often troubled, struggling earnestness, with this cold, far-glancing, manysided, self-idolising, consummate artist.

I am unjust to Walsingham. No man could so well understand and tolerate all kinds of characters, even the most unlike his own, nay, even the poor, foolish, painful, mimicries of himself, without a long and hard self-sacrificing discipline. There is nothing which I find that he so thoroughly hates as the coarse, tawdry finery of the English upper classes, unaccompanied, as it so often is, by any true refinement or sense of the beautiful. But I think, that when this better taste exists, he is inclined to overlook in its favour much of moral evil, and even a good deal of heartless selfishness. When this tendency of his breaks out I shrink away from him. But then again my admiration is recalled to him by his sensibility to every form of power and loveliness, by his insight into the real substance of all the kinds of human life we meet with, and his capacity of divining the history of each, and rounding off its destiny into a clear and expressive whole. Sometimes, for a few moments, I seem borne upwards on his eagle wings, and feel long after as if he had placed me on a mighty-mountain head, whence, in bright sunshine and keen blue air, I can behold the great and living mass of Nature and Mankind. Dare I ask myself whether I could be content to dwell with him upon that summit? It is too late to doubt whether I shall ask the question. Arthur, forgive me! But I am clear as to the answer-No-Oh, No. May God for bid! Rather let me live in the darkest, rudest valley, where I may be strengthed and guided by one true, warm, wise heart; where I should not only understand and mould to imagery all the beings round me, but where they might feel that I loved them, and was struggling onward with them to do whatever good we knew, at whatever sacrifice.

Walsingham puzzles ne more and more. I cannot be mistaken as to the interest he feels in me, and the pleasure he has in my society. I too enjoy the perpetual flow of animated and graceful thoughts which breaks from him on all occasions, and with refer

ence to every little outward object,— a plant, a bird, a shower, a village wedding. Now and then he expresses in a few words a view which seems to throw a wondrous light over whole regions of one's life. As this a large mind, which cannot tolerate small ones, is smaller than if it could. Or this-when we feel strongly and mys teriously as to the past, we should remember that all which seems strangest in our consciousness may arise, not from the past that it relates to, but from the present that it subsists in. Or this-Rochefoucauld's maxims are a true picture, not of human nature, indeed, but of its selfishness. He works like a painter who paints the profile, and chooses the side of the face in which the eye is blind and deformed, instead of the other which is unblemished. Yet the picture may be a most accurate copy. Or this-the wider the base of life the higher may we hope to raise the summit. Numberless more of such remarks has be let fall in the three days he has been here, and chiefly when conversing with me. And yet there is nothing pedantic or sententious in his tone. He is easy and playful, though earnest; and these sayings, and others like them, have only come out as explanations of some casual remark which had interested me, and on which I had wished for more light. Yet this man becomes, on occasion, quite a different being, and one with whom I cannot sympathize at all. Thus, we had yesterday at dinner, and staying till to-day, Mrs. an airy, sparkling creature, fond of admiration, very good-natured, and skimming through life like a butterfly. Walsingham seemed much amused by her, and paid her a great deal of attention. I am certain she could not in the least understand him in his more serious moments. But the odd thing was, that, seeing him with her, no one could have suspected him of ever having any serious moments. She was sing ing, and exclaimed. "What stupid words these are-I cannot sing them! and yet the tune is very pretty: Do give me something better for it?" She held out her ivory tablets to him with a coquettish smile, and said, "Do, I should so like it." He took them from her laughing, and said, "Mind you promise to sing the lines," and in ten minutes he gave her the verses

Mrs ran through this poem merrily for several stanzas, and while she sang there was a droll indefinable smile about the corners of her mouth, which I could not make out. But before she had done, she shook her pretty bright head, with all its fair ringlets waving round it, and said, "O! I can never get through all that." She then gave him an arch glance, and ran off from the piano to me, saying, "Dear Miss Lascelles, what bores Sapphos, and Madame de Staels, and all such people must have been. Do let us have some rational talk about fashions, and fiddlesticks, and any thing useful." Walsingham took up a book, and his whole look changed to one that would suit my notion of Plato or Pythagoras, and this evidently quite unconsciously. Mrs could not keep her eyes off him long, and after a quarter of an hour she made some excuse for moving. I saw her pass near him and say something laughingly. But he looked up-with a face of such entire thoughtful abstraction, that she started away as if she had seen a skeleton-head. He soon, however, smiled, answered her, and then came away and talked to me about Albert Durer's Prayer-book which I was looking at.

Such were the terms on which Maria and Walsingham stood together, when Mrs Nugent proposed that she and they should ride in the evening, after an early dinner, to a ruined church a few miles away, from which there was said to be a very beautiful prospect. They set out more than an hour before sunset, and designed to return by moonlight. Mr Nugent

who was indolent, and cared nothing for any prospects but those of his own pedigree, rent-roll, and dinner-table, said he had letters to write, and staid at home. Two or three of his guests also remained. But the riding-party set out in high spirits, followed by a single servant, and passed quickly through the green lanes till they began to reach the higher and more

broken ground of heathy hills. Here they came to a farm-house, where Mrs Nugent, a notable visitor and adviser of her inferior neighbours, said she must go in to see the farmer's wife, but would soon catch them by a shorter road than that which, for the sake of the view, was to be pursued by them. The others, accordingly, rode on. Maria knew that the good lady's habits of delaying and gossiping would probably detain her longer than she expected. But she could not change her aunt's arrangements, and went forward without objection.

"Not far," said Maria, "from the point we are approaching lives the man we have before spoken of, the hermit Collins. I have seen him often, and, strange as he is, I like him very much. There is such thorough honesty about him, as well as so much queer uncouth kindness, that he interests me extremely. He is the most marked and original figure I have ever heard of in modern England. Whatever is usual or commonplace among us seems to have influenced him only by contraries, and called out nothing but opposition."

"All that," answered Walsingham, "is very foolish, or at least very imperfectly wise. In every age there is good enough, if a man will but put himself into harmony with it, to enable him to produce more good out of it. If he does not, he defrauds his time of what he owes to it; and above all, he keeps his own mind in a perpetual aimless ferment of antipathy. Kicking out behind is not the way to move forward either for horse or man. And then what an absurd dream, to fancy that the good in any man has grown up so independently of all around him as to have nothing out ward with which to connect itself. No, no, we are not thrown down out of the sky like meteoric stones, but are formed by the same laws and gradual processes as all about us, and so are adapted to it all, and it to us. But, no doubt, Collins will fight his way through his present angry element to peace and activity. What employment has he now?"

"He minds his bee-hives. And to the few people he ever sees he talks quaintly and vigorously, I sometimes think wildly. But all he says has a strong stamp upon it, and never could pass from hand to hand without no

tice. After having heard him, some of his phrases keep ringing in one's ears, as if he had sent a goblin trumpeter to haunt one with the sound for days and nights after. But I have always felt that he has more in his mind than ever comes out in the expression, and, so odd as his talk is, I should hardly call it affected or conceited."

"Ah! no doubt there must be much genuine nature there. But, although these vehement lava-lumps and burning coals of his may be no mere showy firework, and do shoot out from a hot central furnace, I would rather it were all so much cool clear water, pouring from an inward lake of freshness."

"I can fancy him saying-the All is right. There must be a Fire-God as well as a Water-God. If there were no fire forces seething and blasting, for aught you know the fountains and flood forces would stagnate into slime. I heard him say something like that when last I saw him."

"All very true. But I stoop to drink of the stream, and I hasten away from the eruption."

"In this case," replied Maria, laughing, "the eruption saves you the trouble. It seeks no one, and loves its solitude."

In half an hour after parting from Mrs Nugent they had climbed a sort of pass between two hills, and then turned to one side, so as to gain the summit of the ridge. There was then nothing between them and the sea but a wide and easy descent ending in level ground. Hardly a house was in sight for many miles. Broad tracts of heath, mingled with furze and broom, all in full flower, and here and there with patches of timber, covered the long and weary fore-ground, which sloped away into fields and meadows, divided by hedgerows, and dotted with sheep and cattle. A small town was visible several miles off on the shore. The sea lay shining under a blood-red sun, which had nearly set amid the heat-red sky. Above the sun a dark cloud hung distinct and swollen as a black mantle; but the glaring light blazed around the spectators, and illuminated one side of the old church which stood about a mile from them on the same ridge as they. The partion of it towards the east looked cold and gloomy, while the hot light pour

ed through two or three windows, and defined the whole dark outline against the sky.

They had hardly gazed for a few seconds before the black cloud spread rapidly, with its smoking edges, over a third of the heavens, and some heavy drops of rain fell. Walsingham looked at Maria, and she said, "Let us make haste to the church; there is no nearer shelter." She turned her horse in that direction; and riding fast, they reached the broken walls of the small green enclosure in which the ruin stood, before much rain had fallen. They pushed through one of the gaps, gained the porch, and dismounted. The door was not locked, and they entered the building, and tied their horses to an old iron stancheon in the wall. A stonebench still remained under the spire of the church, on which Maria sat down, while Walsingham stood beside her. The eastern window, at the other end of the church from them, was in a great degree blocked up by rubbish and ivy, but through it was seen the grey sky, with a streak or two of faint red. The western window, near them, was quite open, and between its shafts they saw the dark and stormy landscape, the sea, angry and labouring under the heavy sky, yet kindled here and there with flame-like rays, and the broad fierce sun balancing for a moment its crimson orb on the perilous edge of the

horizon.

They gazed in earnest delight, but the sharp glare which struck upon Maria's eyes compelled her to raise her hand before her face, while Walsing ham stood confronting the violent and resplendent hour, while the glory upon his marble face was met by more than answering power from within. She looked at him with admiration from behind her hand, now tinged to a transparent pink; and she thought that if, as she believed, his life were far too statuesque and coldly predetermined, yet intelligence and sensibility could never have been invested with a nobler form. At this instant the lightning flashed and filled the church; the thun der broke in a long peal. The sun seemed to have dropped like a flag at the signal, and barely burnt above the sea with a hand's breadth of intense radiance. A crash of rain came down upon the building. Walsingham turned composedly to Maria, and seated himself beside her. "This scene," he

said, "is worth some inconvenience. I fear, had you expected it, you would have staid at home. It would have been an additional inducement to me to come here."

"I should hardly have been allowed to choose, but I am not sorry for the event."

The wind rose high, and dashed the rain in noisy bursts about the ruin. -The neighbouring old beech trees roared. The sound of the sea was not audible, but a vague roll of white and black confusion showed its tumult even at a distance. A glimmer of the sunset still played over it, though the sun was now drowned out. The greatness of the powers at work stirred and enlarged the two beholders with a grave joy. They felt themselves rise and expand with the strong elements.

"One feels now," said Walsingham, "what life there is in nature, and our feeling shows how deeply it is involved with our life, how inseparably its powers are one with those we wield and are conscious of. Almost, we dare to say, with every gust and peal, these efforts of the universe have their impulsions from our breasts, so mightily do sympathy and abounding imagination gush with them from within us."

"The storm is very grand," she said, "but I feel as if I should yield to its grasp, and lose myself in its vastness, if there were not a sense of religion which the sublime struggle awakens in me, but which raises me above it to God."

He did not answer her directly. But soon she heard him repeating, as if rather to himself than to her—

Ye demon winds that fill the vault of air,

And caves of earth with uproar Sibylline,

On whose dark blasts the fates let loose their hair

Amid the thunder-clouds to stream and twine,

Rage on, huge spirits, wildly as ye can! Yet nobler tempest swells the soul of

man.

They were both silent for some moments, when the lightning again broke in terrible beauty; and before the swift sound followed, they saw the ruin and each other's faces in a blaze of light, and land and sea swept over by the meteoric burst, and in the distant depth

a vessel reeling and crouching under the tempest. Involuntarily she grasp ed his arm. She had never felt so intimately attracted to him as when he laid his hand on hers, and returned her trembling pressure.

"It is the hour," he said, "of the Spirits; but I cannot wish it otherwise, or that I were away from here."

"I feel that God is here, but as if he did not reach so far as that poor ship."

"He is there too," replied Walsingham, in a voice almost as low as hers," "but most, doubtless, with those who believe in Him."

The horses were uneasy and frightened at the storm; and the poet said, after a pause"Those animals feel only apprehension. We can admire and enjoy the hour, so much nearer do we lie to the source of all things, at which, could we quite attain to it, all would doubtless appear in perfect harmony."

"How noble," exclaimed Maria, "are these organ tones, so infinitely deep, of the vast air, while in the midst of them we hear so many broken sounds, some even whispers, like voices of living hearts, filling the whole tempest, and modulating every breath of it."

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Her hand now lay calmly in his, and he could feel its quiet pulsation. His own beat more hurriedly-excited not by the tempest but by her. Yes," he said, "not only the ethereal powers are working with fresh energies around us-but the spirits in ourselves—and how many are there, each claiming in turn to be our true self, which no one of them is, but all of them together are, awakened and busy in such an hour, strong with more than common life. Nor can they stir and throng without calling round them, too, the other spirits of the past and present, perhaps of the future, and of all beings with whom our hearts have ever held true communion. It is the graves themselves which are dead, and the dead live triumphantly around us."

His sweet and steady voice flowed clear and low amid the clang and discord of the winds and rain, and wrought with the hour itself, in the ears of Maria, like an enchantment. She pressed the hand which held hers, and looking at the other hand, said to him in a deep whisper-"How that ring of yours glit ters in the darkness! I too feel as

if there were a wondrous life and spir itual presence around us. But for weeks past I have had something of this feeling, and more than ever since you have been staying with us. It is now a month since I have heard any thing of a dear friend, and his image has been haunting me at intervals all the time."

She felt his hand relax, and that he trembled while she spoke. She too now trembled, for never to any one before had she ever spoken of her love. But the previous idea still possessed her, for the potent strife of nature had ele. vated and freed her soul, and broken down many an old barrier of reserve.

"Often," she continued, "and especially when you are with me, he walks visibly before me, and turns his head as if to look at me, but never so much that I can catch his eye. There," she cried, "there-now he sees me !" and she drew her hand away convul sively, and pointed into the darkness. A keen flash now came, and showed Walsingham that there was no one where she had looked. The astounding thunder followed; and Maria, at the same time, fell back with a long sigh. Walsingham, too, was much agitated, for what he thus learned of Maria's affections bitterly disappointed him; but he commanded himself sternly. Another flash now spread around them, and the thunder followed so rapidly as to show how near to them was the explosion; but before it was heard she had again opened her eyes, and both she and her companion saw once more the fated ship, which now lay stripped and dismasted, and seeming to take its final plunge into the deep. They kept their eyes fixed upon the spot, but even when some fainter electric lights did play over t view, the sea was now invisible through the black sheets of rain. The streams from the steeple above them, and from the remaining portions of the roof, were heard rushing down with a continuous uproar, while the rattle and the murmur of the rain itself spread all around, and the wind howled and bellowed as if the universe were given over to its wrath. Except during the moments of the lightning, it had long been pitch dark. Maria felt that she could speak more boldly than if she had been seen by Walsingham, and she said, in a low voice, "I have been talking very wildly; but this tempest had filled me