sere, made a splendid patchwork of light and shade. Nearer the hill, clear in the foreground, a streak of darkness lying between it and the castle, was a white cottage, shaded by two maginificent chesnut trees. The high road passed by it.

The castle and the cottage each claimed a thought, seen in those peculiar accidents of light. But the thought was fleeting-the passion of the moment swept it away. Impressions of mere external beauty were trivial, transient at such a time.

And what filled his soul which was not of the trivial and the transient? That which belongs to all humanity. A Johnson starting from Litchfield, a Goldsmith from his Irish village, a Chatterton from Bristol, with all their generous impulses, their noble ambition, their heroic self-reliance, were but types of my friend. Aspiring, ardent, courageous as they, he was going forth that he might be trodden down among the common mass of men. Like them, curiously but not timidly,

he looked on life, and was eager to try his strength with the world. Who can refuse sympathy with those feelings of the young? The feelings of man, since Adam was expelled from Eden; for like our Johnson, Goldsmith, or Chatterton; the Arabian boy setting forward of old to Damascus; the Egyptian to Thebes or Memphis; the Assyrian to Babylon; had hearts throbbing with no other emotions than those of this English youth. Marvellous design of Providence!-a world always the same is always new to each new heart!

Hardy, then, had climbed the hill, feeling as all men have felt who have climbed a hill which shut them out from the world, no longer to be shut out. He stopped before descending it on the other side; arrested for a moment by the view; then, by sentiments and reflections which had never before arisen in his mind. The Earl of Woreham lived in the towered and battlemented castle, and but for the occupants of the cottage, the

young man might have formed to himself no better idea of greatness than that which this nobleman offered.

The tenant of the cottage was Charles Aveley, a man rich in mental endowments; one who had been a student of the world, as well as of books. At forty years of age he chose retirement, almost solitude, contented to live in a very humble way. "Why has fortune done so much for the one and so little for the other?" Hardy asked, as, the Earl and Aveley coming before his mind's eye, his attention was diverted from their dwellings.

"The man of noble soul is not rich, is unnoticed; the ignorant man, titled and wealthy, is looked up to with reverence-but that is the way of the world, they say; it shall not be my way-No! Respect for that to which respect is due, and for nothing else!"

And here he fell into a long train of thought. Perhaps, it was rather a series of anticipations evoked by passion-the passion

of ambition. The end of them was, the period when respect should be due to himself; when he should be all that Aveley was, and all that the Earl was also. He should teach men to honour virtue by uniting to it the advantages of fortune and station. Thus should he enlighten the world; for, by offering homage to worth in high places, men might, at last, begin to value it when found anywhere. By further reflections, perhaps of this kind, or somewhat better, he persuaded himself that he was not selfish in having admitted into his breast the most selfish of the passions. I shall not say that he so persuaded me; but I must do him justice he had many generous sentiments among his ambitious ones. They were also at that period intimately connected with his feelings for Mr. Aveley, to whose instruction and conversation he owed almost all the information; and certainly all the power of thought which he possessed. After some minutes passed in reverie he roused himself

and stooped to take up his portmanteau which he had set down. But a sudden change in the clouds made a change in the scene, and once more attracted his attention to it. Now, the cottage had disappeared in the shadow which swept forward, and a very beautiful modern mansion, in the Italian villa style, came out like something golden, its marble pillars and high windows, "burnished by the setting sun." This was Downes house, and it stands in the centre of a fine park. "A lucky dog, that Sir Walcot Downes, to fall into such a handsome property by his brother's death!" said Hardy "I wish-" but he checked himself. He had lately shed tears of true sorrow for the death of a brother. Nature was alive and warm within him; he could wish nothing but that that brother yet lived.

Poor Ned-He chose to be a sailor; made some yoyages in a vessel from Liverpool. At last it returned thither without him he died at sea after leaving Jamaica.