life, and was no cloud upon my quiet happiness with the sister 1 loved so dearly.

I scarcely know how the days slipped by us; but I know that I had been living with my sister and her husband between four and five months, and it was very close upon the end of August, when our carelessly happy life was brought to a terrible close, as suddenly as some dream of departed friends and a lost home, from which we awake to find ourselves lonely and desolate.

It was nearly the end of August, and people told us that there was no one in town; but as I found myself jostled by just as many passengers, and pushed about quite as much as ever when I emerged from the quiet of Great Morland Street into any of the bustling thoroughfares, I was unable to realize the emptiness of London about which Londoners complained so bitterly. When the days were very hot, and the street especially dusty, Sophy and I, sitting at our needlework by an opened window, have confessed to each other a weary yearning for yellow corn-fields, and the rich slope of uplands where the grass was ruffled by fresh breezes from the summer sea; but we never said as much before Lawrence, for the Clapham school kept him prisoner in London, and we knew that at a word from Sophy his good resolutions would have melted into air, and he would have insisted on running away into the country to look for the roses that had vanished from his young wife's cheeks.

Yes, the girlish bloom had perished. The tender heart had suffered very bitterly from the pain of an enduring remorse. Even when most childishly happy with the husband of her choice, Sophy never forgot the wrong she had done Bernard Champion. She thought of it more and more, day by day, I believe, as her nature became sublimated by a diviner tenderness under the most sacred influence of womanhood. I had now to superintend the preparation of something even more interesting than a trousseau. My big covered work-basket was a repository of tiny morsels of delicate lawn and muslin ; and when Sophy and I sat together in the sunny window looking out upon a prospect of slated roofs and blackened chimney-pots, we beguiled ourselves by fond talk of a happy future to be spent in a suburban cottage, a little bower nestling amongst lilacs and laburnums, with a tiny grass plat just big enough for the most enchanting infant in creation to roll upon.

One day, when the weather was particularly lovely, and that yearning for the breath of a fresh breeze and the beauty of a rural landscape possessed us more completely than usual, Lawrence proposed a holiday. He had just received a remittance from his mother and was in very high spirits.

“There's a university race at Henley-on-Thames, to-morrow,” he said; "and there's a coach that starts from the White Horse Cellar

this afternoon. We'll go down; put up at an inn; see the race to-morrow; and come home by the night mail. There'll be a lot of fellows whom I know at Henley, and we shall have a glorious time of it, if you think you can manage the journey, Sophy darling, without fatigue.”

Of course my pet declared that there was no possibility of her being tired by any happy holiday spent with her husband. As for his sake she had broken her solemn engagement to Bernard, so to give him pleasure she would have made any sacrifice of her own inclination; but in this case there was no sacrifice. We were both delighted at the prospect of a day by the delicious river about which Lawrence was so eloquent; and I fancied that a change from the stifling atmosphere of London would bring new brightness to my sister's faded face.

The next day dawned upon us pleasantly in pretty country rooms, where the pure white hangings were almost as fragrant as the perfumed air that blew across so many gardens before it came in at our open windows. We breakfasted very early; and the simple country breakfast-the home-made loaf and yellow cream, the fruit and honey, and pinkly tinted new laid eggs-seemed a repast such as one reads of in a fairy tale.

Never had I seen Lawrence Annesley in such high spirits. Bright always, to-day he brightened with every flash of sunlight that flitted across his face, with every glancing ripple of the river which flowed under our window as we sat at breakfast.

The inn at which we stopped was close to the bridge, and there was a balcony outside our window which commanded a superb view of the river. Here Sophy and I were to watch the race, while Lawrence wandered freely in the meadows along the shore, finding old friends and making new acquaintance at every turn. He had been very popular among his set at the university, and his set had been a very large one. He left us almost immediately after breakfast, promising to return in an hour or two. If we grew tired of the balcony, there was a lawn below, a lovely slope of velvet grass, whose outermost fringe was ruffled by the river as it rippled by; and there was a tent under some trees. Gaily dressed people were already beginning to assemble in this river-side garden.

I think Lawrence must have come back to us at least half a dozen times during the hour in which he first left us, so anxious was he that we should be comfortable and happy, and feel no sense of loneliness in his absence. Let me recall the last time of all, when he came back flushed and dusty, delighted with his encounters with old companions, pleased with himself and all the universe, but above all things devotedly in love with his wife.

"There are such lots of fellows I know about the place," he said,

"and they've been almost ready to tear me into little bits,-such jolly fellows. I wonder what they'd think if they knew that I teach a pack of stupid boys to paint very green trees and very blue water, with a miller's cottage and a water-wheel in the foreground, or a little bit of brown ruin in the middle distance, and that I live in Great Morland Street, Bloomsbury? I don't think there's one of them would be snobbish enough to care any the less about me. But if I go down the bank to see the start, are you sure you won't be dull without me, darling? will you be quite happy here with Patty, eh, dear?"

now.

I knew, as well as I knew anything in this world, that my sister was never "quite happy" in her husband's absence, and I knew that she would not mar his pleasure by confessing as much just A picture of them rises before me as I write this, and I can see Lawrence and my sister as I saw them that day, more distinctly than I can see the pictures on the wall before me, for they seem blurred and dim across a mist of tears. I see them standing side by side in the open window, while I sit out in the balcony and look back towards them. I see my sister's face lifted to her husband's, with unspeakable affection in its tender smile; the little hand laid lightly on his arm, so fondly tempted to detain him, so unselfishly anxious to let him go. And looking down at her I can see the bright boyish countenance, the sunny hazel eyes, which I saw first amidst the lonely ruins of Rixmount.

"Oh, darling, you must go," she cried, pushing him from her with a pretty playful gesture; "your old friends are waiting for you. Come back to me, dear,—but not too soon."

But not too soon! Ah, how those words rang in my ears after that day-commonplace words, that were afterwards to assume so terrible a significance !

He went away at last-after more affectionate demonstration than some people would have made on parting with their families preparatory to sailing for Australia. I am glad to think he lingered so long that morning, and that the kiss which he always pressed upon his wife's forehead when he bade her good-bye was even more tender than usual. There are people who think all these demonstrations these kisses and farewells before every brief separation between those who love each other an unnecessary waste of words. But I have wondered sometimes whether the wife who scarcely looks up from the morning paper when her husband goes away to his daily duty, ever thinks, when the hall door bangs behind him, that he may never cross its threshold again with any consciousness of coming back to her with any sense of the wailing cry that is uttered above his coffin. "Oh, if I had loved you better! Oh, if I had been a

little kinder in the insignificant trifles that make up the sum of life!"

Lawrence left us, and my sister, a little tired with her journey, and with the excitement of the morning, lay down upon the oldfashioned white dimity-covered sofa, and fell into a placid slumber. "The time will seem so much shorter if I sleep," she murmured.

I sat and watched her for a little as she slept, with my hand clasped lovingly in hers. I sat looking down at the fair pale face upon the white pillow, with the loose golden hair scattered round it; and when the hand loosened I crept softly away, and went out upon the balcony.

There were voices sounding merrily in every direction; there were gay dresses making spots of vivid colour against a cool background of green; and over all the sun was shining; and through all the gay confusion of voices and laughter I heard the eternal ripple of the river, and the rustling of the sedges on its brink.

I looked back at my sister sleeping as sweetly as an infant, with her lips a little parted, and one loose tress of pale golden hair faintly ruffled by her breath.

Oh, Heaven have mercy upon all human love and human loss, as He had compassion on the widow of Nain! All the old agony comes back to me when I think of my sister's sleep, and remember her awakening.

OUR EMINENT LIVING DIVINES.

66

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE LIFE OF SOUTHEY," 66 ASTRELLO," ETC.

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

THE Church of England may well be proud of her episcopal guardians and counsellors. If we search her muster-roll of bishops, past or present-those who have laboured diligently and faithfully, and have long since gone to their reward, or those who are actively labouring amongst us now,—we shall find names synonymous with primitive purity of life and jealous devotion to her interests. Throughout every page of her history we meet with men whose piety and zeal, no less than their learning and talents, have been an adornment to the holy calling to which they had bound themselves in a willing bondage. She can point to heroes, valiant for the faith, defying chains and death for the love they bore her. She can claim not a few who have joined the noble army of martyrs, and are now rejoicing in the ranks of the blessed that they have been found worthy to suffer. In no age has she been without her faithful witnesses, her zealous champions. Ridley and Latimer, Cranmer and Hooper, stand in the front and vanguard, and in their deaths kindled, as they trusted in God they would, such a light as has not yet, and never will be put out. From that day to this she has never wanted watchmen to warn her against enemies, and to reprove her false friends, though, happily, they have not been called upon to pass through the fiery ordeal, or to seal their devotion by their blood. What nobler spectacle can be afforded than that of Abbott raising his voice against the corruption and profligacy of the Stuart Court? What better service could have been rendered to religion than that magnificent labour of love, the translation of the Bible, which is indeed the Vulgate, circulating, as it does, into millions of homes, and throughout every quarter of the world? When threatened with illegal violence, who so bold and intrepid as her champions Ken and his mitred brethren? To heal the wounds of civil discord and sectarian differences, who so apt as the gentle, eloquent Tillotson? and to resist the presumptuous reasonings of intellectual scepticism, who so lucid, deep, and crushing as Butler?

We might without difficulty enlarge the list indefinitely, and show how our bishops have really been the pillars of the Church. We might cite a host of names from the days of the Reformation downward, whose very mention would kindle a glow of gratitude, pleasure, and