Savenay I would work, or if there is no work to be had, why, I would sit down near the prison, and when any kind persons passed, they would see that I was hungry and give me something." A softened smile illuminated the countenance of the poacher; he looked kindly on the little peasant girl, whose face was turned towards him. "You are kindhearted, Louisa," said he, "but you must stay at the Magdeleine; it is my desire. It is not proper for young girls to be begging on the road. Remain here; Bruno will be back before long, and I shall return afterwards." The shepherdess wished still to oppose this plan. "I have said it, do you understand ?" added the poacher, imperiously. Louisa joined her hands and bowed her head. "I will do as you wish," said she with almost timorous resignation. There was a tolerably long silence; Bruno interrupted it by announcing in a sotto voce that they were going to start. The guards had just placed Moser in the cart and taken their guns. Louisa threw her arms round Bon-Affût and sobbed aloud. The poacher's courage appeared to fail: he turned pale, trembled, and was obliged to sit down; but it was the emotion of a moment. He rose almost instantly. "God will protect you, poor child," said he, with difficulty restraining his tears, "do not weep.. Say good-bye to her, Bruno. . . . and now, enough. Courage, Louisa, we shall return when God pleases." Then recovering himself, he added in a lower tone: .... "One word more, Louisa; you know where the Mare aux Aspics is, you know the snake's hole; I have hidden seven pieces of money there, it is all I have saved. I wanted to make up the number to ten for the day when you and Bruno return from church together. As long as there is any chance of my completing the sum, do not touch it; but if you hear that I am no longer alive, then take it as a legacy; the snake knows you as well as she knows me, and will let you go to the hole." At these words he again embraced the young girl, whose sobs redoubled in spite of herself. I determined to interfere. "Do not grieve yourself thus, my good girl," said I, in Breton," your two friends will soon return." You speak Blohik,' sir," exclaimed the poacher, then you have heard everything." "But I will take advantage of nothing," added I, quickly, "for I am now about to depart as well as your self, and I will join you to-morrow at Savenay, where I hope my deposition will completely acquit you." "May God reward you!" exclaimed Bruno and Louisa at the same moment. We could say no more, for the guards approached. They motioned to the prisoners, who placed themselves behind the cart, and the little escort set out on their march. On passing, Moser hailed me. There was on his pale face and in his feverish eyes an expression of (1) The Breton dialect of Vannes. savage joy. The boisiers watched the little band from the farm-yard, whilst Louisa, standing on the little wall, was by signs taking farewell of the prisoners, but suddenly she uttered a cry, and turning towards me, burst into tears. The cart and the prisoners had just disappeared in the shadow of the ravine. I was unable to reach Savenay until the second day after my departure from the Gavre: but I immediately went to the magistrate who was entrusted with the affair of the poacher and Bruno. My explanations sufficed to dissipate all suspicion about the conflagration, and to set the young honey-seeker at liberty. As to his companion, he had too many old accounts to settle with the foresters to enable me to obtain his freedom before my departure; but I had happily found an old school-fellow at Savenay, who was then a lawyer, and who promised to attend to Bon-Affût, and assist him if he needed aid. I learnt a long time after my excursion to the encampment of the boisiers, that the lawyer at Savenay had succeeded in procuring Bon-Affût's liberation after a few weeks' imprisonment, and that he had procured him a situation on the estate of Carheil, where the former poacher had become the beau ideal of a gamekeeper. I was informed also, that the latter was about to be once more associated with the honey-seeker, who had recently been engaged as gardener at the castle, and who was to join him after harvest time with the shepherdess of the Magdeleine, whom the natives of the forest denominated beforehand, Louisa Bruno. TRIC TRAC. TENIERS. THE scene of this picture is the outer and inner guard-room: it is composed of three distinct groups, all differing in character, and yet united in duty, and forming a perfect whole. The men of the remotest group are huddled round the fire, and though their backs are towards us we can see that they are smoking and drinking and engaged at cards. Games of chance are the delight of soldiers. The second or central group is composed of three soldiers—men of mark no doubt in their regiment, for they stand in grave deliberation, and are either discussing the plan of the next campaign, or lamenting the lack of discipline, and love of drink and gaming in their comrades. Those of the third or foreground group are engaged on the game which gives the name to the picture. Two of them seem wily citizens, or are more probably members of the Commissariat: the other two are officers, one of whom holds a small flagon in his hand, while the other is remonstrating with his opponent in the game, and by his clenched hands and serious visage seems to be on the point of losing it. The varied expression and light and shade and handling of the work are all masterly, and show on what grounds the reputation of the painter has been established. With the works of the school to which Teniers of Teniers plentiful, though the French reaped a rich belongs no one was better acquainted than Reynolds, harvest of art in the land. The Dutch had the for he made a picture-tour in Holland and Flanders; taste to fill their cabinets with pictures not only made patient observations, took copious notes, and suitable in dimensions but also national with respect passed no fine production without careful examination. to subject. Whatever gave a true and brilliant "Their merit," he says, "often consists in the truth image of the land and the people found favour in of representation alone: whatever praise they deserve, their sight; nor were they averse to look on the whatever pleasure they give when under the eye, they humblest scenes. Teniers was a painter after the make but a poor figure in description. It is to the people's heart: he went but to the cottage or to the eye only that the works of this school are addressed: market-place or the barracks for subjects: a woman it is not therefore to be wondered at, that what was spinning by a clear fire and well-swept hearth: a intended solely for the gratification of one sense suc-market-girl holding up a hare for sale: an old man ceeds but ill when applied to another." This is an unfair description, we think, of the works of the Dutch School: had any one told Sir Joshua that his portraits were addressed but to the eye, he would have resented it as an affront, and with good reason. The pictures of which he speaks are full of domestic gladness and fireside joy, and though copies-literal perhaps of what the painters saw, they supply the spectator with matter for reflection and study. Their object was not only to please the eye, but to gratify the mind. They are not exalted by genius, nor do they excite any extraordinary ecstasy, yet they please other senses than the sight-wherever human character appears, and of this the Dutch compositions are full, the mind is called into action. It is one of the rules of study laid down by Reynolds, that a painter had to make up his idea of perfection from the various excellences dispersed over the world. To Italy, he said, men must go for dignity of thought and splendour of imagination, and for the higher branches of knowledge; but as a poetical fancy and power of expression, or even correctness of drawing, were seldom united with such skill in colour as would set off these beauties to the best advantage, it would be necessary to go to the Dutch to learn the art of painting, for in the true use of colours they were unequalled. An artist, he says, by a close examination of their works may, in a few hours, make himself master of the principles on which they wrought, which cost them whole agesand perhaps the experience of a succession of agesto ascertain. Works bearing the name of Teniers are numerous in the world-three painters, a father and two sonsand each skilful—may in some degree account for this, but unquestionably there are counterfeits in circulation. Skilful copies pass in the sight of many for rare originals, or a slight change in a figure or a piece of furniture enables the happy proprietor to call it a first or a second thought of Teniers, and demand a high price. Their cabinet size aids too in countenancing the imposture, for a fine Teniers or an Ostade, a Jan Steen or a Gerard Dow will go into small space, and may have been contained in the hitherto unrummaged chamber of some Dutch Burgomaster: all this is present to the mind of the wily seller, who is as ready with simulated names and dates as with simulated commodities. Those who visit Holland wil still find the pictures repairing spectacles: boors drinking in the inside of a change-house or quarrelling at the door: a man blowing a trumpet or proving the strength of a new brewing; or soldiers at cards on the drumhead, or dancing on the dusty road-side during a march, or gambling in the guard-room, as in the present picture, were matters dear to the sight and welcome to the pencil of this eminent master. THE STRANGE GENTLEMAN.' BY JANE M. WINNARD. LOVE AND LOVE'S ENEMY. FOURTEEN years! twice seven glowing summers and as many icy winters had waxed and waned over the souls of that man and woman, with results notable and strange enough; but they had passed away as a tale that is told, and left no perceptible effect on that ruined turret. The self-same ivy wreaths clung round the old stones; the wall-flowers bloomed exactly where they use to bloom; and the delicate briar-rose showered down its perfumed petals on the moss as of yore, when the linnet sprung forth from its nest in alarm at the approach of human beings. To David Underwood the bird seemed the very same bird that he had so often disturbed when, impelled by the fervour of his youthful passion, he used to repair to the old turret at most unseasonable hours of the day and of the night, that he might be nearer, a little nearer to Miriam Grey. The bird burst forth now just as it used to do, fluttered about, uttered its short sweet note of alarm, swept rapidly round and round within the circle of the old wall, and then, descending once more, bravely settled on the topmost bough of the bush that concealed its precious home, and looked at the intruders with a bright bold eye, but a visibly ' palpitating heart. "Poor little flutterer! you are here as of old," thought David Underwood; "What you are now you were then. The same love swells that melodious throat, the same joy satisfies, the same fear agitates that little beating heart. You are the same-the same! fourteen years have wrought no change in you. Oh! thou little bird-ye peaceful ancient stones! that for one hour I might be as ye, conscious of no (1) Continued from vol. xiv. p. 389. change in all these long, long years! That I might | forget a little while that it is not with me as with you! That I might be a boy once more, that this painful load of experience would roll away from my heart, and send its deepest waters gushing up again into the sunlight, to gladden and refresh! But it cannot be! No, not for one hour-my lost love! Probation, struggle, failure, change! These-these are life, and I have lived! Love too is life. And I have lived in other love than this earliest one. Lived in the true love! aye, and well-nigh died of the false love; bitter hideous mockery of God's best gift!" He stood with folded arms, erect, motionless, save for the slight quivering of that upper lip-that sensifive upper lip which no amount of experience and victory over passion could quell into perfect calm, when the heart within was moved strongly. Seventy years of earthly life would not wear out the power of feeling in that heart. David Underwood would never die from mere fatigue of living. Even in the midst of his greatest sufferings, disappointments, crushing failures; when all the pleasant refreshing breezes of the morning of life had passed, and he was toiling amidst the burden and heat of the sultry noon; even then he had scarcely ever longed for death, but felt keenly the truth sung by our great contemporary poet ""Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant! He stood before his first love, and shrank not from He stood and gazed, and gazed. What was there in the expression of that woman's face, of those sightless eyes, that struck through him like an electric shock? Why are his arms extended as if to clasp her? Why do they sink again with ineffectual longing? Why are his eyes closed, as if to shut out earth and heaven, and all the past years that stare in upon him and tell of the actual, of the folly of unavailing regret; of the necessity for all things being as they are? Why is David Underwood, the philosopher, trembling before a woman? Fast losing his present, conscious, self-possessed Ego, and becoming a boy again? This must not be. He did not think he was so weak. It must be suppressed-shaken off. He is no longer a boy, to be mastered by his feelings. His will is the lord and master over them. He will speak at once. First, about his father's unfortunate losses-and the remedy which he himself (thanks to his success in the career of this world) is able to bring, and of which he can as yet speak to no one but herself. After that, he will speak of David Underwood, as of an intimate friend who has sent him to tell the story of his eventful life; that she may know all, and judge righteous judgment. He will school his voice, and bring about the desired end by the means he himself appoints. That is to act like a wise man and a strong minded one; and such is he, by the acknowledgment of all the world. He folded his arms resolutely once more, he threw back his head, as if that proud action were necessary to his complete self-possession, and was about to speak; when a simple circumstance overturned pride, self-possession, plans, philosophy, all— all.— Miriam Grey, on her side, felt and thought. It takes long to write what a moment or two suffices to the heart and brain to think and feel;-and while the sound of the retiring footsteps died away, and while David was immersed in vivid emotion, such as I have so imperfectly indicated, the clear, pure spirit of Miriam Grey became subdued, and she waited patiently for the words of the stranger. At first she was simply expectant; conscientiously waiting, and endeavouring to hold her mind in readiness for any blow. But while she was waiting with her face turned towards the quarter where she felt sure the stranger was standing, a change came over her. There was an external influence, something she could not define, but which was as real as if she could grasp it in her hand, or explain it in mathematical form to another-an influence from without, from the unseen point where that stranger stood, which seemed to permeate and warm her whole being, and to draw her heart with trembling joy towards it. Her soft eyes brightened, the disquiet and fear passed away—an instinct, a moral certainty impelled her. She half rose. Some one was there whose presence was as sunlight to her soul. Pressing one hand over her eyes, she stretched out the other, and said in a low tone, half joyous, half fearful and surprised Where are you, David ?-For it is you, I know, now, though I cannot see. Where are you?" The outstretched hand was grasped in silence-in silence pressed to lips, eager and trembling as those which had touched it on that night so many years ago. Oh! he had come back loving her still. She could not be mistaken. All her fears and doubts vanished. He had been true to her. How could she even for a moment think what she had thought this last few hours? But, he had come back-he was at her feet once more. How it was so he knew not; but life came back again as it had been with him when he last kissed that gentle hand. The fourteen intervening years, with all their changes, trials, duties, rolled away, away, like a troubled dream when one awakes. For a brief space they were utterly forgotten, and David Underwood was a boy again-a boy that had never been a man-a lover who had never so much as | inflicted. So gentle, so delicate, so sensitive, and (as dreamed that it was possible to love any woman but he now learned) still so loving towards himself! How Miriam Grey. All that he had determined to do could he bear to see her thus-blind, helpless, solivanished from his mind,—his actual position was for-tary; and not to have the power to comfort and supgotten, and the thing he had believed was impossible port her! Nay, to have been himself the cause of took shape in a moment. He sunk at her feet-his the agony she now suffered, and which she, with all arms were flung round her-his face was buried in her pride and reserve, could not conceal! her lap, his strong voice murmuring low— "Nay-if you had never come back, I should have trusted. I know that life for such as you, with genius and power, life has stern duties-duties which might keep you away from me long-very long." "Miriam! Do you not know ?” "I ask not to know anything just now; but that you are here, and that you love me. These are truths enough." "They are truths-but not enough. My own, my lost Miriam !" "Yes, yes," she murmured, bending her gentle face down that she might whisper in his ear. "Enough for the present. Ample! I could bear no more now. You shall explain and justify hereafter. Since you hold the old love, let all the sad dreary past go by.-Forget it." "Forget! Never! There is no forgetting. There is no going back." He started up.-" What mad delusion is this?" he continued, stepping slowly back as if to withdraw himself from her influence. "God pardon me! I have been dreaming, and-I have led you to mistake. I did not mean to wrong you thus. Pardon! Oh, pardon! You do not know-my father did not tell you-I see it now! It remains for me to tell, what should have been told you long since by others. Your old lover, David Underwood, was married five years ago." Sudden as a lightning flash the eloquent blood rushed over her face and neck. There was a nervous clenching of the little white hands that had rested on his head a few moments before, and then slowly she rose and turned to go away without a word, a sigh, or tear. "Miriam!" he cried in a voice of deep emotion, and grasping her arm gently. "Stop. Do not go, 1 implore you! Speak to me, Miriam !” How that fair face turned from him, and the arm was withdrawn from his grasp !-How gently, how full of sorrow and gentle reproach!-there was no indignant pride in the action. I cannot speak to you now. Presently I-I-." 'Only one word-to save a fellow-creature from great pain. Say that you will hear my story one day, that you forgive me. I wrote long since to you, to tell you of my intended marriage." "I never had the letter." "It was enclosed in one to my father." "He never opened any of your letters. He-Ino one knew of this. It has taken me by surpriseafter our meeting just now. Before, it would not have surprised me.' She moved on. "Forgive me, Miriam !" "What shall I forgive ?" She raised her head proudly, and the blind eyes filled with tears were fixed on him. "Forgive me for betraying you into the manifestation of a feeling of which you are now ashamed. Forgive me for daring to forget what was due to you and to myself-for being led away by the associations of this place, and the disordered state of my own mind. Forgive me the pain, the-the insult—” "Ah! there it is! that is the word: you have said it," she replied, in a low distinct tone. "Listen to me, David Underwood! You are right; I have somewhat to forgive. Of what once was between us for it was a reality, even in your heart-of that I will say nothing. Let it go. But of what is and ought to be I will speak. When David Underwood returns to his native place, should his first act be to enter into his father's house in disguise? Should his next act be to insult Miriam Grey in the very spot where he sought her love? Truly there is somewhat for me to forgive-a direct insult to myself, and the sudden annihilation of my reverence for a great man; -for until this hour, David Underwood, I have believed you to be a truly great and good man.—Let me There was a something in her motion as she stepped with an uncertain cautious tread, so unlike the grace-go hence and learn to forgive." ful decision of the girl he had loved, that he was reminded of her affliction once more. He was penetrated to the soul with tender pity. Pity for her blindness crossed that other pity for the pain he had He took her hand; he held it forcibly in both his. Nay, Miriam; for the sake of truth and justice you will-you must hear what I have to say in defence of As with eager remonstrant look and tone he held her hand, and was about to explain the cause of his strange conduct, the little door which communicated "To burst all links of habit-there to wander far away with the tower opened suddenly, and Mrs. Ward ap-On from island unto island at the gateways of the day." peared. will were strong enough,) to break away from this artificial life, "Come, Miriam, breakfast is waiting; the bannocks are nearly cold. There's Philip--Eh!—I beg your pardon, I did not know you had a visitor. You're just in time for breakfast, sir." “I am afraid I must not remain any longer, madam; you are very kind-another time, perhaps.-Bannocks of your own making? that is a temptation, indeed! but it is impossible. I am waited for at the rectory. Good morning, madam; good morning, Miss Grey," and he disappeared. Well, he is the strangest looking creature I ever saw!" exclaimed the pretty widow, looking after him with the greatest curiosity. "What brought him here, I should like to know; he is an old acquaintance of yours, I suppose,—you seemed extremely intimate, Miriam !-why, she is gone, I declare!" * * * * "There, they think, would be enjoyment, more than in this march of mind, In the steam-ship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind. There the passions, cramp'd no longer, shall have scope and breathing space-" And this comes not from a desire for licence, but from a desire to seek out a better law, a truer law, a law that shall more nearly approach to God's law felt within themselves, than the little laws of man's making. This question is almost always decided (whenever it does arise in the mind of a man) in favour of remaining within the bounds of the civilization in which he was born. He believes it to be the least of two evils; that is all. He is by no means thoroughly in love with this beautiful state of things called Western civilization-nobody is who has a mind apt to look beneath the surface-but he accepts it as a necessary Miriam had passed through the doorway, had reached her own room, and locked herself in, before Mrs. Ward had recovered from her astonishment, and was recalled to a sense of the importance of bannocks and break-condition, a means; perhaps the only means, certainly fast. CHAPTER IX. MIRIAM GREY Ir was a small chamber high up in the tower, lighted by one window, gothic-arched, and covered with antique scutcheons of the Greys, painted by the band of an Italian artist. It commanded a wide prospect-overlooking Milford Valley, and range after range of hill and mountain beyond; and on the far horizon, when the day was clear, might be seen a long blue line, which was the ocean. Often, very often in early youth, had Miriam Grey crept into the deep embrasure of that window, and sat there with her eyes fixed longingly on that faint distant streak; seeking she knew not what-only something fuller, freer, more vivid than her life on this remote hill-side. The craving for emotion, for adventure, for change,-natural to every young and active soul, was strong within her, but it had to succumb to the iron rule of circumstance. The instincts of the free savage, the child of nature, with which we all come into the world, must be subjugated by the laws of civilized and social life, if we are to become members of a civilized society at all. With men, who think without authority from other men, it ofttimes becomes a question whether membership of a civilized society is worth having, at the cost of cramping and crushing out many noble instincts, many germs of truth and beauty, With them it becomes a question, whenever the bonds of society are drawn tightly across their own souls, and they struggle to get free-only drawing the bonds the tighter by their struggling. With men it is a question, I say, because they feel within themselves a strength, (if the the means appointed by the Great Creator for the passage of humanity to a higher mode of life here on the earth. With women it is otherwise. It is no question with them, as regards their conduct, what they shall or shall not do in the matter. Morally, they are disabled from entertaining it, because they have neither the will nor the power to choose. Their desire is to another-in-and for another; and provided that desire be gratified, they are not curious about how the affairs of the world are managed. It is not a moral question with them;-the "ought I," or "ought I not," never comes to their minds in these matters. Even the pseudo-emancipated women do not discuss the question of emancipation from civilization itself: they only want to be emancipated from certain things in the present state of society which they believe to be positive evils, unnecessary and obstructive of civilization, and not things essential to the very existence of civilization itself;-which it is said by some wise people that they are. But though it is not a moral question, it is often, very often, a subject of speculation and imagination with cultivated women. They wonder what life, more especially life for woman, is like, elsewhere,―among the Amazons-in polygamous countries-among the Nomadic tribes of Central Asia, in that other civilization of China and Japan, and among the South Sea Islanders. Generally, as is most natural (whether always most strictly in accordance with the rules of logic and right reason, let logicians decide,) they draw comparisons much in favour of the land they live in. The more imaginative their nature, and the more of quiet and solitude and leisure there is in their daily life, the more are young girls wont to speculate upon modes of life most opposed to that to which they are accustomed ; and very much astonished would the constituted |