occurred at the pension. The young people, after a terrible struggle between love and virtue, agree to simplify their affairs by committing suicide together; which, however, being the very stalest incident in French romance or reality, it becomes necessary to give a new turn to the conduct of the situation.

This, then, is the ingenious manner of it.

The two virtuous young people bore a hole in the bottom of a boat, put a cork into the hole, and row themselves out into the middle of the lake. Then, pale, calm, resolute, "Let us embrace," they say, and-pull out the cork.

Last situation of first volume :

Lake at sunset. Pale and calm, young people locked in tender hug. Boat half full of water, slowly sinking.

First situation of second volume :—

Charming Parisian drawing-room interior. Charming, pétillant fire. Two charming young people (the young people), sitting close together on a sofa, quite dry, and smiling. Opposite, reclining in easy chair, very easy old gentleman of benign aspect; eyes, beaming and watering with benevolence, rest on tender pair.

"Be happy, my children," he entreats; "don't mind me the least in the world. Ah, what a fatal mistake you nearly made! What! because I happen to be the husband of this poor angel must I cease to be human, to be capable of sympathizing with your affecting loves ?"

Tears, embraces all round, and-I forget how it goes on or ends, but I feel sure it is better neither imagined nor described.

We must thankfully acknowledge that there is nothing like this in the whole range of our sensation fiction-yet. Its moral system is, nevertheless, very unhealthy. There is something amiss with its backbone; it is dreadfully subject to murder and arson, and seems to be afflicted with a chronic bigamy.

But there are few even slight cases of that virulent sensuality which disfigures the pages of French novels.

Symptoms there are of late of a dangerous proclivity to it, however. Are English novelists feeling their way to the sentimental in decency of their neighbours when, ceasing to paint honest and innocent loves, they only try to interest us in misplaced and utterly undisciplined passions?

Why is Constance perpetually to pine for Georgina's husband, who for his part is consumed by remorseful regrets for Kate, whom he jilted by mistake, and who, in a moment of ill-humour, became Another's?

I declare that I have recently read a novel in which the whole of the dramatis persone might have been in the tearful eye of the immortal Moddle when he declared that everybody was somebody else's!

There is certainly at present an exaggerating tendency in our works of art, whether of pen or pencil. Somebody says there is a sort of spirit abroad which makes men represent grass red, and skies green; and even our noblest story-tellers are not wholly proof against this influence.

But it is for these to make head against the flood of corrupt taste, not to be carried with it helplessly, like swimmers of feeble arm and infirm purpose.

As to the vexed question of religious fiction, I think our novelwriters need not give us anomalous religious tracts in order to vindicate their work, and to do it honestly, usefully, Godwardly.

When the Master Himself taught us the truth which is life, He chose to speak by parables, in very simple, tender stories.

Only let us keep our story-telling pure, for Christ's sake.

MARY BROTHERTON.

A DREAM.

THIS is how the dream came to me:

I was staying in the country with an old friend of mine, who was very rich, and used the "ten talents entrusted to him in the way his Master intended he should. He and I had been talking over some plans which had lately come into his mind with respect to new cottages and an adult school for his labourers, and in my secret soul I envied him ;-envied him, as I thought at first, only for the good he could do; but when he left me, and I remained walking up and down on the soft turf, shaded from a hot July sun by some magnificent lime trees, and dreamily conscious of the luxurious feeling that a summer atmosphere laden with scents and sounds always seems to bring to me, then by degrees the truth became apparent, and I sat down on a garden chair to think the subject out, startled to find how much I had come to connect the idea of happiness with wealth, and how my faith seemed to be failing me at the contrast my own narrow circumstances presented to the ample, almost grand ones of my friend. How long I sat thinking I know not, but my soul was just sinking into a sea of discontent and repining, from which, as it then appeared to me, gold was the only escape, when I suddenly became aware of a change in the garden that surrounded me. I gazed at it again, and saw that the main features of the landscape were unaltered; trees, turf, flowers remained in their old positions, but the trees had burst forth with fruits such as I never before or since beheld, fruits of every shape and colour, but all exquisitely beautiful to see; and resting against every tree was a ladder. I tried to rise, in order to go closer, and examine this wonder, but found I could not move from my seat; and at the same moment there seemed a distant hum of voices in my ears, and looking round to discover from whence it came, I saw thronging in from all sides of the garden a multitude of people, all eagerly intent on the fruit that had so attracted me this was clear from the fact that they never took their eyes from the trees, they pressed and struggled to get near those which boasted the largest and finest fruits, they strove to climb on each other's shoulders to reach what they could not get at otherwise; there was more than one savage fight to wrest a prize from the hands of some fortunate possessor, and several times I saw persons borne down by the violence of the crowd, and their trampled bodies used as aids to others in mounting nearer to the coveted objects. There

was such an immense mass of people, that for some time my eye was too bewildered to notice any details, but as I grew more accustomed to the scene I observed many things that were singular, one of which was, that here and there among the crowd were scattered little groups, or, more generally, single individuals, who seemed to be exceptions to the almost universal rule, as they were walking quietly about, undisturbed apparently by the turmoil around, and in their faces was an expression of contentment, which I vainly looked for in the countenances of the fruit-seekers. These people, too, although they looked towards the trees sometimes, did not seem as if their heart and soul was bound up in getting what grew upon them; on the contrary, I saw several others whose business appeared to be simply in warning others earnestly, and striving to pull them back from the deadly struggle in which numbers were engaged, and often speaking comfort to some out of the many who, having just come exhausted from a fierce contest, were standing, pale and faint, hoping to recover strength for a fresh struggle, or, in utter hopelessness, had laid down to die, the pictures of despair. I noticed, too, that these comforters, as I named them, were not in the least incapable of feeling the attractions which enslaved the majority; for instance, I observed one man holding a splendid fruit in his hand, when for some reason (unknown to me) he laid it on the ground, and there left it; it was soon done, but cost him terrible pain in the doing it, for I saw a spasm cross his face as he bent down, and when he raised himself again there were tears in his eyes, and his lips moved as if in prayer. I saw a young girl, too, with a beautiful, but fragile-looking fruit, which she clasped tightly to her, and even as I looked the fruit seemed to crumble away till her arms held nothing, and she, gazing round for a moment with a dead-white face, suddenly covered it with her hands, and I felt her grief was deeper than I could bear to see; so I turned my attention once more to the still pushing, struggling masses of people, and tried, by closely watching one group, to gain a better insight into what was going on before me. The group consisted of three peopletwo young men, and a girl whom I judged to be their sister, and who seemed as eager as her brothers in the pursuit of the (as they appeared to me) ill-omened treasures. One of the young men, when I first observed him, had his arms full of some very light ethereal-looking fruit, so light, indeed, that it reminded me of soap-bubbles; and as I looked he took one after another, just tasted it, and immediately threw it away, until he had none left. I thought then that having been so disappointed as he evidently was, he would never think of trying any more, but to my surprise I saw him make an onset at a tree he had not hitherto climbed, watched him return with a fresh supply of soap-bubbles, and saw exactly the same tasting and throwing away process enacted over again. His brother was of a different

stamp; his attention never wandered for a moment from a goldcoloured fruit that grew high up out of reach, and I saw him toil and toil until at last he got it. Then how his eyes lit up and sparkled! but there was something almost mean and grovelling in the expression of his face all the time, and I looked away from him to his sister. She, to my amazement, was gazing up at the top of one of the tallest trees, where, following the direction of her eyes, I saw a fruit which looked perfectly luminous, and was certainly very attractive; but how was she ever to get it from that height? She attempted it, however, began to climb, got up a little way, and was thrown back; tried again with the same result, and still tried again; and when I last saw her she had climbed about midway to the summit of her ambition, and had in her hand a smaller, less brilliant fruit than that for which she had so struggled; while on her face there was an expression of weariness and pain which was sad to see. I had observed that, when she first began to climb, a fruit of quite a different colour from that she was seeking had fallen at her feet, but she had contemptuously tossed it away; and now her eyes looked wistfully at the vacant spot where that gift had lain, and she sighed heavily, and seemed to be comparing the memory of that with the shining little fruit she now possessed.

66

Altogether, there was more grief than joy wherever I looked, and, somewhat sick at heart, I closed my eyes to shut out the scene, when I heard a gentle voice say, "This is a picture of life; understand it and be wise." I opened my eyes therefore, half expecting to see an angel by my side; but there was no one, only I fancied a sound like wings in the air. Then looking again all around, I perceived that the fruits had different names written on them, such as Pleasure," "Fame," "Wealth," and others; and I also found I could distinguish what any individual person was saying if I gave my whole attention to it; so instantly searching about with my eyes, I saw the man who had laid down a fruit, and seemed to suffer so much in parting with it. He was now talking to a friend, and said in answer to some question, "Yes, it was a hard trial; for, as you know, there are many dependent on me, and it was a very lucrative post, but I could not retain that and a "conscience void of offence," so there was nothing left but to give it up; and I see now, more clearly even than I did then, in what difficulties I should have been involved had I acted otherwise."

"You did well," returned his friend, "to make up your mind at once about it; delay in all such cases gives the enemy a tremendous advantage. Well," he continued, "you have found the words come true, that the blessing of the Lord maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it,' have you not?"

"Yes, indeed I have, most fully," said the other,-"not only from the peace in my heart, which I never could really feel while I cherished