reply to communications he had sent to each. Though he had been wandering about the country for more than a year, obtaining occasional employment, in various capacities, he had made arrangements for the receipt of letters. He knew the Cartown postmaster, and had written to him, informing him of his removal from Middleton, and telling him that he had instructed some correspondents to address him at the Cartown post-office, and requesting that these letters might be forwarded to him from time to time, according to circumstances. The Cartown postmaster had written a kind note in return, and gladly undertook to see that these wishes were carried out. Meanwhile, Jacob had written a long letter to Lucy, detailing his misfortunes; but telling her that her love would support him under his afflictions, and that, so long as he had such a talisman to cheer him, he would struggle on with the hope that the day was not far distant when a brave reliance on industry and perseverance, and an implicit trust in God, would bring their reward. Then he told her how to address her letters to him in the future. He wrote thus the day he left Middleton. A week afterwards he received a letter from Spen, in which Whiffler told him that he would shortly be going to London, and that if Jacob ever journeyed Cartown way, and did not find him there, to write to him, to be left at the General Post-office. Jacob thinking that Spen was romancing as usual, was in no way prepared for the breaking up of the Spawling establishment. He had written to the Cartown post-office and found that no other letters had been addressed to him; he had written to Spen and received no reply; he had also despatched a letter to Dorothy, as well as to Lucy, and at length began to believe the saying about people being friends so long as the sun shines, and deserting each other in the darkness of poverty. But he was determined to satisfy himself about Lucy, whom he loved so passionately; and thus he came to Cartown. His pride would not let him show himself to anyone but Dorothy; and with her he would have carried matters with a high hand. But the intelligence which the landlord at the public-house had given him disarranged his plans, and excited fears and forebodings that impelled him onwards, through the snow, to the house of the Cantrills.

Jacob did not pause until he reached the wood. The silence of the place, made, as it were, more apparent by the moaning of the wind amongst the trees, appalled him. But he plucked up his courage and proceeded. There were the marks of other footsteps in the path that led to the wellknown cottage. Could they be hers? Robinson Crusoe did not look with more curiosity and interest at the print in the sand, than did Jacob at the traces of some person who had passed on before him. He contrasted the marks with the impressions made by himself. The feet that had gone before him were much smaller than his own. How his heart beat! He hurried on faster, thinking he might overtake somebody perhaps Lucy! On he went, until he saw a figure enter the garden in front of Cantrill's cottage. It was a female, and about Lucy's height, wrapped up in a dark red cloak-it must be Lucy! no-there was an unmentionable,

indescribable grace in Lucy's movements that were wanting here. He passed on, concealing himself as much as possible behind the gate-post, at the entrance to the garden. The cloaked figure turned half round, and Jacob saw that it was the gipsy girl whom he had met in the wood, several times, when walking with Lucy. Then he saw that the cottage was deserted; the shutters were closed, and no smoke went up from the chimney. Even Jacob's desperate energy, and schooled will, gave way before this realization of the forebodings that had seized upon him when he hurried off from Cartown: he reeled, with an exclamation of pain, threw himself upon the garden step, and sobbed, as though his great heart would burst.

Setting down a little basket which she was filling with herbs, that even the snow could not conceal from her, the gipsy ran to Jacob's assistance. With the quick perception of her sex and tribe, she recognised him immediately, and knew, as well as if he had told her, that Lucy was the immediate cause of his grief.

It was long ere the gipsy girl could induce Jacob to rise, and when he did comply with her urgent appeal, he stood up crushed in heart and spirit, shattered more beneath a fear of misfortune than by its actual realization. It seemed to him as if Fate had left him alone with Woe. "When did they leave? when did she go?" he inquired, at length, with desperate calmness.

"A long time since," said the gipsy girl.

"How?"

"In a grand carriage that waited for her in the road near our tents," said the gipsy, watching intently the effect of her words.

"By force?" asked Jacob, excitedly, re-animated by a gleam of hope which entered his soul with the thought that perhaps Lucy was prevented against her will from communicating with him.

"Force!" exclaimed the gipsy. "When a country girl leans on the arm of a grand gentleman, and is conducted to a carriage in company with her mother, and rides away smiling, that doesn't look like force."

66

Oh, my

Jacob compressed his lips, and groaned inwardly. "My dream is over, then," he said bitterly. God! have I deserved all this?" The words hissed between his teeth as if his soul rebelled against the Deity.

"Sir-sir! you take it too much to heart," said the gipsy girl, a little alarmed at Jacob's wild looks.

"Heart!" exclaimed Jacob, "heart! ha ha! I had a heart once, and it's been a mark for all the fiends in hell; they've torn it to pieces at last. Health--the happiness of childhood-mother, father, home, fortune-gone! Even these blows I had surmounted. But-" and then turning suddenly upon his companion, he said, "Leave me! go, go; leave me !"

(To be continued.)

A "GENTEEL" ARTICLE.

BY CUTHBERT BEDE.

There are certain words which may still be heard in what Mr. Jeames de la Pluche calls, "genteel succles," and which are therein used by persons of a certain age, which would be inadmissible in the ordinary conversation of ordinary beings in ordinary society who are compelled to accept the Queen's English of the present day without any alloy of the traditional usages and pronunciations of a bye-gone period. And, one of those words, is that very word "genteel," which, despite its occasional use by elderly persons in that upper grade of society to which Mr. Jeames de la Pluche alluded, has now, by the common consent of educated people been handed over to Mr. Jeames and his fellow flunkies. Jeames might indeed tell you that he has often heard the words from the lips of the old Marquis of Carabbas. But then, the Marquis might take almost any liberties that he pleased with his mother tongue, and his hearers would only regard his departures from the accepted forms of speech as piquant and graceful irregularites; whereas, with the typical Brown, Jones, and Robinson, the exceptional words would be noticed as vulgarisms, and their social position would be judged accordingly. And then, you must also bear in mind the age of the Marquis and the usage and pronunciation of certain words at the time when he was a young man and attached to the Court of his sovereign; so that an expression that would be allowable in his case, would not be permissible in yours, who are neither his equal in age nor in rank and antecedents. To the old dandy of the Regency it may be suffered to denote a lady as "a mons'ous genteel woman;" but a modorn Dundreary swell would abjure such an expression, and would leave it to be used by his servants and tradespeople.

In a matter of this kind, what is one man's meat is another man's poison; and what may be permitted and excused in one case, must be altogether condemned in another. Thus, Lord Russell may say that he will feel obleeged to the noble Lord for such-and-such informationbecause Lord Russell belongs to an antediluvian period, and persists in adhering to the pronunciation that was fashionable in his youth; but, if Mr. Whipper-Snapper, his Lordship's secretary, was to forget himself so far as to say obleege instead of oblige, he would probably be snapped up by his chief as a plagiarist, if not a caricaturist. Another noble Lord, too, may tell us that he will feel it his dooty to bring forward such-and-such a motion on Toosday next. And yet, despite these noble precedents, it will not do either for you or for me, gentle reader, to say that our dooły obleeges us to do so-and-so; for, we are not veteran statesman of high

rank, and we must refrain from taking liberties with the received mode of pronunciation, unless we desire to be relegated to a low stratum of society, and to be regarded as flounderers in the mud of provincialisms.

Again-the Hon. and Rev. Towers Lofty, says tossel instead of tassel, and wropped for wrapped; and he may do so because he is an Honourable and a Peer's son; though, not because he is a Reverend ; for-at least, so I take it-he ought, when he uses the latter word, in a certain chapter read at Christmas, to pronounce it as it is pronounced by the great body of educated Englishmen, of whom the clergy form a portion, and whose pronunciation ought to be listened to with as critical ears as their enunciation. I do not speak here of such variations in pronunciation as neether and niether, sovereign and suv'reign, erd and er-red, sissum and sissim (the latter pronunciation being authorised by a learned Prebend in one of our northern Cathedrals), for these are cases in which eether or eyether pronunciation may be safely left to the discretion of the reader; but I refer to such instances as Mr. Towers Lofty's wropped and tossel, and to the Rev. Athelstan Conquest, who was wont to pray for the Prince Olbert and Olbert, Prince of Wales. But then, Mr. Conquest comes of a famous county family whose names and possessions are written in Domesday Book; and his position is not to be shaken by the substitution of an O for an A. Itis clearly a very different affair with his Curate, who comes of a more plebeian stock, and is of no particular family or county : from his lips such a pronunciation would fall as a vulgarity.

It may be, that there are old ladies still in existence who preserve the traditions of their extreme youth by calling a cup of tea, a dish of tay,” that "elemental tay," that was sipped in "The Rape of the Lock," and of which Queen Anne was so fond-as witness, poet Pope,

"Here, thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,

Dost sometimes counsel take-and sometimes, tea;"

or tay, according to the rhyme, which is a power before which even premier poets have to bend :

"Sometimes

Monarchs are less imperative than rhymes."

I certainly cannot charge my memory with having heard any old ladies of education and position pronouncing tea as Pope and Queen Anne did, although I know that such instances have occurred within these few years; but I have heard the word sparrowgrass from the lips of a real Lady-but then, she was in her seventies, and was an Earl's daughter and sister; and such, in her day, had been the accepted pronunciation for asparagus. From a similar source I derived the word cowcummer, which, certainly, has as much to plead for itself as coocumber; yet, it would never do for the great body of educated Englishmen to adopt these pronunciations.

Then, again, your Eastern-county magnates will tell you that the ripening cornfield looked "as yallow as goold ;" whereas, you would (justly) deem it a vulgarity to say goold for gold, and, still more, yallow for

yellow. As to proper names of persons and places-such as Cissiter, Darby Chumleigh, Cooper, Marchbanks, Cohoon, and the like, here we must altogether follow custom and usage, and have nothing to do with Pronouncing Dictionaries. But, although we turn the e into a in Derby and Hertfordshire and Berkshire, yet, how many of us would presume to follow the usage and custom of the Eastern-county magnates, in sounding the e in yellow like a-unless, indeed, we were chanting some nigger ballad about a yaller gal? "The "poets" employed by the Christy Minstrels and Ethiopian Serenaders may talk, and rhyme, about "yallow" to their hearts' content; but, what other poet would dare to venture on such a vulgarity? And yet, as, to every rule there is an exception, I can here note a most remarkable instance where yellow is pronounced yallow by one who is not only a poet, in the highest sense of the word, but a gentleman and scholar to boot-Tennyson.

Perhaps these is no poet in whom the melody of versification is more strongly marked; and in none of his poems in this melody more beautifully apparent than in "The Dying Swan," which is very music itself. The following lines paint, most perfectly a fen subject:

"One willow o'er the river wept,

And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above, in the wind, was the swallow,

Chasing itself at its own wild will,

And far thro' the marish green and still
The tangled water-courses slept,

Shot over with purple and green and yellow.”

It will be observed, that yellow is here made to rhyme with swallow; a rhyme that is certainly not sanctioned either by "Pronouncing Dictionaries," or by delicate ears. Now, how was this? for, the Laureate's rhymes are as perfect as any other portion of his verse. Doubtless, it arose in this way: Tennyson was an eastern county man, born (as his biographers tell us) "at his father's parsonage, at Somerby, in Lincolnshire, in 1809," where, most probably, he would hear yellow pronounced yallow by men of good birth and education, and would so pronounce it himself; and, what more natural, therefore, than for a Lincolnshire poet, in describing a Lincolnshire scene, to make use of a Lincolnshire rhyme? Elsewhere-as, for example, in "The Lotos Eaters"-he rhymes yellow in the customary way, Lincolnshire fens not being in view; just, in the same way that Swift, although usually obedient to the laws of Pronouncing Dictionaries, often throws off the yoke and then, as an Irishman describing Irish scenes, makes use of Irish rhymes-for, the Dean wrote with rapidity and national enthusiasm, and, when once carried away by his subject did not pause to blot the rhyme that made music to his Irish ear. What rhymes could be more Irish than the following which occur in Swift's brief poem called "The Journal of a Modern Lady"-who was, of course, a lady of the Emerald Isle: Severe and air, severe and share, put and cut, pays and keys, stays and please, tears and forswears, rake well