are;

and show Americans that a given number of themselves remaining behind in the mother country, would as certainly have become what Englishmen now are, and you throw down at once most formidable barriers of prejudice between the two peoples which the cleverest satires on each other's speech, manners, and habits might fail even to shake. It comes, after all, to this, that a single method of treatment, however clever the artist, cannot be satisfactory to either side, and that philosophers are required as well as satirists. Perhaps the best thing of an international character that could happen at this juncture, both to England and America, would be that a long visit should be paid to the latter country by Mr. John Stuart Mill. Mr. Mill possesses in a high degree the confidence of the progressive elements in both countries, and there is probably no other writer who, from the general belief in the purity and disinterestedness of his character, from his exalted reputation as a thinker, and from the credit attaching to his ripened experience, would be more likely to do good by publishing a work on America, founded upon personal observation. The result might not be as satisfactory to the extreme Democracy of either country as they would be likely to anticipate; but it would not for this reason, in my humble judgment, be less desirable.

mena.

International prejudices will possibly always continue to be cherished; but when we look at so emphatic an instance of traditional enmity as is afforded by England and France, and see how the old historic spite and venom have been changed into the "sweet milk of concord," by the magic wands of free-trade and common-interest, we may certainly hope, in milder cases, to see repetitions of the phenoThere is, to say the least, as good reason for relations no less kindly between Great Britain and the United States. In the looming future there are achievements, important to all mankind, which mother and daughter may compass together, but which neither could singly accomplish. The world is entering upon an epoch in which hitherto unthought-of enterprises for the profit and comfort of mankind promise, through the happy union of vast capital and unbounded energy to attain a pitch of splendour and perfection equally unexampled. Wherever the place of the other peoples, in this stirring march, that of the two great branches of the magnificent Anglo-Saxon race must lic in the van; and it will be a happy thing for themselves, and no inauspicious one for the rest of the world, if they are found marching hand in hand.

Second Thoughts.

BY F. C. BURNAND.

CHAPTER XV.

STORY OF THE GOOD-HEARTED FELLOW, CONTINUED.

TERM TIME AT ST. HENRY'S, WITH AN EPISODE OF THE MYSTERIOUS

HANDWRITING.

Ar last, Master Passmore, K.S., the King's Scholar, became captain of the school; became the king, the well-beloved.

Having at the school's ancient fantastic mummery, called The Jugum-now-a-days fallen into disuse-collected even more than sufficient for his first university needs, this Hyacinthus went up to St. Henry's, which college was intended by the religious founder to be a haven where worthy Holyshadians, who had been toiling at their Greek and Latin oars, would find rest.

Master Passmore, K.S., was now a scholar of St. Henry's, with a pleasant and not very distant prospect of a fellowship.

The men of St. Henry's had, from time immemorial, been strict Conservatives. They were independent of the university; though in it, they were not of it: indeed, their college was not included in the academical title, which was, and I believe is, the University of Durbridge and St. Henry's. They kept themselves to themselves, and seldom entered into communion with those without their own gates. St. Henry's was a city of refuge to men pursued by proctors and their unpopular followers; for no university official hath ever sought to have jurisdiction within the Gothic pale of this exceptional college.

Thus St. Henry's had a tradition of exclusiveness: Maurice Passmore set himself above the tradition.

What he had been at Holyshade, that would he have been at Durbridge. But here he soon discovered his mistake. Forgetting that he was no longer either the chubby, pretty boy-plaything of his earlier school-time, or the king, the well-beloved of his later days, he sought the society of those young men who, as Oppidans, had formerly been his patrons. In this patronly light he had never learned to consider them. It was not until now that he began dimly to understand his position as

one

admitted into a superior set upon sufferance. The elder lads, or Holyshadian Oppidans, now undergraduates of the great college of St. Tuft's, had well-nigh finished their course, and were going in for their degrees when he came up. These he greeted cordially, as was his wont, and invited to his rooms. They were "busy reading," they ad, and could not come. Second-year men, and his æquales excused themselves from his parties, as being perpetually pre-engaged to men of their own college, or of their own cliques. Among themselves, they confounded the impudence (only 'twas a stronger expression) of the fellow, who had been, as they took care to inform eligible men of other great public schools, only a Tug at Holyshade. These eligible toadies, therefore, trembling for their own insecure footing in the seventh heaven of St. Tuft's, gave thanks for the warning, and avoided the freshman of St. Henry's, as if he had been a pariah, which to them indeed he was.

Now, to an ambitious spirit who finds himself not permitted even to serve in heaven, there is one other well-known alternative.

This he adopted.

Mark me; Maurice Passmore was no toady. Yet the peaceful cloister of St. Henry's was to him, as it were, a very Tartarus of toadyism.

For the torment of the Toady consists in the absence of the Tuft. Then arose within the walls of St. Henry's such sounds of revelry as had not been heard for many a long night before the advent of this young scholar. [Second Thought. Emphasize heard.' I do not say that there had not been revelries.]

The Provost and fellows discussed the lad's conduct over their wine, in Combination.

Now, it was a Saint's day, kept holy by high feeding; a time. set apart for the broaching of the interior cask. The subject of college discipline occupied, on this occasion, one-tenth part of the seniors' evening; the remaining tithes were given to the celebrated vintage.

It was decided that Noise was Vice.

The Dean (the Dean pro tem.), to whom was committed the duty of reprimanding eccentric youth, wept tears of rare old port on this occasion, and, probably overcome by a sort of strong paternal emotion, could scarcely climb up his own staircase, or lift the latch of his door. On entering his room, he made a note in his memorandum-book (for the Dean was blessed, or cursed, with the shortest of memories), to the effect that Mr. Passmore was to be cautioned.

On the following morning, on referring to this book, in order to see what might be set down as his particular duties for the day-a most

excellent habit of regularity-he was somewhat puzzled by the following entry :

Munze Kutine

Now, what on earth could this mean?

He looked at it this way

and that way, made several guesses, but remained as wise as before. He was an excellent Grecian, no despicable Hebraist; of Arabic he possessed a smattering, and was well acquainted with the aspect of the Cuneiform character.

"Um!" said he; and nobody could have said anything more than that, under the circumstances.

The hieroglyphics on Cleopatra's Needle were intelligible compared with this.

"It can't be my writing," said the Dean to himself.

It certainly was not like it.

He came to the determination of inquiring seriously into this matter. Some one had been tampering with his private memoranda. He would at once finish dressing-for he was rather late that morning, having considerably overslept the early chapel time, and would step over to the Provost's lodge. To this end he must array himself officially in cap and gown.

"That stupid old woman"-he was alluding to his bedmaker"will always put my things out of the way." The academicals were not hanging upon their accustomed peg.

After some searching in most unlikely corners, the cap and gown were discovered lying on a chair beneath the clothes thrown off on the previous night.

"How very odd!" said the Dean.

Having robed himself in front of the looking-glass, he looked at the cap, gave it a shake, so as to make the tassel hang gracefully over the edge, and then put it on.

Then took it off again, and examined the inside.

"Now, how

Tap, tap, sharply at the door.

"Come in!" cries the Dean.

The Provost's man enters, with a college cap in his hand.

"The Provost sends his compliments, sir, and wishes to know if this is your cap."

It was.

"Do you know, Stevens," says Mr. Dean, "if this"-holding up the one he had been trying on-" is the Provost's ?"

It was. Stevens retired.

The Dean, after carefully examining the cap, placed it in its proper position upon the head of its lawful owner, and turning round on the hearth-rug, thrust his hands into the pockets most available at the moment, and stared himself out of countenance in the looking-glass. Mr. Dean, on the rug, smiled a gradually-developing smile, slowly wagging his head the while at Mr. Dean in the glass.

Then he walks towards the table, where lies the Book of Memoranda, open. From this, he, with a scrupulosity on the score of future neatness, highly commendable in any one engaged in an act of present destructiveness, carefully tears out the page with the mysterious writing. A short-lived flame shot up from out of the fire, wavered for a few seconds, to see if another undecided little flicker was going to join it, and then died of disappointment.

"I wonder what I meant ?" said the Dean, ruminating.

It meant that Mr. Richard Passmore was, for the time being, a marvellously lucky fellow.

Perhaps, it meant, also, that precept and practice are two very Or, it meant that dwellers in houses made of glass are not the proper persons to

Or, it meant that there were some wonderful samples of fine old port in the Combination Room of St. Henry's most ancient college.

[On Second Thoughts, this chapter ought to have been called entirely episodical. Do it in a new edition. At present, Maurice Passmore occupies our attention, and young Richard Pincott is en route for Devonshire. All that I've to tell can be told in a five hours' journey.]