So the Squire and Silvia had their drive together without mention on her part of the morning's occurrence, though excellent opportunity was afforded when her father praised her for gathering mushrooms for his breakfast. As Matthew Arnold says,

"We mortal millions live alone;"

and your daughter, sitting by your side in a mail-phaeton, with nothing between you and her but a little broadcloth and sealskin and silk and linen, may be mentally a myriad leagues away from you-farther than from Aldebaran to Sirius. Indeed it is possible that this may happen with your wife, where the material fence or partition is much slighter. This is a world in which hypocrisy and falsehood are singularly well protected. Asmodeus unroofed for the student Cleofas the houses of Madrid-and the result was remarkable. What would it be if some friendly fiend could make transparent the skulls of all one's

acquaintance, and show the ideas at work therein ?

Silvia had a pleasant day on the moorland with her father. The groom had in charge some refreshment (sandwich and sparkle) which slightly moistened the Dryasdust disquisitions produced by Roman pottery and coins. The day was sunny, the moor fresh, the horses fresher, the general state of affairs exhilarant. Silvia was happy. Silvia would have been happier if she had not been troubled by erotic proposals from Walter Nugent that morning. Silvia would also have been happier if she could have gathered courage enough to tell her father. She could not; and thereby arose unpleasant complications. Girls should tell their fathers all their troubles; boys may go to their mothers.

The day passed. Silvia went to bed. She said her prayers, kneeling in her night-dress. Then she lay down and thought over her matutine adventure. It puzzled and worried

her. She was a mere child, remember, and Walter Nugent was a man who had seen the world. There were times when Silvia thought she rather liked Walter Nugent. There were times when she thought the very reverse.

"Oh," she thought, "if I only knew how to tell whether a man was true-how to tell whether his brilliant bravery had any kin at all with knavery-how to find his measure of mind beneath the handsome corporeal rind! I could love if only, only, only, I were sure that I should not be left all lonely by a man who deemed himself wholly free to do as he pleased and to laugh at me. I am ready to love to my uttermost breath, and to give my love to the verge of death. of death. But he whom I love must be true, or I shall leave him alone in his filth-and die. Better any death than to bear the curse of a scoundrel husband. It were not worse to be a slave without chance of egress—a frightfully flogged and scarified negress.

"But I'm no negress, neither am I anxious

from maidenhood to fly; and I don't see why a man should prevail because he caught a bull by the tail. He was very prompt, and did not falter; still I'm not in love with Master Walter. His question of love I think may keep—and I think I think-I'll tumble asleep."

Which she did, stretching her pretty arms above the coverlet by way of preparation for delicious dreams. What did she dream ?

The writer who could chronicle a girl's dreams must have no pedestrian pen. Dreams! They are ravishing, enchanting, absolute. They are the essence of the unknown world. They are what would be if girls could create a world for themselves, a world in which all men should be heroes, and all madly in love with the lovely little dreamer. The male reader has had his dreams, doubtless,-visions like those of Southey at Cintra, or De Quincey amid the lakes. Indeed, not to have dreamt is a sign of imagination stagnant; while to dream wisely and poetically is perhaps a greater in

dication of spiritual power than to think wisely and poetically. Consider the question. An aphorism attributed to George III. says that "six hours in bed are enough for a man, seven for a woman, eight for a fool." Most of us probably are fools. This writer's average is from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. But there are winter mornings too severely iced for early rising; and on such mornings how pleasant it is to lie abed and dream poetic dreams! Take it that the average sleeper spends only eight hours in bed. Those eight hours, a third of the great diurnal round, are all his own. During the other sixteen he has to work, to read and write, to eat and drink,—to go through many processes that deprive one of independence. He must live. Take him to be proprietor of a great estateit has to be managed; or head-master of a grammar-school-the boys have to be whipped into their Homer and Virgil; or day-labourer at a farm-he must work for his beans and bacon. The man has yet to be discovered for