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threshold, perhaps, after this disclosure. Good! Go back to this girl, then, and tell her that you know all, and that she need tell no more lies on my account. Good-night.'

An

She had gone in and the door had closed upon her ere he could frame a sentence. The rector's whole theory of life had broken down under this tremendous revelation. His profession had given him a painful experience of humanity: he had seen oftentimes, despite the Psalmist's testimony to the contrary, the seed of the righteous begging their bread; the diligent man unable to procure work; the religious man haunted in death by ghostly terrors; the infidel dying at ease. But here there was a greater anomaly than all. He had not been unacquainted with persons who had repented to him, as a priest, of hidden crimes of various kinds; but here was one convicted by her own lips of the worst of crimes; and not only unrepentant, but exulting in it, and only regretting that its consequence had not been so fatal as she had intended it to be. And what a criminal! educated woman, so newly married that she might almost be still termed a bride, the wife of the squire of the parish (it did not strike him that this was a bathos) had any man ever heard the like! He could hardly believe her words, even yet, but he did believe them. Kind, right-thinking Mrs Tyndall -his right hand in the parish, and always ready with her purse for his poor people, and with such good views, too, upon church matters-had been in her heart-nay, was so still, since she had not repented of it a murderess! True, she had done her best to repair her evil act, and thanks be to Heaven-for her sake, even more than for that of her victim, dear as she was to him-had succeeded. The good rector put that fact foremost in his mind, and kept it there. As to revealing what Helen had told him, to Alice, or any one else, he never dreamed of it. Her dark and terrible secret was as safe, so far as he was concerned, as though it had been intrusted to him under the seal of confession. But would she be mad enough to tell it to others? That-for he had no further apprehension upon Jenny's account; he felt that Helen had spent her wrath and hate—was now his only fear.

POETRY BY THE SLICE.

THERE is a growing custom among our great authors, arising, doubtless, from the temptation of large prices and immediate gains, to risk their reputation by publishing either pieces which they have formerly set aside as unworthy of them, or such slight efforts as, were they lesser men, would attract no attention. This is especially the case with our poets. The laureate himself has of late years given us many a 'short swallow-flight of song,' that does him little credit; and Mr Longfellow is still more open to this charge. It seems but a few weeks ago that he gave us Tales from a Wayside Inn-and yet his slipshod Divine Tragedy has since appeared; and to-day he presents us with Three Books of Song, which is, mainly, a continuation of the first-mentioned book, with more Wayside Tales in it. The Prelude is excellent, and reminds one much of some of those breezy openings of Scott's cantos, especially in Marmion.

A cold, uninterrupted rain,

That washed each southern window-pane,

And made a river of the road;
A sea of mist that overflowed
The house, the barns, the gilded vane,
And drowned the upland and the plain,
Through which the oak-trees, broad and high,
Like phantom ships went drifting by;
And, hidden behind a watery screen,
The sun unseen, or only seen
As a faint pallor in the sky;
Thus cold and colourless and gray,
The morn of that autumnal day,
As if reluctant to begin,
Dawned on the silent Sudbury Inn,
And all the guests that in it lay.

Only the Poet seemed to hear,
In drowse or dream, more near and near
Across the border-land of sleep
The blowing of a blithesome horn,
That laughed the dismal day to scorn;
A splash of hoofs and rush of wheels
Through sand and mire like stranding keels,
As from the road with sudden sweep
The Mail drove up the little steep,
And stopped beside the tavern door;
A moment stopped, and then again
With crack of whip and bark of dog,
Plunged forward through the sea of fog,
And all was silent as before-
All silent save the dripping rain.

The day being wet, the guests, as in the Christmas Numbers of our periodicals, propose, by way of passing the time, to tell stories, of which the first and best is as follows. It is called the Bell of Atri. In that town, a bell was hung up in the market-place, and it was by the king ordained that whosoever, suffering wrong, should ring it, attention should be paid at once to him by justice.

How swift the happy days in Atri sped,
What wrongs were righted, need not here be said.
Suffice it that, as all things must decay,
The hempen rope at length was worn away,
Unravelled at the end, and, strand by strand,
Loosened and wasted in the ringer's hand,
Till one, who noted this in passing by,
Mended the rope with braids of briony,
So that the leaves and tendrils of the vine
Hung like a votive garland at a shrine.

By chance it happened that in Atri dwelt
A knight, with spur on heel and sword in belt,
Who loved to hunt the wild-boar in the woods,
Who loved his falcons with their crimson hoods,
Who loved his hounds and horses, and all sports
And prodigalities of camps and courts;
Loved, or had loved them; for at last, grown old,
His only passion was the love of gold.

He sold his horses, sold his hawks and hounds,
Rented his vineyards and his garden-grounds,
Kept but one steed, his favourite steed of all,
To starve and shiver in a naked stall,
And day by day sat brooding in his chair,
Devising plans how best to hoard and spare.
At length he said: 'What is the use or need
To keep at my own cost this lazy steed,
Eating his head off in my stables here,
When rents are low and provender is dear?
Let him go feed upon the public ways;
I want him only for the holidays.'

So the old steed was turned into the heat
Of the long, lonely, silent, shadeless street;
And wandered in suburban lanes forlorn,
Barked at by dogs, and torn by brier and thorn.

One afternoon, while the inhabitants of Atri were taking their siesta, they were awaked by the alarum of the accusing bell, whereupon the Syndic, mindful of the royal command, immediately repairs to where it

On its cross-beam swung Reiterating with persistent tongue, In half-articulate jargon, the old song: "Some one hath done a wrong, hath done a wrong!' What he saw was neither man nor woman, but the poor steed,

Who with uplifted head and eager eye Was tugging at the vines of briony. Well was the Syndic fitted for his office, since he at once perceived the dumb beast's cry for justice, and gave heed to it. The miserly old knight in vain endeavours either to pass off the matter as a jest, or to maintain that he has a right to do what he will with his own, even though that were to starve it. The Syndic decrees that

As this steed

example, and discounts at the outset of his career the fame of which he ought to have had the full fruition. We had occasion, some months ago, to notice in these pages with no stinted praise The Luck of Roaring Camp, by Bret Harte, and the Songs of the Sierras, by Joaquin Miller, and were happy to recognise in each a writer of great promise, and a welcome addition to that scanty band of American authors to whom the possession of genius can be honestly imputed. Since then, they have published together a little rubbishy volume, called Stories of the Sierras; and now again we have a third work by Mr Bret Harte, entitled East and West, of about the dimensions of a sixpenny pamphlet.

The praise justly awarded to him by Dickens seems to have turned his head, or that of his publishers, or he would surely never dream of flooding the market, quarterly, with collections of his 'fugitive pieces,' whereof one is generally very good indeed, three or four tolerable, and the rest absolutely good for nothing. Comparing East and West with the Three Books of Song, it is certain

Served you in youth, henceforth you shall take heed that the former contains much the more striking
To comfort his old age, and to provide
Shelter in stall, and food and field beside.

productions; while, on the other hand, it also exhibits examples of vulgarity and dullness, of

And Re Giovanni, the jovial king, when he heard which the graceful author of Evangeline is quite of it, laughed out with glee,

And cried aloud: Right well it pleaseth me!
Church-bells at best but ring us to the door;
But go not in to mass; my bell doth more:
It cometh into court and pleads the cause
Of creatures dumb and unknown to the laws;
And this shall make, in every Christian clime,
The Bell of Atri famous for all time.'

This is a pretty story, gracefully told; but it is not a first-rate production, and none of its fellows are equal to it.

After them comes Judas Maccabæus, a play which we are much mistaken if the poet has not had 'by him' a very considerable time, and which it is a pity he has not kept longer. A Handful of Translations fills up the meagre volume. It is true that Mr Longfellow has never been so ambitious as to aspire to the fame of a great poet, one of those

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incapable. Mr Bret Harte's genius is much more various, if neither so cultivated nor so tender as the elder poet; and though his natural bent is to the grim and humorous, the author of That Heathen Chinee can be graceful and tender also. Let us instance A Greyport Legend.

They ran through the streets of the seaport town; They peered from the decks of the ships that lay: The cold sea-fog that came whitening down Was never as cold or white as they.

'Ho, Starbuck and Pinckney and Tenterden!
Run for your shallops, gather your men,
Scatter your boats on the lower bay.'
Good cause for fear! In the thick midday
The hulk that lay by the rotting pier,
Filled with the children in happy play,
Parted its moorings, and drifted clear-

Drifted clear beyond the reach or call-
Thirteen children they were in all-
All adrift in the lower bay!
Said a hard-faced skipper: 'God help us all!
She will not float till the turning tide!'
Said his wife: 'My darling will hear my call,
Whether in sea or heaven she bide :'

And she lifted a quavering voice and high,
Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry,
Till they shuddered and wondered at her
side.

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It is but a foolish shipman's tale,
A theme for a poet's idle page;

But still, when the mists of doubt prevail,
And we lie becalmed by the shores of Age,

We hear from the misty troubled shore
The voice of the children gone before,

Drawing the soul to its anchorage.

In A Newport Romance, again-and how pleasant and manly it is to find a poet embalming the stories of his own time and place, instead of going for second-hand inspiration to the themes of mythological legend or Grecian song-he has caught the perfume that hangs over an old lovestory, though it is literally but the ghost of a dead and gone bouquet,' the delicate odour of a posy of mignonette that was given by a false lover to a true maiden, more than a hundred years ago. She is not seen, she is not heard; but the scent of mignonette is borne upon the air when her spirit passes through it.

I sit in the sad old house to-night-
Myself a ghost from a farther sea;

And I trust that this Quaker woman might,
In courtesy, visit me.

For the laugh is fled from porch and lawn,
And the bugle died from the fort on the hill,
And the twitter of girls on the stairs is gone,
And the grand piano is still.

Somewhere in the darkness a clock strikes two;
And there is no sound in the sad old house,
But the long veranda dripping with dew,
And in the wainscot a mouse.

The light of my study-lamp streams out
From the library door, but has gone astray

In the depths of the darkened hall. Small doubt
But the Quakeress knows the way.

Was it the trick of a sense o'erwrought
With outward watching and inward fret?
But I swear that the air just now was fraught
With the odour of mignonette!

Whether it was, or was not, the idea sets the poet
thinking on his own dead past in a very touching
way; and one is amazed at the versatility of the
man who can write such tender delicate verse, and
also The Gamblers of Poker Flat. Mr Bret Harte
himself is doubtless, however, of opinion that
grimness and humour suit him rather than poems
of the affections, for he has only given us one or
two, as if in mere evidence of his power to sing
in that strain. Where he is most himself is in
such efforts as the Hawk's Nest.

We looked in silence down across the distant
Unfathomable reach :

A silence broken by the guide's consistent
And realistic speech.

'Walker of Murphy's blew a hole through Peters
For telling him he lied;

Then up and dusted out of South Hornitos
Across the long Divide.

'We ran him out of Strong's, and up through Eden,
And 'cross the ford below;

And up this cañon (Peters' brother leadin'),
And me and Clark and Joe.

'He fou❜t us game: somehow, I disremember
Jest how the thing kem round;

Some say 'twas wadding, some a scattered ember
From fires on the ground.

'But in one minute all the hill below him
Was just one sheet of flame;

Guardin' the crest, Sam Clark and I called to him.
And-well, the dog was game!

'He made no sign: the fires of hell were round him, The pit of hell below.

We sat and waited, but never found him;

And then we turned to go.

'And then-you see that rock that's grown so bristly

With chaparral and tan

Suthin' crep' out: it might hev been a grizzly,

It might hev been a man ;

'Suthin' that howled, and gnashed its teeth, and shouted

In smoke and dust and flame;

Suthin' that sprang into the depths about it,
Grizzly or man-but game!

'That's all. Well, yes, it does look rather risky,
And kinder makes one queer

And dizzy looking down. A drop of whisky
Ain't a bad thing right here!'

There are several poems of this nature, with a local colouring always striking, and, for what we know to the contrary, truthful, but almost all with this thread of sentiment running through them, that however cruel, bad, debased a man may be, there is something left not only admirable in his character, but even tender. This may be the case with the Californian 'rough,' but we scarcely find it so at home.

Sometimes, though rarely, there is a gaiety of heart in Mr Bret Harte's poems that reminds one partly of our Thomas Hood, partly of his own fellow-countryman, the author of Nothing

We checked our pace-the red road sharply to Wear. Aspiring Miss De Laine is a pleasant

rounding;

We heard the troubled flow

Of the dark olive depths of pines, resounding

A thousand feet below.

Above the tumult of the cañon lifted,
The gray hawk breathless hung;

Or on the hill a winged shadow drifted
Where furze and thorn-bush clung;

Or where half-way the mountain side was furrowed
With many a seam and scar;

Or some abandoned tunnel dimly burrowed-
A mole-hill seen so far.

example of this. She adores Brown, a chemist,
not so much from sentiment, as because he supplies
her, by the help of science, with magical washes
and indelible dyes. At last she applies to him to
supply her, on the occasion of a certain ball, with a

Something to fill out the skirt
To the proper dimension, without being girt
In a stiff crinoline, or caged in a hoop;

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A vague circumambient space,
With shadowy boundaries made of point-lace.
The rest was but guess-work, and well might defy
The power of critical feminine eye

To define or describe: 'twere as futile to try
The gossamer web of the cirrus to trace,
Floating far in the blue of a warm summer sky.

'Midst the humming of praises and the glances of
beaux,

That greet our fair maiden wherever she goes,
Brown slipped like a shadow, grim, silent, and black,
With a look of anxiety, close in her track.
Once he whispered aside in her delicate ear,
A sentence of warning-it might be of fear :
'Don't stand in a draught, if you value your life.'
(Nothing more-such advice might be given your

wife

Or your sweetheart, in times of bronchitis and cough,

Without mystery, romance, or frivolous scoff.)
But hark to the music: the dance has begun.
The closely-draped windows wide open are flung;
The notes of the piccolo, joyous and light,
Like bubbles burst forth on the warm summer night.
Round about go the dancers; in circles they fly;
Trip, trip, go their feet as their skirts eddy by;
And swifter and lighter, but somewhat too plain,
Whisks the fair circumvolving Miss Addie De Laine.
Taglioni and Cerito well might have pined
For the vigour and ease that her movements
combined;

E'en Rigelboche never flung higher her robe
In the naughtiest city that's known on the globe.
'Twas amazing, 'twas scandalous: lost in surprise,
Some opened their mouths, and a few shut their eyes.

But hark! At the moment Miss Addie De Laine,
Circling round at the outer edge of an ellipse,
Which brought her fair form to the window again,
From the arms of her partner incautiously slips!
And a shriek fills the air, and the music is still,
And the crowd gather round where her partner

forlorn

Still frenziedly points from the wide window-sill
Into space and the night; for Miss Addie was gone!

Gone like the bubble that bursts in the sun;
Gone like the grain when the reaper is done;
Gone like the dew on the fresh morning grass;
Gone without parting farewell; and alas!
Gone with a flavour of Hydrogen Gas.

When the weather is pleasant, you frequently meet
A white-headed man slowly pacing the street;
His trembling hand shading his lack-lustre eye,
Half-blind with continually scanning the sky.
Rumour points him as some astronomical sage,
Reperusing by day the celestial page;
But the reader, sagacious, will recognise Brown,

No fruiterer of reputation goes about the town with a costermonger's barrow dispensing slices of pine-apple, but sells the fruit as a whole, in all its beauty and fragrance.

WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY.

IN THIRTY-FOUR CHAPTERS.-CHAPTER XI.

When day's oppression is not eased by night; But day by night, and night by day oppressed. TEN o'clock in the morning; the shopkeepers of Aberhirnant have got their shutters down at last the bank door is just opened, and John, the clerk, -they are lieabeds mostly, the Aberhirnant folk; stands on the steps, looking up and down the street. Presently, Mr Rowlands carriage drives up to the door. Within it are the banker and his daughter, Winny.

'Tell me, John,' cried Winny, 'what is this dreadful story I hear of a young man being lost among the mountains last night, and from our carriage too, and what has been done to search for him? Tell me, quick.'

'Indeed, Miss Winny, there was a young man

But there, I'll tell your father all about it. I can't tell you; he may say to you what he likes.' 'Oh, Mr Rowlands, bach, what have I done?' cried John, following him into the inner office, and shutting the door. He was a nice young man too; and I've killed him.'

'Nonsense!' said the banker, turning pale'nonsense!'

'But I have, Mr Rowlands; as surely as if I had done it with my own hands. All night long, I've seen him lying stark in the snow; and his eyes fall on me wherever I go! Oh, Mr Rowlands, Mr Rowlands-you who set me on; it was for it cannot be I who have done this! It was you, your sake I did it. How can you recompense me for it?'

'It only wanted that,' said Rowlands-' only that to make the thing unendurable. What can be done? The young man is lost; we must save the bank. On Monday, the Plasuchaf rents will be paid in, and we shall be safe for a while.'

"Those bottom bonds have been presented for the Arthur's Bride,' suggested John. They must be met at once; five hundred pounds odd.'

'O that ship, that ship! I wish she were at the bottom of the sea.'

'And why not?' cried John; it's the best place for a ship for sure. They're no good now; nobody makes any money by them. All the good, careful men who mean to make money are throw

Trying vainly to conjure his lost sweetheart down, ing their ships away now, master. A word to the

And learn the stern moral this story must teach, That Genius may lift its love out of its reach.

There is surely an ease and lightness about these lines which admirably suit their theme; and indeed, it is one of Mr Bret Harte's merits that he varies his manner with his subject. If there is nothing so good in the present collection as in The Heathen Chinee and other Poems, there are certainly some things which nobody could write except himself. Still we do beg of him and Mr Longfellow, instead of publishing a handful of scraps once a quarter, printed in 'rivulets of type in meadows of margin' to swell their scanty contents, to wait awhile until their hived labours produce a respectable comb.

captain-eh, master?'

John, I am ashamed of you to say such things. Ellis is not such a rogue as you think him to be.'

'No; he's not a rogue; he's a very clever man; and good-hearted too-yes, indeed. But for all that, he'd lose your ship for you, Mr Rowlands, bach, if you made it worth his while.'

'Have you any conscience, John ?'

'Well, indeed, you see, master, I've only two pounds a week; and I haven't anything to spare for luxuries. Perhaps, if you'd given me the rise you promised me years ago'Wait and see,' said the banker-'wait and see Perhaps, if I get over this Eh! who's that?'

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Every creak of the swing-door of the bank, ment, even were the Pride really lost, without every footstep as it sounded on the pavement out-legal preliminaries; but then the banker was side, went to Rowlands' heart; and when the foot- shaky. There are so many shaky people in the step passed by, or the customer in the bank turned out to be a man who wanted to pay some money in, or to cash a cheque for five pounds ten, Rowlands felt as though he had escaped a calamity. But the next footstep brought back the same fear, and thus went round the day in eager watching and listening. The suspense had told upon the banker already; it was destined to tell yet more. 'It's the Hen Doctor,' said John, popping his head into Rowlands' room.

Rowlands turned pale for a moment. The thought of the Hen Doctor and the notes he held tormented him constantly. It was the one pressing immediate danger. The others might be fought off; this couldn't. And yet so weary was he of this wretched fight with fate, that he hesitated before he went out to speak to the Hen Doctor. To rest in his own chair, his arms upon the table, his head leaning upon them, seemed to him the utmost happiness and solace he could expect to have. His mind was quite unstrung; his very limbs were unnerved, and refused their office; and yet he must move about briskly, rub his hands, and cry ha, ha! With a great effort, he roused himself, and went into the bank counting-house.

'Umph!' said the doctor; 'so you keep going on still?'

'Yes, doctor; we manage to get on without your pills or your draughts either."

'Yah! perhaps you'll find I've got a dose for you still-yes, indeed. Look here, Rowlands; I want my money for the ship.' 'What ship?'

'What ship! The Menevia's Pride, as you know very well. I have two ounces of her. She's lost; give me my money.'

world, that a man of fierce headstrong temper and indomitable will may run his course, knocking them down right and left, like skittles, as he goes. Rowlands made a rapid mental calculation. An eighth of three thousand pounds would be three hundred and seventy-five pounds a serious sum, but better than a run. He drew himself up with dignity. 'Doctor, I've always paid on the nail all my life, and I'm not going to begin with legal objections now. Give me your bond in the sum of three thousand pounds, as an indemnity to repay me if the Pride reappears, and you shall have the money.'

'Well, thank you, Mr Rowlands, bach. I like you better than I did before.'

'Shall we pass it to your credit?' 'Credit! No, by Jupiter! No credit for me; let me have the money here in my hand. Gold, too sovereigns. I'm going to pay for the house I've bought in Pen Street, and the fools will never think of weighing the money.'

'John,' said Rowlands feebly, 'three seventyfive.'

'Well, thank you, Mr Rowlands'-putting the money into his hat-'I'll go and see Gwen, and tell her how handsomely you've settled with me, and you'll have her to see you directly; yes, by Jupiter.'

Now that you've done your business with that horrid old doctor, tell me, John, tell me, papa, what about the young man who was lost?' said Winny.

"There's nothing more about him, Miss Winny; he'll not be found till the snow clears away. He took to the Sarn Helen, and he must have perished with the cold before the morning.'

'The Sarn Helen: is not that the Roman road that runs over the mountains, and crosses the

She isn't lost, I tell you; there's no proof Llanfechan Road?' of it.'

'If there is, will you pay me?'

'Of course I will.'

'Down on the nail?'

'Down on the nail, if you like.'

'Very well. Now, just read this, Mr Rowlands, bach,'

The Hen Doctor put into his hand a paper which contained a certified extract from the ship's registry in the custom-house, giving the substance of Captain Ellis's report.

'That's no proof,' said Rowlands; 'I've heard all that before that's no proof.'

'No proof!' exclaimed the doctor in a fury; 'what! no proof! What proof will you have, eh? Come, will you pay me, yes or no, in a minute

come?'

'I shall pay, of course, if it's right.'
'Right or wrong, will you pay? Come, now, in

a minute.'

Had the banker been strong, he would have shewn the Hen Doctor the door; but he was not strong, he was very weak; he could put on the appearance of strength, but, in truth, his strength had vanished with his solvency. The Hen Doctor was angry and vociferous; he held notes to the amount of two thousand pounds and upwards: he was quite wrong, of course; could not compel

* Two sixteenth shares.

'Indeed, I don't know about its being Roman, Miss Winny. Helen's Way, they call it, and Helen was a wise woman, they say; and people say you may meet her now among the hills carrying a cross; but that the man who sees her never lives to see another woman.'

"Then I will go, papa; I will drive to the Sarn Helen, and I will set all the shepherds and all the farmers and everybody to look for him. Alive or dead, we will find him; and I shall offer a reward in your name--a hundred pounds if alive, fifty if dead!'

'My dear, my dear!' said the old banker, 'I won't pay it.'

Then I will, out of my own money. What was his name, do you know, John?'

'Here is his portmanteau, Miss Winny. I brought it here, not knowing what to do with it.'

At the sight of the brown leather portmanteau, she felt a shock quite new to her. It gave a reality and distinctness to her imagination of the young man, lone and lost among the hills; he was no shadow to her now, but a real existence, and the thought nerved her to attempt his rescue.

A name was painted on the portmanteau in large black letters: Gerard Robertson.

Presently, a little crowd gathered in the marketpay-place-if market-place it might be called, which was merely a widening of the cross street in which stood the bank-a crowd gathered round the

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