is thinking of that-thinking of what you have bought, and the price you have paid for it, which makes me sad at times; even when you are sitting by me, and laying your hand on my hand, and the sweet burden of your pure life and being on my soiled and baffled manhood.”

"But it was my own bargain, you know, dear, and I am satisfied with my purchase. I paid the price with my eyes open."

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"Ah, if I could only feel that!" "But you know that it is true." "No, dearest, that is the pinch. do not know that it is true. I often feel that it is just not a bit true. It was a one-sided bargain, in which one of the parties had eyes open and got all the advantage; and that party was I."

"I will not have you so conceited," she said, patting his hand once or twice, and looking more bravely than ever up into his eyes. "Why should you think you were so much the cleverer of the two as to get all the good out of our bargain? I am not going to allow that you were so much the most quick-witted and clear-sighted. Women are said to be as quick-witted as men. Perhaps it is not I who have been outwitted after all."

"Look at the cost, Mary. Think of what you will have to give up. You cannot reckon it up yet."

"What! you are going back to the riding-horses and lady's-maid again. I thought I had convinced you on those points."

"They are only a very little part of the price. You have left a home where everybody loved you. You knew it; you were sure of it. You had felt their love ever since you could remember anything."

"A new home instead of an old one; a poor home instead of a rich one-a home where the cry of the sorrow and suffering of the world will reach you, for one in which you had

"In which I had not you, dear. There now, that was my purchase. I set my mind on having you-buying you, as that is your word. I have paid my price, and got my bargain, and-you know, I was always an oddity, and rather wilful-am content with it."

"Yes, Mary, you have bought me, and you little know, dearest, what you have bought. I can scarcely bear my own selfishness at times when I think of what your life might have been had I left you alone, and what it must be with me."

"And what might it have been, dear?"

"Why you might have married some man with plenty of money, who could have given you everything to which you have been used."

"I shall begin to think that you believe in luxuries, after all, if you go. on making so much of them. You must not go on preaching one thing and practising another. I am a convert to your preaching, and believe in the misery of multiplying artificial wants. Your wife must have none."

"Yes, but wealth and position are not to be despised. I feel that, now that it is all done past recall, and I have to think of you. But the loss of them is a mere nothing to what you will have to go through.'

"What do you mean, dear? Of course we must expect some troubles, like other people."

"Why, I mean, Mary, that you might, at least, have married a contented man; some one who found the world a very good world, and was satisfied with things as they are, and had light enough to steer himself by; and not a fellow like me, full of all manner of doubts and perplexities, who sees little but wrong in the world about him, and more in himself."

"You think I should have been more comfortable?"

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Yes, more comfortable and happier. What right had I to bring my worries on you? For I know you can't live with me, dearest, and not be bothered and annoyed when I am anxious and dissatisfied."

"But what if I did not marry you to be comfortable?"

"My darling, you never thought about it, and I was too selfish to think for you."

"There now, you see, it is just as I said."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean that you are quite wrong in thinking that I have been deceived. I did not marry you, dear, to be comfortable-and I did think it all over; ay, over and over again. So you are not to run away with the belief that you have taken me in."

"I shall be glad enough to give it up, dearest, if you can convince me.'

"Then you will listen while I explain?" "Yes, with all my ears and all my heart."

"You remember the year that we met, when we danced and went nutting together, a thoughtless boy and girl

"Remember it! Have I ever-" "You are not to interrupt. Of course you remember it all, and are ready to tell me that you loved me the first moment you saw me at the window in High-street. Well, perhaps I shall not object to be told it at a proper time, but now I am making my confessions. I liked you then, because you were Katie's cousin, and almost my first partner, and were never tired of dancing, and were generally merry and pleasant, though you sometimes took to lecturing, even in those days."

"But, Mary-"

"You are to be silent now, and listen. I liked you then. But you are not to look conceited and flatter yourself. It was only a girl's fancy. I couldn't have married you then-given myself up to you. No, I don't think I could, even on the night when you fished for me out of the window with the heather and heliotrope, though I kept them and have them still. And then came that scene

down below, at old Simon's cottage, and I thought I should never wish to see you again. And then I came out in London, and went abroad. I scarcely heard of you again for a year, for Katie hardly ever mentioned you in her letters; and, though I sometimes wished that she would, and thought I should just like to know what you were doing, I was too proud to ask. Meantime I went out and enjoyed myself, and had a great many pretty things said to me -much prettier things than you ever said-and made the acquaintance of pleasant young men, friends of papa and mamma; many of them with good establishments too. But I shall not tell you anything more about them, or you will be going off about the luxuries I have been used to. Then I began to hear of you again. Katie came to stay with us, and I met some of your Oxford friends. Poor dear Katie! she was full of you and your wild sayings and doings, half-frightened and half-pleased, but all the time the best and truest friend you ever had. Some of the rest were not friends at all; and I have heard many a sneer and unkind word, and stories of your monstrous speeches and habits. Some said you were mad; others that you liked to be eccentric; that you couldn't bear to live with your equals ; that you sought the society of your inferiors to be flattered. I listened, and thought it all over, and, being wilful and eccentric myself, you know, liked more and more to hear about you, and hoped I should see you again some day. I was curious to judge for myself whether you were much changed for the better or the worse. And at last came the day when I saw you again, carrying the poor lame child; and, after that, you know what happened. So here we are, dear, and you are my husband. And you will please never to look serious again, from any foolish thought that I have been taken in; that I did not know what I was about when I took you for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part.' Now, what have you to say for yourself?"

"Nothing; but a great deal for you. I see more and more, my darling, what a brave, generous, pitying angel I have tied to myself. But seeing that makes me despise myself more."

"What! you are going to dare to disobey me already?"

"I can't help it, dearest. All you say shows me more and more that you have made all the sacrifice, and I am to get all the benefit. A man like me has no right to bring such a woman as you under his burthen."

"But you couldn't help yourself. It It was because you were out of sorts with the world, smarting with the wrongs you saw on every side, struggling after something better and higher, and siding and sympathizing with the poor and weak, that I loved you. We should never have been here, dear, if you had been a young gentleman satisfied with himself and the world, and likely to get on well in society."

"Ah, Mary, it is all very well for a man. It is a man's business. But why is a woman's life to be made wretched? Why should you be dragged into all my perplexities, and doubts, and dreams, and struggles?"

"And why should I not?"

"Life should be all bright and beautiful to a woman. It is every man's duty to shield her from all that can vex, or pain, or soil."

"But have women different souls from men?"

"God forbid !"

"Then are we not fit to share your highest hopes?"

"To share our highest hopes! Yes, when we have any. But the mire and clay where one sticks fast over and over again, with no high hopes or high any thing else in sight-a man must be a selfish brute to bring one he pretends to love into all that."

"Now, Tom," she said almost solemnly, "you are not true to yourself. Would you part with your own deepest convictions? Would you, if you could, go back to the time when you cared for and thought about none of these things?"

He thought a minute, and then, pressing her hand, said

"No, dearest, I would not. The consciousness of the darkness in one and around one brings the longing for light. And then the light dawns; through mist and fog, perhaps, but enough to pick one's way by." He stopped a moment, and then added, "and shines ever brighter unto the perfect day. Yes, I begin to know it."

"Then why not put me on your own level? Why not let me pick my way by your side? Cannot a woman feel the wrongs that are going on in the world? Cannot she long to see them set right, and pray that they may be set right? We are not meant to sit in fine silks, and look pretty, and spend money, any more than you are meant to make it, and cry peace where there is no peace. If a woman cannot do much herself, she can honour and love a man who can."

He turned to her, and bent over her, and kissed her forehead, and kissed her lips. She looked up with sparkling eyes, and said—

"Am I not right, dear?"

"Yes, you are right, and I have been false to my creed. You have taken a load off my heart, dearest. Henceforth there shall be but one mind and one soul between us. You have made me feel what it is that a man wants, what is the help that is meet for him."

He looked into her eyes, and kissed her again; and then rose up, for there was something within him like a moving of new life, which lifted him, and set him on his feet. And he stood with kindling brow, gazing into the autumn air, as his heart went sorrowing, but hopefully "sorrowing, back through all the faultful past." And she sat on at first, and watched his face; and neither spoke nor moved for some minutes. Then she rose too, and stood by his side::

And on her lover's arm she leant,

And round her waist she felt it fold; And so across the hills they went,

In that new world which is the old.

Yes, that new world, through the golden gates of which they had passed together, which is the old, old world after all, and nothing else. The same old and new world it was to our fathers and mothers as it is to us, and shall be to our children-a world clear and bright, and ever becoming clearer and brighter to the humble, and true, and pure of heart, to every man and woman who will live in it as the children of the Maker and Lord of it, their Father. To them, and to them alone, is that world, old and new, given, and all that is in it, fully and freely to

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enjoy. All others but these are occupying where they have no title; "they are sowing much, but bringing in little; "they eat, but have not enough; they drink, but are not filled with drink; they clothe themselves, but there is none warm; and he of them who "earneth wages earneth wages to put "them into a bag with holes." But these have the world and all things for a rightful and rich inheritance; for they hold them as dear children of Him in whose hand it and they are lying, and no power in earth or hell shall pluck them out of their Father's hand.

It is now somewhat over a year since a governor, of whose fourteen months' tenure of office it stands recorded, in the very minute of his recall, that "No ser"vant of the crown had more earnestly "endeavoured to carry out the great prin"ciples of government which were pro'mulgated to the princes and people of "India in her Majesty's gracious procla"mation," was suddenly removed from his office. The indiscretion committed by Sir Charles Trevelyan in publishing, without authority from the supreme government, his and his colleagues' protests against Mr. Wilson's financial scheme, the perhaps worse than indiscretion which led him to publish those colleagues' protests without their previous consent,-have been surely expiated long ere this. His policy remains, and never perhaps, in the history of mankind, was there a policy more triumphantly justified by events.

It will be remembered what the ground of Sir Charles's opposition,rebellion, if you like it-was. To square revenue with expenditure, and fill the chasm of deficit, three new taxes, as to the results of which there were "absolutely

no data" upon which "any reliable calculation" could be made, were to be laid on throughout the length and breadth of India, upon the hundred different races by which it is peopled: an income-tax, estimated to yield £2,500,000; a licence-tax, estimated to produce £1,000,000; and a tobaccotax. Sir Charles protested against the scheme, the calculations upon which it was founded, the individual taxes which it embraced, and the application of them to Madras; and declared that the sheetanchor of Indian finance for the nonce must be retrenchment, especially military retrenchment. He was dismissed; but his policy was at the time endorsed in Madras, even by those who were most opposed to him, and he left amid the loudly expressed regret of almost the whole population. 1

1 See "Addresses presented to his Excellency Sir Charles Trevelyan, K.C.B. on his departure from Madras" (Madras, 1860), which breathe generally a spirit of earnestness seldom met with in such documents. See also Mr. Bourdillon's "Brief Statement of the principal measures of Sir Charles Trevelyan's administration at Madras," which fully explains such a phenomenon.

What has since happened?
The tobacco-tax has been withdrawn.

The licence-tax, levied in some places over and above older trade-taxes which it should at least have superseded, such as the Madras Moturfa, (declared by the East India Company, in their last lying memorandum of 1858, to have been then already abolished, and which had been taken ever since), has produced, with the other trade-taxes, £146,603..

The income-tax has yielded £1,948,094, including £803,550, of arrears. After exciting distrust, ill-will, passive, and sometimes active resistance, from one end of India to the other, it remains an acknowledged failure, and is to be given up except as respects fixed incomes.

The new Wilsonian taxes, together with several additions to existing taxes, have so entirely failed to meet the requirements of the case that the year has closed with a deficit of £6,678,000. And now retrenchment is made by Mr. Wilson's successor his financial sheetanchor; military retrenchment especially. £3,220,000 are to be struck off at a blow from the military estimates.

Thus far the Indian authorities. Looking home, we find Sir Charles Wood introducing three bills, which will hardly pass without modification; but the first of which, for altering the constitution of the Legislative Council by a large infusion of non-official members, who may be either Europeans, East Indians, or Natives, provides also for the formation of councils at the subordinate Presidencies, composed in like manner, and endowed with powers of local legislation and taxation. Thus the claim of autonomy for the separate Governments implied in Sir Charles Trevelyan's protests, and in the whole of his then abnormal proceedings, is to a great extent admitted. The Secretary of State expressly declares that even the proposed extension of the Central Legislative Council "will not yet be sufficient, "in the first place, to overcome the feeling which the other Presidencies "entertain of being overridden, as they "call it, by the Bengal Council, or, on

"the other hand, to overcome the dis

advantages of having a body legislating "for those Presidencies without ac"quaintance with local interests." A principle, be it observed, which in practice will be found to justify a much greater amount of decentralization than is yet hinted at, though Sir Charles Wood proposes to allow the prospective creation of additional provincial legislative councils.

Surely Sir Charles Trevelyan stands avenged. Surely it is time that he should have a hand in carrying out that policy which has vindicated itself without him.

It is not an easy thing to govern India, or any of its Presidencies, as Sir Charles Trevelyan showed that he could govern, well. Leaving out of sight the higher prize, the heavier responsibilities, of the Governor-Generalship,-a man, we will say, a stranger to India, promoted to the government of an Indian Presidency, is transported, somewhat advanced in life, into an enervating climate, which has, perhaps, just killed his predecessor, upon a salary of 12,000l. a year; a palace or two besides to live in, furnished as palaces; a retinue of servants found him, at a cost, perhaps, of 1507. a month, whilst the lighting of his palaces costs some 601. To use the words of one who knows India well-"If he should "say, 'I know nothing; I have every"thing to learn; if I set to work, what

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can I learn to any purpose in five years? "I will take things easy, and trust to "committees and secretaries to do what "I cannot,'-if he argued thus, where "would be the wonder?" Sir Charles Trevelyan, on the contrary, really did know more, it is said, than any officials in the Presidency or provinces, what Madras needed; and he showed them that he did know it, and would teach them to know it. Hence, while hated by too many civilians-though with some signal exceptions, like that of Mr. Bourdillon-by every other class, I am assured, he seems idolized. "You can't think the change he made," said a native pleader; "all the civilians came forward to shake hands with us!"