self-control, she quietly pocketed it and departed, telling Mr. Wall that she would see him after she had digested the con

tents.

On reaching home, Mrs. Travers felt much cheered on finding Tom Reed assisting Fanny in some energetic amateur gardening, which was her last and most lasting whim.

"You will stay to dinner, of course?" she said. "I want a committee of the whole house to discuss Sir Hugh Galbraith's letter. Mr. Wall has told me so much, that he rejected my offer, and, knowing this, I shall take time, and fortify myself with dinner before I read it. I am sure it is odiously insulting."

"Do you know that Mr. Ford is in the drawing-room?" said Fanny, with the slightest possible grimace.

I

"No, indeed. What does he want? suppose only to pay a visit. Well, I cannot ask him to stay to dinner to-day, but I will for Sunday. I could not read out Sir Hugh's letter before him. Why, I cannot tell, for he has always been most friendly and obliging to me. So, Fanny, I will go in and see him."

Mr. Ford was deep in the Times when Mrs. Travers entered and greeted him kindly, yet with a nameless something of caution in her usual frank cordiality, which he did not fail to notice and interpret to the satisfaction of his immense, yet uneasy vanity.

"I trust, my dear Mrs. Travers, you will not consider me intrusive," he began.

"Certainly not, Mr. Ford. I am very glad to see you; but are you quite well? you have been suffering from cold? which is perhaps the reason you have kept so long away."

"You are very good to notice my absence when you have the society of so new and agreeable a friend as Mr. Reed." The head a little bent to one side with a jerk, "I could scarcely hope

"Oh, Mr. Reed is a very old friend as well as a very pleasant one," interrupted Mrs. Travers, carelessly, and by no means in an apologetic tone. "He is a relation, you know, of dear old Mr. Lee, and was quite a playfellow of Fanny's and mine."

"Well," resumed Ford, "I have ventured to call, as I see the Indian mail is in, to ask if there is any communication from Sir Hugh Galbraith?”

"There is, indeed," replied Mrs. Travers, sitting down with a sigh; "and a very decided rejection of my offer. I am quite vexed; perhaps when he thinks better of it he may change his mind."

"Hum! He is a great fool, that is, unless he has formed any idea that a will more favourable to himself may turn up; and, even if it does, he would probably be better off with your offer."

"I have no doubt he would," replied Mrs. Travers, slowly untying her bonnet. “I feel quite sure my husband would not have left him as much as I wish to give."

"Suppose my late respected employer was subject to crotchets like other men?" answered Ford, rubbing his hands slowly together, and putting his head slightly to one side, interrogatively. "What a cruel triumph it would be to Sir Hugh if the bulk of the property had been left to him and a mere legacy to you?

"Why imagine anything so improbable?" replied Mrs. Travers calmly, yet with a perceptible tinge of contempt in her tone. "Mr. Travers would never have been unjust to me."

"No, no, of course not; but, after all, he must have been fallible like other men - very fallible, I should say, or he never would have used such words as But I beg your pardon, you forbid me to allude to that unhappy occurrence."

"I did," said Mrs. Travers shortly; "so you ought to avoid everything that can possibly lead up to it," she added goodhumouredly. "And tell me now how is poor old Gregory's family getting on; you mentioned that he left a son and daughter not very well off?"

"His son is well-to-do in his way; he commands one of Duncan's ships; he sailed for China some time after his father's death: but the daughter is in bad health; she is a widow with several children, and very badly off. The brother does what he can for her, but he has a wife and children himself."

"Then, my dear Mr. Ford," cried Mrs. Travers earnestly, "do pray see how she is, and provide what is necessary for her and the poor children. I would go and see her most willingly, but a total stranger

the widow of a man who must be to her in some degree a personage, having been her husband's employer might be troublesome and oppressive. Pray assure her of my sympathy and readiness to help her. I know Mr. Travers would have done so. He valued poor Mr. Gregory very much, and I feel quite sure he would approve what I propose."

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Certainly," said Mr. Ford in a suppressed and rather choked tone. "Certainly," he repeated, clearing his throat; Gregory was a very faithful servant and-and-your amiable, generous read

"

"He is changed in some way; but he is a very good fellow. He must be - he always has been and why should he change! I wonder why I am always so glad when he is gone!"

Dinner passed less agreeably than usual, for the three friends were oppressed by the anticipated unpleasantness of Sir Hugh's letter. Tom Reed did considerably the largest share of the talking. At last the more solid portion of the repast was cleared away; the grave and discreet Edwards gave the final touch to the dessert dishes, which perfected their mathematical precision, and departed. "Now or never, Mrs. Travers-courage! Take a glass of sherry, and open the fatal scroll."

"Oh, I am quite equal to the occasion without such extraneous aid," returned Mrs. Travers smiling, as she drew forth the letter and opened it slowly. "What a horrible hand! but cruelly firm. It has evidently been dashed off in hot haste. I must glance through it before I read aloud." (Reed and Fanny naturally looked at their hostess. as her eyes eagerly scanned the page. First, the quick colour flushed up to her brow, then faded away as rapidly, and left her almost pale. When she came to the end she laid it down for an instant with a slight, bitter smile.) "Listen to this!" she exclaimed, taking it up again, and proceeded to read in a clear, quiet voice:

"Gentlemen, I am in receipt of yours of, announcing the death of my cousin Mr. Richard Travers, and the liberal intentions of his widow towards me. Be so good as to inform your client that I am not disposed, by accepting obligations from her, to imply approbation of the deplorable weakness which disgraced the close of my unfortunate relative's life. I think it right to add a report that another and a very different will is in existence has reached me. I am on the point of starting for England, to ascertain, as far as possible, the truth, and, in any case, to try if the law can uphold a will so infamously unjust, and made evidently under the undue influence of a lady whose antecedents could not have exactly fitted her to be Mr. Travers's adviser. I, therefore, prefer claiming my possible rights to sharing the spoil with her, and beg that I may receive no further propositions on the subject. "I have the honour to be, gentlemen, etc., etc., HUGH GALBRAITH."

looked up at her listeners and kept silence.

"What a bitter bad temper the man must have been in when he wrote that!" cried Tom Reed.

"I am sure he is a detestable, ungrateful thing!" added Fanny.

"You see Wall was not so far wrong when he said that too liberal an offer might suggest an idea of being bought off," continued Reed.

"To a man of Sir Hugh's calibre, perhaps," said Mrs. Travers slowly, with her eyes still fixed on the letter. See," she went on, handing it over to Reed, "he had written woman' before 'lady,' and put his pen through it, not liking, I suppose, to be conventionally rude."

66

"Yes, yes, I see," he replied, as he glanced over Sir Hugh's effusion. most unwarrantable letter-ungentlemanlike, even. You really deserve some credit for taking it so calmly."

"Do I?" returned Mrs. Travers. "Do I take it calmly? If it ever happens that I can pay my debt to Sir Hugh, he will not fare the better for my calmness! What have I ever done to deserve such treatment? That he should be hurt and disappointed by my husband's will I am not surprised; but does he think Mr. Travers had not a right to marry any one he liked? And why should I be so distasteful to Sir Hugh Galbraith? Surely he does not fancy that we are still in the feudál ages, when humble birth was more disgraceful than misconduct? Why should he disdain me without knowing me? Pooh! Why do I trouble myself with such conjectures? What is he and his contempt to me? I can well afford to despise both."

She had spoken with repressed vehemence, and stopped abruptly. Reed looked up earnestly, as if struck by her tone, and Fanny exclaimed:

"And I daresay you are just as well born! I always heard your father

land he will find out how absurd any attempt to shake your position would be." "I suppose he will, Tom," returned Mrs. Travers. 66 Still, this man will give me trouble and pain. He has been wronged, and I cannot make it right. Try and throw it back as I will, his scorn hurts me; the material superiority of my position hurts me. You may laugh, Tom; but I should like to give him his choice of weapons and beat him in a fair fight. My money is my weak point."

Long may you continue to suffer from such weakness!" exclaimed Reed fervently. "You really are the most chivalrous lady I have ever had the pleasure of meeting."

"Oh, I daresay you think me very silly -but I am what I am. He says he is coming to England. I feel that his arrival will be the beginning of troubles."

"I am sure I wish some one would give him a bear's hug and finish him," cried Fanny, indignantly. "Never mind, Kate! He cannot take away everything from you, as he would like, I daresay. So you must try and forget him and be happy. Do not let him vex you."

"I shall try and follow your advice, dear," returned Mrs. Travers smiling, and resuming her usual tone, as the indignant colour which had mounted to her cheek faded away. "Come, let us go into the drawing-room; and, to turn our thoughts, suppose we plan out that little tour I have projected for the summer?"

Accordingly the three friends adjourned into the pleasant, perfumed drawing-room, where "Bradshaw " and " Murray" helped them to much lively talk and delightful plans. Mrs. Travers was unusually bright, and Sir Hugh seemed forgotten.

But long after Tom Reed had bid goodnight, and Fanny Lee's bright eyes were closed in sleep, Mrs. Travers sat thinking, with her elbows on her dressing-table, and her chin resting on her hands, till her candle was burnt down in the socket; and then she started up, extinguished it, and, opening the shutter, brushed out her long, chestnut-brown hair in the cold moonlight.

From Macmillan's Magazine. RICHARD BAXTER.*

IT may be in the recollection of some that in the course of last year I assisted

* An Address at the Inauguration of the Statue of Richard Baxter, at Kidderminster, July 28, 1875. Large parts of the address were omitted in the delivery.

at a like celebration to this in the town of Bedford. It is difficult to conceive a greater outward contrast than that between John Bunyan and Richard Baxter; between the stout burly youth who played on the green at Elstow, and the pale, lean, dyspeptic student who came hither from the banks of the Severn; between the homely, direct language, the native poetic genius of the illiterate tinker, and the multifarious knowledge, the hair-splitting arguments, and the prosaic disputations of the chief of English Protestant schoolmen. Their lives ran almost parallel to each other, yet, so far as we know, the one passed his threescore, the other his threescore and sixteen years without ever having seen the other, without having ever grasped each other's hand or looked in each other's face. We are far better acquainted with both than either at the time could have been with either. But there seemed to be special reasons why, though with some hesitation, I should respond to the invitation with which I was honoured on this occasion, and endeavour to bring out some lessons peculiar to Baxter, and full of instruction for our age, perhaps even more than for his own.

I. Unlike Bunyan, he lived not in the byways and corners of religious biography, but in the very thick of the crowded and eventful conflict of the national crisis -known, feared, hated, beloved throughout the realm. He was one of those who, without occupying the first place amongst men of letters, or the first place amongst men of action, occupy a conspicuous place in both. There is a saying of Luther's in which he divides the foremost men of his time and country into four classes: Words, not deeds - Erasmus, the great scholar; Deeds, not words Martin Luther himself, the great reformer; Deeds and Words Philip Melanchthon, scholar and reformer; Neither deeds nor words Carlostadt, the useless iconoclast. This is a classification which runs through all ages, and not least through the seventeenth century of our own history. At

-

The statue (by Mr. Brock) represents Baxter with one hand lifted up as if preaching, the other resting on the Bible. On the pedestal of the statue is the following inscription:

"Between the years 1641 and 1660
this town was the scene of the labours of
RICHARD BAXTER,

renowned equally for his Christian learning
and his pastoral fidelity.

In a stormy and divided age
he advocated unity and comprehension,
pointing the way to the Everlasting Rest.
Churchmen and Nonconformis:s
united to raise this memorial, A.D. 1875."