the very best of us soil, aye, sooner than a bride's riband."

At this time the declining sun flamed goldenly through the casement. We looked, doubtless, yearningly towards it, for the Hermit rising, said, with solemn voice-"Let us abroad, and behold God Almighty in the heavens." Then taking his staff, he passed into the garden, and silently we followed him.

It was a glorious time. The air fell upon the heart like balm; the sky, gold and vermilionflecked, hung, a celestial tent, above mortal man; and the fancy-quickened ear heard sweet, low music from the heart of earth, rejoicing in that hour of gladness.

"Evenings such as this," said the Hermit, pause," seem to me the very holiday time of death; an hour in which the slayer, throned in glory, smiles benevolently down on man. Here, on earth, he gets hard names among us for the unseemliness of his looks, and the cruelty of his doings; but in an hour like this, death seems to me loving and radiant, a great bounty, spreading an immortal feast, and showing the glad dwelling-place he leads men to." "It would be great happiness could we always think so. For so considered, death is, indeed, a solemn beneficence-a smiling liberator, turning a dungeon door upon immortal day. But when death, with slow and torturing device, hovers about his groaning prey; when, like a despot cunning in his malice, he makes disease and madness his dallying serfs"

"Merciful God!" cried the Hermit, "spare me that final terror! Let me not he whipped and scourged by long, long suffering to deathbe dragged, a shrieking victim, downward to the grave; but let my last hour be solemn, tranquil, that so, with open, unblenched eyes, I may look at coming death, and feel upon my cheek his kiss of peace!"

Thus spoke the Hermit, with passionate fervour. His mind seemed solemnly uplifted. We turned aside from him, following one of the many garden paths. After some minutes, the Hermit came up with us. He was again the cheerful, light-hearted anchorite. "What say you," said he, "to pass an hour or so at The Gratis?"

"Where we shall meet the villagers of Clovernook?"

"Some of them, at least," said the Hermit. "I have not been there these three weeks. This way we shall have time to stroll a round; there are some ruins-for Clovernook has its antiquities-I shall be glad to show you." The Hermit led the way from the garden, and with a few strides we found ourselves in a delicious green lane. "This," said he of Bellyfulle, "is called Velvet-path, and leads eastwardly to the village. What do you pause at?" asked the Hermit, as we suddenly stopped, listening to

"To me," said the Hermit, "the sheep-bell sounds of childhood; yea, of babyhood. In the world without us, it hath often been to me a solace and a sweetness. I had seen little of the green earth-knew, alas! how little of its softening loveliness, its beautiful records of God's tenderness to man in herbs and flowers, that in their beauty seem sown by angel hands for man's delight. Of these things I had little seen or known; I was so early built up in the bricks of a city: otherwise, sir, harsh thoughts and foolish sneers, evil and folly begotten in a too-early, sordid strife with man, perhaps, had not defiled me. The sheep-bell was the one remembrance-the one thought still dwelling in my brain, and with its sometime music calling up a scene of rustic Sabbath quietude. Swelling meads in their soft greenness ; hedge-rows, and their sparkling flowers; a row of chestnut trees in blossoming glory; a park ; a flock of nibbling sheep-a child, the mute yet happy wonderer at all."

"And the scene charmed by the simple sheepbell?"

"Even now," said the Hermit, "it is in certain moods my best music. Many an evening have I seated myself on that mossy cushion, at the foot of yonder beech-tree, and leaning back with folded hands and closed eyes, have let my brain drink and drink its stilling sounds; and I have gone off into day-dreams, heaven knows where. I have been in the holy East; have heard the flocks of the Patriarchs, and seen Rebecca at the well."

Thus talking, we had proceeded half-way up Velvet-path, when a man in rustic dress, followed by a sheep-dog, came over a stile close upon us. He immediately paused, and taking off his hat, accosted the Hermit-" A blessed evening, this."

"All's well?" asked the sage. "All's well," answered the man. The Hermit smiled and bowed, and saying, "God be with you, Joseph," passed on.

"Who is he?" we asked.

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My shepherd," answered the Hermit of Belly fulle; "and I would answer for it even upon parchment, as honest, simple a creature as a day-old lamb. Look at him; I warrant me he is about to play his evening music to his dog."

It was even so; for turning round we saw Joseph seated under a tree, vehemently twanging a Jew's-harp. "A strange instrument for a shepherd."

"He hath wonderful knowledge of that piece of iron," said the Hermit; "nor is it strange it

should be so. For twenty years it was, in the outside world, the constant companion of his. lips."

"Indeed! what was your shepherd, ere in happy hour he came to Clovernook?"

"He was door-keeper to a sponging-house. Yes, he was the janitor; the demon of the iron grill; and would solace his darkness and captivity (for keeper of prisoners, he himself was the greatest) with that vocal metal. Poor wretch! That fourpenny harp was his comfort-his consolation-his blithe society."

"Is he not a Jew?" we asked. "Yes; and served a Hebrew master," answered the Hermit, who smilingly added, "I knew the gentleman well."

"Pray, sir, has your philosophy discovered why, of all men, Jews-at first a pastoral, country-loving people-should delight to take service under the sheriff, so that they may carry away captive the spendthrift and the wretched, holding the human chattels under lock and key? Why, of all folks, should Jews delight to be bailiffs?"

"It may be," said the Hermit," in memory and sweet revenge of the Egyptian bondage. Poor things! they still make bricks, too; aye, and brick houses; though the cruelty of modern law, I hear, denies them straw-bail."

"How earnestly the dog watches the musician's face!" we cried; for the animal, sitting upright, stared with contemplative looks at the shepherd. "We never saw more meaning in a cur's countenance."

"Humph! Strange things are told of that dog," said the Hermit. "Joseph insists upon it that the spirit of a London money-lender, an old acquaintance, animates Flip. You may be sure, sir, I have no such superstition, or would hardly trust my flocks within range of its teeth. Yet has the dog marvellous sagacity. Put a bad shilling among a hundred good ones, and Flip, with sensitive nostril, will detect the counterfeit. Many a man, sir, would think it impossible to earn higher praise. A fine, elevating gift, sir, that quick sense of bad money. I knew a man-poor fellow-who bought the faculty at what you and I should think a great It is an odd story, but true, sir-true as I call the tale the TRAGEDY OF THE

cost. the stars. TILL."

"A strange, household title," said we; "pray relate it."

"You would hardly think, sir, that the matter happened in London? In a mean, obscure street; a place where the hard realities of life knocked daily, hourly, at people's hearts? Where the men and women seemed only made to work, and eat, and sleep, and die; the unideal, moving things of the world, the mere biped furniture of the earth. And yet, sordid and barren as the spot may be, there is the

restless spirit of man, yearning and struggling to deliver itself from the squalor that defiles it. See man, the natural monarch of the earth, styed like a hog. Why, even there, in chindeep misery, visions will now and then glorify the habitation. The poetic spirit-for what is hope but the poetry of daily life-will touch the coarsest soul that answers, like a harpstring to the wind, unconscious of the power that stirs it. Let this remembrance go with you, and you shall behold no place where man is mean or common. Take the thought with you in nooks and alleys where the sweet air of heaven sickens with disease, and man seems not made of the earth of Paradise, but of city mud, a stark, foul, brutish thing; even there man is glorified by his hopes, that, like angelfaces in a dungeon, brighten and beautify his prison. Let us imagine, sir," said the Hermit, letting his ivory staff fall in his arm, and leaning against a huge, sheltering sycamore" let us imagine some city quarter, in which the inhabitants-miserable creatures!-should be bereaved of all hope. A little higher only would they be than apes. They would seem to us the lay-figures of humanity; moving images, with tongues to wag and eyes to open. We should behold their habitations with shuddering looks and shrinking nose, and hurry from the spot, as though fever and poverty clawed like demons at our skirts, to taint and ruin us. Any way, the dwellers of Hopeless Quarter would seem to us-dignified as we are by four meals a day, and with no rent in our coats, no crack in our shoe-leather-as forlorn animals, permitted on the earth for some mysterious purpose, but who, though something like ourselves in outward guise, had nothing else in common with us! Would not such be the belief of many of us?"

"It is more than likely," we answered.

Why, sir," cried the Hermit, with a grave look, "it is our creed. Every street, lane, or alley that harbours the wretched poor, is, to our gingerly apprehension, Hopeless Quarter. We wholly avoid it; or if otherwise, with our moral thumb and finger holding our moral nose, we hurry through it. We cast a rapid look at the forlorn inhabitants-a frightened glance in at doorways and down cellars-and never for one brief minute think, that beneath that outward husk of humanity, that in those miserable abiding-places of mortal suffering, there is the aspect, and the earthly refuge of the future angel. Many a time, sir," said the Sage of Bellyfulle, "I have walked the streets, and day-dreaming, have fashioned to myself the doings, the hopes and cares of the householders. To my fancy, the brick walls of the houses have turned to glass, and I have seen all that passed inside. Well, I have been rarely rapt by what I have beheld in the palaces and mansions of the