and conscious exclusion of the other two is a fatal mistake. There is a school of writers of fiction of this day whose aim is unadorned delineation of the circumstances of daily life, who make too apparent their aim. It ends in affectation.

The same principles are true of the characters of life. Cicely had plot and character. And Jessy and the widow had-what, perhaps, the following little incidents may enable the reader to decide for himself upon.

Jessy had come down a little later than usual, and Mr. Seymour was waiting for her. He was standing at the window looking out at the dark brown beds neatly cut in the brown turf, and the crocus leaves which were bursting through it.

"Ah, Jessy, my girl, what have I got?" said Mr. Seymour with his usual kind and good humoured smile. Good man! his own mind was so good, and calm, and settled that he could afford to be ever cheerful," What have I got ?"

The colour flew from Jessy's face as she passed the breakfast table and walked up to her father, half, and more than half suspecting what he meant. "Oh, I doubt not you would know. No, my Jessy must purchase that gift by at least double the number of kisses to her old father."

So saying the kind man pressed his daughter to his bosom, and whispered his blessing on her head.

But Jessy's heart was beating high. The words of love, the fond embrace, the kiss she had in childhood

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prized as the seal of peace, love, and daily joy, and which now was to her the dearest impression of the passing day, all were scarcely noticed now. She caught the letter her father offered as the prize, so valuable, and laid it on the table, though with a sigh.

Mr. Seymour no more understood Jessy than the sunbeam becomes part of the valley or the tree into whose inmost depths it penetrates. Yet he loved her more than father ever loved daughter. He did not know when or why or how she was sad,—often joked when she was sorrowful, and sympathised and condoled with her when she was more light-hearted than usual. The sunbeam of his love penetrated every portion of her being, but it never became part of her.

This morning he did think she was dull once or twice at breakfast. "Is anything the matter, Jessy? Why don't you open the letter? Are you afraid I shall see a line of it? I will not look, I promise you."

"Dear papa!" said Jessy, smiling, and saying nothing. She did not look at it often during breakfast, she rather shunned the place where it lay. She had a feeling-she could not have told you what it was. But though her eye glanced off the letter as it lay and she had rather have looked at anything else, still, the moment breakfast was over, she caught it up and flew from the room in agitation so great that Mr. Seymour started round and said, "Are you not well?"

"Yes, dear papa, quite," said she stopping, and kissing his forehead, while her quick and uncertain breath told a different tale, "quite well, only-I'm in a hurry." And she was gone.

The

She hastened down the passage which led to her own room, and she closed the door. That room was her refuge; there the tired wing might droop; there the forms of society, the need of keeping up when the heart is breaking, the necessity of talking when there is no single topic about which we can raise a thought, those kites and vultures which hover over us, are gone. tired wing may droop, and the bird may nestle in its sheltered home. When Cicely one day asked her an old question borrowed from the suggestion of another, "whether she would like to be a bird because it lived in a nest, or because it could fly to the clouds," Cicely having said, of course, that the latter would be her reason; Jessy said, as she sat thinking with delight at the idea, "Oh, I should like to be a bird because I could build and live in a nest. It would be so snug." And that room was Jessy's nest, and there she sang her plaintive song alone, and the wing of her spirit was still.

She sank back into her chair; she looked round the letter, broke half the seal. She took that other one from her bosom, and read it, and smiled. This gave her courage, and she opened the new one. We will venture to stand by and read with her its contents, and imagine though we are not authorised to say what Jessy felt.

"My dearest Jessy,

And why not say so? What is there in that which can dissatisfy any one, the most clinging? Or may it be that the cherished tenant of that loving breast had a slightly different beginning. Well, what matters it,—'tis but a word—and how can it much matter if a possessive

pronoun be inserted or omitted? After all we do not mean so much by a word, and yet we fret about another person's to us, as if it were all and everything. Why, we have known a man fret himself into paralysis because a man signed himself "yours truly," instead of "yours faithfully ;" and yet the poor writer had no more intention than he had for writing with the front of his pen instead of its back. Ay! and more than that, we heard of a man who trembled and turned pale to open a letter to see if it began "My dear Sir," or "My dear Mr. Robson," and when the eye discerned at a glance that there were three words and not four in the address, the letter was doubled up and locked up, and not read for a week; and that week, I assure you, was a wretched one. But our friend opened it on Saturday night, and found that he had misapprehended the third word, and instead of "Sir," it was "Sam;" so that the great man instead of drawing back a degree had advanced one; ay! and the degree was to an abbreviated Christian name. And then, oh the misery of having neglected it for a week!—the surprise the great writer would feel at having it unanswered! The heartmisery it might have saved-the-. But we are wandering far from Jessy.

"My dearest Jessy,-I have so much to tell you."

Why use the word "tell," why not use the words

say to you?" Why, Jessy, what difference can there be between "say," and "tell?" And yet to her there was, though undiscovered by us, as much as when a cold wind passes over an aching wound in agony to the silent sufferer, while it is as a refreshing breeze to us.

"To tell you of the brilliant cavalry charge at Balaklava; I assure you it was a sight which those who saw will never see equalled. The day was brilliant, and in the early morning those thin mists which seem to crisp away before the stronger power of the sun, were lifting up, leaving that singularly rich colouring which only October gives. On this occasion the colours of nature were intermingled with the dress of soldiers and the instruments of war

"

Jessy's eye was gazing vacantly at the page; she had read and made it all out, but her mind had wandered off it. "Why tell me of all this, what do I care for it? He did not use to write so," said she, as with eyes swelling with a tear, she again gazed on the old letter, and saw more in its scantiest line than in the whole page of this last one; and yet the first was about nothing and this last was about something. Ah, but then she was the something, the one thing, the only thing of which Leonard then wrote-What, reader, do you call that selfish? No, call it not by so hard a name. Remember she would have died-ay, more than died, loved till she died for him.-Well, well, we will not moralise and philosophise any more,-the subject is difficult. The fact was her loving eye gazed on a focus into whose minute circle every ray of Jessy's light was concentrated, while he gazed on a wide world of sunshine and why not?

Then came a good deal about the Balaklava charge; and then Jessy's eye became fixed again, and a smile passed over her face, and her manner became earnest as her glance fell on the words, "I have been unwell