save fetch and carry water and wood | the people of the interior. Their manand prepare their own food. Their ners and customs are identically the parents and friends can only see them three or four times a year, and it is on these occasions that any Krobo bachelor seeking a wife accompanies the families to that part of the mountain reserved exclusively to the girls, and makes his choice. If the girl be of a marriageable age, the dower is at once paid, and the wedding takes place as soon as convenient; but should the object of the man's choice be too young, she will be "sealed" to him, and he will have the privilege of paying for her maintenance on the mountain until such time as she leaves it to become one of his wives.

This ceremony is only one of the four great

customs" which take place annually on the Fetish-Mountain; the others, known as the Kotoclo, Nadu, and Kokonadu, are reported to be much less harmless in character. Fetish customs and practices are hedged in with so much secrecy and mystery that many criminal and atrocious acts are probably committed which are never brought to the notice of the government.

The British settlements on the Gold Coast are almost entirely confined to a narrow strip of land running along the seaboard. District commissioners and other officials are stationed at all the principal points, and in the large towns on the coast line life and property are as secure as they are in England. The natives inhabiting the immediate neighborhood of the official settlements are being slowly but gradually improved by education, and also perhaps in a slight degree by example. Owing to many reasons, however, and principally on account of the extreme unhealthiness of the interior, only a very small number of Europeans have made settlements at any distance from the seaboard, and although the government has imposed its authority in a remarkable manner on all those tribes inhabiting the regions included in the Protectorate, there is hardly any direct influence of European civilization on

same as they were when the first white men landed on the Gold Coast nearly five centuries ago, and though Ashantis and tribes further inland may be seen wearing Manchester cottons and decorating their mud huts with gaudy pictures of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the ordinary life of these savages has not been modified or improved in any perceptible degree. It is not indeed to be expected that, among beings so ultra-conservative as the African negro, abominable practices which have been religiously observed for thousands of years could be eradicated by the mere fact of making them criminal.

HESKETH J. BELL.

Note by the Author. - This paper was written a few months ago on the Gold Coast. Since then, King Sakitti having died somewhat suddenly, an inquiry was made by the government into the nature of the Krobo Fetish customs, more especially as regarded the Kotoclo, the Nadu, and the Kokonadu. This inquiry resulted in the discovery that the customs were attended by all kinds of atrocities, the Kotoclo especially being characterized by human sacrifices on a considerable scale. In last October the Krobo Mountain was taken possession of by the colonial troops, and the Fetish houses, on being ransacked, were found to contain enormous numbers of human skulls, thigh bones, and other evidences of barbarous rites. Four Kroboes, convicted of participating in a human sacrifice, were hanged by the colonial authorities in the presence of the whole tribe. The Fetish houses have all been burned, together with their gruesome contents; participation in any of the Krobo customs has been prohibited by law, including even that of the Otufo; the girls' villages on the mountain have been destroyed, and a Christian king has been nominated by the government as a successor to the late Sakitti.

From Blackwood's Magazine.

A TALE OF TWO STUDIOS.

could aid her, materially and without offence. He was a man of small but

"The craft that createth a semblance and mocketh sufficient fortune, who had followed no

the heart's desire."

I.

profession, but had given his life to the pursuit of art, not as a means but as an MRS. PALGRAVE had won a great end in itself. He had studied hard, as share of the world's regard. Well born a young man, but had early convinced and highly accomplished, she had been himself that he was lacking in the manearly left a widow, in poor circum-ual skill to produce great work; and stances, with one child. a boy. She with the renunciation of which his had many friends, but from friends it is hard to accept the necessaries of life, be they never so freely offered. One friend there was who would fain have given her his all-one who had loved her almost from her childhood, loved without hope.

It was to the credit of both of them that she had succeeded in keeping his friendship even while she gave her heart to a man whom she knew to be less worthy than he, but whom, nevertheless, she loved. For hers was the fervid nature in which the heart and not the head is leader.

nature again showed itself capable in the matter of his love, he had practically abandoned all effort of production, and contented himself with adding to his great stores of knowledge, and in studying the elementary principles of art until they began to assume for him the exactness of a science. In the whole art world no opinion was more valued than that of George Heaton, no judgment was given with a graver sense of responsibility nor with more perfect honesty. When, therefore, he began to speak of Mrs. Palgrave as a sculptor whose work merited attention, her fame and her fortune - so far as fortune can be made by any ordinary success in art She in no way belied his praise; for so soon as her affairs had been put in some order after her husband's death, she set herself to a severe course of work for two years or so at the study of structural form, and thus laying a solid foundation for the skill and manipulation which previous practice had given her, was competent to execute the orders which Heaton's commendation brought plentifully to her. Her works were in many of the best houses of England, her name was mentioned among the leading artists, and in soci

were secure.

When Mr. Palgrave died he took with him to the grave the love of the woman whom he had worshipped and ill-used. For a while George Heaton, Florence Palgrave's best friend, had hoped that his strong, patient affection would be rewarded. He had hovered near her, helping her with good counsel, and in every possible way lightening her burdens. By degrees he grew to perceive that her heart was buried with the man whose love had been so unlike the steady, helpful love which he bore her; but none the less, while he accepted his situation with sad courage, did he continue his friendship and his support. Nor, though she could not love him as she wished, did she failety she was spoken of with an affecto appreciate his untiring service, to admire his great qualities, and to reverence his judgment. So that her affection for him grew to be a scarcely less earnest feeling than her love of her dead husband, only it was different, it was less selfish; it was, in truth, a higher feeling; and, such as it was, he accepted it with gratitude, and took it as his mission to watch over her and be by her side in all difficulties.

tionate admiration as a woman of its own set, to whom circumstances, at the first, had been adverse, but who had conquered them all, not by the charm of person, with which nature had plentifully endowed her, but by the power of her genius, which had placed her high among contemporary sculptors.

II.

THE light in the studio was growing Happily he had a means by which he very dim. The bronzes stood out like

it. I get their praise, and I get their money, and I am grateful for it. I am grateful to you, my dear friend, for it - for it is to you that I owe it all; but it would be ten times more grateful to me to hear once from your lips that I had done good work.”

66

But you have. I tell you now, and always. You do do good work."

black guardians, and the marbles and "The praise of fools!" she cried plaster figures were ghostly. The men bitterly. "Oh, George, I am so sick of who worked on the marble had gone home, and the measuring-bow and the chisels were laid aside; but Mrs. Palgrave's fingers still flew feverishly over the shaping mass of clay before her, as if she feared to lose a moment of the remaining daylight. George Heaton stood near her, watching her with eyes of grave affection, as she worked. The dark braids of her hair showed few lines of silver where the small widow's cap did not cover them. Her cheeks were still aglow with the light of young "Florence, you surprise me so much! health, and her beautiful dark eyes I had always thought that you were with the fire of eager purpose. George pleased, satisfied, with your success." Heaton, with his strongly cut, com- 'Again my success! Oh, George, posed face and grizzled beard, looked no. I have kept it so long to myself, nearly a score of years her senior, for I felt it ungrateful to you to comthough he was so but by half that num- plain, owing everything, as I do, to ber. you. But it withers me with self-con

"Oh, good work, yes good in its way, I suppose; but great work, never. Can I never do great work?"

66

"You are clever," he said at length tempt when these people praise me admiringly. those who know nothing; while you! "Clever!" she echoed, and a note-yes, you praise — you praise my clerthat was almost a cry of pain sounded in her voice. "Clever! What is it to be clever? A monkey is that.”

She laid down her modelling-tool, and with tears standing in her dark, passionate eyes looked up at him.

For him, he was so greatly surprised at the effect upon her of his remark that he was unable to reply for a mo

ment.

"I said you are clever," he repeated "clever. I was admiring your cleverness."

"Yes," she said impatiently. "Yes, you always tell me I am clever. Will you never have anything to tell me but that?"

"What is your meaning, Florence?" he asked. "Surely you are not dissatisfied with what I say, with your work, with your success?"

"My success!" she echoed, with a mocking laugh. "Success do you call it ? "

erness."

Heaton was sore put to it, but his loyalty to her and his own best self forbade him to delude with a lie the woman he loved.

"Shall I never do anything great?" she asked, as he was silent — and gazed into his eyes, as a prisoner into the eyes of his judge.

66

"Florence," he said tenderly, can you, a sculptor and a woman-one, therefore, who looks sometimes in her glass - ask me this question seriously? Or, rather, can your glass not answer that question for you? God gives but very few of us so many gifts as he has given you. You have all the quickness of apprehension, all the manual dexterity, for a great artist, besides all your social and personal gifts. But this great creative faculty look in your glass and ask it does that consist with the quickness which every line and feature of your face shows so vividly, and which makes its charm? Do you not know that creation resides in those slow rounded forms which lack the qualities which light your face? You have the love, the instinct, the appreciation, and the manipulation;

How few have | sweet, strong nature, loving his mother ever had it! Above all, how few with all his heart, and with a deeply of your sex-in its highest sense! rooted faith and pride in her genius. Sappho, perhaps, alone - and she is Gerald had been home about a fortlittle more to us than a myth. Forgive night when next George Heaton called me, dear, if I pain you. But you at the studio. Mrs. Palgrave met wanted the truth, did you not?" Heaton with slight embarrassment in "Yes," she said slowly. "Yes, her greeting. "Forgive me, dear old yes," she repeated again. "I wanted friend," she whispered to him, “for the truth." And she threw her mod- the manner of our last parting.'

Mrs. Palgrave had laid down her modelling-tool, and was looking up, amazed at Heaton's tone. Any possible amusement at the colloquy between Heaton and the boy was lost in this a surprise. She knew so well his ordi

"Well," she echoed. "Is it good, nodding his head towards one of Mrs. do you think?”