member, there was a spacious hall, freely open to the multitude. It was so immensely spacious that it is compared to

"A covered field, where champions bold Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair Defied the best of Paynim chivalry

To mortal combat or career with lance."

This is the image of our free and swarming Press. It is brusht with the hiss of rustling wings." It is so crowded that the incomers have to be miraculously diminished. They are squeezed into small print and mercilessly abridged by the magic wand of

an editor, and thus reduced they are "at large, though without number still, amidst the hall of that infernal court." But this is not all. There is also an inner chamber of deliberation, where there is more dignity and more ceremony. The old historic Parliament still meets, and still preserves its superiority:

"Far within And in their own dimensions like themselves, The great seraphic lords and cherubim In close recess and secret conclave sat, A thousand demigods on golden seats, Frequent and full."

THE German people in general and Count Bismarck in particular have found a champion in Mr. Max Muller, who in a letter to the Times, which fills two columns, contends that the Prussian Premier has done nothing to forfeit the good opinions of England. It does not follow, Mr. Muller says, that he approved Count Benedetti's proposals because he did not instantly repudiate and make them public. A Foreign Minister is not like a private individual. He stands in the position of counsel for his country, and is bound by the simplest rules of prudence not to disclose many a secret of which, as a private person, he might decline to become the depositary. "Do you suppose," Mr. Max Muller asks," that Lord Palmerston had never to listen for a moment to suggestions about Turkey and Saxony, about Savoy and Nice, and was he driven from office by an indignant people?" Professor Muller maintains further that since 1866 Count Bismarck's policy has been patriotic and peaceful, sans reproche, though, no, doubt, also, sans peur. Germany had to be united; everybody who had tried to unite it had failed; Bismarck succeeded. His procedure was not in all respects strictly regular, but "there are in the history of all countries great convulsions which one cannot criticize according to the

ordinary rules of right and wrong. We do not criticize thunderstorms that darken heaven and earth, strike down palaces, and carry off the harvest of peaceful villages." Mr. Max Muller refuses to believe that England and Germany can ever be at enmity. "If Germany conquers, a new era of peace will dawn on Europe; for Germany, if once united, would tolerate no war of conquest. An army in which every second man is the father of a family is the best guarantee for the peace of the world. There need be no formal alliance between England and Germany. The two nations are one in all that is essential, in morality, in religion, in love of freedom, in respect for law. They are both hard workers, hard thinkers, and, where it must be, hard hitters, too. In the whole history of modern Europe Germany and England have never been at

But the ma

A TALKING MACHINE.- ON Saturday an exhibition of quite a novel character was opened at the new building called the Palais Royal, Argyle-street, Oxford-circus. It is an exhibition of a talking machine, which by mechanical appliances is made to give forth utterances resembling those of a human being. It is the invention of Professor Faber, of Vienna, and has been constructed and patented by him, and is certainly a wonderful specimen of human ingenuity. It is true, the question may arise, where is the utility of it? seeing that every man, woman, and child possesses a talking machine, more or less perfect, of his or her own. chine has its utility nevertheless, for it illustrates a much neglected science of acoustics. Moreover, it is highly interesting as showing how far ingenuity may go.. The machine has a mouth, with tongue and lips, which are set in motion by a mechanical apparatus which sets free a portion of air from a large bellows, and so controls it as to produce the sound required. It pronounced, with great clearness, every letter of the alphabet, many words, and a few sentences perfectly; not merely set words, but any words the audience chose to name. It also human passions, to the astonishment, apparlaughed, and uttered other cries expressive of Public Opinion. ently, of all who heard it.

PART XI.

CHAPTER V.

It was the very first time that Félix had come across Angélique since her marriage; and he had of late been so much in the babit of visiting her cousin without seeing herself, that he was never prepared to meet her now, and had quite forgotten that the frequency of his visits had originated in his desire to see her and not Marie.

The situation was therefore more than sufficiently embarrassing for a man who like him had never graduated in the school of society that teaches its scholars never to find any situation in the world embarrassing, from the extrication of an army from an enemy's country, up to the extrication of one's foot from a lady's dress in a ballroom. Certainly there was no reason on earth, in the nature of things, why he should be dissatisfied with himself. He had been the victim, she the betrayer; and he had therefore every right, if he was so minded, to claim the dignity that is the privilege of the injured party in such matters. And so, bad he been Angélique and had she been Félix, he would have both felt and acted. But being as they werebe the man and she the woman- - it was he who somehow felt as though it had been be and not she who had been the one to blame. A woman who is no longer a child is always mistress of such a situation, and | if she has only a very little tact may always shine in it to advantage, however much she may in reality be in the wrong; while, on the other hand, a man requires to have both experience and genius in such matters to come out of it with even as much as decent credit, however much he may be in the right. Perhaps Félix was also weighted with the feeling that, when all was said and done, he had sinned against the gospel of romance by not having been altogether so true to the memory of his old passion as he had once vowed to be; for inconstancy on the one side is not, in the creed of such as he, held to be a set-off against inconstancy on the other. On sounder grounds there was plenty of excuse for him, no doubt; but then, "Qui

s'excuse

the composition of any one, the more apt is the voice of false sentiment to make itself heard; and of false sentiment Madame Lester had always had her full share - no less now that her reading consisted of little that was more sentimental than butchers' bills, than when she used to identify herself with Byronic heroines. Moreover, it did not by any means seem to follow in her eyes that because she chanced to be so unfortunate - as it had turned out- to be married, she should lose her sway over any of her adorers, even though, as in the case of Félix, she should gain from them nothing more valuable than a little adoration. And then she felt kind to him for old recollections' sake, and as a woman cannot help feeling towards one who has once loved her and whom she supposes to love her still. But still she was far from allowing any trace of her emotion to be visible; and indeed it was far too slight, such as it was, for her to be conscious of having felt any whatever. On the contrary, she at once frankly held out her hand with the air of welcoming an old friend, and said,

"Mais, Monsieur Créville, you come in time to convince this doubter. Is it not true that Miss Raymond is to be married ? "

66

What! my old pupil? I had not heard it."

Her manner had put him at his ease, so far as she was concerned; and so it could not be that his pre-occupied air had been caused by embarrassment alone. Angelique noticed his worn appearance; and, taking it as a compliment to herself, felt more kindly towards him still.

"And you do not ask to whom? But I forgot - you would not know him. We provincials forget that there are people in the world to whom our little celebrities are unknown. And yet you might know him, though you are a friend of Mr. Barton?"

"Of Barton ? "

"Yes; and so is he."

"I should scarcely have thought that any friend of Barton would have fallen in Miss Raymond's way."

"Oh, I don't know. Marriages are made in heaven, they say. Mark Warden is the favoured mortal. Do you know him?"

supposed, he had come to bid adieu to the last of his illusions before he cast the dust of England from his feet forever.

Now Angélique had been able to take great credit to herself for her passing gleam of sentiment. She was proud of it, and of herself for having been capable of feeling it. But Félix, except for the feeling of embarrassment when he first perceived her, and of which he now felt almost ashamed, had felt not even a passing gleam. No sooner had he met her eyes, no sooner had she spoken, than it was plain to him that the Angélique whom he now saw before him was the Angélique of his grande passion no more; if, indeed, the Angélique of his grande passion had ever really existed in the flesh. In that moment he felt that something else besides his own heart had changed; or rather, that his heart had been false to her because it had never ceased to be true to the ideal he had sought in her and had found - where?

Where indeed? It was clear enough even to him, in the light of the flood of joy that rushed into his heart when he heard the last words of Angélique, and looked up suddenly at Marie. His doubts of her had then, after all, been as absurd as he had been trying vainly to persuade himself that they were, and Barton had in truth been slandering her as grossly as he had been trying, with equal ill-success, to force himself to assume. Had any sort of connection really existed between her and Warden, it was not thus and in her presence that Angélique who must have known of it would have spoken.

-

"Ah!" he exclaimed, with a sigh of something more than relief. "Do you know Barton, then? How long has he known this?"

"Not long. It is only just settled, it seems. It is a curious match, is it not?" "Any way the bridegroom is to be congratulated. And how is Barton? I did not know you knew him."

"No more we did, till yesterday. Is it true that he writes the dramatic criticism for the Trumpet'? and that you actually allowed him to insert that odious review of poor Miss Marchmont? For shame! Ah, you cared a little more about her than that once upon a time, did you not? What a couple of silly children we were; but they were pleasant days, all the same -those delightful days when we were so miserable. We shall never have such pleasant ones again—no, not when you have all the world at your feet, and when I well, I shall have dropped out of your life then, n'est ce pas, Monsieur? Marie, my angel,

--

And so, with a parting embrace to her angel and another presentation of her hand to the lover for whose death she had so nearly and so lately been answerable, she once more carried into the street her last purchase from Madame Jupon.

But although Félix had received an unmistakable lesson from the unspeakably joyful relief that the words of Angélique had given him, he was certainly no nearer reading what was in the heart of Marie. All that he could think of now was that she was in reality all that he had supposed her to be; that she had once more been restored to her pedestal above the altar. How could he ever have committed the treason, the blasphemy, of having even for a single moment cast her down? Surely, it now seemed to him, he could never really have done so - he must always, in his heart of hearts, have remained loyal; the disturbance could only have been in his fancy in his mind.

But Marie!

Whether she still loved her husband or no, there is but one word to describe her state; and that word is desolation. Whatever her feelings towards Félix might be, they did not subtract from the force of the word.

The state of nervous excitement, or rather exhaustion, in which she was, and in which the activity of the memory and of the imagination fully made up for the loss of calm reason, caused her to comprehend at once and to the letter every word that had passed between Mark Warden and herself in the course of her last interview with him, and that had then been so unintelligible. So plain had the meaning of it grown now, that the amount of truth that might lie in the report which she had just heard was altogether immaterial. Whatever might be the explanation of that report, the fact remained and stared her in the face- not, perhaps, the fact that he was actually about to leave her for another that must be as she willed, to say the least of it; but certainly the fact that he wished to do so, and that he had actually proposed it to her almost in so many words. At present, though she realized this, she was incapable of realizing how it affected her. It is weaker women than she whose feelings in such matters are sufficiently simple to find