peace or freedom for me before two o'clock. Will you wait?"

"Of course I will," said Brian; and thereupon she gave him a nod by way of dismissal.

He executed a movement of retreat to wards the wall, and stationed himself in a sort of backwater, out of the eddying human stream, well content to bide his time. If Beatrice had told him to wait five hours, instead of only one and a half, he would have done her bidding with perfect cheerfulness. But, indeed, this ball did not seem to him to be nearly as dull an affair as those of which he had had previous cognisance. At Kingscliff, where everybody knew him, and where non-dancers were looked upon as social defaulters, he had always felt that he would rather submit to any imaginable form of penance than look on, all the night through, at a number of people bobbing round and round a hot room, with the chance of being himself compelled, at any moment, to go bobbing round also. Here it was quite different. No one noticed him, nor did he recognise a single acquaintance, except Sir Hector Buckle, looking very smart and spruce, who passed once through the rooms and vanished; and it was amusing enough, for once in a way, to catch a glimpse of the so-called great world. Some of the persons who passed close to him were really great. There were Cabinet Ministers among them, and Foreign Ambassadors, covered with orders, and Brian distinctly heard one of the latter say to a lady, Madame, je vous préviens que la Russie ne peut plus reculer et que la guerre est inévitable.' This was most interesting; but the other scraps of conversation which reached his ears were scarcely of equal importance. He gathered from them that all these people had either come from Mrs. A.'s or were going on to Lady B.'s, and their chief anxiety appeared to be to find out whether those whom they met were engaged upon the same exciting programme. Also, he noticed, that a large majority of these pleasure-seekers were past middle age, and he wondered what could be the inducement that kept them out of bed at a time of life when they ought to have been thinking seriously about economising their vital forces. The old women, of course, might have marriageable daughters; but the old men would surely have been happier at home. And where were all the young

men?

66

But these notes and queries were put a stop to when a lady of noble proportions,

who had been carried through the doorway on the top of the flood, extricated herself with a vigorous plunge, and landed breathlessly by Brian's side.

Well, Mr. Segrave," said she, "I did think that you would remember me; but I suppose I am not the sort of person whom any one would expect to meet in a grand London ballroom."

"I am very glad to meet you, at all events," answered Brian; and indeed it was a real pleasure to him to recognise Miss Joy, beaming all over with good-humour, as of yore, and wearing the self-same ruby velvet gown with the tail of which she had once swept Gilbert's chair from under him. "I am like the Doge of Venice at Versailles," he added; "astonishment at finding myself where I am exhausts my capacity for wonder. But it isn't very wonderful that you should be in the same house as Miss Huntley, is it?"

"It is rather wonderful that I should be in this house," Miss Joy replied. "I am supposed to be on furlough just now, and of course my name doesn't appear in Lady Clementina's visiting-list; but Beatrice insisted upon it that I should come to-night, because she knows how much I enjoy spectacles of this kind. So I put my pride in my pocket and came."

"We seem to be in the same boat," observed Brian, "and we can enjoy the spectacle together. I would ask you to do me the honour of dancing with me, only—

"You would meet with a polite, but decisive refusal if you did," interrupted Miss Joy, laughing. "Do you think that I have no shame, and that I am incapable of distinguishing between Kingscliff and Park Lane? But I'll tell you what you might do for me, if you were inclined to be goodnatured-you might take me down-stairs and give me something to eat.'

Of course he was quite ready to do that, and by the exertion of some physical force he succeeded in piloting his companion down to the supper-room, where, as need hardly be said, everything that art and luxury could achieve in the culinary line was at her disposal. However, he soon discovered that Miss Joy's request had not been prompted by any greedy appetite, for she would take nothing but a morsel of aspic and half a glass of champagne, and as soon as she had finished this frugal refreshment she drew him aside into one of the smaller rooms, which for the moment was untenanted, saying: 66 Now we shall be able to talk comfortably."

saying, Beatrice won't let Lord Stapleford come to the point; which shows that she is hesitating. It is arranged, I believe, that he is to meet us at Homburg next month; and then, I trust, she will give him his answer. It will be a very great pity if she dismisses a man who has so many good qualities and no defects, unless it be a defect to be rather commonplace."

Brian really could not concur. If Miss Huntley had not yet met any one for whom she could care as a wife ought to care for her husband, surely it would be better that she should remain unmarried until she did. What was there in her situation which rendered an immediate marriage so desirable? He had many arguments of undoubted weight to urge in support of his views and against Miss Joy's, and he was bringing them forward, one by one, when, to his horror he heard the clock on the mantelpiece strike three. "Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, "I had no idea that it was so late. I-I must take you upstairs again, if you don't mind; I have an engagement

"

"Off you go then!" returned Miss Joy, laughing at his dismayed face. "You can leave me here; I am big enough to take care of myself."

Perhaps it was not very polite; but he took her at her word. It would be too heartbreaking to have lost what might very likely be his last chance of an interview with Beatrice before she left London. He ran quickly up the staircase, which was almost deserted now, and entered the ballroom, where the crowd, though less than it had been in the earlier part of the evening, was still large. Seeing at a glance that Beatrice was neither among the dancers nor the spectators, he pursued his search through the adjoining room and discovered her at length, sitting quite alone beside an open window, in what appeared to be the library.

"I am so very sorry!" he began breathlessly. "I was talking to Miss Joy, and I didn't notice how the time was slipping away."

"I thought you had gone home to bed like a sensible man," she answered. "I am glad you found Miss Joy so fascinating, for I wasn't set at liberty as soon as I expected. Stapleford has only just left."

She seemed to be a little tired and out of spirits. Could it be that Stapleford had already demanded and obtained a definite reply Brian scrutinised her anxiously, and she may have divined his thoughts, for she smiled and said,

"I have been upon the social treadmill for rather too many hours at a stretch, that is all. I wanted to have a long chat with you about things in general; but now I feel too stupid to talk to anybody. Happily, the end of all this monotonous revelry is not very far off; I don't think I could stand much more of it. Next week we go to Goodwood; then to Cowes, and then-oh, how glorious!-I shall be my own mistress once more, and Miss Joy will take me away to Homburg to recruit my jaded system."

"I am not going to Homburg, though," Brian could not help saying ruefully, "and I suppose I shall have no further opportunities of meeting you among the monotonous revellers of whom you have become so weary."

"Well, but that is just what I was thinking about," she rejoined, straightening herself in her chair and speaking with more animation. "Why shouldn't you come to Homburg? You can't stay in London all the summer; you won't care to go to Kingscliff; and if you haven't done with the labours of composition yet, why, pianos can be hired at Homburg as well as anywhere else, and there are certain spare hours in the middle of the day during which most. people go to sleep, because they have nothing else to do. I would undertake to amuse you or find amusement for you in the mornings and evenings."

The suggestion was certainly a tempting one. Brian had not given a thought to the coming summer; but now he reflected that he was very well able to afford himself a holiday, and how could he spend it better than by betaking himself to a place where he might count upon seeing Beatrice every day? He fancied, too, that there was something more in her cagerness than a mere desire to be kind, or even to secure for herself a certain variety of companionship. It was no very far-fetched or extravagant conjecture that, at a time of crisis in her life, she might wish to have near her a friend upon whose sympathy or even advice she could rely. For of course there are situations in which simple honesty and devotion are of more value than the worldly wisdom of a multitude of counsellors.

"Would you really like me to come?" he asked, after a pause.

"Odd as it may appear," she answered, laughing, "I really should." Perhaps it was a somewhat tardy movement of compunction that made her add: "I always try to collect as large a circle as I can in places of that

kind. Stapleford has promised to join us, and I dare say there will be others. I don't think you will find it dull."

He understood her meaning; but indeed the caution was not needed. If in the recesses of his heart there had still lurked the shadow of a lingering hope, this had been dispelled as much by her outspoken friendliness as by Miss Joy's assurance of the good opinion that she entertained of him. Well; he was

thankful to have it so, since nothing more was attainable. His influence over her, if he possessed any, would at all events never be exerted save for what should seem to him to be her happiness, while his own would assuredly be increased by proximity to her. That, if it did nothing else for him, would relieve him from the torture of suspense and enable him to see for himself whither her destiny was leading her.

the

lilies," and to wish that all the unfold

ings, of thought and feeling were as simple and spontaneous as theirs.

The student of poetry has

a task unlike the florist's, for the latter knows well the objects of his care; he anticipates their modes of foliation and flowering, while the poet often proves to be a specimen of a new order -not in the books-not to be comprehended by pedants' rules, nor to be judged by safe precedents. Pope and Dryden, whose points were as obvious as cudgel-blows or rapierthrusts, were as well appreciated at first as to-day; but poets of finer mould, like Words

XXVIII-37

their inheritance.

It is over forty years since Lowell began to write, and though his poems in dialect had immediate popularity, his higher and serious work, until within a recent period, found small favour with critics or with the American public. The most of his British admirers,

even now, read the "Biglow Papers" by the help of a glossary, and ignore his other poems.

His father was an eminent clergyman in Boston, learned, saintly, and discreet, who at the time of the general Unitarian movement, refused to take either side of the controversy, and called himself simply a Congregationalist. He lived at Cambridge, nearly four miles from his church, in a large and plain wooden house, built before the revolution. "Elmwood," as it was called by Dr. Lowell, is surrounded by noble elm, ash, and pinetrees, mostly of his planting, and appears dignified and grave to-day, as becomes a house which knew the "good old colony times." It was there that our poet, the clergyman's youngest son, was born, February

22, 1819-Washington's birthday-and there he lived almost without interruption until he was appointed United States Minister to Spain.

His mother, Harriet Traill Spence, descended from an Orkney family, was a woman of superior mind, somewhat eccentric, fond of reading and of Scotch ballads; and her children were nurtured as much with poetry as with religion and maternal love. The ballad of Sir Patrick Spens (who might have been an ancestor) was a favourite with the family.

Elmwood had a large and rich collection of books, and the poet was apparently turned loose to browse in it, according to Dr. Johnson's phrase. Hakluyt, Purchas, Marco Polo, "Don Quixote," "Pilgrim's Progress," romances of Arthur and Charlemagne, Shakespeare and the long line of poets and dramatists, were read with eager delight. Nothing came amiss to his all-devouring mind except mathematics, logic, philosophy, and the other studies prescribed by college regulations. But thanks to his evident natural abilities, and perhaps to the regard felt for his father, he passed the examinations and received his degree.

The Cambridge of that day was rustic and provincial. In the college faculty and in the town there were marked characters whose whimsical traits are sketched in "Cambridge Thirty Years Ago." This article appeared in Putnam's Monthly, 1853, and was afterwards included in "Fireside Travels," the most charming of Lowell's volumes of prose. The ancient speech which bears the name of "Yankee," was then in common use among the uneducated-"uneddicated," they would have said—and traces of its slipshod forms and nasal accents could sometimes be detected even in the sedate utterances of the learned. But the thought of employing the dialect in satire or in bucolics did not occur to Lowell till later.

Summer Reverie." Evidently his love of nature was an absorbing passion, and it led him to make distant excursions in later years, as to Moosehead Lake in Maine, and to the Adirondacks in north-eastern New York (in company with Emerson, Agassiz, Wyman, and Stillman), where he met lumberers, trappers, and deer-hunters, and came to know

"The shy, wood-wandering brood of Character."

He studied law, but made no serious attempt to practise it; he was predestined to a literary career, and had no settled employment except in aiding the anti-slavery cause, until, in 1857 he succeeded Longfellow as professor of modern languages and literature in Harvard College.

He was early married to Miss Maria White, a lady of delicate beauty, and of natural gifts and graces. She wrote several beautiful poems, which were privately printed in a memorial volume after her decease. Of the children of that marriage only one, a married daughter, survives. The death of the mother (1853) was the subject of one of Longfellow's most exquisite poems, "The Two Angels."

Lowell's Rembrandtish portrait by Page, painted about the time of his marriage, shows a thoughtful face; luxuriant auburn hair, parted evenly upon a fair brow and hanging in long wavy locks; a full, ruddy beard spread over a broad falling linen collar, and a rather spare figure, with good square shoulders, clad in a loose coat of coarse, brown cloth. Poet, enthusiast, dreamer! would be your first thought in looking at the far-away expression of the eyes; but the courage and composure shown in the mouth would make you suspend judgment, and you would conclude that imagination and common sense were fairly balanced. The face, costume, and manner of that portrait, so severely simple, offer a remarkable contrast to the picture of the foreign minister in London at the height of his fame.