?

MARGARET J. PRESTON.



MONSIEUR FOURNIER'S EXPERIMENT.

"La transfusion parait avoir eu quelque succes dans ces derniers temps."

A dejected man, M. le docteur Maurice Fournier locked the door of his physiological laboratory in the Place de l'Ecole de Medecine, and walked away toward his rooms in the rue Rossini. At two-and-thirty, rich, brilliant, an ambitious graduate of l'Ecole de Medecine, an enthusiastic pupil of Claude Bernard's, a devoted lover of science, and above all of physiology, yesterday he was without a care save to make his name great among the great names of science—to win for himself a place in the foremost rank of the followers of that mistress whom only he loved and worshiped. To-day a word had swept away all his fondest hopes. Trousseau, the keenest observer in all Paris, formerly his father's friend, now no less his own, had kindly but firmly called his attention to himself, and to the malady that had so imperceptibly and insidiously fastened itself upon him that until the moment he never dreamed of its approach. He had been too full of his work to think of himself. In any other case he would scarcely have dared to dispute the opinion of the highest medical authority in Europe; nevertheless in his own he began to argue the matter: "But, my dear doctor, I am well."

"No, my friend, you are not. You are thin and pale, and I noticed the other night, when you came late to the meeting of the Institute, that your breathing was quick and labored, and that the reading of your excellent paper was frequently interrupted by a short cough."

"That was nothing. I was hurried and excited, and I have been keeping myself too closely to my work. A run to Dunkerque, a week of rest and sea-air, will make all right again."

But the great man shook his head gravely: "Not weeks, but years, of a different life are needed. You must give up the laboratory altogether if you want to live. Remember your mother's fate and your father's early death—think of the deadly blight that fell so soon upon the rare beauty of your sister. Some day you will realize your danger: realize it now, in time. Close your laboratory, lock up your library, say adieu to Paris, and lead the life of a traveler, an Arab, a Tartar. For the present cease to dream of the future: strength is better than a professorship in the College of France, and health more than the cross of the Legion of Honor."

Fournier was at first surprised and incredulous: he became convinced, then alarmed. After some thought he was horribly dejected. At such a time an Englishman becomes stolid, a German gives up utterly, an American begins to live fast, since he may not live long; but he, being a Frenchman and a Parisian, had alternations—first, the idea of suicide, which means sleep; second, reaction, which is hopefulness.

He chose to react, and did it promptly. A little time, and the rooms in the Place de l'Ecole de Medecine, opposite the bookseller's, displayed a card stuck on the entrance-door with red wafers, "a louer," the hammer of the auctioneer knocked down the comfortable furniture of the apartments in the rue Rossini, while that of the carpenter nailed up the well-beloved books in stout boxes, and the places that had known M. le docteur knew him no more. None but those who have experienced the pleasures of a life devoted to scientific research can understand how hard all this was to him. The fulfillment of long-cherished desires, the completion of elaborate systematic investigations, the realization of pet theories, the establishment of new principles,—all, all abandoned after so much toil and care. To struggle painfully through a desert toward some beautiful height, which, at first dimly seen, has grown clearer and clearer and always more splendid as he advances, and now at its very foot to be turned back by a gloomy stream in whose depths lurks death itself; to reach out his hand to the golden truth, fruit of much winnowing of human knowledge, and as he grasps the precious grains to be borne back by a grim spectre whose very breath is horrible with the noisome odors of the tomb; to choose an arduous life, and learn to love it because it has high aims, and then to give it up at once and utterly!—alas, poor Fournier!

"Nevertheless," he said as he turned his back on Paris, "even idle wanderings are better than dying of consumption."

Behold the student of science a wanderer—sailing his yacht among the islands of the Mediterranean; making long journeys through the wild mountain-regions and lovely valleys of untraveled Spain; stemming the historic current of the Nile; among the nomad tribes, in Arab costume riding an Arabian mare, as wild an Arab as the wildest of them; killing tigers in India, tending stock in Australia, chasing buffaloes in Western America,—everywhere avoiding civilization and courting Nature and the company of men who either by birth or adoption were the children of Nature. By day the winds of heaven kissed his cheeks and the sun bronzed them: at night he often fell asleep wondering at the star-worlds that gemmed the only canopy over his welcome blanket-couch.

His treatment of consumption was certainly a rational one, and perhaps the only one that is ever wholly successful. But, alas! few can take so costly a prescription.

How often had his studies led him to dissect the bodies of animals that had died in their dens in the Jardin des Plantes! Often in the first generation of cage-life, almost always in the second, invariably in the third, they grow dull, listless, the fire goes out of their eyes, the litheness out of their limbs: they forget to eat, they cough, and soon they die. Of what? Consumption. Once our fathers were wild and lived in the open air: they scarcely ever died, as we do, of consumption. Crowded cities, bad drainage, overwork, want of healthful exercise, stimulating food, dissipation,—these are human cage-life. If a man is threatened with consumption, let him go back to the plains and forests before it is too late.

Certainly the treatment benefited Fournier. By and by it did more—it cured him. The cough was forgotten, the cheeks filled out, the muscles became hard as bundles of steel wire, his strength was prodigious: he ate his food with a relish unknown in Paris, and slept like a child.

Nevertheless, his mind, trained to habits of thought and observation, was not idle. When a city was his home he had been a physiologist and had studied man: he made the world his dwelling-place, and wandering among the nations he became an ethnologist and began to study men.

A distinguished professor, writing of the influence of climate upon man, for the sake of illustration supposes the case of a human being whose life should be prolonged through many ages, and who should pass that life in journeying slowly from the arctic regions southward through the varying climates of the earth to the eternal winter of the antarctic zone. Always preserving his personal identity, this traveler would undergo remarkable changes in form, feature and complexion, in habits and modes of life, and in mental and moral attributes. Though he might have been perfectly white at first, his skin would pass through every degree of darkness until he reached the equator, when it would be black. Proceeding onward, he would gradually become fairer, and on reaching the end of his journey he would again be pale. His intellectual powers would vary also, and with them the shape of his skull. His forehead, low and retreating, would by degrees assume a nobler form as he advanced to more genial climes, the facial angle reaching its maximum in the temperate zone, only to gradually diminish as he journeyed toward the torrid, and to again exhibit under the equator its original base development. As he continued his journey toward the south pole he would undergo a second time this series of progressing and retrograding changes, until at length, as he laid his weary bones to rest in some icy cave in the drear antarctics,

Multum ille et terris jactatus et alto,

he would be in every respect, save in age and a ripe experience, the same as at the outset of his wanderings.

Extravagant as this illustration may appear, the professor goes on to say, philosophically, on the doctrine of the unity of the human race, it is not so; for what else than such an imaginary prolonged individual life is the life of the race? And what greater changes have occurred to our imaginary traveler than have actually befallen the human family?

The facts are patent. Under the equator is found the negro, in the temperate zones the Indo-European, and toward the pole the Lapp and Esquimaux. They are as different as the climates in which they dwell; nevertheless, history, philology, the common traditions of the race, revelation, point to their brotherhood.

How is it that climate can bring about such modifications in man? Is it possible that the sun, shining upon his face and his children's faces for ages, can make their skin dark, and their hair crisp and curly, and their foreheads low? Or that sunshine and shadow, spring-time and autumn, summer's showers beating upon him and winter's snows falling about his path, can make him fair and free? Or that the dreary night and cheerless day of many changeless arctic years can make him short and fat and stolid as a seal? Surely not. These avail much; but other influences, indirect and obscure in their workings, but not the less essentially climatic, are required. Food, raiment, shelter, occupation, amusement, influences that tell upon the very citadel and stronghold of life—and all in their very nature climatic, since they are controlled and modified by climate—are the means by which such changes are effected. The savage living in the open air, not trammeled with much clothing, anointing his skin with oil, eating uncooked food, delighting in the chase and in battle, and living thus because his surroundings indicate it, becomes swart and athletic, fierce, cunning and cruel—takes ethnologically the lowest place. Of literature, science, art, he knows nothing: for him will is justice, fear law, some miserable fetich God. Still, in his nature lie dormant all the capabilities of the noblest manhood, awaiting only favorable surroundings to call them into glorious being. It might shock the salt of the earth to reflect that some centuries of life among them and their fair descendants would make him like them.

The arctic savage clad in furs and eating blubber does not differ essentially from his brother of the tropics. So much of his food is necessarily converted into heat that he cannot afford to lead so active a life; but he also, like him of the tropics, partakes with his surroundings in color. The one, living amid snowclad scenery, where the sparse vegetation is gray and grayish-green, and the birds and animals almost as white as the snow over which they wander, is pale, etiolated. The other, under a vertical sun, surrounded by a lush and lusty growth, whose flowers for variety and intensity of color are beyond description, and in which birds of brightest plumage and black and tawny beasts make their home, has the most marked supply of pigment—is dark-hued, black, in short a negro. Between these two extremes is the typical man, fair of face, with expanded brow and wavy hair, well fed, well clad, well housed, wresting from Nature her hidden things and making her mightiest forces the workers of his will; heaping together knowledge, cherishing art, reverencing justice, worshiping God. How startling the contrast between brothers!

Such changes do not take place in a few generations. For their completion hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years must elapse. The descendants of the blacks who were carried from Africa to America as slaves two centuries and a half ago, save where their color has been modified by a mixed parentage, are still black. Already the influence of new climatic surroundings and of association has wrought great changes upon them: they are no longer savages. But their complexion is as dark as that of their kidnapped forefathers. Their original physical condition remains almost unaltered, and with it many mental characteristics: their love of display and of bright colors, their fondness for tune and the power of music to move them, their weird and fantastic belief in ghosts and spirits, in signs, omens and charms, and many other traits, still bear witness to their savage origin. But even these are fading away, and these men are slowly but not the less surely becoming civilized and white.

The point of departure for every structural change in a living organism lies in the apparatus by which nutrition is maintained; and this in the higher classes is the blood. Most complex and wonderful of fluids, it contains in unexplained and inscrutable combination salts of iron, lime, soda and potassa, with water, oil, albumen, paraglobulin and fibrinogen, which united form fibrine—in fact, at times, some part of everything we eat and all that goes to form our bodies, which it everywhere permeates, vitalizes and sustains. Borne in countless numbers in its ever-ebbing and returning streams are little disks, flattened, bi-concave, not larger in man than one-three-thousandth of an inch in diameter, called red corpuscles, whose part it is to carry from the lungs to the tissues pure oxygen, without which the fire called life cannot be sustained, and back from the tissues to the lungs carbonic acid, one of the products of that fire; and larger, yet marvelously small, bodies called leucocytes or white corpuscles, whose precise origin and use to this day, in spite of all the labor that has been spent upon their study, remain unknown. But that which makes the blood wonderful above all other fluids is its vitality. Our common expression, "life's blood," is no idle phrase. The blood is indeed the very throne of life. If its springs are pure and bountiful, if its currents flow strong and free, muscle, bone and brain grow in symmetry and power, and there is cunning to devise and the strong right arm to execute. But if it be thin and poor, and its circulation feeble and uncertain, the will flags, the mind is weak and vacillating, the muscles grow puny, and the man becomes an unresisting prey to disease and circumstance. If it escape through a wound, strength ebbs with it, until at length life itself flows out with the unchecked crimson stream. Thus, then, by acting upon the blood, climate has wrought and is working such changes upon man. But why are constantly-acting causes so slow in producing their effects? How is it that countless generations must pass away before purely climatic causes, potent as they are, begin to manifest themselves in physical changes in the races of men exposed to them?

Fournier, physiologist, as I have said, by the education of the schools, but by the broader education of his travels sociologist and ethnologist, devoted himself again to science, and framed this hypothesis: Climatic influences, acting upon man, bring about physical changes exceedingly slowly, because they are resisted by an inveterate habit of assimilation. This habit pertains either to the blood or the tissues, possibly to both, probably to the blood alone.

To establish an hypothesis experiment is necessary. Physiology is a science of experiment. Hence the frequent uncertainty of its results, since no two observers conduct an experiment in exactly the same manner—certainly no two ever institute it under precisely the same conditions. Nevertheless, let us not decry science. Out of much searching after truth comes the finding of truth—after long groping in darkness one comes upon a ray of light.

An experiment was necessary. To the ingenious mind of Fournier an elaborate one occurred. If he could perform it, not only would his hypothesis be established and confirmed beyond all cavil, but a, field of scientific research also be opened such as was yet undreamed of. However, for this experiment subjects were needed. Brutes, beasts of the field? Not so: that were easy to achieve. Human beings, two living, healthy men, one white, one black, were the requirements. Impossible! The experiment could never be performed: its requirements were unattainable. O tempora! O mores! Alas, for the degeneracy of the age! In the days of the Roman emperors men were fed, literally fed, to wild beasts in the arena—Gauls, Scythians, Nubians, even Roman freedmen when barbarians were scarce. This to amuse the populace alone. Frightful waste of life! In India, a thousand lives thrown away in a day under the wheels of Juggernaut; in Europe, tens of thousands to gratify the imperious wills of grasping monarchs; in America, hundreds to sate the greed of railroad corporations. And now not two men to be had for an experiment of untold value to science, that would scarcely endanger life in one of them, and in the other would necessitate only the merest scratch! To what are we coming? No one complains that tattooed heads are going out of fashion—that the king of the Cannibal Isles no longer flatters a ship's master by inquiring which head of all his subjects is ornamented most to his fancy, and the next day sending him that head as a souvenir of his visit to the anthropophagic shores. It is well that the custom is dead. But is there not danger of drifting too far even toward the shore of compassion? May it not be that there is something wrong with the bowels of mercy when criminals are executed barbarously, while science needs their lives, or at least an insight into the method of their dying; when precise examination of the manner of nerve and blood supply to the organs of a superannuated horse is heavily finable; when charitable but perchance too enthusiastic societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals push their earnestness even to interference with scientific researches, because, forsooth! they jeopardize the lives of rabbits, guinea-pigs and dogs? The legend Cave canem bears a deeper meaning now than it did in the inlaid pavements of Pompeian vestibules. We dare not trample it under foot.

Five years passed, and with restored health back came the old desires in redoubled force. Fournier longed to return to civilization and to work. The life that had been so delightful while it did him good became utterly unbearable when he had reaped its full benefit. I am tempted to quote a line about Europe and Cathay, but refrain: it will recur to the reader. He burned to renew the labors he had abandoned, to take up again the work he had laid down to do battle with disease, now that disease was vanquished. Thus the year 1863 found him in the city of Charleston, homeward bound in his journey around the world.

While still in the wilds west of the Mississippi he could have shaped his course northward and readily proceeded directly by steamer from New York to Europe. But a determined purpose led him to choose a different course, though he was well aware that it would involve indefinite delay in reaching Paris, and great personal risk. The life he had been leading made him think lightly of danger, and years would be well spent if he could accomplish the plans that induced him to go into the disorganized country of the South.

He straightway connected himself with the army as surgeon, and solicited a place at the front. He wanted active service. In this he was disappointed. Charleston, blockaded and beseiged, was in a state of military inaction. Save the occasional exchange of shot and shell at long range between the works on shore and those which the Unionists had erected and held upon the neighboring islands and marshes, nothing was done, and for nearly a year Fournier experienced the irksomeness of routine duty in a wretchedly arranged and appointed military hospital. Nevertheless, the time was not wholly wasted. From a planter fleeing from the anarchy of civil war he procured a native African slave, one of the shipload brought over a few years before in the Wanderer, the last slave-ship that put into an American harbor. This man he made his body-servant and kept always near him, partly to study him, but chiefly to secure his complete mental and moral thraldom. An almost unqualified savage, Fournier avoided systematiclly everything that would tend to civilize him. He taught him many things that were convenient in his higher mode of life, and taught him well, but of the great principles of civilization he strove to keep him in ignorance; and more, he so confused and distorted the few gleams of light that had reached that darkened soul that they made its gloom only the more hideous and profound. He wanted a man altogether savage, mentally, morally and physically. Instead of teaching him English or French, he learned from him many words of his own rude native tongue, and communicated with him as much as possible in that alone, aided by gesture, in which, like all Frenchmen, he possessed marvelous facility of expression. In the unexplored back-country of Africa the negro had been a prince, and Fournier bade him look forward to the time when he would return and rule. He always addressed him by his African name and title in his own tongue. He took him into the wards of his hospital, and taught him to be useful at surgical operations and to care for the instruments, that he might become familiar with them and with the sight of blood, which at first maddened him. Once he gave him a drug that made his head throb, and then bled him, with almost instant relief. He affected an interest in the amulets which hung at his neck, and besought him to give him one to wear. He committed to his care, with expressions of the greatest solicitude, a strong box, brass bound and carefully locked, which he told him contained his god, a most potent and cruel deity, who would, however, when it pleased him, give back the life of a dead man for blood. This box contained a silver cup, with a thermometer fixed in its side; a glass syringe holding about a third of a pint; a large curved needle perforated in its length like a tube, sharp at one end, at the other expanded to fit accurately the nozzle of the syringe; a little strainer also fitting the syringe; and last, a small bundle of wires with a handle like an egg-beater.