general notice, and drew expressions of | never drew any of her facts or impresadmiration from the late Lord Lytton. sions from second hand; and thus, in In January, 1868, she contributed a pithy spite of the number and variety of her paper called "An Address to Workmen illustrations, she had rarely much to corby Felix Holt," in which much sensible rect in her proof-sheets. She had all that advice was given to the operative classes love of doing her work well for the work's who had been recently enfranchised by sake, which she makes prominent charthe Reform Bill. From this paper, prob-acteristics of Adam Bede and Stradiably better than from any other portion of varius. Her grasp of business was not her writings, a definite idea of George less striking than her literary power; and Eliot's real political sentiments may be her shrewdness and foresight were such gathered; and they are such as neither as are seldom to be met with. Anxious Liberal nor Conservative will feel dis- as she always was to retain her hold on posed to quarrel with. One of her the public, she steadily shrank from reshorter poems, "How Lisa Loved the ceiving in her own person the homage King," founded upon a tale of Boccaccio, which the world would have gladly paid was published in the magazine of May, to her genius. It was in her letters that 1869, after she had kept it six years be- she was most wont to open her heart; side her. This was the last of her contri- and those who had the privilege of being butions that appeared in Blackwood; but among her correspondents will sadly miss she never lost her interest in the maga- the thoughtful and tender notes which zine, or intermitted her regard for the entered so fully into the feelings and editor to whom her early essays in fiction affairs of those to whom they were adhad been submitted. Only a few days dressed. Her publishers cannot think, before George Eliot's death, the feelings without a feeling of deep regret, that the of his family were deeply moved by a let- many tokens of George Eliot's regard ter from her to his nephew, Mr. William which were wont to come to them in the Blackwood, containing the following ref- form of letters, are now at an end, and erences to the loss of her former friend that there can be in future no red-letter and literary adviser: days in their calendar to mark the arrival of a manuscript from George Eliot. I feel that his death was an irreparable loss to my mental life, for nowhere else is it pos- Not merely a great writer but a great sible that I can find the same long-tried gen- woman has passed away. In addition to uineness of sympathy and unmixed impartial the spell which bound the world to her gladness in anything I might happen to do by her genius, she had a personal power well. To have had a publisher who was in the of drawing to herself in ties of sympathy fullest sense of the word a gentleman, and at and kindly feeling all who came under the same time a man of excellent moral judg; her influence. She never oppressed any ment, has been an invaluable stimulus and comfort to me. Your uncle had retained that one by her talents; she never allowed fruit of experience which makes a man of the any one to be sensible of the depth and world, as opposed to the narrow man of litera-variety of her scholarship; she knew, as ture. He judged well of writing, because he had learned to judge well of men and things, not merely through quickness of observation and insight, but with the illumination of a heart in the right place a thorough integrity and rare tenderness of feeling. few know, how to draw forth the views and feelings of her visitors, and to make their sympathies her own. There was a charm in her personal character which of itself was sufficient to conciliate deep and lasting regard. Every one who entered Looking back over the years during her society left it impressed with the conwhich the publishers of this magazine viction that they had been under the inwere in frequent communication with her, fluence of a sympathy and tenderness not they feel that it is due to their departed less remarkable then the force of her friend to put on record some aspects of mental power. But attractive as the theme her character which they perhaps had would be to all who knew her, it would better opportunities of discerning than be doing injustice to George Eliot's own the other friends who met her in society. feelings if we were to dwell upon her perGeorge Eliot was the most careful and sonal qualities. Her deep and catholic accurate among authors. Her beautifully love for humanity in its broadest and best written manuscript, free from blur or eras- sense, which was in itself the strongest ure, and with every letter delicately and quickening motive of her genius, will distinctly finished, was only the outward maintain her influence in the future as in and visible sign of the inward labor which the present. All too soon has her eloshe had taken to work out her ideas. Shequent prayer been granted:— VOL. XXXIII. 1707 LIVING AGE. O may I join the choir invisible In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues. DON JOHN. A LONDON STORY OF TO-DAY. BY JEAN INGELOW. CHAPTER XIV. THE Euston Hotel. "No, sir," she shortly answered, "we have no such name here." Perhaps Don John had not dared to give his own name. Lancy now felt that he must follow the directions given. "I was asked to give this card, and inquire for No. 16." "No. 16! Ah, yes, sir, that's it," exclaimed a waiter, starting forward almost with alacrity, and taking the card. "Yes, sir; follow me, if you please." Lancy rose to follow, but slowly. It seemed to him that the young person who had searched the books looked at him with amusement, and that the porter at the door was observant too. He was taken up-stairs and along some almost interminable passages; then a door was opened; he was announced," Mr. Lancelot Aird," and turning from a table in the window, and coming slowly on as if not to startle him, he saw, not Don John but the lodger. "There's some mistake!" exclaimed Lancy aghast, and starting back. Something indescribable in her face and in her manner astonished him almost to the point of making him forget why he had come. Lancy reached it, got in front of the railway terminus, and looked right and left with a longing hope that he might see Don John glancing out at some window. His heart beat wildly, as if all the "No, there's no mistake," she anlife he had was thumping at his left side. swered, looking at him with that neverHis hands trembled, his lips were white. to-be-forgotten expression in her eyes. What if after all there was some mistake!" No; 'twas I that advertised, Lancy!" But what mistake could there be? Don John had written obscurely, but that was because he was afraid of being found out. Lancy had written a letter to his adopted parents, setting forth that he longed to see the world, and so he had run away. But Don John would have had time now to put that and the stealing of the ten sovereigns together. He had no doubt jumped to the right conclusion, and would save him; but Lancy did not relish having to face him. Whenever he had committed any peculations, it was Don John who was sick with shame and rage, not only with fear of detection, which was what Lancy felt, but with horror at the deed itself. He had written his own name on a card, and though he was full of hope, yet the dread of what Don John would say, and of what he might have risked in order to bring about this interview made Lancy tremble. "Is there a young gentleman waiting here for me?" he asked of the porter. "What is the young gentleman's name?" was the not unnatural answer. Lancy hesitated, sank into the one chair which graced the vestibule, and gave it, "Master Donald Johnstone." A young woman, who was seated in a kind of glass case, began to examine some books. She had passed between him and the door. She leaned against it, and held the handle, while he sank into a chair. Lancy," she began again, and said no more. The silence that followed was so full of wonderment to Lancy that no words, he felt, could add to it whatever those words might be. And yet they did give him a kind of shock, she said them with such difficulty and such distress. "I saw you take it," she whispered, after that pause. "Lancy, I saw you open my desk and steal the ten sovereigns; and I - I am as miserable as you are." He Lancy looked at her as she still stood supporting herself against the door. was subdued by her paleness, by the distress and misery in her voice, and the yearning in her face. He burst into tears. Oh, it appeared so long before she spoke again! "I want to save you. Do you know why?" "Do I know why?" he repeated, almost in a whisper. "No." He looked at her, and his heart seemed to whisper to him what this meant. He Yes! He was almost sure now that this was what he had foreseen this was what he had known she would say. He trembled from head to foot; the ten sovereigns were far away now, lost in a wild whirl of disaster, and grief, and change. "I can't love any other mother than that one at home,” he said bitterly. She answered, in a piercing tone of distress and remonstrance, "But you have run away from her, my Lancy. And could she forgive you if she knew all ?” "I cannot say.' "But I do know - and I do forgive and I will forget. Only repent, my son, my only dear; or you'll surely break my heart." "I have repented. Oh, forgive me, and let me go! I have left them all, and lost them. But "But you cannot take me instead. I know it. You cannot love me all on a sudden." Lancy was too much astonished and agitated to arrange the many thoughts which were soon to press for utterance. Only one came to the front, and he uttered it. "It is late in my life for you to ask me to love you for the first time." "Yes," she sighed. She stood pale and mournful of aspect and leaned against the door. He knew that her distress for his fault was overpowering the joy of recovering him. He revolved in his mind the circumstance, and vaguely gazed about him at the commonplace room, the commonplace woman only distinguished from many others by the over-richness of her dress, and the fineness of her gold ornaments. Nothing helped him. And she said she was his mother! Which was best? to run away to the docks and see what ships were like, and make trial of the hardships of the sea; or to bind her to secrecy, and let her save him as she had said? It was easy, this last plan. It was a respite; but he felt instinctively, for he was not calm enough for any decided thoughts he felt that to run away bore with it the blessed possibility of coming home again and being forgiven. But to stay as her son was to give up the home, he could not have both. Then he looked at her, and for the moment was even more sorry for her than for himself. And he rose and came towards her, for this Lancy was not always to act basely and with unkindness. He dried away his tears. "But I know very well that you love me now," he said, with her last word still ringing in his ears. "You would like to kiss me, wouldn't you?" and he bent his fresh young cheek to her lips. She kissed him, and with what joy and gratitude no words can tell. Holding him for a moment round the neck, "Promise you won't run away from me,” she entreated. 'No, I will not." Then astonishment getting the better of his emotion, he went "You - no, I need not fear that you will betray me. But if you are my mother, how comes it that my own - I mean my other father and mother-do not know you?" "Mr. Johnstone does know," she answered, sobbing. "When I met him in the fields I saw that he recognized me. So then you know nothing at all about me, Lancy?" She trembled. She was seated on a chair next to him now, had taken his hand, and was pressing it to her heart. He scarcely cared about this, or noticed it. He perceived that he was saved, but then he was lost! This mother who had found him would want to keep him, and she could never be admitted as an equal in the adopted mother's home. "I know nothing but that your name is Collingwood," he answered, with a sigh. "Oh yes! my name is Collingwood. You know nothing more, my son? Think." She looked intently at him, and he added, — 66 They said that my father's name was Aird, and after his death that you married again." It's quicker than lightning. I have no time to think, was his reflection, and he held up his hands to his head. "Yes, but nothing more?" she asked. "Nothing, but that you never wrote to me, which we thought was strange." "We?" "Don John and I." Then there was a pause, and they both wept. "Can't you say mother to me, Lancy? "No," said Lancy dejectedly. "I love the other one. I don't mean - I don't wish to love any but her." "But surely"—she sighed as if deeply A lump seemed to rise in Lancy's throat then, and he trembled even more than she did. "I am not saved," he answered hoarsely; "I don't wish to say anything wicked to you. Let me alone, or I shall." "I'll only say one thing, then," she persisted. "That ten pounds: you are welcome to it. Consider that I gave it to you. It is yours." Lancy's chest heaved; there certainly was some relief in that sigh. Presently she spoke again. "I heard what you wrote in your letter to Mrs. Johnstone all the servants and children know that you had run away to sea. Nothing could be like the astonishment of them all. I think it was as good a thing as you could have said; and so, when I got here, I said the same thing, that my son had run off to sea; but I said I hoped you would come and take leave of me, and I bribed the waiters to look out for you." Oh, what a world of difference there was between this speech and anything that had ever been said to him in his lost and forfeited home! But it suited poor Lancy, and he gradually became calmer. He was to be aided with this lie that concealed a theft. She hoped by means of it to conciliate and make him lovingly dependent on her; and he, by the same means, hoped to pass for nothing worse than an extremely ungrateful, bad, and foolish schoolboy, to obtain forgiveness and get away from her. Each was subtle enough to conceal such thoughts. Lancy at once determined that he would try to be more pleasant to her, and she began to throw out hints of projected visits to Paris and to Switzerland, which, without distinctly asking him to go with her, seemed to show that his company, at home or abroad, would always be a pleasure to her. A clock on the mantelpiece struck one. Now was the decisive moment. "You'll stay and have your lunch with me, of course?" she said." "I suppose so," he answered dejectedly; and then, on reflection, added, "if you please." The color came back to her face. She knew her game was won. She rang the bell, quietly ordered lunch for two, and added, but rather slowly, "And this young gentleman my son will sleep here tonight. I shall want a room for him near to mine." The waiter tried, but not very successfully, to conceal his interest and amusement. Lancy, with a disconsolate air, was looking out of the window. Mrs. Collingwood put a small piece of paper in the waiter's hand, on which was some writing. "You'll see that this goes at once?" "Yes, ma'am." It was a telegram addressed to Mr. Johnstone, at his house in the country, and was thus expressed: "Sir, Master Lancelot Aird is with me at the Euston Hotel; I await your wishes. M. J. C." As the lunch drew to its conclusion, Lancy became hopelessly restless. Mrs. Collingwood noticed this, and asked what he would like to do.. He had nothing to do. He had thought of going to see the beasts fed; but it was too early. Lancy brought out this plan in his most boyish and inconsequent fashion. "But he had two green linnets and a little tortoise in his lodgings. He should like to have them with him at the hotel, for he had nothing to do." Mrs. Collingwood said she would go with him and fetch them. "And as I've got some money left," continued Lancy, sighing between almost every word, "money that you have given me now, I should like some more creatures. I saw a puppy at the shop yesterday-a stunning one, a skye - and perhaps, if I had it" here a great many more sighs "I shouldn't be so miserable." So an open fly was hired, and Lancy appeared at his late lodgings to claim his property. His landlady was a good woman. She was pleased to see him with a fine lady, who thanked her for having been kind to her son. "Does he owe you anything?" she asked. cy. "No, ma'am, nothing." Excepting for the castors," said Lan "Well, now," exclaimed the landlady, "to think of your remembering that, sir; and to think of my forgetting! Mrs. Collingwood paid a shilling for the use of the castors, and generously forbore to take back the threepence change. Lancy felt rather less forlorn when he reached the hotel again with his tortoise, his two linnets, a skye puppy, and some wood and wire with which he meant to enlarge a cage for a starling, that he had added to his menagerie. He was very 5 clever with his hands, and being much occupied, took no notice when a telegram was brought in for Mrs. Collingwood. It ran thus, "I will be with you to-morrow morning, about ten o'clock." So after breakfast the next morninga meal during which Lancy was still disconsolate Mrs. Collingwood asked him if he did not wish to see Mr. Johnstone, and ask his pardon for having run away. Lancy said "Yes," but not with any hope that this wish would so soon be realized. In two minutes the waiter announced Mr. and Mrs. Johnstone. A tall lady entered, and with a jealous pang, Maria Collingwood saw her boy rush up to her. "Oh, mother-mother!" he cried. His face was on her bosom, and her hand rested on his forehead. "Ask father to forgive me," he cried. His arm was round her neck, and she kissed him. How beautiful she was, how motherly, how tall! The other woman looked and envied her from the bottom of her soul; her face was colored with agitation, and her eyes flashed. She had but vaguely noticed, she was scarcely aware of Mrs. Collingwood's presence; but Mr. Johnstone was, he walked up to her, as she sat slightly turning away from the unbearable sight of her Lancy's love for another mother. "I have told him that I am his mother, sir," she whispered, "but nothing else; nothing at all.' Donald Johnstone turned; Lancy had made a step or two towards him, but before he took any other notice of him, he said, "Set your mother a chair." And as Mrs. Johnstone sat down she made a slight movement of recognition to Mrs. Collingwood, who was keenly aware that her Lancy was standing humble and crestfallen for what seemed a long time before the adopted father, whose steady, penetrative eyes appeared to look him through and through. It seemed a long time, but it could not have been many seconds. When he did speak his face changed, and his voice, which was low, trembled with impassioned emotion. "Have I ever denied you any one thing that was good for you all your life long?" "No, father." "Have I made any difference between you and the dearest of my dear sons?" "No, father." "Look at me." Lancy lifted up his daunted face, and looked entreatingly at his judge. "Your mother, as we drove along this morning, begged me to forgive you, Lancy, -for running away." Lancy's eyes fell. The steady, clear emphasis imparted to those last words shook him, and frightened Mrs. Collingwood no less. There was more meaning in them than met the ear. How could he have discovered what she only had seen? And if he had not, what did he suspect? He sighed deeply. "For running away," he repeated; "and I said I would." Another pause. "Have I anything else to forgive you for?" Lancy's head was bent, as he stood, but he murmured something in his fright and confusion. It seemed to be "No." Then the other mother spoke. She said, "Oh, yes, my Lancy; yes. Your father has to forgive you for long distrust of his anxious goodness, and care for you. If you were unhappy at home, why didn't you say so? If you longed so much for a sea life, why did you never tell it even to me? Why have you done this to us? We deserved better things of you, Lancy. You have been ungrateful and unkind." He does know, thought Mrs. Collingwood, and she does not. He Lancy was completely overcome. staggered as he stood, and in another instant the adopted father was holding him by the shoulder; he made him sit down, and unfastened his necktie. As he bent over him to do this, Mrs. Colling. wood saw Lancy lean his forehead for a moment against Mr. Johnstone's breast. "You won't tell mother?" he faltered. And Mrs. Collingwood heard the words with a passion of jealous pain. Of course he did not care that she knew. She heard the whispered "No." Then she saw him put his hand on her boy's head. He said, "May God forgive you, my poor child, and grant you time to retrieve the past." A silence followed. The adopted mother and the true mother both wept. Lancy, now the terrible ordeal was over, felt almost as if he was in his former place, and was going to his home as if |