by other men, under other circumstances, the honestly. His employers consented at my enaction might have been ridiculous. Performed treaty to let him off without prosecuting. I by this man, at the crisis of the interview, the begged very hard—I was fond of my son James action was horrible. -and I took him home, and did my best to reform him. He wouldn't stay with me; he went away again to London; he-I beg your pardon, Sir! I'm afraid I'm confusing things; I'm afraid I'm wandering from the point?"

"My wife, Sir," he resumed, "stood a little in my way; she did me (I am afraid I must confess) some injury with Sir John. Soon after I got the steward's situation she contracted-she took-she fell into habits (I hardly know how He spoke those words-apparently (as events to say it) of drinking. I couldn't break her of then stood) the most irrelevant to the matter in it, and I couldn't always conceal it from Sir hand that had yet escaped him; actually (as John's knowledge. She broke out, and-and-events were soon to be) the most vitally importtried his patience once or twice, when he came to my office on business. Sir John excused it, not very kindly; but still he excused it. I don't complain of Sir John; I-I don't complain, now, of my wife." He pointed a trembling finger at his miserable crape-covered beaver hat on the floor. "I'm in mourning for her," he said, faintly. "She died nearly a year ago,

when he had told his story to Mr. Brock, and was waiting for a generous word in return, as the man before him was waiting now. "Today is Saturday," he went on. "Can you come and give me my first lesson on Monday morning? I beg your pardon," he added, interrupting Mr. Bashwood's profuse expressions of acknowledgment, and stopping him on his way out of the room; "there is one thing we ought to settle, ought we not? We haven't spoken yet about your own interest in this matter-I mean, about the terms." He referred a little confusedly to the pecuniary part of the subject. Mr. Bashwood (getting nearer and nearer to the door) answered him more confusedly still.

"Any thing, Sir-any thing you think right. I won't intrude any longer-I'll leave it to you and Mr. Armadale."

"I will send for Mr. Armadale if you like," said Midwinter, following him into the hall. "But I am afraid he has as little experience in matters of this kind as I have. Perhaps, if you see no objection, we might be guided by Mr. Pedgift?"

The Sunday morning found Midwinter in the park, waiting to intercept the postman on the chance of his bringing more news from Mr. Brock.

At the customary hour the man made his appearance and placed the expected letter in Midwinter's hands. He opened it, far away from all fear of observation this time, and read these lines:

"MY DEAR MIDWINTER,-I write more for the purpose of quieting your anxiety than because I have any thing definite to say. In my last hurried letter I had no time to tell you that the elder of the two women whom I met in the Gardens had followed me, and spoken to me in the street. I believe I may characterize what she said (without doing her any injustice) as a tissue of falsehoods from beginning to end. any rate, she confirmed me in the suspicion that some underhand proceeding is on foot, of which Allan is destined to be the victim, and that the prime mover in the conspiracy is the vile woman who helped his mother's marriage and who hastened his mother's death.

At

Mr. Bashwood caught eagerly at the last sug- 'Feeling this conviction, I have not hesigestion, pushing his retreat while he spoke as tated to do, for Allan's sake, what I would have far as the front-door. "Yes, Sir-oh yes, yes! done for no other creature in the world. I have nobody better than Mr. Pedgift. Don't-pray left my hotel, and have installed myself (with don't disturb Mr. Armadale!" His watery eyes my old servant Robert) in a house opposite the looked quite wild with nervous alarm as he turn-house to which I traced the two women. We ed round for a moment in the light of the hall- are alternately on the watch (quite unsuspected, lamp to make that polite request. If sending for Allan had been equivalent to unchaining a ferocious watch-dog Mr. Bashwood could hardly have been more anxious to stop the proceeding. "I wish you kindly good-evening, Sir," he went on, getting out to the steps. "I'm much obliged to you-I will be scrupulously punctual on Monday morning-I hope-I think -I'm sure you will soon learn every thing I can teach you. It's not difficult-oh dear, no-not difficult at all! I wish you kindly good-evening, Sir. A beautiful night; yes, indeed, a beautiful night for a walk home."

I am certain, by the people opposite) day and night. All my feelings, as a gentleman and a clergyman, revolt from such an occupation as I am now engaged in; but there is no other choice. I must either do this violence to my own selfrespect, or I must leave Allan, with his easy nature, and in his assailable position, to defend himself against a wretch who is prepared, I firmly believe, to take the most unscrupulous advantage of his weakness and his youth. mother's dying entreaty has never left my memory; and, God help me, I am now degrading myself in my own eyes in consequence.

His

"There has been some reward already for the

With those words, all dropping out of his lips one on the top of the other, and without notic-sacrifice. This day (Saturday) I have gained ing, in his agony of embarrassment at effecting his departure, Midwinter's outstretched hand, he went noiselessly down the steps, and was lost in the darkness of the night.

As Midwinter turned to re-enter the house the dining-room door opened and his friend met him in the hall.

"Has Mr. Bashwood gone?" asked Allan. "He has gone," replied Midwinter, "after telling me a very sad story, and leaving me a little ashamed of myself for having doubted him without any just cause. I have arranged that he is to give me my first lesson in the steward's office on Monday morning."

"All right," said Allan. "You needn't be afraid, old boy, of my interrupting you over your studies. I dare say I'm wrong-but I don't like Mr. Bashwood."

an immense advantage-I have at last seen the woman's face. She went out with her veil down as before; and Robert kept her in view, having my instructions, if she returned to the house, not to follow her back to the door. She did return to the house; and the result of my precaution was, as I had expected, to throw her off her guard. I saw her face unveiled at the window, and afterward again in the balcony. If any occasion should arise for describing her particularly, you shall have the description. At present I need only say that she looks the full age (five-and-thirty) at which you estimated her, and that she is by no means so handsome a woman as I had (I hardly know why) expected to see.

"This is all I can now tell you. If nothing more happens by Monday or Tuesday next I "I dare say I'm wrong," retorted the other, shall have no choice but to apply to my lawyers a little petulantly.

"I do."

for assistance; though I am most unwilling to

trust this delicate and dangerous matter in other hands than mine. Setting my own feelings, however, out of the question, the business which has been the cause of my journey to London is too important to be trifled with much longer as I am trifling with it now. In any and every case depend on my keeping you informed of the progress of events; and believe me

"Yours truly,

"DECIMUS BROCK." Midwinter secured the letter as he had secured the letter that preceded it-side by side in his pocket-book with the narrative of Allan's Dream. "How many days more?" he asked himself, as he went back to the house. "How many days more ?"

The lovely

The day of the picnic came. morning and the cheerful bustle of preparation for the expedition failed entirely to tempt Midwinter into altering his resolution. At the regular hour he left the breakfast-table to join Mr. Bashwood in the steward's office. The two were quietly closeted over the books, at the back of the house, while the packing for the picnic went on in front. Young Pedgift (short in stature, smart in costume, and self-reliant in manner) arrived some little time before the hour for starting, to revise all the arrangements, and to make any final improvements which his local knowledge might suggest. Allan and he were still busy in consultation when the first hitch occurred in the proceedings. The woman-servant

Not many. The time he was waiting for was from the cottage was reported to be waiting bea time close at hand.

low for an answer to a note from her young mistress, which was placed in Allan's hands.

Monday came and brought Mr. Bashwood, On this occasion Miss Milroy's emotions had punctual to the appointed hour. Monday came, apparently got the better of her sense of propriand found Allan immersed in his preparations ety. The tone of the letter was feverish, and for the picnic. He held a series of interviews, the handwriting wandered crookedly up and at home and abroad, all through the day. He down, in deplorable freedom from all proper retransacted business with Mrs. Gripper, with the straint. butler, and with the coachman, in their three "Oh, Mr. Armadale" (wrote the major's several departments of eating, drinking, and daughter), "such a misfortune! What are we driving. He went to the town to consult his to do? Papa has got a letter from grandmamprofessional advisers on the subject of the ma this morning about the new governess. Her Broads, and to invite both the lawyers, father reference has answered all the questions, and and son (in the absence of any body else in the she's ready to come at the shortest notice. neighborhood whom he could ask), to join the Grandmamma thinks (how provoking!) the picnic. Pedgift Senior (in his department) sooner the better; and she says we may expect supplied general information, but begged to be her-I mean the governess-either to-day or toexcused from appearing at the picnic on the morrow. Papa says (he will be so absurdly score of business engagements. Pedgift Junior considerate to every body!) that we can't allow (in his department) added all the details; and Miss Gwilt to come here (if she comes to-day) casting business engagements to the winds, ac- and find nobody at home to receive her. What cepted the invitation with the greatest pleasure. is to be done? I am ready to cry with vexation. Returning from the lawyer's office, Allan's next I have got the worst possible impression (though proceeding was to go to the major's cottage and grandmamma says she is a charming person) of obtain Miss Milroy's approval of the proposed Miss Gwilt. Can you suggest something, dear locality for the pleasure party. This object ac- Mr. Armadale? I'm sure papa would give way complished, he returned to his own house to if you could. Don't stop to write-send me a meet the last difficulty now left to encounter-message back. I have got a new hat for the the difficulty of persuading Midwinter to join picnic; and oh the agony of not knowing wheththe expedition to the Broads. er I am to keep it on or take it off.-Yours truly, E. M."

On first broaching the subject Allan found his friend impenetrably resolute to remain at home. Midwinter's natural reluctance to meet the major and his daughter, after what had happened at the cottage, might probably have been Overcome. But Midwinter's determination not to allow Mr. Bashwood's course of instruction to be interrupted was proof against every effort that could be made to shake it. After exerting his influence to the utmost, Allan was obliged to remain contented with a compromise. Midwinter promised, not very willingly, to join the party toward evening at the place appointed for a gipsy tea-making, which was to close the proceedings of the day. To this extent he would consent to take the opportunity of placing himself on a friendly footing with the Milroys. More he could not concede, even to Allan's persuasion, and for more it would be useless to ask.

"The devil take Miss Gwilt!" said Allan, staring at his legal adviser in a state of helpless consternation.

"With all my heart, Sir-I don't wish to interfere," remarked Pedgift Junior. "May I ask what's the matter?"

Allan told him. Mr. Pedgift the Younger might have his faults, but a want of quickness of resource was not among them.

"There's a way out of the difficulty, Mr. Armadale,” he said. "If the governess comes today let's have her at the picnic."

Allan's eyes opened wide in astonishment.

"All the horses and carriages in the ThorpeAmbrose stables are not wanted for this small party of ours," proceeded Pedgift Junior. "Of course not! Very good. If Miss Gwilt comes [to-day she can't possibly get here before five

o'clock. Good again. You order an open carriage to be waiting at the major's door at that time, Mr. Armadale; and I'll give the man his directions where to drive to. When the governess comes to the cottage let her find a nice little note of apology (along with the cold fowl, or whatever else they give her after her journey), begging her to join us at the picnic, and putting a carriage at her own sole disposal to take her there. Gad, Sir!" said young Pedgift, gayly, she must be a Touchy One if she thinks herself neglected after that!"

"Capital!" cried Allan. "She shall have every attention. I'll give her the pony-chaise and the white harness, and she shall drive herself if she likes."

He scribbled a line to relieve Miss Milroy's apprehensions, and gave the necessary orders for the pony-chaise. Ten minutes later the carriages for the pleasure party were at the door.

"Now we've taken all this trouble about her," said Allan, reverting to the governess as they left the house, "I wonder, if she does come today, whether we shall see her at the picnic."

"Depends entirely on her age, Sir," remarked young Pedgift, pronouncing judgment with the happy confidence in himself which eminently distinguished him. "If she's an old one, she'll be knocked up with the journey, and she'll stick | to the cold fowl and the cottage. If she's a young one, either I know nothing of women or the pony in the white harness will bring her to the picnic."

They started for the major's cottage.

THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.*

age, which has also added another quadrangle, in wretched imitation, it is believed, of some part of Versailles. Beyond, you pass into a garden remarkable for its fine masses of varied foliage and its vignette view of Magdalen Tower. Skirting the college and garden is the ancient city wall, here in its most perfect state, and most completely recalling the image of the old feudal town. The style of the college is the earliest perpendicular, marking the entrance of Gothic architecture into the last of its successive phases of beauty, and at the same time the entrance of Medieval Catholicism and the feudal system upon the period of their decline. The special studies prescribed by the founder, which are of a classical character, also mark the dawn of the Renaissance in England some time after its light had begun to fill the sky in the land of Petrarch. This was the age of Gower and Chaucer, the natal hour of modern English literature. With the revival of learning was des-. tined to come a great revolution in the religious sphere. But to this part of the movement Wykeham was no friend. In ecclesiastical matters he was a Conservative. He had come into collision with the early Reformation, and with the precursor of Luther in the person of Wycliffe. He dedicated his two colleges to the Virgin, of whom he was a special devotee, and whose image stands conspicuous in more than one part of the quadrangle. He went beyond the previous founders in making peculiar and sumptuous provision for the performance of the Catholic ritual, with its stoled processions and tapered rites, and in enjoining religious observances and devotions on the members of his college. New College is still distinguished not only

NEW COLLEGE is four centuries and a by the nt choral service. Like many a Catholic

half old. Once it was not only new, but a novelty, and the wonder of its age. This college, and the great school at Winchester attached to it, were the splendid and memorable work of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, who, combining, after the manner of those days, the statesman with the churchman, was the Chancellor, the favorite minister, and the chief diplomatist of Edward III. Loaded with preferment, even to an excess of pluralism, by the favor of his sovereign, he used his accumulated wealth with the munificence which Bacon, childless himself, complacently notes as characteristic of childless men. The founder of New College had originally risen in life and attracted the King's notice by his skill as an architect-a calling not incompatible with the clerical character in an age when the clergy embraced all who wrought not with the hand but with the brain. He had built Windsor Castle; and in founding his own colleges no doubt he gratified the tastes of the architect as well as those of the friend of religion and learning. The chapel, the hall, the cloisters, the tower, the great quadrangle, still bespeak his genius; though the great quadrangle has been somewhat marred by the tastelessness of a later * Concluded from the May Number.

excellent choral service. Like many a Catholic patron and promoter of learning in the epoch preceding the Reformation-like Wolsey, like Sir Thomas More, like Leo X.-Wykeham, in fostering classical literature and intellectual progress, unconsciously forwarded the destruction of all that was most dear to him. He warmed into life the serpent (so he would have thought it) that was to sting his own Church to death.

New College had altogether more the character of an Abbey than the previous foundations. Its warden lived with more of the state of an abbot than the warden of Merton and the other colleges of that type. Its statutes prescribed a more monastic rule of life than previous codes. They regulated more narrowly, not to say more tyrannically, the details of personal conduct, and provided for more of mutual surveillance and denunciation. They forbid any student to go beyond the gates any where, except to the schools of the University, without a companion to keep watch over him. They betray an increased desire to force individual character into a prescribed mould. We may gather from their enactments that in those days, as in these, the student was sometimes led astray from the path of learning and asceticism by the sports and

allurements of an evil world; for they strictly tical and scoffing age, at the head of whom was enjoin abstinence from gambling, hunting, and the modern counterpart of Wycliffe-John Weshawking. Each member of the college is sworn ley. to observe them by oaths which, by their almost portentous rigor and prolixity, seem to betray the advent of an age when, the religious faith of the world having given way, morality had given way with it, and man could no longer put trust in man.

The University, as has been said, appears to have been in a languishing state when New College was founded. Wykeham obtained for his students the peculiar privilege of being examined for their degrees by the college instead of the University, whereby he meant to raise them to a higher pitch of industry, though the privilege proved, in after-times, a charter of idleness. He also provided for instruction by college tutors within the walls.

Facing one way on High Street, the other on the Radclyffe Square, with a fine Gothic front, two quadrangles, and a pair of high towers in debased Gothic style, but very picturesque, stands All Souls College. Over the gateway in High Street are sculptured the souls for whose relief from Purgatory the college was partly founded. Chichele, its founder, was Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of Henry V. Parliament already at that time was moving the Crown to secularize church property and apply it to the defense of the realm. Shakspeare has immortalized the statement of the chroniclers that Archbishop Chichele urged his master to claim the crown of France in order to divert him from attending to these proposals. Some confirmaIn these respects his college was peculiar. It tion of this belief may perhaps be found in the was still more peculiar in its connection with statutes of Chichele's college, which command the famous school which, standing beneath the its members, as a duty more incumbent on them shadow of Winchester Cathedral, casts over boy-even than that of learning, to pray for the souls hood the spell of reverend antiquity. Winches of King Henry V. and such of his companions ter was the first of our English public schools, in arms as "drank the bitter cup of death" in and the archetype of our public school system: the fields of that glorious but unjust, and therea system somewhat severe, taking the boy, al- fore, in its ultimate issue, disastrous war. In most the child, from his home, and throwing after-times, through some unexplained train of him before his hour into a world almost as hard accidents, the college became appropriated to as that with which the man will have to strug- men of high family, and the claims of aristogle; but the parent, no doubt, of some Roman cratic connection are still struggling with those virtues, and the mistress, in part, of our impe- of merit for the possession of the institution. rial greatness.

It is probable that the troubles which interfered with the prosperity of the University had been connected with the rise of Wycliffeism. The arch-heretic was himself the foremost of Oxford teachers and the leader of the ardent intellect of Oxford, as well as of its high spiritual aspirations. It was with great difficulty, and after repeated struggles, that the church authorities succeeded in purifying, if ever they did succeed in purifying, the University of this plague; and our first religious test was directed against this the earliest form of the Protestant religion. Among those who had caught the infection was Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College, a venerable and somewhat sombre pile, close to Exeter. Afterward he grew orthodox, was made a bishop, and, becoming a deadly enemy of the party which he had deserted, founded a theological college specially to combat "that new and pestilent sect, which assailed all the sacraments and all the possessions of the Church." These words are not a bad summary of Wycliffeism, a movement directed at once against the worldly wealth of the Establishment and the sacramental and ceremonial system, which failed any longer to satisfy the religious heart. Whether Bishop Fleming's college contributed much toward the suppression of Protestant heresy in those days we do not know. In the last century it produced a group of students of a serious turn, diligent in religious studies and exercises, and on that account the laughing-stock of their fellow-students in a skep

Chichele had been educated at New College, the statutes of which he to a great extent copied. Another son of the same house, who also copied its statutes, was William of Waynflete, Chancellor of Henry VI., and founder of Magdalen College, which stands beside the river Cherwell, amidst its smooth expanses of lawn and under its immemorial trees, the loveliest of all the homes of learning, the richest in all that is dear to a student's heart. Let one whose youth was passed in that fair house pay his tribute of gratitude and reverence to his founder's shade. In this work, we may believe, the spirit of a statesman-prelate, tossed on the waves of civil war, found relief from the troubles of an unquiet time. Under that gateway, when the tracery, now touched by age, was fresh, and the stone, now gray, was white, passed Richard III., with his crime in his heart. The shadow of his dark presence is in the rooms of state over the gateway, which have just been restored by the college to their pristine magnificence. But pass on, under the cloisters, through the quadrangle, with its tranquil beauty, its level floor of green, and its quaint symbolic figures, and you will come to the walk consecrated by the gentle genius of Addison.

The quadrangle, chapel, and hall are the work of the founder. But the tower, which lends grace to every view of Oxford, is believed to be a monument of the taste and of the soaring genius of Wolsey, who was a Fellow of the college, and the occurrence of whose name is ominous of coming change.