her characters showed to herself to that in the prophetic insight of the American which she displayed them to her readers, authoress, who was so shocked to see some there is a curious proof in a fact stated by of our fine ladies' carriages rolling through Mrs. Gaskell, viz., that she thought Jane the streets of London "with three possible Eyre so like the Francesca of Miss Bremer's inheritors of eternal glory hanging on beNeighbors, that she was afraid every one must hind." think she had taken her conception from it. Most of all, however, we confess we are moved for the three curates. They seem so defenceless and so good-humored about the matter. Every one has a fling at them. The biographer tells us they were "so obtuse in perception." They must be happy men if they don't know how hard they have been hit; but even pachydermatous animals have rights which should be respected. Can we be so sure, too, that they did not feel it? perhaps they thought it the wiser course to laugh it off; perhaps they exercised a Christian forgiveness. Prima facie one could expect that even

"The poor curate that we tread upon

In corporal anguish feels a pang as great
As when a rector dies."

Mere curates as they were, however, we cannot help thinking it a little too bad that Miss Bronte should not only wrong them, but scorn them because they submit to

wrong:

"The very curates, poor fellows! show no resentment; each characteristically finds solace for his own wounds in crowing over his brethren. Mr. Donne was, at first, a little disturbed; for a week or two he was in disquietude, but he is now soothed down; only yesterday I had the pleasure of making him a comfortable cup of tea, and seeing him sip it with revived complacency. It is a curious fact, that since he read Shirley, he has come to the house oftener than ever, and been remarkably meek and assiduous to please. Some people's natures are veritable enigmas: I quite expected to have had one good scene at least with him; but as yet nothing of the sort has occurred.'

"The very curates!" but surely we must all have a beginning. The curate is the undeveloped stage (by. possibility, at least) of that perfect creature which, in expanded lawn sleeves, with venerable apron in front, and with venerable silk-encased legs, gracefully pendulous behind, soars benignantly into the House of Lords. That very Bishop of Ripon, whose visit spread a mild halo over the parsonage at Haworth, may once have been a curate. Miss Bronte should have thought of these things. She lacked

The Professor, now published, throws no new light on the characteristics of Miss Bronte's genius; no new ground is broken; indeed, the greater part of it only retraces for us the Belgian experiences with which we are already familiar. Here is the first draft of Madame Beck, under the name of Mademoiselle Reuter; M. Pelet, the French master, is a new and excellent sketch: but we have our old friend, the teacher and intellectual subjugator of the female heart, in Mr. William Crimsworth, but mixed in his nature something of the sulky, secret-feeding affections of Lucy Snowe; in Mr. Hunsden, the educated and abnormal Yorkshire manufacturer, a crude, ill-drawn, and exaggerated, as well as badly-defined figure; and in Frances, the plain, piquant, strong-minded, fascinating little girl. But Frances, though like, is unlike. She gives a charm to the book; intellect is reconciled with a 66 sweet, attractive kind of grace," which Miss Bronte does not often indulge us by delineating, Frances is a refined and softened Jane Eyre, and decidedly the most attractive female character that ever came from the pen of this author. She suffers the ordinary fate, however. Miss Bronte was a great upholder of the privileges of her sex, yet no writer in the world has ever so uniformly represented women at so great a disadvantage. They invariably fall victims to the man of strong intellect, and generally muscular frame, who lures them on with affected indifference and simulated harshness; by various ingenious trials assures himself they are worthy of him, and, when his own time has fully come, raises them with a bashaw-like air from their prostrate condition, presses them triumphantly to his heart, or seats them on his knee, as the case may be, and indulges in a condescending burst of passionate emotion. these men are in their attachments utterly and undisguisedly selfish, and we must say we grudge them their easily won victories over the inexperienced placid little girls they lay siego to. It is not thus that generous men make their advances, or that women, worthy of the name, are won. One such

case might pass; but it is Miss Bronte's and we lose patience at being told, with all standing idea of a romantic courtship. The this array of exculpation, that she needed Professor contains some very unsparing and "purifying." Coarse materials, indeed, she outspoken expressions, especially in the too much deals with; and her own style has sketches of two or three young ladies who something rude and uucompromising in it, occupied prominent places in the Brussels school described. Miss Bronte had had no opportunity of learning what in England is considered proper to be said, and naturally, from her foreign experience, adopted some touch of continental freedom of speech. While we are on this subject, we cannot pass without notice a passage in the Life in strange contrast with the general tone of universal admiration. A passage which few, we think, can have read without just indignation; and after penning which, we cannot help saying, we wonder the writer had the heart to accuse the Quarterly reviewer of injustice or pharisaism:

not always in accordance with customary ideas of what is becoming in a female writer; but it would be scarcely possible to name a writer who, in handling such difficult subjectmatter, carried the reader so safely through by the unseen guardianship and unconsciously exercised influence of her stainless purity and unblemished rectitude. The conventional proprieties of speech and subject-matter she disregards, indeed; her delicacy lost some of its bloom abroad, and she may be said with justice to want refinement; but even that is the conventional refinement rather than the real one. It has been well said, and every reader perceives it, or ought to do so, that "I do not deny for myself," says Mrs. her plain speaking is itself the result of her Gaskell, with an air worthy of Mrs. Can- purity. What she has that jars on us often dour, "the existence of coarseness here and in her writings is not so much these things as there in her works, otherwise so entirely a certain harshness, a love of the naked fact noble. I only ask those who read them to too unsparing, and a tendency to believe that consider her life, which has been openly laid what is attractive scarcely can be true. In bare before them, and to say how it could be otherwise. She saw few men; and among the school of ladylike refined writing, true these few were one or two with whom she in its own sphere, enlivening, softening, and had been acquainted since early childhood, elevating, which deals gently with weak who had shown her much friendliness and mortality, and reversing the saying which kindness-through whose family she had dissuades us from breaking a butterfly on a received many pleasures for whose intellect she had a great respect-but who talked before her, if not to her, with as little reticence as Rochester talked to Jane Eyre. Take this in connection with her poor brother's sad life, and the outspoken people among whom she lived; remember her strong feeling of the duty of representing life as it really is, not as it ought to be; and then do her justice for all that she was, and all that she would have been had God spared her, rather than censure her because circumstances forced her to touch pitch, as it were, and by it her hand was for a moment defiled. It was but skin-deep. Every change in her life was purifying her; it hardly could raise her. Again I cry, 'If she had but lived!'"' Charlotte Bronte's works are far from being "otherwise so entirely noble ; they have defects in abundance; but there never were books more free from the stain here so quietly assumed, and so feelingly lamented as unavoidable. Rochester does not talk without reticence to Jane Eyre. The writer never did touch pitch she might paint it; but it was in the safety of her own innocency,

wheel, punishes vice with a knitting-needlewhich compels into courtly phrases the swelling form and native hideousness of crime, and throws over the stern precipices and gloom-shrouded abyssess of life-remorse and terror and madness-frail bridges of happy fancies and spirit-consoling hopes,-in this school we have many proficients. High in the list stands Mrs. Gaskell's own name. Graceful fictions have power to beguile us, to cheer us, to instruct us; and if with too silver a voice she echoes the dread undertones of the mystery of sin and suffering and death, we remember that reality has more sides than one, that each side has its truth, and welcome the genius which instinctively turns to that aspect where beauty predominates, and whose darkest shades are error and frailties and penitence. But Miss Bronte had a different call: her feet were rougher shod to walk rough both life and art; and if she does not lead us through the dark caverns of life, at least she does not attempt to measure their depths with a silken thread,

or hang pale lights of fancy in their mouths. and that direct personal indictment, which As she passes over the lesser evils of life, she accompanied the account of Branwell Bronte's describes them in their native ruggedness; wretched fate, itself recorded with unneces through the depths she steals, in general, in sary detail. Having had no opportunity to the silence of fortitude; and only now and record this impression before the late corres then some brief cry of personal anguish.rings pondence was advertised, we have no inclina, sharp and sudden through the darkness. tion to dwell on it now, or to follow the example of reading an insulting lesson to one who must already be painfully sensible of her error. If, on the other hand, we have in this paper not swelled the number of those little paragraphs which publishers delight to cull, and which have pretty well exhausted the "combinations and permutations" of the language of eulogy, it is not because we have not a deep sense of the value of a record which raises the life of a woman so high above the triumphs of the artist, or the beauty and the skill with which that record has been framed; but because we love to believe that authors. of sense. and delicacy estimate indiscriminate laudation at its true worth.

It is impossible to pass from the subject of Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Miss Bronte, without some allusion to that particular feature which has of late been pressed upon the attention of the public.

It is our function to be critics, not flatterers. We have not scrupled to state freely our conviction, that this biography is too detailed a record of domestic life; that it infringes somewhat on that personal reserve and dignity of privacy, which should limit the gratification of public curiosity or public interest. We felt long ago that these and yet more powerful considerations should have checked that outspoken burst of feeling,

HOW DO OYSTERS MAKE THEIR SHELLS.-The following Note may assist in furnishing a reply to this Query:

"A London oysterman can tell the age of his flock to a nicety. The age of an oyster is not to be found out by looking into its mouth. It bears its years upon its back. Everybody who has handled an oyster-shell must have observed that it seemed as if composed of successive layers of plates overlapping each other. These are technically termed shoots," and each of them marks a year's growth, so that by counting them we can determine at a glance the-year when the creature came into the world. Up to the time of its maturity the shoots are regular and successive; but after that time they become irregular, and are piled one over the other, so that the shell becomes more and more thickened and bulky. Judging from the great thickness to which some oyster-shells have attained, this mollusc is capable, if left to its natural changes unmolested, of attaining a patriarchal longevity."

-Notes and Queries.

R. W. HACKWOOD.

FOREIGN AIRS AND NATIVE GRACES.-Respecting the origin of psalm tunes, add the following from the Illustrated Exhibitor:

of George IV., and Archbishop Manners, adapted 220 strains of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, to as many of the best versions of the Psalms; and he says, musically speaking, England has not produced a single original idea. He ascribes the thoughts of Arne and Purcell to the Italians, and our grave church music to the Flemings." R. W. HACKWOOD. -Notes and Queries.

MONOLITHS.-The famous obelisk of Forres, so interesting to the antiquary,-which has been described by some writers as formed of a species of stone unknown in the district, and which, according to a popular tradition, was transported from the Continent,-is evidently composed "of a pure quartoze sandstone furnished by the upper beds of the Old Red Sandstone system. These are extensively quarried in Moray, near the village of Burghead, and exported to all parts of the world. It is the best building stone of the north of Scotland, both for beauty and durability. See The Old Red Sandstone, by Hugh Miller, ed. 6., 1857., p. 239. F. S. -Notes and Queries.

SHOWING THE WHITE FEATHER. -I thought that the appearance of a white feather in the "The first tunes were popular airs and dances. fine plumage of a gamecock was considered as The Old Hundredth was a love ditty; Rebuke evidence against the purity of his breeding. me not was a jig; and Stand up, O Lord, was Hence the stigma. But I am no ornithologist a Poitou dance. Gardiner, under the sanction-Notes and Queries. ALFRED GATTY.

T

1

From Household Words.
HELENA MATHEWSON.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

My father was rector of Lichendale, a
little, grey-walled town, of which few but
north-country people have ever heard. My
mother died when I was quite a child,
leaving me little Helena, as I was always
called-with no other companions than my
two brothers, Paul and Lawrence, and our
faithful, old nurse, Hannah. My eldest
brother, Paul, was grave and moody; and
Lawrence and I, who were warm allies, were
nearly always quarrelling with him. Law-
rence could not bear to hear what Paul so
firmly maintained; that unless Helena
were a better girl, and more careful over her
spelling, she would be burnt alive after she
died. Not seeing the inconsistency of this
terrible threat, and, fearing from Paul's
authoritative tone, that he had the power to
execute it, Lawrence would take up my cause
with fiery zeal, and often cudgelled Paul
into granting me a milder sentence.
used to take our lesson-books into the study
every morning; and, while I learnt my
spelling, my brothers read and construed
with my father.

But Paul soon grew too old for mere
home-schooling; and, after much secresy and
mysterious preparation, he was sent to the
grammar-school at Sawbridge. Lawrie and
I made merry over his departure. We had
wilder games: than ever in the garden and
woods, and got into twice as many scrapes as
before; so that sometimes even Hannah lost
all patience with us, and dragged us-little
trembling culprits before my father, who
lifted his kind eyes from his book, and tried,
with but little success, to look displeased.

so sorry to leave Lichendale, and so charmed with the unusual hurry and bustle, and his suddenly acquired importance, that smiles. and tears chased each other away in quick succession from his face. I can see now his last, sad look, as the mail-coach, which had stopped for him at our gate, drove off; and I remember turning out of the sunny garden into the house, and running up stairs that I might sob undisturbed in some quiet hidingplace. But Paul, who had come over for the day to say good-bye to Lawrence, soon discovered me; and, instead of trying to comfort me, talked in a slow, measured moan of the wickedness of my grief, and of his belief that despondency was a child of the devil.

Sir

Lawrence's letters were frequent and affectionate, and at first almost homesick. The pleasures of Rome were great, he wrote, but still he loved Lichendale and Helena, far, far more dearly. than ever, and often longed to come back. Gradually, however, another We tone crept into them. There were fewer allusions to home, and to the time when he should return to us; but, instead, the thin blue sheets were covered with accounts of the grand English families that he met, whose patronage seemed to intoxicate him, and of beautiful ladies, whom, I feared, ho liked better than little Helena, if they were really as lovely as he described them. Edward Stamford, the owner of Lichendale Hall, and who would have been the great man of our neighborhood had he ever visited it, was one of the acquaintance of whom we heard most. My father regretted this much; for reports had travelled home that the life Sir Edward led abroad was wild and dissipated; and those who recollected him at Those happy days passed too quickly. Lichendale, in the old Baronet's time, deLawrence went to school; and, after two orclared that he had been always self-willed three years there, to Rome. He had always and passionate. said he would be an artist; and he did not flinch from his plan as he grew out of childhood, but adhered to it so steadily that at length my father consented to his going to Italy to study. He was very young to be sent so far alone; but my father had lived for so long in Lichendale, that he seemed to have forgotten how full of danger and temptation a city like Rome would be to one eager and reckless as Lawrence.

Poor Lawrie! I remember our last parting well. He was so glad to be going to Italy,

I

Lawrence had been absent six years. was grown into a tall, shy girl of sixteen; and Paul, after a successful career at Cambridge, was on the eve of being ordained. Surely, Lawrence would soon come back, I thought. My father also longed for his return, and wrote to urge him to leave Rome, at least for a while. We were full of glad expectation. My father counted the weeks that would elapse before his return, and I counted the days and hours, which I thought would never pass.

Before that day came a more terrible-a the sober, godly towns-people, overcame more suddenly terrible one. A letter came these scruples, and he settled down into my for my father from Italy, but not directed father's place, if not to fulfil its duties as in Lawrence's hand. I took it into my mildly, at any rate with as rigid conscien father's study myself, and watched him as tiousness and self-denial. Hannah had left he read it. He seemed to dread evil. He us, to live with some orphan nieces of hers broke the seal slowly, and paused before he in another town; so I was Paul's little dared to glance at the contents. I was so housekeeper, as I had latterly been my frightened and impatient that I could have father's. There were none of the few fami torn it open, had it been bound with iron, lies of our own rank in Lichendale that I and my father's delay was dreadful to me. much liked, or with whom I kept up any One look at his face, as he stared in horror great intimacy, so that I often felt sadly at the short, Italian sentence, confirmed my lonely. Paul loved me in his grave way, worst fears, and I did not need to hear the but he seemed to think that any unnecessary word "Dead!" rise slowly to his lips, to display of affection was harmful, and I capstrike the awful certainty through me, that not remember his ever petting or caressing Lawrence-affectionate, wilful Lawrence- me. Still, after the first great grief for would never come back to us. I did not Lawrie and my father had been softened by scream or faint. I felt the longing that I time, I was happy-in a sort of quiet, listhave had from childhood, whenever I have less way. The country round Lichendale been unhappy or terror-stricken, to creep was beautiful. away with my grief and hide; but I could with the Hall peering through the trees; not leave my father, pale and ghastly as he and, on the other, the red sands which the looked. Thank God! I did not. For years tide rarely covered, stretching away to the he had symptoms of heart-disease. I clung silver sea-line. I used to take long walks to him in silence, thinking that it was only by myself on these sands, or in the woods. his great mental pain that made him so I did not read much; for the only books deadly still and white. I chafed and kissed that Paul allowed me were what I did not his hands; and, in grief for his grief, almost care for; either abstruse treatises on religion, forgot my own. "Paul-send for him!" or biographies, in which the history of the he sighed. I left the room, wrote a short man was made subservient to all manner of note to summon him, and then hastened back doleful morals, and melancholy hints to sinto the study, for I began to fear my father ners. We lived very simply. Lawrence was ill. had left many debts in Rome; and, to pay these, it was necessary for a few years to give up many luxuries, and to part with one of our old trusty servants. So I found some pleasant occupation in little household duties.

In those few minutes Death had entered, and claimed his victim. What a night of misery I passed! I longed to die. Why was I spared?-spared to pain and mourning and craving grief?

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

NEARLY two years passed, and I still lived at the dear old rectory. Sir Edward Stamford, the patron of the living of Lichendale, had written to offer it to Paul when he heard of my father's death. The letter was kind, and full of polite regrets that they should most probably never meet, as he intended to remain always abroad. There was no mention of Lawrence in it; which I thought strange. My brother hesitated for some time before accepting a living from one whom he chose to call a sinner in the sight of the Lord; but his affection for Lichendale; for it grand, old parish church, and

On one side, was the park,

This was my life when I was eighteen; and it was then that Sir Edward Stamford suddenly returned to Lichendale. He was brought by the report of an approaching dissolution of Parliament, people said; for, they whispered, he meant to stand for Lichendale, to turn out the present sleepy old member. Lichendale is one of the smallest borough-towns in England; but, at the passing of the Reform Bill, everybody thought it likely to become a populous sea port. There were rumors of docks to be built, and new lines of traffic to be opened; and the old inhabitants, terrified at the prospect of these changes, swore vengeance against the different companies that were to