"What is the matter with you? You look so strange. What have you been doing? and where, oh, where is your son?" "Where is Jack?" faltered the major. He staggered, and Kate, with a strength that she did not know she possessed, stretched out her hands and supported him. "Dear Major Wodehouse, you look so ill and so tired," she said soothingly. "I am so glad to see you! Let me take your arm and help you home." "But you said, Where is Jack?" said the major. He seemed half dazed. He looked stupidly at her. In four months he had grown ten years older. "Yes, dear Major Wodehouse," said Kate, trying to speak steadily through her tears. "He went away the same night that you did, and he has been travelling in Germany ever since. I believe there are hundreds of letters awaiting you from him. Oh, let us make haste and get to the house!" "Jack went away the same night!" echoed the major. "My boy, my boy," he murmured, "you might have trusted me! You said, "Which of us must go?' and you might have known I should be the one. "But why had either of you to go away?" asked Kate, with irrepressible curiosity. The major drew himself up till once more he was a fine man. In the moonlight he and Kate scanned each other. "Kate!" he said solemnly and with old-fashioned courtesy, "I am not ashamed to say that my boy and I both aspired to the hand of the same dear and sweet lady. When I found it out, I resolved to go away, hoping that you and he would marry and be happy, and I wrote and wrote begging him to try and win you. But at last, my dear"- the major's voice faltered "at last I could bear it no longer, for I have never been separated from my boy since he was born, and I hoped I might have the honor of calling you my daughter, and instead you tell me that my boy has fled." Kate burst into a passion of weeping. "Oh, Major Wodehouse," she sobbed, "I don't know what your son feels about me, but, whatever happens, let me be a daughter to you! | An hour later, Kate and the major had read Jack's first note and most of his subsequent letters. written on the morning of his departure, "My dear Father," the young man had world to me, but I cannot forget that you "Kate Layard has come to be all the have been all the world to me all my days before. So I am going. When I think you are married, I will wait in some place for news of you. Till then, I shall write, but push on, and leave no address. "Believe me truly, dear Father, "Your loving Son, "J. W." The succeeding letters were written in the same strain, and at last came several from Bonn impatient for replies. The major groaned. "Why didn't he trust me?" said he, over and over again. "But you will write now?" suggested Kate; "or telegraph ?" "I will telegraph," said the major eagerly, opening the drawer where he kept telegraphic forms. "He will be at home the day after to-morrow, and you 66 I," said Kate, blushing, "am going to Brighton to-morrow.” "What?" cried the major. But he could say no more, for hurrying footsteps were heard in the hall and a voice that cried, " Where is he? Where is my father?" And the major rushed out, and Kate sank half fainting into a chair. I do not know exactly what Jack and the major said to each other, nor would it be fair-even if I knew-to relate the precise terms in which Jack spoke his hopes to Kate nor how Kate made answer. But I will say that Kate walked home in the moonlight on Jack's arm, and that the major looked after them without envy, and thought that, at past sixty, a daughter is better than a second wife. The major appeared the next day, spruce and tall as ever, and nobody but Kate knew how nearly sorrow and separation had made an old man of him. As for Jack, when he read his father's first note and successive letters, he felt more inclined to cry than he had done since he was a little lad and lost a favorite marble. "I love Miss Layard," the major had written, but I love you even more, my boy, and I retire. Win her, Jack, and God be with Then the major kissed her tenderly. "My dear," he said, "whatever happens" I will be a father to you." And she took his arm and guided his you both." wearied footsteps to his own door. "A father's love is beyond words," he said to Kate. "I ought not to have thwarted him." "But you see, Jack, I loved you," returned Kate conclusively. So the bridal was celebrated, and Jack's partner, who was the only other person who knew why the major and Jack had vanished, made a speech, in which he said words of such oracular significance that the bride blushed, and the bridegroom and his father exchanged glances of deep affection. "In every incident of life," said this gentleman, "my partner Wodehouse and my friend the major have acted similarly. Even in their love affair-if it becomes me to tread on ground so sacred—it has been with them a case of 'Like father, like son."" FAYR MADOC. From The Gentleman's Magazine. TOWN LIFE UNDER THE RESTORATION. THE representation of places and people, whether we chance to be well acquainted with them, or whether we chance to be strangers to them, is almost certain to prove attractive. For one reason, the renewal of our own impressions, or the comparison of them with those of others, is well calculated to afford us considerable gratification. For another, we gladly embrace all the opportunities which present themselves of increasing the stock of knowledge which we possess respecting man and nature. In the case of foreign impressions, the invigorating air of youth breathes over us again from the new points of view, and in the freshness of emotion under which we regard objects which have long been as familiar to us as the clothes that we wear. Nor is it novelty alone, seeing that curiosity co-operates with reason. Great communities, as well as private individuals, are often equally inquisitive to know what their neighbors think and say respecting them. To men, individually, one of the greatest benefits to be derived from foreign travel is the tendency that it has to remove the film of vulgar and local prejudice by which their vision so often becomes obscured. The migration of an entire community is impossible, but the visits of educated and impartial strangers may, so far as this is concerned, prove equally effectual, premising that the people will be disposed to give careful consideration to what they may have to say upon its manners, its customs, and its institutions. During the eighteenth century Britain was constantly visited by foreigners, and of these upwards of sixty published elaborate accounts of their sojourns among us, thus providing the student of the social condition of England during that eventful period with an inexhaustible storehouse of facts. It is to be wished that the same could be said of the second half of the seventeenth century. But it cannot. There was no lack of foreign visitors to our shores during that time, but they either did not see fit to record their experiences in print, or if they did, they have not survived to us. The number of those who actually published accounts of their perambulations through the land we live in between the accession of Charles II. in 1660 until the close of the seventeenth century, so far as we have been able to ascertain, does not amount to more than a dozen all told, and all their performances, without exception, are meagre and unsat isfactory to the last degree. Hence the student who desires to view the social condition of "this happy breed of men, this earth, this England," during that period, is deprived of those aids which lie so plentiful to his hand when he sits down to study the social condition of England during the succeeding century. He must either abandon the idea aitogether, or set himself diligently to peruse the dramatic literature and other forms of light literature which the age produced, the journals, and other recondite sources of information, in order to familiarize himself with national manners and morals. He must become a veritable Autolycus -a snapperup of unconsidered trifles, if he desires to behold "the very age and body of the times, his form and pressure." Life in the English capital under the sway of Charles II. was a curious compound, and ranged from the grave to the gay, from the lively to the severe. It was by no means easy work. Seldom was the pursuit of pleasure attended by so much labor, seldom was the business of enjoy. ment found to be so exhausting. Daily life commenced very early and ended very late, and was perpetually renewed with unceasing regularity. The people of rank, from whom, indeed, the rest of society were content to take their ideas of what was fashion and what was not, rose very late in the day, although, probably, not much more so than their successors do in this latter quarter of the nineteenth century. Attire presented a most formidable obstacle. Moderns can have no conception, or at the best a very imperfect one, whom he required to attend him in his progress through the streets clad in yellow liveries, relieved by black sashes wound round their bodies, and black feathers waving in their hats. It should be mentioned that under the Restoration all classes of the community wore their hair very long, allowing it to flow in natural ringlets around their shoulders; and so widely did this fashion prevail, that in the year 1664 the ample periwig or peruke was introduced into the country by the votaries of fashion, from the court of Lewis XIV., there being no English head of hair sufficiently luxuriant. Samuel Pepys, a careful observer of the contemporary fluctuations of fashionable attire, records in his of the time which a fashionable beau con- | from that which was worn by his footmen, in public wearing a periwig for the first The served admirably to point the moral of the political reformer or to adorn the tale of the mob demagogue, had such people then existed. Among the more astounding items of this bill appears the following: "117 yards of scissæ temæ,' cut work for trimming 12 pocket handkerchiefs, £485 145. 3d. And 78 yards for 24 cravats at £8 10s., £663." The expenditure for six new lace razor cloths amounted to £270, and on twenty-four new indusiis nocturnis, in plain English, night-shirts, the sum of £499 10s. was bestowed. King William's consort, the handsome Mary of Modena, approached, but did not quite reach her husband, in lace expenditure, seeing that in 1694 her lace bill attained the respectable total of £1,918. It will not surprise any one to learn that lace had one of its sunniest epochs in the eyes of all from the Restoration to the Revolution. From the king to the plebeian all retained a deep-seated affection for it. These were the days when all young military men wore lace, and prepared their cravats with far greater pains than the three Graces of classical antiquity ever bestowed upon the goddess Venus. Even the volunteers deemed it incumbent upon them to go to the camp wearing a quantity of lace, and very happily did the dramatist Thomas Shadwell satirize the folly in his comedy of "The Volunteers or the Stock Job. bers," as the following dialogue will serve to illustrate: "Major General Blunt.What say'st, young fellow? points and laces for camps? Sir Nicholas Danby. — Yes, points and laces. Why, I carry two laundresses on purpose. Would you have a gentleman go undress'd in a camp? Do you think I would see a camp if there were no dressing? Why, I have two campaign suits, one trimmed with Flanders lace and the other with net point."* doubt that the Merry Monarch lost his wager, since the fashion does not appear to have been more than one of two years' duration, its ruin, in all probability, having been accomplished by the insolence of the French king, Lewis XIV., and his courtiers, who, to manifest the contempt that they entertained for "his Majesty of England," clothed all their servants and retainers in the very costume which his capricious fancy had devised. But though the fashion was abandoned its influence was considerable. In the vest probably was contained the germ of the long squarecut coat by which it was succeeded, and in the tunic most likely was contained the germ of the waistcoat, almost as long, which was worn under the coat, and almost entirely concealed the breeches. The sleeves of the coat extended no further than the elbows, where they were turned back and formed large cuffs, those of the shirt bulging forth from beneath, ruffled at the wrists and adorned profusely with ribbons. Both coat and waistcoat were, of course, adorned with buttons and buttonholes from the collar downwards to the knee. The Restoration era, being essentially the age of "the dangling knee fringe and the bib cravat," it was only natural that the stiff band and the falling collar, which had been worn under the tyranny of Puritan ascendency, should have given place to neckcloths or cravats of Brussels or Flanders lace tied with ribbons beneath the chin, and with the ends hanging down square. In this age of Puritan sobriety in dress, it is difficult to comprehend the mania which seized the breasts of fine gentlemen of the Caroline age for lace. We find Pepys in 1662 putting on his "new lace band," and recording in his "Diary" his complete satisfaction with his appearance in it. "So neat it is," wrote he, "that I am resolved my great expenses shall be lace bands, and it will set off anything else the more !"* Charles II., in the last year of his reign, actually expended £20 12s. for a new cravat to be " worn on the birthday of his dear brother;" and James II. expended almost as much as £30 upon a cravat of Venice point lace in which to appear on the anniversary of the birthday of his consort. King William III., notwithstanding his iron, phlegmatic constitution, entertained a genuine Dutch taste for lace, so much so, indeed, that his bills for that article in 1695 amounted to the modest sum of £2,459 195., a fad which would have • Diary, i., p. 171. Our readers would be very greatly mistaken were they to conclude that female attire under the Restoration was any the less sumptuous, any the less gaudy, or any the less costly than that which was ordinarily worn by the opposite sex. The very reverse was the case. A great change was effected during the reign of Charles II. in the female costume of England, but it was one that was confined almost exclusively to that which was worn by the upper classes of society. As before, the middle and lower classes, the wives of the citizens, and those who would have been denominated countrywomen, adhered tenaciously to the wearing of high Shadwell's Works, ed. 1730. crowned hats, of French hoods, of laced Braganza and her ladies, the Portuguese 337. Pepys's Diary, ed. Lord Braybrooke, 1848, i,. p. with their hats and feathers, and changing • Diary, ii., p. 194. |