fingers pinning it in again; his relief is too heartfelt to be concealed; the budding tragedy is nipped, and the wide smile settles once more on his face. The dance over, he seeks Dorothea, still smiling, but less widely, and somewhat guiltily. She has no answering smile for him, and the hold she lays on his arm is not relaxed until the evening is done.

So waltz follows polka, and polka waltz, with the occasional interlude of a Rhine lander, just to try the visitors' prowess by its awkward hitch, until ten o'clock is reached. Then carriages, or rather carts, for the ox-cart is the native equivalent for the brougham, begin to be announced. The Wanderer is seen descending the staircase with the belle of Pünderich upon his arm, but the vine-embowered porch discreetly shields the tender parting as he hands her into the straw-laden ox-cart. He watches the slow jolting vehicle out of sight, and then turns sadly into the house, thinking of Nausicaa. Titania and Speranza have been danced off their feet by insatiable partners, and even now can scarcely be torn from their grasp. Henriette, Augusta, and Mathilde, each appeals in vain for one more last dance with the favored swain; the ancient wagonette stops the way, the Student with an expression of absolute determination has already taken his seat, and off they must go. Warm farewells all round, a parting cheer, and home they drive in the starlight, waking on the way the thousand and one echoes of the winding valley. ROLAND GRAHAM.

From The Pall Mall Gazette. A PANEGYRIC ON SIR WALTER SCOTT. MR. LESLIE STEPHEN AT TOYNBEE HALL.

A LARGE audience assembled at Toynbee Hall on Saturday evening to hear Mr. Leslie Stephen's paper on "Walter Scott" - a paper made all the more interesting by the frequent autobiographical notes scattered through it. Before proceeding to speak of Scott in particular, Mr. Stephen made some remarks on novels in general. All men of sense, he said, love novelists. Even Darwin soothed his nerves after his scientific labor with the most industrious reading of all sorts of novels. Nothing gives repose more effectually than straying into the world of fiction; but what is it that amuses us in fiction? Some people like reading and others psalm-singing, some a card-table

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and others the theatre. Others, again, prefer a quiet book by the fireside, and among the novel-readers some enjoy imag inary bloodshed, some have a taste for wild adventures which aim at the display of human nature and social foibles; some like quiet pictures of commonplace life; a very few choose the romance uncontaminated by realism. 'My own taste," Mr. Stephen continued, "when I retire into the world of novels, is to find myself in a pleasant atmosphere, and to feel that I am conversing in the higher sense of the word with courteous-minded people, who do not drop their good manners even in their day-dreams, with people who are not too anxious to preach to me, and who know a scoundrel when they see one. I like my author to see life truly, and therefore kindly to see it truly, for I cannot be really interested in a fiction purposing to deal with realities, unless it shows me a clear insight into men and women, unless I can feel that the observer of manners is grasping realities firmly, and that he knows what are the passions and ideas, the fears and the hopes, by which human beings are really stirred. Good fiction is not simply lying, but realism seen through the medium of a perfect imagination. It will show that the really valuable elements in the world are the tender social affections, and the good, honest, simple, natural feelings which bind men together and give the true value to life. Men of genius make us think better of the race and open our eyes to their good qualities. I like my novelist to be both truthful and generous, and to have that characteristic which we term thorough manliness, and therefore I love Sir Walter Scott."

Returning to the subject of the lecture, Mr. Stephen said: "When I am tired and fidgeted, I have no anodyne to which I take more kindly than a novel of Scott's. Scott touches so many interests that it is easiest to approach him from the side that happens to be most interesting to the lecturer. My mother was an enthusiastic admirer of Scott's writings, and when I was a mere lad, and more than forty years ago, I learned to love his poems, and I love them still, for they have the genuine touch which makes poetry live. Scott was the first person who really made people love mountain scenery. He looked at nature as a sportsman and agriculturist, and he gives the aspects of scenery which he passes over in the enjoyment of fresh air and healthy exercise. There is no pleas ure so great to me as a ramble with Scott over his grey hills.

"And Scott loved Scotland-country as he loved Scotland-nation. He was the sturdiest of patriots, but he was also a sturdy old Tory, a Tory of the old days when Toryism was at its greatest, a hater of the French Revolution, a man who thought that all Radicals ought to be put down as so many emissaries of the devil. | He belonged to the generation who saw the fulfilment of some of Burke's forebod. ings. He deplored the disruption of the old social order, not that he reasoned, but that he saw these things with the eye of a patriotic poet. To him his beloved Scotland was the outcome of historic processes, every lord even being the incarnation of the past. Such Toryism we may in the main respect, however little we may share it.

"Scott gave up poetry because he had exhausted his vein; it was not his natural language. The Waverley novels, published in rapid succession, fascinated all England. He was undoubtedly an admirable story-teller when he chose. No novel ever opened more effectively than "Ivanhoe," and the rising interest with which we follow the events makes us forget all its anachronisms. In The Bride of Lammermoor' we are moved even to the border of the painful. In 'Redgauntlet' we have a beautiful legendary story, the story of the blind piper, inserted, and no writer probably ever gave a better picture of adventure in the infernal regions. Scott's heroes generally bore us; indeed, Scott did not care for them himself. In 'Waverley' the hero is only dragged about to show us the gathering of the Highland clans and their march into England When Scott describes the Middle Ages, he convinces people that his personages have once been really alive, but he sees his contemporaries through the eyes of a contemporary. He had the historic eye, and this is the great novelty which he has introduced into the air of fiction. It enabled him to appreciate the history passing before his eyes as well as that which he only knew from books.

"My favorite character among Scott's

heroes is Dandy Dinmont, in 'Guy Mannering.' He is the type of the sturdy yeoman of the old school - a man with a rough exterior and tender as a woman within. He is the genuine Scot of the type probably best loved by his author. Scott does not make his characters change natures to reconcile us to them. The strong religious feelings of the Scotch peasants were in some respects antipathetic to him. From his youth he was filled with prejudices against the Covenanters, but he held that even a villain ought not to be misrepresented, and he cannot help doing justice to the people he had often reviled by making them the most attractive persons in the story. Claverhouse in Old Mortality' is the finest of these characters. The most impressive story is 'The Heart of Midlothian.' If it had been carried out to the end as ably as it was written at the beginning, it would have been, in my opinion, the best novel ever written. Scott never touches the relation of father and daughter without making them lovable. There is no instinct that he touches with a more loving hand, except perhaps canine fidelity. In this novel we see the true Scotch nature at its best portrayed by a genuine Scotthe true sympathy that exists under a rough exterior and is spread through the lower classes of the nation, the material out of which spring some of the highest developments of the human race.

"In conclusion, I consider Scott a little too much of a Tory in the inferior sense, being too much taken up by the desire to belong to the landed gentry. We forget the weakness, however, when we think of the heroism with which he met his misfortunes, and the gallantry with which he sacrificed health, and finally his life, to pay off his debts. I ask you to read his works from beginning to end, not forgetting his delightful notes, and when you have done, begin again at the beginning. I have never taken him up without laying him down in a more wholesome frame of mind."

THE MIRAGE. THEY tell us that when weary travellers deem They view through quivering heat across the sand

Great rocks for shadow in a weary land, And clustering palms, and, fairer yet, the gleam

Where smiles in light to laugh in sound the stream,

This is no work of some enchanter's wand, But that reflected here true visions stand Of far-off things that close beside them seem.

As after ceaseless rain

The chill dank glades with drifted leaves are stored;

And by the bleak wind slain

The smitten reed hangs down its useless sword;

The beech in hues of red And bronze mimics the dusky bracken's withering bed.

VI.

While round the dying hedge

theme,

From strips of jutting ledge

The ranks of dewdrops file along the rails: Each slips from his frail hold, caught in the With every zephyr's breath

arms of death.