learn how to sit down in a chair with propriety. My father was a clergyman holding a small country living. He died when I was five-and-twenty, and I had to teach in order to earn my bread. I obtained a tolerably good situation, but at the end of two years I was informed that, although a clergyman's daughter would 'do very well' so long as her pupils were quite young, it was now time that they should be handed over to a lady who had been accustomed to Society. I had become thoroughly weary of my work. I was not enthusiastic to instruct girls for whom I did not care. I suppose that if I had been a born teacher, I should have been as happy with the little Hardmans as I was in the nursery with my youngest sister now dead. I should not have said to myself, as I did every morning, 'What does it matter?' my leisure moments and holidays during those two years I had written a novel. I could supply conversation and description, but it was very difficult to invent a plot, and still more difficult to invent one which

In

of itself would speak. I had collected a quantity of matter of all kinds before I began, and then I cast about for a frame in which to fit it. At last I settled that my

hero, if hero he could be called, should fall in love with a poor but intelligent and educated girl. He had a fortune of about two thousand pounds a year, nearly the whole of which he lost through the defalcations of a brother, whose creditors received about five shillings in the pound. He felt that the fair name of his family was stained, and he was consumed with a passion to repay his brother's debts and to recover possession of the old house and land which had been sold. He went abroad, worked hard, and met with a lady who was rich whom he really admired. His love for his betrothed had been weakened by absence, the engagement, for some trifling reason, was broken off, and he married the heiress. At the end of five years he returned to England, discharged every liability, and in two years more was the owner of his birthplace. The marriage, alas! was unhappy. There was no obtrusive fault in his wife, but he did not love her. She could not understand his resolution to take upon himself his brother's debts, and she thought the price he paid for the house was excessive, as indeed it was. She was a good manager, but without imagination. He was rejoicing, in her presence, one spring morning that he

had been wakened by the clamour of the rooks with which he had been familiar ever since he was a boy, and her reply was that an estate equal in value to his own and possessing a bigger rookery had been offered him for less money by one-third than he had thrown away. Unfortunately it is not in management or morality that we crave companionship. It is in religion and in the deepest emotions that we thirst for it. Gradually he became wretched, and life was almost unbearable. She took no pleasure in the ancient place and its beautiful garden, he never asked her to admire them, and there was neither son nor daughter to inherit his pious regard. At this point I was obliged to introduce the Deus ex machina, and the wife died. The widower sought out his first love; she had never wavered in her affection to him; they were married, had children, and were happy.

My tale was a youthful blunder. It was not really a tale. I introduced, in order to provide interest, all sorts of accessoriesaunts, parsons, gamekeepers, nurses, a fire and some hairbreadth escapes, but they were none of them essential and they were all manufactured. The only parts not worthless were those which were autobiographical.

One of them I remember very well, although my MS. was burnt long ago. I believed then that Nature is not merely beautiful, but that she can speak words which we can hear if we listen devoutly, and that if personality has any meaning she is personal,

'The guide, the guardian of the heart and soul.'

Towards the end of an autumn afternoon I had rambled up to the pillar which was a landmark to seven counties. It was wet during the morning, but at five o'clock the rain ceased and a long, irregular line of ragged cloud, dripping here and there, stretched itself above the opposite hills from east to west. Underneath it was a border of pale-golden, open sky, and below was the sea. The hills hid it, but I knew it was there. I was hushed and reassured. When I got home I transferred my emotion to my deserted heroine, and tears blotted the paper. But it was a mere episode, without connection and, in fact, an obstruction.

I sent my manuscript to a publisher and need hardly say that it was returned as unsuitable. I tried two others, but with no success. The third enclosed a copy of his reader's opinion. Here it is :

It

'. . . is obviously a first attempt. evinces some power in passages, but the characters lack distinction and are limited by ordinary conventional rules. I cannot recommend it to you for its own sake, and there is no prospect in it of anything better. The author might be capable of short stories for a religious magazine. It is singular that Miss C.'s Mariana, which you also sent me, should be on somewhat the same lines, but Mariana, his first love, is seduced by the man who forsakes her and, in the end, marries her as his second wife. During his first marriage his intimacy with Mariana continues and Miss C. thereby has an opportunity, which she used with much power, for realistic scenes, that I believe will prove attractive. I had no hesitation therefore in advising you to purchase Mariana, although the plot is crude.' I could not take the publisher's hint. I put my papers back into my box and obtained another situation. In about a twelvemonth, notwithstanding my disappointment, I was unable to restrain myself from trying again. I fancied that I might be able to project myself into actual history and appropriate it. I had been much attracted to Mary Tudor, and I had studied everything about her on which I could lay