acceptance of which he would have secured to himself a handsome income for life. But he disclaimed it, and went quietly up to bed, on a November night, in the shabby sponging-house, with the observation that he was in no hurry. So that when an extraordinary turn in the law-suit took every lawyer by surprise, and the legal world stood aghast, amazed, dumbfounded at a decision that put him in possession of the entire wealth of that remarkable uncle of his who used to pinch my ears, he alone was cool. I can see him now, fastening the elastic band about his umbrella as he walked out of the court, as calm as the cabman whom he hailed. On the morrow morning, when he had read the report of the case in the papers, he turned to me and said,

I was right, my friend; you see that I was right. And now tell me which are the rooms in the castle you would prefer? Drop in at Coutts's, and see the liberty I have ventured to take with your balance. Tell me if you like your brougham: it is at the door. Now see whether you cannot become Lord Chancellor.'

In sober truth, my brougham was at the door; my account was a princely one; and I had the pick of the castle apartments. The scene was a glorious one when the sun of Lewis's fortunes was in its noontide splendour. The beautiful, the brilliant, the gifted, the illustrious, crowded to his halls, thronged his drawing-rooms, peopled his park, and tasted of all the sweets of his refined and liberal hospitality. He alone remained calm and easy, I might say, unconcerned. Misfortune had hit him hard, and had not stirred a muscle of his face: fortune was now his generous friend, and she could barely extort a smile from him. I was, I think, more grateful. I blessed and thankedthe Fates. For, while any care as to my means of living was removed far away from me, I neglected no opportunity of promoting my own advancement in my own way. I worked at my profession, and Lewis was able to introduce me to firstrate business. I had at times more

than I could well manage. When I was at the castle I would retire from the scene of the festivities to my own apartment, and there turn out my brief bag upon the table, and read into the small hours. Very few men, I flatter myself, would have done that, with the advantages that I had within my reach. But I was determined not to be dependent on Lewis. I was resolved to draw the line somewhere; for, as I think I have remarked before, I never really liked him.

I grew rich-I do not deny it; and it was Lewis's money that enabled me to make a figure in the world, which is half the battle in the professions. But he wanted me; I was necessary to him; and therefore it was for himself that he was open-handed with me. I am not the first orphan who has been adopted; nor the first school chum who has been befriended in afterlife; nor the first man who has owed his stepping-stones to fortune, to accident. I don't see why I should be pestered about it, as though there were something so very extraordinary in my case. I make my acknowledgments once for all; and I fail to see why I should be perpetually uttering thanks. It has been said that gratitude is a lively sense of favours to come: I am sure that I expect nothing more from Lewis. The brougham in which I ride was his, granted; my house was part of his estate, granted. The case in which I pocketed nearly three thousand pounds was of his introduction; have I ever denied it? My wife's brilliants were a present made to her by Lewis when we married. Does not this happen every day in the week? Am I bound to like a man because he finds pleasure in my society and profit in my advice? Let me tell my story in my own way to the end. We were at the castle. My wife and children had been staying there for months, and I had been in the habit of running down in the intervals of my arduous professional duties. Lewis had stood godfather to our eldest boy, and had settled a sum of money on the engaging young fellow that insured him a

good position in life; so that we felt bound to humour the godfather's desire to have the boy as much with him as possible. Lewis was very fond of children; and they, I am bound to add, were very fond of him.

Well, on a certain autumn morning-the first on which a fire had been deemed necessary in the breakfast-room-Lewis asked me to give him half an hour in the library. I had business of my own in hand; but I was always a good-natured fellow, I believe, and I followed my old schoolfellow. He began quietly, as when he put the band round his umbrella when he had gained his

cause

"The vicissitudes of my life are not ended yet. My dear old schoolfellow, learn that once again I haven't a penny in the world.'

At this point I begged him to excuse me for a moment; and I ran to my wife's boudoir, and told her to have everything ready for the midday train. Above all, she was not to forget her diamonds. She was the most obedient of consorts, and I will do her the justice to say that she did not forget a thingeven to the baby's socks. turned to the library, and taking Lewis by the hand, expressed my regret. He continued

I re

Not a penny in the world! I am beggared, my dear friend, by the men whom I have helped to affluence. My own people have turned upon me. My own stewards have destroyed me. The people and places I found poor and bare, and that are now thriving, are the centres of the infamy that has stripped me. You heard one of my bailiffs this morning give me notice. This rascal is rat number twenty, and carries off a handsome competence with him. But some are not at the trouble of masking their ingratitude. There is no creature upon two legs, nor upon four, half so ungrateful as a bad servant whom you have petted, and can pet no longer. See that fellow crossing the park with a loaded cart. He came to me shirtless: rat number twenty-one.'

'But how has this come to pass, my dear Lewis?' I asked; and is it altogether irremediable?"

me.

'It has come to pass as I have told you. Every man on whose honour I have relied has betrayed My model cottagers, I am told, laugh at me for a fool. I have trebled the trade in my county town, and the townsfolk haven't a good word for me, although they had plenty yesterday. The local paper has turned about with its readers. Last week I was munificent; but in to-day's copy I am a fool: in the next edition I shall be a rogue. I should advise you to clear the sinking ship while there's a boat-that is, a coach-at hand.'

'Leave you, Lewis, at such a moment!' I exclaimed; for I was hurt at his suggestion, which was not a very delicate one under the circumstances. 'Leave you now! I would not think of such a thing; nor should anything less than the case the tremendous case-of Thunder v. Butter, drag me from your side to-morrow.'

A smile passed over the placid face of Lewis while I spoke. It was a smile I had seen before, and at which a less amiable man than, I can say without vanity, I am, might have taken offence.

'You leave to-morrow, then?' Lewis asked.

'I must.'

'Well, we shall tide over the week, I dare say; but there will be elbow-room in the castle before then, I can see.'

I did not like Lewis's style. Of course I made every allowance for him under the circumstances; and when I had seen my wife to the station with the children, the maids, the jewel and dressing-cases, and my despatch-box, in which my deeds were safely under lock and key, I made a second attempt to be kind and sympathetic. I asked whether there was anything I could do for him in London.

'Yes,' he said, raising his cold blue eyes, and cutting his words with his glittering teeth. 'Yes; remain in it!'

This was too much; and I left

him. Now all my impressions as to his character were confirmed; and I could understand thoroughly why I never liked him.

At the railway-station-for I left that very evening-I found more than half the castle servants. The station-master was compelled to put on three or four extra luggagevans; and I kept the train quite five minutes, getting my boy's pony (Lewis's last present) into a horsebox.

When I reached town I heard more than I care to relate about the immense ruin in which Lewis had involved himself. He had trusted vast sums of money to friends and relatives, right and left; he had listened to any kind of gotup tale of distress; he had been imposed upon in fifty directions. A splendid man of business; a power

ful, clear-headed administrator; he had doubled the value of the enormous property which came to him, after so many years of battling and of poverty, from his uncle. But, you see, he ruined all by putting faith in men who were not trustworthy; and I am told that when he left the castle there was not a man left there to carry his carpetbag to the railway.

I cannot help feeling a kind of warmth towards the man when my wife comes like a queen into her drawing-room, covered with the marriage parure of diamonds; but my conscience is at ease-is as quiet as a babe asleep-for, as I am sure I must have remarked twenty times, even at the height of his prosperity I never liked LewisNEVER!

BLANCHARD JERROLD.

I AM writing these lines in the

neat waiting-room of a roadside station. I shall have to wait more than an hour before my train comes. I am doing a little home tour; and before now I have had to wait several hours for a train, especially when ill-disposed rival railway companies have exercised the utmost ingenuity in order to thwart and torment the British tourist. Now I hold, as a matter of moral courage, that a man ought not to be afraid of being left for some hours in the vacuity of a country station. He ought to be able to fall back upon his internal resources. He has his thoughts, and a book, and a writing case. These are among our best treasures, and a wise man will carry them about with him. Some of my days that have been most fertile in incident or reflection have been spent in the loneliness of railway stations. I am sure that I shall presently be most sorry to hear the five-minute bell and the scream of the railway whistle.

I have been making a pedestrian tour. My arrangements were long ago fixed for Paris; but I have compromised for this. I am taking the rail just now because I have come upon ground which I know well, and I purpose to get over it quickly, that I may break new ground. You must not lay down your rules too rigidly in regard to pedestrianism. In fact, all inflexible rules are a mistake. I know men who, having determined to do a pedestrian tour, will trudge on with knapsack and umbrella, and will refuse to deviate an inch from their programme. Under no circumstances will they post, or use a stage-coach, or accept an hospitable offer of a seat in a carriage, though the rains may be continuous and heavy. They come out to trudge, and trudging is the final cause of their coming out. Now, I delight to vary my mode of locomotion. Of course a walking

tour means honest walking; but this must not be carried beyond the fatigue-point when exercise becomes hurtful. But I like to ascend a tidal river with the tide, and imagine if you can, as you float onwards, that it is the lotus which blows upon the shore. A stage-coach is always an excuse for riding, as you can see the country well, and a stage-coach is rare, and its effect, to me, exhilarating. If you come to a dull, flat country, a post-chaise, or even the train, will let you gather up all the effect that there is to be gathered up. These, I suppose, will be my latest wanderings this year, these in the late autumnal days. The mornings are often thick and foggy, chill, and the evening shadows gather only too soon; but there are brilliant bursts of sunlight in the middle-day, and the forests are all ablaze with glory, and a peculiar stillness broods in the air, broken only by the frequent crack of the sportsman's gun; and pleasant it is to find oneself sociably housed for the long evenings, and, with an honest sense of weariness, go off to one's welcome rest.

I am fortunate in my companionship this time. It is per se quite a moot question whether it is best to pedestrianize solitary or with a friend. The greatest luxury of all is to combine the two systems-to be in company when you can be silent or can talk, exactly as you will. The old adage says that three is no company at all; but I find that three is very good company indeed. Two will talk if one wishes to be silent, or two can walk if one desires to rest. I think that a walking party is better than a shooting party. It is true that you lose a barbaric shooting of birds, and you leave a good lunch, which in pedestrianism is often a matter of much ambiguity. But in shooting you get separated from your friends, and you cannot observe nature so fully, and

you lose any intellectual pleasure there may be in companionship. On this occasion I was very well provided. I had a friend who excelled in art and another who excelled in talk. And let me tell you that it is an immense advantage if you can get an artist with you; for his trained, instructed eye will gather up all the points of a prospect, background, foreground, and perspective, and he will even help Dame Nature by showing you how a clump of trees in the foreground would help that magnificent pile of buildings or how a grey ruin on that eminence would help the river-shore. He will tell you, too, what famous artists loved these scenes; how Turner loved that sedgy stream, or Copley Fielding found most congenial scenery here for his watercolours.

It is astonishing what a variety of landscape you may see within the limits of an English county. Suppose you have been staying at Brighton. You are tired of that long promenade by the sea, of the open drawing-room on the pier, of the tables d'hôte, of parties and concerts that only reproduce London, of the Pavilion where military bands alternate with popular preachers, and balls and fancy-fairs. You want to enjoy scenes now that are entirely bucolic and unsophisticated. First drive to the Devil's Dyke, or better still, further on to Chanctonbury Ring. There, outspread before you, is a vast magnificent panorama, enclosed here and there by the sea or by the downs, and comprehending many inland counties. You have rarely seen so magnificent a sight, and you hardly thought, perhaps, that the languid southern coast could so soon afford you this keen mountain air. Now that you have comprehended the panorama, you shall examine more minutely the nearer details. The region has a quadrilateral of railways; but within these iron lines there is an intensely rural country, which railways almost seem to have cut off from the outer world. The inhabitants are Boeotian, but their scenery is emienntly good. I at least have a

painter and a poet with me, and they will leave nothing unnoticed. But let me candidly avow that pedestrianism has its inconveniences. You are going out into the wildernesa. You are leaving all luxuries behind you. You cannot exactly fix the limits of your day's march. You move circuitously to visit different points of interest. Do not imagine that you have the slightest chance of fish or game, for all luxuries go to Brighton or London. If you are very fortunate, you will get ham and eggs; in some places you will hardly get bread and cheese. That inn, where you confidently relied for rest, has all its beds full, and the larger your party the worse your chances. Then you have to trudge in the dark, perhaps over ploughed fields. When you come to the country-town, probably the one good inn will be full, and, not to blink the truth, perhaps you have to go to a pothouse, or something very like it. It is not so bad, if things are clean and wholesome. Besides, you get very much the kind of interior that Teniers used to paint, which gives a kind of picturesque aspect to things. I am bound to say that the natives have greatly progressed in a lively appreciation and appropriation of metropolitan changes.

What, then, is the actual compensation which you obtain for this unwonted amount of endurance and self-denial? In the first place, your blood gets properly oxygenated. Then you have that thorough change of scene which is the most invigorating of all remedial agencies. Above all, you get a shifting change of God's own pictures. This kind of country, for instance, is the very sort which Hobbema painted-a broad, flat region, with thick-foliaged trees. All over the land are the clear running brooks; and peasants will talk of going to the brooks, meaning the meadows. Here you are by the side of a slow winding river. The cattle are like Cuyp's in the rich grass and by the pools. The tall reeds, osiers and bulrushes, have an almost tropic growth. Yon dim, secluded path by the river-side is almost a con