of the world-of the universe. Every living creature is to itself more important than all the rest of the world, and the place in which it dwells is the centre of the world; and this imperishable selfishness should be utilized and cultivated, so that it should be changed into general beneficence. The man who does best for himself does best for others. The aphorism may be reversed. Unfortunately, people will go abroad to perform charity, when the truest charity would be to do justice at home-to themselves first, and then to their kindred and dependents.

Squire Silchester confined his charity within the limits of his own demesne, though doubtless he would have come down with his thousand if Exeter Cathedral had to be rebuilt. He did not encourage the professional vagrant, who traverses all roads of England, utterly careless of the parish constable, and who thinks that he has a right to enter the most private part of your garden, and to use bad language

if you give him no money. So many people give money to this kind of scoundrel, simply to get rid of him, that he lives excellent well. and ought to be represented in Parliament, The theory is that the House of Commons represents the nation: if so, why has the tramp no representative? He is a definite entity in England. He can hardly live, against foreign competition. The Italian organ-grinders and the German bands are sweeping the oldfashioned English beggar off the road. These aliens pervagate the country, and are all the more annoying because the strongest language you can use to them does not in any degree affect them. They are musical missionaries. It is clearly the function of Germany to be the leading state of Europe in one way or another.

Silvia Silchester grew up a charming child, notwithstanding her father's odd notions of education. She never opened a book. She learnt many things which many girls never learn. She learnt from her father, who made

every lesson a work of art. The Squire, when he came to put his theories into practice, and to teach his children viva voce, found it rather hard work. He had to go back to the elements of things, which he had digested and forgotten long ago, and to reproduce them in a poetic and rememberable form. It was a fine mental exercise. The a b c of knowledge had to be brought back again in a new shape. The Squire did it uncommonly well, and found that in doing it he learnt more than he had learnt at school. He found, what few people know, that the first principles of knowledge are more difficult than those which succeed them. It puzzled him considerably to show his son and daughter that the three angles of any triangle must always be equal to two right angles. The demonstration was done on the sea-sand with a stick,-like most of the old Greek geometry.

When Silvia Silchester passed from babyhood to girlhood-when she reached her teens, and

had vague vision of that mystical future which haunts all she creatures-she was really worth looking at. To speak unpoetically, she was a big girl. There was a good deal of her-and it is hard to have too much of a good thing. She was a mere hoyden in those days; could climb a tree as well as her brother; had not faded into that delicate young-ladyhood which makes one feel that the pretty little person is too brittle to touch. There's a time when the girl is a romp, a tomboy: well for her if she has open country around her, and kind playfellows. Silvia lacked neither. She became Silvicultrix. You might have deemed her a wood-nymph, a hamadryad. It was a quiet neighbourhood, whither came few strangers; and the child was well known by everybody; and so there was no surprise at her being seen at the top of the highest oak in her father's woods. She thought those great trees friendly, and talked to them, and listened to their sayings. Trees talk. Children know their

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language better than the grown folk who understand the jargon of the Stock Exchange.

Little Silvia gradually began to think. She and her brother knocked about together, of course; but boys go farther afield now and then, and leave their sisters to their own devices. There were times when Silvester went off for a day's shooting or fishing; then, if Papa was in the library, and Mamma in the still-room, little Silvia was lonely. She used to go out into the woods, with Lion as attendant, and think. Her thoughts had no novelty. Every girl has gone through the same process; has tried to find out why she was brought into the world; has wondered what it was she longed for, and could not get. Silvia was differently situate from all other girls, seeing that for her the art of printing had no existence. Her typography was Nature's handiwork-fern and primrose, moss and anemone. She knew the meaning of these. The beauty of the world around her was reflected in her clear