"Many people like it."

"I dare say you do—at present. But you may tire of it. You married her in a hurry, and you have not got rid of your romance yet. At the same time, I dare say she is a very good sort of girl, and will not disgrace you if you instruct her and manage her properly. But remember my words—she has a temper, and you will find it out if you thwart her."

How sweet and fresh the air was, even in Kensington, when Sheila, having dressed and come down stairs, and after having dutifully kissed Mrs. Lavender and bade her good-bye, went outside with her husband! It was like coming back to the light of day from inside the imaginary coffin in which she had fancied herself placed. A soft west wind was blowing over the Park, and a fairly clear sunlight shining on the May green of the trees. And then she hung on her husband's arm, and she had him to speak to instead of the terrible old woman who talked about dying.

And yet she hoped she had not offended Mrs. Lavender, for Frank's sake. What he thought about the matter he prudently resolved to conceal.

"Do you know that you have greatly pleased my aunt?" he said, without the least compunction. He knew that if he breathed the least hint about what had actually been said, any possible amity between the two women would be rendered impossible for ever.

"Have I, really?" said Sheila, very much astonished, but never thinking for a moment of doubting anything said by her husband.

"Oh, she likes you awfully," he said with an infinite coolness.

"I am so glad!" said Sheila, with her face brightening. "I was so afraid, dear, I had offended her. She did not look pleased with me."

By this time they had got into a hansom, and were driving down to the South Kensington Museum. Lavender would have preferred going into the Park, but what if his aunt, in driving by, were to see them? He explained to Sheila the absolute necessity of his having to tell that fib about the four-o'clock engagement; and when she heard described the drive in the closed brougham which she had escaped, perhaps she was not so greatly inclined as she ought to have been to protest against that piece of wickedness.

"Oh yes, she likes you awfully," he repeated, "and you must get to like her. Don't be frightened by her harsh way of saying things: it is only a mannerism. She is really a kind-hearted woman, and would do anything for me. That's her best feature, looking at her character from my point of view."

"How often must we go to see her?" asked Sheila.

"Oh, not very often. But she will get up dinner-parties, at which you will be introduced to batches of her friends. And then the best thing you can do is to put yourself under her instructions, and take her advice about your dress and such matters, just as you did about your hair. That was very good of you."

"I am glad you were pleased with me," said Sheila. "I will do what I can to like her. But she must talk more respectfully of you."

Lavender laughed that little matter off as a joke, but it was no joke to Sheila. She would try to like that old woman—yes: her duty to her husband demanded that she should. But there are some things that a wife—especially a girl who has been newly made a wife—will never forget; which, on the contrary, she will remember with burning cheeks and anger and indignation.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

SOME PASSAGES IN SHELLEY'S EARLY HISTORY.

Shelley's connection with Stockdale is one of the curiosities of literary history. It is as if Miranda had attached herself to the fortunes of Caliban. An inexplicable thing, except upon the assumption of the young poet's inexperience of men and his ignorance of affairs. It is, moreover, a new passage in his life which has hitherto eluded the most sagacious of his biographers. Who was Stockdale, and what was the relationship between these two personages, so opposite in character, intellect and pursuits? Stockdale's name was altogether unknown to honest folks before Shelley gave it currency and introduced the owner of it to polite society—at all events on paper. He owes his notoriety, therefore, entirely to the boy-poet, into whose way the good man was thrown by one of those inexplicable freaks of chance which often bring about such strange results both to subject and object.

John Joseph Stockdale was, like his father, a bookseller, who did a low sort of business in Pall Mall. For some forty years the Stockdales, father and son, were jointly or separately the John Murrays of the London Bohemians. Their house was the resort of novelists, poets, and especially dramatic writers, for twenty years before and twenty years after the close of the eighteenth century, and they were purveyors-general of circulating libraries, tempting the ambition of young authors with rosy promises of success and alluring baits of immortality, if they could only find the base metals in quantum stiff, to pay the cold-blooded paper-merchant and the vulgar type-setter. Many a poetic pigeon did the Stockdales pluck, no doubt, by these expedients. For in those days, as in these present, a young suckling full of innocence and his mother's nourishment deemed it the highest earthly honor to be admitted to the society of Bohemian bulls and fire-breathing poets; and to be further allowed the privilege of paying for dinner and wine, with dramatists and men of the Bohemian kidney as guests, was a distinction for which no amount of pecuniary disbursement could by any possibility be regarded as an equivalent.

It is hardly to be supposed, however, that Shelley—even if it could be shown that he actually joined the mob of Stockdale's wits as hale-fellow-well-met—ever participated in this loyalty to their sovran virtues and superiorities. He was the god, not they; and although he hid his divinity under a mask and knew the value of silence in a court of fools, yet he could not fail to be conscious that small and unimportant as he was held to be among those Titans of imagination and song, yet it would be found upon trial that he alone could bend the mighty bow of Ulysses, and had the right to wear the garland and singing-robes of the poet.

But the prior question remains, how Shelley, of all men then living, came to have any knowledge of such a person as Stockdale—still more, any dealings with him.

And it is remarkable that the answer to this question comes from one and the same source; and that is the private journal of Stockdale himself, who, like the petty Boswells of the serial literature of the present day, cozened, by flattery and other arts best known to that class, a considerable number of scholars and authors into a correspondence with him, and carefully preserving these their private letters until time should have enhanced the value of the autographs, and he could glorify himself in the fame of the writers, deliberately ransacked his old archives for this purpose; and finding a number of the boy Shelley's business-letters to him—curious, to be sure, and interesting enough to a hero-worshiper—he audaciously published them in an unclean magazine called Stockdale's Budget.

Personally, we know nothing of the Budget, but an English bookworm sets it down as "a sort of appendix to the more celebrated Memoirs of Harriet Wilson", which Stockdale had himself published a few years before. This was so boldly licentious, and so reckless in its attacks upon the private characters of the Upper Ten, that the publisher was prosecuted with merciless persistency until his business gave up the ghost. To convince the public that he was a martyr he started the Budget in 1827, and still appears to have kept his poets and dramatic satellites around him, and to have been a man of some repute for good-nature to young authors. Indeed, it is but fair to say that from the first moment of Shelley's introduction to him until we find him betraying Shelley's confidence in him to his father, to save him, if possible, from the publication of an atheistic theorem, he seems to have been fascinated by the young poet's character, and has testified under his own name that he had the highest confidence in his integrity, although it seems he lost a round sum by him in the end; and he adds that, in his belief, Shelley would "vegetate rather than live, in order to pay any honest debt."

It was in 1810 that Shelley, impressed somehow or other with the belief that Stockdale was the poet's friend, rushed pell-mell into the publisher's Pall Mall shop, and besought him to do the friendly thing by him, and help him out of a scrape he had got into with his printer by ordering him to print fourteen hundred and eighty copies of a volume of poems, without having the money at hand to pay him. "Aldus of Horsham, the mute and the inglorious," was finally, appeased, although not by Stockdale's money, and the edition of the poems passed into Stockdale's hands for sale. The book was entitled Original Poetry, by Victor and Cazire, and we are informed that an advertisement of the same appeared in the Morning Chronicle, September 18, 1810.

Shelley had previously published a romance called Zastrozzi, and his first kitten-love, Harriet Grove, is said to have helped both in this performance and the poems. But Harriet was not mindful of the commandment against stealing, and when Stockdale came to examine the poems he found that she had taken one entire poem by Monk Lewis and put it in among the "original" poetry. Shelley ordered the edition to be "squelched," but nearly a hundred copies had already been issued; and this fact, so maddening to the poet, may yet rejoice the collector of rare books.

These poems, the Wandering Jew, an epic, the joint production of himself and Captain Medwin, a school-boy production, St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian, and his first story, Zastrozzi, are the first books of the poet; and their history is detailed with more or less interest in the letters which passed between Shelley and Stockdale respecting them. The poet tells Stockdale, in offering him the manuscript of the Jew for publication, that he had previously to knowing him sent it to John Ballantyne & Co., and encloses their letter setting forth the reason that they did not publish it—namely, that it contained "atheistical opinions." The canny Scots are sorry to return it, and do so only "after the most mature deliberation." They think that it is better suited, "perhaps," to the "character and liberal feelings of the English than the bigoted spirit which yet pervades many cultivated minds in this country;" adding, "Even Walter Scott is assailed on all hands at present by our Scotch spiritual and evangelical magazines and instructors for having promulgated atheistical doctrines in the Lady of the Lake."

Shelley assures Stockdale he is unconscious of atheism in the Few, and asks him "upon his honor as a gentleman to pay a fair price for the copy-right."

Stockdale never received the manuscript of the Jew, and Shelley, having submitted a copy in manuscript to Campbell and received an adverse judgment, does not seem to have troubled himself further about it. So it remained in must and dust until 1831, when somebody of the Stockdale ilk discovered it, and printed parts of it in Frazer's Magazine. Judging from these excerpts, the book was entirely worthless, and as for the stories, they were neither better nor worse than other school-boy pieces of those days.

The betrayal of confidence of which Shelley complained as proceeding from Stockdale arose from a letter of the poet's, in which (November 12, 1810) he asks his friend the publisher to send him a "Hebrew essay demonstrating the falsehood of the Christian religion," and which the Christian Observer, he says, calls "an unanswerable but sophistical argument." Have it he must, be it translated into "Greek, Latin or any of the European languages."

Pendulous Stockdale—"long and lank and brown"—comes from the reek and sin and filth of Harriet Wilson's Memoirs, his pet publication, and actually trembles with godly fear for the safety of a human soul, and that soul the interior, eternal esse of the son of a baronet; which baronet he hopes to make a good money-friend of by betraying his son's secrets to him. Love, of a sort, for Shelley may also have been a constituent of his motive to this treachery, as the poet called it, for there can be no doubt that he did love him in his way, as all the rough fellows—his Comus crew of the Budget office—loved him.

Old Sir Timothy is grateful to the bookseller for abusing the trust put in him by his son, and he thanks him for what he calls the "liberal and handsome manner" in which Stockdale has imparted to him his sentiments toward Shelley, and says he shall ever esteem it and hold it in remembrance.

The publication of the letters before us sets at rest the disputed point as to the date of Shelley's first acquaintance with Harriet Westbrook, whom he subsequently married. Writing to Stockdale December 18, 1810, he requests him to send copies of the new romance to Miss Marshall, Horsham, Sussex, T. Medwin, Esq., Horsham, Sussex, T.J. Hogg, Esq., Rev. Dayrells Lynnington, Dayrell, Bucks; and Jan. 11, 1811, writing to the same person, he asks him to send a copy of St. Irvyne to Miss Harriet Westbrook, 10 Chapel street, Grosvenor Square. It is pretty certain, therefore, that the acquaintance began between the dates of these two letters, for if he had known Harriet when he ordered his book to be sent to Miss Marshall, he would certainly have coupled the two names together and added them to the little list of his friends already given. Our English friend suggests here that Shelley may not have known Harriet personally at this time, but merely through the reports of his sisters, who were always talking about her, as reported in the Shelley Memorials. We think this is likely to be the case, as during that period Shelley does not seem to have journeyed to London. The aforesaid friend says also that he possessed a manuscript (unpublished) in which somebody who knows states that Shelley first saw her in January, 1811, and that whenever this manuscript is published it will be seen how very slight was Shelley's acquaintance with Harriet before their marriage, and "what advantage was taken of his chivalry of sentiment and her complacent disposition, and the inexperience of both, and how little entitled or disposed she felt herself to complain of his behavior." "Shelley and his girl-wife visited Windermere," we think are the words of De Quincey in alluding to their sudden apparition in the Lake district just after their union. And two more discordant natures could hardly have been bound together till death.

The last friendly communication which passed between Shelley and his publisher was dated January 11, 1811, as we have seen; and he must immediately afterward have discovered the treachery of Stockdale, for only three days later he writes a vituperative letter against him to Hogg, in that he had been traducing Hogg's character; and informs him that he will, while on his way to Oxford, compel the publisher to explain not only why he "dared to make so free with the character of a gentleman about whom he knew nothing," but why he had been treacherous enough to inform Sir Timothy that he (Shelley) had sent him "a work" which had been submitted to him in the strictest confidence and honor.

This performance was probably the pamphlet which caused Shelley's expulsion from Oxford; and Stockdale hoped to be regarded as a friend of the family by telling Sir T. all about it, and thus preventing a young aristocrat of such high birth and pretensions from falling into the slough of the blackguard Free-thinkers. No doubt he was influenced to do this good turn to the family by the fact that the bill for the last romance was unpaid, and he knew that if Sir Timothy would not, and Shelley, being a minor, could not, liquidate it, he would, between the two unreliable stools, come to the ground. In order to apologize for Shelley, and make it appear to his father that he was not to blame for writing such wickedness, but that another had indoctrinated him with all bad notions, he pitched upon Hogg as the scapegoat. This is, at all events, the English writer's explanation; but it was a futile as well as a foolish thing for the cunning publisher to do, for he made them all his enemies, and Sir Timothy refused to pay a farthing of the printing account. So the publisher lost it. Shelley, it is true, in a cool, polite business letter (April 11, 1811), asks for his account, which is delayed, and does not reach the poet until some time after it is sent, when it finds him in Radnorshire, Wales, too poor to pay it. With an innocency worthy of the days of Adam and Eve, he, after promising to pay as soon as he can, offers Stockdale the manuscript of some metaphysical and moral essays—the result of "some serious studies"—"in part payment of his debt."

JANUARY SEARLE.

CHANGES.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A SLEEPING-CAR SERENADE.

Not long ago I had to travel by the night-express from Montreal to New York, and feeling drowsy about eleven o'clock, presented my claim for a lower berth in the car paradoxically designated "sleeping," and tantalizingly named "palace," with sanguine hopes of obtaining a refreshing snooze. Knowing from experience the aberrations of mind peculiar to travelers roused from sleep, by which they are impelled to get off at way-stations, I secured my traps against the contingencies liable to unchecked baggage, and creeping into the back of the sepulchral shelf called a bed, I enveloped myself after the fashion of Indian squaws and Egyptian mummies, and fell asleep.

I do not know whether the noise and concussion of the cars excite the same sort of dreams in every one's cranium as they do in mine, but they almost invariably produce in my brain mental phenomena of a pugnacious character, which are nothing modified by palace cars and steel rails. This particular night there was a perfect revelry of dreams in my brain. I was on the frontier with our corps, engaged in a glorious hand-to-hand conflict with men our equals in number and valor. We were having the best of it, giving it to them hot and heavy, crash! through the beggars' skulls, and plunge! into their abominable abdominal regions. "No quarter!" It was a pity, but it seemed splendid.

Bang! roared an Armstrong gun, as I thought, close to my ear: down went a whole column of the enemy like a flash, as I awoke to find it a dream, alas! and the supposed artillery nothing more or less than one of those sharp, gurgling snorts produced during inspiration in the larynx of a stout Jewish gentleman, who had in some mysterious way got on the outer half of my shelf during my sleep, and whose ancient descent was clearly defined in the side view I immediately obtained of the contour and size of his nose. I had got one of my arms out from under the covering, and found I had "cut left" directly upon the prominent proboscis of my friend—a passage of arms that materially accelerated his breathing, and awoke him to the fact that though he had a nose sufficiently large to have entitled him to Napoleon's consideration for a generalship had he lived in the days of that potentate, yet there was something unusual on the end of it, which was far too large for a pimple and rather heavy for a fly. Perhaps it induced a nightmare, and deluded him into the belief that he had been metamorphosed into an elephant, and hadn't become accustomed to his trunk. It puzzled me to know how or why he had been billeted on my palatial shelf, for the whole of which I had paid; but as it was rather a cold night, and there was something respectable in the outline of that Roman nose, I turned my back on him and determined to accept the situation, soothing myself with the reflection that if I repeated the assault upon his nose, such an accident must be excused as a fortuitous result of his unauthorized intrusion.

I had just got freshly enveloped in the "honey-dew of slumber" when my compagnon de voyage began to snore, and in the most unendurable manner, the effect of which was nothing improved by his proximity. It seemed to penetrate every sense and sensation of my body, and to intensify the extreme of misery which I had begun to endure in the hard effort to sleep. His snore was a medley of snuffing and snorting, with an abortive demi-semi aristocratic sort of a sneeze; while to add to the effect of this three-stringed inspiration there was in each aspiration a tremulous and swooning neigh. I had been reading The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man for several previous days, and began to think I had discovered some wandering Jewish lost link between man and the monkey, and that I actually had him or it for a bedfellow; but by the dim light of the car-lamps I managed to see his hands, which had orthodox nails. I was now thoroughly awake, and found myself the victim of a perfect bedlam of snorers from one end of the car to the other, making a concatenation of hideous noises only to be equaled by a menagerie; though, to give the devil his due, a earful of wild animals would never make such an uproar when fast asleep.

It is a well-known fact that when one's ears prick up at night and find the slightest noise an obstacle to slumber, after much tossing and turning, and some imprecating, tired Nature will finally succumb from sheer exhaustion: she even conquers the howling of dogs holding converse with the moon and the cater-wauling of enamored cats. Cats, and even cataracts, I have defied, but of all noises to keep a sober man awake I know of none to take the palm from the snoring in that car. There seemed to be a bond of sympathy, too, among the snorers, for those who did not snore were the only ones who did not sleep.

The varieties of sound were so intensely ridiculous that at first I found it amusing to listen to the performance. A musical ear might have had novel practice by classifying the intonations. The war-whooping snore of my bedfellow changed at times into a deep and mellow bass. To the right of us, on the lower shelf, was a happy individual indulging in all the variations of a nervous treble of every possible pitch: his was an inconstant falsetto in sound and cadence. Above him snored one as if he had a metallic reed in his larynx that opened with each inhalation: his snore struck me as a brassy alto. The tenors were distributed at such distances as to convey to my ears all the discord of an inebriated band of cracked fifes and split bagpipes playing snatches of different tunes. There were snores that beggar description, that seemed to express every temperament and every passion of the human soul. I cannot forget one a couple of berths off, which seemed to rise above the mediocrity of snores, mellowing into a tenderness like the dying strains of an echo, and renewing its regular periods with a highbred dignity which Nature had clearly not assumed. Another broke away from the harsh notes around in soft diapasons, and with a mellifluous soprano which I instinctively knew must belong to a throat that could sing. Was it Nilsson? Just over my head was a jerky croak of a snore, sounding at intervals of half a minute, as if it had retired on half-pay and longed to get back into active service.

It occurred to me, when amid these paroxysms of turmoil I heard a very fair harmony between the bass of my bedfellow and the tenor of a sleeper in the next berth, that if a Gilmore could take snores, into training, and by animal magnetism or mesmerism manage to make them snore in concert and by note—

we should have a diverting performance in sleeping-cars, and one objection to their use would be actually utilized as an extra inducement to patronize them.

Several times I was strongly impelled to shunt my bass snorer off the bed or twig his Roman nose, but one experiment of a kick roused such a vigorous snort, like that produced by dropping a brick on a sleeping pig, that I abandoned such physical means of retaliation. I thought of tickling his nose with a feather or a straw, but the bed contained neither, and I had not even a pin. And supposing I should stop my shelf-mate, what could I do to suppress the rest? Should I make some horrible noise between a hoarse cough and a crow, and say, if any one complained, that it was my way of snoring? But I thought that the object to be attained, and the possibility of being voted insane and consigned, in spite of protestation, to the baggage-car, would not compensate me for the exertion required; so I determined to submit to it like a Stoic. (Query: Would a Stoic have submitted?)

The more one meditates upon the reason of wakefulness, the more his chances of sleep diminish; and from this cause, conjoined with the peculiarity of the situation and the mood in which I found myself, I had surely "affrighted sleep" for that night. As I lay awake I indulged in the following mental calculation of my misery to coax a slumber: The average number of inspirations in a minute is fifteen—remember, snoring is an act of the inspiration—the number of hours I lay awake was six. Fifteen snores a minute make nine hundred an hour. Multiply 900 by 6—the number of hours I lay awake—and you have 5400, the number of notes struck by each snorer. There were at least twelve distinct and regular snorers in the car. Multiply 5400 by 12, and you have 64,800 snores, not including the snuffling neighs, perpetrated in that car from about eleven P. M. until five the next morning!

The question follows: "Can snoring be prevented?" It is plainly a nuisance, and ought to be indictable. I have heard of the use of local stimulants, such as camphire and ammonia—how I longed for the sweet revenge of holding a bottle of aqua ammonia under that Roman nose!—and also of clipping the uvula, which may cause snoring by resting on the base of the tongue. The question demands the grave consideration of our railroad managers; for while the traveling public do not object to a man snoring the roof off if he chooses to do it under his own vine and fig tree, tired men and women have a right to expect a sleep when they contract for it. Is there no lover of sleep and litigation who will prosecute for damages?

There is a prospect, however, of a balm in Gilead. An ingenious Yankee—a commercial traveler—has invented and patented an instrument made of gutta percha, to be fitted to the nose, and pass from that protuberance to the tympanum of the ear. As soon as the snorer begins the sound is carried so perfectly to his own ear, and all other sounds so well excluded, that he awakens in terror. The sanguine inventor believes that after a few nights' trial the wearer will become so disgusted with his own midnight serenading that his sleep will become as sound and peaceable as that of a suckling baby.

And yet there is nothing vulgar in snoring. Chesterfield did it, and so did Beau Brummell, and they were the two last men in the world to do anything beyond the bounds of propriety, awake or asleep, if they could help it. Plutarch tells us that the emperor Otho snored; so did Cato; so did George II., and also George IV., who boasted that he was "the first gentleman in Europe." Position has nothing to do with cause and effect in snoring, as there are instances on record of soldiers snoring while standing asleep in sentry-boxes; and I have heard policemen snore sitting on doorsteps, waiting to be wakened by the attentive "relief." We may be sure Alain Chartier did not snore when Margaret of Scotland stooped down and kissed him while he was asleep, or young John Milton when the highborn Italian won from him a pair of gloves; though it did not lessen the ardor of philosophical Paddy, when he coaxingly sang outside of his true love's window—

Shure, I know by the length of your snore you're awake.

But really, I don't know whether women do snore. I'm not sure that the mellifluous soprano snore in the car was Nilsson's, and Paddy may have been joking. I know that only male frogs croak.

W.G.B.

FABLES FOR THE YOUTH.

THE LION AND THE FOX. The Lion and the Fox once traveled in company. Upon their coming to a public-house, it was agreed that the former should go in and get a dinner, while Master Reynard kept watch at the door. In stalked the Lion boldly, and ordered a haunch of venison and a blood-pudding. The servant-maid, instead of fainting away, bade him throw his mane over a chair and take his ease. Locking the door as she withdrew, she sent for a policeman, and before night King Lion was snugly back in the menagerie whence he and his companion had that morning escaped.

Master Reynard, scenting what was in the wind, took to the woods and was seen no more.

Moral: This fable teaches us to beware of that pretended friendship which is specious and hollow.

THE JUDGEMENT OF PARIS. The Gorilla, the Hippopotamus and the Snapping-Turtle were once upon a time partaking of a royal dinner at the table of an opulent old Oyster, when the conversation turned upon personal beauty. Each one of the guests present claimed for himself that he alone was the favorite among the ladies for his handsome form and features. As the wine had gone around freely, the discussion grew heated, and upon the suggestion of the Gorilla it was left to their host to decide between them.

In vain did Mr. Saddlerock (for that was the host's name) insist that the point was too delicate for so humble an individual as himself to presume to pass upon.

"Nay," said all three in concert, "tell us honestly what you think."

"But I may offend you," urged the bivalve.

"Oh, that were impossible," smiled the Turtle.

"Quite so," grunted the Hippopotamus.

"My dear friend," added the Gorilla with a leer, "as for myself, I am so confident of being considered an Apollo that I wish for nothing so much as your candid opinion."

"Well, gentlemen," replied Mr. Saddlerock, "since you all urge me to disclose my real sentiments, I will do so. So far from being good-looking, egad! it's hard telling which of you has the ugliest countenance! In fact, you'd better draw lots for it."

No sooner had this remark fallen from his lips than he saw his mistake. He ran to the window, jumped out and vainly attempted to climb a tall sycamore in the garden. The Gorilla, seizing him with a clutch like that of a vice, dragged him ignominiously back to the dining-hall. Here the unhappy Mr. Saddlerock was opened, and the wicked Gorilla swallowed his body in a twinkle, flinging thereafter a shell to each of the other competitors.

Moral: When the powerful quarrel, don't let yourself become mixed up with them or you may get hurt.

THE SANGUINARY DUEL. Two men fought a duel. Let us distinguish them by the names of A and B respectively. It was a real, bona-fide, powder-and-ball affair. A meant business: so did B.

It was a terrible encounter.

A had all the vocal part of his jaw shot off, and several useful portions of his epiglottis carried away. Totally unfitted for his business as auctioneer, he died some years after of dyspepsia of the brain.

B parted company with his left arm, so he was compelled to pass himself off as a disabled hero of the rebellion and accept a snug little office in the United States custom-house, where there was nothing whatever to do.

That is all.

The dispute grew out of something A had said about B. B said A said that B said something, and B said he hadn't said it.

Moral: Don't duel.

THE DOG AND THE SPARE-RIB. A mastiff crossing a bridge, and bearing in his mouth a piece of meat, suddenly swallowed the meat. He immediately observed that the shadow of the aforesaid meat in the water had disappeared.

Such is optics.

Moral: We learn from this fable that life is but a shadow.

THE ASS AND THE LOCOMOTIVE. A donkey one day was quietly munching thistles when he heard the screaming whistle of a locomotive. Pricking up his ears, he started into a gallop and raced across lots with his tail high in the air.

Moral: This fable teaches what an ass he was.

THE MOUSE AND THE CAT. A mouse once peeped from his hole and saw a cat. The cat was looking the other way, and happened not to see the mouse.

Nobody killed.

Moral: This little fable doesn't teach anything.

SARSFIELD YOUNG.

A PICTURE WITH A HISTORY

In a number of Punch for February, 1873, in the account of "Our Representative Man's" visit to the Exhibition of Old Masters, occurs the following sentence: "No 35. Oh, Miss Linley (afterward Mrs. Sheridan), oh how lovely you are! Oh, Thomas Gainsborough, oh, Thomas Gainsborough, oh! And if Baron Lionel de Rothschild, M.P., ever wishes to offer a testimonial to one who knows nothing whatever about him, and for no particular object, let him send this picture, carriage paid, to the residence of your representative, who as his petitioner will never cease to pray at convenient seasons, etc."

The picture thus apostrophized represents that "Saint Cecilia, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, ³ whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art (Reynolds's and Gainsborough's) has rescued from the common decay."

It is not unlikely that Sheridan or his wife may have presented this picture to the Hon. Edward Bouverie.⁴ A letter of Mrs. Sheridan in 1785 (she died in 1792) is dated from his seat, Delapre Abbey, and she and Sheridan were habitués of his house.

It was at the death of General Bouverie, grandson of Mrs. Sheridan's friend, that her picture was sold, a few months ago, to Baron Rothschild; and a romance might well be woven out of the circumstances which caused this painting to be removed from the place which it had so long occupied in the library of Delapre Abbey.

Delapre Abbey is a stately mansion occupying ground once covered by a monastery, of which the only remains serve as offices of the more modern edifice. Approaching the ancient borough of Northampton by the old London road, you observe on your left, about a mile from the town, a beautiful specimen—one of the only three remaining—of the crosses which a king of England raised to commemorate the places where his beloved wife's body rested on her last journey to Westminster. It lay one night at the abbey, and, whilst that is almost obliterated, the cross remains almost perfect after centuries have elapsed, and served mainly as the model for that which has recently been erected close to Charing Cross, where formerly another of these memorials marked the last halt of the royal funereal cortege.

Mr. Edward Bouverie had several sons, and on the marriage of the eldest Delapre Abbey and the estates attached to it were, in conformity to common usage in England, settled upon the children of this marriage, and, failing issue, on the general's younger brothers and their sons in succession. The general's marriage proved childless, his next brother also left no issue, and at length no son remained but a certain somewhat ne'er-do-weel, Frank.

Frank was an officer in the army. Whilst quartered in the north of Ireland he had fallen in love with a girl beneath him in station, and, greatly to the disgust of his family, married her. His father, who was deeply imbued with aristocratic prejudices, ceased to hold intercourse with him, and except that occasional communications passed between him and his mother, his relations with his family ceased. At length he died, and as it became evident that his brothers would never have children, Frank's son was obviously the heir. Under these circumstances the family offered terms to the mother if she would give up her son altogether and consent to his being bred a Protestant. These overtures she declined. The advice of leading lawyers was then sought, but they declared that the settlement of the property could not by any possibility be set aside. Meanwhile the case suddenly assumed a new aspect.

About twelve years ago a lady of prodigious energy and perseverance made her appearance in the law courts of London, who was bent on proving the legitimacy of her grandfather. By "much wearying" she prevailed upon Lord Brougham to introduce a bill which became known as the "Legitimacy Declaration Act." By the provisions of this measure a person who believes himself heir to a property may cite all persons interested to come in at once and show cause why he should not be adjudged rightful heir and representative of a given person and estate.

Frank Bouverie's son resolved, therefore, to take the bull by the horns, and save all future trouble by obtaining a decree of court. The family very unwisely resolved to oppose his claim. It seemed that stories prejudicial to the character of the claimant's mother had been in circulation, and the Bouveries grounded their opposition on the allegation that the claimant⁵ was not in truth a Bouverie at all.

On the other hand, ample testimony was adduced to show that Frank Bouverie, notwithstanding his wife's irregularity of conduct, had always regarded the boy as his son and heir; and one witness told how the father had held the little fellow up to look at the picture of his ancestral home, and said, "All that will one day be yours." So the Bouveries' case broke down entirely, and the ex-private soldier, ex-policeman, stepped into the fine old mansion of Delapre with sixty thousand dollars a year. It is satisfactory to be able to add that he has always borne an excellent character, and seems likely to duly take his place as a country gentleman. Of course nothing but the bare fabric and land came to him: the personalty was all left to his aunt, the general's widow, an old lady near ninety, who yet survives; and it was by her direction that the famous Linley picture once more changed hands.

Footnote 3: (return) This lady's granddaughters, her son's daughters—the duchess of Somerset, Queen of Beauty in the celebrated Eglinton Tournament; the countess Gifford, mother, by her first husband, of Lord Dufferin, viceroy of Canada; and the Honorable Mrs. Norton, the well-known authoress—were famous in their day for beauty. Gainsborough passed many years at Bath, where his intimacy with the Linley family, then resident there, commenced. The following is from Fulcher's Life of Gainsborough: "After returning from a concert at Bath, where we had been charmed with Miss Linley's voice, I went home to supper with my friend (Gainsborough), who sent his servant for a bit of clay, with which he modeled, and then colored, her head—and that too in a quarter of an hour—in such a manner that I protest it appeared to me even superior to his paintings. The next day I took a friend or two to his house to see it, but it was not to be seen: the servant had thrown it down from the mantelpiece and broken it." Gainsborough would now and then mould the faces of his friends in miniature, finding the material in the wax candles burning before him: the models were as perfect in their resemblance as his portraits.

Footnote 4: (return) The history of the Bouverie family settling in England is curious. The family had, prior to 1542, long been settled in Flanders. In that year was born, near Lisle in that country, Laurence des Bouveries, as the name was then written, founder of the English branch. Laurence, from mixing with his father's Protestant tenants, had imbibed some of their ideas, and his father, a stern Catholic, told him that if he failed to appear at mass the following Sunday he would have him examined by the Inquisition. In terror he ran away to Frankfort-on-the-Main, and there had the luck to fall in with a sympathetic silk manufacturer, who made him superintendent of his men. Subsequently he married his patron's niece and heiress, and eventually removed to England when Queen Elizabeth offered an asylum there to those of the Reformed faith. His family made wealthy alliances and prospered, and in 1747 his representative was created a peer. He married, first, the heiress of Delapre, and her property went to her second son, Edward. His eldest son by his second marriage took the name of Pusey, and was, father of the celebrated Dr. Pusey.

Footnote 5: (return) Lord Cairns, then Sir Hugh, opened the case for the claimant, and received, it was said, two hundred and fifty guineas for the work, which occupied about two hours. Sir Fitzroy Kelly appeared as counsel for the family. He spoke for about fifteen minutes, and his fee was the same.