approval, but not less confident of your love, and anxious only to realize your presence between myself and the public, and to mingle with those severer voices to whose final sentence I submit my work, the beloved and gracious accents of your own.

"OWEN MEREDITH.""

As Grinlay Snarl read the last paragraph, his voice grew husky, and there were tears in his eyes. Lucy had been weeping silently for some time, but she was young, full of sympathy and sentiment, and easily moved, but the old critic's emotion surprised her.

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What," said she to herself, "if I have mistaken this man, if, instead of a selfish, egotistical, tyrannical boaster, he is a man of taste and feeling. Rough, rude, ugly, and disagreeable as he is, he may have a tender heart; and if he loves me, as I often fear he does, how painful it will be to trample on a

true and noble love; yet to love him in return, even were I free, were impossible. Alas! I fear. . . . but no, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I will not anticipate so great a trial."

"How I wish you would write this critique yourself," said Lucy. "I had no idea that you could admire anything so intensely."

"Well, the Nil admirari is the motto of the age, and I try to make it mine; but what few things I do admire, I admire with passion;" and he shot a glance out of his green eyes at Lucy, which made her shudder. "And now I entrust these two critiques to you, Miss Lucy. Give us an abstract and extracts of each, and let me see that I have not overrated your powers. You will see that LuCILE'-though one would expect her, as the Comtesse de Nevers, to turn out anything but a selfish coquette-is, in reality, meant to show us how divine a thing a woman can be made,' by sublime, self-sacrificing, devoted love.

Give plenty of extracts. For the playful take

such as this:

666 COOKS.

We may live without poetry, music, and art;

We may live without conscience, and live without heart; We may live without friends, we may live without books, But civilised man cannot live without cooks.

He may live without books-what is knowledge but grieving?

He may live without hope-what is hope but deceiving? He may live without love-what is passion but pining? But where is the man that can live without dining?'

"Then, again, for a pretty little vignettelike description of a mountain home, what do you think of this ?

One lodges but simply at Serchon, yet thanks
To the season that changes for ever the haunts
Of the blossoming mountain, and shifts the light cloud
O'er the valley, and hushes and rouses the loud
Wind that wails in the pines, or creeps murmuring down
The dark evergreen slopes, to the slumbering town;
And the torrent that falls, faintly heard from afar,
And the blue-bells that purple the dapple-grey scaur.

VOL. III.

F

One sees with each month of the many-faced year
A thousand sweet changes of beauty appear.'

:

"A glowing description of female beauty is a poct's delight, and let us listen to this "The Lady in truth

Was young, fair, and gentle; and never was given
To more heavenly eyes the pure azure of heaven;
Never yet did the sun touch to ripples of gold,

Tresses brighter than those which her soft hand unrolled

From her noble and innocent brow, when she rose

An Aurora at dawn from her balmy repose,

And into the mirror the bloom and the blush
Of her beauty broke glowing like light in a gush
From the sunrise in summer.

Love roaming shall meet

But rarely a nature more sound or more sweet,
Eyes brighter, brow whiter, a figure more fair,
Or lovelier lengths of more radiant hair,
Than thine, Lady Alfred, and here I aver

(May those that have seen thee declare if I err!),
That not all the oysters of Britain contain

A pearl pure as thou art.

Let some one explain,

Who may know more than I of the intimate life
Of the pearl and the oyster-why yet in his wife,
In despite of her beauty, and most when he felt
His soul to the sense of her loveliness melt,

Lord Alfred miss'd something he sought for-indeed
The more that he miss'd it, the greater the need,
Till it seemed to himself he could willingly spare

All the charms that he found for the one charm not there.'

One extract more I will suggest, Miss Lucy," said Grinlay Snarl, "and then, as it is getting late, I must beg to hear what you have written of your new tale.

"Lucile in the end, as you will see, becomes a Sister of Charity (La Sœur Seraphine); and thus her mission is described :

666

The vapours closed round, and he saw her no more:
Nor shall we, for her mission accomplished is o'er,
The mission of genius on earth! To uplift,
Purify, and confirm, by its own gracious gift,
The world, in despite of the world's dull endeavour
To degrade and drag down and oppose it for ever.
The mission of genius: to watch and to wait,
To renew, to redeem, and to regenerate.
The mission of woman on earth; to give birth
To the mercy of heaven descending on earth.
The mission of woman, permitted to bruise
The head of the serpent, and sweetly infuse,
Through the sorrow and sin of earth's registered

curse,

The blessing which mitigates all; born to nurse,