which, if it turns out as good as it samples here, is by no means bad tipple. One misfortune of our vintages is the fanciful names given by different vignerons to exactly the same kind of wine, so that it is necessary for you to know the owner's "brew" specially—what one grower calls Burgundy another calls Claret, and a third Colonial Port, or some such mixture of names and kinds, not to speak of all sorts of native or aboriginal names. As a rule, the Murray River (Albany and other townships) wines are of fullest flavour; but all our wines are strong naturally, and many of them of first-class quality when well made and well kept, and Sir William Macarthur has varieties of red and white which would make any wine connoisseur give a sigh of intense satisfaction as he slowly imbibed them. There is at least one good point about all our wine-it is sound and wholesome, and no bedevilment of "colouring and tasting" is mixed with it; and I really believe that a little more experience in the make and ripening of it will put it in the front rank of all the vintages of the world. Even now, I think, if you get a good bottle of "Ettamoogah" or "Carbinet," you will not find it much behind the best sorts of French "reds.”

O'

N behalf of John Keats's only sister, Madame Fanny Keats de Llanos, the sole surviving member of the poet's immediate family, an influentially signed memorial was lately sent to the Treasury with the view of obtaining a Civil List pension. This the First Lord has not seen fit to grant; but an award of £150 has been made from the Queen's Bounty Fund. Having regard to the very strong public claims of one whose brother's works are already classical, and to the urgency of the case through heavy family misfortunes, the signataries of the memorial, including most of the eminent poets of the day, have treated the grant as the nucleus of an adequate fund, and a subscription has been set on foot to obtain from the lovers of Keats a proper provision for his sister. The memorialists have already subscribed a considerable sum; and it is certain that the matter need only be brought before a wider circle to ensure the speedy collection of the needful fund. Contributions great or small, according to the donor's circumstances, are therefore earnestly solicited from all who honour the name of Keats. Subscriptions will be received and promptly acknowledged by Mr. R. Garnett, Superintendent of the Reading Room, British Museum; by Mr. W. M. Rossetti, of 56 Euston Square; and by Mr. H. Buxton Forman, of 38 Marlborough Hill, St. John's Wood.

SYLVANUS URBAN.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

AUGUST 1879.

UNDER WHICH LORD?

BY E. LYNN LINTON.

THE

CHAPTER XXII.

THE NEW DEPARTURE.

HE threatened eviction of the men in the Row stirred the village greatly. This was only what might have been expected, and what indeed Mr. Lascelles had foreseen and provided for. He knew that the action was harsh, and that to turn out of their homes a body of hard-working, sober, respectable men because they did not go to church and believed in science rather than revelation, was as close on persecution as the times will allow. But he calculated on the natural respect of humanity for force and thoroughness-if also its natural abhorrence of tyranny had to be considered as well-and he thought that he would make the bold stroke boldly and abide by the issue.

He heard, of course, that it was Richard Fullerton's intention to build cottages for the dispossessed; and he smiled when he heard it. He would suffer the houses to be built, sure enough; but who would be the tenants was another matter. The weather was such, however, that nothing could be done for the present beyond marking out the ground and digging the foundations; and meanwhile Mr. Fullerton managed to lodge John Graves and his brother Ben in a house of largish size which happened to be vacant; while Ringrove, in spite of what he knew would be Hermione's displeasure and Virginia's distress, found places for many-Dick Stone and Allen Rose among the number; and the rest were housed by Mr. Nesbitt and the local Laodiceans. Thus as things turned out the break-up was not so VOL. CCXLV. NO. 1784.

K

disastrous as it had threatened to be, and the men were not ruined, while the Church had shown her power. She meant to show more yet before the end of all things; but for the present this preliminary blow was enough.

Meanwhile, though much was said, nothing was done; and that burning in effigy, discussed at Tom Moorhead's, never came off. Tom would not have been sorry to have had a hand in it, and would have given his best hat with a free heart if it would have made the likeness closer; but on the whole they thought better of it. Mr. Fullerton, they said among themselves, would be main sure to object, and the notion died out as some others had done. The village talked over the eviction-which they persisted in taking to be rather the work of the vicar than of that softy, young Molyneuxas men on 'Change talk over the imperial war that chances to be on hand; and some said one thing and some another; but, save here and there a half-hearted malcontent 'taking pet' with the Church and absenting himself for a few Sundays from the services to go back when his temper had cooled-no action was taken. On the wholethough everyone said it was a shame and a sin, and Mr. Lascelles was no better than the Pope of Rome, and they would have to look sharp if they didn't all want to be made into slaves—yet, in spite of all that, the Englishman's veneration for strength carried the day, and if the vicar got ill-will from some he got respect dashed with fear from more.

At the Abbey that kind of lull which follows on a storm fell on the household after the discussion between the two men, and the rearrangement of their lives between Hermione and her husband; and for a few weeks things were apparently tranquil-as death is tranquil. No bystander could have seen that the love which had been so deep and true had received its death-blow, and that there was as little real peace as happiness in this well-ordered, well-mannered family. Hermione, secretly dissatisfied with herself, and, like all women, regretting the love which she had finally repulsed, at the first did not care to aggravate her secession by unnecessary bitterness; and the vicar, satisfied with his substantial gains, left off for the moment grasping at the fringes. Knowing that weakness is always an uncertain holding, and fearful lest Hermione should go back on her old self if the tension were too strong-aware that crafty angling gives length of line, and that rest must sometimes be taken even in a struggle-Mr. Lascelles took things quietly for the time, and let the present fetters wear themselves easy before he put on new ones. He even seemed to give his adversary some slight

advantage by a relaxation of Church observances, which, by the way, Nature herself commanded.

The winter had set in with exceptional severity; snow-storms were of frequent occurrence, and the frost did not break in between. The short days were sunless and dark, and "mattins" and evensong were perforce given up for want of attendants. Both Hermione and Virginia had rather bad colds; and the vicar was afraid of too much austerity in the discipline, which yet was necessary for the maintenance of his influence. Had the daily services been continued he would not have allowed either to join in them; and without them, if not quite the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out, they would have been something like it. Theresa Molyneux, with her increasing thinness, her hollow cough and constant fever, was out of the bounds of possibility in weather which tried strong men and killed off the weak and aged; and Mr. Lascelles did not think the soul of tough Aunt Catherine of so much importance that he should arrange daily service mainly for her benefit. Others of the female members of his congregation were also ill and disabled; so that, after deliberation, he thought it wiser to abandon early daily prayer until the weather should change, than to go on in spite of the elements, and make the Magnificat include bronchitis, and the Grace culminate in pneumonia.

All that was required for the present of the faithful who were in tolerable health was attendance on the Wednesday and Friday services, early celebration on Sunday, and that all-important weekly confession which gives the priest supreme control of the family, so that he can break up a dangerous love and an opposing unity if he will, as the seed of a upas tree planted in a clay pot would soon split it into fragments. These duties were imperative on all who would stand well with their local pope and be sure of their place in heaven; but these led to no domestic collision at the Abbey.

For though Richard kept more with his wife and daughter than he had ever done before, yet he could not constitute himself either their gaoler or their spy; and so long as he knew that certain things were not done, he had to content himself with the rest. When he asked Virginia, as he almost always did at breakfast: “Have you been out, my child?" and she answered: "No, papa," he was satisfied that, so far, the spoke of common sense had been put into that murderous ecclesiastical wheel, and that the car of Juggernauth had been stopped to this extent in its destructive course. He did not know of all the notes which passed in the day between the Abbey and the Vicarage; of the exhortations, the confessions, the constant

spiritual presence that was never suffered to fade from their consciousness. He only knew that for about a fortnight those two dear ones of his, whom he was believing to guard, did not do anything monstrously unwise, and that neither Mr. Lascelles nor any other of the clergy entered the house. But this was only the outside of things; the core remained the same.

His keeping so much nearer to them, and seeing so much more of their actions, did not in the end advance Richard's cause with either wife or daughter. Kind and gentle as he was to both, he was all the same a hindrance-an overseer and controller in one, whose companionship must not be suffered to bring pleasure, and which hindered what it did not give. Had they not been warped and held as they were, this new frequency of association would have been infinite joy, but now it had come too late :-"too late!" sighed Hermione, looking back to the old shrine with its withered flowers and defaced god, while borne away by a stronger will than her own to the temple where that god was accursed and his worship the unpardonable sin.

While the weather was so bad that they were perforce kept so much in-doors, to have Richard coming in and out continually, now with a scrap of news from the day's paper, now with a beautiful bit of fairyland revelation by the microscope, if sometimes embarrassing when notes had to be written, and the like, yet sometimes was not wholly unpleasant—at least to Hermione, whose humour varied with the hour. To Virginia, more intense and less personally swayed, her father's presence was always now a pain. But when the worst of the winter broke and their lives were ordered back into the old groove of religious activity, while Mr. Lascelles resumed his command, it became an unmitigated torture to both alike.

How could they go to the Vicarage daily-that ark of their peace!—as they had been accustomed to do, when Richard smilingly proposed to accompany them in their walk or asked to be taken with them in the carriage? They might say that they had parish work to attend to once or twice in the week, perhaps ;-but every day? Impossible! Unless they wished to bring things to a premature crisis, they must be "well and wise walking" as the Khans of the legends; and how devoted soever they might be in spirit, yet, as they were told by their respective directors, they must be wary in action.

How unhappy they all were! Mr. Lascelles and Sister Agnes bitterly resented this slight obstruction to the completeness of their control; and their bitterness reacted in rather spiteful castigation of the