of a lover of her country. Highland fidelity to the fugitive Prince Charlie has been lauded to the skies. In our humble opinion, not less worthy of praise is this instance of faithfulness just now recorded; and shown not to one surrounded by the romantic and sacred halo of a royal name, but to a man of plebeian birth, who simply declared himself (however falsely), a devoted champion of the rights of Ireland.

CONSTANCE: "

CHAPTER XXVI.

Thou cold-blooded slave, Hast thou not spoke like thunder at my side, bidding me depend Upon thy stars, thy fortune and thy strengthAnd wear a lion's hide? Doff it for shame, And hang a calf's skin on thy recreant limbs." KING JOHN. A DAY or two after the well contrived flight of Stephens from the country he had sworn to make free or perish in the attempt, Malachy O'Byrne paid a visit to Katie Rowan. The young man was pale, almost haggard, and was evidently the subject of most desponding and troubled thoughts. "O, Katie," he exclaimed, as he threw himself upon a seat in the drawing room, where he found her alone, "O, Katie, I feel as though my very heart would break-all my fondest expectations are cast to the ground, my love, and are shattered into ruin.'

Alarmed by his appearance and manner, the young girl moved close to him, took his hand in hers, and with pity in her eyes entreated to know what had happened. "O, Katie," he said, "he upon whom we both fixed our fondest and highest hopes; who was our ideal of all that was lofty, brave, morally great, and glorious; who was to be the vindicator-to use your own words of the poor and the oppressed,' has proved himself unworthy of the faith that we reposed in him, and is at heart, I find, a coward and a traitor."

Katie, at these words, was startled and shocked. She looked into her lover's eyes to see if he were not the subject of some mental aberration. There were no tokens there, however, of departed or departing reason; only of abandoned enthusiasm and extinguished hope; and she felt utterly unable to account for Malachy's words, which had sounded in her ears as more than bordering on the profane. "O, Malachy," she said, "Malachy, what can you mean; you terrify me. He that shall come, my beloved, will come and will not tarry. Join not yourself, I entreat you dearest Malachy, with those scoffers in the last days, who say 'where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.' How can He, Malachy, be unworthy of our trust, 'whose word abideth for ever.' No, my beloved,

heaven and earth may pass away, but His word cannot;' and 'his righteousness is like the great mountains.'"

Again the young man was mystified, but greatly interested by the utterances of Katie. There was a ring and rhythm in her words that surpassed all he had ever heard from the lips of others. "But she must not be deceived any longer by her magnificent dreams," he said within himself. He was disillusioned, and so shall she be; he would tell her what he had discovered, and which had completely disenchanted him.

"Listen to me, Katie, darling," he said, "so long as he, in whom we both trusted, was unseen and unknown, and I took the testimony of mere words for the revelation of his character, I had as unbounded a faith in him and admiration of him as you have. I could have kissed his very feet, Katie, and have shed the last drop of my heart's blood in defence of his interests and honour; but, Katie, I have come to know him personally, to hold communion with him; to test what he is by actual experience and contact. And, let me tell you, Katie, while it gives me anguish to say it, he is false. He is a person of mere pretence; one who puts words for deeds, Katie; and who, when the crisis comes, deserts those who relied upon him, and imperilled their all upon his assurances."

The young girl, horrified, flung herself away from the near presence of one deemed a blasphemer, even though her lover; and with parted lips and blanched cheek she gazed at him.

"I honour your constancy of mind, Katie," he said, "although it evidently has made your thoughts recede from me; but, my dearest one, I have proof of what I say. I have urged him to fling down the gage of battle, Katie; to head his rallying hosts-to lead his sworn and willing combatants to the death struggle and to victory-but he has refused, Katie. His heart grows white at the thought of peril; he values supremely his own personal safety; and turning his back upon his sacred promise, and the foe, has fled the country."

At these last words, a conclusion so utterly unexpected from Malachy's previous words, as understood by Katie, from her special prophetical standpoint, the young girl was altogether astonished and confounded.

"Who has

"Who? What I adjure you, tell me whom you mean," she exclaimed. turned his back? Who has left the country? Speak! In Heaven's name! for your words sound in my ears as the darkest of riddles."

"Whom do I mean, Katie," he responded, as much amazed as she was; "how can you, my darling, ask the question? Mean! why I mean, of course, James Stephens; he who

was to be the Saviour of our country, as we fondly trusted; but he has turned tail, Katie; has deemed discretion the better part of valour. Dastard as he is, he has left his friends in the lurch; and is, this hour, I suppose, safe in a foreign land. I tried for days, Katie, my very best to rouse him to the holy war, but all in vain; he was as a hare that hears in the distance the cry of the bugles; and, scared, he would think of nothing but ignominious flight.

The effect of these words upon Katie Rowan cannot be described. She had then been, for long, the victim of a strange and sacrilegious delusion. She and Malachy had been, unwittingly, the worshippers of two infinitely distinct and distant ideals. And

"Her heart had not, by a sacred harmony,

Ever moved with his, joined in communion sweet." In their rapt intercourse they had mingled thoughts and feelings, in her conception, harmoniously sacred and divine, but which, in fact, were proved to be in absolute discord. For, while she had meant a sinless and redeeming God; Malachy had in his mind, all the time, a seditious and rebellious man. It was as though they had been fatuitously enwreathing, into one fruit cluster, grapes of the Tree of Life, and the poison berries of Sodom; and she shuddered at the very imagination; and felt a violent recoil from the man who, by his guilty enthusiasm for a fellow mortal, had betrayed her into a deadly sin.

And yet and yet -Malachy, though destitute of her own high spiritual ideals and holy aspirations, had ever displayed, she felt, a generous heart and a brave and noble nature. He was, therefore, not to be blamed, perhaps, but rather to be pitied. Beside, the young man had wholly won her heart and fascinated her. If their ideals were not one, most certainly their affections were-and human nature is weak, while human passion is strong. So that even while her conscience admonished her for leaning towards one, not of "the children of the light," yet she gradually yielded herself, and felt constrained to soothe and encourage him. "Poor fellow, so downcast and desolate-his idol broken. Peradventure, too, it was the hour," she thought, "of his spiritual emancipationfrom the delusions of the world. And should not she be his good angel in this crisis of his life?" She, therefore, approached him again, and, is it to be wondered at, even submitted after awhile, to his caresses and endearments.

In the midst of this happy reconciliation, Katie trying, with all her moral force, to uplift Malachy upon the wings of her own enthusiasm, to the lofty heights of holy contemplation and hope, they were interrupted by the sudden and hurried entrance of Garrett; who, contrary to

his usual manner, scarcely waiting to salute Katie-so full of some important matter was he said hastily to Malachy, "Come to my room, Malachy, I want a word with you." "Malachy !" exclaimed Garrett, when he had closed his room door, "we must fly, nor have The writs are out for we a moment to lose.

our arrest, and the police, I fear, are this hour upon our track. Professor Doctus has warned me. He counsels concealment in some sure place for a time, until the present excitement and severity of the authorities is over.

What had occurred was this-the Fenian Chief, MacNally, to whom Garrett had taken his secret oath, was, underhand, in full communication with the Government; and in the shape of solid gold and silver was reaping his reward. He had given a list to the Castle officials of the names of persons whom he declared it would be advisable, in the present most alarming crisis, to arrest ; and in this list were the names of Garrett Rowan and Malachy O'Byrne.

An intimate friend of Professor Doctus's had fortunately got sight of the list of the proscribed; and knowing how Professor Doctus was interested in Garrett, he had taken upon him to tell him of what the police had in hand. The Professor at once communicated this intelligence to Garrett; telling him also that he was informed Malachy O'Byrne was wanted likewise by the executive. Garrett, therefore, at once hastened home to arrange for flight; and happy to find Malachy at his mother's house, he urged upon him, as we have seen, the necessity of acting upon his own intention of escape.

"Yes, Garrett," answered Malachy, "I will accompany you to the South. Indeed, before you spoke to me I had proposed to leave the city; but not in cowardly flight, my friend, but to take up the role which the renegade Stephens has shamefully abandoned. He has shirked the contest, Garrett, has been mean enough to be recreant to his oath; but our patriot cause is greater than the man, and his desertion does not much weaken it. Thousands of brave hearts in South Leinster and Munster are panting, eager for the fray; and we have bold chieftains, American officers, to lead them. I go to be foremost in the fight, Garrett, and to shed my blood, if needs be, upon the altar of my country."

"I admire your enthusiasm, Malachy, but not your wisdom," was Garrett's reply. "To my mind the whole thing has burst up and collapsed; Ireland, I believe, from what I have lately seen, need never think of forcing herself from the grasp of England-it is impossible. Let her use constitutional and moral methods of emancipation. They will, with patience and persistency, succeed; but, we

have no time for such discussions, my friend. Away, Malachy, and assume some disguise. In case we miss each other on our journey, Michael Flynn's, Sliev-na-Man, is my destination; and my name, for the present, is Corny Winter, drover. What is yours?"

"I shall make for my father's house," said Malachy, "and my address will be the Rev. Father Prout, Lisnadil Farm."

Garrett smiled, and soon the friends parted, alas! never more to meet.

(To be Continued.)

MUSINGS IN RHYME: WAR.

BY GEORGE RULE..

Alas! alas! from war what evils rise!
O, would mankind but open their dull eyes!
The laws of nature, bird and beast obey,
By instinct led and fast in fate,1; but man,
Placed by the great Creator in the van

Of all below, gropes on his darkling way."
It has been said, within the human soul"
The passions serve 'neath reason's chief control,—
Thus should it be, no doubt, but who will say,
It holds o'er war's fierce lusts such regal sway?
Behold the savage in his native wood-

He thinks by day and dreams by night of blood-
His only occupation is to slay-

What is he better than a beast of prey?
But what can we above the savage boast?
Have we,
"the civilized," his spirit lost?

Do we, whose lips profess the Christian plan
Of peace on earth below, good-will to man,
Strive, in good truth, to act the Christian part,
And drive the murderous spirit from our heart?
Do we at news of battles fought and won
Not sound the merry bell and pealing gun,
In frantic joy, and with vehement voice
Proclaim our triumph as our hearts rejoice?
'Tis true, alas! O, that it should be so!
Such mirth is only mockery of woe.

Woe, deep, dire, unmitigated, sheer-
The widow weeps her only son laid low;
The maid her idol hope, so fondly dear,
So full of life a few short hours ago;

The old man mourns his one last solace here,
And his last tears from their dried fountain flow;
Children their sire bewail; the faithful wife,
In grief, bemoans the partner of her life.
The wail and woe we still refuse to hear;
The battle's din alone is in our ear;
Through smoke and dust, thick roll'd before our eyes,
We see not men in mortal agonies;
We do not see the tens of thousands slain,
Ghastly in death, upon the bloody plain.
Nor do we hold in horror men in place
Who bring the scourge upon the human race;
Through party strife and rivalry we see
In war and carnage but a "policy;"

A villain wades through slaughter to a throne--1
His guilt of blood we hasten to condone !
When lust of power awakens in the soul
Ambition brooks not reason's weak control;
Beneath the strong, fierce passion, conscience, crush'd,
Lies prostrate, and its voice is rudely hushed;
And men become, what fiends are said to be,
Something beyond our poor humanity.
To such as these war 's but a means, a way,
To gain through conquest power or empire's sway.
The Macedonian conqueror, it is said,

Wept for new fields to ply the bravo's trade,

1.-" And binding nature fast in fate,

Left free the human will."-POPE.

2.-"Gropes his dull way on."-MOORE.

3.-"Within the human soul are many lesser faculties Which serve reason as chief."-MILTON

5

4.-"Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne."-GRAY. 5.-"He loathed the bravo's trade."-BYRON.

To slake his thirst for slaughter-yet his name
Uncurs'd is written on the rolls of fame.
A Bismark now, as Alexander then,
Is deem'd a very demigod of men ;
"The man of blood and iron," at whose frown
Affrighted nations quake, and-funds
go down!
Yet the poor cynic, with his gnarled mind,
Beheld in him a saviour of mankind;
Held what his despot will ordain'd as right,
And found the law divine in lawless might.
And men, admiring, read his jumbled page
And dub the "hero worshipper 116 a sage.

On war's dark path look through historic time,.
With footprints marked with misery and crime;
Mark well its train, and tell me, if you can,
What good did ever come of it to man?

The time will come, 'twas said, when war shall cease
And all will be prosperity and peace;

More than two thousand years have fled away 7 Since Israel's prophet spoke these words of cheer,Alas! can it be said we see to-day

One ray to hope such consummation 's near?
Behold dark low'ring over Europe's plains,
With blasting breath, War's murderous spirit reigns;
And myriad legions, muster'd in array,
Await, like dogs held in the slips, to slay-
Await the dark design and evil mood
Of evil men to deluge earth with blood!
With all thy wondrous faculties of mind,
Is this, O, man, thy destiny assigned?
Blaspheming thought,-'tis only thou art blind!

A GENERATION OF BLUESTOCKINGS.

BY HUGH S. MACLAUCHLAN.

NEW people read Mrs. Montague's "Essay

on the genius and writings of Shakes pear" now-a-days. Few people even know that such a work was ever published, and yet the literary world of last century went mad over it, and the reputation of the authoress travelled into every country and city in Europe. We who read Shakespear by the light of scholarly criticism feel wonder at the singular taste of our forefathers, and are quite at a loss to account for their strange partiality. Perhaps it was that it was written by a woman-for few could write with grace and intelligence in those days, and, truth to tell, they who could had little encouragement to do so, when Mistress Behn and Mistress Manley found a wider acceptance among their own sex than Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Perhaps it was that the authoress was a woman of wealth and social influence, and the world was too well bred to find fault with anything that came from so respectable a quarter. At any rate, whatever might be the cause, the " 'Essay" was praised up to the skies, and Mrs. Montague became a famous woman. But although it was on account of this obsolete production that

6.-Thomas Carlyle.

7.-" And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."-ISAIAH.

Mrs. Montague gained her chief celebrity, it is by very different means she has retained it. We have forgotten her completely as an authoress, but we still remember her as the Queen of the Bluestockings, the patron and companion of the order of literary ladies.

The order of Bluestockings, that exercised so considerable an influence in England during the last century, did not originate with our selves. Catherine de Vivonne, Marchioness de Rambouillet, whose assemblies at the Hotel de Rambouillet were the great attraction of the Paris of two hundred years ago, must rank as the founder. The mantle of this lady descended upon others who had not the wit nor the tact to revive the glories of the earlier assemblies, and not until it fell on the shoulders of Madame du Deffand and Mademoiselle l'Espinasse did France possess another literary queen. These ladies first attracted public notice about the year 1720; and for fifty years they reigned supreme in Parisian literary circles, encouraging, entertaining, and corresponding with the chief actors in the Augustan age of French philosophy and poetry. But Madame du Deffand and Mademoiselle l'Espinasse could not live for ever. New poets and philosophers sprang up around them. An age came in that longed to put in practice the splendid dreams of their forefathers. Men were thirsting for La Republic, and in reckless consciousness of their own strength they became impatient of female dictatorship.

When the glories of the Parisian assemblies began to fade away, a court of literature of a somewhat similar nature was established in London. Mrs. Montague then resided with her nephew in a spacious house in Hill Street was it the house where Myra and Endymion went one early morning, with their hearts open to renew old impressions, and with memories revivified to live over for a brief space the hopeful years of their youth-and as she possessed an ample income she conceived the idea of having stated hours for public receptions, at which all the literary celebrities of the age should attend. The idea quite hit the humour of the town. Poets, philosophers, and scholars began to crowd around her; social gourmands ate her dinners, and drank her wines; artful critics admired her paintings and articles of vertu, and most of all lavished praises on her literary productions. Mrs. Montague was then more than fifty years of age, but she did the honours of her assemblies with consummate tact. She had that art, so rare in modern society, of making her guests feel quite at ease the moment they came within her presence, and so pleasantly did she move among them, provoking conversation here, diverting it from

a dangerous channel there, making the tastes and characters of those about her a special study, and so disposing them as to make her assembly a happy and harmonious whole, that the wits were loud in her praise; and in an incredibly short space of time she had attained the summit of her ambition, crowned by voice and by pen the acknowledged Queen of English Literature.

I cannot think of this old-world literary court, with its prim sovereign and bagwigged subjects, without a strange interest and emotion. Lift the cover of a hundred years, and the living picture is laid bare before you, filled up with the forms of those who had won or were winning fame. The busy hum of conversation rises, now swelling into opinionative altercation, which the lady of the house speedily smoothes away by some comprehensive courtesy, now falling into a subdued and drowsy murmur, continual as the fall of leaves in autumn or the flow of brooks in spring. That man of ponderous bulk and heavy visage is Dr. Johnson. See there, he pats a rhyming school-girl on the head, bidding her put fewer Cupids in her verses. How she blushes, and curtsies, and hurries away behind some distant screen to think, with the great benevolent eyes before her like a beacon light, while the timorous disputant who takes her place in the doctor's attentions is snuffed out by some incontrovertible conversational aphorism, or shamed into silence by extravagant strains of irony and abuse. There you may see Edmund Burke, innocently abstracted; and close at hand poor Garrick, pertly vain, and swelling with annoyance at the attentions lavished on his burly fellow-townsman. He actually turns away when Sir Joshua Reynolds enquires after the last good thing the doctor said, affecting not to hear the question. Look at Sir Joshua's smiles and his ear-trumpet-are they not true to the life? What a kaleidoscope it is, ever changing, ever assuming fresh forms and colours. Sir Joshua has gone back to limbo with his ear-trumpet, Garrick with his peacock strut; and in their place we discern a notable couple, an old courtier and a young. How strangely the contrast strikes us now, when both have been swept about with the dust of generations. Erskine, in the bloom of youth, just commencing his glorious career at the bar, and the first Lord Lyttleton, the Mæcenas of needy pamphleteers, soon to leave Hagley to the tender mercies of his dissolute son. Then, if your eye be quick, you may catch a glimpse of little Burney, timidest of literary women, shrinking from the bold stare of strangers and the very mention of "Evelina;" and you may be sure Mrs. Thrale will not be far off, whimsical hostess of Streatham, whose

habitual gentleness and hospitality to Dr. Johnson could not always repress the coarse outbursts of her uncouth guest. There is Mrs. Chapone, ugly and sensible; and Mrs. Carter, pious and prim; and scattered about the room, quaintly attired, and acting as a pendant to every disputatious group, the lesser lights of the Bluestockings, the humbler members of the order of literary ladies. Now and again you may see strange forms flitting about the crowd, but most of them you know, and as you withdraw your eyes from the scene again the picture dims, and you remember that it is not a reality, but only a series of visions that rise from the novels and printed diaries of a byegone age. It fades away, but it leaves behind it pleasant memories; and as I think of assemblies less laughed at in our own enlightened times, where silly evolutions serve to cover the paucity of conversational powers, and where common intelligence is far less necessary than studied correctness of manner, I cannot think that women have altogether changed for the better, or that the old Bluestocking gatherings were so absurd and odious after all.

After the death of Dr. Johnson, in 1784, Mrs. Montague's assemblies lost their hold on the literary world. They were still continued in the splendid mansion in Portman Square that had taken the place, of the old house in Hill Street; but the times were changed-pleasure, with her butterfly wings, charmed away the great world to other pastimes and other scenes, and with swift decadence this court of literature vanished into history, and its courtiers were spirited away. Where? Ah, who can tell Some to the gay excesses of Carlton House; some to the new joys of faro in Clubland; some to beneath the cloud of care that blackened the decline of many a literary life; some over Styx to shadow land. Pray the stream was smooth, the ferryman gentle! At last only a few faithful friends remained to Mrs. Montague; and the wits at Carlton House, or in the boxes at the theatre-perhaps the pit ceased to point their epigrams against her, or to dub with the title " Bluestockings the celebrated women who had imparted by their presence such a lustre and interest to her

assemblies.

Retracing my steps for a moment, I may mention that Mrs. Montague was not allowed to maintain her sovereignty unchallenged. Literary parties of a similar nature were held at the residence of Mrs. Vesey, and there were those of more exclusive tastes who affected to prefer them. Strange stories are told of Mrs. Vesey's absence of mind, how she often forgot her own name, and how on one occasion she warmly denounced second marriages, quite for

getting that she had been led to the altar a second time herself. But all these things are forgotten now, and with them are forgotten the flippant sayings of the Macaronis, and the ridicule they heaped on the heads of a generation of Bluestockings.

HER ONLY BROTHER.

BY GERALDINE BUTT.

CHAPTER VIII.

T seemed as if new life had come to Bertie

ST

since the night when he realised how much he owed to his sister—when first he saw the irreparable injury he had done her. It was a slipping, stumbling, shuffling way in which he strove to retrieve his wasted youth, but there was life in it-and there was hope.

He clung to her as to his guiding star, and he never found her fail him, though her own heart half failed her sometimes, at the dreariness of his lot. She worked eagerly for his release from the town where he was so known and commented on-and, with many tears, Mrs. De Visme consented to a change.

"You'll not like leaving it all," she said. "It is like leaving my life behind me; but if, as you say, it is best for Bertie-"

And so, because it was best for Bertie, these two women put themselves on one side completely, and began to discuss the rival merits of other places. Sir Arthur discussed it with them, and helped them very much. It was Bertie's best chance, he thought, and then he looked with a pang at Bee's white face, and turned hurriedly away, trying not to remember how empty the town would be without her.

he

"I must try and manage it as soon as I can," she said, as he walked home with her one evening, "for Bertie is getting into trouble again; he drifts down, you see, so easily, and his old companions cannot let him alone; fights up again, now," she went on, raising her eyes piteously, to read encouragement in his. "He is steadier than he was six months ago, and he is fond of me.”

"Then you do not regret it?" he said, in a low voice.

"No," Bee answered dreamily, "I think if my heart broke, I should not regret it. I hate that club," she went on vehemently, as they turned a corner, and across the pavement before them there streamed a dull light from a half closed door. "Let us hurry on."