poverty, scorn, an abnormal condition, but, coupled with these, a conscience at rest. Then came the second choice. He might make material atonement to the peasant girl he had wronged years before. He might then, having dismissed this subject of self-reproach, think of the fire-side happiness no longer denied him, and even dream of Georgette, the beautiful Georgette !

Once the straight path taken, the tempting traverse lost sight of for ever, he seemed to lose all ambition, all enterprise, even all capacity of looking forward.

Again and again after that interview Georgette tried to rouse him from his lethargy, and entice him from the dead-alive country town in which he was lost to the world. She penned kind matter-of-fact little notes, such notes as any rich woman may write to a poor clergyman, making one proposal after another. Now she wrote word that a church was on the point of being built, and endowed for him, in Paris, a parsonage-house should be added; he must accept. And when that proposal was calmly and sadly rejected, came another. Why, then, would he not go to England and settle himself among the French Protestants of London? A large following surely awaited him there, and rich supporters of the Reformed faith were ready to do for him what had been proposed in Paris. He should have his own church, and ample means of extending its usefulness. To all these overtures the pastor made the same reply. He thanked his sweet benefactress, he was overwhelmed with a sense of her goodness, but he was too old to change his mode of life a second time. That was how he put it, and indeed and in truth this man, although still in his prime, felt the inertia and the spiritlessness of age. His splendid mental powers were allowed to wear out unused. A weekly sermon to a scant congregation, the occasional task of winning over some rustic enquirer to the new faith, the supervision of a small school, baptisms, burials, such were the duties of one who might have risen to the highest position in any church. Yet he seemed not unhappy, rather passive and automatic, as if the strings of passion and action were stopped for ever, brought to a standstill by some rude shock.

It was the same with Georgette. After that journey to the parsonage amid the vines, she returned whither she had come, and continued to live in the world. Again and again suitors demanded her hand, but she steadfastly refused to marry. With a little more determination of character, a broader intellectual horizon, she might have won for herself a conspicuous social position. She did indeed preside over a salon, and prove the good genius of many; but, for the most part, she frittered away generosity and noble intention upon insignificant objects. Her favourite method of doing good was to find

protégés of young struggling artists, authors, musicians, of the other sex. Here was an adoration, a flattery, she could accept without shame or self-reproach. It pleased her to be adored by those who had nothing but adoration to give. Her hotel in Paris, her château in Touraine, were for the most part given up to this kind of graceful single-minded hospitality; and whenever she travelled, with the suite of a princess, she was accompanied by some promising painter, poet or archæologist, too poor to travel on his own account.

She did not seem unhappy, only pensive and strangely indifferent to the good things Fortune had heaped into her lap; strangely indifferent to life too! She would visit cholera-stricken patients, climb the most dangerous mountain peaks, ride ungovernable horses, and encounter perils of all kinds, without any shrinking, much less real terror. In one isolated respect were her outward habits changed. She gave as munificently to her own Church as before; she never openly seceded from it, but it was well known that she regularly attended a small Protestant temple in one of the more obscure quarters of Paris.

M. B.-E.

With an Old Magazine.

THE man who thought "'twas heaven to lounge upon a couch and read new novels on a rainy day," must have been one who should have lived in the present day. From his heaven he would in all likelihood have excluded those very writers who made the fortunes of a certain old magazine-Charles Lamb, with his quaint and tender thoughts; Hazlitt, with his wonderful imagery and bold unconventional writings; Carlyle, with his work as yet free from personal invective and abuse; De Quincey, with his graphic pen; Tom Hood, with all the bright nonsense of a boy who had not yet entered upon his inheritance of trouble; and a host of other luminaries, amongst whom John Keats was not the least noticeable. Rather than people our heaven with the novelists, would we name these old-world writers, and pass our time with the half-forgotten pages of the London Magazine.

When in 1820 the publishers, Messrs. Baldwin, Craddock and Joy, formed the idea of starting a new magazine under the title of an old and defunct periodical, they began looking about for an editor. They finally fixed upon the ex-editor of the Champion newspaper, one John Scott-a man in the prime of life, of good average ability, and with the courage of his opinions. He was shrewd and conscientious, with an immense capacity for work, and (what was even more to the point) with an enviable power of reconciling conflicting interests and keeping a very large staff on excellent terms with themselves, with him, and with each other. Scott began his editorship by contributing a series of articles on living authors, which exhibited fairly critical taste, and were eminently readable. Unfortunately he was very soon lured into the literary quarrels of the day. Lockhart in Blackwood had unwarrantably abused Leigh Hunt and his set, and John Scott thought fit to take up the cudgels on their behalf. A violent altercation ensued, and Lockhart challenged the editor of the London. It may be urged in Lockhart's defence that John Scott had been writing very offensively about the author of the Waverley Novels'; and as Lockhart had recently married Sir Walter's daughter, he may have felt called upon to fight his battles. Be that as it may, he sent the challenge; but while the

matter was still impending, his second used some expression in regard to John Scott, which the latter so promptly resented as to insist on fighting him before meeting the original offender. The duel took place. They met at Chalk Farm, and Christie (Lockhart's over-officious second) fired into the air. Scott did not notice the upward aim, and his second, Patmore, with most culpable negligence, did not inform him of it, so Christie's shot was returned point-blank. He was not hurt, but he was naturally much incensed, and when next he fired, he struck Scott just above the right hip. The poor fellow fell mortally wounded, and the proprietors of the magazine were so distressed at his loss, that instead of finding another editor they instantly sold their paper, which passed into the hands of the publishers, Taylor and Hessey. The former of these gentlemen insisted that Sir Philip Francis was the real author of the muchdiscussed letters of Junius; whilst Hessey's great kindness to Keats is sufficient to perpetuate his name.

The firm must have had a healthy belief in young talent, for when they decided they would follow in the steps of William Blackwood, and only employ a kind of sub-editor, who should work under their immediate supervision, they gave the post to a boy of twenty-one. This boy, whose pale face was brightened by a perpetual smile, whose slight figure and feeble voice were constantly shaken with laughter at his own or other people's expense, and who always dressed in sombre black, proved to be the very embodiment of merriment. The space that had been occupied in the magazine to argue over Sir Walter's shortcomings, or to break into fierce invective of Lockhart's unjust criticisms, was now filled by fresh young verse, delicious little essays, and witty answers to correspondents; and Tom Hood's name came to be associated with a quality tolerably rare in those hard-hitting times he wrote amusingly, and he hurt no one's feelings. It was part of his duties to hunt up dilatory contributors, and De Quincey, who was one of the most uncertain of men, was constantly invaded by the energetic young editor.

“When it was my frequent and agreeable duty to call on Mr. De Quincey, (being an uncommon name to remember, the servant associated it on the memoria technica principle with a sore throat, and always pronounced it Quinsy,) and I have found him at home-quite at home-in the midst of a German Ocean of Literature, flooding all the floor, the table, and the chairs,- billows of books tossing, tumbling, surging open,-on such occasions I have willingly listened by the hour, whilst the Philosopher, standing with his eyes fixed on one side of the room, seemed to be less speaking than reading from a handwriting on the wall."

The lodgings here referred to were in York Street, Covent Garden; and it was here that De Quincey wrote his famous Confessions of

an English Opium-Eater.' It was Charles Lamb who had introduced him to the proprietors of the London; for the friendship that had been commenced in 1804 was gladly renewed when De Quincey settled in London for a time in 1821. Seventeen years before he had taken a note of introduction to the India House in search of the future Elia, whom he had eventually found seated on "the highest possible stool." The kindly fashion in which the little spare clerk had received his unknown visitor, and the warm hospitality with which he straightway took him back to the Temple to tea, took firm hold of De Quincey's memory: and though he was not famed for tact when speaking of the home life of his contemporaries, and indeed betrayed more than he had any right, he was always especially gentle and honourable when dealing with that whimsical albeit lovable pair in the Temple rooms.

Many liberal people I have known in this world. . . many munificent people, but never any one upon whom, for bounty, for indulgence and forgiveness, for charitable construction of doubtful or mixed actions, and for regal munificence you might have thrown yourself with so absolute a reliance as upon this comparatively poor Charles Lamb."

When in 1821 Lamb introduced his friend to Mr. Taylor, the latter gentleman promptly invited him to accompany Elia to one of the "magazine dinners" which he gave monthly to the whole staff of writers at the publishing office in Waterloo Place. De Quincey naturally accepted the invitation, and while at table began speaking of his opium experiences. His fellow guests were exceedingly interested in his account, and his host finally suggested that their first conversation should prove the nucleus of his first contribution. His papers appeared in the September and October numbers, and few magazine articles have produced such a wonderful impression. In the vehement discussion to which they gave rise, their author was greatly annoyed to find his narration was regarded more as clever fiction than as absolute fact; and he hastened to write a letter to the London, in which he declared "the entire Confessions were designed to convey a narrative of his own experiences as an opiumeater, drawn up with entire simplicity and fidelity to facts." His later contributions were signed by the initials X. Y. Z.

De Quincey is not usually considered to be what is called a lovable man; but there is something eminently attractive in the tiny restless being, with his soft voice, colourless face, and marvellously bright eyes. When he was working hard for wife and bairns in distant Westmoreland, living in those lodgings and hedged in by those ponderous German books which young Hood so graphically described, it became necessary for his health that he should take a daily walk. The parks naturally offered the best London substitute for the

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