ed up in her mind to avenge upon him, even while she did him substantial service. And she was cruel with the remorseless cold-blooded cruelty of a creature whose powers of thought and sympathy were worn out. He wondered at her as he sat and saw her old eyes glisten with pleasure at the thought of having sent this poor injured robbed woman away. And he was her accomplice, her instigator, and it was for Bessie's children. The thought made him sick and giddy. It was only with an effort that he recovered himself. "When a woman comes back after twentyfive years, she does not disappear again," he said. "I am not blaming you. You did as was natural to you. But tell me everything. It might have been an impostor-you never saw her. How can you be sure it was Phoebe Thomson? If Nancy even had been here". "I tell you it was Phoebe Thomson," said Mrs. Fennell, raising her voice. And then all of a sudden she became silent. Nancy had come quietly up-stairs, and had opened the door, and was looking ia upon her mistress. She might have heard more, she might not even have heard that. She came in and put down some small purchases on the table. She was quite self-possessed and observant, looking as she always did, showing no signs of excitement. And Mr. Brownlow looked at her steadily. Like Nancy! but Mrs. Powys was not like Nancy. He concluded as this passed through his mind that Mrs. Fennell had named Nancy only as the first person that occurred to her. There was no likeness not the slightest. It went for nothing, and yet it was a kind of relief to him all the same. Why do you come in like that, without knocking, when I've got some one with me?" said Mrs. Fennell, with tremulous wrath. "It's like a common maid-of-all-work, that knows no better. I have told you that before." "It's seldom as one of the family is here," said Nancy, "or I'd think on't. When things happen so rare folks forgets. Often and often I say as you're left too much alone; but what with the lady yesterday and Mr. Brownlow today' 66 What lady yesterday?" cried Mrs. Fennell. "What do you know about a lady yesterday? Who ever said there was a lady yesterday? If you speak up to me bold like that, I'll send you away. "Oh, it's nothing to me," said Nancy. "You know as I was out. They most always comes when I'm out. Fine folks is not partial to me; but if you're agoing to be better looked to, and your own flesh and blood to come and see you, at your age, it will be good news to me. 66 My own flesh and blood don't think a great deal about an old woman," said Mrs. Fennell, swallowing the bait. "I'm little good to anybody now. I've seen the day when it was different. And I can still be of use to them that's kind to me," she said with significance. Mr. Brownlow sat and listened to all this, and it smote him with disgust. He got up, and. though it cost him an effort to do so, held out his hand to the old woman in her chair. "Tell me, or tell Jack, if you want anything," he said. "I can't stay now; and if any thing occurs let me know," he added. He took no notice of the vehement shaking of her hand as she turned towards Nancy. He looked at Nancy again, though he did not like her. She at least was not to be in' the conspiracy, and he had a satisfaction in showing that at least he was not afraid of her. "If there is anything that can make your mistress more comfortable," he said, sternly, "I have already desired you to let me know; and you understand that she is not to be bullied either by you or any one else good day." If she "Bullied!" said Nancy, in consternation; but he did not condescend to look at her again. He went away silently, like a man in a dream. Up to this moment he had been able to doubt. It was poor comfort, yet there was some comfort in it. When the evidence looked the most clear and overwhelming, he had still been able to say to himself that he had no direct proof, that it was not his business, that still it might all be a mistake. Now that last standingground was taken from under his feet. Mrs. Thomson's heir had made herself known. She had told her name and her parentage, and claimed kindred with his mother-in-law, who if she had been an impostor, could have convicted her; and the old woman, on the contrary, had been convinced. It was a warm summer day, but Mr. Brownlow shivered with cold as he walked along the familiar streets. had but come twenty years, five and twenty years ago! If he had but followed his own instincts of right and wrong, and left this odious money untouched! It was for Bessie's sake he had used it, to make his marriage practicable, and now the whirligig of time had brought about its revenges. Bessie's daughter would have to pay for her mother's good fortune. He felt himself swing from side to side as he went along, so confused was he with the multitude of his thoughts, and recovered himself only with a violent effort. The decisive moment had come. It had come too soon- before the time was out at which Phoebe Thomson would be harmless. He could not put himself off any longer with the pretext that he was not sure. And young Powys in the office, whom he had taken in, partly in kindness and partly with evil intent, sat under his eyes calculating the amount of that frightful interest which would ruin him. Mr. Brownlow passed several of his acquaintances in the street without noticing them, but not without attracting notice. He was so pale, that the strangers who passed turned round to look at him. No further delay no putting off-no foolish excuses to himself. Whatever had to be done must be done quickly. Unconsciously he quickened his pace, and went on at a speed which few men could have kept up with. He was strong, and his excitement gave him new strength. It must be done, one thing or another; there was no way of escaping the alternative now. There are natures which are driven wild and frantic by a great excitement, and there are others which are calmed and steadied in face of an emergency. Mr. Brownlow entered his private office with the feeling of a man who was about to die there, and might never come out alive. He did not notice any one- - even waved Wrinkell away, who was coming to him with a bag of papers. "I have some urgent private business," he said; "take everything to my son, and don't let me be disturbed." He said this in the office, so that every one heard him; and though he looked at nobody, he could see Powys look up from his calculations, and Jack come in some surprise to the open door of his room. They both heard him, both the young men, and wondered. Jack, too, was dark and self-absorbed, engaged in a struggle with himself. And they looked at the master, the father, and said to themselves, in their youthful folly. that it was easy for him to talk of not being disturbed. What could he have to trouble him- he who could do as he liked, and whom nobody interfered with? Mr. Brownlow, for his part, saw them both without looking at them, and a certain bitter smile at his son's reserve and silence came to him inwardly. Jack thought it a great matter to be checked in his boyish love-making; while, good heavens! how different were the burdens, how much harder the struggles of which the boy was ignorant! Mr. Brownlow went in | and shut the door. He was alone then-shut out from everybody. No one could tell, or even guess, the conflict in his mind-not even his young adversary outside, who was reckoning up the compound interest. He paused a little, and sat down, and bent his head on his hands. Was he praying? He could not have told what it was. It was not prayer in words. If it had been, it would have been a prayer for strength to do wrong. That was what he was struggling after-strength to shut out all compunctions to be steadily cruel, steadily false. Could God have granted him that? but his habits were those of a good man all the same. He paused when he was in perplexity, and was silent, and collected his thoughts, not without a kind of mute customary appeal; and then flung his hands away from his face, and started to his feet with a thrill of horror. " Help me to sin!" was that what it had been in his heart to He spent the whole day in the office, busy FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. VI. He went with very hard and heavy work. minutely into all those calculations which he supposed young Powys to be making. And when he had put down the last cipher, he opened all his secret places, took out all his memorandums, every security he possessed, all his notes of investments, the numberless items which composed his fortune. He worked at his task like a clerk making up ordinary accounts, yet there was something in his silent speed, his wrapt attention, the intense exactness of every note, which was very different from the steady indifference of daily work. When he had put everything down, and made his last calculation, he laid the two papers together on his desk. A little glimmering of hope had, perhaps, awakened in him, from the very fact of doing something. He laid them down side by side, and the little colour that had come into his face vanished out of it in an instant. If there had been but a little over! If he could have felt that he had something left, he might still, at the eleventh hour, have had strength to make the sacrifice; but the figures which stared him in the face meant ruin. Restitution would cost him everything- more than everything. It would leave him in debt; it would mortgage even that business which the Brownlows of Masterton had maintained so long. It would plunge his children down, down in an instant out of the place they had been educated to fill. It would take from himself the means of being as he was - one of the benefactors of the county, foremost in all good works. Good works! when it was with the inheritance of the widow and the orphans that he did them. All this came before him as clearly as if it had been written in lines of light-an uneducated, imprudent woman -a creature who had run away from her friends, abandoned her mother- a boy who was going to the bad -a family unaccustomed to wealth, who would squander and who would not enjoy it. And, on the other hand, himself who had increased it, used it well, served both God and man with it. The struggle was long, and it was hard, but in the end the natural result came. His half-conscious appeal was answered somehow, though not from on high. The strength came to him which he had asked for strength to do wrong. But all the clerks started, and Mr. Wrinkell himself took off his spectacles, and seriously considered whether he should send for a doctor, when in the evening, just before the hour for leaving the office, Mr. Brownlow suddenly opened the door and called young Powys into his private room. 167. From Dr. Bigelow's "Modern Inquiries." HOMER AND THE CLASSICS. The consummation of heroism is to upbraid and then butcher a fallen foe. Ulysses, the hero of the " Odyssey," on his return home, winds up that poem by a wholesale slaughter of his disorganized subjects, hangs up a dozen censurable females in a row, and puts Melanthius to a lingering death by gradual mutilation, much after the manner of a modern Chinese execution, by vivisection into inch-pieces. Such is the exclusive devotion, if not the fanaticism, of the present day, which places the successful but imaginative poetry of a semi-barbarous age above all the acquireTHE mystery attending the person of ments which have since rendered our terHomer, and the obscurity which veils the restrial life worth possessing. Its savage atHomeric age, have given to the "Iliad " a tributes, brute instincts, and exceptionable human if not divine interest, hardly sur- morality, override the more modern sentipassed in effect and duration by that of the ments of humanity, honor, and Christian Pentateuch itself. A work, finished in its charity. The gods who preside in this scencharacter and wonderful in its poetic inspir- ic exhibition are tainted with every vice ation, which preceded authentic history and which has since degraded their supposed failed to record its own, may well stimulate subordinates of the human race. Cruelty, the curiosity and deep interest of the world. revenge, deceit, hatred, unrelenting rancor, It appeared when society was fresh and and unbridled lust, are the qualities which primitive, and struck its roots deep in a soil call for admiration in a generation professunoccupied by competing growths. It in- ing to feel and practise virtues of an oppovented, portrayed, and exaggerated things site nature. An exterminating war is unacceptable to the age in which it appeared. dertaken for the sake of a vacillating adulIt sounded the depths of the human heart as teress, and its principal heroes quarrel imit then existed, a compound of savage im- placably about the possession of their female pulses, grasping credulity, and strong hu- slaves. Indomitable rage exalts and apoloman yearnings. On this basis it construct-gizes for all acts of injustice and atrocity. ed gods and heroes, and finished them with a completeness and individuality of character not to have been expected from the existing age and the limited materials which that age afforded. The miracle of its composition is exceeded only by that of its preservation. From obscure and shadowy beginnings, it has descended through nearly three thousand years of accumulating homage, to receive from loyal worshippers its apotheosis at the present day. It is not enough that it was applauded and held up as a model by the writers cf antiquity, Its fame had no culminated till the nineteenth century; and we now see it occupying a throne in the schools and universities, at least of England, of which the steps belong to the very structure and machinery of church and sate. The word "learning now means a knowledge of Greek literature, and the name "scholar" is accorded to none but those familiar with the works of Homer and his countrymen. Within three years, three new metrical versions of the "Iliad" have been added to the dozen previously existing translations. The Homeric poems have been placed, by more writers than one, by the side of the Holy Scriptures; and Mr. Gladstone, the distinguished statesman and churchman, in his voluminous work of "Studies on Homer," instructs us, that "the poems of Homer may be viewed, in the Fhilosophy of human nature, as the complement of the earliest portion of the Sacred Records." " But there are lesser improprieties, which perhaps find a parallel in more modern times. Diomede and Glaucus meet on the field of battle, and, instead of attending to their duty, which is to fight, they fall into a lung discussion about their pedigrees, and compare the generations of men to leaves, as poets in all ages have done, from Job to Dr. Beattie. The interview ends in a trading operation, in which one party gets a set of golden arms in exchange for one of brass, the estimated value of which, by the statement, is not a tenth part of that of the former; and although the bargain appears to have been arranged by Jupiter, who took away the brains of one of the parties for the purpose, 'nevertheless it might at the present day have been legaily accounted a swindle of the first magnitude. Achilles, having killed Hector, drags him by the heels three times round the walls of Troy; and in successive days he recreates himself by repeating the same process round the tomb of Patroclus. This classical tale, the stereotyped wonder of the schoolboys of Christendom, has its parallel in the story of the Oriental Caliph, who, having cut off the *By Lord Derby Blaikie, Herschell, Wright, head of his enemy, afterwards occupied him Simcox, Dart, and others. self for twelve hours in kicking it round his | from Constantinople, the revival of letters, courtyard. and the restoration of art, are familiar At the present day, men speak with en- words which mark the concurrent influence thusiasm of the " revival" of classical liter- of different agencies in revolutionizing the ature as the great event, era, and landmark social condition of men a few centuries ago. of intellectual progress in modern times. They are so many instruments by which But this so-called revival of literature was the indispensable influence of Christianity not the production of any new light. The has been truly and slowly developed to the best that can be said in its behalf is, that it world. But at the root of all these agenwas a partial return to the state of things cies, and deep and far beyond and above that existed in the Periclean and Augustan them, was the vivifying nurture of utilitaages. And what men knew in either of rian science. The world mainly owes its those ages was not a tenth part of what they present advanced and civilized state to the know now. Notwithstanding the tradition- influence of certain physical discoveries al acclamation which has heralded their and inventions of comparatively recent praise down to this time, we are not certain date, among which are conspicuous the that they excelled their remote descendants printing-press, the mariner's compass, the of the present day in any desirable acquisi- steam-engine, and the substitution of mation or accomplishment. In their gymnas- chinery for manual labor. The materials tic and musical exhibitions, they are said to and agents for these and other like imhave driven, spoken, sung, and danced with provements have existed ever since the success, if not always with propriety. Their creation of the world; but the minds of poetry, in its power of delighting the ear or competent and qualified thinkers, being abmoving the passions, might have been equal sorbed in less profitable studies, had not to ours, but was in no respect superior. been turned effectively upon them or upon Their forensic and popular oratory was their uses. There was electricity in the elaborate, powerful, brilliant, and effective; clouds, there were loadstones in the mounand so at the present day are those of every tains, cataracts in rivers, and steam in cultivated nation in Europe and America. household utensils. But the world rolled They had popular exhibitions of drama, both on; empires and dynasties and ages of barcomic and pathetic. The Greeks had bac- barism passed away, and left the minds of chanalian orgies, and the Romans gladiato- men engaged in superstitious rites, in schorial combats, in which they publicly butch- lastic studies, and in fruitless or pernicious ered captives in the presence of ferocious controversies. We owe the great debt of audiences, and threw living victims to wild modern civilization to the enterprising, beasts for the amusement of crowds of re- acute, patient, and far-seeing innovators fined spectators. The untold horrors of who, during the last few centuries, have their slavery have not often been thought broken away from the prescribed and beatof sufficient account to encumber minutely en track of their predecessors, and have the pages of their history. In their social given their energies to developing, directrelations they were licentious and exquisite- ing, and utilizing the illimitable forces of ly depraved. In their domestic habits they the material world. If these very men had were primitive, destitute, and uncleanly. given up their time to the objectless controThe absence of books and scarcity of writ- versies of the schools, or to the more innoing made popular education a thing of im- cent and agreeable studies of Latin and possibility. Greek, ignoring the great and vital problems of physical science, the dark ages would still have prevailed in Europe, and America might have remained an undiscovered wilderness. It is obvious, then, that, after the fluctuating continuance of a most imperfect civilization for some thousands of years, a change, if it come at all, must come, not, as it has been wrongly supposed, in the form of a renaissance, or reproduction of anything that had existed before, but in the shape of a new creation, a new layingout of unexplored territory, a new planting of virgin soil with seeds unknown to former cultivators, of seeds pregnant with an abundant harvest, with new fruits and flowers, worthy of the acceptance and enjoyment of an improved and appreciative race. The Reformation, the exodus of Greeks The mere lapse of time furnishes nothing to human improvement. Neither does the endless inculcation,. on successive generations, of the obsolete studies of their fathers. Metals might have slept in their ores, gunpowder in its elements, and steam in its inertest form, until doomsday; and mankind been none the wiser, if it had not happened that sagacious and persevering discoverers, under difficulties, persecutions, and perils, brought them successfully to light, and laid modern art. them at the feet of advancing civilization. | vinous age. The cultivation of the grape It is not the perfected railroad train, nor was a memorable step in human progress, the passenger who successfully rides in it, to which we are indebted for some good that deserves our applause; but it is the and much evil. The Greeks gratefully asoriginal and comprehensive minds who cribe it to Bacchus; but the Jews rather planned, organized, and launched into suc- give the credit to Noah, who planted a cessful operation this great achievement of vineyard, and drank of the wine and was The telescope, the press, the drunken. But neither Bacchus nor Noah compass, the chronometer, and the quad- could have produced the genuine "article rant have wrought wonders for science and without some antecedent knowledge of civilization; but the greater wonder is, how husbandry for cultivation, mechanics for these things got invented at all, after the world presses and receptacles, and of chemistry had run for five thousand years in the beaten for fermentation. But, if it really happened track of unproductive routine. that the experiment and its subsidiary sciences went hand in hand, it will serve to show that education of the mind and realization of its substantial results may sometimes be usefully combined in one and and the same process. 1. From The North British Review. Constable's Miscellany. Vol. X. Table Talk. Edin. 1827. It has been brought as an objection to the claims of utilitarian science, that most of its alleged discoveries have been lucky accidents, often made by ignorant persons, stumbled upon by chance, and not arrived at by philosophic induction or investiga- Horace says that we all write, both tion. As far as this is true, it is also true learned and unlearned. The same truth of every other step in the progress of hu- equally applies to discoverers. But, when man knowledge. No science, no develop- sudden discoveries are made by unprepared ment of complicated truth, no great ad- persons, they are exceptions to the general vance in intellectual progress, has ever rule of gradual growth, merely because sprung full and finished into existence, like their cardinal fact is so simple that it does Adam from the hands of his Creator; but, not admit the consumption of time in its on the contrary, they have all had their development. Thus a man may learn to fortuitous and imperfect beginnings, their swim in five minutes, and a gold mine or a feeble glimmerings, their uncertain and continent may be, and has been, discovered fluctuating advance, their years, or more in the twinkling of an eye. frequently centuries, during which they have groped their way to a distant and long-deferred maturity. The first languages were made by barbarians, the first orations were spoken by savages, the first poems were probably war-songs, the first statues were hideous idols, the first history was fabulous, unless possibly we except that part of it which is preserved for our edification in arrow-headed characters. Hundreds of and years, many THE Connection between Reason and Riintroductory sciences, and many lives of labor, have dicule seems to be very close; though its been necessary to conduct almost any great nature certainly is not very clear. The discovery from its rude beginnings to its only animal that reasons is also the only finished stages. The steam-engine was not animal that laughs, and apparently, too, the perfected in a day, and the knowledge of only one that is laughed at, or that deserves the solar system was not stumbled upon in to be so. Beasts, acting by instinct, are a night. Some of the greatest acquisitions never absurd, humanity having reserved of civilized life date back beyond tradition. that privilege exclusively to itself. Listen The native country of wheat is unknown; to Swift:and the inventors of the plough and the ship, if known to the ancients, are not known to the moderns. There were, doubtless, navigators who were sailing before Jason, as much as there were brave men living before Agamemnon. Antiquarians and geologists are now enlightening us in regard to things as remote as a stone and a bronze but they have not age age; yet agreed in settling the period of the 2. The Jest-Book. Selected and arranged by MARK LEMON. London, 1864. 'Brutes find out where their talents lie: |