if our national anthem was really the | It means Howard and Clarkson just as product of this age. And not our people much as it means Fielding and Gibbon; only, but the men of culture, of rank, of it means Wesley and Whitefield quite power, and the court itself. And the as much as it means Hume or Watt. story that the king caused the whole And they who shall see how to reconcile house to rise when the "Hallelujah Cho- Berkeley with Fielding, Wesley with rus was heard is a happy symbol of the Hume, and Watt with Cowper, so that enthusiasm of the time. all may be brought home to the fold of humanity at last, will not only interpret aright the eighteenth century, but they will anticipate the task of the twentieth. Their music showed that their hearts were in the right place; but they showed it in more practical ways. The age, with all its grossness, laid the seeds of those A few words about the eighteenth censocial reforms, which it is the boast of tury afford no space to touch on the greatour own time to have matured. It was est event of it-the Revolutionary crisis then that the greatest part of the hospi- itself. The intellectual preparation for it tals as we know them were founded; the is all that we can here note; and we may asylums, reformatories, infirmaries, bene- hear the rumblings of the great earthfit societies, Sunday schools, and the like. quake in every page of Hume, Adam It was then, amidst a sea of misery and Smith, Priestley, and Bentham; nay in cruelty, that Howard began what Burke Cowper and Burns and Wordsworth and called "his circumnavigation of charity." Coleridge. The "Rights of Man," the Then too began that holy war against "Declaration of Independence," "The slavery and the slave-trade, against bar Negro's Complaint," "the greatest hapbarous punishments, foul prisons, against piness of the greatest number," "A man's the abuses of justice, the war with igno- a man for a' that," the "new birth" of rance, drunkenness, and vice. Captain the Methodists, were all phases of one Coram, and Jonas Hanway, and John movement to attain the full conditions of Howard, and Thomas Raikes, led the humanity. The Revolution did not hapway for those social efforts which have pen in 1789 nor in 1793. The Terror was taken such proportions. Jeremy Ben-in '93; the old system collapsed in '89. tham and Samuel Romilly struck at the But the Revolution is continuing still, abuses of law; Clarkson and Wilberforce violent in France, deep and quiet in and the anti-slavery reformers at slavery England. No one of its problems is comand the trade in men. Methodism, or pletely solved; no one of them is rerather religious earnestness, lies at the moved from solution; no one of its creaheart of the eighteenth century; and the tions has complete possession of the work of Wesley and Whitefield is as field. The reconstruction begun more. much a part of its life, as the work of than a hundred years ago is doing still. Johnson or Hume or Watt. That great For they see history upside down who revival of spiritual energy in the midst of look at the Revolution as a conflagration a sceptical and jovial society was no acci-instead of a reconstruction; or who find dent, nor was it merely the impulse of two in the eighteenth century a suicide, ingreat souls. It is the same humanity stead of finding a birth. which breathes through the scepticism of Hume, and the humor of Fielding; and it runs like a silver thread through the whole fabric of that epoch. Cowper is its poet, Wilberforce was its orator, Whitefield was its preacher, Wesley was its legislator, and Priestley himself the philosopher whom it cast forth. The abolition of slavery, a religious respect for the most miserable of human beings as a human soul, is its great work in the world. This was the central result of the eighteenth century; nor can any century in history show a nobler. The new gospel of duty to our neighbor, was of the very essence of that age. The French Revolution itself is but the social form of the same spirit. He who misses this will never understand the eighteenth century. FREDERIC HARRISON. From Macmillan's Magazine. BESIDE a lovely little lake in Switzerland there is a small village of scattered vine clad chalets, and just beyond these the land curves round from a projecting point and forms a bay. On the side of the point nearest the chalets is a shallow creek, and from this goes up a long flight of steps; these are plainly not much used, grass grows between the stones, and on each side, among the dusky silver of the thistle-down, are blackberry bushes laden Two gentlemen are standing smoking in the terraced garden at the top of the wall. One of them, the elder, nods, in a friendly way, and says, "Good-evening, Madame Engemann." with fruit. No one has been there to take | beside her make the woman look up, with this. And, indeed, when the end of the the weird horror fully shown. steps is reached, one only gets a view of the opposite shore about two miles away, and of the grand mountain range that ends the view on the left. The outlook on the right is blocked by the garden wall which ends the point; on the left are some tumble-down sheds filled with faggots, and what may possibly be the rubbish of generations. An artist would stand wrapt in admiration of the light and shade concentrated on the strange medley within the sheds bits of the roof have been blown away, and although the gloom is too great to distinguish anything, there is sombre color within, and a mysterious suggestiveness in the forms that here and there stand out of the chaos. There is the tiniest strip of ground between the sheds and the lake, and from this gourds and vines have climbed up over the ruin. On this strip of ground, shading her eyes with her lean, brown hand, André's mother has been standing this half-hour, watching the opposite shore. There is nothing special about her at first sight; she is like a score or so of the women of ber canton. She wears a black, full skirt, more than half covered by a grey woollen apron; over this is a short, loose, black jacket, no cap or collar, only some white linen shows round her brown neck. Her grey hair is smoothly gathered into a knot behind, and is almost covered by a tanned straw hat bent 'down over her square face; her nose is long and thin. The rest of her face looks like a shrivelled leaf, but the eyes are strangely young and bright, with a look in them that at once arrests attention. Andre's mother may be in other respects like her neighbors, but no such woman in the little village has such a weird story written in her eyes. As a rule eyes that are expressive can tell many stories, sometimes revealing quite an unexpected chapter of events, but it rarely happens to one person in a lifetime to read the shocked horror that is fixed in the eyes of André's mother, or to see in one face so strange a mingling of age and youth. Strangely, too, this weird expression is out of place in the sweet, pathetic face; the loving lips seem ready to protest against the terror which has got, as it were, embroidered on what may have once been a face of beaming joy. There are times when this terror lurks out of sight, but any sudden emotion recalls it; and now voices sounding close His friend stands half hidden under a long, vine-covered pergola, that reaches from the charming house yonder to this point. He is a stranger, and he is absorbed in admiring the hills on the opposite side of the lake, and the grand snow mountains rising above them; but at the sound of a strange voice he turns and starts back as he meets the ghost-haunted eyes of André's mother. "You are expecting André," says Mon. sieur Weissembourg. "I suppose this is the last outing he gets before he comes down for the winter, eh?" "Yes, sir, it is the last, till he comes in October." The joy in her voice spreads over her face, and for a moment even her eyes smile. Then she turns away again and looks across the lake. The two men walk under the pergola, where the leaves glint gold and green in the sunshine, and the grapes hang in purple clusters; the wind is rising, and the long vine-sprays are blown out towards the stately blue lilies that border the terrace. "Whoever is that woman?" says the young man, when they have passed out of hearing. "Is she old or young? She looks spirit-haunted." Monsieur Weissembourg smiles. "Well, then, the spirits are good ones. She is usually called André's mother, but her name is Elisa Engemann." "But why does she look so scared?" "Ah well, poor soul! she has cause. She was married fourteen years ago to a good husband, and they were very happy. She was a pretty young girl, and he was a fine handsome fellow, and had the reputation of being one of the best guides at Grindelwald; and he had saved money enough to buy a chalet here and to furnish it; and then, before André was born, he took his last journey - he was buried in a snowfall." "And the shock of his death gave her that look?" "It was more than that. He had left her, promising to be home before the baby was born. Three days after, between night and morning, she roused from sleep and heard her husband's voice outside calling to her. She said the voice was loud at first, but it grew feebler, and at last died away. She rose up and opened the door, but she could not see any one; she came on to my house, and begged to see me. I believe I was rough to her, for I felt provoked to be roused out of my sleep for what seemed to me an idle dream; but next day came the news that Engemann and the traveller he was with were missing. Of course my first thought was for Elisa, and then I learned that she had started the day before, when she left me, for the place where her husband was to make the ascent. You may be sure I followed her at once; when I found her she lay in bed in a little mountain chalet with her baby beside her―her hair had changed to grey, and that awful look of horror was in her eyes." There was a pause. Monsieur Weissembourg's young visitor had come to the Oberland to make the most difficult as cent he could find. Elisa's story seemed to him a troublesome episode; he wished he had not heard it. gentlemen see the steamer shoot swiftly to the landing-place on the other side of the lake. "The boy André takes the boat over there," Monsieur Weissembourg explains, "and he will be here soon. He has had to make a long journey before reaching the boat." The ragged-looking chalet over the way, just now aflame with those huge flowers that try to stare the sun out of countenance, is not Elisa's own dwelling-place. She has spied her friend the carpenter, who is also the godfather of André, smoking his pipe in the wooden balcony that goes round his house, and she pauses a moment outside the sunflower plot, to call out, "There is the boat, Hans Christen; André is coming." Then, with her head bent forward, she hurries down the road. Hans Christen, a big-headed fellow, and much too broad for his height, takes his pipe out of his mouth and looks down the road after her. "Poor soul!" he says. "Poor, loving soul!" II. SOME little way beyond the village and the landing-place, a chalet stands beside the road, screened from the lake by a row of trees. In itself it is not very different from the other cottages. It is large, however, has two rows of green-shuttered windows, and has balconies with slender carved rails on each story, made of the same brown wood as the rest of the house; the roof of course has very deep, projecting eaves, and in front these would make a high-pitched gable if the top had not been flattened; along the edge of this gable are carved barge-boards; a flight of wooden steps leads up to the lowest balcony. When the two men pass out of sight the stillness comes back to the lakethe grand silence that is in harmony with the giant mountains beyond the clear, blue-green water. In this evening light their snowy tops are shadowed by delicate greys, and the lower hills are a rich purple; the long range on the other side that follows the course of the lake to the right and goes on behind the river that flows into it, and the little town of Dort, grows darker and darker, and so does the great pyramid of rock just opposite to the place where Elisa stands gazing. High up on the side of this huge pyramid are chalets, tiny specks from this distance; a village lies beneath at its foot, hidden by a low ridge of green hills, and this is the point which seems to magnetize the woman's gaze. She is as still as the mountains; her head turned slightly over one shoulder so that her ear may receive the first There is more than one such chalet sound of the expected steamer. The beside the lake, but not over every one sound has reached her. She turns with does the grape-vine and American creeper a look of sudden happiness that fills fling such luxuriant shoots. These climbeven her eyes to the exclusion of the ers reach the ridge of the roof, they cling dread that lives in them; and then she lovingly to the topmost balcony, and then comes briskly up the steps. At the top fling themselves down in cascades of she waves one hand to the two gentle-green and gold, flame-color and crimson, men, who are coming this way again, as they smoke their cigars under the vinewreathed pergola. "André is coming," she calls out; "there is the boat." And as Andre's mother crosses the dusty road to a bit of garden ablaze with a group of gorgeous sunflowers, the two that would seem enough of themselves to satisfy a lover of color, without the orange and scarlet of gladiolus and nasturtiums that gleam through them from the window-ledges. One side of the roof stretches out and forms an open shed; here are stacked freshly chopped logs for burning, and brushwood crusted with lichens and glowing with shrivelled brown leaves, | cleaning, though no one else could see gathered in the skirts of the lofty pine that any cleaning was needed; or she forest that clothes the steep hill behind would make a little extra soup for some the chalet. Near is a bundle of chopped poorer neighbors, by way of sending the broom, on which a handsome black goat phantom to the right-about. is browsing, while a few chickens are picking about, with an anxious mother hen that emblem of domestic worry at their heels. In front of the house a cock and a few brown hens are keenly watched from the balcony by a small grey cat with a bushy tail. The tinkle of the goat's bell chimes in merrily with the cock-crowing and the cluck cluck of the hens. This is the chalet which André's father, Joseph Engemann, built with his perilously earned gains. So much sympathy had been felt in the little town of Dort and at Grindelwald when he perished on the mountain, that the widow had been able to keep possession of the chalet, and by the sale of her eggs and fruit she had managed to supply her wants. When André left school, at the end of last winter, he wanted to live at home to help his mother; he said he felt sure he could make the garden yield twice as much as she did, and he could save her all hard work. Elisa's heart yearned to have her boy with her, but he was delicate, and every one told her that if she sent him up to the mountain he would grow strong and hearty; and when the lad found that he could earn wages there he was eager to go. He had come home once for a couple of days, so brown and healthy-looking that his mother had cried for joy when she saw his rosy cheeks and how much he had grown and strengthened. In October he would come home for the winter, for when once snow covered the mountaintop it was no longer a safe abiding-place for either sheep or shepherds. During the winter there would be plenty for André to do, and in the evenings she thought he would have time to read his father's books, for Joseph Engemann had been very fond of reading. She was not afraid that André would take up with idle ways. One fear she had, but of this she had never spoken. What if he grew to love the mountains as his father had loved them, and became a guide to travellers? When this thought came to her, Elisa's heart seemed to stand still as if an icy hand pressed on it, and the strange look of horror filled her eyes. Then she would tell herself this was an idle dream and a selfish one, and she tried to chase it by giving her house an extra VOL. XLII. 2138 LIVING AGE. The lower balcony went round the house, and on one side a gourd kept fast hold of the carved rails with its tendrils; on the ground below, showing among the light and shade of the huge leaves, were globes of golden, rosy fruit, and one of these had been cut for soup in honor of André's arrival. From the open door on this side the house came a murmur of happy voices, then a peal of merry laughter, in perfect harmony with the soft evening sunshine and the bright beauty of the flowers. If the grand tranquillity of the lake and the giant mountains had wanted. a gem to brighten them, this chalet would assuredly have fulfilled the part. Inside the bare, spotless room André and his mother sat side by side on a bench. The boy's arm was round her neck and his face was hidden on her shoulder, while he pointed to a heap of stockings in his mother's lap. It was plainly the sight of the stockings that had caused his burst of laughter; he lay nestling his face in her black stuff jacket while his shoulders still shook with merriment. She too was smiling. "Fie, then, saucy boy"- she patted his smooth, fair head with her brown veined hand -"why does he laugh so at his poor old mother?" "She is not old; she is, on the contrary, quite young." He got up, and while he kissed her, he tenderly stroked the grey hair which matched so ill with her eves; then he took up the stockings one by one and examined them. He was only thirteen, and though he was well grown he had still the charming oval face, clear skin, and limpid dark eyes which one sees in Swiss children, and which so completely deserts them as they grow older. The only fault that could have been found with André was that his neck was short, so that his head came a little too near his broad shoulders; but he was so active and light in his movements that this was scarcely noticed. "Dear little mother!" he stood looking at the stockings; "did she make you all, and had she the conscience to think that André could wear you all? You would do for six Andrés. Naughty little mother to sit knitting all day long, when a walk in the pine wood would do you good." "All day long! Bless him, does he really think I spend so much time on him? Go along then; the goat and the chicks would not let me, even if it were in me to sit still all day." "You have not then time to feel lonely, mother?" He spoke carelessly, but the look in his sweet, dark eyes made his mother's heart throb. She had never talked to him about his father's death. Up, on the mountains he had learned the sad story from his brother shepherds, and it often came back to him when he was alone. He thought the remembrance of it must be very terrible to his mother; and she had so many lonely hours. But a new idea had been growing in André's mind; probably it had been latent there, and had only needed the solitude and silence of his mountain life to develop. He avoided meeting her eyes, but when she spoke the strange hoarseness in her voice drew his attention, and he started when he saw the wild terror in her face. Mother," he cried, " are you ill?" 66 She put out her hand. "Tell me," she said, "I had best know it, André, what kind of life can you have up on the mountains that is not quiet and lonely?" The boy hesitated; he was vexed with himself and with his mother; it had been easy to keep thoughts to himself up there among his fellows. At the mountain chalet where he slept he was considered only a merry, light-hearted boy; he kept his confidences for the snow mountains, and though these were so far above him, he used to talk to them, and tell them his longings to approach them more nearly. For although the shepherds called to one another in their pleasant Swiss fashjon, and travellers sometimes talked to André as they climbed the mountain, there were many solitary hours to be lived through on the green pasture. The André had not counted that the warm pyramid-shaped mountain was not more glow of homecoming would have the than eight thousand feet high, and did not same effect on the reserve he habitually therefore offer great attractions to climb-maintained as the sunshine had on mouners; only a few travellers passed across it during the summer. It was, as André's mother often reminded herself, a safe, out-of-the-way sheep-pasture. And yet the fear born with her child never deserted her, and now something in his words gave it new power. She returned his earnest gaze, and answered the thought she shrank from, rather than the question he had put to her. Brooding over her sorrow had increased her natural quickness of perception, for it had alienated the outward distractions which might have confused this perception by giving her less time for thought. "You are lonely, then, my child; you want a more stirring what do I say?. a more active life. Well," she went on quickly, as she saw that he was trying to speak, "at the château up yonder, they are wanting a good shepherd to manage the beasts they keep down here. Old Michael is dying, and, besides, he is much too old for work. If they would not think you too young, the place might suit you eh, my boy? André got up from the bench; then he stood some minutes at the open door, looking out, seemingly, at the gourd-vine. His mother waited till he turned round; a sickening fear clung about her heart, but she would not yield to it, though it had made her very pale. tain snow, and yet that look in his moth- all "You are tired of being on the same pasture," she said, trying to catch at a fragment of hope, as one seeks for a glimpse of blue in a threatening sky; "well, then, you must exchange on to the other side of the Simmenthal; you will there find an altogether different country." No, no," he said, "it is not the sameness I feel; sheep are not like cows, little mother; sheep do not stay in one spot till they have eaten up the grass; they stray here and there, and sometimes they lead me up to the very top. Ah, mother, it is a grand look-out I have then; it makes me long to know what more I could see from those high snow peaks above. Surely, if one climbed the white mountain herself, one would see to the end of the world!" His mother's yearning gaze noted the glow in his face, and her lips moved as if she were echoing his words. She got up and turned away, pressing her hardworked hands together nervously. "I must call in the goats," she said; and she went out. In truth, to her also the air had become choked and heavy; the look on her boy's |