over her and taking one of her little trembling hands in his, which was almost as unsteady, while with desperate courage he first touched and then stroked the golden hair that floated over her shoulders. Ernestine dropped her cheek on his knee at the first touch of that friendly hand, whose caress had no terror in it; and his trembling fingers smoothed and smoothed her hair long before he could make the effort to speak to her.

It was full three hours later that Fanny, who had been talking long with "Cousin Honora," invaded the parlor, filled with the vain imagination that the lovers had had quite time enough to get tired of each other. She never was told what had passed; but there sat Austin on the sofa, with Ernestine at his side. He had an arm around her, and her head rested on his shoulder in the most natural way in the world. She had been crying, but he had evidently smoothed and settled matters at last; and as he had her chin in one of his hands and was about to kiss her, he persisted in his intention in the most shameless way, in spite of Fanny's approach, and then called “Come in!" very coolly as she beat a retreat. It is needless to say that Fanny did not accept the invitation, but went back to Cousin Honora with the news that their darling's keeping was in the hands of the man they all trusted.

The first thing Fanny did in the way of preparing for the wedding was to inform her quondam favorite George of the situation, and to sign him a check for a large amount, in order that his disappointment might be forgotten in the pleasures of a European trip. He grumbled, took the money, reluctantly consented to his mother's eager wish to accompany him, thanked his aunt half-graciously, and prepared to go.

Fanny, with this burden rolled off her conscience, wrote next to the Drummonds to invite them to visit her, and to remain until after the marriage of their little Ernestine. Mrs. Ainsleigh wrote also; and so one gray winter's evening Charlie Drummond, the mountain glow on his cheeks and the frosty sparkle in his clear blue eyes, came across the threshold of Mrs. Greyson's house. It was some time before the wedding. His father and mother could leave home only a few days, and would come down later just to witness the ceremony. With his same old gentle manner Charlie devoted himself mainly to his Aunt Honora. Fanny was always here, there, now in one spot and then in another; but she was not so absorbed in Ernestine's affairs that she failed to throw every opportunity for enjoyment in Charlie's way, and to let him know that she particularly desired to make his visit a pleasant one.

He thought her a little changed. In the few restful moments in which she sat and talked with him, there seemed to him a certain pathetic cadence in the ring of her voice; the big brown eyes looked so troubled sometimes, and a little line of "worry" gathered between the white brows. He was troubled always after talking to her; a wistful look was in his eyes as he observed her outgoings and comings-in. Both of them said in their hearts that these meetings meant only anguish to both; that their lives were to be forever in contrast to the happy loving lives of the two lovers in the house; yet "only for

a little while," pleaded the traitor in both hearts. Wait until the wedding is over, and we part hands as they join theirs for ever. Fanny looks forward to the same dreary splendor and moneyed emptiness; Charlie thinks he will be glad at her presence this little while, and that he has strength to bear the after-pain.

Fanny is alone in the library one morning, when Charlie's brisk step came through the hall, and he paused in the doorway.

Here you are! May I come in, muddy as I am?" and he tapped his riding-whip against his knee. His dark pants were indeed plentifully spattered with mud. "I want to say what a glorious ride I have had. I never mounted a horse I liked better than this one of yours."

"Come in, of course. So you have really enjoyed it?"

"Oh, immensely! I feel at home on horseback," he answered, hastily.

"And you are contented only at home: I have not known how to make the city attractive to you.'

Charlie caught the disappointed cadence in Fanny's voice, and regretted his hasty speech. "I have enjoyed my visit more than you know," he said. "It will be hard for me to go home this time — for the first time in my life." He advanced towards her as he spoke, and looked at her earnestly. "All my happiness used to be there. I used to love the mere liberty, the activity, the hard work which gave zest to my moments of idleness. All the horses and colts, the cows, the sheep, the dogs know and love me; the woods and fields and skies seemed full of blessings to me; my life was sensible, serene, content. You know how I lived: how plainly, contrasted with your elegance and luxury yet how happily. Things are changed now." "How changed?" asked Fanny, a rich rose-color in her cheeks. "There is something I want," said he, with the glint in his blue eyes and the firm look coming to his mouth-the firm look with which Charlie always faced trouble: "one thing that I want which will not let my old pleasure feel complete. It is something very far beyond me, very beautiful, very sweet. I shall not try for it; I have no right to it; I must do without it."

She turned a little away, and looked down in the fire glowing in the low grate. "You will have a better life in the future than 1," she said. "But then you and every one else give me credit for being satisfied with my life. You speak to me always as if I had a soul small enough to be content with gaiety and admiration and city societyfit for nothing else. Oh, I revel in pretty dresses! My soul satisfieth itself in a fine carriage and pair; happiness remaineth with three-inch carpets, with rosewood and silver and gold, with jewels and lace! If I had an immortal soul and a womanly heart I might care for other things; but I am only a butterfly-I can appreciate nothing better than this!"

The color flamed up in Fanny's cheeks. She looked very handsome, but she felt ridiculous. She had surprised herself with this burst of petulance; she felt a burning contempt for her own weakness. "I just wanted to assure you," she resumed, with a lame apology to cover her confusion, "that nothing in people's surroundings can

please them unless they have a contented mind. You and I must learn to give over wishing for the unattainable, and be satisfied with the course of life which falls to our lot."

She turned and crossed the room, but Charlie faced her at the door with a resolved look. Two very pale faces confronted each other in silence for a moment. There was a look in his eyes Fanny could not bear; her lip suddenly trembled, and her face changed its whole expression. She lifted one hand - she did not touch him, but she seemed to wave him aside, and she fled past him to her own

room.

There, half an hour later, Charlie sent her a letter. Something had roused him; he had dared wooing her at last.

And what was life without love? Could anything reconcile her to parting with the only man sne thoroughly respected and cared for; the only man whose comings and goings mattered to her, whose step rejoiced her, whose hand-clasp thrilled her through and through? Or could she think “the world well lost" for him, and adventure a simpler, nobler life than the old one, giving to George and Austin their share of the estate, and taking for it all, Charlie? Was she to step down from her proud estate and cleave to one man only? A strange joy thrilled through the sweet woman's heart, that heart that had kept tender and true so long.

She had opened her door, had taken three steps down the hall, when Charlie came to meet her. With a struggle Fanny lifted her long lashes and looked her best and latest lover in the face, her answer shining in her eyes. H. HARDY.

ARMAND DE PONTMARTIN.

TH

HE pleasure derived from reading good books is similar to that of personal association with the writers. The man appears in his work if not always, at least almost always. It is only the dii majores of literature, Homer, Shakspeare, and a very few others, who seem to have no personal connection with what they write, and hide their individuality behind an impenetrable veil. It is nearly impossible to arrive at any distinct idea of the character of the Greek poet from reading the Iliad, and Shakspeare completely disappears in the crowd of immensely varied and sharply contrasted personages of his plays. But with the makers of books in general, the style is the man. The writer reveals surely, sometimes on every page, his pecul.ar

individuality; so that having read the books you know the authors, and either shrink from them as human beings of repulsive and unsympathetic traits, or are warmly attracted toward them as toward the noble and engaging characters of one's personal acquaintance.

Count Armand de Pontmartin, the able and penetrating critic of modern French society and literature, is an instance, and a very striking one, of this personality of a writer in his works, and of the pleasure derived from reading the printed thoughts of a scholar and a gentleman. Allow the use of that old-fashioned word which the world looks but coldly on in this democratic age. In the multitude of makers of books, articles, essays, sketches, stories and dramas, who jostle each other in the race for fame or cash, it is not every one who indicates his possession of the delicate and attractive traits which constitute this character. With the good as the bad, the well-bred as the vulgar, the person accustomed to the society of honorable people and the "Bohemian" addicted to low association and discreditable living, the style still expresses the man, and the author is in his writing. Is it a human being of pure life and character who writes? You can see the fact in his pages. Is it a vulgar pretender, an adventurer without self-respect or honor? That is as plain in his book. There may occur here and there an apparent exception to this rule, and a man of bad character may successfully dissimulate and appear what he is not. But the limit to this faculty of acting a part is soon reached. The genuinely pure page can only be written by the genuinely pure man. If the book you read reflects a sensitive honor, an exquisite sense of decorum, and the prisca fides in morals and manners; if you say to yourself during the perusal: "This volume excites respectable sentiments, honorable views, commendable feelings, and prompts to virtue and the practice of all things that are pure, honest and of good report," be sure in that event that the author himself is thus decorous, honorable, pure, and writes himself in his book. M. de Pontmartin impresses you, everywhere in his works, with this high opinion of his personal character, and the contrast between himself and the greater number of the prominent writers of modern France is striking indeed. No class of authors ever more thoroughly revealed themselves in their productions. Consider for a moment the works of the poets and romance-writers, more especially, of the last generation in France. These books reflect perfectly the characters of the men who wrote them as these men reflected in themselves the peculiar epoch, 1830 and the years following, in which they figured. They suddenly appeared in the midst of a literary tempesta veritable hurricane as of the tropics. French literature all at once broke violently away from the fetters of classicism which had long bound it. Revolting from the reserve and dignity of Racine and Corneille, it ran riot in a new direction, and wandered in paths very dubious and zigzag indeed. The movement was a sort of vertigo: its advocates dignify it with the more flattering term, a renaissance. If it were a new birth, the birth resulted in something resembling a monster, though a vigorous and striking monster. The seething blood of a sudden and violent reaction filled all brains, as the sap rushes up in trees with the abrupt coming of spring. Old theories and precepts were thrown

to the winds, and the whole literary mind of France seemed to grow dizzy and lose its equilibrium. Virtue was confounded with vice, respect for the bienséances of life was lost sight of, and the boundaries between good and bad taste were everywhere thrown down, the writers asserting boldly that they did not write books to be read by girls at boarding-schools, and that where they met with any exhibition whatever of human passions they had the right to paint these passions as they found them. The result of this theory of letters was soon seen. The writers who led in the new revolution were men of unquestionable ability, but they had grown dizzy, for the most part led lives which would scarcely bear close inspection, and their mental and moral idiosyncrasies were revealed in their books. The early dramas of the great genius, Victor Hugo, were remarkable for the repulsive choice of subjects, as in his Le Roi S'Amuse, Lucretia Borgia, and other plays, where he seems to prefer the revolting, and delight in showing flowers of ideal virtue growing in dunghills; and a great crowd of writers with similarly warped tastes followed him. Dumas in his Antony, Don Juan de Marana, and many other plays, treated shocking subjects, and drew pictures equally offensive to morals and religion; and although this vigorous writer, perforce of his gay temper, kind heart, and virile healthfulness of character, afterwards emerged from this bad atmosphere and wrote books of an entirely different description, his first essays were as objectionable as those of his co-mates. Hugo and Dumas led only; they were followed and abetted by a long list of writers, whose productions came to be classed under the comprehensive title of "The Literature of Desperation." By Soulié, whose wild fancy seemed to burn him up, and send him staggering dizzily through such artistic monstrosities as the Memoirs of the Devil and Eight Days at the Château. By Balzac, the morbid, corrupting and powerful master of realism, from the perusal of whose books you rise with an uneasy sense of moral contamination. By Alfred de Musset, whose great genius did not prevent his Child of the Age from being one of the most terrible and hopeless gospels of unfaith in God and man alike ever written. By Eugene Sue, whose mental atmosphere was heavy with the sickly perfume of disreputable opinions, and whose private life was fully in accord with his absence of moral convictions and his disbelief in marriage and religion. By George Sand, whose wonderful imagination and exquisite style were in like manner placed at the orders of infidelity in religion, impurity in the marriage relation, communism, socialism, and, in a word, all that ought not to be and cannot be believed in by right thinkers and respectable people. By Baudelaire, the half-crazed poet of incontestable powers, whose Flowers of Evil would have crushed all the hopes of humanity if they had not begun by arousing an inexpressible sentiment of disgust, as in his revolting Une Charogne. By the younger Dumas, the historian of the demi-monde, who reproduced in the most exaggerated form Hugo's virtuous monsters and respectable sinners; and by M. Sardou, whose comedies ridicule everything that men ought to respect. By Rénan and Sainte-Beuve even, men of an altogether different type from those above-mentioned, but belonging to the new school of thinkers in this, that they made themselves more or less directly