I

killed two, and in one place which I could not | her domestic troubles great and unbear-
get at without a bed-key, "beings" (as Maz- able, that she was oppressed by her
zini would say) were clearly moving! Ah, husband's meanness and selfishness, and
mercy, mercy, my dismay was considerable! was a melancholy martyr to his moral and
Still, it was not the acine of horror this time, physical infirmities. It would be about
as last time, for now I knew they could be
annihilated root and branch. When I told as fair to conclude from such passages
her there were plenty, she went off to look as the following, which refers to the com-
herself, and came back and told me in a per- pletion of the rewriting of part of the
emptory tone that "she had looked and there "French Revolution," that she was a
was not a single bogue there!" It was need- drunkard and a Roman Catholic:
less arguing with a wild animal. I had Pear-
son to take the bed down, and he soon gave
me the pleasant assurance that "they were
pretty strong!" Neither did he consider
them a recent importation.

The thrifty couple had been living nine years in Chelsea before they could afford to buy a sofa, and then it was only by unusual cleverness that Mrs. Carlyle man aged to achieve the luxury:

his second "first volume," and then we shall One chapter more brings him to the end of sing a Te Deum and get drunk-for which, by the way, we have unusual facilities at present, a friend (Mr. Wilson) having yesterday sent us a present of a hamper (some six or seven pounds' worth) of the finest old Madeira wine. know here; the lady, verging on old-maidenism, These Wilsons are about the best people we is distinctly the cleverest woman I know.

It is quite true that Mrs. Carlyle needed Just when I seemed to be got pretty well more tender sympathy and thoughtful through my sewing, I have rushed wildly into kindness than it was in her husband's a new mess of it. I have realized an ideal, have actually acquired a small sofa, which nature to give her; but that is the way needs to be covered, of course. I think I see with a good many husbands and wives your questioning look at this piece of news: who jog through the world very comfort. "A sofa? Just now, above all, when there ably, and Mrs. Carlyle at any rate underhad been so much else done and to pay for! stood her husband's temperament and This little woman is falling away from her made allowances for it. Here is a charachitherto thrifty character, and become down-teristic extract from a letter written to a right extravagant." Never fear! this little friend who made a special effort to conwoman knows what she is about; the sofa sole her soon after the death of her costs you simply nothing at all! Neither have mother: I sillily paid four or five pounds away for it out of my own private purse. It is a sofa which I have known about for the last year and a half. The man who had it asked 47. 10s. for it; was willing to sell it without mattress or cushions for 2. 10. I had a spare mattress which I could make to fit it, and also pillows lying by of no use. But still, 2. 10s. was more than I cared to lay out of my own money on the article, so I did a stroke of trade with him. The old green curtains of downstairs were become filthy; and, what was better, superfluous. No use could be made of them, unless first dyed at the rate of 7d. per yard; it was good to be rid of them, that they might not fill the house with moths, as those sort of woollen things lying by always do; so I sold them to the broker for thirty shillings; I do honestly think more than their value; but I higgled a full hour with him, and the sofa had lain on his hands. So you perceive there remained only one pound to pay; and that I paid with Kitty Kirkpatrick's sovereign, which I had laid aside not to be appropriated to my As Mr. Froude records in a foot-note, own absolutely individual use. So there is a "Carlyle never forgot her birthday aftersofa created in a manner by the mere wish towards." Once in 1846, she thought he have it.

It is open to prejudiced readers, and even to incompetent editors, to infer from such lively descriptions of domestic troubles as the above that Mrs. Carlyle found

Only think of my husband, too, having given me a little present! he who never attends to such nonsenses as birthdays, and who dislikes nothing in the world so much as going into a shop to buy anything, even his own trowsers and coats; so that, to the consternation of cockney tailors, I am obliged to go about them. Well, he actually risked himself in a jeweller's shop, and bought me a very nice smellingbottle! I cannot tell you how wae his little gift made me, as well as glad; it was the first thing of the kind he ever gave to me in his life. In great matters he is always kind and considerate; but these little attentions, which we women attach so much importance to, he was never in the habit of rendering to any one; his up-bringing, and the severe turn of mind he has from nature, had alike indisposed him towards them. And now the desire to replace to me the irreplaceable, makes him as good in little things as he used to be in great.

had forgotten her, and she told the story of her mistake and its correction thus:

Oh! my dear husband, fortune has played me such a cruel trick this day! and I do not even feel any resentment against fortune, for

the suffocating misery of the last two hours. I
know always, when I seem to you most exact-
ing, that whatever happens to me is nothing
like so bad as I deserve. But you shall hear
how it was.
Not a line from you on my birth-
day, the postmistress averred! I did not burst
out crying, did not faint-did not do anything
absurd, so far as I know; but I walked back
again, without speaking a word; and with such
a tumult of wretchedness in my heart as you,
who know me, can conceive. And then I shut
myself in my own room to fancy everything
that was most tormenting. Were you, finally,
so out of patience with me that you had re-
solved to write to me no more at all? Had
you gone to Addiscombe, and found no leisure
there to remember my existence? Were you
taken ill, so ill that you could not write? That
last idea made me mad to get off to the rail-
way, and back to London. Oh, mercy! what
a two hours I had of it! And just when I was
at my wits' end, I heard Julia crying out
through the house: "Mrs. Carlyle, Mrs. Car-
lyle! Are you there? Here is a letter for
you." And so there was after all! The post-
mistress had overlooked it, and had given it to
Robert, when he went afterwards, not knowing
that we had been. I wonder what love-letter
was ever received with such thankfulness! Oh,
my dear! I am not fit for living in the world
with this organization. I am as much broken
to pieces by that little accident as if I had
come through an attack of cholera or typhus
fever. I cannot even steady my hand to write
decently. But I felt an irresistible need of
thanking you, by return of post. Yes, I have
kissed the dear little card-case; and now I will
lie down awhile, and try to get some sleep. At
least, to quiet myself, I will try to believe-
oh, why cannot I believe it once for all-that,
with all my faults and follies, I am "dearer to
you than any earthly creature."

ing, it came into my mind, "What is he doing, I wonder, at this moment?" and then, instead of picturing you sitting smoking up the stranger chimney, or anything else that was likely to be, I found myself always dropping off into details of a regular execution! Now they will be telling him it is time! now they will be pinioning his arms and saying last words! Oh, mercy! was I dreaming or waking? was I mad or sane? Upon my word, I hardly know now. Only that I have been having next to no sleep all the week, and that at the best of times I have a too "fertile imagination," like "oor David." When the thing is over I shall be content, however it have gone as to making a good "appearance" or a bad one. That you have made your "address," and are alive, that is what I long to hear, and, please God! shall hear in a few hours. My "imagination" has gone the length of representing you getting up to speak before an awful crowd of people, and, what with fuss, and "bad air," and confusion, dropping down dead. Why on earth did you ever get into this galley?

We have no space left in which to do justice to the humor and the pungent wit, the delicious naïveté, and the power of expressing spontaneous thoughts, grave and gay, in a choice language, which make at least a hundred of the letters contained in these volumes worth preserving as choice specimens of letter-writing, apart altogether from their personal interest as illustrations of Mrs. Carlyle's character and of her relations with her husband and her friends. Her records of her visits, after many years of absence, to her birthplace are intensely pathetic; and other letters, such as one describing her interview with Father Matthew, are Such letters are almost too sacred to be no less interesting for other qualities. printed, but as Mr. Froude ignores their Here is part of an account of an evening significance in his efforts to misrepresent spent in seeing the private theatricals got the relations between Mr. and Mrs. Car-up by Dickens and Forster in 1845:lyle, it is right that they should be taken at their true value, as indications of the only too sympathetic nature of a wife who wrote and thought love-letters to the last. Here is one of the very latest, written nineteen days before her death, while her husband was delivering his rectorial address in Edinburgh: —

Upon my honor, I do not feel as if I had penny-a-liner genius enough, this cold morning, to make much entertainment out of that. Enough to clasp one's hands, and exclaim, like Helen before the Virgin and Child, "Oh, how expensive!" But "how did the creatures get through it?" Too well; and not well enough! The public theatre, scenes painted by Stansfield, costumes "rather exquisite," together Dearest, By the time you get this you will with the certain amount of proficiency in the be out of your trouble, better or worse, but out amateurs, overlaid all idea of private theatriof it, please God. And if ever you let yourself cals; and, considering it as public theatricals, be led or driven into such a horrid thing again, the acting was "most insipid," not one perI will never forgive you-never! What I former among them that could be called good, have been suffering, vicariously, of late days is and none that could be called absolutely bad. not to be told. If you had been to be hanged I Douglas Jerrold seemed to me the best, the don't see that I could have taken it more to oddity of his appearance greatly helping him; heart. This morning, after about two hours of he played Stephen the Cull. Forster as Kitely off and on sleep, I awoke, long before daylight, and Dickens as Capt. Bobadil were much on a to sleep no more. While drinking a glass of par; but Forster preserved his identity, even wine and eating a biscuit at five in the morn-through his loftiest flights of Macreadyism;

for a fly, and a headache for twenty-four hours! I went to bed as wearied as a little woman could be, and dreamt that I was plunging through a quagmire seeking some herbs which were to save the life of Mrs. Maurice; and that Maurice was waiting at home for them in an agony of impatience, while I could not get out of the mud-water!

There is a painful sadness in many of the letters, especially those in the third volume. They show that the increased income that came from Carlyle's later popularity brought no relief to him, tortured by the labor of book-writing, or to his wife, as great though not so noisy a

sleeplessness.

while poor little Dickens, all painted in black
and red, and affecting the voice of a man of
six feet, would have been unrecognizable for
the mother that bore him! On the whole, to
get up the smallest interest in the thing, one
needed to be always reminding oneself: "all
these actors were once men!" and will be men
again to-morrow morning. The greatest won-
der for me was how they had contrived to get
together some six or seven hundred ladies and
gentlemen (judging from the clothes) at this
season of the year; and all utterly unknown to
me, except some half-dozen. So long as I
kept my seat in the dress circle I recognized
only Mrs. Macready (in one of the four private
boxes), and in my nearer neighborhood Sir
Alexander and Lady Gordon. But in the in-
sufferer as he was from weak health and
terval betwixt the play and the farce I took a
When
notion to make my way to Mrs. Macready.
Mrs. Carlyle's
John, of course, declared the thing "clearly jealousy of Lady Ashburton had spent
impossible, no use trying it;" but a servant of itself, the strain of her husband's work on
the theatre, overhearing our debate, politely Frederick the Great, the writing of which
offered to escort me where I wished; and then both he and she regarded as a solemn
John, having no longer any difficulties to sur-duty, to which all personal comfort must
mount, followed, to have his share in what be sacrificed, was nearly as irksome.
advantages might accrue from the change. Perhaps Carlyle, having married his
Passing through a long dim passage, I came
on a tall man leant to the wall, with his head charming wife, ought to have abandoned
the calling of author, philosopher, and
touching the ceiling like a caryatid, to all ap-
pearance asleep, or resolutely trying it under prophet, to which he had pledged himself,
most unfavorable circumstances. "Alfred and to have made no effort to give play
Tennyson!" I exclaimed in joyful surprise. which, as it turned out, was anything but
"Well!" said he, taking the hand I held out play to his genius. But his wife mar-
to him, and forgetting to let it go again. "I ried him for his genius, and there is noth-
did not know you were in town," said I. "I ing to show that he would have been a
should like to know who you are," said he; better husband or made his wife happier
"I know that I know you, but I cannot tell had he abandoned his calling.
your name." And I had actually to name my.
self to him. Then he wke up in good earnest,
and said he had been meaning to come to
Chelsea. "But Carlyle is in Scotland," I told
him with due humility. "So I heard from
Spedding already, but I asked Spedding,
would he go with me to see Mrs. Carlyle? and
he said he would." I told him if he really
meant to come, he had better not wait for
backing, under the present circumstances; and KINLOCH-HOUran Castle stands out
then pursued my way to the Macreadys' box; of the very waters of Loch Houran, with
where I was received by William (whom I had its ruined gables and towers clothed with
not divined) with a "Gracious heavens!" and ivy. From the water it looked like noth-
spontaneous dramatic start, which made me
all but answer, "Gracious heavens !" and starting but a roofless and deserted ruin. One
dramatically in my turn. And then I was tower in the centre stood up above the
kissed all round by his women; and poor Nell
Gwyn, Mrs. M- G——, seemed almost
pushed by the general enthusiasm on the dis-
tracted idea of kissing me also! They would
not let me return to my stupid place, but put
in a third chair for me in front of their box;
"and the latter end of that woman was better
than the beginning." Macready was in perfect
ecstasies over the "Life of Schiller," spoke of
it with tears in his eyes. As "a sign of the
times," I may mention that in the box opposite
sat the Duke of Devonshire, with Payne Col-
lier! Next to us were D'Orsay and " Milady"!
Between eleven and twelve it was all over-
and the practical result? Eight-and-sixpence

From Macmillan's Magazine. THE WIZARD'S SON.

CHAPTER X.

jagged lines of the walls, with something that looked like a ruined balcony or terrace commanding the landscape. The outline was indistinct, for the trees that had got footing in the ruined chambers below grew high and wild, veiling the means by which it was sustained at that altitude: but the little platform itself was very visible, surrounding the solid block of the tower, which showed no window or opening, but looked as if it might yet outlive centuries. As the boat approached, Walter saw the rowers whisper, and give significant looks at Symington, who sat

"What do you mean by a phenomenon?" he asked hastily. He remembered suddenly that the young lady on the coach had spoken of this light, and taken it, so to speak, under her protection.

respectfully on one of the cross seats, not | and softly defined it against the darker to put himself in the way of his master, background. who occupied the other alone. Hoarse "How is it done?" said the young man whispers breathed about the other end of simply. He perceived the moment after the boat, and Symington was progged in that his tone was like that of the bagman the shoulders with an occasional oar. on the coach, and shivered at the thought. "Will ye no' be letting him see't?" the So soft and steady was the light that it rowers said. Walter's faculties were ea- had not seemed to him extraordinary at gerly acute in the strangeness of every-all. thing around him; the sense that he was going to an impossible house to a ruin on an impossible errand seemed to keep him on the alert in every particular of his being. He could see through the dusk, he could hear through the whistle of the wind and the lashing of the water upon the boat's side, which was like the roar of a mimic storm; and he was not even insensible to the comic element in Syming ton's face, who waved away the oar with which he was poked, and replied with words and frowns and looks full of such superiority of information, that a burst of sudden nervous laughter at the sight relieved Walter's excitement. He felt that a thrill of disapproval at this went through the boat, and the men in the bow shook their bonnets as they rowed.

"The light?" Walter said. He had been about to ask what the meaning of it might be. It had not been visible at all when they started, but for the last moment or two had been growing steadily. The daylight was waning every minute, and no doubt (he thought) it was this that made the light more evident. It shone from the balcony or high roof-terrace which surrounded the old tower. It was difficult to distinguish what it was, or identify any lamp or beacon as the origin of it. It seemed to come from the terrace generally, a soft, extended light, with nothing fiery in it, no appearance of any blaze or burning, but a motionless, clear shining, which threw a strange glimmer upwards upon the solid mass of the tower, and downwards upon the foliage, which was black and glistening, and upon the surface of the water. "Yon's the phenomenon," said Symington, pointing with a jerk of his elbow. The light brought out the whole mass of rugged masonry and trees from the rest of the landscape,

"If your lordship has ainy desire to inquire into my opinion," said old Syming ton, "though I doubt that's little likely, I would say it was just intended to work on the imagination. Now and then, indeed, it's useful in the way of a sign - like a person waving to you to come and speak; but to work on the imagination, that's what I would say."

Walter looked up at the light which threw a faint glimmer across the dark water, showing the blackness of the roughened ripple, over which they were making their way, and bringing into curious prominence the dark mass of the building rising out of it. It was not like the moon, it was more distinct than starlight, it was paler than a torch: nor was there any apparent central point from which it came. There was no electric light in those days, nor was Loch Houran a probable spot for its introduction: but the clear, colorless light was of that description. It filled the visitor with a vague curiosity, but nothing more. "To work on whose imagination ? and with what object?" he said.

But as he asked the question the boat shot forward into the narrow part of the loch, and rounded the corner of the ruin. Anything more hopeless as a place to which living passengers, with the usual incumbrances of luggage, were going, could not well be conceived; but after a few minutes' rowing, the boat ran in to some rude steps on the other side of the castle, where there were traces of a path leading up across the rough grass to a partially visible door. All was so dark by this time that it was with difficulty that Walter found the landing; when he had got ashore, and his portmanteau had been put out on the bank, the men in the boat pushed off with an energy and readiness which proved their satisfaction in getting clear of the castle and its traditions. To find himself left there, with an apparently ruined house behind him, his property at

his feet, his old servant by his side, night | one has read of a belated traveller unclosing in around, and the dark, glistening | willingly received into some desolate inn, water lapping up on the stones at his feet, which turns out to be the headquarters was about as forlorn a situation as could of a robber band, and where the intruder be imagined. must be murdered ere the morning.

"Are we to pass the night here?" he said, in a voice which could not help being somewhat querulous.

"This is your way, my lord," said the shrill old man, leading the way up the spiral stair. The whole scene was like a The sound of a door opening behind picture. The woman holding up her interrupted his words, and turning round light at the end of the long passage, the he saw an old man standing in the door- old man with his lamp, the dark corners way, with a small lamp in his hand. He full of silence and mystery, the cold wind held it up high over his head to see who blowing as through an icy ravine. And the new-comers were; and Walter, look- the sensations of the young man, who ing round, saw a bowed and aged figure had not even had those experiences of a pale old face, which might have been adventure which most young men have in made out of ivory, so bloodless was it, the these travelling days, whom poverty and forehead polished and shining, some grey idleness had kept at home in tame dolocks escaping at the side of a black skull-mestic comfort, were very strange and cap, and eyes looking out keenly into the darkness.

"And who's to carry up my lord's portmanteau?" said Symington.

"His portmanteau!" cried the other, with a sort of eldritch laugh. "Has he come to bide?"

This colloquy held over him exasperated Walter, and he seized the portmanteau hastily, forgetting his dignity.

"Lend a hand, Symington, and let us have no more talk," he said.

novel. He seemed to himself to be walking into a romance, not into any real place, but into some old story-book, a mystery of Udolpho, an antiquated and conventional region of gloom and artificial alarms.

"Come this way, my lord; come this way," said the old man ; the steps are a bit worn, for they're auld, auld as auld as the house. But we hope you'll find everything as comfortable as the circumstances will permit. We have had just twa three days to prepare, my mistress and me; but we've done our best as far," he added, "as the circumstances will permit. This way, this way, my lord."

Close

At the head of the stair everything was black as night. The old man's lamp threw his own somewhat fantastic shadow upon the wall of a narrow corridor as he held it up to guide the new-comer. to the top of the staircase, however, there opened a door, through which a warm light was showing, and Walter, to his surThere is a moment when the most for- prise, found himself in a comfortably furlorn sensations and the most dismal cir-nished room with a cheerful fire, and a cumstances become either ludicrous or table covered for dinner, a welcome end irritating. The young man shook off his to the discomfort and gloom of the arrivsense of oppression and repugnance as heal. The room was low, but large, and hastened up the slope to the door, while the lantern, flashing fitfully about, showed now the broken path, now the rough red masonry of the ruin, which was scarcely less unlike a ruin on this side than on the other. The door gave admittance into a narrow passage only, out of which a spiral staircase ascended close to the entrance, the passage itself apparently leading away into the darkness to a considerable distance. At the end of it stood a woman with a lighted candle peering out at the stranger as the man had done. He seemed to realize the stories which every

there were candles on the mantelpiece and table which made a sort of twinkling illumination in the midst of the dark panelled walls and dark furniture. The room was lined with books at one end. It was furnished with comfortable sofas and chairs of modern manufacture. There was a curious dim mirror over the mantelshelf in a heavy gilt frame of old carv ing, one or two dim old portraits hung opposite, the curtains were drawn, the fire was bright, the white tablecloth with an old-fashioned silver vase in the middle, and the candles burning, made a cheer