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betrays her son, and enhances the gifts of wealth and well-born beauty by a radiation out of the air, and clouds, and forests that skirt the road,— a certain haughty favor, as if from patrician genii to patricians, a kind of aristocracy in nature, a prince of the power 5 of the air.

The moral sensibility which makes Edens and Tempes so easily, may not be always found, but the material landscape is never far off. We can find these enchantments without visiting the Como Lake, or the Madeira 10 Islands. We exaggerate the praises of local scenery. In every landscape the point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock as well as from the top of the Alleghenies. The stars at night stoop down over the brown- 15 est, homeliest common with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt. The up-rolled clouds and the colors of morning and evening, will transfigure maples and alders. The difference between landscape and land- 20 scape is small, but there is great difference in the beholders. There is nothing so wonderful in any particular landscape as the necessity of being beautiful under which every landscape lies. Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty breaks in everywhere.

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TWO EXTRACTS FROM "HENRY ESMOND."

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

For a sketch of the life of Thackeray, see Book VI, page 28.

I.

MY SUPERIORS ARE ENGAGED IN PLOTS FOR THE
RESTORATION OF KING JAMES II.

NOT having been able to sleep for thinking of some lines for eels which he had placed the night before, the lad was lying in his little bed, waiting for the hour when the gate would be open, and he and his comrade, 5 Job Lockwood, the porter's son, might go to the pond and see what fortune had brought them. At daybreak Job was to awaken him, but his own eagerness for the sport had served as a réveillé long since -so long that it seemed to him as if the day never would come. 10 It might have been four o'clock when he heard the

door of the opposite chamber, the chaplain's room, open, and the voice of a man coughing in the passage. Harry jumped up, thinking for certain it was a robber, or hoping perhaps for a ghost, and, flinging open his 15 own door, saw before him the chaplain's door open, and

a light inside, and a figure standing in the doorway, in the midst of a great smoke which issued from the room. "Who's there?" cried out the boy, who was of a good spirit.

"Silence!" whispered the other; "'tis I, my boy!" and, holding his hand out, Harry had no difficulty in recognizing his master and friend, Father Holt. A curtain was over the window of the chaplain's room that looked to the court, and Harry saw that the smoke 5 came from a great flame of papers which were burning in a brazier when he entered the chaplain's room. After giving a hasty greeting and blessing to the lad, who was charmed to see his tutor, the father continued the burning of his papers, drawing them from a cup- 10 board over the mantelpiece wall, which Harry had never seen before.

Father Holt laughed, seeing the lad's attention fixed at once on this hole. "That is right, Harry," he said; "faithful little friend, see all and say nothing. You 15 are faithful, I know."

"I know I would go to the stake for you," said Harry.

"I don't want your head," said the father, patting it kindly; "all you have to do is to hold your tongue. 20 Let us burn these papers and say nothing to anybody. Should you like to read them?"

Harry Esmond blushed and held down his head; he had looked as the fact was, and without thinking, at the paper before him; and though he had seen it, could 25 not understand a word of it, the letters being quite clear enough, but quite without meaning. They burned the papers, beating down the ashes in a brazier so that scarce any traces of them remained.

Harry had been accustomed to see Father Holt in more dresses than one; and he was, in consequence, in no wise astonished that the priest should now appear before him in a riding dress, with large buff leather 5 boots, and a feather to his hat, plain, but such as gentlemen wore.

"You know the secret of the cupboard," said he, laughing, "and must be prepared for other mysteries"; and he opened-but not a secret cupboard this time 10 only a wardrobe, which he usually kept locked, and from which he now took out two or three dresses and perruques of different colors, and a couple of swords of a pretty make (Father Holt was an expert practitioner with the small-sword, and every day while he was at 15 home he and his pupil practiced this exercise, in which the lad became a very great proficient), a military coat and cloak, and a farmer's smock, and placed them in the large hole over the mantelpiece from which the papers had been taken.

20

"If they miss the cupboard," he said, "they will not find these; if they find them they 'll tell no tales, except that Father Holt wore more suits of clothes than one."

Harry was alarmed at the notion that his friend was about to leave him; but "No," the priest said, "I may 25 very likely come back with my lord in a few days. We are to be tolerated; we are not to be persecuted. But they may take a fancy to pay a visit at Castlewood ere our return; and, as gentlemen of my cloth are suspected, they might choose to examine my papers, which

concern nobody

at least not them." And to this day, whether the papers in cipher related to politics or to the affairs of that mysterious society whereof Father Holt was a member, his pupil, Harry Esmond, remains in entire ignorance.

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The rest of his goods, his small wardrobe, etc., Holt left untouched on his shelves and in his cupboard, taking down with a laugh, however, - and flinging into the brazier, where he only half burned them, some theological treatises which he had been writing. "And 10 now," said he, "Henry, my son, you may testify, with a safe conscience, that you saw me burning Latin sermons the last time I was here before I went away to London; and it will be daybreak directly, and I must be away before Lockwood is stirring."

"Will not Lockwood let you out, sir?" Esmond asked. Holt laughed; he was never more gay or good-humored than when in the midst of action or danger.

15

"Lockwood knows nothing of my being here, mind 20 you," he said; "nor would you, you little wretch! had you slept better. You must forget that I have been here; and now farewell. Close the door and go to your own room and don't come out till-stay, why should you not know one secret more? I know I know you 25 will never betray me."

In the chaplain's room were two windows; the one looking into the court facing westward to the fountain; the other a small casement strongly barred, and looking

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