it; and in whispers loud enough for the mother to hear (as if she knew it not!) reiterates in his decisive way, concerning this boy, that miraculous unfoldings shall yet come out of him. It was even so. Instincts like these in humble souls, from the mother and the night-watchers at Bethlehem downwards, are whispers from the invisible Shrine-infallible, eternal. The prophet of the People, in short; the People's King had been born at Alloway." DR HATELEY WADDELL. A JOURNEY BY STAGE COACH. FROM FELIX HOLT THE RADICAL. You have not the best of it in all things, O youngsters! The elderly man has his enviable memories, and not the least of them is the memory of a long journey in midspring or autumn on the outside of a stage coach. Posterity may be shot, like a bullet through a tube, by atmospheric pressure, from Winchester to Newcastle. That is a fine result to have among our hopes; but the slow oldfashioned way of getting from one end of our country to the other is the better thing to have in the memory. The tube journey can never lend much to picture and narrative -it is as barren as an exclamatory O! Whereas the happy outside passenger, seated on the box from the dawn to the gloaming, gathered enough of stories of English life, enough of English labours in town and country, enough aspects of earth and sky, to make episodes for a modern Odyssey. Suppose only that his journey took him through that central plain watered at one extremity by the Avon, at the other by the Trent. As the morning silvered the meadows with their long lines of bushy willows marking the watercourses, or burnished the golden corn-ricks clustered near the long roofs of some midland homestead, he saw the full-uddered cows driven from their pasture to the early milking. Perhaps it was the shepherd, head servant of the farm, who drove them; his sheep dog following with a heedless unofficial air as of a beadle in undress. The shepherd, with a slow and slouching walk, timed by the walk of grazing beasts, moved aside, as if unwillingly, throwing out a monosyllabic hint to his cattle; his glance, accustomed to rest on things very near the earth, seemed to lift itself with difficulty to the coachman. Mail or stage coach for him belonged to that mysterious distant system of things called "Gover'ment," which, whatever it might be, was no business of his, any more than the most outlying nebula or the coal sacks of the southern hemisphere ; his solar system was the parish; the master's temper and the casualties of lambing-time were his region of storms. He cut his bread and bacon with his pocket-knife, and felt no bitterness except in the matter of pauper labourers, and the bad luck that sent contrarious seasons and the sheeprot. He and his cows were soon left behind, and the homestead too, with its pond overhung by elder-trees, its untidy kitchen garden, and cone-shaped yew-tree arbour. But everywhere the bushy hedge-rows wasted the land with their straggling beauty, shrouded the grassy borders of the pastures with catkined hazels, and tossed their long blackberry branches on the corn-fields. Perhaps they were white with May, or starred with pale pink dog-roses; perhaps the urchins were already nutting amongst them, or gathering the plenteous crabs. It was worth the journey only to see those hedge-rows, the liberal homes of unmarketable beauty of the purple - blossomed ruby-berried nightshade, of the wild convolvulus climbing and spread ing in tendrilled strength, till it made a great curtain of pale-green hearts and white trumpets, of the many-tubed honey-suckle, which, in its most delicate fragrance, hid a charm more subtle and penetrating than beauty. Even if it were winter, the hedge-rows showed their coral, the scarlet haws, the deep crimson hips, with lingering brown leaves to make a resting-place for the jewels of the hoarfrost. Such hedge-rows were often as tall as the labourers' cottages, dotted along the lanes, or clustered into a small hamlet, their little dingy windows telling, like thick-filmed eyes, of nothing but the darkness within. The passenger on the coach-box, bowled along above such a hamlet, saw chiefly the roofs of it. Probably it turned its back on the road, and seemed to lie away from everything but its own patch of earth and sky, away from the parish church by long fields and green lanes, away from all intercourse except that of tramps. If its face could be seen, it was most likely dirty; but the dirt was Protestant dirt, and the big, bold, gin-breathing tramps were Protestant tramps. There was no sign of superstition near, no crucifix or image to indicate a misguided reverence; the inhabitants were probably so free from superstition that they were in much less awe of the parson than of the overseer. Yet they were saved from the excesses of Protestantism by not knowing how to read, and by the absence of handloom and mines to be the pioneers of Dissent; they were kept safely in the via media of indifference, and could have registered themselves in the census by a big black mark as members of the Church of England. MISS EVANS. DRAMATIC EXTRACTS. SYNOPSIS OF FAZIO. FAZIO and his wife Bianca mutually discant upon their wedded happiness. They talk of Bartolo the miser and Aldabella the beautiful and heartless flirt with whom Fazio had been enamoured before his union with Bianca. Immediately after this scene, on the same night, Bartolo, the rich miser, is attacked by midnight assassins, and is mortally wounded. He has just strength left to stagger into Fazio's house, where he shortly afterward expires. Before his death, however, he acquaints Fazio where his riches are concealed, which he had succeeded in saving from the hands of the robbers. Fazio relinquishes his favourite study of alchymy and possesses himself of the miser's gold, burying him in his own garden and keeping from the world the secret of his death. Fazio grown rich, is an object of solicitude with Aldabella, to whose seductive influence he yields. Bianca is made aware of the faithlessness of her husband, and that the Council are deliberating upon the mysterious disappearance of Bartolo the miser. Stimulated by jealousy and the desire to wreak vengeance upon Aldabella, before the Council she implicates her husband in Bartolo's murder, acquainting them where to search for his body and his appropriated riches. Finally, as the acme of her triumph, she acquaints them where to apprehend her husband, viz., in the chamber of Aldabella. Although Fazio is admitted by the Council to be innocent of the murder of Bartolo, he pleads guilty to being in possession of his wealth, which alone is a capital offence by the laws of Florence, the scene of the tragedy. Bianca relents and implores Aldabella and the Council to exert their influence to spare her husband's life. Fazio is executed, and his despairing wife having obtained from the Duke the promise of protection to her two infant children, dies immediately afterward. FROM "FAZIO." SCENE FIRST. In which connubial happiness, a Miser, and proud Beauty are described. A Room with Crucibles and Apparatus of Alchymy. FAZIO and BIANCA. Fazio. WHY what a peevish envious fabulist Bianca. Would'st thou know Thy right and title to thy weariness?— Beyond two years. Fazio. Days, days, Bianca ! Love Hath in its calendar no tedious time, So long as what cold lifeless souls call years. |