had subsided, Miss Leonora was found to have entirely recovered herself; but not so the Perpetual Curate, who had changed colour wonderfully, and no longer met his accuser with reciprocal disdain.

"My dear aunt," said Frank Wentworth, "I wish you would not go back to that. I suppose we parsons are apt sometimes to exaggerate trifles into importance, as my father says. But, however, as things have turned out, I could not have left Carlingford," the Curate added, in a tone of conciliation; and now, when good fortune has come to me unsought

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Miss Leonora finished her portion of chicken in one energetic gulp, and got up from the table. "Poetic justice!" she said, with a furious sneer. "I don't believe in that kind of rubbish. As long as you were getting on quietly with your work I felt disposed to be rather proud of you, Frank. But I don't approve of a man ending off neatly like a novel in this sort of ridiculous way. When you succeed to the Rectory I suppose you will begin fighting, like the other man, with the new curate, for working in your parish?"

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"When I succeed to the Rectory," said Mr Wentworth, getting up in his turn from the table, “I give you my word, aunt Leonora, no man shall work in my parish unless I set him to do it. Now I must be off to my work. I don't suppose Carlingford Rectory will be the end of me," the Perpetual Curate added, as he went away, with a smile which his aunts could not interpret. As for Miss Leonora, she tied her bonnet-strings very tight, and went off to the afternoon service at Salem Chapel by way of expressing her sentiments more forcibly. "I daresay he's bold enough to take a bishopric," she said to herself; "but fortunately we've got that in our own hands as long as Lord Shaftesbury "" lives; and Miss Leonora smiled grimly over the prerogatives of her party. But though she went to Salem Chapel that afternoon, and

consoled herself that she could secure the bench of bishops from any audacious invasion of Frank Wentworth's hopes, it is true, notwithstanding, that Miss Leonora sent her maid next morning to London with certain obsolete ornaments, of which, though the fashion was hideous, the jewels were precious; and Lucy Wodehouse had never seen anything so brilliant as the appearance they presented when they returned shortly after reposing upon beds of white satin in cases of velvet-"Ridiculous things," as Miss Leonora informed her, "for a parson's wife."

It was some time after this-for, not to speak of ecclesiastical matters, a removal, even when the furniture is left behind and there are only books, and rare ferns, and old china, to convey from one house to another, is a matter which involves delays-when Mr Wentworth went to the railway station with Mrs Morgan to see her off finally, her husband having gone to London with the intention of joining her in the new house. Naturally, it was not without serious thoughts that the Rector's wife left the place in which she had made her first beginning of active life, not so successfully as she had hoped. She could not help recalling, as she went along the familiar road, the hopes so vivid as to be almost certainties with which she had come into Carlingford. The long waiting was then over, and the much-expected era had arrived, and existence had seemed to be opening in all its fulness and strength before the two who had looked forward to it so long. It was not much more than six months ago; but Mrs Morgan had made a great many discoveries in the mean time. She had found out the wonderful difference between anticipation and reality; and that life, even to a happy woman married after long patience to the man of her choice, was not the smooth road it looked, but a rough path enough cut into dangerous ruts, through which generations of men and women followed each

other without ever being able to mend the way. She was not so sure as she used to be of a great many important matters which it is a wonderful consolation to be certain of-but, notwithstanding, had to go on as if she had no doubts, though the clouds of a defeat, in which, certainly, no honour, though a good deal of the prestige of inexperience had been lost, were still looming behind. She gave a little sigh as she shook Mr Wentworth's hand at parting. "A great many things have happened in six months," she said "one never could have anticipated so many changes in what looks so short a period of one's life"-and as the train which she had watched so often rushed past that bit of new wall on which the Virginian creeper was beginning to grow luxuriantly, which screened the railway from the Rectory windows, there were tears in Mrs Morgan's eyes. Only six months, and so much had happened!-what might not happen in all those months, in all those years of life which scarcely looked so hopeful as of old? She preferred turning her back upon Carlingford, though it was the least comfortable side of the carriage, and put down her veil to shield her eyes from the dust, or perhaps from the inspection of her fellow-travellers and once more the familiar thought returned to her of what a different woman she would have been had she come to her first experiences of life with the courage and confidence of twenty or even of fiveand-twenty, which was the age Mrs Morgan dwelt upon most kindly. And then she thought with a thrill of vivid kindness and a touch of tender envy of Lucy Wodehouse, who would now have no possible occasion to wait those ten years.

:

As for Mr Wentworth, he who was a priest, and knew more about Carlingford than any other man in the place, could not help thinking, as he turned back, of people there,

to whom these six months had produced alterations far more terrible than any that had befallen the Rector's wife :-people from whom the light of life had died out, and to whom all the world was changed. He knew of men who had been cheerful enough when Mr Morgan came to Carlingford, who now did not care what became of them ; and of women who would be glad to lay down their heads and hide them from the mocking light of day. He knew it, and it touched his heart with the tenderest pity of life, the compassion of happiness; and he knew too that the path upon which he was about to set out led through the same glooms, and was no ideal career. But perhaps because Mr Wentworth was young-perhaps because he was possessed by that delicate sprite more dainty than any Ariel who puts rosy girdles round the world while his time of triumph lasts, it is certain that the new Rector of Carlingford turned back into Grange Lane without the least shadow upon his mind or timidity in his thoughts. He was now in his own domains, an independent monarch, as little inclined to divide his power as any autocrat; and Mr Wentworth came into his kingdom without any doubts of his success in it, or capability for its government. He had first a little journey to make to bring back Lucy from that temporary and reluctant separation from the district which propriety had made needful; but, in the mean time, Mr Wentworth trode with firm foot the streets of his parish, secure that no parson nor priest should tithe or toll in his dominions, and a great deal more sure than even Mr Morgan had been, that henceforth no unauthorised evangelisation should take place in any portion of his territory. This sentiment, perhaps, was the principal difference perceptible by the community in general between the new Rector of Carlingford and the late Perpetual Curate of St Roque's.

THERE is a question I wish some one would resolve for me, for though I have an opinion upon it myself, I am by no means sure it is a correct one; and indeed the matter has so many aspects, it is not easy to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.

The question is this: Are men generally greater or less than their works? That is to say, is the speech, or the lecture, or the poem, or the picture, better than or inferior to the man that made it? It is a somewhat large field for speculation, and probably would demand from us a greater insight into the natures and characters of distinguished men than is easily attainable. It is, moreover, one of those questions on which any great sweeping judgment would in all likelihood be incorrect.

There have been men of such versatile genius-so many-sided, as the Germans say that it would be difficult to say they were not greater than their works; not alone because their great intellects could adapt themselves to labours so various and dissimilar, but because it would not be easy to pronounce in what especial pursuit the individual had found his truest field and his most congenial work. Michel Angelo was one of these.

My own opinion is this, the man is always, or almost always, inferior to the thing he produces; and in this instance, as in countless others, the part is better than the whole. I am, of course, here speaking solely of representative menthe great signs of the human equation. As for Jones and Brown & Co., I reserve them for another oc

casion.

The varying ratio of the differ

ence between the man and his work will be measured by the character and peculiarity of the work itself.

Thus a man's greatest battle, his grandest speech in the House, his epic, or his essay, may possibly be only in a slight degree above the normal stature of the man himself; whereas, if he be a painter, his great picture is sure to overtop him considerably; and if a musician, his grand opera will reduce him to the mere proportions of a dwarf; and this, remember, not because music is a higher development of the intellectual faculty than war, statecraft, or poetry; but because of all created bipeds there is nothing so mentally small as a composer!

Mendelssohn alone of all our present-day men had genius: as for the others, there is not one of them whose worst ballad is not better than he who wrote it. They are the shallowest thinkers, the worst-informed on matters of general interest, and the poorest conversationalists the world produces. They are as circumscribed as the actor, and they have not that humoristic tendency which gives to the actor all the emphasis of his character.

Next in order to musicians come hairdressers great, indeed, as artists, poor as humanities. It would not be fair, perhaps, to expect a man to rise to the level of the wig; for what assumption of virtue or magnanimity could vie in counterfeit with that wavelike fall over the ears, that curl of more than childlike innocence on the forehead? I can imagine Mr Truefit a charming companion, brilliant, suggestive, and versatile; but it would be hard to persuade me that he was greater

In other words, that the individual in any great creation has, through the excitement of his labour, so worked upon his faculties that they have accomplished results far beyond their normal exercise, and in this way transcended the individual himself. Hence was it Petrarch shed tears as he read over his sonnets-tears, certainly, not shed for Laura; and Cervantes laughed till he cried over the drolleries of Sancho Panza. And if Shakespear withstood Falstaff, he was something more or less than human. I have heard, and I like to believe it, that Dugald Dalgetty was intensely relished by Scott years after he had written him.

Over and over again in the Lives of Painters do we find them in amazement at some of their own earlier efforts; and Fuseli cried out on seeing one of his own without recognising it, "What a genius that fellow had!"

These are the traits, too, which Brown & Co. fix on to establish their pet accusation of vanity against clever men; and indeed I would wish at this moment to protest against being classed with these critics, since it is not by disparaging the man that I seek to establish my position, but by elevating the work. Now what is the true state of the case? It is no use beating about the bush, taking a bygone example, or indicating a live one by asterisks. Let me instance my

self; I can afford to say it without any risk of being called vain. I have seen a great deal of life, not alone in the great world and the little world, but in that intermediate world which is bigger than them

Not a monologist like Macaulay, nor an overbearing opinionist like Croker, nor a flippant epigrammatist like Thiers, my skill was pre-eminently employed in eliciting whatever latent stores of agreeability I could detect around me. Not merely a talker myself, I made talkers of others. No rock so dull that I could not elicit a spark from it; no table-land so barren that I could not find a wild-flower in its desolation. Well, it so chanced that t'other day one of those creatures who presume on the fact of being an old schoolfellow to maintain an acquaintanceship, dormant for half a lifetime as if there could be any bond of friendship cemented by having been flogged by the same cane-came through the neighbourhood where I have pitched my tent for the summer, and installed himself as my guest for a day. He was a loutish, heavy-headed dog as a boy, and years had not made any better of him. He was as wearisome at forty as I remember him at fourteen, with this addition, that he had gathered as he went on in life a quantity of commonplace observation which he fancied to be wisdom, and a stock of the very dreariest stories that he thought wit. I had to endure this wretched incubus for twelve mortal hours, and to endeavour to, what is called entertain him. I did my utmost; I took him through politics, and gave him a canter from Circassia to SchleswigHolstein, with diversions into Poland and North America. I tried him with Colenso and the Dean of Westminster, dashed with Dr Dar

win and spiced with Du Chaillu. I went into early Christian art, railroad shares, the grape disease, Garibaldi, the Irish famine, and the state of the Funds. I gave him a haunch of Alpine mutton Wales could not rival, and a bottle of such "chambertin" as the First Napoleon drank after a victory. I prolonged the evening in an arbour over the lake, with a view at our feet Claude never approached in his best moments, with the perfection of mocha and an unparalleled cigar; and after a long pause, in which, by the aid of maraschino, I was endeavouring to recruit exhausted nature, the creature said, "By the way, I gave Scroggins of the Three hundred and fifth, a letter to you; you were at Paris at the time."

"Perhaps so; I do not remember. I have forgotten him."

"Well, he has not forgotten you." At this remark I rallied. I brightened up-I felt as one, after days of lying becalmed, as the first air of wind raises the drooping ensign at the peak, and wafts it lazily to the wind. I thought, at all events, Scroggins was better than his friend. I at least had made some impression on him.

"Scroggins," continued he, "is a clever fellow; he was on Sir Hugh Badstock's staff in India twelve years ago, at Rangoon, and knows a deal of life."

I gave a ready assent to this under the guarantee already received, that Scroggins had preserved a full memory of me.

"When he was going abroad," continued he, "he came down to my place in Surrey. 'Don't you know O'Dowd?' said he. 'Intimately; we were in the same class at school.' 'Give me a letter to him,' said he, for I shall stop some time in Paris, and I hear so much of him, I'd like to see him.'

At this I smiled blandly once more, and nodded that he should go on; but instead of doing so, he only filled his glass, and tasted it, and then sat silent.

"Well,” said I-"well?”

"I suppose, said he, after another pause, "that you may have been ill, or out of sorts-probably hard up. I hear you often are hard up.

came

"And why do you infer any of these?" asked I, a little uneasily. "Well, I thought so, because Scroggins said when he back that he was never so disappointed in all his life: you were not a bit what he expected; you never said a funny thing the whole time he was there-told no good story, and did not even once make him laugh. 'In fact,' said he, 'Watkins of ours is worth a score of that fellow, and sings niggermelodies and dances the Perfect Cure" till you'd split your sides looking at him.""

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"Did you ever hear what the footman said to Oliver Goldsmith in the kitchen?"

"No."

You're a wit, they say; let us see if you can swallow a poker!" "And what did Goldsmith say?" asked my ancient friend and schoolfellow.

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History recordeth not; but I believe I could tell you what he felt."

As he sipped his wine in silence, I remembered an anecdote of a fellow - sufferer, and my memory helped me to some consolation. It was during one of Charles Kean's visits to the United States. He was entertained at dinner by one of the great New York merchants. Opposite to him at the table there sat a gentleman, who continued to observe him with marked attention, and at last called on the host to present him to Mr Kean. The introduction was duly made, and ratified by drinking wine together, when the stranger, with much impressiveness of manner, said, “I saw you in Richard last night.

Kean, feeling, not unnaturally, that a compliment was approaching, smiled blandly and bowed.

"Yes, sir, continued the other, in a slow, almost judicial tone; "I have seen your father in Richard;