year, and which would make it the brightest one that I have ever seen. Be a prophet, Miss Lascelles, and tell me-which will it be?-the joy or the sorrow?' "He gazed so intently that I had some difficulty in answering with composure: 666 'Perhaps both. We are taught to believe that life is checkered ? ' 666 See,' he went on. This is the beginning of the year. We are standing here safe and happy. Miss Lascelles, where shall we be when the year ends?' "The question seemed to me faithless in a Christian, and puerile in a brave man: I did not say so; but my face may have expressed it, for he changed the subject suddenly, and could not be induced to return to it. I danced twice with him afterwards; and when we parted I said, emphatically : "A happy new year to you, Mr. Manners.' "He forced a smile as he answered, 'Amen!' "Mrs. Dallas (who kindly chaperoned us) slept all the way home; and Miss Dallas and Harriet chatted about their partners. Once only they appealed to me. What first drew my attention was Mr. Manners' name. "Poor Mr. Manners!' Harriet said; 'I am afraid I was very rude to him. He had to console himself with you, eh, Dolly? on the principle of love me love my dog, I suppose?' "Am I so conceited that this had never struck me? And yet-but here comes Harriet, and I must put you away, dear diary. I blush at my voluminousness. If every evening is to take up so many pages, my book will be full at Midsummer! But was not this a red-letter day? George! what a happy time that was! How, in the sweet days of the sweetest of summers, I laughed at your "presentiment?" How you told me that the joy had come, and, reminding me of my own sermon on the checkered nature of life, asked if the sorrow would yet tread it down. Too soon, my love! too soon! Nelly forgive me this outburst. I must write more calmly. It is sad to speak ill of a sister; but surely it was cruel, that she, who had so many lovers, should grudge me my happiness; should pursue George with such unreasonable malice; should rouse the senseless but immovable obstinacy of our poor brother against him. Oh, Eleanor! think of my position! Our father and mother dead; under the care of our only brother, who, as you know, dear Nell, was at one time feared to be a complete idiot, and had, poor boy! only so much sense as to make him sane in the eyes of the law. You know the fatal obstinacy with which he pursued an idea once instilled; the occasional fits of rage that were not less than insanity. Knowing all this, my dear, imagine what I must have suffered when angrily recalled home. I was forbidden to think of Mr. Manners again. In vain I asked for reasons. They had none, and yet a thousand to give me. When I think of the miserable stories that were raked up against him—the misconstruction of everything he did, or said, or left undone-my own impotent indignation, and my poor brother's senseless rage, and the insulting way in which I was watched, and taunted, and tortured-oh, Nelly! it is agony to write. I did the only thing left to me-I gave him up, and prayed for peace. I do not say that I was right: I say that I did the best I could in a state of things that threatened to deprive me of reason. Well may I blush, dear Nell, to re-read this girlish nonsense. And yet it con- My submission did not produce an tains not the least strange part of this amount of harmony in the house in any strange story-poor Mr. Manners' pre-way proportionate to the price I paid sentiment of evil. After this he called constantly, and we met him often in society; and, blinded by I know not what delusion, Harriet believed him to be devoted to herself, up to the period, as I fancy, when he asked me to be his wife. I was staying with the Tophams at the time. I believe that they had asked me there on purpose, being his friend. Ah, for it. Harriet was obliged to keep the slanders of my lover constantly in view, to quiet the self-reproach which I think she must sometimes have experienced. As to Edmund, my obedience had somewhat satisfied him, and made way for another subject of interest which was then engrossing his mind. A man on his estate, renting a farm close to us, who was a Quaker, and very | thing that happened with the utmost dis"strict" in his religious profession, had tinctness. I spent the day chiefly in the been for a long time grossly cheating garden, gathering roses for pot-pourri, him, relying, no doubt, on my poor being disinclined for any more reasonabrother's deficient intellect. But minds ble occupation, partly by the thundery that are intellectually and in reason de- oppressiveness of the air, partly by a ficient, are often endowed with a large vague, dull feeling of dread that made share of cunning and caution, especially me restless, and which was yet one of in monetary affairs. Edmund guessed, those phases of feeling in which if life watched, and discovered; but when the depended on an energetic movement one proof was in his hands, his proceedings must trifle. In this mood, when the were characteristically peculiar. He did foreclouded mind instinctively shrinks not discharge the man, and have done from its own great troubles, little things with it; he retained him in his place, assume an extraordinary distinctness. I but seemed to take a - let me sayin- trode carefully in the patterns of the tersane delight in exposing him to the reli- race pavement, counted the roses on the gious circle in which he had been a star, white bush by the dial (there were twenand from which he was ignominously ty-six), and seeing a beetle on the path, expelled; and in heaping every possible moved it to a bank at some distance. annoyance and disgrace upon him that There it crept into a hole, and such a the circumstances admitted. My dear, wild, weary desire seized on me to creep I think I should have preferred his wrath after it and hide from what was coming, upon myself, to being the witness of my that-I thought it wise to go in. brother's miserable exultation over the wretched man, Parker. His chief gratification lay in the thought that, exquisite as were the vexations he heaped upon him, the man was obliged to express gratitude for his master's forbearance as regarded the law. "He said he should never forget my consideration for him till death! ha!" Ha! As I sat in the drawing-room there was a rose still whole in my lap. I had begun to pluck off the petals, when the door-bell rang. Though I heard the voice distinctly when the door was opened, I vow to you, dear Nell, that my chief desire was to get the rose pulled to pieces before I was disturbed. I had flung the last petal into my lap, when the door opened and Mr. Manners came into the room. He did not speak; he opened his arms, and I ran straight into them, roses and all. The petals rained over us and over the floor. He talked very fast, and I did nothing but cling to him, and endure in silence the weight which his presence could not remove from my mind, while he pleaded passionately for our marriage. He said that it was the extreme of all that was unreasonable, that our lives' sane freak of a hardly responsible mind. happiness should be sacrificed to the inHe complained bitterly (though I could but confess justly!) of the insulting and intolerable treatment that he had received. He had come, he said, in the first place, to assure himself of my constancy-in the second, for a powerful and final remonstrance with my brotherand, if that failed, to remind me that I should be of age next month; and to convey the entreaty of the Tophams that, as a last resource, I would come to them and be married from their house. I made up my mind, and promised; then I im-1 It may have been half-past six when Mr. Manners arrived; it had just struck a quarter to nine when Edmund came in and found us together. He paused for a minute, clicking his tongue in his mouth, in a way he had when excited; and then he turned upon me, and heaped abuse on insult, loading me with accusations and reproaches. George, white with suppressed rage, called incessantly upon me to go; and at last I dared disobey no longer; but as I went I touched his arm and whispered, "Remember! for my sake." His intense "I promise, my darling," comforted me then- and afterwards, Nelly. I went into a little room that opened into the hall and waited. In about twenty minutes the drawingroom door opened and they came out. I heard George's voice saying this or something equivalent (afterwards I could not accurately recall the words): "Good-night, Mr. Lascelles; I trust our next meeting may be a different one." The next sentences on both sides I lost. Edmund seems to have refused to shake hands with Mr. Manners. The last words I heard were George's half-laughing: for your "Next time, Lascelles, I shall not ask hand-I shall take it." Then the door shut, and Edmund went into his study. An hour later he also went out, and I was left alone once more. I went back into the drawing-room; the rose leaves were fading on the floor; and on the table lay George Manners' penknife. It was a new one, that he had been showing to me, and had left behind him. I kissed it and put it in my pocket: then I knelt down by the chair, Nell, and wept till I prayed; and then prayed till I wept again; and then I got up and tidied the room, and got some sewing; and, like other women, sat down with my trouble, waiting for the storm to break. It broke at eleven o'clock that night, when two men carried the dead body of my brother into his own kitchen-foully murdered. But when I knelt by the poor body, lying awfully still upon the table; when I kissed the face, which in death had curiously regained the appearance of reason as well as beauty; when I saw and knew that life had certainly gone till the Resurrection: that was not all. The storm had not fully broken till I turned and saw, standing by the fire, George Manners, with his hands and coat dabbled with blood. I did not speak or scream; but a black horror seemed to settle down like mist upon me. Through it came Mr. Manners' voice (I had not looked again at him): "Miss Dorothy Lascelles, why do you not ask who did it?" I gave a sharp cry, and one of the laborers who had helped to bring Edmund in, said gravely: "Eh! Master! the less you say the better. God forgive you this night's work!" George's hoarse voice spoke again. 66 Do you hear him?" and then it faltered a little-"Dorolice, do you think this?" It was his pet name for me, (he was an Italian scholar,) and touched me inexpressibly, and a conviction seized upon me that if he had done it, he would not have dared to appeal to my affection. I tried to clear my mind that I might see the truth, and then I looked up at him. Our eyes met, and we looked at each other for a full minute, and I was content. Oh! there are times when the instinctive trust of one's heart is so far more powerful than any proofs or reasons, that faith seems a higher knowledge. I would have pledged ten thousand lives, if I had had them, on the honesty of those eyes, that had led me like a will-o'-thewisp in the ball-room half a year ago! The new year's dance came back on me as I stood there-my ball dress was in the drawer up stairs-and now! oh dear! was I going mad? Chambers's Journal. THE present generation of untravelled Englishmen know little by experience of the important difference which exists between paper-money and coin. Our national credit has, on the whole, been good for a very long period, and although ous month, and, along with some of the here and there banks have broken, and clergy, who threw in their lot with them, their paper has become depreciated, the constituted themselves into a National disturbance of the public confidence Assembly. This event may be said to which has ensued has seldom been more mark the date when the old régime than temporary and local. Few can now ceased, and the new order of things was say that they remember the time when inaugurated. There was still a king in they looked suspiciously at a five-pound France, but after this the unfortunate Bank of England note, and gave them- Louis reigned only in name. The Revoselves no rest until they had changed it|lution was accomplished. The Democinto five golden sovereigns. The tremendous struggle going on in America, however, is familiarizing our minds with a distinction which, happily, we have not had to learn at our own cost. A new name has been added to the vocabulary of the money-market. Every reader of the newspapers knows that the Federal States are at present flooded with "greenbacks ;" and all who know so much are aware of this also, that since these came to form the principal circulating medium in that country, the value of the paper-money has sunk to less than one half of its nominal value in coin; that is to say, suppose a similar depreciation to exist here, we should have to pay a five-pound note for perhaps no more than forty shillings in sil ver. What will be the final issue of this financial disturbance, it would be very difficult to say, and it is not our purpose here to furnish any particular theory on the subject. But, in connection with the discussion of a problem which so many feel to be at once an interesting and an important one, our readers may be glad to have some information supplied to them regarding the origin and history of the famous ASSIG NATS -the French greenbacks, with which the leaders of the first Revolution fed their armies, and carried on the gigantic work which fell to their hands to perform. The times change, and we change with them; and there are many points in which the cases are not at all parallel. But we shall be surprised if the two stories, when they are both finished, do not throw some light upon each other; and, at any rate, what we have to tell will afford a solider basis than many at present have for their speculations about the future. racy was master. It was no easy task, however, which the sovereign people had thus taken into their own hands. Before that eventful year had closed, they found difficulties of every kind to deal with, and duties and responsibilities of every description. to discharge. For one thing, the treasury was empty; and with the court to be kept up, and the Paris populace to feed, and the business of the country to be carried on, it behooved them to find money somewhere. A new impost was of course the natural way of getting what they wanted, but the National Assembly, like the American Congress of our own times, exhibited a very decided disinclination to resort to further taxation. A simpler method of raising a revenue was suggested to them, and finally adopted. The illustrious example of Henry VIII. was followed. The church of France had vast territorial possessions; these, by a sweeping decree of the Assembly, were declared to belong to, and to be at the disposal of, the state; and out of this mine of wealth, so lightly got, and so extensive, not only was enough procured to meet their pres ent necessities, but those immense financial resources were obtained which upheld for a long period the schemes and enterprises of the Revolution. Some ingenuity was required, however, to turn the new-found property to account. Ready money was wanted, and to get this, the estates of the church had to be sold; but to have brought them all into the market at once, would have been, of course, in the last degree impolitic, since their value would have been thereby sensibly affected. A device was therefore resorted to, which is said to have been first suggested by On the 17th of June, 1789, the depu- Bailly, the mayor of Paris, and which, ties of the Tiers état retired from the while it kept up the price of the land, States-general, which had assembled at put the administration in immediate posVersailles in the beginning of the previ-session of a new circulating medium. The property of the clergy was transferred in the mass to the various municipalities throughout the country; and by them the contiguous estates were sold in detail, and as purchasers offered. At first, the municipal authorities had no money to pay for the possessions with which they were invested, and they gave bills at varying dates instead; but as the land was taken up, and the proceeds came into their hands, they became gradually possessed of funds, and thus able to meet the obligations which they had undertaken. These bills, then, which the government held, were of unquestionable value, and might have been paid away at any time as an equivalent for coin; but they were usually of large amount, and the state had many creditors to whom it owed smaller sums. To meet their case, therefore, and also to protect the municipalities against a too great or early pressure, a subsidiary arrangement was entered into. The large bills were broken up, as it were, into a number of smaller promissory-notes, and these receiving the name of bons, furnished the first notion of the assignat. ing the revenue, and many were the ar- Given This expedient, however, gave only partial satisfaction and relief. When a But the French government had creditor of the state got a bon paid over learned a dangerous secret. It is so to him, he received what was capable of much easier to roll money off a printingbeing exchanged for something of real machine than to dig it out of a mine, or value; but that something might be wring it out of a nation by taxes, that nothing else than land, and he might not there must always be a temptation to choose to become the owner of that kind follow the first method, if it can be safely of property, or he might think the Rev- put into operation at all; and in the olution not so certainly accomplished as course which was now followed, Paris, to be able to give him a secure title to we may say, showed an example which it; or he might have conscientious scru- Washington has been only too ready to ples about laying his hand on the patri- follow. The time came soon enough mony of the church, and in his hand the when the national treasury required to paper would be practically inconvertible. be again replenished, and Mirabeau proIt was necessary, therefore, for the sake posed the short and easy plan of issuing of such persons, and for other reasons, eight hundred or a thousand million to advance a further step in the devel- more assignats. This motion was, of opment of the scheme. The Assembly course, resisted by many; and among must give to the assignat the faculty of others, by Talleyrand, who delivered a circulation. This, after some discussion, remarkable speech in opposition to it. was done; and four hundred millions of Those who remember the relief-the what was now to all intents and pur- sense of positive fulness and wealthposes paper-money, were sent forth from which was experienced in America after the national treasury; the only difference the first creation of greenbacks, will not between an assignat and an ordinary be surprised to hear that similar results bank-note being this, that the former followed in France. The four hundred professed to carry interest along with it. millions which had been formerly sent Of course, the clergy opposed them-out, had just been so much money added selves vehemently to this plan of increas- to the currency and apparent means of |