"I dare say it is, you naughty beautiful thing. If any body is goose enough to fall in love with you, he'll be also goose enough, I don't doubt, to do so at first sight. There, don't look perpetually in that glass: but take care!

"What use? If it is going to happen at all, I say, it has happered already; so I shall just please myself, as usual."

And it had happened: and poor Frank had been, ever since the first day he saw Valencia, over head and ears in love. His time had come, and there was no escaping his fate.

But to escape he tried. Convinced, with many good men of all ages and creeds, that a celibate life was the fittest one for a clergyman, he had fled from St. Nepomuc's into the wilderness to avoid temptation, and beheld at his cell-door a fairer fiend than ever came to St. Dunstan. A fairer fiend, no doubt; for St. Dunstan's imagination created his temptress for him, but Valencia was a reality: and fact and nature may be safely backed to produce something more charming than any monk's brain can do. One questions whether St. Dunstan's apparition was not something as coarse as his own mind, clever though that mind At least, he would never have had the heart to apply the hot tongs to such a nose as Valencia's, but at most have bowed her out pittyingly, as Frank tried to bow out Valencia from the sacred place of his heart, but failed.

was.

:

Hard he tried, and humbly too. He had no proud contempt for married parsons. He was ready enough to confess, that he, too, might be weak in that respect, as in a hundred others. He conceived that he had no reason, from his own inner life, to believe himself worthy of any higher vocation-proving his own real nobleness of soul by that very humility. He had rather not marry. He might do so some day but he would sacrifice much to avoid the necessity. If he was weak, he would use what strength he had to the uttermost ere he yielded. And all the more, because he felt, and reasonably enough, that Valencia was the last woman in the world to make a parson's wife. He had his ideal of what such a wife should be, if she were to be allowed to exist at all-the same ideal which Mr. Paget has drawn in his charming little book (would that all parsons wives would read and perpend), the " Owlet of Owlstone Edge." But Valencia would surely not make a Beatrice. Beautiful she was, glorious, loveable, but not the helpmeet whom he needed. he fought against the new dream like a brave man. He fasted, he wept, he prayed: but his prayers seemed not to be heard. Valencia seemed to have enthroned herself, a true Venus victrix, in the centre of his heart, and would not be dispossessed. He tried to avoid seeing her: but even for that he had not strength : he went again and again when asked, only to come home more

And

miserable each time, as fierce against himself and his own weakness as if he had given way to wine or to oaths. In vain, too, he represented to himself the ridiculous hopelessness of his passion; the impossibility of the London beauty ever stooping to marry the poor country curate. Fancies would come in, how such things, strange as they might seem, had happened already; might happen again. It was a class of marriages for which he had always felt a strong dislike, even suspicion and contempt; and though he was far more fitted, in family as well as personal excellence, for such a match, than three out of four who make them, yet he shrunk with disgust from the notion of being himself classed at last among the match-making parsons. Whether there was 66 carnal pride" or not in that last thought, his soul so loathed it, that he would gladly have thrown up his cure at Aberalva; and would have done so actually, but for one word which Tom Thurnall had spoken to him, and that was— Cholera.

That the cholera might come; that it probably would come, in the course of the next two months, was news to him which was enough to keep him at his post, let what would be the consequence. And gradually he began to see a way out of his difficulty-and a very simple one; and that was, to die.

"That is the solution after all," said he. "I am not strong enough for God's work: but I will not shrink from it, if I can help. If I cannot master it, let it kill me; so at least I may have peace. I have failed utterly here: all my grand plans have crumbled to ashes between my fingers. I find myself a cumberer of the ground, where I fancied that I was going forth like a very Michael-fool that I was !-leader of the armies of heaven. And now, in the one remaining point on which I thought myself strong, I find myself weakest of all. Useless and helpless! I have one chance left, one chance to show these poor souls that I really love them, really wish their goodSelfish that I am! What matter whether I do show it or not? What need to justify myself to them? Self, self, creeping in everywhere! I shall begin next, I suppose, longing for the cholera to come, that I may show off myself in it, and make spiritual capital out of their dying agonies! Ah me! that it were all over !-That this cholera, if it is to come, would wipe out of this head what I verily believe nothing but death will do!" And therewith Frank laid his head on the table, and cried till he could cry no more.

It was not over manly: but he was weakened with overwork and sorrow and, on the whole, it was perhaps the best thing ne could do; for he fell asleep there, with his head on the table, and did not wake till the dawn blazed through his open window.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE DOCTOR AT BAY.

Did you ever, in a feverish dream, climb a mountain which grew higher and higher as you climbed; and scramble through passages which changed perpetually before you, and up and down break-neck stairs which broke off perpetually behind you? Did you ever spend the whole night, foot in stirrup, mounting that phantom hunter which never gets mounted, or, if he does, turns into a pen between your knees; or in going to fish that phantom stream which never gets fished? Did you ever, late for that mysterious dinner-party in some enchanted castle, wander disconsolately, in unaccountable rags and dirt, in search of that phantom carpet-bag which never gets found? Did you ever "realize" to yourself the sieve of the Danaides, the stone of Sisyphus, the wheel of Ixion; the pleasure of shearing that domestic animal who (according to the experience of a very ancient observer of nature) produces more cry than wool; the perambulation of that Irishman's model bog, where you slip two steps backward for one forward, and must, therefore, in order to progress at all, turn your face homeward, and progress as a pig does into a steamer, by going the opposite way? Were you ever condemned to spin ropes of sand to all eternity, like Tregeagle the wrecker; or to extract the cube roots of a million or two of hopeless surds, like the mad mathematician; or last, and worst of all, to work the Nuisances Removal Act? Then you can enter, as a man and a brother, into the sorrows of Tom Thurnall, in the months of June and July, 1854.

He had made up his mind, for certain good reasons of his own, that the cholera ought to visit Aberalva in the course of the summer; and, of course, tried his best to persuade people to get ready for their ugly visitor: but in vain. The choiera come there? Why, it never had come yet, which signified, when he inquired a little more closely, that there had been only one or two doubtful cases in 1837, and five or six in 1849. In vain he answered, “Very well; and is not that a proof that the causes of cholera are increasing here? If you had one case the first time, and five times as many the next, by the same rule you will have five times as many more if it comes this summer.'

66

Nonsense! Aberalva was the healthiest town on the coast." "Well but," would Tom say, "in the census before last, you had a population of 1,300 in 112 houses, and that was close packing enough, in all conscience and in the last census I

find you had a population of over 1,400, which must have increased since; and there are eight or nine old houses in the town pulled down, or turned into stores; so you are more closely packed than ever. And mind, it may seem no very great difference; but it is the last drop that fills the cup."

What had that to do with cholera ? And more than one gave him to understand that he must be either a very silly or a very impertinent person, to go poking into how many houses there were in the town, and how many people lived in each. Tardrew, the steward, indeed, said openly, that Mr. Thurnall was making disturbance enough in people's property up at Pentremochyn, without bothering himself with Aberalva too. He had no opinion of people who had a finger in everybody's pie. Whom Tom tried to soothe with honeyed words, knowing him to be of the original British bulldog breed, which, once stroked against the hair, shows his teeth at you for ever afterwards.

But staunch was Tardrew, unfortunately on the wrong side ; and backed by the collective ignorance, pride, laziness, and superstition of Aberalva, showed to his new assailant that terrible front of stupidity, against which, says Schiller, "the gods them selves fight in vain."

"Does he think we was all fools afore he came here?"

That was the rallying cry of the Conservative party, worshippers of Baalzebub, god of flies, and of that (so say Syrian scholars) from which flies are bred. And, indeed, there were

excuses for them, on the Yankee ground, that "there's a deal of human natur' in man." It is hard to human nature to make all the humiliating confessions which must precede sanitary repentance; to say, "I have been a very nasty, dirty fellow. I have lived contented in evil smells, till I care for them no more than my pig does. I have refused to understand Nature's broadest hints, that anything which is so disagreeable is not meant to be left about. I have probably been more or less the cause of half my own illnesses, and of three-fourths of the illness of my children; for aught I know, it is very much my fault that my own baby has died of scarlatina, and two or three of my tenants of typhus. No, hang it ! that's too much to make any man confess to! I'll prove my innocence by not reforming!" So sanitary reform is thrust out of sight, simply because its necessity is too humiliating to the pride of all, too frightful to the consciences of many.

Tom went to Trebooze.

"Mr. Trebooze, you are a man of position in the county, and own some houses in Aberalva. Don't you think you could use

your influence in this matter?"

"Own some houses? Yes,"-and Mr. Trebooze consigned

the said cottages to a variety of unmentionable places; "cost me more in rates than they bring in in rent, even if I get the rent paid. I should like to get a six-pounder, and blow the whole lot into the sea. Cholera coming, eh? D'ye think it

will be there before Michaelmas ?"

"I do."

"Pity I can't clear 'em out before Michaelmas. Else I'd have ejected the lot, and pulled the houses down."

"I think something should be done meanwhile, though, towards cleansing them."

*** Let 'em cleanse them themselves! Soap's cheap enough with your *** free trade, ain't it? No, Sir! That sort of talk will do well enough for my Lord Minchampstead, Sir, the old money-lending Jew! *** but gentlemen, Sir, gentlemen, that are half-ruined with free trade, and your Whig policy, Sir, you must give 'em back their rights before they can afford to throw away their money on cottages. Cottages, indeed! *** upstart of a cotton-spinner, coming down here, buying the land over our heads, and pretends to show us how to manage our estates; old families that have been in the county this four hundred years, with the finest peasantry in the world ready to die for them, Sir, till these new revolutionary doctrines came in-Pride and purse-proud conceit, just to show off his money! What do they want with better cottages than their fathers had? Only put notions into their heads, raise 'em above their station; more they have, more they'll want. *** Sir, make chartists of 'em all before he's done! I'll tell you what, Sir," and Mr. Trebooze attempted a dignified and dogmatic tone-"I never told it you before, because you were my very good friend, Sir: but my opinion is, Sir, that by what you're doing up at Pentremochyn, you're just spreading chartism -chartism, Sir! Of course I know nothing. Of course I'm nobody, in these days: but that's my opinion, Sir, and you've got it!"

By which motion Tom took little. Mighty is envy always, and mighty ignorance: but you become aware of their truly Titanic grandeur only when you attempt to touch their owner's pocket.

Tom tried old Heale: but took as little in that quarter. Heale had heard of sanitary reform, of course; but he knew nothing about it, and gave a general assent to Tom's doctrines, for fear of exposing his own ignorance: acting on them was a very different matter. It is always hard for an old medical man to confess that anything has been discovered since the days of his youth; and beside, there were other reasons behind, which Heale tried to avoid giving; and therefore fenced off,