The toast went round.

"You don't drink the toast, Clive," said Harris to him who sat at the bottom of the table.

"I do not," replied Clive, pushing away his glass indignantly. "I hate this system of reckless criticism. I believe it weighs like an incubus on our schools. What do you know about art, Harris? You've made a hundred blunders in the course of your article."

"What, do you admire this opus Thompsonianum, then?" asked one.

the stairs; but Harris, busy in dismissing his company, observed nothing, and they were soon in the street. Harris could scarcely keep up with the pace at which his companion strode along, and as to conversation, it was impossible, so after a gasp or two, he gave it up.

They found Helen and Mary in the little sitting-room, which was decorated with flowers, and had a sort of gala air. A letter in Sir Jasper's hand lay on the table. Helen's eyes beamed as she gave it to James, and it seemed to her that she heard their mar"I know nothing about it. I have not riage-bells ringing, for there was the price of been at the exhibition this morning long his "first exhibition picture." But no anenough to see above half a dozen_pictures, swering look met hers. His eyes were fixed but I object to the whole system. It's a dis-on Harris with a look of scorn, his face deadly grace to the age. Critics, if allowed at all, ought to be trained to their work, pass an examination

"Take out a license, perhaps, wear a badge - Licensed to cut up young artists!'"

They ought to be educated for their work at least. Very likely the picture they treat in this flippant manner has cost time and labor, such as they are incapable even of understanding."

"A splendid burst of eloquence, Clive! He'll have you in his next novel, Harris!" "I repeat, it's a disgrace to the age," Clive went on. "And the provoking thing is, that the public is led by these absurd dogmas like a flock of sheep. 'I see by the Midas that such a picture is excessively bad!' says one; and that such a picture is full of affectation,' says another; when all the time the Midas has nothing to do with it, but only some individual who sets up as critic, without knowing more of art than a baby. We, indeed!"

pale, and his lips firmly closed. He opened the letter, looked at it, and crushed it in his hand. An ominous silence and a strange, confused dread fell over them.

Harris tried to rally, and turned aside to look at two small cabinet pictures.

"Pretty things these," he said. Specimens of modern Italian art, I suppose, picked up when you visited Rome, as I heard you mention this evening. Strange how Italy has degenerated since its great days."

"Only a Rubens and a Vandyck. They belong to a baronet, for whom I chose them in Antwerp. Admirable art-critic!"

Mary was shocked. She had never seen her brother rude before.

"Come up to my room, will you?” said James, and there was something so imperious in his tone, that Harris mechanically obeyed. Helen followed, beckoning to Mary to accompany her, which she did.

As they reached the open door of the studio, they saw Harris, who had just entered it, turn ghastly pale, and visibly tremble. His first glance had told him that his old friend was an artist, of which he had no idea; his first thought had reminded him of his criticism. He tried to speak, to excuse himself, to declare what he had written was in ignorance; but his voice died away in indistinct mutterings.

It might have been thought that James would sympathize with Clive, and second his indignant appeal; but the fact was, he had not heard a word of this hurried dialogue. His inward rage so possessed him, that the room and the men in it seemed to whirl before his eyes, and their voices to sound only as a distant murmur. The insults heaped on his work were the more stinging because they "No more words," said James in a supcame from his early friend, to whom his heart pressed voice, but speaking distinctly. had just opened so warmly; and, moreover," Here is a letter for you to read-to read he was at this moment less able than usual aloud." to bear any kind of provocation. Every faculty of his being was therefore engaged in preserving an outward calm, and he succeeded so perfectly that no one had the slightest suspicion that he was feeling any thing at all. The reading that had been interrupted was not resumed, and the party broke up soon afterwards. "I am to walk home with you, Thompson, you know; stop a moment," cried Harris.

James did not answer. He was already on

Harris took the letter and read it, but not aloud. It dropped from his hand on the floor, and Helen snatched it up and read:

"Sir Jasper Langley feels confident that after article in the Midas, Mr. Thompson will not exthe opinion of the press, as expressed in the pect him to complete the arrangement for his picture. Sir Jasper Langley much regrets this contre-temps, and hopes on some future occasion to be more fortunate in a selection of some work of Mr. Thompson's."

erable fears, dreadful images before her, and | among the clouds, and over the sea.

she could not sleep. Often she was aware followed an unintelligible description of wild, that Mary, too, was awake and crying bit- fantastic forms that pursued him wherever terly. "Mary is too gentle, too sensitive he went, and to avoid which, he was going for her stormy life," would Helen say to her- out in a boat. self; "she needs a sister's love and sympathy. Oh, only let us find him; then all shall be right!”

They were in Glasglow early in the morning, and on the Clyde early next day. Now there was time to breathe, time to think. The beautiful scenery around them they saw nothing of. Helen shut her eyes, that she might not see it, so miserable was the contrast with her inward struggle. There was something so strange, wild, unlike himself in James letter; no word of affection, no wish for them. He spoke of spending a whole day and night on the mountains; of his loathing at his own weakness, because, hating the very idea of ever painting again, "Feared!" Helen said no more, and her he was always seeing pictures everywhere-tone made the guide walk faster and faster. in the gloomy glens, on the granite peaks, "He's had a guid doctor and a kind nurse,"

he said. "Mrs. Andrew Hamilton-we're and distraction began to smooth away; the a' Hamiltons here, ye see-she's been aye parched lips unclosed. Some kind hand beside him. He's cried aye upon twa names; placed in Helen's a glass containing the I'm thinkin' it's just yoursels. But he was strong stimulant that the medical man had very quiet when I cam doon to the pier. I left for him; she moistened the lips with it, stopped to hear news o' him." then tried, and succeeded in getting some into the mouth.

Should they never reach the lodgings? They pressed on faster and faster. At last they turned aside by a jutting rock under some trees, and stopped at a cottage. A young man dressed in black came to the door instantly with a gesture that was meant prevent their entrance, but at a word from e guide, he made way for them. The door pened at once into the room.

Was that James they saw, with ghastly pale face, eyes unnaturally large and dilated, tight, compressed lips, and rigid arms that lay outside the bed? Mary had flung herself on her knees beside him, and pressed her warm hand on his heart, to feel if it beat. Helen, with face as white as his, fixed her eyes on his, then laid her cheek to his. "James, my own love!" she whispered in his ear. 66 Mary is here; Helen is here; Helen your wife-your own! Look at her!" and then again she raised her head, and tried to fix his wild, distracted eyes.

"It beats!" It was Mary that spoke. "Air! air!" gasped Helen, making an earnest gesture with her hand.

"James, it is our marriage-day."

The eyes gently closed, the lips visibly smiled, the breathing became soft and regular. He was asleep. They had sank on their knees beside the bed. The ministerfor he it was who was present-laid a hand on each head, and said, softly > Send up praise to Him who has given the blessing! Then there was a hushed silence for hours.

66

When morning broke, James still slept, and Helen still watched. Her soul was absorbed in him. She watched that there might be no sound to disturb, that warmth and air might be about him, that she might be ready to give support when he awoke. Mary, utterly exhausted, lay on the floor, wrapped in a cloak, with her head on a pillow, and slept too. It was not till more than twelve hours had so passed that he awoke, so weak, he could scarcely move his hand, but restored to consciousness and affection, and able to understand his happiness.

Need we describe the joy and peace of that recovery to life and health; or the marSome one opened the window, and a bright riage-day that followed; or the weeks of ray of the setting sun, and a sweet scent of happiness passed in that wild and beautiful the evening air, fell upon them all three. Island of Arran; or the enthusiasm with The lids began to close a little over the eyes; which the artist returned to his work? It the white rings seen all round the iris before, is sufficient to say that in the days of his sucwere no longer visible; a ray of conscious-cess he forgot past injuries, and that when ness came into the eyes; they brightened, he found the early love had revived, he was they looked into Helen's. The lines of pain able to take Harris to his heart as a brother.

CARS IN THE DESERT.-Mr. Russell, the wellknown Crimean reporter of the London Times, gives a most interesting sketch of a run through a portion of the Arabian desert by the new railway route. We subjoin an extract :

"Blanched bones of camels lie in dull whiteness on tho sands. Not a bird fans the hot, silent air. Stones and sand, and sand and stones, are all, and everywhere stretched out dead and hard under the blue sky and the relentless sun. The rail which conveys us through this desolation is single, and the line is said by English engineers to be very badly made, as the French engineers who laid it out took it over a ridge eleven hundred feet high, instead of following a low level near the river, which would have greatly diminished expense and cost of working. The water and coal for the engines are to be carried by the trains out to the various stations. So they are like commissariat animals in a barren

country, which have to carry their own fodder, and diminish the public burdens.

"These stations are helpless, hot, oven-like erections, generally cked out by old Crimean wooden huts, within the shade of which may be scen an undoubted Englishman, smoking his pipe. At the twelfth station we coaled; the train ended in the desert hero; but at long intervals, for miles in advance, we could see the encampments of Arabs, who, for the time, had become navvics, and were engaged in picking and burrowing and blasting through the rocks a way for the iron horse. In a long wooden shed

the centre of a group of tents-were laid out long tables, covered with hot joints of recondite animals, papier-mache chickens, and lignite vegetables. This was our dinner-it had come all the way from Cairo-so had the wine, the beer, and spirits. If manna and quails were at all eatable, we had envied the food of the Israelites."

From The Saturday Review.
GENTLEMEN.

of property and no official or professional position universally implies personal supeA GREAT part of the most important busi- riority, there is a constant tacit revolt against ness of life is transacted imperceptibly, and this use of the word, and a correspondthrough the unconscious agency of innumer- ing endeavor to apply it to the possession able persons who contribute, by their choice of those qualities by which property and of phrases to the gradual modification of lan- rank ought to be accompanied. Thus, a guage. Words come to bear a totally differ- meritorious story was called "John Halifax, ent meaning in different generations, and, in Gentleman," the point of the title being that the course of the process, influence, in no the hero was not a gentleman really, but small degree, the nature of the modifications only morally. Between the exclusively techwhich they record. The invention of the nical and the exclusively moral view of the name "Whig" for a particular political party word, the usage of society has struck a sort had no small historical importance, for it led of balance, so that when we speak of a “genpeople to ask what they meant by it, and at tleman" in the present day, we virtually asthe same time gave them considerable facili- sert that certain merits go together-that ties in conducting the inquiry. A more or they usually belong to the members of cerless conscious and explicit sentiment in- tain classes and that the person to whom formed those who originated the nickname the name is applied is both a member of the that particular people had a sufficient num-class and a possessor of the merits in quesber of points of resemblance to render them capable of being described by a common mark; and when the mark was once affixed, an inquiry into the nature and causes of the peculiarities denoted by it was natural, and, indeed, almost inevitable.

tion.

What these merits are, and how far they really do belong to a few classes of society, are curious questions. The first can be answered only by attention to the common use of language; and this gives a strange result. This is a fair illustration of the process by Some of the acts which are considered as which most of the transient phases of society ungentleman-like belong to the greater and are at once described and recorded, and it is others to the lesser morals; but though constantly being applied to almost every sub- many well-meaning persons like to make out ject which is at once interesting and indefi- that whatever is wrong is also vulgar, the nite. Dean Trench's well-known volume common use of language does not warrant about Words abounds in curious instances of them in thinking so. To tell a wilful lie is it. Most of us know how "Pagan " meant, at once very wicked and very ungentlemanfirst, a countryman-then a countryman who like, and the same might probably be said of still retained the idolatry which had been most forms of stealing; but no one would banished from the towns-and, lastly, an say that there was any thing particularly reidolator without reference to his local habita- pugnant to the character of a gentleman in tion. Curious as such words are in a literary arson, or murder, or cruelty to animals. and historical point of view, it is still more Adultery and seduction would certainly be curious to watch and to try to understand ungentleman-like in so far as they involved the changes which are actually in progress either breach of special confidence or gross under our own eyes, and to attempt to ascer-specific fraud or falsehood, but not otherwise, tain the point in their history which particu- notwithstanding their moral enormity. Perlar words in general use and of wide appli- haps the most singular illustration arises in cation have actually reached. Hardly any the case of offences in the use of language. word affords so good an example of this as It is one of the most common of all arguments the word "gentleman as it is now used. against profane swearing that, besides being In its infancy, as every one knows, it meant wrong, it is very vulgar; but though there merely to affirm of the person to whom it is a certain degree of truth in this, it is only was applied the possession of a particular true under a very important limitation. If pedigree. At present it is used in what may a man were, on all occasions and in all sociealmost be called a miscellaneous manner, for ties, to interlard his conversation with proit bears at once several different meanings, fane oaths, he would certainly act in a very each of which is more or less connected with vulgar way; but it is not vulgar, though it its original signification. Its most cbvious is certainly wrong, to swear upon provocameaning is still that which makes it a mere tion, in moderation, and in the society of term of dignity. In this sense, a man is a those who are not likely to be annoyed by gentleman who has either a certain amount it. In the minor morals there is the same of independent property or who holds a cer- kind of apparent confusion. There is nothtain official or professional rank; but, inas- ing ungentleman-like in ill-nature or selfishmuch as the word is felt to imply personal ness, carried to the utmost length and persuperiority, and inasmuch as no amount sisted in with the utmost virulence, though