think of the change that time had made in everything. She had been fighting him, and making him her chief antagonist, almost ever since. And yet, down in the depths of her heart poor Winnie remembered Mary's words, and felt with a curious pang, made up of misery and sweetness, that even yet, even yet, under some impossible combination of circumstances this was what made her laugh, and made her cry so bitterly-but Aunt Agatha, poor soul, could not enter into her heart and see what she meant. They were in this state of agitation when Mary came in, all unconscious of any disturbance. And a further change arose in Winnie at sight of her sister. Her tears dried up, but her eyes continued to blaze. "It is your friend, Mrs. Kirkman, who has been paying us a visit," she said, in answer to Mary's question; and it seemed to Mrs. Ochterlony that the blame was transferred to her own shoulders, and that it was she who had been doing something, and showing herself the general enemy. verse heart. And she thought it would be right to point out to Mary, how any trouble that might be about to overwhelm her was for her good, and that she herself had, like Providence, acted for the best. She looked about the room with actual curiosity, and shook her head at the sight of the Major's sword, hanging over the mantel-piece, and the portraits of the three boys underneath. She shook her head and thought of creatureworship, and how some stroke was needed to wean Mrs. Ochterlony's heart from its inordinate affections. "It will keep her from trusting to a creature," she said to herself, and by degrees came to look complacently on her own position, and to settle how she should tell the tale to be also for the best. It never occurred to her to think what poor hands hers were to meddle with the threads of fate, or to decide which or what calamity was " for the best." Nor did any consideration of the mystery of pain disturb her mind. She saw no complications in it. Your dearest ties—your highest assurances of good-were but "blessings lent us for a day," and it seemed only natural to Mrs. Kirkman that such blessings should be yielded up in a reasonable way. She herself had neither had nor relinquished any particular blessings. Colonel Kirkman was very good in a general way, and very correct in his theological sentiments; but he was a very steady and substantial possession, and did not suggest any idea of being "She must mean to call Mary to repen-lent for a day and his wife felt that she tance, too," said Winnie. She had been thinking with a certain melting of heart of what Mary had once said to her; yet she could not refrain from flinging a dart at her sister ere she returned to think about herself. 66 She is a horrid woman," said Aunt Agatha, hotly. Mary, I wish you would explain to her, that after what has happened it cannot give me any pleasure to see her here. This is twice that she has insulted us. You will mention that we are not-not used to it. It may do for the soldiers' wives, poor things! but she has no right to come here." herself was fortunately beyond that necessity, but that it would be for Mary's good if she had another lesson on the vanity of earthly endowments. And thus she sat, feeling rather comfortable about it, and too sadly superior to be offended by her agitation down-stairs, in Mrs. Ochterlony's room. All this time Mrs. Kirkman was seated in Mary's room, waiting. Her little encoun- Mary went in with her fair face brightenter had restored her to herself. She had ed by her walk, a little soft anxiety (percome back to her lofty position of superior- haps) in her eyes, or at least curiosity, ity and goodness. She would have said a little indignation, and yet the faintest herself that she had carried the Gospel touch of amusement about her mouth. She message to that poor sinner, and that it had went in and shut the door, leaving her sister been rejected; and there was a certain and Aunt Agatha below, moved by what satisfaction of woe in her heart. It was they supposed to be a much deeper emotion. necessary that she should do her duty to Nobody in the house so much as dreamt that Mary also, about whom, when she started, anything of any importance was going on she had been rather compunctious. There there. There was not a sound as of a is nothing more strange than the processes raised voice or agitated utterance as there of thought by which a limited understanding had been when Mrs. Kirkman made her comes to grow into content with itself, and approval of its own actions. It seemed to this good woman's straightened soul that she had been right, almost more than right, in seizing upon the opportunity presented to her, and making an appeal to a sinner's per appeal to Winnie. But when the door of Mrs. Ochterlony's room opened again, and Mary appeared, showing her visitor out, her countenance was changed, as if by half-adozen years. She followed her visitor downstairs, and opened the door for her, and "It is that woman who has brought her bad news," cried Winnie; and then both together they cried out," What is it, Mary? have you bad news?" 66 looked after her as she went away, but not | had looked so fair and so strong in the comthe ghost of a smile came upon Mary's face. posure of her middle age when she stood She did not offer her hand, nor say a word there only an hour before, that the strange at parting that any one could hear. Her despair which seemed to have taken posseslips were compressed, without smile or sion of her, had all the more wonderful an syllable to move them, and closed as if they effect. It woke even Winnie from her prenever would open again, and every drop occupation, and they both came round her, of blood seemed to be gone from her face. wondering and disquieted, to know what was When Mrs. Kirkman went away from the the matter. Something must have hapdoor, Mary closed it, and went back again pened to Will," said Aunt Agatha. to her own room. She did not say a word, nor look as if she had anything to say. She went to her wardrobe and took out a bag, and put some things into it, and then she tied on her bonnet, everything being done Nothing that I have not known for as if she had planned it all for years. years," said Mrs. Ochterlony, and she kissed When she was quite ready, she went down- them both, as if she was kissing them for stairs and went to the drawing-room, where the last time, and disengaged herself, and Winnie, agitated and disturbed, sat talking, turned away. "I cannot wait to tell you saying a hundred wild things, of which any more," they heard her say as she went Aunt Agatha knew but half the meaning. When Mary looked in at the door, the two who were there, started, and stared at her with amazed eyes. "What has happened, Mary?" cried Aunt Agatha; and though she was beginning to resume her lost tranquillity, she was so scared by Mrs. Ochter- she saw Mary far off on the road, going lony's face that she had a palpitation which took away her breath, and made her sink down panting and lay her hands upon her heart. Mary, for her part, was perfectly composed and in possession of her senses. She made no fuss at all, nor complaint, but nothing could conceal the change, nor alter the wonderful look in her eyes. "I am going to Liverpool," she said, "I must see Will immediately, and I want to go by the next train. There is nothing the matter with him. It is only something I have just heard, and I must see him without loss of time." to the door; and there they stood, looking at each other, conscious more by some change in the atmosphere, than by mere eyesight, that she was gone. She had no time to speak or to look behind her; and when Aunt Agatha rushed to the window, steady and swift with her bag in her hand. In the midst of her anxiety and suspicion, Miss Seton even felt a pang at the sight of the bag in Mary's hand. "As if there was no one to carry it for her!" The two who were left behind could but look at each other, feeling somehow a sense of shame, and instinctive consciousness that this new change, whatever it was, involved trouble far more profound than the miseries over which they had been brooding. Something that she had known for years! What was there in these quiet words which made Winnie's veins tingle, and the blood rush to her face? All these quiet years was it possible that a cloud had ever been hovering which Mary knew of, and yet held her way so steadily? As for Aunt Agatha, she was only perplexed and agitated, and full of "Am I looking in a dreadful fixed way ?" wonder, making every kind of suggestion. said Mary, with a faint smile. "I did not | Will might have broken his leg - he might mean it. No, there is nothing the matter have got into trouble with his uncle. It with any of the boys. But I have heard might be something about Islay. Oh! Winsomething that has disturbed me, and I must nie, my darling, what do you think it can see Will. If Hugh should come while I am be? Something that she had known for away years! "What is it, Mary?" gasped Aunt Agatha. "You have heard something dreadful. Are any of the boys mixed up in it? Oh, say something, and don't look in that dreadful fixed way." But here her strength broke down. A choking sob came from her breast. She seemed on the point of breaking out into some wild cry for help or comfort; but it was only a spasm, and it passed. Then she came to Aunt Agatha and kissed her. "Good bye: if either of the boys come, keep them till I come back," she said. She This was what it really was. It seemed to Mary as if for years and years she had known all about it; how it would get to be told to her poor boy; how it would act upon his strange half-developed nature; how Mrs. Kirkman would tell her of it, and the things she would put into her travelling bag, and the very hour the train would leave. It was a miserably slow train, stopping every-ders. She went carrying it, marking her where, waiting at a dreary junction for sev- way, as it were, by blooddrops which answereral trains in the first chill of night. But ed for tears, to do what might be done, that she seemed to have known it all, and to nobody but herself might suffer. For one have felt the same dreary wind blow, and thing, she did not lose a moment. If Will the cold creeping to the heart, and to be had been ill, or if he had been in any danused and deadened to it. Why is it that ger, she would have done the same. She one feels so cold when one's heart is bleed- was a woman who had no need to wait to ing and wounded? It seemed to go in make up her mind. And perhaps she might through the physical covering which shrinks not be too late, perhaps her boy meant no at such moments from the sharp and sensi- evil. He was her boy, and it was hard to tive soul, and to thrill her with a shiver as associate evil or unkindness with him. Poor of ice and snow. She passed Mrs. Kirk- Will! perhaps he had but gone away beman on the way, but could not take any cause he could not bear to see his mother notice of her, and she put down her veil fallen from her high estate. Then it was and drew her shawl closely about her, and that a flush of fiery colour came to Mary's sat in a corner that she might escape recognition. But it was hard upon her that the train should be so slow, though that too she seemed to have known for years. Thus the cross of which she had partially and by moments tasted the bitterness for so long was laid at last full upon Mary's shoul face, but it was only for a moment; things had gone too far for that. She sat at the junction waiting, and the cold wind blew in upon her, and pierced to her heart- and it was nothing that she had not known for years. MR. JOHN R. THOMPSON, well known in American literary circles as the editor of the Literary Messenger-a Transatlantic sheet long since defunctis said to be the Heros von Borcke of Blackwood's Magazine, whose adventures while in the Confederate Service are soon to be published in book form. SPECIFIC FOR THE WHOOPING-COUGH.-It is now pretty well known that the emanations of gasworks are an admirable specific for the whooping-cough, but it is not always convenient to go there, especially when the distance is considerable. Mr. Schnaiter, in such cases, recommends phenol (carbolic acid) as an excellent succedaneum. He states that whooping-cough having lately broken out in an epidemical form at Maisons-Laffitte, a village not many miles MR. JAMES CROLL has published an impor- from Paris, on the Rouen railway, he caused tant paper, "On the Influence of the Tidal some phenol to be poured into three or four Wave on the Motion of the Moon," in the Phil-plates in the house of a friend of his whose chilosophical Magazine for August. He considers dren were attacked with the disease, and that in that the earth is gradually approaching nearer the course of a week they recovered completely. and nearer to the moon, and that he has shown additional reasons for the conclusion that "the influence of the tidal wave will not only stop the diurnal motion of the earth, but will ultimately bring the moon to the earth's surface.' FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. III. After this success a dozen more children were treated in the same manner, and with a similar result. Sunday Gazette. 23. From the Saturday Review, 29 Sept. that she will have nothing to do with ENGLAND AND HER ALLY. ENGLISHMEN are not likely to be so bitterly nettled at the omission of their name in the Imperial State Paper as the French were because the King of PRUSSIA refrained from any mention of the good offices of France in his speech on opening the Chambers. Still it is rather trying to the ordinary Briton to awake and find that, in an exhaustive manifesto on the map of Europe and on the future of European politics, the wishes and the designs and the existence of Great Britain are all ignored. The French EMPEROR has publicly taken us at our word. We have declared that for the future we mean to stand aloof from the vulgar brawls of the Continent of Europe, and to devote ourselves instead to the majestic task of violently forcing the Japanese to buy Manchester dry goods. The EMPEROR believes in the sincerity of the declaration, and ceases to take England into account as a European Power. Spain is included in his description of the distribution of European forces. The possible progress of Russia, and even of the United States of America, is thought worth reckoning in a calculation of the various elements which may go to the making of the future. Great Britain is relegated to the dim obscurity and insignificance which envelopes such Powers as Sweden and Holland. Nobody has any right to complain of this. In the late debate in the House of Commons upon foreign politics our rulers wished to make it plain that our chosen foreign policy is to have no policy at all. We have taken up an attitude of philosophic indifference to everybody's interests but our own, and NAPOLEON III. either believes that we mean to stick to it, or else he would fain pique us out of it. It is, however, much easier to put on a complacent air of philosophy than to saturate yourself with a genuinely philosophic temper. And unless you are really as loftily unimpassioned as you wish to be thought, nothing is more irritating than to be left out of all consideration and account, just as if you meant what you said. Consequently, the Englishman who, in spite of the material prosperity of his country, has still a great deal of the old Palmerstonian Civis Romanus feeling about him, may find himself somewhat sore at this unaccustomed indifference. People who do not go to parties still generally like the compliment of being asked. And on similar principles, though England has ostentatiously vowed foreign affairs, she would perhaps none the less like to have grandiloquent French civilities heaped upon her in the Imperial orations. The EMPEROR is endowed with the too keen logical power of the nation over whom he rules. If his ally thwarts him in nearly every project that he has entertained since the alliance was contracted, he tacitly assumes that such a connection is no alliance at all, and is certainly not worth mentioning in a document of which the object is business, and not idle talk. In the affairs of Poland, in the scheme for a Congress, in the affairs of Mexico, in the scheme for the recognition of the South, and in smaller matters equally, he found that the English alliance meant English disapproval and opposition. The further we are removed from those projects in point of time, the more indisputably clear does it become that, in the gist of these transactions, we were right and that the EMPEROR was wrong. Still this is not alliance. To make matters worse, not only were we compelled to oppose the Imperial plans, but, as the heaven-born RUSSELL was then Foreign Secretary by Divine Right, we were compelled to make our opposition as offensive as. possible. Who can wonder that the EMPEROR, in reviewing his position, in taking stock of the political relations of Europe, should not think it worth while to waste a paragraph or a thought on an alliance which for ten years has produced little besides a bundle of rude despatches? The recent Circular unquestionably marks a highly important point in the history of the French alliance. It shows that, through the ostentatious repetition of our resolve not in any circumstances to resort to material influence, we have ceased to be respected as a source of moral influence. By the constant declaration that nothing short of invasion shall induce us to draw the sword in Europe, we have neutralized the effect of such a disinterested and eminently creditable act, for instance, as the cession of the Ionian Islands. We have lost all weight in critical emergencies where, though we may have no call to fight, we have, and it is our duty as a rational people to have, very strong opinions and very strong unselfish interests. The really elevated and noble side of English character counts for nothing, because most politicians and some journalists insist that foreign Powers shall see nothing but its selfish and meanly prudent side, as if that were the substance of the whole. The deplorable result is gradually dawning upon us. The mention in the EMPEROR's Circular of that "irresisti- | of some unpleasant relics of a bygone spirit, ble power which is gradually causing the an Englishman may, without blind national disappearance of minor States" has natu- vanity, take pride in the comparative disrally inspired the liveliest uneasiness in interestedness of his country in European Brussels, and among the politicians of Switz- affairs. Considerations of the truest selferland. The annexation of populations interest have taught us that territorial ra"with the same customs and the same na pacity is a source of constant weakness and tional spirit." as France, which is spoken of perturbation in the country which is afflictas a very proper kind of territorial exten-ed by it, apart from its pestilent effects on sion is not unreasonably felt to have an un- surrounding nations. We have committed pleasant application to two countries in parts of which they use the French language and the French code. Now there can be no doubt that any move on the part of France in this direction would excite as violent feeling as England is capable of in any matter not immediately affecting the diffusion of dry goods. Whether the feeling would be violent enough to drive us into war, and whether such aggressions would be a just cause of war, are two very open questions. But thus much at least is clear that, if the alliance between England and France had been anything deeper than a makeshift, if the English Government had pursued an intelligent and selfrespecting policy, interfering only on occasions and in a manner in which interference could be effective, and displaying something like a compact, foreseeing, and generous system of national action, then English councils could not have failed to tell with irresistible force against the bare conception of these freebooting projects. The example and weight of England in commercial matters strengthened the EMPEROR against a rebellious and stiff-necked section of his own subjects in the matter of Free-trade In exactly the same way, in matters affecting the European State-system, if England had not vaunted her profound indifference to all Continental transactions whatever, her upright and disinterested policy must have strengthened the EMPEROR in controlling what he calls "the hope of obtaining by war a territorial extension." For the French people have never shown any dead want of susceptibility in the presence of a disinterested example. They are not very much less sensitive about being surpassed morally than about being surpassed in the art of war. That keen spirit of emulation which has been so unfortunately kindled in the order of military ideas by the victories of their old antagonists, the Prussians, is capable of being more beneficently roused in the order of moral ideas. In the presence of a nobler political morality than his own, a Frenchman is as certainly impelled to obey it as a citizen of any other thoroughly enlightened country. In spite sins in our time in this way, but we have got a stage ahead of them now. Demands such as those shadowed forth in the Auxerre speech, intimations that if anybody else gets anything we shall insist upon having something too, are impossible in this country. Why, then, is so admirable an example thrown away upon France? Why do the keen, and on the whole generous, people of that country lag behind and fail to see the striking moral inferiority of the attitude which they have been assuming? Because England has been too anxious to give the ugliest and meanest aspect to her policy of which it is capable, and to set forth its principles in the most unattractive guise that they can be made to assume. Instead of saying that non-intervention in the recent war was the right policy for us because Germans knew their own affairs best, and because no political duty invited our interference, writers and speakers seem to prefer to explain our course, in this and all the similar crises of the Continent, by saying that, in the first place, we are an Asiatic Power; and, in the second, that, after all, our great and single duty in the universe is to diffuse unlimited quantities of dry goods. It is this colouring and tone which revolts foreigners against conduct that is substantially worthy of all their admiration. There is all the difference in the world between the august and dignified neutrality of a great nation and the mean neutrality of a small shopkeeper at a contested election, who does not care a straw for one principle more than another, but is only afraid of losing his customers. There was true dignity in the neutral attitude of the Emperor of the FRENCH in the late war, until the humiliating declarations now humiliating in a double sense- about the necessity for territorial compensation. Apart from this fatal stain he could have preserved a splendid position throughout the contest. How is it that England takes just the same attitude on just the same grounds, with principles at least as good, and intentions much better, and yet without winning one jot of goodwill or respect from a single bystander? The answer, we think, is plain. It is denied |