"You would not even let him take the place of the noble lad you lost. But this is what I wanted to say. You are the only one I ever knew in my life who has really made me believe in love. Your poor wrecked life—"

"My dear, my life is really only beginning," and the falsetto laugh and strange statement ended the sudden fit of confi. dence and sympathy between the two.

Sophie's ideal lover became merged once more into the tiresome, useless partner in the firm, with his absurd, dreamy notions; and McIntyre's renewed vision of true girlhood, such as Sophie had given him for a moment or two, changed to his normal idea of the egotism and heartlessness of youth, that can see no hope but in itself, recognize the worth of no ambition but its own.

"And how do you like Pascal?" inquired McIntyre, as his own and Sophie's heart drifted from each other rapidly as they had approached.

"I see nothing to dislike in him yetexcept, of course, that he causes you and papa vexation."

so to have gained upon him since she saw him last, when she heard her father's laugh at the door, and saw him bringing Mr. Pascal at once towards McIntyre.

"Ah, there he is!" cried Jolliffe. "Mr. Pascal, we are indebted to you for the triumph of getting him here to-night. How are you, friend hermit? Here's Mr. Pas cal, who's come to teach the poor Pelican the art of supporting her numerous progeny without drawing so much on her own life blood."

McIntyre rose and shook hands with the new manager. He only gave one anxious, furtive glance at his face, then sank down again, saying, with a laugh full of depression,

"You startled us. I had forgotten all about business, and was indulging in a fit of sentiment with Miss Jolliffe."

Sophie could scarcely conceal her surprise. How was it the latter part of their brief conversation had gone from her mind, as it evidently had gone from his, and the recollection of the first part returned? How had it happened? When? The transition of thought and feeling had come in a moment - a moment, too, when one would have expected everything of the kind to have vanished at the appearance of a stranger, especially a stranger "You don't think he is one to be carry-regarded with so much foreboding as the ing this investigation farther than his in- new manager. structions compel him?"

"Is there nothing of the bloodhound let loose on his favorite scent in him?"

"Nothing whatever of the kind that I can see."

Sophie looked surprised. McIntyre never by any chance spoke to her on business, yet now he questioned her with a sort of feverish earnestness, and gazed in anxious suspense into her eyes.

"I should think decidedly not," she answered.

"Oh! you do."

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Yes; and I believe he will not find his necessary business much to his liking."

"Ah, yes. Then he would in all probability wish to simplify his task, and get it over as soon as possible?"

"That is what I should think." "Thanks, thanks."

Sophie, as her father spoke to McIntyre, glanced again at Pascal, and found his eyes regarding her in a manner that made her color painfully. But the last look at his face had solved the mystery as to her own and McIntyre's change of thought to the spirit of their brief confidence. It occurred to her that though they had, be fore Pascal's entrance, changed the subject of conversation, they had remained in the same attitude; and perhaps even the expression of the brief flash of confidence and sympathy remained, and was seen by Pascal, and was reflected back for them from his face.

Pascal hardly looked at McIntyre, but stood listening while Jolliffe made some good-humoredly sarcastic allusions to his partner's few and far-between visits to the brewery.

Sophie grew still more perplexed, for McIntyre seemed to have forgotten her, as he sank back in his chair, looking with wan, dreamy eyes on his thin hands as Sophie, although Keith had come to her their fingers locked and unlocked trem-side, could not help watching the two men blingly. when Jolliffe moved away and left them "No," he murmured, without looking at together. She felt concerned for each in her," he would not be likely to prolong ora manner. McIntyre had shown her complicate it."

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Sophie was still looking at him in wonder, and some increasing alarm at the wanness and tremulousness that seemed

involuntarily, in his weakness, how he dreaded Pascal's intervention, and Pascal, she felt, with a keenness of perception rather unusual to her, had observed

words to veil a livelier love-passage than had ever passed between Sophie and him self. Did it strike any one else as it struck him? Yes; again Pascal's eyes seemed reading Sophie's blushing face, with more interest than Keith thought warrantable in a stranger. It immediately convinced him the state of things between Dwining and Sophie must be even more apparent than he had thought. He felt bewildered and irritated beyond endurance. Only a day before, when a friend bantered him on his delay in persuading Sophie to agree as to "the happy day," he had, with an air of graceful vanity, if not insolence, intimated that only a word from himself was wanting. He had done this in perfect sincerity, having quite believed the hesitation was all on his side.

selves. It was the fervent entreaty in his eyes when he said, "Come to-mor row;" the tender yet apologetic doubt as he asked " Really?" the pleasure Sophie showed in stilling the doubt by her honest look and word of assurance: it was all this made Keith wish it would not be vulgarly eccentric (to say the least of it) to throw Dwining out of the window by which he stood. How many times had Keith asked Sophie to go with him to St. Matthias's, and invariably in vain, she always excusing herself on the plea of her devotion to the old parish church.

Although it was past midnight when McIntyre and Keith returned to the Poplars, the good fire in the library tempted them to enjoy the semblance of winter in the heavily dewed summer's night. Keith, as a rule, was not an impulsive "A very decent fellow, that man of young man, but he certainly was to-night Lovibond's," observed McIntyre, warmmuch inclined to do something to humble ing his hands. "I'm very glad for Jol Sophie, as he felt she had humbled him.liffe's sake; it would have been so unYet he told himself that the first thing to pleasant for them to have had a vulgar or be done was to completely conceal from an inconsiderate person quartered upon her that he was either surprised or irri- them." tated. He sang and accompanied Sophie and Dwining in a trio, and even persuaded the other pupils to join in glees; Keith condescending to sing with them. Still, all through the evening he saw that almost involuntary but earnest claiming on the part of Sophie and Dwining of their right to be confidential and to interchange sympathy and something more than sympathy, in the name of the music in which they were both enthusiastic. He could have borne it to a certain extent, but when he saw how they drew each other out, and how charined they appeared at the result of so doing, Keith felt very much as though he was being made a fool of.

Yes, my cousin wants to go." "And you'll be there to-morrow morn"Yes." “Really?"

"Really."

Keith knocked off the end of his cigar and stood looking at it with his elbow on the mantelpiece. McIntyre glanced at him, wondering a little at his silence; but his perfect features were as usual imperturbable, except that they had a slightly pensive expression extremely becoming. At length he did answer, showing he had not been oblivious to his guardian's remark.

"I fancy though," he said, admiring the turn of his wrist as he held his cigar, and speaking in a more inert drawl than usual, "there may be unpleasantness." Do you?"

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"I fancy it might be as well for me to be out of it all."

"Out of it? Then what do you mean to do?"

"Don't know at all," lisped Keith.

"My dear boy, this is childish. What can you mean? McIntyre leaned back in his chair, and looked at Keith with an alarm in his eyes the occasion did not seem to warrant. Surely," he added, with his high-pitched laugh, “you are jesting."

Keith shook his head, hiding a yawn, and answered with languid decision, "No." His weariness was not affected. His first occasion for jealousy had caused him as much pain as it would have done a better man.

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But but," said McIntyre, "I surely Dwining's words were nothing in them- don't understand you. You cannot possi

bly mean your affection for Miss Jolliffe is to be endangered by her father's present difficulties?"

"I fancy my plan of life will be entirely changed," answered Keith calmly. "One thing I'm resolved on; I had certainly better be absent while things are so out of shape at the brewery. But we can talk of this next week. I am keeping you up; and if Hall's funny songs have bored you as they have me, you want rest. Good night."

'Good-night," said McIntyre with white

lips.

When Keith had gone and his light though languid step was heard on the stairs, the head in the armchair fell forward upon trembling hands; then it was lifted, and the eyes looked into the fire with all the pathos of a child charged with some crime it can but partly understand.

"Does he mean it?" said McIntyre, half aloud; "does he really mean it, and does he want his money? And must 1 be ruined!-disgraced for the whim of a boy?"

utterances of this kind, and the unhappy spirit of detraction which lay beneath such wild and grotesque humors. Carlyle will always remain an artist in epithets - but few will turn to him for an intelligent or comprehensive estimate of any great name of his own or of recent time.

We propose to look at Coleridge for a little as a religious thinker, and to ask what is the meaning and value of his work in this respect now that we can calmly and fully judge it. If Coleridge was anything, he was not only in his own view, as Mr. Traill admits, but in the view of his gen. eration, a religious philosopher. It is not only the testimony of men like Hare, or Sterling, or Maurice, or even Cardinal Newman, but of John Stuart Mill, that his teaching awakened and freshened all contemporary thought. He was recognized with all his faults as a truly great thinker, who raised the mind of the time and gave it new and wide impulses. This judgment we feel sure will yet verify itself. If English literature ever regains the higher tone of our earlier national life - the tone of Hooker and Milton and Jeremy Taylor Coleridge will be again acknowl edged, in Julius Hare's words, as "a true sovereign of English thought." He will From The Fortnightly Review. take rank in the same line of spiritual COLERIDGE AS A SPIRITUAL THINKER. genius. He has the same elevation of MR. TRAILL'S recent volume has re feeling, the same profound grasp of moral called the poet-philosopher who died just and spiritual ideas, the same wide range fifty years ago, leaving a strongly marked of vision. He has, in short, the same love but indefinite impression upon the mind of wisdom, the same insight, the same of his time. The volume has done some-largeness-never despising nature or art, thing to renew and vivify the impression or literature, for the sake of religion, still both in respect of Coleridge's poetry and criticism. His work as a critic has never, perhaps, been better or more completely exhibited. It is recognized generously in all its largeness and profundity, as well as delicacy and subtlety; and justice is especially done to his Shakespearian commentary, which in its richness, variety, felicity, combined with depth and acute ness, is absolutely unrivalled. But Mr. Traill cannot be said to have even attempted any estimate of Coleridge as a spiritual thinker. It may be questioned how far he has recognized that there is a spiritual side to all his thought, without which neither his poetry nor his criticism can be fully understood, cleverly as they may be judged.

It is not only out of date, but outside of all intelligent judgment, to quote at this time of day Mr. Carlyle's well-known caricature from his "Life of Sterling," and put readers off with this as a "famous criticism." We now know how to value

less ever despising religion for the sake of culture. In reading over Coleridge's prose works again, returning to them after a long-past (familiarity, I am particularly struck by their massive and large intellectuality, akin to our older Elizabethan literature. There is everywhere the play of great power of imagination as well as reason - of spiritual perception as well as logical subtlety.

--

To speak of Coleridge in this manner as a great spiritual power, an eminently healthy writer in the higher regions of thought, may seem absurd to some who think mainly of his life, and the fatal failure which characterized it. It is the shadow of this failure of manliness in his conduct, as in that of his lifelong friend Charles Lamb, which no doubt prompted the great genius who carried manliness, if little sweetness, from his Annandale home, to paint both the one and the other in such darkened colors. We have not a word to say on behalf of the failings of either.