Harry, and I'm happy; and yet I am trembling and crying the while, and feel like to swoon! But I was ever weak and foolish, as you know. I needed your strong arm to sustain me. But how could you ever find the courage to take me from my grandmother? What will she do? Were she to see me here, Harry, she would kill me!" "She shall kill me first. And I take some killing, I warrant." "But where are we hurrying?" "Dearest Bab! one of the chaplains of the Fleet shall make us man and wife ere an hour has sped. They're famous forgers of the bonds of Hymen, though I've seen worthier blacksmiths." 66 Harry, I dare not." "And you're not angry with me, cousin?" "Can I be angry with an angel? Ah, Bab! if all preachers had thy tender persuasive way, there'd be fewer sins to be frightened into righteousness by earthquakes and such dreadful matters!" The coach was turned, and slowly climbed the hill again. Lady Betty had grown alarmed at last, finding the Countess remained for so long a time quite still and speechless. Upon examination it was found that the poor lady was insensible. There was froth upon her lips, and a drawn look on one side of her face, symptomatic of a paralytic seiz ure. 66 Quick, a surgeon!" cried Lady Betty. "This earthquake stuff still scares thee?"Is there no one present who can breathe Nay, I'll not have thee frightened. My a vein?" godless grand-aunt has worked wicked- Medical aid was forthcoming. It was ness enough of that kind already. We'll not re-enter town then. We'll turn the horses' heads towards the north and cross the Tweed. One of the priests of the border shall marry us, if thou wilt have it so, pretty one. I'll grudge nothing,- not even delay in making thee mine, — that tends to thy greater happiness." Oh, Harry, take me back. You must, cousin, indeed you must," cried Bab, after a pause. He was startled at the strange earnestness of her beseeching. "I cannot leave her, Harry. I must do my duty, cousin. You would not have me deemed wicked, cruel, heartless?" "None dare think so of thee, Bab." "All will, Harry; and they will think rightly, if I quit her now, at this moment of all others. She is very old, strangely feeble, terribly downcast, just now, with excess of fear and sickness. My place is at her side. Bethink, thee, she is almost my only living relative. My parents both have been taken from me, as you know. I have borne with her vexing humours a long while, but surely I should have patience to bear with them only a little Íonger, it may be! I have thought her cruel "And she has been cruel indeed to thee, Bab," muttered the Captain, with an oath. "But she may have meant kindly by me. Let us try to think so. Indeed, it will be best. And she is not always so harsh to me as she hath been of late. And however she may have sinned against me, is it for me to pay her back trespasses at such a time? Take me to her." "It shall be as you will, Bab," quoth the Captain, with a sigh. held advisable that the Countess should be borne within doors. She had not missed her grand-daughter. She was never indeed to know of Lady Barbara's brief absence: her flight with her lover, and her return to her duty. IX. FOR Some days the Countess lay at Highgate, in the dingy bed-room of a roadside inn. She was insensible, tionless, and could give utterance to no articulate sounds. -mo Early in the ensuing week she was carried back to St. James's Square. She bore the journey tolerably well. But the town physicians at once declared that her ladyship's recovery was not to be looked for. It was only a question of a few days with her, they decided. Her constitution had wholly given way. Lady Bab was constant in her attendance by the sick bed of her grandmother. She had not seen the Captain since the night of her short ride with him in the carriage towards town and a Fleet marriage. She was thinking of him fondlyand of her own troubles, and of the dying Countess - the sum of whose sins and failings death was gradually dimming and dissolving, so far as the vision of survivors was concerned. It was nearly an hour past midnight. The taper burned very dimly. White as her draperies, and terribly worn with watching, looked poor little Lady Barbara. For a moment she closed her weary eyes, and sleep stole over her. She bowed her head upon her breast-then awoke with a start, almost with a scream. Lady Dangerfield was sitting up in "At home, in your own house, grandmamma," "Who brought me here? What's the day of the month?" The 12th of April, grandmamma.” There was a pause. Then the 5th has passed? And the Sth? And no earthquake?" "No earthquake." "No earthquake! Then I've been made a fool of. We've all been made fools of. Why wasn't there an earthquake?" To this query, Bab could find no suitable reply. bed, staring at her grandchild with fixed | do your best to deserve the love of her glassy eyes, "Where am I?" she de- whole heart, that she has given thee, manded in a thick, muffled voice. It was Harry," said Lady Betty Laxford to the the first time she had spoken since her Captain. "Sure, what have you ever seizure upon Highgate Hill. done to merit the happiness of wedding my sweet Bab, and what can she see in your roystering, guard-room airs, to think of taking thee for her husband? And yet, if she hadn't, I almost think I could have shown pity for thee myself, Captain; for I do believe there's an honest heart in that broad chest of yours, beating sturdily under your red coat. Try and deserve your good fortune, Harry; that's all you can do-really deserve it, you never will. Treat her tenderly, and love her all your life. We're strange creatures, we women, and we need a world of indulgence and forbearance. You must humour us, and pet us; we're but babies at the best. And yet, for all our fancies and follies, our vapours, frights, faintings, monkeys, fashions, china, patches, washes, tattle, and impertinence, there's something of the angel about us too, if you'll only think so. Heighho! How pleased and fond and silly you both look, and yet, you know, you should be miserable, seeing what's happened. I can't find heart to scold you, however, for looking so happy. Things are all upset, somehow. This comes of earthquakes! Well, they need not happen very often. The poor Countess! - I must wear crape, I suppose, though I look quite a wretch in black, always. Now she's gone, is there harm in my saying — no! -now she's gone, I'll bite my tongue off, rather than say anything against her! There, positively, if you two fools can't get on without kissing each other, I'll— turn my head away!" The Dowager Countess, with a groan, sank back in her bed, and turned her face to the wall. Bab re-arranged the disturbed coverings, and resumed her chair. Sometime afterwards the taper flickered and went out. But there was no longer need of its light. Day had dawned. Bab opened the window-curtains ever so gently, to admit the first cheering rays of the Then, something strange about the look of her grandmother's hand, as the light fell upon it lying open upon the coverlid, arrested her attention. sun. The Dowager Countess was dead. The footsteps of the watchman, going his rounds without, were to be heard. Past five o'clock, and a sunshiny morning!" She knew the voice. She raised the window. Captain Brabazon stood below, gazing up at her. Harry!" she cried to him plaintively. "All is over!" There was a choke in her voice. She could say no more. Her heart seemed overcharged with, wholly occupied by grief just then. Still, by-and-by, the comforting thought came to her, that she was not alone or uncared for in the world; that her Harry was true to her; and that she was free now to give him her love and her hand, without aid from the chaplains of the Fleet or the Tweed. Could she sorrow then so very much for the demise of the Dowager Countess? Indeed, the life of the late Lady Dangerfield had not been of a kind to justify much lamentation, on the part of any one, over her death. The date of the demise of the Dowager Countess was remembered afterwards, so far as it was remembered at all, in connection with the time fixed for the Great Earthquake - which did not occur. But the Earthquake soon ceased to be a topic of conversation - -was speedily, indeed, forgotten almost altogether. Folly does not long lie fallow; punctually produces fresh crops, with scarce the interval of a season between them; and needs little cultivation or labour to stimulate her natural fertility. In a very little while other subjects, quite as preposterous in their character, gave occupation and entertainment to the frivolous world of "Be good to the dear little woman, and society. From Fraser's Magazine. OR, THE KING'S SACRIFICE. [THE battle of Clontarf, fought A D. 1014, annulled for ever the Danish power in Ireland. During two centuries and more the sons of the North had landed on the Irish coasts, sacked the monasteries, burned the cities and churches, and in many places wellnigh destroyed the Christian civilization of earlier times, although they were never able to establish a monarchy in Ireland. The native dynasties for the most part remained; and Brian the Great, then King of all Ireland, though aged and blind, led forth the native hosts against the invader for one supreme effort. He placed his son Murrough in command; but he offered up, nothwithstanding, his life for his country, and wrought her deliverance. His sons and his grandsons partook his glory and his fate. His death was a favourite theme with the chroniclers and bards of ancient Erin. When Bolingbroke wrote his Patriot King, he little thought how near him he might have drawn, from a period and a'land deemed barbarous, the most signal example of that regal greatness of which he aspired to set forth the ideal.] I. ANSWER, thou that from the height Look'st to left, and look'st to right, Answer make, how goes the fight?' II. Thus spake King Brian, by his tent He marched, kept pure his path with prayer. That made him wondrous 'mid his peers, The burden of his fourscore years: III. 'O King, the battle goes this hour As when two seas are met in might, When billow billow doth devour, And tide with tide doth fight: I watch the waves of war; but none Can see what banners rise or fall; Sea-clouds on rush, sea-crests on run, And blood is over all.' IV. Then prayed the King once more, head-bare, Gem-charged, and cleansed from mortal taint, : Which guards, thus late, its wasted pile,† And maids, and confessors each one, The blazoned letters well he kenned The gathering anthem hears, The thoughts that nursed his youth, that hour God's priests were offering, far and wide, For lo! it was Good Friday morn, And Christ once more was crowned with thorn: Yield from their sunless wombs: XII. Him God destroyed! The accursed one lay In Armagh Church sleep well. Silent all night the Northmen haled Their dead adown the bleeding wharf :Far north at dawn their dark ships sailed; But on thy shore, Clontarf, Old Eire once more, with pale cheeks wet, Gave thanks that He who shakes the skies Had burst His people's bond, and yet Decreed that Sacrifice : For God is one that gives and takes; That lifts the low, and fells the proud; Thus sang to Eire her bards of old; THE POWER OF THE LEAF. In the first place, says the English Mechanic, let us fully understand what we mean by worker · -or let us agree as to the definition of the term. To illustrate, we say of the locomotive that it performs a certain amount of labour, it turns so many wheels, drives so many looms, draws so many cars so many miles an hour- - we speak of it as a worker. So, too, of man - we speak of him as a worker. He performs so much labour, physical or mental. Yet the locomotive, with all its ponderous bars, its mysterious valves, its great levers, its hidden springs, can do nothing. It is dead, inert metal. True, too, of man that wonderful combination of bones and muscles and nerves and tissues can do nothing but decay, and be resolved to dust again. The brain cannot think, the eye cannot see, the ear cannot hear, the nerves cannot thrill, the muscle can not contract. In the same sense the leaf can do nothing. Yet in the same sense that a locomotive can draw a train, or that man can think and labour, is the leaf a labourer that outworks them all. The locomotive is a combination of material things so arranged that through or by them we discover the operations of force. Man himself is nothing more. The leaf is the same. Better, perhaps, that we say that these are the workshop wherein force exhibits itself, and produces results. When did the leaf begin its work? It was the first to rise on creation's morn and go forth to labour. Ere the almost shoreless ocean dashed upon the low Silurian plain, the leaf was at its work. And through all the long ages it has worked - worked to develop better and higher forms of life. And the earth's broad face is written all over with the evidences of its faithfulness. From The Spectator. THE PRINCESS LOUISE. and reigning Sovereign, and though any such demand for consent was wholly at variance IN the midst of a very great war, a war with the English system of thought,— the history of which will be studied centu- which at heart relies on this doctrine, that ries hence with minute care, a clever young every man or woman ought to marry whom woman is engaged to a promising but as he or she likes, provided the public thinks yet undistinguished young man, and the the liking reasonable still it was felt to English world pauses in its contemplation be expedient. The Act was very badly of the conflict to consider that event. And drawn up, for it did not interfere in the it is an event, that is the puzzle of it. most important matter of all, the choice There are not ten educated Englishmen in of the reigning Sovereign, - did not, for the Empire who do not feel a quiet but still instance, interfere with Queen Victoria's definite sensation of pleasure in hearing a right, if she liked, to marry a music-master; sort of official announcement that the but still its effect was to drive the Royal Frincess Louise is to marry the Marquis caste back upon itself for alliances, of Lorn on some day in next February. people, on the whole, approved that. The Marquis, though the heir of a very They did not want to see Mrs. Fitzherbert ancient race, for centuries closely bound crowned. Of late years, however, the Act up with our history, is of no particular wore out its popularity. There were a importance to anybody but his father's ten- good many children and grandchildren of ants; and the Princess, though in the line the House, and it seemed likely to come of the succession, and popular from an im- to this, that a good many young gentlepression which, true or false, is entirely men, with immense rank, no property, and unwarranted by evidence, that she is very no chance of the throne, could not marry unlike other Princesses, is very far re- heiresses, and were therefore claimants on moved from any chance of the throne, but the public, and kept in a meaningless still everybody is in reality very much in- slavery as to their choice in marriage; and terested indeed, and a good deal pleased. a great many young ladies, also of high The truth is that the announcement is a rank, about whom England felt in some social event, that the English, who in inexplicable way a distinct interest, were State politics are republican, are in social forced into marriages of convenience. It politics either aristocratic or democratic, was felt that a change should come, yet and that this alliance interests and pleases also felt that a legal change would be inthem, because it involves a triumph of both expedient, and a wish was expressed in a those ideas over the monarchical one. A half-forgotten case, which it is not needful member of the Royal Family marries a to discuss further, that the rule should, as subject, no matter how great, with the Sovereign's assent, and we are, therefore, coming back to rationality—that is, rudely expressed, the public sentiment. The Royal Marriage Act is perhaps, of all laws ever passed in Europe, the most brutally insolent in idea, but although incessantly attacked and never defended in principle, it has never been repealed. The country spect felt by the mass of mankind for has felt that the Act did in a very bad high birth, is intelligible enough, continuway get the people out of a very danger-ity of any kind always impressing the ous scrape, a conflict between two irre- imagination; but the special respect felt concilable sets of ideas, the wish to obey and paid to two families or rather to democratic principles, and the determina- the Catholic and Protestant branches of tion to maintain monarchical institutions. one particular family — as if the stock of It is all very well, and quite true, to say that one person is as good as another; but the Prince who married a housemaid would not reign in England, and, if unrestrained by law, the tendency of princes is to marry housemaids, or worse. Their touchstone of the distinctions between people below them is pleasingness or unpleasingness to themselves. The Act bound all descendants of George III. who wished to marry to obtain the previous consent in writing of the regards those in the succession who are unlikely to succeed, be relaxed by the Sovereign herself. It has been relaxed, and the general satisfaction may be shared by those who, like ourselves, are unable to understand, though they fully acknowledge, the kind of charm which the Royal caste exercises over European minds. The re a particular German Emperor were in some mystical way sacro-sanct, has never been satisfactorily explained. Why are not the Savelli respected more than the Bourbons or Guelphs, being as they are at least ten centuries older; and why should it seem natural for a Greek Parliament to choose Prince George of Denmark as King, and unnatural to choose, say, Lord Stanley? The superstition, however, exists, and in permitting the marriage of |