he could not help it. Believe me, Mr. Orme, I have not injured you willingly. There is but one path before us. We must never meet again.' He raised his head stiffly. Those low grave tones were most unlike Gilbert's voice. 'Be it so,' he replied. 'At least I am consoled to see you can bear it so cheerfully. At least I am glad to be the only sufferer.' They were cruel words, and she felt them so; but she knew that men are unjust in proportion to the strength of their affections; and she could not bear to think that he should go away and never do her justice, never know the cost of her burnt-offering, purified by a fire that reduced to ashes the altar on which it was kindled. 'Do not say so,' she answered, her eyes filling fast with tears. Do not believe I am utterly without feeling, without heart. Do you think I can take a sponge at will and wipe out the past, as you wipe off the figures from a child's slate? Do you think I can forget last year, with its changes, and its misgivings, and its surprise of unspeakable happiness? Do not make my duty too difficult for me to perform-do not make my burden too heavy for me to bear-do not force me to confess that my misery is more hopeless, my punishment heavier and more enduring than your own.' His face cleared and brightened in a moment. A beam of hope seemed to play on it once more.. Something in Ada's tone, that spoke of human longing and vain natural regret, seemed to call him, as it were, to the rescue. He was a man, and he argued like a man, pressing into his service all the considerations of sophistry, expediency, and precedent which might at least, he thought, persuade, if they were powerless to convince. He rose from his chair, and his whole exterior seemed to glow and change, whilst the full tones of the kindly voice smote sweetly, as of old, upon her ear. With all the impassioned energy of a man who is pleading for life, and more than life, he urged upon her every argument that love 167 could suggest to fly at once with him, and be his own for ever. He pleaded his faith, his truth, his fond obedience, above all, his altered condition now, and his future destruction if deprived of her. He was ready to leave England with her that minute-to change his name to accompany her to the remotest corner of the earth, and there devote every hour of his life to her service. They would be so contented, so happy. With a fine climate and a beautiful country, and their own society, all the world to each other, life would be a rapturous dream. He drew such a picture of their future as dazzled even his own mental vision. Gilbert was never deficient in eloquence; and the advocate's own being was indeed wrapped up in his cause. Then he asked indignantly what it was, this obstacle, that stood in the way of more than earthly happiness? A right granted without consideration, and repudiated by the possessor's own deliberate act; an alliance never sanctified by love, and dissolved by mutual consent of the contractors. Was this imaginary difficulty to embitter the whole future lives of two guiltless persons? Was a superstitious adherence to a vow made under mistaken conditions, and afterwards broken on the one part, to debar her for ever from the inheritance of every child of clay? -the sunshine of the soul that gladdens all alike, rich and poor, grand and lowly-that gives a zest to the beggar's coarsest food, and kindles a glow upon the peasant's fireless hearth? Was he to be the joint sufferer: he who had loved her as a thousand Latimers could never have done, to whom in her beauty she was the light of his life, the very air he breathed? ‘Ada, Ada! you are mine in the sight of heaven. Will you sacrifice me to him? Since our Mother Eve was fain to listen to the whispers of the serpent, it seems woman's lot to be tempted, woman's lot to be in all cases the besieged and the assailed. Woe to her if she be defeated!woe to her if she be surprised by a coup-de-main, or compelled to surrender at discretion? In either case, whilst the conqueror flings abroad his banner and trumpets forth his victory with all the honours of war, the vanquished must be enslaved, reviled, and humbled to the very dust. Væ victis! is the battle-cry of less unpolished savages than Brennus, of none more than the gentler sex themselves. I wonder on what principle of justice is founded the award that the less erring of two culprits should bear the whole punishment of their joint crime? I wonder in what page of the gospel I shall find authority for the conclusion, that the same offence is in man a venial folly, in woman an unpardonable sin? Is it brave and generous to trample down the weak and truckle to the strong? Is it the Teacher's will that his disciples should be the first to break the bruised reed and quench the smoking flax? If so, then society as at present constituted is indeed established on a noble and Christianlike basis! Tempted she was indeed, and who can tell how sorely? Yet did Ada come out of the furnace pure and radiant as an angel of light. It was hard to see him pleading there so eagerly, hard to know what must be the result of his failure in the one dear hope of his life, hardest of all to stifle the voice that cried for him so loudly in her own breast. Ada, too, was not deficient in imagination. She could picture to herself-ob, far too vividly-the happiness of a lot on which she must not even dare to think; could appreciate with a thrill that was not altogether painful the intense devotion that scrupled not for an instant to leave country and friends and kindred, and all for her sake; that would willingly and thankfully lose everything else so it gained but her. Men did not usually love like this. It was something to have found the treasure; alas, that it had been won only to be given up! Her visions, too, had been of a golden future, rich in all the blessings of domestic happiness and love; a future that to a woman -and such a woman as Ada-was a very type of heaven upon earth. Now that it was impossible she felt for the first time how she had cherished and leant upon this future how she had made it the goal and the object of every thought and every action-how it had indeed become a part of her very existence, without which the life before her was a weary and barren waste. Then it seemed so easy to make herself and him happy. What was the sacrifice of character and reputation and earthly honour? Nothing for his sake. Nay it would be a pleasure to prove to him that she too could give up all for one she loved. The opportunity was present, the cage was open; it seemed so easy to be free-so easy but for one consideration. 'Gilbert,' she said, and the loving look she bent upon him was pure from all earthly feeling, Gilbert, you have often told me that my happiness was dearer to you than your own; that you were capable of any effort, any sacrifice, for my welfare. It was my pride and pleasure to believe this, to know that you were different from others, to feel that I could trust you and depend upon you to the last. The time has come to put you to the proof. There is right, Gilbert, and there is wrong. Would you ask me to turn out of the path that leads to Heaven even for your sake! Would you wish to see me lost body and soul? Oh, I know you better than that. You are generous and chivalrous and good. Assist me in my task, hard though it be. Join me in the painful effort. I need never then be ashamed of the past. Do not deprive me of my only consolation, but let me carry with me that memory pure and unsullied into another world.' 1861.] Woman's Principle and Man's Injustice. fond eyes? Had she been less beautiful she might have conquered. But no, he could not give her up-could not voluntarily resign her to another, his type of all that was most enslaving and attractive, his very ideal of womanly perfection both in body and mind. Right or wrong, if man could do it, he would win her still. He could not stand upon the heights that she had reached, nor breathe so pure an air as that refined exalted nature. There was an earthly leavening in his devotion, deep and absorbing though it was-a drop in the cup of his affection which, like some cunning poison, sweetened while it strengthened the draught. Banishment from her presence was too severe a sentence; he could not bear it and live-he said so. But she was firm. She who knew the danger so well, whose eyes were not blinded by passion or self-interest, though she had loved him entirely, though her future life promised to be even sadder and lonelier than his own. She could do right, though hers appeared far the harder task of the two. We call them the weaker sex; we mock their frailties, their indecision, their inconstancy and love of change; yet I have known women bear suffering both of body and mind without wincing, from which a strong man has shrunk and turned away aghast. 'It must not be,' she said, softly, but decidedly. This is our last meeting upon earth. It is hard to say farewell. Gilbert, if it will make you happier, I will even pray that you may forget me.' He was angry, maddened, desperate. 'You have never loved me,' he exclaimed, wildly, ‘if you can say such things to me now. You are like all other women, and I was an idiot to suppose you different. So long as everything went on smoothly, while there was little to lose and much to gain, so long was I in high favour, and Mrs. Latimer saw nothing to be ashamed of in the conquest of Gilbert Orme; but directly there comes a difficulty, directly she on her side has some 169 thing to give up, something to undergo, oh! then it is quite another thing, and the poor fool who cannot change his affections as a lady does her dress, must suffer for his infatuation during the rest of his life. Well, I thank you for the lesson, Mrs. Latimer. I am not the first man, I conclude, by a good many, who has had to learn it; though it has not been taught in the kindest manner, I am the less likely to forget it. I shall not fall into the same mistake again, you may be sure. Oh! I am likely to be a wise, and a good, and a happy man hereafter!' He spoke in strong bitter irony; hurt, angry, and self-torturing. She could not answer him for sobbing, and he went on, now softening at her distress, now lashing himself once more into cruelty. 'If I might but live near you, and see you sometimes; if I might watch over you, Ada, and hear from you, and be sure of your welfare. I would even be satisfied that you should never hold communication with me so long as you were well and happy, on condition that I might come to you and aid you in sickness or distress. But no, no, you shake your head, you deny me even a kind word, a pitying look. False, heartless, ungrateful! you never cared for me, and I will crush and annihilate every feeling I ever had for you as I trample this wretched flower under my foot!' While he spoke, he took a sprig of geranium from a stand on the table, and ground it with a curse beneath his heel. Then, without another word or look, turned abruptly to the door, and left the apartment. With fixed eyes and parted lips, Ada stretched out her arms towards his receding figure. She tried to speak, but her voice was gone. Like the vague noises of a dream, she heard his footsteps die away upon the stair, the closing of the street door, and the wheels of the cab which had been waiting for him clattering away up the street. Then for the first time she realized her desolation. She felt the agony she had undergone, and knew the extent and the hopelessness of her loss. Never to see him again! neither to-day, nor to-morrow, nor next month, nor through all the weary years they both might live: never to hear his voice, nor see his handwriting, nor know aught of him, save through careless indifferent third persons. Her dearest hope to be that he might forget her, that he might belong exclusively to another, and love that fortunate woman as well as he had loved her. No! she could not quite bring herself to that, and yet how selfish to wish it otherwise. And half-an-hour ago her destiny was in her own power! Had she so willed it, she might have been his own all her life. It was a cruel reflection, and yet had it to be done again, Ada thought she would again have found strength for what she considered the Right. Nevertheless, she picked up the poor flower he had crushed with such brutal harshness, and hid it away sadly and tenderly in her bosom. ITALIAN STATES AND RULERS IN THE LAST HALF THE But before we give our unqualified sympathy to the cry which Sismondi and other historians have raised, let us ask whether the change was not an inevitable one, and moreover, whether it was altogether so pernicious as they represent it to be. When we see how completely the whole current of European affairs at this time ran in one direction, how the tendency of political change was everywhere from the rule of the many to the rule of the one, how monarchy was on all hands gaining both in territorial consistency and in administrative strength, it would seem that there was something in the temper of men's minds and in the exigencies of their condition which by an irresistible, perhaps unconscious impulse, led them onwards in the same path. That the movement began to take place earlier in Italy was owing to the more rapid maturity at which politics, in common with all other arts and sciences, had arrived in that genial land of the south. The 'barbarians,' as its inhabitants, like their prototypes the Greeks, contemptuously designated all the nations located beyond their own barriers, arrived only more tardily at the same results. In England, the destructive civil wars of the Roses decimated the nobility and threw power into the king's hands. But why did the former consequence bring about the latter? Because the evils of a jealous and warlike aristocracy were felt by the nation at large. Feudalism had had its day. It had been tried in the balance and found wanting to the necessities of a progressing generation. Had it not been for this, who can say that the royal power might not have suffered as well as that of the nobles, when a Henry and an Edward owed their 1861.] Tendencies towards Despotism. alternate preponderance to the favour of an Earl of Warwick, and the successful competitor for the crown did not possess a coin in his coffers that he could call his own? In France the same effect appears as consequent on the misfortunes of foreign invasion. Yet Charles VII. was not a prince of any personal vigour or concentration of purpose. He was reduced lower than almost any other prince of his race had ever been reduced by the progress of conquering foes. Nothing easier, as it would seem, than for his brave nobles, the Dunoises, the St. Pols, the Du Maines, the Dammartins, when they had successfully vindicated their country's freedom, to establish their own power on the degradation of that of their royal master, and to make France the assemblage of independent feofs it had been in the days of the rois fainéans. But it was not so; the spirit of the age was against such a result. Not even the hatred inspired by Charles's successor, and the combination of all the princes of the blood against him, could prevent the steady progress of the monarchy towards absolutism. The despotic rule of Louis XIV. was rooted and grounded by Louis XI. In Spain, the chief independent monarchies into which that country had been divided, were concen trated under Ferdinand and Isabella Castile and Aragon by marriage, Granada by conquest. In Germany, the imperial power became in effect hereditary in the house of Hapsburg, though still keeping up the semblance of election. Frederic III. at the end of a long reign was succeeded by his son Maximilian; and in the lifetime of this prince, romantic as he was, improvident, and possessing little of the patience and consistency of a deep politician, circumstances accomplished for him what his own genius would scarcely have done alone, and prospered his matrimonial schemes to the vast enlargement of the dominions of his house. And in Italy, as we have said, 171 the same process, only beginning earlier, is to be traced. The reign of the first sovereign duke of Milan, the great Gian-Galeazzo Visconti, who reigned over sixteen cities of the old Guelph and Ghibelline leagues, and drew his revenues from the whole fertile plain of Lombardy, had terminated at the very beginning of the century. The principality he had aggrandized was circumscribed under his successors; but the system of concentration went on in other States. Venice, taking advantage of Milan's weakness, stretched her confines to the Adda. Florence swallowed up all the smaller Tuscan republics, save Sienna, Lucca, and Perugia, which last fell under the Papal sway; and the Popes themselves became suzerain lords of most of the lesser towns of Romagna. Florence, Genoa, and Venice still retained the republican form of government; if indeed the jealous oligarchy of Venice can be called republican, where life and liberty were far more at the arbitrary irresponsible disposal of the governing power than in any tyrannical lordship of the time. Venice alone of all Italian States, whether monarchies or republies, suffered no revolutions, was torn by no contending factions. The few ill-starred conspiracies by which, from time to time, it was attempted to sap the iron tyranny of the State, were stifled by the never-slumbering suspicion of the Council of Ten and its ruthless inquisitors; and many a hapless victim was buried in some prison or canal out of sight and out of hearing, whose thoughts of discontent were never, as far as he was aware, whispered beyond the circle of his nearest friends, and whose fate his nearest friends could only darkly suspect. Genoa, on the contrary, was one perpetual scene of civil strife and tumult. The Dorias and Fieschis, the Grimaldis and Spinolas, disputed the possession of power among themselves, till, wearied of internal discord, and fearing the domination of Milan, the republic in the beginning of the fifteenth century placed itself voluntarily |