kissing me, she bade me be very quiet, and told me that I had been very ill, and that soon I should be well again.

Large spots of cold rain began to fall, mother, and asked where I was; but, and I wrapped my little sister's cloak closer around her as we hurried onwards. We were on a wide-spreading moor, and still we went on till the night closed in. The rain now began to fall faster, and the wind made a low, sobbing noise as it swept by us. We grew afraid as we hurried past gaunt trees which seemed to assume gruesome shapes. Then in the darkness we could discern twinkling lights, and at last we came up to one, which, being in the turf, we took for a fairy light; but, alas no fairy answered us when we called; and I remember wondering why the rain did not put the tiny lamp out. Then my little sister began to cry most bitterly, and placing my arms around her, I found that her cloak was wet through, and I had not noticed till then that my jacket was the same.

Day followed day, and I would watch the sky grow blue and the clouds sail across; and the song of the birds in the orchard came in with the soft, balmy air at my window. I would talk to the lady, and for hours she would sit with loving face and listen to my prattle. I told her how my little sister and I had started for the Land of the Setting Sun; and when I asked her where my sister was, she told me that when I was stronger she would tell me; and I said I was strong now; and bending over me and covering me with kisses, she told me that my dear little sister had gone to the land where our mother was

-that I might go to them, but that they could never come to me; and in telling me she cried; and I cried too, for I felt how lonely my path in life would be without my mother and sister; but putting her arms around me, the lady told me that some day I should join them in the Land of the Setting Sun, in the land that knows no night.

We struggled on. I only remember how the night grew blacker, and that finally we came to a big house; and how, after pulling a long handle hanging at the portal, a terrible clanging of bells and barking of dogs and flashing of lights ensued. What followed I can but faintly remember. I have a dim I am old now; many sunsets have recollection of seeing a beautiful lady come and gone since then. The lady that I thought must be my mother, and who sat by my bedside, and who afterof sitting before a blazing fire; then I wards became to me more than a secmust have fallen asleep. When I ond mother, is no more of this land, awoke, it was broad daylight, but the but has gone to join my mother and room seemed strangely different from sister in that brighter country of no my own, and yet, there, hanging on the shadows. The world has taught me wall before me, was my mother's min- many things since then; but how williature. In the night I had been dream-ingly would I give up much of my ing. I dreamed that soft and sweet knowledge for the possession of the voices were calling to me, and kind innocence of a little child. The longer hands were gently smoothing my burning forehead. I was thirsty. My mother cooled my lips, and her voice lulled me to sleep again. But could I be awake? By the window grew honeysuckle, that I never had known was there; and standing against the blue sky was a red farmhouse that I had never seen before. I shut my eyes to see if it were all real; but on opening them again, I saw the beautiful lady bending over me, and I called her

one lives in the world the more one becomes of the world; and it seems to me that since my childhood I have turned my back upon the sunset, and have wandered far away from that land. I am fast approaching what men call second childhood; and in those days that are to be, when the sky is lifted up as a curtain and I catch a glimpse of that other land, then shall I, my labors ended here, once more set out to reach the Land of the Setting Sun.

From The Argosy. THE STORY OF A WANDERING CROWN.

He speedily learned that the country was on the verge of ruin; war had decimated the population and exhausted the national finances. The land was untilled and the resources of the kingdom at the lowest ebb. Under these circumstances the value of the Hungarian crown as a trophy of victory was at a discount. The misfortunes of the

THE red walls and watch-towers of a royal palace rise on the grey cliffs above the Danube, which flows between the twin cities of Buda-Pesth, the present capital of Hungary. A Magyar soldier, in uniform rich with brown fur and gold embroidery, conducts us through vaulted corridors to the Schätzkammer, impoverished State and the dire necesor treasury, which contains the Hunga- sities to which it was reduced destroyed rian regalia. Collars, orders, and stars chivalrous sentiment and national gleam with rainbow light; ropes of pride. The supposed merchant profpearl and chains of emerald are heaped ited by the situation, and soon entered up in barbaric profusion, amid rude into such successful negotiations with coronets of beaten gold and uncut the harassed and pauperized governjewels, which carry our thoughts back ment that he was enabled to secure the to the days of the savage Huns, whose possession of the silver crown. chieftains first wore these insignia of Having carefully packed the treasure royalty. Heavy golden bracelets and in a wooden cask, he slung it behind clasps, engraved with cabalistic figures the rude wagon which held his misor hung with Oriental charms and amu-cellaneous wares, and started on his lets, suggest the same train of associa- homeward journey through the dark tions. Bohemian forests. As the wagon went jolting down a rough road between the blue-black aisles of pines, the cask became loosened and fell into a deep pool of muddy water, hidden by the over

But more precious to the loyal Magyar heart than all this embarras de richesses, whether of barbaric rudeness or medieval splendor, is the ancient silver crown of Hungary-battered, shadowing branches of the sombre dinted, and black as old iron. We gaze on it with reverential awe; for surely no crown in the world has undergone such wonderful vicissitudes.

trees. The disguised prince plunged into the water, but the dim light of an autumn afternoon and the slippery bank of the forest tarn made the rescue of When the royal line of Orfad became the cask and its precious contents a extinct, Hungary was filled with confu- difficult matter. In the waning twilight sion. The pope crowned one candi- success at length crowned his efforts, date; the Diet elected another, who and the shivering merchant, halfimmediately donned the coronation drowned and covered with mud, prorobes and the silver crown. His pre- ceeded on his way, trying to forget tensions were speedily suppressed by chilled limbs and chattering teeth in the king of Bohemia, who surrounded the clation of triumph which warmed the walls of Buda with his troops, and his ambitious heart. carried off both king and crown to an impregnable Bohemian fortress. Otto of Bavaria was then chosen by the Hungarians as their future ruler, on condition that he should first recover the famous crown, with which the fortunes of Hungary have ever been so closely connected.

The Bavarian prince agreed to the conditions, and, disguising himself in the garb of a merchant, he set forth on his quest and reached Bohemia in safety.

Elizabeth, the widowed queen of King Albert of Hungary, was the next to disturb the safety of the silver crown.

The death of the king had plunged the country into a vortex of strife and confusion, which raged in ever-increasing tumult round the red towers of Buda, threatening the life and liberty of the desolate queen. In the midst of the contest she resolved to escape from the dangers which threatened her, taking with her the ancient crown round which the hopes and affections of Hun

garian royalty had entwined themselves for so many centuries, regarding it almost as a symbol of faith as well as an ensign of regal power.

For the next two centuries, though the sacred crown was taken on many long and eventful journeys, it never fell into the hands of an enemy. Then With the aid of a lady-in-waiting, the came the revolution, which caused the queen removed the heavy crown from Hungarian kingdom to totter to its very its satin-lined casket, and with trem- foundations, and the crown again narbling fingers sewed up the treasure in rowly escaped seizure. It was saved a velvet cushion, while her hand-by a band of patriots, who, in order to maiden, drawing the iron bolt of the protect it from the Austrian army, ponderous oaken door, listened intently buried it deeply in the heart of a gloomy for any approaching footfall on the forest. stone stairs which led to the turret Fifty years passed away before the chamber of her royal mistress. Dark-precious relic was disinterred from its ness fell, gradually all distant sounds hiding-place. Damaged, bent, and batdied away, as undisturbed save by her own fears, the queen, with flushed face and fast-beating heart, finished her task.

The palace clock tolled twelve before the work was done. The cry of the watchman and the clanging arms of the sentinels relieving guard echoed for a moment through the silence of the sleeping household. Then the deep stillness of a winter midnight brooded once more over palace and city, and the fast-falling snow, which muffled every sound, enabled the trembling fugitives to escape the vigilance of the guard.

The queen and her faithful attendant stole out unobserved through a postern door, into the thick and murky air, and, descending the cliffs in safety, fled across the frozen Danube. Slipping and stumbling, and falling across great blocks of ice in the darkness, the queen, though bruised, terrified, and exhausted with fatigue, never lost her hold of the precious crown; but after taking refuge in Germany, she was reduced to abject poverty; want stared her in the face, and in her distress she pawned the historic crown of Hungary to the Emperor Frederick for three thousand ducats.

Indignation fired every patriotic Magyar heart; war was declared, and, after much bloodshed, the battered crown was recovered by the Hungarian army and taken back in triumph to Buda, where it was locked up in a fortress and guarded night and day by two State dignitaries chosen from the Magyar nobility.

tered almost out of recognition, it was then conveyed by a rejoicing multitude to the Hungarian capital, where it has ever since remained in safety, consid ered as the most priceless treasure of the national regalia, and trebly endeared to every brave Magyar heart by the lives sacrificed in its defence and the wars which have raged around it.

The strife and tumult which for so many centuries surrounded the silver crown, only increased its moral value and heightened its significance, finally winning the due recognition of Hungarian needs and requirements.

The brave Magyar race stoutly refused to denationalize itself by incorporation with Austria, and, at last, the necessity of self-government for Hungary was admitted. Francis Joseph of Hapsburg was solemnly crowned king of Hungary as well as emperor of Austria, and accepted with the silver crown the double responsibility of the double monarchy.

Thus the historic crown fulfilled its destiny, and at length rests in undisturbed security after the centuries of conflict in which it played such an important part. The transitional state between barbarism and civilization has been of necessity prolonged in a country so steeped in warlike memories; but the independence so gallantly fought for has been achieved at last, and the ancient silver crown of Hungary, revcrenced for so many ages as the emblem of national freedom, has become the eternal monument and memorial of national victory.

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WHEN SWALLOWS BUILD.

THE wakening earth with ecstasy is thrilled, And gladness tunes the note of every bird;

Yet in my heart strange memories are stirred,

When swallows build.

I miss those fragrant flowers the frost has killed,

Which bloomed in blushing beauty yesteryear;

FOLK-SONG.1

(From the Old French.)

WHAT shall one do if Love depart?
I sleep not night nor day;
All night I think of my true love,
Him who is far away.

I got me from my restless bed,
And donned my gown of grey,
And went out through the postern gate
To the garden at break of day.

And songs of bygone Springs I seem to I heard the bonny laverock then,

hear

When swallows build.

My soul is faint with longings unfulfilled
For happiness I never yet have known,
But which I fondly yearn to call mine

own

When swallows build.

So deem me neither sullen nor self-willed
If in the Spring I sing no song of glee,
But hang my harp upon a willow tree
When swallows build.

My Summer sonnet shall be duly trilled,
My Christmas carol and my harvest
hymn;

But let my lips be dumb, mine eyes be
dim,

When swallows build. ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER. Temple Bar.

The nightingale did sing,

And thus she.spake in her own speech,
"Behold my love coming.

"In a brave boat up the Seine River,
Wrought of the pleasant pine;
The sails are all of satin sheen,
The ropes of silken twine;
The mainmast is of ivory,

The rudder of gold so fine.

"The good sailors who man the bark
Are not of this country;

The one is the son o' the king o' France
He wears the fleur-de-lis;

The other's the son—but what care I?
My own true love is he."

Public Opinion.

1 From "Verse-Tales, Lyrics, and Translations." By Emily H. Hickey. Mathews & Lane.