returned from the wars to the slovenly and unceremonious methods of English Venery, that he sought to improve them on the French model and used his dignity and position as Master of the Game for the purpose?

as

The conjecture is not original with us, and we are therefore the more ready to accept it; moreover the dedication of the treatise that immediately follows THE CRAFT OF HONTYNG in the Cotton manuscript shows that it is highly probable. The author of THE MAYSTER of the Game, for such is the title he gives to it, describes himself holding that office under King Henry the Fourth, and as Edmund Langley was by no means on bad terms with Henry of Lancaster, and was devoted above all things to the chase, there is nothing extravagant in assuming that he was not ill pleased to retain his appointment under the new sovereign. Henry, again, might well be disposed to confirm him in his old post from motives both of friendship and policy, for Edmund, like most of his kind, was a popular man,

All gentle disport as to a lord appent
He used aye, and to the poor supporting
Wherever he was in any place biding
Without suppryse or any estorcyon
Of the porayle [pauvrail] or any oppression.

That the two treatises are from the same hand, the recurrence of identical phrases and of the principal features in both renders almost certain. The probability is that the first was only a sketch for a larger and more important work, which was abandoned when the writer obtained access to the manuscript written by Gaston de Foix. Froissart, who visited Gaston in 1385, says nothing about the book, though he records that his host loved hounds of all beasts, and hunting both winter and summer, so that it may well have taken another ten years or more to reach England.

But we must reserve THE MAYSTER OF THE GAME for a separate paper, for to discuss it in the short space that remains to us would be an insult to the shade of Gaston and, in du Fouilloux's phrase, to derogate from the dignity of Venery.

OLDBERRY met me with more than his habitual joyousness of aspect while I was divesting myself of my outer coat in the hall of the Athenæum, a little club which a few choice spirits of Dublin had formed in Molesworth Street, a correct but decidedly dismal street on the attractive edge of society.

"I am glad you were able to come this evening, Paddy," he said. "Lumley has brought down a splendid Russian fellow. He came with letters to some of the men of Trinity, and Lumley is doing the honours."

"I am glad, too. Bridget is better now, and she ordered me away, found me, in fact, getting stupid, which she attributed to the atmosphere of the sick-room."

"I hope you told her that the club called in a body."

"Indeed I did, Oldberry. All you fellows are so kind to us; Bridget wonders as much as I."

Oldberry looked at me smiling in his pleasant way. "Why, Paddy, you're the pride of the club; and as for Miss Bridget, we all worship the ground she treads on."

Oldberry took my arm and led me across the hall into a little room where the members read and wrote letters on the club note-paper. Near a row of book-shelves I saw Lumley's broad shoulders and his massive brown head; he was holding a book in one hand, and with the other was accentuating his words by a series of vivid gesticulations. Beside him stood a remarkable figure. The delicate face, with its large luminous eyes, was of pale

The

olive tint, like that of faded ivory, and there was something in the excessive blackness of the hair, pointed beard, and moustache, suggesting eastern rather than southern blood. man was slim to a fault, and not above the middle height. He wore his hair brushed off his forehead like a child's ready for the round comb; an ugly fashion, I noted, and nothing less picturesque than his head and face could carry off an effect so unbecoming. The hair behind fell on to the top of his velvet coat-collar; and this collar, curving deeply round his long neck, and low in front to display a quantity of soft silk neckerchief, looked no less foreign and striking than his head.

"Ah!" cried Lumley, spying me, and holding out his hand with his smiles of cordial pleasure. "This is Paddy, our Paddy!"

All the fellows called me Paddy, and smiled when they greeted me. I have always thought it was because of the pleasure they took in pronouncing my name.

"Paddy!" murmured the Russian, letting his luminous gaze rest gently on my face, and I saw that even his deep eyes were stirred by something like a smile as he hesitated over the fascinating syllables. "It is a kind of sensation to meet any one of the name," he said, and his English was perfect.

"Then the rascally charm of 'Paddy' has penetrated to far Russia," laughed Lumley.

"We speak of an Irishman as Paddy, just as we speak of an Eng

lishman as John Bull; only somehow John Bull does not make us smile, and we invariably show our teeth when we say Paddy. You must excuse me, sir, but the name is so sympathetic and humorous,-like the face of a good-tempered child."

"Oh, it's never necessary to apologise to Paddy," said Oldberry; "he does not understand the disagreeable in anything. He has got an enviable trick of shutting his eyes upon all that is unpleasant, and everything he sees pleases him.”

Oldberry, you perceive, is a goodnatured fellow. Indeed they are all good-natured fellows at the Athenæum. Why they should agree to spoil me in their persistent way is a question I cannot answer.

We fell into literary chat. Lumley had just founded a new review, which we fondly hoped would eclipse the famous EDINBURGH, and of its prospects each had much to say. We all wrote poetry, essays, and short stories in those days. I have never been able to ascertain that the IRISH REVIEW seriously interfered with the reputation and circulation of the great Whig organ indeed, I fear that, like most things Irish, it appealed too exclusively to local tastes; but we were proud of it, we were desperately in earnest, and we were exceedingly industrious. And when Arcanieva actually proposed to translate a short story by Tourgenieff and write an essay on Russian politics for us, we literally embraced him, toasted him in punch, and listened respectfully to his views expressed between continuous puffs of cigarettes.

As an Englishman or a Frenchman, he would have interested us; as a Russian he simply captivated us. His slow lisping tones, his careful enunciation, the breathless magnitude of his views upon European questions, which we approached with provincial

reticence and timidity, that queer black head of his and the impassable ivory face,-all combined to catch our fancy and mysteriously inflame our imagination. We in Dublin are insufficiently accustomed to foreign influences, and hence our awe of the foreigner. Frenchmen have occasionally sought the shelter of our hospitable shores, and have been kind enough to profess themselves both amused and interested. A casual Italian has settled in our midst, and fallen in love with our ladies. I think I have even heard of a German domesticated among us. But a Russian! The picture of a Chinese, a Turk, or a Japanese walking our streets and familiarly greeting us by name could not have excited or as

tounded us more. For weeks we went about seeking wild and improbable excuses for coming in contact with the fascinating stranger. We grew proud and ostentatious, and spoke with frantic volubility of Tolstoi and Lermontoff and Ivan Tourgenieff. A few of us went so far as to purchase Ollendorff's method of learning Russian, and called one another Gospodi this and Gospodi that, in a tripping lively way that hinted a considerable knowledge of the language behind

What a splendid thing it was, we felt, to walk down Grafton Street with a real live Tartar; not in the least like a Tartar, but a gentle polished creature, who might be a Russian attaché, and who held us spell-bound by his discourse, which flowed softly and fluently from his handsome lips. and sometimes tangled itself in the waves of his silky beard. Yes, we were proud of him; proud of his distinction, of his appearance, of his universal knowledge, of his revolutionary principles, and of his evident appreciation of ourselves. A Russian who was not a Nihilist would have pleased us less, as a being deprived of

special local colour. It was impossible to be more cultured or more revolutionary than young Arcanieva; consequently our enthusiasm knew no bounds.

My sister Bridget was feverishly anxious to see him, so I proposed on the first occasion to bring him out to our modest little house at Donnybrook.

Bridget and I had grown up together, indispensable to each other, tenderly attached by ties far deeper than those of blood; by ties of sympathy, of taste, of solitude, and a quaint infantine reliance that was physical almost as much as intellectual. The pleasure of a book would be marred for me if Bridget had not read it, to discuss it with me; the daintiest meal would be tasteless for her, if I were not there to share it. Except during office-hours, and my weekly visit to the club, we were never separated. The fellows never wanted to see me alone. They knew that Bridget was my second self, and loved to sit and talk to her in our pleasant little parlour on the Donnybrook Road. They all admired and loved her, just as if she were their sister as well as mine. I do not know how much it is permitted a brother to say in praise of his sister; but at the risk of offending against an unwritten law, I will admit with pride that Bridget is the prettiest and the sweetest woman I have ever met. With her there my fireside is abundantly decorated; and I have not yet felt the temptation to desire another

presence.

The mention of Arcanieva, as I have said, excited her, and a description of his person and his qualifications by no means tended to allay the excitement. We had both read WAR AND PEACE, and, in spite of noble resolutions, had been unable to conceal from ourselves that it was colossally dull. Bridget, being of a finer and

more charitable nature, qualified the condemnation by calling it cyclopean; she said it reminded her of the vast steppes of Russia and its wide halfpeopled dominions. It followed, she thought, that a book treating of such a nation could not accurately be lively or sparkling. In the interest of local colour she was willing to sacrifice her individual taste, and to describe it, with a solemn shake of her pretty brown head, as a great work, a profound, a cyclopean view of life. I swallowed the cyclopean, as I would have swallowed an elephant, if physically able to do so, upon her persuasion, and with much misgiving applied myself to ANNA KARENINA. We made better way with this, though neither of us would have thought the book less powerful or less entertaining, if that heavy agricultural philosopher, Levine, had been left out of it. On the whole, we enjoyed ANNA KARENINA, and were determined to speak of it with unqualified admiration, saying nothing whatever about Levine, when Arcanieva came.

noon.

He came to tea one Sunday afterWhen he stepped into the soft lamplight, smiling upon us both, I thought I had never seen anything more strangely handsome than his head with its shining dusky hair brushed roundly off it and touching the broad velvet collar, that had an appearance really Byronic. His gleaming eyes, after a slight smile of greeting directed towards me, rested intensely upon Bridget's face,―rested thereon deliberately, complacently, but not in the least impertinently. What they saw must have pleased them, however beautiful the Russian ladies may be. Bridget looked like a little Dresden statue thrilled into life, in a state of fluttering pink and white excitement, her soft blue eyes burning lustrously as with an inward flame. She held out her hand, and it was a very pretty

hand, slim and white and deliciously dimpled. Arcanieva smiled as he took it, as if he wished us to understand that he thought the habit of shaking hands upon introduction a singularly agreeable practice, when the proffered hand was that of a pretty woman.

He drank several cups of tea, and ate several thin slices of bread-and-butter and some plum-cake, with an evident relish, talking the while in a persistent murmuring stream. He spoke well : his voice was musical and slow, with a slight lisp that was an added attraction; and his language was rather more correct than that of the average young Englishman who frequents drawingrooms and drinks tea of an afternoon. His culture, considering his youth, was amazing, and more amazing still were his theories. He was a theosophist, and discoursed in an odd vague way about the Elemental. I had a tremendous respect for his intellect, but for the life of me I could never get at his meaning when he mounted this particular hobby. I used to dream afterwards that I was wandering through space greeted continuously with the word elemental in letters of fire. As well as I could make out from his soft vague monologue, Lermontoff and Byron were the only men of genius who have this quality of elemental. English literature was a conventional imposition; the French was also a sham, an unconventional sham, blighted by the so-called esprit gaulois, which he translated "the spirit of sex," and I thought the definition good; Germany nourished herself upon thin sentimentalities; and the South had long since burned itself out in the fire and brimstone of its

own gross passions. In the puff of a cigarette he obliterated all their claims, and Russia stood out, sharply defined, as he seemed to think, by that inexplicable word elemental, rising from an ocean of potentialities to build itself

"And Ireland?" Bridget asked him breathlessly, with a glance of enchanted surprise.

"Ireland, my dear young lady, has its future. It is perhaps farther away than ours, which nearly touches the present. But you will need to throw off the chains of imitation. You are at present neither Irish nor English, simply provincial. You copy the English,-may I say it and not offend?— badly, weakly. You have less of the Elemental in you than the savage races who breathe at least by themselves, until they, too, are spoiled by imitation. You are an interesting race, a delightful race; but you are an embryonic race, and the Potential is not as yet discovered in you."

We felt unreasonably abashed; our judge was so amiable, so suave, so inexpressibly superior. Yet Bridget found voice to make a spirited protest for the honour of her beloved land.

I next met Arcanieva at a college breakfast-party in Lumley's rooms. He was still holding forth softly upon the Elemental and decayed literatures, and smiled as charmingly as ever when congratulated upon a really pretty poem that had recently appeared in our review under his name. I mentioned my official address, and Isaid I should take it as a favour to be occasionally disturbed in my easy labours by his engaging presence, and also pressed him to drink tea with my sister on the following Sunday. He was delighted with both proposals,