"Let us ride to Richmond to-morrow," said Florimel," and have a good gallop in the park. Did you ever see a finer sight than that animal on the grass?"

"The fellow's too heavy for her," said Liftore: "I should very much like to try her myself."

Florimel pulled up and turned to Malcolm. "MacPhail," she said, "have that mare of yours ready whenever Lord Liftore chooses to ride her."

"I beg your pardon, my lady," returned Malcolm, "but would your ladyship make a condition with my lord that he shall not mount her anywhere on the stones."

"By Jove!" said Liftore scornfully, "you fancy yourself the only man that can ride."

"It's nothing to me, my lord, if you break your neck, but I am bound to tell you I do not think your lordship will sit my mare. Stoat can't, and I can only because I know her as well as my own palm."

The young earl made no answer, and they rode on, Malcolm nearer than his lordship liked.

"I can't think, Florimel," he said, "why you should want that fellow about you again. He is not only very awkward, but insolent as well."

"I should call it straightforward," returned Florimel.

"My dear Lady Lossie! See how close he is riding to us now."

"He is anxious, I dare say, as to your lordship's behavior. He is like some dogs that are a little too careful of their mistresses touchy as to how they are addressed: not a bad fault in dog, or groom either. He saved my life once, and he was a great favorite with my father: I won't hear anything against him."

"But for your own sake- just consider: what will people say if you show any preference for a man like that?" said Liftore, who had already become jealous of the man who in his heart he feared could ride better than himself.

"My lord!" exclaimed Florimel, with a mingling of surprise and indignation in her voice, and, suddenly quickening her pace, dropped him behind.

Liftore looked at him as if he would strike him. But he thought better of it apparently, and rode after Florimel.

CHAPTER XX.

BLUE PETER.

By the time he had put up Kelpie, Malcolm found that his only chance of seeing Blue Peter before he left London lay in going direct to the wharf. On his road he reflected on what had just passed, and was not altogether pleased with himself. He had nearly lost his temper with Liftore; and if he should act in any way unbefitting the position he had assumed, from the duties of which he was in no degree exonerated by the fact that he had assumed it for a purpose, it would not only be a failure in himself, but an impediment perhaps insurmountable in the path of his service. To attract attention was almost to ensure frustration. When he reached the wharf, he found they had nearly got her freight on board the smack. Blue Peter stood on the forecastle. went to him and explained how it was that he had been unable to join him sooner. 'I didna ken ye," said Blue Peter, "in sic play-actor kin' o' claes."

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Nobody in London would look at me twice now. But you remember how we were stared at when first we came," said Malcolm.

"Ow, ay!" returned Peter with almost a groan. "There's a sair cheenge past upo' you, but I'm gauin' hame to the auld w'y o' things. The herrin' 'ill be aye to the fore, I'm thinkin'; an' gien we getna a harbor we'll get a h'aven."

Judging it better to take no notice of this pretty strong expression of distrust and disappointment, Malcolm led him aside, and putting a few sovereigns in his hand, said, Here, Peter, that will take you home."

"It's ower muckle

Malcolm was after her so instantly that it brought him abreast of Liftore. your own place," said his lordship with stern rebuke.

Weel, Peter, a' 'at I can say is, I ken my ain hert, an' ye dinna ken't."

na the Scriptur' itsel' say the hert o' man is deceitfu' an' despratly wickit; who can know it?"

he neared home. The consequence was that he felt in no haste to execute Malcolm's commission; and hence the delights of greeting over, Annie was the first to open her bag of troubles: Mr. Crathie had given them notice to quit at midsum

mer.

"Peter," said Malcolm and he spoke very gently, for he understood that love and not hate was at the root of his friend's anger and injustice. gien ye winna lippen to me, there's naething for't but I maun lippen to you. Gang hame to yer wife an' gi'e her my compliments, an' tell her a' 'at's past atween you an' me, as near, word for word, as ye can tell the same; an' say till her I pray her to judge atween you an' me, an' to mak the best o' me to ye 'at she can, for I wad ill thole to loss yer freenship, Peter."

The same moment came the command for all but passengers to go ashore. The men grasped each other's hand, looked each other in the eyes with something of mutual reproach, and parted - Blue Peter down the river to Scaurnose and Annie, Malcolm to the yacht lying still in the Upper Pool.

He saw it taken properly in charge, and arranged for having it towed up the river and anchored in the Chelsea Reach.

When Blue Peter found himself once more safe out at sea, with twelve hundred yards of canvas spread above him in one mighty wing betwixt boom and gaff, and the wind blowing half a gale, the weather inside him began to change a little. He began to see that he had not been behaving altogether as a friend ought. It was not that he saw reason for being better satisfied with Malcolm or his conduct, but reason for being worse satisfied with himself; and the consequence was that he grew still angrier with Malcolm, and the wrong he had done him seemed more and more an unpardonable one.

When he was at length seated on the top of the coach running betwixt Aberdeen and Fochabers, which would set him down as near Scaurnose as coach could go, he began to be doubtful how Annie, formally retained on Malcolm's side by the message he had to give her, would

"Hoot, man! what's gotten intill yer heid?" returned his wife. "It's no Ma'colm: it's the illy-wully factor. Bide_ye till he comes till 's ain, an' Maister Crathie 'ill hae to lauch o' the wrang side o' 's mou'."

But thereupon Peter began his tale of how he had fared in London, and in the excitement of keenly anticipated evil, and with his recollection of events wrapped in the mist of a displeasure which had deepened during his journey, he so clothed the facts of Malcolm's conduct in the garments of his own feelings that the mind of Annie Mair also became speedily possessed with the fancy that their friend's good-fortune had upset his moral equilibrium, and that he had not only behaved to her husband with pride and arrogance, breaking all the ancient bonds of friendship between them, but had tried to seduce him from the ways of righteousness by inveigling him into a play-house, where marvels of wickedness were going on at the very time. She wept a few bitter tears of disappointment, dried them hastily, lifted her head high, and proceeded to set her affairs in order as if death were at the door.

For indeed it was to them as a death to leave Scaurnose. True, Annie came from inland, and was not of the fisher race, but this part of the coast she had known from childhood, and in this cottage all her married years had been spent, while banishment of the sort involved banishment from every place they knew, for all the

She set herself to man,

As perfect music unto noble words. She was one with her husband in thought and feeling, tastes and actions; she enabled him to carry out his objects by her sympathy and by her active co-operation; she took upon herself the vexing petty cares of life, and left him free to follow out his political and literary career. Yet she was no "housewife," but shared all the best part of his mind upon all occasions. How much individual intellectual power, good sense, and insight into character she possessed, may be seen in the two large, thick volumes, wherein, with a tender reverence for her husband, in whose life her own was so completely merged, she made his character known to a circle far wider than even that in which he moved during his lifetime.

The book is peculiarly interesting to us as the story of one who, though a stranger in the land, and preserving his own individuality quite unbroken, yet identified himself with the best of English life in a manner which no other foreigner has ever done before or since.

Our pride of race, the supercilious habit of looking down on all other nations, as our inferiors in religion and politics, our shyness, exclusiveness, and insularity -our want of facility in other languages - combine to make a barrier into real English society which hardly any outsider from other lands finds it possible to pass. And although this must be the case more or less in every country, so that of the thou

sands who traverse Europe to and fro, the number of men and women in each generation might almost be counted on one's fingers who have become really intimate with the French, German, or Italian upper class, yet in England the difficulty created by the want of a common language makes the bar far greater than elsewhere. As Lord Houghton once said in a paper upon education, scarcely any English man speaks even French sufficiently well to enjoy talking it, and other tongues are still stranger to his lips. It was the accident of Baron Bunsen having married an Englishwoman, and using her speech as fluently as his own, which first opened the door for him into that jealously-kept sanctuary of English social life, which his sympathy with the nation improved to the utmost.

It is this which makes the book so valuable- to see ourselves as others see us; not through the eyes of what we might call an insolent Frenchman ""

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a dogmatic German," whom we could comfortably put aside with the feeling that "he does not understand us," but by one who touched all things as if he loved us, with a gentle, sympathetic reverence for all that was good, and a very kind tenderness even for our faults, which make his strictures tell home.

Bunsen's was a curious life of failure in the objects upon which he had set his heart. The gods shaped his ends to entirely contrary courses to those which he had rough-hewn for himself. He abhorred diplomacy, and his life was to be spent in little else. He preferred the learned leisure of a literary and artistic career, and he was condemned to the rush of London society as part of the duties of his position. He had a tender affection for his own country, yet during his lifetime he was almost singularly without influence in Germany, except through the personal friendship of the king, while he caused Prussia to be respected among nations in a manner which none of her internal arrangements before Sadowa and Sedan could have effected. He was not a great diplomatist, yet no ambassador ever took such a position before in England. was anything but a great writer, yet he had more influence on his generation than many who were both, by sheer force of straightforward honesty in thought and action, true love of God and man, and sympathy with what was highest in thought and feeling wherever he went. It is to the honor of the world that he should have been so successful, for he had none of the adjuncts which generally raise men

He

He belonged, and prided himself on the fact," to the kernel of the German nation, the cultivated and cultivating class of society;" and the record of the self-denial exercised by him and his parents in their poverty, and the sacrifices required to obtain the education which was like bread and meat to him, are exceedingly touching. At length, however, he obtained work at the Göttingen University, which enabled him to live independently while he pursued his own studies without interruption.

The "statement of his plan of intellectual work," laid before Niebuhr when he was only twenty-four, takes one's breath away by its extent and the enormous labor which it. contemplated as possible. He "determines to combine three forms of contemplation, in order to interpret the problems of human knowledge, i.e., philology, to arrange and treat individual historical facts; history, to discover their connection from their earliest development; and philosophy, to establish the principles by which philology and history investigate facts and laws of development, and mediate between fact and ideal conception," whatever this last may mean.

He wishes to "acquire the whole treasure of language in order to complete his favorite linguistic theories," to show the historical connection of German and Scandinavian heathenism with the East ("a study especially interesting as showing the history of nations"), and desires" to bring the language and spirit of the solemn East into communion with the European mind."

To accomplish this gigantic plan he went to Paris to study Persian, intending to follow it up with Sanskrit; while in order to acquire the more modern languages of India, he proposed to spend three years at Calcutta. The material part of his scheme he hoped to carry out by joining an "Oriental journey of linguis tic research," which he trusted, under the auspices of Niebuhr, would be sent out by the Prussian government. Meantime he earned money to support himself by teaching; undertook to accompany a young American on his travels, and even went as far as Florence with a young Englishman; but both plans dropped through, and at length he set forth on his own resources to meet Niebuhr, the ambassador at Rome, and his old friend Brandis, secretary of legation, through whom he hoped to obtain some opening for work. His enjoyment of the new life is delightful even to

mate, the exquisite beauty, the leisure for study (for teaching evidently bored him infinitely), the congenial society, all filled him with rapture. "There is but one Rome and one Niebuhr," he says. He plunges into a whole polyglot of reading: Plato, Firdusi, the Koran, Dante, Isaiah, the Eddas, all in their own tongues. A different influence, however, was at hand, more charming than Firdusi, more interesting even than the Eddas. He falls in with an English family with three daughters; and very soon declares how he had always thought that his old love, his plan of study and travel, would have prevented the devoting of his whole heart and being to another and human bride." Woman, however, was stronger than learning and carried the day.

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The courtship was short, but they had ample means of becoming really acquainted with each other's characters and tastes, in the easy, pleasant intercourse of Rome, and during their visits to all the great objects of interest, where the learned young German was an invaluable companion. The natural objections against a marriage where the bridegroom was absolutely penniless were great, but Niebuhr promised his assistance, and declared that Bunsen was certain to succeed in life; and the young couple were married in June, 1817.

Then comes a paradisiacal interlude at an "exquisite villa at Frascati," "the terrace of which looks down over vineyards, fields of maize, olives, fig-trees, and a long avenue of cypresses and pines." From the balcony of his room they "can see the Mediterranean in the distance, the beautiful Sabine mountains to the right, forming a semicircle round that end of the plain, and Rome in the centre. Springing fountains rise out of marble basins in the garden, most refreshing in this hot weather July), pots of myrtles and flowers, blue skies," "all fair sights and sounds are about them. Here he added to his other interests a study of the Bible with his wife, but felt a little uneasy in the midst of his happiness at the thought of what his friends would say to his giving up India; still after all, he reflects, "it was only a means to an end," and he "hopes without misgiving to accomplish what is necessary" in other ways. In October they returned to Rome, and established themselves in a suite of great, bare, half-furnished rooms in the Palazzo Caffarelli, on the Tarpeian rock; where once Charles V. was said to have been lodged. "The prospect has not its equal for beauty and