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clouded sky-that I could think no more, | than I. It might be nothing of conse and fell asleep. quence; it might be a note to myself. I imagine that, had I never again seen Should I open it? Why should I not the young man, I should not have suf- open it? Here no doubt was an opportufered. I think that, by slow, natural de-nity to set things right between my heart grees, his phantasmal presence would and my uncle; I could take it to him unhave ceased to haunt me, and I should opened. But if I hardly dared even in have grown gradually capable of my duties thought to complete that if- might not as before. I do not mean that I should that be a wrong to the youth of my vision? have forgotten him, but neither should I Might it not represent a confidence rehave been troubled on remembering him. posed in me? Might it not be the messenI know I should never have regretted ger of a heart trusting me before it ever having seen him. Like a thunderstorm, knew my name? Would it not be to with all its unsettling influences, would inaugurate our acquaintance with an act the experience have passed from me. I of treachery, or at least distrust? Right had nothing to blame myself for. I should or wrong, thus my heart reasoned, and to have felt- not that a glory had passed its reasoning I gave heed. "It will," I away from the earth, but that I had had a said, “be time enough to resolve when I vision of bliss. What it was I should know the matter that requires resolve." not have had the power to recall, but it This, I now know, was juggling, for the would have left with me the faith that I question was there already- whether I had beheld what was too ethereal for my should be open with my uncle or not. memory to store. I should have consoled "What if I should," I said to myself, myself both with the dream and with the "the moment I knew the contents of the conviction that I should not dream it paper, reproach myself that I had not read again. The peaceful sense of recovered it at once. nearness to my uncle would have been far more precious to me than the dream. The sudden fire of transfiguration that had for a moment flamed out of the all and then again withdrawn inward, would have be come a memory only, but the child-way of seeing things would have remained with me, nor do I think that would ever have left me; it is the care and the prudence of the wise that bleaches the grass, and holds the red rose of life over sulphur-fumes; but it was not thus my history was to unfold itself.

Outwearied with inward conflict, I slept a dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER XII.

A LETTER.

A COOL wind went through the curtains of my couch, and I awoke. The blooms of the peasant-briars and the court-roses were waving together over my head. The sigh of the wind went breathing itself out over the far heath, and as it passed through my 'forest of lowly plants and small bushes, it found and fanned the cheeks that had lain down hot and athirst for air. It gave me life new and fresh. I lay for a few minutes, and then as I was rising something fluttered to the ground. I thought it was a leaf from a white rose above me, but I looked, and there lay a folded paper. I took it up. It had been folded hastily and had no address, but who could have a better right to unfold it

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I sat down on the heather amid the roses, and unfolded it. This is what I found written with a pencil : —

"I am the man to whom you talked so kindly over your garden wall yesterday. Will you, I wonder, think me presuming and impertinent. Presuming I may be, but impertinent, surely not. If I were, would not my heart tell me so, seeing it is all on your side?

"My name is John Day; I do not yet know yours. I have not dared to inquire after it, lest I should hear of some impassable gulf between us. The fear of such a gulf haunts me. I can think of nothing but the face I saw over the wall through the clusters of lilac, but the wall seems to keep rising as if it would hide you forever.

"Is it wrong to think thus of you without your leave? If one may not love the loveliest, then is the world but a fly-trap hung in the great heaven, to catch and ruin souls.

"If I am writing nonsense I cannot tell whether I am or not-it is because my wits wander with my eyes to gaze at you through the leaves of the wild rose under which you are asleep. Loveliest of faces, may no gentlest wind of thought ripple thy perfect calm until I have said what I must, and laid it where you will find it.

"I live at Rising, the manor-house over the heath. I am the son of Lady Cairn

on the great horse; then in the morning I was taken away without having seen her. I had never to my knowledge heard who lived there. I was not born inquisitive, and there were miles between us.

edge by a former marriage. I am twenty years of age, and have just ended my last term at Oxford. May I come and see you? If you will not see me, why then did you walk into my quiet house, and turn everything upside down? I shall I sat still, nor thought of moving. I come to-morrow night in the dusk, and had no need or impulse to move a finger. wait in the heather, outside the fence. If I lived essentially-independent of outer you come, thank God! If you do not, I ways of life. I knew now what had come shall believe you could not, and come to me. It was no merely idiosyncratic again and again and again, till hope is experience, for the youth had the same; dead. But I warn you I am a terrible it was love! How otherwise could we be hoper. thus drawn together from both sides? Also it seemed verily good enough to be that wondrous thing ever on the lips of poets and tale-weaving magicians. Was it not far beyond any notion of it their words had given me? The secret of life was opened to me.

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It would startle, perhaps offend you, to wake and see me so near you; but I cannot bear to leave you asleep. It seems as if something might happen to you. I will write until you move, and then make haste to go.

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My heart swells with words too shy to go out. Surely a Will has brought us to gether. I believe in fate, never in chance. "When we see each other again will the wall be down between us, or shall I know it will part us all our mortal lives? Longer than that it cannot. If you say to me, I must not see you, but I will think of you,' not one shall ever know I have other than a light heart. Even now I begin the endeavor to be such that, when we meet at last, as meet we must, you shall not say, 'Is this the man, alas ! who dared to love me!"

"I love you as one might love a womanangel who, at the mere breath going to fashion a word unfit, would spread her wings and soar. Do not, I pray you, fear to let me come. There are things that must be done in faith, else they never have being; let this be one of them. You

stir!"

As I came to these last words, hurriedly written, I heard behind me, over the height, the quick gallop of a horse, and knew the piece of firm turf he was crossing. The same moment I was there in spirit, and the imagination was almost vision. I saw him speeding away-"to come again!" said my heart, solemn with gladness.

Rising Manor was the house to which the lady took me that dread night when first I knew what it was to be alone in darkness and silence and space. Was that lady his mother? Had she rescued me to give me her son? I could hardly be willing to believe it. But I had never actually seen the lady, or I had forgotten what she was like. The way was mostly dark, and during a great portion of it, I was too weary to look up to where she sat

But my uncle! There lay bitterness. Was I false to him, that now the thought of him was a pain? Had I begun a new life apart from him? To tell him would perhaps check the terrible separation. But how was I to tell him? For the first time I knew that I had no mother. Would Mr. Day's mother be my mother, too, and help me? But from no woman but my own mother, hardly even from her would I ask mediation with the uncle I had loved and trusted all my life and with my whole heart. I had never known father or mother, save as he had been father and mother and everybody to me. What was I to do? Gladly would I have hurried to some desert place, and there waited for the light I needed. That I was no longer in any uncertainty as to the word that described my condition, did not, I found, make it easy to use the word to my uncle. Perhaps," I argued, as I struggled in the toils of my new liberty, "my uncle knows nothing of this kind of love, and would be unable to understand me. Suppos. I confessed to him what I felt towards a man I had spoken to but once, to tell him the way to Dumbleton, would he not think me out of my mind?"

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At length I bethought me that, so long as I did not know what to do, I was not required to do anything; I must wait till I did know what to do. But with the thought came suffering enough to be the wages of any sin, that, so far as I knew, I had ever committed. For the conviction awoke that already the love that had hitherto been the chief joy of my being, had begun to pale and fade. Was it possible I was ceasing to love my uncle? What could any love be worth if mine should fail my uncle? Love itself must be a mockery, and life but a ceaseless sliding

I rose, went into the house, and up to the study, took a silk sock I was knitting for my uncle, and sat down to wait what would come. I could think no more; I could only wait.

From The Fortnightly Review. RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

down to the fearful valley of indifference. Even if I never ceased to love him, it was just as bad to love him less. Had he not been everything to me?-and this man, what had he ever done for me? Doubtless we are to love even our enemies; but are we to love them as tenderly as we love our friends? Or are we to love the friend of yesterday, of whom we know nothing though we may believe everything, as we love those who have taken all the trouble to make true men and women of us? "What can the matter be with my soul?" THe food of country people in the fourI said. "Can that soul be right made, in teenth century, as to-day, was chiefly pork which one love begins to wither the mo- in all its forms of bacon, ham, brawn, or ment another begins to grow? If I be pudding; and pork was relatively little so made, I cannot help being worthless." cheaper than in many a remote and rural It was then first, I think, that I re- place to-day. Butter, cheese, eggs, were ceived a notion-anything like a true no- very plentiful; herrings were an article of tion, that is, of my need of a Godalmost daily diet (they cost a sol the hunwhence afterward I came to see the one dred, about a halfpenny apiece), as also in need of the whole race. Of course, not the north of France, a kind of salted whale being able to make ourselves, it needed a called craspois, a truly Viking dish, of God to make us; but that making were a which the popularity has wholly vansmall thing indeed, if he left us so unfinished.* In Normandy pea-soup was then, ished that we could come to nothing right; if he left us so that we could think or do or be nothing right; if our souls were created so puny, for instance, that there was not room in them to love as they could not help loving, without ceasing to love where they are bound by every obligation to love right heartily, and more and more deeply. But had I not been growing all the time I had been in the world? There must then be the possibility of growing still. If there was not room in me, there must be room in God for me to become larger. The room in God must be made room in me. God had not done making me, in fact, and I sorely needed him to go on making me; I sorely needed to be made out. What if this new joy and this new terror had come, had been sent, in order to make me grow? At least the doors were open; I could go out and forsake myself. If a living power had caused me for I did not cause my self-then that living power knew all about me, knew every smallness that distressed me. Where should I find him? He could not be so far that the misery of one of his own children could not reach him. I turned my face into the grass and prayed as I had never prayed before. I had always gone to church, and made the responses attentively, but I knew that was not praying, and had tried to pray better than that. But now I was asking from God something I sorely wanted. "Father in heaven," I said, "I am so miserable! Please, help me!"

as now, a favorite food. Wine, beer, and mead were freely drunk by all classes. In 1392, a homeless pin-maker on the tramp breakfasts off wine and fish;‡ workmen out of employment dine at the village inn off bread, meat, and red wine at fourpence the pint.§ In the same year the provisions left in the house of the wife of the Duke of Bourbon's minstrel were: bacon to the value of four sous or shillings, six large loaves of bread, a great pot full of green peas, two penn'orth of onions, and a shilling's worth of salt.|| But the best criterion we get of the daily food of the rural population is the record preserved in the accounts of manors and monasteries of the dinners afforded to laborers on corvée, or doled out day by day in return for some bounden service. Thus, the smith of the monastery of Jumièges received in return for his occasional services a daily ration of two small loaves, a measure of wine of medium quality, and either six eggs, four herrings, or some equivalent dish. A vintager of St. Ouen, on corvée, was supplied every day with two rolls and a mess of peas and bacon with salt.** A tenant of the monks at Bayeux, during his corvée, was entitled to a daily meal of a white loaf, a brown loaf, five eggs, or three herrings, with a Léopold Delisle, L'Agriculture Normande, p. 189 ↑ Ibid. Régistres du Châtelet for 1392, i. 174. Ibid., 427.

Ibid., i. 526.

Delisle, L'Agriculture Normande, 189. ** L'Agriculture Normande.

gallon of beer. The monks of Monte- half as much on those selected for her bourg gave their men a loaf, a mess of wardrobe. The wife of another burgher pea-soup, three eggs, and the quarter of a chooses three-and-twenty doublets, delicheese, or, if they chose, six eggs, and no cate in quality and of a vermeil color. cheese; on fast days they made shift with Over this garment the women of the fourthree herrings and some nuts; they teenth century put a tight long bodice of washed down this ample meal with as strong cloth, to which they attached, by much beer as they chose to drink. A hooks or lacets, a pair of tight, long sleeves, tenant of the monks of St Ouen, received, generally of some costly material, silk in return for his corvée, not only bread being used on great occasions even by and wine, pea-soup and bacon, but fresh the poorer classes. Over this again they or salt beef and poultry. All this is in slipped a very long dress, touching the Normandy. In Anjou, the men on corvée ground on all sides, tight in the bodice dine more sparely off wine and bread and but sleeveless, or with loose, hanging garlic; but the carpenters on a farm re-sleeves; it was generally much trimmed ceive in addition to a daily wage of one sol eight deniers, five penn'orth of meat per person; the hedgers and ditchers also dine off bread and meat. In almost every one of the numerous records that we have of the daily fare of the laboring class in fourteenth-century France, we find a dish of eggs, a mess of peas and bacon, half a chicken, a few herrings, or a generous slice of meat, added to the modern laborer's dinner of bread and cheese and beer.

Our rural ancestors of every class went well and warmly clad. The farm laborers of the fourteenth century wore better garments than our ploughmen use to-day. Men of every class appear to have possessed linen shirts and linen drawers, hose of strong cloth, and leather shoes; a coat of warm russet or fustian, an ample cloak resembling the limousin or Tuscan ferraiuolo, and (sometimes attached to this garment, sometimes separate) a long-tailed | hood of cloth. Masons, laborers, workmen of every class, completed this costume by a pair of gloves; London gloves were held in high esteem. Bonis, the merchant of Montauban, sold them to his country clients at seven sols the dozen.

The women were as sensible in their attire. They all wore a long chemise of linen, and over this a garment called a doublet, in form resembling the linen bodice sewn to a white petticoat, which is still used in dressing little girls. The wedding doublet of the butcher's daughter of Montauban took about five yards of fine white linen of Paris, costing fifteen sols the ella measure which exceeded the modern metre by about two nails. The butcher was evidently a man of means; for we find his wife ordering some doublets for herself at £3 10s. apiece, while a neighboring noble's wife spends not quite

L'Agricultare Normande, 190.

t Joubert, Vie Privée en Anjou, p. 94.

with silk and braid. A farm-servant buys a piece of red silk to trim her gonella, another chooses one of blue cloth worth one livre; the simplest that we find, made of a coarse, pale cloth called blanket, comes, with the trimmings, to nearly fourteen sols. The gown was surmounted by a heavy girdle, richly ornamented, from which the purse and keys of the house. wife dangled. Out of doors a long, draped mantle, trimmed to match the gonella, was usually worn.

The women of the later fourteenth century were fastidious in dressing their hair. We all know the hennin, the tall, slender sugar-loaf of buckram, from which floated a gauzy veil. The peasants naturally did not wear this inconvenient and romantic headdress. They braided their hair with ribbons and galoons intertwined in every plait. A woman with long hair would use about seven yards of ribbon; over this she placed a strong net of silk or thread; the whole was enveloped in a veil of thin silk, the favorite ornament of country-women, and frequently given as a wedding present. A very handsome veil of German silk would cost as much as seventeen sols; a commoner one, of good Aleppo silk, from five to ten sols; still a veil quite presentable in appearance, of a rougher silk, could be had as low as three sols (we may suppose about twelve shillings of our money). Almost every peasant in well-todo circumstances afforded his wife and daughter this piece of elegance, probably worn on fine occasions. The artisans, small farmers, and farm servants of the fourteenth century were less economical in ornament than their descendants. butcher of the little country town of Montauban gives his daughter, for her wed ding day, a silver necklace, a purse, a girdle of silk, a string of amber beads, a pair of embroidered gloves, a veil of German silk, two silk nets for her hair, and many-colored silks and threads for the

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embroidery of her wedding gown. An artisan affords his child a veil of German silk, a net to match, a string of amber, a purse and girdle, the whole expense coming to £1 6s., or about five guineas of our currency. A servant on one of Bonis's farms buys for his wife a silk wimple; gloves, hair-ribbons, and ornamented hairnets are common fairings.

our

quality and the quantity of his purchases.
The goat-herd and the shepherd are all in
russet; but see the drover as he comes
home from market resplendent in his man-
tle checked with black and green; he
sports a hood striped with grey and yel-
low; hood and cloak are in accordance
with the most fashionable standard of the
day. Here out in the fields we seldom
use such brilliant colors; russet, blanket,
grey, blue, and English green are
usual wear. It is only when the knight,
the doctor, or the merchant from the town
is drawn this way that we see the real
taste of the bon ton; the particolor green
and vermeil, white and blue, vert perdu
and slate color, yellow and black, white
and vermeil, that are, with the universal
black and green, the last cry of the mode.
The check and stripe are popular alike
in town and country. It may, perhaps,
interest my readers to see the price paid
by the country people of the fourteenth
century for their comfortable clothes.
order to have an idea of the relation of
this expense to their revenue, let us re-
member that the wage of a laborer varied,
according to his age and position, from
five deniers to one sol two deniers per
day.

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We see all these good people, dressed soberly or splendidly according to their rank, but almost always comfortably dressed, as we turn the pages of the accounts of Bonis or the palpitating "Registers of the Châtelet " (the Newgate Calendar of an earlier age). Along the country roads, the notary jogs on business, dressed in violet cloth richly furred, solidly seated on his ample cob. He passes the country squire (the grandchild of the last rich semi-noble vavassour) hooded in black, parti-colored russet, and wrapped in a houppelande of English green, furred with squirrel, the long end of his cloak falling over the left shoulder. The shep. herd on the hill drives his flock; he is warmly clad in strong brown woollen. The thatcher, as he steps across the fields from his daughter's churching, is dressed all in his best in a large check of brown and white and blue. There stands the If not in every village, at least in every farmer, all in sombre russet, with an ele- châtellerie, there was a doctor, a surgeon, gant hood striped black and yellow; there and a barber surgeon; *the laborers apare gold rings on his hand, over his pear to have used their services freely and gloves, and gold clasps to his girdle. At to have rewarded them with liberality. the little village inn the serving-maid One of Bonis's day-laborers falling ill, comes out, dressed in iron-grey, with a sends to Montauban for the physician of bunch of pink roses in her hands. The the place, and pays him for several visits mason of the hamlet stands at his gate, the sum of four sols two deniers which chatting with a fellow of his craft, and the we may compare to nearly £1 15s. of our tramp in search of work; the home-stay-money. Another pays his doctor as much ing workman is well clad in whitish grey, with darker grey hose and a grey-blue hood; the traveller has a long brown cottehardie, lined with an old coat, a brown hood buckled under the chin, brown hose, and strong leather shoes with The doctors of the Middle Ages and steel buckles. At the corner of the road later, even so late as the middle of the fifa wandering beggar waits for alms, dressed teenth century, were chiefly inspired by in a mantle of faded russet patched with the theories of the Arabs. Louis XI., as we an older light-blue garment, and a hood of know, made the Paris University copy in Heaven knows what color, not worth two extenso the great work of Aboo Bekr ibn deniers. His wife squats beside him, Zacaria er Razi, the famous physician of slovenly dressed in an old, patched cas- the tenth century, whose masterpiece," El sock tied round her waist with a reed. Mansoori," is a résumé of Arabian theraShe has no hair, and a strip of dirty cloth peutics. This book, commonly known as tied round her head but half conceals her" Razi," was very popular throughout the baldness. They are the only really shabby people that we meet (save the wandering friars, who make a virtue of it); but few are so magnificent as the drover, a person of importance, it would appear, from the

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as eighteen sols, say £3 125. And in the accounts of Bonis we find frequent mention of drugs and medicinal spices of an expensive sort, sold to the agricultural laborers of the district.

fourteenth century. A copy of it, bought by Bonis for four livres, assisted him in the preparation of his drugs, and of the plasters, unguents, electuaries and tisanes Joubert, Vie Privée en Anjou, p. 60.

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