after hour on the subject of our studies, and discussed, each in our own way, the comparative advantages of ancient and modern times. My boy, of course, was all for shield and helmet against hat and umbrella; preferred his ideal Rome, with its Appian way and its Forum, to the material London, of which he knew too well the Piccadilly and the cab-stands; opined that we had hardly yet recovered the effects of the dark ages, esteemed the Olympic Games far superior to the Derby, and regretted equally the laurelled triumphs glistening and winding upward to the Capitol, with the free discussions when sage met sage in the open Athenian schools; with the glorious obstinacy of youth, adopted the irrational side of the argument, and stood by it to the death.

But it was on the oft-vexed question of woman's mission and woman's influence that my young pupil came out in his brightest colours. I have heard military men affirm that perfectly raw reIcruits who have never seen a shot fired, are preferable to the stanchest veterans for one desperate coup de main or rash haphazard attack; and in the same way, I have often remarked that the boy of eighteen professes an utter contempt for his natural enemy, where the man of thirty guards every assailable point, and intrenches himself in the strongest position he can command. Ten years later he will decamp without beat of drum, and seek safety in flight. On one occasion I hazarded the opinion that the woman worship which came in with the institution of chivalry, and will not outlast that superstition a day, had done more than any human influence to advance our civilization and ameliorate the condition of mankind. Gilbert was in arms at once, he disputed my position at its very outset, he denied that women ever had any influence at all, except amongst the weaker minds and less commanding spirits of the opposite sex. He flushed and chafed with the subject as he threw his straw hat aside and

walked up and down in the sun, like a young Apollo. I ought to have been gratified with his progress. He brought all the learning he possessed to bear upon the subject, and fired off a sixty-eight pounder, so to speak, at the commencement of the action.

'Why, even old Herodotus sneers at them as mere chattels,' quoth the untried legionary; and like a dry old fellow as he is, he gives us his real opinion when he quotes the sensible maxim of the Persians, "that to carry off women by violence is the act of wicked men, but to trouble oneself about avenging them when so carried off, is the act of foolish ones, and to pay no regard to them when carried off, the act of wise men; for that it is clear that if they had not been willing, they could not have been carried off." We were reading it only last week, and you laughed yourself, though you don't often laugh, when I construed the passage. It is clear that he didn't think them much worth troubling oneself about. Nor have I forgotten the inscriptions of Sesostris, nor the regulations of the Egyptians, which permitted no woman to enter the precincts of a temple, as an inferior being unworthy of the service of a god or goddess; and even the Greeks, though they were fools enough to make war about Helen, treated their captive women as slaves, and only respected their mothers and sisters as a part of themselves, not because they belonged to the inferior

sex;

whilst the Romans, who, I have heard you say, improved as much upon the Greeks in common sense as they fell short of them in imagination and poetry, evidently considered them mere machines to rear their children, and if ever they did speak of them as gracing the wine-cup, or enhancing the charms of a feast, apparently deemed it a matter of no moment which should be the preferred one, but lumped in Chloris and Chloë, Lydia and Lalage, all at the same premium, one as good as another.'

'Yet did the conquerors of these very Romans, the tall Gothic bar

barians, frame all their measures by the advice of their wives, nay, even bade the experience of the warrior give place in council to the sagas of the wise women, daughters of Odin.'

I hazarded this argument with some diffidence, knowing the storm it would bring down.

was

"The bull-headed, superstitious, beef-devouring gladiators! the reply, 'with just enough sense to knock their heads against a wall, which luckily for them had been sapped and crumbling for centuries. Could they keep Rome when they had it? Could they defend Constantinople when it was in their clumsy iron grasp? Did not the Turks, press them hard on the Bosphorus did not the Moors enslave them in Spain? the polygamist against the monogamist all the world over, till the latter abandoned his creed and began to put his faith in policy and common sense, instead of a cross-handled sword and a long-eyed ladye lighto'love!'

Then you scorn the institution of chivalry, Gilbert,' was my reply; 'and prefer the picture of Archimedes demonstrating his problem during the assault, to that of Dunois bleeding to death with his back to a tree and his face to the enemy, the while he made a Christian ending before the crucifix of his sword-hilt?'

'Dunois was a fine fellow!' answered Gilbert; besides, there was no woman in his case. What

I protest against is the raising up an idol and bowing down before it because it has soft eyes and long hair. You always take the other side of the question to draw me out; I know I'm right, because I feel I am. How hot it is! There's my mother going out in the carriage. Don't let us read any more for to-day; come and take up the trimmers we set last night, and after that we'll go and catch a pike in the witch-pool under the elms.'

I rose and followed him in silence, thinking of Antony and the tawny-finned fishes, and the hook that sooner or later is in every man's nose.

CHAPTER III.

'EARLY FROSTS.'

11

I was not always a recluse-not always the musty bookworm who exists only amongst dusty shelves and rare old badly-printed editions. The same man who some years ago would have bade me see his twoyear-olds gallop, now asks me to arrange his library. I once lived in the world as others do. Shall I confess it? my heart was never thoroughly interested in what is termed society. Perhaps I had not room for so many objects of interest and affection; perhaps, like an unskilful gambler, I set all my store on one desperate throw, and lost, and cared not to try again; to play for silver where I had once staked gold. So the bowl has stood empty ever since.

This is no story of my own life. I only mention it because I want an explanation of something which my former experience has convinced me to be an undoubted fact; and I do not wish my experience to be set at nought, as that of one who has never been down in the arena, and spilt his blood upon the thirsty sand.

Why is it that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred those women who have been brought up chiefly amongst men, who have had no sisters, who have lost a mother early in life (doubtless for many reasons a sad affliction to a girl), who have been dependent on father or brothers for society and conversation, should turn out the most fascinating and superior of their

sex?

Why is it that in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, the boy who is educated solely by his mother becomes a triumphant and successful man in after-life?

Perhaps the opposite influence of either sex is beneficial to the other, perhaps the girl derives vigorous thought, expanded views, habits of reflection, nay, more, charity and forbearance, from her male associates, as the boy is indebted to his mother's tuition and his mother's companionship for the

gentleness and purity of heart which combine so well with a manly and generous nature, for the refinement and delicacy of feeling which so adorn true courage, above all, for that exalted standard of womankind which shall prove his surest safeguard from shame and defeat in the coming battle; a shield impervious so long as it is bright, but that when once soiled slides and crumbles from his grasp, leaving him in the press of angry weapons a naked and defenceless

man.

We have all heard of the little boy who sturdily upheld, in defiance of the poet, that 'his mamma was the noblest work of God.' I think the truest and holiest homage that can be offered to a fellow-creature, is that which such a child tenders unconsciously to his mother. She is to him the one bright beautiful being upon earth. His young eyes open wide with childish wonder at the magnificence of her apparel, the mingled grace and majesty of her bearing; he feels so proud to belong to her, and at the same time so conscious of his right to a place by her side, a seat on her knee. When others caress him, he smiles pleasantly enough for a time, but soon wearies, and hurries off to be at play again; but when she lays her quiet hand upon his brow, the boy forgets hoop and marbles, the new knife and the promised pony, to nestle by her side, and look up in her face, and sit lovingly down at the feet of his own

mamma.

All that he knows of good he learns from her. She teaches him to love and pray. She teaches him to hope and to believe. If ever he gets to the end of the narrow way, where the little wicket stands, and hears the bolts drawn back, and sees the golden light from the happy land shining through, whom shall he thank and bless on earth, but her who first taught him the pass-word and gave him the key? Perhaps she will also be the first to bid him welcome on the other side.

Gilbert Orme was without this unspeakable blessing. Everything

else that the world deems advantageous was lavished on him in profusion. Health, vigour, childish spirits, a fine place, and a long minority, but no mother, at least, not in the sense in which I understand the word. Gilbert was an only child, but in good truth he was far from being spoilt, as people consider only children usually destined to be. From boyhood his was a nature on which harshness or ill-usage made but slight impression, a spirit that could only have been broken through its affections, and these, even when I was reading Homer with him at eighteen, had been called but little into play. Lady Olivia never seemed to care for her child. Not a labourer about West-Acres but took more pride in the bright-haired handsome boy than did his own reserved and

haughty mother. When I first knew her, she was not yet a widow, but I could never see that the event which soon after deprived her of her husband, made the slightest difference in her manners or softened her character one jot.

Of Mr. Orme I knew but little. I had heard of him in former days (for he was somewhat after my time) as a gay dashing young man ; on the turf, in society, member for a most corruptible borough in his own county, good-looking, goodhumoured, not much troubled with brains, with a slight tendency to literature, and a rather stronger turn for love-making. I saw him once or twice at Newmarket, and missed meeting him at a country place or two, to which we were both invited for the slaughter of pheasants and other game. interested me but little, and astonished me not at all, to learn that he had married the Lady Olivia, of whose maiden name I will say no more than that it was identical with that of Lady Gertrude, whose father indeed had been the elder lady's brother. But after his marriage Mr. Orme dropped out of society altogether. People in London do not trouble themselves much about absentees. 'Here's Orme accepted the Chiltern Hundreds,' said one of his club friends

It

1861.]

to another as he yawned over the evening paper; what the deuce is that for? By the way, hasn't something happened to him?'

'Married, poor devil!' was the reply; the speaker himself possessing a charming wife with a numerous family, and very fond of them besides; but that's

no

reason he shouldn't come to London. Does anybody know anything about him?

'Mad!' observed young Tattleton, sententiously, who preferred hazarding a falsehood to betraying ignorance on any subject whatever, 'and shut up down at that place in the country,' he added, shaking his head commiseratingly, and pointing with his forefinger to the spot where his own brains ought to have been.

The two friends were quite satisfied with the explanation, and fell to discussing their last night's dinner, taking no more thought for 'poor Orme.'

He was not mad, though, nevertheless, only thoroughly and essentially miserable. Lady Olivia might have made an excellent wife to another; probably, like the rest of us, under totally different circumstances, would have been a totally different person. As it was, however, she made a most uncomfortable one to him. He had fallen into a mistake not unusual with one of his temperament-weak, kindly, and over-imaginative-and had invested the lady, whom he had met at some half-a-dozen balls and a breakfast, with all the qualities of his ideal, none of which did she happen to possess. Then came the disenchantment, the disagreements, the recriminations, the offended pride on one side, the growing dislike and blank hopelessness on the other. It was an ill-judged and most unhappy union.

But,'

as Lady Olivia observed, ' was that her fault? Was she to be punished because Mr. Orme mistook her for somebody else? No! he had been in error; let him be the sufferer!'

The argument was not without some show of reason, and he suffered accordingly, without much complaint, and with a strong bridle

13

on a temper naturally keen and self-asserting. A sterner nature would have bent her to his will, and altered her character to assimilate it with his own. She would have loved him all the better. A milder would have succumbed, and learned, like other slaves, to submit to despotic authority with a good grace. But Orme was as God had made him, and took refuge in a listless, hopeless, pitiable apathy. He ceased to tear at the chain he had not strength to break, the chain that bound him to one with whom he had not a single feeling in common save abhorrence of the fetter, and threw his hands up like the drowning man, who has the sense to know that his struggles can but prolong his agony.

Those are wise and suggestive words in our Prayer Book which exhort us to take in hand marriage, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God,' words that refer to the highest source, the most important action in the lives of most human beings-words that suggest to the least considerate the awful gravity of the interest at stake. A loving marriage is a good and holy sight in the eyes of men and angels, but that was the refinement of a fiend's torture, which bound the living, breathing being hard and fast to the senseless corpse.

I have heard his neighbours say that Mr. Orme grew strangely idle and indifferent and lethargic. He left off field-sports altogether, gave away his famous pointers, sold his hunters, doubled his subscription to the hounds, and otherwise conducted himself in an unaccountable manner. Some people thought he had gout in the stomach, others vowed it was water on the brain. His old butler, who wouldn't leave, though Lady Olivia gave him warning once a fortnight, opined it was neither of these, for a certain tall bottle labelled V. O. P. stood in his master's dressing-room; and that faithful domestic, who, liking brandy less than beer, took very little of it himself, knew that it was never quite empty and never full.

By degress he chafed less and less under Lady Olivia's provocations, took less and less interest in his boy (he was fond of the urchin, but a child's love will scarcely stand a man in the stead of everything else), and dozed away more and more time in his arm-chair over the embers of his study-fire. One spring morning they both went out together, and the tall bottle, too, had ebbed to the last teaspoonful. So there was a fine funeral, and Lady Olivia became a widow, and Gilbert an orphan with a little black frock on his back, and a long minority before him. Nobody seemed to care much for poor Orme but the old butler, and he gave up his place immediately, and took the public-house in the village.

In most families such an event would have drawn tighter the bonds of affection which should unite mother and son with the Ormes, however, it was not so. Lady Olivia, when the customary year of a widow's seclusion had passed by, went into society as before. Perhaps a little more frequently than during the latter months of her husband's life. She was a great stickler for conventional forms, and went to London regularly in the season to keep up her acquaintance, just as she gave large, solemn, frigid dinners at West-Acres to sustain her influence in the county. She seemed to have no inclination to marry again.

People speculated, indeed, on her intentions, as they always will upon matters with which they can have no earthly concern, and coupled her name with a rich London banker, a superannuated Lord of the Bedchamber, and a neighbouring Squire still in his minority. Such reports disturbed her ladyship's equanimity but little. Even Diana was talked about with that young rake Endymion, and Lady Olivia carried her indomitable head so high that she could well afford to look down upon the nods and winks and signs of humbler mortals. He would have been a bold man too who could have ventured on a tender subject with that severe beauty crushing him to the

dust, those grave eyes looking sternly into his own. Old Flippant, a lady-killer of some twenty years' practice, called her the Marble Widow. Egad, sir,' said that mature Lothario, 'she's a chiller, a regular black frost; when the wind's in the east I can't go near her without sneezing.' And, indeed, veteran as he was, he stood in considerable awe of the icy dame of whom he spoke so disparagingly. To give her her due, like Queen Elizabeth of blessed memory, she was one of those admirable ladies who could 'look a lion down.'

I wish for her own sake she could have been kinder to the child. When I first came to live near West-Acres he was a bright handsome boy of some seven or eight summers, the least bit of a scapegrace, and rather. too fond of rat-catching, rabbiting, and such illiterate amusements; but, as the old keeper used to say, 'a little. gentleman every inch of him!' He had all a boy's spirits and a boy's pluck, with something feminine in the shyness of his glance and the soft kindliness of his disposition which endeared him wondrously to the domestics and work-people about the place. One of the numerous grievances for which he was taken sternly to task by Lady Olivia was his predilection for the society of the grooms and coachman, and his natural preference of the stable to her ladyship's own morning-room, which was in truth a dull place of resort for a child; inasmuch as he was not permitted to romp about or make a noise in those sacred precincts. Also-and of this fault I cannot fairly hold him guiltless-for the reckless manner in which he rode and otherwise maltreated a certain longsuffering pony called 'Mouse,' of which the extraordinary speed and endurance were daily tested to an unjustifiable extent.

By the way, my first introduction to the young gentleman was brought about through the instrumentality of this much aggrieved quadruped. I was walking with Lady Olivia in the park a day or two after my arrival in the neighbourhood, dis