"You are free and welcome to come here whenever you please," answered Joshua. "I am not going to shut my door in your face. But I'm afraid if you were known to come often, Combhollow would begin to talk about it, and say you were forgetting yourself."

"A fig for Combhollow and its petty distinctions. I have not so many friends in this God-forsaken place that I can afford to sacrifice a good one."

"God-forsaken!" repeated Joshua, horrified. "Do you think for a moment that we are farther from His care because we live off life's busier highways?"

"Oh, of course not. It's only a way of speak

ing. Once more good-night. I shall tell my father how much I owe you; and I shall drop in sometimes of an evening, Mr. Haggard, since you've promised not to shut your door upon me.'

"A very civil-spoken young man," said aunt Judith approvingly, directly Oswald was gone. "I shouldn't have expected Pentreath to be so mannerly, considering the way they've been brought up. What do you think of him, Joshua?"

"A good-natured youth, but a weak one. An ash sapling, to be bent by any wind; not an oak, to stand firm against the storm."

TO BE CONTINUED.

H, William, poet-king, own you were wrong
Where boldly you uttered your dictum in song,
That May and the spring days owned love in its prime,
When the passion scorns fetters of season or time.

I saw her I loved her, and how could I fail,
Though Christmas was blowing its bitterest gale,
Though snow-flakes in silver were falling around,
And frost at its keenest had fettered the ground?
All ruffled and hunger-tamed feathered fowl fled
But a few yards in flight at the snow-muffled tread
And 'twas so with fair Lilian, storm-ruffled bird,
When there by the hill-side my step she first heard:
All startled and eager, o'er-burdened she stood,
As I leaped into view from the edge of the wood;
The wind tried to waft her, the snow-flakes to hide,
Each aiding the evergreens clasped to her side.
And love? What, in winter, the landscape all bare?
Yes, I wooed and I won, for I vow I was there.

I'd arrived down from town, but was left in the lurch,
At the house-"No, sir, out-evergreens-deck the church."
I stopped for no more, for my heart knew no rest,
And away o'er the crunching snow started in quest.
How the spirits of air seemed to mock at my pain,
When now here and now there I'd each smarting eye strain!
But no-naught but snow-flake and snow-laden bough,
And the wind through the pines in a low moaning sough;
But I searched on and searched with my heart in a glow,
Till I met with a tiny track over the snow.

Pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, my poor heart and each trace-
The former all flurry, the latter all grace-

And I knew by the footprints my darling had made,

I was right on the trail, though the storm sprites betrayed.
And now in mad anger they leapt to the fray;

With a rush and a sweep came each evergreen spray,
To sweep the snow surface and bare the soft track,
Till the gravel lay snow-swept, the soft furrows black;
But onward, still onward! the footprints ahead,
When the snow came in whirl-drifts to cover the tread.
They were there though, still there, 'neath the wide-spreading fir;
But now the harsh briar hand dared me to stir,
As it caught at each garment; the storm, too, came down
To beat me away with its mightiest frown.

But love laughed at rivals; I knew she was there,
And flung down my gage to the spirits of air;

As I dashed on through snow, rime, through coppice and wood,
To where all leaf-laden my startled fawn stood-
Stood at gaze-for a moment as white as the snow,
Then her cheeks bid to rival each berry's red glow,
And her parted lips' pearls shone in mistletoe sheen,
While she clasped in her arms her vast bouquet of green.
Enemies all, from the laurel that lay

On the soft heaving breast, with a cedar and bay,
And a chevaux de frise of the holly-all arms,
To act as a fortress for Lilian's charms;

And I said, could I laurel or bay leaf have been!
When my heart said, "My lad, you're sufficiently green."
Well, I loved, and she knew-there was welcome that day;
It was Christmas-the rest is to come off in May.

-From "A Book of Fair Women."

sense of power in weakness, the consciousness of being able to influence others in a special way, simply because of the suffering which disposed them to be sympathetic, and to yield readily, for the time at any rate, to the better impulses. Illustrations from biography are more telling than any theoretic answer to such a question could be; and hardly elsewhere is to be found such an evidence of the compensations that may be brought to an invalid's life, simply from the desire to be helpful to others, than is to be found in the story of Lady Duff Gordon's long exile in Egypt and elsewhere. This must be our excuse for attempting a short outline of her life, drawn from the two volumes of her letters which her daughter has published.

Lady Duff Gordon was the only child of John Austin, the distinguished author of the "Province of Jurisprudence," and of Sarah, the youngest daughter of John Taylor, of Norwich. She was born in June, 1821, such a weakly child that we are told Maudsley, the surgeon, brought her to life by sheer skill in nursing her on his knees, and giving play to the lungs. The Austins were neighbours of Jeremy Bentham, and James Mill, the historian of India, and Bentham's garden, where the utilitarian philosophy of the nineteenth century was born, was the playground of Lucie Austin and the young Mills. Here, it would seem, many a bout of play took place, in which "Bun Don" (Brother John), i. e. John Stuart Mill, took part, in spite of what he has said in his "Autobiography" of the sternness of his childish life.

When Lucie was only five years of age she went with her father to Germany, and remained there so long that she learned to speak German as fluently as her own tongue -a quick, inquiring little damsel, with ways of her own, and a great love of animals. Her education was irregular, having been carried on entirely at home till 1836, with the exception of a short period that she attended a mixed school of boys and girls at Hampstead, where, however, she learned Latin, which she found very useful afterwards. In that year Mr. Austin was appointed a Commissioner to Malta, to which he was accompanied by his wife, and as it was not deemed expedient to take Lucie with them, she was sent to school at Clapham, with a Miss Shepherd. Though her mode of education hitherto had left its own results in a note of individuality and impatience of routine, she applied herself assiduously to the school studies, especially to Latin and Greek.

At sixteen, wholly on her own responsibility, she took the step of being admitted by baptism into the Church of England; and wrote a very remarkable letter, for one of her years, giving her reasons for the step she had taken,

II. 1.

and intimating that she was prepared for some slight crosses from many excellent friends, whose creed she never could satisfactorily adopt.

This letter, which indicates great individuality of judgment and equal resolution, shows also a beautiful humility and ingenuity in escaping from all that could excite common observation and remark-traits which, as we shall see, only deepened as time went on. Her courtship was as original and unconventional as her education. In 1838, when her parents returned from Malta, she began to see a good deal of society, in which figured many of the most brilliant intellects of the day. She had met Sir Alexander Duff Gordon at Lansdowne House, and he "at once became attracted by the mother and deeply attached to the daughter." They used to walk out together, as she was much left to herself, and had no companions. "One day Sir Alexander said, 'Miss Austin, do you know people say we are going to be married?' She was annoyed at being talked about, and hurt at his brusque way of mentioning it, was going to give a sharp answer, when he added, 'Shall we make it true?' She replied, with characteristic straightforwardness, by the monosyllable 'Yes!' and so they were engaged. At this time she translated and published Niebuhr's 'Greek Legends,' the only literary work she did before her marriage, which took place in Kensington Old Church on May 16th, 1840. Eye-witnesses still remember with interest the beauty of the pair."

After their marriage they went abroad, and saw much of art and life-especially was Lady Duff Gordon impressed with the works which she was privileged to examine in the studio of Kaulbach, at Munich.

On her return home she soon became the centre of a very brilliant coterie. Most of the great writers and artists of the day were to be found in her drawing-room, and her daughter tells how she remembers, when a little child, Leopold Ranke, the historian of the Popes, walking up and down, talking vehemently a sort of olla podrida of English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, with now and then a Latin quotation, speaking fast and mixing up all the languages; and she remembers, too, that when Mr. Guizot escaped from France, his first dinner and welcome was in the house in Queen Square.

In 1842 their eldest child was born, and the years sped on happily, the cares of the household relieved by literary work; Lady Duff Gordon having translated Meinhold's "Amber Witch," "The French in Algiers," and Feuerbach's "Remarkable German Crimes and Trials," and later some of Ranke's works. An odd addition was made to the household in 1846, while they occupied a villa at Richmond, and one which seemed in much like a forecast of later friendships. This was a little black boy,

3

Hassan el Bakkeet, who had been turned out by his master because he was getting blind. Lady Duff Gordon took him in, cared for him, and had him taken to an oculist who cured him. This oculist offered to take the boy into his service, and give him good wages. His misHis mistress advised him to accept the place, upon which he fell on his knees and begged to be whipped instead of being sent away, as he said, "51. a year with you are sweeter then the 127. he offers." Hassan repaid all the care spent on him by devotion, though then only twelve years old. He was looked on as one of the family, the constant playmate of the eldest child, and when a son was born, he said triumphantly to all callers, "We have got a boy." He died from a cold caught at Weybridge in 1849, and never was servant more deeply regretted.

Contact with working men did not make Lady Duff Gordon afraid to encourage them in the development of intellect, and she had her reward, for a number of the men from the engineering workshop of her friend, Mr. Bridges Adams, which she used to visit, came to "protect her" in the riots of 1848. While living at Weybridge, she set up a workingman's library and reading-room, which answered well, with forty subscribers at twopence a week. "They all like it much," she says, "and I go most Monday evenings and transact the business and talk over the news.

I hope it will do some good here. At any rate, it keeps a few out of the public-house."

In 1851, she began to complain of weakness, and could not go to London, even to see the Exhibition. She recovered a little by-and-by, and in 1854 the family went to Paris, where Lady Duff Gordon renewed the acquaintance formed with Heinrich Heine, the poet, while she was yet, a child; and her picture of his painful and desolate condition is every way most touching, as well as her efforts then and afterwards to cheer him.

Her health gradually got worse and worse. Ventnor had been tried for some winters with slight result, and in 1860 it was felt that a voyage to the Cape of Good Hope might be beneficial. Of this she has herself given bright and cheerful record in her letters from the Cape, brimful of appreciation of all that was new and striking, and wholly unlike valetudinarian effusions. She thinks of herself last.

She makes friends with Dutch Boers, Malays, and Kaffirs alike, and gets such blessings from Mahommedan coolies as stirs the ire of the English housemaid. "There, ma'am, you see how saucy they have grown-a nasty, black, heathen Mahommedan ablessing of a white Christian!"

Her love of animals remains a refreshment to her, and in what circumstances cannot that taste be gratified to the full? "I wish," she

writes, "I could send the six chameleons which a good-natured farmer brought me in his hat, and a queer lizard in his pocket. The chameleons are charming, so monkey-like, and so caressants. They sit on my breakfast-tray and catch flies, and hang in a bunch by their tails and reach after my hand."

But no interest ever displaced or modified the healthy love of human nature, always enlightened by a true desire to do good to others, without any trace of patronage or affectation of philanthropy. It was simple and kindly interest in others. Therefore we are not surprised to read

"The postmaster, Heer Klein, and his old Pylades, Heer Ley, are great cronies of mine, stout old gray-beards, toddling down the hill together. I sometimes go and sit on the stoep with the two old bachelors, and they take it as a great compliment; and Heer Klein gave me my letters all decked with flowers, and wished Vrolyke tydings, mevrouw,' most heartily. He also made his tributary mail-cart Hottentots bring from various higher mountain ranges the beautiful everlasting flowers, which will make pretty wreaths for J-"

The stay at the Cape lasted from July, 1860, till May, 1861, when she returned much better in health. But, unfortunately, she was persuaded to go to the Eaux Bonnes, which did her harm; and from there she went to Egypt, which with the exception of a short visit to England in 1865, remained her home to the end. Sometimes she lived on land, sometimes, for months, she made a boat her home. Gradually, as circumstances removed English servants from her, she found the natives grew the more serviceable; and not only so, the more intimate her acquaintance with them became, her affection for them deepened. Arabs, Nubians, Copts-it is all the same. She manages them so that she could not wish better service, and at length resolves, "I'll have no more Europeans here."

During the first two years, she spent a good deal of time in Alexandria and Cairo; but the climate of the former affected her injuriously. In both places she made attached friends, alike among high and low. She was too wise to do despite to any custom of the people, or to rebuff any friendly and affectionate advance, and certainly it does not seem that she ever in this way sacrificed her authority or her power of commanding good service. One of her friends in Cairo was her washerwoman; and when once she returned to Cairo for a special purpose, we have this suggestive glimpse of the somewhat grotesque welcome given to her:

"When I went yesterday to deposit my goods at the worthy old washerwoman's house, the neighbours seeing me arrive on my donkey, followed by a cargo of pots and pans, thought I was come to live there, and came running out. I was patted on the back and welcomed, and overwhelmed with offers of service to help to clean my house, &c."

Omar, her native servant, seems to have been a model, utterly devoted to his mistress. She says of him:

"Omar performs wonders of marketing and cooking. I have excellent dinners-soup, fish, a petit plat or two, and a rôté every day. I never saw so good a servant as Omar, and such a nice creature, so pleasant and good. When I hear and see what people spend here in travelling and in living, and what trouble they have, I say, 'May God favour Omar and his descendants.""

And this nothwithstanding that intercourse between them must have been somewhat difficult, seeing that as yet she knew little of Arabic, and he had only odd words of English. But in the beginning of 1864, she set herself to study the language, and for this purpose put herself under Sheykh Yoosuf, of whom we hear frequently; but when she wished to recompense him, we have this incident:

"I gave Sheykh Yoosuf four pounds for three months' daily lessons in Arabic last night, and had quite a contest to force it on him. 'It is not for money, O Lady!' and he coloured crimson."

In the early part of 1864 she had made her home up the Nile at El-Uksur, and feeling that it might be lonely and dull for "a young man fond of a little coffee-shop and gossip," she proposed that, if this were so, Omar "might go down for a time and join me again, as I could manage with some man here. He absolutely cried and kissed my hands, and declared he never was so happy as with me, and he could not rest if he thought I had not all I wanted. 'I am your memlook, 'I am your memlook, not your servant; your memlook!"" She significantly adds, "I really do believe that these people sometimes love their English masters better than their own people. Omar certainly has shown the greatest fondness for me on all occasions."

And in her love of nature and the picturesque, no less than in the curiosities of the country, she finds an unfailing source of pleasure. She enjoys the wonderful scenes, the clear air, the river pictures, the fine figures of the felaheen-nothing escapes her. She found the Thousand and One Nights were quite real. "The country is a palimpsest," she aptly says, "in which the Bible is written over Herodotus, and the Koran over that: in the towns the Koran is most visible; in the country Herodotus." But her interest in the people never abates. She repudiates, as though she were herself an Egyptian, the charges brought against them, and cannot comprehend how travellers carry away such misunderstandings, save by haste and the existence of English prejudice.

And Lady Duff Gordon fully justified her frequent reflections in this wise by her actions. She saw beneath the surface, and, sympathising, won the hearts of the strange people among whom her lot was cast. She was interested in all their concerns, ever active to aid them -became a kind of doctoress, whose fame went afar; and was consulted by high and low in all manner of doubts and difficulties. She was

the "Sitt el Kebeer"-the great lady-and the mere mention of her name procured respect and kind attention for others even from the roughest of the Arabs. And there is such a healthy humorous appreciation of the varying traits of character! The children, too, are a never-ending study.

Space, unfortunately, will not permit us to follow in detail Lady Duff Gordon's several years' life in Egypt; we can only give some small indications of her work as physician and its success. She writes on the 22d of February, 1866:

"My medical reputation has become far too great, and all my common drugs-epsom-salts, senna, aloes, rhubarb, quassia-run short. Especially do all the poor, tiresome, ugly old women adore me, and bore me, with their aches and pains. They are always the doctor's greatest plague. The mark of confidence is that they now bring the sick children, which was never known before, I believe, in these parts. My Turkish neighbour at Karnac has got a shaitan (devil), i. e. epileptic fits, and I was sent for to exorcise him, which I am endeavouring to do with nitrate of silver; but I fear imagination will kill him, so I advised him to go to Cairo, and leave the devil-haunted house. My doctoring business has become quite formidable. I should like to sell my practice to any 'rising young surgeon.' It brings in a very fair income of vegetables, eggs, turkeys, pigeons, &c."

And again, before very long, "I don't know what to do with my sick. They come from forty miles off, and sometimes twenty and thirty sleep outside the house." So that we are not much surprised by-and-by to hear that shaers, or poets, had been singing her praises in the true Arab style, and "sending down parties of real Arabs with their sick on camels from above Edfou."

At Thebes the Sheykh had prepared her tomb amongst those of his own family, descended from the Prophet; and there would have been a peculiar fitness in the burial there of one who had done so much to draw forth the better qualities of the Arabs, and to proclaim them to her countrymen. During the last two years of her life, and even while she was humorously telling in her letters home of these medical labours, she had patiently suffered much, and in July, 1869, she passed away while on a visit to Cairo, having only a few days before written with a deeply pathetic suggestion, "I would rather die among my own people in the Saeed than here."

To a fine and subtle intellect she added rare earnestness, relieved by gentle, humorous insight and broadest sympathies; and she has done as much as any other single individual, to show how much of strength may be added to English character in its contact with other races, by the infusion of kindly sympathy and unaffected concern for their good. And surely we may see from her example how the valetudinarian life may be sweetened and blessed by kindly interest in the welfare of others.

-Good Words.