not an expression that you would use in a careful treatise; it is not an expression that you would use in a sermon; but it is an expression of a rude sort that is connected with a very fine truth-namely, that there is an action of our intelligence that is admirably represented by the power of smell-that, as smell perceives what there may be before sight discerns exactly what it is, so intelligence often marks and discerns people whilst as yet their full qualities have not been investigated. Now there is this disposition very often in persons to talk of one another. "What a long nose he has!" Of course there is a great deal of good-natured chat that passes about our neighbours. We mean no unkindness, but we should be very watchful in talking of one another, and if it is possible to say anything heartily in praise of our neighbour-not as an affected Mr. or Mrs. Candour would, appear to praise and insinuate some blame, but if it be possible to say anything in appreciation, we should just say it.

It often happens that persons who are connected with something that is really vulgar impute a wrong to their neighbour and forget their own share in it, after the pattern of a lady that lived in Holloway -perhaps one of the Seven Sisters who gave the name to the wellknown road there. She called on a butcher, and said, "Oh, Mr. Butcher, how can you be so cruel as to kill lamb?" "Well, ma'am," said he, "how can you be so cruel as to eat it?" There are a great many people in society that are very fastidious in their judgment of others, like the lady that blamed the butcher for killing lamb, but did not think of any blame that might attach to herself, if there was anything wrong in killing the animal, for eating it. A great many persons who are fastidious about others, and see that which may be defective, do not see in their own individual case something that is related thereto. When sometimes an exclamation is uttered, "Who'll buy? who'll buy?" a man might say, "Not I, not I." But there is often so much pretension that we feel sure that when it is affirmed "This is the shop" certainly this is not the shop at which any careful man would care to trade. We must beware in society of all kinds of pretensions. It may be a This is the book, This is the party, This is the church, This is the method, as well as This is the shop; and we must be on our guard against such pretensions and delusions. And you must not be too eager in any department of life to cheapen things. Else you change them. Apples you can eat may be dear at a penny, but apples that nobody can eat are not really cheap at three for a farthing. If it is vulgar to profess that you alone have and can give something that the people want, it is vulgar to seek any kind of thing except at its own proper rate. I do not believe that by the mere mechanism of a political economy, however thoughtfully

developed the science may be, we can come happily right. I do not believe that with any scheme for the arrangement of work and wages master and man will be contented. It is only as you can infuse the spirit of love and justice into man and master, and only as it can be felt through society that every man's work ought to be every other man's gain, and that the rich ought as much to work for the poor as the poor for the rich, that you can get those happy accommodations for which we are all pining. Better times are at hand, else the truths uttered professedly out of eternity are indeed unreliable. But we know that we have followed no cunningly devised fable. We know that Jesus Christ is the greatest fact in the world; we know that in Him was no falsity and no pretence at all; we know that wherever His Spirit has prevailed there pretence has ceased, and there what a man wanted he was ready to pay for. Now, to my thought, it is vulgar to try and get mere "bargains," and it is vulgar to try and sell as bargains what, even if the specimen you offer is good, other people have as well as yourself. Of course, in the present state of society, it would be astonishing for Mr. Little Smith on this side of the street to walk into the shop of Mr. Great Smith and say, "Now, Mr. Great Smith, I have counted, and I am sure you cannot have less than a thousand customers a week; I have a hundred. Now, could you let me have about fifty of your thousand customers to help me on." "Will you have

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the goodness to show Mr. Little Smith the door?"-that is what the great man would say. It would be just the same with Mr. Great Church and Mr. Little Church. This is the spirit of much of modern society, but it is not the spirit of Christ. Nor do I think it is the spirit that has the ascendancy even in society now. essentially vulgar. Whoever would climb up into heaven by steps of baseness shall find, just as he gets to the top, that his foothold is rotten, and down he must go into the abyss. There is no going up into heavenly places except by heavenly stairs. Yes, heavenly stairs will lead us up to heavenly places, and no other stairs will. Step up by truth after truth; go up by the way of justice; go up by the way of love. Give the next man under you your hand. Don't be ashamed, because you are not so strong as the man who precedes you, to accept his hand if it is offered. And then, if he helps you, and you help the man that is next behind you, and you are walking upon a sure path, the firm pathway of truth, in the way of the Divine steps of justice, you will enter into the glory of God, and there is no vulgarity in His presence. The commonest thing has a heavenly cleanness, and the simplest offering has in it a heavenly fragrance, and all angels minister to one another, and everybody remembers the sorrowful times of the world, and is glad that they are ended,

and that there is no more that is unbrotherly, or untrue, or suspicious, that can intrude again. Never more shall peace be troubled, never more shall falsehood be uttered, never more shall suspicion be excited, but God being in all men, all will be for and with one another in perfect content.

CHAPTER IV.-MARTIN WRAY'S PROMISE.

WHEN We had fairly lost sight of Mr. Gibson I felt as if we had really quitted Eaglesmere, and that in very deed a new phase of life had opened for me. A shade of dejection stole over me as I pictured the vicar's return home; he would see the mountains and the lake, and his own ugly white-washed church, with its absurd little belfry, and its one tinkling bell, that always when it rang fast just before the service commenced, reminded me of Margery's tongue when she was more than usually exasperated. Poor Margery! I am afraid I formed a very unfavourable estimate of her character; child-like, I took a one-sided view of things and people generally, and naturally enough I chose that particular side which was constantly obtruded upon my vision. I forgot her real kindness in her hasty, tormenting temper; I ignored many of her good deeds, because at times she was tyrannous and unjust, and all her gentler words were unremembered when, as was frequently the case, she indulged in what Martin called "a regular mag." Beginning to scold upon one score, and going off at a tangent to another, reaping up old transgressions and grievances, and bewailing her own peculiar trials, people might well imagine her to be a very good-fornothing, cross old woman, with a terribly developed genius for "magging." Nothing alienates a child like a capricious temper, a temper that has as many moods as the moon has phases, a temper that is bright and genial one day and morose the next, that is at peace with all the world over-night, and gets up next morning at issues with everybody, that casts sunshine around it before dinner and shadow in the afternoon, and that without any apparently justifiable cause. Phoebe and I learned betimes to discern signs and tokens, and we knew pretty well when a storm was impending; no eager excursionist ever watched the barometer or contemplated the weather-vane with greater concern than we scanned old Margery's face at various hours of the day; and, indeed, "How does the wind

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blow? came to be a very common inquiry in our house, and it did not relate either to the actual points of the compass! I fear I was often unjust to Margery, and I was so on this occasion, as she sat on the top of the coach drowned in tears, and audibly bewailing her hard fate. I scarcely pitied her at all, for I attributed her affliction to her constitutional bad temper, little realising how hard it was for the old woman of seventy-four to leave home, and kindred, and the associations of a lifetime, and, as it seemed to her, her own country, for that Dovercourt was not in "furrin' pairts" was past her comprehension. We had come so far, she said, and got on the other side of London, and the land did not look a bit the same, nor yet the people, and they had another speech, so it must be another country-a foreign country of course!

And yet, though Margery's tears angered me, I was conscious of something like regret in my own bosom. Mr. Gibson would never teach me any more; I should never again learn my lessons on Canter-fell or go chanting Latin verbs along the mere's green shore; and I began to reflect that I had been very happy in my own way at Eaglesmere, and new and untried experiences awaited me in Southamshire. A sort of apprehension seized me a presentiment of future trouble from some mysterious source. "All is not gold that glitters," I could not help telling myself, and perhaps the scenes that my fancy had so happily painted would be far less attractive than I had pictured. Martin, too, looked serious. I think we all felt parting with the vicar; only Phoebe's blue eyes were sparkling and her innocent face all rosy smiles as we drove through transpontine London into the suburban districts and then into the open country beyond. All she loved were with her, and the sweet little soul was content to go whithersoever they went; and not a shadow of care fell on her sunny spirit till Margery, having cried quietly all through Lambeth and Vauxhall, burst into loud sobs at the sight of a mile-stone, which told her she was going farther and farther away from the beloved Eaglesmere.

"What's t' row, auld woman?" asked Martin, not unkindly; "dinna greet sae sair, my lass; ye are nae ganging to t' antipathies."

"I'm ganging awa' fra my ain counthry, an' I'll niver set een on it mair. I'm an auld woman, a puir auld woman, an' my time canna be lang now; but I would ha' loiked to lay my banes amang them as I've kenned and as kenned me. It'll be ower unco', man, gettin' oop on t' Resurrection-morn amang strange folk, and nane o' our ain kin, and niver a face ye ken weel."

"Whisht, gudewife, whisht!" replied Martin, patting her on the shoulder; "dinna ye see how ye are skeering t' little 'un? I tell ye what, auld wifie, I'll see if I canna git ye carried to Eagles

mere when the Lord ca's ye. I'll spake to my leddy aboot it ane of furst things. I wonder now what it costs bearing a corpse a' that lang way frae South to North? But whativer it costs, Mar- · gery, my woman, I'll do it for thee 'gin it's amang t' possibilities. There, dinna greet; I'll do it, and there's my hand upon it. Sae noo ye may get yer deein' dune comfortably wheniver t' Lord ca's ye to Himsel'."

But Margery was not consoled. "Ye wael na' moind gin I did dee," she said, bridling in her own peculiar fashion. "An' it seems ye count on me for ganging first; how d'ye ken but what ye may be ca'ed afore me? it's nae always t' yangest, or t' strangest that lasts t' langest. I'm nae but siventy-three."

"Siventy-fower come Martinmas, and Martinmas'll sune be here; it's sax weeks an' mair sin' Lammas Fair, and we're nigh upon the feast o' St. Michael and a' Angels, ye ken; sae ye may as weel ca' yersel' siventy-fower at ance, and ha' dune wi' it."

"An' why for suld I gang mekin' mysel' a day aulder na' I be? Yer allus flyting me aboot bein' sae aged; but ye ken as weel as I do, ye fause loon, that there's on'y twa years atween us; and whatten's that when we're baith auld un ower threescore and tin, and owt to be thinkin' aboot our latter ends, and noo aboot a scrappie piece o' time atween us? Ye didna tell me o' my age when ye cam awooing me, sax-and-forty years agone; an' when we were wedded ye didna keep skirling i' my ears that I were thirty and ye but twenty-het. T Lord forgie ye, Martin Wray, but ye're nae t'gude man ye owt to be to me in my auld age."

"An' ye're nae the bonnie wifie I thowt ye'd be. I didna ken what a tangue ye had when I got wedded to ye. Gudesakes! a silly mon niver kens what he's gotten till it's ower late to change."

"Nay, ye canna change noo," said Margery, triumphantly; "sic as I am, ye've got to keep me, an' I'll stek to you, an' whar ye gang I'll gang; an' gin ye flyte me sae oft I'll mak' ye ken t' length o' my tangue, for ye dinna ken it yet, for a' yer braggin' an' tellin' o' lees aboot me; but" and Margery melted once more into the tears which her wrath had temporarily dried up; "but I'm verra miserable, an' I wish t' gude Lord would tak' me."

"An' ye keep sae contrary, and wag yer tangue sae muckle, I sall wish as t' Lord had ye instead of me; maybe He'd mak' better o' ye na' I ha' dune.”

"Yes, He would," said Margery, "for He kens my heart; He kens I'm na sae bad as ye think me. He kens it's no but words, jest sounding brass an' tinkling cymbals, an' na mair. T' Lord kens I've been a true gude wife to ye these fower-and-forty years, though I hev let my tangue get onruly now and then. He knows I ha' lo'ed ye weel, for a' my cross-grainedness atimes, an' it's