tions, all human excellencies, such as are really highest, wisest, best, most sublime, most beautiful, and most true, no less than such as are most gentle, most pure, and most lovely, will flourish among the human family of that bright future period. to an extent so unparalleled and exalted that one of the present time cannot, for an instant, hope to rival such matchless glory." "But we may," he proceed to remark, "nevertheless, add most effectually and delightfully to our happiness by rousing every noble energy within our power, so as to approach as near the lustre of that mighty period as it is possible in the present stage of human progress; while, with an object, heavenly bright in its purpose, we may look upon the transcendent. future periods referred to as the great lighthouse of a grand hope, towards which we and our intermediate successors should resolve to steer, not with any poor repining spirit, or with a laggard wail, but with a conquering energy and joy, and with an heroic persistency and pleasantness such as will scatter away the clouds from our nocturnal sky, and admit the thousand stars of heaven to beam their bright radiancy upon us, until the sun itself will rise in its greatest majesty and splendour."

Such was the grand conception of our sculptor, but the heart has been stilled and the hand stayed, ere the accomplishment was achieved.

Such was his world-the studio; and yet Edwards was no hermit he did not shun society but his friendships were few. The daughters and the grand-daughters of kindred minds to his own, the descendants of brother sculptors and thinkers-these, reminding him of old days and philosophic reveries, came to him and clung around him, regarding him as their own grandsire, loving him as deeply. To see him so surrounded in his age when the brow was wrinkled and a nimbus of grey hair adorned him, was to be reminded of wondrously carved relics of antiquity around which clung the graceful foliage of Roman climes.

Of the practical side of the world he had a bitter taste in youth, but even the memory of it disappeared, and in his meridian and in his age he was still the open hand.

His meridian was, in fact, a recast of his youth. In early London days he stood one dinner hour by a bookstall, one shilling only in his pocket and on the stall a shilling Homer. It was a question of no dinner or Homer, and the Greek poet won the day. So in later years books were the greatest luxuries, and in boxes, underneath all his productions, were his treasures. He never cared for the dignity of a bookcase, but he knew where every book was, and every one he had was diligently read. And the youth of life ever remained with him throughout as unchanged as his early predilections. Innocency and a love for

all that was beautiful and pure in the world, blending with age. and the love of the lore of all lands, until "the silver cord was loosed, and the golden bowl broken at the fountain."

"And is this all?" exclaims the practical minded man of this prosaic, and money-loving age. "The Welsh lad from the mountain-then become no Michael Angelo-figured simply as the producer of some beautiful conceptions, flourished only as a dreamer, and died poor!" True, O practical mind! "Then what of all that arduous effort, that mighty struggle for bread, that self devotion for half a century to learning, that greed for the acquistion of all varied wisdom, that perfect self denial, waving off even the most innocent enjoyments of life, and, cui bono, for what?"

Of Joseph Edwards it may be said that Wales never had a truer or a more gifted son. He built up a pure life, perfected and enriched a grand intellect and his monument is not alone the many creations of his poetic, philosophic, or devotional mind, but he, himself, stainless as the marble from Carrara ere it left his studio, hallowed by the glory of his genius. There was not a virtue that he did not cultivate, and that of charity in its lesser as well as broader interpretation more than any. Strangest, most undecipherable of all earth's moral problems this, that he so pure of heart, so open-handed in the exercise of philanthropy, should in his extreme old age be brought again forcibly into contact with poverty, and have his last hours saddened with the possibility that he might almost be compelled ere the grave claimed him to beg his bread.

In truth it was not quite so bad, but a great reverse, the sweeping away of the fund that was regarded as the store for his old age, naturally aroused fears; and it is when the evening of life is drawing on apace that the shadows fall upon the mind.

He died January 9th, 1882, aged 67, with not a friend of the mountain-land near. Not one, in fact, of his old Welsh friends knew that he was ailing, until he was-gone!

The dream of Pygmalion was to endow his beautiful creation with life, that it might become his helpmeet. That of Edwards to realize the ideal to arrive at Truth. In that aim he had roamed mentally throughout the regions of antiquity, with the philosophic enquirer of ancient and of modern times. Astronomer-he surveyed as the Chaldean the unrolled heavens with their unnumbered worlds: Geologisthe examined the great tablets of the earth, and in flora and fauna built up the landscapes of old: Student-in brief, of every school, lover of the beautiful, whatever form it took, whether in nature or art; in the expression of nature in flower and tree, or in that of the intellect, no matter the guise, through all, ever yearning, ever hoping, the cry of wards was "Truth!"

And let us hope, nay, let us believe, that this he has found; the dream of the Heathen sculptor surpassed by the faith of the Christian Philosopher; and the conceptions of the beautiful realized to the uttermost.

Grateful to him, poet-sculptor, will it be, that the lustre of the truth so earnestly sought, is now found in fullest radiance through no distorted or chequered medium; that he is at length, earth's pilgrimage over, sorrow and trouble ended, at the fount of that harmony which comes to us on earth only in broken and subdued strains.

ONE OF THE FIRM.

BY FREDERICK TALBOT.

CHAPTER V.-WATCH AND WARD.

When John Bradshaw marched out of Oakenshaw Chapel under the intolerable stings of conscience, and the scorpion-like lashes of Mr. Rose's eloquence, he felt that he had betrayed his secret to the whole world, but the first words of his wife reassured him. They were words of encouragement and appreciation. It was quite right that Mr. Rose should be given to understand that personal attacks on a member of their family, even if he richly deserved a dressing, would not be tolerated; and what a warm loving heart her dear John had to stand forth thus bravely in defence of one of the household. In all this, Mrs. John Bradshaw displayed a virtuous hypocrisy, such as is even enjoined in holy writ when wives are told not to be bitter against their husbands. For when those husbands make fools of themselves, how can wives help bitterness in their hearts; if, haply, they abstain from suppressing it from their lips. Mrs. John Bradshaw, with a delicate woman's intense sensitiveness, had been stung to the quick by the exhibition of himself her husband had made. Happily she had no idea of its real cause. She attributed it all to his hasty, ungovernable temper.

Mr. Bradshaw accepted the incense of his wife's praises with some complacency. Yes, he had a feeling heart, else how should he have lost his self-composure so completely when touched by Mr. Rose's discourse. If he were a sinner, certainly he was not a hardened one. He had repented, that is to say of the evil part of the matter, of what was wrong and unlawful; and the best way he could prove his repentance would be by taking care that his wrong doing should do as little harm as possible. As long as his wife could be saved from the knowledge of the secret, as long as he did his duty by the boy-and he was inclined to do very much more than his bare duty in that respect-the evil in his conduct would concern only himself. The man and his daughter had already been compensated at his expense, although not with his sanction. But that had been one matter in which he had never drawn the purse strings tight.

Of course, before the day was out, Hester Rose came down to Oakenshaw; and there was a general battle royal among the women folks, with many tears shed and much excited talk, but with the general result of aggravating the situation. These feminine disturbances are like a fever and must run their course, or like those circular storms that are met with at sea-you know where you are when they start, but where the dickens are you by the time they have blown themselves out? In the case of Hester and Mary it was pretty evident that Harry was the bone of contention, and that Hester rather wanted him, but would not have him; while Mary, not wanting him, was inclined to take him out of contrariety.

Hester had gone home before Harry returned. Harry was rather doubtful as to the reception he would get, for now that Chevril had opened his eyes to the meaning of the morning's scene, he expected his uncle to be rather angry. But he was agreeably surprised to find himself quite rehabilitated in the family esteem, Mrs. John pitying him for having been subject to a punishment quite disproportionate to his offences, for she took a very charitable view of Harry's delinquencies, believing him quite incapable of real wrong-doing. His uncle, too, seemed to have made common cause with him, and Mary was kindness itself. In a hundred artless little ways she showed her sympathy with him, and a belief in his excellence. And Harry was touched with this confidence of hers, and by the feeling which had prompted her to make his cause her own. Hester weeping over him as if he were an outcast, Chevril sarcastic and rather cold; it was a delightful change to come to the warmth and sympathy of home, where Mary had so many pleasant and gracious things to say to him. And then he could not help thinking how if he married Mary, as everybody seemed to wish him to do, he need care nothing about what was said of him here or there.

John Bradshaw was going to London the next day, and Harry was to be left in command; and there were some last words to be said to him. They were said very kindly, too, for Mr. John seemed to have made common cause with his nephew; and it was past ten before they separated, and then Harry went out upon the terrace for a smoke. There was a light burning in a cottage window far below in the valley that seemed to have a strange attraction for him. He turned resolutely away once or twice, and as often he seemed drawn once more into the circuit of its rays. While he watched it, it was obscured once, twice, thrice and then shone out again brightly. This signal, if signal it were, had an extraordinary effect upon Harry. "Meliora video proboque," he said, as many a man had said before, and acting as too many of his fellow-creatures, under the circumstances, he plunged down the hill into the darkness,