Maxwell was altogether

much harm to, Maxwell. altered; as if he had walked over a bridge which spanned a whole stream of life. True, he had just turned fifteen, which makes a wonderful change in many, but that could hardly account for the alteration—so silent, so full of his own thoughts as he stood on the rug, with his back to the fire, and literally if any one made the very joke to him which was made a year ago, or six months ago and brought out a peal of laughter, it was now received with perfect gravity and profound silence and a frown, till Mrs. Loraine said, "Maxwell, my dear, do you not feel well?"

"Oh yes, mamma," and he went out whistling.

Then he always used of old to be talking of Jessybut now he never did, and if any one else spoke of her he instantly left the room; then he never used to kiss his sisters, but now he always kissed Cicely before breakfast, though he looked so grave about it, that it gave anything but a happy impression. Then too he was sometimes found in a corner reading poetry -not Wordsworth or Tennyson, true-but Byron, and that was something; but then he would read "Parisina," and Cicely wished him to read "The Corsair," and his mother had some recollections that "The Hebrew Melodies" was the right thing to read, or "Don Juan," she was not quite sure which, for she had but glimmerings from her young days of either, and she had not read much since. But she could not be very far wrong in recommending any work by the author of "The Hebrew Melodies."

And then there was Alice. The war touched her

also; in its own way found her out in the schoolroom, poor child, in many a strange way; first the governess was so terribly prosy and melancholy; she always had been, but now it was worse than ever; she always saw something in everything which happened. Sebastopol and every movement was a fulfilment of the Apocalypse; and what with showing the evident fulfilments, anticipating the future and explaining the reasons each week why the surmises of last week had proved a profound failure, poor Alice's French and German and "Life of Marie de Medicis," were at a sad discount. Then the governess was so cross, so sublime, so dignified, as if every movement in the war had a particular concern with her; just as we always feel that we are ourselves the personal friends and confidants of Richard I., and Queen Elizabeth in the Talisman and Kenilworth, and with every hero of a novel in proportion as he is high and noble. Her walks were so long, so silent, always to the high road, along it and back again. Then Maxwell did not play nearly so much as he did with Alice, did not plague her and bully her half as much as he did; and this made Alice sad, for she always loved it dearly.

Oh, yes, the war shaft found its way into the schoolroom. War did not shoot past little Grace without touching her. Poor little gentle, thoughtful, loving Grace with all her wondering affection for Jessy Seymour, and which Jessy, with her own wild, fervent devotion used to love so. Poor Grace; she too in her walk to the Rectory to know how Jessy was, had her own share of grief from the quiver of the war.

And there was that little room down the passage in the Rectory to which daily at ten o'clock-But we will of that another time.

Then, too, there was one more, and I have been all this time reaching her. Constance Randall; the shafts of war hit her right home-home to the very heart, as I will now go on to tell, now that I have bound all my floating, Sibylline leaves of story into one idea, one volume of history. In a war kindred interest makes us all one; and there is no kindred interest greater than that of war. We never felt so much at home with multitudes as we do now. Never; the war has made us all one, and given means enough for many threads to a tale.

Poor Constance; there indeed the war had shot its arrows home. The best narrative of her life and quiet unknown sufferings will be from her diary; some leaves of which I now transcribe. You are shocked at printing a living person's diary. Well,-but there you will find no reason to be uneasy. "Then," you say, "Constance is dead! and all the consequence to a tale!" Well, she is dead, and it is that death and the way that led to it, of which I am the annalist. Otherwise you should never have heard of Constance's diary. Mr. Randall found her diary in a small box which lay "But then," you say, "Mr. Randall too had nothing but her diary to go by, and never got that longed-for conversation with her."

put away in her cabin.

Let us wait and see.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE DIARY.

HERE is her diary—at least part of it. Diaries! strange, real, powerful things, when self talks to self, and self sits opposite self, to be looked at, examined, analysed,-judged; so full of reality and out-pourings, we rush to our diary when our hearts are full, and there is no one to tell, or no one we can or will talk to, and we utter our woes and anxieties like a poet writing his stanzas; weeping over them and laughing at their beauty, and then tearing them up and scattering them to the winds; only happy to have given to words our feelings. Dante's diary is his Divina Comedia, and Tennyson's is "In Memoriam." And sometimes men paint diaries on canvas, and tell self to self more than to the public. What a diary in those Danby sunsets or Redgrave's tall cool green trees; what a diary in Millais' "Hugonot," or Hunt's "Stray Lamb." There they are telling of such living, heaving, soaring feelings which must be told to some one, or somehow be told to self.

What a diary in many a "Crucifixion,” and “Calvary," and that Francia in the National Gallery! How day after day the painter wrote his heart's love and anguish and hope and prayer in each line and tone of colour and sorrowful or gladdening lineament.

Is not Magdalen Tower at Oxford a diary, or the Choir of Amiens, or the west-front of Strasburg a diary, an architect's diary each of them.

"Feb. 2. I reached Killarney to-day with my child -my precious Raymond. My father refuses to receive me or to see me. I went to the village of my old home, and wrote from Mrs. Cripps' cottage, my old nurse. Shall I ever forget those long hours when I waited for the answer-that long afternoon and evening? When it was twilight I went out to visit the old churchyard. How many scenes of my childhood came back to me-all, all of them softening, humbling, mellowing. I knelt by an old rusty rail which surrounded two flat gravestones, broken and mossy. I saw again the name which I remember so well having read on Sunday when a child, Sir Silas Silius.'

"Nettles grew as they used among the rails and the gravestones. The church clock struck 'seven.' Oh, what words, what home-telling words its dear old chimes seemed to say. I longed that it would go on for an hour, each bell was full of music to my soulbut all humbling, soothing, mellowing.

"So the past always is-the past! what do not people lose who have no past. Oh, parents, you have done a work alone a great work who give a past to your children. It is a long sweet background full of quiet light and pensive evening-hues against which every scene and figure in after life stands out relieved. I needed these lights; for I went back to Mrs. Cripps', and the good old lady's manner made me feel sure there was bad news, she was so kind. Threescore years and ten and five more to that can afford to be kind to all. It has seen too much of life to take strong lines of censure or of approval. What repose there is in the