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head to foot, yet they push bravely on. They are followed by a company of priests the elder men in cabs, the younger on foot and humming a low chant. They are all attired in gorgeous robes, and every church they pass sends forth a sad mourning toll from its glittering belfry. The hearse comes next, adorned with gilded figures of angels, and drawn by four or six sable steeds. Men bearing torches walk on either side of it. The corpse reclines on a bier exposed to the public gaze. It is habited in white, and no pains have been spared to render its appearance as striking as possible. The hair is carefully braided, the pallid cheeks and lips are rouged, a rose-bud being perhaps laid on the latter. The sight is ghastly and painful in the

extreme.

What a contrast between all this show and circumstance and the passive shrunk en body in whose honor it is done, and which rolls from side to side with every motion of the hearse, jolting now over jagged stones, and anon tottering into some foul gutter! A full regimental band tramps behind, toiling painfully through some excruciating funeral march, and raising notes truly heartrending in their dreary melancholy. Their music may be heard far away, for their trumpets blare as though they would wake the dead. Sometimes the military band is replaced by a gipsy troop with their softer fiddles and pipes. The effect is then less distressing, for there is something solemn and soothing in the sweet refined tones of the poor tzigan. The carriages of the relatives and friends of the deceased close the procession. The mourners, the women particularly, usual ly make great demonstrations of grief, wailing, weeping, and shrieking, and occasionally striving to precipitate themselves from the vehicle. Amongst the women belonging to the poorer classes the scene is sometimes a little ludicrous, as they seem to consider it their bounden duty to raise an extra lugubrious howl the moment that any well-dressed person strikes upon their view.

Until lately the line of demarcation between noble and commoner was very strongly drawn. There was no middle class.

But travel and the arrival and settling of strangers in Roumania have tended considerably to mitigate this state

of things, and there has arisen at Bucharest a kind of second society consisting of the foreign merchants and of the petits boyards, as they are named. Still, those composing the cream of society do not recognize this supplement, and both classes remain distinct and separate. The society of Bucharest embraces the descendants of former reigning princes, the great Wallachian boyards, the Moldavian nobility who have quitted Jassy and located themselves in the metropolis, the members of the various diplomatic corps stationed at Bucharest, and a few persons whose position in their own country has been ascertained, and who have lived long in the land.

The Wallachian aristocracy are on the most intimate terms with each other, being linked together by marriage and often by the hereditary alliance of centuries. They are most exclusive, and till recently would have nothing to say to any one exercising any profession whatever. There is a certain amount of jealousy and rivalry existing between them and those Moldavians whom the union of the two provinces and the constant sitting of the Parliament at Bucharest have brought to that city. The Moldavians meet at their own houses, the Wallachians at theirs, and foreigners can have no possible cause for complaint so long as these people practise exclusiveness even among themselves.

But the Roumans are not without thought for their dependents, in whose welfare they often greatly interest themselves. The gentlemen are well acquainted with their farmers and peasants, their treatment of these being almost patriarchal. And the ladies are not too delicate to mix with the country girls. Some will even join the merry Sunday evening dance, that may be observed on nearly every village green during the summer and autumn months.

There is a polite respectful air about the plebeian Rouman, which contrasts most agreeably with the uncouth roughness of the lower classes in some more civilised lands. One can immediately perceive that he has been kept under proper control, and has not been caressed and fooled till he no longer knows his right place in the world. He has probably never heard those sublime theories relating to the rights of man, or the effi

cacy of chronic drunkenness and strikes. Yet his condition is not unenviable. He receives a fair wage for a fair day's work, and, if thrifty and frugal, may lay money by and prosper in his generation. His wants are few and inexpensive. There are public institutions in plenty to help him should he fall ill, and there is no lack of charitable spirits when the winter is unusually protracted or the maize-crop has failed. The very beggar in the streets-and there are not a few of them here must realise a comfortable income, since none, boyard or priest, shopman or servant, will refuse a small copper coin to the poor and needy.

The Wallachian boyard lives in great style, and with much display. His house is large and commodious, and splendidly furnished. The ceilings here are beautifully painted. He has a host of servants and satellites attached to his mansion-two or three men-cooks, the same number of coachmen, valets, footmen, and maids in battalions. These, some times to the number of thirty or forty, all inhabit his house and courtyard, and in many cases the wives and children dwell with them. But the master is good-natured and generous, and makes no objection to a system which would exasperate any one else. He keeps open house, and has a dinner prepared for any friends who may present themselves. It is on record that as many as forty guests have sat down at a table to which none had been previously invited. This would test pretty severely the resources of most establishments, but it affects him not. His cuisine is of the most recherché order, in fact, a combination of whatever is most excellent in others. Here you have the very best of everything, a mingling of the Eastern and Western modes, that is most piquant. He has lived over and over again at the best hotels in every corner of Europe, and his taste and experience are perfect.

His horses are magnificent, and his stables probably contain some English thoroughbreds. He has his own particular carriages and coachmen, and his wife hers, quite distinct-a very convenient arrangement, it may be remarked, whereby much trouble and annoyance are avoided. For, in this country, woman certainly is in the fullest enjoyment of her rights and privileges, and, as is but

natural, seems determined to make the most of them. She has her own horses and servants, her own suite of apartments, and is thorough mistress of herself, all the livelong day. She may expend a fortune upon her toilette, indulge in any amount of flirtation, and, if she grow weary of her long-suffering husband, she is free to wed another whenever she may fancy so doing.

Divorce is not infrequent in this country, particularly amongst the upper classes of society. The Greek Church allows three divorces, and these are often accorded for the most trivial reasons, such as slight incompatibility of temper, extravagance on the part of the husband, and so forth.

But this passion for divorces seems to be abating a little, for the last generation of married couples live apparently on better terms with one another than the preceding.

It is scarcely a matter for wonder that marriages have not, as a rule, turned out very prosperously, seeing that they are arranged after so eccentric a method. When a girl arrives at a marriageable age, her sire fixes upon her a certain dot or dowry, the fame of which is diligently spread abroad by the friends of the family in question, as well as by the professional match-makers. This dowry must prove, in most cases, a most severe and unpleasant drain upon the paternal finances, as the daughter's happiness and worldly success depend in a great measure upon its magnitude. Thus a man blessed with three female olive-branches will not seldom bestow three-quarters of his fortune upon them, and exist contentedly on the remaining quarter. If he have sons, so much the worse for them; they must satisfy their glowing ambition with what they can get, and pay their court in turn to damsels possessed of a goodly heritage. Eligible youths present themselves as suitors for the hand of the fair candidate for Hymen's rites, and a list of their names and qualifications, if any, is handed to the lady, who makes her selection accordingly. Some of these ardent lovers may be personally unknown to her, nay, may even have never beheld those peerless charms by which they are so deeply smitten, yet she may choose one from among them notwithstanding. Of a truth, marriage

is here a lottery, if anywhere, as it always will be; more especially when those most concerned have had few or no opportunities of cultivating each other's acquaintance, and of forming some slight estimate of the merits of their future yoke-fellows.

Nor is duelling a dim shade of the past. It has not died a natural death, in this land at least. There are some times three or four duels a week during the Carnival, when balls and dissipation are at their climax. The pistol and the rapier are the usual weapons, for the sword seems to have been resigned to the ruder German by common consent. The results are not always serious, though there are some famous duels on record. The fair sex is naturally the root of this, as of other evils. An accidental stepping on a lady's train, a trifling error in the dance, a casual glance, innocent and unmeaning as a babe's, may sometimes lead to the gravest consequences.

ant.

The Church festivals are scrupulously observed at Bucharest, the shops being closed on all those that are more importThe feasts of Christmas and Easter are drawn out to three days, during which period nothing, not excepting bread and tobacco, can be bought.

The lower classes fast most strictly in Lent. Indeed, the year seems to be made up entirely of holidays and penitential days. Men are either feasting or fasting, a régime which does not conduce very greatly to health, and which, sooner or later, must tell on the constitution. This is the case likewise with the Russian peasantry, who are also much weakened thereby.

Visits are always paid on saints' days to all who bear the same name.

Thus

on St. Demetrius' Day all the Demetriuses are called upon and congratulated. And this is not always easy work, seeing that some names are exceedingly popular with the natives.

Sunday and Thursday are the chief days for outings with the great mass of the inhabitants. They visit, shop, give evening parties, and see the play on these days. Ordinary people stay much at home on the other days and live in true Eastern style, making no toilette, but sitting about in a loose robe from morning till night, and smoking a multitude of Turkish cigarettes. As they will never stir out on foot, and must always be dressed most extravagantly, they probably discover that such expensive tastes cannot be satisfied every day in the week.

It is in the summer, when the aristocracy are abroad, that they most distinguish themselves. The suburb of Vacaresti contains certain mineral springs of which old and young, healthy and sickly, crowd alike to drink in the early dawn during the summer months. There are such displays of equipages and attire as must be seen to be imagined. Some of the fair ones will rise at two o'clock in the morning, and begin the pleasant task of adorning by candlelight, that they may be ready to start at five and take their part in the most pressing business of the day. A comedy, entitled 'The Waters of Vacaresti,' has been written by the great Wallachian actor, M. Milo, to satirise all these proceedings.

On a hot summer's evening the gardens are crowded with fair women walking up and down the paths in the balldresses they wore during the winter season.-Temple Bar.

CHAPTER XXIV.

YOUNG MUSGRAVE.

BY MRS. OLIPHANT.

BACK AGAIN AT THE CASTLE.

THE Squire went home after his game of ducks and drakes in the most curious, bewildered state of mind. The shock of all these recent events had affected him much more than any one was aware, and Randolph's visit and desire to make

sure about "family arrangements," had filled up the already almost overflowing measure of secret pain. It had momentarily recalled, like a stimulant too sharp and strong, not only his usual power of resistance, but a force of excitement strong enough to overwhelm the faculties which for the time it invigorated; and while he walked about his woods after

his first interview with his son, the Squire was on the edge of a catastrophe, his brain reeling, his strained powers on the verge of giving way. The encounter with little Nello on the lake side had exercised a curious arresting power upon the old and worn edifice of the mind which was just then tottering to its fall. It stopped this fall for the moment. The trembling old walls were not perhaps in a less dangerous state, but the wind that had threatened them dropped, and the building stood, shaken to its foundation, and at the mercy of the next blast, but yet so far safe-safe for the moment, and with all the semblance of calm about it. To leave metaphor, the Squire's mind was hushed and lulled by that encounter with the soft peacefulness of childhood, in the most curious, and to himself inexplicable way. Not, indeed, that he tried to explain. He was as unconscious of what was going on in himself as most of us are. He did not know that the various events which had shaken him had anything more than pain in them he was unaware of the danger. Even Randolph's appearance and the thought of the discussions which must go on when his back was turned, as to the things that would happen after his death-he was not aware that there was more in them than an injury against which his whole spirit revolted. He did not know that this new annoyance had struck at the very stronghold of vitality, the little strength left to him. Which of us does know when the coup-de-grace is given? He only knew the hurt the wound-and the forlorn stand he had made against it, and almost giddy lightness with which he had tried to himself to smile it down, and feel himself superior. Neither did he know what Nello had done for him. His meeting with the child was like the touch of something soft and healing upon a wound. The contact cooled and calmed his entire being. It seemed to put out of his mind all sense of wounding and injury. It did more; it took all distinctness at once from the moral and the physical landmarks round him. The harsher outlines of life grew blurred and dim, and instead of the bitter facts of the past, which he had so long determined to ignore, and the facts of the present which had so pushed themselves upon

him, the atmosphere fell all into a soft confusion. A kind of happiness stole over him. What had he to be happy about? yet he was so. Sometimes in our English summers there is a mist of heat in the air, confusing all the lines of the landscape as much as a fog in winter

in which the hills and lakes and sky are nothing but one dazzle and faint glory of suppressed light and warmth light confusing but penetrating: warmth perhaps stifling to the young and active, but consolatory to those whose blood runs chill. This was the mental condition in which the Squire was. His troubles seemed to die away, though he had so many of them. Randolph, his middle-aged son, ceased to be an assailant and invader, and dropped into the dark like other troublesome things-not a son to be proud of, but one to put up with easily enough. John? he did not remember much about John; but he remembered very distinctly his old playfellow little Johnny, his little brother. "Eighteen months - only eighteen months between them :" he almost could hear the tone in which his mother said that long ago. If Johnny had lived he would have been-how old would he have been now? Johnny would have been seventy-five or so had he lived— but the Squire did not identify the number of years. There was eighteen months between them, that was all he could remember, and of that he sat and mused, often saying the words over to himself, with a soft dreamy smile upon his face. He was often not quite clear that it was not Johnny himself, little Johnny, with whom he had been playing on the waterside.

This change affected him in all things. He had never been so entirely amiable. When Randolph returned to the assault, the Squire would smile and make no reply. He was no longer either irritated or saddened by anything his son might say-indeed he did not take much notice of him one way or another, but would speak of the weather, or take up a book, smiling, when his son began. This was was very bewildering to the family. Randolph, who was dull and self-important, was driven half-frantic by it, thinking that his father meant to insult him. But the Squire had no purpose of any kind, and Mary, who knew him better,

at last grew vaguely alarmed without knowing what she feared. He kept up all his old habits, took his walks as usual, dressed with his ordinary care-but did everything in a vague and hazy way, requiring to be recalled to himself, when anything important happened. When he was in his library, where he had read and written, and studied so much, the Squire arranged all his tools as usual, opened his book, even began to write his letters, putting the date-but did no more. Having accomplished that beginning, he would lean back in his chair and muse for hours together. It was not thinking even, but only musing; no subject abode with him in these long still hours, and not even any consistent thread of recollections. Shadows of the past came sailing-floating about him, that was all; very often only that soft, wandering thought about little Johnny, occupied all his faculties. Eighteen months between them, no more! He rarely got beyond that fact, though he never could quite tell whether it was the little brother's face or another-his son's, or his son's son's-which floated through this mist of recollections. He was quite happy in the curious trance which had taken possession of him. He had no active personal feelings, except that of pleasure in the recollection and thought of little Johnny-a thought which pleased and amused, and touched his heart. All anger and harm went out of the old man, he spoke softly when he spoke at all, and suffered himself to be disturbed as he never would have done before. Indeed he was far too gentle and good to be natural. The servants talked of his condition with dismay, yet with that agreeable anticipation of something new, which makes even a "death in the house" more or less desirable. "Th' owd Squire's not long for this world," the cook and Tom Gardiner said to each other. As for Eastwood, he shook his head with mournful importance. "I give you my word, I might drop a trayful of things at his side, and he wouldn't take no notice," the man said, almost tearfully, "it's clean again nature that is." And the other servants shook their heads, and said in their turn that they didn't like the looks of him, and that certainly the Squire was not long for this world.

The same event of Randolph's visit had produced other results almost as remarkable. It had turned little Lilias all at once into the slim semblance of a woman, grown-up, and full of thoughts. It is perhaps too much to say that she had grown in outward appearance as suddenly as she had done in mind; but it is no unusual thing in the calmest domestic quiet, where no commotion is, nor fierce, sudden heat of excitement to quicken a tardy growth, that the elder members of a family should wake up all in a moment to notice how a child has grown. She had perhaps been springing up gradually; but now in a moment every one perceived; and the moment was coincident with that in which Lilias heard with unspeakable wrath, horror, shame, pity, and indignation, her father's story-that he would be put in prison if he came back; that he dared not come back; that he might be executed. (Lilias would not permit even her thoughts to say hanged-most ignominious of all endings-though Miss Brown had not hesitated to employ the word.) This suggestion had struck into her soul like a fiery arrow. The guilt suggested might have impressed her imagination also; but the horrible reality of the penalty had gone through and through the child. All the wonderful enterprises she had planned on the moment are past our telling. She would go to the Queen and get his pardon. She would go to the old woman on the hills and find out everything. Ah! what would she not do? And then had come the weary pilgrimage which Geoff had intercepted; and now the ache of pity and terror had yielded to that spell of suspense which, more than anything else, takes the soul out of itself. What had come to the child? Miss Brown said; and all the maids and Martuccia watched her without saying anything. Miss Brown, who had been the teller of the story, did not identify its connection with this result. She said, and all the female household said, that if Miss Lily had been a little older, they knew what they would have thought. And the only woman in the house who took no notice was Mary-herself so full of anxieties that her mind had little leisure for speculation. She said, yes, Lilias had grown; yes, she was changing. But what time had she to consider Lilias'

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