was once a flag, whilst with his right he seizes that of the leader, though no more than a private from the ranks. That perplexes you not; mystery you see none in that. For distinctions of order perish, ranks are confounded; 'high and low' are words without a meaning, and to wreck goes every notion or feeling that divides the noble from the noble, or the brave man from the brave. But wherefore is it that now, when suddenly they wheel into mutual recognition, suddenly they pause? This soldier, this officer-who are they? O reader! once before they had stood face to face the soldier that was struck, the officer that struck him. Once again they are meeting; and the gaze of armies is upon them. If for a moment a doubt divides them, in a moment the doubt has perished. One glance exchanged between them publishes the forgiveness that is sealed for ever. As one who recovers a brother whom he has accounted dead, the officer sprang forward, threw his arms around the neck of the soldier, and kissed him, as if he were some martyr glorified by that shadow of death from which he was returning; whilst, on his part, the soldier, stepping back, and carrying his open hand through the beautiful motions of the military salute to a superior, makes this immortal answer-that answer which shut up for ever the memory of the indignity offered to him, even while for the last time alluding to it: Sir,' he said, 'I told you before, that I would make you repent it.' The Long Path. It Yes, that was my last walk with the schoolmistress. happened to be the end of a term; and before the next began, a very nice young woman, who had been her assistant, was announced as her successor, and she was provided for elsewhere. So it was no longer the schoolmistress that I walked with, but- -Let us not be in unseemly haste. I shall call her the schoolmistress still; some of you love her under that name. When it became known among the boarders that two of their number had joined hands to walk down the long path of life side by side, there was, as you may suppose, no small sensation. I confess I pitied our landlady. It took her all of a suddin,she said. Had not known that we was keepin' company, and never mistrusted anything partic'lar. Ma'am was right to better herself. Didn't look very rugged to take care of a femily, but could get hired haälp, she calc'lated.-The great maternal instinct came crowding up in her soul just then, and her eyes wandered until they settled on her daughter. No, poor, dear woman,-that could not have been. But I am dropping one of my internal tears for you, with this pleasant smile on my face all the time. The great mystery of Providence is the permitted crushing out of flowering instincts. Life is maintained by the respiration of oxygen and of sentiments. In the long catalogue of scientific cruelties there is hardly anything quite so painful to think of as that experiment of putting an animal under the bell of an air-pump and exhausting the air from it. [I never saw the accursed trick performed. Laus Deo!] There comes a time when the souls of human beings, women, perhaps, more even than men, begin to faint for the atmosphere of the affections they were made to breathe. Then it is that Society places its transparent bellglass over the young woman who is to be the subject of one of its fatal experiments. The element by which only the heart lives is sucked out of her crystalline prison. Watch her through its transparent walls ;—her bosom is heaving, but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle, compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the Book of Martyrs. The " dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we call Civilisation. Yes, my surface-thought laughs at you, you foolish, plain, over-dressed, mincing, cheaply-organised, self-saturated young person, whoever you may be, now reading this,-little thinking you are what I describe, and in blissful unconsciousness that you are destined to the lingering asphyxia of soul which is the lot of such multitudes worthier than yourself. But it is only my surface-thought which laughs. For that great procession of the UNLOVED who not only wear the crown of thorns, but must hide it under the locks of brown or gray,-under the snowy cap, under the chilling turban,—hide it even from themselves, -perhaps never know they wear it, though it kills them,there is no depth of tenderness in my nature that Pity has not sounded. Somewhere, somewhere,-love is in store for them, -the universe must not be allowed to fool them so cruelly. What infinite pathos in the small, half-unconscious artifices by which unattractive young persons seek to recommend themselves to the favour of those towards whom our dear sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are impelled by their Heaven-given instincts! Read what the singing-women- -one to ten thousand of the suffering women—tell us, and think of the griefs that die unspoken! Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman; and there are women enough lying in the next churchyard with very commonplace blue slate-stones at their head and feet, for whom it was just as true that "all sounds of life assumed one tone of love," as for Letitia Landon, of whom Elizabeth Browning said it; but she could give words to her grief, and they could not.-Will you hear a few stanzas of mine? THE VOICELESS. We count the broken lyres that rest Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,— But o'er their silent sister's breast The wild flowers who will stoop to number? A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them; Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them! Nay, grieve not for the dead alone, Whose song has told their hearts' sad story,- O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, Oh, hearts that break and give no sign To every hidden pang were given, So the last day of summer came. It was our choice to go to the church, but we had a kind of reception at the boardinghouse. The presents were all arranged, and among them none gave more pleasure than the modest tributes of our fellowboarders,—for there was not one, I believe, who did not send something. The landlady would insist on making an elegant bride-cake with her own hands; to which Master Benjamin Franklin wished to add certain embellishments out of his private funds, namely, a Cupid in a mouse-trap, done in white sugar, and two miniature flags with the stars and stripes, which had a very pleasing effect, I assure you. The landlady's daughter sent a richly bound copy of Tupper's Poems. On a blank leaf was the following, written in a very delicate and careful hand :— Presented to .. by . . On the eve ere her union in holy matrimony. May sunshine ever beam o'er her! Even the poor relative thought she must do something, and sent a copy of The Whole Duty of Man, bound in very attractive variegated sheepskin, the edges nicely marbled. From the divinity-student came the loveliest English edition of Keble's Christian Year. I opened it, when it came, to the Fourth Sunday in Lent, and read that angelic poem, sweeter than any thing I can remember since Xavier's "My God, I love Thee." I am not a Churchman,-I don't believe in planting oaks in flowerpots, but such a poem as "The Rosebud" makes one's heart a proselyte to the culture it grows from. Talk about it as much as you like,-one's breeding shows itself nowhere more than in his religion. A man should be a gentleman in his hymns and prayers; the fondness for "scenes," among vulgar saints, contrasts so meanly with that— "God only and good angels look and that other,— Behind the blissful scene," "He could not trust his melting soul But in his Maker's sight." that I hope some of them will see this, and read the poem and profit by it. My laughing and winking young friend undertook to pro cure and arrange the flowers for the table, and did it with immense zeal. I never saw him look happier than when he came in, his hat saucily on one side, and a cheroot in his mouth, with a huge bunch of tea-roses which he said were for "Madam." One of the last things that came was an old square box, smelling of camphor, tied and sealed. It bore in faded ink, the marks, "Calcutta, 1805." On opening it, we found a white cashmere shawl, with a very brief note from the dear old gentleman opposite, saying that he had kept this some years, thinking he might want it, and many more, not knowing what to do with it,that he had never seen it unfolded since he was a young supercargo,—and now, if she would spread it on her shoulders it would make him feel young to look at it. Poor Bridget, or Biddy, our red-armed maid-of-all-work! What must she do but buy a small copper breast-pin and put it under "Schoolma'am's plate that morning, at breakfast? And Schoolma'am would wear it,—though I made her cover it, as well as I could, with a tea-rose. It was my last breakfast as a boarder, and I could not leave them in utter silence. 66 Good-bye," I said,-"my dear friends, one and all of you! I have been long with you, and I find it hard parting. I have to thank you for a thousand courtesies, and above all for the patience and indulgence with which you have listened to me when I have tried to instruct or amuse you. My friend the Professor (who, as well as my friend the Poet, is unavoidably absent on this interesting occasion) has given me reason to suppose that he would occupy my empty chair about the first of January next. If he comes among you, be kind to him, as you have been to me. May the Lord bless you all!”—And we shook hands all round the table. Half an hour afterwards the breakfast-things and the cloth were gone. I looked up and down the length of the bare boards over which I had so often uttered my sentiments and experiences-and-yes, I am a man, like another. All sadness vanished, as, in the midst of these old friends of mine, whom you know, and others a little more up in the world, perhaps, to whom I have not introduced you, I took the schoolmistress before the altar from the hands of the old gentle |