thence, with a bound imitated from the tiger, he alighted safely on the other side.

The phlegmatic natives were roused into sufficient excitement to utter "Wah, wah!" admiringly at his daring, while his parents loudly applauded him.

Mrs. Day jumped off her pony-“I can cross in the same way," she exclaimed, "it's not much of a jump, after all."

Her husband pulled her back. "Nay, twenty years ago you could; not now. Don't be a fool, Day," he cried, "here's the rope."

So a stout rope was flung across the chasm, and clinging to it with his hands, his body hanging over the flood, Captain Day worked himself safely across, and his wife prepared to follow. For Frances there was nothing but waiting; she was horrified at the mere idea of venturing after her aunt, and disagreeable as was the thought of the weary waiting, she was resolved to be patient rather than ventureMrs. Day set out valiantly, her slight little figure with its extraordinary garments surging to and fro, as she went on hand over hand-such thin little hands. She had got to the further side, and her husband, bending down, had already hold of her wrist, when she suddenly let go with one hand, and dragging her husband with her, she fell down the precipice quicker than the roaring water!

some.

It was barely eleven o'clock when this happened, but it was eight in the evening before the travellers proceeded on their way. For hours the cousins waited one on each side of the cruel torrent, till little by little the roar subsided as the fall thinned. As soon as it had reached a less formidable spread, the young man and his servants clambered over the hill-side, and after long and agonising search came upon the mutilated bodies. Their death must have been instantaneous, for they had fallen nearly 100 feet. They lay within a few yards of each other; Mrs. Day, the lightest, having dropped furthest. It was a work of time and great difficulty to carry them up to the road. Meantime a number of villagers had collected to mend the bridge, over which Frances was carried just as John and his precious burthens appeared.

"You will ride mother's pony," he said, "we want both dandies." He spoke in his usual manner, and issued his orders promptly. He made no comment upon what had happened, yet it was plain he was sorely wounded; his shriek when his parents fell had reached Frances above the rush of the waterfall, and for an instant he had seemed about to throw himself headlong after them. His cousin did her best to hide the terror she felt at riding the dangerous roads in the uncertain light, for though the moon was up, the sky was thick with clouds. But all through her life the horrors of that day and night were vividly present to her whenever she was out of health. The two marches to Nynee Tal had to be made one,

on account of the necessity for reaching the station as quickly as possible, so all through the night the ghastly procession toiled on.

Every rustle in the jungle, every cry of wild animals, every sound made the girl's heart beat with terror. When they entered the woods, torches were lighted, and the men shouted at intervals to scare away the tiger and the leopard, but on the unsheltered ledge over the bare mountain side the torches were extinguished, and in the dim light the awful depths below assumed yet more awful profundity. First in the procession the two dandies were carried, and their heavy swing between the bearers was horribly significant; after them rode John, then Frances, then the Ayah, mounted on the Captain's pony, and last of all the baggage. Now and then they passed a heap of coolies huddled together for protection round a bonfire. Sometimes a halt was made to allow the men to refresh themselves for a few moments with the hookah, but the silence of the little party was rarely broken. It was almost noon next day when the last great ascent was made, and they saw stretched 800 feet beneath them the deep dark lake and the picturesque houses of Nynee Tal. As they began to descend John placed himself on foot in front and whistled the "Dead March in Saul" solemnly until the dak bungalow was reached.

"Father would have had that played before him had he died while an officer," he said, as he assisted his cousin from her pony. "If he could have heard me, he'd have been pleased I showed him such an attention."

That evening when the bodies were carried over to the burialground, John, arrayed in what was to have been his wedding suit, again slowly marched at the head, whistling.

The chaplain stopped him at the entrance to the church-yard, and by reminding him of his duty as chief mourner, prevented the poor fellow making himself a butt for scoffers any longer.

On his return to the bungalow he freed Frances from her engagement to him.

Ten years afterwards Frances Day, who was living with a maiden aunt, met her cousin John again. They had parted at Nynee Tal the day after the funeral, she to remain with the chaplain's wife till she could find an escort to England, he to return to his tea-plantation. Since then they had not even corresponded, though they were aware of each other's movements through their agents. Very soon after Frances' coming of age John had sold the estate and quitted India. He travelled over the Continent of Europe, and did his best to repair the want of proper cultivation in his boyhood by seeking the society of clever men and studying standard literature. When he presented himself to his cousin she was struck by the improvement in his manner and person. Mr. Day, the accomplished traveller, bore little

resemblance to "Jack Sahib" of Bahutburrakhud. Frances was altered for the better too. The terrible accident she had witnessed, the mental trials she had undergone, had borne good fruit. The realities of life, its uncertainty, its trials, had been brought home to her, and when she again met John she could appreciate the good sense, and reverence the good heart. They saw each other constantly for a month; at the end of that time John asked her to be his wife. "There is no one but you in all the world," he said, "who has the same memories with me. I have many good friends, and yet at times I feel so terribly alone, so crushed with the memory of that sorrowful past, that I long even for old Muddea or 'Jan Cheeniman ’ to speak to of my old home. I have done my best during the last few years to make myself more like other men of my position, and tried hard to rub off the rusticity of my bringing up. I have even taken pains to brush my hair," he added, smiling, "but until lately I never allowed myself to think why I did it all. Since meeting you again I have discovered my aim has been to become less disagreeable in your eyes, Frances. I know better now than to press myself upon you by saying our marriage would save bother, but indeed it will save my life from being cheerless and purposeless. Give me the right to make you forget the sadness of our former engagement in a new one under happy auspices. I have loved you all these years, and you are associated with my tenderest memories."

Surely there is no greater magician than Time. Frances had once declared from her heart, she would rather die than marry John Day, and now she admitted she could imagine no greater earthly happiness than wedded life with him.

"What about Lieutenant Græme?" John asked, when he had assured himself of his cousin's affection.

She laughed and blushed as she remembered her high and mighty behaviour concerning the said Lieutenant Græme.

"I saw him at a ball in London five years since," she said; "he was good enough to recognize me and to ask me to dance, and afterwards he begged to be allowed to introduce his wife to me!"

"Well, and you shrieked and fainted, of course; or assumed an appearance of dignified scorn, eh?"

“No, I didn't. I was so astonished at not feeling anything but amused surprise that I forgot what was due to my betrayed affection, and actually got up quite a liking for the young lady, and used to visit her and play with her babies till they returned to India."

"But you must have lost all your gushing romance!" John said. "Ah! you are not the same Frances Day who begged my father to hasten our marriage. Pray, are you going to insist on no delay this time?"

J. MASTERMAN.

POWDER AND PATCHES.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE SACRISTAN'S HOUSEHOLD."

DUST and shadows! "Pulvis et umbra sumus," said Diderot to his contemporaries, quoting ancient wisdom, and the words, hackneyed enough as applied to humanity in general, have a striking and sinister signification when used to characterize that brilliant butterfly generation, which was so soon to have its painted wings scorched and shrivelled in the conflagration of the great French Revolution.

But for our present purpose the Latin words might be freely rendered "Powder and Patches;" for it is of a famous portrait painter that the following pages are to treat-of the Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera, whose pictures in pastel excited the highest enthusiasm among the amateurs and cognoscenti of her day, and still retain an honourable position in the art collections of Europe. She painted the pulvis et umbra of the days of the Regency;-glittering dust, in truth, and gay magic-lantern shadows! And the medium she used to pourtray them was a singularly appropriate one. "Pastel was the true means of representing these personages. Pastel gave the true colour of their century; its powdery butterfly tints were suitable for these fickle butterflies, these voluptuous Phalenes! What mortal could ever have reproduced them in oils ?" Thus writes M. Julius Hubner, of the Dresden Museum. Pulvis et umbra erant !

Although not an artist of the first rank, Rosalba Carriera has for us the great and interesting merit of having preserved faithful representations of the men and women of her time. The medium she used would scarcely have been chosen by a genius of a robuster type; although, as a recent biographer of hers truly observes, all tools are good to a great workman. This writer (M. Alfred Sensier) further says: "Rosalba chose this way because it was the road to success, and because she had not the force to compel Fortune, but only to follow her. But having once entered on this path she availed herself of all the advantages which it offered, with real talent."

Some persons have erroneously supposed her to be the inventor of pastel painting; but there is abundant evidence to show that such was not the case. In the first place, as M. Sensier points out, this method, or one closely analogous to it, was known to the most ancient masters. It would not be difficult to point out traces of it in the sketches, cartoons, and studies which those masters have left us. Later, Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Guido, &c., appropriated to themselves certain qualities of the pastel. Indeed, there needs but one sunny day to transform "distemper" into pastel. Water colours became pastels when they were solidified into a paste and dried. And

the same medium which serves to bind the colours in distemper painting, i. e. gum, is used also to give solidity and firmness to the pastel.

It is nearly certain that the first to suggest to Rosalba the use of pastels, was an Englishman named Cole, who was in Italy as early as the year 1704. Letters of his to the Venetian artist are extantnotably one written from Rome,-wherein he makes mention of her works in pastel, and promises to send her by some English friends of his a supply of pastels and some tinted paper.

But although Rosalba Carriera by no means invented painting in pastel, yet she undoubtedly made it the fashion amongst the great folks of her day throughout Europe. And, what is far better, she produced by this means a large number of delicately conceived, highly finished, and interesting portraits.

Rosalba was born at Venice on the 7th of October, 1675. Her father was a native of the neighbouring city of Chioggia, and her mother a Venetian, whose maiden name was Alba Foresti. Her parents held the rank of respectable citizens, but were very poor. Her father filled a government office under the Venetian Republic, in Chioggia, whence he was removed to Venice before Rosalba's birth. But the rest of the Carriera family, and Rosalba's heirs (i. e., the Pedrottis and Penzos) always inhabited Chioggia; and her first biographer, the Canonico Vianelli, was himself a Chioggiote.

Rosalba had two sisters, both younger than herself: Giovanna and Angela. The affectionate friendship which subsisted among the three sisters was not broken to the close of their lives. Giovanna died unmarried in 1737, when Rosalba was sixty-two years old. Angela married young. Her husband was Antonio Pellegrini, a Venetian painter, who possessed the gift of covering huge spaces of wall or canvas with showy pictures in an incredibly short space of time. But there is no need of further allusion to him at present.

Of the infancy and early youth of Rosalba very little is known. She lived in the midst of a family who had to endure frequent struggles with poverty. Her father's salary did not suffice for the needs of his household, and her mother felt it necessary to bring her own personal exertions to their assistance. She became a lace-maker, and devoted herself especially to the manufacture of that elaborate and rich kind of lace called Venice-point. It was a manufacture which at that time had no equal of its own species in Europe. Eminent artists used to furnish designs for this elegant fabric, and some of our little Rosalba's first efforts with her pencil were made in drawing patterns for her mother to work from. Andrea Carriera, her father, drew, and even painted a little. There were artistic traditions in the family; for Andrea's grandfather, Andrea Pasquelino, had been a painter of considerable merit.

Thus the little band of workers-father, mother, and daughters