Marney, the newspaper correspondent, | that is the word. Listen, Max, do not let and his family among others, and made out a respectable living, showing no lack of energy and shrewdness in her arrange ments. So time went on. Max worked hard and with credit to himself and his patron; he made friends, he grew up tall and active and animated, he had plenty of spirit and natural gaiety and insouciance, although sometimes of late when he came away from his long visits to his godfather, leaving him absorbed in his dreams of possible truth for his dreams were of the truth - Max had begun to ask himself more seriously for what did he himself live? Of what did he dream? What did he hope? Everybody wishes for happiness of one or another sort for themselves, or for other people for those they love, or for the human race. Caron's heart ached for the human race; his hopeful nature pointed to better things in the future than those which were now past. Max, who was younger and more definite in his desires, might have confessed, had you crossquestioned him, that he still possessed a personality still wished for as much happiness as ever he could get for himself, for his old mother, for his many friends, as well as for his country. And by happiness he certainly meant success, power, money, luxury even, that tangible sign of comfort and well-being. The romance of his nature had been somewhat hidden and overshadowed by constant toil, by a certain loneliness at home, and by its dry, economic aspect of things. Max could not help feeling in himself some effort of mind in suiting himself to the worthy people among whom he lived: the necessity for living among them had induced a certain recklessness of acquiescence which perhaps savored of contempt. As he grew older year by year the highbred artistic instincts in him put him into a different relation with his natural companions in life. Caron was the person with whom he used to feel most at ease. The human race is farther away at sixand-twenty than at sixty years of age, but Caron's influence was very great, and the constant presence of that gentle philosophy had ended by strangely impressing the young man, who was the son of an optimist, be it remembered, although his mother was a practical woman. Madame du Parc was frightened by her son's enthusiasm. She was grateful for Caron's kindness, she profoundly mistrusted his lubies, as she called them. "Yes, lubies, 66 him persuade you to leave your work for the good of any of those humanities," she used to say. Humanity is nothing at all-nothing but lazy fellows, who will not work and are turned off from their ateliers." Caron, much as he loved Max, his godson, never attempted to persuade him to anything. The old man came and went his own way, busy with his own schemes. He was an excellent man of business; his manufactory flourished, notwithstanding his experiments. Sometimes Caron himself would leave the whole thing and mysteriously disappear for long periods. He would come over to London on errands of his own. To-night, when Max met him at Fourchette's, he had not even known that Caron was in England. His god. father had given him his address and told him to come and see him in the lodging where he was living, over a little toy-shop in the Brompton Road. In his lodging in Brompton, by the light of the green lamp in the window, the old man sat, with Max beside him, late into that night, bending across his papers; there were maps of Europe, piles of MSS. written in a delicate foreign band, heaps of letters neatly strapped and ticketed. Everything Caron did was orderly and, if one may use the expression, respectful. To him nothing was common, nothing worthless. He was an amateur, perhaps a dreamer-but there was a certain gentle magnanimity and method in his visions which comprehended small things and humble as well as great ones. He showed a certain courtesy to the troubles and wants of life which is far less commonly met with than the pity they must always inspire. Max, looking round the shabby room, could not but contrast it with that of his friend the editor, where, amid disordered heaps, crumpled proofs, and dirty velvet cushions, among gilt confusion and statu. ettes and vulgar ornamentation, Hase, extended in his armchair, sat puffing out the law. Here, in the shabby, orderly room, Caron, with grey hairs, bent at his work, bent, patiently searching for the truth, deferring to others even while he was planning their interests. What Caron had to propose to Max was also a publication, one which he had at heart. A publication for the people, a book to be illustrated by Max, with litho graphs and wood blocks and engravings and cheap carbon reprints of photographs, on the cheapest paper, to be published at the lowest price —a history of Socialism from the earliest times, a history explaining the real meaning of the word, of that divine theory by which the rich and the good and the capable were to teach their secrets to the poor and the dull and the incapable, to show them how to be selfrespecting and respected by others, industrious, and commeasurably rewarded. The disciples of truth, of justice, and love were to break the bread of spiritual life and dispense it to the hungry multitudes still, alas! fainting in the wilderness, to teach them hatred of wrong, and at the same time just rebellion against oppression. The free were to teach freedom. It was to be the modern version of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Caron's life and heart were in his book. He had worked at it from time to time for years past, writing it down in words, living it in bis daily life more eloquently than by any words. The chapters were to begin with the earliest mythologies and dawn of natural science, and travelling on from one age to another, from one mind to another, from law to law, from experience to experience, to record the progress of knowl edge, of truth; to point to an ever-continuing faith in the human race, an everlasting hope; to preach the true fusion of interests human and divine, help and love meeting want and callous ignorance, knowledge and justice raising misery and crime. We must not fear, said Caron, to preach the salutary transfoming elements which, alas! with pain and violence at times divide true and natural laws from those social phenomena which are nothing, only illusions of men's making. Evil is but a force to be lifted to higher aims; crush it and imprison it by bonds, and sooner or later these will fail to constrain. Max listened in silence as his godfather talked in his low, calm voice, so gentle, so convinced. All his life he had loved and admired the old man, respected his generosity, and trusted it, even though he sometimes smiled at his Utopian dreams. Max knew that Caron, who had been born rich, had spent more than one fortune in his day upon others; he had helped his generation with a liberal hand, and spent hundreds for the good of men who had never benefited by his aid. Max was one of the exceptions to the many who owed so much to him and who had repaid him with failure and lazy ingratitude. This one pupil had honestly and gratefully profited by Caron's past kindness. Du Parc thought, as Caron talked on that night, that he could have made a fine drawing of the eager, delicate, pale face shining in the light of the lamp and of its own hopes. "This book this book shall be a Bible to the poor man," cried Caron; "it shall show him how to hope, how to work, how to admire those who have gone before our high priests, our martyrs, our teachers. How many more are there whose names are scarcely known? You, Max the engraver, know poor Meryon's work; he too was one of us. And now," said Caron, smiling, "though I have promised your mother that I would never try to tempt you from your career and your own work to help me in mine, the moment has come when you can help me materially by your work. Leave that man with the champagne and the shabby offers, and come and labor for me, and for those who want your help. The editor with his low ambitions-high quarters! Is this a time when the emperor should be amusing himself with picture-books? I mistrust that Hase. He wants your name, Max, rather than your talent. But you have a conscience, my son, as your father had before you. Have nothing to do with that shopkeeper; I have better work for you to do." "You know very well, Papa Caron, that I should always do any work you wanted," said Du Parc, laughing. "I think you are hard on M. Hase. There is no harm in his making a bargain any more than in my refusing it. His offer is shabby, but as times go it is not so bad; before I accept or reject it, tell me exactly what it is I am to do for you." And Caron, who for all his dreams was a clear-headed and extraordinarily capable man of business, explained at some length and with great exactitude what it was he required. What he required was enough to take up the young man's time for many months to come, and consequently it was impossible for Max to hope to accomplish the work which Hase had proposed to him. The drawings from the National Gallery must go to some one else; one of the smaller volumes, that of the private col lections in the west of England, Du Parc hoped he might still execute. It was not without a sigh that he rang at the bell and asked to see M. Hase the next day, and explained to him the reason of his change of mind. In vain Hase augmented his offers. Du Parc would only agree to undertake the one volume. "Caron wants his drawings done at once. If you have any more work for me later I shall be glad of it," said the young en- | seat with sudden irascibility. graver, "but I can't fail him." "You are wrong, altogether wrong," cries Hase. "You are engaging yourself to an old imbecile who has no notion of affairs." "Take care, or I will give you in charge on the spot; " and he called angrily to the coachman to drive on. The coachman whipped his horses, and one of the wheels just grazed the beggar's foot. "D-them!" said the man to the woman, as the two heaps of rags stood side by side on the pavement looking after the carriage. Max came back early next day to the toy-shop, and for an hour or two the master and his pupil sat together with the first few chapters and elaborate notes of the book of books spread on the table "I could drive in a carriage too, if I before them, while Caron stood explain had one," said the woman with another ing, dilating, planning this illustration oath; then she looked up, for Caron was and that symbols, compositions that leaning far out of his window, and calling were to take the working man's fancy, to to the beggar to attract his attention. remain imprinted on his mind, and lead "Here," he cried, "get your tools out of him insensibly to the truth. One picture pledge, my friend; do your own work; do most especially of his own composition not demean yourself to beg of others," did good old Caron insist upon. There and he threw down a couple of half was to be a rising sun; the rays of light crowns, which rolled in different direcwere to be shining upon a great globe tions across the pavement. While the scattered with the wrecks of past ages, beggars leapt to catch them, the occufetters lying broken on the ground, spears pants of the carriage returning on its and cannon overturned, and the symbols wheels saw the scene. The young lady of war rent asunder, the rainbow of peace looked up in amazement at the eager grey and universal tranquillity shining in the head and outstretched hand, the gentlesky. man pulled angrily at his moustache, the servant came out from the shop with some parcel, the whole equipage rolled away. Du Parc had drawn back into the shade of the curtain. "I know that girl," he said; "she has just married that old fellow for his money. She is a friend of my mother's." 66 'Of course I can draw anything you like, but what do you think all this will do?" Du Parc said, laughing at last almost against his will. "Men will note this. Those who have not patience to read my words will see your pictures, and will ask what the meaning of the riddle may be. The voice of truth is not to be silenced, the very stones cry out," said Caron gravely. "All life is a symbol, a secret to be discovered." As he spoke, an open carriage, drawn by two livery horses, stopped at the door of the shop below, shaking the low room with its sudden vibration. In the carriage was seated a beautiful young woman dressed in the fashion, and an older man grey, military, upright- by her side. At the lady's desire the servant jumped down from the box and went into the shop, apparently to make some purchase, and, while the carriage waited, it so chanced that a beggar in many rags came up, followed by a shabby woman with a sleeping child wrapped in a tattered shawl. The window was open, and the two men in the little room which was close over the toy-shop could not help assisting at The man shuffled up, and in a whining voice began to ask for money to get his tools out of pawn, and some what rudely touched the lady on the shoulder, to attract her attention. the scene. of passages beyond number; and not many readers know how many lines from Philip Van Artevelde" have passed into stock quotations. The world knows noth ing of its greatest men has been said by numbers who never read a play of Sir Henry Taylor's. But there was a strange and awe-inspiring influence exerted upon youthful readers by the stern sobriety, the Autobiography of Henry Taylor, Author of "Philip 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, "How dare you! Be off, you fellow!" Van Artevelde." cried the gentleman, starting from his & Co. 1885. restrained good sense, combined with the bright gleam of something very near to the highest poetic genius. One thought the author must be sixty at least: we find he was only thirty-four; though in the days of the first enthusiastic study of the drama that would have appeared as advanced middle age. Good sense, in combination with brilliancy, overawes readers of twenty-two; impresses them with the sense of an infinite elevation above their own standpoint. For even in those flighty days the youth knew well how he ought to think, and would think if he were wise. Even when extravagantly admiring Byron, we knew in ourselves that his theory of life and of moral character was at its root idiotic. But in those days we suspended our moral sense, and enjoyed the hectic and unwise beauty; as at an opera, for the song's sake, we are content that a man in mortal extremity should stop and sing. highly. But he does think highly of himself. Looking back, now, in later life, and in the light of this "Autobiography," one seems to discern in "Philip Van Artevelde a simulated maturity: the reaction in a mind which has risen in wrath against an idolatrous admiration of Byron. His "enthusiastic admiration of Byron," Sir Henry Taylor tells us, was morally stupefying;" and he burst his bonds asunder, as lesser readers have done. One thinks, reading the great play, of a clever student at the university writing his prize-essay for the reading of his professors: not in the style which is really congenial to himself, but in that which he knows will suit them. One sees the young Henry Taylor was thinking of his great friend, the judicious Southey; and pruning extravagances in that thought. And though Henry Taylor was never so young as many men have been, one is pleased to find occasional little outbreaks of what is distinctly not so very wise, in this awe-striking personifica. tion of precocious maturity and wisdom. The preface to " Philip Van Artevelde "is unquestionably arrogant in its tone. And when we find it was a man of thirty-four who took upon himself so to lecture mankind, we are amused. But it is thoroughly like the lad of twenty-two in the Colonial Office writing to his superior that ever since he entered the office he had been doing the work of a statesman. And it is completely consistent with the man's calm declaration that "in point of intellectual range he regarded Sir James Stephen and Mr. Gladstone as belonging to the same order of minds as his own." It is a most symptomatic touch that the young Henry Taylor does not rather put it that he "belonged to the same order of minds" as Mr. Gladstone. We do not need the 66 These Autobiography" to tell us that Sir Henry Taylor was never at a university; never at a public school. For many years, till our generation has grown old, our reverence and admiration for the author of that magnificent poem have hardly lessened. Yet somehow one did not want to know more of the author. Familiarity did not appear becoming, here. The poem held one off firmly. We have read “Philip Van Artevelde" perhaps ten times; and parts of it have been repeated to one's self times innumerable. We mark with pleasure, reading this "Autobiography," that our favorite passages are the author's favorite passages too; and we are deeply interested in what he tells us of their origin. Yet there was always a hardness felt: a sternness. It was always too sagely and composedly wise, that exquisite passage which tells how we get over things: which we have quoted in this magazine (we include its predecessor) too often already. And now we find that it was in fact written before the first grief was over. beautiful lines were not written after experience had shown that sorrow would be tamed by time and health; but at the very But we have the " Autobiography," first, when weaker souls would have while Sir Henry Taylor is still with us, at thought to sit down and die. It was not the age of eighty-four years and six even as when a dear young friend, crushed months. It had been intended to come under the bitterest of all bereavements, later; but there is no reason why it should said feverishly to the present writer, "I'm not be given to the world now. We may not going to break down: I must peg say at once that it is most interesting. away." It would not have been nearly so We may say too, that it makes no change in sad to hear him say that he never could our estimate of the man formed from the lift up his head again. But Artevelde's study of his works. Here is unquestionawords, perpetually quoted, are most typi- bly the author of " Philip Van Artevelde," cal of their author. We do not venture of "The Statesman," of "Notes from to call him self-sufficient. But he is self- Life," and "Notes from Books; " as he is sufficing, and has always been so. Nor and must be. The provokingly wise do we say he thinks of himself a bit too "Statesman," which ought to have come from the pen of Solomon, or at the least of | Henry entered the navy as a midshipman. He was a lazy boy: and in his nine months at sea he never once went up the rigging. After some years of irregular home education, Henry got a clerkship in a govern ment office. The three brothers lived together in a London lodging: and there within a fortnight the two elder died. For a few months Henry was sent to Barbadoes; then he returned home. His stepmother was angelic: "I suppose she had faults like other people, but I never found out what they were.' It is curious to find in a letter written by his father in 1814, all the scholarship about eternal punishment which in these last months has come new to many from the eloquent Dean Plumptre of Wells. There it is: all about the Eon. Yet Henry's days passed heavily in his secluded home, with all its kind affection; and he began to write poetry, "built on Byron." In 1822 he first saw himself in print; it was a short essay in the Quarterly on Moore's "Irish Melodies." Within a year he went to London, hoping to support himself by his pen. one who had been prime minister and from that elevation taken the measure of his fellow-creatures for twenty years, was written at thirty-five by a clerk in the Colonial Office. No wonder that its tone of calm superiority gave offence. When Archbishop Whateley wrote (as Sir H. Taylor tells us he did) an analogous book called "The Bishop," at least he did not put his name to it. Through all this frank picture of Sir H. Taylor, from his own hand, we have the same temperate, reserved, assured strength and wisdom. There is no Aluster nor flutter: even when his dearest friend died, even when the friend's sister decidedly said no. From early youth, Henry Taylor was always par negotiis. The entire character and career strike a certain awe, and bid the ordinary mortal | keep his distance. In the case of any one else, we should have been aggrieved at finding the pros and cons about his marriage treated with a grave solemnity as of Gibbon showing us how Christianity made its way. Here it seems quite natural. The grand manner becomes Sir H. Taylor, and everything about him. And though the story is told quite without reserve, those who have hitherto reverenced Sir H. Taylor most, will not be disappointed. The stately figure stands secure on its pedes tal, still. Henry Taylor was born at Bishop Mid. dleham, in the county of Durham, on October 18, 1800. Sir Henry surprises us by stating that this was "the first year of the new century.' ." Does a century mean a hundred years, or only ninety-nine? Was the year 100 the first year of the second century, or the last year of the first? He conveys that he would have been pleased had his birth been noble, and had his name sounded heroically. We can say truly that we never thought of the meaning of his name till he made this suggestion. His father was of gentle descent, but took to farming. His mother was the daughter of an ironmonger at Durham. She died while her famous son, the youngest of three, was an infant. But her short life had been happy. The farm, she wrote, was "the sweetest place under the sun, or above it either." Ah, "the earth hath He given to the children of men." The father was a man of good ability; he wrote many articles in the Quarterly Review. But he was habitually grave and reserved; and it was a melancholy home in which the boys grew up till their father married again when near forty-seven. At the age of thirteen He arrived in London on October 23; and next day called on Gifford. His second paper in the Quarterly was a review of Lord John Russell, whom it helped to turn from poetry to politics. But the turning-point in Henry's life was near. In January he was appointed to a place of of 300l. a year in the Colonial Office, through the influence of Dr. Holland; and in that office he did his life-work. There was great delight at home at his deliverance from hack authorship; and he had found his proper place. He plunged into his work eagerly; and soon wrote to his father that a paper he had composed formed the substance of a speech by Canning. His faults in those days, he says, were "arrogance and impertinence." For years he drafted despatches in a style and temper of which in after days he was heartily ashamed. Doubtless with good reason. His manner, he says, was against him; shyness leading him, as it had led others, to affectation and unpleasant bluntness. His great friend was Hyde Villiers, brother of the late Earl of Clarendon, and of Montagu, Bishop of Durham. He had other friends, appointed to eminence: Austin the Parliamentary lawyer, John Stuart Mill, and John Romilly, who became master of the rolls. Charming above all others was Miss Villiers. He did a little work for the Quarterly; and at twenty-six published "Isaac Comne. |