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we try to sit upon them both at once.

How would Dolf like this expedi

tion to Scotland, handsome George being in it ?" Charlotte's eyes flashed now. I care no more for Dolf than I care for-not half so much as I care for this poor little brute. Don't bring up Dolf to me, Kate!"

"As you please. I would not mix myself up with your private affairs for the world. Only, a looker-on sometimes sees more than those engaged in the play."

Crossing the apartment, Mrs. Verrall traversed the passage that led from it, and opened the door of another room. There sat her husband at the dessert-table, drinking his wine alone, and smoking a cigar. He was a slight man, double the age of his wife, his hair and whiskers yellow, and his eyes set deep in his head: rather a good-looking man on the whole, but a very silent one. "I want to go to London with you," said Mrs. Verrall.

"You can't," he answered.

She advanced to the table and sat down near him. "There's Charlotte going one way, and you another"

"Don't stop Charlotte," he interrupted, with a meaning nod.

"And I must be left in the house by myself; to the ghosts and dreams and shadows they are inventing about that Dark Plain. I will go with you, Verrall."

"I should not take you with me to save the ghosts running off with you," was Mr. Verrall's answer, as he pressed the ashes from his cigar on a pretty shell, set in gold. go up incog. this time."

66

"Then I'll fill the house with guests," she petulantly said.

"Fill it, and welcome, if you like, Kate," he replied. "But, to go to London, you must wait for another opportunity."

"What a hateful thing business is! I wish it had never been invented!"

"A great many more wish the same. And have more cause to wish it than you," he dryly answered. "Is tea ready ?"

Mrs. Verrall returned to the room she had left, to order it in. Charlotte Pain was then standing outside the large window, leaning against its frame, the King Charles lying quietly in her arms, and her own ears on the alert, for she thought she heard advancing footsteps: and they seemed to be stealthy ones. The thought-or, perhaps, the wish-that it might be George Godolphin, stealing up to surprise her, flashed into her mind. She bent her head and stroked the dog, in the prettiest unconsciousness of the nearing footsteps.

"Charlotte!"

A hand was laid upon her shoulder. She cried out. A genuine, sharp cry of dismay, dropped the King Charles, and bounded into the room. The intruder followed her. "Why, Dolf!" uttered Mrs. Verrall in much astonishment.

you?"

"Is it

"It is not my ghost," replied the gentleman, holding out his hand. He was a little man with fair hair, Mr. Rodolf Pain, cousin to the two ladies. "Did I alarm you, Charlotte?" "Alarm me!" she angrily uttered.

the earth."

"You must have sprung out of

"I have sprung from the railway station.

Where is Verrall ?"

"Why have you come down so unexpectedly?" exclaimed Mrs. Verrall.

"To see Verrall. I

go

back to-morrow."

"Verrall goes up to-morrow night."

"I know he does. And that is why I have come."

"You might have waited to see him in London," said Charlotte, her equanimity not yet restored.

"It was necessary for me to see him before he reached London. Where shall I find him, Mrs. Verrall?"

"In the dining-room," Mrs. Verrall replied. with him, in this hurry?"

"What can you want

"Business," laconically replied Rodolf Pain, as he quitted the room in search of Mr. Verrall.

't was not the only interruption. Ere two minutes had elapsed, Lady Godolphin was shown in, causing Mrs. Verrall and her sister nearly as much surprise as did the last intruder. She had walked over from the Folly, attended by a footman, and some agitation peeped out through her usual courtly suavity of manner.

"Can you be ready to start with us to-morrow morning instead of Monday?" she demanded of Charlotte Pain.

"To-morrow will be Sunday!" returned Charlotte.

"The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath: remember Who it was spoke that to us," said Lady Godolphin, with some sternness. "It is the argument I have just been obliged to bring forward to Sir George. I did not imagine you were so scrupulous."

She laid a stress upon the "you," and a smile crossed Charlotte Pain's lips: Charlotte was certainly not troubled with over-scrupulousness upon these points.

"I do not countenance Sunday travelling, if other days can be made use of," continued Lady Godolphin. "But there are cases where it is not only necessary, but justifiable: when we are glad to feel the value of those Divine words. The fever has broken out again, and I shall make use of to-morrow to get away from it. We start in the morning." "I shall be ready and willing," replied Charlotte.

"It has appeared at Lady Sarah Grame's," added Lady Godolphin: "one of the most unlikely homes it might have been expected to visit. After this, none of us can feel safe. Were that fever to attack Sir George, his life, in his present reduced state, would not be worth an hour's purchase."

Declining the invitation to remain, Lady Godolphin prepared to leave again, after giving a few moments, with Charlotte Pain, to the settlement of preliminaries for the morning. The dread of the fever had been strong upon her from the first; but never had it been so keen as now. Some are given to this dread in an unwonted degree: while the epidemic lasts (of whatever nature it may be) they live in a constant, racking state of fear, of pain. It is the death they fear: the being sent violently on the unknown life to come. I know but of one remedy: to make peace with God: death or life are alike then. Lady Godolphin had not found it.

"Will Mr. Hastings permit his daughter to travel on a Sunday?" exclaimed Mrs. Verrall, the idea suddenly occurring to her, as Lady Godolphin was leaving.

"That is my business," was my lady's frigid answer. It has been said that she brooked not interference in the slightest degree.

It certainly could not be called the business of Mr. Hastings. For, my away the lady and Maria, and Sir George and Charlotte Pain, were far next morning from Prior's Ash, before he received an inkling of the matter. That graceless George-much he cared about the sin of Sunday travelling!-attended them a few stations forward, getting back at night. "If I had but known of this, what a pretext it would have been for keeping Maria!" mentally uttered the dismayed rector.

THE IRONSIDES.*

NAVAL SONG.

By J. E. Carpenter.

OLD England's glorious wooden walls
Were once our country's pride,
Where'er a keel could float they all
The world in arms defied;

When NELSON fought and DIBDIN sung,

No Iron Ships had we,

But arm to arm we boldly met

The bravest on the sea!

And so we will again, brave boys,

In spite of wounds and scars,

For Hearts of Oak may still be found
In England's jolly Tars.

They threaten now with mail-clad ships
Our commerce and our trade,
The proof, my hearties, still must be
Of what their men are made;

If they have castles on the deep,
Why we can build as stout,

"Twill come to this that both, like men,

Must meet and fight it out.

But, spite of steam and steel, brave boys,
There's nothing still debars

The British Fleet the world to beat
With England's jolly Tars.

The Ironsides of England then
Must proudly take their place,
And steam instead of wind and tide
Assist us to give chase;

A precious change is this, brave boys,

For Tars like and me,

you

Who've sarved aboard a man-o'-war,

And lived at last to see!

Our duty still we'll do, brave boys,

And bless our lucky stars

That alter what they will,-they cannot
England's jolly Tars!

* This song has been set to a stirring melody by Mr. W. Vincent Wallace.

NOTES ON NOTE-WORTHIES,

OF DIVERS ORDERS, EITHER SEX, AND EVERY AGE.

BY SIR NATHANIEL.

And make them men of note (do you note, men?).-Love's Labour's Lost, Act III. Sc. 1.

D. Pedro. Or, if thou wilt hold longer argument,

Balth.

Do it in notes.

Note this before my notes,

There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting. D. Pedro. Why these are very crotchets that he speaks, Notes, notes, forsooth, and noting!

Much Ado About Nothing, Act II. Sc. 3.

And these to Notes are frittered quite away.-Dunciad, Book I.

Notes of exception, notes of admiration,

Notes of assent, notes of interrogation.-Amen Corner, c. iii.

XLV. THE EMPEROR JOSEPH II.

KAUNITZ said, "It takes a hundred years to make a great man in Austria." A propos of which mot a Saturday Reviewer has affirmed that "Joseph II., with all his faults, was undoubtedly a great man ;"-and has subjoined the query: "Will the modern Lower Empire live long enough to produce another?”*

It is to the influence of this same Kaunitz,-" who, like an evil spirit, ever attended him"-that Menzel attributes the contradiction apparent in Joseph's character, the intermixture of so much injustice with his most zealous endeavours to do right-for Joseph "evinced an utter want of feeling in his foreign policy" (alluding to Poland), and yet was, in his own dominions, the "greatest enthusiast for popular liberty and the greatest promoter of national prosperity that ever sat upon a throne." Maria Theresa died in 1780, and Joseph II. no sooner found himself sole sovereign than, as this historian describes it, he began a multitude of reforms, with headlong enthusiasm attempting at once to uproot every ancient abuse and to force upon his subjects liberty and enlightenment. "Regardless of the power of hereditary prejudice, he arbitrarily upset every existing institution, convinced that he was promoting the real welfare of his subjects." His reforms extended to both church and state, and everywhere met the same opposition. That best of schoolmasters, Experience, but "whose school fees are so heavy," taught him, before he had done, the moral of our old dramatist's adage, that

Things rashly undertaken end as ill,

But great acts thrive when reason guides the will.‡

*Saturday Review, No. 26. (1856.)

Menzel's History of Germany, § cexxxviii.

Beaumont and Fletcher, The Fair Maid of the Inn, Act I. Sc. 1.

Taking into account his circumstances, position, and mental endowments, there was no monarch in Europe but this emperor, Schlegel maintains, whose mission it so eminently was to determine the great contest of the age, and with a strong hand to guide the changes now almost inevitable, in such a manner and in such a direction as to ensure the general well-being. While, however, most writers assign Joseph's rashness, his desire to reap the fruit as soon as he had sown the seed, without leaving time for its silent growth, as the main cause of the imperfect success of his measures, Frederick Schlegel submits that, easily as this tendency may be explained by the emperor's position, education, destiny, and character, it does not account altogether for the failure of his plans. To him it appears, that it was Joseph's neglect to win over and guide public opinion, that created the principal obstacles to his measures, and often hindered their success. This neglect "is the more to be lamented, as public opinion soon acquired a power so great and formidable, and almost exclusively governed the age. How many means, too, stood at his command to influence public opinion, to become the pilot of that age, and steer it towards the haven of universal well-being! He, the offspring and heir of Maximilian and Charles the Fifth, the successor of Matthias Corvinus, the emperor of Germany, sovereign of the French and German Netherlands, protector and lord of the most refined and industrious provinces of Italy, a man, too, of penetrating mind and restless energy and activity; well versed in the useful sciences; familiar with the various countries and peoples of Europe from personal observation; master of so many languages; in personal intercourse so attractive and irresistible; he, we say, ought to have swayed the minds of all men, and have been the saving genius of Europe, by imposing silence on the storms that were menacing her with destruction."*

The character Archdeacon Coxe gives of this Kaiser is, that he undoubtedly possessed many great and amiable qualities, but that these were counteracted by a restlessness of temper, and a rage for innovation, which were with difficulty controlled even in his youth, by the calm udgment and wary circumspection of his mother, Maria Theresa ;defects aggravated by a spirit of despotism derived from his high birth, and fostered by his confined education. To these the historian of the House of Austria adds an habitual duplicity, and a disregard of the most solemn engagements, which sunk him in the opinion of Europe, and deprived him at once of the love of his subjects, and the confidence of his allies. A wise statesman, it is remarked, will always consult the genius and temper of his people, and make even prejudice and superstition subservient to the general good: Joseph, unfortunately for himself and for Europe, acted in direct contradiction to this plain rule, in attempting to abolish deep-rooted institutions, and to extirpate prejudices and opinions which had been consecrated by ages. "He expected that to be the work of a moment which could only be the gradual operation of successive years; he never distinguished what was just and specious in theory, from what was reducible to practice. To use the words of his rival Frederic, 'his head was a confused magazine of despatches, decrees, and projects.' With the most thoughtless precipitation, he made laws before he had re

Schlegel's Modern History, lectures xix., XX., xxi., passìm.

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