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sight indeed, and so we were all; we could not look at each other without laughing till we held our sides. In short, we had made ourselves such figures that, when we entered two by two the precincts of the Baths, humming a lugubrious chant, people fled at our approach, and we were at some pains to have our identity acknowledged even by our fellow-boarders.

I

I must now mention an incident which wellnigh threw me off the rails of flirtation, and down the precipice of amorous infatuation. A few days after the masquerade just mentioned, a little before noon, I was sitting and reading my newspaper in a very odd place the orchestra of the dancing-room. This orchestra was my refuge against the heat it was always pleasantly cool there and also my tent of Achilles when I chanced to be out of sorts. was somewhat so on this morning. I am very particular, perhaps I ought to say fidgety, about my letters. Gentlemen past forty are apt to fidget about many things. Well, then, I had a letter, which I wanted to go by the day's post -an end most easily.secured by handing it to the letter-carrier, when he called about eleven A.M. As I could not do so myself this time, having ordered a bath, which was ready, I begged Jungfrau Madeleine to see to it for me. Jungfrau Madeleine, to make assurance doubly sure, put my letter in her pocket, and . . . forgot it there. I must say, in fairness to her, that it was a washing-day, and poor Madeleine at her wits' end. When apprised of the mischance, after my bath, I grumbled a little-more, I am afraid, than necessary-but I would hear of no one being sent on purpose to the village-all hands were engrossed by the great wash-and withdrew moodily, paper in hand, to my elevated station in the dancing-room.

I had been there perhaps threequarters of an hour, when the door of the large hall, just in front of my orchestra, was flung open, and there appeared on the threshold a group of three ladies, two holding and dragging in an apparently reluctant third one

between them. The prisoner was Mdlle. Emma.

"What is it? what new crime has the most terrible of enfants terribles committed?" cried I, jumping down, and striding towards the door.

"Come and see what a state she has put herself in," said Mdlle. Emma's sister.

My blood gave a turn, as my eyes, following in the direction of the elder sister's, rested on Mdlle. Emma's shoulders. They were the colour of brickdust, blistered all over as if by a scald. "How was it done?" I asked.

"By walking in the sun without a parasol," said the sister; "did you ever hear of a piece of folly like this?"

"Really, it is too bad," I began; "a babe four years old..."

"Don't scold," interrupted Malle. Emma.

The tone in which she said it was neither petulant, as usual, nor propitiating; it sounded like a quiet warning.

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"You are right," said I; we can do something better than scold just now;" and I ran to the kitchen, took hold of a paper bag full of flour, and scattered handfuls of it on the poor neck, shoulders, lace tippet, and all, ending by dabbing the tip of her nose, and her left cheek, and this, and that, on which I pretended to notice signs of an incipient sunburn. The upshot was what might be expected-Malle. Emma snatched with both hands the bag of flour, turned it topsy turvy, and shook out the remaining contents over my head and face. I had seen flour used with advantage, when nothing better was at hand, as a sedative in cases of slight scalds. If it did Mdlle. Emma only the tenth part of the good which she professed it did, flour is a wonderful specific for sunburns.

Enfant terrible showed admirable endurance, good-humour, and cheerful wit throughout the day. She made light of what she called her bobo-nay, joked about it, parrying all the while with much skill every hint aimed at drawing out from her the sort of errand on which she had come by it. She had

been taking a walk, she said. I suggested. the probability of her having gone to the station, there to meet, by special appointment, Mr. Eisenschmidt, who had left the day before, and in the natural flutter of her spirits having forgotten her parasol. She observed what wonderful penetration novelists were gifted with, and gave me leave to use the situation in my next tale.

I had occasion to go to the village early next morning, and met the lettercarrier on the road. I presume he knew my fidgety ways, for he no sooner saw me than he came up, and informed me that my letter of the day before had been brought to the office in time to start. Brought by whom? I asked. He said, by the tall young lady.

Here was a discovery! A flask of the most generous Johannisberg, gulped at a draught, would have left me cool in comparison. Mdlle. Emma braving the noonday heat of the dogdays, Mdlle. Emma getting a sunstroke-in fact, nearly achieving martyrdom-for my sake; what a rich premise to start inferences from ! I confess, to my shame, that I started some of the wildest. The flesh is weak, you know, especially at past forty. Thank God, the paroxysm was short. A misgiving soon stole upon me, a misgiving that I tenderly nursed and helped on, that I was making a fool of myself. A walk of four or five hours, my usual medicine in cases of a conflict of feeling, being quite out of the question in the present broiling weather, I bethought myself of a substitute. I went home and put myself under a cold showerbath until my teeth chattered; then I took my head between both my hands, and read myself a good lecture in front of my looking-glass. Thanks to this energetic treatment, I felt sufficiently braced to go and meet my fair lettercarrier not at too great a disadvantage.

Had I still wanted sobering, the sight of her would have done so for me. There was so much of the child in her looks; she had all the unconsciousness, the trustfulness, the archness of one, as she said, shaking hands,—

"You have been keeping aloof in

presentiment of bad news in store for you."

"You alarm me," said I, with a look anything but alarmed; "what can it be?"

"A most disastrous piece of news for you," she said; "guess."

Her sister, from behind her, made me guess, by a clever pantomime, that they were going away.

"Let me see," said I; "what can befall me so tremendous, unless it be that you are going to stay another week."

She turned sharply round towards her sister. "You have told him already."

"How could I," said the latter, "when I have not seen him until now?"

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"Well," wound up Mdlle. Emma, we are going to start within three days."

"Three days!" I repeated, with as elongated a face as I could command at so short a notice, "it is a long way off; so we are in for seventy-two more hours of parched heat, and no hope of rain!"

"It will rain. . . tears enough when I am gone," said she.

"May be tears of... relief," said I.

Mdlle. Emma's stay at Schranksteinbad having coincided with a constant drought, I had, of course, ascribed the fact to some malignant influence of her presence, and pretended to sigh for her departure that the spell might cease.

The three days went off capitally. I had no momentary weakness to conquer, not even the least effort to make, in order to keep my resolution faithfully of letting Mdlle. Emma ignore my knowledge of her little secret. Withal our sporting warfare raged fiercer and more continuous than ever. My happiest hits are of that date. I kept cutting jokes to the last, in the very omnibus which was taking the family to the station, and to which I had craved admission on the plea that I must make sure that Mdlle. Emma was off-it was too good to be believed unless seen, and so on. I was positively astonished at my own self-possession.

It forsook me a little, though, when

my turn came to shake hands with Mdlle. Emma. I don't know whether it was I who first pressed hers unwittingly very tight, or she mine, or both of one accord pressed simultaneously; whichever it was, the pressure had this singular effect on both of us, that we did not find a single word to say, and stood gazing at each other like two geese. It was a very awkward moment. The next she was leaning on the window of the carriage, still gazing at me, and I at her. She looked like a picture a beautiful picture-in a frame. A smile, her would-be usual arch smile, was still lingering round her mouth, but there was a quiver at one of its corners ... and her eyes were filling fast.

What was there extraordinary in the

sight that it should upset me so? I felt a shock in the very centre of my heart. My eyes grew dim, and there rose to my lips, trembling for utterance, the first person singular of the first tense of a very hackneyed verb. . . .

Lucky that the train glided on, as if by stealth, and, in less time than it takes to write it, Mdlle. Emma was out of the reach of a whisper. Now, mine being one of those bashful verbs, which can only be whispered, I had no choice but to drop it, and give out instead a loud and hearty "God bless you!"

The sense of the narrow escape I had had was so strong upon me, that, unscathed though I came out of it, if I did, I vowed then and there that this should be my last flirtation.

THE NEW MORALITY: WORSHIP OF MAJORITIES.
To the Editor of Macmillan's Magazine.

SIR,-It is seldom that a letter appearing in a religious journal deserves to be remembered a week after its publication. The following, which I read in the Guardian of February 19th, is one of the excepted cases. The position of the writer, and its contents, give it more than a transitory importance.

MR. JOWETT'S FRIENDS.

To the Editor of the Guardian.

SIR,-A Somewhat extraordinary correspondence, introduced by a not less extraordinary notification, has lately appeared in the public prints.

It seems that a number of persons, "feeling the injustice of the course recently pursued by the University of Oxford" towards Professor Jowett, have raised a subscription among themselves, amounting to no less a sum than 2,000l., and have tendered it to that gentleman (who, however, has had the good taste to decline the gift), not merely as marking their "sense of the honourable and conscientious manner in which, during six years, he has fulfilled his Professorial duty," but also as making good "the arrears of salary withheld by the University" and discharging “at least some portion of the debt which has accrued to him during that period."

If these gentlemen, Sir, had offered the money simply as a testimony of their respect for Professor Jowett, and of their own sense of

his efficiency, their conduct would have been perfectly intelligible, and no one would have been entitled to complain.

But what are we to think, when, among the objects assigned, that of remedying an act of injustice committed by the University-in other words, of discharging a debt which she ought to have discharged herself—is ostentatiously put forward?

I am not going to reopen the controversy respecting the endowment of the Regius Professorship of Greek. But these gentlemen surely need not be reminded (those of them, at all events, who are members of the University; and it is not easy to understand why others should have stepped out of their way to make good her deficiencies), that what they venture to call the injustice of the University was the course deliberately determined upon, after a free and full discussion, by that body whose decision is definitive in such matters.

What possible end can there be of strifes, if restless spirits are thus to refuse acquiescence in the sentence of authority, unless perchance that sentence happens to be in their own favour? C. A. HEURTLEY, Margaret Professor of Divinity. Christ Church, Oxford, Feb. 17, 1862.

Those who signed the memorial to Professor Jowett might anticipate many objections to the course which they took. I doubt if any one of them anticipated Professor Heurtley's objection. They

knew that Oxford had once, in a very formal manner, asserted the divine right of a single person, and that fellows of Magdalene and students of Christ Church found some reason to repent of that assertion not many years after it went forth. They did not know that the divine right of majorities was an article of University faith; they were not aware that "restless spirits' was the only name which a teacher of divinity could find for those who held that the decrees of a Sanhedrim or a council might be unjust. Now that they do know it, I believe the reasons which induced them to sign the memorial have become immeasurably stronger than they were before.

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We who are engaged in the practice of different professions in the heart of London, feel to what perils our moral code is continually exposed. Lawyers are tempted to let quirks and quibbles interfere with the plain downright maxims upon which Englishmen and Christians ought to act. Clergymen are liable to all the influences of a subtle religious casuistry. We send our sons to the University that they may learn sound principles of ethics; that they may see them illustrated in the practice of men not exposed to the friction of ordinary society, without those excuses for making principles bend to expediency

which

are continually urged in the world. Oxford undertakes to teach many things. She especially boasts to be a school of ethics. She asks help in teaching ethics from a great moralist of the old time, who looked upon justice as the chief of virtues, the sum of all the virtues. She promises that whatever is weak in him shall be strengthened, whatever is lacking in him shall be supplied, by the theology of the New Testament.

A congregation, consisting in great part of Oxford tutors and professors, distinctly set at defiance the maxim that a labourer is worthy of his hire; that it is just to pay men for services which they have done. They could produce most plausible apologies for their doctrine; apologies that would have done credit

to the most refined advocate in our courts. They could produce religious reasons for what they had done, reasons that would make the fortune of any casuist. One would have regretted such a proceeding in the Common Council of London; in any municipal corporation. It would have alarmed us for our commercial integrity. But it need have given rise to no protest. That becomes necessary, when those who teach morality adopt and sanction a morality which is lower than that of clubs and common councils, and defend it by religious maxims.

There might be better ways of bearing witness against this outrage upon all sound ethics, than that of offering some acknowledgment to Professor Jowett for his services. I can imagine a much worse way. An attempt might have been made to extend the rule against Professor Jowett to those who established it.

The Professor of Hebrew intimatesif he does not say directly-that every one who wishes to secure a legitimate payment for the services of the Professor of Greek makes himself responsible for that Professor's theological tenets. Has he forgotten whither such a doctrine might lead? If it is true, it must apply, at least, as strongly to the Hebrew chair. I say only "at least as strongly”— most people would say that one whose business is to lecture on the Old Testament has more to do with theology than a lecturer on Eschylus or Plato. But I do not press that point. I only say, that any one who subscribes to Dr. Pusey's maxim, who admits it under any modification, must be prepared to take every possible step for interfering with his emoluments, or else must be responsible for his theology and his ethics. Most who repudiate his theology and his ethics, yet believe him to be the fittest person for a lecturer of Hebrew, and would count it a crime to do anything which would weaken him in that position. What course, then, must they take? They must protest against the decree which he and the majority of the congregation have passed,

with whatever authority it may be endorsed.

They must protest for his sake. Yes! and now also still more for Professor Heurtley's sake. For, if the doctrine of his letter to the Guardian is the doctrine, which he proclaims in his chair of Divinity, all who care that the youth of England should not have the lessons of their childhood confounded-that they should not learn to despise the men whom they have been taught to reverence are bound to lift up their voice against such a Doctor. He must begin with declaring the Protest at the Diet of Spires to be atrocious; he must go on to denounce Athanasius as the most restless of all spirits, because he dared to set himself against the world-the

world meaning the majority of the Eastern and Western Churches; he must proceed to declare that those were false Apostles, who were brought before councils, and were condemned to be beaten or killed by majorities of them; he must end with exalting Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, as chief in the roll of saints. Of course he does none of these things. Is it safe, then, to punish Professors for all the heresies they may teach when they are not fulfilling their appointed office? Is it not a duty to bear witness against them, when in congregations or in newspapers they contradict what they bid us observe and do when they are sitting in Moses' seat? Your obedient Servant, F. D. MAURICE

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THE age of ghosts is gone; but spectres are still occasionally seen. Indeed, the majority of mankind never go to bed, without, in "the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men," seeing phantoms flitting about them. A smaller number see visions in broad daylight, with their eyes wide open. A shadowy figure enters at a window or a door, or rises from the ground "like an exhalation," moves noiselessly about the room, takes a seat at the fire, sits for a time silent as death, and then melts into air, to the infinite relief of the spellbound spectator. Some peculiarly nervous people have such visitors almost daily. Others, the victims of intemperance, are tormented by "familiars" of a more fearful kind. A hundred devils dance before them, grin at them, deftly elude their blows, mock at their fury. Regarding the reality of such apparitions there is no doubt; they are the real representatives of the mythical ghost. It is marvellous, then, that so

little has been written regarding them; for it is certain that, while they are understood by the few, they are still a subject of profound wonder to the many. It is in the writings of medical men chiefly that we have narratives of spectral illusions, and they too often content themselves with stating the case without accounting for it. It is true, the explanation lies a little beyond the strict limits of their profession-in the constitution of the mind rather than of the body; but a knowledge of mental science may surely be presumed on the part of every well-educated physician. Still, we want a philosophy of spectres. Even Dr. Abercrombie, with all his marvellous powers of observation, and his devotion to the study of psychology, is extremely confused in his explanation of spectral appearances, though nothing can be better than the cases which he cites.

The simple, but undoubted, explanation of spectres is that they are our own

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