Voltaire and his divine Emilie; his quar- history is very curious and highly interestrels with Maupertuis; his extremely disre- ing, and it is impossible not to sympathise putable and dirty quarrel with the Jew with a man who so thoroughly knew what stock-jobber, Hirsch; his quarrel with the he wanted, and who got it after such desKing of Prussia; his way of living in his perate struggles. He did get Silesia, and old age; are all brought before us with in- he had probably about as much right to it imitable vivacity, and throw more light on as Maria Theresa. The population, apparthe character of the man than anything ently, rather preferred him to her; but the else written in English. He, however, is question of right depends on the question only one of many figures introduced into whether the States of Bohemia in the year the book. There are excellent sketches 1544 had or had not a right to annul the of George II., the Duke of Cumberland, Erbverbrüderung made by the Duke of Chatham, Wolfe, Prince Ferdinand of Liegnitz, and whether the Emperor FerBrunswick, Prince Henri of Prussia, Belle- dinand had a right to confiscate Jagerndorf. isle, and innumerable others. We have, Frederick's claim dated from 1624 as to besides, incidental accounts of the principal Jagerndorf, and from 1675 as to Liegnitz English naval expeditions of the eighteenth and Brieg; but it seems to have been the century, of the exploits of Vernon and An- way of the German Empire to keep such son, of the siege of Minorca, of Braddock's claims alive and to wrangle, and finally expedition and defeat, and of the other fight over them as was done only two years wars between the French and English ago in the instance of the lovely Schleswigcolonies in America. This includes an Holstein controversy. What the laws of excellent account of the taking of Quebec, eternal fact and nature and of everlasting with portraits of Wolfe and Montcalm. justice may be as to the power of the States Every one of these incidents is told with a of Bohemia over Erbverbrüderungs, apdegree of skill which no other man could, pears to us a question as difficult as it is unand of care which hardly any other man interesting; nor can we get beyond the would have expended on it all. Such a assertion that Frederick, knowing his own union of the special gifts of Dryasdust and mind and watching his opportunity, and Walter Scott, with a depth of thought and having extraordinary good fortune, got feeling to which hardly any antiquary or what he wanted. Something may be said novelist can pretend, has never before been for his first war, and the last he could not produced in our country. Whatever else help; but the second war appears to us a the book may be, it is a monument of its mere undisguised piece of rapacity, an atauthor's genius, which will at all events tempt to get a slice of Bohemia to which he effectually preserve his memory in the did not even allege that he had any sort of claim. It is difficult to make this square with fact and nature, as Mr. Carlyle uses the words. The attempt certainly was a fact, and it probably appeared to Frederick very natural, world. The fault of the work appears to us to lie in the selection of its subject. When all is said and done, it is difficult to care much about Frederick or his doings. His AN Australian paper says: - "The desire of the Chinese to adopt European children appears to be so strong as to lead them in some in stances to break the law. Recently a Chinaman was arrested upon the criminal charge of stealing a child. The accused states that he has had the child in his possession for some time, and we can only say that it looks as if it had been well cared for. In connection with this we may state that the Chinese have a great inclination to adopt European male children to whom their cast of countenance may be pleasing. Instances are under our own knowledge where the Celestial has offered a good round sum in exchange for a child to whom he had taken a liking.' PART II - CHAPTER VI. EVERYTHING went on well enough at the station for some time after the great occurrence which counted for so much in Mrs. Ochterlony's life; and the Major was very peaceable, for him, and nothing but trifling matters being in his way to move him, had fewer fidgets than usual. To be sure he was put out now and then by something the Colonel said or did, or by Hesketh's well-off-ness, which had come to the length of a moral peculiarity, and was trying to a man; but these little disturbances fizzed themselves out, and got done with without troubling anybody much. There was a lull, and most people were surprised at it, and disposed to think that something must be the matter with the Major; but there was nothing the matter. Probably it occurred to him now and then that his last great fidget had rather gone a step too far but this is mere conjecture, for he certainly never said so. And then, after a while, he began to play, as it were, with the next grand object of uneasiness which was to distract his existence. This was the sending "home" of little Hugh. It was not that he did not feel to the utmost the blank this event would cause in the house, and the dreadful tug at his heart, and the difference it would make to Mary. But at the same time it was a thing that had to be done, and Major Ochterlony hoped his feelings would never make him fail in his duty. He used to feel Hugh's head if it was hot, and look at his tongue at all sorts of untimely moments, which Mary knew meant nothing, but yet which made her thrill and tremble to her heart; and then he would shake his own head, and look sad. "I would give him a little quinine, my dear," he would say; and then Mary, out of her very alarm and pain, would turn upon him. 66 Why should I give him quinine? It is time enough when he shows signs of wanting it. The child is quite well, Hugh." But there was a certain quiver in Mrs. Ochterlony's voice which the Major could not and did not mistake. 66 "Oh yes, he is quite well," he would reply; come and let me feel if you have any flesh on your bones, old fellow. He is awfully thin, Mary. I don't think he would weigh half so much as he did a year ago if you were to try. I don't want to alarm you, my dear; but we must do it sooner or later, and in a thing that is so important for the child, we must not think of ourselves," said Major Ochterlony; and then again he laid his hand with that doubting, experimenting look upon his boy's brow, to feel "if there was any fever," as he said. "He is quite well," said Mary, who felt as if she were going distracted while this pantomime went on. "You do frighten me, though you don't mean it; but I know he is quite well." "Oh yes," said Major Ochterlony, with a sigh; and he kissed his little boy solemnly, and set him down as if things were in a very bad way; "he is quite well. But I have seen when five or six hours have changed all that," he added with a still more profound sigh, and got up as if he could not bear further consideration of the subject, and went out and strolled into somebody's quarters, where Mary did not see how lighthearted he was half an hour after, quite naturally, because he had poured out his uneasiness, and a little more, and got quite rid of it, leaving her with the arrow sticking in her heart. No wonder that Mrs. Kirkman, who came in as the Major went out, said that even a very experienced Christian would have found it trying. As for Mary, when she woke up in the middle of the night, which little peevish Wilfrid gave her plenty of occasion to do, she used to steal off as soon as she had quieted that baby-tyrant, and look at her eldest boy in his little bed, and put her soft hand on his head, and stoop over him to listen to his breathing. And sometimes she persuaded herself that his forehead was hot, which it was quite likely to be, and got no more sleep that night; though as for the Major he was a capital sleeper. And then somehow it was not so easy as it had been to conclude that it was only his way; for after his way had once brought about such consequences as in that re-marriage which Mary felt a positive physical pain in remembering, it was no longer to be taken lightly. The conse quence was, that Mrs. Ochterlony wound herself up and summoned all her courage and wrote to Aunt Agatha, though she thought it best, until she had an answer, to say nothing about it; and she began to look over all little Hugh's wardrobe, to make and mend and consider within herself what warm things she could get him for the ter mination of that inevitable voyage, and to think what might happen before she had these little things of his in her care again 66 would try to think how good Aunt Agatha | for Mrs. Kirkman, she thought it sinful so would be to him, but was not to say com- much as to imagine anything of the kind. forted by that not so much as she ought to "It grieves me to hear you speak in that have been. There was nothing in the least loose sort of latitudinarian way," she said; remarkable in all this, but only what a great oh, my dear Mary, if you could only see many people have to go through, and what how much need you have to be brought low. Mrs. Ochterlony no doubt would go through When one cross is not enough, another with courage when the inevitable moment comes and I feel that you are not going came. It was the looking forward to and to be let alone. This trial, if you take it in rehearsing it, and the Major's awful sug- a right spirit, may have the most blessed gestions, and the constant dread of feeling consequences. It must be to keep you from little Hugh's head hot or his tongue white, making an idol of him, my dear- for if he and thinking it was her fault this was takes up your heart from better things' what made it so hard upon Mary; though Major Ochterlony never meant to alarm her, as anybody might see. "I think he should certainly go home," Mrs. Kirkman said. "It is a trial, but it is one of the trials that will work for good. I don't like to blame you, Mary, but I have always thought your children were a temptation to you; oh, take care!- if you were to make idols of them" “I don't make idols of them," said Mrs. Ochterlony, hastily; and then she added, with an effort of self-control which stopped even the rising colour on her cheek, "You know I don't agree with you about these things." She did not agree with Mrs. Kirkman; and yet to tell the truth, where so much is concerned, it is a little hard for a woman not to stop short, however convinced she may be, and think that, after all, the opinion which would make an end of her best hopes and her surest confidence may be true. "I know you don't agree with me," said the Colonel's wife, sitting down with a sigh. “Oh, Mary, if you only knew how much I would give to see you taking these things to heart to see you not almost, but altogether such as I am," she added, with solemn pathos. "If you would but remember that these blessings are only lent us that we don't know what day or hour they may be taken back again All this Mary listened to with a rising of nature in her heart against it, and yet with that wavering behind, - What if it might be true? "Don't speak to me so," she said. "You always make me think that something is going to happen. As if God grudged us our little happiness. Don't talk of lending and taking back again. If He is not a cheerful giver, who can be?" For she was carried away by her feelings, and was not quite sure what she was saying—and at the same time, it comes so much easier to human nature to think that God grudges and takes back again, and is not a cheerful giver. As What could Mary say? She stopped in her work to give her hands an impatient wring together, by way of expressing somehow in secret to herself the impatience with which she listened. Yet, perhaps, after all, it might be true. Perhaps God was not such a Father as He, the supreme and allloving, whom her own motherhood shadowed forth in Mary's heart, but such a one as those old pedant fathers, who took away pleasures and reclaimed gifts, for discipline's sake. Perhaps - for when a heart has everything most dear to it at stake, it has such a miserable inclination to believe the worst of Him who leaves his explanation to the end, - Mary thought perhaps it might be true, and that God her Father might be lying in wait for her somewhere to crush her to the ground for having too much pleasure in his gift, which was the state of mind which her friend, who was at the bottom of her heart a good woman, would have liked to bring about. "I think it is simply because we are in India," said Mrs. Ochterlony, recovering herself; "it is one of the conditions of our lot. It is a very hard condition, but of course we have to bear it. I think, for my part, that God, instead of doing it to punish me, is sorry for me, and that He would mend it and spare us if something else did not make it necessary. But perhaps it is you who are right," she added, faltering again, and wondering if it was wrong to believe that God, in a wonderful supreme way, must be acting, somehow as in a blind ineffective way, she, a mother, would do to her children. But happily her companion was not aware of that profane thought. And then, Mrs. Hesketh had come in, who looked at the question from entirely a different point of view. "We have all got to do it, you know," said that comfortable woman, "whether we idolize them or not. I don't see what that has to do with it; but then I never do understand you. The great thing is, if you have somebody nice to send them to. One's MADONNA MARY. 66 some anxious about," said Mrs. Hesketh; "Then I can't see what you have to be people always make a fuss about things happening to children; why should anything happen to them? mine have had everything, I think, that children can have, and makes one uncomfortable at the time to never been a bit the worse; and though it think of their being ill, and so far away if anything should happen, still, if you know they are in good hands, and that everything is done that can be done one never hears till the worst is over," said the well-off woman, drawing her lace shawl And then, round her. fret; there is nothing that is not made Good-by, Mary, and don't worse by fretting about it; I never do, for my part." mother is a great comfort for that; but then | doubtless her comfortable visitor was about there is one's husband's friends to think to utter on this subject. "I have only feabout. I am not sure, for my own part, male friends," she said, with a natural that a good school is not the best. That touch of sharpness in her voice. "I have can't offend anybody, you know; neither an old aunt and a sister who are my nearest your own people nor his; and then they relatives—and it is there Hugh is going," can go all round in the holidays. Mine for the prick of offence had been good for have all got on famously," said Mrs. Hes- her nerves, and strung them up. keth; and nobody who looked at her could have thought anything else. Though, indeed, Mrs. Hesketh's well-off-ness was not nearly so disagreeable or offensive to other people as her husband's, who had his balance at his banker's written on his face; whereas in her case it was only evident that she was on the best of terms with her milliner and her jeweller, and all her tradespeople, and never had any trouble with her bills. Mary sat between the woman who had no children, and who thought she made idols of her boys and the woman who had quantities of children and saw no reason why anybody should be much put out of their way about them; and neither the one nor the other knew what she meant, any more than she perhaps knew exactly what they meant, though, as was natural, that latter idea did not much strike her. And the sole strengthening which Mrs. Ochterlony drew from this talk, was a resolution never to say anything more about it; to keep what she was thinking of to herself, and shut another door in her heart, which, after all, is a process which has to be pretty often repeated as one goes through the world. "But Mary has no friends. friends, poor thing. It is so sad for a girl no female when that happens, and accounts for so many things," the colonel's wife said, dropping the lids over her eyes, and with an imperceptible shake of her head, which brought the little chapel and the scene of her second marriage in a moment before Mary's indignant eyes; "but there is one good even in that, for it gives greater ground for faith; when we have nothing and nobody to cling to "We were talking of the children," Mrs. Hesketh broke in calmly. I should keep Hugh until Islay was old "If I were you enough to go with him. They are such companions to each other, you know, and two children don't cost much more than one. If I were you, Mary, I would send the two together. I always did it with mine. And I am sure you have somebody that will take care of them; one always has somebody in one's eye; and as for female friends". Mary stopped short the profanity which 66 import out of the corners of her down- ry came back from the door the colonel's wife Mary, if we could only choose the good ed. It is so natural to open all the doors part which cannot be taken away from us!" "But surely we all try, a little, after that," said Mary. "She is a kind woman, and very good to the poor. And how can we tell what her thoughts are? I don't think we ever understand each other's thoughts." 66 "I never pretend to understand. I judge according to the scripture rule," said Mrs. Kirkman; "you are too charitable, Mary; and too often, you know, charity only means laxness. Oh, I cannot tell you how those people are all laid upon my soul! Colonel Kirkman being the principal officer, you know, and so little real Christian work to be expected from Mr. Churchill, the responsibility is terrible. I feel sometimes as if I must die under it. If their blood should be demanded at my hands!" "But surely God must care a little about them Himself," said Mrs. Ochterlony. "Don't you think so? I cannot think that He has left it all upon you' "Dear Mary, if you would but give me the comfort of thinking I had been of use to you," said Mrs. Kirkman, pressing Mary's hand. And when she went away she believed that she had done her duty by Mrs. Ochterlony at least; and felt that perhaps, as a brand snatched from the burning, this woman, who was so wrapped up in regard for the world and idolatry of her children, might still be brought into a better state. From this it will be seen that the painful impression made by the marriage had a little faded out of the mind of the station. It was there, waiting any chance moment or circumstance that might bring the name of the Madonna Mary into question; but in the meantime, for the convenience of ordinary life, it had been dropped. It was a nuisance to keep up a sort of shadowy censure which never came to anything, and by tacit consent the thing had dropped. For it was a very small community, and if any one had to be tabooed, the taboo must have been complete and crushing, and nobody had the courage for that. And so gradually the cloudiness passed away like a breath on a mirror, and Mary to all appearance was among them as she had been before. Only no sort of compromise could really obliterate the fact from anybody's recollection or above all from her own mind. And Mary went back to little Hugh's wardrobe when her visitors were gone, with that sense of having shut another door in her heart which has already been mention and leave all the chambers open to the day; but when people walk up to the threshold and look in and turn blank looks of surprise or sad looks of disapproval upon you, what is to be done but to shut the door? Mrs. Ochterlony thought as most people do, that it was almost incredible that her neighbours did not understand what she meant; and she thought too, like an inexperienced woman, that this was an accident of the station, and that elsewhere other people knew better, which was a very fortunate thought, and did her good. And so she continued to put the little things in order, and felt half angry when she saw the Major come in, and knew beforehand that he was going to resume his pantomime with little Hugh, and to try if his head was hot and look at his tongue. If his tongue turned out to be white and his head feverish, then Mary knew that he would think it was her fault, and began to long for Aunt Agatha's letter, which she had been fearing, and which might be looked for by the next mail. As for the Major, he came home with the air of a man who has hit upon a new trouble. His wife saw it before he had been five minutes in the house. She saw it in his eyes, which sought her and retired from her in their significant restless way, as if studying how to begin. In former days Mrs. Ochterlony, when she saw this, used to help her husband out; but recently she had had no heart for that, and he was left unaided to make a beginning for himself. She took no notice of his fidgetting, nor of the researches he made all about the room and all the things he put out of their places. She could wait until he informed her what it was. But Mary felt a little nervous until such time as her husband had seated himself opposite her and begun to pull her working things about and to take up little Hugh's linen blouses which she had been setting in order. Then the Major heaved a demonstrative sigh. He meant to be asked what it meant, and even gave a glance up at her from the corner of his eye to see if she remarked it, but Mary was hard-hearted and would take no notice. He had to take all the trouble himself. "He will want warmer things when he goes home," said the Major. "You must write to Aunt Agatha about that, Mary. I have been thinking a great deal about his going home. I don't know how I shal! get on without him, nor you either, my darling; but it is for his good. How old is Islay?" Major Ochterlony added with a little ab |