Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key; but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of man she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are some that, to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have received her mark upon their foreheads.

But the third Sister, who is also the youngest-! Hush! whisper whilst we talk of her! Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She droops not; and her eyes, rising so high, might be hidden by distance. But, being what they are, they cannot be hidden: through the treble veil of crape which she wears the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the very ground. She is the defier of God. She also is the mother of lunatics, and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest Sister moves with incalculable motions, bounding, and with tiger's leaps. She carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum,—our Lady of Darkness. These were the Semnai Theai or Sublime Goddesses,

these were the Eumenides or Gracious Ladies (so called by antiquity in shuddering propitiation), of my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke by her mysterious hand. Touching my head, she beckoned to Our Lady of Sighs; and what she spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in dreams) no man reads, was this:

"Lo! here is he whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled; and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of Sighs! Do thou take him now to thy heart, and season him for our dreadful sister. And thou,"turning to the Mater Tenebrarum, she said,-"wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do thou take him from her. See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope; wither the relenting of love; scorch the fountains of tears; curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall he be accomplished in the furnace; so shall he see the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. And so shall our commission be accomplished which before God we had,-to plague his heart until we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit."

WILLIAM COBBETT

HAZLITT in The Spirit of the Age has written the best characterization of Cobbett, an impressionistic sketch done in a happy hour by a master whose subject was to his liking. The two men had traits in common. Both were strongly individual; both were good haters; both enjoyed life tremendously, and extracted from it every scruple of its simple pleasures. Politically they were not unsympathetic, at least in Cobbett's latter days when he had become a radical. Yet the differences in men of such marked character are inevitably outstanding. Cobbett was the most admirable of husbands and fathers, in which capacities Hazlitt, it is clear, cannot be counted a success. And the robust, early-rising, temperate Cobbett would have looked upon Hazlitt's immoderate consumption of strong tea with disgust.

The mental backgrounds of the two are, of course, diverse. Cobbett was self-educated and, in the polite sense, despite his strong mind, uncultured. There were

not many books which he greatly admired; and these were of a practical sort pertaining to trees and agriculture. His references to Shakespeare are sometimes slighting and he seems to have had little appreciation of poetry and the arts. Trees and a fertile landscape he loved; he had an expert's eye for the state of the crops, the character of soils, and all matters relevant to the business of farming. His is the self-made man's contempt for the polite acquisitions of society, for institutional learning, for the arts and graces. Not only does he think them of little worth in themselves but he remembers always the common laborer whose toil makes

them possible, the laborer who in Cobbett's day too often got no more than nine or eight, or even seven shillings a week for his toil.

Cobbett's Political Register, the journal which he edited, was for many years a power in England. No other man had, perhaps, so large a personal following. Few had so great an influence in molding the popular mind to the need and methods of political reform. He wrote prodigiously on political and agricultural topics. Were all his writings to be collected and published they would fill a hundred volumes. Inevitably much of this writing is of interest nowadays only to historians. His English grammar, vastly popular for many years, and his book on French which embodies his sensible methods for mastering that language, are now superseded. It is to his Rural Rides and the delightful Advice to Young Men and (Incidentally) to Young Women that the modern reader will turn for an expression of his racy personality. Like all good writers Cobbett stamps everything he does with his own peculiar genius. He is prodigal of himself. All that he reports and all his arguments are colored with his idiosyncrasies and prejudices and illustrated with anecdotes drawn from his experience. His autobiography is written in every paragraph.

Cobbett has, then, style, for it is as though the man's voice sounded from the written page. It is a downright, vigorous, racy style free from all literary influences. He had a masterly command of English idiom and the instinct of a good writer for the word suited to his sense and his audience. This audience was one of little education, men essentially much like himself. He was their voice. Through him the agricultural worker became articulate. He surpassed them in range and power, of

, for he was an exceptional man, but he felt with

them and liked them. Despite his many volumes and his great celebrity he remained to the end of his life a son of the soil, fearful and contemptuous of great cities; London he called the Wen. The rise of the manufacturing classes, the vast increase in England's material wealth stirred in him none of the enthusiasm of the new school of political economists. He looked deeper to the condition of the masses whom this wealth did not benefit. That England could never return to the old and better order of things which he had known as a boy he did not appreciate. His remedies for the ills of the Industrial Revolution would not have sufficed had he been given the power to administer them. But men of greater knowledge than his were equally unable to cope with the new and complicated problems of the machine age.

FROM RURAL RIDES

REIGATE, (SURREY), Saturday, 26 July, 1823.

Came from the Wen, through Croydon. It rained nearly all the way. The corn is good. A great deal of straw. The barley very fine; but all are backward; and, if this weather continue much longer, there must be that "heavenly blight" for which the wise friends of "social order" are so fervently praying. But if the wet now cease, or cease soon, what is to become of the "poor souls of farmers" God only knows! In one article the wishes of our wise government appear to have been gratified to the utmost; and that, too, without the aid of any express form of prayer. I allude to the hops, of which, it is said, that there will be, according to all appearance, none at all! Bravo! Courage, my Lord Liverpool! This article, at any rate, will not choak us, will not distress us, will not make us miserable