two people who had forgotten themselves? I believe it began with Elsley's being vexed at her springing up two or three times, fancying that she heard the children cry, while he wanted to be quiet, and sentimentalize over the roaring of the wind outside Then-she thought of nothing but those children. Why did she not take a book and occupy her mind? To which she had her pert, though just answer, about her mind having quite enough to do to keep clothes on the children's backs, and so forth,-let who list imagine the miserable little squabble ;— till she says, "I know what has put you out so to-night; nothing but the news of my sister's coming." He answers,"That her sister is as little to him as to any man; as welcome to come now as she has been to stay away these three years."

“Ah, it's very well to say that; but you have been a different person ever since that letter came.' ." And so she torments him into an angry self-justification (which she takes triumphantly as a confession) that "it is very disagreeable to have his thoughts broken in on by one who has no sympathy with him and his pursuits-and who-" and at that point he wisely stops short, for he was going to throw down a very ugly gage of battle. Thrown down or not, Lucia snatches at it.

"Ah, I understand; poor Valentia! You always hated her." "I did not but she is so brusque, and excited, and-" "Be so kind as not to abuse my family. You may say what you will of me; but—”

"And what have your family done for me, pray?"

Why, considering that we are now living rent-free in my brother's house, and-" She stops in her turn; for her pride and her prudence also will not let her tell him that Valentia has been clothing her and the children for the last three years. He is just the man to forbid her on the spot to receive any more presents, and to sacrifice her comfort to his own pride. But what she has said is quite enough to bring out a very angry answer, which she expecting, nips in the bud by

"For goodness' sake, don't speak so loud; I don't want the servants to hear."

"I am not speaking loud "—(he has not yet opened his lips). "That is your old trick to prevent my defending myself, while you are driving one mad. How dare you taunt me with being a pensioner on your brother's bounty I'll go up to town again and take lodgings there. I need not be beholden to any aristoerat of them all. I have my own station in the real world,-the world of intellect; I have my own friends; I have made myself a name without his help; and I can live without his help, he shall find!"

"Which name were you speaking of?" rejoins she looking

up at him, with all her native Irish humour flashing up for a moment in her naughty eyes. The next minute she would have given her hand not to have said it; for, with a very terrible word, Elsley springs to his feet and dashes out of the room.

She hears him catch up his hat and cloak, and hurry out into the rain, slamming the door behind him. She springs up to call him back, but he is gone ;—and she dashes herself on the floor, and bursts into an agony of weeping over "young bliss never to return"? Not in the least. Her principal fear is, lest he should catch cold in the rain. She takes up her work again, and stitches away in the comfortable certainty that in half an hour she will have recovered her temper, and he also; that they will pass a sulky night; and to-morrow, by about mid-day, without explanation or formal reconciliation, have become as good friends as ever. Perhaps," says she to herself, with a woman's sense of power, "if he be very much ashamed and very wet, I'll pity him and make friends to-night."

66

Miserable enough are these little squabbles. Why will two people, who have sworn to love and cherish each other utterly, and who, on the whole, do what they have sworn, behave to each other as they dare for very shame behave to no one else? Is it that, as every beautiful thing has its hideous antitype, this mutual shamelessness is the devil's ape of mutual confidence? Perhaps it cannot be otherwise with beings compact of good and evil. When the veil of reserve is withdrawn from between two souls, it must be withdrawn for evil, as for good, till the two natures, which ought to seek rest, each in the other's inmost depths, may at last spring apart, confronting each other recklessly with,— "There, you see me as I am; you know the worst of me, and I of you; take me as you find me what care I?”

Elsley and Lucia have not yet arrived at that terrible crisis; though they are on the path toward it, the path of little carelessnesses, rudenesses, ungoverned words and tempers, and, worst of all, of that half-confidence, which is certain to avenge itself by irritation and quarrelling-; for if two married people will not tell each other in love what they ought, they will be sure to tell each other in anger what they ought not. It is plain enough already that Elsley has his weak point, which must not be touched; something about " a name," which Lucia is to be expected to ignore, as if anything which really exists could be ignored while two people live together night and day, for better for worse. Till the thorn is out, the wound will not heal; and till the matter (whatever it may be) is set right, by confession and absolution, there will be no peace for them, for they are living in lie; and, unless it be a very little one indeed, better, perhaps, that they should go on to that terrible crisis of onon defiance.

It may end in disgust, hatred, madness; but it may, too, end in each falling again upon the other's bosom, and sobbing out through holy tears,-"Yes, you do know the worst of me, and yet you love me still. This is happiness, to find oneself most loved when one most hates oneself! God, help us to confess our sins to Thee, as we have done to each other, and to begin life again like little children, struggling hand in hand out of this lowest pit, up the steep path which leads to life, and strength, and peace."

Heaven grant that it may so end! But now Elsley has gone raging out into the raging darkness; trying to prove himself to himself the most injured of men, and to hate his wife as much as possible: though the fool knows the whole time that he loves her better than anything on earth, even than that "fame," on which he tries to fatten his lean soul, snapping greedily at every scrap which falls in his way, and, in default, snapping at everybody and everything else. And little comfort it gives him. Why should it? What comfort, save in being wise and strong? And is he the wiser or stronger for being told by a reviewer that he has written fine words, or has failed in writing them; or to have silly women writing to ask for his autograph, or for leave to set his songs to music? Nay, shocking as the question may seem, is he the wiser and stronger man for being a poet at all, and a genius ?—provided, of course, that the word genius is used in its modern meaning, of a person who can say prettier things than his neighbours. I think not. Be it as it may, away goes the poor genius; his long cloak, picturesque enough in calm weather, fluttering about uncomfortably enough, while the rain washes his long curls into swabs; out through the old garden, between storm-swept laurels, beneath dark groaning pines, and through a door in the wall which opens into the lane.

The lane leads downward, on the right, into the village. He is in no temper to meet his fellow-creatures,-even to see the comfortable gleam through their windows, as the sailors cose round the fire with wife and child; so he turns to the left, up the deep stone-banked lane, which leads towards the cliff, dark now as pitch, for it is overhung, right and left, with deep oak-wood.

It is no easy matter to proceed, though, for the wind pours down the lane as through a funnel, and the road is of slippery bare slate, worn here and there into puddles of greasy clay, Elsley slips back half of every step, while his wrath, as he tires, oozes out of his heels. Moreover, those dark trees above him, tossing their heads impatiently against the scarcely less dark sky, strike an awe into him, a sense of loneliness, almost of fear. An uncanny, bad night it is; and he is out on a bad

errand ; and he knows it, and wishes that he were home again. He does not believe, of course, in those "spirits of the storm," about whom he has so often written, any more than he does in a great deal of his fine imagery; but still, in such characters as his, the sympathy between the moods of nature and those of the mind is most real and important; and Dame Nature's equinoctial night-wrath is weird, grewsome, crushing, and can be faced (if it must be faced) in real comfort only when one is going on an errand of mercy, with a clear conscience, a light heart, a good cigar, and plenty of Mackintosh.

Per

So, ere Elsley had gone a quarter of a mile, he turned back, and resolved to go in, and take up his book once more. haps Lucia might beg his pardon; and if not, why, perhaps he might beg hers. The rain was washing the spirit out of him, as it does out of a thin-coated horse.

Stay! What was that sound above the roar of the gale? a cannon?

He listened, turning his head right and left to escape the howling of the wind in his ears. A minute, and another boom rose and rang aloft. It was near, too. He almost fancied that he felt the concussion of the air.

Another, and another; and then, in the village below, he could see lights hurrying to and fro. A wreck at sea? He turned again up the lane. He had never seen a wreck. What an opportunity for a poet; and on such a night too: it would be magnificent if the moon would but come out! Just the scene, too, for his excited temper! He will work on upward, let it blow and rain as it may. He is not disappointed. Ere he has gone a hundred yards, a mass of dripping oil-skins runs, full butt against him, knocking him against the bank; and, by the clank of weapons, he recognises the coast-guard watchman. "Hillo !-who's that? Beg your pardon, Sir," as the man recognises Elsley's voice.

"What is it ?—what are the guns ?"

"God knows, Sir! Overright the Chough and Crow; on 'em, I'm afeard. There they go again !-hard up, poor souls! God help them!" and the man runs shouting down the lane.

Another gun, and another; but long ere Elsley reaches the cliff, they are silent; and nothing is to be heard but the noise of the storm, which, loud as it was below among the wood, is almost intolerable now that he is on the open down.

He struggles up the lane toward the cliff, and there pauses, gasping, under the shelter of a wall, trying to analyse that enormous mass of sound which fills his ears and brain, and flows through his heart like maddening wine. He can bear the sight of the dead grass on the cliff-edge, weary, feeble, expostulating

with its old tormentor the gale; then the fierce screams of the blasts as they rush up across the layers of rock below, like hounds leaping up at their prey; and far beneath, the horrible confused battle-roar of that great leaguer of waves. He cannot see them, as he strains his eyes over the wall into the blank depth,nothing but a confused welter and quiver of mingled air, and rain, and spray, as if the very atmosphere were writhing in the clutches of the gale: but he can hear,-what can he not hear? It would have needed a less vivid brain than Elsley's to fancy another Badajos beneath. There it all is :—the rush of columns to the breach, officers cheering them on,-pauses, breaks, wild retreats, upbraiding calls, whispering consultations,-fresh rush on rush, now here, now there,-fierce shouts above, below, behind, -shrieks of agony, choked groans and gasps of dying men, -scaling-ladders hurled down with all their rattling freight, dull mine-explosions, ringing cannon-thunder, as the old fortress blasts back its besiegers pell-mell into the deep. It is all there : truly enough there, at least, to madden yet more Elsley's wild angry brain, till he tries to add his shouts to the great battlecries of land and sea, and finds them as little audible as an infant's wail.

Suddenly, far below him, a bright glimmer;-and, in a moment, a blue-light reveals the whole scene, in ghastly hues,blue leaping breakers, blue weltering sheets of foam, blue rocks, crowded with blue figures, like ghosts, flitting to and fro upon the brink of that blue seething Phlegethon, and rushing up towards him through the air, a thousand flying blue foamsponges, which dive over the brow of the hill and vanish, like delicate fairies fleeing before the wrath of the gale :-but where is the wreck? The blue-light cannot pierce the grey veil of mingled mist and spray which hangs to seaward; and her guns have been silent for half an hour and more.

Elsley hurries down, and finds half the village collected on the long sloping point of down below. Sailors wrapped in pilotcloth, oil-skinned coast-guardsmen, women with their gowns turned over their heads, staggering restlessly up and down, and in and out, while every moment some fresh comer stumbles down the slope, thrusting himself into his clothes as he goes, and asks, "Where's the wreck !" and gets no answer, but a surly advice to "hold his noise," as if they had hope of hearing the wreck which they cannot see; and kind women, with their hearts full of mothers' instincts, declare that they can hear little children crying, and are pooh-poohed down by kind men, who, man's fashion, don't like to believe anything too painful, or, if they believe it, to talk of it.

"What were the guns from, then, Brown? asks the Lieu tenant of the head-boatman.