which, indeed, the natural revulsion of relief after that outbreak of alarm and melancholy was evident. It was she now who was the soul of the little party, for the doctor was moody and preoccupied, and her husband watched her with an anxiety almost too great to be kept within the bounds of ordinary attention. She rose, however, to the occasion. She began to talk of their probable travels, of Baden and Homburg, and all the other places which had been suggested to her. "We shall be as well known about the world as the Wandering Jew," she said; "better, for he had not a wife; and now that we have nearly exhausted Europe, there will be nothing for us but the East, or Egypt―suppose we go to Egypt, that would be original?"

voice, not powerful, but penetrating, rose like a bird in the soft gloom. James Beresford looked at the doctor with an entreating look of secret anguish as the first notes rose into the air, so liquid, so tender, so sweet.

"Are you afraid? tell me!" he said, with pathetic brevity.

Maxwell could not bear this questioning. He started up, and went to look this time at a picture on the wall. "I don't know that I have any occasion to be afraid," he said, standing with his back turned to his questioner, and quite invisible from the piano. "I'm a nervous man for a doctor when I'm interested in a case—

Here there was a pause, for she had ended the first verse of the song, and the "Not at all original," said Mr. Max-low warble of the symphony was not well, who seemed half to resent her new- enough to cover their voices. born gaiety. "All the cockneys in the "Don't speak of her as a case," said world go to Egypt. Mr. Cook does the Beresford, low but eager, as the singing Pyramids regularly; and as for Jerusalem, recommenced; "you chill my very blood." it is common, common as Margate, and "I didn't mean to," said the doctor, the society not much unlike." with colloquial homeliness; and he went "Margate is very bracing, I have al-away into the back drawing-room and sat ways heard," said Mrs. Beresford, "and much cheaper than a German bath. What do you say to saving money, James, and eating shrimps and riding donkeys? I remember being at Margate when I was a child. They say there is not such air anywhere; and Mr. Maxwell says that the sea, if I like the sea —

-

"Give him a big, well-sounding name, doctor," said Mrs. Beresford, laughing; "it was only a bilious attack. But, talking of the sea, there is Biarritz that would do, don't you think? It is warm, and it was gay. After all, however, I don't think I care for the sea. The Italian lakes are fine in the autumn, and as it gets cooler we might get on perhaps to Florence, or or Kamtschatka, or Timbuctoo, or the Great Sahara," she said, with a burst of laughter. "You are complaisance itself, you gentlemen. Now I'll go and sing you something to reward you for humoring me to the top of my bent, and licensing me to go where I please."

even Rome

She had a pretty voice, and sang well. The piano was at the other end of the room, the "back drawing-room" of the commonplace London house. The two men kept their places while she went away into the dim evening, and sat down there scarcely visible and sang. The soft, sweet

down near the piano, to escape being questioned, poor Beresford thought, who sat still mournfully in the narrow circle of the lamplight, asking himself whether there was really anything to fear. The soft security of the house with all its open windows, the friendly voices heard outside, the subdued pleasant light, the sweet voice singing in the dimness, what a picture of safety and tranquillity it made! What should happen to disturb it? Why should it not go on forever? James Beresford's sober head grew giddy as he asked himself this question, a sudden new ache undreamed of before leaping up, in spite of him, into his heart. The doctor pretended to be absorbed in the song; he beat time with his fingers as the measure went on. Never in the memory of man had he shown so much interest in singing before. Was it to conceal something else, something which could not be put into words, against the peace of this happy house, which had come into his heart?'

Fortunately, however, Beresford thought, his wife forgot all about that agitating scene for some days. She did not speak of it again, and for about a week after was unusually lively and gay, stronger and better than she had been for some time, and more light in heart, talking of their journey, and making preparations for it with all the pleasant little sentiment which their "honeymooning" expeditions had always roused in her. When everything was

"As a matter of speculation," he said, and the natural man awoke in him. He forgot the pain the idea had caused him, and thought of it only as an idea; to put it in other words, the woman beguiled him, and he got upon one of his hobbies.

ready, however, the evening before they left home a change again came over her. Cara had been sent to Sunninghill with her nurse that day, and the child had been unwilling to go, and had clung to her mother with unusual pertinacity. Even when this is inconvenient it is always flat-"There are many things one allows as tering; and perhaps Mrs. Beresford was pleased with the slight annoyance and embarrassment which it caused.

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'Remember, James," she said, with some vivacity, as they sat together that evening, "this is to be the last time we go honeymooning. Next time we are to be respectable old married people (as we are, with our almost grown-up daughter). She is nearly as tall as I am, the child! nearly eleven and so very tall for her age."

"I think we might take her," said Beresford, who indeed had often wished for her before. "She is old enough to bear the travelling, and otherwise it would do her good."

up

"Yes, this must be the last time," she said, her voice suddenly dropping into a sigh, and her mood changing as rapidly. A house is dreary on the eve of departure. Boxes in the hall, pinafores on the furniture, the pretty china, the most valuable nicknacks all carried away and locked -even the habitual books disturbed from their places, the last Pall Mall on the table. The cloud came over her face as shadows flit over the hills, coming down even while she was speaking. "The last time," she said. "I can't help shivering. Has it grown cold? or is it that some one is walking over my grave, as people say?" "Why, Annie, I never knew you were superstitious."

"No. It is a new thing for me; but that is scarcely superstition. And why should I care who walked over my grave? I must die some time or other and be buried, unless they have taken to burning before then. But there is one thing I feel a great deal about," she added, suddenly. "I said it once before, and you were frightened, James. If you knew that was going to die of a painful disease must die-that nothing could happen to save me, that there was nothing before me but hopeless pain-James, dear, listen to me! - don't you think you would have the courage for my sake to make an end of me, to put me out of my trouble?"

66

speculation which one is not fond of in fact. People must have a certain power over their own lives, and I think with you, my love, that it is no charity to keep infirm and suffering people just alive, and compel them to drag their existence on from day to day. Notwithstanding heaven's canon 'gainst self-slaughter, I think people should be allowed a certain choice. I am not altogether against euthanasia; and if indeed recovery is hopeless and life only pain

"Yes, James," she said, eagerly, her eyes lighting up, her cheeks flaming with the red of excitement; "I am glad you see it like that; one might go further perhaps when from any reason life was a burden; when one was useless, hopeless, unhappy-"

66

Stop a little; we are going too fast," he said, with a smile, so entirely did the argument beguile him. "No one is justified in treating unhappiness like a mortal disease; unhappiness may pass awaydoes pass away we all know, even when it seems worst. I cannot allow that; neither would I let people judge which lives were useless, their own or other people's; but illness which was beyond the possibility of cure ought to be different; therefore, if the patient wished it, his wish, I think, should be law- Annie, my darling! what is this? what do you mean?"

She had suddenly risen from where she was sitting near him, and thrown herself half at his feet, half into his arms.

"Only this," she said; "promise me promise me, James! if this should ever happen to me -if you had the assurance, not only from me, but from the people who know that I had a terrible comI│plaint, that I could never get better; promise that you would put me out of pain, James. Promise that you would give me something to deliver me. You would not stand by and see me going down, down into the valley of death, into misery and weariness and constant pain, and, O God! loathsomeness, James!

Annie, for heaven's sake don't talk so. It is nonsense, but it makes me unhappy." "As a matter of speculation," she said, with a knowledge of his weakness, "you can't think it would be wrong to do this do you, James?"

She buried her head in his breast, clinging to him with a grasp which was almost fierce; her very fingers which held him, appealing strenuously, forcing a consent from him. What could he say? He was too much distressed and horrified to know

BY THE AUTHOR OF "MIRABEAU," ETC.

THE Sun of chivalry set upon the fields of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, and it and medievalism sank together; an interregnum, a long night, followed, and lasted until Charles the Eighth invaded Italy; then came the dawn of the Renaissance. With the extinction of chivalry there terminated a great and wonderful human tragedy that had endured through many

44

deep debt of gratitude. Not even Greece | A life it was full of vigor, in which all and Rome better succeeded in impressing animal enjoyment, all the pleasures that upon their temples and coliseums the pe- nature has implanted in strong thews and culiar genius of their age and people than robust health were developed to the utdid those mediæval masons in transfer- most; the war, the chase, the banquet, ring the very spirit of their times into the joust, the sense of omnipotent power their glorious churches and cathedrals. to destroy or to protect these gave an Their symbolisms, the eternal multiples ecstasy to existence of which our languid of the number three, as representing the being and cold sluggish blood can give trinity, and others that we can no longer us no conception.* But with the frost recognize, for there was not a hideous and snow came a period of hibernation. gargoyle that had not its significance, I Very dull and dreary must have been say the letter of this symbolism is dead to those great fortresses, isolated on the sumus, but its spirit yet haunts the echoing mits of hills, surrounded by their huge aisles, the ghostly cloisters, and broods walls, no sign of life beyond, except the in the dim religious light of the stained straggling, squalid huts of some vassal windows of the lonely chapels, and among village. The châtelaine and her daugh the tombs and the recumbent effigies of ters had their household duties, they spun priest and warrior. Pass out of the broad and worked tapestry. But those lusty daylight, the dull prosy turmoil of this men, what could they do to pass away the workaday age, into the twilight obscurity time, but eat, drink, talk over past and of a Gothic cathedral, and in that second future wars, and hunts, and tourneys, and time leaps back centuries, and all that re- at night fall asleep over a game of chess? mains to us of the present is the distant Visitors there were none, except some murmur of that other world of which stray pilgrim or traveller, always welcome scarcely a second ago we were denizens; for the news he brought of the outward but now we are among the ghosts of alche- world. mists, sorcerers, troubadours, knightserrant, Rosicrucians, monks, and mystics, -for all these weird influences lurk among the grey stones and weigh down upon the imagination.

Not the grandest buildings of the Renaissance, not St. Peter's nor St. Paul's affect us thus; they strike us with awe and admiration, but our feelings are definable, never soaring into the regions of the unknown and supernatural, but confining themselves to the wonders of the real. We regard them as glorious triumphs of art, conceived by minds wholly artistic. And the subtle essence of the thought suffuses all the works of men's hands, even though they attempt to disguise it, and can never be dissociated therefrom. In the most commonplace letter we may feel things which no analysis of the words can convey. The dunce and the genius use the same collocation of words, the same expressions, and yet to the productions of each clings the subtle essence of the soul which produced them.

Although the presence of decay, which weakens the appreciation of present reality, renders the influence less potent than among the well-preserved ecclesiastical buildings, there is much of the same weird glamor over the ruins of the old feudal castles, less gloomy and mystic, perhaps, but more ideal and romantic; there we were among only the ashes of chivalry, here we are amidst the scenes of its life.

But with returning spring came the most welcome of all visitors, the wandering jongleur. A pleasant sight it was to seigneur and châtelaine, to demoiselle and squire, to page and serving-man, to see him in his many-coloured garb, his aumonière at girdle, sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback, winding his way up the steep road that led to the castle. The arrival of a packet of new books at some remote unvisited country-house is but a feeble excitement to that which animated all who gathered in the great hall to hear the recital of some new romance he had composed since he last wandered that way, or to their old favourite, the "Roman de la Rose," or "Chanson de Roland." With what a fierce delight the men listened to those stories of bloody and heroic deeds, of the prowess of Charles Martel and Charlemagne, of their battles with giants, and dragons, and infidels; and how the ladies' eyes sparkled, aye, and the men's too, at the tales of gallant knights and lovely demoiselles, captives in enchanted castles, persecuted by

In one of the ancient chansons of the "Roman des
Loherains," a feudal seigneur is made to say:
"Si je tenais un pied un paradis,

Si j'avais l'autre au château de Naisil,
Je retrairais celui de paradis

Et le mettrais arrière dans Naisil."

If I had one foot in Paradise and the other in the castle of Naisil, I would draw back the one that was in Paradise and put it behind the one in Naisil.]

sorcerers and caitiff barons, miracles of | Genoese wealth, of luxurious modes of love and constancy. And these songs life, of wondrous pictures, marble palaces, and recitals would sometimes last for gold and silver used for delf and wooden months, until summer had merged into trenchers; of a climate voluptuous as Parautumn; then the jongleur would depart adise, a nature more lovely and prolific laden with presents, and frequently hon- than northerners could even dream of, ored with knighthood. These men were women whose beauty intoxicated the soul; the high-priests of chivalry; their songs such stories were drunk in by the greedy filled the fiery souls to which they were ears of peasant, noble, and prince, filling addressed with eager emulation, suffusing them with longings to behold and to contheir whole being and their every act with quer this glorious land. the roseate glow of romance; "and no warrior," says Sismondi, "had any other conception of war, no prince of politics, than what they found in the romances.'

And Italy had ever been a land of promise to the French; the thought of war with which stirred the pulses of the nation as our own were stirred by war with France. Even Louis the Eleventh, had he dared to leave his kingdom, would have

Louis the Eleventh destroyed feudalism, and with it chivalry - how sordid, vile, and degraded was that age I have endeav-led an army across the Alps; but he paved ored to depict in a previous article; romanticism was dead, and no other birth of intellect or imagination had yet taken its place.

*

the way for his successor, by having fostered such aspirations, and more so by the soulless dulness to which his base, bourgeois mind had condemned the nation throughout his reign.

But across the Alps a new era of art and life had long since dawned, and was His death was the lifting of a nightwithin a few years of its meridian splen- mare, and France breathed once more. dor. Giotto, taking nature as his type, His daughter Anne, the wife of the and drawing from living models, had rev- Seigneur de Beaujeu, who, although only olutionized art, and soon the splendid gen- twenty years of age, was a woman of great ius of Da Vinci burst upon the world.ability and vigorous mind, seized upon the Brunelleschi, in the great cathedral of Florence, the earliest specimen of Renaissance architecture, had given the fruits of years of study among the ruined edifices of ancient Rome, and asserted the practical over the mystic and fantastic; the resuscitation of classical literature, and above all, the introduction of the art of printing, had dealt a blow to legend and romance, which not even the appearance of Dante's great poem, that noblest production of the mediæval mind, could heal. The overthrow of the Greek Empire had scattered the learning of Constantinople, a pernicious gift, which impeded for several generations the progress of true science by the sophisms of the schools. The discovery of America, and the promulgation of the theory of Copernicus, had overthrown all preconceived ideas of the uni

regency and the custody of the king's person, to the prejudice of the Duc d'Or léans, the first prince of the blood, who had decidedly a prior claim. Charles had only just entered his fourteenth year; a small, sickly boy, with a prodigious head sunken between his shoulders, a pigeon breast, limbs all disproportioned, legs so small and thin that they seemed incapable of supporting his frame. Condemned from childhood, by a father's jealousy, to a seclusion little short of imprisonment, no one much higher than menials allowed to approach him, his mind was as weak as his body.

After years of fear and enforced quietude, the turbulent elements of the nation were sure, under a minority, to rise again to the surface; there was an assembly of the States-General; a great clamor of grievances, a revolt of the Duc d'Orléans, assisted by the old enemies of France, the duke of Brittany and Maximilian. The regent, however, contrived to quell the first, to defeat the combination in a pitched battle, and take Orléans prisoner.

But these difficulties were no sooner adjusted than there arose other complications; the duke of Brittany died without male heirs; it was the last great fief that remained disunited from the crown of France, and France longed to complete her unity. An antiquated claim to the