"What are they-what do they seem to be like?" "They're awful, sir," the Colonel responded, sinking his voice still lower, and lighting a fresh cigar; for his eccentricities being known, he was always permitted to smoke in the house-agent's office. "There are two on 'em, sir; but they're never seen together. There's a tall handsome lady in a night-dress, and her hair hanging down, for all the world like Lady Macbeth, and she seems to hold something like the shadow of a stick or a switch in her hand. She's generally to be seen gliding up and down the great staircase. Then there's another: a poor, pale, delicatelooking lad, in little loose pants, and blue rosettes in his shoes, and a point-lace collar. But there seems to be stains of ink and stains of blood on his hands, and his face, and his collar, and the paper on which he is writing, always writing, at a little table in the bay-window of the hall; but there ain't no real table there; it's a phantom table, sir, and it's all over Blood." No amount of persuasion could persuade Colonel Pyke to remain at Gashleigh Court. The offer was made for him to take it at a reduced rate; but he said that Mrs. P.'s "nuvs," or nerves, couldn't stand the racket, and that he had had a belly ful of ghosts, which would last him for the term of his natural life. He went away, and the family resumed their wanderings up and down the earth. They are now, I believe, domiciliated in the neighbourhood of Simpheropol in the Crimea, where they grow capital champagne grapes, are much respected by the neighbouring Tartars, and enjoy themselves like jovial, kind-hearted cosmopolitans as they are. With the Pyke occupancy ended the last attempt to let Gashleigh Court. My lord, in profound disgust with his haunted property, sold the whole concern, stock, lock, and barrel, to the Ultra-Democratic and Universally Philanthropic Freehold Land and Building Society; and the directors thereof proceeded to lay out the demesne of Gashleigh, and some contiguous acres, in compact building-lots. Gashleigh Court came down last year. The workmen had a hard job to demolish it; for the old house was very tough, and the joists and rooftree of the hardest Spanish chestnut. To fragments, however, it came at last. The building materials were sold in lots; but the place "stripped," to use the technical term, most remuneratively, and portions of the windows, the panelling, and the carved mantel-pieces of Gashleigh Court, found their way in due time into some of the most aristocratic and expensive "ruination shops" in the Strand, Holborn, and Piccadilly. While they were dismantling the bay-window of the great hall, the workmen happened to notice that in the sill was fitted a kind of deep narrow chest or locker. It was securely nailed down; but at last they managed to raise the lid, which was on hinges, towards the window. The locker appeared to be crammed full of earth and stones; but removing these the workmen found, at a depth of about two feet, a mass of papers, manuscript books stripped of their covers, and which seemed to have been schoolboys' copy-books of very old date. The pattern handwriting at the head of the copies was angular, crabbed, but bold and symmetrical; the imitations beneath were most lamentable pothooks and hangers the feeblest and most staggering of childish scrawls. There were at least twenty of these books; but every page of every one of them was discoloured by dusky smears and blots. Mr. Snape, the surgeon of the village, took occasion to examine these smeared and blotted manuscripts attentively. He even subjected them to the test of the microscope. He gave it as his opinion that most of the discolorations arose from blots of ink, from which the original hue had long since faded. But there were several darker, browner spots about the copy-books, and these Mr. Snape authoritatively declared were neither more nor less than spots of Human Blood. And now I feel slightly in a difficulty. My memory (seldom very trustworthy) has suddenly failed me in two most essential particulars. I can remember the occurrence, but I can't recollect when it is said to have occurred, or whereabouts I saw it narrated. I am completely at sea as to time and place. Was it in King James's time, or in Queen Anne's? Was it in King Charles's, the First or the Second? Did I find the story in one of those ponderous tomes of County History which cumber the lower shelves of the Library of Reference in the British Museum Readingroom? or did I stumble across it in an old volume of the Mirror-in God's Revenge against Murder-in a collection of antiquated newspaper cuttings in the back number of a defunct magazine-or where? Treacherous memory, what a trick thou hast served me! At all events, there is an unnumbered, unknown closet in my head, from which I draw a skeleton with yellow bones and grinning skull; and I remember me that I have read this: That hundreds of years ago— under what king or queen I know not, but in days when gentlefolks wore point-lace collars, rosettes in their shoes, and rapiers at their sides, and gentlewomen kirtles and farthingales-there dwelt in a certain Court-even then old fashioned-in an English shire a Lady Barbara Livingstone. Her lord, a stately knight of long line, practised in all courtly arts and martial exercises, and much beloved by his prince, had been for years in Italy, Resident from the English Crown to the Most Serene Republic of Venice. That even if his Embassy came to an end, it was not within likelihood that he would return to the Court, for that the Lady Barbara and he pulled not well together. "Duro con duro,” says the Italian proverb, "non mai fan muro." He was haughty, and she was haughty; both had an evil temper, and so concluded that the wisest thing they could do, to avoid the scandal of unseemly broils ending in a public separation, was to live apart. That the Lady Barbara had an only child-a delicate boy with fair hair, for whom she entertained much stern love, but reared him nevertheless with exceeding and unvarying harshness, ofttimes correcting him not only with reproofs and chid ings, but with blows and stripes. That she so reared him till he was nine years of age. That the boy, though quick and dexterous at most of the sports of his age, and besides of a ready wit and playful fancy, was at mere book-learning a hopeless dullard. That his mother, the stern Lady Barbara, declared his dullness to be obstinacy; would often push away Mr. Marrable (the child's tutor), who was likewise her chaplain, saying that he was too gentle with the dunce, and that she would show him how so wilful and headstrong a colt should be broken in; and would thereupon scourge him cruelly. That she often beat the child till he bled. That his principal fault in learning was in his writing; and that neither threats nor punishment could cure him of besmearing his copies with inky blots. That one fatal November night his mother, who had kept him writing, writing, writing, at a little table in the bay-window of the great hall, without food or respite for many weary hours-to the plentiful down-falling of tears, and, alas, of ink-blots on his copy-booksdeclared, that if he were kept there till morning dawned, he should produce a page of handwriting free from blots; and that she would cure him of his slovenliness, or Kill him. That she set him a copy and went to bed. That she came in an hour's time in her nightrail down the great oak staircase, and found the boy crying over his task, which, woe! was full of blots. That, with a stick or switch, often used for that dreadful purpose, she beat him mercilessly. That she so came down, so found him full of tears and ink, and so beat him, eleven times during that night. That all the boy said, between his plaintive moans, was, "Don't, mother; don't!" That, at cock-crow, when for the twelfth time she had come down, and was again about to beat the child, Mr. Marrable, the chaplain, who had been waked from his bed by the victim's moans, rushed from his hiding place, and, wrenching the rod from her hand, cried, "Woman, for JESUS' sake, for His sake that was scourged, forbear, and stay thy bloody hand!" But that it was too late, for that the little lad lay at her feet quite still and motionless; and that guileless tormented spirit had found peace. That she cried out in a dreadful voice, "He is Dead, and I am Mad!" and that she did indeed become distraught, and so raved until her dying day; and that her lord coming home from Venice wept many bitter tears over the boy's grave, but would never look more upon the face of his lady, to whom he gave a name such as was given to Cain. But that who put the tear-bedewed, blood-stained copy-books into the locker by the window-sill (unless indeed it was the Reverend Mr. Marrable, in his perturbation to hush the matter up, and hide all evidence of the dismal deed), was never known. This is the story I read, but I cannot remember where. It does not matter now. The demesne of Gashleigh is a most eligible site, and will ere long be covered with semi-detached villas, designed by the Architectin-ordinary to the Ultra-Democratic and Universally Philanthropic Freehold Land and Building Society. New Notes from Old Strings. No. IV. "The glorious picture vanisheth away."-SPENSER. Shifting its prospect to a thousand hues." / ADDISON, Epilogue to British Enchantress. "And all the shapes of that grand scenery shifted." SHELLEY, Revolt of Islam. The world's political changes resemble slowly-dissolving views, with this remarkable difference,-that those behind the scenes know pretty nearly as little of what is to follow next as those before them. "Mais la fresque est pressante, et veut sans complaisance La sévère rigueur de ce moment qui passe Aux erreurs d'un pinceau ne fait aucune grace." MOLIERE, La Gloire du Val de Grace. The political philosopher may paint in oils, and retouch; th practical statesman must, for the most part, paint in fresco, and be quick about it, with the chance that some other statesman may be spoiling his pattern, and making, after the fashion of Italian decoration, the fair human face and bust end in a foolish stick of crisped celery. "On any point if you dispute, Depend upon it, he'll refute; Change sides, you but increase your pain, For he'll confute you back again."-PRIOR, Alma. ' "J'ai voté, dans un jour, Dix fois contre, et dix fois pour."-BERANGER. These men are thimble-riggers, and do not mean you to know under which thimble the pea of truth, or of their sincere opinion, is hidden. They remind us of Charles V., who made his secretaries write letters of directly opposite import, for fear of betrayal, and attached his signature in private to one of them, burning the others; or of the Persian heir, who, when the Shah is dead, causes three royal coffins to be fitted up; "which of them is to contain the royal body the vulgar are not permitted to know" (Fowler's Persia). "The croaking of frogs and toads is hushed and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the light of a candle."-JEREMY TAYLOR, On the Good and Evil Tongue. I think it is the younger Buckland who has recently stated the same VOL. IX. PP fact. However, political croakers often croak none the less, but rather all the louder, for the light. "All is complete, and my head is broke, according to prophecy. Oh, admirable Chaldean !"-SHIRLEY, The Sisters. Political croakers would generally rather share in a calamity than fail in a prediction. "Orlando l' elmo gli levò dal viso, E ritrovò che 'l capo sino al naso ARIOSTO, Orlando Furioso. With skull split from the crown to the nose, the infidel manages to murmur out a confession of his offences. Rather late in the day for a knight, but exactly the predicament in which a political or public abuse ejaculates its "Peccavi!" Great are the virtues of extremity! In Landseer's famous picture of a Highland flood, there is a hen which appears to have laid an egg in her spasm of terror at the rising waters. This is said to be ve true to nature. Many a ministry has laid its best egg on the eve of its political decease,—and its successor has had all the credit of the chicken. However, the eggs of terror are very often addled ones. Lord Malmesbury, in his Diary (November 5th, 1796), records: "I went to Rondonneau's, who published all the French revolutionary acts and laws. Ten thousand laws have been published since 1789; only seventy of them are in force." This circumstance is twice repeated in the Diary. "Cotanta diarrea di leggi!" (Casti.) "The lightning in the collied (coal-black) night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth." SHAKESPEARE, Midsummer-Night's Dream. Some statesmen will only be guided by the fierce forked lightning that darts from the strong collision of excited party-interests, showing them the edge of the precipice at the same moment that it paralyses them. Compared with this, the reasonable and seasonable discussion of differences is mere safe summer sheet-lightning. How many of us require to be scorched by Truth as a flame before we submit to be guided by her as a beacon! "Le choc engendre la lumière," says old Dumas. It would be well if it did nothing worse. "Convincing few, converting fewer."-DR. BARROW, Sermon on Submission to the Divine Will. Οὐ γὰρ πείσεις οὐδ ̓ ἣν πείσῃς.—ARISTOPHANES, Plutus. Let every useful innovator make up his mind to having to deal with |