"Go first; " said Morton; "I will not leave you now: you will be longer getting across than I shall. I will keep guard till you are over."

"Hark! hark;-are you mad? You keep guard! What is your strength to mine? Twenty men shall not move that door, while my weight is against it. Quick, or you destroy us both! Besides, you will hold the rope for me, it may not be strong enough for my bulk of itself. Stay !-stay, one moment. If you escape, and I fall— Fanny-my father, he will take care of her,-you remember,thanks! Forgive me all! Go; that's right!'

With a firm pulse, Morton threw himself on that dreadful bridge; it swung and crackled at his weight. Shifting his grasp rapidly-holding his breath-with set teeth-with closed eyeshe moved on- he gained the parapet-he stood safe on the opposite side. And now, straining his eyes across, he saw through the open casement into the chamber he had just quitted. Gawtrey was still standing against the door to the principal staircase, for that of the two was the weaker and the more assailed. Presently the explosion of a firearm was heard; they had shot though the panel. Gawtrey seemed wounded, for he staggered forward, and uttered a fierce cry; a moment more, and he gained the window-he seized the rope-he hung over the tremendous depth! Morton knelt by the parapet, holding the grappling-hook in its place, with convulsive grasp, and fixing his eyes, bloodshot with fear and suspense, on the huge bulk that clung for life to that slender cord!

"Le voilà! le voilà!" cried a voice from the opposite side. Morton raised his gaze from Gawtrey; the casement was darkened by the forms of the pursuers-they had burst into the rooman officer sprung upon the parapet, and Gawtry, now aware of his danger, opened his eyes, and as he moved on, glared upon the foe. The policeman deliberately raised his pistol-Gawtrey arrested himself-from a wound in his side the blood trickled slowly and darkly down, drop by drop, upon the stones below; even the officers of law shuddered as they eyed him-his hair bristling his cheek white-his lips drawn convulsively from his teeth, and his eye glaring from beneath the frown of agony and menace in which yet spoke the indomitable power and fierceness of the man. His look, so fixed-so intense-so stern, awed the policeman; his hand trembled as he fired, and the ball struck the parapet an inch below the spot where Morton knelt. An indistinct, wild, gurgling sound-half laugh, half yell-of scorn and glee, broke from Gawtrey's lips. He swung himself on-near— near-nearer a yard from the parapet.

"You are saved!" cried Morton; when at that moment a volley burst from the fatal casement-the smoke rolled over both the fugitives-a groan, or rather howl, of rage, and despair, and agony, appalled even the hardiest on whose ear it came. Morton sprung to his feet and looked below. He saw on the rugged stones, far down, a dark, formless, motionless mass-the strong man of passion and levity-the giant who had played with life and soul, as an infant

with the baubles that it prizes and breaks-was what the Cæsar and the leper alike are, when the clay is without God's breath,-what glory, genius, power, and beauty, would be, for ever and for ever, if there were no God !-(Death of Gawtrey, the Coiner.-Night and Morning.)*

CHARLES DICKENS

b. 1812, d. 1870.

She was dead. No sleep so beautiful and calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon. She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God, and waiting for the breath of life; not one who had lived and suffered death.

Her couch was dressed with here and there some winter berries and green leaves, gathered in a spot she had been used to favour. "When I die, put near me something that has loved the light, and had the sky above it always." Those were her words.

She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead. Her little bird-a poor slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed-was stirring nimbly in its cage; and the strong heart of its child-mistress was mute and motionless for ever.

Where were the traces of her early cares, her sufferings, and fatigues. All gone. Sorrow was dead indeed in her, but peace and perfect happiness were born; imaged in her tranquil beauty and profound repose.

And still her former self lay there, unaltered in this change. Yes. The old fireside had smiled upon that same sweet face; it had passed like a dream through haunts of misery and care; at the door of the poor schoolmaster on the summer evening, before the furnace fire upon the cold wet night, at the still bedside of the dying boy, there had been the same mild lovely look. So shall we know the angels in their majesty, after death.

The old man held one languid arm in his, and had the small hand tight folded to his breast, for warmth. It was the hand she had stretched out to him with her last smile-the hand that had led him on through all their wanderings. Ever and anon he pressed it to his lips; then hugged it to his breast again, murmuring that it was warmer now; and as he said it he looked, in agony, to those who stood around, as if imploring them to help her.

She was dead, and past all help, or need of it. The ancient rooms she had seemed to fill with life, even while her own was waning fast-the garden she had tended-the eyes she had gladdened— the noiseless haunts of many a thoughtful hour-the paths she had trodden as it were but yesterday-could know her no more.

"It is not," said the schoolmaster, as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek, and gave his tears free vent, "it is not on earth that

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Heaven's justice ends. Think what it is compared with the World to which her young spirit has winged its early flight, and say, if one deliberate wish expressed in solemn tones above this bed could call her back to life, which of us would utter it !"

She had been dead two days. They were all about her at the time, knowing that the end was drawing on. She died soon after daybreak. They had read and talked to her in the earlier portion of the night, but as the hours crept on, she sunk to sleep. They could tell, by what she faintly uttered in her dreams, that they were of her journeyings with the old man; they were of no painful scenes, but of those who had helped and used them kindly, for she often said "God bless you!' with great fervour. Waking, she never wandered in her mind but once, and that was of beautiful music which she said was in the air. God knows. It may have been.

Opening her eyes at last, from a very quiet sleep, she begged that they would kiss her once again. That done, she turned to the old man with a lovely smile upon her face-such, they said, as they had never seen, and never could forget-and clung with both her arms about his neck. They did not know that she was dead, at first.

She had never murmured or complained; but, with a quiet mind and manner quite unaltered-save that she every day became more earnest and more grateful to them-faded like the light upon a summer's evening.-(The Death of Little Nell.-The Old Curiosity Shop.)

CHARLES KINGSLEY,

b. 1819, d. 1875.

Forth Amyas went, with Ayacanora as a guide, some five miles upward along the forest slopes, till the girl whispered, "There they are"; and Amyas, pushing himself gently through a thicket of bamboo, beheld a scene which, in spite of his wrath, kept him silent, and perhaps softened, for a minute.

On the further side of a little lawn, the stream leaped through a chasm beneath overarching vines, sprinkling eternal freshness upon all around, and then sank foaming into a clear rock basin, a bath for Dian's self. On its further side, the crag rose some twenty feet in height, bank upon bank of feathered ferns and cushioned moss, over the rich green beds of which drooped a thousand orchids, scarlet, white, and orange, and made the still pool gorgeous with the reflection of their gorgeousness. At its more quiet outfall, it was halfhidden in huge fantastic leaves and tall flowering stems; but near the waterfall the grassy bank sloped down toward the stream, and there, on palm-leaves strewn upon the turf, beneath the shadow of the crags, lay the two men whom Amyas sought, and whom, now he had found them, he had hardly heart to wake from their delicious dream.

For what a nest it was which they had found! The air was heavy with the scent of flowers, and quivering with the murmur of the stream, the humming of the colibris and insects, the cheerful song of birds, the gentle cooing of a hundred doves; while now and then, from far away, the musical wail of the sloth, or the deep toll of the bell-bird, came softly to the ear. What was not there which eye or ear could need? And what which palate could need either? For on the rock above, some strange tree, leaning forward, dropped every now and then a luscious apple upon the grass below, and huge wild plantains bent beneath their load of fruit.

There, on the stream bank, lay the two renegades from civilised life. They had cast away their clothes, and painted themselves, like the Indians, with arnotto and indigo. One lay lazily picking up the fruit which fell close to his side; the other sat, his back against a cushion of soft moss, his hands folded languidly upon his lap, giving himself up to the soft influence of the narcotic coca-juice, with halfshut dreamy eyes fixed on the everlasting sparkle of the waterfall—

While beauty, born of murmuring sound,
Did pass into his face.

Somewhat apart crouched their two dusky brides, crowned with fragrant flowers, but working busily, like true women, for the lords whom they delighted to honour. One sat plaiting palm fibres into a basket; the other was boring the stem of a huge milk-tree, which rose like some mighty column on the right hand of the lawn, its broad canopy of leaves unseen through the dense underwood of laurel and bamboo, and betokened only by the rustle far aloft, and by the mellow shade in which it bathed the whole delicious scene.(Scene in an Indian Forest.)*

JOHN RUSKIN,

b. 1819,

It is a constant law that the greatest men, whether poets or historians, live entirely in their own age, and that the greatest fruits of their work are gathered out of their own age. Dante paints Italy in the thirteenth century; Chaucer, England in the fourteenth; Masaccio, Florence in the fifteenth; Tintoret, Venice in the sixteenth--all of them utterly regardless of anachronism and minor error of every kind, but getting always vital truth out of the vital present.

If it be said that Shakspere wrote perfect historical plays on subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer, that they are perfect plays just because there is no care about centuries in them, but a life which all men recognize for the human life of all time; and this it is, not because Shakspere sought to give universal

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truth, but because, painting honestly and completely from the men about him, he painted that human nature which is, indeed, constant enough, a rogue in the fifteenth century being, at heart, what a rogue is in the nineteenth and was in the twelfth; and an honest or a knightly man being, in like manner, very similar to other such at any other time. And the work of these great idealists is, therefore, always universal; not because it is not portrait, but because it is complete portrait down to the heart, which is the same in all ages; and the work of the mean idealists is not universal, not because it is portrait, but because it is half portrait,-of the outside, the manners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret and Shakspere paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English nature as they saw it in their time, down to the root; and it does for all time; but as for any care to cast themselves into the particular ways and tones of thought, or custom, of past time in their historical work, you will find it in neither of them, nor in any other perfectly great man that I know of.

If there had been no vital truth in their present, it is hard to say what these men could have done. I suppose, primarily, they would not have existed; that they, and the matter they have to treat of, are given together, and that the strength of the nation and its historians correlatively rise and fall-Herodotus springing out of the dust of Marathon. It is also hard to say how far our better general acquaintance with minor details of past history may make us able to turn the shadow on the imaginative dial backwards, and naturally to live, and even live strongly if we choose, in past periods; but this main truth will always be unshaken, that the only historical painting deserving the name is portraiture of our own living men and our own passing times, and that all efforts to summon up the events of bygone periods, though often useful and touching, must come under an inferior class of poetical painting; nor will it, I believe, ever be much followed as their main work by the strongest men, but only by the weaker and comparatively sentimental (rather than imaginative) groups. This marvellous first half of the nineteenth century has in this matter, as in nearly all others, been making a double blunder. It has, under the name of improvement, done all it could to EFFACE THE RECORDS which departed ages have left of themselves, while it has declared the FORGERY OF FALSE RECORDS of these same ages to be the great work of its historical painters! I trust that in a few years more we shall come somewhat to our senses in the matter, and begin to perceive that our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves also what shall be true for the future. Let us strive, with just veneration for that future, first to do what is worthy to be spokea, and then to speak it faithfully; and, with veneration for the past, recognize that it is indeed in the power of love to preserve the monument, but not of incantation to raise the dead.-(Modern Painters, vol. iii., pt. iv., chap. vii., § 19, 20 & 21.)*

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