prize; "but get up there, there's a little fellow under you." They are hauled and roll off him, and Tom is discovered a motionless body.

Old Brooke picks him up. "Stand back, give him air," he says; and then feeling his limbs, adds, "No bones broken. How do you feel, young un?"

66

Hah-hah," gasps Tom as his wind comes back, 'pretty well, thank you-all right."

"Who is he? 99

says Brooke.

Oh, it's Brown; he's a new boy; I know him," says East, coming up.

“Well, he is a plucky youngster, and will make a player," says Brooke.

And five o'clock strikes.

"No side," is called, and

the first day of the school-house match is over.

AN

DR. ARNOLD OF RUGBY

ND then came the great event in Tom's as in every Rugby's life of the day-the first sermon from Dr. Arnold.

More worthy pens than mine have described that scene the oak pulpit standing out by itself above the school-seats; the tall gaunt form, the kindling eye; the voice-now soft as the low notes of a flute, now clear and stirring as the call of the light-infantry bugle of him who stood there, Sunday after Sunday, witnessing and pleading for his Lord, the King of Righteousness and Love and Glory, with whose spirit he was filled, and in whose power he spoke; the long lines of young faces, rising tier above tier down the whole length of the chapel, from the little boy's who had just left his mother, to the young man's who was going out into the great world rejoicing in his strength.

It was a great and solemn sight, and never more so than at this time of the year, when the only lights

in the chapel were in the pulpit and at the seats of the præpostors of the week, and the soft twilight stole over the rest of the chapel, deepening into darkness in the high gallery behind the organ.

But what was it, after all, which seized and held these three hundred boys, dragging them out of themselves, willing or unwilling, for twenty minutes, on Sunday afternoon? True, there always were boys scattered up and down the School who, in heart and head, were worthy to hear and able to carry away the deepest and wisest words spoken. But these were a minority always—generally a very small one, often so small a one as to be counted on the fingers of your hand. What was it that moved and held us, the rest of the three hundred reckless boys, who feared the Doctor with all our hearts, and very little besides in heaven or earth; who thought more of our "sets" in School than of the Church of Christ, and put the traditions of Rugby, and the public opinion of boys in our daily life, above the laws of God?

We couldn't enter into half that we heard; we hadn't the knowledge of our own hearts, or the knowledge of one another; and little enough of the faith, hope, and love needed to that end. But we

listen, as all boys in their better moods will listenaye, and men too, for the matter of that—to a man whom we felt to be, with all his heart and soul and strength, striving against whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but the warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us, and by our sides, and calling on us to help him, and ourselves, and one another.

And so, wearily, and little by little, but surely and steadily on the, whole, was brought home to the young

boy, for the first time in his life, the meaning of his life; that it was no fool's or sluggard's paradise, into which he had wandered by chance; but a battle-field, ordained from of old, where there are no spectators, but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life and death.

And he who roused this consciousness in them, showed them, at the same time, by every word he spoke in the pulpit, and by his whole daily life, how that battle was to be fought; and stood there before them their fellow-soldier, and the Captain of their band. The true sort of Captain, too, for a boy's army: one who had no misgivings, and who gave no uncertain word of command; and, let who would yield or make truce, would fight the fight out-so every boy felt-to the last gasp, and the last drop of blood. Other sides of his character might take hold of him and influence boys here and there; but it was this thoroughness and undaunted courage which, more than anything else, won his way to the hearts of the great mass of those on whom he left his mark, and made them believe first in him, and then in his Master.

VICTOR MARIE HUGO

VICTOR MARIE HUGO, French statesman, novelist, and poet, born at Besaçon, in 1802; died at Paris, in 1885. He received a classic education, and at the age of twenty brought out a volume of poems called "Odes and Ballads." After the revolution of July, 1830, his play, "Marion de Lorme," that had been previously suppressed by the censor, was produced and was a great success. A number of other dramatic pieces were written by him, "The King Amuses Himself" being suppressed by the government. He gained admittance to the Academy, and was made a peer by Louis Philipp. On the coup d'état of 1851 he was exiled. His best novels are "Les Misérables," of most dramatic and absorbing interest, "The History of a Crime," "The Toilers of the Sea," and "Nôtre Dame de Paris." The last gives a most accurate idea of the social and religious conditions of Paris in the Middle Ages. Both the best scenes and most striking characters are somber. The tragic note is found everywhere.

THE COURT OF MIRACLES

THE

(From "Nôtre Dame ")

HE Court of Miracles was indeed only a pothouse, but a pot-house of thieves, as red with blood as with wine.

The spectacle presented to his eyes when his tattered escort at last landed him at his journey's end was scarcely fitted to bring him back to poetry, even were it the poetry of hell. It was more than ever the prosaic and brutal reality of the tavern. If we were not living in the fifteenth century, we should

say that Gringoire had fallen from Michael Angelo to Callot.

Around a large fire burning upon a great round flag-stone, and lapping with its flames the rusty legs of a trivet empty for the moment, stood a number of worm-eaten tables here and there, in dire confusion, no lackey of any geometrical pretensions having deigned to adjust their parallelism, or at least to see that they did not cross each other at angles too unusual. Upon these tables glittered various pots and jugs dripping with wine and beer, and around these jugs were seated numerous Bacchanalian faces, purple with fire and wine. One bigbellied man with a jolly face was administering noisy kisses to a brawny, thickset woman. A rubbie, or old vagrant, whistled as he loosed the bandages from his mock wound, and rubbed his sound, healthy knee, which had been swathed all day in ample ligatures. Beyond him was a mumper, preparing his "visitation from God"-his sore leg-with suet and ox-blood. Two tables farther on, a sham pilgrim, in complete pilgrim dress, was spelling out the lament of Sainte-Reine, not forgetting the snuffle and twang. In another place a young scamp who imposed on the charitable by pretending to have been bitten by a mad dog, was taking a lesson of an old dummy chuckler in the art of frothing at the mouth by chewing a bit of soap. By their side a dropsical man was reducing his size, making four or five doxies hold their noses as they sat at the same table, quarrelling over a child which they had stolen during the evening,-all circumstances which, two centuries later, "seemed so ridiculous to the court," as Sauval says, "that they served as diversion to the king, and as the opening to a royal ballet entitled 'Night,' divided in four parts, and danced at the Petit Bourbon Theater." "Never,” adds an eye-witness in 1653, "have the sudden changes of the Court of Miracles