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What had brought the beauty here? Vincent's dazzled eyes did not make out for some time the dark spare figure beside her, all sunned over with the rays of her splendour. Mrs Tozer and Phoebe on one side, proud yet half affronted, contemplating with awe and keen observation the various particulars of Lady Western's dress, were not more unlike her, reposing in her soft beauty within the hard wooden enclosure of the pew, beaming upon everybody in sweet ease and composurethan was the agitated restless face, with gleaming uncertain eyes that flashed everywhere, which appeared at her other side when Vincent came to be able to see. He preached his sermon with a certain selfdisgust growing more and more intense every time he ventured to glance at that strange line of faces. The only attentive hearer in Tozer's pew was Lady Western, who looked up at the young minister steadily with her sweet eyes, and listened with all the gracious propriety that belonged to her. The Tozers, for their part, drawn up in their end of the seat, gave a very divided attention, being chiefly occupied with Lady Western; and as for Mrs Hilyard, the sight of her restless ness and nervous agitation would have been pitiful had anybody there been sufficiently interested to observe it. Mr Vincent's sermon certainly did not secure that wandering mind. All her composure had deserted this strange woman. Now and then she almost rose up by way apparently of relieving the restless fever that possessed her; her nervous hands wandered among the books of the Tozer pew with an incessant motion.

Her eyes

gleamed in all directions with a wistful anxiety and suspicion. All this went on while Vincent preached his sermon; he had no eyes for the other people in the place. Now and then the young man became rhetorical, and threw in here and there a wild flourish to break the deadness of his discourse, with no success, as he saw.

He

read tedium in all the lines of faces before him as he came to a close with a dull despair-in all the faces except that sweet face never disturbed out of its lovely calm of attention, which would have listened to the Dissenting minister quite as calmly had he preached like Paul. With a sensation that this was one of the critical moments of his fate, and that he had failed in it, Vincent dropped into his seat in exhaustion and self-disgust, while his hearers got up to sing their hymn. It was at this moment that Tozer walked up through the aisle, steadily, yet with his heart beating louder than usual, and ascended the pulpit stairs to give forth that intimation which had been agreed upon in the back parlour on Friday. The minister was disturbed in his uncomfortable repose by the entrance of the deacon into the pulpit, where the worthy butterman seated himself by Vincent's side. The unconscious congregation sang its hymn, while the Nonconformist, rousing up, looked with surprised eyes upon his unexpected companion; yet there were bosoms in the flock which owned a thrill of emotion as Tozer's substantial person partially disappeared from view behind the crimson cushion.

Phoebe left off

singing, and subsided into tears and her seat. Mrs Pigeon lifted up her voice and expanded her person; meanwhile Tozer whispered ominously, with a certain agitation, in his pastor's ear—

"It's three words of an intimation as I'd like to give-nothing of no importance; a meeting of the flock as some of us would like to call, if it's quite agreeable-nothing as you need mind, Mr Vincent. We wouldn't go for to occupy your time, sir, attending of it. There wasn't no opportunity to tell you before. I'll give it out, if it's agreeable,” said Tozer, with hesitation-" or if you'd rather

"Give it to me," said the minister quickly. He took the paper out of the butterman's hand, who drew back uncomfortable and embar

rassed, wishing himself anywhere in the world but in the pulpit, from which that revolutionary document menaced the startled pastor with summary deposition. It was a sufficiently simple notice of a meeting to be held on the following Monday evening, in the schoolroom, which was the scene of all the tea and other meetings of Salem. This, however, was no tea-meeting. Vincent drew his breath hard, and changed colour, as he bent down under the shadow of the pulpitcushion and the big Bible, and read this dangerous document. Meanwhile the flock sang their hymn, to which Tozer, much discomposed, added a few broken notes of tremulous bass as he sat by the minister's side. When Mr Vincent again raised his head, and sat erect with the notice in his hand, the troubled deacon made vain attempts to catch his eye, and ask what was to be done. The Nonconformist made no reply to these telegraphic communications. When the singing was ended he rose, still with the paper in his hand, and faced the congregation, where he no longer saw one face with a vague background of innumerable other faces, but had suddenly woke up to behold his battleground and field of warfare, in which everything dear to him was suddenly assailed. Unawares the assembled people, who had received no special sensation from the sermon, woke up also at the sight of Vincent's face. He read the notice to them with a voice that tingled through the place; then he paused. "This meeting is one of which I have not been informed," said Vincent. "It is one which I am not asked to attend. Iinvite you to it, all who are here present; and I invite you thereafter," continued the minister, with an unconscious elevation of his head, "to meet me on the following evening to hear what I have to say to you. Probably the business will be much the same on both occasions, but it will be approached from different sides of the question. I invite you to meet on Monday, according

to this notice; and I invite you on Tuesday, at the same place and hour, to meet me."

Vincent did not hear the audible hum and buzz of surprise and excitement which ran through his startled flock. He did not pay much attention to what Tozer said to him when all was over. He lingered in his vestry, taking off his gown, until he could hear Lady Western's carriage drive off after an interval of lingering. The young Dowager had gone out slowly, thinking to see him, and comfort him with a compliment about his sermon, concerning the quality of which she was not critical. She was sorry in her kind heart to perceive his troubled looks, and to discover that somehow, she could not quite understand how, something annoying and unexpected had occurred to him. And then this uneasy companion, to whom he had bound her, and whose strange agitation and wonderful change of aspect Lady Western could in no way account for-But the carriage rolled away at last, not without reluctance, while the minister still remained in his vestry. Then he hurried home, speaking to no one. Mrs Vincent did not understand her son all day, nor even next morning, when he might have been supposed to have time to calm down. He was very silent, but no longer dreamy or languid, or lost in the vague discontent and dejection with which she was familiar. On the contrary, the minister had woke up out of that abstraction. He was wonderfully alert, open-eyed, full of occupation. When he sat down to his writing-table it was not to muse, with his pen in his languid fingers, now and then putting down a sentence, but to write straight forward with evident fire and emphasis. He was very tender to herself, but he did not tell her anything. Some new cloud had doubtless appeared on the firmament where there was little need for any further clouds. The widow rose on the Monday morning with a presentiment of calamity on her mind-rose from the

bed in Susan's room which she occupied for two or three hours in the night, sometimes snatching a momentary sleep, which Susan's smallest movement interrupted. Her heart was rent in two between her children. She went from Susan's bedside, where her daughter lay in dumb apathy, not to be roused by anything that could be said or done, to minister wistfully at Arthur's breakfast, which, with her heart in her throat, the widow made a pitiful pretence of sharing. She could not ask him questions. She was silent, too, in her great love and sorrow. Seeing some new trouble approaching-wistfully gazing into the blank skies before her, to discover, if that were possible, without annoying Arthur, or compromising him, what it was; but rather than compromise or annoy him, contenting herself not to know-the greatest stretch of endurance to which as yet she had constrained her spirit.

Arthur did not go out all that Monday. Even in the house a certain excitement was visible to Mrs Vincent's keen observation. The landlady herself made her appearance in tears to clear away the remains of the minister's dinner. "I hope, sir, as you don't think what's past and gone has made no difference on me," said that tearful woman in Mrs Vincent's hearing; "it ain't me as would ever give my support to such doings." When the widow asked, "What doings?" Arthur only smiled and made some half articulate remark about gossip, which his mother of course treated at its true value. As the dark wintry afternoon closed in, Mrs Vincent's anxiety increased under the influence of the landlady's Sunday dress, in which she was visible progressing about the passages, and warning her husband to mind he wasn't late. At last Mrs Tufton called, and the minister's mother came to a true understanding of the state of affairs. Mrs Tufton was unsettled and nervous, filled with a not unexhilarating excite

Ar

ment, and all the heat of partisanship. "Don't you take on," said the good little woman; "Mr Tufton is going to the meeting to tell them his sentiments about his young brother. My dear, they will never go against what Mr Tufton says: and if I should mount upon the platform and make a speech myself, there shan't be anything done that could vex you; for we always said he was a precious young man, and a credit to the connection; and it would be a disgrace to us all to let the Pigeons, or such people, have it all their own way." Mrs Vincent managed to ascertain all the particulars from the old minister's wife. When she was gone, the widow sat down a little with a very desolate heart to think it all over. thur, with a new light in his eye, and determination in his face, was writing in the sitting-room; but Arthur's mother could not sit still as he did, and imagine the scene in the Salem schoolroom, and how everybody discussed and sat upon her boy, and decided all the momentous future of his young life in this private inquisition. She went back, however, beside him, and poured out a cup of tea for him, and managed to swallow one for herself, talking about Susan and indifferent household matters, while the evening wore on and the hour of the meeting approached. A little before that hour Mrs Vincent left Arthur, with an injunction not to come into the sick-room that evening until she sent for him, as she thought Susan would sleep. As she left the room the landlady went down-stairs, gorgeous in her best bonnet and shawl, with all the personal satisfaction which a member of a flock naturally feels when called to a bed of justice to decide the future destiny of its head. The minister's fate was in the hands of his people; and it was with a pleasurable sensation that, from every house throughout Grove Street and the adjacent regions, the good people were going forth to decide it. As for the minister's mother,

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Mrs Vincent turned away silently in her anguish which she dared not indulge. She wrapped herself in a black shawl, and took out the thick veil of crape which she had worn in her first mourning. Nobody could recognise her under that screen. But it was with a pang that she tied that sign of woe over her pale face. The touch of the crape made her shiver. Perhaps she was but forestalling the mourning which, in her age and weakness, she might have to renew again. With such thoughts she went softly through the wintry lighted streets towards Salem. As she approached the door, groups of people going the same way brushed past her through Grove Street. Lively people, talking with animation, pleased with this new excitement, declaring, sometimes so loudly that she could hear them as they passed, what side they were on, and that they, for

their part, were going to vote for the minister to give him another trial. The little figure in those black robes, with anxious looks shrouded under the crape veil, went on among the rest to the Salem schoolroom. She took her seat close to the door, and saw Tozer and Pigeon, and the rest of the deacons, getting upon the platform, where on occasions more festive the chairman and the leading people had tea. The widow looked through her veil at the butterman and the poulterer with one keen pang of resentment, of which she repented instantly. She did not despise them as another might have done. They were the constituted authorities of the place, and her son's fate, his reputation, his young life, all that he had or could hope for in the world, was in their hands. The decision of the highest authorities in the land was not so important to Arthur as that of the poulterer and the butterman. There they stood, ready to open their session, their inquisition, their solemn tribunal. The widow drew her veil close, and clasped her hands together to sustain herself. It was Pigeon who was about to speak.

CLOUGH'S POEMS.

THERE are men continually passing from among us whose character and powers have been of no common order, but of whom, outside the limited circle of private friends, very little indeed is known, and that little not always their best or highest aspect. They leave their mark upon their own generation, not as they might have done, but as what we call circumstances have admitted. Sometimes the early promise has been great, and there appears no adequate explanation why it should not have been fulfilled. If such explanation could be given, the secret of it rests with a few, and the public, perhaps from delicacy, perhaps from indifference, does not care to seek it. Their lives seem failures; and it is only a higher court of appeal than either contemporary opinion, or the judgment of posterity, that can decide how far they really were or were not so.

Of these was Arthur Hugh Clough, whose posthumous volume of poems will form almost his only remembrance to future generations. Yet these are a very limited and imperfect sample of his mind: probably by no means what he would himself have desired to be judged by. Striking and remarkable they are in many ways; and the warm admiration of regretful friends, who cherish them as the only tangible fruit of a mind of a very high order -a legacy from a noble and kindly spirit too early called away-will probably secure for them a place in public favour which otherwise they might scarcely have obtained, well as they deserve it. They have no right on this account to claim any degree of exemption from criticism; but they will be read with an additional interest by those who know that they are only the leisure fancies of

a mind that was always active, which never shrank from the harder and more prosaic work of life, and which, under different circumstances, might have left for itself a more enduring record.

Mr

For this reason, before we proceed to notice the poems themselves, which will already be in the hands of many of our readers, we may be allowed to say something of the writer; who, known and loved by very many, was not careful to seek, and certainly did not obtain, any very prominent place in the public eye. There needs the less apology for this, because the short "Memoir" which the editor has prefixed to the volume must be called unsatisfactory. Palgrave has done his work no doubt in an affectionate spirit, and we have no wish to speak slightingly of his tribute to the memory of his friend; but assuredly he tells us very little of what we should have liked to know. If it was thought worth while to introduce the poems themselves by any personal notice of their author, it was worth while to make it fuller and more intelligible to those many readers who may have hitherto scarcely known him even by name. The editor would have done well to have remembered in this as in another case, that what the public would be glad to have from him was not opinions, but facts; that if the poems he was editing were really worth reprinting in a collected form, there was no need of any thing like the puff editorial; and that, on the other hand, if they were not good enough to make an audience for themselves, no amount of admiration on the part of Mr Palgrave would force them upon unwilling readers as genuine inspiration. It would have been better,

Poems by Arthur Hugh Clough, some time Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. With a Memoir. Macmillan. 1862.

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