"I was told in London, as I came through it, that George Godolphin has been playing up old Rosemary with everything, and that Verrall has helped him," continued Mr. Crosse.

"Folks will talk,” said bold Charlotte. "I was told-it was the current report in Prior's Ash-that the stoppage had occurred through Mr. Crosse drawing his money out of the concern."

"What an unfounded assertion!" exclaimed that gentleman, in choler. "Prior's Ash ought to have known better."

"So ought those who tell you rubbish about George Godolphin and Verrall," coolly affirmed Charlotte.

"Where's Thomas Godolphin ?"

"At Ashlydyat. He's in luck. My Lord Averil has bought it all in as it stands, and Mr. Godolphin remains in it.”

"He is ill, I hear ?"

"Pretty near dead, I hear," retorted Charlotte. marry Miss Cecilia.'

"And where's that wicked George ?"

"My lord is to

"If you call names, I won't answer you another word, Mr. Crosse." "I suppose you don't like to hear it," he returned in so pointed a manner that Charlotte might have felt it as a lance-shaft. where is he?"

Well, "Just gone into lodgings with his wife and Margery and Meta. I have been taking tea with them. They left the bank to-day."

Mr. Crosse stood, nodding his head in the moonlight, and communing aloud with himself. "And so and so-it is all a smash together! It is as bad as was said."

"It couldn't be worse," cried Charlotte. "Prior's Ash won't hold up its head for many a day. It's no longer worth living in. I leave it for good to-morrow."

"Poor Sir George! It's a good thing he was in his grave. Lord Averil could have prosecuted George, I hear."

"Were I to hear to-morrow that I could be prosecuted for standing here and talking to you to-night, I shouldn't wonder," was the answer. "What on earth did he do with the money? What went with it ?”

Report runs that he founded a cluster of almshouses with it," said Charlotte, demurely. "Ten old women, who are to be found in coals and red cloaks, and half-a-crown a week."

The words angered him beyond everything. Nothing could have been more serious than his mood; nothing could savour of levity, of mockery, more than hers. Report runs that he has been giving fabulous prices for horses to make presents of," angrily retorted Mr. Crosse, in a tone of pointed significance. "He only gave

"Not a bit of it," returned undaunted Charlotte. bills.'

"Good night to you, Mrs. Pain," came the next words, haughty and abruptly; and Mr. Crosse turned to continue his way.

Leaving Charlotte standing there. No other passengers came down from the station: there were none to come: and she turned to retrace her steps to the town. She walked slowly and moved her head from side to side, as if she would take in all the familiar features of the landscape by way of a farewell in anticipation of the morrow; which was to close her residence at Prior's Ash for ever.

SUNDOWN.

BY ASTLEY H. BALDWIN.

EVENING approaches: the all-tired Earth
Prepares for rest, and with a low still voice
Praises her great Creator, who hath given
A time for all things: after day the night,
And after toil the blessings of repose.

*

Apollo lingering leaves his favourite boy,
Bright-haired young Hyacinth, whose violet eyes
Are dull with sleep, yet with a loving glance
Turns he towards the Sun-God as he smiles
A last farewell to the half-slumbering Earth.
Grandly he falls! The red oaks gleam with gold,
And the white heaving bosom of the sea
Floats in a liquid amber; majesty

Sits on the face of Nature, ere she doffs
The day-robes of her gorgeous sovereignty
For the
grey silvered vestments of the night!
The dew-wet apple-blossoms, robed in pink,
Sweet-scent the misty night-haze, the white pear
Closes her fragrant treasures from the kiss
Of the enamoured South-wind, who anon
Steals from her snowy riches some small store,
And scatters perfume on the willing breeze.
Bathed in a flush of purple gleam the hills,
Their red crests showing 'gainst the brighter sky
Superbly beautiful; the pine-trees bend
To the slow-coming night-breeze, and around
Rest the white flocks-O God, how beauteous-fair
The tranquil calm thou spreadest o'er the Night.

An English sundown! Lives there on this earth
A scene of truer beauty? Brighter far

May blaze the splendour of an orient sky

In amethyst and opal, but to us,

To us, blessed sons of England-God be thanked!—

Gives he alone from his Almighty hand

These scenes of truest Beauty, truest Peace!

* The metaphor is applied to the sun-rays falling on the blue hyacinth beds.

6

DIONYSIUS THE ELDER.

BY SIR NATHANIEL.

MICHELET pauses in his narrative of the Sicilian Vespers to remark on the fate of Sicily for ages-ever the milch-cow, drained both of milk and blood by a foreign master. In her bosom it is, he reminds us, that all the great quarrels of the world have been decided—Athens and Syracuse, Greece and Carthage, Carthage and Rome, have made her their battlefield; and there too the servile wars were fought out. All these solemn battles of mankind, he says, "have been contested within sight of Etna -like the Judgment of God' before the altar." Then came the Barbarians,-Arabs, Normans, Germans. Each time that Sicily formed a hope and desire, each time she was summoned to suffer: she turned, and then back again to the same side, like Enceladus under the volcano. Such, according to the French historian, are the "weakness and incurable irreconcilableness" of a people composed of a score of races, and so heavily oppressed by the double fatality of history and climate. In fact, he asserts, that the only hours Sicily ever had of independence and healthy existence were under her tyrants, the Dionysiuses and Gelons of old; by whom alone, too, she was rendered formidable abroad.*

So again Mr. Leigh Hunt opens a chapter of Glances at ancient Sicilian history and biography, with some remarks on the fate of the fair island, which, being one of those small, beautiful, and abundant countries which excite the cupidity of larger ones, has had as many foreign masters as the poor Princess of Babylon, in Boccacio, who, on her way to be married to the King of Colchos, fell into the hands of nine husbands. Leontius gives a pleasantly particularised catalogue raisonné of the leading celebrities of Sicily, in the old, old times, from Phalaris of the bull, and Stesichorus of the lyre, and Damocles of the sword, to Marcellus and Verres. Of course, an item or two in the list are appropriated to the Dionysiuses and their associates. And thus the Elder of the tyrants figures on the gossiping roll of names:

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Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse (the Elder). He wrote bad verses; slept in a bed with a trench round it, and a drawbridge; and, for fear of a barber, burnt away his beard with hot walnut-shells. What a razor! Dionysius had abilities enough to become the more hateful for his capricious and detestable qualities. Probably he had a spice of madness in him, which power exasperated. Ariosto has turned him to fine account in his personification of Suspicion."

Other items, that deal indirectly with his majesty, are the following: "Damon and Pythias, the famous friends. One of them became surety to Dionysius for the other's appearance at the scaffold, and was not disappointed. Dionysius begged to be admitted a third in the partnership! the most ridiculous thing, perhaps, that even the tyrant ever did. "Damocles, the courtly gentleman, who pronounced Dionysius the happiest man on earth. He was treated by his master to a 'proof of the

* See Michelet, Histoire de France, t. iii. 1. v. ch. i.

pudding' which tyrants eat. He sat crowned at the head of a luxurious banquet, in the midst of odours, music, and homage; and saw, suspended by a hair over his head, a naked sword. This, it must be confessed, was a happy thought of the royal poet-a practical epigram of the very finest point....

"Plato; who visited both the Dionysiuses, to induce them to become philosophers! He might as well have asked tigers in a sheepfold to prefer a dish of green peas.

The conduct and fortunes of the elder Dionysius are referred to by Mr. Stuart Mill, as a standard illustration, from that history which men call philosophy teaching by example, of the successive stages of the " despot's progress." Here, too, he observes,† the avenging Nemesis attends; but, as usual with the misdeeds of rulers, the punishment is vicarious:-the younger Dionysius, a "weak and self-indulgent, but good-natured and rather well-meaning inheritor of despotic power," having to suffer the penalty of the usurpation and the multiplied tyrannies of his energetic and unscrupulous father.

Mr. Grote's portrait of the latter, is that of a man all whose appetites were merged in the love of dominion, at home and abroad; and of money as a means of dominion: to the service of which master passion all his energies were devoted, together with those vast military resources which an unscrupulous ability served both to accumulate and to recruit. How the tyrant's treasury was supplied, with the large exigencies continually pressing upon it, we are but little informed. We know, however, that his exactions from the Syracusans were exorbitant; that he did not hesitate to strip the holiest temples; and that he left behind him a great reputation for ingenious tricks in extracting money from his subjects.

"Both the vague general picture, and the fragmentary details which come before us, of his conduct towards the Syracusans, present to us nothing but an oppressive and extortionate tyrant, by whose fiat numberless victims perished; more than ten thousand, according to the general language of Plutarch. He enriched largely his younger brothers and auxiliaries; among which latter, Hipparinus stood prominent, thus recovering a fortune equal to or larger than that which his profligacy had dissipated. But we hear also of acts of Dionysius, indicating a jealous and cruel temper, even towards near relatives."

-

This, indeed, is a salient point in the tyrant's character. For it appears certain, as the historian amply shows, that Dionysius trusted no one-TισTévæv ovdevi, are Plato's own words; that though in the field he was a perfectly brave man, yet his suspicion and timorous anxiety as to every one who approached his person, were carried to the most tormenting excess, and extended even to his wives, his brothers, his daughters. "Afraid to admit any one with a razor near to his face, he is said to have singed his own beard with a burning coal. Both his brother and his son were searched for concealed weapons, and even forced to change their clothes in the presence of his guards, before they were permitted to see him." We are told, too, of an officer of the guards, named Marsyas, who dreamed that he was assassinating Dionysius, being

* A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla, pp. 29 sq.

† Mill's Dissertations and Discussions in Philosophy, &c., vol. ii. p. 513. Grote, History of Greece, vol. xi. part ii. ch. lxxxiii.

put to death for this dream, as proving that his waking thoughts must have been dwelling upon such a project. Other examples of the like tragical freaks are to be read of in Plutarch, and in the anecdotes recounted by Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations and elsewhere. That about his brother Leptines, for instance, who was one day describing the situation of a place, and took a spear from one of the guards to trace the plan; a liberty which scandalised Dionysius beyond measure-and the result of which was the execution of the soldier who had parted with his spear for a few seconds, to oblige Leptines, and aid in the topographical demonstrations of that too demonstrative kinsman. Dionysius owned himself afraid of the sense and sagacity of his friends, because he knew that with sense and sagacity to put this and that together, to make deductions and draw comparisons, they could not but think it more eligible to rule than to be ruled, to govern than to obey. Their stolid ignorance would have been his bliss: in more instances than one or two, it was their folly to be wise.

Appian tells the story, and Montaigne repeats it after him, of a stranger who publicly said he could teach Dionysius an infallible way to find out and discover all the conspiracies his subjects should contrive against him, if he would give him a good sum of money for his pains. Dionysius, hearing of it, had the man sent for, and desired at once to be made master of a secret so precious. What was the art the man had to communicate? Quick! Let him name his terms. Well, his terms were a talent. That was a good deal of money. But Dionysius would not haggle-but would comport himself en prince. So the man should have the talent. And now, what was the art that cost so round a sum? All the art was, that, giving the ingenious gentleman a talent, his majesty should afterwards boast in all quarters that he had obtained a singular secret from him. Dionysius liked the idea-paid down a thousand crowns for it-and made political capital of it, from that day forth. It was not likely, as Montaigne, who relishes the idea too, remarks, that the king should give so great a sum to a person unknown, unless as a reward for some extraordinary and very useful discovery, and the belief of this served to keep his enemies in awe. Princes," adds the shrewd old essayist, "do very wisely, however, to publish the informations they receive of all the practices against their lives, to possess men with an opinion that they have such good intelligence, and so many spies abroad, that nothing can be plotted against them but they have immediate notice of it."* But this stroke of practical policy would have hit the taste of Dionysius less, by a good deal, than the theory that cost him an ungrudged talent. He was of a turn of mind to appreciate the expansive powers of imaginative suspicion. A miserable turn of mind, but one that with him was at once beyond participation and beyond relief. A blighting, palsying presence, this of stealthy Suspicion; but a presence that was not to be put by.

But thus it is with kings; suspicions haunt
And dangers press around them all their days;
Ambition galls them, luxury corrupts,

And wars and treasons are their talk at table.†

* Essais de Montaigne, livre i. ch. xxiii.
† H. Taylor, Edwin the Fair, Act IV. Sc. 4.

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