control; I am far from suggesting that she is what is called a hard woman; she strikes me as having less of hardness than her husband (of whom I have not spoken I hope unfavourably), but she is more reticent. I have sometimes thought that, notwithstand ing all her apparent prosperity and her evident satisfaction in it, that she has some secret sorrow."

"Poor soul, poor soul!" sighed Hester involuntarily.

"If it be so, Miss Darrell, I am sure that it will, in your eyes, be an ample excuse for her if-if-I scarcely know how to express it but her manner has some stiffness. In your case it is impossible but that she will unbend when she comes to know you; but just at first you will think her cold. She does not wear her heart upon her sleeve; but you will find your way to it."

"Your knowledge of character may be great, but I doubt its intuition," said Hester, laughing; "and as I did not ask you to read mine, Captain Drake "-she broke off suddenly, attracted by an object in the landscape, which came opportunely into view. "What a noble house that is under the hill yonder!"

"That is Medbury-your future home, as I hope you mean to make it."

background of the picture presented to the traveller's eye, demands his undivided admiration. The noble pile is of vast extent, and towers over the stately trees that guard it on the east and west; behind it rises a cliff, in autumn (which was the season at present) green with foliage, and only showing here and there the glint of the chalk; but to the south, whence the travellers were approaching it, it unveils all its beauties; its stately terraces, beneath which lies the sleepy moat, preserved from stagnancy by a thread of running stream, its smooth and shaded lawns, and its park studded with clumps of oak, as old as the walls themselves, illustrate to perfection the poet's line, "a haunt of ancient peace."

"I have never seen anything so beautiful," murmured Hester; "it is like a new sense of enjoyment to behold it."

"True," replied the Captain, pleased by her evident admiration; "and yet to my father it offers the saddest spectacle, because it is his home no longer. For my part I confess I do not share his feelings; the place, to my mind, is too huge to admit of a merely personal association. It seems to me-though perhaps I should not say so if we had not lost it-that it ought to be public property."

"I quite understand what you mean,' said Hester, smiling, "though the sentiment sounds socialistic."

"Yes; I don't think Sir Abraham would sympathize with it but here we are at our journey's end."

With one more turn to skirt the bank of a little river, the train ran into the station.

To this friendly aspiration-expressed, too, in tones so genuine that it certainly deserved some acknowledgment- Hester answered nothing; the singular beauty of the scene before her, though combined, no doubt, with the possible associations that it might one day possess for herself, held her spellbound. With two exceptions one of which will occur to every home-traveller, while the other is the hereditary home of the Howards there is no mansion in England which, from the railway, has so picturesque an appearance as Medbury Castle. Other fine residences, while enhancing the beauties of nature, fill, after all, only a secondary place in the landscape, while Medbury dominates it. As the train sweeps round the curve that 'Oh, Hester, I am so glad!" cried the leads to Shingleton and the sea, the Castle sud-girl, running up to the carriage door; "I denly "leaps up" (as it does in Mrs. Brown- thought both you and Captain Drake had ing's ballad), and though forming only the missed the train."

On the platform, scanning with eager eyes the foremost carriages, which happened to be first-class ones, stood Maria. The blank disappointment, and even pain, in her face on not finding in them her she sought touched Hester to the core.

"I am here, dear!" she exclaimed from the window.

A

BY MRS. ELIZABETH ROSSITER.

LARGE red-brick house with three | the oldest inhabitant of the district. In this gables, each gable surmounted by a kitchen two of the girls, called "breakfastwhite round stone; on one side a noble row girls," clear away the breakfast apparatus ; of chestnut-trees, intended to keep off the while the others divide their time between east wind; on the other an old-fashioned, preparing the dinner, getting water up from walled-in kitchen-garden; in front a lawn, the deep well (the opening of which is firmly nearly as large as a small London square; on covered in, leaving only a small opening, every side, as far as the eye can reach, open just large enough for the pail to pass, so that fields, with abundance of trees; and on one it is impossible for even the smallest child to spot, and only one, a group of cottages; all fall down, for the well is very deep), hunting asleep in the early morning sun, except a few about the fields and hedges for eggs laid by pigeons perched on the points of the gables, hens of emigrating dispositions, gathering and just beginning a new day by a lazy sur- wild flowers, and playing about generally. vey of their domain, now and then flying The younger children devote themselves enback through the open window of the room tirely to playing, and this takes very varied given up to them. forms. One of the most uncommon was invented by a little lame girl, who found endless pleasure in sitting on the edge of the dust-bin to watch a hen laying an egg in one corner.

About seven o'clock a bell is rung, in a half imperative, half cheerful manner, and in a few minutes the white blinds of the large square windows on the first floor are pulled up, and the windows themselves opened top and bottom; then the large white front doors are opened; then a side door; lastly, a third door, of a large outbuilding, being opened, lets out, with a succession of "whirrs as they fly down from their lofty perches, some two score chickens, of all ages and dignities, from the tiny fledgeling running by its mother's wing, to the magnificent rooster, chief of the clan, who rouses nobody by his mighty crow only because there are no neighbours to be roused, always excepting the big dog, Boxer, who at the appearance of the birds comes out of his kennel, shakes himself and his chain, takes a drink of water, looks round leisurely, then calls out lustily for his breakfast. The only other living beings are all girls, too numerous to be sisters, too lively to be scholars, too active to be at home, too natural to be anywhere else.

About eight they go to breakfast, prefaced by brief morning prayers, in a large room at a long table, in the centre of which is a large vase full of fresh wild flowers. One of the older girls acts as "mother," pouring out the coffee, &c.; and when they have eaten and drunk as much as they will (for there is the same freedom as in an ordinary family, no limit or separate portions), each girl carries out her cup and saucer, plate, &c., to the still larger kitchen, through the open door of which can be seen the old-fashioned well, surrounded by wooden palings, covered by a wooden roof, and backed by an enormous quince-tree, the age of which is unknown to

At ten the postman's cart is heard coming; it turns up towards the house, a quarter of a mile from the main road, stops opposite, the postman climbs the wire fence, crosses the intervening meadow, is received with an inquiring bark by the big dog, who comes out to examine every visitor, has a special objection to doctors and clergymen, a dislike to farmers, a tolerance for ordinary people, and a special liking for children; while a woman in a bonnet (always excepting myself) excites the fiercest howls. The children crowd round the man of letters; those who get any sit down to read them; those who don't turn away, saying, "Never mind, I'll have one tomorrow."

At one o'clock, dinner. Then some of the bigger girls disappear for a long walk to the woods to gather flowers; or to the post, a box in the wall at the blacksmith's shop a mile and a half off. The younger ones play about, some on the huge trees that, cut down years ago, still lie at the bottom of the field near the gate leading to the road, some on a swing set up between two trees; some read on the lawn, fairy tales being the literature most in favour. By five o'clock they are all together on the lawn, grouped round my easy-chair; and here, under the bright sun, we can see them individually and collectively. On a rug spread out on the grass are three girls, about thirteen, reading; three younger are trying to put together a dissected puzzle; two are on chairs doing needlework; one, a lame girl with two crutches, is running

with wonderful speed round the lawn, drag-years ago, of the right of all children to a ging the big dog along by a string; two knowledge of nature as part of their education, others run with her to take the dog when her urged that it was better to see a field and "turn" is ended; the remainder are doing cows for a week than to read about them nothing in particular, except, perhaps, watch for a month; that town children, if poor, ing the chickens that, almost as tame as kit- could never hope to develop all the possibitens, wander about amongst them, looking lities of their life without some experience of for young grass and stray crumbs, or the the freedom of rural life; that penned up pigeons that fly about between the house in narrow streets and imprisoned at the top and the big pond in the adjoining farmyard, of narrow stairs, their minds and bodies are and circle about high above the trees. A alike starved, their bodies cramped, their general and very desultory conversation goes minds dwarfed, their moral sense dulled: on, partaking largely of personal reminiscences then I spoke to the wind. Now, after I have on the part of the children, and inquiries as shown that the work is easy, the expense to the details of country life. small, the gain enormous, the public mind has got so far as to recognise that it is more desirable to prevent illness by food and pure air than to cure it, and thousands of children are sent into villages to stay with cottagers, who receive with them something better besides the few shillings weekly for their board-the sense of giving hospitality to those who need it, the pleasure of giving pleasure. Even now, the bodily benefit of pure air is the one object, and I am still vainly crying in the wilderness that the poor children of large towns have need of nature as a teacher as well as a doctor; that the development of the sense of natural beauty is an essential of full morality.

At six comes tea, either in the large room at the long table or on the lawn, just as may be decided at the last moment by the popular vote. If the latter, a small table is carried out to hold the tea-things, the meal becoming a picnic, the children grouping themselves as they please. Afterwards the day is ended by a general playing about near the house, on the lawn, or in the adjoining meadows; and soon after eight some one calls out, "Time for prayer." Then, after a brief meeting in my room, at which, after a few short prayers, any desired change as to "sleeping partners" is made in a committee of the whole house, by nine o'clock the windows are closed, the blinds pulled down, and the whole place goes to sleep again till the morning sun warms it once more into active life.

Who are these children? Whence do they come, and for what? They are all London children, all poor, some very poor; mostly delicate in health, many deformed or lame. They have come from Mile End, Seven Dials, Islington, Paddington, Battersea, Rotherhithe, &c., to this red-brick house, Horsforth Park, Ingatestone, half-way between Ongar and Chelmsford, in the very heart of rural life; half-a-mile from the high road, a mile and a half from the nearest village, three miles from the nearest postage stamp, and four miles from the nearest mutton chop; to live, for a brief time, the life God means children to live, a life surrounded by the beauty of the earth and sky, with room to breathe in and pure air to breathe; free from anxiety, care, trouble, hunger, thirst, or pain; to learn that London is not the world, that life may be something besides a feverish existence of barrack-like school and stony pavements.

It has always been recognised that country air, sometimes sea-air, might lawfully be given as medicine to restore health to the sick; but when I spoke, five-and-twenty

That rural life is natural to children is, for me, proved by the fact that the children never thank me at going away. At parting, they are affectionate but never thankful; of all the hundreds of children that have, during the last seven years, been here, no one has ever said, "Thank you." But every Christmas, every Valentine's Day, every Easter, brings me a shower of cards; on St. Patrick's Day, a bit of shamrock came to me from an Irish girl in Saffron Hill, who sent to Ireland for it. My birthday is remembered in many parts of London by children whom, probably, I shall never see again. I am always delighted to find that the children utterly forget that the house is not their home, that they regard it as so much like home that a formal expression of thanks for anything never occurs to them. I have printed a few of the many letters I have received, to show how very cordially the children and their parents feel the benefit and pleasure of country life; but it requires return to the unnatural life of town to remind them that their pleasure was only a glimpse of the world of beauty around them, not their daily life; that nature is not to them an every-day matter.

It is with the hope that, by showing how

EMERSON.

BY AUGUSTINE BIRRELL, AUTHOR OF "OBITER DICTA," ETC. HE life of a poet by a poet ought to make very pretty reading, and be an easy theme for a timid reviewer, but the life of Emerson, even when written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, is not, in my judgment, easy to handle.

we find so cool-brained a critic as the American Minister at the Court of St. James's writing and quoting thus of Emerson :

"Those who heard him while their natures were yet plastic, and their mental nerves trembled under the slightest breath of divine air, will never cease to feel and say :

'Was never eye did see that face,

Was never ear did hear that tongue,
Was never mind did mind his grace
That ever thought the travail long;
But eyes, and ears, and every thought
Were with his sweet perfections caught;'

There are men whose charm is in their entirety. Their words occasionally utter what their looks invariably express. We read their thoughts by the light of their smiles. Not to see and hear these men is not to know them, and criticism without personal knowledge is in their case mutilation. Those who we recognise at once that the sooner we take did know them listen in despair to the half-off our shoes the better, for that the ground hearted praise and clumsy disparagement of critical strangers, and are apt to exclaim as did the younger Pitt, when some extraneous person was expressing wonder at the enormous reputation of Fox, "Ah! you have never been under the wand of the magician."

it is upon the question of Emerson's personal influence, will not always be admissible in support of his claims as an author. In the long run an author's only witnesses are his own books.

In Dr. Holmes' estimate of Emerson's books everyone must wish to concur. These are not the days, nor is this dry and thirsty land of ours the place, when or where we can afford to pass by any well of spiritual influence. It is matter, therefore, for rejoicing that, in the opinion of so many good judges, Emerson's well can never be choked up. His essays, we are told by no less a critic than Mr. Arnold, are the most valuable prose contributions to English literature of the century; his letters to Mr. Carlyle carried into all our homes the charm of a most delightful personality; the quaint melody of his poems abides in many ears. He would indeed be a churl who grudged Emerson his fame.

But when we are considering a writer so full of intelligence as Emerson-one so remote and detached from the world's bluster and brag it is especially incumbent upon us to charge our own language with intelligence, and to make sure that what we say is at least truth for us.

Were we at liberty to agree with Dr. Holmes in his unmeasured praise-did we, in short, find Emerson full of inspirationour task would be as easy as it would be pleasant; but not entirely agreeing with Dr. Holmes, and somehow missing the inspiration, the difficulty we began by mentioning presses heavily upon us.

of small avail to write as Dr. Holmes does, about "brilliant circles," and "literary luminaries," and then to pass on, and leave the circles circulating and the luminaries shining in vacuo. We want to know how they were brilliant and what they illuminated. If you wish me to believe that you are witty I must really trouble you to make a joke. Dr. Holmes' own wit, for example, is as certain as the law of gravitation, but over all these pages of his hangs vagueness, and we scan them in vain for reassuring details.

"Mild orthodoxy, ripened in Unitarian sunshine," does not sound very appetising, though we are assured by Dr. Holmes that it is "a very agreeable aspect of Christianity. Emerson himself does not seem to have found it very lively, for in 1832, after three years' experience of the ministry of the "Second Church" of Boston, he retires from it, not tumultuously or with any deep feeling, but with something very like a yawn. He concludes his farewell sermon to his people as follows:

"Having said this I have said all. I have no hostility to this institution. I am only stating my want of sympathy with it.”

Dr. Holmes makes short work of Emerson's childhood. He was born in Boston on the 25th May, 1803, and used to sit upon a wall, and drive his mother's cow to pasture. In fact, Dr. Holmes adds nothing to what we already knew of the quiet and blameless life that came to its appointed end on the 27th April, 1882. On the completion of his college education, Emerson became a student of

ordained, in March, 1829, minister of the "Second Church" in Boston. In September of the same year he married; and the death of his young wife in February, 1832, perhaps quickened the doubts and disinclinations which severed his connection with his "Institution" on the 9th September, 1832. The following year he visited Europe for the first time, and made his celebrated call upon Carlyle at Craigenputtock, and laid the keel of a famous friendship. In the summer of 1834 he settled at Concord, where he died. He married again, visited England again, wrote essays, delivered lectures, made orations, published poems, carried on a long and most remarkable correspondence with Carlyle, enjoyed after the most temperate and serene of fashions many things and much happiness. And then he died.

Pleasant reading as the introductory thirty-theology, and after a turn at teaching, was five pages of Dr. Holmes' book makes, we doubt the wisdom of so very sketchy an account of Emerson's lineage and intellectual environment. Attracted towards Emerson everybody must be; but there are many who have never been able to get quit of an uneasy fear as to his "staying power." He has seemed to some of us a little thin and vague. A really great author dissipates all such fears. Read a page and they are gone. To inquire after the intellectual health of such a one would be an impertinence. Emerson hardly succeeds in inspiring this confidence, but is more like a clever invalid who says, and is encouraged by his friends to say, brilliant things, but of whom it would be cruel to expect prolonged mental exertion. This gloomy and possibly distorted view is fostered rather than discouraged by Dr. Holmes' introductory pages about Boston life and intellect. It does not seem to have been a very strong place. We lack performance. It is

"Can you emit sparks?" said the cat to the ugly duckling in the fairy tale, and the poor abashed creature had to admit that it