back-room were singing over their ironing; but Nannchen's voice was silent.

After a time-even his pipe did not taste well to-night-Becker returned to the room, muttering, "The Prussian sha'n't spoil my supper, too."

He began to eat.

Nannchen came in, and asked, "Father, sha'n't I warm your supper a little?"

Nannchen stood beside him, forcing back her tears.

'Bring a light," replied Becker.
Nannchen obeyed.

"Can you look me in the eye with a clear conscience?" asked the father.

"Yes."

"Then go on."

"Father-I haven't much to tell." "The less the better."

But go on

"Father, it is now three weeks since I went to see my aunt at Kostheim." "I might have thought so. go on!" "Uncle had just gone on his first trip as helmsman on the Schiller, and, as we sat together, a Prussian came in, and said he had a message from his uncle, the overseer of the foundery at Neuwied, with whom my aunt formerly lived. My aunt knows the soldier; she had seen him before when he was a little boy. She went down into the cellar to get some wine-"

"I'll pay her for the wine," interrupted Becker; and Nannchen continued:

"As we were alone in the room, the soldier said, in a trembling voice: 'It is a piece of good fortune sent by Heaven that I have met you here, Fräulein Nannchen.' 'How do you know my name?' I asked. Then he said, politely: 'Allow me to take off my cap,' and he did so, and his face was so handsome and kind and honest you saw him, too, father."

"I didn't see him."

-

"Then you probably will to-morrow."
"We'll see. Go on."

"Then he told me that he had known me by sight a long time, but had not been bold enough to speak to me. And I told him he did quite right, for he would have had the worst of it. Then we both laughed, I don't know why, but we could not stop laughing. My aunt came up with the wine, we touched glasses, and he told me he had asked where we live and what my name was, and he knew you, too, father, by sight."

"He sha'n't know me in any other way. But go on."

"I've almost finished my story. My aunt urged us to take more wine, but Wilhelm scarcely drank half a glass, and said he thought he wouldn't want any thing more to eat or drink all his life, and he talked very sensibly and pleasantly, and told us he was a joiner-but they call it cabinet-maker-and when I went away, he asked permission to go with me. So we walked side by side. When we came to the train, he asked, 'Will you allow me to take a boat?' I made no objection, and, as we got in, the boatman said:

other man except you, father, if you say 'Yes' and 'Amen.'"

"Do you know what sort of an amen I'll say?" shouted the father, raising his clinched hands over the young girl's head. "That's the way I'll say amen, you—"

"Don't do that, father! you would repent it all your life if you struck me," replied Nannchen.

Becker's hands fell, he walked silently out of the house, sat down on the bench, and smoked till midnight. The stars sparkled over his head, the nightingales sang in the shrubbery, in the distance from the Rhine he heard the snorting of a steam-tug, as if some monster were approaching, and the sentinels on the walls shouted from post to post: "Comrade, are you there?

"Comrade, are you there?" cried a voice to Becker, also. He felt angry with himself for sitting up so long, when he must go to the Rhine at three o'clock to unload a ship from the Netherlands. He did not go to bed, but walked straight to the river-bank, and slept for a few hours on some coffee-bags stored in a shed.

Becker was now thinking of all this, and he felt anxious about the end of the matter. Nothing can be conquered by force, and he knew of no other means, unless Nannchen came to her senses of her own accord. Today, for the first time, he failed to hear the landing - bell, and was waked just as the steamer was making a dainty, graceful curve, to come up to the wharf. Becker was quickly at his post.

II.

WHEN the time for rest came again, and Becker sat idle, a burden far heavier than any he had dragged in and out fell upon him.

Yes, his wife, he thought, looking at his broad, strong hands-yes, when a wife dies and leaves husband and children, it is as if they had lost an eye or a hand. He covered his eyes for a time, and then, following his former train of thought, murmured: "If she were alive this wouldn't have happened, and you wouldn't be sitting here worrying about what is going on at home. To take care of a girl! Ah, if she doesn't take care of herself, bolts and bars are useless. I needn't fear, Nannchen is good and proud, she won't do any thing wrong. But who knows what an artful Prussian-for they are artful-"

Becker sat still a long time, now opening his eyes, now resolutely closing them; if he saw the world around him he was dissatisfied; and if he shut his eyes and saw nothing, he grew more and more anxious. He was angry with himself, for he could not help confessing

that he was not fit to manage such matters.

Suddenly he rose and went up to a beggar, who sat on the bridge not far from the landing, with his crutches beside him. Becker hastily stooped and gave him money.

So.

The man had sat there for years, and Becker had scarcely noticed him, fur less thought of giving him alms. To-day he did And I can tell why, for Becker has explained it he was angry with himself. On looking up once, he had suddenly wished he was the lame beggar, who had nobody in the world but himself; then, hastily reflecting that this was a sin, he went up to the man and gave him some money, as if to atone for the wicked thought.

Becker returned home that evening later than usual, but ate and drank first at the "Ship "-for, in the first place, he did not want to let Nannchen get his supper; and, secondly, he felt that something might happen which would deprive him of it altogether. If the Prussian were there again-he didn't know what he would do; he'd give him a dig in the ribs !"

He pursued his way in a very sullen mood. He was angry that something was being cooked at home, which must be eaten, though he was neither hungry nor thirsty.

As he passed, the guard at the cathedral, a tall, curly-headed soldier, was standing idly by a pillar. Something about him attracted his attention, and the soldier took the cigar out of his mouth, made a military salute, and said:

"A fine evening, Herr Becker."

Becker started, looked indignant, clinched his fist, and walked on.

"A fine evening!" he muttered. A fine evening! Deuce take him with his fine evening! What sort of talk is that?"

Now he had some definite object of anger, he could not bear the Prussian's High-German accent.

"But he is a fine-looking fellow. He might well take a young girl's eye, and he has a lawyer's gift of the gab; all Prussians have that, they can talk till a man would think he was the stupidest mortal in the world, and they had swallowed all the wisdom. Wait, I'll settle your business. And the impudence of speaking to me on the cathedral square, as if we had been friends all our lives!"

Becker went home feeling very much relieved; the Prussian was on guard that day, and the house in Gartenfeld was safe from him for four-and-twenty hours.

When the old man reached home, he found his son Nicola and his daughter-in-law awaiting him. He spoke more mildly than he had intended to Nannchen, who was setting the table, and told her she might clear away the things, he had eaten his supper. His daughter-in-law should see nothing of what was going on in the house. He sat down on the bench outside the door; Nicola joined him, and said he had heard what had happened, and his father probably believed him now.

"I'll tell you what," said Becker, rubbing both hands over his knees, which felt unusually weak, "don't meddle in this busi

him loads of wood. You must recommend | Herr Becker to him."

"The Prussian has never been recommended to me, and I don't believe he will be; I can't give what I don't have.—Where is your wife?"

"I don't know-probably standing by some garden-fence gossiping. Can't you tell me your errand ? "

For aught I care. I merely want to tell the Prussian that I'll have nothing to do with him, and my Nannchen will have nothing to do with him either."

"I must ask to have Nannchen tell me so herself."

"I didn't know that he," said Becker, speaking to his brother-in-law over his shoulder," had any right to ask any thing."

Fortunately, just at this moment the aunt entered, and was overjoyed to see the three men sitting so comfortably together.

"You've said too much already!" exclaimed his brother-in-law, rising. His face flushed, and the red flowers on his jacket seemed to grow redder and twine in and out as if in anger, as he folded his arms and continued: Yes, look at me, I'm not afraid of your huge fists. I'm sorry you are so unreasonable. You're taking the best way to make your child deceive you! Did you ask your parents before you spoke to your wife?" "Pray, don't shout so; speak gently," said the aunt.

He opened the door, but met Nannchen on the thresheld.

"What! You here?" the father shouted. "Didn't you promise me you would never meet him again without my knowl. edge?"

"I'm not doing it without your knowl edge," replied Nannchen. "You are here."

All laughed, and even Becker could not help joining, though he felt more like swearing.

Nannchen drew him into the room again, and he was obliged to sit down.

A long pause ensued. At last Nannchen began:

"Father, I know your grudge against Wilhelm. You want to have nothing to do with him, because he is a Prussian."

"Of course."

"And suppose some wished to have nothing to do with you, because you belong to Hesse-Darmstadt?"

"I don't belong to Hesse-Darmstadt, I belong to Mayence."

"Yes, but you are a German, too! I shall never forget how you looked when you bore the great German banner in the year '48."

"Yes, and who tore down the German cockade and trampled it under foot? The Prussians!" cried Becker, dashing his clinched fist on the table; he was glad to have some pretext to give vent to his rage.

"Not I," said the young man, "I wasn't here, and who knows whether any one else did it?"

"Yes," cried Becker, with trembling lips," it was a Prussian who snatched off my Nicola's black and gold cap-he was a schoolboy, then-and flung it into the Rhine. If I had been there, the Prussian would have gone after it! And before I-"

66

"Let that pass," interrupted the helmsman, a great deal of water has flowed down the Rhine since then. Are we not all a pack of fools?" he added, laughing. “What does this concern us now? There stands Herr Becker in his civilian's dress, and tomorrow he'll put on his uniform again, as every one must. You've lived on the shore of the Rhine all your life, brother-in-law, and don't know that there are other people in the world."

"You are not my teacher. It is probably the new fashion that a father passes for nothing with his daughter's suitor."

"He passes for as much as he is worth and makes himself," replied the brother-inlaw, while the soldier extended his hand, saying:

"I have every respect for you, Herr Becker; you are a man of honor."

The two women left the room, but stood outside the door like a guard, to prevent any violent outbreak, and ere half an hour had passed the helmsman called them in again.

Nannchen sought her father's eyes; he would not look at her, and Wilhelm's gaze was also fixed on the floor. Her uncle alone seemed cheerful and said:

"Yes, we have stirred up all the old stories again. I shall never forget it—I steered the ship that brought the embassadors of the German Reichstag from Frankfort to Cologne, whence they went to Berlin to give the King of Prussia the imperial crown. Oh, what splendid-looking men they were! Where are they now? Most of them underground, or scattered over the wide world. If I should live to be a hundred years old, I shall never forget what a trip that was; there will never be such another. Nothing but rejoicing on all sides, and people thought all trouble was over. Yet here we sit quarreling about the emperor's beard, and haven't even an emperor, much less one that has a beard."

All laughed, and the helmsman, who prided himself on his political knowledge, continued:

"What's the use? Things have turned out differently from what we wanted, but what's the use of worrying? It'll all come right in the end.-Nannchen, don't be anxious, your affairs will come out right, too."

* A German saying, signifying to dispute over trifles.

Not

This really seemed to be the case. another angry word was spoken, and the porter drank the wine set before him, but did not touch glasses with the Prussian; he retired into passive resistance, for he saw that he could not carry out his wishes here, there were too many against him; to be sure he was stronger than all of them put together, but bodily strength was of no use. So he did nothing at all, but applied himself to the wine.

[CONCLUSION NEXT WEEK.]

SEVEN BRILLIANT

TH

SUNSETS.

HERE are more people in these degenerate times who see sunsets than sunrises; and there is no doubt but that the former are, to the majority of the human race, much more agreeable ephemera. One requires three things to perfect a sunset: you must have the natural phenomenon (if there is such a thing), then the person to see it, then the mood of mind to enjoy and appreciate it. These three things do not always come together.

Seven times in my experience have these three things come to be united. I have seen extraordinary sunsets, no doubt, without seeing them; the clouds, the colors, the majestic pomp of celestial heraldry, were there, but my appreciative sense was not there. The better part of me went not forth to greet Nature's most gorgeous hospitality. My mind had no wedding-garment; it staid at home, in its poverty and obscurity. But there were moments when both guest and host were in a festive mood, and then the sunset was not thrown away.

The first of these gorgeous ceremonials was one spring-day many years ago in New York, when Mrs. Kemble had been reading "Macbeth." She had given especial prominence to the character of Shakespeare's great spiritualist, that dreamer of dreams and seer of visions, the most imaginative and poetic of all Shakespeare's characters, except Hamlet. I remember that she gave me the idea that he was a small and dark man, very beautiful in form and feature. I seem to see him now, majestic in spite of a delicate figure, the most perfect of Nature's noblemen, loving his wife intensely, and perfectly dominated by that morbid brain of his, which saw witches on the heath and daggers in the air. Never before had I cared for the male Macbeth. It was the so-called female Macbeth who had ruled my fancy, that superb tigress with a man's heart under her woman's breast. But the genius of that extraordinary woman, Shakespeare's great interpreter, gave unusual interest to the thrice-called thane. Nothing could be more beautiful than his smile as he says "sweet chuck"-that dear familiarity of love which Shakespeare throws as a gleam across this dark and lurid picture. So great was the glamour that Mrs. Kemble disappeared, and Macbeth appeared in her place. All through the play Lady Macbeth, even with traditions of Mrs. Siddons behind her, seemed less prominent in Mrs. Kemble's reading than

Macbeth. It has made me apprehensive of stage Macbeths ever since. Such a delicate fibre; such a refined "precious porcelain of human clay;" such a poet-so piteous a sacrifice-such a groan of blasted conscience as her Macbeth, never crossed my vision before or since! How few men could have made it at once so manly, so weak, so strong, and so terrible, as she did!

No actor but one of great physical as well as mental refinement should ever attempt Macbeth. Her Lady Macbeth was, of course, a prodigiously fine thing; but it was not so inspired, so poetical, as her Macbeth.

When I came out of that room which genius had filled with ghosts-that atmosphere in which intellect seemed to float in radiant particles-I saw the sun just setting, a round, red orb against the palest green. If sunsets and atmosphere could not do any thing, I should say that it was impossible for so red a sun to be defined against so pure a green without intermediate tints of crimson; but there it was, and to the north floated three hazy clouds as like the dreadful sisters of the caldron as if an artist's hand had shaped them. Many persons saw and noted them. Had Mrs. Kemble's genius called them from the subtile gases of the atmosphere ? Had her wand, which she might have stolen from Prospero, again summoned them to the vision of mankind? Then, as we looked, the green became incarnadined, the whole western sky was as red as Lady Macbeth's hand; blood, blood everywhere-"I could not have believed there was so much blood in him "-and slowly and solemnly the three sisters took on the crimson hue, and then dissolved, and faded away into night and mystery, where they live and have their being.

The second remarkable sunset that I remember was in that tropical sea which embraces the Antilles. One must pardon much to the soft enchantment which wraps the imaginative traveler as he first enters the gentle delights of the tropics. It is "a land in which it is always afternoon," and one floats delicately and naturally toward sunset. The neighborhood of the sea is always favorable to beautiful effects of sunset. The god of day dies as the dolphin with innumerable tints of color. We had floated like Ulysses on those smooth and dreamy waters for days, and we talked of Columbus as we approached the Virgin Islands. How frail was that bark; how ignominiously small and poor the entourage of the greatest and most courageous of dreamers and poets! Columbus, taking the undiscovered sea into the hollow of his hand, was the greatest of visionaries. When he sailed to meet that floating sea-weed he took a leap in the dark which no human being has paralleled. Who wrote that fine verse?

"Thou Luther of the darkened deep,

Not more courageous thou than he !
His greatness woke Earth's troubled sleep,
While thine unbound the sea!"

Luther and Columbus and Franklin were new, great, original, courageous men-they did great work for the human race. Columbus, by far the most romantic of them all, we talked of "as we sailed! as we sailed!

as we sailed!" The trade-winds, spicy and delusive, may have intoxicated our senses; but, as the sun went down in gold and crimson and aqua-marine, we saw three little ships sailing in the heavens.

"The mirage," said the practical captain. Mirage, indeed! We knew better. Had we had a good glass or better eyes, we should have read "Isabella of Castile" on that royal standard. We should have seen the wasted figure of Columbus on the deck. We should have seen his discontented crewthat crew which always surrounds the man who is greater than his age! Nothing is so possible as the impossible-nothing so real as delusion. Which would we resign, our real lives or our dreams? In that sunset we saw the triumph of dreaming, the conquest of the impossible:

"What you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Courage hath genius and power and magic in it."

The third remarkable sunset occurred in the second year of our war, and was seen from Long Branch-a place noted for beautiful sunsets.

I

It was a desperately unhappy time. need not recapitulate its horrors. Every one at that gay watering-place was watching for the echo of defeat. The sea was brilliant, beautiful, and unsympathetic-a siren, as she always is, treacherous and enticing. One got a little courage by bathing in the morning, and by watching her blue and silver as she decked herself in the sunbeams. Naught but the murmur in her vacant shells told of the sorrows she locked in her secret caverns. From the land came the wail of the dead and dying. Wives were listening to the readers of the news, with hands clasped over their ears, dreading and hoping. Daughters, sisters, lovers-all, all were in that sickening agony of suspense which is worse than the sober certainty of woe, when there came a bulletin of bad news. One little wife whom we all loved, whose husband, a captain, was at the front, had paced the beach, with her long hair floating over her cloak, for many a sunset hour. One evening she called us out to see a gorgeous sunset. It was one of the opal effects, the crimson behind the pale green, the fire hidden, lambent, flashing, for a moment, then gliding behind the cloud, when up from the sea came a hideous black procession of dark vapors-an army with banners, horses, and horsemen, and a long black line in which our prophetic and excited souls saw hearses, coffins, and the panoply of death. That night came dreadful newsa battle had been fought, the carnage had been terrible, and our captain was killed, and his little wife lay insensible, with her long hair about her, a mourning veil.

The fourth sunset was in Florence-dear Italian city, famous also for its sunsets. Whether that long line of the high Carrara Mountains helps this desirable consummation, whether the civic glories and romantic his tories have floated upward, whether the cold breezes from the Alps meet half-way the softer airs of the Apennines, I know not. There is no apparent reason for the beauty of Florentine sunsets, but they have "that best excuse for being "-they are most beautiful.

Well, we had spent the morning in the Uffizi Gallery, we had wandered into the Pitti Gallery, we had looked over Benvenuto Cellini's goblets, and had gone to the tomb of the Medici. Somehow or some way we had gotten hold of Bande Neri, or he had gotten. hold of us. He was a dashing, fascinating hero, this Bande Neri. When he did take hold of one it was with a strong grip, and he held us that day in mortmain. Dying at twenty-seven, like most of the Medici, who were singularly short-lived, he left a history and a career which many a man of sixty might have been proud to achieve if, indeed, deeds of conquest, stormy and warlike proceedings, are achievements. Bande Neri,

or Black Band, was the Duke Giovanni de Medici, who married his cousin Maria Salviati, thus uniting his branch of the house with that of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and his son Cosmo I. assumed the title of grand-duke. His statue stands in front of the Uffizi Gallery, and his memory fills an important epoch in the history of Florence.

That evening, as we drove on the Cascine, we saw the most glorious crimson sunset I have ever seen. Every variety and shade of that enchanting color filled the sky. It was the color of the giglio, or famous lily of Florentine heraldry, and from east to west was a black band of cloud-so black that it was almost inky. We could not help feeling that it was an atmospheric compliment to our historical researches. This black band of cloud on such a superb crimson produced a curious, weird, and unnatural effect. Thousands of the gay pleasure-seekers on the Cascine saw and admired it; few besides ourselves associated it with the stormy and romantic hero who had made his Black Band so famous.

Thus it will be seen that sunsets, like beauty, live in the eye of the gazer. It is a pleasant coincidence when your own mind can go forth to profit by the miracles of the sunset, as well as by all the other gratuitous miracles of Nature.

The fifth gorgeous sunset was over the castle at Edinburgh. It was after Holyrood, after a day spent in seeing that wonderful town which Walter Scott so loved, after a week's enjoyment of the Frith of Forth, Arthur's Seat, Salisbury Crags, the old Castle of Craigmillar, and the dear delights of Melrose, "Roslyn Chapel fair," Abbotsford, and Dryburgh Abbey. I suppose Edinburgh is perhaps the most picturesque town in the world. Nuremberg and Venice have strong claims to the title, but Edinburgh, with its new and old town, its hills and hollows, its wildness and finish, palace and precipice, its giant rock and old feudal castle in the midst of the city, is certainly preeminent. This sunset, with so many memories behind it, was sure to be remarkable; it was tranquil, the new moon hung over it; the sky was pale-blue, and gold, and green, with dogs' heads in white clouds toward the south, indicating possible rain on the morrow, when up came one little red shape, a heart-was it the Heart of Mid-Lothian ?

The many significant sunsets described by travelers are all distanced by Mr. Whymper's remarkable story of the cross which he saw in the heavens at sunset after the terri

ble death of Lord Frederick Douglas and the Swiss guides and two English geutlemen on the Matterhorn.

Mr. Whymper does not seem to be an imaginative man; his book reads like the conscientious work of a practical observer-an artist, too, one who can, with pencil as well as pen, illustrate his ideas. He declares that he saw-and he draws it, too-a cross in the sky, very luminous, large, and distinct, after that dreadful event. What a message, personal, and yet removed from our sphere, was that vision!

On the day that the dreadful news came to New York of the death of President Lincoln, many persons declared that they saw a "banner in the sky." It was very warm for the season, and the western heavens had been brilliant for many sunsets. I remember the occasion and the sunset; it was not unlike our flag, that floating mass of crimson streaked with white, and the deep blue of the adjoining sky. Whether Mr. Church got from it his idea of the "Banner in the Clouds," I do not know; it certainly was suggestive of that lovely picture.

Every one who has observed sunsets has been struck, no doubt, with the frequent resemblance to animals in the floating clouds: dogs' heads, swans, eagles, and lions, seem to particularly attend at the soirée of the departing monarch.

Hamlet alludes to this cloud-zoölogy in his conversation with Polonius, whose easy conscience first saw that it was "backed like a weasel," and then was very like a whale." There was an old superstition that clouds over the sea looked like fish, while clouds over the mountains took the form of birds; that clouds on the plains resembled buffalo and lions and deer. But clouds are too far off to be influenced by what passes beneath them; they look like every thing by turns and nothing long. They are the most changeable things in Nature-her wild and beautiful caprices.

Howells speaks, in his delightful book on Venice, of the sunsets in that most dreamy city. He describes one of them as being like the tears and smiles of an angry beauty. There is every thing in Venice to make beautiful sunsets-water and architecture-which helps along a sunset wonderfully, although it may sound absurd to say so. To look at a sunset after seeing St. Marks, with all its pomp of color, its porphyry and verde-antique columns, its Saracenic gates, its horseshoe-shaped trellises, its scarlet and gold, its amethyst and ruby, is merely to continue the idea. You are great, you are lifted up, therefore you are better able to appreciate the sunset. Then the Campanile rises so graciously against the western sky

"The last to parley with the setting sun!" I saw a wonderful sunset in Venice, but I should have to get Tintoretto and Titian and Paul Veronese to describe it for me Ah! who would not like to have lived in that century! to have looked at the sunset when the world was all agitation, passion, picturesqueness, tumult, emperors, popes, doges, when people dressed in purple and fine linen, and Beauty sat on a Venetian balcony and

kissed her hand furtively to the cavalier in the gondola? There were some splendid sunsets in those days, no doubt

"The first in beauty shall be first in might."

The sunsets at Newport are often very beautiful. I saw one once in the summer of 1872, which was imperial in splendor. It was a world on fire; the crimson glories shot up from east and west, from north and south; there was no difference of glory in the westthe sun might have set in any quarter of the heavens. This phenomenon I have seen before, but have never had it explained. In the days of superstition it would have been considered an omen dire and fearful. It presaged nothing but a very hot day. Another feature of its splendor was its long duration. The sun died very slowly that night, and the glories of his curtained death-bed remained visible for an hour.

The last of these sunsets was seen from the deck of a steamship, just outside of the harbor of Brest. To those who are starting

on a sea-voyage nothing is so cheerful and beautiful as a sunset such as this was-"a crystalline splendor, clear but not dazzling" -filled the west, and illuminated for us the receding shores of la belle France and the Channel Islands. We thought of Mary of Scotland, as she tearfully bade adieu to this lovely land. We thought, as we looked out to sea, of home and kindred, between whom and us lay the dread ocean. How many, how contradictory, how incoherent, are the ideas which cross one's mind, as such a scene, under such circumstances, flits before the "visual orbs." Security, peace, tranquillity, and gentle hope, these were our dreams and emotions-but, alas! the promise was delusive. We were caught next day in a circular storm, the sea became like peasoup, we were tossed on the highest and most sickening waves, nor did we see another sunset until we entered the harbor of New York, where a wintry sky, clear and cold, and uncompromising, welcomed us to duty and to work, after a vacation in Europe which had been all recreation and pleasure:

"In vain our pent wills fret,
And would the world subdue ;
Limits we did not set,

Condition all we do."

We cannot command our sunsets, nor the spirit in which to meet them; both must be accidental; but one thing is certain-it is an hour most dear to the whole human race. Toward the western heaven the poet looks for his inspiration; there the sighing lover looks, dreaming of his future; there the woman carries her disappointments, her sorrows, which she never tells; there the scholar looks, as he demands of himself courage to unfold a new idea. "Is not doubt the hand trembling, yet careful, that turns the telescope of earnest inquiry upon the heavens of truth?" "There look those who wear the purple," and wonder if to-morrow will be safe or sorrowful; thither look the dying, as if through those gates, which will soon open for them; there looks the tired laborer, thanking Heaven that another day's work is done; there looks the soldier, as he treads the disputed field; and the mother gathers

ONE

one of the strangest mysteries, if it be one, dimly recorded in historic annals, is that of the Princess Charlotte Sophia, of Brunswick. The story, though an old one, is still but little known even in the dominions of the empire. The new light which a recent Russian writer has let in upon the facts has induced us to recall them at the present time.

On the 27th of January, 1689, the Czar Peter the Great was married, somewhat against his will, to Ewdokija Feodorowna Lapuchin, the daughter of a powerful Russian noble. On the 18th of February of the following year, his eldest child, Alexis Petrowitsch, was born and baptized.

Owing to the absence of maternal carePeter, having quarreled with his spouse over a serious affair, had banished her to a convent very soon after marriage-the prince Alexis was left to himself, and, until his thirteenth year, was almost wholly neglected. During this interval, his mind lost all sense of decency and respect, and his unrestricted mode of living entailed upon him some of the worst of habits. When, at length, he was intrusted to the care of a learned German, Henry Huyssen, he made but small progress in the way of improvement. Euclid and algebra were found to be ill-suited to his wild and willful nature. But the poor tutor combated with the difficulties of his position about ten years, and then surrendered his princely pupil in disgust.

Meanwhile, the czar, who seems not to have been able to keep out of matrimony, had taken secretly unto himself another spouse, the daughter of a poor woman, and already famed as much for her modest deportment as for her attractive beauty. Nothing was more common in Russia and in all the Asiatic kingdoms than marriages between sovereigns and their subjects; but that an impoverished stranger, who had been discovered amid the ruins of a plundered town, should become the absolute sovereign of that very empire into which she was led captive, is an incident which fortune and merit have never before produced in the annals of the world. The charming captive, whose name was Martha, thus became, after her elevation to rank, Catharine I. of Russia.