"You can leave me beside Mrs. bargain or take an unfair advantage. Vul- | Mr. Stanniforth," she said, with much gar he may be, according to your notions dignity. of vulgarity; but no one has ever accused Winnington." him of being dishonest. He is a man of business; and a bargain, you know, is a bargain. If I go into the market to buy an estate, or a horse, or whatever it may be, I must use my own judgment as to the value of my purchase. If I didn't think it worth the price asked, I shouldn't give that price. In fact, the chances are that I shouldn't give the price unless, in my opinion, it were worth a little more." "I once heard of a man," said Nellie, "who bought what appeared to be a glass bead from a pedlar for a few shillings, knowing it to be a valuable diamond. He was what you would call a man of business, I suppose. If Mr. Stanniforth is a friend of yours, I am sorry I mentioned his name; but I am afraid I shall continue to dislike him nevertheless." "You would not dislike him, if you were to meet him." "I would not meet him for the world!" cried Nellie. "Luckily, there is not the least chance of my ever doing so; and as for his son, Mr. Tom Stanniforth, who is coming to stay at Longbourne very soon, I shall take good care to keep out of his way." "Isn't that rather hard lines upon poor Tom Stanniforth?" "I dare say it won't distress him very much," answered Nellie drily. "But indeed, if you carry out your threat, it will distress him extremely. I happen to be the Tom Stanniforth in question; so I can speak with some authority as to his feelings." And as soon as they had re-entered the ball-room, she withdrew her hand from her late partner's arm and, with a little cold bow, gave him his dismissal. He lingered near her for a moment, as if he had something more to say; but, as she turned her head resolutely away from him and began talking with great rapidity to a bystander, he moved off presently, with a halfamused, half-concerned look upon his face, which Nellie saw out of the corner of her eye, and which did not serve to diminish her wrath. She watched his tall figure skirting the space reserved for the dancers; pres ently she saw the Duke of Middlesex arrest his progress by a familiar tap on the shoulder; she observed the easy deference with which he talked to the prince, and consoled herself with an inward sneer at the pliability of some people's Radicalism. Shortly afterwards she caught sight of his long legs extended beside Mrs. Winnington's ample skirts, and she thought to herself, "Now he has gone over to the enemy." All this was most unjust and unfair; but those who amuse themselves by setting traps for their neighbors must not expect the entrapped ones to judge them with strict impartiality. If Nellie could have overheard what was passing between Mr. Stanniforth and the lady at whose side he had chosen to seat himself, she must have admitted that the second of her charges at least was an unfounded one. "He is a shade less objectionable than his sister; but that is not high praise. They are anything but a nice family. So shockingly brought up." "Oh, come!" cried Mr. Stanniforth, "I'm sure you don't mean that," Nellie blessed the friendly darkness "Yes; that is the girl's brother dancing which veiled her confusion. Every word with Edith," Mrs. Winnington was say that she had said about the elder Stanni-ing. forth's dishonesty and plebeian origin came back to her memory with horrible distinctness; she was furious with herself for her stupidity, and if the mischief had not seemed to be past all mending, she would have begged her companion's pardon in the humblest language she could command. Unluckily, however, he broke out into a great jolly laugh; and that was more than her pride could brook. "It was all your fault!" she exclaimed. "I know it was. I ought to have told you my name long ago; but the temptation to let you go on was too strong for me. Will you forgive me, Miss Brune, and shall we shake hands upon it?" But Miss Brune was no longer in a mood either to accept or to offer apologies. "I should like to go in now, please, "If I did not mean it, I should not say it," rejoined Mrs. Winnington tartly; for several things had occurred to put her out of temper that evening, and under such circumstances she could not always retain command over her tongue. Recollecting, however, that she was not yet this gentleman's mother-in-law, she made haste to add, in a more charitable spirit, "One must not be too hard upon them; a widower's children are much to be pitied, and Mr. Brune has allowed his to run wild all their lives. They are not well brought up- I cannot pretend to consider them so-but the fault is not altogether their | appointment and discouragement; and "You told me that they had been with Miss Brune." Mrs. Winnington's eye-glasses fell from her hand. She turned, and stared at her neighbor, half horrified, half suspicious. Could he have guessed at the projects which she had formed for his future domestic bliss, and was he amusing himself at her expense with an unseemly jest? She almost hoped that it might be so. But no; the broad smile that lighted up his good-humored face had not a shade of malice in it; it was obvious that he was expressing his thoughts quite frankly; and poor Mrs. Winnington was within an ace of losing her temper again as she looked at him. "I can't congratulate you upon your taste," she said curtly. with Edith before the evening was over; and that was something. Rome was not built in a day; middle-aged bachelors were game that required wary stalking; a boy like Walter Brune could not be any serious obstacle in the way of well-laid plans; Nellie was clearly marked out by fate to marry that odious young Marescalchi, who would break her heart, and go to the dogs. Such were the reflections with which Mrs. Winnington comforted herself, in the intervals of slumber, during her fifteen-mile drive home. From The Westminster Review. CAROLINE FOX, JOHN STERLING, AND JOHN STUART MILL.* THIS book is in every respect delightful and remarkable. It records the experiences and utterances of a mind of far It really was enough to provoke a more than common intelligence and cultisaint. At the cost of much pain, labor, vation, and of a disposition at once sinand humiliation, she had obtained an in-gularly liberal, cheerful, and devout. vitation to this ball, simply and solely in order that Tom Stanniforth, who, as she had heard, was to be present at it, might dance with her daughter; and here was her reward! The wretched man had danced twice only in the course of the evening only twice; and both times with the girl whom of all others she would fain have kept out of his way. For of course he would meet her again at Longbourne, and of course she was pretty; Mrs. Winnington was perfectly well aware of that. She was prettier even, perhaps, than Edith; though surely less refined, less aristocratic. But what did a horrid Manchester man care about refinement? Everything was going wrong. He had not asked Edith for a dance; he evidently did not now intend to do so; and meanwhile Edith was spending a great deal too large a portion of the evening with Walter Brune. Alas! the world we live in is full of dis Throughout the life of Caroline Fox, her home was at the south-western extremity of England, and yet she could reckon in her list of friends very many of the men most celebrated in literature and science, during the period over which her "Memories" extend. John Sterling and John Stuart Mill are the central figures in her group of Old Friends," and she was also intimate with Wordsworth, Carlyle, the Bunsens, Hartley and Derwent Coleridge, Tennyson, Julius C. Hare, Milman, J. A. Froude, Charles Kingsley, Francis Newman, Frederick Dennison, Maurice, and Sir Henry Taylor; and among men of science with Professors Adams, Airy, Lloyd, and Owen, the Bucklands, father the Journals and Letters of Caroline Fox, late of Memories of Old Friends, being Extracts from Penjerrick, Cornwall, from 1835 to 1871. Edited by HORACE H. PYM. In two volumes. Third Edition, to which are added fourteen original letters from J. S. MILL, never before published. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1882. and son, Sir Edward Sabine, Sir Charles | The family had grave elders, bright, cheery Lyell, and Sir Roderick Murchison. young branches, men and women; truly amiable "Most worthy, respectable, all after their sort. and highly cultivated people, with a great deal of money among them," wrote Sterling, "who make the place pleasant to me. They are connected with all the large Quaker circle-the Gurneys, Frys, etc., and also with Buxton, the Abolitionist."* With "Friends" wealth seems an alwriting to a kindred spirit, who resembled most inseparable accident. Caroline Fox, her alike in intellectual and spiritual characteristics, in the possession of wealth, and in its generous expenditure for the good of others, observes: habitually cultivated, and that as our crotchets Caroline Fox belonged to a remarkable family of brothers and sisters of old Quaker lineage, whose forefathers two hundred years ago settled in Cornwall. Their descendants dwelt in a cluster of lovely dwellings in the town of Falmouth and its neighborhood. Falmouth, some readers may wish to be informed, is built where the Truro River, after flowing through scenery which in parts is not unworthy to be compared with that of the Rhine, past Tregothnan, the stately home of the Boscawens, and Trelissick, formerly the abode of Davies Gilbert, a name once not unknown in the world of politics I always try to account for this phenomenon and letters, and still cherished by his fel- by remembering that we are essentially a midlow Cornishmen as an historian of the dle class community; that amongst us indusantiquities and topography of their com-try, perseverance, and energy of character are mon county, joins an arm of the sea, and widens into the capacious harbor of Falmouth, guarded by the ancient castles of Pendennis and St. Mawe's. "The brothers," the editor of the "Memories" truly says, "would have made a noticeable group in any country, and were not less conspicuous from their public spirit and philanthropy than from their scientific attainments, their geniality, and the simplicity and modesty of their lives." "† Of these brothers, Robert Were Fox, Caroline's father, was the eldest. Properly to bring this family before our readers' mind would require a power of description such as that which enabled Macaulay to perpetuate the memory of the society of Holland House, Sir James Stephen the memory of the Clapham sect, or Dr. Martineau so vividly to bring before his readers Priestley in his American exile, on the outer margin of civilization, seated in his study, beneath the pictures of the friends he had lost, and surrounded by the books which had been his companions through half a century and over half the We may add that this Cornish family earth, while the social voices of the group supplied a notable illustration of Richof heretics round the fireside of Essex ard Cobden's remark, "That the Quakers Street floated on his ear, and his eye have acted Christianity, and their women would dream of the philosophers who had have approached nearer to an equality welcomed him on his yearly visits to Lon- with the other sex than any of the dedon. Lacking this power, we avail our-scendants of Eve." The abolition of selves of the glimpse given by Carlyle in his "Life of Sterling:" Of the well-known Quaker family of the Fox's, principal people in that place, persons of cultivated, opulent habits, and joining to the fine purities and pieties of their sect, a reverence for human intelligence in all kinds. This was written in 1855, but "Friends" are no longer excluded from the higher walks of professional life. Not only is one Friend a privy councillor, but another is a judge of the High Court of Justice. Early Friends would not have tolerated the being spoken of as the "Right Honorable" gentleman, or being addressed as "My Lord," or "Your Honor." Now it would be curious to see the effect which would be produced if a member of the bar using all "plainness of speech" addressed the learned judge we allude to simply as "Friend." slavery and the slave trade, the spread of Christianity, the bloodless war against ignorance, intemperance, and, not less, against the military spirit, were supported by their labors and their purses. They labored also in other fields of usefulness, Carlyle's Life of Sterling, p. 259. † Letter to the late E. T. Carne, of Penzance, vol. +Life of Cobden, vol. ii., p. 366. * More properly the Fal, unde derivatur Falmouth. ii., p. 234. † Memoir, vol. i., p. xiv. specially those connected with the great The Foxes always occupied a foremost industry of their native_county. The position in the Society of Friends, and president of the Royal Society, in his retained, as did Caroline to the last, many annual address, referring to the severe of the scrupulosities, and many of the loss which the Society and the scientific peculiarities in speech and dress, which world generally sustained by the death of made the Society what Caroline described Robert Were Fox, describes him as "em- it, "surely the most difficile and bizarre inent for his researches on the temper- body in Christendom." * "It is droll," ature and the magnetic and electrical wrote Sterling to Carlyle, "to hear them condition of the interior of the earth, talking of all the common topics of sciespecially in connection with the forma- ence, literature, and life, and in the midst tion of mineral veins; and further, as the of it, 'Does thou know Wordsworth?? inventor of some, and the improver of or, 'Did thou see the coronation?' or other instruments, now everywhere em-Will thou take some refreshment?"" On ployed in ascertaining the properties of terrestrial magnetism."* Robert Were Fox also obtained the Banksian medal for acclimatizing more than two hundred foreign plants in his grounds at Grove Hill,† a place singularly favorable to the growth of exotics and delicate shrubs. Orange and lemon trees are grown against the garden walls, and yield an abundance of very tolerable fruit. His appearance and character are sympathetically described by one, herself also of Quaker lineage, and who knew him well: occasion of one of the visits of the British Association to Dublin, there was a dinner and soirée to all the savants at the vice regal lodge. "There was quite a row," Caroline records in her diary, "when the gentlemen wanted their hats: terrible confusion and outcry. Never before had a broad brim so justified itself in my eyes. It was found and restored to its owner, whilst I had to leave poor General Sabine in a mass of perplexities." † 66 Look Parenthetically, we may observe that Caroline records an imaginary saying, put by Carlyle in the mouth of George The wise but determined and energetic regu- Fox, utterly inconsistent with, nay repuglator of his own, and the prop and firm sup- nant to, historic truth, and showing Carport of his mother's large family, picture to lyle's ignorance of the man whom he proyourself his forehead, and the sides of his fessed to describe. He had "wandered head, with what Spurzheim used to call "per-in to tea" with the Foxes, during one of pendicular walls of reason and of truth.' Pa- their biennial visits to London, tient investigation, profound reflection, and steadfast determination sit upon his thinking and bent brow. Generous and glowing feeling often kindles his deep-set eyes, whilst the firm closing of his mouth, the square form of the chin, and the muscular activity and strong form, show that it is continually compressed within by the energy of a self-governing character. Truth and honor unshaken, conscience unsullied, cool investigating reason and irresistible force seem to follow the outlines of his very remarkable character.‡ ing dusky and aggrieved at having to live in such a generation, and pouring forth such a string of tirades that it became natural in his hearers to ask, Who has ever done any good in the world?' 'Why,' he replied, there was one George Fox, he did some little good. He walked up to a man, and said, "My fat-faced friend, thou art a damn'd lie!!!" " " + Of one, and not the least of the benevolent characteristics of Friends-their Of his wife, Maria Fox, we learn from love of animals - these volumes give us the same authority that she was a "super- many illustrations. We read of Caroline eminently excellent mother. She had not when quite a child, saying, "O mamma! the scientific tastes that distinguished her do let me say my hymn louder, for my husband; but her heart and affections, poor mule is listening and cannot hear her least actions, and her very looks were me." § We read also of a walk taken by so imbued and steeped in the living waters Caroline and her sister with Sterling. of divine truth that she seemed to have" We took," she notes, "poor Billy, the come to the perfection of heavenly wisdom, which made her conversation a rich feast and a blessed instruction." § Vol. ii., p. 234. t Vol. ii., p. 255. Readers of "Lord Macaulay's Life" will remember the story of his uncle (a Friend), who, when in London, had looked in at Rowland Hill's Chapel, and had there lost a new hat. When he reported this misfortune to his father, the old Friend replied," John, if thee'd gone to the right place of worship, thee'd have kept thy hat on thy head." (Vol. i. p. 21.) Vol. ii., p. 84.. ily. The Polytechnic Society of her native county, established in a great measure through her exertions, did not, to use her sister's words, "hesitate to reward two of her pictures with their medals, and, moreover, paid them a public compliment, which her sister was "almost apt to fancy well deserved."* goat, with us when Sterling chose to lead | whom these volumes are dedicated, is an it, and presented a curious spectacle: his artist of no mean ability, and exercises solemn manner with that volatile kid."* the characteristic beneficence of her famOn another occasion, she affectionately refers "to Balaam, the ape, whom I had borrowed for the afternoon, and the kid, near by, quite happy in our companionship." Frank Buckland is described as staying at Uncle Charles's, "and you might have seen him in his glory, lying on the pavement outside the drawing room door, with the three monkeys sprawl- Caroline, like her brother, possessed ing about him.”‡ "We were delighted," considerable intellectual power. From is another entry, "to watch Uncle Joshua her birth she was of delicate constitution, in his sweet companionship with nature; and consequently, never went to any the little birds are now so intimate and school; but her mother's care, aided by trustful, that they come when he calls the best masters obtainable at that time them, and eat crumbs out of his mouth. and in her remote home, completely supIt is a charming and beautiful sight." § plied the want of school training, but, says Caroline Fox, one of the three children her biographer, "The best part of her of her parents, was born May 24, 1819. education was gained after the schoolHer brother, Robert Barclay Fox, was a room door was closed, and she was misman of intellectual power and literary ten-tress of her own time." Association with dency, both of which had received the cultivation common amongst Friends. His friendship was sought and prized by three men of very different characters John Sterling, in a greater degree by John Stuart Mill, and in a still greater degree by that much-enduring statesman, William Edward Foster, himself reared as a Friend, and whose friendship with Robert began, we believe, at an early period in their lives. Like Sterling, Robert's literary tendency took the poetic form of expression. From the specimens of his poetry given us, we can only wish that he had been as fortunate as was Sterling in the possession of a friend, who would, in the spirit of the Scriptural saying, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend," have given to his poetical aspirations, such snubbings as Carlyie and his wife gave those of Sterling. Far better was a prose effort of his -a tract, entitled, "My friend Mr. B." Its purpose was to counteract the effect of the foolish invasion panic of 1853. Writ ten from the Friends' point of view, both as regards the immorality of the war spirit and its anti-economical tendency, it so delighted Cobden that he requested a copy of it might be sent to every member of both Houses, which was done.T Anna Maria, the sister of Caroline and Robert, who survives them both, and to the literary and scientific men who frequented the houses of her father and his brothers, further developed her natural powers, and the works of Coleridge exercised upon her a peculiar † fascination, and stimulated her mind to greater efforts of thought. Her own description of her state of mind in her twenty-first year is given in the memoir. There is perhaps too much introspection to be perfectly healthy or natural in one so young. This is due to her training by Friends and their habit of watching and narrating their experiences. Dr. Calvert, "the excellent ingenious cheery Cumberland gentleman," with whom Carlyle in his "Life of Sterling has made us familiar, and the closing years of whose life were spent at Fal mouth, was one of the intimate friends of. the Fox circle; "A few solemn words spoken by him awakened a consciousness in Caroline's mind of the worthlessness of a merely traditional faith in highest truths." "The more," she says, "I examined into my reasons for believing doctrines, the more was I staggered and filled with anxious thought." She was in the state of mind which Carlyle describes "as the spasmodic efforts of some to believe that they believe." This description she appropriated to herself. "I fully believe," she continues, "in Christ as a Mediator and Exemplar, but I could not bring my reason to accept him as a Sav. Vol. ii., p. 192. |