shut;

and I observed that Charlie hesitated for a moment before he put out his hand to open it. Only for a moment though; then he unlatched the door, and the bright farm kitchen was before us. There was a big blazing fire in the grate, which showed that on the table the tea-things were set for tea; the kettle was hissing away merrily, and some tea-cakes stood to keep warm on a low stand before the fire. Everything looked snug and cosey. Evidently Mrs. Johnson had prepared everything ready for tea when the farmer should return from Ď. market; and was now gone up stairs to "clean" herself. I had time to make all these observations over Charlie's shoulder, before he gave a sudden start, and strode with a low exclamation to a bundle of clothes which lay at the farther and darker side of the kitchen, on the smooth stone floor. A bundle of clothes it looked like, with Jip lying asleep beside it in very strange attitude.

I shall never forget the horror of the next moment. Huddled up, evidently in the attitude in which she had fallen, lay Mrs. Johnson, with a gaping wound across her throat, from which the blood was still trickling, and Jip, with a large pool of blood near his head, lay dead beside her.

I stood for a moment, too, paralyzed with horror, -such intense, thrilling horror, that only any one who has experienced such a feeling can understand | it, and then, with a low scream, I sank on the floor, and put up my hand to try and hide the horrible sight.

"Hush!" whispered Charlie, sternly, taking hold of my hands, and forcibly dragging me on to my feet again; "you must n't make a sound. Whoever has done this can't be far off; you must run home, Cissy, as hard as ever you can. Come!"

He dragged me to the door, and then I turned sick all over, and tumbled down again. I felt as if I could not stir another step.

"It's no use, Charlie, I can't stir," I said. "Leave me and go without me."

"Nonsense! Try again."

I tried again, but it was no use; my legs positively would not move, and precious time was being wasted.

"You fool!" Charlie said, bitterly and passionately. How was a boy of fifteen to understand a woman's weakness? "Then I must leave you. It's Johnson's money they no doubt want. They would n't murder if they could help it, and Johnson will be back directly."

"Yes, yes. Go," I said, understanding that he wanted to fetch help before the farmer came. "I will hide somewhere."

"In the kennel there," he said, looking round quickly; and don't stir."

He pushed me into poor murdered Jip's kennel, and then he disappeared, and I was left alone in the gathering darkness with those two prostrate forms on the kitchen floor as my company, and perhaps the murderers close at hand.

sick trembling feeling came on so strongly, that the pin torture had to be again applied. In another minute three men came out of the back door, and I could distinctly hear every word of their conversation.

"He's late, I think," said one. "If he does n't come soon, we must go; that girl 'll be home soon. I heard the old woman tell her not to stop." "What's it signify?” said another. "We can soon stop her mouth."

"It is n't worth so much blood, Dick," said the

third. "We've only got fifty pound by this, and

the farmer 'll not have more.'

"He ought to be coming by now," said the first, anxiously, coming a step or two nearer the kennel. "Hallo! What's that?"

The tone made me turn sick again. Had Charlie found help already? No. The three men were standing close to the kennel, and during the moment's silence that followed the man's exclamation, I remembered that I had dropped my muff. I tried to stop the hard quick thumping of my heart, which I felt certain they must hear, and then, as if fascinated, I raised my head from my knees, - for till that moment I had been crouching at the farthest end of the kennel,- and saw a hairy, fierce-looking face glaring in at the entrance of my hiding-place. I tried hard not to scream, and I succeeded; but in another moment I should have fainted if the face had not been taken away. To my utter amazement, as the face disappeared, its owner said,

"I thought some one might be hiding. That's a lady's trumpery. What can it mean?"

Evidently I had not been seen, thanks to my dark dress and the gathering twilight. I breathed freely now; unless something very unforeseen occurred, I was safe.

"Some one has been, and has dropped it," a voice said quickly. "That's all on account of your cursed foolery, Dick," it went on angrily. Why could n't you stop at the door, as I told you?" "Well, let's do something now," the third said, anxiously, "or we shall be having some one here." The three men then went back into the house again, and I could hear them speaking in low tones; presently the voices grew louder, and they were evidently quarrelling. In another minute they came out again, and from what I could hear, they began to search in the farm-buildings and outhouses for the owner of the muff.

"There's no one here," at last one called out. " They must have gone away again. Go to the gate, Bill, and see if anybody is coming that way."

After a moment, Bill returned to the other two, who were now standing talking in low whispers at the back of the kennel, and said: "No, there's no one coming." And my heart sank as I thought how long it would be before succor could arrive.

"The fellow 's late," one of the others said, after a minute or two; "but we had better be on the watch now. Mind, both of you, that he's down from his gig before he sees us."

They walked away along the line of house towards the other entrance by which Mr. Johnson would come; and I, thinking they had gone to take up their hiding-places, put my head cautiously out of the mouth of the kennel, and looked around.

I combated the faint feeling which Charlie could not understand by pinching my arms and sticking pins into them, and after a little judicious torture of this sort, the sick feeling went off, and I could think again. "I will take off my boots," I thought, after They make such a noise, and I may have to move," for already a glimmering plan had Surely I could reach the house without being rushed across my brain of how I might warn John- seen, I thought, and if I could but reach the big So I rose a little from my crouching position, ruinous drawing-room, which commanded a view unlaced them, and slipped them off. I had barely of the fields the farmer would cross, I might be done this, when I heard the sound of voices, and the able to warn him back from the fate which awaited

a moment. "6

son.

him. I must warn him if I could; it was too horri- | threw it on the ground, and, shutting my eyes, ble that another murder should be done.

and entirely against the ideal of Cervantes. Our Leech would have done justice to the humor of the story without this proportionately absurd violence. So would Leslie, and indeed did in more than one instance, notably in the "Sancho Panza before the Duchess." One of the most glaring instances is the large cut of Don Quixote lying wounded and melancholy, his head buried in the pillow and his face and nose plastered up, with one eye patched over and the other bloodshot and glazed, averted with a ghastly look; his bony hands, with their swollen veins, clutching the bedclothes. This is a ghastly study from some hospital of criminals.

If the object in illustrating a beautiful work of lit

at the pictures, then it is accomplished. Our caricatures of the time of Gilray and Rowlandson are precisely analogous in their art with the illustrations of M. Doré, although his admitted genius raises his work to that pitch of popular favor which we think so detrimental, not to say demoralizing, in its influence.

Dante. That many persons think otherwise we know from the very general admiration so constantly bestowed upon these works of M. Doré; but we doubt whether many would be found of this number who would be able to say they thought them adequate to the purpose, and conceived in a kindred spirit of Italian art. We suspect, in many cases, people wonder at, rather than admire, these works, and if they were to question themselves would probably find that it was Doré that attracted them rather than Dante. Just as we see a conceited actor sometimes take the stage and tear a passion to tatters, till his tragedy makes us roar, so, we must confess, does M. Doré affect us when he means to be pathetic. A propensity of this ten-erary art is to make us turn over the pages to laugh dency, which amounts to a failing, is, as it seems to us, fatal in an illustrator: humor the most delightful, because of its gentle undercurrent, becomes the grotesquery of the clown and imp; and pathos is lost in the convulsions of physical pain and spasmodic agony. Doré, in fact, has added nothing but a peculiar, monkey-like repulsiveness and fiendish personality to those horrible assemblages of human beings tormented by demons which Orcagna, and other painters of the time of Dante, represented as they were bound to do, being good churchmen of their day. If the purpose were merely to strike out something new and foreign to those illustrations of the same fine poetry which were conceived by Canova, Flaxman, and Cornelius, something opposite to the classical idea which was evidently in the mind of Dante himself, here we have it offered by M. Doré. But, then, we have to remember the eternal truth, that beauty of idea is allied with beauty of form, as we see it so implicitly followed in the antique representations of gods of the Greeks and Romans, again in the prophets and apostles of Masaccio, Michel Angelo, and Raphael, and constantly relied upon by modern artists of the religious school. No one for a moment supposes that these grand creations of art pretend to be like the Elijahs and John Baptists of the ancient wilderness, and the dark-"La Legende de Croque-Mitaine," "Les Contes skinned fishermen of Galilee. These ideal repre- Drolatiques," "Le Roi des Montagnes," the advensentations possess a general truth which appeals to tures of Jules Gérard, the lion-hunter, "Atala," by all the world as expressing certain human feelings M. de Chateaubriand, and some others, including an and aspirations, although the personification adopt- extraordinary number of drawings. But the amazed and other conventionalisms have the least pos- ing facility shown by such an amount of work is still sible resemblance to the actual facts. Art has its more wonderful when we see that he has undertaken mode of expression, and beauty is its prime ele- the greatest of all forms of illustration,- that of the ment: hence the great sculptors and painters of all Bible. We must confess to something of a twinge time never permitted themselves to paint in the at the first thought of a Bible illustrated by M. Doré. spirit of positivism which M. Doré indulges; they These illustrations have now been exhibited by the abjured the real for the ideal, and shunned every-publishers of the work in London (Messrs. Cassell & thing horrifying to the senses. M. Rénan attributes the fall of Gothic art to the want of this taste: "L'art du moyen âge tomba par ses défauts essentiels, et parce qu'il ne sut pas s'élever à la perfection de la forme."

With the singular and rather unaccountable exception of the architectural sculptors of the Gothic, and the ornamentalists of that period who revelled in their grotesques, the old masters never stood, as it were, outside their work, and mocked and sneered at the subject. This is, as it seems to us, what M. Doré does almost in every line; we see it in his "Crucifixion," in "The Wandering Jew," in many of the illustrations of the "Inferno," which betray a fiend-like cruelty in the bare invention displayed in exhibiting the sufferings of the wicked. We see it again in the way in which our most glorious gentleman of knight-errantry, Don Quixote, is made to look ridiculous and contemptible beyond all limit,

Hogarth had, with all his leaning towards caricature, a humorous, as well as a serious, side to his mask, and was also superior to M. Doré in his naturalness. The portrait of Dante as frontispiece is an outrage upon the ideal which Giotto painted from the life upon the wall of the old palace of the Podestà at Florence; that was a face full of the dreamy-rapt expression of the poet, while this is a head full of sardonic spite and half-savage cruelty. We might at least have been spared this, we might have had a real portrait; but M. Doré must make all his figures pass in his own phantasmagoria. Perhaps, however, M. Doré never intended to try his hand at portraiture, one of the severest touchstones of art; he merely proposed to give us his idea of Dante, just as his illustrations convey the materi alistic view which he takes of the poem. M. Doré's talent finds a most congenial occupation in such works as his illustrations to the works of "Rabelais,"

Co.), and the first numbers of the Bible are, we believe, already published. There are no less than 230 large page drawings, which, viewed simply as the working of one man constantly engaged for four years, and of those wood engravers who have been employed upon it, are really remarkable as an undertaking successfully accomplished, and a very costly one. The sum expended upon the artistic part of the work is stated to be more than £15,000.

In this important application of his abilities, M. Doré has evidently endeavored to be more in accordance with the common taste, and has followed more the ordinary forms of pictorial composition; at the same time there is abundant originality to be noticed in his treatment of subjects which have so constantly furnished themes to the painters for so many ages. Generally, indeed, the influence of the works of the old masters is little perceptible in the various compositions, and we notice rather that

of Horace Vernet and those of the French school | though this would demand a feeling for angelic who have studied in the East. Still, the designs beauty which as yet we see no sign of in his works. throughout, though certainly not so characteristic He has never yet drawn a beautiful woman, at least of Gustave Doré as those of the " Wandering in his book illustrations. This leads us to remark Jew," for example, exhibit some of those points of of all M. Doré does in the figures of his composi distinction which we have endeavored to show are tions, that the drawing is never understood. His peculiar to his style. Wherever it is possible to muscular action, we can see, is never founded in a call in his power for representing any of the terri- knowledge of the figure, but, being made up of ble catastrophes and massacres like that of the sev-knotty-looking limbs in forced attitudes, the purpose enty sons of Ahab, related in the Old Testament, he is sure to give way to his peculiar inclination. Thus, his picture of "The Deluge" is rendered effective by the heaps of corpses cast together in every conceivable attitude, and a tigress is introduced upon a rock in the waters striving to save her young. It is remarkable that painters of the highest class have generally avoided the subject of the Deluge. John Martin essayed it of course, for he was one of those artists who, like Haydon, are perpetually grasping after the greatest subjects, with neither the genius to conceive nor the learning of hand to represent, if they even caught an inspiration. Several of the Bible illustrations are rendered needlessly horrible by the absolute cruelty they represent: whole families weltering in their blood, executioners spearing and stabbing them in the most painfully real manner, and their countenances and attitudes exhibiting the most hideous struggles for life or piteous suffering. On the side of art all this must be viewed as an error; and, as illustrative of the Bible, it defeats its purpose. There may be lessons to be learnt at the gratings of the Morgue, but surely those of the Bible need no study of this kind to enforce them.

is served of producing a forcible resemblance. We see much the same thing in the common French every-day illustrations, which are often irresistibly comic and most cleverly touched. We see it in Gavarni, in George Cruikshank, but not in Mr. Tenniel or Mr. Leighton, or the Brothers Dalziel or Mr. Gilbert, all of whom are perfect in their knowledge of the figure, at least as far as they attempt it. However, let us not be envious of such a clever illustrator, or make comparisons where they may be out of place. We are disposed to place him in a niche by himself, to be admired much as we do his great double in literature, Alexandre Dumas; but as to accepting him as an illustrator of any subjects not grotesque, fantastic, and French of the Reign of Terror order that is quite another thing. A word remains to be said as to the method of execu tion adopted - it might be said invented by M. Doré. This is most effective in giving great depth and great brilliancy in the lights; and nothing can surpass the finish of the wood-engravings by M. Pisan and M. Pannemaker, who appear to have acquired some peculiar qualities in their art as yet unknown to English wood-engravers.

FROM YEAR'S END TO YEAR'S END.

legs were made for them,-long, thin, straight; and his back was like his legs. The manner in which his long black coat, with its wide skirts, hung upon the Earl's hips, was a marvel to the admirers of good dressing. Four days a week in the winter it was exchanged for a stronger and a broader one of scarlet. The Earl's manner was as irreproachable as his appearance. His servants worshipped him, his children admired him, his tenants loved him, and his equals — well, his equals were so few and far between, that it is difficult to appreciate their feelings, if they had any. To say truth, hi hesetting sin was family pride.

It is seldom that we remark in any of M. Doré's works any kindliness and warmth of expression, any touch of human sympathy from the artist himself. It was a fine open season, just one month before We are amazed with the cleverness of hand, the in- | Christmas day. The trees were cleared of their ventiveness, the feeling for effect of light and shade, foliage, and the hedge-rows of their leaves; but the which in his landscape sometimes amounts to what weather was genial, and soft winds and a cloudy might be called impressive; but we look in vain for atmosphere held out to the sportsman a promise anything like the tenderness and refinement, and which was not destined to be fulfilled. The Earl above all the religious feeling which so elevates the of Rosendale was an admirable sample of the Engsacred art of the great masters. At least if they had lish nobleman and the British sportsman. Few men not all of them the religious feeling of Angelico, they looked so well, behaved so well in all relations of had the good taste to assume it when they painted re-life, or wore such perfect leathers and tops. His ligious subjects. If we are not mistaken, there is an illustrated Bible for which we have to thank the same enterprising publishers, which has the subjects taken from the old masters and some of the modern painters; it is only necessary to compare these two works to see that in the criticisms here ventured upon the just estimate has been taken. It is not that the great ability of M. Doré has failed to sustain him, and that he has not constrained himself very greatly throughout these illustrations of the Bible with far more of the continence of art which belongs especially to sacred subjects, but that his peculiar feeling is not generally in accordance with the themes. In the interests of art, and not for the sake of preferring Rosendale Castle, like other Castles of Indolence, our own artists, we should imagine that the Bible was opened to the world out of the season. As one could be illustrated in a manner more correct and of the best sportsmen in the county, and the largest in better taste. This work clearly originated in subscriber to the county hounds, Lord Rosendale France, and it is essentially French; it is a great felt it to be incumbent upon him to fill his house commercial undertaking, and must therefore be with hunting-men during Christmas. The only con"made to pay." For this reason, chiefly, we pre-dition, implied rather than expressed, was that each sume, has its circulation been extended to this country, where possibly the taste for the sensational and the unconventional in every shape may welcome such a form of sacred illustration. The next achievement offered to M. Doré we shall expect to see will be the illustration of Milton's "Paradise Lost," al

guest must be provided with a stud, for which accommodation was found in the village. There were exceptions to this rule occasionally, but such were seldom acknowledged by the guests, and might consist of a savant, or a Frenchman, who fell to the lot of the Countess and her daughters to entertain.

Lord Glendower, the Earl's eldest son, came down | in a manner which entitled him to the entrée to the of course. He was a hard, well-knit man, of mid- very best circles; a great deal of it found its way dling stature, always with a glass in his eye, and an into the pockets of Sharper, Pulham, and the Leviunpleasant witticism at hand for a friend or an athan ringmen, who hailed young Porter's advent enemy; it scarcely mattered which. He was a as a star of the first magnitude, and worshipped acbetter class of Jack-Pudding in the London clubs, cordingly the rising grandson. Lord Glendower, and was unpopular in proportion to the great ex- indeed, called him, "the Star from the East," in tent of his acquaintance. There was a good-natured consideration of the locality of the great distillery. duke, stout, gray, and of the gamekeeper pattern, "Who is Bulstrode?" I should think the quesriding to cover on a fat cob, and mounting the se- tion could never before have occurred to Sir George datest of hunters, when his jacket and gaiters not Sherringhame, or to anybody else, excepting to the unfrequently led the shirkers to victory. There was mammas, who thought their daughters in danger a formidable marquis, the parti of the season, an in- from his fascinations. Of course, Lady Rosendale nocent, unpretending person in reality, who would need not be numbered among them. Jack Bulstrode have been cheerful enough had he not been made was such an universal favorite, so exceedingly handto feel the necessity of marrying thus early in life. some, so clever, so good-humored, so perfect a genWherever there were women it put him in a false tleman to all appearance, and such a thoroughly position; and the Earl had three daughters, two of good fellow from beginning to end, that nobody ever whom were still unmarried. The third, to be sure, had considered it a question worth answering. He the Lady Evelyn, was scarcely out; and the Marquis was in a good cavalry regiment, had a fair income of Cocky-leeky would not commit such a solecism as for a bachelor, kept a small but very good stud, was to fall in love with the younger sister, while Lady to be found in the best houses during the shooting Margaret Caradoc remained single. There were season, occasionally backed a friend's horse, and two or three rising politicians of fifty, a couple of played as good a rubber for eighteenpence as if he Guardsmen, the Duchess, some younger Lady Ma- had been playing for thousands. Once known not to rys, and distinguished commoners, and one or two be "detrimental," he became the pet of the old lapoor but highly-connected hangers-on of the family. dies; and heaven only knows what he was to the Lord Rosendale was eminently distinguished by con- young ones: he never inquired. sideration for poor relations.

"Did you say Jack Bulstrode was coming to-morrow, Glendower?"

"If he does n't break his neck on the road," said his Lordship, making a cannon, and calling the game. "He's going to hunt his way here."

"Why the deuce should he break his neck?" rejoined the Marquis, formidable for his matrimonial qualifications, chalking his cue, "why the deuce should Bulstrode break his neck? He's the best man to hounds I ever saw in my life; there's 30 more chance of his breaking his neck thanthan" here the Marquis holed the red ball.

Than you have," replied Glendower, screwing his glass into his eye, and chuckling. The Marquis was not famous for risking his neck after hounds. think that a man's means of enjoyment in other ways ought to exempt him from such a necessity.

I

"Where are the hounds to-morrow?" inquired George Sherringhame, a handsome little baronet in a Lancer regiment, and excellent at all things, coaching included. "I suppose we can get to them from here? I shall go any distance if Bulstrode 's coming here afterwards; he's the very best company

Jack's first appearance in a house like Rosendale under ordinary circumstances need have created no sensation. He had been asked by Lord Glendower because he thought he might be useful to his mother in entertaining her guests, and to his father and the men in shooting pheasants and entertaining them. Any thought of Jack Bulstrode's pleasure never crossed Lord Glendower's mind. I am afraid we shall see that self-denial was not one of that gentleman's many virtues.

When a man has only a given number of pages, the description in detail of a heroine (à fortiori of a hero) is a luxury which he ought to forego. Of late years they have all been pretty much alike: golden hair, lovely red and white skins, compressed lips, gleaming blue eyes, lithe and sinewy limbs, and a general boa-constrictor cast of countenance for the destruction of the unwary. Now some of these charms belonged to Jack, but none of them to Lady Evelyn Caradoc. It is impossible to resist a certain impression (at least, I have found it so), for good or bad, when the name or qualities of any particular person, unknown to you, has been constantly_canvassed in your presence. For a few days past Lady Evelyn had heard of nothing but Jack Bulstrode, or Captain Bulstrode; what he had done, what he had

Too good for you, George, over a country," inerrupted Glendower again; "you'll be more at Some with him in the phaeton on the road. How-said, what was his weight, what was his height; and ever, we can all go. It's Timberfield to-morrow; aly twelve miles. We'll have the drag if George will promise not to upset us."

"I should think Glen was reserved for another fate," said Sherringhame. "You'd better mind your game, Glen," added he, after a pause; "the Marquis is well ahead, thirty-seven to twenty-six. I lay you twenty to fifteen." 'Done," said the ther; and the game proceeded. What the result aight have been had Lord Glendower reserved his wwers for billiards instead of chaff, I can't say; as was, he lost.

66

"I say, Sherringhame, who is Bulstrode? Our people don't know him." The question was propanded sotto voce by Captain Porter, of the Coldtreams, whose grandfather had made a million in a gin-distillery, and whose grandson was dispensing it

two ladies at table had almost quarrelled about the color of his eyes. They both agreed in one thing, that they were the handsomest eyes in London. Madame la Duchesse de la Porte St. Martin, the earl's eldest daughter, said they were so in Paris last season; and M. le Duc was most anxious again to make the acquaintance of the Englishman who had won the La Manche Steeplechase for him on a French bred horse. It is not too much to say that Lady Evelyn's curiosity had reached a pitch not far from partiality, by the time he arrived.

"My dear Evelyn, how you do talk of this man!" said Miss Nettleship, a lady of great propriety, now occupying a semi-official position in the house as half-governess and half-companion.

"You told me I ought to pick up as much as possible from the conversation at the table, as I was