shrinking from him; then she turned to- minute. I think you ought to marry wards him again with sudden compunction. her. "You must not suppose it is unkindness; but think,-two people who have been like brother and sister."

"The only time," said Millefleurs, still more seriously, "that I ever stood in this position before, it was the relationship of mother and son that was suggested to me with equal futility, if you will permit me to say so; brother and sister means little. So many people think they feel so, till some moment undeceives them. I think I may safely say that my feelings have never except, perhaps, at the very first been those of a brother, any more," he added in a parenthesis, "than they were ever those of a son."

What Edith said in reply was the most curious request ever made perhaps by a girl to the man who had just asked her to marry him. She laid her hand upon his arm, and said softly, "Tell me about ber!" in a voice of mild coaxing, just tempered with laughter. Millefleurs shook his head, and relieved his plump bosom with a little sigh.

"Not at this moment, dear Edith. This affair must first be arranged between us. You do not mean to refuse me? Reflect a moment. I spoke to your father more than a week ago. It was the day before the death of poor Mr. Torrance. Since then I have waited, hung up, don't you know? like Mahomet's coffin. When such a delay does occur, it is generally understood in one way. When a lady means to say no, it is only just to say it at once- -not to permit a man to commit himself, and leave him, don't you know? hanging on."

"Dear Lord Millefleurs

Oh, there would be no hindrance there," said Millefleurs; "that was quite unsuitable. I don't suppose it could ever have been. But with you," he said, turning to take her hand again, "dear Edith! everything is as it should be it pleases your people, and it will delight mine. They will all love you; and for my part, I am almost as fond of dear Lady Lindores as I am of you. Nothing could be more jolly (to use a vulgar word - for I hate slang) than the life we should lead. I should take you over there, don't you know? and show you everything, as far as San Francisco if you like. I know it all. And you would form my opinions, and make me good for something when we came back. Come! let it be settled so," said Millefleurs, laying his other hand on Edith's, and patting it softly. It was the gentlest, fraternal, affectionate clasp. The hands lay within each other without a thrill in them the young man kind as any brother, the girl in no wise afraid.

"Do you think," said Edith, with a little solemnity, from which it cost her some trouble to keep out a laugh, "that if I could consent (which I cannot: it is impossible), do you think it would not be a surprise, and perhaps a painful one, to - the other lady-if she heard you were coming to America so?"

It

Lord Millefleurs raised his eyes for a moment to the ceiling, and he sighed. was a tribute due to other days and other hopes. "I think not," he said. "She was very disinterested. Indeed she would not hear of it. She said she regarded me as a mother, don't you know? There is something very strange in these things,' he added, quickly forgetting (as appeared) his position as lover, and putting Edith's hand unconsciously out of his. "There "In America," said Edith boldly, "you was not, you would have supposed, any were called so by the other lady chance of such feelings arising. And in He waved his hand. "By many peo-point of fact it was not suitable at all. ple," he said; "but never mind. Never Still, had she not seen so very clearly by any one here. Call me Wilfrid, and I what was my dutyshall feel happier

"My name is Wilfrid," he said, with a little pathos; "no one ever calls me by it in this country not even my mothercalls me by my name."

"I was going to say that if you had spoken to me, I should have told you at once," Edith said. "When you understand me quite, then we shall call each other anything you please. But that cannot be, Lord Millefleurs. Indeed you must understand me. I like you very much. I should be dreadfully sorry if I thought what I am saying would really burt - but it will not after the first

you

"I know now," said Edith; "it was the lady who-advised you to come home."

He did not reply directly. "There never was anybody with such a keen eye for duty," he said; "when she found out I hadn't written to my mother, don't you know? that was when she pulled me up. Don't speak to me,' she said. She would not hear a word. I was just obliged to pack up. But it was perfectly unsuit

able. I never could help acknowledging | gentleman he was. The discovery was

that."

"Wilfrid," said Edith, half in real, half in fictitious enthusiasm, for it served her purpose so admirably that it was difficult not to assume a little more than she felt, "how can you stand there and tell me that there was anything unsuitable in a girl who could behave so finely as that. Is it because she had no stupid little title in her family, for example? You have titles enough for half a dozen, I hope. Are you not ashamed to speak to one girl of another like that

not entirely agreeable to his amour-propre, and wounded his pride a little; but in the mean time the necessary thing was to set Edith at her ease so far as was possible, and make her forget that she had in any way committed herself. What he did was to set a chair for her, with her back to the lamp, so that her countenance need not be revealed for the moment, and to sit down by her side with confidential calmness. "Since you wish it," he said, "and are so kind as to take an interest in her, there is nothing I should like so much as to tell you about my dear Miss Nelly Field. I should like you to be friends."

Would it were possible to describe the silent hush of the house while these two talked in this preposterous manner in the solitude so carefully prepared for them! Lord Lindores sat breathless in his library listening for every sound, fixing his eyes upon his door, feeling it inconceivable that such a simple matter should take so long a time to accomplish. Lady Lindores in her chamber, still more anxious, foreseeing endless struggles with her husband if Millefleurs persevered, and almost worse, his tragical wrath and displeasure if Millefleurs (as was almost certain) accepted at once Edith's refusal, sat by her fire in the dark, and cried a little, and prayed, almost without knowing what it was that she asked of God. Not, surely, that Edith should sacrifice herself? Oh no; but that all might go well- that there might be peace and content. She did not dictate how that was to be. After a while both father and mother began to raise their heads, to say to themselves that unless he had been well received, Millefleurs would not have remained so long oblivious of the passage of time. This brought a smile upon Lord Lindores's face. It dried his wife's eyes, and made her cease praying. Was it possible? Could Edith,

"I could not, I could not," she cried, with a sudden little effusion of feeling, quite unintentional. A flush of hot color ran over her, her eyes filled with tears. She looked at him involuntarily, almost unconscious, with a certain appeal, which she herself only half understood, in her eyes. But Millefleurs understood, not at the half word, as the French say, but at the half thought which he discovered in the delicate, transparent soul looking at him through those two involuntary tears. He gazed at her for a moment with a sud-after all, have yielded to the seductions of den startled enlargement of his own keen little eyes. "To be sure!" he cried. "How was it I never thought of that before?

Edith felt as if she had made some great confession, some cruel admission, she did not know what. She turned away from him trembling. This half comic interview suddenly turned in a moment to one of intense and overwhelming, almost guilty emotion. What had she owned to? What was it he made so sure of? She could not tell. But now it was that Millefleurs showed the perfect little

the dukedom? Her mother felt herself struck to the heart by the thought, as if an arrow had gone into her. Was not she pleased? It would delight her husband, it would secure family peace, it would give Edith such a position, such prospects, as far exceeded the utmost hopes that could have been formed for her. Somehow, however, the first sensation of which Lady Lindores was conscious was a humiliation deep and bitter. Edith, too! she said to herself, with a quivering smile upon her lips, a sense of heart-sickness and downfall within her. She had wished it surely

-she had felt that to see her child a duchess would be a fine thing, a thing worth making a certain sacrifice for; and Millefleurs had nothing in him to make a woman fear for her daughter's happiness. But women, everybody knows, are inaccessible to reason. It is to be doubted whether Lady Lindores had ever in her life received a blow more keen than when she made up her mind that Edith was going to do the right thing, the prudent, wise thing, which would secure family peace to her mother, and the most dazzling future to herself.

When a still longer interval had elapsed, and no one came to tell her of the great decision, which evidently must have been made, Lady Lindores thought it best to go back to the drawing-room, in which she had left Edith and her lover. To think that Edith should have found the love-talk of Millefleurs so delightful after all, as to have forgotten how time passed, and everything but him and his conversation, made her mother smile once more, but not very happily. When she entered the drawing-room she saw the pair at the other end of it, by the fire, seated close together, he bending forward talking eagerly, she leaning towards him, her face full of smiles and interest. They did not draw back, or change their position, as lovers do, till Lady Lindores, much marvelling, came close up to them, when Millefleurs, still talking, jumped up to find a chair for her. "And that was the last time we met," Millefleurs was saying, too much absorbed in his narrative to give it up. "An idea of duty like that, don't you know? leaves nothing to be said."

lect "to roll joyously about on a dunghill, thinking no evil"? as was said of Rabelais. Is all consciousness and intention fatal to the highest literature? and is design, driven from theology, to be allowed no resting-place in letters either? Is the quality we call humor the only salt that will keep the memory of a writer fresh for centuries? and, if so, what are the essentials of this surprising quality? Who are the masters in the science of it? Who is the chief priest of its ritual? Is it another name for human life, or is it something apart and partial? Is it a modern faculty and of recent birth, or has mankind always possessed and valued it? Had Shakespeare humor? What was the origin of the word? Did it originate with the surgeons? Did . . . but Have you any more questions? the startled reader may reasonably ask; and seeing that we may never be able to answer those already propounded, it may be as well, at least for the present, not to ask any more.

Some people probably would make very short work of some of these questions. It is not the highest result of the intellect to roll about on a dung-hill, joyously or otherwise. Humor is not human life, but only a certain aspect of it, and that not a very elevated one. If I believed this last assertion I should not go on with this paper, but if the sources of this word lie so deep in the realities of life that the highest genius cannot exist without the recognition of its meaning; if, as the race grows more intellectual, it may be expected to grow more sensitive to the influence of this quality, though its power of achieving it may possibly become less, then it may be worth while to try to clear our minds a little concerning this word, and to settle to our own satisfaction, if possible, what we mean by it.

Lady Lindores sat down, and Millefleurs stood in front of the two ladies, with his back to the fire, as Englishmen love to stand. There was a pauseof extreme bewilderment on the part of the new-comer. Then Millefleurs said, in his For it would seem that beneath the round little mellifluous voice, folding his masque of the comic actor lie the issues bands, "I have been telling dear Edith of great controversies, and that the oppoof a very great crisis in my life. She un-nents have recognized in the jester's derstands me perfectly, dear Lady Lin- laugh the truest test of what lies at the dores. I am very sorry to tell you that root of human existence. On the one she will not marry me; but we are friends hand we are asked lugubriously "whether the greatest men," those of deepest and widest outlook Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare, Beethoven have found the world a merry place, or "have been much pleased with life." No one is so, From Macmillan's Magazine. THE HUMOROUS IN LITERATURE. we are charitably informed, but "children and grown-up children, some of the BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN INGLESANT." selfish rich, and a few peculiarly happy WAS Hamlet a fluke? Is the highest natures." On the other hand we hear, attainment possible to the human intel-"If the great humorist Circumstance

Have men always possessed and valued the quality of humor, and how long have they called it by this word? I have some difficulty in deciding which of these questions to take first, they are both so important. The word is yet scarcely fitted to the quality, yet if the latter be such as we believe it to be, it must have been the most ancient possession of the race. I think we shall find it such, for the humor of Aristophanes is as pure as that of later days, and runs upon the same lines man's folly and far-reaching thought, his littleness and his lofty dreams, his weakness and his power. In the "Plutus" is the germ of Don Quixote and Sancho. In the "Birds" and "Frogs," human life is played with, amid graceful rhythm and music, with as delicate and genial a touch as Addison's, and with a melody as perfect as Mr. Matthew Arnold's. Much the same may be said for Terence, but the distinguishing quality is not so marked; it is more of the unconscious sort; nor is the medium so delicate and graceful; for it does not follow that because man had not yet learned to use the word, that there were not even then conscious and unconscious humor.

If this be so, then the paltriest fact of human existence, the stupidest life of the veriest clown, is more pregnant of truth, more full of teaching, than the maturest thought of the greatest genius, and we cannot shrink from the climax reached in the modern paradox- that the humor of Cervantes, which has to do largely with the unseen and the divine, is terrene, while that of Sterne, which never recog nizes aught save the exigences of the moment - including an insistent exigence called death is derived from the eternal order of things.

But may we not oppose to this brilliant theory, with some show of reason, that intention is necessary to art; that if life be a lesson so easily read by him that runs, wherein is the advantage of letters at all? The careless do not read the lesson of life; it is the function of the true artist, whom we take to be the humorist, to point the moral, and we say that by the manner in which he does so he shows his skill.

The greatest genius, qua genius, that ever wrote, undoubtedly lends a vast support to the theory which I am opposing. Indeed it would probably never have been propounded had Shakespeare never lived; for in Shakespeare we find neither con. sciousness nor intention, nothing but life in infinite variety, fed from the wellsprings of human feeling, and ruled by the inevitable forces that keep the issues of life and death. That, when he began "Hamlet," Shakespeare had no intention of doing more than dramatizing a bald Now, I think, we must go back again to story out of Saxo Grammaticus, is proba our first question, Was Hamlet a fluke? bly true; but it surely is a poor complifor this brings us at once face to face with ment to creative genius to assert that it is a question which we must answer, Is gen- too stupid to understand a character as it ius conscious or unconscious? Speak- grows under its touch. It will be ading of "Werther," Goethe said that there mitted, I think, by those who have atwas an old prejudice that a book must tempted such things, that the most dehave a didactic purpose; "a true exhibi-lightful part of their experience is the tion of life," he says, "has no such purpose. It neither justifies nor blames, but unfolds ideas and actions in their relations, and thereby reaches and enlightens." In other words, is genius so infinite that intention is contrary to its nature and shows that it is not genius? or, to put it another way, human life is so in-speare, having set himself to write a story finite in its incongruities, in its pathos, in with a tragic ending, had the sense to let its meanings, and its hopes, that to de- his character work itself out upon those scribe it with the intention and puny lines, and those alone, which lead to tragic vision of a finite being is to destroy its issues. "It is a text," says Dr. Gervinus, infiniteness and to confuse its delicate" from true life, and therefore a mine of lines; whereas, if the artist copies unconsciously the life which is about and before him, he cannot err - the lesson must be read aright.

way in which characters do grow and develop, as it seems, independently of the author. They form their own story, and pursue their own course; but is the author the only person concerned who is not allowed to see this? "Hamlet" became a lesson for all time because Shake

the profoundest wisdom." That Shakespeare understood the character of Hamlet, and also that such meaning grew upon him, we seem to have positive proof, from

the additions which he afterwards made | intended to point out the incongruity of to the first cast of the play; every one of human existence, the contrast of man's which, as Dr. Gervinus also says, "assist highest aspirations with his possibilities, to a more true understanding of the and not, as has been asserted, his "ludipiece." crous futility in his relations to his fellowman." Man is not futile in such relations; he is most helpful and competent.. It is when he comes into contact with the "universal harmony" that the futil. ity manifests itself. From the first the "Quixote" has been read from these different points of view; is it possible that some inquiry into the origin of the faculty of humor will enable us to reconcile them?

But whatever we may say of "Hamlet," it is certain that the "Quixote" was not a fluke. The one thing which in this, the great masterpiece of humor, is kept before the reader from the first page to the last, is the nobility of this crazed Spanish gentleman, and, what is more, the humor is not only recognized by the author, it is perceived by the characters themselves, as, in real life, people understand the humor of the situation. With an exquisite truth all the gentlemen are made to recognize it. There is not a gentleman in the book, but, the moment he comes across Don Quixote, recognizes not only his worth but the humor of his craze. "Para aquellos que la tenian del humor de Don Quixote era todo esto materia de grandis"For all those who understood the humor of Don Quixote all this was a matter of infinite laughter." And even those who were not gentlemen, but who as servants were accustomed to asso

ciate with gentlemen, saw it. "If this be not a concerted jest," said one of the ser. vants of Don Lewis, "I cannot persuade myself that men of such good understanding as all these are or seem to be, can venture to affirm" such things. The crass stupidity which talked of "laughing Spain's chivalry away," has been, I should hope, sufficiently exposed. On the contrary, "most of his hearers being gentle. men, to whom the use of arms properly belongs, they listened to him gladly."

"Antes como todos los mas eran caval

leros, á quien son anexas las armas, le escuchiavan de muy buena gana."

I do not contend that Cervantes realized the full extent of his conception, to do so would have been to limit its applicability. He could not, for instance, see the force of the allegory, which grows in import and truth as the years go on, which underlies the story of the liberation of the galley slaves, and it is possible that he may have been unaware of the perfect ending of the whole matter which his genius led him to adopt. He may have pandered to what he supposed was the popular opinion of his hero by making him die repentant and false to the ideal of his life; but by. doing so he did but point with supreme force the allegory and lesson of his wonderful book. Whatever Cervantes may not have intended, or have been conscious of, it is certain that he

The word must have had its birth in
Europe, for we have seen that Cervantes
uses it in precisely the same sense that
Ben Jonson understands by it.

What does the author of "Every Man
out of his Humor" say? -
Why, Humour . . . we thus define it
To be a quality of ayre or water
And in itself holds these two qualities
Moisture and fluxure: as, for demonstration,
Powre water on this floor, 'twill wet and run
Likewise the ayre (forc't through a horn, or
trumpet)

Flowes instantly away, and leaves behind
A kind of dew; and hence we may conclude
As wanting power to contain itself
That whatsoe'er hath fluxure, and humiditie,
Is Humour. So in every humane body
The Choller, melancholy, flegme, and blood,
By reason that they flow continually
In some one part, and are not continent,
Receive the name of humours. Now thus far
It may, by metaphor, apply itself
Unto the general disposition :
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
As when some one peculiar quality
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,

In their confluctions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a Humour.

No inkling of the modern sense here.
Asper, further on, says, -