have sworn a vow to myself, and this time | in peace and trouble me no further? I shall keep it. She shall find me her true When have I failed to answer you before? knight, her dream shall come true, unless Could not you guess that I had no answer, my strong right arm drops paralyzed at my side. Already the snarling cats of the village, the human scavengers of our little world, have been busy with her fair name and mine. The steely eyes of these magpies have been on us though we knew it not, their lying tongues have been making their master the devil's music. Already the county families are beginning to look askant when they meet my darling. Thank Heaven, my mother stands by her, and would proclaim herself her friend and champion before all the world. But my angel has a champion already. And her knight has made up his mind, though she knows nothing of his determination as yet. With vizor down, and the shining shield of love to guard him, he is going to charge through these heavy boundaries of a hard society, and with the white arms of his fair pillion tight clasped around him, to disappear forever.

or, if I had, that something in the nature of that answer made me refrain from using it? Why could you not think me absent from my home, in the delirium of a fever, or in the stony silence of the tomb? Your pestilential correspondence has poisoned the very air I breathe, the oily flavor of your sickly sentiment has tainted my very food, I have tasted it in my salad, in my pipe, in everything. Bah! I try to spit it out and cannot. Well, you have drawn your badger, you shall have your answer

a lawyer's answer free of charge; I will meet you point by point and answer all. Read it, digest it if you can, and then burn it.

You

"In your unmeasurable conceit, you ask me what I would do in the far-off possibil. ity of my being in your place? Now know the truth. I was in love with Mrs. Car. rington myself once. That was nearly thirteen years ago. Try to think what "Yes, George, I am going to fly with thirteen years means more than twoher. I must throw all to the four winds thirds and nearly three-quarters of the for the sake of one sweet face. My home, entire time you have been privileged to ambition, mother, all, all. Are there not cumber the earth. Then summon up an soft climes where nature holds an eternal image of yourself as you then were. summer; where we can live, poor in all were five years old, a creature in black else, yet trebly rich in each other's love? velvet with flaxen ringlets down his back, On your far travels, have you never sighted naked, gravel-stained knees, and mouth some far-off isle, 'half hid in the liquid and half a face daubed over with strawazure bloom of a crescent of sea,' where berry jam. When you were whimpering we may wander hand in hand, the world in a nurse's arms, or raising the echoes of forgetting, by the world forgot? When the sleeping wood with a baby treble, in you hear of our flight from my poor mother, be gentle with her, and not too hard with me. Make all allowance for a temptation well-nigh irresistible. Try to imagine, if you can imagine anything so absurdly improbable, that the loveliest woman you have ever seen, who would sell her soul for your love, is kneeling at your feet (I mean your great broad strong feet) and asking you to save her. Now can you not understand it all? We may never meet again, unless in the time to come you care to penetrate to the flowery home we may select as ours, and amuse yourself by watching the selfish rapture of our love. Perhaps for the last time, your cousin,

"FRANK."

This passes endurance. I too have kept my vow. He has goaded me to desperation, and I have answered him.

"Oh, vain, inflated boy, why could not you be warned by my silence to leave me

your terror of some darting dragon-fly, I was fondling your mistress. She was younger then by these long thirteen years. If she is well-preserved now, she was beautiful then. And she was mine, and I think that, if ever she cared for anybody, it was for me. In your unbounded selfconfidence you fancy you were the first. Why, I was not the first, by how many I never troubled to learn. I did not go maudlin mad with my good fortune; I enjoyed my reign, which was absolute, and abdicated of my own free will, and the running Lipple was swollen with your angel's tears.

"Now you shall learn why Dickey Dornton whistled in the lane. Dickey was my immediate successor. He no doubt remembers you in the gravel and jam state, and when he saw you at the stile by her side, it made him feel old. Yet think how much older than Dickey that low-drawn whistle must have made her feel, who was old even when the whistler was young. After Dickey came a

cub who was sent to read with the vicar. | stony glances cares very little about it.
After the cub came the three Cobble- So that her cook satisfies the worthy
whaite boys, one after another. After vicar, and she sees no undue scarcity in
them but I will drop the curtain-the stock of rising youth, she goes on her
Dickey, who lives on the spot, tells me way at peace with all the world. I think
she has played the fool with nine-tenths the worthy matrons of the neighborhood
of the country side-that is the juvenile entirely wrong. Their policy of cold
country side, for she prefers baby-faced looks is short-sighted and unworthy. To
boys to stern-browed men. And very nat- my mind, these timid mothers should be
urally too. For don't run away with the grateful not morose. They are most of
idea that I am blackening your charmer's them in your angel's debt. I look upon
character. She is quite able to take care Mrs. Carrington as one of the highest and
of herself, and has done so. And unless best institutions of South Devon. These
these harmless flirtations can be held to foolish parents are paying heavy fees to
make a sea of sin (as you would put it), tutors and masters to polish their rough
she has not wandered far from the straight gems into a presentable and orthodox
path of virtue. She is a curious woman form, and here at their own gates is a
(Dickey and I have studied her well), not kindly sensible creature doing more than
without humor, and possessed of the all the hirelings, gratis, and yet they are
shrewdest common sense I have ever met. dissatisfied. For in my time, at least, this
She has no aspirations, no yearnings after good soul taught nothing but the soundest
the impossible, the narrow boundaries of wisdom. 'Why should you write to me?'
her cage' have never galled or troubled she used to say, 'you talk better than you
her, she is as contented as the good vicar write; why, I dare say your spelling is
and as tranquilly happy. But Lippleford worse than faulty, you can see me when
does not teem with distractions, and she you like, and I will listen for an hour with-
does not read, so she relieves the deadly out going to sleep once.'
dulness of her idle hours by playing with woman, how much I owe you!
a parcel of brats who make her all the
sport of monkeys and none of the danger
of men. Who should blame her for in-
dulging in this amusement? Not I, nor
you; for I am her debtor in the first les-
sons in the ways of the world; and you
might have sat at her feet and learnt wis-
dom too if you had not been a poet
a fool. So you see, when from the study
window you watched her years ago 'pass-
ing like a light' (as you have it), she prob-
ably looked in now and again on all you
tumbled-haired little ruffians and thought
'they are coming on nicely.' Looked in
upon you, my boy, with the passionless,
far-seeing scrutiny of a careful gardener
surveying a frame of promising young
seedlings. Perhaps her practised eye
marked you down and docketed you in
her mental catalogue as the hardiest and
most advanced of the batch. So you may
at least console yourself with having been
the 'first bloomer' of your season.

- or

Admirable

"If I desired to make an appointment with her I wrote to say that I was commissioned by my aunt to talk over the arrangements of the Easter bazaar. To which she would reply: —

"DEAR MR. PEYTON, -I will give the bazaar my best attention. Try to come before three o'clock or you will miss my husband. It is his day for Exeter.'

"This told me what I wanted to know, ie., that I was not to come till after three o'clock, when the coast would be clear;. yet all the world might have read her letter. Say that I wanted to meet her by your precious apple-tree, she had instructed me how to frame the mandate. I should have written:

"DEAR MRS. CARRINGTON, The head gardener tells me that he can get you the double cowslip roots that you want, from the corner of Rogers's small field; so I have told him to go there after his tea, which he takes about five. And if the farmer is out of the way, I have no doubt he will get them.'

"You say that the country people are beginning to look askant at the fair vicaress. They began to look askant at her twelve years ago, when, putting one little scrap of information with another, "My boy, at five o'clock my darling' they thought they had discovered the rea- would be there. You can guess who 'the son of the mysterious absences and tell- farmer' was, for old Rogers would have tale blushes of their young hopefuls. let us grub up the apple-tree itself if we They have been looking askant ever since wanted it. Never write what can be then, and gradually cooling off into a set-spoken,' she used to say, and I have acted tled frigidity. But the victim of their on the advice ever since. Only last year

I burnt a drawer-full of her perfumed in the afternoon, when the declining sun notes.' They all began with Dear Mr. is at the hottest point of the twenty-four Peyton,' and ended with 'Yours truly.' If hours. Steal once more through the honI had made them into a parcel and sent est farmer's baking meadows, but penethem to the vicar, no harm would have trate a little farther; go on till you come been done. to the great chestnut-tree. Here, in the "But, with a brain weakened by all the shadow of its long, swinging branches, poetical trash you have read and written, you will find the farmer's cows, knee-deep you have made an idiot of yourself. In- in the cool waters of the brook. Select stead of taking your course of Carrington, some large-eyed, fawn-faced Alderney, as I should a course of medicinal waters, and pour your burning plans into her and gaining a world of benefit therefrom, great drowsy ears. Describe those softer you rave and howl and rant and inundate climes you tell me of, paint the glories of me with a hailstorm of letters. It puzzles the azure sky and the emerald seas, trot me how on earth you can have contrived out every metaphor in your commonplace to make her break through her undeviat- book, every dazzling image from your iming principles in the matter of your babyish mortal dead, fall on your knees, if you post-office. I cannot comprehend under like, and but prevail on her to fly with what pressure she has consented to put you. Can you read my parable? If the her hand to any correspondence more com- tranquil beast consents and follows you, promising than the above. On the whole, take it as a happy augury, and speed on I really think that age must be dimming the wings of love to your enchanter and her faculties. Let me see, she was sup-repeat your passionate pleadings. But, if posed to be nineteen, though we only have her word for it, when she first came to Lippleford. That was fourteen years ago, which would make her, at the lowest computation, thirty-three. In short, were she a modern Hindoo, or a heroine of Shakespeare's time, she might have been your mother. I think I can explain her unwonted frivolity now. She has noticed some silver threads in the black night of her glorious hair-do you think any fool could not write your balberdash if he tried? or she has found that rambles under the starry skies of the summer nights induce a rheumatic stiffness in the joints; or it may have been Dickey's whistle; but she has suddenly realized how old she is. It is the final flickering of the fading torch. Her kingdom is slipping from her grasp, and, in her desperate struggle to retain her tottering throne, she is allowing an unwonted license to her subjects.

"You have shown yourself a fool, old man, in this wild romance. And you did wrong, very wrong, in writing to me on the subject. There are some things that should never be told, however much the silence may chafe your self-love. Men of the world never speak of these things. Only boys boast of broken hearts and conquered dames. But don't fret, you will grow out of the habit. And the sooner the better, for it is a very bad one.

"And now we come to your projected flight. Well, I say fly, put on your wings and fly the moment you receive this. Yet first try the little experiment that I now describe. Take your punt and cross into paradise once more, and do it about four

your friend the cow should decline, and with slowly twitching tail and munching mouth hear you out unmoved, be warned, and save your vast conceit from a cruel stab.

66

Why, my lovesick boy, if she - not the cow, the other-had meant flying, would she not have flown years upon years ago? Has she not been asked to fly by half the gentry round? She loves to be asked to fly. It is the crowning stone of these little episodes. She sets more store by this request than all the rest of the story. She will not be angry. But she will no more leave her meadow than the black-muzzled Alderney; and I fear that when she has wrung the project from your trembling lips, she will show you that the play is over, that it is time to ring down the curtain on your dainty little comedietta; and begin to cast her lustrous eyes about her garden forcing frames for another seedling. Digest my parable, and save yourself this last mortification.

"Your affectionate and well-wishing friend and cousin,

"GEORGE."

It was a good letter. A few little touches in it made me chuckle as I wrote them; and it pleased me to think that my pen had not grown rusty for want of use. I almost wished he would show a part of it- of course not the part that concerned me- to his mother. How my poor uncle would have laughed over it! Phew! I breathe again; I have blown the sickly odor of the boy's romance out of my cham bers. But, lord, lord, how old and cynical

“Oh, my cousin, what a letter you have
written me! And you would have me go
into the world's bitter school and study
the hard hearts of men, that when I get
to your time-lichened years I too may
twang my lyre to such harsh notes as
these. And you tell me to burn your ter-
rible epistle. Were it not wiser to glaze
and frame it, and hang it over my storm-
tossed pillow, that morning and night I
might gaze on its scalding periods? Shall
I not hold it as my hair-shirt and stinging
Scourge, through many years to come
May I not send it to the printers, and
have ten thousand copies printed in a
leaded type that all may read, and de-
spatch one to every parsonage house in
England? Oh, heart of granite! Pas
sionless, pitiless disciple of a worldly
wisdom, learn the truth concerning this
twice-injured lady. Mrs. Carrington left
Lippleford last May for the entire sum-
mer. Poor old C. had been bad with
bronchitis, and the doctors ordered him to
the Engadine for six months. Naturally
his wife went with him. We have been
sitting under a raucous-voiced Irishman
these many weary months. The vicarage
is let to an Exeter butcher, and his portly
consort has supplied the only light that I
have seen passing over the shaven lawns
of the vicarage gardens. I was but trying
my maiden pen, gentle cousin. Yet have
I drawn thee well. I confess I had lent
a curious ear to certain whispers in the
past which coupled thy name with hers.
Thanks and thanks again. You have en-
couraged me when my heart was flagging
with doubt and distrust of myself. But
now I shall gird up my loins and attack
the magnum opus. For I am going to
write a novel and a novel with a strong
love interest.

"Ever your devotea and grateful pupil,

"FRANK."

W. B. MAXWELL.

From The National Review. NEWFOUNDLAND AND THE FRENCH FISHERY QUESTION.

THE frequent references that have of late been made in the daily papers to the fishery rights of the French upon the shores of Newfoundland, and the unique position which is here claimed of the inhabitants of a foreign country to totally exclude our colonists from a possession in, and a permission to fish upon, the colonist's own shores, render this a fitting moment to give our readers a short history of the present question with a slight review of the Newfoundland fisheries, and of the colony itself. Newfoundland may be roughly described as a triangle, the apex of which stretches towards the coast of Labrador, its eastern, western, and southern sides being each about four hundred miles in length. This gives no correct idea of its actual coast-line, because of the numerous arms of the sea, bays, and creeks which everywhere indent it; and from its situation it may at some future time occupy an important position in the maritime defences of Canada, when that country feels inclined to throw off the fostering care of Mother England, and has naturally absorbed Newfoundland, which latter place could render any attempt of an ascent of the St. Lawrence impossible. To the southward of Newfoundland lie innumerable banks-banks so called, as they compare with the immediate depths of the great Atlantic, but still upon which water to the depths of from one hundred and twenty to five hundred feet is found, whilst the soundings within a few miles extend to twelve thousand feet. These, constituting the Great Bank, as the feeding ground of the cod in May, June, July, and August, form a mine inexhaustible in its supply of fish food to the countries on the shores of the Mediterranean, the West Indies, North and South America, and are of course the scene of the main industry of the Newfoundlander, and the source of wealth of its principal merchants. cold water of the Arctic seas, when freed by the breaking up of the northern winter, bearing on its surface the huge icebergs which form such a danger to the navigation of the North Atlantic, skirts. the east coast of Labrador, the main body passes the east shore of Newfoundland, where many of these bergs are stranded and broken up, and, continuing southward, meets with bends westward, and finally merges into the Gulf Stream. The meeting of this Arctic current, and the cold air on its surface, with the warmer waters of

The

the Gulf Stream is the immediate cause | and to understand this so-called "French of those dense, impenetrable fogs which shore" and the "fishery question," a invest the banks of Newfoundland with brief history of Newfoundland and its the dangers to navigation which have pe- past must be glanced at, to show the riodically to be encountered by the great origin of the treaties between the two lines of ocean steamships plying between nations and the anomalous position the Europe and the United States and Canada. Newfoundlander occupies upon a great But this same meeting of the tropical and part of the coast of his own island until boreal waters have a compensation for the this day. human family, as the former brings up in From the date of its discovery, 1497, the its depths the countless millions of fish value of its fisheries was keenly apprewhich seek their food in the minute crus-ciated by Portugal, France, and England, tacea abounding in the Arctic waters. In and for years it was resorted to by vessels the Arctic seas the waters are character- fitted out principally at Bristol, whose ized by a variety of colors, and it is found owners endeavored steadily to prevent any that if a fine insect net be towed after a attempts at people settling on the island ship, it becomes covered with a film of as likely in time to rob them of what they green or brown, according to the prevailing considered as their monopoly. A town, color of the water. These films are of St. John's, now its capital, was founded in organic origin, a living slime, and here are 1578. Six years afterwards Sir Humphrey to be found swarms of minute crustacea Gilbert took possession of it in the name feeding on this, and serving in their turn of his royal mistress, Queen Elizabeth. It as food to other denizens of the deep, and was in returning to England from this to the many birds that frequent the colder expedition Sir Humphrey perished at sea waters in summer. This ice-laden current, off the Azores. His loss inflicted a great then passing the coast of Labrador and blow upon Newfoundland, for he seems to Newfoundland, renders possible the exist-have been thoroughly impressed with the ence of all those minute forms of marine life, which serve as food for the caplin and herring, these in their turn being devoured by the cod. The homes then of the deep-sea commercial fishes are in the vicinity of the coasts washed by the coldwater seas, and these are the great store houses of the fish food supply. Food fishes are known to be local in their habits; they are governed in their movements by the presence of food, the spawning instinct, and the temperature of the water; they migrate from the deep to the shallower waters of the coast for spawning purposes, or in search of food, returning to greater depths again in almost an opposite direct line; and a law seems to govern their annual migration, viz., that they return to the place of their birth for reproductive purposes. We have here the two distinct fisheries off the shores of Newfoundland: the bank fishery, of an international and general character, and the in-shore fishing. The former is free to all comers; Americans, Spanish, French, English, Newfoundlanders, and Portuguese have laden their fishing ships here for two hundred years. The grounds appear to cover an area about two hundred miles long by seventy broad. The cod taken here is larger and finer in quality than the fish taken along the shores of the island. The latter, that is the coastal fishing, is the source of the differences that are always arising between France and England;

idea that the right way to prosecute the fisheries was to colonize the country and conduct them on the spot, whereby he would have established a resident population who would also have brought the soil under cultivation. In 1621 Lord Baltimore settled the first English colony upon the south-eastern peninsula of Avalon, and it was about the same time that the French settled upon the shores of the bays on the west and south-west coasts of the island, making Placentia the headquarters of their fishing sphere. These settlements, however, were of a very temporary char. acter, being merely camping grounds in the immediate vicinity of some sheltering bay occupied by the crews of the fishing vessels (where the fish was cured before being stowed on board for transit to Europe), and abandoned annually at the close of the fishing season, in September or October. Rivalries would soon follow between the fishermen of distinct nation. alities, and events occurring in Canada and North America soon affected the settlers in Newfoundland. These rivalries eventually led to an expedition against the French, headed by Sir David Kirke, who made a clean sweep of the French settlements in Canada, finally capturing Quebec. Charles I., however, reinstated the French in the possessions they had lost, but granted to Sir David full possession of Newfoundland, where he died in 1655. The French rule again established itself