him. He did not go home that night, but walked about the silent streets, scarcely knowing whither, until daybreak.

IX.

In the depth of his despondency, Stanilaus had thought of abandoning his art altogether, and of seeking some employment in his old capacity of a teacher. The never-ending struggle to sustain a reputation, even if once gained, the petty jealousies which annoy a competitor for public favour, and the necessity for constant production when art is made a profession, disheartened him. The fever and anxiety of the first epoch in his career were passed, and he dreaded to renew it. He longed for a peaceful life; and Paris, where he was now known to so many persons, who were all acquainted with the story of his ambition and its failure, became hateful to him. But for the debts he owed, he would have returned at once to England. His true friend, Engelhart, understood his feelings, and counselled him to withdraw himself immediately from all his old pleasures, and to retire to some picturesque and quiet city in the provinces, there to pursue his art laboriously and tranquilly. He promised to supply him with money sufficient to keep his mind free from the anxiety of providing for his daily wants, until such time as he could repay him. 'I did thus when a young man,' said he, and it was the happiest time of my life.' The picture he drew of his peaceful and contented life, determined Stanilaus to take his advice.

The day of his departure drew near, and Stanilaus felt unwilling to go without having seen Beatrice, and bidding her farewell. He had no shame about calling for this purpose; and he wrote to say, that an old friend would come at a certain time to take leave of her before his departure from Paris. He found her in her room expecting him. She had prepared to meet him; and Stanilaus thought she had never looked handsomer than that evening.

'What ails you?' said Beatrice anxiously. 'You look pale—your face is thin.'

'I have had much to vex me of late,' replied Stanilaus.

'I know,' said Beatrice; but why should this vex you, when you could so easily repair everything?'

'I am not so sure of that as I was, Beatrice,' said he.

'And for that very reason you must succeed,' replied Beatrice. Stanilaus shook his head. 'I am going now to retire to a great distance, and to give my talents one more trial.'

'It is a good thought,' said Beatrice. 'Paris is a bad place-you must live quietly, and be industrious.'

'This I will promise you,' replied Stanilaus.

'And keep your promise?' said Beatrice smiling; for she recollected how often he had broken such resolutions.

'I think so. I am a different man, I hope, from what I was. This failure, which I thought a misfortune, may turn out, as Engelhart says, a blessing. I was drunk with the praises of people, but the world has sobered me.'

'And now, while you think yourself furthest from fame, you are nearer to it than ever.'

'Do not talk of fame, Beatrice,' said he. 'I failed with my last work, because I was feverishly craving after applause. Now, I will work to please myself; and if what pleases me does not please others too, I must be content with obscurity.'

'Ah! you are indeed changed,' said Beatrice.

Stanilaus was very loath to depart. Assuredly, if he had known the history of the bunch of dried flowers which caught his eye on the mantel-piece, he would not have left her so coldly. Before he went, she confessed to him the history of her putting him in prison, and how she had repented, and sought him everywhere on the night that he had left his room. She could not let him go away, she said, with the belief that she had been selfish.

Stanilaus was delighted with her simple and natural explanation of what had appeared to him so treacherous. 'I did not know you then, Beatrice,' said he. 'How could I?-we must be pure and good ourselves before we can understand the pure and good. I hope you have a better neighbour now.'

Indeed, I have not,' replied Beatrice; for I have none at all. The room has been empty ever since you left it.'

Beatrice was happier that night than she had ever been in her life. This explanation was the utmost she had desired, and she had begun to fear that Stanilaus would never know how she had only wished to save him, after all. She was content to bid him farewell now, though they should be about to part for ever.

'I will come and visit you again the very day I return,' said Stanilaus. It may be months-perhaps years; but be sure that I shall not have been in Paris an hour, before I come to see my dear old friend, to whom I owe so much.'

A whole week had passed beyond the time the sculptor had fixed for his departure, and still he was not gone. Beatrice had calculated, and found that he should be now settled in his new home in the country. But Stanilaus repented of his determination, and would gladly have renounced it, but for his fear of degrading himself in the eyes of his friend Engelhart, who would think he had abandoned himself again to his old vacillating disposition. But at last he bethought him of a kind of middle course. He told Engelhart that he had changed his resolution only so far as regarded the place, but that he was still determined to retire altogether from society. 'To-morrow,' said he, 'I shall have disappeared, and my old friends will see or hear nothing of me for a long time to come.'

That evening he visited Madame Benoit, and inquired if his old room were still unoccupied.

'You will find it exactly as you left it,' replied the portress, who was glad to see her lodger returned.

'Then,' said Stanilaus, 'I shall be glad to live there again, if you will accept a little higher rent.'

Madame Benoit objected.

'But I am going to ask a favour in return,' said Stanilaus-' that is, that you aid me in keeping my place of residence an entire secret. Do not think that there is any mystery in this: I am simply going to work, and I wish to be undisturbed.'

The portress promised to obey him implicitly; and the next afternoon he brought his tools and boxes there, and took up his abode again in his solitary room. The events of the last six months seemed to him like a story he had been reading—the impression of them was fast fading away.

come.

He listened for Beatrice's footsteps till evening, but she did not He tapped at her door, and unlocked it, to peep into her room. He noticed her lamp and work-box on the table, and the order and neatness that reigned there, and shut the door again without locking it. Later, he heard her coming up the stairs: he knew her step well. She opened her door, and soon after he heard her moving about in her room. He hesitated with a kind of dread of seizing the happiness that awaited him. He was sitting in his chair by the fire, just as he had sat on the night when she parted with him, before the officers came to arrest him, and looking towards her room, when he heard the handle of the lock moved, and saw the door slowly open. Beatrice stood there, holding the lamp in her hand. She started, and stopped upon the threshold, staring at him in wonder.

'Do not be alarmed, Beatrice,' said he; 'I am no ghost.'

'You startled me!' said she, breathless. 'I thought you were a hundred leagues away. But I see now-you meant to surprise me.'

'No,' replied Stanilaus, taking her by both hands, and looking in her face; ‘I really meant to go, but I found I could not. I loved you too much to leave you.'

Beatrice trembled visibly, and finally laid her face upon his shoulder, and burst into tears. She dreaded that he would change again.

But when she saw afterwards how closely he remained confined, how unceasingly he worked, and how cheerful and contented he had become, she knew how great a change his disappointment had wrought in him. She told him what she had not dared to tell him before-how unhappy his departure had made her; she shewed him the bunch of dried flowers, and he remembered them; and she confessed to him how she had never failed one evening to peep into

his room, until the night when she was so astonished to find him there.

Stanilaus worked at small objects all that winter. He would never have thought of attempting a great statue again, had not Beatrice endeavoured to convince him that he was now far more certain of success than before. One day he issued from his place of concealment, and visited his friend Engelhart, who, though he had regularly received through Beatrice the fruits of his labours, had never known where he was. He shewed him a drawing of his design, and his friend approved it.

'You shall work upon it here,' said Engelhart; 'but as a previous failure is apt to hinder a man's success, you shall exhibit it anonymously?'

He took the same subject as before, but he treated it so differently, that none could have suspected it to be by the same artist. He had worked at it with nothing to disturb his thoughts, and he was well satisfied with it. Before it was exhibited, Engelhart had disposed of it for a considerable sum to a foreign nobleman, who was known throughout Europe for his taste in art. The rumour of this purchase insured it attention among the objects in the exhibition. The newspapers extolled it everywhere; and Stanilaus's old enemy pointed out its beauties in the Débats, and alluded to a young artist whose brief but brilliant fame in private circles must be still fresh in the memory of his friends.' He counselled that young artist, ‘if he was still in existence,' to pay a visit to the exhibition, and see his own subject treated by one who had a true sense of art. One morning the baroness and her daughter, who was still unmarried, were astonished to read in the Débats an announcement of the marriage of Count Stanilaus de Lemberg with Mademoiselle Beatrice de Salins. A paragraph in the same paper mentioned the fact, that the statue lately purchased by the Duke de Téruel, and which had attracted so much attention at the late exhibition, was the work of Count Stanilaus de Lemberg. The fame of Stanilaus increased rapidly; but he continued to live privately with Madame de Lemberg at Neuilly, near Paris, where his friend Engelhart visited him frequently. He had no leisure to devote to the frivolous society of his fashionable acquaintances; but when he went to Paris, he never failed to find time for a visit to his friend Madame Benoit.

THE BRITISH CONQUEST OF INDIA.

HE first nation of modern times to hold a commercial intercourse with Indiathat famous land of the East, regarding which such gorgeous accounts had come down from antiquity-was the Portuguese. To discover a short route to the celebrated countries where the gold and the diamonds and the rich spices were to be found, was the great object of European ambition in the fifteenth century; and as the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama was the first to solve the problem, by doubling the Cape of Good Hope (previously passed by his countryman Diaz), and sailing into the Indian Ocean in the year 1497, his countrymen, then celebrated among the nations of Europe for their enterprise and nautical skill, were the first to reap the advantages of a connection by sea with the East Indies. Nearly a whole century elapsed, during which,' to use the words of Mr Mill in his History of British India, 'the Portuguese, without a rival, enjoyed and abused the advantages of superior knowledge and art amid a feeble and half-civilised people.'

About the end of the sixteenth century, other nations, especially the English and the Dutch, began to compete with the Portuguese in the trade with the East Indies. Passing over various efforts made by English adventurers, supported by government, to establish a regular commerce with India, we come to the memorable attempt made under the auspices of a number of London merchants, who had been constituted into a Company for the purpose by a royal

No. 140.

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