I, for my part, should decline accompanying them in such very scanty attire. By Jove! it's disgustingand crinoline beats your fashions hollow, granny, after all.'

'It looks odd to you now, I dare say,' said Lady Langton, with the half smile which acknowledged her defeat; and I own that it is an exaggeration in the other direction. But look here,' she added, taking up a Punch' which lay on the table, and pointing out one of Leech's pretty girls, who, smilingly un

conscious of the refractory state of her crinoline, was carrying on a desperate flirtation on the pier at Brighton, her general contour meanwhile attracting the notice and ridicule of the crowd. 'I think this is equally if not more absurd.'

'Oh, no, grandmother! nothing comes up to this,' said Alice, emboldened by her brother's championship, and looking over his shoulder at the two extraordinary figures, which a lucky chance had thrown in the way of the mischievous

own way, he could never have reconciled himself to be looked down upon by a wife, or continually urged to endeavour to distinguish himself in the way which ambitious women are apt to urge those whose fame and fortunes are interwoven with their own. If, therefore, Mabel had imagined that the spark of latent affection which she entertained for him, I would have been kindled into a flame by an open declaration on that auspicious morning, she had greatly mistaken; and the eagerness

he expressed for the arrival of the less active pair, plainly evinced that there was none to be made. Perhaps the moment when he turned laughingly from her, to hurry on the 'slow coaches,' by signal that they approached the Well, was the turning-point in Mabel's future life. Her haughty lip curled with a little dash of scorn, and she said, half to herself, 'My mind is made up now as to what I will wish.'

Stephen, who, unacknowledged to himself, had a deeper interest in

hope you were more explicit,' he added to his sister and cousin, 'or the ancient party who blessed the Well will have nothing to do with you.'

'I was clear enough in thought,' said Alice, gaily; and words unspoken cannot compromise me, at all events.' As she spoke the words, a clear ringing voice was heard shouting outside the cover which contained the Holy Spring, 'Where are you? What's up now?' and in another moment, directed by the answering shouts of his cousins, Charlie Austen appeared amongst them.

We are not bound to reveal the secrets of any of the party, but there can be no treason in mentioning that a bright and tell-tale blush dyed Alice's cheeks crimson, as she encountered the earnest questioning gaze of her sailor cousin; and if we hazard a conjecture, that that glowing and beautiful colour, may have thrown some light on the unexpressed wish at the Well, there can be no harm in our doing so.

The young party went merrily home to the Hall under the cheering influence of cousin Charlie's sailor He was a frank, warmspirits. hearted lad, and held a place in Lady Langton's affections only second to Harry's, who, as pickle-inchief, held the widest portion in that rich and generous domain.

After a few happy weeks spent in such enjoyment as can only be known to youth, including one of the best runs that was ever known with the fast dare-devil hounds, the pride of their master's heart, the party was broken up, each individual member of it, taking his or her appointed place on the world's stage.

Light-hearted youth must develop into serious manhood; and wishes, which in embryo seemed but frivolous toys, must grow and flourish until they absorb the very soil which first gave them birth. The wishes which those ardent young spirits thought they had sown by the Well-side, had in reality taken root in a soil which bears the surest promise of fruition -in the soil of the earnest, living, human heart. Sow a wish, strong,

earnest, entire, in that soil, and there is more than a chance that it will grow into a goodly tree. There is as much chance of it, in fact, as there is that the grain of seed planted in the earth will become a blade of corn. Storms may destroy

accident may befall circumstances may uproot but the chances are for it, and Providence itself on its side. Go, therefore, young hearts, and wish to your hearts' content, while you have the power and the will: the time will come when a sad-eyed philosophy will teach you that the enjoyment of life is not in the realization, but in the germ; that the age of wishing is the age of hope; and that hope itself, according to a happy simile, is 'but the dream of a man awake.' Let the dream last, even that waking dream, while it can: it is over too soon; and when fruition fills our hands, our hearts are too often left empty and void.

Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural
bowers

Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand-and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it-0, to whom?"

Five years after that eventful Christmas tide, the same party, with some few additions, were assembled at Langton Hall-assembled on a more melancholy occasion, for Lady Langton's health was failing fast, and in all human probability that would be the last occasion on which she would summon to her timehonoured roof, the flowers of her numerous flock. The individual members of it were all altered, more or less, or rather they had all developed the seeds which were to influence life had not only taken root, but had flourished, and become hardy plants.

Mabel deserves the first mention, as the strongest feminine character of the party. She had acted with 'a will entire,' and her hopes and wishes had been crowned with success. The wish which she had breathed in silent earnestness at the 'Wishing Well' had been the main

spring of her life and action. We seldom ardently wish what we do not feel within us the latent power to obtain. It lay in Mabel's power to attain hers, and she had done so. She wished for a high position-for grandeur-for what constitutes, in fact, a woman's idea of success-and she attained all.

She was married to a middle-aged earl, who, cold, calculating, and unattractive himself, had married from motives of expediency. Mabel Langton had been chosen by him out of a bevy of eligible young ladies (of whom report said that he kept a list in his pocket, with their different recommendations dotted

down to assist his memory), because she appeared to him the best fitted to wear his ancient coronet with becoming dignity and grace. And very gracefully, and with real dignity, she did bear the honours of her new position, as became a true Langton; but those who knew her best, affirmed that she had grown hard and stern, and that the beautifully chiselled lips of the young countess seldom, if ever, relaxed into a smile.

'I am quite frightened at Mabel now,' said her cousin Alice, who met her again at Langton Hall that Christmas for the first time since their mutual marriages. She is so very reserved and proud that we seem to have nothing in common. I wish she would confide in me as she used to do, for I more than suspect that she is not as happy as she would like people to believe.' This observation was made to Lady Langton, whose favourite Alice still was, although a breach had been made for a little while between them when the affection existing between herself and her cousin Charlie, had first been announced.

Few women, however really good and unworldly they may be, can take genuine interest in a poor match. The turning-point in a woman's career is all-important to her, because she has but one; and deny it as they will, no woman likes to see the girl on whom she has lavished interest and day-dreams without end, mated to poverty and insignificance for life.

VOL. II.-NO. XII.

'Poverty, if you like, grandmother,' said Alice, with an indignant blush, when Lady Langton had thus, as she thought, placed her position before her in its true light; 'poverty, if you like, but insignificance, no! The wife of a brave officer, who has served his country nobly, and will serve it again to the death if necessary, is, in my mind, not at all insignificant.' And she looked so beautiful in her 'righteous indignation,' that the elder woman took a lesson from her grandchild, and owned to herself that there were nobler things in life than are dreamt of in the philosophy of the worldly wise and the ambitious.'

Alice had been married to her cousin Charles two years; and during his long and frequent absences, spent most of her time between her two homes, as she called then her father's and Langton Hall. She shared the family anxiety with respect to her grandmother's health, which threw a gloom over the Christmas party assembled under her roof. Her brother Harry was also indefatigable in his attentions to the dear old lady, whose trembling hand shook with increased agitation, whenever it held in its feeble grasp the hard weatherbeaten one of her favourite grandson. He was still light-hearted and free from all worldly cares of more weight or importance than the laming of a favourite hunter, or a succession of hard frosts in the hunting season. He wore his heart as heretofore on his sleeve, and would have found the same difficulty in framing a wish if a good fairy had promised him the immediate fulfilment of it. These are the natures that ride buoyantly on the surface of the stream of life-that find sufficient enjoyment in the day and the hour, to prevent them from framing airy fabrics, of which ardent hopes and passionate wishes form the foundation and corner-stones.

Stephen's was a very different character. He possessed the imagination to forecast, and the will to carry out, what men call a successful career; and, as yet but a very young man, the seed has not only

*D

flourished, but put forth blossom and bud. He is on the high road to fame; and when he comes into his noble inheritance, will have earned a name, of which his cousin Mabel might have been justly proud had she valued the affection which it was once in her power to win. As it is, however, they have both been eminently successful in the paths they have chosen for themselves.

Was I not right?' said Lady Langton when the party were assembled once more, but on the eve of departure, on the following day'was I not right, men and women, in sending you, as boys and girls, to the famous " Wishing Well" at Monkswood? Have not the wishes that you wished there come true? Yours have, you know,' she said, fixing her still shrewd and piercing eyes upon the countenance of her eldest grand-daughter, which seldom revealed any glimpse of the life within, but which was, in this instance, guilty of a conscious blush. 'And yours is coming,' she added, addressing Stephen: the Langtons will not have to be ashamed of you

two ambitious ones.' But, after all, the heart of age warms more in the end to the wishes of ingenuous youth; and even the proud old grandmother has come to acknowledge that in such things as you have chosen are vanity and vexation of spirit. My little Alice made the wisest wish when she wished for a blessing on the love which she bore for one who loved her, and who has made her a noble husband in spite of his poverty and insignificance.

It was a tearful smile which lighted up the aged face of the Lady of Langton Hall as she said these last words: the sun of her life was fast going down, but in those latter days the vision of the morning came again; and imagination carried her back to the time when the airy castles were building, which middle age shatters, and which old age rebuilds, not on its own account, but on the foundation of those ardent hopes which make every young heart a fountain of hope and the spring of a 'Wishing Well' that never freezes or runs dry.