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man of so marked an originality does to | in order, and walls surround it on all sides. us all is great, if it is provoking; and we At last, on the very outskirts of the garhad rather possess him with his errors than a hundred steady-going writers who can give solemn reasons for all they say. The intellectual excitement which he awakens, the delight and anger which he kindles in opposite characters, and the way in which his words create a stir of debate, mark the man of genius whose mistakes are often as good as other persons' victories, and who from this very quality of individuality, united to the personal attractiveness of his simple and sympathetic humanity, is calculated to be of great and lasting good to Oxford.

We have read many lectures on Art Subjects, many books on Art Criticism. They have their merits, merits which Mr. Ruskin's work does not possess. They are formal, easily understood, carefully arranged; all scattered thought, or impetuous fancy, or wild theory is banished from their pages. We walk through a cultivated garden, the beds are trimly laid down, the paths are neat and straight, the grass is closely shaven, the trees are trees of culture, the very limes on the edge are kept

den, beyond the bounding wall, and looked. down upon by a row of pert hollyhocks who have in the course of many seasons arrived at the power of producing double flowers in an artistic manner, we catch a glimpse of a wild bit of grassy land, full of grey boulders and some noble trees growing as they like it, and below a brook chattering pleasantly over the stones. Every flower of the field blooms here and runs in and out among the rocks and roots after its own sweet will. The woodbine, the wild rose sprays, the ivy and moss, play the maddest and the prettiest pranks by the brook-side. The sky is blue above, with a world of drifting clouds, and the ground below is a mystery of light and colour. It is true there are burnt spaces of grass and here there, and clusters of weeds, and now and then a decayed tree stem; but for all that, when we see the pleasant place, we do not think twice about it, we forget our garden, we leap the wall - and we live far more than half of our art life with the books of Ruskin. |

To end, by what I began by indicating, I contend that men die, when they die of any mental disease, not from overwork, but from the sense of failure in their work. Arthur Helps.

I ENTIRELY agree with those who say that yourself, have been largely the cause of the dismen seldom, or ever, die prematurely of over-aster which afflicts you. work. What they die of, is the want of prosperity in their work. It was a wonderfully shrewd saying, whoever said it, that we do not die of the work we do, but of that which we find we cannot do. Men die prematurely of chagrin. That word chagrin is a very remarkable word. The sound of it almost conveys the full meaning of it. And here I may venture to remark that there are no two words which signify the same ARTIFICIAL ULTRAMARINE. THE mode of thing exactly. There are no such things as syn- manufacturing the substance for the beautiful onyms. For example, in this present case, cha-pigment obtained by the ancients from the lapis grin conveys much more than disappointment. lazuli, or azure stone, was, says the Scientific You may be very much disappointed, yet take Review, like many other great inventions, the it very little to heart. Pope says result of accident. A German chemist, whilst "Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin, experimenting with anhydrous sulphuric acid aud sulphur, made the accidental discovery that an exquisite blue colour was produced. came to the conclusion that the blue colour of the ultramarine was probably due to sulphur and sulphuric acid, and at once instituted some experiments with alumina, soda, sulphur, and sulphuric acid, and succeeded, after repeated failures, in actually imitating the precious stone. The artificial material is said to be successfully formed by evaporating 100 lbs. of a solution of sulphide of sodium mixed with 25 lbs. of dry china clay and 1-2 lb. of crystals of copperas; the dry mass is then heated in a muffle to a red heat, washed, and again heated.

That single act gives half the world the spleen." Belinda might still have been delightful, if she had been disappointed only.

Chagrin is a lasting thing. It means that part of disappointment which touches ourselves, and respecting which we feel that we are the guilty parties. It is almost wonderful to see with what complacency men will bear the greatest sorrows and disappointments in the causing of which they feel that they have had no share. People do not cry much over an earthquake: they are not chagrined by its effects. In order to have a lasting chagrin, you must,

He

CHAPTER XV.

FIRELIGHT CONFIDENCES.

TIME passed on. As the Squire and Mrs. Dimsdale grew older, Fernyhurst was not so cheerful as it used to be. Tom had taken a curacy in an outlying poor London district to learn his work, and his visits were short. Charlie was away on a long cruise. Hastings generally now by a sort of tacit understanding came down without his wife, who paid her visits to her own people at the same time, which it is to be feared was looked upon by her husband as a double advantage.

When she did appear with her two spoilt, ugly children the pleasure of the visit was not increased. One day the Squire openly remonstrated. "I can't stand those children, May," said the old man; "you must manage to keep them up-stairs as much as you can when they're here. That boy's a perfect nuisance; he never says anything but I won't,' except when he says She shan't,' for the baby and then they're so hideous!" It is a distressing fact that pretty children are suffered by public opinion to do things which in ugly ones cannot by any means be endured.

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about her with your brother. I know how perfectly he agreed with me in his opinion of her, for I spoke to him about it the very evening she was here last with him." Why, mamma," said Clara, bursting out laughing, "is it possible you haven't got farther than that? I remember asking him that same night what he meant by seeming to agree to your attacks on May, when I knew he thought so differently; and he said he'd only just nodded his head, and hadn't heard a word you'd been saying, he was so cut up by her refusal.”

"Refused by May! he was a great deal too sensible to offer to her. I don't believe a word of it," said Lady Wilmot angrily, as she walked majestically away; and indeed it is much the best thing to be done: when facts are so impertinent as to refuse to obey infallibility, the only thing left to do is to ignore the facts altogether. It was the more provoking, because the longer she thought of it the more convinced she was of the truth of Clara's words. It accounted for a number of little things which she had solved by systems as elaborate as Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles, and now came the "simplicity of the Copernican system," and explained them all. It did not annoy her the less here had her three children been acting under her own eye in direct opposition to her expressed desires, and she had never found out anything that was going on. "May, too, of all people!" she repeated to herself. It was more convenient to complain of their duplicity than of her own blindness, which she did to her own perfect satClara Wilmot had married a neighbour-isfaction. Clara was beyond her reach, ing Squire. Her extreme fear of her mother had changed into a sort of jaunty indifference and compassion for Amy, who still remained the souffre douleur at home, and to whom she was always recommending rebellion. One day she had driven over to Brickwall, and was having a little talk with Amy in the garden as they paced up and down the terrace.

The cousinhood were sadly scattered: the Admiral had gone on a distant command; his constant wife had followed him with her little girls to Halifax, whence rumours of the conquests of the fair Milly arrived from time to time-the discomfiture of whole regiments of her Majesty's officers, both army and navy.

"I have a letter from Lionel by this mail," said she, "abusing me for not telling him more about May. He says his three years are almost up, and he wants, as usual, to hear what she is doing. I hoped he would have forgotten about her before this. She's not married, that is all the hope I can give him, and I'm afraid he'll take even that as encouragement."

and she was a little afraid of her daughter's tongue when they did meet, but she worried poor Amy to an almost intolerable degree. For the whole of the next week her aphorisms, and reflections, and axioms went on with remarkable vigour. " I might just as well be without a daughter at all," she ended one afternoon as she prepared to go out in the carriage.

"Shall you want me with you to-day, mamma?" said Amy gently.

"No, thank you," replied her mother loftily; "that sort of want of confidence is to me insufferable."

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When she returned she found Amy, for a wonder, sitting idle in the dusk. 'And that book I begged you to take to Mrs. Giles not gone!" said her mother with a certain pomp of displeasure.

"What's that you are saying about May?" said her mother, as they passed "Mamma, Mr. Jones is come on a visit the book-room window, appearing unex- to the rectory, and he has just been here." pectedly, as was rather her wont. "I hope "What! you don't mean to say that you're not getting up any absurd nonsense tiresome man is come back!—not to stay,

I hope?" replied Lady Wilmot with, how-in the now classical red flannel - brushing ever, only her normal ungraciousness and their hair; an operation supposed to be no suspicion of the state of the case. favourable to confidences. "He came up here to ask me Amy hesitated for a momentme to marry him."

"-and "to ask

"Marry him! How excessively impertinent!" cried Lady Wilmot, rising up to her full breadth and height to express the size of her indignation. "What could he be thinking of? And I'm afraid, Amy, you're not to be trusted to make him feel how extremely unbecoming on his part it was to propose such a thing!" and her portly silks ruffled and rustled at the very idea.

"But, mamma,” replied her daughter timidly, "I like him very much, and I accepted him."

"What!" said her mother, turning upon her with her stoniest glare, and a voice which would almost have annihilated Amy at another moment, and sunk her (morally) into the earth; but to-day she held her own in a way which surprised even herself. "Yes, dear mother, it isn't anything new. I was very sorry when he went away last year without saying anything to me; he tells me it was because he was afraid you wouldn't listen to it, but now he's got a better curacy, and altogether

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"Tell me about him," said May rather sadly; “I have heard nothing for such a long while."

"His time will be up now very soon. He is doing extremely well-on the staff, you know. Mamma had such a pretty message about him from the General the other day through his wife (she's somehow a cousin of Clara's husband), saying how capitally Lionel did his work, and how much they all valued him. He inquired a great deal about you, May, and what you were doing." Then, after a long pause, "Do you never intend to marry, dear?" she went on, emboldened by the twilight, for May was proud and reticent on such matters, and it was a little difficult to enter upon them with her.

"I have not made any intentions about it; but marry is a verb which requires an accusative case. I have never seen mine, that's all."

"Are you quite sure you are not mistaken, May? You have a great deal of interest and sisterly feeling for Lionel : why should they not do as a good foundation for marriage?"

"No, I think not; the chances of jar are too many. The intercourse is too close for friendship. One must start with a hotter fire to weld two into one."

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"Don't let me hear a word more about any such folly," replied Lady Wilmot, angrily going out of the room. Besides "And then, dear, are you not running her annoyance at the thing itself, to be the risk of having your heart turned out of thus caught unprepared a second time house and home, as it were, towards the end within a week was too much for her com- of life of starving? And may you not posure. But the oracle was too summary be sorry to have refused even half a loaf, to succeed even for Lady Wilmot, and though it be so really to you? Amy stood her ground with the sort of Amy, if I were to propose to you to eat quiet, persistent resolution which very your dinner now," said May, half laughing timid people sometimes show when they" (as we are on feeding metaphors), beare driven to the wall. She said very little, but it was evident that her mother's arguments (for she had so far descended from her high horse as to condescend to argue) fell off from her like so much

water.

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cause you had a long journey to make, and you might be hungry before the end, you would say, 'I don't want it. I can't give myself an appetite; I should only have an indigestion.' I cannot give myself an appetite for what I do not want "Very obstinate in choosing to make now. I cannot provide for unknown future yourself a beggar!" said Lady Wilmot; wants. And I don't think I need starve at and indignant at such extraordinary and all; there are always plenty of sick and unlooked-for insubordination, she made sorrowing and lonely people in the world herself at last so unpleasant that Amy for one's heart to find food among, if one took refuge in a visit to Fernyhurst, offer-tries. Single life may be like moonlight ing herself nominally to assist in nursing compared with a happy marriage, but also Mrs. Dimsdale, who was more ill than as bright moonlight to a foggy or stormy usual, without giving any other reason. day compared with a great proportion of "Clara's had a long letter from Lionel," marriages." said she the evening after her arrival, as the two girls sat over their fire at bedtime-May in a blue dressing-gown, Amy

"One requires so many qualities to be happy as a single woman," said Amy with a sigh.

"Not qualities, only the power of interest in other people and things, I think. Do you remember the manna in the wilderness? If you put by more than you wanted, it decayed. I always think there is a great truth in that. If you grasp after more sweet and pleasant things than you really want, if you put by' for future occasions, they perish away, and are of no use. Give us this day our daily bread of love as of everything else, that is happiness here. So now I have work enough and love enough to 'fullfil' me, as the Prayer-Book says, it cannot be right for me to grasp after more. Thou camest not to thy place by accident.' A single life of gossip and sourness is very horrible; but that is not necessary, is it?"

"A man shall forsake, &c., &c."

"Yes, it is a difficult thing to settle in one's own mind. I don't undertake the general question; but I cannot think it could be right to forsake positive present duties unless at a very evident and strong call of one's affections elsewhere."

"But then, May, you cannot judge for others. You have always had a career, as it were strong interests, objects for warm affections, liberty to carry out your own thoughts, and fancies too."

"I dare say I haven't been half grateful enough for that," answered she, musing.

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Mrs. Carr about the butter'-'Don't be
out of the way: I shall want you in half an
hour.' It is not even as if I had the inter-
est of the responsibility of the household;
no, it is all because it is so good for me.'
If a woman's life is to be one of perpetual
interference, if her time must be at some
one's beck and call, I had rather it should
be a husband's. A wife has rights, at
least, as well as duties, in the eyes of the
world. She has but one master, at all
events. Don't you know how you see
'girls' of forty ordered about, and every-
thing settled for them as if they were ba-
bies? The other day, mamma consulted
Clara as to whether some book was fit for
me to read. I am two years older than
Clara, and have thought, at least, as much
as she has; but she's a married woman,
and I am only a 'young lady.' I've ac-
cepted Mr. Jones, May," she ended ab-
ruptly.

"My dear Amy," cried May, jumping up and putting her arms round her cousin's neck, "how could you let me go on prosing about marriages in this way when you had this great thing to tell me? Don't you know I care more about your private happiness than for all the general theories in the world?"

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Yes, but I wanted to hear what you would say."

"And you have seriously accepted him?" "Yes, very seriously indeed; it is no laughing matter, for my mother is so angry that I don't know whether she will ever let me marry him if she can help it." "Well, he's a good man," said May slowly.

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May, you must remember all people have not the capacity for happiness as you understand it. All that intellect, and breadth, and width, and height, and depth which you want, would be lost upon some of us."

"But just think of the sort of vexatious interference which so many unmarried women have to endure! Oh, a girl ought to be willing to sacrifice her own pleasure to every one else's!' says the world; and so her whole life is cut up into little bits: she has not even the satisfaction of seeing the ruin of her own day of much use to any one else—she has spent a pound to benefit them to the extent of a shilling. The public good' which, I heard Mr. Scrope once say, everybody ought to work for, would have gained by her making herself as good a tool for good work as possible. I can do nothing well. I know nothing thoroughly. If I had my bread to earn, no "Well, I don't feel like myself to-night. one ought to employ me- and why? II am a voice crying wisdom in the wildersit down to work at something which in-ness, that nobody listens to, I dare say. terests me, and mamma calls me down to give out the sugar, or to write a note, or to listen to some stupid library book, which neither she nor I care about, but which must be sent on;' or I'm to drive regularly with her at half-past two, just when the class at the school begins, which I want to attend."

"Can't you change the time, dear?" "No; for in the morning it is, 'Amy, run and see whether I have left my glasses up-stairs''My dear, go and speak to

"I didn't know you could be so sarcastic, Amy."

What I mean is, 'each after his kind.' If you give a lion grain, or a cow meat, it will starve, though the food be the best of its sort. I am an exceedingly commonplace thrush; a very commonplace garden, with very ordinary trees, will make me quite happy, and make me sing a little tune of my own, and a pleasant tune too to some people." And poor Amy's eyes filled with tears.

"Dear Amy, you know no one loves and respects and values it more than I do,"

answered May, with another kiss. "I was only a little afraid whether Mr. Jones were quite worthy of his good fortune.”

"When you come to know him better you won't think so," said Amy, with a smile and a tear and a blush. "You'll think I'm not nearly good enough for him."

"I wonder whether papa could get a Chancellor's living for him," said May thoughtfully, after being silent for a time, as she sat brooding over the fire, her long hair streaming over her in a cloud, and the tongs in her hands, as she made little spurts of light spring out of the wood. "He hates asking anybody for anything, but I know he would do it for you, dear, and that would make Aunt Wilmot perhaps more amenable."

“And I shall write to Lionel," said Amy, smiling, after another pause, "and tell him that at all events you have laid by no accumulation of manna for future days, and that you have a great idea of the virtue and necessity of being passionately in love. 'Petit poisson deviendra gros,' and 'tout vient à point à qui sait attendre.' How prettily you used to repeat that fable when Miss Edwards inflicted French punishments upon you!"

"You'd better not do any such thing, Amy," replied May anxiously. Il ne faut pas jouer avec le feu,' if you want a French proverb. I want to be friendly and sisterly with him. Why not? I can't bear the idea of losing his friendship, but I don't want any more.'

And death began to tell upon the few who remained in her daily life. Poor old Nursey was the first to go, that stout old heart, loving and tender and true, which had watched over her childhood and delighted in her youth. It is a tie which is not so strong now as of old. The interval between classes is less, but the separation greater. May was with her at twelve o'clock at night, and her last words, in the vigorous tone of her old commands, as if her nursling was still a child, were, "Don't you be a-setting fire to your sleeves, dear child, with that there candle as you go down-stairs."

By morning she was dead, and May sorely missed the constant and warm affection which never failed. There is something in the feeling towards you of the elders who have known you and been kind to you from childhood which nothing can ever replace. "Je l'aime parceque c'est lui," not for your talents or your virtues, or your position, but because "you are you" a loving pride in your successes and your merits, a tender shade thrown over your faults. We never value the feeling, however, at its full worth till it has passed away, and we find ourselves in the hard outer world judged rigorously by what we are worth, and even that grudgingly allowed.

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May, you don't look well,” said Tom on one of his now rare and rapid visits. "I shall make Cecilia ask you up to London for a little. You ought to have a change for a time; oughtn't she, papa ?"

"I don't much believe in those friend- Accordingly, when the invitation arships being possible," said her cousin scep-rived soon after, her father insisted on her tically, as she took her candle and went accepting it. off to bed with a very sisterly kiss.

CHAPTER XVI.

FALLING LEAVES.

Mrs. Dimsdale had been ailing for so many years that May had no feeling about leaving her for a short time, and she was enjoying her unwonted holiday when a sudden summons arrived from Fernyhurst. Ir was a very trying year for May. Her mother was dying, and before she One after another of her friends had could reach home all was over. It was a dropped off in different directions. Her terrible shock to her, and though she was brothers and cousins were away. All the in no wise to blame, her conscience recompanions of her own age were scattered proached her bitterly for having been for one reason or another. Amy was as away. Conscience is an excellent constifond of her as ever, but the cares and anxi-tutional sovereign, under the checks of eties of a small, poor parsonage are very engrossing, and it had become almost impossible, in the secluded life the old people now led at Fernyhurst, for May to form any new friendships.

The children of her sister were not very interesting, and as they grew up were more and more away, and the Seymours, though they came down once or twice in the year, hardly filled up the old gaps.

common sense and comparison of duties, but if ever it is allowed despotic rule it is often guilty of horrible tyranny. May was harassed and tormented in a merciless way by hers, until Tom's straightforward, downright query one day, Why, one would fancy that you thought your being here would have kept my mother alive, May: surely we haven't the reins of Providence in our hands in this way," luckily

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