Through a break not more than a rod or two. wide in the hedge of trees which lined the opposite cliff, it was possible to get a narrow glimpse of what lay beyond. A strip of grassy lawn extended in front of what seemed to be the grey stone corner of a house. The distance was too great to make out details, but it looked solidly built-not after the modern style. As Helwyse gazed, sharpening his eyes to discern more clearly, he saw a figure moving across the lawn directly towards him. It advanced to the very brink, and, pausing there, seemed to return his glance. Helwyse could not tell whether it were man or woman. Had the river only been narrower !

The next moment, however, he remembered his telescope, and taking it from the case, he was at one bound within a hundred yards of the western shore!-Man or woman? He steadied the glass on his knee and looked again. A woman, surely, but how strangely

dressed! Such a costume had not been in vogue since Damascus was a new name in men's mouths. Balder gazed and gazed. Accurately to distinguish the features was impossible—tantalisingly so! for the gazer was convinced that she was both young and beautiful. Her motions, her bearing, the graceful peculiarity of her garb-a hundred nameless evidences made it sure.

How delightful to

watch her in her unconsciousness!

Yet he felt

a delicacy about thus stealing on her without her consent or knowledge. The misgiving could not, however, deter him from looking— perhaps it gave a zest to the enjoyment.

The very princess you were just now dreaming of!" murmured he; "the most beautiful and complete woman!-Would I were the prince to win thee!"

This aspiration was whispered aloud, as though she were within conversable distance. Balder could be imaginative enough when the

humour took him. Hardly had the whisper passed his lips when he saw the princess majestically turn her lovely head, slowly and heedfully, until her glance directly met his own. His cheeks burned!--it was as if she had actually overheard him. He saw her stretch her arms towards him, and then, with a gesture of beautiful power, clasp her hands together, and draw them in towards her bosom.

Prince Balder's hand trembled, the telescope slipped; the quick effort he made to regain it lent it an impetus which shot it far into the water. It had done its work, and was gone for ever. The beautiful princess was once more a vague speck across a mile of rapid river; now even the speck had moved behind the trees and was out of sight.

The episode had come so unexpectedly and so quickly passed, that now it might almost seem not to have been at all. But Helwyse had yielded himself unreservedly to the spirit

of the moment; following so aptly on the fanciful creation of his thought, the apparition had for him a peculiar significance. The abrupt disappearance afflicted him like a positive loss.

Did he then soberly believe himself and the princess to have exchanged glances, not to speak of thoughts,-across a river a mile wide? -Perhaps he merely courted a fancy from which the test of reason was deliberately withheld. Spirits not being amenable to material laws, what was the odds (so far as interchange of spiritual sentiments was concerned) whether the prince and princess were separated by miles or by inches?

But however plausible the fancy, it was now over. Helwyse lay back upon the rock, drew his hat over his eyes, folded his hands beneath his head, and appeared to sleep.

XIV.

THE TOWER OF BABEL.

IN a perfect state of society, when people will think and act in harmony with only the purest aesthetic laws, a knowledge of stenography and photography will be all-sufficient to the creation of perfect works of art. But until that epoch comes, the artist must be content, (under pain of redundancy and confusion,) to do the grouping, toning and proportioning of his picture for himself. People nowa-days seldom do or think the right thing at the fitting moment; insomuch that the historian of their lives, if he will make himself intelligible, must exercise his own discretion in the arrangement of his materials.

Now, in view of the rough shaking which late events had given Balder Helwyse and his