Coggan retired before she could ask any further; and then they called at the vicar's in a way which excited no curiosity at all. Then Gabriel went home and prepared for the morrow.

"Liddy," said Bathsheba, on going to bed that night, "I want you to call me at seven o'clock to-morrow, in case I shouldn't wake."

"But you always do wake afore then, ma'am."

and knocked at Bathsheba's door. Ten minutes later two large umbrellas might have been seen moving from the same door, and through the mist along the road to the church. The distance was not more than a hundred yards, and these two sensible persons deemed it unnecessary to drive. An observer must have been very close indeed to discover that the forms under the umbrellas were those of Oak and Bathsheba, arm-in-arm for the first time in their lives, Oak in a great coat extending to his knees, and Bathsheba in a cloak that reached her Bathsheba, however, awoke voluntarily clogs. Yet though so plainly dressed, at four, nor could she by any contrivance there was a certain rejuvenated appearget to sleep again. About six, being ance about her quite positive that her watch had stopped during the night, she could wait no longer. She went and tapped at Liddy's door, and after some labour awoke her.

"Yes, but I have something important to do, which I'll tell you of when the time comes, and it's best to make sure."

"But I thought it was I who had to call you?" said the bewildered Liddy. "And it isn't six yet."

"Indeed it is; how can you tell such a story, Liddy? Í know it must be ever so much past seven. Come to my room as soon as you can; I want you to give my hair a good brushing."

When Liddy came to Bathsheba's room her mistress was already waiting. Liddy could not understand this extraordinary promptness. "Whatever is going on,

ma'am?" she said.

"Well, I'll tell you," said Bathsheba, with a mischievous smile in her bright eyes. "Farmer Oak is coming here to dine with me to-day!"

"Farmer Oak you two alone?" "Yes."

and nobody else?

"But is it safe, ma'am?" said her companion, dubiously. "A woman's good name is such a perishable article

Went up the hillside
With that sort of stride

As though a rose should shut and be a bud

again.

Repose had again incarnadined her cheeks; and having, at Gabriel's request, arranged her hair this morning as she had worn it years ago on Norcombe Hill, she seemed in his eyes remarkably like the girl of that fascinating dream, which, considering that she was now only three or four and twenty, was perhaps not very In the church were Tall, Liddy, and the parson, and in a remarkably short space of time the deed was done.

wonderful.

The two sat down very quietly to tea in Bathsheba's parlour in the evening of the same day, for it had been arranged that Farmer Oak should go there to live, since he had as yet neither money, house, nor furniture worthy of the name, though he was on a sure way towards them, whilst Bathsheba was, comparatively, in a plethora of all three. Just as Bathsheba was pouring out a cup of tea, their ears were greeted by the firing of a cannon, followed by what seemed like a tremendous blowing of trumpets, in the front of the house.

"There!" said Oak, laughing. knew those fellows were up to something, by the look of their faces."

Oak took up the light and went into the porch, followed by Bathsheba with a shawl over her head. The rays fell upon a group of male figures gathered upon the gravel in front, who, when they saw the newly-married couple in the porch, set up a loud "Hurrah!" and at the same moment bang again went the cannon in the background, followed by a hideous clang of music from a drum, tambourine, clarionet, serpent, hautboy,

A mar puts out when walking in search of a tenor-viol, and double-bass the only bride,

remaining relics of the true and original

Weatherbury band - venerable wormeaten instruments, which had celebrated in their own persons the victories of Marlborough, under the fingers of the forefathers of those who played them now. The performers came forward and marched up to the front.

"Those bright boys, Mark Clark and Jan, are at the bottom of this," said Oak. "Come in, souls, and have something to eat and drink with me and my wife."

From Blackwood's Magazine. ANCIENT CLASSICS LATIN LITERA

TURE.

THE difference between the literature of Greece and that of Rome is of the most marked and striking character. It is not superficial, but fundamental, founded in the mental constitution of either race, and affecting all their productions. These two initial languages of the modern world possess a distinctness of separation "Not to-night," said Mr. Clark, with which is scarcely to be found among their evident self-denial. "Thank ye all the successors. English literature, for insame, but we'll call at a more seemly stance, is not so unlike French as Latin time. However, we couldn't think of is unlike Greek. The modern languages, letting the day pass without a note of all more or less following the two great admiration of some sort. If ye could parent tongues of literature, share among send a drop of som'at down to Warren's, themselves the traditions of an older art, why so it is. Here's long life and happi- | and take the path opened by Greek or ness to Neighbour Oak and his comely by Roman indiscriminately as suits indibride!" vidual genius; but the Roman and the Greek formed tradition, and by dint of being each the first in his own way, retain all the sharpness of almost personal difference. It is, no one can doubt, the Greek voice that has the mastery in the great duo. No authentic rule, no established order, no canons of art stimulated its early utterances. Its first uplifting in song was as spontaneous and untaught as that of the birds or the brooks. It orihey,ginated art in originating the first works of art, and was a law to itself in the truest sense of the word; without models, without instruction, it reached the heights of poetry at a bound, and, seated there amid the primeval mists, has ever since given laws to the world. The only literature at all contemporary with the Greek

"Thank ye, thank ye all," said Gabriel. "A bit and drop shall be sent to Warren's for ye at once. I had a thought that we might very likely get a salute o' some sort from our old friends, and I was saying so to my wife but now."

66 Faith," ," said Coggan in a critical tone, turning to his companions, "the man hey learnt to say my wife' in a wonderful nateral way, considering how very youthful he is in wedlock as yet neighbours all ?”

"I never heerd a skilful old married feller of twenty years' standing pipe my wife' in a more used note than 'a did," said Jacob Smallbury, "It might have been more true to nater if it had been spoke a little chillier; but that was hardly to be expected just now."

"That improvement will come with time," said Jan, twirling his eye.

Then Oak laughed, and Bathsheba smiled, for she never laughed readily now, and their friends turned to go.

- that of the Hebrews - has somehow, in consequence of its sacred claims, got put aside from consideration as literature; and to many minds it would be a great, and almost sinful, effort to bring the glorious poems of Job, of David, or of Isaiah from their consecrated places, and to compare them in their equally striking human originality with those of the Greek poets. For our own part, we should like nothing better, were it possible, than to see this done, and to have each great writer of the Old Testament identified and set forth for the benefit of the unlearned, as this series has identified the writers of the other great languages so often slumped together in our general title as "classics," with nothing to indicate that one differs from another as much as the sun differs from the moon.

Ancient Classics for English Readers. Edited by the Rev. W. Lucas Collins, M. A. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London.

defend, to praise and blame, to sing need no help of learned bystanders to and to love. This is the part which Rome make comprehensible. But in the other has taken in the double work. To Greece we are compelled to accept the critic's the ideal, to Rome the actual, the one word, or to commit ourselves to the tenfilling out and perfecting the other. der mercies of a translator who possibly Thus there is no rivalry between two comprehends the language he translates things in which there exists so little re- without entering into its subtle beauties, semblance. They are each mighty and and almost certainly has less mastery potent in their way. Greece remains the over his own tongue than the author supreme queen of the world of imagina- whom he makes known to us had over tion, which she fills with the noblest his. Even in our own language it is infifigures figures of which no one ven-nitely easier to explain Shakespeare to tures to make sure that they did not the masses than it is to explain Bacon. once live as certainly as ourselves, and The works of the first are independent of who have outlived, as the most ignorant him, separate things launched like great can see, ages and political systems, king- ships upon the universal sea, each carrydoms and cycles of conquest, and evening the freight of its own fortunes; but the Greek race which produced them as for the philosopher, all that we can do though still the sharp-witted mongrel of for him is to indicate the form and tenthe Levant may call himself by that hon-dencies of his philosophical system; we ourable name. Rome, when she took up cannot make even the most easy and popin her turn the wondrous tale of human ular of his works visible to the public; existence and endeavour, did it by no we can but say of the "Essays," "Read such band of visionary heroes, but by them"-there is nothing further possimeans of actual lives and men, setting forth before the world the growth and downfall of her own magnificent empire, great type and emblem, scarcely less instructive than the narrower but intenser type of existence which we have in the Jews. What the Hebrew story is in the spiritual economy, a history, yet a parable, Rome is to the political and public constitution of humanity; and this her Cæsars and her Ciceros reveal to us with more force than a second Eschylus could have rendered it. The national literature of one thus becomes the complement of the other, though they are as different from each other as words can say.

ble. The noble Latins stand therefore at a disadvantage in comparison with the Greeks, which it would be difficult to exaggerate. Except in the case of the one epic of Virgil, and the lyrics of Horace, we are obliged to betake ourselves to biography, to chapters of historic comment or elucidation, before we can convey any idea to the uninstructed Englishman of the great writers of Rome.

The one Latin poem of which the reader may be enabled to form an idea without direct aid of translation is the Eneid; and Virgil is the greatest poetical name of Roman literature. Few poets have had such eminent fortune, These characteristics of Roman litera- either during their lifetime or after their ture make it extremely difficult to set it death. His own generation fully recog before those who are unable to read it nized his pre-eminence, and bestowed for themselves. To do justice to the lavish rewards and honours upon its conceptions of a great dramatic poet is favourite poet. In the middle ages, when not so hard a task. Something may well the classic world had faded into temporabe done to make him understood without ry obscurity, Dante, a poet more intense quoting a line of his verse. Eschylus and vigorous than himself, took him as and Sophocles might perish off the earth, his guide into the unseen world, and has yet Clytemnestra on the walls of Argos, glorified the name of Virgil as much and sad Electra," and Orestes wildly almost as that of Beatrice in his great flying over earth and sea before the dread poem. From that time or even before Furies who pursue him, would still re-that time he was elevated into an oramain, figures which, once put within the cle by fanciful superstition; his lines range of our vision, die no more. But a affording a mode of divination which has beautiful piece of rural description, or a lasted till recent days. His name has thrilling burst of oratory, can only be everywhere taken its place among the done justice to by literal rendering, by highest; and in our own day, one of the direct translation, the most hazardous of first of scholars, and most excellent of all literary processes. The first comes men, the late Professor Conington, gave before us with the force of a picture, aa great part of his too short life to the thing which we can see, and which we translation and glorification of Virgil.

When we turn, however, to the poem itself and to its hero, we cannot but feel that art has done less for us than nature did. Æneas, goddess-born, and therefore half-divine, is a splendid ancestor for Augustus; and that he should be brought to the Latin coast, in spite of a thousand obstacles, by direct command and intervention of the gods, to found the supreme city which should rule the world, was flattering and delightful to the Romans, for whose benefit, ages before they were born, all this trouble was taken; but looked at on his own merits he is but a sorry fellow on the whole, and has not the size and grandeur of the Homeric

His poetical career has been a fortunate poet, celebrating in magnificent story the one from beginning to end-though the half-divine race of his tyrant; for Virgil end is not yet, nor perhaps ever will be; himself was a Roman, sharing the inorcertainly up to this time his star has known dinate, arrogant love of his city and race, no waning. There are some critics who which his great poem flattered; and it is find in the Georgics his finest inspiration; but just to suppose that he believed the feeling no doubt that in the Æneid their sway of Augustus, which, no doubt he poet exposes himself to comparisons helped to make palatable to his fellowwhich are of dangerous greatness; but citizens to be the best thing for them the great epic must take the foremost after all the tumults and commotions of place in every account of the poet. It the Republic. stands in direct contrast, in many respects, to the other great epics which it suggests and recalls. It has not the spontaneous origin, the free poetic birthright of the Iliad and the Odyssey. They sprang, no one knows how, from nature and the poet's instinct, without dramatic plan or elaborate purpose, formed out of nothing, or out of primeval legends, who knows or cares which? — to please the lounging groups at the city-gates, or on the margin of the murmuring sea, or perhaps merely to please the nameless bailad-maker himself, as many a later yet primitive lay of raid and foray, of love and witchcraft, has been made since. But the Æneid has no such spontaneous heroes. There is a breadth and vigour character. It proceeds from the region even about the wily Ulysses, though we of conscious art, and is a poem with a have no particular sympathy with him, purpose, an elaborate literary work, skil- which somehow throws a certain greatfully framed to glorify the Roman race, ness into his sometimes very doubtful and that half-divine potentate who ruled devices, and keeps us from despising over it. We are in a different world alto- him. Eneas is a being of colder blood gether from that through which Homer's and smaller mould. The poet's favourharpings rang. The Latin poet chooses ite epithet for him is "the pious;" but his subject, selects his incidents with the reader is disposed to substitute the skill and care, and uses all the expedi-"prudent"— a less attractive title. All ents of art to heighten his efforts. A the critics make violent efforts to imconquering race never weary of its own press upon us the fact that as there was praises, a royal patron to celebrate, and no love, properly so-called, in ancient a splendid court to flatter, are visible in days, nor appreciation of the delicacy and the very structure of the poem. Now finer soul of that passion, the pious wanand then even, the reader is brought derer's treatment of Dido was perfectly back out of Carthage, or Latium, or even in keeping with the temper and morality Hades itself, with a sudden leap, by the of his time. And so we presume it was ; unexpected intervention of an apostro-yet Virgil would not have been a poet phe to Cæsar, some pæan over his vic- had he not known better, and he vinditories, some lamentation such as that cates himself, at least in some degree, by which moved all Rome to tears the the grand strain of indignant remonpoet's wail over the young Marcellus. strance and invective which he puts into Thus we are made to feel not only the Dido's mouth. The reader's sympathy, intention of the poem, but even the audi- it is needless to say, is entirely with the ence who listen to it, the imperial lady tragical forsaken woman, in whose preswho swoons at the name of her dead son, ence the cautious hero cuts a very poor and the high-seated Augustus, whose figure. There is no passion in him at glorious descent as the son of Iulus or any part of the tale. He is weaker and Ascanius was the inspiration of the whole. poorer even than the false lover of later In all this there is nothing like the vaga- romance, who before the moment of his bond bard, or bards, who wove the story perfidy arrives, has one time or other of the siege of Troy; but neither have been kindled by some living warmth. we here a mercenary laureate, or court-Æneas is the most calculating and cold