The

Then

it to me to know that God was alive in leaf and insect? What love in this? For they, too, suffered. shrivelled, and crawled, and died. What was in this but a cold, shadowy, abstract intelligence-intangible-not wholly divine, because not human-afar off, while the whole creation groaned and travailed together? No; it was the blessed human element that saved me. Man-God stretched out hands-warm, human hands-to lift me up. I tracked the shining feet in Holy Land; there was blood upon the paths they trod; and I found IIim weeping alone in Gethsemane Garden. Ay, and felt Him, too, through all the darkness upon Calvary, and heard a dying sorrowful voice, over the dim world, humming underneath a dying voice with life in it. After solemn afflictions men's genius usually awakes within them, and begins to work. those that have no longer anything to receive from earth bethink them of what they can give, and find giving the nobler part in life. Great painters, poets, thinkers, heroes, have done thus. Circumstances shut me from such high dreams, and held me bound to an humbler usefulness. When I began to look about me my courage almost failed. Athwart the threshold of the future there lay a dead body, and I had to tread boldly over the corpse of all that in life had been most dear to me. Image, Arthur, to yourself this sorthat love's dearest one should be taken away, strangely and suddenly, from him, before their sweet intercourse has been marred by a single unkind thought, or chilled by one cold word; that she should grow cold in his embrace, and be lost to him, while yet the seal of his last kiss is on her, and his warm arms wound about her. When one that sits forlorn by the mute pale clay can remember that the last sound of the lifeless lips was true and tender, the last touch of the cold white hand was warm and gentle, and that never light of scorn or anger had arisen in the depths of those loving eyes henceforth for ever darkened. Not one memory that can defile her beauty, or lessen his deep loss. Yet this reflection, in all its sadness, was my salvation. Had I found her false, or frail, or frivolous, and shallow-hearted, or known her, for one hour, in one word or look, less worthy than I deemed

row;

her from the first, my grief at her loss might have been less, but my fall far more. It is easy to believe in virtue and all high things, living among noble types, and ministered to and strengthened by all that is lofty and beautiful in human intercourse; but when those types lie shattered at our feet in the base and common dust-when a fair face is a take-in-when the woman that seemed so near the angels falls suddenly to the level of the animals, and the sacred circle is broken rudely through by common feet, and vulgar gazers are in the temple, and vulgar fingers have defiled the spotless image that we set so high-then must there be a fearful hour in the life of a manto such an one what shall be the end? For when the belief in all human truth and excellence is gone, the belief in that which is divine may as well go after it and what is left? Thank God this has been spared me !"

I was silent, for I knew the truth of what he said too bittely to answer "yes" to it. My own life was not without some spots. I had a broken idol or two of my own, that my heart swelled to remember. But that is neither here nor there. I could not speak if I would even if pity were a pleasant thing, it gives me a sort of choking in the throat.

Dear old Rushbrook! (continued Morton) it is a hard thing that sorrow sticks to us to the last, while our joys soon sneak off at the first mishap. Poor old man, he had lived till his head was silver; and I- my life was before me; yet the same calamity caught us both together. You may judge how far I had mastered my own grief, when I was able to attempt to console his. I could not say that our sorrow was the same, for Madeline was more to me than it was possible she could have been to any other. What was I but a miser that had gathered together into one great bank all his fortune, instead of wisely distributing it in lesser sums elsewhere? One day, the bank breaks, and leaves him penniless as the spendthrifts whom yesterday he despised. Many a comfortless night, by many a dying fire, did we watch the winter out together. Sometimes, with trivial words, we spoke of other things as though we cared for them; we put our mutual sorrow aside with a silent consent, as it were,

on both sides, till one would mutter her name, or say "how good, how beautiful she was !" and then we could speak no more that night. Sometimes I read to him out of that great black Bible of his, till in some one verse God seemed speaking to me with his own voice, and straightway mine was choked with tears. Sometimes, oftenest indeed, we both sat silent, in silence helping each other to bear the weight of God's finger grazing us. We were not ashamed to suffer; we chose Christ rather than Goethe. At last, a desire grew up in the heart of the old man, which brought him consolation. That tenantless grave from which we had extorted its secret was there not hope in the empty coffin? He thought so at least. For myself, I knew not what to think. I imparted to him those strange details which Madeline had revealed to me of the circumstances that preceded and accompanied her sister's supposed decease. history was entirely new to him, for Madeline, partly from veneration of her sister's memory, but chiefly from a fear to cause her father needless pain, had never shown him Geraldine's jour nal, nor in any way hinted at the fact which that journal proved unhappily, but too clearly. These things affected him strangely, but more with hope than sorrow, and, as we talked them over, a new light seemed to break upon the mystery. The feelings of the poor child for Count C were not to be doubted; nor her helplessness in the strange thrall of his influence. The Count's utter want of principle and systematic egotism were well known to me. What if this pretended death were all a cheat, devised by C

This

to

cover the flight of his victim, and divert suspicion for ever from himself? In this strange drama it was difficult to guess how far Geraldine had been a willing actor; but the last paragraph in the girl's journal seemed to indicate some strange resolve to which she had reluctantly brought herself at the dictation or persuasion of C This notion gathered probability the more we considered it. Some unnatural influence had evidently been exerted upon the unfortunate girl. It was possible, just possible, that C might possess magnetic powers and secrets unknown to me. Then trance might so easily have been caused; the household deceived, the

a

rest was easy to conceive of. If such, however, had been the case, it was clear that some one must have been in the secret. These things could not have been done without an accomplice. I half suspected Lady Roseville, but more through instinct than from any just cause of suspicion; and, indeed, all the evidence was against the likelihood of her guilt in this business, for it was to be gathered from the notes which had been preserved of Geraldine's journal, that Lady Roseville was rather the poor child's rival, and, consequently, not likely to assist C in his designs upon the girl. At this point all was vague. The old man was more hopeful than myself; for, granting even the probability that Geraldine was yet alive-and this was at the most only a probability-I could not but shudder to think under what fearful circumstances she might now be existing; for C, when the excitement of a new pleasure was over, would not, I felt sure, scruple to fling away the spoiled thing from him, as one would a fingered butterfly or a gathered rose. There was more pity

in death than in that man; I knew him well. And the girl's remorse and disgust-betrayed where her trust was greatest her ruined life; I saw it all. Clear as truth up grew the terrible picture! Death were better than that, I could not help feeling. The old man, oddly enough, did not seem to apprehend these things thus; he was possessed by the one feeling, that his child might still be alive, and his mind could seize no more than that single fact. I had no heart or wish to darken his hope, and I kept my own fears to myself.

"I will not die till I have seen her," he said; and I resolved to lose no time in prosecuting a search, the difficulties of which I could not but foresee.

"It will be well to see Lady Roseville," I thought in my own mind, "and sound her so far as may be, before any steps are taken. I will see her to-morrow, and judge for myself." So we said "Good night" with stronger hearts each of us. For me there was yet an object-a human interest-left in life, and I blessed God from my heart. Stripped and bare at last,' I said, "that is what the executioner should be;" for I thought of C– and that slow justice of events which he had set at nought.

66

THE morning broke through a misty shower, with a sighing far off, and a sound of tears in caves and leaves; I remember it well, that day, because it rained till noon, and we had a fire lit in the library, and tried to read the rain out. I felt very restless, however, and could not sit quiet for ten minutes; pulled down fifty books; hovered about; dipped into all, settled at none; grew mightily interested in watching a particular rain-drop straggling down the window-pane in zig-zags, till it bumped its sides against another big, round, sluggish fellow, who, with great gravity, opened his mouth and eat up the intruder, and then went on a little faster. Then to the book-shelves again, with a discontented yawn; gaped over "Hesiod," and put him back again, upside down, and pitched at last on the parson's vellum "Homer." Out I pulled it, and down fell something-a rattle and bang. I picked it up; it was the casket containing the bracelet sent to my wife, and which had lain there quite forgotten since that eventful day in which I had thrust it on the shelf. The sight of the thing caused a great flutter in my heart; it brought back the last dark days of the old time so vividly. I took the casket to the fireside, and sat down and opened it. The great emerald and its little train of gems flung out sparkles to the fire, as I turned it over and over in my hand. I could not help more and more admiring the beauty of the workmanship as I looked at it. I opened the clasp and fastened it round my wrist, which it barely spanned. I felt a great pressure on the pulse, and every moment the pressure seemed to increase. "It was made for a smaller wrist than mine," I thought; "how beautiful it is!" for the fire-light was dancing and twinkling among the gems, and the little glittering eye of the serpent was really full of expression, and had a life-like sharpness and slyness about it. Soon, however, it seemed to me that my pulse was rising rapidly. I thought, at first, that this was fancy, or that the pressure only of the bracelet rendered the strokes of the pulse against it more perceptible; but still the pulsation seemed to mount and hurry, and, by degrees, I felt a deli

cious tingling warmth creeping up the arm, and winding and trickling, as it were, into my very brain. I can liken the sensation of it to nothing but that of a warm breath from some beloved lips, and the faint but rapturous thrill it sends before it. I gave myself up to the delight of it, like a girl to some first kiss, with a confused wondering pleasure, as I leaned back in the chair. A pleasant languor began to weigh upon my lids, and a desire to close my eyes, which was not drowsiness. These sensations increased momently. I resolved, however, to test them, and see whether the bracelet had, or had not, any connexion with them. Not without an effort, I unclasped it. When it was off, the feeling began at once to flutter and ebb away. This is some devil's work," I said, and set to examining the bracelet more carefully than I had done before. In so doing, I accidentally caught the little steel tongue in the cuff of my coat, and, in attempting to extricate it, I pressed it back with my thumb. To my surprise, it yielded to the pressure, recoiling back into the mouth with a sort of click, and at the same moment a little gold trap in the pouch under the throat of the serpent flew open. This little lid was so delicately worked, and when shut fitted to the rest with such fineness and exactness, that I had not before observed it. In the small cavity within was a tiny lock of soft bright hair, curled closely round, and fastened upon a minute coil of blue steel spring. It was evident that this coil communicated in some way or other with the little steel tongue; and I remarked that it was so made as to press with some force against the lid above it, which, when once opened, could with difficulty be closed again, on account of this pressure from the spring inside. Again I clasped the bracelet on the wrist; again the same sensations were produced. I now observed, moreover, that the little tongue vibrated up and down in exact time and measure with the pulse of the wrist, and that the pouch of the snake containing the spring was so placed as to press exactly on the vein of the pulse. This was all I was able to discover, but I had no doubt whatever that the whole was a contrivance, the principle

of which I was not acquainted with, for communicating to the person wearing the bracelet certain magnetic influences; and that such was C's design in sending it to my wife seemed evident. I had no longer any difficulty in accounting for Madeline's strange attraction to the cabinet where the casket had been deposited; "and if," I could not help thinking, "the effect is so powerful upon me, what would it not have been upon that fragile and susceptible temperament of hers?" The idea half maddened me, for it was impossible to know how far this bedevilled piece of jewellery might not, as it was, have affected her health. While I was gloomily peering into the little cell containing the lock of hair, I discovered crumpled up in one corner a tiny paper ball. With some difficulty I managed to pick this out and carefully unroll it; it contained these words only, written in a woman's hand: "For God's sake, dear, save yourself, and destroy this bracelet.” I had no doubt of the correctness of my original conjecture; all was growing

to a horrible clearness. The hair was, in all probability, Geraldine's. Probably, too, she had contrived, unseen by C, to thrust into the locket this hurried warning. I shuddered as I read it, for every word of it seemed to add a terrible force to the frightful picture which I had involuntarily drawn in my own mind of the unhappy girl's position.

I contrived to disengage the lock of hair from the steel coil; I then flung the jewelled reptile, as though it were a live venomous thing, out of the window into the fish pond in the garden. It sunk with a splash in the lazy green water, and my heart grew lighter as I heard it. The little twine of hair I afterwards showed to old Rushbrook; he at once recognised it as Geraldine's. He supposed that it had belonged to Madeline, and I did not think it worth while to undeceive him. Towards the afternoon the rain sobbed itself out, and I set forth for the Manor House, determined, if possible, to gather something about Cfrom her ladyship.

DURING the forty years of general peace, now violently, though but partially disturbed, a new influence has arisen among the nations. Its energies are irrepressible. Oceans cannot confine them; territorial boundaries, whether traced arbitrarily or determined by the barriers of nature, cannot check them; and distance scarcely lessens their power. The Spirit of Intercommunity is extending its sway from sea to sea, and making the whole world kin. It must advance as facilities of association multiply, and the habits of different countries assimilate. Its progress cannot be resisted by the sword, and the arm of the despot is nerveless before it. Changes greater than those of previous centuries have, within the lapse of a few years, marked its development. The short history of its period of rule

is a brilliant record of triumphs, the beneficial results of which no untoward event can sensibly injure or retard. That era has had its conquerors -a numerous host of heroes-and their victories are memorialed in trophies greater than those of Alexander. More enduring, more glorious conquests than Cæsar's, were the achievements of Watt, and Stephenson, and Galvani—by them this controlling spirit of modern times was ushered into being; by them the golden gates of the Age of Peaceful Arts were unlocked. The impetus given by their discoveries to the advancement of society, which had been but slowly gradual before, is operating with continually accelerating force year year. What will be written in another half-century respecting improvements of which we boast at the

after

The palatial structure which stood so proudly and auspiciously last summer on Leinster Lawn is now a dismantled

and unseemly ruin. Unlike its great precursor, it is destined to no resurrection. We may yet build an Irish Sydenham, but the time is distant. The rich treasures of art and industry grouped together beneath the domes of our Exhibition, have all been scattered-its splendid halls lie waste and tenantless. As an unsubstantial vision, the scene has vanished away, leaving nothing but the remembrance of its departed glory. That, however, is ineffaceable. Years hence the magical picture will steal before us again, as memory glances retrospectively over its hoarded wealth. Although unfolded to view, as it were, for a moment, and no more, it has impressed itself indelibly on the mind of the people of this country, from the critic of refined taste to the rustic who beheld the spectacle in bewildered amazement. The beauty of the Irish Palace of Industry alone will embalm it in the recollection of the present generation. When every pillar of the edifice shall have disappeared, and a new aspect have been given to its site, the superb magnificence of the former view will reclothe the spot with ideal splendours. None can forget the powerful influence of that mimic world of surpassing gran

deur.

We

less gorgeous, in its general appearance; but it had more substantial merit as an unique work of art. Indeed, although the two structures have been compared with each other, they were so totally unlike, that the latter erection may be claimed as a wholly original conception of the Irish artist. The interior of the building has scarcely yet received sufficient praise. Wherever the beholder placed himself, the view was satisfying. had not, indeed, the splendid effects of light and shade, which were to the poet's eye the chief charm of Hyde Park, and are still more magnificently apparent at Sydenham. The varying aspects of the crystal avenues, as clouds and sunshine by turns flitted over the face of the unintercepted heaven, were extremely beautiful. How was vision mocked by the sickly ray and the running shadow! When the declining sun of evening gleamed through the arches in a flood of mellow light, staining every pane with a tint of ruby, and mantling every object with the warm colouring of nature, we seemed transported to a realm only known to the fancy, and not to stand amidst the utilities of a materialistic age. But if there was less idealism in our Palace, it had more of the poetry of fact; if less fragile, its appearance of stability was more suited to its utilitarian character. It was not so much a vast Museum as a Temple of Industry, emblematic of the sternest practicality. The great Central Hall was a noble theatre in which to exhibit the products of labour. Viewed from the main entrance, it stretched away in a harmonious vista, its immensity relieved by the light galleries on either side. The northern and southern courts were fine apartments, and the hall of Art was, on the whole, arranged with the most correct judgment and taste. As a work of architectural genius, the Irish Palace, without and within, was creditable to its dedesigner and to the country. It cannot be forgotten. It is spoken of with unexhausted interest at the present moment. As the magnificence of the Hyde Park Exhibition did not mar its success, so the greater glory of the marvellous erection in Penge Wood will not erase its memory. At this instant the cheerful sounds of its whirring machinery seem to fall upon our ear, and the measured click of the shuttle more