young lady who is as fond of admiration as the rest of us."

"I wish you would not talk quite so flippantly on subjects of importance, Miss Westbrook," Brian jerked out solemnly. "You are not fond of admiration or attention."

"I am only a woman," answered Mabel demurely. "I think I am, Mr. Halfday."

"No-no, not in the way I mean," said Brian; "not the fulsome admiration and attention which that big blonde would take for a compliment."

"She will the more readily get over this folly," said Brian.

They went slowly from the promenade to the paths which wound up the steep hills of

CLOSE TO THE TRUTH.

ABEL WESTBROOK turned very white, before a flush of honest indignation at Michael Sewell's duplicity stole over her face and neck. Young and guileless herself, knowing little of the world and the world's temptations, crediting humanity with higher motives than as a rule it deserved, believing in the good, and doubting if there were much evil in men's hearts, the revelation of Brian Halfday was a blow to Mabel from which she did not readily recover. "Oh! is it true-can it be true?" she exclaimed.

Mwhite, before a flush of honest in

peace, and with only a few stragglers to wonder what might be the subject of their conversation.

"Now tell me what to do. I can rely upon you," said Mabel, when they were on one of the upper paths, and not far from the summit of the cliff.

"Thank you for the compliment," answered Brian with a smile. "I have given you, in my time, a great deal of advice, which I have no remembrance of your following." "Go on, You regard matters lightly. I have a friend's reputation at stake," said Mabel impatiently.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Westbrook. This is reproof for reproof, I suppose; but I hardly deserve it. But why should we not treat the matter lightly ?" he asked. "Michael Sewell has been flirting with your friend, and has not told her he is married. Mrs. Disney has been a little indiscreet in accepting attentions from a gentleman of whose antecedents she is in ignorance; and a quiet hint from you sets the position right. Where is the harm done? The widow is not likely to be desperately in love. Her vanity may have been flattered by a handsome young man's attentions, but I should doubt if her heart had been touched in the least."

"I am not so sure. Love is a plant of quick growth in the hearts of most women, I have been told."

"Quick-growing plants wither quickly," said Brian in reply. "The weed grows apace, is torn up by the roots, and thrown asideand there's an end of it."

"I had forgotten your opinion of women," Mabel, half-indignantly, half-sorrow

fully. "But this Michael Sewell is dangerous."

"To any one with a fair share of common sense," Brian answered, "he is obtrusive and vulgar."

"Why is he here without Dorcas? Why does he come under a false name to the 'Mastodon,' and with a title to which he has no right?"

"I am not defending Michael Sewell," replied Brian. "He is no friend of mine. In twenty-four hours from this time he will constitute himself my bitterest enemy."

Mabel drew a quick breath of alarm, and looked anxiously at Brian.

"He will not think you have told me,” she said.

"Probably he will; but I am not alluding to that. He knows I am likely to study Dorcas's interest before his own; and if I understand the gentleman, he will treat the matter as an excellent jest, when he is found out-not before."

"Why do you think he will consider himself your bitterest enemy then?"

"Will you allow me to reply to that question twenty-four hours hence also?"

"For what reason?" Mabel inquired. "It concerns you-it relates to the old, objectionable topic of your money," said Brian.

"Yes," replied Mabel thoughtfully, "I can afford to wait for any explanation of that, but," she added with greater interest, "you are not going to quarrel with him-to place yourself in vain opposition to him to do harm rather than good by setting yourself up as my champion? I promised your sister Dorcas to wait patiently-to have faith in her and you must not interfere."

Suppose I am studying my own interests, and not yours?"

"Confound Angelo !" exclaimed Brian in a higher key, despite himself; "only last night you spoke as if you were afraid of him, doubtful of the result of this foolish stepyou must pardon me, but it was a very foolish step-which you had taken at his friends' advice—and now you are scarcely happy out of his sight.

"He is my charge," was Mabel's reply, "for the present. He is still weak and strange, and only I have any influence over him. I might add without much vanity perhaps that he at least is unhappy out of my sight, terribly unlike his old self, but after your hard words I shall say no more, Mr. Halfday. Please conduct me back to the promenade."

"Yes-one minute," said Brian, “I have said something rude again, and hurt your feelings as usual. But you spoke of the man as if" “Well—as if?" demanded Mabel imperiously.

"As if you loved him," Brian answered, "and that vexed me."

"I do not see why it should vex you in any way," said Mabel, with a charming assumption of ignorance that a man more versed in woman's wiles would have seen through quickly, and seized his advantage from.

"Everything that relates to you affects me seriously," replied Brian, very grave and stern under the misapprehension of her manner,

and you know, or should know, that as well as I do. I have attempted no disguise ; you have. Every time I meet you there arises something to perplex me with your character, and to bewilder me with your remarks. You wonder why I should be vexed at your speaking as if you loved Angelo Salmon. Why-you have no right to love him!"

"Have I not a right to love whom I please?"

"Certainly not," said Brian emphatically,

"you should be--I believe you are--above all profession of attachment for people you don't care for."

"But I do care for Angelo-in a way, that is."

"Yes, in a way! But how would the man who loves you with his whole soul-whom you love, for you have almost owned itthink of the miserable and mistaken position you have assumed ?"

"What man can you possibly mean?" exclaimed Mabel, becoming very red on the instant.

"What man? Great Heaven, what a question are you laughing at me-have you gone out of your mind, too?" cried Brian, in his profound astonishment.

"I hope not-but I don't know what you mean. I must be unaccountably dull this morning. Will it please you to enlighten me?"

"The dry-goods fellow in the backwoods somewhere-whom you are not treating well, if you care for him at all. Which you owned to me you did, mind," said Brian with severity.

Mabel coloured again, but her eyes looked up at the blue sky, and then along the path they were pursuing in their slow progress downwards to the promenade again, and finally, to Brian's increased surprise and vexation, she burst into a peal of merry laughter which echoed pleasantly and musically amongst the trees. It was a momentary forgetfulness of the shadows that were about her life, that might be stealing from the lower ground like a mist that would envelop the lives of others presently, and wherein others might be lost, but she was young, naturally light-hearted, and the humour of the position and the studied gravity of Brian Halfday were too much for her. She laughed from the heart, as a girl should at her age, but it was the last laugh for many a long day.

"I don't see the joke," said Brian shortly.

"I cannot very well explain." was Mabel's answer; "there is a mistake somewhere, I think."

"A man in the backwoods."
"Ay-very far back, indeed."

"If I had only dreamed you were jesting on that night respecting the man I fancied you loved-I should have been very glad. I should have acted in a different fashion." "I don't see why you should have done so."

"You were not in love with a dry-goods man-a backwoodsman-any one in America, then? Tell me that?"

"Literally speaking-no," answered Mabel; "but you must not ask too--"

"And you have never loved Angelo Salmon?" he cried. "It is all out of pity for him that

"Pray don't say any more," said Mabel, interrupting him in her turn, and becoming very much afraid of him. "I don't careI don't wish to reply to further questioning. I will not."

"You shall," he exclaimed; "for I must learn the truth, and be crushed under foot or raised to heaven by a word. I love you, Mabel. You know it-you have known it all along. Oh! my darling, to be lost for ever, or to be won now. I love you-I love you!"

It was a fitting place for the avowal, under the still, green trees that shadowed the winding paths of the Spa Gardens, where love-making is not particularly uncommon; it was the fitting time for it to two hearts that had been slowly and surely approaching each other from the first, in spite of every misconception; it was the genuine outburst of a pent-up soul that no woman could mistake. It was the strong love of a strong man, whose pride had given way, and whose passion had mastered his reserve.

Mabel looked away, trembled, and shed tears, but she did not shrink from him as he passed his arm for an instant round her waist. This was her first love, and she only

the band that was playing a triumphal march, as if in compliment to his victory.

Two men followed them, but Brian and Mabel were unconscious of watchers, or of anyone existing, just then, in the world, save themselves; such is the selfishness of the human heart when a man or woman is stowed away at its core.

"What did I tell you?" said Michael Sewell to Angelo, as they stood on the high ground, looking down at the lovers; "what else could you expect?"

"Yes--what could I expect?" repeated Angelo. (To be continued.)

I'

Nall countries where the people, either en masse, or as winnowed out by a process of artificial selection, constitutes the ultimate depositary of political power, the problem sooner or later arises, how to reconcile the broadest franchise with security for the ability, culture, and integrity of rulers. It is no new perplexity arising out of the exigencies of modern representative institutions; on the contrary, it was felt in Rome of old, and met by such rude appliances as suggested themselves as each new emergency arose. It is felt now, when civil polity has assumed the garb of philosophy, when society is more complex, and the need of satisfaction more pressing and imperative. No doubt the science of government was treated of by Plato, and Aristotle, and Cicero, but the conditions under which it presented itself to the view of the ancient philosopher were radically different from those of modern society, as contemplated by modern thought. A brief consideration of the question may be of service here, since, as may perhaps appear in the sequel, Canada offers a fairer field for its solution than Europe or the United States. And first, to clear the ground of a few obstructions tending to obscure the view, which, to be of use, must necessarily be broad and comprehensive.

Popular government, whether it be decked with the trappings of monarchy or appearing in the naked, but pretentious, simplicity of a republic, is not an end, but only the

means to an end. To assert that the object of all government is the good of the governed, and, therefore, that its machinery is merely instrumental, appears to be a truism; yet, like other self-evident propositions, it is apt to be, at times, lost sight of or forgotten. There crops up, ever and anon, the popular fallacy that forms of rule are to be approved or condemned, not for what they do, but for what they are. Since the days of Rousseau and the Encyclopædia, doctrinaires have never tired of expatiating on the theory of government, as divorced from its practice. Like political economy, the offspring of the same era, democracy has been submitted as a complete theory, indisputable in its dogmatic principles, and capable of adaptation to any community, without regard to time, place, or degree of civilization. The revolution of 1789 has ceased to be the bogey it was, and properly so. The present generation has learned to peer beyond the terrible excesses of the Revolution; the eye is no longer confused with the fearful scenes of the Terror; the ear catches other sounds than the groans of the dying, the rattle of the fatal tumbril, or the dull thud of Samson's knife. The smoke has rolled away, and the substantial results remain to be contemplated by men no longer frenzied by horror or unnerved by fear. The cost of these benefits surpasses calculation; but, on the other hand, they are priceless. It is not too much to say that all which Europe possesses of

political and intellectual freedom, and all the promise of advance and progress yet before the nations, are referable to that awful convulsion. Whether liberty could not have been achieved by a process less violent and drastic, it is futile to enquire; for we must take history as we find it, not as one would have pre-adjusted it.

It is one thing, however, to recognize the service to human equality and freedom wrought by the Revolution, and quite another to approve of the theories to which it gave rise. Rigid political systems, stereotyped for all time, are sure to prove faulty, just as cast-iron creeds in religion have done over and over again. Theologians are not the only dogmatists in the world; nor have they a monopoly of obstinate bigotry and intolerance. To propound a particular form of government as the only one suited for every nation, irrespective of age, clime, or social development, on the sandy foundation of a social contract or an hypothesis concerning the rights of man, is only less absurd than to impose upon all men a detailed scheme of religious belief. A form of government, like all human appliances, must stand or fall by its adaptability to the purposes of all government, or the reverse. Democracy is no spell to conjure with; there is no magic about the name or the thing; for, according to circumstances, it may be either as an angel from Heaven, or as a fiend from the pit. At some stages of civilization, what Mr. Mill calls a "beneficent despotism" may be, out of question, the best form of rule, and popular government, if possible at all, the very worst. In like manner, even where the people have a share in the councils of their country, the extent of that share must be determined not on any preconceived theory, but by the circumstances of the case. It cannot be too often insisted upon, that the franchise is not a right but a privilege, to be granted or withheld according to the simple rule of expediency—by which is meant a regard for the general good, or in other words, a regard for the ultimate objects and aims of government which is established for the general good. If every intelligent human being had an inherent right to the franchise, there could be no possible pretence for denying it to women, who are, for the most part, more intelligent in the lower strata of society than the males already en

franchised-or of refusing it to minors between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. Moreover, if the possession of property were the test, instead of, or conjoined with, manhood, then every man should be represented according to the amount he pays to the tax-collector, which would give us that most odious of all governments-a plutocracy. Property qualifications are a clumsy device for separating the enfranchised sheep from the unenfranchised goats-a pis aller for want of something better.

Forms of Government, then, as well as the extent of the franchise where representative institutions exist, cannot be determinately fixed on à priori principles; and yet it by no means follows that they are matters of indifference. Pope's well-known couplet"For forms of Government let fools contest,

That which is best administered is best,' is superficially true, yet substantially false. Given the age, the historical antecedents, and the existing conditions in point of civiliization of any people, and although you may have some doubt about the precise political system to be preferred, there is seldom any difficulty in excluding all forms of government but one, out of view altogether. In civilized Europe and northern America, at all events, there is no longer room for choice. In Europe, Russia and Turkey alone remain without representative institutions, and for the present, it is quite as well that they do so. The Divan's proposal to establish constitutional government throughout the Ottoman Empire would be ludicrous, if it were not palpably fraudulent, a deliberate offer to act a lie, the same lie they imposed upon credulous Europe in the case of Crete. Germany is a bureaucracy, with the forms of free institutions, as the last Napoleon's rule was a despotism grounded on universal suffrage. In France and Italy, the experiment promises well, and deserves. the cordial sympathy of free humanity; in Spain it is an abortion. In England and the United States, representative government is of historic development-the sole difference being that the child has outstripped the parent. Whether it has acted wisely or not, is another thing. The framers of the American constitution left the question of the suffrage to the individual States, and, as a matter of fact, Virginia and other members of the Confederation required a property