at her pictures, selling them to Mathias, like a true aristocrate as she was, rather than part with the dentelles and the jewels that were the heirlooms of the past glories of her line. Trembling for her brother's safety, she dare tell her name to none. Montausier, her cousin, who shared their danger and their refuge, sometimes employed her, unknown to Gaston, to take messages or cypher letters to their friends (an office which Fleur-de-Lys eagerly performed, being a hot little politician, and in the performance of which she had lost her way that night that Carlton found her in the streets, after the Italiens); and, mistrusting a woman's tongue, Montausier had made her solemnly swear never to reveal who she was, nor where she lived, to any one. Thus her lips were sealed to Carlton; and though she would have trusted him fearlessly, she could tell him nothing, and was thankful silence had been forced upon her, when she heard him name as his cousin Stéphanie de la Vieillecour, whom she knew, though he did not, to be an active partisan of the government, paid well, too, for her espionage, and who had an especial grudge, dating back some two or three years, to Gaston de Félice, who had been steeled to all seductions, whether of his ambition or his vanity, from a woman he unpolitely termed a traitress and a spy. All Carlton's energies, as soon as he heard the elucidation of the mystery that had tormented him for the last two months, were bent on one object to get Fleur-de-Lys and De Félice out of France. In the first place, he felt he owed poor Gaston some recompense for the indignity of that blow and that "Lâche!"-not palatable, he could see, even when explained away, to the fiery young Vicomte; in the second-with the French marriage laws, which are about as meddling, odious, and troublesome as can be, so much so, that we can hardly wonder at Frenchmen for disliking the holy bond when it is such a difficulty to get into it, and when in, such a desideratum to get out-Albany could not marry his Fleur-de-Lys without informing the maire, the curé, and the good people generally of the two arrondissements, of the fact of the proscribed De Félice being in Paris; besides, when the girl's name was not to be whispered on pain of Cayenne, how the deuce was he to get all the forms and legalities which France, knowing how slippery a tie it is, thinks it necessary to environ and barricade all approaches to that social institution, which is their bête noire, and in which, with the usual contradiction of human nature, the fetters forged the hardest are kicked at the soonest?

With Carlton, to will a thing was to do it, if there were means in heaven and earth to accomplish it. He bore down all opposition, he pooh-poohed all fear, he did not care a straw how he compromised himself with the French government, and, finally, forced De Félice into a scheme utterly antagonistic to all that fiery young noble's prejudices and pride. He wrote to his mother in England to be kind enough to telegraph for him instantly on business of the greatest importance, which that dowager viscountess, who idolised her son, immediately did, thinking Albany must have gone mad, but grateful to get him home even in a state of brain fever or lunacy.

With the telegram in his hand, Carlton hurried to the English ambassador, with whom he happened to have some intimacy, and showing him how urgent the case was, asked him for passports for himself, for a Mademoiselle Rose Duclos, and his two valets, James Waters and Pierre Legros. The minister, accustomed to give Carlton passports two or three times a

year, and thinking it very natural, if he thought about it at all, for him to take a pretty Parisienne home with him, gave him what he asked, wished him "bon voyage," and dropped the matter from that time out of his mind for evermore.

In the first dawn of the morning, Carlton rolled away to the chemin de fer, with Mademoiselle Rose Duclos beside him, and his two valets in the rumble-one his confidential servant, the other strangely aristocraticlooking even for that dignified class of flunkeys-the hearts of three at least of the party beating more anxiously than they had ever done in all their lives, while they breathed a thanksgiving for every station they passed unmolested; and Lafitolle, over his morning chocolate, thought of them too often to enjoy the perusal of his Charivari with his boasted unruffled philosophy. In the grey of the evening, Carlton lifted Mademoiselle Rose Duclos from the carriage he had ordered to meet him at Dover, and as it stopped before the wide hall-door of his mother's house near Hastings, he whispered, as he pressed her a moment against his heart, "Safe at last, thank God! My darling Fleur-de-Lys, welcome to England; it shall be a happy home to you."

He kept his word-it has been a happy home to her; as happy a one as Paris to her now, where they invariably spend half the year, from October to March, and where Madame de la Vieillecour holds her in especial detestation, partly because she is a rival star, chiefly because she is Carlton's wife, and, what is infinitely worse, his love. Sœur Marie's grave has often flowers showered on it in grateful memory of the old rendezvous, and they seldom go to their box at the Italiens without thinking of the night when in the Paris streets he heard that plaintive cry, "Sauvez-moi, monsieur!" Carlton and De Félice have a very warm friendship for each other, despite the blow and that insulting "Lâche!" Gaston refused to accept the general pardon the other day, dearly as he loves, fondly as he longs to see, his belle France once more. Perhaps his fate has saddened him, or English beauties are too still and statuesque to please him; at any rate, he still sees nothing to bear comparison with his young sister. Albany tells him he is right, there is nothing to compare with her, and to both of THE TWO VISCOUNTS the dearest thing on earth is FLEUR-DE-LYS, ONCE CARLTON'S INCONNUE.

"HÉLAS!" AND "HO! HO!"

(From "Les Mots" of Talleyrand.)

"TIS said, of nature pure and true
Old Talleyrand but little knew,
Yet all men own'd him deeply versed
In nature's craftiest ways and worst;
None equal to this man of guile
To sound the depths of sham or wile;
Who knew him best most learn'd to fear
The smart of his sardonic sneer.-

In stillness flows the river deep,
The shallow brooklets babbling leap,
So "weeping ripe" in grief's loud mood,
Her paper much with tears bedewed,
And words so very incoherent,

As made her grief at least apparent,
This sly old fox a widow chose
As confidant of all her woes.

Much raved she of "the dear departed,"

Said she "just lived," but "broken-hearted," "So kind a man,' so good a spouse,"

22.66

And such her sense of "binding vows,"
That "could she find a man as good"-
"She could not," but "suppose she could"-
No time should from remembrance sever
"Her loved lost lord-oh! never! never!"

The black-edged missive, which conveys
This frantic grief in broken phrase,
Finds Talleyrand with mind and brain
Deep in the complex case of-Spain!
Thus tasked, how shall he turn to write
Of comfort common-place and trite?
A word will do, till grief grows calm;
So his is short: "Hélas! Madame."

"The year of decency" goes by,
Again a note demands reply;
Long as the first, scarce more connected,
Tells "how she spent her days dejected:"
How "nights of loneliness endured,"
And! "how her broken heart was cured,"
And "when the proper period's ended,"
Hopes he'll approve "the dear intended!"

On Talleyrand's pale marble face
Emotion never left a trace,

Though change so quick from grief to love
Might marble's self to laughter move.
His laugh was inward, as he took

His pen, to give a fit rebuke

To grief forgot without a qualm,

And briefly wrote, "Ho! ho! Madame."

LA MORALE.

If upon famed Killarney's lake,

We shout "How are you, Paddy Blake?”
Echo replies-as boatmen tell-

"Oh, thank you, sir, I'm very well.”

So, when with bursting, o'ercharged bosom,
Widows wail husbands as they lose them,

Cynics like Talleyrand oft know

"Helas'!" true echo is "Ho! ho!"

R.

Mingle-Mangle by Monkshood.

but made a mingle-mangle and a hotch-potch of it-I cannot tell what.— BP. LATIMER'S Sermons.

ONCE A CHILD: NEVER A CHILD: ALWAYS A CHILD.

IN THREE PARTS.

PART II.-NEVER A CHILD.

ONCE A CHILD was the subject of a preceding paper,-illustrative of what Hartley Coleridge expresses in his sonnet on Childhood,*

But Heaven is kind, and therefore all possess

Once in their life fair Eden's simpleness.

The same sonnet opens with an exclamation that is suggestive of our present topic:

Oh what a wilderness were this sad world

If man were always man, and never child!

Yet it is certain that persons are here and there to be met with, in dead history, and in this actual life, of whom it is almost literally true, in every but the mere physical sense, that they were never young, never had the feelings and freshness of children, never knew what it was to revel in and reflect

The innocent brightness of life's new-born day.

Maria Bronte (the Helen Burns of "Jane Eyre"), the eldest of six children, could only have been a few months more than six years old, Mrs. Gaskell tells us, when Mr. Brontè removed from Thornton (in Bradford parish) to Haworth, in February, 1820. Those who knew Maria then, describe her as grave, thoughtful, and quiet, to a degree far beyond her years. "Her childhood was no childhood; the cases are rare in which the possessors of great gifts have known the blessings of that careless happy time; their unusual powers stir within them, and, instead of the natural life of perception-the objective, as the Germans call it they begin the deeper life of reflection-the subjective.

"Little Maria Brontè was delicate and small in appearance, which seemed to give greater effect to her wonderful precocity of intellect. She must have been her mother's companion and helpmate in many a household and nursery experience, for Mr. Bronte was, of course, much engaged in his study; and besides, he was not naturally fond of children, and felt their frequent appearance on the scene as a drag both on his wife's strength, and as an interruption to the comfort of the household."† A few pages later we read, it is true, of the six little creatures being used to walk out, hand in hand, towards the glorious wild moors, which in after days they loved so passionately, the elder ones taking thought* Poems of Hartley Coleridge, vol. ii. p. 111. † Life of Charlotte Brontè, vol. i. ch. iii.

ful care for the toddling wee things: but this passage immediately ensues: "They were grave and silent beyond their years; subdued, probably, by the presence of serious illness in the house; for, at the time which my informant speaks of, Mrs. Brontè was confined to the bedroom from which she never came forth alive. You would not [good old nurse loquitur] have known there was a child in the house, they were such still, noiseless, good little creatures. Maria would shut herself up [Maria, but seven!] in the children's study with a newspaper, and be able to tell one everything when she came out; debates in parliament, and I don't know what all. She was as good as a mother to her sisters and brother. But there never were such good children. I used to think them spiritless, they were so different to any children I had ever seen.'"*

Mrs. Gaskell's doctrine that the cases are rare in which greatly gifted persons have been happy in childhood, is open to exceptions and limitations and negations which this is not the place to enforce. Where, however, there is a forcing system in action, educationally or otherwise, so as to give morbid development to a precocious intellect, the normal happiness of childish days is, of course, in extremest peril, if not inevitably blighted in the bud. At any rate, a certain unnatural pretentiousness, or pragmatical conceit, or priggish pedantry, is produced, so essentially unchildlike, which saddens the beholder if not the infant prodigy itself, and if it does not make parents ashamed, invariably makes the judicious grieve. Wordsworth depicts the monstrosity to the life:

This model of a child is never known

To mix in quarrels; that were far beneath
His dignity

And natural or supernatural fear,

Unless it leap upon him in a dream,
Touches him not

Not blind is he

To the broad follies of the licensed world,
Yet innocent himself withal, though shrewd,
And can read lectures upon innocence;
A miracle of scientific lore,

Ships he can guide across the pathless sea,
And tell you all their cunning; he can read
The inside of the earth, and spell the stars;

he knows, too, the policies of foreign lands; can string you names of districts, cities, towns, "the whole world over, tight as beads of dew upon a gossamer thread ;"'

he sifts, he weighs;

All things are put to question; he must live
Knowing that he grows wiser every day
Or else not live at all, and seeing too
Each little drop of wisdom as it falls
Into the dimpling cistern of his heart.

Poor child! would one say, were there a child in the case.

For this unnatural growth the trainer blame,
Pity the tree.

However,

For is it not thrice pitiable to see the cherished vanity of this enfant ter

* Life of Charlotte Brontè, vol. i. ch. iii. p. 48.