exclude from its most modish circles a class that could perhaps ill be spared. That phenomenon, however, is not peculiar to the capital. It is to be found in all parts of the provinces; it is but one of the many indications of the changes inseparable from the substitution of commerce for land as a foundation of national prosperity. Every where the class of smaller country gentlemen complains of being elbowed out of the way by retired traders whose rural ambitions and whose liberal offers constrain the squires with heavily dipped estates to let their fam. ily seats with all shooting rights to the banker or brewer who has grown rich in the country town. County society in most parts of England retains today the same tone and color that it had before County Councils and District Boards were the creations of Parliamentary statue. So it is with that Society in the Metropolis, whose foundation is spoken of as plutocratic instead of aristocratic. No new chapter in our polite development really has been opened. It is the same London, whether in town or out of it, which Charles Greville, George Payne, Alfred Montgomery knew. But while Society has in this way, become more nationally representative, indescribably more cosmopolitan, and, as Lord Beaconsfield found out, vastly more amusing, its entertainments have grown in expense, while the introduction of certain Parisian ways have further increased the financial burdens of the summer on the Thames to a figure prohibitive to whole orders which, in earlier years of the Queen's reign were seldom absent from the capital between the meeting and rising of Parliament. The single item of flowers for the diningtable or drawing-room seems to-day a consideration only less serious than was once a season's rental of a little house conveniently situated for St. Stephen's and Hyde Park. Then there

are the dinners and suppers at the smart restaurants, which, since the closing of the famous Boulevard cafés, seem to have been transported from the Seine to the Thames. These places are found by the country cousin of the better sort to be, not only intolerably costly, but invidiously exclusive. Our country gentleman, up for Ascot week, enters one of such caravanserais to find all the best places taken a week in advance by some Amphitryon whose very name is as strange to him as those of the South African kopjes which puzzle him in The Times. If he secures a seat at another of these establishments a little farther down Piccadilly, at the next table to his there will be a party of golden youth, spending on their menu and wine card what, in his generation, sufficed the middle-aged visitor from the shires for a year's allowance at Christ Church.

Thus, two movements of a mutually opposite character may be noticed in those regions now dealt with. On the one hand the disappearance of the political hostess and of much which that fact implies has given place to a social organization more varied, more truly reflecting the business, the pleasures, the interest and pursuits of con. temporary life, for which every reasonably qualified aspirant is eligible--without any voucher from great ladies or other persons of quality, such as used to bar the entrance to Almack's, or to less historic and more modern resorts. If the political hostess were, as she long continued to be, the sole or the dominant representative entertainer, the Society of the period might be in danger of losing much of that present salt which acts as an antiseptic to certain forms of vulgarity as well as of decay. A price like that just indicated has indeed to be paid for this variety. But when one remembers the amount of philanthropic work of perennial as well as practical interest

in the welfare of all classes, and in all efforts for national improvement, but thinly veiled by the surface frivolity, few will think there is reason to regret the division and subdivision of the polite world into those sets which Greville called gangs, but which really testify to new modes of social life, animating, for the most part not unhealthily, the whole constitution of the body politic. As a man of fashion and of society, Greville was a cynosure of his day. No man was less of a trifler, or really looked at life in a more serious light. It was this inborn earnestness of the Anglo-Saxon race which colored Greville's social ideas that has The Fortnightly Review.

always operated as a force invigorating alike the varied interest and individuals constituting the complex whole known as Society. That stimulating instinct of the English people is not less active now than in past years. Greville, as has been seen, recognized the natural leader of Society in the wearer of the crown. During the present reign the monarchy has become a synonym for all those manifestations of social beneficence which have attracted, as the career of Madame de Falbe shows, the smartest society itself, and by doing so have made superficial frivolity a serious instrument for national well-being.

T. H. S. Escott.

Derwent Findlay, Q.C., fifty and furrowed, poked the fire into a blaze and took down an old pipe from the shelf. His window looked into Planetree Court, but the curtains were drawn and the perspective of gaunt houses with the dusty windows saying "Chambers" as plainly as their plain faces could, the uneven flags of the court, the consumptive trees gathering dust and smoke, the consumptive cats, and the old pumps were all blotted out.

Next day the long vacation would commence. There were no briefs in the blue bag under the table, the judge had been jaunty on the bench in full view of a round of country visits, the juniors had been noisy, and there had been the air of approaching holiday which had dimly hastened his pulse for the last twenty-five years.

Findlay, Q.C., had won his case, had added to a long list of victories gained by his peculiar doggedness, had earned his rest, had indeed everything that should have made him content-but he was not. His fire-poking was pettish, his pipe seemed tasteless, the lamp smoked unwarrantably, he was even conscious that the red and green dressing-gown he had purchased fifteen years ago in an Indian bazaar was growing faded.

"Hullo, Findlay, going abroad?" Mervyn had asked-Mervyn, the antagonist always pitted against him in patent cases, and his most intimate crony of private life, and he had answered shortly

"Don't know. Plans not made yet." That was the difficulty, he could not settle any point as to his movements. Twenty-four long vacations had found him prepared with plans neatly and

correctly written out on a sheet of brief-paper, plans which for twentyfour years he had carried out conscientiously. There was a sheet of briefpaper on the table, but it was blank except for the heading, very neat and exact, like all of his work, “My plans."

He drew his dressing-gown round himself sharply, and the tobacco jar towards him. To do this he had to turn, and in turning he saw the extent of his room-study, smoking-room, dining-room, in one-for with worldly prosperity he had deviated in no way from the style of living he had practised as a junior. The room was neat and precise with the neatness and precision of a well-drilled charwoman. It looked comfortless, and he saw it for the first time. He filled his pipe quickly, rose and stepped over to the lamp smoking on the table, lit his pipe by it and turned the wick down. Then he went back to his easy-chair, and thrust his slippered feet towards the fire. It had been raining, and although midsummer the night was chill and cheerless.

"Fifty years old-and at twenty-five I was doing just the same, living in the same rooms, prosing in the same courts, going to the same club, eating at the same restaurant in the Strand. Twenty-five years-dear me, what a long time, what a very long time. And all this time I have been quite content to be a machine, getting a little older every year, but otherwise exactly the same for twenty-five years. Now I am beginning to wake up. Oh, it's preposterous! I am an old fogey, a confirmed old bachelor. I-dear me, it's very curious how her face haunts me. Nineteen years old. Quite a child. Why, God bless my soul, I gave her a

I

present when she was christened. remember it perfectly. It was-it was -I have forgotten, but I know it is entered in my diary. Elaine, Dick called her. I remember telling Dick that it was absurd giving her such an outlandish name. Strange that I should think Dick right now. Elaine! A pretty name. "The lily maid.' Yesthat describes her accurately. And now here's the long vacation before me and -and no plans. It's very lonely here. I have never noticed it before, but it is lonely. I shan't grow younger, and life should be a little easier than it has been. I'm afraid I have missed a very great deal. Fifty, and I have never been in love. Have I? Let me see. Yes, once. It was a long while ago. I don't remember her name. I daresay it's in my diary. She was very fond of peaches. So is Elaine. That's strange. I wonder if all women are fond of peaches."

Derwent Findlay, Q.C., was given to talking to himself. He invariably argued his points alone, addressing his book-shelves as the court.

"The long vacation and that blank sheet of paper. Oh, what a hypocrite I am. I ought to write in very large letters, 'Elaine!' No plans when I have this letter from Clevedon? Why, I went down there at Christmas, and at Easter-that was the time I was reading Machelby v. Gerston & Co., and Elaine helped me make a digest of the brief. And now they seem to look upon my going down to them as a foregone conclusion. And why shouldn't I go? After all I was Dick's best friend, and I am now his widow's sole trustee. Not very well off, but Dick was always reckless. Six hundred a year-what is six hundred a year? I must spend quite four hundred myself and I haven't much comfort. Curious never noticed that before."

He looked at his dressing-gown. "Ugh!" he said. "Faded!"

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He looked at his carpet. "Threadbare!" he muttered. "Tablecloth spotted, grease, tobacco-ash, ink. Windows dirty, curtains colorless. Armchair rubbed, spring gone, castors rickety. Bookcases dingy." He looked into the fire. "What am I? A faded colorless old bachelor, who has let the world slip on twenty-five years without caring. Life! I really do not think I knew the possibilities of life untilDear me, dear me, I fear I must be in love with this young girl whose christening I remember perfectly. What would she say to me? Why, even my collars are out of date and Tomorrow I will go to my hosier, and the next day to Clevedon."

Clevedon is a quiet town on the shore of the Bristol Channel. It is pretty in a quiet way that does not appeal to lovers of piers and bands, more or less strident. Mrs. Buckiston had a quiet unpretentious villa that hung over the sea like a quiet unpretentious plum over a garden wall. There was a large garden and many trees. Elaine, her daughter, was a healthy, bright, English girl, who by the force of circumstances remained poised between girlhood and womanhood. In the ordinary state of things a girl of nineteen would have come into the full kingdom of womanhood. She had been educated at a quiet school, and had remained unawakened with her mother for the eighteen months she had been home. Mrs. Buckiston was colorless, and divided her attention between mourning for her husband and a serene delight in the ordering of her small household.

Derwent Findlay, Q.C., was the one excitement of the Clevedon household. He was more to others than to himself. To others he was the great authority on Patent Law, a man with a princely income; to himself he was Derwent Findlay, and he saw no difference be

tween the Derwent of thirty years ago and the Derwent of to-day.

"Go, Elaine, and see that Mary has put the clean curtains in Mr. Findlay's room," Mrs. Buckiston said.

"You have told me to do that five times, mother dear," Elaine answered, slipping to her knees and taking her mother's hands caressingly in hers. "I saw Mary put them up myself at eleven o'clock, and it's now four."

"Ah, yes, I had forgotten. I am so anxious, dear. Poor Dick thought so much of Mr. Findlay, and one never can trust in servants. You like Mr. Findlay, Elaine?"

"Oh, yes. He is so clever."

"Just what your father said. He is very rich."

"He ought to be."

Poor

It was

"It does not always follow. Dick lost most of his money. really inexplicable. He was always finding out such wonderful schemes for making money-but somehow they never succeeded. I wonder if Jane will remember to lay an extra place at din. ner?"

"She ought to, mother dear. We have talked of nothing else but Mr. Findlay's coming for the last four days, and I have heard you tell her myself quite a score of times."

"You are cross, Elaine. I am sorry, but your father would have been very anxious that everything should be done for Mr. Findlay."

"I am not cross, dearest."

I

"Aren't you? I am glad of that. am so nervous. I am quite sure that something will go wrong. Have you

put out the extra napkin ring?" "My own dear mother, not one single item has been forgotten."

"Such a strange man Mr. Findlay. I never feel quite at ease with him, dear. I heard him talking in his room such a long time one night at Easter. You know what a light sleeper I am. He woke me up. He spoke so fiercely.

And of course there was no one with him."

"He has a habit of talking to himself. I have often heard him. He prepares his speeches that way, I think."

"Poor Dick never did such a thing. Besides, I am almost certain I heard your name."

"My name-nonsense!"

"How like your father you grow, Elaine. That is just what he would have said. I suppose Mr. Findlay's habit comes from living so much alone."

"He has lived a long time alone?" Elaine questioned.

"Twenty-five years. All his relatives are dead. Dick used to say he was one of the most blessed of men. I really don't think my relations ever bored him much."

"Twenty-five years alone," Elaine murmured wonderingly.

When Derwent Findlay, Q.C., rolled up to the little villa on the hill in a local cab that was almost mediæval in design, Elaine met him at the front door, and was particularly kind to him under the influence of his twenty-five years of loneliness.

He handed out a bundle carefully wrapped in oil silk. Inside was another of chamois leather, but that was not visible.

"Take care of it, take great care of it, Elaine. I wouldn't have anything happen to it for the world.

"What is it?" she asked, taking it up very carefully.

"What is it? My immortality. Findlay on Patent Law. I have reached the fortieth chapter. I am beginning to get thoroughly into the subject."

She found its weight very great. "Have you been long over it?" she asked.

"Long? Oh no. About ten years,

that's all. It means a lot of research. I hope to do a great deal down here.