near relations. Lady Moberly, Winifred's mother, was a lady at once ultra-fashionable and ultra-evangelical. She was one of those of whom the sarcastic Saturday Review declared that the names of their great men must be written alike in the Peerage and in the Book of Life. Thorndale was shortly placed under the charge of a country clergyman, to be prepared for Oxford. Here he had one fellow-pupil, Luxmore, a youth passionately devoted to poetry. And his tutor's library furnished an endless store of poetry, theology, and philosophy, which were all devoured with equal avidity. When the vacation approached, Thorndale was somewhat surprised by receiving from Lady Moberly a formal invitation to Sutton Manor. He had counted, as a matter of course, upon spending the vacation there. But her ladyship was cautious; and her letter contained a postscript, cautioning Thorndale to beware of a certain fairy who haunted the shrubbery in which he was accustomed to walk. He learned the meaning of the postscript too soon. His cousin was more charming than ever; but his love, hopeless, yet unconquerable, was on his part a mere worship, where even the prayer was not to be spoken.' And this passion served to extinguish all ambition. He entered the cloisters of Magdalen, he tells us,

As indifferent to the world as any monk of the fourteenth century could have been. Academical honours, or the greater distinctions in life to which they prepare the way, had no sort of charm for me. The 'daily bread' was secured; and neither law, physic, nor divinity could have given me my Winifred.

A life of mere reflection, then, was to be his portion.

His over-sensitive mind never recovered the frost of that early disappointment. Is it too much to say that it results from the morbid body, from the weakness of physical nature, when trouble and sorrow, no matter how heavy, borne in early youth, cast their shadow over all after-years? What a vast deal a healthy man can 'get over!' True, as beautiful, are the words of Philip van Artevelde, in Mr. Taylor's noble play :

Well, well, she's gone,

And I have tamed my sorrow. Pain and grief
Are transitory things, no less than joy,
And though they leave us not the men we were,
Yet they do leave us. You behold me here,
A man bereaved, with something of a blight
Upon the early blossoms of his life,

And its first verdure,-having not the less
A living root, and drawing from the earth
Its vital juices, from the air its

powers:

And surely as man's health and strength are whole,
His appetites re-germinate, his heart

Re-opens, and his objects and desires
Shoot up renewed.*

can

How many twice-married men and women testify to the truth of Artevelde's philosophy! Out of a romance, it takes very much to kill a man-unless, indeed, consumption has marked him from his birth, and his physical constitution lacks the reacting spring. But Mr. Smith has made his hero feel and act just as it was fit under the conditions given. He became a solitary dreamer; and though feeling the attraction

* Taylor's Philip van Artevelde, Second Part, Act iii. Scene ii.

which draws the moth to the flame, yet at vacation times, instead of going to Sutton Manor, he betook himself to Wales or Cumberland, to 'read.' There he read, thought, wrote, destroyed. He mused deeply on the constitution of society: he longed for a time when manual labour should not be deemed inconsistent with refinement and intelligence. But he found his theory crumble at the touch of fact:

As I marched triumphantly along, I came to a field where men were ploughing. I had often watched the ploughman as he steps on steadily, holding the share down in its place in the soil, and felt curious to try the experiment myself. This time, as the countryman who approached me had a good-natured aspect, I asked him to let me take his place within the stilts. He did so. I did not give him quite the occasion for merriment which I saw he anticipated; I held down the share, and kept it in its due position. But I had no conception of the effort it required—which, at least, it cost me. When I resigned my place, my arms trembled, my hands burned, my brain throbbed; the whole frame was shaken. And something, too, was shaken in the framework of my speculations. The feasibility of uniting with labours such as these much of the culture we call intellectual, was not so clear to me as it was an hour ago. I walked along less triumphantly, maintaining a sort of prudent silence with myself.

Thorndale all over! Easily driven by some little jar, even from a cherished purpose or belief. All physical constitution again. In the days when manual labour and mental cultivation are combined, men like Thorndale must be watchmakers and printers: men with more bone and sinew must go to field-work. But who does not remember the diary of Elihu Burritt, when teaching himself half-a-dozen languages, with its constantly-recurring entries of Forged twelve hours

to-day'-'Forged fourteen hours to-day'-the brawny blacksmith, with his fore-hammer and his Hebrew lexicon side by side?

Very frankly and without reserve, Thorndale shows us how his opinions on society swayed to and fro. He went to see Manchester, and mourned to think how, 'for leave to live in habitations, where air and light, beauty and fragrance, are shut out for ever, men and women are toiling as no other animal on the face of the earth toils.' And, caring little for conventional proprieties, he sits down in London on the steps of a church—it was in Regent Street-amid the offscourings of the population, and contemplated society from this new point of view. It looked very different! He heard the stifled mutterings of the deadly hate which the very lowest class bear to those above them. The ground underneath us, in truth, is mined: the mine is charged. Is not the hatred natural? We do not ask whether it be right.

Without a doubt, we of the pavement, if we had our will, would stop those smooth-rolling chariots, with their liveried attendants (how we hate those clean and well-fed lackies!), would open the carriage-door and bid the riders come down to us!—come down to share-good heaven! what?—our ruffianage, our garbage, the general scramble, the general filth.

Walking another day down Regent Street, he passes an open carriage standing at a shop door. Seated alone in it is-Winifred! He avoids recognition, and hurries away. Soon he slackens his speed-stops-turns, walks back, slowly, rapidly, breathlessly! The carriage was gone. True to the life!

He left Oxford at last, and returned to Sutton Manor. 'It was the old story of the moth and the flame.' He resolved that for a month his heart should have its way; and rowing with Winifred on the river, wandering with her in the shrubbery, watching the sun go down, he had his month of elysium.' All his philosophy was in those days full of hope. He wondered at the greatness of the human capacity for happiness. At length he broke hurriedly away, and hastened to Loch Lomond. We have already seen how he returned, and with what result.

Then he became a wanderer. He tells us he never ceased to think, but a despondency crept from his life into his philosophy.' He went to Germany, Switzerland, Italy—the accustomed route-and learned to appreciate the diversity there is in human life. On the banks of the Lake of Lucerne he met his Utopian friend, Clarence, whom he had known at Oxford; and they spent long days in varied talk together. Clarence dwelt much upon the misery of the better or the middle classes. He thought it exceeds that of the poor wretches on the Regent Street steps. What ceaseless and life-wearing anxiety and care there are in the hearts of most educated men! Clarence did not wonder that men go mad. As life goes against them, as the income proves insufficient, as the expenses increase, as impending calamity ever jars miserably upon the shaken nerves, and as the mind is day by day racked by ceaseless fears, the only wonder is that Reason does not oftener forsake her seat, totter, and fall!