tion about Morris Townsend. "Please say no more; please don't follow up that subject." "Doesn't it interest you?" asked Mrs. Penniman, with a certain timorous arch ness. "It pains me," said Catherine. said "I was afraid you would say that. But don't you think you could get used to it? He wants so much to see you." "Please don't, Aunt Lavinia," Catherine, getting up from her seat. She moved quickly away, and went to the other window, which stood open to the balcony; and here, in the embrasure, concealed from her aunt by the white curtains, she remained a long time, looking out into the warm darkness. She had had a great shock; it was as if the gulf of the past had suddenly opened, and a spectral figure had risen out of it. There were some things she believed she had got over, some feelings that she had thought of as dead; but apparently there was a certain vitality in them still. Mrs. Penniman had made them stir themselves. It was but a momentary agitation, Catherine said to herself; it would presently pass away. She was trembling, and her heart was beating so that she could feel it; but this also would subside. Then suddenly, while she waited for a return of her calmness, she burst into tears. But her tears flowed very silently, so that Mrs. Penniman had no observation of them. It was, perhaps, however, because Mrs. Penniman suspected them that she said no more that evening about Morris Townsend. XXXV. Her refreshed attention to this gentleman had not those limits of which Catherine desired, for herself, to be conscious; it lasted long enough to enable her to wait another week before speaking of him again. It was under the same circum- | stances that she once more attacked the subject. She had been sitting with her niece in the evening; only on this occasion, as the night was not so warm, the lamp had been lighted, and Catherine had placed herself near it with a morsel of fancy-work. Mrs. Penniman went and sat alone for half an hour on the balcony; then she came in, moving vaguely about the room. At last she sank into a seat near Catherine, with clasped hands, and a little look of excitement. "Shall you be angry if I speak to you again about him?" she asked. Catherine looked up at her quietly. "Who is he?" "He whom you once loved." "I shall not be angry, but I shall not like it." "He sent you a message," said Mrs. Penniman. "I promised him to deliver it, and I must keep my promise." In all these years Catherine had had time to forget how little she had to thank her aunt for in the season of her misery: she had long ago forgiven Mrs. Penniman for taking too much upon herself. But for a moment this attitude of interposition and disinterestedness, this carrying of messages and redeeming of promises, brought back the sense that her companion was a dangerous woman. She had said she would not be angry; but for an instant she felt sore. "I don't care what you do with your promise," she answered. Mrs. Penniman, however, with her high conception of the sanctity of pledges, carried her point. "I have gone too far to retreat," she said, though precisely what this meant she was not at pains to explain. "Mr. Townsend wishes most particularly to see you, Catherine; he believes that if you knew how much, and why, he wishes it, you would consent to do so." "There can be no reason," said Cather ine-“no good reason." "His happiness depends upon it. Is not that a good reason?" asked Mrs. Penniman, impressively. "Not for me. "I think you will be happier after you have seen him. He is going away again -going to resume his wanderings. It is a very lonely, restless, joyless life. Before he goes he wishes to speak to you; it is a fixed idea with him-he is always thinking of it. He has something very important to say to you. He believes that you never understood him, that you never judged him rightly, and the belief has always weighed upon him terribly. He wishes to justify himself; he believes that in a very few words he could do so. He wishes to meet you as a friend." My happiness does not." Catherine listened to this wonderful speech without pausing in her work; she had now had several days to accustom herself to think of Morris Townsend again as an actuality. When it was over she said simply, "Please say to Mr. Townsend that I wish he would leave me alone." She had hardly spoken when a sharp, firm ring at the door vibrated through the summer night. Catherine looked up at the clock; it marked a quarter past nine -a very late hour for visitors, especially in the empty condition of the town. Mrs. Penniman at the same moment gave a little start, and then Catherine's eyes turned quickly to her aunt. They met Mrs. Penniman's and sounded them for a moment, sharply. Mrs. Penniman was blushing; her look was a conscious one; it seemed to confess something. Catherine guessed its meaning, and rose quickly from her chair. 66 'Aunt Penniman," she said, in a tone that scared her companion, "have you taken the liberty. . . ?" "My dearest Catherine," stammered Mrs. Penniman, "just wait till you see him." Catherine had frightened her aunt, but she was also frightened herself; she was on the point of rushing to give orders to the servant, who was passing to the door, to admit no one; but the fear of meeting her visitor checked her. "Mr. Morris Townsend." This was what she heard, vaguely but recognizably, articulated by the domestic, while she hesitated. She had her back turned to the door of the parlor, and for some moments she kept it turned, feeling that he had come in. He had not spoken, however, and at last she faced about. Then she saw a gentleman standing in the middle of the room, from which her aunt had discreetly retired. He She would never have known him. was forty-five years old, and his figure was not that of the straight, slim young man she remembered. But it was a very fine presence, and a fair and lustrous beard, spreading itself upon a well-presented chest, contributed to its effect. After a moment Catherine recognized the upper half of the face, which, though her visitor's clustering locks had grown thin, was still remarkably handsome. He stood in a deeply deferential attitude, with his eyes on her face. "I have ventured-I have ventured," he said, and then he paused, looking about him as if he expected her to ask him to sit down. It was the old voice, but it had not the old charm. Catherine, for a minute, was conscious of a distinct determination not to invite him to take a seat. Why had he come? It was wrong for him to come. Morris was embarrassed, but Catherine gave him no help. It was not that she was glad of his embarrassment; on the contrary, it excited all her own liabilities of this kind, and gave her great pain. But how could she welcome him when she felt so vividly that he ought not to have come? "I wanted so much-I was determined," Morris went on. But he stopped again; it was not easy. Catherine still said nothing, and he may well have recalled with apprehension her ancient faculty of silence. She continued to look at him, however, and as she did so she made the strangest observation. It seemed to be he, and yet not he; it was the man who had been everything, and yet this person was nothing. How long ago it was-how old she had grown-how much she had lived! She had lived on something that was connected with him, and she had consumed it in doing so. This person did not look unhappy. He was fair and well preserved, perfectly dressed, mature and complete. As Catherine looked at him the story of his life defined itself in his eyes: he had made himself comfortable, and he had never been caught. But even while her perception opened itself to this, she had no desire to catch him; his presence was painful to her, and she only wished he would go. 66 'Will you not sit down?" he asked. "I think we had better not," said Catherine. "I offend you by coming?" He was very grave; he spoke in a tone of the richest respect. "I don't think you ought to have come." "Did not Mrs. Penniman tell you-did she not give you my message?" "She told me something, but I did not understand." "I wish you would let me tell you-let me speak for myself." "I don't think it is necessary," said Catherine. "Not for you, perhaps, but for me. It would be a great satisfaction-and I have not many." He seemed to be coming nearer; Catherine turned away. "Can we not be friends again ?" he asked. "We are not enemies,” said Catherine. "I have none but friendly feelings to you." "Ah, I wonder whether you know the happiness it gives me to hear you say that!" Catherine uttered no intimation that she measured the influence of her | it is needless to say that he had learned words; and he presently went on, "You the contents of Doctor Sloper's will. He have not changed-the years have passed was nevertheless not at a loss. "There happily for you." are worse fates than that," he exclaimed, "They have passed very quietly," said with expression; and he might have been Catherine. "They have left no marks; you are admirably young." This time he succeeded in coming nearer-he was close to her; she saw his glossy perfumed beard, and his eyes above it looking strange and hard. It was very different from his old-from his young-face. If she had first seen him this way she would not have liked him. It seemed to her that he was smiling, or trying to smile. "Catherine," he said, lowering his voice, "I have never ceased to think of you.' supposed to refer to his own unprotected situation. Then he added, with a deeper tenderness, "Catherine, have you never forgiven me ?" "I forgave you years ago, but it is useless for us to attempt to be friends." "Not if we forget the past. We have still a future, thank God!" "I can't forget-I don't forget," said Catherine. "You treated me too badly. I felt it very much; I felt it for years." And then she went on, with her wish to show him that he must not come to her "Please don't say these things," she this way, "I can't begin again-I can't answered. "Do you hate me ?" "Oh no," said Catherine. Something in her tone discouraged him, but in a moment he recovered himself. "Have you still some kindness for me, then ?" "I don't know why you have come here to ask me such things!" Catherine exclaimed. "Because for many years it has been the desire of my life that we should be friends again." "That is impossible." "I "Why so? Not if you will allow it." "I will not allow it!" said Catherine. He looked at her again in silence. see; my presence troubles you and pains you. I will go away; but you must give me leave to come again." "Please don't come again," she said. "Never ?-never?" She made a great effort; she wished to say something that would make it impossible he should ever again cross her threshold. "It is wrong of you. There is no propriety in it-no reason for it." "Ah, dearest lady, you do me injustice!" cried Morris Townsend. "We have only waited, and now we are free." "You treated me badly," said Catherine. take it up. Everything is dead and buried. It was too serious; it made a great change in my life. I never expected to see you here." "Ah, you are angry!" cried Morris, who wished immensely that he could extort some flash of passion from her calmness. In that case he might hope. "No, I am not angry. last, that way, for years. other things. Impressions last, when they have been strong.-But I can't talk." Anger does not But there are Morris stood stroking his beard, with a clouded eye. "Why have you never married?" he asked, abruptly. "You have had opportunities." "I didn't wish to marry." "Yes, you are rich, you are free; you had nothing to gain." "I had nothing to gain," said Catherine. Morris looked vaguely round him, and gave a deep sigh. "Well, I was in hopes that we might still have been friends." "I meant to tell you, by my aunt, in answer to your message-if you had waited for an answer-that it was unnecessary for you to come in that hope." "Good-by, then," said Morris. cuse my indiscretion." "Ex "Is she so hard?" asked Mrs. Penni- | niman. And then, as if from a sense of Editor's Easy Chair. is it is the THE END. F, as a New York paper recently said, the | is conscious that his very words will be spread full time for the work upon Journals and Jour-sands of readers, it is of those readers, and not nalism, which has been lately issued in London. The New York writer holds that in our political contests the "campaign speech" is not intended or adapted to persuade or convert opponents, but merely to stimulate and encourage friends. The party meetings on each side, he thinks, are composed of partisans, and the more extravagant the assertion and the more unsparing the denunciation of "the en- | emy," the more rapturous the enthusiasm of the audience. In fact, his theory of campaign speeches is that they are merely the addresses of generals to their armies on the eve of battle, which are not arguments, since argument is not needed, but mere urgent appeals to party feeling. "Thirty centuries look down from yonder Pyramid," is the Napoleonic tone of the campaign speech. As an election is an appeal to the final tribunal of the popular judgment, the apparent object of election oratory is to affect the popular decision. But this, the journalist asserts, is not done by the orator, for the reason just stated, but by the journal. The newspaper addresses the voter, not with rhetorical periods and vapid declamation, but with facts and figures and arguments which the voter can verify and ponder at his leisure, and not under the excitement or the tedium of a spoken harangue. The newspaper, also, unless it be a mere party "organ," is candid to the other side, and states the situation fairly. Moreover, the exigencies of a daily issue and of great space to fill produce a fullness and variety of information and of argument which are really the source of most of the speeches, so that the orator repeats to his audience an imperfect abstract of a complete and ample plea, and the orator, it is asserted, would often serve his cause infinitely better by reading a carefully written newspaper article than by pouring out his loose and illogical declamation. But the argument for the newspaper can be pushed still further. Since phonographic reporting has become universal, and the speaker | of the thousand hearers before him, of whom he thinks, and for whom his address is really prepared. Formerly a single charge was all that was needed for the fusillade of a whole political campaign. The speech that was originally carefully prepared was known practically only to the audience that heard it. It grew better and brighter with the attrition of repeated delivery, and was fresh and new to every new audience. But now, when delivered to an audience, it is spoken to the whole country. It is often in type before it is uttered, so that the orator is in fact repeating the article of to-morrow morning. The result is good so far as it compels him to precision of statement, but it inevitably suggests the question whether the newspaper is not correct in its assertion that the great object of the oration is accomplished not by the orator, but by the writer. But this, after all, is like asking whether a chromo copy of a great picture does not supersede painting, and prove it to be an antiquated or obsolete art. Oratory is an art, and its peculiar charm and power can not be superseded by any other art. Great orations are now prepared with care, and may be printed word for word. But the reading can not produce the impression of the hearing. We can all read the words that Webster spoke on Bunker Hill at the laying of the corner-stone of the monument fifty years after the battle. But those who saw him standing there, in his majestic prime, and speaking to that vast throng, heard and saw and felt something that we can not know. The ordinary stump speech which imperfectly echoes a leading article can well be spared. But the speech of an orator still remains a work of art, the words of which may be accurately lithographed, while the spirit and glow and inspiration of utterance which made it a work of art can not be reproduced. The general statement of the critic, however, remains true, and the effective work of a political campaign is certainly done by the grew, and has prevailed for a generation. But the return feeling, the counter-reaction, is as distinctly marked by Mr. Frederic Harrison's fine article of last year. The explanation of the feeling of the past generation, so far as the feeling can be explained, is to be sought in the protest of popular sympathy in England against the long and narrow Tory ascendency which followed the Reform Bill of '32, to which Scott, as a Tory, was opposed. It is not the fact that he was a Tory, merely, which explains the reaction, but the spirit of the age was antifeudal, and opinion burst with an exultant spring from the thralldom of the terror produced by the French Revolution. Of the many aspects of this feudal spirit Scott had been the laureate in prose and verse, and his fame shared the natural hostility of the reaction. newspaper. The newspaper is of two kinds, | reaction of feeling about Scott, which rapidly again that which shows exclusively the virtue and advantage of the party it favors, and that which aims to be judicial and impartial. The tendency of the first kind is obvious enough, but that of the last is not less positive if less obvious. The tendency of the independent newspaper is to good-natured indifference. The very ardor, often intemperate and indiscreet, with which a side is advocated, prejudices such a paper against the cause itself. Because the hot orator exclaims that the success of the adversary would ruin the country, the independent Mentor gayly suggests that the country is not so easily ruined, and that such an argument is a reason for voting against the orator. The position that in a party contest it is six on one side and half a dozen on the other is too much akin to the doctrine that naught is everything and everything is naught to be very persuasive with men who are really in earnest. Such a position in public affairs inevitably, and often very unjustly to them, produces an impression of want of hearty conviction, which paralyzes influence as effectually as the evident prejudice and partiality of the party advocate. Thorough independence is perfectly compatible with the strongest conviction that the public welfare will be best promoted by the success of this or that party. Such independence criticises its own party and partisans, but it would not have wavered in the support of the Revolution because Gates and Conway were intriguers, and Charles Lee an adventurer, and it would have sustained Sir Robert Walpole although he would not repeal the Corporation and Test laws, and withdrew his excise act. Journalism, if it be true that it really shapes the policy of nations, well deserves to be treated as thoughtfully as Mr. "John Oldcastle" apparently treats it in the book we have mentioned, for it is the most exacting of professions in the ready use of various knowledge. Mr. Anthony Trollope says that anybody can set up the business or profession of literature who can command a room, a table, and pen, ink, and paper. Would he also say that any man may set up the trade of an artist who can buy an easel, a palette, a few brushes, and some colors? It can be done, indeed, but only as a man who can hire a boat may set up for an East India merchant. THE violent action and reaction in literary fame during an author's life, and for a long time after his death, is often observable. No fame seemed greater, sounder, or better assured than that of Scott. It partook apparently of his own healthy, hearty nature, and the universal personal tenderness of public sympathy in his decline and death seemed to foreshow an unswerving public allegiance to his renown. But Carlyle's review of Lockhart's Life, noble and admiring and pathetic in the highest degree, yet marked distinctly the beginning of a VOL. LXIL-No. 367.-10 | The new spirit at once showed itself in Dickens, whose broad, bright, kindly, aggressive democracy, making the hero of his story a friendless work-house boy instead of a knight at arms, and its scene a city lane or Wapping instead of a stately castle or a historic land, was the representative of the changed feeling and the new day. There was, on our side of the sea at least, an eagerness of delight in Dickens which was very striking, and which the Scott generation somewhat resented. "I don't know much of Dickens,” said one of the older school, with reproving severity, "but I read Scott all through every year." It was said with the proud and indignant air of the true believer who upholds his faith among pagans. "Who is this Dickens? I must look him up," said another, with exquisite scorn, as he listened to the praise of the new author, and hurried home to restore his equanimity with the Antiquary. But although Dickens's letters are only published within the year, the reaction against him is already in full career, and curious critics are wondering how much of the extravagance of so broad a caricaturist can possibly interest or entertain the reader of another century. But against no great author of the last century has this reaction been more pronounced than against Byron, and the counteraction is just as plainly marked as with Scott. Mr. Ruskin's ardent homage, and the Life of Byron, by John Nichol, in the series of “English Men of Letters," show the matured judgment of today, and reverse that of a generation. It is interesting to compare this later biography with Moore's. There is a slightly subacid tone of belligerence in Professor Nichol's book which is very amusing. He evidently means to show that he understands the reasons of the judgment of Byron, and that he has no wish whatever to conceal anything, or to depict him as a hero or a saint. Indeed, the first and signal charm of the book is its veracity. The painter is a realist, with a singularly firm touch, and the story of Byron's life has never been better told. The author makes us see the man as ho |