thought led her to many others, and finally compelled her to say to Joseph while by night they kept watch from hour to hour over the insensible yet breathing body: "I must take back what I said yesterday. I can't keep my promise. You and I will be as we were before. It is not required of me."

"Don't talk about it now," he answered quietly.

"But you understand me," she said. "It is not required of me."

He did not answer.

We have expressed ourselves quite freely concerning Joseph, and have told merely the truth. But how is one ever to get at the entire truth concerning another, or predict with certainty concerning character and conduct in unexpected situations? If Bartholomew could have looked up into the face of Joseph that night, even after Barbara had spoken the words above recorded, he would not have seen in it the frown of an enemy or the cruel scorn of a tyrant. "Is this Joseph ?" Barbara said to herself more than once as the hours went on; but neither his gentleness nor his anguish drew her nearer to him. It was not, however, without a curious kind of satisfaction that she saw these kindly manifestations. "He has a good heart," she said. Yet she was glad that she had resigned

it.

As to Joseph, it was evident that he was not thinking of her. When he brought the doctor, he had only eye and ear for him, and to see him place himself under direction, to hear him as he asked opinion and instruction, was to think, Is the stone hewn, and the Temple built? Yet Joseph had merely been relieved of an incubus, - himself. He had only suddenly come to see an adversary who was without offence lying helpless before him, and the field of strife was abandoned, all its issues forgotten.

But how would it be when Bartholomew began to live again, and the cruel doubt whether he had really

sought death had been removed? Thought would probably run in its accustomed channels then, the old will assert itself in usual ways, and life reveal itself as heretofore. Barbara's folly as displayed on that night when they were all beside themselves was at least not to be remembered. All this perhaps was to be expected and should now have record; but other facts besides these wait for record.

A week after Bartholomew had risen from his bed to walk about the house and to talk like his emancipated self, Mr. Altman, finding himself alone with Barbara, said to her with a formality of speech that made her apprehensive, "Let me see now, Barb'ra, you've been with us, it's eight months since Aunt Minty died."

He laid down his newspaper to say this, and to look at her. She hurriedly picked up her work and bestowed her attention upon it, as she answered, "I was just thinking the same thing, Uncle"; and she might have made the same answer any hour of any day, for her thoughts were continually haunting the border-land as if to seek the counsel of the dweller in light.

"We don't want you to leave us, Barb'ra. Joseph don't for one, as you must know. I have a been speaking to him." The old man said these last words with a tremulous gravity that communicated itself, or its symptoms, to Barbara. If he was going now to plead for Joseph, what could she say?

"Did he tell you anything, Uncle? I have wanted so much to say something to you! I have felt so sorry! You cannot guess. No, Uncle, I assure you." It was better to speak than to wait his speech, so Barbara rushed into words.

"You can't quite make up your mind to our Joseph; is that it, 'Barb'ra?" said the old man, slowly passing his old hands over his old face.

"I am so sorry, Uncle, but it is the truth."

"Well, if you can't, you can't. That's the way I see it. I never wanted but

one. Money's no object with me though, Barb'ra."

"I am so glad to hear you say so, Uncle! I began to think I was the only person in the world who felt so. I don't care for money, I only want to earn my living. It is all I have ever asked for or expected."

"Just so, Barb'ra, I approve your sentiments. But it's a good thing to have a comfortable home of your own, with things to your mind for the wishing."

"But what would you think of me Uncle, if I married for a home?"

"I'd be glad to have you, if you married right! Why should n't you? I don't want you to leave us. You're my daughter, Barb'ra; that's down in my will, and they know it in Churchill."

"I will never leave you, Uncle, while you need me. My place is here, and I know it. That's in my will, Uncle." Yes, on one point Barbara was absolutely clear.

The old man looked well pleased. He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again it was slowly, but not with hesitation, as if he would feel his way; rather with the reluctance of justice, which, in spite of all things, will be just: "I have two boys, you mind."

Barbara turned her eyes bright with amazement on the slow-speaking advocate who was not looking at her, but steadfastly on the floor. When he found that she would make no answer, he continued, "We are all agreed on one point. We can't spare you. The boys came to me about it. They understand each other better than they ever did before. It's just which one of 'em you'll have. And if you won't have either, just say so and they'll trouble you no further about it."

"Did Joseph say that, Uncle?”

"Well, yes, Barb'ra, something like that."

"And Bartholomew ?"

The old man was silent; he lowered his spectacles over his eyes, and stretched out his hand as if reaching after his newspaper. Instead of the "Tribune," he found Barbara's hand in his. She beheld her duty now clear as we see the rising sun on an unclouded morning.

"Let us not say anything more about it," said she. "Things can rest as they are. I will be a daughter to you, Uncle Joshua."

"But there are my boys," said he. "The business was not settled." "Shall you try the new wheel in the new mill, Uncle?"

O Dick! what would you have made of Barbara's question? Would you have heard your dear girl's heart in her voice, or merely duty's cold urgence?

"Yes, yes, it'll come to that of course. I always meant to have it so." The old man spoke warmly, and drew his hand across his eyes!

"I gave Joseph my answer, Uncle. I have n't changed my mind."

Heart or duty, what do you think? All one? It would seem so.

Need we? The world is wide, and from the peak of magnanimity to which he had ascended, if by any stretch of meaning the word has force in this connection, and are there not divers ways of yielding to the inevitable?-Joseph saw how far the horizon extended, and so it is not to be wondered at that by and by he went out " seeking a country," and Barbara, remaining at the Mills, felt satisfied that she had found hers, and could there fulfil her mission.

Caroline Chesebro'.

BETHN

ETHNAL GREEN is mainly known to Americans who remember their nursery ballad books as the residence of a certain Blind Beggar's daughter, the details of whose history indeed we confess ourselves to have forgotten. Known by its beggars in the era of primitive poetry, the region has beggary still for its sign and token. Its wretchedness has been so great that, till within a few months past, there may well have been a question whether a blind beggar was not rather a lucky person, and his imperfect consciousness a matter of congratulation. But now there is a premium on good eyesight, for Bethnal Green discerns it self through the thick local atmosphere the unillumined possessor of a Museum and a gallery of pictures, treasures which all well-dressed London is flocking eastward to behold. Half in charity and (virtually) half in irony, a beautiful art - collection has been planted in the midst of this darkness and squalor, an experimental lever for the "elevation of the masses." The journey to Bethnal Green is a long one, and leads you through an endless labyrinth of ever murkier and dingier alleys and slums, and the Museum, whether intentionally or not, is capitally placed for helping you to feel the characteristic charm of art, its being an infinite relief and refuge from the pressing miseries of life. That the haggard paupers of Bethnal Green have measured, as yet, its consolatory vastness, we should hesitate to affirm; for though art is an asylum, it is a sort of moated strong-hold, hardly approachable save by some slender bridge-work of primary culture, such as the Bethnal Green mind is little practised in. There are non-paying days at the Museum, as well as days with a sixpenny fee, and on the occasion of our visit the sixpence had excluded the local population, so that we are obliged to repeat

from hearsay a graceful legend that the masses, when admitted, exhibit, as one man, a discrimination of which Mr. Ruskin himself might be proud, and observe and admire on the very soundest principles. In the way of plain fact we may say that the building, as it stands, is the first of a projected series of District Museums, to be formed successively of various fragments of the temporary structure at South Kensington, as this great collection is more solidly enclosed; that it was erected toward the close of last year, and opened with great pomp by the Prince of Wales in the following June; and that it immediately derived its present great interest from the munificence of Sir Richard Wallace, — heir of that eccentric amateur the late Marquis of Hertford, who offered the Museum the temporary use of his various arttreasures, and had them transported and installed at his own expense. It is with the Marquis of Hertford's pictures that we are concerned; the collection otherwise consisting of a small Animal Products Department, which we leave to more competent hands, and (rather grimly, under the circumstances) of a group of FOOD SPECIMENS, neatly encased and labelled, interesting from a scientific, but slightly irritating from a Bethnal Green, that is, a hungry point of view.

Sir Richard Wallace has become eminent, we believe, for his large charities to the poor of Paris during the tribulations of the siege and the Commune, and the observer at Bethnal Green may almost wonder whether a portion at least of his benevolence may not have come to him by bequest, with Lord Hertford's pictures. The most striking characteristic of the collection, after its variety and magnificence, is its genial, easy, unexclusive taste, the good-nature of well-bred opulence. It

ing there in its crepuscular London atmosphere, the picture has a hardly less distinct individuality of coloring than that to which, as you stand before the Veroneses of the Ducal Palace, the reflected light of the Venetian lagoon seems to make so magical an answer. The painter's touch in the flesh-portions is less forcible; the arms and hands are sketchy, and rigidly viewed, the face and bosom lack relief; but expression is there, and warmth and a sort of delightful unity which makes faults venial. The picture misses greatness, doubtless; but it is one of the supremely happy feats of art. If as much can be said for another Sir Joshua, equally noted, the "Strawberry Girl" (from the collection of Samuel Rogers), it must be said with a certain reserve. This is a charming sketch of a charming child, executed in hardly more than a few shades of brown with that broad, tender relish of infantine dimples in which the painter was unsurpassed; but that it is a little more fondly mannered than critically real, such a trio of neighbors as the uncompromising little Spanish Infants of Velasquez (to whom a child had the same sort of firm, immitigable outline as an adult) helps us materially to perceive. Velasquez's children are the children of history; Sir Joshua's, of poetry, or at least of rhymed lullabyliterature and the two sorts of representation are as far asunder as Wordsworth and Cervantes. An irresistible little ballad-heroine is this Strawberry Maiden of Sir Joshua's her pitifully frightened innocent eyes make her the very model of that figure so familiar to our childish imagination, — the Little Girl Devoured by a Wolf. There are various other Reynoldses in the collection, but they rarely approach the high level of the two we have spoken of. Oftenest, and especially in the case of the portraits of women, their principal charm is the air of fresh-colored domestic virtue in the sitter. They offer a vivid reflection of this phase of English character. Sir Thomas Lawrence's "Lady Blessington" in no de

gree casts them into the shade. The lady's extremely agreeable face is no more that of a model English countess than the artist's clever hand is that of a first-rate painter.

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Except in a couple of capital little Wilkies, four small Turners, and a charming series of Boningtons, English talent figures further with but moderate brilliancy. Turner, however, is a host in himself, and the four little finished water-colors which represent him here are almost a full measure of his genius. That genius, indeed, manifests, proportionately, more of its peculiar magic within the narrow compass of a ten-inch square of paper than on the broad field of an unrestricted canvas. Magic is the only word for his rendering of space, light, and atmosphere; and when you turn from the inscrutable illusion of his touch in these matters, the triumphs of his cleverest neighbors - those of Copley Fielding, for instance seem but a vain placage of dead paint. He never painted a distance out of which it seems a longer journey back to your catalogue again than the receding undulations of rainwashed moor in the little picture entitled "Grouse-Shooting." It is hard to imagine anything more masterly than the sustained delicacy of the gradations which indicate the shifting mixture of sun and mist. When Art can say so much in so light a whisper, she has certainly obtained absolute command of her organ. The foreground here is as fine as the distance; half a dozen white boulders gleam through the heather beside a black pool with the most naturally picturesque effect. The companion to this piece, "Richmond, Yorkshire," reverses the miracle, and proves that the painter could paint slumbering yellow light at least as skilfully as drifting dusk. The way in which the luminous haze invests and caresses the castle-crowned woody slope which forms the background of this composition is something for the connoisseur to analyze, if he can, but for the uninitiated mind simply to wonder at. Opie's famous reply to the youth