prints, which soon turned my eyes from everything else, to range delighted over Landseers, Turners, Roberts's Eastern sketches, the ancient Italian masters; and I recognised, with a sort of friendly affection, an old print of my favourite St. Sebastian, in the Dulwich Gallery. It brought back to my mind a thousand dreams and a thousand sorrows. Would those dreams be ever realised? Might this new acquaintance possibly open some pathway towards their fulfilment ?- some vista towards the attainment of a station where they would, at least, be less chimerical? And at that thought my heart beat loud with hope. The room was choked up with chairs and tables, of all sorts of strange shapes and problematical uses. The floor was strewed with skins of bear, deer, and seal. In a corner lay hunting-whips, and fishing-rods, foils, boxing-gloves, and gun-cases; while over the chimney-piece, an array of rich Turkish pipes, all amber and enamel, contrasted curiously with quaint old swords and daggers -bronze classic casts, upon Gothic oak brackets, and fantastic scraps of continental carving. On the centre table, too, reigned the same rich profusion, or if you will, confusion-MSS., Notes in Egypt," "Goethe's Walverwandschaften," "Murray's Handbooks," and "Plato's Republic." What was there not there? And I chuckled inwardly, to see how Bell's Life in London and the Ecclesiologist had, between them, got down "M'Culloch on Taxation," and were sitting, arm-in-arm, triumphantly astride of him. Everything in the room, even to the fragrant flowers in a German glass, spoke of a travelled and cultivated luxury-manifold tastes and powers of self-enjoyment and self-improvement, which, Heaven forgive me if I envied, as I looked upon them. If I, now, had had one-twentieth part of those books, prints, that experience of life, not to mention that physical strength and beauty which stood towering there before the fire—so simple, so utterly unconscious of the innate nobleness and grace which shone out from every motion of those stately limbs and features all the delicacy which blood can give, combined, as one does sometimes see, with the broad strength of the proletarian-so different from poor me!—and so different, too, as I recollected with perhaps a savage pleasure, from the miserable, stunted specimens of overbred imbecility whom I had often passed in London ! A strange question that of birth! and one in which the philosopher, in spite of himself, must come to democratic conclusions. For, after all, the physical and intellectual superiority of the high-born is only

preserved, as it was in the old Norman times, by the continual practical abnegation of the very caste lie on which they pride themselves by continual renovation of their race, by intermarriage with the ranks below them. The blood of Odin flowed in the veins of Norman William; true-and so did the tanner's of Falaise. (From Alton Locke.)

REFLECTIONS ON A BATTLEFIELD

THIS hopeful oration was delivered in a fitting lecture-room. Between the bare walls of a doleful fire-scarred tower in the Campagna of Rome, standing upon a knoll of dry brown grass, ringed with a few grim pines, blasted and black with smoke; there sat Raphael Aben-Ezra, working out the last formula of the great world problem-"Given self to find God." Through the doorless stone archway he could see a long vista of the plain below, covered with broken trees, trampled crops, smoking villas, and all the ugly scars of recent war, far onward to the quiet purple mountains and the silver sea, towards which struggled, far in the distance, long dark lines of moving specks, flowing together, breaking up, stopping short, recoiling back to surge forward by some fresh channel, while now and then a glitter of keen white sparks ran through the dense black masses The Count of Africa had thrown for the empire of

the world-and lost.

"Brave old Sun!" said Raphael, "how merrily he flashes off the sword-blades yonder, and never cares that every tiny sparkle brings a death shriek after it! Why should he? It is no concern of his. Astrologers are fools. His business is to shine; and on the whole, he is one of my few satisfactory sensations. How now? this is questionably pleasant!"

As he spoke, a column of troops came marching across the field, straight towards his retreat.

"If these new sensations of mine find me here, they will infallibly produce in me a new sensation, which will render all further ones impossible . . . Well? what kinder thing could they do for me? . . . Ay-but how do I know that they would do it? What possible proof is there, that if a twolegged phantasm pokes a hard iron-gray phantasm in among

my sensations, those sensations will be my last? Is the fact of my turning pale, and lying still, and being in a day or two converted into crow's flesh, any reason why I should not feel? And how do I know that would happen? It seems to happen to certain sensations of my eyeball—or something else—who cares! which I call soldiers; but what possible analogy can there be between what seems to happen to those single sensations called soldiers, and what may or may not really happen to all my sensations put together, which I call me? Should I bear apples if a phantasm seemed to come and plant me? Then why should I die if another phantasm seemed to come and poke me in the ribs ?

"Still I don't intend to deny it. . . I am no dogmatist. Positively the phantasms are marching straight for my tower! Well, it may be safer to run away, on the chance. But as for losing feeling," continued he, rising and cramming a few mouldy crusts into his wallet, "that, like everything else, is past proof. Why-if now, when I have some sort of excuse for fancying myself one thing in one place, I am driven mad with the number of my sensations, what will it be when I am eaten, and turned to dust, and undeniably many things in many places? Will not the sensations be multiplied by-unbearable! I would swear at the thought, if I had anything to swear by! To be transmuted into the sensoria of forty different nasty carrion crows, besides two or three foxes, and a large blackbeetle! I'll run away just like anybody else if anybody existed. Come, Bran!

"Bran! where are you; unlucky inseparable sensation of mine? Picking up a dinner already off these dead soldiers. Well, the pity is that this foolish contradictory taste of mine, while it makes me hungry, forbids me to follow your example. Why am I to take lessons from my soldier-phantasms, and not from my canine one? Illogical! Bran! Bran!" and he went out and whistled in vain for the dog.

"Bran! unhappy phantom, who will not vanish by night or day, lying on my chest even in dreams; and who would not even let me vanish, and solve the problem — though I don't believe there is any-why did you drag me out of the sea there at Ostia? Why did you not let me become a whole shoal of crabs? How did you know, or I either, that they may not be

very jolly fellows, and not in the least troubled with philosophic doubts? .. But perhaps there are no crabs, but only phantasms of crabs. And, on the other hand, if the crab-phantasms give jolly sensations, why should not the crowphantasms? So whichever way it turns out, no matter; and I may as well wait here, and seem to become crows, as I certainly shall do. Bran! Why should I wait for her? What pleasure can it be to me to have the feeling of a four-legged, brindled lop-eared, toad-mouthed thing always between what seem to be my legs? There she is! Where have you been, madam? Don't you see I am in marching order, with staff and wallet ready shouldered? Come!"

But the dog, looking up in his face as only dogs can look, ran toward the back of the ruin, and up to him again, and back again, until he followed her.

"What's this? Here is a new sensation with a vengeance! O storm and cloud of material appearances, were there not enough of you already, that you must add to your number these also? Bran! Bran! Could you find no other day in the year but this, whereon to present my ears with the squeals of one-two-three-nine blind puppies ?"

(From Hypatia.)

AT THE DEVIL'S LIMEKILN

So on they went to the point, where the cyclopean wall of granite cliff, which forms the western side of Lundy, ends sheer in a precipice of some three hundred feet, topped by a pile of snow-white rock, bespangled with golden lichens. As they approached, a raven, who sat upon the topmost stone, black against the bright blue sky, flapped lazily away, and sank down the abysses of the cliff, as if he scented the corpses underneath the surge. Below them from the gull-rock rose a thousand birds, and filled the air with sound; the choughs cackled, the hacklets wailed, the great black - backs laughed querulous defiance at the intruders, and a single falcon, with an angry bark, dashed out from beneath their feet, and hung poised aloft, watching the sea fowl which swung slowly round and round below.

It was a glorious sight upon a glorious day. To the northward the glens rushed down toward the cliff, crowned with gray crags, and carpeted with purple heather and green fern; and from their feet stretched away to the westward the sapphire rollers of the vast Atlantic, crowned with a thousand crests of flying foam. On their left hand, some ten miles to the south, stood out against the sky the purple wall of Hartland cliffs, sinking lower and lower, as they trended away to the southward along the lonely iron-bound shores of Cornwall, until they faded, dim and blue, into the blue horizon, forty miles away.

The sky was flecked with clouds, which rushed toward them fast upon the roaring south-west wind; and the warm ocean breeze swept up the cliffs, and whistled through the heather bells, and howled in cranny and in crag,

Till the pillars and clefts of the granite
Rang like a God-swept lyre;

All three

while Amyas, a proud smile upon his lips, stood breasting that genial stream of airy wine with swelling nostrils and fast heaving chest, and seemed to drink in life from every gust. were silent for a while; and Jack and Cary, gazing downward with delight upon the glory and the grandeur of the sight, forgot for a while that their companion saw it not. Yet when they started sadly, and looked into his face, did he not see it? So wide and eager were his eyes, so bright and calm his face, that they fancied for an instant that he was once more even as they.

Wondering, they set him down upon the heather, while the bees hummed round them in the sun; and Amyas felt for a hand of each, and clasped it in his own hand, and began—

"When you left me there upon the rock, lads, I looked away and out to sea, to get one last snuff of the merry sea breeze, which will never sail me again. And as I looked, I tell you truth, I could see the water and the sky, as plain as ever I saw them, till I thought my sight was come again. But soon I knew it was not so; for I saw more than man could see; right over the ocean, as I live, and away to the Spanish Main. And I saw Barbados, and Grenada, and all the isles that we ever sailed by; and La Guayra in Carraccas, and the Silla, and the house beneath it where she lived. And I saw