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watching him at his work sometimes ham- the smoke that fills it half blinds him, mering away at a toy-cart which Francisco but in a moment or two he comes out had fashioned for his amusement, at other again, with Beppino in his strong arms. times tending the plants which stood on The brazier is stupefied, he cannot the shelf yonder. Next to his Camilla stand-Checco places him against the and his boy the old carpenter loved flow-wall farther from the fire and dashes water ers, and the love had been shared by little in his face. Checco.

These recollections soften him and almost bring tears, but with them come others stronger and more bitter. The grimy drudgery beside Beppino - for used to out-door labor at his uncle's farm, Checco had taken no interest in hammering and soldering pots and pans then anxious waiting for a glimpse of his mother: and when she came into the workshop, ah, that was the bitter drop! how she always turned to Beppino and scarcely noticed him; and then there had been the daily torment of his stepfather's gibes.

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Patience," Checco frowns at his own thoughts, "I did not come for all this, I came for peace."

Softly he opens the door, and looks in; he sees his mother lying on the sofa fast asleep. He stands irresolute, his entrance has not roused her, she goes on breathing deeply. He draws back again and closes the door.

Instead of waiting in the shop, he goes out by a side door into the little yard. This is almost filled up by tumble down sheds used for timber in old Francesco's time, among them Checco has played many a merry game at hide-and-seek with his bright young mother. But what is this? A veil of blue smoke comes between him and the sheds, and there is a strong smell of burning wood. Checco hurries forward, but the smoke rapidly increases; it almost blinds him; he rushes back to the fountain near the door by which he entered.

A large copper bucket stands beside it, he catches this up and snatches another from the workshop, in another moment he is deluging the shed with water.

At first his efforts seem useless, the smoke bursts out afresh and fills the yard, almost stifling him; he knows there used to be straw in the shed that is burning, he

has often taken a siesta inside it.

Again and again he deluges the place with water; and now his efforts prevail, there is a lull in the outburst of smoke; he goes nearer, and he hears a faint cry, Help!"

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Checco gasps, till now he has only thought of putting out the fire, it has all been so sudden -he dashes into the shed

"Help!" shouts Checco, and works harder still to put out the fire; the smoke gets lower and lower, and the yard is streaming with water. Checco turns to look at Beppino, he still leans against the wall, but he has opened his eyes.

A woman's loud cry startles Checco he cannot turn round and face his mother. He stands trembling, filled with fear that once more she may have misinterpreted his conduct towards Beppino. He is surprised to see the drenched, smoke-stained man stagger to his feet.

"Don't be frightened, Camilla," he calls out; "I am all right. The shed was on fire, and Checco has put it out. I should have been burned in my sleep if he had not come."

His mother's arms are round Checco, and as he hugs her closely to him she sobs on his shoulder.

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My boy! my brave boy!" she says, and she kisses him till, in his happiness, poor Checco feels as if hard life is over, and heaven has begun for him.

Camilla lifts up her head and strokes his cheek.

"What a fine fellow you are," she says; "to think of you doing it all by yourself! But how did you get here, my boy?" Then, in a sharp voice to poor pale Beppino, who, after shaking Checco's hand, has staggered back against the wall, "I'll wager it was one of your nasty cigars that did the mischief."

PART IV.

SPRING is making life lovely at Assisi. Out-of-the-way nooks on Monte Subasio are fragrant with violets; while anemones and asphodel, narcissus and iris, paint the grassy slopes, where they can find them, and cistus gleams among the rocks. The balcony at the little inn is gay with yellow roses, and everywhere the fresh, delicate leaves are opening hastily to welcome the bright, golden spring. The houses of the little town gleam white as they cling to the side of the steep hill below them; in the valley is the great church of Santa Maria degli Angeli; and above, supported by its double range of arches, are the Church and Convent of San Francesco.

The English lady we saw last year in the oliveyard outside Perugia has come to

know she meant more than that"-he
checks his hurried words, and looks
grave "but I could never tell how happy
I am in my garden; every plant is a friend
to me; it is delightful to have so many
friends; and for all the care I give I am
paid over and over again; and the flowers,
the darlings"-his eyes darken with
pleasure; he stops and adds timidly,
with a certain awkwardness that recalls
that sad Checco under the olive-trees
"will the signora have but the condescen-
sion to come this way and see my flow.
ers?"

stay at Assisi. She knows that she shall find Checco here. There are not any flowers in the neat garden, but, as she looks over from the little balcony of the hotel, it is pleasant to see rows of cabbage and lettuce and beetroot and peas and beans gleaming in the sunshine, with freshly turned brown lines of earth be tween. And beyond the garden stretches the lovely landscape; there is the valley below, then the intervening, undulating plain, so tender-looking in its fresh green, and the pale foliage of the olives, with brown vineyards here and there, for as yet the leaves lie snug in their sheaths. She nods, and follows him: she looks All round are the purple mountains, with as happy as Checco, and feels almost the towns and villages showing white, some- same age as the lad as she goes on talktimes nestling half-way up the hillsides,ing to him about his garden, while they or else, like Foligno, crouching below walk along the damp paths. on flat ground. But the English woman comes every year to Umbria, and she has seen this landscape often. She is looking for Checco, and she gives a start more like surprise than recognition when she sees a tall man coming up the side of the How charming!" his companion says. garden. He holds up his head, and, un- "Do you grow them for your own pleas conscious of being watched, he is whis-ure, Checco?" tling a merry tune.

The lady goes down the rickety steps that lead from the balcony to the garden, and walks slowly towards him. She is curious to see whether Checco will recognize her; he soon sees her, and pulls off his straw hat, while his face beams with a happy smile.

"How are you, Checco?" she says gaily. "I thought you would have forgotten me. I am not sure I should have recognized you if I had not known where to find you.'

His eyes are beautiful in their expression of earnest gratitude, and though his lips still tremble a little, that miserable, nervous twitching has left his face. He looks quite happy.

"Ah," he says earnestly, "does the signora think then that I could forget her? that would not be possible."

"Well," she says abruptly, having a horror of "sentiment," as she calls it, "and how do you get on here? Do you like your work? and are the people kind?

His face flushes a little, and in his eagerness to speak, his words tumble over one another:

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He stops on the other side of the bluegreen rows of peas, and points to a hedge of roses covered with delicate pink blossoms, and with a carpet of double violets below.

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He gives her a bright smile.

"I gather them for the mistress," he nods back at the house; "she is very good to me, and—and" he hesitates at certain memories, "when I get a chance I send a nosegay to my mother."

But he does not look sad at her name, his companion fancies he seems than ever contented.

more

"You are then really happy here? You would not exchange Assisi for Perugia, Checco?"

He shakes his head, then he raises his dark eyes and looks straight into hers.

"The signora was right in more than one thing that she said to me on the hillside," he says gravely; "she can never know how much she helped me."

A mist comes before his eyes, and a lump rises in his throat. He stoops down and gathers the finest of his violets; then, without a word, he offers them to his friend.

"Thank you, Checco." She gives him a bright smile. "I shall keep these for your sake; I shall not forget you, my friend."

She holds out her hand, and he kisses it reverently. "Ah, signora," he says in a choked voice, "I owe everything to you. But for you I might be still at San Pie

Yes, oh! yes, they are all good to me. The signora was a prophet. Does she not remember that she said I should one day find out what I was made for? Itro."

KATHARINE S. MACQUOID.

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IMMEDIATELY after Carlyle's death two volumes of his "Reminiscences were hurried through the press in such hot haste that Mr. Froude did not even take time to correct the proof-sheets properly.

Within little more than a twelvemonth he

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Le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire. Mrs. Carlyle's letters had also supplied towards Lady Harriet Baring, and Mr. sufficient information about her feelings Froude need not have handled over again to have been made public. In many other a matter about which nothing at all ought lack of discretion. What but injury can respects, too, Mr. Froude shows strange it do his hero to have it known that he Newman "had not the intellect of a modonce told his biographer that Cardinal erate-sized rabbit," and wrote of " some little ape called Keble"?

had issued two volumes of biography, recounting the first half of Carlyle's life. Another year was not allowed to pass before three volumes of Mrs. Carlyle's letters were published, and now we have before us two more volumes of biography, which complete the series. Carlyle died in 1881, and this is October, 1884. There is no need to rediscuss the question of the wisdom of Mr. Froude's proceedings; most honorable passages in Carlyle's life, These volumes open with one of the but if the mere statement of them is not his steady prosecution in the midst of sufficient let the reader contrast them for a moment with the manner in which Lock poverty of the task of writing his "Hishart acted when he was left Scott's lit-tory of the French Revolution," and his erary executor. Lockhart did his work quickly, but not hastily. He let five years elapse before he printed his first volume, and his biography was finished two years afterwards. His masterpiece is a permanent addition to our literature, and has increased the fame of the great and good

man whose life it recounts. Mr. Froude's books are crude compilations, and he has inflicted a blow on the reputation of Carlyle from which it is unlikely that it will

ever recover.

Owing to Mr. Froude's method of publication, the interest attached to this last instalment of his biography has already been anticipated in a large measure. No eventful incidents marked the last fortyfive years of Carlyle's life, and of his character and ways of thinking and of living the seven volumes already published had given more than sufficient information. It is unfortunate, therefore, that his biographer has not been more sparing of extracts from Carlyle's journals relating his sufferings from indigestion and sleepless nights, and has told his readers over and over again of the spring cleanings in Cheyne Row and the philosopher's dislike to the smell of paint and the crowing of cocks, matters about which Mrs. Carlyle's letters had already made ample mention. Surely every petty incident in a man's life need not be published at full length simply because he was a man of genius. Mr. Froude pleads that there was nothing in Carlyle's life that needed hiding, but that

Thomas Carlyle: a History of his Life in London, 1834-81. By J. A. Froude. 2 vols. Longmans

& Co.

heroic behavior when the first volume was No nobler episode is to be found in the destroyed through the negligence of Mill. Carlyle who could say, "Well, Mill, poor career of any man of letters. To the fellow, is terribly cut up: we must endeavor to hide from him how very serious the business is," many a harsh judgment and outrageous outburst of jealousy and passion may well be forgiven. Could than those he put down in his journal there be finer or more touching words

when Mill had told him of his loss? —

...

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But on the whole should I not thank the Unseen? For I was not driven out of composure, hardly for moments. "Walk humbly with thy God." How I longed for some psalm or prayer that I could have uttered, that my morning I have determined so far that I can loved ones could have joined me in!... This still write a book on the French Revolution, and will do it. Nay, our money will still suffice.. I will not quit the game while faculty is given me to try playing. I have written to Fraser to buy me a Biographie Universelle" (a kind of increasing the stake) and fresh paper: mean to huddle up the Fête des Piques and look farther what can be atOh, that I tempted. Oh, that I had faith! had! Then were there nothing too hard or to God for it. Surely He will give it thee. heavy for me. Cry silently to thy inmost heart At all events, it is as if my invisible schoolmaster had torn my copybook when I showed it, and said, "No, boy! Thou must write it better." What can I, sorrowing, do but obey

obey and think it best? To work again; and, oh! may God be with me, for this earth is not friendly. On in His name! I was the nearest being happy sometimes these last few days that I have been for many months. My health is not so bad as it once was. I felt my

self on firmish ground as to my work, and | tainly on horseback I have always taken him could forget all else. I will tell John, my to be tall. Eyes beautiful light blue, full of mother, and Annandale Getreuen, but not till I mild valour, with infinitely more faculty and feel under way again and can speak peace to geniality than I had fancied before; the face them with the sorrow. To no other, I think, wholly gentle, wise, valiant, and venerable. will I tell it, or more than allude to it. The voice, too, as I again heard, is "aquiline"

A passage like this creates a feeling of sympathy for the writer that a judicious biographer would not have impaired by printing the wild expressions he uttered under the torments of dyspepsia. From Mill, his early friend and admirer, Carlyle became greatly estranged. Mill dared to decline an article offered for the Westminster, and when the sage wrote up slavery in Fraser, Mill had the audacity to contradict him. Mill's death, however, seems to have awakened Carlyle's better nature, and Mr. Froude might well have contented himself with printing the expression of sorrow which the news elicited, and have expunged the contemptuous criticism which Carlyle passed on his old friend's autobiography. Yet though Carlyle's judgments of the individuals he met were, as we have repeatedly said, grossly unfair, he had an undeniable power of detecting their weaknesses. He was often blind to their merits, but the defects almost always were correctly signalled, if exaggerated. His descriptions in these volumes are as vivid as those in their predecessors. For instance, of Greville, the author of the "Memoirs," he writes: One Greville, an old official hack of quality who runs racehorses, whom I have often enough seen before: memorable as a man of true aristocratic manner, without any aristocratic endowment whatever-a Laïs without the beauty. He has Court gossip, political gossip, etc., and is civil to all persons, careless about all persons-equal nearly to zero.

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clear, perfectly equable—uncracked, that is and perhaps almost musical, but essentially tenor or almost treble voice-eighty-two, I understand. He glided slowly along, slightly saluting this and that other, clear, clean, fresh as this June evening itself, till the silver buckle of his stock vanished into the door of the next room, and I saw him no more.

account of Count d'Orsay's visit: A piece of not ill-natured satire is his

About a fortnight ago, this Phoebus Apollo of dandyism, escorted by poor little Chorley, came whirling hither in a chariot that struck all Chelsea into mute amazement with splendor. Chorley's under jaw went like the hopper or under riddle of a pair of fanners, such was his terror on bringing such a splendour ertheless, we did amazingly well, the Count into actual contact with such a grimness. Nevand I. He is a tall fellow of six feet three, built like a tower, with floods of dark-auburn hair, with a beauty, with an adornment unsurpassable on this planet; withal a rather substantial fellow at bottom, by no means without insight, without fun, and a sort of rough sarcasm rather striking out of such a porcelain figure. He said, looking at Shelley's bust, in faces who weesh to swallow their chin." He his French accent, "Ah, it is one of those admired the fine epic, etc., etc.; hoped I would call soon, and see Lady Blessington withal. Finally he went his way, and Chorley with reassumed jaw. Jane laughed for two days at the contrast of my plaid dressing-gown, bilious, iron countenance, and this Paphian apparition.

The estimate of Christopher North is worth quoting:

I knew his figure well; remember well first seeing him in Princess Street on a bright April afternoon probably 1814 exactly forty years ago. A tall ruddy figure, with plenteous blonde hair, with bright blue eyes, fixed, as if in haste towards some distant object, strode rapidly along, clearing the press to the left of us, close by the railings, near where Blackwood's shop now is. Westward he in haste; we slowly eastward. Campbell whisPalms,"" which poem I had not read, being pered me, "That is Wilson of the 'Isle of then quite mathematical, scientific, etc., for extraneous reasons, as I now see them to have been. The broad-shouldered stately bulk of the man struck me; his flashing eye, copious, dishevelled head of hair, and rapid, unconcerned progress, like that of a plough through It must have been fourteen years later before I once saw his figure again, and began to have some distant straggling acquaintance of a personal kind with him. . . .

Truly a beautiful old man; I had never seen till now how beautiful, and what an expression of graceful simplicity, veracity, and nobleness there is about the old hero when you see him close at hand. His very size had hitherto deceived me. He is a shortish, slight-stubble. ish figure, about five feet eight, of good breadth however, and all muscle or bone. His legs, I think, must be the short part of him, for cer

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It is one of the prettiest shores I ever saw : trim grass or fine corn, even to the very brow of the sea. Sand (where there is sand) as white as meal, and between sand and farmfield a glacis or steep slope, which is also covered with grass, in some places thick with meadow-sweet, "Queen of the Meadows," and quite odoriferous as well as trim. The island of Stroma flanks it, across a sound of perhaps two miles broad. Three ships were passing westward in our time. The old wreck of a fourth was still traceable in fragments, sticking in the sand, or leant on harrows higher up by way of fence. . . . The Orkneys, Ronald Shay, Skerries, etc., lay dim, dreamlike, with a beauty as of sorrow in the dim grey day.

lived apart, as in different centuries; though, | Effects that others attain by art and labor to say the truth, I always loved Wilson he seemed hardly able to avoid when he really rather loved him, and could have fancied took his pen in hand:a most strict and very profitable friendship between us in different, happier circumstances. But it was not to be. It was not the way of this poor epoch, nor a possibility of the century we lived in. One had to bid adieu to it therefore. Wilson had much nobleness of heart, and many traits of noble genius, but the central tie-beam seemed always wanting; very long ago I perceived in him the most irreconcilable contradictions, Toryism with sansculot tism; Methodism of a sort with total incredulity; a noble, loyal, and religious nature, not strong enough to vanquish the perverse element it is born into. Hence a being all split into precipitous chasms and the wildest volcanic tumults; rocks overgrown, indeed, with tropical luxuriance of leaf and flower, but knit together at the bottom that was my old figure of speech-only by an ocean of whisky punch. On these terms nothing can be done. Wilson seemed to me always by far the most gifted of all our literary men, either then or still; and yet intrinsically he has written nothing that can endure. The central gift was wanting. Adieu! adieu! oh, noble, illstarred brother!

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The whole aspect of the thing, the maddest looking stew of lies, and dust, and foul breath, fills me with despair. I attended two days, neither of my cases coming on. I inquired of all persons what I had to do or look for-in vain. There was no gleam of daylight in it for me, not so much as a seat to sit down upon. At length I followed the hest of nature, and came quietly away.

Carlyle nourished a strong dislike to the Jews, which Mr. Froude illustrates with two amusing stories :

Some time while the Jew Bill was before Parliament, and the fate of it doubtful, Baron Rothschild wrote to ask him to write a pamphlet in its favor, and intimated that he might name any sum which he liked to ask as payment. I inquired how he had answered. "Well," he said, "I had to tell him it couldn't be; but I observed, too, that I could not conceive why he and his friends, who were supposed to be looking out for the coming Shiloh, should be seeking seats in a Gentile legisla ture." I asked what Baron Rothschild had said to that. "Why," Carlyle said, "he seemed to think the coming of Shiloh was a dubious business, and that meanwhile, etc., etc."

He stood still one day, opposite Rothschild's great house at Hyde Park Corner, looked at it a little, and said, "I do not mean that I want King John back again, but if you ask me which mode of treating these people to have been the nearest to the will of the Almighty about them -to build them palaces like that, or take the His account of his first ride on a rail- pincers for them, I declare for the pincers." way is admirable : —

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Then he imagined himself King John, with the Baron on the bench before him. 'Now, sir, the State requires some of those millions you have heaped together with your financing work. You won't?' very well," and he gave a twist with his wrist "Now, will you?" and then another twist, till the millions were yielded.

The whirl through the confused darkness, on those steam wings, was one of the strangest things I have experienced — hissing and dashing on, one knew not whither. We saw the gleam of towns in the distance — unknown towns. We went over the tops of houses one town or village I saw clearly, with its chimney heads vainly stretching up towards us -under the stars; not under the clouds, but among them. Out of one vehicle into another, snorting, roaring we flew the likest thing to a Faust's flight on the Devil's mantle; or lyle get in, observed that the "old fellow 'ad a A stranger on the box one day, seeing Caras if some huge steam night-bird had flung you "Queer 'at!" answered the driver, on its back, and was sweeping through unqueer 'at." "ay, he may wear a queer 'at, but what would known space with you, most probably towards you give for the 'ed-piece that's a inside of London. it?"

:

A droll incident is the following criti. cism of the sage by a driver of a Chelsea omnibus:

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His wonderful power of describing Carlyle entertained a genuine admiralandscape comes out in many a passage. tion for Peel, and the passages referring

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