"Ay, but it would not be like the Willows," said the most practical Marian; and they both looked out with a smile and a sigh upon the beautiful sunshiny lawn, the river in an ecstasy of light and brightness, the little island with all its ruffled willow-leaves, and bethought themselves, finding some amusement in the contrast, of Laurel House and Myrtle Cottage and the close secluded walls of Bellevue. Mrs Atheling had sent the Fly for her daughters-the old Islingtonian fly, with the old white horse, and the coachman with his shiny hat. This vehicle, which had once been a chariot of the gods, looked somewhat shabby as it stood in the broad sunshine before the door of the Willows, accustomed to the fairy coach of Mrs Edgerley. They laughed to themselves very quietly when they caught their first glimpse of it, yet in a momentary weakness were half ashamed; for even Agnes's honest determination to let everybody know their true "rank in life" was not troubled by any fear lest this respectable vehicle should be taken for their own carriage now. "Going, my love?" cried Mrs Edgerley; "the fatal hour-has it really come so soon?-You leave us all desolée, of course; how shall we exist to-day? And it was so good of you to come. Remember! we shall be dying till we have a new tale from the author of Hope Hazlewood, I long to see it. I know it will be charming, or it could not be yours; and, my love, you look quite lovely such roses! I think you quite the most exquisite little creature in the world. Remember me to your excellent mamma. Is your carriage waiting? Ah, I am miserable to part with you. Farewell that dreadful word-farewell!" Again that light perfumy touch waved over one blushing cheek and then another. Mrs Edgerley continued to wave her hand and make them pretty signals till they reached the door, whither they hastened as quickly and as quietly as possible, not desiring any escort; but few were the privileged people in Mrs Edgerley's morning-room, and no one cared to do the girls so much honour. Outside the house their friend the gardener waited with two bouquets, so rare and beautiful that the timid recipients of the same, making him their humble thanks, scarcely knew how to express sufficient gratitude. Some one was arriving as they de parted some one who, making the discovery of their presence, stalked towards them, almost stumbling over Agnes, who happened to be nearest to him. "Going away?" said a dismayed voice at a considerable altitude. Mr Endicott's thin head positively vibrated with mortification; he stretched it towards Marian, who stood before him smiling over her flowers, and fixed a look of solemn reproach upon her. "I am aware that beauty and youth flee often from the presence of one who looks upon life with a studious eye. This disappointment is not without its object. You are going away." Yes," said Marian, laughing, but with a little charitable compassion for her own particular victim, "and you are just arriving? It is very odd-you should have come yesterday." "Permit me," said Mr Endicott moodily. "No; I am satisfied. This experience is well-I am glad to know it. To us, Miss Atheling," said the solemn Yankee, as he gave his valuable assistance to Agnes 66 to us this play and sport of fortune is but the proper training. Our business is not to enjoy; we bear these disappointments for the world." He put them into their humble carriage, and bowed at them solemnly. Poor Mr Endicott! He did not blush, but grew green as he stood looking after the slow equipage ere he turned to the disenchanted Willows. Though he was about to visit people of distinction, the American young gentleman, being in love, did not care to enter upon this new scene of observation and note-making at this moment; so he turned into the road, and walked on in the white cloud of dust raised by the wheels of the fly. The dust itself had a sentiment in it, and belonged to Marian; and Mr Endicott began the painful manufacture of a sonnet, expressing this "experience," on the very spot. But you ought not to laugh at him, Marian, even though other people do," said Agnes, with superior virtue. Why not?" said the saucy beauty; "I laughed at Sir Langham and I am sure he deserved it," she added in an under-tone. "Marian," said Agnes, "I think you have named him yourself, or I should not have done it-we had better not say anything about Sir Langham to mamma." "I do not care at all who names him,” said Marian, pouting; but she made no answer to the serious proposition: so it became tacitly agreed between them that nothing was to be said of the superb runaway lover when they got home. CHAPTER XI.-HOME. And now they were at home-the fly dismissed, the trunks unfastened, and Agnes and Marian sitting with Mamma in the old parlour, as if they had never been away. Yes, they had been away-both of them had come in with a little start and exclamation to this familiar room, which somehow had shrunk out of its proper proportions, and looked strangely dull, dwarfed, and sombre. It was very strange; they had lived here for years, and knew every corner of every chair and every table and they had only been gone a fortnight -yet what a difference in the wellknown room! Somebody has been doing something to the house," said Marian involuntarily; and Agnes paused in echoing the sentiment, as she caught a glimpse of a rising cloud on her mother's comely brow. "Indeed, children, I am grieved to see how soon you have learned to despise your home," said Mrs Atheling; and the good mother reddened, and contracted her forehead. She had watched them with a little jealousy from their first entrance, and they, to tell the truth, had been visibly struck with the smallness and the dulness of the family rooms. "Despise!" cried Marian, kneeling down, and leaning her beautiful head and her clasped arms upon her mother's knee. Despise!" said Agnes, putting her arm over Mrs Atheling's shoulder from behind her chair: oh, mamma, you ought to know better!-we who have learned 66 that there are people in the world who have neither a mother nor a home!" “Well, then, what is the matter?" said Mrs Atheling; and she began to smooth the beautiful falling hair, which came straying over her old black silk lap, like Danae's shower of gold. Nothing at all-only the room is a little smaller, and the carpet a little older than it used to be," said Agnes; "but, mamma, because we notice that, you do not think surely that we are less glad to be at home." "Well, my dears," said Mrs Atheling, still a little piqued; "your great friend, when he called the other day, did not seem to think there was anything amiss about the house." "Our great friend?" The girls looked at each other with dismaywho could it be? "His card is on the mantelpiece," said Mrs Atheling. "He had not very much to say, but he seemed a pleasant young man-Sir Something -Sir Langham; but, indeed, my dear, though, of course, I was pleased to see him, I am not at all sure how far such acquaintances are proper for you." "He was scarcely my acquaintance, mamma," said Agnes, sorrowfully looking down from behind her mother's chair upon Marian, who had hid her face in Mrs Atheling's lap, and made no sign. "For our rank in life is so different," pursued the prudent mother; "and even though I might have some natural ambition for you, I do not think, Agnes, that it would really be wishing you well to wish that you should form connections so far out of the sphere of your own family as that." 66 Mamma, it was not me," said Agnes again, softly and under her breath. "It was no one!" cried Marian, rising up hastily, and suddenly seizing and clipping into an ornamental cross Sir Langham's card, which was upon the mantelpiece. "See, Agnes, it will do to wind silk upon; and nobody cares the least in the world for Sir Langham. Mamma, he used to be like Harry Oswald-that is all -and we were very glad when he went away from the Willows, both Agnes and I." At this statement, made as it was with a blush and a little confusion, Mrs Atheling herself reddened slightly, and instantly left the subject. It was easy enough to warn her children of the evils of a possible connection with people of superior condition; but when such a thing fluttered really and visibly upon the verge of her horizon, Mrs Atheling was struck dumb. To see her pretty Marian a ladya baronet's wife-the bride of that superb Sir Langham-it was not in the nature of mortal mother to hear without emotion of such an extraordinary possibility. The ambitious imagination kindled at once in the heart of Mrs Atheling: she held her ments of the Willows. But, alas! there was nothing but meagre gentility, blank good order, and unloveliness, in this sacred and reserved apartment, where Bell and Beau never threw the charm of their childhood, nor Mrs Atheling dispersed the kindly clippings of her work-basket. The girls consulted each other with dismayed looks-even Rachel, if she came, could not stand against the chill of this grim parlour. Marian pulled the poor haircloth sofa into another position, and altered with impatience the stiff mahogany chairs. They scarcely liked to say to each other how entirely changed was their ideal, or how they shrank from the melancholy state of the best room. "Sir Langham was here, Agnes," said Marian; and within her own mind the young beauty almost added, "No wonder he ran away!" "It is home-it is our own house," said Agnes, getting up for the occasion a little pride. Marian shrugged her pretty shoulders. "But Susan had better bring any one who calls into the other room." Yes, the other room, when they returned to it, had brightened again marvellously. Mrs Atheling had put on her new gown, and had a pink ribbon in her cap. As she sat by the window with her work-basket, she was pleasanter to look at than a dozen pictures; and the sweetest Raphael in the world was not so sweet as these two little lovely fairies playing upon the faded old rug at the feet of Mamma. Not all the luxuries and all the prettinesses of Mrs Edgerley's drawing-rooms, not even the river lying in the sunshine, and the ruffled silvery willows drooping round their little island, were a fit balance to this dearest little group, the mother and the children, who made beautiful beyond all telling the sombre face of home. WAYSIDE SONGS, ORIGINAL AND TRANSLATED. "HOME-KEEPING YOUTH" were considered, in Shakespeare's day, to "have ever homely wits;" but at present we are so fond of going to and fro over the face of the earth, and of walking up and down upon it, that the home-keeper has become an object of wonder and even of respect. As it is the man who has not written a book that ought to be entered at Stationers' Hall, and largely pensioned from the Literary Fund, so it is he who has never travelled, and (rarer virtue!) has never described his travels, that ought to receive a large grant of money from the Geographical Society. The great increase of books may not tend greatly to increase human knowledge, because it dilutes the small particle of human knowledge into such huge hogsheads of supposed knowledge or folly, that the particle of knowledge is often lost for all good ends. In like manner, travel itself and books of travel may be serious obstacles to knowledge of this earth. How can geographical research be prosecuted with much enthusiasm when the explorer knows that his hardwon volume will be lost among a fleet of compilations professing to be original and spicy sketches, got up to suit the Cockney's idea of the matter? This travel that is no travel, and description that is no description, should not be permitted, however, to raise any prejudice against the old idea of wandering as the completion of education-of the years of apprenticeship being fitly followed by the Wanderjahre. An American philosopher has expressed the opin- "He wonder'd that your Lordship Some to discover islands far away; Some to the studious universities. He said that Proteus, your son, was meet: To let him spend his time no more at home, ANTONIO. Nor need'st thou much importune me to that I have consider'd well his loss of time; Unfortunately there are no "islands far away" to be discovered now. The "studious universities" suggest ideas of paradisiacal innocence. Even war affords so little opportunity at present for the development of individuality, that it is of small use in the way of producing that desirable character more often sought than found, a perfect man." A modern youth has only to live for without any effort of his own, he may float about on the labours of others, and amuse himself by trifling only with the varied 66 efforts of man. The true ideal of life seems to have been regarded, by our forefathers, as consisting in a stormy youth and a quiet old age. Storming away life in ancient times involved "a life o' sturt and strife" more than is attainable at present, except among the glens of the Atlas, and suchlike interesting nooks of the earth; but it involved also free and pleasant connection with naturedwelling under the greenwood tree, wild rides and forays, and long pilgrimages. What enviable fellows the Three Archers were ! "We three archers be, Rangers that rove through the north countrie, That value not honours or monie. "We three good fellows be, That never yet ran from three times three, At a lass or a glass under greenwood tree, If the weather were always fine in these days, a lass and a glass always procurable under a greenwood tree, and ven'son in abundance, then we can easily believe that these fine fellows would not yield up their glorious privileges at the bidding of three times three; that to any monarch even each of them would answer in the words of the outlaw Murray,- "Ere the king my fair countrie get,- It may be questioned, however, how far making "nobilis cauld," and living in entire defiance of principalities and powers, be absolutely necessary to the fit development of the modern youth. In the ideal, that is to say, in his poems, spasmodic tragedies, and veracious autobiographies, he is well known to be a most formidable person; consumed by unutterable remorse; haunted by the spirits of innumerable lost females; with the weight of several very culpable homicides resting upon his head; and to have even, possibly, committed the unknown sin; but in the depressing atmosphere of the base actual, he has rather the appearance of one who requires to be encouraged, and to be reminded that a little practical extravagance in youth may be no impeachment to his age. No doubt, |