is that which receives the most culture in the country! Not, of course, that I mean in the most distant way to insinuate that—

DUNSFORD. Oh no, certainly not-pray do not go any further in the sentence. We know the respect you have for our intellects.

Lucy. Do you know, Mr. Milverton, that poor Carter is dead? He died last week.

MILVERTON. What, my poor old friend who lived in that cottage there, and with whom I have had many a long talk about the crops and the weather. Ah me! he was not a very wise man; yet, now, perhaps, he knows much more than the wisest of us who are left. I have often thought, Dunsford, when any of those whom we consider common-place people die-how at once they come in our minds to be regarded as superior beings. They know so much more than they did, we think; they look down upon us, as we fancy; they could tell us so much. Great is our reverence for the dead.

I ought to have known there was something the matter with the old man, not seeing him this fine day at his accustomed place in the porch.

LUCY. Don't you feel sometimes, Mr. Milverton, when there is a very very fine day like this, as if something were going to happen—some

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thing quite unforeseen and very joyous-out of the common way, you know?

ELLESMERE. As Milverton is silent, Miss Daylmer, I will answer for him. We are getting into the middle-aged and full-coloured, if not into the 'sere and yellow,' leaf; and are not given to the transports which belong to hopeful young buds and blossoms. When it is a fine warm day like this, we rejoice-that it is not cold.

MILVERTON. Do not believe him, Lucy, we are not quite so prosaic, yet.

ELLESMERE. Do look at that little shepherd boy staring at us. Depend upon it, our coming here is the event of the day to him.

MILVERTON. I wonder how those urchins get through the hours.

ELLESMERE. Dinner, though but bread and cheese, must be the great pivot for their thoughts to turn upon. Now, it is so many hours to dinner. That is a fact which may be dwelt upon. Then dinner comes. After that, there is a sort of rush of the thoughts into space for as yet supper is not on the horizon. Then strange images are sought out in the scudding clouds; dim recollections of a mother or a playmate lost young succeed, or, perhaps—but we will not go on imagining; let us try what we can

make out of our young friend there, and see

what he does think of.

DUNSFORD. Here, my boy.

ELLESMERE. Your dogs and ours seem to agree very well, my little man.

SHEPHERD'S BOY. Yees: they knoawed one another afore.

ELLESMERE. What a fine day it is for you to-day. SHEPHERD'S Boy. Yees.

ELLESMERE. But I suppose, whether it is fine or not, you are out all day long with the sheep? SHEPHERD'S Boy. Yees.

ELLESMERE. Heus, amici, multo magis arduum est colloqui cum rusticis, quam argutis quæstionibus veritatem e testibus non volentibus extorquere !

DUNSFORD. Testibus non volentibus!

ELLESMERE. Oh, never mind the Latin. But let us proceed. And do you like the summer days better than the winter days, my little fellow ? SHEPHERD'S Boy. They be warmer.

ELLESMERE. And how do you get through the

days?

SHEPHERD'S Boy. I doant know.

ELLESMERE. I dare say, you find them sometimes very long.

SHEPHERD'S BOY. Noa. Johnny Hewsome do come up most afternoons to see I,

ELLESMERE. Humph! Is Johnny Hewsome a bigger boy than you?

SHEPHERD'S Boy. Noa.-We be much of the same soize.

ELLESMERE. Well, you can buy something with this for you and Johnny Hewsome to play with. Good bye.

We then walked on, leaving the boy pulling vigorously at his hair.

ELLESMERE. Johnny Hewsome do come up most afternoons to see I.' There lies the savour of life to our young friend. Without it, all would be 'lees,' as Macbeth would say. Well, it is very beautiful to see the friendship of these little animals. I think there is more friendship at that time of life than at any other. They are then evenly-formed creatures, like bricks, which can be laid close to one another. The grown-up man is like a fortress, angular-shaped, with a moat round it, standing alone.

LUCY. Who is it that is now involved in metaphors ?

ELLESMERE. I suppose all of us have, at one time or other, had a huge longing after friendship. If one could get it, it would be much safer than that other thing.

MILVERTON. Well; I wonder whether love, for I imagine you mean love, was ever so described before, 'that other thing!'

ELLESMERE. When the world was younger, perhaps there was more of this friendship. David and Jonathan! How does their friendship begin? I know it is very beautiful; but I have forgotten the words. Dunsford will tell us.

DUNSFORD. 'And Saul said to him, Whose son art thou, thou young man ? And David answered, I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.

'And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.'

ELLESMERE. Now that men are more complex, they would require so much. For instance, if I were to have a friend, he must be an uncommunicative man; that limits me to about thirteen or fourteen people in the world. It is only with a man of perfect reticence that you can speak completely without reserve. We talk together far more openly than most people; but there is skilful fencing even in our talk. We are not inclined to say the whole of what we think.

MILVERTON. What I should need in a friend