"But is it safe, ma'am ?" said her companion, dubiously. "A woman's good name is such a perishable article that—

Bathsheba laughed with a flushed cheek, and whispered in Liddy's ear, although there was nobody present. Then Liddy started and exclaimed, "Souls alive, what news! It makes my heart go quite bumpity-bump!"

"It makes mine rather furious, too," said Bathsheba. "However, there's no getting out of it now."

It was a damp disagreeable morning. Nevertheless, at twenty minutes to ten o'clock, Oak came out of his house, and

Went up the hill side
With that sort of stride

A man puts out when walking in search of a bride,

and knocked at Bathsheba's door. Ten minutes later two large umbrellas might have been seen moving from the same door, and through the mist along the road to the church. The distance was not more than a hundred yards, and these two sensible persons deemed it unnecessary to drive. An observer must have been very close indeed to discover that the forms under the umbrellas were those of Oak and Bathsheba, arm-in-arm for the first time in their lives, Oak in a great coat extending to his knees, and Bathsheba in a cloak that reached her clogs. Yet though so plainly dressed, there was a certain rejuvenated appearance about her

As though a rose should shut and be a bud

again.

Repose had again incarnadined her cheeks; and having, at Gabriel's request, arranged her hair this morning as she had worn it years ago on Norcombe Hill, she seemed in his eyes remarkably like the girl of that fascinating dream, which, considering that she was now only three or four-and-twenty, was perhaps not very wonderful. In the church were Tall, Liddy, and the parson, and in a remarkably short space of time the deed was done.

The two sat down very quietly to tea in Bathsheba's parlor in the evening of the same day, for it had been arranged that Farmer Oak should go there to live, since he had as yet neither money, house, nor furniture worthy of the name, though he was on a sure way towards them, whilst Bathsheba was, comparatively, in a ple

thora of all three. Just as Bathsheba was pouring out a cup of tea, their ears were greeted by the firing of a cannon, followed by what seemed like a tremendous blowing of trumpets, in the front of the house. "There!" said Oak, laughing. "I knew those fellows were up to something, by the look of their faces."

Oak took up the light and went into the porch, followed by Bathsheba with a shawl over her head. The rays fell upon a group of male figures gathered upon the gravel in front, who, when they saw the newly-married couple in the porch, set up a loud "Hurrah!" and at the same moment bang again went the cannon in the background, followed by a hideous clang of music from a drum, tamborine, clarionet, serpent, hautboy, tenor-viol, and doublebass the only remaining relics of the true and original Weatherbury band-venerable worm-eaten instruments, which had celebrated in their own persons the victories of Marlborough, under the fingers of the forefathers of those who played them now. The performers came forward, and marched up to the front.

"Those bright boys Mark Clark and Jan are at the bottom of all this," said Oak. "Come in, souls, and have something to eat and drink wi' me and my wife."

"Not to-night," said Mr. Clark, with evident self-denial. "Thank ye all the same; but we'll call at a more seemly time.

However, we couldn't think of letting the day pass without a note of admiration of some sort. If ye could send a drop of som'at down to Warren's, why so it is. Here's long life and happiness to neighbor Oak and his comely bride!"

"Thank ye; thank ye all," said Gabriel. "A bit and a drop shall be sent to Warren's for ye at once. I had a thought that we might very likely get a salute of some sort from our old friends, and I was saying so to my wife but now."

"Faith," said Coggan in a critical tone, turning to his companions: "The man hey learnt to say 'my wife' in a wonderful naterel way, considering how very youthful he is in wedlock as yet-hey, neighbors all?"

"I never heerd a skilful old married feller of twenty years' standing pipe my wife' in a more used note than 'a did," said Jacob Smallbury. "It might have been a little more true to nater if 't had been a

the original, but if this be marred by any eccentricity or fault, and that be reproduced, it catches the eye of the uninitiated and carries off,the fraud. So, to return to the Sands aforesaid, we find that if some masters of the art turn in their toes a little, or have a heel worn down, or a nail misplaced in the soles of their shoes, such peculiarity is adopted, and the "forlorn and shipwrecked brother" is deluded into the belief that a Dickens or a Landseer, a Bentham, a Rossini, or a Kean, have passed that way-a way leading not to the "shining table-lands," but to the dismal swamps of mediocrity.

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Thus in every profession we find traditions formed for the most part upon the faults of eminent men. Tricks of tone, manner, expression, easily picked up, and which pass-so to speak-as trade-marks. Where is the young barrister who does not address the Bench as " mi Lud" the first time he opens a brief in court? the sucking attorney who does not talk of "sheddles ?" the fledgling doctor who does not speak of the baby as "us" when called in to prescribe for its little ills? the embryo R. A. who does not begin with some trick caught from an Etty or a Turner? the aspirant for literary fame who does not take his dip out of the dregs of some well-used inkstand? the ambitious "general utility" who does not form himself upon the failings of a Macready or a Mathews ? It would never do for Mr. Bluebag to say my Lord," or for Mr. Pounce to call that list of debts a "schedule." That would be a proclamation of greenness, an audacious departure from tradition, at which the managing clerk would frown. The judge would lift his spectacles and ask the Associate, "who is that young gentleman ?" to his utter demoralization. Mamma would really be sure that her darling ought to have better advice, if Mr. Redlamp called that wonder of his race he, or she, or it—and so on. We all like to put on something belonging to our successful elders, and wear it in a jaunty off-hand way as though it were our own. And our successful elders like to see us do so. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. When Mr. Buskin, entrusted with two lines in the new melodrama, talks about his "cheyild," drags his left foot as he walks, and rolls his eyes at nothing in particular, the stage mana

ger roars approval, and observes that the young man will do.

If this sort of thing floated only on the surface, it would not matter, but it indicates what is to be found below-a worship of tradition; a fear of doing things that have not been done, and of thinking things that have not been plainly stamped with the hall-mark of authority-which is standing in our way as a nation. Mind, I have not a word to say against tradition in the abstract. Taken as the mariner takes his beacons and lights, to warn him off rocks and shoals, traditions are to be respected. We can mark all, or nearly all, the bad places, and in the absence of warnings to the contrary, may presume that we are sailing on in safety. It is impossible to mark all the good ones, and a navigator who required to be assured of every inch of his way, would seldom get out of sight of port. But some of our social pilots will not budge unless they see a light dead ahead, and avoid with a thrill of horror localities where they see big foreign ships passing in perfect safety, because some one, years ago, hung out a red light on the spot! Perhaps there never was any danger there. Perhaps the reef, or whatever it was, has been washed away. It was a Scylla; it ought to have been a Charybdis-it is neither; but woe to the audacious hand that would dare take down the red light! Now supposing that white means safety, and red danger, the removal of one obsolete red light is of more importance than the establishment of half a dozen white ones. Where we have passed once, we may pass again; others may follow us. The "all right" beacon then becomes (as grammarians say) "understood." But a bogus red light is that fine old nuisance, a mockery, a delusion, and a snare"-a snare, because it leads to a want of respect for red lights which mark real dangers. Half our troubles-political and social-arise from the misuse of red lights. For example, supposing that our forefathers had not persisted in hanging up lights more or less red over the door of every place of worship that did not belong to the Established Church-should we have all this hubbub about cancation? We made dissent by illiberality to Dissenters.

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Using the word in its general sense, we are (next to the Chinese, perhaps) the

most conservative people under the sun. How we distrust and dislike anything that has the mark of novelty upon it? To call an idea or an article "new fangled" is to condemn it. How many inventions have we driven abroad because we look upon inventors as our natural enemies-disturbers of the public peace? Our cousins on the other side of the At lantic are vastly our superiors in this respect. Everything that is new has a charm for them; but they mar their advantage by running into the contrary extreme and scoffing at all that is old-not because it is worn out, but simply because they have not got it. Our conservatism -though it has kept us back on the path of progress has warned us against the Jack o'Lanterns which gather on either side, and have lured more excitable communities into the mud. And so it is useful in its way, pretty much as a drag is useful when you are driving in a hilly part of the country. Its main prop is tradition. If you can raise an uncontradicted cry of "Who ever heard of such a thing ?" in private life, the thing is doomed. If in public life honorable gentlemen are assured that the proposal in question has good precedent, it will pass. The precedent may belong to a time which had nothing in common with our own; but it is a precedent, and must be respected. In the world of fashion we do not ask if this or that be right or wrong, convenient or inconvenient, pleasant or the contrary; but only if it is or is not done. To do what is done, is to be respectable; and to be respectable, is to be happy. Sit down to dinner in a black necktie when "other fellows" wear white (or vice versâ), my young friend, and see how unhappy you will be! Now a Frenchman would rather enjoy being so distingué, and an American not care a red cent one way or the other.

This is a small thing? Granted. So is a feather, but it will show which way the wind blows. Taken alone, the saying "sheddle" and "cheyild" are small things, but they indicate the set of tradition in two professions. It is often urged, that lawyers uphold what is bad in our law for sordid reasons. That is a libel. No class of men have been more earnest in recommending reforms in practice than those who have been the first to lose by them; but to principles hallowed by tradition,

they cling. As a lover treasures a withered flower, or a faded bow of ribbon which has once decked the bosom of his adored one, so does a lawyer cleave to the rules of a bygone age. What mind educated under other training-what jurist of any other nation-can defend, in these days, the principle handed down from feudal times, that land is to be considered as a special property; that one who holds it for the life of a gentleman aged eighty, has one class of estate dignified and privileged; and that another who possesses it, or has power over it, for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, has a mere chattel? This is not a small thing. It is going to give us some trouble. We have kept up the red light too long.

I write not about great things, and will not offend again. I think that if one could tear away, and consign to a congenial dustbin, the rags and tatters of tradition, we should find in many cases that there is no body underneath. Nothing but a scarecrow.

The great army of reformers is recruited from amongst the intelligent mechanicsmen who earn about the pay of a captain in the line. No class profess a greater contempt for tradition, and no class are more slaves to it. No class cry out more loudly against injustice, and no class is more unjust. I pass by the rules of their Trades' Unions,-rules which, if established as law by the ukase of an emperor, would call down upon them the most scathing denunciations. Such tyranny! such oppression ! would never have been heard of. I pass this by, and come to their domestic traditions. Can any one explain why working men love black raiment? Black, says tradition, is respectable. Why? Grant that "Sunday clothes" never wear out, and are not to be made available for workday use, is black broadcloth a cheap, a durable, or a becoming dress? It costs more at first, its glory is short-lived, it looks worse than any other when that glory has departed. Ichabod is sooner said of a black suit than of any other. And yet, black trousers, a black "claw-hammer coat," and a black satin waistcoat is the delight of the "intelligent mechanic!" A black satin vest! Is there any article of costume which is more unsatisfactory in its youth and makes more haste to become seedy? seedy? Who can bear the ordeal of a