२ I should sow mignonette and Virginia stock," she cried, with a firm faith; "lowgrowing flowers would be sure to thrive. It is only roses (poor roses!) and tall plants that come to harm." John, for his part, dwelt much upon the fact that in the little front parlors of the terrace houses there were shelves for books filed into a recess. This weighed quite as much with him as the cleanness of the new places. "The villas are too dingy for her," he said, looking admiringly at her fresh face. "She could never endure the little grey, grimy rooms." That was his romance, to think that everything should be shining and bright about her. He was unconscious of the dinginess of the parlor in Ellen's home. It was all irradiated with her presence to him. These discussions, however, all ended in a sigh and a laugh from Ellen herself. "It is all very fine talking," she would say. den (which she was proud to think was LIVING AGE. "He will never get well," said John, falling back into his dejection, “and he will never die." "Then it will never come to anything. Can you consent to that?" I said. her skill, and came out at ten o'clock every morning with as fresh a face as ever, and her little roll of music always in her hand. And every evening, though now he was set down at his lodgings from the omnibus, and no longer passed my He made me no reply. He shook his window on his way home, John made his head; whether in dismal acceptance of pilgrimage of love to Pleasant Place. the situation, whether in protest against She kept her youth - the sweet complex- it, I cannot tell. This interview filled ion, the dew in her eyes, and the bloom me with dismay. I spent hours ponderupon her cheek-in a way I could not ing whether, and how, I could interfere. understand. The long waiting did not My interference had not been of much seem to try her. She had always his use before. And my children began to evening visit to look for, and her days laugh when this lingering, commonplace were full of occupation. But John, who little romance was talked of. My mothhad naturally a worn look, did not bearer's lovers," the boys called them -"my the probation so well as Ellen. He grew mother's turtle-doves." bald; a general rustiness came over him. He had looked older than he was to be gin with; his light locks, his colorless countenance, faded into a look of age. He was very patient almost more patient than Ellen, who, being of a more vivacious temper, had occasional little outbursts of petulant despair, of which she was greatly ashamed afterwards; but at the same time this prolonged and hopeless waiting had more effect upon him than upon her. Sometimes he would come to see me by himself for_the_mere pleasure, it seemed to me, though we rarely spoke on the subject, of being understood. "Is this to go on forever?” I said. "Is it never to come to an end?" "It looks like it," said John, somewhat drearily. "We always talk about our little house. I have got three rises since then. I doubt if I shall ever have any more; but we don't seem a bit nearer The time had almost run on to the length of Jacob's wooing when one day Ellen came to me, not running in, eager and troubled with her secret as of old, but so much more quietly than usual, with such a still and fixed composure about her, that I knew something serious had happened. I sent away as quickly as I could the other people who were in the room, for I need not say that to find me alone was all but an impossibility. I gave Chatty, now a fine, tall girl of twenty, a look, which was enough for her; she always understood better than any one. And when at last we were free I turned to my visitor anxiously. "What is it? I said. It did not excite her so much as it did me. "I She gave a little abstracted smile. "You always see through me," she said. thought there was no meaning in my face. It has come at last. He is really going "this time, directly, to the Levant. Oh, what a little thing Chatty was when I asked her to look in the atlas for the Levant; and now she is going to be married! What will you do," she asked abruptly, stopping short to look at me, "when they are all married and you are left alone?" and he ended with a sigh, not of impatience, like those quick sighs mixed up with indignant, abrupt little laughs in which Ellen often gave vent to her feelings, but of weariness and despondency much more hard to bear. "And the father," I said, "seems not a day nearer the end of his trouble. Poor man, I don't wish him any harm." This, I fear, was a hypocritical speech, for in my heart I should not have been at all sorry to hear that his "trouble" was coming to an end. Then for the first time a faint gleam of humor lighted in John's eye. "I am beginning to suspect that he is better," he said; "stronger at least. I am pretty sure he has no thought of coming to an end." "All the better," I said; "if he gets well, Ellen will be free." I had asked myself this question sometimes, and it was not one I liked. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," I said; "the two little ones of all have not so much as thought of marrying yet." Ellen answered me with a sigh, a quickly drawn impatient breath. "He is to sail in a fortnight," she said. Things have gone wrong with the nephew. I knew he never could be so good as John; and now John must go in a hurry to set things right. What a good thing that it is all in a hurry! We shall not have time to think." She turned upon me almost with severity in her tone. "I thought you knew better. I go with him! Look here," she cried very hurriedly, "don't think I don't face the full consequences - the whole matter. He is tired, tired to death. He will be glad to go- and after - after ! If he should find some one else there, II shall never be the one to blame him." "Ellen! you ought to ask his pardon on your knees - he find some one else! What wrong you do to the faithfullest the truest "He is the faithfullest," she said; then after a moment, "but I will never blame him. I tell you beforehand. He has been more patient than ever man was." Did she believe what she was saying? It was very hard to know. The fortnight flew by like a day. The days had been very long before in their monotony, but now these two weeks were like two hours. I never quite knew what passed. John had taken his courage in both hands, and had bearded the father himself in his den; but, so far as I could make out, it was not the father but the mother with her tears who vanquished him. "When I saw what her life was," he said to me when he took leave of me, "such a life! my mouth was closed. Who am I that I should take away her only comfort from her? We love each other very dearly, it is our happiness, it is the one thing which makes everything else sweet: but perhaps, as Ellen says, there is no duty in it. It is all enjoyment. Her duty is to them; it is her pleasure, she says, her happiness to be with me." "But-but you have been engaged for years. No doubt it is your happinessbut surely there is duty too." "She says not. My mind is rather confused. I don't seem to know. Duty, you know, duty is a thing that it is rather hard to do; something one has to raise one's self up to, and carry through with, whether we like it or whether we don't like it. That's her definition; and it seems right- don't you think it is right? But to say that of us would be absurd. It is all pleasure-all delight," his tired eyelids rose a little to show a gleam of emotion, then dropped again with a sigh; "that is her argument; I suppose it is true." "Then do you mean to say I cried, and stopped short in sheer bewilderment of mind, not knowing what words to use. "I don't think I mean to say anything. My head is all confused. I don't seem to know. Our feeling is all one wish to be together; only to see one another makes us happy. Can there be duty in that? she says. It seems right, yet sometimes I think it is wrong, though I can't tell how." I was confused too--I was silenced. did not know what to say. "It depends," I said, faltering, "it depends upon what you consider the object of life." "Some people say happiness; but that would not suit Ellen's theory," he said. "Duty I had an idea myself that duty was easily defined; but it seems it is as difficult as everything is. So far as I can make out," he added, with a faint smile, "I have got no duties at all." "To be faithful to her," I said, recollecting the strange speech she had made to me. "Faith He almost laughed outright. ful! that is no duty; it is my existence. Do you think I could be unfaithful if I were to try? These were almost the last words he said to me. I suppose he satisfied himself that his duty to his employer required him to go away. And Ellen had a feverish desire that he should go away, now that the matter had been broached a second time. I am not sure that when the possibility of sacrifice on his part dawned upon her, the chance that he might relin. quish for her this renewed chance of rising in the world, there did not arise in her mind a hasty, impatient wish that he might be unfaithful, and give her up altogether. Sometimes the impatience of a tired spirit will take this form. Ellen was very proud; by dint of having made sacrifices all her life, she had an impetuous terror of being in her turn the object for which sacrifices should be made. To accept them was bitterness to her. She was eager to hurry all his preparations, to get him despatched, if possible, a little earlier than the necessary time. She kept a cheerful face, making little jokes about the Levant and the people he would meet there, which surprised everybody, "Is she glad that he is going? Chatty asked me, with eyes like two round lamps of alarmed surprise. The last night of all they spent with us - and it seemed a relief to Ellen that it should be thus spent, and not tête-à-tête as so many other evenings had been. It was the very height and flush of summer, an evening which would not sink into darkness and night as other evenings do. The moon was up long before the sun had gone reluctantly away. We sat without the lamp in the soft twilight, with the stream of wayfarers going past the windows, and all the familiar sounds, which were not vulgar to us, we were so used to them. They were both glad of the half-light. When I told Ellen to go and sing to us, she refused at first with a look of reproach; then, with a little shake of her head, as if to throw off all weakness, changed her mind and went to the piano. It was Chatty who insisted upon Mr. Ridgway's favorite song, perhaps out of heedlessness, perhaps with that curious propensity the young often have to probe wounds, and investigate how deep a sentiment may go. We sat in the larger room, John and myself, while behind, in the dim evening, in the distance, scarcely visible, Ellen sat at the piano and sang. What the effort cost her I would not venture to inquire. As for him, he sat with a melancholy composure listening to every tone of her voice. She had a very sweet, refined voice - not powerful, but tender, what people call sympathetic. I could not distinguish his face, but I saw his hand beat the measure accompanying every line, and when she came to the burden of the song, he said it over softly to himself. Broken by all the babble outside, and by the music in the background, I yet heard him, all tuneless and low, murmuring this to himself—"I will come again, I will come again, my sweet and bonnie." Whether his eyes were dry I cannot tell, but mine were wet. He said them with no excitement, as if they were the words most simple, most natural. the very breathing of his heart. How often, I wonder, would he think of that dim room, the half-seen companions, the sweet and tender voice rising out of the twilight? I said to myself, "Whoever may mistrust you, I will never mistrust you," with fervor. But just as the words passed through my mind, as if Ellen had heard them, her song broke off all in a moment, died away in the last line, “I will come a- There was a sudden break, a jar on the piano and she sprang up and came towards us, stumbling, with her hands put out, as if she could not see. The next sound I heard was an unsteady little laugh, as she threw herself down on a sofa in the corner where Chatty was sitting. "I wonder why you are all so fond of that old-fashioned nonsense," she said. And next day the last farewells were said, and John went away. From Fraser's Maga: ne. A VISIT TO THE OLDEST STATE IN EUROPE. THAT the smallest and the oldest of European governments should be combined in one is in itself a curious fact; that this government should be engulfed, so to speak, in the middle of Italy, with principalities, duchies, and kingdoms whirling around it like leaves driven by a winter's storm, adds force to this political phenomenon; but that so little is known and so little veneration paid to this Methuselah amongst States is perhaps the most extraordinary feature in its existence amongst us in the nineteenth century. For this is a community whose authentic history dates from the days of Pepin, father of Charlemagne, and whose legendary history carries us back to the days when the persecutions of the Roman emperor Diocletian drove a pious anchorite to the mountains in the neighborhood of Rimini, there to form a semi-ecclesiastical community, which still retains its primitive simplicity both in constitution and customs. San Marino is the name of this Liliputian State; it has a population of eight thousand souls, an area of sixteen square miles; it is governed by two captains, it has secretaries of state for home and foreign affairs, and above all it has a most exemplary chancellor of its limited exchequer, who has invariably an annual balance to place at his country's disposition. Here, indeed, is a field for a modern Gulliver; the whole atmosphere of the place is, politically speaking, Liliputian, and one longs to people the solitary mountain which occupies almost the whole of the republic with dwarfs and beings of another world. Strange to say, in Roman days this mountain was known as the 66 Titanic rock;" here amongst the upheaval of strata and yawning chasms of tufa, the ancients conjured up a race of giants, ambitious in their greatness to overthrow the king of heaven; whilst now we find existing on this very spot the most pigmy of States. As the scene of a fairy-tale San Marino would offer the facilities of a Brobdingnag and a Liliput all in one. Curiosity led me to this mountain republic, curiosity led me to examine its history and its constitution, and my curiosity was rewarded by the discovery of a unique instance of medieval statecraft, the sole survivor of the countless republics which once dotted Italy, still governed by insti- | ious to reside amongst them for any tutions which were hoary with age when length of time the accommodation offered Cæsar Borgia endeavored to add it to by the little inn in the Borgo, or commerhis dominions, and which Napoleon the cial centre at the foot of the rock, will be Great respected and Garibaldi treated looked upon with blank dismay. Anklewith decorum. Let those who feel dis- deep we sank in mire as we crossed the posed visit with me this tiny State and threshold, to be accosted by every stench discuss its peculiarities, only alluding to with which an Italian pothouse is redoits constitution and history with Napo- lent; the bedroom looked alive with dis leonic respect when occasion may re- comforts, and, though breathing an air of quire. freedom far older than any we could find elsewhere, we heaved a sigh, and wished it could be less impure. After a drive of a few hours from Rimini our vetturino made us aware that we were crossing the frontier of the re- Before, however, we decided on estabpublic, where the road which leads to the lishing ourselves in these quarters, I delittle commercial village at the foot of the termined to issue forth and see if the Titanic rock traversed a stream which little town, the centre of government, formed the eastern boundary, and Gul- built upon a cliff a thousand feet above liver found himself amongst the "ever- the centre of commerce, could offer us a free" Liliputians. And indeed there are more inviting resting-place. I was fortinot wanting numerous signs of this much-fied in my search by a letter of introducvaunted liberty which the eight thousand tion to a leading republican, Domenico Liliputians enjoy. The word Libertà is Fattori by name, no less a personage than chalked up in large letters against every the secretary of state for foreign affairs, second house; their motto of Libertas is and brother of a most learned citizen, forced on your notice at every turn; it who had printed a little story of his counadorns their stamps, their coins, their try's liberties which was exhibited, toflag; it is engraven over each of the city gether with other treasures of the like portals; and before a few days' residence sort, in San Marino's little room at the amongst them had expired, the very no- last Paris Exhibition. tion of liberty became irksome in the Thus I stepped up the steep, rugged extreme. I went to the theatre and was path which leads to the city, gaining congreeted by a drop-scene representing al-fidence at every step as I left below me most naked Liberty. I mounted up to the loathsome Borgo, and saw enchantthe piazza and found a white marble ing panoramas of mountains, plain, and statue representing the same personage. I ascended still higher to the parish church, and lo! the patron saint stood over the high altar, with a scroll in his right hand on which was written Liberty! Nevertheless it was satisfactory to learn that this liberty ended not in a display of the simple word, and this boast of fifteen centuries' standing is still genuine in all its branches. Taxation here is reduced to a mere nothing; the voice of the people governs everything. The officials are sufficiently paid by the honor conferred upon them, and receive a mere nominal salary. Property, hence, as compared with Italy, is of enormous value, and a law has been passed enacting that no foreigner can hold land within the narrow precincts of the republic unless he has spent six consecutive years as a citizen within its boundaries, and during this period has conducted himself as a moral and exemplary citizen should. Very simple-minded are these republicans; their requirements are but few, and the luxuries they can offer to visitors are exceedingly limited, so that to one anx sea, all brilliantly illumined by a rich opalesque sunset over the pinnacled Apennines, which here assume those grotesque shapes delineated by masters of the Umbrian school. Did my eyes deceive me? No, it was indeed true. Coming towards me down the rugged path, I saw a gentleman in a tall hat, wearing a badly-fitting suit of dress clothes and a white tie, and in attendance upon him was a lackey in gaudy livery. Nothing more out of place could be imagined: a half-naked anchorite or a skin-clad herdsman one would have passed by unnoticed; and my heart misgave me, for into this wild spot I had not thought it necessary to drag my evening toilette. I questioned my conductor as to the meaning of this apparition, and learned to my relief that he was a captain of the most serene republic of San Marino out for a state walk. When engaged in his official capacity a captain always wears this dress, and in the state wardrobe six dress suits are kept to fit all shapes and sizes of republicans who may attain to the dignity of ruler. |