sel-and reached the commanding officer's ears. happens to be gifted with second sight. What Well, under ordinary circumstances, this was did she say of me then?"

The

And thus, unconsciously imitating the Cor sair when he left Medora, Mr. Fitz-Poodle departed on his friendly mission.

no business of the colonel's, but when Walton "Oh, we were talking about you, and Adela found that Arthur was always asking for short asked me what your pursuits were, and whether leave, and got a hint, besides, of the use he you were fond of sporting, and what we did made of it-I need not tell you what that was in the evening when we were alone,-and -he began to fear that in one of his impulsive then-she-she advised me to-to take care moods.the young lieutenant might bring back of you." a wife to head-quarters, and as he knew that "Ha! ha! ha! Is that all, Eliza? I hope such a step would mortally offend old Mr. you will take care of me. I'm sure I shall Mervyn, who is a great disciplinarian in his always take care of you. But we didn't want family, he point blank refused Arthur's last your cousin to remind us so soon of our marapplication for leave of absence, and told him riage vow. She is a little too apprehensive. moreover, the reason why. Arthur did not But I suppose it is because she is so fond of take this intimation in good part: he said you, so I shall not quarrel with her on that Colonel Walton might refuse him leave if he account. Now, dearest, I must be off. chose, but he had no right to interfere with his cab is at the door, I see, and Lucas is putting private concerns, and that, as he had made up in my carpet-bag. Make any excuse you like his mind on the subject, he should go without to Adela, and say I was obliged to go in a his permission. Walton mildly but firmly great hurry. One kiss,-another,-one more, warned him against such a step, observing, -good-by." good-humoredly, however, that he was still too much of a boy to be trusted. This remark, which was perfectly true, greatly irritated Arthur: he went to his barracks and wrote a most furious letter to Colonel Walton, calling him a tyrant and I don't know what else, and winding up by demanding the satisfaction which was due from one gentleman to another, Walton in reply, as I have already mentioned, sent word to Arthur to keep his room till he was in a more temperate mood, intimating that he should then expect to hear from him in a different strain. This is the state of affairs at present. Walton has waited three days, but as the foolish fellow has shown no signs of amendment, he begins to have some apprehension lest Arthur should carry his threat into execution and go off in quest of his inamorata, in which case the whole story must be told, and it will be all up with the young "I thought-perhaps," said Mrs. Fitz-Pooentélé. Knowing, however, that I have more dle, slightly hesitating, "that-as you hadinfluence over Mervyn than most people, Wal-received a letter-and looked so-so ill-that ton has asked me to run down to Canterbury something might have happened.' and see if I can't bring him to reason. "So there has, Eliza! I am agonized with sorry to be called away just as your cousin has apprehension-all your poor cousin's hopes arrived, but it can't be helped, and I hope I and expectations are at this moment trem shall be able to get back by to-morrow night, bling on the verge of a precipice-the de or the next day at latest. There is no occasion stroying sword now hangs but by a single to let any one know why I leave town-I mean thread! Those are his very words!" you need not tell Miss Cunninghame even, as "Whose words, Adela? You distract me! it might be awkward for Arthur in case he What evil is impending? What is it you should come to the house while she is staying dread?" here."

1 am

"I shall tell nobody the reason, and Adela is not at all inquisitive. You never saw her before, did you?"

"What a question, Eliza! Of course I never did. Why do you ask?"

"Only,-only, because I had a sort ofof fancy that she knew something about you." "I don't see how that is possible, unless she

The off hand frankness of her husband's manner, and the natural construction he put upon Miss Cunninghame's words, completely reassured Mrs. Fitz-Poodle, and banished from her mind an uneasy thought which had begun to lurk there. As soon as the cab drove off she returned to her boudoir, but Adela was no longer there. She then went to her cousin's room, and, after knocking twice, the door was unlocked by Adela herself, who was very pale, and appeared as if she had been crying.

"Good gracious, Adela!" she exclaimed, "has anything happened to make you uncomfortable? How is my aunt?"

"Oh, very well, dear, I believe. I have heard nothing to the contrary."

"I had intended to have reserved this secret for a calmer, happier moment-but fate is stronger than human will. It will astonish you, Eliza, when I announce the fact, un breathed as yet to any ear, that I am-AN AFFIANCED ONE! Yes, Eliza, three months ago I pledged my maiden troth!" "Goodness! And is this the cause of your present sorrow? Where is your-the gentleman ?"

B

"Where? I know not! In a dungeon, "I'm sure I didn't mean to offend you, perhaps Fatally expiating his cr- -no, not Adela," returned Mrs. Fitz-Poodle, meekly; a crime-at the worst but an offence caused" but really I couldn't understand the letter." by his love for me." "Enough," said Miss Cunninghame; แ we

"Dear me! has he k-k-killed anybody, will speak of it no more. All I request is that you will not name the subject to Mr. Fitz-Poodle."

Adela?"

"Not yet, Eliza !"

"But if he is in prison, dear, he can't get at any one to kill, unless it is the jailer who brings him black bread and a pitcher of water daily that's what they do, I believe ;-but then he must have done something to get put there. What was it? Oh, do tell me!"

"Read that missive!" said Adela. "I did not say he was actually incarcerated, though it may be so!"

Mrs. Fitz-Poodle removed a very damp cambric handkerchief from a crumpled letter that was lying on the bed, and having smoothed out the creases, read as follows:

moment

"I came to tell you, Adela-only when I saw you had been crying I forget it-that Beaufort has been suddenly obliged to go out of town. I hope you will have better newswhatever it relates to-before he comes back."

"Gone out of town!" muttered Miss Cunninghame, in a tone too low for her cousin to hear what she said; "can instinct have forcwarned him of my prescience? Or, perchance, an access of fearful appetite!" "What do you say, dear? I thought I heard the word, appetite!' Luncheon, I dare say, is quite ready. Shall we go down? Come, kiss me, Adela. You know I never could bear not to be friends with you. There, that's a dear! I dare say it will be all right."

"Idol of my heart! Little did I think this hand would ever pen aught but tidings of joy to thee! Yet destiny has willed it otherwise. Evil even now is hovering with outstretched To do Miss Cunninghame justice I must wings above the head of your devoted one. say that she did kiss her cousin most affectionAll our hopes and expectations are at this ately. Though exaltée to the last degree, (Perhaps, as this paragraph and, as we have seen, apt to indulge in the has been already mentioned, there is no occa- most absurd fancies, she always acted, as she sion for repeating the "precipice" and the thought, "for the best," in which endeavor, "destroying sword!") "I had arranged for when common sense and discretion happen to another brief hour of happiness with thee, my be absent, people frequently reverse their inAdela (by the express-train at 8 30 A. M. on tentions. She was right, however, about one the 13th), but tyrannous authority interposed thing. Mrs. Fitz-Poodle, with all her affecits ban and marred the smiling scene. Mad- tion, was not a counsellor for such a case as dened by disappointment, I said something, I that of Adela Cunninghame; indeed, unless know not what, words of menacing import, this young lady had unbosomed herself a little nay-more-I put them on paper, and defied more plainly, I don't know whose advice could my persecutor to the outrance. With cynical have done her any good. But it was not in coldness he refused to raise the gauntlet I had her nature "to descend," as she said, "to thrown down, and prated of paternal behests. common-place details"-and, therefore, she I was of unyielding spirit-thanks to my-love resolved to wait till another post should bring for thee-and, though unfettered, I am now- her better tidings or worse. a captive! Surrounded as I am by his myrmidons, I dare not venture to say more at present, but at the first unwatched moment I will write again. At the worst, I can but hurl defiance in his teeth again, and fly to those arms which are the haven of Adela's fond and faithful shipwrecked lover."

"You see, Eliza, what a fearful strait he is in!" observed Miss Cunninghame-as I must still call her.

Having come to this conclusion, she very wisely accepted her cousin's invitation to dry her tears, and go down to luncheon; and whether philosophy or hunger prevailed, or whether some inspiration kept up her spirits, I know not, but she certainly did behave at that meal as if she were not "an affianced one," with a lover in most mysterious difficùlties.

Shall I follow the cousins throughout the oo"Upon my word," said Mrs. Fitz-Poodle, cupations of the day-accompany them to "I don't see anything very clearly. I can't Mrs. Jehosophat's, and the fifty other charmmake out what it's all about. He seems to ing shops that were Mrs. Fitz-Poodle's delight have been threatening to knock somebody-break in upon their tête-à-tête at dinnerdown, and then-I should say jumped over-take a stall beside them at Albert Smith's fif board, and perhaps swam ashore, and was teen hundredth representation (given, I be taken up for a smuggler!"

"Your penetration," said Adela, scornfully, "does you infinite credit. A smuggler, indeed! Henceforth I shall confine my sorrows to my own bosom."

lieve, on that night)-and then tell you that Miss Biddy Fudge was quite right when she said that a laugh would revive her under the pressure of romantic woe, and that Adela Cunninghame followed her example?

Imagine these things, and imagine what faces, but Mrs. Fitz-Poodle had no difficulty Time, the old coralline, is always at work in recognizing her husband's voice. about-forever constructing new edifices, for- "Where are you, Eliza? Oh, here! I

ever effacing the past; no respecter is he of either joy or sorrow; his lightest touch preduces change.

*

hope we 're in time for dinner. I've brought an unexpected guest. It's all right, dearesttoo long a story to tell just now-let me introduce my friend-don't make a mistake in the dark and salute the wrong person, Arthurha! ha ha!- Mrs. Fitz-Poodle, this is my. cousin, Mr. Mervyn, of the 20th Dragoons Miss Cunninghame, I think this. gentleman is known to you already!"

Quarrel with him as we may, no one in Mr. Fitz-Poodle's household would be likely to object to the change which he wrought there in little more than twenty-four hours from the time of that gentleman's abrupt departure for Canterbury. It was just six o'clock in the As a spasmodic novel-writer would say: evening of the following day, and Mrs. Fitz-" A faint shriek was heard, and the next moPoodle and her cousin-having once more ment Adela would have fallen to the ground visited half the shops in London-were sitting if Arthur Mervyn had not rushed forward and in the library by firelight, waiting for letters caught her fainting form in his arms." by the day-mail. Adela, whose thoughts in- Preston salts, eau-de-Cologne, and-and a sensibly assumed a gloomier complexion as few tender whispers, rendered the tableau of the moment of expectation drew near, had revival quite perfect. It is scarcely necessary fallen into the train by which she first startled to say, that Mr. Fitz-Poodle promised "to Mrs. Fitz-Poodle, and was narrating, as an in- make things pleasant" to Arthur Mervyn and duction, no doubt, to something even less Adela Cunninghame, or that he kept his pleasant, the delectable history of Gilles Garnier, the notorious loup-garon, who was executed for lycanthropy at Dole, in the year 1574, when the "visitors" bell" was rung vio- that night, her last words were:lently, a noise of footsteps in the hall followed "That I should have taken that dear, kind, almost immediately, the library-door flew good Fitz-Poodle for a wehr-wolf. open, and more than one person entered the Heaven, I never told Eliza !" apartment. It was too dark to distinguish

word.

*

When Adela Cunninghame retired to rest

THE LICENTIOUSNESS OF BEAUMONT AND that while on the serious side of their natures FLETCHER. To read one of the pages of the they were thoughtful and beautiful poets, and beautiful portions of their works, you would think probably despised nine-tenths of the persons it impossible that such writers should frame their whom they amused, on the other side, and in lips to atter what disgraces the page ensuing:- the intoxication of success, they threw themyet there it is like a torrent of feculence beside a selves with their whole stock of wit and spirits chosen garden; nay, say rather like a dream, or into the requirements of the ribaldry in fashion, a sort of madness,-the very spite and riot of the and, by a combination peculiar to the signs tongue of a disordered incontinence for the pre- of the Stuarts, became equally the delight vious self-restraint. And this was the privilege of the "highest" and the "lowest circles." Not of their position! the gain they had got by their that there was wanting in those times a cirparticipation of polite life in the days of James cle of a less nominal altitude, in which their conthe First, and their right to be considered its per- demnation was already commencing; for though fect exponents! Had Beaumont been fortunate the gloomier class of Puritans were as vulgar in enough to have been the son of a briefless bar- their way, as the Im-puritans were in theirs, yet rister, or Fletcher's father, happily for himself, a breeding alien to both prevailed in the families have risen no higher in the Church than his min- which the young Milton frequented; and when istry in the village of Rye, the two dramatists, the author of Allegro and Penseroso spoke of the unhurt by those blighting favors of the day, and dramatists who attracted him to the theatre, he admonished to behave themselves as decorously tacitly reproved the two friends by limiting his as their brethren, might now have been in pos- mention of names to those of Shakspeare and session of thoroughly delightful fame, and such Ben Jonson; though how he admired the cula volume as the one before us have been a thing prits, apart from their misdemeanors as fine out of the question; but the son of the judge, gentlemen, is abundantly proved by his imitaand the son of the bishop, unluckily possessed tions of them in those very poems, and in rank as well as gayety enough to constitute them- the masque of Comus. Leigh Hunt's Selections selves the representatives of what in the next from Beaumont and Fletcher in Bohn's Standard age was styled the "gentleman of wit and plea- Library.

sure about town;" and the consequence was,

1

From The Press.

began to disappear; and forty-five years more 1. The War and its Issues. 2. The End. By reach to 1865, or to what Dr. Cumming supthe Rev. John Cumming, D. D. London: poses to be the seventh-thousand year of the Arthur Hall & Co. world. Ancient chronology is involved in so much difficulty that it would be out of place to discuss Dr. Cumming's hypothesis here. If he really believes the end to be so near as he as sumes, we need not wonder at his anxious inquiry concerning the signs of the times.

IN noticing any works by Dr. Cumming, we are met by a difficulty at the outset :-in what light are we to regard him? As an orthodox expounder of prophecy, or as a mere showy lecturer ? Is he a thoughtful, learned divine, He lays much stress on the thirty-eighth diligently seeking after truth, and earnestly and thirty-ninth chapters of Ezekiel. His key studying his Bible to find it, or is he a kind of to their interpretation is, that by Rosh is meant pulpit Barnum, solely anxious to collect a Russia; by Tubal, Tobolsk; and by Mesheck, large audience, and to excite speculation and Muscovy: the three names typifying the Rus wonder among the crowd. His place is not sian empire. The veritable Gog is the Northyet fixed. He has been successful in obtain- ern despot, the ambitious tyrant, the huge vuling notoriety, but surely not in establishing a ture, as the Reverend Doctor indifferently solid reputation. As an author we can judge terms the Emperor of Russia for the time bohim only by his works; and as in these we ing. Then, Gomer is Germany, which is to find an odd mixture of politics and prophecy, of news and divinity, we must claim to treat them rather more freely than we should care to do publications of a purely sacred character.

make common cause with Russia; and Tarshish is England, destined to play a great part in putting a hook into the jaws of Gog. (The End, Lect. vii.) Gog may be checked for a time in his career of aggression; but ultimately, and that before long (as the prophecy is to be ful filled in ten years) Gog will advance to Palestine, will be struck down at Jerusalem, the Jews will be collected and regain their Holy City, and the Millennium will commence.

Dr. Cumming is of opinion that the world is to terminate in ten years' time from this date. With this conviction on his mind, he is continually looking about for signs of the end. He reads newspapers as he never read them before, believing that the facts they chronicle are "just Providence translating prophecy in- The "vials" of Revelation are interpreted to performance." (The End, p. 19.) The daily with like boldness, and to the like conclusion. newspaper is the best commentary on revela- The first was poured out at the commencement tion. "God writes the prophecy; the jour- of the revolutionary era in 1790; the second, nalist steps in, and, without thinking of the poured out upon the sea, typified the destrucprophecy, testifies its complete and magnificent tive prowess of the British navy; the third sigfulfilment." (Ib.) Again: "Providence is nified the wars on the Danube, the Po, and the writing, in the page of the modern newspaper, Rhine; the fourth was directed against the imthe fulfilment of ancient apocalyptic predic- perial power of Napoleon, under figure of "the tions." (Ib. 176.) Dr. Cumming is fond of that sun;" the fifth annihilated the temporal power kind of stirring expression which friendly crit- of the Popedom," the seat of the beast," when ics would term lucid and graphic, but which" the Pope was dragged at the chariot-wheels remids us much more of the audacity of Ameri- of Napoleon, was taken to Fontainebleau and can metaphor. Great statesmen and generals made a prisoner, treated as a puppet, the Emthink they are carrying out their own plans, peror making merry at his expense;" the sixth, while in fact they are just stepping in to fill up to dry up the River Euphrates, was poured out the outlines God has sketched, and moving on the some years ago, but the effects are still in operails he has laid down." (Ib. 20.) This thought ration, the " Kings of the East" being, not the is presented to us in a variety of forms. The East India Company, as some commentators Chancellor of the Exchequer does not think have supposed, but the Jews; and Armagedthat, in imposing new taxes to carry on the war, don being clearly Sebastopol, where the kings he is helping to fulfil the prophecies of Eze- of the earth are to be gathered together to kiel; but Dr. Cumming knows it, and he tells "the battle of that great day of God Almighty; us that he pays those war-taxes "with the sus- and the seventh and last vial was poured out in taining and consolatory thought that he is pre- 1848, we being at this moment, without knowparing the way for the coming of our Lord and ing it and without meaning it, preparing the Saviour Jesus Christ." (Ib. 85.) way for the restoration of the Jews to Palestine, and Great Babylon being "brought to remembrance" through the gigantic blunder of the Papal aggression of 1850.

The year 1865 is fixed as the period for the coming of our Lord, from a consideration of the dates in the Book of Daniel. The 1260 years terminated, he supposes, in the great revolu⚫tionary convulsion of 1790; then, thirty years more reached to the period when the Mohammedan power, typified by the River Euphrates,

.99

The devout and candid reader of the 16th chapter of Revelation will be very far from satisfied that this interpretation of it is natural or convincing, or even so much as plausible.

The pouring out of the second vial, when end Doctor to indulge. "The libraries of every living soul died in the sea," cannot by Ptolemy and Alexandria are the circulat the most forced principle of interpretation sig- ing libraries of every neighborhood." Hardnify the triumphs which secured to England ly yet: but even were it so, we might reasonthe empire of the ocean; and though; in re- ably doubt whether railway travelling and the ference to the fourth vial, Dr. Cumming as- multiplication of books were the proper fulfil serts that Napoleon was called by his soldiers ment of the prophet's words. "The Little Sun," we suspect that his vivid imagination has deceived him, and that for the style he gives we should read, Little Corporal.

One sign of the End is to be earthquakes in divers places, and Dr. Cumming, who appears to be indefatigable in his study of the newspapers, collects a number of instances in which shocks have been felt with more or less of severity. At Turin the earth trembledwithout occasioning any damage, howeverand the account as given is set down as a witness to the coincidence between God's word and God's works:

"

Such theories of interpretation, however, should never be harshly judged nor rashly rejected. Very few persons can be competent judges of them, and common sense, our best guide in most cases, may fail us in attempting to fathom the depths of prophecy. But of the events of the time in which we live we can all form a fair judgment, and when Dr. Cumming points to them in support of his opinions we get out of the maze of theory into the plain paths of fact. We can judge, for instance, whether we are living in an age when terrible natural phenomena are peculiarly prevalent, A slight shock at New Zealand is noticed with and when we might expect from what is pass-like solemnity :

ing around us, that the last days predicted in

I was awoke by hearing the jug and the basin rattle, my bed shaking under me, and a noise he was awoke with the house shaking much, like the door loudly banging to. Michael said and the bells ringing."

Scripture are at hand. Dr. Cumming fur- The children screamed, the dogs barked, and nishes us with the surer standard for estimat- they all rushed out of the house amid a shower ing the truth of his ideas, as he is all for lite- of bricks from the chimney of the house, which ral interpretation. A remarkable prediction had fallen. Several other shocks were felt dur of the closing epoch found in Daniel is, he ing the night. says, "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." The running to and fro he supposes to indicate railway travelling:

Is not this the age of travelling-of excessive travelling of unprecedented locomotion? Have not all calculations been defied? Have not all expectations been agreeably disappointed? Have not railways made travelling as well as provided facilities for it?-End, 132.

On the prophecy "Knowledge shall be increased " the commentary is more pious :

CO

The great convulsions which are to precede the End will most likely produce far more terrible effects than the rattling of a basin in a jug, or the barking of dogs.

As the seventh vial was poured into the air, our commentator searches his newspaper for evidence of new forms of disease resulting from an altered state of the atmosphere. He adduces cholera as the most striking instance; but cholera first appeared, if we recollect rightly, in 1817, and had manifested itself by terrible ravages in Asia and Europe long before that date of 1848 which Dr. Cumming fixes as the time for the pouring forth of the A change has taken place amid the masses of seventh vial. He notices also the potato dismankind, immense and unmistakable. Never ease, and the vine blight, as evidences that the was the spread of knowledge so earnest a pur- solemn prediction, "It is done," is in course of suit; never was the passion for it so ardent, en- fulfilment. But the most singular instance of thusiastic, and universal. The folio that was of his credulity-or of his presumption of the old written for the few is now expanded into credulity of his readers is found in his quottracts for the many. The libraries of Ptolemy, ing a paper read at the Medical Society on or of Alexandria are now the circulating libra- the prevalence of carbuncles and boils, as ries in every neighborhood. Systems of divinity another evidence of the miraculous interposiand learning, that were once banked up in uni- tion of the last and most terrible of the angels versities, have now burst their embankments, and millions slake their thirst where thousands sip. ped deliciously before. If ever in any age, it is in the present, that knowledge has become almost universal.

of wrath. In our judgment, there is no surer way of casting contempt on prophecy than to dwarf its sublime and fearful announcements by applying them to phenomena of common occurrence and of trivial import. The most. Here we have a fair example of that style of devout believer in the special action of Provi amplification in which it delights the Rever-dence might hesitate to accept a carbuncle on