I? and if you had all the weight o' this undertaking upon your mind, perhaps you'd say the wrong thing too. Prisoner at the bar, surrender, in the name of the Fath the crown, I mane!" The man under the tree seemed now to notice them for the first time, and, giving them no opportunity whatever for exhibiting their courage, he strolled slowly towards them. He was, indeed, the little man, the third stranger; but his trepidation had in a great measure gone. "Well, travellers," he said, "did I hear ye speak to me?" "You did: you've got to come and be our prisoner at once," said the constable. "We arrest ye on the charge of not biding in Casterbridge gaol in a decent, proper manner to be hung to-morrow morning. Neighbors, do your duty, and seize the culpet!" On hearing the charge, the man seemed enlightened, and, saying not another word, resigned himself with preternatural civility to the search-party, who, with their staves in their hands, surrounded him on all sides, and marched him back towards the shepherd's cottage. It was eleven o'clock by the time they arrived. The light shining from the open door, a sound of men's voices within, proclaimed to them as they approached the house that some new events had arisen in their absence. On entering they discovered the shepherd's living-room to be invaded by two officers from Casterbridge gaol, and a well-known magistrate who lived at the nearest country-seat, intelligence of the escape having become generally circulated. "Gentleman," said the constable, "I have brought back your man -not without risk and danger; but every one must do his duty. He is inside this circle of able-bodied persons, who have lent me useful aid considering their ignorance of crown work. Men, bring forward your prisoner." And the third stranger was led to the light. "Who is this?" said one of the officials. "The man," said the constable. "Certainly not," said the other turnkey; and the first corroborated his state ment. "But how can it be otherwise?" asked the constable. "Or why was he so terrified at sight o' the singing instrument of the law?" Here he related the strange behavior of the third stranger on entering the house. coolly. "All I know is that it is not the condemned man. He's quite a different character from this one; a gauntish fellow, with dark hair and eyes, rather goodlooking, and with a musical bass voice that if you heard it once you'd never mistake as long as you lived." "Why, souls 'twas the man in the chimney-corner!" Hey-what?" said the magistrate, coming forward after inquiring particulars from the shepherd in the background. " Haven't you got the man after all?” "Well, sir," said the constable, "he's the man we were in search of, that's true; and yet he's not the man we were in search of. For the man we were in search of was not the man we wanted, sir, if you understand my every-day way; for 'twas the man in the chimney-corner.' "A pretty kettle of fish altogether!" said the magistrate. "You had better start for the other man at once." The The prisoner now spoke for the first time. The mention of the man in the chimney-corner seemed to have moved him as nothing else could do. "Sir," he said, stepping forward to the magistrate, "take no more trouble about me. time is come when I may as well speak. I have done nothing; my crime is that the condemned man is my brother. Early this afternoon I left home at Anglebury to tramp it all the way to Casterbridge gaol to bid him farewell. I was benighted, and called here to rest and ask the way. When I opened the door I saw before me the very man, my brother, that I thought to see in the condemned cell at Casterbridge. He was in this chimneycorner; and jammed close to him, so that he could not have got out if he had tried, was the executioner who'd come to take his life, singing a song about it and not knowing that it was his victim who was close by, joining in to save appearances. My brother looked a glance of agony at me, and I knew he meant, 'Don't reveal what you see; my life depends on it.' I was so terror-struck that I could hardly stand, and, not knowing what I did, I turned and hurried away.' The narrator's manner and tone had the stamp of truth, and his story made a great impression on all around. "And do you know where your brother is at the present time?" asked the magistrate. "I do not. I have never seen him since I closed this door." "I can testify to that, for we've been between ye ever since," said the consta "Can't understand it," said the officer | ble. LIVING AGE. VOL. XLII, 2140 'Well, it appears to me that nothing can be gained by retaining this poor man in custody," said the magistrate: "your business lies with the other, unquestionably." And so the little man was released offhand; but he looked nothing the less sad on that account, it being beyond the power of magistrate or constable to raze out the written troubles in his brain, for they concerned another whom he regarded with more solicitude than himself. When this was done, and the man had gone his way, the night was found to be so far advanced that it was deemed useless to renew the search before the next morning. Next day, accordingly, the quest for the clever sheep-stealer became general and keen, to all appearance at least. But the intended punishment was cruelly disproportioned to the transgression, and the sympathy of a great many country folk in that district was strongly on the side of the fugitive. Moreover, his marvellous coolness and daring under the unprecedented circumstances of the shepherd's party won their admiration. So that it may be questioned if all those who ostensibly made themselves so busy in exploring woods and fields and lanes were quite so thorough when it came to the private examination of their own lofts and outhouses. Stories were afloat of a mysterious figure being occasionally seen in some old overgrown trackway or other, remote from turnpike roads; but when a search was instituted in any of these suspected quarters nobody was found. Thus the days and weeks passed without tidings. In brief, the bass-voiced man of the chimney-corner was never recaptured. Some said that he went across the sea, others that he did not, but buried himself in the depths of a populous city. At any rate, the gentleman in cinder-grey never did his morning's work at Casterbridge, nor met anywhere at all, for business purposes, the comrade with whom he had passed an hour of relaxation in the lonely house on the coomb. The grass has long been green on the graves of Shepherd Fennel and his fru gal wife; the guests who made up the christening party have mainly followed their entertainers to the tomb; the baby in whose honor they all had met is a matron in the sere and yellow leaf. But the arrival of the three strangers at the shepherd's that night, and the details connected therewith, is a story as well known as ever in the country about Higher Crowstairs. THOMAS HARDY. From The Spectator. QUEEN VICTORIA AS GODDESS. THE Athenæum mentions casually a striking incident which is stated to have recently occurred in Orissa, and which would have broken Lord Beaconsfield's heart. Sergeant Atkinson, presumably an inspector of roads, or, it may be, police officer, reports to the Indian Spectator, a native paper published in English, that a tribe in Orissa has adopted Queen Victoria as its deity. We have no details either as to worship or creed, though they will, no doubt, be speedily obtained; but the story is prima facie probable. A sergeant would never have invented such an incident, so entirely outside his experience, and such an elevation for the queen is in entire accordance with all that is known of the operation of religious feeling among the lower castes and wilder tribes of the Indian provinces. It is impossible to read the wonderfully suggestive and instructive "Essays," recently published by Sir Alfred Lyall-essays which want nothing but length and dryness to place their author in the front rank of Asiatic authorities without perceiving that Brahmanism, so far from having ossified itself, is still a living and changing creed, that it constantly creates for itself or assimilates new objects of worship, fresh deities, and even in rare but most important cases, new philosophies. The regular process is for a philosopher, or chief of a tribe, or otherwise influential person, to recognize in some system of thought or person, or rare object—which latter may vary from an épergne to an oddly-shaped rock or . strangely-placed clump of trees- either a fitting symbol of the universal and divine, or an embodiment of it, or an earthly manifestation of some subordinate but powerful deity, and gradually belief, or worship, or reverence accretes to the idea, or person, or thing, till he or it becomes an object of worship, and a centre of faith, it may be to scores of thousands. Chaitanya, founder of the Vaishnavas, is reverenced by millions. If the idea spreads, or the person is believed to work wonders, or miracles are reported of the thing, the circle of worshippers extends, the worship becomes a cult, with separate ceremonial and ritual; and behold a new caste, with a new faith, fully born. If the new force is locally considerable, Brahmanism, as represented by local priests, or occasionally by teachers of wider influence, steps in, and either denounces the new teaching as utterly evil-in which case every charge the foul imagination of Asia can invent is hurled at its votaries —or, much more frequently, adopts the idea, person, or thing, declares them all sacred, gives them Brahmanical names, and, so to speak, consecrates the whole affair, which thenceforward is an integral part of Hindooism, and develops till the teacher is considered not only inspired, but a source of inspiration, or the person is worshipped as an avatar, or the thing becomes a sacred idol. Of the numerous local gods known to have been living men, by far the greater portion derive from the ordinary canonization of holy personages. This system of canonizing has grown out of the world-wide sentiment that rigid asceticism and piety combined with implicit faith gradually develop a miraculous faculty. The saint or hermit may have deeper motives the triumph of the spirit over corrupt matter, of virtue over vanity and lusts, or the self-purification required of medieval magicians and mystical alchemists before they could deal with the great secrets of nature; but the popular belief is that his relentless austerity extorts thaumaturgic power from reluctant gods. And of him who works miracles do they say in India, as in Samaria they said of Simon Magus, "This man is the great power of God;" wherefore after death (if not in life) he is honored as divine indeed. Now the word miracle must not be understood in our sense of an interposition to alter unvarying natural laws, for in India no such laws have been definitely ascertained; it means only something that passes an ordinary man's understanding, authenticated and enlarged by vague and vulgar report. And the exhibition of marvellous devotion or contempt for what is valued by the world stimulates inventive credulity. He who does such things is sure to be credited with miracles, probably during his life, assuredly after his death. When such an one dies, his body is not burnt, but buried; a disciple or relative of the saint establishes himself over the tomb as steward of the mysteries and receiver of the temporalities; vows are paid, sacrifice is made, a saint's day is added to the local calendar, and the future success of the shrine depends upon some lucky hit in the way of prophecy or fulfilment of prayers. The number of shrines thus raised in Berar alone to these anchorites and persons deceased in the odor of sanctity is of them have already attained the rank of large, and it is constantly increasing. Some temples, they are richly endowed, and collect great crowds at the yearly pilgrim gatherings, like the tombs of celebrated Christian martyrs in the Middle Ages. But although the shrines of a Hindu ascetic and of St. Thomas of Canterbury may have acquired fame among the vulgar and ignorant by precisely the same attribute — their reputation for miraculous efficacy-yet the only point of resemblance between the two cases is this common inference from eminent sanctity in the world to wonder-working power in the grave. whereas the great Catholic Church never allowed the lowest English peasant to regard St. Thomas or St Edmund as anything higher than glorified intercessors, with a sort of delegated miraculous power, the Indian prophet or devotee does by the patronage of the Brahnatural beings, until his human origin fades mans rise gradually in the hierarchy of superand disappears completely in the haze of tradition, and he takes rank as a god. For What is Sir Alfred Lyall declares that he could, if required, give minute details of such elevations, and this not of persons only, but of things; and he proceeds to defend a theory which we cannot now examine, that this may have been the origin of much of the Hindoo polytheism, which in its wildness and impossibility so puzzles those who know that behind Hindooism lives a vast and subtle philosophy worthy the study of the keenest minds. certain is that the process goes on, that the Indian people, with their hunger for belief and reverence, are constantly begetting new gods, and that Brahmanism, with its rooted notion that bhakti (faith) is in itself a holy condition of mind apart from the object of faith, and its theory that anything may be an embodiment of the Universal Spirit, lends its sanction to the process, and in lending it sends crowds, it may be millions, hunting for what of benefit or good of any kind may be derivable from the new worship. It is a logical induction from the Brahman faith, strange as it may seem, that creed, color, or history is no bar to the acceptIf the Universal Spirit, or, far below him, ance of the person or thing thus deified. Vishnu or Siva, chooses to take an ugly stone or a silver dish for symbol, or to embody himself in a negro or a white man, there is no law of limitation upon his actions. The white man, however unac countable, or barbaric, or unclean, was | faith, which is a question mainly of the still created. The French General Ray- The adoption of Queen Victoria into a system like this is so natural, that we wonder it has never occurred before. She is just the material to make a goddess of; a living being, of far-reaching power, invisible, yet present throughout India; a worker, in native eyes, of many wonders; and on the whole beneficent, though that, indeed, to the devotees of small-pox and cholera, both of which have worshippers, and the first very many, would make but little difference. God creates, and God crushes also, in the Hindoo mind. There is no reason in the world, on the Brahmanical theory, why the universal should not express himself in Queen Victoria, or why Vishnu or Siva, or better still, Saraswuti, the mighty goddess of wisdom and knowledge, should not express himself or herself in her. Either deity is unlimited, if not unconditioned, and granting the acceptance of the number of its votaries, temples may yet rise over Orissa, or farther, in which wor ship will be paid to Queen Victoria, and her figure will be hung with jewels and sacred flowers, and thousands will bow, and march, and dance in an ecstasy of adoration, and hundreds of thousands, as they pay or receive coin, will put it to their foreheads, because it bears the effigy of the new goddess. Little of all this will probably happen, because the tribe which has adopted this cult is small, because Orissa is traversed incessantly by men who have lived in Calcutta, where scepticism is in the air — there are, if we recollect rightly, fifty thousand men from Orissa in Calcutta, who return home as faithfully as Scotchmen and because the English officials, fearing ridicule, will stamp out the new faith, if they can. But there is absolutely no impossibility in its spread, and if it spread, the consequences would be incalculable. The adhesion of a single province of India to the queen in any way which made disloyalty or disobedience impossible would change all the conditions of government there, and rest the empire, now so insecure, on a basis of granite. It will not happen, though a thing much greater, the formal adoption of Christianity by the Khalsa, the Sikh "children of the sugar and the sword," was within an ace of happening, would, as we believe, have happened, but for Lord Canning's repugnance; but that there should be even a dim possibility of it is an incident in Indian history worth more than the Athenæum's quiet reference, or our own poor effort to explain. We suppose some official note of the occurrence will one day reach the queen, and we wonder how she will feel. It must be a curious sensation to know that in one corner of the world you are actually worshipped by men and women you never saw, or possibly heard of, — held to be divine, to be something which, whether through the presence of a deity incarnate in you, or any other way, is unmistakably above humanity. There must be a strange humility generated by that. The Roman emperors could have told us something of it, for though the cultus of the emperor was not precisely worship, it approached it very closely, was held by loyal Christians to be entirely forbidden, as the wor ship of a false deity, and must in a mind like that of Marcus Aurelius have devel oped some strange thoughts. Visible in. cense can hardly go up in a thousand cities before one's own image without ex citing thought, and Aurelius could have carefully designed to electrify, as we shall told us so clearly what his thoughts were. soon see; but his constructions are still Nicholson's thoughts we know. He was more so; indeed, he may be said to have profoundly irritated at being made a deity, anticipated Wagner in the use of disand, with his usual "unconstitutionality," cords, if that were really the secret in he ordered his worshippers severe whip- the art of the great musician who has pings, which were inflicted, and which lately left us, a matter on which the profoundly confirmed their faith. They present writer is profoundly incompetent would have made a faithful guard for him to pass any judgment. Abruptness is in that final charge into Delhi, and, per- Mr. Browning's secret. Take the prefahaps, preserved his life; but the Orange- tory poem to his new volume of "Jocoman could not away with the blasphemy, seria," just published by Smith and Elder, or the soldier bear the touch of ridicule a poem which is the nearest thing to a involved. Perhaps Queen Victoria will lyric that the book contains, and neverbe angry, too, though she will hardly or- theless, though a lyric, is a succession of der whippings for the poor Ooreyas; but slight shocks: still, even in a reign like hers, it may Wanting is - what? hereafter be recorded, as a most weird in- Summer redundant, cident, that far down in a forgotten sea- Blueness abundant, coast province of India, where, also within Where is the spot? her reign, millions of persons perished of Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same, hunger, a wild tribe, struck in some un-Framework which waits for a picture to known way by the separateness of her personality, resolved that, of all they knew, she was the most probable depositary of the breath of the Universal Spirit, and the fittest object for their worship. Some day, perhaps, even English electors, hearing of such things, will wake to a dim apprehension that all mankind is not alike, that humanity is not enclosed in a corner of the smallest continent, and that between them and the Indian there is still some kind of gulf. frame: Roses embowering with nought they embower! What of the leafage, what of the flower? mer ! Breathe but one breath How abruptly the opening interrogation breaks upon us! How enigmatic the reply! we do not mean that its drift is not soon enough apprehended, but that on the first blush the reply seems to be explaining not the essence of the state of want, but the essence of those conditions which ought most to satisfy want. And then, MR. BROWNING might have taken as a how curiously elliptic is the question, motto for his work as a poet one of Car-"Where is the spot?" Of course, what dinal Newman's striking verses: From The Spectator. Can Science bear us To the hid springs Of human things? Or thought's day-gleam, He never publishes a volume in which Mr. Browning means is something of this sort, "Where is the spot where the redundant summer and the abundant blueness find their way into the soul so as to satisfy it?" But this is carrying ellipsis to the point of an electric shock, for it is startling merely to feel how much of the poet's meaning we are expected to gather from his hints, and supply in part from our own resources. Then the abjective "beamy," which is chosen to describe the world, is unquestionably an odd one for the purpose, and chosen, as we should say, for the jerk it administers to the imagination. Nothing, on the whole, could express the sense of a blank somewhere, which the poet wants to express, better than these sudden little tugs and jerks at the reader's mind. But then, again, when he wants to indicate what would best fill |