The round cheek and portly figure had long lost all the proportions of girlhood; and something unmistakeable about the matron's air and tone, told of a greater change than these-a change in mind and soul. As Leuthold kissed the hand of Madame Waldhof, he no longer thought of the Hilda of his boyhood.

She let fall a few tears as she spoke of her father, and then the wife of Herman recovered her usual calm demeanour. She called her children, who, after much resistance, came to kiss Leuthold's hand one by one. One, a sweet, modest-eyed, little maiden, whom her mother called Hilda,-came and stood by Leuthold's knee. It seemed as if the spirit of the first Hilda were revived in her; as the old man met her open gaze, and laid his hand on her soft braided hair, the child wondered that he repeated her name so often in such a low, dreamy tone, and that as he kissed her, a tear, not her own, was left upon her cheek. It had fallen to the memory of what was now nothingness-the Hilda who once had been.

"You will annoy Leuthold with all these young folk," said Herman to his wife. "Mothers are so vain of their children! Come, old friend, and I will show you all the changes I have made in the house."

"You have let this hall remain, I see," said Leuthold, in a low tone, as they went out. "Do you

remember that night, Herman ?"

"The night I dreamed such a wild dream? It was some of thy strange fancies which got into my brain, Leuthold; but I have forgotten all such things now.

Let us go and see the horses. I hunt almost as much as ever, though I am not so young as I was the day I quarrelled with Von P―. Ha! ha! Dost remember it, Leuthold? To think how foolish I made myself for the sake of that old dame yonder! Yet Hilda has been a good wife to me; and we live very comfortably."

"I am glad," Leuthold answered, absently; and Herman continued—

"Those old times were pleasant, after all, and we often laugh over them. I sometimes thought, after you went so suddenly, that you really fancied Hilda. But if you did, I suppose you have long got over it— these love notions are foolish things. We are all wiser, and we need not quarrel about her now-Ha! ha!"

And Waldhof's laugh made needless the answer which, for his life, Leuthold could not have uttered. All that day he followed his friend mechanically, sat at the board, listened to the husband and wife as they discussed the daily household events, and chronicled the words and deeds of their children. Once only the conversation turned on things in which Leuthold could take an interest. He asked after the treasures of the professor's library.

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Oh, they have passed into different hands," said Madame Waldhof. "I was told that no one cares for manuscripts now, since printing has become known."

"For my part I care little for books or manuscripts either. One lives very comfortably without being learned. I have not caught Madame Waldhof reading

this long time; and I think of her just as highly. I imagine she, too, is quite as contented with me as if I were the cleverest man living."

Hilda looked up in her husband's face with a beaming smile, and laid her hand in his. That look brought back her girlish days-it showed that one feeling remained the same-woman's love!

At last, when Herr Waldhof had fallen asleep, and his wife sat spinning beside him in perfect silence, lest his slumbers should be broken, Leuthold crept away to his own chamber. There, in the stillness of meditation, his whole life rose up before him with its array of shadows. They glided past him, fast changing like forms in a dream. He alone remained the same. To the time of gray hairs Leuthold had carried the one true feeling of life-love. It was a reality; all the rest were but fleeting shadows. He rejoiced that it had been so; that his love had been made immortal in memory; that, embalmed by suffering, the one ideal had remained secure through the changes of life. In this love he rested; still worshipping, not the real Hilda, the wife of Herman, but the Hilda of his dreams—the pure image of womanhood. He lovednot her, but love itself.

Again in his solitude his guardian angel stood beside Leuthold. It showed him the difference between the life of the body and the life of the soul; it painted the man-animal at his feasts, at his pleasures, wasting his existence in petty joys; how, when the mask of youth falls off, he sinks down, down, by lower degrees, until,

in the aged driveller, no sign remains of the casket that contained a divine soul.

"Hast thou not been rich ?

"Wouldst thou have exchanged thy life, with all its loneliness-all its cares-for such an one as this ?" murmured the inner voice. in the wealth of thy soul. Hast thou not been happy? -in scattering blessings on others, far and wide. Hast thou not been loved? for all holy spirits look down with immortal tenderness on the man who walks the earth in purity, in meekness, and in charity. Thou hast done thy work, O faithful one! Lay thy burden down, and enter into thy rest."

And on Leuthold's ear fell another low tone-solemn and sweet-which he knew well.

"Come," it breathed, "son of my love, I wait for thee! Come home! The shadows are passing away: the immortal day is dawning. Thou hast lived, thou hast suffered, thou hast conquered. Now rejoice!"

As the old man listened, a heavenly smile brightened his face, for he knew that the time of his departure was at hand. He looked out into the night, and the angels of the stars breathed their influence down upon him. Every ray, as it fell, brought with it a divine message, penetrating to his inmost soul. Joyfully, rapturously that weary soul answered the summons, and spread its wings to the land of immortality.

THE SCULPTOR OF BRUGES.

ABOUT the middle of the sixteenth century, there was not an artist in the Netherlands whose fame had spread wider than that of Messer Andrea, the sculptor of Bruges. His father had come from Italy, and settled in Flanders, where he lived and struggled, an ardent and enthusiastic man, whose genius cast just sufficient light to show him his own defects. This love of the beautiful was the sole inheritance he left his son. But Andrea's northern birth and education had, to a certain degree, qualified his Italian descent, so that to his father's impulsive nature he added a steady perseverance, without which all the genius in the world is but as a meteor of a moment.

The branch of design that Andrea followed was wood-carving, in which, by his wonderful skill, he surpassed all his contemporaries. In our day, it is impossible, from the few relics that remain, to know the perfection to which our ancestors of the middle ages carried this art; which attained even to the dignity of sculpture, when Gothic saints and Madonnas looked down from their niches in cathedrals: though the