alike of passion and of vanity-"Your [ of excitement-lay stress on excitement friends must see if something cannot be done for you, Colonel Sewell. I have little doubt but that you have many and warm friends. I speak not of myself; I am but a broken reed to depend on. Never was there one with less credit with his party. I might go farther, and say, never was there one whose advocacy would be more sure to damage a good cause; therefore exclude me in all questions of your advancement. If you could obliterate our relationship it might possibly serve you."

SO.

"I am too proud of it, my lord, to think

99

"Well, sir," said he, with a sigh, "it is possibly a thing a man need not feel ashamed of, at least I hope as much. But we must take the world as it is, and when we want the verdict of public opinion, we must not presume to ask for a special jury. What does that servant want? Will you have the kindness to ask him whom he is looking for?"

"It is a visitor's card, my lord," said Sewell, handing it to the old man as he spoke.

"There is some writing on it. Do me the favour to read it."

Sewell took the card and read, "See Sir B. for me. - WILMINGTON. Sir Brook Fossbrooke." The last words Sewell spoke in a voice barely above a whisper, for a deadly sickness came over him, and he swayed to and fro like one about to faint.

"What! does he return to the charge?" cried the old man, fiercely. "The Viceroy was a diplomatist once. Might it not have taught him that, after a failure, it would be as well to employ another envoy?"

"You have seen this gentleman already then?" asked Sewell, in a low faint tone. "Yes, sir. We passed an hour and half together an hour and half that neither of us will easily forget."

"I conjecture, then, that he made no very favourable impression upon you, my lord?".

"Sir, you go too fast. I have said nothing to warrant your surmise; nor am I one to be catechised as to the opinions I form of other men. It is enough on the present occasion if I say I do not desire to receive Sir Brook Fossbrooke, accredited though he be from so high a quarter. Will you do me the very great favour" and now his voice became almost insinuating in its tone "will you so deeply oblige me as to see him for me? Say that I am prevented by the state of my health; that the rigorous injunctions of my doctor to avoid all causes

-deprive me of the honour of receiving him in person; but that you mention our relationship - have been deputed by me to hear, and if necessary to convey to me any communication he may have to make. You will take care to impress upon him that if the subject-matter of his visit be the same as that so lately discussed between ourselves, you will avail yourself of the discretion confided to you not to report it to me. That my nerves have not sufficiently recovered from the strain of that excitement to return to a topic no less full of irritating features than utterly hopeless of all accommodation. Mind, sir, that you employ the word as I give it - accommodation.' It is a Gallicism, but all the better, where one desires to be imperative, and not precise. You have your instructions, sir."

66

Yes, I think I understand what you desire me to do. My only difficulty is to know whether the matters Sir Brook Fossbroke may bring forward be the same as those you discussed together. If I had any clue to these topics, I should at once be in a position to say These are themes I must decline to present to the Chief Baron."

"You have no need to know them, sir," said the old man, haughtily. "You are in the position of an attesting witness; you have no dealing with the body of the document. Ask Sir Brook the question as I have put it, and reply as I have dictated."

Sewell stood for a moment in deep thought. Had the old man but known over what realms of space his mind was wandering what troubles and perplexities that brain was encountering- -he might have been more patient and more merciful as he gazed on him.

"I don't think, sir, I have confided to you any very difficult or very painful task," said the Judge at last.

"Nothing of the kind, my lord," replied he, quickly; "my anxiety is only that I may acquit myself to your perfect satisfac tion. I'll go at once."

"You will find me here whenever you want me."

Sewell bowed, and went his way; not straight towards the house, however, but into a little copse at the end of the garden, to recover his equanimity, and collect himself. Of all the disasters that could befall him, he knew of none he was less ready to confront than the presence of Sir Brook Fossbrooke in the same town with himself. No suspicion ever crossed his mind that he would come to Ireland. The very last he had heard of him was in New Zealand,

ness, deference, if needed, to any extent; he could have acted his part-it would have been mere acting as man of honour and man of courage, to the life, with any other to confront him but Sir Brook.

where it was said he was about to settle. | to carry him through a passage of difficulty. What, too, could be his business with the He could assume a temper of complete imChief Baron? had he discovered their rela- perturbability; he could put on calm, coldtionship, and was he come to denounce and expose him? No evidently not. The Viceroy's introduction of him could not point in this direction, and then the old Judge's own manner negatived this conjecture. Had he heard but one of the fifty stories Sir Brook could have told of him, there would be no question of suffering him to cross his threshold.

"How shall I meet him? how shall I address him?" muttered he again and again to himself, as he walked to and fro in a perfect agony of trouble and perplexity. With almost any other man in the world Sewell would have relied on his personal qualities

This, however, was the one man on earth who knew him-the one man by whose mercy he was able to hold up his head and maintain his station; and that this one man should now be here! here, within a few yards of where he stood !

"I could murder him as easily as I go to meet him," muttered Sewell, as he turned towards the house.

CASTLES IN THE AIR.

FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM BY W. C. BRYANT.

"But there is yet a region of the clouds
Unseen from the low earth. Beyond the veil
Of these dark volumes rolling through the sky,
Its mountain summits glisten in the sun,
The realm of Castles in the Air. The foot
Of man hath never trod those shining streets;
But there his spirit, leaving the dull load
Of bodily organs, wanders with delight,
And builds its structures of the impalpable
mist,

Glorious beyond the dream of architect,
And populous with forms of nobler mould
Than ever walked the earth." So said my
guide,

And led me, wondering, to a headland height
That overlooked a fair broad vale shut in

By the great hills of cloudland. "Now behold
The Castle-builders!" Then I looked; and,
lo!

The vale was filled with shadowy forms, that bore

Each a white wand, with which they touched
the banks

Of mist beside them, and at once arose,
Obedient to their wish, the walls and domes
Of stately palaces, Gothic or Greek,
Or such as in the land of Mahomet
Uplift the crescent, or, in forms more strange,
Border the ancient Indus, or behold
Their gilded friezes mirrored in the lakes
Of China, yet of ampler majesty,
And gorgeously adorned. Tall porticos
Sprang from the ground; the eye pursued afar
Their colonnades, that lessened to a point
In the faint distance. Portals that swung
back

On musical hinges showed the eye within
Vast halls with golden floors, and bright al-

coves,

And walls of pearl, and sapphire vault besprent

In trains of vapor, through the empty air.
Meantime the astonished builder, dispossessed,
Stands 'mid the drifting rack. A brief de-
spair

"Take thou this wand," my bright companion

said.

I took it from her hand, and with it touched
The knolls of snow-white mist, and they grew
green

With soft, thick herbage. At another touch,
A brook leaped forth, and dashed and sparkled
by;

And shady walks through shrubberies cool and
close

Wandered; and where, upon the open grounds,
The peaceful sunshine lay, a vineyard nursed
Its pouting clusters; and from boughs that
drooped

Beneath their load an orchard shed its fruit;
And gardens, set with many a pleasant herb,
And many a glorious flower, made sweet the air.

I looked, and I exulted; yet I longed
For Nature's grander aspects, and I plied
The slender rod again; and then arose
Woods tall and wide, of odorous pine and fir,
And every noble tree that casts the leaf
In autumn. Paths that wound between their

stems

Seizes him; but the wand is in his hand,
And soon he turns him to his task again.
"Behold," said the fair being at my side,
"How one has made himself a diadem
Out of the bright skirts of a cloud that lay
Steeped in the golden sunshine, and has bound
The bauble on his forehead! See, again,
How from these vapors he calls up a host
With arms and banners! A great multitude
Gather and bow before him with bare heads.
To the four winds his messengers go forth,
And bring him back earth's homage. From Gray pinnacles and walls of splintered rock.

the ground

Another calls a winged image, such

As poets give to Fame, who, to her mouth
Putting a silver trumpet, blows abroad
A loud, harmonious summons to the world,
And all the listening nations shout his name.
Another yet, apart from all the rest,
Casting a fearful glance from side to side,
Touches the ground by stealth. Beneath his
wand

A glittering pile grows up, ingots and bars
Of massive gold, and coins on which earth's
kings

Have stamped their symbols." As these words
were said,

The north wind blew again across the vale,
And, lo! the beamy crown flew off in mist;
The host of armèd men became a scud
Torn by the angry blast; the form of Fame
Tossed its long arms in air, and rode the wind,
A jagged cloud; the glittering pile of gold
Grew pale and flowed in a gray reek away.
Then there were sobs and tears from those
whose work

The wind had scattered: some had flung them-
selves

Upon the ground in grief; and some stood
fixed

In blank bewilderment; and some looked on
Unmoved, as at a pageant of the stage.
Suddenly hidden by the curtain's fall.

Led through the solemn shade to twilight glens,
To thundering torrents and white waterfalls,
And edge of lonely lakes, and chasms between
The mountain-cliffs. Above the trees were

seen

MISERIES OF THE HONEYMOON.

From the Saturday Review. | ous of them is to go on the Continent. As
a rule, a newly-married couple could
scarcely do a more rash and ill-considered
thing. The tremendous revolution in
thoughts and habits which cannot but ensue
from the new state of things is quite bad
enough, without adding to the strangeness
and novelty by surrounding the already be-
wildered bride with the unusual customs
and mysterious ordinances of Continental
hotels. The ways of foreigners are not as
our ways. The presence of men where at
home the service is performed by women,
the presence of people under circumstances
in which at home one is accustomed to their
absence, the horribly deficient accommoda-
tion in the shape of dressing-rooms and
baths, and a variety of startling usages quos
dicere versu non est, combine to make a so-
journ in all but a very few Continental ho-
tels rather a serious trial. Even to a man
it is trying. The bridegroom may be nearly
as much harassed as his less audacious com-
panion. Still, hers is the harder part. It
is sometimes said that it would be much
more sensible to bring English girls up on
Continental principles, and that we should
do better to cultivate their delicacy up to a
much less sensitive point. Our assailants
maintain that a great deal of what we prize
is no more than a useless fringe of delicacy,
which we might strip off without
any
real purity, and with the greatest increase
in freedom and comfort. This may be, or
it may not. Whether the foreign fashion
of recognizing facts which in this country
we are accustomed to conceal be an im-
provement or not, there is certainly no like-
lihood of the slightest change taking place
in the present generation. Perhaps those
who are brides now, recollecting their own
sorrows and discomforts, may bring up their
daughters on revolutionary principles.
Meanwhile the fact remains that to an Eng-
lish lady, brought up with English notions
and English habits, the Continent is by no
means a pleasant place for travel with a
strange husband. She may not talk moon-
shine to herself about being "plague-
spotted " or " disowned by her family," but
there still will probably be many moments
when she would give worlds to be back again
even in the dullest of English homes.

In a recently published novel, the authoress has been at the pains to introduce a little disquisition on honeymoons, which must fill the spirit of every reader with distress. The common belief is that the time of the honeymoon is one of the most pure and genuine bliss. But this, it would appear, is a mere delusion. "Of all the discomfortable periods of a woman's life, that which is derisively called the honeymoon is the most discomfortable." Presuming that discomfortable means the same thing as uncomfortable, one is rather startled by this to begin with, but worse follows. "The aspect of things, like an unaired robe, strikes coldly against her heart; there is no nook or corner where she seems to have her fit abiding-place; the smoothness of sweet custom has departed from her path, and a rough road of jarring incongruities is substituted for it." What on earth are the jarring incongruities thus mysteriously named? And would not a majority of brides look back upon the lethargic dulness of sweet custom rather than its smoothness? Why a pleasant excursion with a lover should be either jarring or incongruous we cannot for the life of us make out. How ever, we are assured that every bride sighs for "the gracious days of untrammelled singleness;" never was she so much bored by her old solitude as by this "true loneliness of never being alone." And then, says the writer indignantly, though rather incomprehensibly we own, "As if it were not enough to steep her to the lips in strangeness-strange duties, strange habits, strange hopes and fears for a future yet hidden away in a darkness far deeper than that of the grave-it is her fate to be removed away from every family scene, as if she were plague-spotted, and as if her own household had disowned her." The last few words sound most uncommonly like nonsense, and any bride who should be so foolish as to feel herself plague-spotted or cast off, because she had gone away with her husband instead of staying quietly at home, would deserve to be divorced on her return. But though the authoress has put the case somewhat hyperbolically, as it is the wont of authoresses to do, it is not difficult to see that there may be a basis of fact and reason for her gloomy picture. People no doubt make the most dreadful blunders in the arrangement of these memorable excursions. The most common and the most conspicu

loss to

But, in arranging a honeymoon, is not all travelling about from place to place a clear blunder? Travelling has a fearfully trying effect on the temper with most people. It makes them peevish and hasty. They never succeed in getting the luggage and the tickets fairly off their minds, or else they show a fatuous indifference about them which is

for ever causing all sorts of confusion and in real life. Two people must have a very horrid discomfort. Many people, too, who extraordinary amount of internal resources are thoroughly agreeable in an ordinary to go and spend five or six weeks together way, display the strangest and most unsus- in some place which is indescribably pretty pected traits when they find themselves and romantic, but at the same time very among unfamiliar faces. They begin to lonely and very dull. Of course, if they give themselves curious airs, as if they were work at science or history or philosophy for persons of quality and consequence in dis- five or six hours a day, they may get on guise; or they shrink timorously or defi- very well. A walk together and dinner antly into the depths of their inner selves. together after this would not be likely to Then, again, frequent change of scene does pall. But then the majority of brides and not agree with everybody. Most English bridegrooms take no interest whatever in people are dreadfully worried by being science or philosophy, or solid pursuits of transplanted from one place to another. any kind. If they cannot spend the time Those who shine most brilliantly at their in amusement or business or conversation, own firesides become clouded over else- or thinking about amusement or business, where, and repeated changes literally sub- they fall into the grasp of a gigantic ennui. merge them in gloom and moodiness. All Except in the case of two very strong and this shows that for two people to set off on cultivated minds, there can scarcely be a a trip which entails a number of longish more fatal blunder than the attempt to enjourneys, and a great variety of stopping- joy unmixed bliss in a lonely honeymoon. places, is not the proper plan for allowing When two people have a long common past each to see the best of the other; because to look back upon together, it is different. not one person in a thousand is seen at his But looking forward together to a long combest when travelling, and a great many are mon future is marvellously unsatisfactory, seen at their very worst. At the same after a very short time. The future has time it is possible to fall into a grievous mis- nothing tangible and certain as the past take on the other side. Seeing the discom- has; so the two minds roam vacantly forts of taking a newly-married wife to a through space, wishing it were dinner-time. series of foreign hotels, some men esconce The Duke was perhaps right when he dethemselves in sequestered dells and remote clared that: spots in the country or by the seaside. Here you may, perhaps, have leisure to discover and contemplate the good points of your companion. Only the leisure too often proves thoroughly disproportionate to the good points. The good points are not adequate to filling up all the time, and then, unfortunately, the margin of time unoccupied fills itself up by the discovery of bad points. The happy couple forget that the person you like best in all the world may still upon occasion have the power of boring you as frightfully as the person you most Some of the misery which the novelist dislike. In one of Miss Braddon's novels a from whom we have quoted describes so situation of this sort is made to lead up to a magnificently is due to the teachings of fearful catastrophe, in the form of a pro- others of her own craft. Marriage is the longed estrangement between husband and chief among many things which nearly all wife. Instead of going to some place where novelists love to paint in false colours. there is plenty of life and diversion, the hero They talk tolerably rationally about the reis induced by a treacherous friend to spend lations of parent and child, and brother and his honeymoon in a place where he and his sister, but that of husband and wife is inwife see no faces but their own for five or variably veiled by a thick haze of delusive six weeks. Of course, the design of the sentiment. And novelists are not the only treacherous friend is accomplished perfectly. persons to be blamed. Perhaps human naAt the end of the time, the bride can ture, or that fragment of it which is develscarcely endure the sight of her new lord, oped in the bosoms of young ladies, has and the new lord, though too thick-headed something to do with the case. Girls reso to be distinctly bored, feels that something lutely refuse to believe that the future life has gone seriously wrong between them. with their lover will be a more or less faithAnd the case is, doubtless, not uncommon | ful reproduction of the lives of the father

Such as I am all true lovers are,

Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,
Save in the constant image of the creature
That is beloved.

But when the lover has become the husband, after a prolonged honeymoon in a dull and lonely place, the constant image may absolutely generate an unstaid skittishness, if not downright ill-humour and weariness.