you would prefer as a husband; pray, did you paint from the life?" Shirley opened her lips, but instead of speaking she only glowed rose-red. "I shall have an answer to that question," affirmed Mr. Sympson, assuming vast courage and consequence on the strength of this symptom of confusion. "It was an historical picture, uncle, from several originals." "Several originals'! Bless my heart!" There it is! With your pert tongue you to realities—” would try the patience of Job." "Realities'! That is the test to which you shall be brought, ma'am." "To avow before what altar I now kneel, to reveal the present idol of my soul-" "You will make haste about it, if you please; it is near luncheon-time, and confess you shall." "Confess I must. My heart is full of the secret; it must be spoken. I only wish you Mr. Sympson rose up furious; he bounced out of the room, but immediately bounced back again, shut the door, and resumed his seat: were Mr. Helstone instead of Mr. Sympson; you would sympathize with me better." Madam, it is a question of common sense. and common prudence, not of sympathy and sentiment, and so on. Did you say it was Mr. Helstone?" "Not precisely, but as near as may be; they are rather alike." "I will know the name; I will have ticulars." par "They positively are rather alike; their very faces are not dissimilar-a pair of human falcons and dry, direct, decided, both. But my hero is the mightier of the two; his mind has the clearness of the deep sea, the patience of its rocks, the force of its billows." "Rant and fustian!" "I dare he can be harsh as a saw-edge say and gruff as a hungry raven." Madam, it is you who shall keep it." "Impossible, sir, since I form no part of "Miss Keeldar, does the person reside in your family." Briarfield? Answer me that." "Uncle, I am going to tell you; his name is trembling on my tongue." 'Speak, girl!" "That was well said, uncle. 'Speak, girl!' It is quite tragic. England has howled savagely against this man, uncle, and she will one day roar exultingly over him. He has been unscared by the howl, and he will be unelated by the shout." "I said she was mad: she is." "This country will change, and change again, in her demeanor to him; he will never change in his duty to her. Come, cease to chafe, uncle; I'll tell you his "Do you disown us?" "I disdain your dictatorship." "Who will you marry, Miss Keeldar?" "Not Mr. Sam Wynne, because I scorn him; not Sir Philip Nunnely, because I only esteem him." "Whom have you in your eye?" "Such obstinacy could not be unless you were under improper influence." What do you mean? There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil. 'Improper influence'! What old woman's cackle is that?" "Are you a young lady?" "I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be 'Listen! Arthur Wellesley, Lord Wel- | treated." lington." "Do you know," leaning mysteriously for ward and speaking with ghastly solemnity- the same tongue. Let us part. It is "do you know the whole neighborhood teems with rumors respecting you and a bankrupt tenant of yours-the foreigner Moore?" "Does it?" "It does. Your name is in every mouth." It honors the lips it crosses, and I wish it may purify them." not," she resumed, much excited-"it is not that I hate you. You are a good sort of man-perhaps you mean well in your way-but we cannot suit; we are at variance. You annoy me with small meddling, with petty tyranny; you exasperate my temper and make and keep me passionAs to your small maxims, your narrow rules, your little prejudices, aversions, to ate. "Is it that person who has power to influence you?" 'Beyond any whose cause you have ad- dogmas, bundle them off, Mr. Sympson; go vocated." "Is it he you will marry?" He is handsome and manly and commanding." "You declare it to my face? The Flemish knave! The low trader!" offer them a sacrifice to the deity you worship. I'll none of them; I wash my hands of the lot. I walk by another creed, light, faith and hope than you." "Another creed'! I believe she is an infidel." "An infidel to your religion-to your god. Your god, sir, is the world. In my eyes you too, if not an infidel, are an idolater. "He is talented and venturous and resolute. 'Prince' is on his brow, and 'ruler' in his bearing." "She glories in it! She conceals nothing! I conceive that you ignorantly worship; in No shame, no fear!" "When we speak the name of Moore, shame should be forgotten and fear discarded; the Moores know only honor and courage. "I say she is mad." "You have taunted me till my blood is up; you have worried me till I turn again." That Moore is the brother of my son's tutor. Would you let the usher call you 'sister'?" "Mr. Sympson, I am sick at heart with all this weak trash; I will hear no more. Your thoughts are not my thoughts, your aims are not my aims, your gods are not my gods. We do not view things in the same light; we do not measure them by the same standard; we hardly speak in all things you appear to me too superstitious. Sir, your god, your great Bel, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a demon. You, and such as you, have raised him to a throne, put on him a crown, given him a sceptre. Behold how hideously he governs! See him busied at the work he likes best-making marriages. He binds the He binds the young to the old, the strong to the imbecile; he stretches out the arm of Mezentius and fetters the dead to the living. In his realm there is hatred— secret hatred; there is disgust-unspoken disgust; there is treachery-family treachery: there is vice-deep, deadly, domestic vice. In his dominions children grow unloving between parents who have never loved; infants are nursed on deception from their very birth; they are reared in an atmosphere corrupt with lies. Your god rules at the bridal of kings: look at your royal dynasties. Your deity is the deity of foreign aristocracies: analyze the blue blood of Spain. Your god is the Hymen of France: what is French domestic life? All that surrounds him hastens to decay; all declines and degenerates under his sceptre. Your god is a masked Death." "This language is terrible! My daughters and you must associate no longer, Miss Keeldar; there is danger in such companionship. Had I known you a little earlier But, extraordinary as I thought you, I could not have believed—” แ 'Now, sir, do you begin to be aware that it is useless to scheme for me-that in doing so you but sow the wind to reap the whirlwind? I sweep your cobweb-projects from my path that I may pass on unsullied. I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience, shall dispose of my hand-they only. Know this at last." Mr. Sympson was becoming a little bewildered. "Never heard such language," he muttered again and again, "never was so addressed in my life, never was so used." "You are quite confused, sir. You had better withdraw, or I will." He rose hastily: peration, he hurled an oath at the dog and a coarse epithet at his mistress. "Poor Mr. Sympson! He is both feeble and vulgar," said Shirley to herself. "My head aches, and I am tired," she added; and, leaning her head upon a cushion, she softly subsided from excitement to repose. One entering the room a quarter of an hour afterward found her asleep. When Shirley had been agitated, she generally took this natural refreshment; it would come at her call. MR. DONNE'S SUCCESS IN LIFE. This gentleman turned out admirably. His little school, his little church, his little parsonage, all owed their erection to him, and they did him credit; each was a model in its way. If uniformity and taste in architecture had been the same thing as consistency and earnestness in religion, what a shepherd of a Christian flock Mr. Donne would have made! There was one art in the mastery of which nothing mortal ever surpassed Mr. Donne: it was that of begging. By his own unassisted efforts he begged all the money for all his erections. In this matter he had a grasp of plan, a scope of action, quite unique; he 'We must leave this place; they must begged of high and low-of the shoeless pack up at once.” cottage brat and the coroneted duke. He "Do not hurry my aunt and cousins; give sent out begging-letters far and wide-to them time." "No more intercourse; she's not proper." He made his way to the door; he came back for his handkerchief; he dropped his snuff-box; leaving the contents scattered on the carpet, he stumbled out. Tartar lay out side, across the mat; Mr. Sympson almost fell over him. In the climax of his exas old Queen Charlotte, to the princesses her daughters, to her sons the royal dukes, to the prince-regent, to Lord Castlereagh, to every member of the ministry then in office; and, what is more remarkable, he screwed something out of every one of these personages. It is on record that he got five pounds from the close-fisted old lady Queen Char lotte, and two guineas from the royal profligate her eldest son. When Mr. Donne set out on begging expeditions, he armed himself in a complete suit of brazen mail. That you had given a hundred pounds yesterday was with him no reason why you should not give two hundred to-day; he would tell you so to your face, and ten to one get the money out of you: people gave to get rid of him. After all, he did some good with the cash; he was useful in his day and generation. CHARLOTTE BRONTE (Currer Bell). THE PAST AND PRESENT. FROM THE FRENCH OF CONSTANTINE FRANCIS, COUNT DE VOLNEY. Ν times past and filled my mind with serious and profound contemplations. Arrived at Hems, on the banks of the Orontes, and being at no great distance from Palmyra of the desert, I resolved to see its celebrated monuments. After three days' travelling through an arid wilderness, having traversed the valley of caves and sepulchres, on issuing into the plain I was suddenly struck with a scene of the most stupendous ruins-a countless multitude of superb columns stretching in avenues beyond the reach of sight. Among them were magnificent edifices, some entire, others in ruins. The ground was covered on all sides with fragments of cornices, capitals, shafts, entablatures, pilasters, all of white marble and IN the eleventh year of the reign of Abd- of the most exquisite workmanship. After ul-Hamid, son of Ahmed, emperor of the Turks, when the victorious Russians seized on the Crimea and planted their standards on the shore that leads to Constantinople, I was travelling in the empire of the Ottomans and through those provinces which were anciently the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria. My whole attention bent on whatever concerns the happiness of man in a social state, I visited cities and studied the manners of their inhabitants, entered palaces and observed the conduct of those who govern, wandered over the fields and examined the condition of those who cultivate them, and, nowhere perceiving aught but robbery and devastation, tyranny and wretchedness, my heart was oppressed with sorrow and indignation. I saw daily on my road fields abandoned, villages deserted and cities in ruin. Often I met with ancient monuments, wrecks of temples, palaces and fortresses, columns, aqueducts and tombs; and this spectacle led me to meditate on a walk of three-quarters of an hour along these ruins, I entered the enclosure of a vast edifice formerly a temple dedicated to the sun, and, accepting the hospitality of some poor Arabian peasants who had built their huts in the area of the temple, I resolved to stay some days to contemplate at leisure the beauty of so many stupendous works. Every day I visited some of the monuments which covered the plain, and one evening, absorbed in reflection, I had advanced to the valley of sepulchres. I ascended the heights which surround it, and from whence the eye commands the whole group of ruins and the immensity of the desert. The sun had just sunk below the horizon: a red border of light still marked his track behind the distant mountains of Syria; the full moon was rising in the east on a blue ground over the plains of the Euphrates; the sky was clear, the air calm and serene; the dying lamp of day still softened the hor |