had left the wars with an empty sleeve or a shattered leg. Kirsteen stopped and took her little purse from her pocket and gave him sixpence with a look of sympathy. She thought of the boys all away to the endless Indian wars, and of another besides who might be fighting or losing his arm like this "And I'm very sorry for ye, poor man. and I hope you will win safe home," said Kirsteen passing on. But different feelings came into her mind when she found that she was being followed, and that the man's prayer for "anither saxpence" was being repeated in a rougher and more imperative tone. Kirsteen had a great deal of courage as a girl so often has, whose natural swift impulses have had no check of practical danger. She was not at first afraid. She faced round upon him with a rising colour and bade him be content. "I have given ye all I can give ye," she said, "for I've a long, long journey before me and little siller."

"Ye have money in your purse, my bonny lady, and no half so much to do with it as me."

"If I've money in my purse it's my own money, for my own lawful uses," said Kirsteen.

"Come, come," cried the man, "I'll use nae violence unless ye force me. Gie me the siller."

"I will not give ye a penny," cried Kirsteen. And then there ensued a breathless moment. All the possibilities swept through her mind. If she took to flight he would probably overtake her, and in the meantime might seize her from behind when she could not see what he was doing. She had no staff or stick in her hand but was weighted with her bundle and her cloak. She thought of flinging the latter over his head and thus blinding and embarrassing him to gain a little time, but he was wary and on his guard. She gave a glance towards the boat on the loch, but it was in mid-water, and the bank was high and precipitous. Nowhere else was there a living creature in sight.

"Man," said Kirsteen, "I cannot fight with ye, but I'm not just a weak creature either, and what I have is all I have, and I've a long journey before me I'll give ye your sixpence if you'll go."

I'll warrant ye will," said the sturdy beggar, "but I'm a no so great a fuil as I look. Gie me the purse, and I'll let ye go."

"I'll not give ye the purse. If ye'll say a sum and it's within my power I'll give ye that."

"Bring out the bit pursie," said the man, "and we'll see, maybe with a kiss into the bargain," and he drew nearer, with a leer in the eyes that gleamed from among his tangled hair.

"I will fling it into the loch sooner than ye should get it," cried Kirsteen, whose blood was up-"and hold off from me or I'll push you down the brae," she cried, putting down her bundle, and with a long breath of nervous agitation preparing for the assault.

"You're a bold quean though ye look so mim-gie me a pound then and I'll let ye go."

Kirsteen felt that to produce the purse at all was to lose it, and once more calculated all the issues. The man limped a little. She thought that if she plunged down the bank to the loch, steep as it was, her light weight and the habit she had of scrambling down to the linn might help her—and the sound of the falling stones and rustling branches might catch the ear of the fisher on the water, or she might make a spring up upon the hill behind and trust to the tangling roots of the heather to impede her pursuer. either case she must give up the bundle and her cloak. Oh, if she had but taken Donald and the gig as Mrs. Macfarlane had advised!

In

one spring up the hill before he could seize her. And in a moment her bounding heart all at once became tranquil and she stood still, her terror gone.

For within a few paces of her was a sportsman with his gun, a young man in dark undress tartan scarcely distinguishable from the green and brown of the hillside, walking slowly downwards among the heather bushes. Kirsteen raised her voice a little. She called to her assailant, "Ye can go your way, for here's a gentleman!" with a ring of delight in her voice.

The man clambering after her (he did "hirple" with the right foot, Kirsteen observed with pleasure) suddenly slipped down with an oath, for he too had seen the newcomer, and presently she heard his footsteps on the road hurrying away.

"What is the matter, my bonny lass?" said the sportsman; 66 are ye having a quarrel with your joe." Where's the impudent fellow? I'll soon bring him to reason, if you'll trust yourself to me."

Kirsteen dropped over the bank without reply with a still more hot flush upon her cheeks. She had escaped one danger only to fall into another more alarming. What the country folk had said to her had piqued her pride; but to be treated by a gentleman as if she were a country lass with her joe was more than Kirsteen could bear.

He had sprung down by her side however before she could do more than pick up the bundle and cloak which the tramp had not touched.

"He's a scamp to try to take advantage of you when you're in a lone place like this. Tell me, my bonny lass, where ye are going? I'll see you safe over the hill if you're going my way."

"It is not needful, sir, I thank ye," said Kirsteen. "I'm much obliged to you for appearing as you did. It was a sturdy beggar would have had my purse; he ran at the sight of a gentleman; but I hope there are none but illdoers need to do that," she added with

heightened colour drawing back from his extended hand.

The young man laughed and made a step forward, then stopped and stared, "You are not a country lass," he said. "I've seen you before-where have I seen you before?"

Kirsteen felt herself glow from head to foot with overpowering shame. She remembered if he did not. She had not remarked his looks in the relief which the first sight of him had brought, but now she perceived who it was. It was the very Lord John whose remarks upon the antediluvians had roused her proud resentment at the ball. He did not mistake the flash of recognition, and a recognition which was angry, in her eyes.

"Where have we met? he said. "You know me, and not I fear very favourably. Whatever I've done I hope you'll let me make my peace now.'

"There is no peace to make," said Kirsteen. "I'm greatly obliged to you, sir ; I can say no more, but I'll be more obliged to you still if you will go your own gait and let me go mine, for I am much pressed for time."

"What! and leave you at the mercy of the sturdy beggar?" he cried lightly. "This is my gait as well as yours, I'm on my way across Whistlefield down to Roseneath-a long walk. I never thought to have such pleasant company. Come, give me your bundle to carry, and tell me, for I see you know, where we met."

"I can carry my own bundle, sir, and I'll give it to nobody," said Kir

steen.

"What a churl you make me looka bonny lass by my side over-weighted, and I with nothing but my gun. Give me the cloak then," he said, catching it lightly from her arm. "If you will not tell me where we met tell me where you're going, and I'll see you home."

"My home is not where I am going," said Kirsteen. "Give me back my cloak, my Lord John. It's not for you to carry for me."

"I thought you knew me," he cried. "Now that's an unfair advantage, let me think, was it in the school-room at Dalmally? To be sure! You are the governess. Or was it?"

He saw that he had made an un

lucky hit. Kirsteen's countenance glowed with proud wrath. The governess, and she a Douglas! She snatched the cloak from him and stood at bay. "My father," she cried, "is of as good blood as yours, and though you can scorn at the Scots gentry in your own house you shall not do it on the hill-side. I have yon hill to cross," said the girl with a proud gesture, holding herself as erect as a tower, 'going on my own business, and meddling with nobody. So go before, sir, or go after, but if you're a gentleman, as ye have the name, let me pass by myself."

66

The young man coloured high. He took off his hat and stood aside to let her pass. After all there are arguments which are applicable to a gentleman that cannot be applied to sturdy beggars. But Kirsteen went on her

way still more disturbed than by the first meeting. He had not recognised her, but if they should ever meet again he would recognise her. And what would he think when he knew it was Drumcarro's daughter that had met him on the hill-side with her bundle on her arm, and been lightly addressed as a bonnie lass. The governess at Dalmally! Hot tears came into Kirsteen's eyes as she made her way across the stretch of moorland which lies between Loch Long and the little Gairloch, that soft and verdant paradise. She walked very quickly neither turning to the right hand nor the left, conscious of the figure following her at a distance. Oh, the governess! She will be a far better person than me, and know a great deal more, thought Kirsteen with keen compunction, me to think so much of myself that am nobody! I wish I was a governess or half so good. I'm a poor vagrant lass, insulted on the road-side, frighted with beggars, scared by gentlemen. Oh, if I had but taken that honest woman's offer of Donald and the gig!

THE study of English literature in our schools and colleges on a scale proportionate to its importance is of comparatively recent date. I suppose we should not be far wrong in fixing that date at about thirty years back. Up to that time, although the colleges in London and other great centres could boast distinguished professors of the subject, it had hardly been recognised, even in the higher forms of schools at all.

School histories of England, in an appendix to the successive chapters, may have furnished the names of the great authors in prose and verse who adorned each reign, with a list of their more important works, but that was all. To whom the credit is due of leading the movement which has brought about the remarkable change in this respect, it might be difficult to say. But there is no doubt that the movement received a great impetus about the time just mentioned by the publication, through the Clarendon Press at Oxford, of a series of selected works of the great English classics, thoroughly edited and annotated, under the general direction of the late Professor Brewer, of King's College. Single plays of Shakespeare, separate portions of the "Canterbury Tales", selected poems of Dryden, and so forth, were one by one issued, under the care of the editors best qualified for the task, and at a price that made them available for use in all the higher class schools and colleges in the country. "The authors and works selected", so ran the prospectus of the series, "are such as will best serve to illustrate English literature in its historical aspect. As the eye of history', without which history cannot be understood,

the literature of a nation is the clearest and most intelligible record of its life. Its thoughts and its emotions, its graver and its less serious modes, its progress or its degeneracy, are told by its best authors in their best words. This view of the subject will suggest the safest rules for the study of it".

Admirable words, worthy of the largeminded and large-hearted scholar who inspired, if he did not actually frame, them; and we can well understand how they must have brought light and inspiration to many a schoolmaster and student, who had never entertained the~ idea of Chaucer and Bacon as possible factors in education, though it had seemed the most obvious thing in the world to study the masterpieces of Schiller, Dante, or Molière. At the time we are speaking of, the average schoolmaster would have scouted the idea of an English classic becoming a text-book in his school. He might indeed give out a canto of "Marmion " to be learned by heart as a holiday task, but that was for a mere exercise of memory, or to keep the lad from being too noisy on a wet day. I remember how Dr. Arnold, in one of his letters, expresses an ardent wish that he might have the opportunity of studying a play of Shakespeare with his sixth form, on the same scale of attention and precision as they studied a book of Thucydides! But this was but an aspiration, and the times were not ripe for a change, even if the re morseless limits of years and months admitted of any diminution of the space allotted to Latin and Greek.

I do not at all say that the prejudice of the average teacher against the introduction of English writers into the curriculum of his school was altogether unworthy, and to be laughed at. It had its root in a true conviction that

nothing was worth teaching that did. not involve some labour and trouble on the part of the learner-that did not awake and exercise in him some new powers-that was not, in a word, a discipline. It was this feeling that was sound and worthy of all respect in the prejudice against English literature as an element in education. The picture of Addison, or Pope in a boy's hands connected itself with that of a half-hour of idleness-harmless perhaps, but still idleness-spent in an arm-chair by the fire or on a sunny lawn, a half-hour withdrawn from more serious and profitable study. And if any one, reading these suppressed thoughts of the teacher, were to retort that after all Addison and Pope might be as worthy literature as Horace and Aristophanes, the answer would be ready: "Yes, but it takes some trouble to get at the meaning of Horace and Aristophanes. The language in which they wrote obliges the student to give thought and trouble to the subject. An English book does nothing of the kind".

And it was to those who cherished this conviction, and yet were quite aware that Hooker and Bacon, Shakespeare and Milton, De Foe and Swift must have an important message to those who spoke their tongue, that, as I have said, such words as Professor Brewer's came like something of a revelation. English literature, it now appeared, might ask some labour and attention on the part of the student, might evoke and train some new powers. It might link itself with history, or rather claim to be itself a department of history, and history had long ago been established as a necessary branch of education. And moreover, as such, it admitted of being examined in, and the final test by examination has always, I suppose, been present to the mind of the teacher when considering the appropriateness of a subject for his pupils.

From the first, then, English literature has been regarded by the teacher as something to be examined in; and

from the first this has largely determined the form in which it has been taught. The connection of an author with his own time-how far he has either reflected the deeper convictions and aims of that time, or perhaps only its passing moods and fashions; the obligations of the writer to foreign models, or to the influence of a revived study of ancient literature -these and many such inquiries were seen to be wholesome and instructive ways of studying the author, and throwing light upon his genius and our appreciation of him. And in all sound teaching of the subject such topics have always, of course, found a place. But even here, and in the hands of teachers of real and wide scholarship, I think may be perceived the first shadow of a danger which might in time spread and overcast the entire subject. In the hands of a teacher who himself loved and enjoyed the author he was treating of, it would be impossible but that something of his own taste and appreciation should be transferred to the student who listened to him, provided always that the student had in him the germs of taste and appreciation at all. But here again the terminal examination began to cast its "shadow before." How are you to examine upon a young student's enjoyment of the "Fairy Queen" or the "Rape of the Lock"? Even though he has learned to feel, and ardently to relish, the exquisite yet wholly different flavours of these two poems, how is this to be tested by an examination paper? Moreover, if a taste for these writers is to be found by studying them not for the history or archaeology in them, but for their own sakes and for the enjoyment of them-there is no time for this in the class-room, for that time is wanted for the historical and critical questions that arise; and the student at home has no time for that leisurely and deliberate reading that brings about a love for an author, as distinguished from a mastery of his difficulties (if an ancient writer) of language or allusion. And thus