him home." And then we read how the eager wayfarer beckoned with his hand, and waved his hat, and cheered out, loud, as if the light were they, and they could see and hear him, as he dashed towards them through the mud and mire, triumphantly.* John Galt drenches his Andrew Wylie to the skin, and appals him with a thunderstorm, and overwhelms him with despair, all in one page, ere he suffers the downcast wight to "discover a light at some distance. It was low, dim, and red; but it was to him like the hospitable eye of a friend, and he rose and walked cautiously towards it. In a short time he found himself again in the forest, but still the light was beaming and alluring him forward"t-and the pawky carle took care rather to force his way through brambles and all kinds of unkindly underwood, than, by deviating from his rugged path, to lose sight of that friendly gleam. Lord Lytton in like manner drenches Philip and Sidney Morton in a midnight storm-the younger brother sinking, tired and worn-out, on the roadside. Darkness is above them, and all around them,-darkness that may be felt. But suddenly in the distance there "gleamed a red, steady light, like that in some solitary window; it was no will-o'-thewisp, it was too stationary"-human shelter was then nearer than Philip had dared think for;‡ and with hope revived, he bade Sidney look up, and hope too. Janet Dempster, in "George Eliot's" story, is made to tread slowly with her naked feet on the rough pavement, the night her husband has turned her out of doors into "the stony street, the bitter north-east wind and darkness"-supporting herself by the wall, as the gusts of wind (for the very wind is cruel that night) drive right against her. The glimmer of a rushlight from a room where a friend is lying, is like a ray of mercy to Janet, after that long, long time of darkness and loneliness.§ A living divine-of note for a successful head-mastership at Harrow, and for the rare fact that really and truly he noluit Episcopari-has moralised on the thought how great a difference there is between a little light and none, when you have lost your way, even on almost familiar ground. You go round and round, and grope for this object or that, but all is darkness, and you begin to fear you must spend the long hours of night shelterless. "At last a feeble glimmering becomes perceptible in a distant quarter: a rushlight in a cottage window, a lantern in a farmhouse shed, it is enough for hope in that perplexity: you make for it, and you are safe." And of course the deeper you are in a quite unknown lucus (a non lucendo), the more precious any the tiniest lux becomes, however distant and however dim." Follow Mr. Charles Reade's hero, Gerard Eliassoen, into the German forest, a benighted stranger, groping his way in what seemed to him an interminable and inky cave with a rugged floor, on which he stumbled and stumbled as he went: on, and on, and on, with shivering limbs, and empty stomach, and fainting heart, till the wolves rose from their lairs and bayed all round the wood; and Gerard's excited ear heard light feet *The Battle of Life, part ii. † Sir Andrew Wylie, ch. xlvi. Night and Morning, book ii. ch. x. Scenes of Clerical Life: Janet's Repentance, ch. xv. VOL. LXI. 2 D patter at times over the newly fallen leaves, and low branches rustle with creatures gliding swiftly past them. Presently in the sea of ink there was a great fiery star close to the ground. He hailed it as he would a patron saint. CANDLE! a CANDLE !* he shouted, and tried to run; but the dark and rugged way soon stopped that. The light was more distant than he had thought; but at last in the very heart of the forest he found a house with lighted candles and loud voices inside it."† Dr. Croly's Salathiel, benighted and stumbling on the dark mountains, with a torrent bellowing before him, and a wall of rock on the opposite side, chafing the while at ruinous delay,-strains his aching gaze in vain for some little candle's far-thrown beams. "After long climbings and descents, I found that I had descended too deep to return. Oh, how I longed for the trace of man, for the feeblest light that ever twinkled from cottage window !" One recals Thomson's autumnal night picture : Drear is the state of the benighted wretch, Who then, bewildered, wanders through the dark, From cottage streaming, or from airy hall.§ In another poem Thomson pictures Selvaggio pricking through the forest, before daybreak: Deep in the winding bosom of a lawn, With wood wild fringed, he marked a taper's ray, Did to a lonely cot his steps decoy. It burns on, Always rememberable by readers of "Jane Eyre" is the scene of the fugitive girl's night wanderings on the moors-wet through-hungry, faint, cold, and desolate. In vain her glazed eye is strained over the dim and misty landscape. It remains at last only to find a hollow where she can lie down; but all the surface of the waste seems level. Her eye is still roving over the drenched ground, and along the moor-edge, that vanishes amid wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in among the marshes and the ridges, a light springs up. "That is an ignis fatuus," is Jane's first thought; and she expects it will soon vanish. however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing. "It may be a candle in a house," she then conjectures; "but if so, I can never reach it." And she sinks down where she stood, and hides her face against the ground, and lies still awhile; the night-wind sweeps over her, and dies moaning in the distance. Anon she rises: the light is yet there; shining dim, but constant, through the rain. She tries to walk again, and drags her exhausted limbs slowly towards it. "It led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog; which would have been impassable in winter, and was plashy and shaking even now, in the height of summer. Here I fell twice; but as often I rose and rallied my faculties. This light was my forlorn hope: I must gain it."¶ As gain it at last she does. *The capitals are of course Mr. Reade's own peculiar. He is given to all sorts of tricks in typography. The Cloister and the Hearth, ch. xxiv. § The Seasons: Autumn. Jane Eyre, ch. xxxviii. In one of the fictions published by Miss Braddon before "Lady Audley's Secret," and probably more audaciously and systematically sensational than any of its successors, how many or how sensational soever they be, there is a wild scene on a dreary heath, in a midnight storm-a dying man in a hovel, to which a girl is hastening, dripping wet with the pelting rain. "The feeble glimmer of the candle with the drooping wick, sputtering in a pool of grease, is the only light which illumines that cheerless neighbourhood. The girl's heart beats with a terrible flutter as she approaches that light, for an agonising doubt is in her soul about that other light; which she left so feebly burning, and which may be now extinct."* A lady-novelist of quite another school-almost as fertile a writer as Miss Braddon, and perhaps not so very much a less popular one (for it argues a prominent popularity to be selected to write the story in Good Words)-makes much in her latest fiction of a certain light in the mansion, as watched by a certain young lady in the cottage. Winnie is again and again depicted in wistful scrutiny of the light at Sir Edward's -betokening the presence of one who is provokingly absent from her. "The light in Sir Edward's window shone afar off on the tree-tops, shedding an irritating influence upon Winnie when she looked up." And again: "Sir Edward's window still threw its distant light over the treetops, and the sight of it made her smouldering passion blaze." And later: "From the moment when she had seen Sir Edward's window suddenly gleam into the twilight, matters had changed."-" And when Sir Edward's windows were lighted once more, and the certainty that he [Captain Percival] was not coming penetrated her mind, Winnie clenched her pretty hands, and went crazy for the moment with despite and vexation."† Chateaubriand's René reclines at nightfall on a rock, and listens to the murmur of the waves, as he fixes his gaze on the sombre walls of the monastery within which his Amelia is immured. "Une petite lumière paraissait à la fenêtre grillée. Etait-ce toi, o mon Amélie, qui, prosternée au pied du crucifix, priais le Dieu des orages d'épargner ton malheureux frère?" Mr. Thackeray's last hero, Denis Duval-the narrative of whose career, with its lamented author's, was cut short too soon, so much too soon-being wisely counselled by good old Doctor Bernard against continuing the smuggling practices into which his innocent boyhood had been inveigled, makes a vow, the same night, after drinking tea with his dear doctor, that he will strive henceforth to lead an honest life-that his tongue shall speak the truth, and his hand be sullied by no secret crime. "And as I spoke," he writes, in the tender retrospect of some threescore years, "I saw my dearest little maiden's light glimmering in her chamber, and the stars shining overhead, and felt-who could feel more bold and happy than I? "That walk schoolwards by West-street [where dwelt Agnes, the little maiden of his regards] certainly was a détour. I might have gone a *The Trial of the Serpent, ch. v. † Madonna Mary, by Mrs. Oliphant, ch. xiv., xv., xvi. passim. straighter road, but then I should not have seen a certain window; a little twinkling window in a gable of the Priory House, where the light used to be popped out at nine o'clock." Mrs. Inchbald, who was one of Dr. Warren's patients, was secretly in love with that most engaging of physicians, and used to pace Sackvillestreet after dark, purely to have the pleasure of seeing the light in his window. That is a town picture. But the heart of man (and woman) is alike, in town and country; and here is a country one: (what though the one be fact, and the other fiction? c'est égal, where the heart is concerned :) And oft in ramblings on the wold, And full at heart of trembling hope, Here again we are in the streets : The sunset wanes From twinkling panes. Dim, misty myriads move Down glimmering streets. One light I see- And lights me to my love.§ * "T'other day, when we took over the King of France to Calais (his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence being in command), I must needs hire a postchaise from Dover, to look at that old window in the Priory House at Winchelsea. I sighed as sentimentally, after forty years, as though the infandi dolores were fresh upon me, as though I were the schoolboy trudging back to his task, and taking a last look at his dearest joy."-Denis Duval, ch. vi. † See Leigh Hunt's Old Court Suburb, ch. ix. Tennyson, The Miller's Daughter. Owen Meredith's Poems, p. 352. 397 CLEMENT'S TROUBLE. STRANGERS who came into the little village of M- were much surprised to find there a large community of Roman Catholics; large in comparison with the rest of the population, who, members of the Church of England and of various Protestant sects, did not number more than one third of the whole. The Roman Catholic chapel was a much better kept and much prettier building than the barn-like English church, and the congregation which gathered around Father Dolan was more numerous than that which sat at the feet of the Rev. John Fulword. This preponderance of members of a foreign Church was due to the neighbourhood of a large and influential family who had been Roman Catholics from the first moment when England separated from the rest of the Catholic world, and who lived on from generation to generation surrounded by servants and retainers of their own faith. And connected by marriage and other ties with the great family were several gentlemen's families who, living on their own property and keeping up old traditions, made a little circle and society of their own. Among these families was one, the wealthiest of them, of the name of Cavanagh. The Cavanaghs were of course originally Irish people, but they had lived in England during more than two hundred years, and were now thoroughly English. At the time of which I am about to write the family consisted of Mr. Cavanagh, his wife, his unmarried sister, and his nine children, of whom the eldest, Dora, was just eighteen. There were other Cavanaghs dispersed about the world, but Mr. Charles Fitzgerald Cavanagh was the head of the family, and drew his income of 40007. a year from his beautiful estate of High Oakfield. His eldest boy was at Eton, and his seven younger children were still in the hands of their nurses and their nursery governess; so Dora only was much known in the village, and led a rather lonely and rather wild life among her flowers and her poor people, her dogs and her priests. Mrs. Cavanagh was somewhat of an invalid, and left Dora very much to her own resources and to Clement's care. Attached to the Cavanaghs had always been the family from which Clement sprang; his uncle had been chaplain to the late Mr. Cavanagh, and Father Dolan was his mother's cousin, while Canon Foley was his father's uncle. So that Clement came of a family of priests, and had been always educated in the idea and intention of himself entering into holy orders. He was an orphan, and resided in Mr. Cavanagh's house, and the only reason why he was not already in the priesthood was that his health had been delicate, and he was recommended perfect quiet. before devoting himself to the final studies preparatory to his ordi nation. Mr. Cavanagh's house was a very pleasant one, everything went so smoothly and pleasantly in it; they were a good-tempered set of people, perhaps rather too easy-going, but money was plentiful, and no one ever thought it right or necessary to be disagreeable. There were all the ingredients necessary for a happy household, and I doubt if any sighs were ever heard in the green arbours and mossy walks of High Oakfield. Cer |