we see running on the black and shrivelled surface of paper which has just been burnt. And has not a foggy morning its beauties too? I was not long ago journeying from Clapham to Westminster on the top of an omnibus, while a thick mist, curling and shifting about, alternately hid from view and partially revealed the rows of houses that glided past us like grey spectres. Above their roofs, but scarcely above them, the red sun peeped, or rather bounded along to keep pace with us which he did. Sometimes he was for an instant concealed behind chimney-stacks, steeples, or public edifices, and then he again showed his fiery orb, broad and brilliant. And, as we pass before Kennington Park, the skeleton trees one after another cover the golden globe with a delicate, black, ever-changing network of branches a sight not to be despised. Now we turn away; our direction has changed, and the sun disappears. Shall we no more see him beaming jovially and genially into our faces not a god too bright to be gazed at, but the familiar companion of our journey? Yes, there he is! - again, though but for a short time, we see him bounding along the horizon, as if to bid us farewell. foot-passengers that runs by the side of the Charing Cross railway bridge. It was broad daylight- that is, as broad daylight as we got all that day. And yet I could see neither whence I came nor whither I was going. Men and women, like shadows, some passing one way, some the other, came out of invisible regions, and vanished into regions invisible. I looked downwards; I could just see the turbid waves below me, and their uneasy undula tions to and fro. I looked upwards; a faint, hazy, bluish tint told me that there was a sky overhead. But in all the broad expanse before me I could not tell where the dark-brown hue of the Thames melted into the pale azure of the firmament. Nothing could be distinguished-absolutely nothing. The nearest bridges above and below, the houses on either side, Cleopatra's gigantic Needle, the boats and coal-barges if, indeed, any were then moored upon the river - were all completely out of sight. I was suspended in the air between the dimly seen sky and the dimly seen waters, on a bridge that neither ended nor began, or rather, of which the beginning and the end were a few yards off from me on either side. A dozen feet or so of railing, right and left; trains constantly whizzing by, with thundering noise and exploding fog-signals; Now all that effect is owing to the fog. human beings, indistinct in the near dis. Say what you will against it, I still maintance, distinct for a moment while they tain that no one can truthfully deny the pass, and then again at once indistinct and picturesque beauty obtained by the agent swallowed up in the cloud; a most perfect that, instead of letting you shut your eyes gradation from the seen to the unseen, from the dazzling sunbeams, brings the throughout all possible varieties and great giver of light himself into the landshades would not such a sight be emi-scape, and contrasts his living, burning nently worthy of a great painter's pencil, globe of flame with the cold, angular outor a great writer's pen? lines of the grey, shrouded houses and the Or take another point of view: Water-dead, leafless boughs of the desolate trees. loo Bridge on a foggy evening; not, however, when the vapors are densest, but when they just begin to thicken, rising from the Thames. How the eye plunges down the long vista of lights - some fixed, some mobile in the vain endeavor to distinguish Blackfriars Bridge, otherwise than by the stream of sparks that flit backwards and forwards upon it! And the eddying mists-now thicker, now thinner, as the wind's direction changes make the lights twinkle like the stars of heaven, and more than they; some ap. pear all but extinguished and then again revive suddenly, while the accumulated fog is driven hither and thither, up or down the stream. To use a homely comparison, the vanishings and reappearances of the lamps in the uncertain distance are not unlike the train of scintillations that Is not this contrast beautiful? Yet nobody notices it, because it is at our doors. How many remarked it that morning from the tops of their omnibuses! And if I saw it, small merit to me; had I chanced to have been reading a paper, Sir Robert Morier's quarrel with young Bismarck or Boulanger and M. Jacques would have absorbed me completely. Life in London does not, for most men at least, exhaust all the possibilities of the picturesque; only we get accustomed not to seek for it, not to think of it even, in connection with our daily life. And no wonder. "What we have seen a thousand times is not worth seeing;" such is the instinctive axiom of the common mind, than which nothing can be falser or more foolish. For, if the fact that we have gazed upon anything rendered that thing less beautiful, we must have the evil eye. The children of Israel | imagine that London, besieged by the enin the desert grew so used to see, day emy, is burning, and that the fog-signals after day, night after night, the cloudy pil. are the detonations of shells from hostile lar and the pillar of fire, that at last they batteries; or think that Vesuvius, when took no notice at all of these wonders, about to overwhelm Pompeii, began by and in their presence, broke out into idol- rolling forth such a cloud down its sides. atry and rebellion against Jehovah. They You will soon find it terribly picturesque. were a stiffnecked generation; and so are And, therefore, as the fog is not so, that arises only from our associations, disagreeable indeed, but without the element of grandeur that might attach to them. we. London, the metropolis of the world, is unique; it is meet that its beauties should be unique also. At the hour when the charms of Nature vanish from sight, or only come forth if the heavens lend their aid, London, all the year round, spreads before all beholders a constant panorama of splendor and of brilliancy. In the lowest depths, in the mud abysses of this ocean of humanity, we often and often perceive wild glimpses of rude and savage, but joyful and exuberant life. And at those seasons when the enchantment of verdure ceases in the groves, when the magic of sunlight loses its power in meadow and field, the enchantment of another magic lends to the buildings and the streets of London a mysterious charm for him who has eyes to see. Not all of us, however. Some men have souls, artistic souls that rise above this dead level. And their souls yearn for mystery. From the clear, hard light of science they fly, when wearied, to the dusky, misty regions of faith. After having waked, we must sleep; one state comes in aid to the other; each is the half of life. And so is faith also the half of thought, with its mysteries and its indistinct revelations of we know not what. The fog symbolizes all this. It figures forth with marvellous truth the conditions of our knowledge, beginning in ignorance, ending in ignorance, and spreading only a very little way around us on each side. In the weird indistinctness that it sheds upon everything in this world of London - clothing the Houses of Parliament with phantom drapery, effacing the hands on the dial of the clock tower, and annihilating to the eye the mighty dome of St. Paul's, while leaving its foundations and walls intact the fog throws the glamor of mystery over all, and thus gives a touch of poetry to a wilderness of buildings that would by themselves be too prosaical, too matter-of-fact. But it may be said that I plead for the fog in general, not for the London fog. What is there of the beautiful in this dingy yellowish monster, shedding flakes of black snow all round, and almost stifling you in the thick folds of its close embrace? I own that this dinginess, this jaundice hue, this combination of smoke and mist that gives the very sun a "sickly glare" and extinguishes the electric lights at a hundred yards, seems to be, and is, repulsive. But take away the idea of mere annoyance, of trifling inconvenience, which the fog suggests, and try to substitute that of a terrible calamity of which it might be either the cause or the accompaniment; you will no longer say that the fog's appearance is "horrid" or "disgusting,' ," but rather confess it to be fearful and grand in the extreme. When you see at the end of a long, interminable street a thick volume of fog settling down and rolling onwards in triumph, fancy that it is the plague-cloud, conveying deadly germs into every household that it reaches; or M. H. DZIEWICKI. From Murray's Magazine. JOEL QUAIFE'S RETURN. I. IN one of the most solitary ranges of the South Downs a man was fighting his way against a storm of wind and rain, which seemed to beat upon him from all quarters of the heavens at once. Night was coming on, and heavy clouds were blowing up from seaward. Sometimes the "denes," or valleys, were full of mist, and the man looked round him every now and then as if he were not sure of his track. A sort of mystery always hovers over the South Downs in the dim light of a winter's evening. The winds rush in and out of the hollows with strange, wild sounds. Sometimes they fill the air with cries which seem to come from human beings in pain. A nervous or superstitious person might imagine that the weird spirits which, as the old people believe, still linger in these secluded hills were holding high carnival, and seeking to drive the intruding mortal from their domain. Every such sound evidently had an effect upon the man who was battling against the storm on this December night. Wet, cold, and miserable, he looked eagerly round for some place of shelter. There was nothing better than the thick furze, which, in some places, had grown to a height of ten or twelve feet. A pile which had been cut for fuel stood ready to be carted off by the side of the faint track the man was following. He threw himself down at the back of it, so as to get some shelter from the wind, and lit a short, black pipe. For a little while he sat motionless, puffing jets of smoke from his mouth; then he began talking in a low voice, as if some one had silently joined him. "I was a fool to come here at all," he said; "but I never till now fancied there was any danger in it. Night and day, something was always pushing me on to come back. If it all turns out right, I shall say it was luck; anyhow, it can't be worse than it was over there in Canady. There's a starvation hole for you, if you like! I thought I might as well be hard up here as there if you've got to starve, may as well do it in your own country. It comes a bit easier at home—anyhow, I fancied so. Must die somewhere — what's the odds where, provided it isn'tHere the man stopped short, and stood up and looked round him nervously. There was a hunted look in his eyes; for a moment or two his hand shook so that the pipe fell from it, and lay in fragments on the ground. This mishap appeared to rouse him from his dreams. "Anywhere but there," he muttered, as he tried to retrace his steps. "I thought I was miles away from here. The round tops of these hills are enough to confuse the very deuce. But I know where I am now. I can get to Newhaven in an hour." The darkness had come on so quickly that the hour had passed away, and another after it, and still the traveller was as far as ever from Newhaven. II. A FEW minutes after he had turned away from the cottage, a strange-looking figure was advancing towards it from an opposite direction. It was dressed in a long coat reaching to the heels; on its head was a dilapidated felt hat; in the right hand it brandished a long, ash stick, which it sometimes threw with sure aim at a small herd of cows. Presently a cry was heard from the direction of the cottage, a cry several times repeated: "Barbara, Barbara !” The person in the long coat answered with a peculiar whoop, which rung through the hollows far and near. Apparently the signal was understood, for the call was not renewed. The cows were shut up in the barn, and the long-coated figure made its way towards the cottage, at the door of which an old man was standing. "Here you be at last," said he querulously; "I began to be afeared you was lost. Come in, gal, come in! My rheumatics is worse than ever, and I be that dog-tired I can scarcely stand. I brought in the 'ood, and lit the fire; let us have our bit o' supper afore it gets bedtime. What's the good o' bein' so late?" "That's gone," said he, with an oath, as he kicked the broken pipe from him; "it was about the only thing I had left. What the deuce came over me all at once? He shook himself impatiently, and strode on towards the ridge of the hill, in the The long coat was taken off, and the hope of descrying some cottage or barn wearer shook her black hair free from the before the night set in. His head was rain which had gathered in it. Her frame bent down, his eyes were fixed upon the was vigorous and strong, but in her eyes ground, and he went along at a pace which there was a half vacant and wandering showed that he was still in the full vigor look, and she seemed unconscious even of of his powers. By the time he neared the her father's presence after the first greetridge, there was so little daylight left that|ing. She went about the cottage talking he could scarcely see more than a few to herself as she spread a homely, but yards round him in any direction. The only object on which his eyes fell was a small cottage, in a hollow of the Downs, with a large, rambling barn standing near it- a place where, at least, a rough shelter might be found. The man quickened his steps until he got close to the cottage, when some unaccountable impulse seemed to stop him, and again the hunted look came into his face. In a moment he had hurried from the direction of the cottage down towards the valley. clean, cloth for the evening meal. In the corner stood her father's crook, the true crook of a South Down shepherd. It had belonged to John Zone's grandfather, and few are to be seen like it in these degen. erate days. The girl touched it in a friendly way as she passed, threw a fresh heap of faggots upon the fire, and then took her supper by fits and starts, the father watching her with uneasy glances. At last she sat down on a low stool by the side of the fire, and rocked herself to and fro, humming broken snatches of songs, as if she were singing a child to sleep. Ay, that's the way she goes on now," said the old man, with a heavy sigh. "That's been her way ever since the night her mother died. It's over ten years ago this very month, and she gets worse and worse. At first she would talk to me now and then; now she says nothing for two or three days together, unless I ask her about them cows. Barbara, Barbara, I say!" and here the shepherd raised his voice a little, "the beastës have got the disease down at Mus' Vinall's farm. be a spreadin' all over. Has any o' your cows been took?' It "No, father; there's one a little lame, but it be'ant the disease. I don't let them go near Mus' Vinall's land." Then she relapsed into dead silence. "Ask her a question about the beastës," muttered the shepherd, "and she'll answer you like any Christian; but if you speak to her 'bout sothin' else, she turns deaf or foolish, like she is now." The girl was looking straight at him, but apparently she did not see him. Her mind, for the moment, was a perfect blank. "She saw that man," muttered the father, in a lower tone; "perhaps she actually saw it done. She was took the same night as her mother died-I thought she knew who did it. But she could not speak; for a long time she was a' daft. She were allus fond of her mother, poor gal, and still thinks she's comin' home some day." The shepherd lit his pipe, and sat down opposite his daughter at the fireside, but she took no heed of him. Her hands were clasped round her knees, and except for the crooning sound which she occasionally made, and her rocking motion, she showed no sign of life or consciousness. The shepherd had fallen half asleep, and his daughter appeared to be asleep too; but at length she turned her head towards the door, and drew herself up in a listening attitude. The storm had increased in violence, and swept over the Downs in sudden gusts which shook the cottage until doors and windows rattled. But these were not the sounds which roused the girl. She stood up and put her hands on her father's shoulder. "What's the matter with thee now?" he asked. "One of thy bad dreams comin' on? Better have it out up-stairs, gal. Go to bed; it's a'most nine, I reckon." But she did not change her position. She pointed to the door, and said, "There is some one coming; we must let him in." "It's The father looked up astonished. one of they tramps,' ," he replied; "why should we let him in? He must go on furder, I reckon, for I won't have him here. The last one we took in gave us a lot of trouble before we were rid an him. There were no tramps on these Downs when I was a lad; but now they're all over the country, for beggin' comes easier than workin' to some folk. I allus thought it must have been a tramp that was here the night your mother died; but no one can tell now unless it be you." "There it is again," said the girl, appar ently not hearing him. Three loud blows upon the door resounded through the little room. "It be the wind; haven't ye larned to know its tricks yet? Doesn't it sometimes nearly break the door in, ay, and make the walls quake like as if they'd coom down? I tell ye there be nobody theer; why dost look so scared? If it is a tramp, ye needn't be so afeared-ye've seen one afore to-day, surelye?" "I know who it is," said the girl, with a strange fire in ber eye, "and he must come in. I knew he'd be here at last." "Who do you mean?" asked the shep. herd, taking the girl by the shoulder, as if trying to awaken her. Why don't ye go to bed?" "I tell you, father, he must come in," she repeated; and there was something in her manner which compelled him to give way. She motioned him towards the door, and a spell seemed to be upon him. He took up his crook, and went to the door, while his daughter watched him as if all power of movement and speech had been taken from her. III. THE bolt was drawn back, at the same moment the latch was lifted from without, and a man hustled himself into the room. For a moment or two he stood as if bewil dered, and there was a strange silence. The stranger's gaze was fixed from the first moment upon Barbara. He stood staring at her as if she had been the ghost of one whom he had known long ago, and under the first influence of some strong emotion he turned to the door to face the storm and darkness again, but a look from the girl seemed to hold him fast. He was a man of about fifty, with a grizzled beard and thin hair, wrinkled and worn in feature, and a restless look hovered over bis face. 66 Well, some of you here know me, I suppose," said he, with a hard laugh, as 520062 he threw his hat upon the floor, and passed | seemed to seize him. He trembled all g his hands over his dripping clothes. over, and his teeth chattered violently. "I've been out there long enough, and The shepherd looked at him in alarm. thought I'd just drop in to see you, in a friendly way. I reckon you've seen me before, anyhow," and he turned to the shepherd as he spoke. John Zone looked at him doubtfully, then went up closer to him and peered into his face. "So you're back again," said he, when he had finished his scrutiny; "I thought you were dead long ago, Joel Quaife!" The daughter started slightly when the name was mentioned, and she again fixed her eyes searchingly upon the stranger. Her gaze irritated him, and he turned impatiently away. "Don't be scared," said the man, "you've seen the shakes before to-day, down in the brooks yonder. I caught mine in Ameriky. They're bigger over there, to match the country." As he spoke, Barbara came softly to the fire and threw more fuel upon it. "Dead men don't come back, John Zone," said he, "whatever they may tell 'ee. The women folk may, though," he added, with a sort of shiver; "leastways, I know of one as does, and not only at night nuther; I've seen her at times when I knew I was awake. You can't keep 'em from worritin' of ye, livin' or dead." He moved round to the fire as he spoke, and sat down on the stool before it. "What brings thee back here when every one thought thee dead?" asked the shepherd suspiciously. "That's right," said the stranger, rubbing his hands gleefully; "there was always lots o' dry fuzz about here, and it makes a good fire when you can't get nothing better. On with it, lass. There's a wind outside enough to freeze a man's heart in him, if he had any to freeze. Who is she?" he said to Zone, pointing to Barbara. "She stares at me as if I had come out of a wild beast show. What ails her?" darter. Don't you remember "I came back because I was tired of furrin parts," replied the stranger. "I thought all old friends would be glad my to see me again; but you don't seem to be over glad." "Have ye been far away?" said the shepherd, not committing himself to any opinion. "It's my her?" "I never see her before as I know on, but she'll remember me next time." The girl laughed aloud, but there was a ring in her laugh which the stranger evidently did not like. He left off rubbing his hands, and looked hard and long at the girl. "Ay, to Ameriky, Canady, all sorts of places. At last I wanted to see the old country again; but I'm thinkin' I'd better ha' stayed where I was. I've been wanderin' round this house the last three hours at least-lost! These Downs all look alike at night." "Coom a little nearer the fire," said the shepherd, moved to sympathy, in spite of his distrust. "Is she a natural, or what?" he asked. He seemed to shrink as the girl returned his gaze in an undaunted manner. "She's never been right," exclaimed Zone, "since that awful night we had here ten years and more ago. We found her in the marnin', all soft and foolish like, tryin' to hide away from us, and her senses never came back to her. You were away, then, I reckon? Did you hear tell of it?" Hear of what? What are you mumbling about? You've got a nice family party here! - one of ye quite cracked, and the other three parts. You must make each other lively these long nights!" He burst into a hard, grating laugh, which seemed to jar on Barbara's nerves. She shivered as she turned her face from the "I'll be glad enough to do that, for I'm nearly starved with the cold. I did my best to get on to Newhaven, but somehow I was always brought back to your cottage, and glad I was at last to see the light in your window. I thought to sleep among the furze, but it was too cold and wet. So I had to come here after all-it's what they call fate, and you can't run away from that. Anyhow, I'm here, and I can't stand that cold outside any more to-night. So you'll let me bide here, John, for the sake of old times?" As he spoke his eye rested upon Barbara, and a fit of ague man. "The night when the poor missis died," said Zone, who had been plunged in his own thoughts. "Of course you've heard how it all happened?" "How should I hear of it when I was in another country?" replied the stranger irritably. "What's the good of rakin' up all your old troubles? Let 'em sleep, man; that's what I do, leastways, when I can. It doesn't pay to go pokin' and rummagin' into one's past life—you a'most always find something you didn't want to see again. Let sleeping dogs lie, and tell that gal o' your'n to get me something to |