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THE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES OF CANADIAN NATIONALISM, William Norris, London,

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ronto - -
ROUND THE TABLE:

Our Indian Policy.-Political Demoralization in
Canada. -Party Spirit not an unmixed evil. --
Prof. Huxley on Heroism. -The Survival of the
Fittest and Civilization.-Poor Satan! Want
of receptivity of ideas.

CURRENT EVENTS:

The Quebec Crisis.-The Session at Ottawa.-The Fiscal Question.-The Activity of the Senat. The Permissive Liquor Bill. - Cabinet Changes. The Independence of Parliament Bill The Coming General Election.-Lawlessness in Montreal and Toronto.

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Mrs. Duncan's My Intimate Friend.-Heller's Rénée and Franz. -Books Received.

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MONTREAL: DAWSON BROTHERS.

ST. JOHN, N.B.: J. & A. MCMILLAN. VICTORIA, B.C.: T. & N. HIBBEN.

SINGLE NUMBER, 35 CENTS.

YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION, $3.50.

CHAPTER I.

spirits at a uniform temperature, a simmering rather than a bubbling of cheerfulness. The

WO novices are waiting for the ceremony of reception. They have been placed side by side upon a seat at the lower end of the great hall, and have been enjoined to wait in silent meditation. The low seat perhaps typifies the stool of repentance; but until the reception is over one hardly likes to speculate on the meaning of things. One of the novices is a man and the other a girl. Two by two the fraternity have entered into this ark, and two by two they go out of it. So much only is known to the outer world. The man is about thirty years of age, with bright eyes, and smooth shaven chin and cheek. If the light were better, you would make out that he has a humorous twinkle in his eyes, and that his lips, which are thin, have got a trick of smiling at nothing-at the memory, the anticipation, the mere imagined umbra of a good thing. This kind of second sight is useful for keeping the

choly in solitude, rush into any kind of company, often take to drink, commit atrocious crimes while drunk, and hang themselves in prison. Mr. Roger Exton will never, it is very certain, come to this melancholy end. He is extremely thin and rather tall; also his face is brown, of that colour which comes of long residence in hot climates. In fact Mr. Exton has but recently returned from Assam, where he has made a fortune-which we hope is a large one-some say by tea, or, according to another school of thinkers, by indigo. The question, still unsettled, belongs to those open controversies, like the authorship of "Junius," or the identity of the "Claimant," which vex the souls of historians and tap-room orators. The only other remarkable points about this novice were that his hair was quite straight, and that, although he was yet, as I have said, not much more than thirty, the corners of his eyes were already provided with a curious and multitudinous collection of crows' feet,

the puckers, lines, spiders' webs, and map like rills of which lent his face an incongruous expression, partly of surprise, partly of humour, partly of craft and subtlety. The rapid years of modern life, though his had been spent in the quiet of the north-west provinces, had in his case, instead of tearing the hair off temples and top, or making him prematurely gray, as happens to some shepherds, marked him in this singular fashion.

The reasons why you cannot see things as clearly as I have described them are that it is past nine o'clock on an evening in July; that the hall is lighted chiefly by upper windows which form a sort of clerestory; that most of the glass is painted; that what amber twilight of a summer evening can get in is caught in the black depths of a fifteenth century roof, across which stretches a whole forest of timber, a marvel of intricate beams; or falls upon tapestry, carpets, and the dull canvas of portraits which swallow it all up. In the east, behind the pair who wait, is a rose window emblazoned with the arms and crest, repeated in every light, of the great House of Dunlop. Looking straight before them, the expectants could make out nothing at all except black shadows, which might mean instruments of torture. Half way up the wall there ran a row of tiny gas-jets, which had been lighted, but were now turned down to little points of blue flame, pretty to look at, but of no value as illuminators.

Over their heads was an organ-loft, in which sat a musician playing some soft and melodious sort of prelude. Of course there were lights in the organ-loft; but there was a curtain behind him, while in front the organ, cased in black woodwork of the last century, rich with precious carvings, was capable of absorbing, without reflection, all the light, whether from candles, gas, oxyhydrogen, electricity, or magnesium wire, which modern science might bring to play upon it. So that no good came out of the organ-loft lights.

The minutes passed by, but no one came to relieve their meditation and suspense. The soft music, the great dark hall, the strange light in the painted glass, the row of tiny gas-jets, the novelty of the situation, produced a feeling as if they were in a church where the organist's mind was running upon secular things, or else on the stage at the opera waiting for the procession to begin. An odd feeling-such a feeling

as must have passed over the minds of a City congregation two centuries and a half ago, when their Puritan ministers took for Church use tunes which once delighted a court, and therefore belonged to the Devil.

The girl heaved a sigh of suspense, and her companion, who had all this time looked straight before him without daring to break upon the silence, or to look at his partner in this momentous ceremony, looked round. This is what he would have seen had the light been stronger; as it was, the poor man had to content himself with a harmony in twilight.

She wore, being a young lady who paid the very greatest attention to the subject of dress, as every young lady, outside Girton and Merton, ever should do, some sweetlooking light evening dress, all cloudy with lace and trimmings, set about with every kind of needlework art, looped up, tied round, and adorned in the quaint and pretty fashion of the very last year of grace, eighteen hundred and seventy-five. She wore a moss-rose in her dark hair, and a simple gold locket hanging round her neck by a light Indian chain. She is tall, and as is evident from the pose of her figure, she is gracieuse; she is shapely of limb as you can see from the white arm which gleams in the twilight ; she has delicately-cut features, in which the lips, as mobile as the tiny wavelets of a brook, dimple and curve at every passing emotion, like the pale lights of an electric battery; her eyes do most of her talking, and show all her moods-no hypocritical eyes are these

eyes which laugh and cry, are indignant, sorry, petulant, saucy, and pitiful, not in obedience to the will of their mistress whom they betray, but in accordance with some secret compact made with her heart. Give her a clear-cut nose, rather short than long; a dainty little coral of an ear, a chin rather pointed, and an oval face—you have as a whole, a girl who in her face, her figure, the grace of her bearing, would pass for a French girl, and who yet in language and ideas was English. Her godfather called her Eleanor, which proved much too stately a name for her, and so her friends always call her Nelly. Her father, while he breathed these upper airs, was a soldier, and his name was Colonel Despard.

Taking courage from the sigh, Roger Exton tried to begin a little conversation.

"I am," he said, suppressing a strong desire to yawn. "I am meditating." "Then please don't interrupt my meditations," she answered, with a little light of mischief in her eyes.

So he was silent again for a space. "Do you happen to know," the man began again-men are always so impatient"Do you happen to know what they will do to us in the ceremony of reception ?"

"Tom-I mean, Mr. Caledon, refused to tell me anything about it, when I asked him."

"I hope," he said, fidgeting about, "that there will be no Masonic nonsense ;. if there is, I shall go back to the world."

"I presume," she said, "though I do not know anything about it, really-but I expect that the Sisters will give us the kiss of fraternity, and that——”

"If," he interrupted her-" If we have only got to kiss each other, it would be a ceremony much too simple to need all this mystery. After all, most mysteries wrap up something very elementary. They say the Masons have got nothing to give you but a word and a grip. The kiss of fraternity that will be very charming."

He looked as if he thought they might begin at once, before the others came; but the girl made no reply, and just then the organ which had dropped into a low whisper of melodious sound, which was rolling and rumbling among the rafters in the roof over their heads, suddenly crashed into a triumphant march. At the same moment, the long row of starlike flame-dots sprang into a brilliant illumination: the double doors at the lower end of the hall, at the side opposite to that where was placed the stool of repentance, were flung open, and a Procession began, at the appearance of which both novices sprang to their feet, as if they were in a church.

windows high up, beneath which hung tapestry, by a large rose window in the east, and a great perpendicular window in the west. There was a gallery below the rose, and the organ was in a recess of pratique in the wall at the lower end. Along the wall at the upper, or western end, was a row of stalls in carved woodwork, the wood was old, but the stalls were new. There were twenty in all, and over each hung a silken banner with a coat of arms. Each was approached by three steps, and each, with its canopy of carved wood, its seat and arms in carved wood, the gay banner above it, and the coat of arms painted and guilded at the back, might have served for the Royal Chapel at Windsor. Between the windows and above the tapestry were trophies of arms, with antlers and portraits. And on the north side stood the great fireplace, sunk back six feet and more in the wall; around it were more wood carvings, with shields, bunches of grapes, coats of arms in gold and purple, pilasters and pediments, a very precious piece of carving. There was a daïs along the western end; on this stood a throne, fitted with a canopy, and overlaid with purple velvet fringed with gold. On the right and left of the throne stood two chairs in crimson velvet, before each a table; and on one table were books. In the centre of the hall was another table covered with crimson velvet, in front of which was a long cushion as if for kneeling. In front of the candidates for reception, was a bar covered with velvet of the same colour.

The novices took in these arrangements with hasty eyes, and then turned to the procession, which began to file slowly and with fitting solemnity over the polished floor of the long hall. The organ pealed out the march from Scipio.

"I haven't heard that," said the man, "since I was at Winchester, they used to play it when the judges came to church."

First there walked a row, in double file, of boys clad in purple surplices, with crimson hoods; they carried flowers in baskets. After them came twenty young men in long

It was a grand old hall which had once belonged to the original Abbey which Henry VIII. presented to the Dunlop who graced his reign. It was as large as the hall of Hampton Court, it was lit by a row of

ropes; they carried books, which might have been music books, and these were singing-men and serving-men. After them, at due intervals, came the Brethren and Sisters of the monastery.

There were eighteen in all, and they