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The evil spell which seemed to shackle down
The fine, keen, subtle faculty that used

To see into the heart of loveliness;

And therefore Basil learned to shun the haunts
Where Nature holds her chiefest courts, because
They forced upon him in the saddest light
The fact of what he was, and once had been.

So fared the drunkard for five awful years-
The last of which, while lighting singing dells,
With many a flame of flowers, found Basil Moss
Cooped with his wife in one small wretched room;
And there, one night, the man, when ill and weak--
A sufferer from his latest bout of sin-
Moaned, stricken sorely with a fourfold sense
Of all the degradation he had brought
Upon himself, and on his patient wife ;

And while he wrestled with his strong remorse
He looked upon a sweet but pallid face,
And cried, "My God! is this the trusting girl
I swore to love, to shield, to cherish so
But ten years back? O, what a liar I am!"
She, shivering in a thin and faded dress
Beside a handful of pale, smouldering fire,
On hearing Basil's words, moved on her chair,
And, turning to him blue, beseeching eyes,
And pinched, pathetic features, faintly said—
"O, Basil, love! now that you seem to feel
And understand how much I've suffered since
You first gave way-now that you comprehend
The bitter heartwear, darling, that has brought
The swift sad silver to this hair of mine

Which should have come with Age-which came with Pain,
Do make one more attempt to free yourself

From what is slowly killing both of us;

And if you do the thing I ask of you,

If you but try this once, we may indeed—
We may be happy yet."

Then Basil Moss,

Remembering in his marvellous agony
How often he had found her in the dead
Of icy nights with uncomplaining eyes,
A watcher in a cheerless room for him;
And thinking, too, that often, while he threw
His scanty earnings over reeking bars,

The darling that he really loved through all
Was left without enough to eat-then Moss,
I say, sprang to his feet with sinews set

And knotted brows, and throat that gasped for air,
And cried aloud—"My poor, poor girl, I will."

And so he did; and fought this time the fight
Out to the bitter end; and with the help
Of prayers and unremitting tenderness,
He gained the victory at last; but not-
No, not before the agony and sweat

Of fierce Gethsemanes had come to him;
And not before the awful nightly trials,
When, set in mental furnaces of flame,

With eyes that ached and wooed in vain for sleep,
He had to fight the devil holding out

The cup of Lethe to his fevered lips;

But still he conquered; and the end was this,
That though he often had to face the eyes

Of that bleak Virtue which is not of Christ

(Because the gracious Lord of Love was one with Him
Who blessed the dying thief upon the cross),
He held his way with no unfaltering steps,
And gathered hope and light, and never missed
To do a good thing for the sake of good.
And every day that glided through the world
Saw some fine instance of his bright reform,
And some assurance he would never fall

Into the pits and traps of hell again.

And thus it came to pass that Basil's name

Grew sweet with men; and, when he died, his end

Was calm—was evening-like, and beautiful.

Here ends the tale of Basil Moss. To wives

Who suffer as the Painter's darling did,

I dedicate these lines; and hope they'll bear

In mind those efforts of her lovely life

Which saved her husband's soul; and proved that while
A man who sins can entertain remorse,

He is not wholly lost. If such as they
But follow her, they may be sure of this,
That Love, that sweet authentic messenger
From God, can never fail while there is left
Within the fallen one a single pulse
Of what the angels call humanity.

CHARLTON GRANGE.

O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona nôrint, Agricolas.

PEMBROKE L. MURRAY.

HARLTON GRANGE, the homestead of the Charlton Run, is about as unlike the ideal of a home-station in the "far interior" as anything can well be. No dense groves of gum-trees encircle it about; no broken and rugged range of mountain lends picturesqueness to its immediate vicinity; it is neither the rude and primitive dwelling of squattocracy in its Age of Iron, nor the stately chateau of squattocracy in its Age of Gold.

narrower

Picture to yourself an undulating landscape of meadow, through which a limpid stream slips quietly along its devious course ;—on through many a broad acre of arable land, here, pausing as it were, upon its way in quiet corners to form deep and placid pools crowned with pearly water-lilies, that fling rich festoons across its surface ;-here, hurrying away through a channel rippled by the overhanging grasses, and by the graceful reeds that bend to its caress; here, babbling and brawling across the "Stony Ford";-here, becoming a broader and shallower sheet, where the horses and cattle in the home-paddock are wont to quench their thirst;-here, again, its course diverted for the purpose, it embraces an artificially-constructed islet, arched over with weeping willows; then away again, far away, over rocky clefts where eels and blackfish congregate, and where the station urchins love to fish-past the boundary-rider's hut, past the boundary fence-away, far away.

On the bank near the bend formed by the willowed islet is the Old Man's garden, tilled by two sturdy disciples of Old Adam, under whose care it blushes with flower and is burdened with fruit; and in the Old Man's garden is Charlton Grange, the

residence of the Old Man himself. A cottage—or, rather, half-adozen cottages thrown into one—untarnished in the integrity of its whitewash, immaculate in porches and rustic lattices and baywindows, and ivied patches of verandah-with its stack of chimneys, its snug stables and coach-buildings: placidity and intense respectability are its exterior characteristics.

On the other bank of the river-the Rabba Rabba (a foaming torrent in Winter, a mild streamlet in Summer), never descended so low in geographical nomenclature as the designation of a "creek”—is a cluster of buildings or little hamlet. This is composed of the cottage and garden of McTavish, the manager, with his wife and yearly increasing family; the abode of Saunders, the "working overseer"; the "men's hut," the "traveller's hut," the store, the bakery, the wool-shed, the sleeping-hut, and the hut of Jack Mole, the ploughman and bullock-driver, who is married. I was nearly forgetting the "school," where daily instruction is imparted to a small swarm of younkers, McTavishes, Saunderses, and Moles, with the children of Buist, the boundary-rider, and of Duncan and Wallis, the "cockatoo" settlers, and others. For be it observed that Charlton is a station where men stay a long time. Length of servitude at Charlton is not measured by days, or weeks, or months, but by years. Old Jack, the cook, has been five-andtwenty years baking mutton and bread (the age of "damper" has passed into a tradition at Charlton), and boiling "doughboys." He was a sailor in his youth, was Old Jack, and can spin a sailor yarn still; but his pleasantest associations are those connected with the run. And there is a sleek, contented, indolent expression, and a corporeal stoutness about the Old Man's retainers, from which one may argue that they do not find their lot cast in particularly unpleasant places. To resume our sketch, however:

Yonder track winding away round the slope of that luxuriantlygrassed ridge to the right will conduct you to the Jericho-road (Jericho is the nearest considerable town); and that grove of wattles to the left stretches away for miles, till it loses itself in the growth of denser timber. And a famous grove of wattles it is: gilded every Spring with the perfume-laden blossoms interlaced with sprays of cool, green foliage.