my eyes too sharply fixed upon the legs of the tables. He declared that when I was present, an adverse influence seemed to pervade the room, due, apparently, to my painful lack of spiritual sympathies. But the Professor condoned my failure in the regular psychical line, in consideration of my brilliant success as a beholder of wraiths and visions. After I took my degree that summer, he used all his influence to procure me the post of keeper of the Accadian Antiquities at the Museum, for which my previous studies had excellently fitted me: and by his friendly aid I was enabled to obtain the post, though I regret to say that, in spite of his credulity in supernatural matters, he still refuses to believe in the correctness of my conjectural interpretation of the celebrated Amalekite cylinders imported by Mr. Ananias, which I have deciphered in so very simple and satisfactory a manner. As everybody knows, my translation may be regarded as perfectly certain, if only one makes the very modest assumption that the cylinders were originally engraved upside down by an Aztec captive, who had learned broken Accadian, with a bad accent, from a Chinese exile, and who occasionally employed Egyptian hieroglyphics in incorrect senses, to piece cut his own very imperfect idiom and doubtful spelling of the early Babylonian language. The solitary real doubt in the matter is whether certain extraordinary marks in the upper left hand corner of the cylinder are to be interpreted as accidental scratches, or as a picture representing the triumph of a king over seven bound prisoners, or, finally, as an Accadian sentence in cuneiforms which may be translated either as 'To the memory of Om the Great,' or else as Pithor the High Priest dedicates a fat goose to the family dinner on the 25th of the month of midwinter.' Every candid and unprejudiced mind must admit that these small discrepancies or alternatives in the opinions of experts can cast no doubt at all upon the general soundness of the method employed. But persons like the Professor, while ready to accept any evidence at all where their own prepossessions are concerned, can never be induced to believe such plain and unvarnished statements of simple scientific knowledge.

However, the end of it all was that before I had been a month at the Museum, I had obtained the Professor's consent to my marriage with Nora: and as I had had Nora's own consent long before, we were duly joined together in holy matrimony early in October at Oxford, and came at once to live in Hampstead. So, as it turned out, I finally owed the sweetest and best little wife in all Christendom to the mysterious occurrence in Piccadilly.

J. ALEUTENOT WILSON.

'The Wearing of the Green.'

BY BASIL, AUTHOR OF LOVE THE DEBT.'

When laws can stop the blades of grass

From growing as they grow;

And when the flowers in summer time
Their colours daren't show:
Why then I'll change the colour that
I wear in my caubeen;

But, till that day, please God, I'll stick
To the Wearing of the Green.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SUMMERS' HOUSEHOLD.

If the country enjoys a momentary quiet, it is pleaded as an argument in favour of the good effect of wholesome rigours. If, on the contrary, the country grows more discontented, and if riots and disorders multiply, new arguments are furnished for giving a vigorous support to the authority of the Government, on account of the rebellious disposition of the people.'-Edmund BurkE (Letter on the State of Ireland, written to the Rev. Dr. Hussey).

IRISH people on their first visit to England are aggressively selfdefensive. They imagine that their English friends remember and despise their nationality every minute of the day; whereas their English friends-unless the matter is obtruded upon their notice-concern themselves about it hardly more than about the breed of the beef on their table-be it Scotch, Irish, or English. If, indeed, the Irish make themselves in any way offensive, their English friends are at once reminded of their nationality; if, on the contrary, the Irish prove singularly able or singularly agreeable, their English friends not only forgive, but so far forget the offence of their birth, as even to regard them as English. Hence it comes that the Irish contribute nothing to the greatness, and commit most of the crime, of this country. Like treason (appropriate comparison !) an Irishman never comes to good:--

Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none will call it treason.

Unless, then, an Irishman makes himself in some way offensive, his English friends do not trouble themselves about his nationality. In truth, his English friends have very little thought to spare from themselves at all. While the vain and supersensitive Irishman discerns a sneer in each look and a slight in each word, his English friend-who can no more get out of himself than off his own shadow -is not thinking of him at all one way or the other. And because he is not thinking of him at all, or of anyone but himself, an

Englishman will sometimes say the most ofensive things unintentionally and unconsciously. He is sometimes doubly narrow--narrow in imagination and narrow in sympathy-so that he could not if he would, and would not if he could, put himself in another's place.

Now Mr. Summers, senior, was an unusually narrow specimen of an Englishman. Not only was Terence's 'Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto,' a world too wide for him, but he could feel no concern in or for any man or matter that didn't bear some relation to himself personally. His own affairs were of planetary importance; the affairs of others were of importance in proportion to their bearing upon his own. If you informed him, on your doctor's authority, that your hacking cough was a symptom of a galloping consumption, his first thought would be that he had no hacking cough; his next, that consumption was supposed to be, in some extreme cases, infectious; and his third, that you would feel an absorbing interest in a cough he had last winter for a week or two, to which he would at once divert the conversation.

It might, then, be supposed that Mr. Summers would take no more interest in Ireland and the Irish than in the revelations of the microscope; yet he did, and a deep interest too—

Ucalegon

Proximus ardet

Confiscation was infectious, and Mr. Summers had two tenants who paid him 80l. and 30l. a year respectively, which might any day, by the Irish precedent, be reduced by one half. Therefore, he held upon the Irish question views strong to vehemence, derived, like all his political views, from articles in the newspapers. Curiously enough, however, his present views on this question were derived from 'The Pall Mall Gazette,' of all papers in the world. That journal had printed prominently a sarcastic letter, headed, "Solution of the Irish Difficulty,' suggesting (à propos of the Irish wouldbe volunteers who crossed to Flintshire to be drilled) that Irish Protestants should be draughted for drill to England at the expense of the Government and restored, armed, to their own country in successive batches, till all of that creed between the ages of eighteen and thirty had passed through the mill. Then Ireland was to be cut loose from England until, in the inevitable civil war which would ensue, the pure Celts and Catholics unarmed and undrilled would be nearly exterminated and the Protestant victors so weakened as to be again governable by England. This letter having been copied into one of Mr. Summers' favourite prints, was taken seriously by him and furnished him with his present views on the Irish question.

If, therefore, Miles and Norah, like most Irish people on an

English visit, expected their nationality to be remembered and remarked upon daily, they were not disappointed. For, though Mr. Summers had been cautioned by his son to respect their guests' patriotism, he gave free expression to his opinions of the Irish; and his opinions of the Irish agreed in the main with those of Dean Wren-Sir Christopher's father-as they are handed down to us by Sir Thomas Browne. 'Ireland and Crete neither breed nor brook any venomous creature, which was a providence of God, considering that no creature can be worse than the natives themselves.' Such opinions as this he would express to his guests without the least consciousness of being offensive; for his mind was too full of his own feelings to have room for a thought of theirs.

We are not, however, about to weary our readers with these opinions—trite truisms to be found in almost every English newspaper-but we thought it right to mention them in passing as detracting somewhat from the comfort of Miles and Norah at the Towers.

But Ireland was not the only subject on which Mr. Summers spoke authoritatively; he spoke authoritatively on every subject whereon he condescended to give an opinion at all. In fact, he knew so little of anything as to imagine that he knew all about everything. According to Bacon, Fuller, and Pope, a little learning is an intoxicating thing, and so it doubtless was in their days. But now a man had need to know nothing almost, to be positive about everything; so much wider is the horizon in art, science, politics, nature, and religion, disclosed even to the most cursory glance in our day. That Mr. Summers knew nothing of anything we cannot certainly say, for he was supposed to be an expert in fowls, or, at least, in fowls of a certain breed-Dorking, we think. But on all other subjects he was the most ignorant and the most positive man we have ever met. If a stranger ventured to differ from him (only a stranger would venture), he would look perplexed for a moment and then repeat what he had said as though he had not been heard; and this repetition he appeared to regard as an additional and conclusive argument. In truth, like many men born to wealth and position, he took the social deference conceded to his rank as a deference conceded to his intellect, and by some curious mental confusion imagined his authority in questions of sport, politics, and religion to be as indisputable as his authority in his own house, grounds, and stables.

Mr. Summers received Miles' apology for Norah's absence from lunch so graciously that Mrs. Summers' anxious mind was relieved

of its load.

‘Qur air will soon set her up,' he said, and his manner suggested

that the Springthorpe air was his private property. He repeated then a pompous grace-his daughter Ann crossing herself and curtseying at the proper places-for Ann was of an age which it would be hardly fair to indicate more nearly than by admitting that she was a devotee of two years' standing. During lunch Mr. Summers was the chief and almost the sole speaker, and his chief and almost sole topic was Ireland. He propounded to Miles his 'Kilkenny cats' plan for the pacification of the country-to arm, drill, and discipline in England the Protestant minority of the north, and then to let them loose, by a separation of the two countries, upon the unarmed and undrilled Catholics.

Why, that's Bobadil's plan,' Miles replied, smiling good humouredly.

'Hem! I believe there was some suggestion of the kind in the newspapers,' Mr. Summers admitted, imagining Bobadil to have been the correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette.' Reid, feeling uncomfortable at the turn the conversation had taken, attempted to change it.

'You mustn't think, Mr. Wyndham-' he began. But his father was not going to allow his guest to imagine that he was indebted for his ideas to this newspaper person Miles had mentioned, and he therefore broke in with:-'It has been an idea of mine as long as I can remember, probably before the gentleman Mr. Wyndham has mentioned was born. "Cut loose," I've always said, "cut loose Ireland, and then let them fight it out among themselves." The Ulster men having English and Scotch blood in their veins would be more than a match for five times their number of Celts and Catholics.'

Roman Catholics,' interjected Ann emphatically, though in a low voice. She held Roman Catholics to be dissenters from the only true Catholic Anglican Church. The correction broke from Ann instinctively, for as a Sunday school teacher she dwelt weekly to her class upon the essential difference between Catholic and Roman Catholic. Hence this presumptuous correction of Mr. Summers slipped from her almost mechanically, to her father's stupefaction and her own confusion. Mr. Summers, having looked at her for a moment as though he could hardly believe his ears, and having thus made everyone at the table thoroughly uncomfortable, resumed with a composure so perfect that, but for an access of pompousness in his manner, you would hardly have supposed that anything had happened.

'As I was saying, Mr. Wyndham, when I was interrupted, I should leave the Protestants to settle with the Catholics in Ireland, and not take the country back till it was well weeded,'