the noblest fellow in creation, and I congratulate the happy lady who can boast of such a Bayard for her own liege knight. Why should there not be a Bayard of the church militant? Is there any fight harder than a good man's single-handed battle with the arch-enemy? Every day, every day the demon lies in wait, and the struggle must be renewed afresh, and the warm heart's blood must be spilt again, and the weary soldier creeps back to his tent wounded, but not vanquished. To-day Satan lies grovelling in the dust, and the Christian hero stands triumphant with his mailed foot upon the breast of the fiend; but to-morrow his foe confronts him again, erect and terrible. Ah, how many disguises he wears! in what unthought-of corners he hides himself! now playing bo-peep among the pages of a book, now looking out of beautiful earthly eyes, now shining in the glamour that hangs about a bishop's mitre, now crouching amongst sacks of gold. And the fight goes on all through the long, long day, and it is only when the darkness closes in, and the dying soldier sees his enemy crawling away maimed, and stricken, and humiliated, it is only then that he feels himself a conqueror. And my poor, dear, hopeful mother asks me to fight such a fight! Oh, Miss Champion, if you knew what a pitiful creature I feel myself when I associate with your cousin Bernard, and how I should envy and hate him if he didn't happen to be the dearest friend I have in the world!"

Fanny Annesley laughed heartily at her brother's concluding words. "Only imagine my brother hating any one, Miss Champion!" she exclaimed. "If you knew him as well as I do, you would know how unutterably preposterous such an idea seems to me. Clara and I call Lawrence the zoophyte. He is such a dear, good creature, of the morally invertebrate order; very clever, but with no backbone to hold his intellectual attainments together. He is very fond of drawing; but you should see his portfolio, full of heads without shoulders; beautiful faces, with one eye filled in and one cheek shaded; sketches from nature, with one tree worked out, and all the rest the feeblest indication of what he meant to do. He plays the piano delightfully, but he never masters the last page of a fantasia, and his musical repertoire is the merest rag-bag of odds and ends; and poor dear mamma is so anxious that he should enter the Church, and cannot bring herself to see that he is entirely unfitted for it. Our only strength lies in Mr. Champion's influence; if any one can mould Lawrence into something good and useful, he can-and if he fails, farewell to all our hopes."

I could not help listening to this conversation. I could not help stealing a glance now and then at those two bright faces whose indefinable likeness puzzled and perplexed me. In spite of my perplexity, however, I was considerably amused by the calm manner

in which Lawrence Annesley stood by and allowed his weaknesses to be expatiated upon by his sister, who took very much the tone which she might have taken if her three or four years of seniority had been half a century.

"Yes, I am the most useless fellow in the universe," he said, as cheerfully as if he had been remarking the brilliancy of the summer day. I observed that he always spoke of himself contemptuously as a "useless fellow," or a "preposterous creature," or an "absurd and anomalous being;" and that he always chose the biggest and most alarming words in the English language to express what he meant. "I am an utterly incongruous and unnecessary wretch, and unless Bernard can do something with me I must come to no good.

He said this in his airiest manner. I stole a little look at Sophy while Bernard and Clara Annesley were deep in a discussion about the provincial character of our church architecture, and I saw that my sister was half amused and half bewildered by Lawrence's wild way of talking. It was so unlike anything she had been accustomed to, and she scarcely knew whether to laugh or to look gravely reproachful.

We spent a very happy day upon that bare hill above the sea, with no better shelter from the July sun than the old Saxon wall. Mounted upon this stout old wall Lawrence Annesley delivered a serio-comic lecture upon the history of the ruined castle, and the manners and customs of its Saxon inhabitants. Ah, I fancy I see him, now, with his young face steeped in the summer sunshine, and the outline of his light, boyish figure sharply defined against the blue summer sky. I have only to close my eyes, and I can see him, and Bernard's darker face looking up to him in wondering amusement. Two faces so wondrously unlike!-two faces which make up the history of my sister's life. Ah, what a sad and tragical story it was which began in a happy, idle summer ramble among the ruins of an old Saxon fortress! Was there any battle ever fought upon that castle hill half so terrible as the strife and the passion, the anguish and the sin, which were to mingle darkly in the story of our lives?

AGNUS DEI.

SWEET Love of God, all other love exceeding,

O come and purify the sin-stain'd soul!

Hear Thou our prayer while painfully 'tis pleading;

Heal Thou our hearts-Thou canst-O make us whole!

The love of earth is dear, but Thou art dearer;
And sweet as summer is the joy of life;
And every cross we bear still brings us nearer
The everlasting rest for sin and strife.

We feel our sin, and know its deep defiling,
And mournfully we cry unto our God:

Break Thou the spell too long our hearts beguiling;
Help us to tread the path which Jesus trod.

Help us to walk more closely to our Saviour;
O help us to receive the life He gives!
Help us to seek to order our behaviour,

And here on earth to live as Jesus lives.

Take Thou our wills, and mould them to Thy pleasure;
Take Thou our hearts, the strong desire to still.

Give us, O Lord, Thy Spirit without measure;
Fill Thou our wills with Thy most holy will.

Give us Thy law, that we too may obey it,

And hearing His kind words may we be blest, Who dearly bought Himself the right to say it,"Come unto Me, and I will give you rest."

A. D.

ECCENTRICITY.

IT has been said by a great authority that the tendency of this generation is towards a uniformity so slavish and so senseless, that eccentricity has become valuable in and for itself, simply as a protest; and that it is, therefore, to be cultivated and respected wherever it is found. We doubt both the assertion and the inference.

Of course we may take it for granted that only harmless eccentricity is meant. But even so, the position seems to require a somewhat stricter limitation than it has received. There are a hundred perfectly harmless eccentricities-mere violations of ordinary conventional rule-which it would be extremely difficult to value, or to regard with respect. Indeed, the mere idea that this view of eccentricity per se could ever prevail fills us with alarm. Suppose my eldest son chose to wear a wreath of roses; no one can say that such a habit would be, in itself, injurious; yet I, as a father, could hardly be expected to value the protest which it involved. The flowers might be Foster's best; the decoration might be graceful in itself, and becoming to its wearer, just as there are women who always look their best in men's hats. The sole objection to the thing would be its eccentricity. And can anybody say that this would not be a serious objection? Would any bishop ordain him in it? Would any clergyman marry him in it? Would it not be an insuperable bar to his advancement in any profession, or to his success in any competitive examination? Will it be answered that the fact that it is such a bar proves the existence of that very slavish monotony of custom into which it is so desirable to insinuate a wholesome thrill of occasional discord? We think it rather tends to show, what we believe to be the fact, that eccentricity is not valuable for its own sake, but that, whenever a custom is violated, the first question which a wise man asks is, whether any good was obtained by the violation which could not have been obtained as quickly and as thoroughly without it.

We go a little farther. We think that the breach of general custom is always in itself an evil-perhaps slight, but still an evil; and we think that the question to be asked is, whether the good attained is greater than the evil; whether the occasion demanded the sacrifice? Where this question is answered in the affirmative, let the imputation of eccentricity be fearlessly incurred. We honour the man who defies the world for the sake of something better than the world; but we are very far from honouring him if the thing which

he presents to us as better than the world is, not to put too fine a point upon it, simply and solely himself.

There are several other ways of looking at the matter. The rule which it is proposed to break is either good, bad, or indifferent. If it is good or bad, the question of its observance is a question of right or wrong, and does not belong to our subject. It is the breach of a rule in things indifferent which constitutes eccentricity; and we say that it is not worth while to bestow so much consideration upon an unimportant rule as to take the trouble of purposely breaking it. Nobody breaks a rule purposely without secretly commending himself for so doing; and the habit of secretly commending yourself because of certain unimportant differences from your neighbour is a bad habit. It comes from, and it tends to, littleness of mind.

It may be said that it is not worth while to bestow so much consideration upon an unimportant rule as to take the trouble of purposely keeping it. Eccentricities which arise in this way, which are simply neglects or oversights, can hardly be said to have any claim on our respect. We make allowances for them. If the object aimed at be worthy of pursuit, we forgive the man who disregards trifles in pursuing it; but we do not think him a greater man by reason of the number of small considerations which escape him. We say that if his mind was not capable of attending to things both great and small, he was wise to take the great and leave the small; but we should have respected him more if he had been capable of attending to both. And if the oversight or neglect was not the accident of a mind engrossed by high thoughts, it must be looked upon as a weakness. If my strong-minded daughter tucks up her petticoats to an unusual height, and goes into the water to save a child's life, I commend her, even though she may forget to let down her petticoats when she comes out of the water. But if she habitually tucks up her petticoats to an unusual height when she is walking on the pavement, I object to her. Till she has been remonstrated with, the eccentricity is, perhaps, simply an inadvertence, and in that case I take leave to consider it a foible. After she has been remonstrated with, if she persists, and defends herself by saying that she prefers convenience to custom, it becomes one of those intentional eccentricities which we are called upon to admire in and for itself. I resolutely decline admiring it, especially if she has thick ankles. If she has not, I may perhaps admire, but I shall be admiring her ankles, and not her eccentricity.

Two things are to be noticed as characteristics of eccentricity. It generally is a little ludicrous, and it generally diminishes influence. The latter characteristic is probably the result of the former. You may love the man whom you laugh at, but if he provokes laughter at the very moment in which he intends to move you