a visit of a most important and startling the child I was taught to consider mine, was character. Two gentleman, a Mr. Dyk- spoken of as born in March, 1839 - just a hart, of whom he had heard his wife speak year later. But, unaccountable as that in former days; and a Mr. Ballow, of whom seemed, I thought it was made only too easy he had heard in a very different way, to believe. The little girl, whom it nearly had waited upon him, with assurances, which were certainly supported by much seeming evidence, that the daughter he had discarded was his own child, after all. Yet, after his wife's own confession, however could he believe it? They were talking together, he and his brother, in the dressing-room of the latter, in which a fire had been lighted; for the household was wide awake enough now. I," said his brother Gerald; " I would never seek to throw any unnecessary doubt upon the story, whatever my personal interests may be supposed to indicate. As to my own daughter, I by no means think that the fancying herself an heiress, has been a good thing for her. She might be happier and better with a more modest fortune. But, I confess I don't see how the terrible proofs you had are all to be set aside." "Nor, indeed, do I. You may remember at that miserable time, fourteen or fifteen years ago, that I thought I saw one thing which contradicted that woman Roberts's story. She said she parted with her child, on the day of its birth, in March 1838. Now, broke my heart to surrender, even when I was made sure she was not my own, she was, in appearance, a year above her nominal age; and Mrs. Roberts let me know that her child was remarkably small and weak when borne. And Lady Anne Somerby mentioned to me- - she was fond of putting all sorts of trivial detail into her letters what interest, during the spring and summer of 1838, my wife was taking in a child only at nurse in Hammersmith. In very truth, I had a choice of improbabilities; and my wife's guilt, in which I would have disbelieved, while a thread of hope remained, seemed the less-alas! the less-improbable of the two. But setting aside all that, you know that I had her confession-her confession with her own lips, and in your and my own presence." While the brothers were discoursing still after this fashion, a servant came hastily in, to say that Miss Varnish had been seen gliding across the Italian garden and in the direction of the wood that skirted the road to Bridgewater. PROSY SERMONS. Various reasons are given why men do not go to church. The fact is they are not fed when they do go. Human nature is true to itself, and men will not go where they are not fed. If there was a discriminating preacher in the pulpit, and he sent men away with better judgment, and with better moral convictions, and with better balanced states of mind; if he sent them away feeling thut the sermon went home with them, and that they needed it, the church would be a place to which people would resort far more than they now do. And never was there a time when men wanted religious truth as much as now. Never was there a time when so many were hungry for knowledge of things that pertain to manhood here and hereafter as at this very day. And when they go to church, and get nothing but cut straw, and straw raised five hundred years ago at that, and will not come again, I honour them. I lay this law as much to myself as to my brethren. I never scolded you for not coming to church, and I never will. I do not mean here, for you almost always fill this house; but if my prayer-meetings and lectures are not well attended, it is my fault and not yours. I know it. I do not believe, as long as human nature remains true to what it is, that the herds will refuse to come to the rack when there is juicy fodder there; and if they do not come it is because there is nothing to eat. Therefore, when our evening meetings have fallen off, I have always said to myself, "You are falling off, and not the people.' Even when I have not remedied the evil, I have known the cause of it all the time. And, on the other hand, the moment my own soul was full, and my sympathies flowed out in overwhelming tides toward my fellow-men, I have noticed that my meetings have gone up. If a man sleeps under my preaching, I do not send a boy to wake him up; but I feel that a boy had better come and wake me up. I am not now speaking of watchers of the sick, nor of seamen that have just landed, but of those "pillars of the Church of God" that make sleeping a business! - Rev. H. W. Beecher. thou," may the distressed Novel-wright exclaim, "that I, here where I sit, am the foolishest of existing mortals; that this my Long-ear of a (1.) Mary Barton: A Tale of Manches- fictitious Biography shall not find one and the ter Life. (6.) Ruth. (7.) A Dark Night's Work. (8.) Life of Charlotte Bronté. (9.) Sylvia's Lovers. (10.) Cousin Phillis, and other Stories. (11.) Wives and Daughters. 'Quand une lecture vous élève l'esprit, et qu'elle vous inspire des sentiments nobles et courageux, ne cherchez pas une autre règle pour juger de l'ouvrage; il est bon, et fait de main d'ouvrier.' This dictum of Jean de la Bruyère is peculiarly applicable to the works of Mrs. Gaskell, whose too brief literary career was closed by death early in the past year. It is hardly possible to read a page of her writing without getting some good from it. The style is clear and forcible, the tone pure, the matter wholesome. Under her guidance we are always taken into cleanly company, and need never feel ashamed to say where we have been a comfortable consciousness that does not remain with us after the perusal of certain younger authors, who yet set up for moralists. She is never afraid of degrading her subject by homely details, and on whatever she touches she leaves the artist-mark of reality. Other hovel-writers of her generation have more poetry, more scholarship, more grace, eloquence, and passion, but in the art of telling a story she has no superior perhaps no equal. other, into whose still longer ears it may be the means, under Providence, of instilling somewhat?" We answer, "None knows, none can certainly know: therefore, write on, worthy Brother, even as thou canst, even as it is given thee." Thus encouraged Mrs. Gaskell does write on, and does instil somewhat, well worth hearing and laying to heart; and that her words, and others like them, have been laid to heart, and have brought forth the fruit of good deeds, witness the universal charity that prevailed during the recent cotton famine, and contrast it with the angry distrust that existed between rich and poor during the calamitous years of 1846-47-48 when she first began to teach and to preach. Words are things; and a small drop of ink, Those were days of great trouble and upsetting both in the social and the political world. In Ireland there was famine and rebellion; in France there was revolution, out of which rose the Second Empire; in England there was commercial distress, such as always bears most heavily on the multitudes whose daily labour is their daily bread. In the preface to the cheap edition of MARY BARTON' Mrs. Gaskell tells us how, living in Manchester, she learnt to feel a deep sympathy with the care-worn men thronging its busy streets, who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations of work and want, tossed to and fro by circumstances, apparIt is nineteen years since Mrs. Gaskell ently in even a greater degree than other made her first essay in fiction in MARY men; she tells us how this sympathy opened BARTON,' a tale of Manchester Life, which to her the hearts of one or two of the more but yesterday was adapted to the stage thoughtful amongst them; how she saw under the name of The Long Strike' that they were sore and irritable against the -a remarkable testimony to its abiding prosperous, especially against the masters popularity. Novels have been styled Week- whose fortunes they had helped to build up ; day Sermons, novelists Week-day Preachers, and how they were possessed by a strong and in more than one of her stories Mrs. belief that the privations and miseries that Gaskell takes up the parable of Dives and they suffered were the result of the injusLazarus with the avowed object of telling tice and hardness of the rich, the even tenor one half of the world how the other half of whose seeming happy lives appeared lives, that knowledge may breed sympathy, to increase the anguish caused by the and sympathy bring about redress for those lottery-like nature of their own. sufferings which arise from ignorance, mis- saw the thoroughness of this belief maniconception, or wilful wrong. She by no fested from time to time in acts of deadmeans thinks it her mission simply to amuse. ly revenge; and the consequences were For motto to MARY BARTON' she takes so cruel to all parties, that the more she rethese words of Carlyle: "How knowest flected on them the more anxious she be She came to give utterance to the dumb agony of the people, and to disabuse them of their bitter misapprehensions; for they seemed to her to be left in a state wherein lamentation and tears were put aside as useless, but in which the lips were compressed for curses and the hands clenched and ready to smite. Mrs. Gaskell's vocation was that of a peacemaker. She compels us to feel not how different men are, but how much they are alike when the accidents of wealth and poverty are put by. She utters her voice often through tears, but always to a most wise and Christian purpose, and throughout 'MARY BARTON' her cry is for Patience with the Poor. The discussions she strove to pacify, the difficulties she strove to smooth, are cropping up again in these days with quite another light upon them, and it is not always easy to get at her original point of view, but when we do get at it, we see that it was the just point for that time, whatever modifications and changes twenty years may have wrought in the respective positions of masters and men. The literary merits of the story are great, but the moral of it, the deep, direct, earnest intention that underlies the story, which has performed its mission and become out of date, is its most forcible part. The conversion of the masters is accomplished now. Their power is effectually circumscribed by public opinions and public government; their consciences are better informed than they were half a century ago, and few rich men would care to assert at this hour an absolute right to do what they like with their own. The individual artisan also is wiser, abler, more willing to see straight than his fathers were; but bodies of artisans banded in trades' unions are what they always were -parts of a machine without heart, without brain, without conscience. Terrible trade outrages, the perpetrators of which remain undiscovered, still occur at intervals, startling the nation with a revival of the worst symptoms of a treacherous old disease, and almost justify ing the belief of the unaffiliated that it is radical in the constitution of these societies. Such an outrage is one of the leading events in the story of MARY BARTON. The plot is woven on the back-ground of a long strike, Mary, her father, and her two lovers being the most prominent actors in it. John Barton is a busy member of his union, a man not naturally harsh or bitter, but one whose sufferings have turned the milk of human kindness in his heart to gall. His mother had died of want, his little lad had clemmed to dead' before his eyes. Hating factory work for women, he had 'prenticed his dear little Mary to a dressmaker, and she grew up so bonny, blithe, and attractive that she not only engaged the affections of Jem Wilson, a suitor in her own rank of life, but also drew on herself the less honourable admiration of young Mr. Carson, the son of a wealthy cotton-spinner. She lets her fancy run on the notion of being a lady, and discourages Jem, though she does not love his rival, and while matters stand in this position comes the crisis of the story-the murder of young Carson in fulfilment of a unionist oath of vengeance against the masters, and the arrest of Jem Wilson for the crime. The circumstances that immediately preceded its commission we will quote. The first scene is a meeting of masters and delegates from the men, with a view to putting an end to the strike which was ruining both. 'The door was opened, and the waiter announced that the men were below, and asked if should be shown up. They assented, and rapit were the pleasure of the gentlemen that they idly took their places round the official table. Tramp, tramp, came the heavy clogged feet up the stairs, and in a minute five wild, earnestlooking men, stood in the room. Had they been larger-boned men you would have called them gaunt; as it was, they were little of stature, and their fustian clothes hung loosely on the operatives had had more regard to their their shrunk limbs. In choosing their delegates, brains and power of speech than their wardrobes. It was long since many of them had known the luxury of a new article of dress; and air-gaps were to be seen in their garments. Some of the masters were rather affronted at such a ragged detachment coming between the wind and their nobility; but what cared they? 'At the request of a gentleman hastily the delegates read, in a high-pitched, psalmchosen to officiate as chairman, the leader of singing voice, a paper containing the operatives statement of the case at issue, their complaints and demands, which last were not remarkable for moderation. He was then desired to withdraw for a few minutes, with his fellow-delegates, to another room, while the masters considered what should be their definitive anThe masters would not consent to the swer. advance demanded by the workmen. They would agree to give one shilling per week more than they had previously offered the deleates positively declined any compromise of their demands. Then up sprang Mr. Henry Carson, the head and voice of the violent party amongst the masters, and addressing the chairman, even before the scowling operatives, he proposed some resolutions - firstly, declaring all communication between the masters and that particular trades' union at an end; secondly, declaring that no master should employ any workman in future, unless he signed a declaration that he did not belong to any trades' union. Considering that the men who now stood listening with lowering brows of defiance were all of them leading members of the union, such resolutions were in themselves sufficiently provocative of animosity; but not content with simply stating them, Harry Carson went on to characterize the conduct of the workmen in no measured terms, every word he spoke rendering their looks more livid, their glaring eyes more fierce. such laughable pictures on men whose very hearts within 'em are so raw and sore as ours were and are, God help us." 'John Barton began to speak; they turned to him with great attention. "It makes me more than sad, it makes my heart burn within me, to see that folk can make a jest of starving men; of chaps who comed to ask for a bit o' fire for th' old granny as shivers i' th' cold; for victuals for the childer, whose little voices are getting too weak to cry aloud wi' hunger. I've seen a father who had killed his child rather than let it clem before his eyes; and he were a tender hearted man!" Brooding and talking over this wound to their self-love kindles their vindictive passions. Barton suggests that instead of beating poor "knobsticks,' or blinding them with vitrol, they should have at the masters — set him to serve out the masters and see if he will stick at aught. 'Now there had been some by-play at this meeting. While the men had stood grouped near the door, on their first entrance, Mr. Harry Carson had taken out his silver pencil, and had drawn an admirable caricature of them lank 'ragged, dispirited, and famine-stricken. Underneath he wrote a hasty quotation from the fat knight's well-known speech in Henry IV. He passed it to one of his neighbours, who ac'And so with words, or looks that told more knowledged the likenesses instantly, and by than words, they built up a deadly plan. Deephim it was sent round to the others, who all er and darker grew the import of their speeches smiled and nodded their heads. This proceed- as they stood hoarsely muttering their meaning was closely observed by one of the men.ing, and glaring, with eyes that told the terror He watched the masters as they left the hotel (laughing, some of them were), and when all had gone, he went to the waiter, who recognised him "There's a bit on a picture up yonder, as one of the gentlemen threw away; I've a little lad at home as dearly loves a picture; by your leave I'll go up for it.' "Well!" said John Slater, after having acknowledged his nose and his likeness; "I could laugh at a jest as well as e'er the best on 'em, though it did tell agen mysel', if I were not clemming, and if I could keep from thinking of them at home, as is clemming," (his eyes filled with tears; he was a poor, pinched, sharpfeatured man, with a gentle and melancholy expression of countenance); "but with their cries for food ringing in my ears, and making me afeard of going home, and wonder if I should hear 'em wailing out if I lay cold and drowned at th' bottom of th' canal, there why, man, I cannot laugh at aught. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make game on what they never knowed; as can make their own thoughts were to them, upon their neighbours. Their clenched fists, their set teeth, their livid looks, all told the suffering which their minds were voluntarily undergoing in the contemplation of crime, and in familiarising themselves with its details. Then came one of those fierce terrible oaths which bind members of trades' unions to any given purpose. Then under the flaring gaslight they met together to consult further. With the distrust of guilt each was suspicious of his neighbour, each dreaded the treachery of another. A number of pieces of paper (the identical letter on which the caricature had been drawn that very morning) were torn up, and one was marked. Then all were folded up again looking exactly alike. They were shuffled together in a hat. The gas extinguished; each drew out a paper. The gas was re-lighted. Then each went as far as he could from his fel-` lows, and examined the paper he had drawn without a word, and with a countenance as stony and immovable as he could make it. 'Then, rigidly silent, they each took up their hats and went every one his own way. He who had drawn the marked paper had drawn the lot of the assassin! and he had sworn to act according to his drawing. But no one, save God and his own conscience, knew who was the appointed murderer. Harry Carson is the victim selected, and the evening but one after the swearing of the secret oath, he is shot dead on his way home. At this crisis the dramatic interest of the story quite runs away with its morality. Jem Wilson, falsely accused of the murder and brought to trial, gets a safe de 7 liverance in one of the finest scenes of the | Helstone, a parish in the New Forest, and book, but the real criminal goes unpunished in such straitened circumstances that she of human justice, the wickedness of his act cannot attend her niece's marriage, because is dissimulated, and the law is mocked. it would not be prudent to buy new clothes That such crimes, done in the supposed in- for the occasion, and she will not disgrace terest of communities, occasionally evade it by going shabby. After the wedding we discovery, is a fact too patent to be denied, are taken down to Helstone with Margaret but in a work of fiction written for a great Hale and her father, not greater strangers purpose, where points are strained here and to the heroine's home than she is herself; strained there to fit imaginary circumstan- and here occur some of those sweet desces, we would rather this point had been criptive bits of country which betray that if strained also, and that the murderer of Mrs. Gaskell's lot was cast in murky ManHarry Carson had expiated his crime upon chester, her imagination made its brightest the gallows, a warning and example to holidays in the woods and fields. others, tempted and tried as he was tempted and tried, at whatever cost of. feeling to writer and readers. The book, as have said, still enjoys a wide popularity, and as we have allowed to it the credit of having wrought true sympathy for the poor in the hearts of their richer neighbours, we venture also to express a fear that it may have wrought real mischief in the hot heads of angry unionists by granting impunity to murder. we The sacrifice of what is eternally right to what is temporally agreeable is liable to be often demanded by the exigencies of romance, and therefore is it that so many critics set their faces against moral aims in novels, and declare that it is their sole mission to be entertaining. In her earlier works Mrs. Gaskell never consented to this, and NORTH AND SOUTH' is a second illustration of the quarrel between Manchester masters and operatives as it was in the times that are past. But here the quarrel is incidental to another story, designed to set forth the different fibre of Hampshire and Lancashire men to the distinct advantage of the latter. It is easy to see where Mrs. Gaskell's heart is, and where also was her truer and fuller knowledge at this period of her career. The scene opens on the eve of a wedding in London, and we are introduced first to the bride elect, a pretty young lady afraid of anybody who does anything for conscience' sake, and her cousin, the heroine, Margaret Hale, who has been brought up with her in Harley Street. We make a passing acquaintance with the bridegroom, a brave, handsome noodle; with his brother, a clever, ambitious barrister; and with the bride's mother, Mrs. Shaw, who having married for position, has all her life since professed regret for what she missed in not inarrying for love like her sister, Margaret's mother, who having accepted an amiable clergyman, has moped with him in affectionate discontent and obscurity ever since at 'It was the latter part of July when Margaret returned home. The forest trees were all one dark, full, dusky green; the fern below them caught all the slanting sunbeams; the weather was sultry and broodingly still. Margaret used to tramp along by her father's side, crushing down the fern with a cruel glee, as she felt it yield under her light foot, and send up out on the broad the fragrance peculiar to it, commons into the warm-scented light, seeing multitudes of wild, free, living creatures, revelit called forth. This life- at least, these ing in the sunshine, and the herbs and flowers walks - realised all Margaret's anticipations. Her out-of-doors life was perfect. Her indoors life had its drawbacks.' And very serious drawbacks they were; the shadow of a dear son, lost to home and country, an exile and fugitive under sentence of death, for the leading part he had taken in a mutiny on board a king's ship; failing health and broken spirits for the bereaved mother, and sad doubts and unrest on the part of Mr. Hale, which bring him to a resolution to give up Helstone and his office as a minister of the Church of England. And here we think there is some haziness and exaggerated sentiment. As a man of honour and conscience, Mr. Hale could certainly not any longer hold a cure under a religious system that he believed contrary to right (what his special difficulties were we are not told), but it is a curious misconception of Anglicanism to set forth as one of its principles that to leave the Church of England is to be severed from the Church of God. We had hitherto rested in peace under the belief that all the reformed congregations, at home and abroad, whatever their government, were of the same household of faith as ourselves. To be sure, it is by the lips of Margaret Hale that the new notion is promulgated, and that may account for its eccentricity; heroines are commonly nice girls and good |