Quite beautiful is the view of the Strand and Fleet Street in the morning, with its shapes of St. Clement's, St. Bride's, "that madrigal in stone," and "the high majesty of Paul"; and the picture of Trafalgar Square in the haze of golden light is a rhapsody. London has had her poets, even in modern days, from Wordsworth to H. S. Leigh. No one, however, has hymned and lauded her, wooed her so amorously, or been so receptive of her various moods, as Mr. Henley. I have marked for extract many superb passages, but I will go no farther. I will, however, counsel every reader to turn to the closing poem, to the patriotic song beginning

What have I done for you,

England, my England!

Patriotism seems now to be "bad form "-out of date, what not. The man, however, who can be deaf to this noble poem is—well, is not to be envied.

FORTHCOMING SALE OF THE ALTHORP LIBRARY.

WO more of our "great houses" are divesting themselves of what has been most civilising and honouring in their investiture. The great Dudley collection of pictures has now gone to the hammer, and the great Althorp library is to follow it with as little delay as possible. I am not behind the scenes, and do not know what private reasons may have justified in each instance the sale. The dispersal of the library at Althorp, one of the finest private collections in the world, is at least epoch-marking. A sort of alliance between the aristocracy and letters was involved when the greatest private libraries could be found in the palaces of Blenheim, Althorp, and the like. Now, however, this slight and, in fact, misleading symptom has passed, and the divorce between the landed aristocracy and the intellectual life of the nation seems all but complete. The present book-owners of England belong to the middle classes, and the nobles are left to the enjoyment of their collections of weapons of the chase, their studs, and other signs of their feudal origin and occupations. With the growth of public libraries one can contemplate with something not far removed from equanimity the breaking up of these princely collections. The taste for fine books will not soon expire, and one may even, with no very great grudging, watch the most splendid or the rarest typographical monuments being carried off by our descendants across the Atlantic. They are at least still in the family. A propos to the forthcoming sale, a description from the Gentleman's Magazine of 1819 of the purchase for

Lord Spenser of the famous Valdarfer Boccaccio has been reprinted in various quarters. The previous and more spirited personal contest for the same priceless volume between Lords Spenser and Blandford, and the subsequent formation of the Roxburghe Club, are too well known to be again dragged to light.

I

A NEW NATIONAL LIBRARY.

HAVE always held that we want a second great public library accessible, under special restrictions, to students. For practical purposes the British Museum is admirable, being, in fact, one of the great national institutions in which it is difficult to find a blemish. The collection is noble, and the service unsurpassable in courtesy as in efficiency. To prosecute in the Museum a somewhat arduous search leaves one at the close with a higher estimate of one's fellows. From the point of view of the bibliographer, however, the British Museum collection is very far from complete. It has many priceless treasures, and may vie with the greatest libraries of other capitals; but it is still in some respects painfully incomplete. Its funds are inadequate to the purchase of one tithe of the literary treasures that come into the market. The library I would fain see should be confined to the works of great cost and importance for which the scholar has constant need. It should have, for example, all printed editions of Chaucer, and as many early MSS. as are obtainable. To see these things a man has now to make a pilgrimage to Oxford or Cambridge, or, it may be, to obtain admission through private interest to some collection such as that of Mr. Huth. A library such as I indicate must necessarily be slow in growth. I would have it, however, if possible, endowed both publicly and privately, so that on an occasion such as the sale of the Althorp library it could make its pick among priceless books. On no occasion should it be allowed to compete with the British Museum beyond taking up the running in case that august but carefully managed institution should be outbid from some other source. Access to works such as should then be collected should be restricted to serious workers, and a work when lent to an individual should be collated before it is restored to the shelves. Many will think this scheme visionary. It will, however, I think, be carried out on some future day when the difficulties in the way of its establishment may be much graver than they now are.

SYLVANUS URBAN.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

SEPTEMBER 1892.

THE ALTRUIST IN CORDUROY.

By H. V. BROWN.

I.

S the much battered door in the high garden wall was opened -opened slowly, gently-and the undersized, deformed, rather singular-looking man dragged himself out in his limping painful way under the elms, a voice (not disagreeable in itself, yet terrible in its significance) called after him from the garden: "Jacob Laur! Jacob Laur! come back an' hear th' rest; I've on'y told ye summat o' th' truth! Come back, lad, an' hear it out like a man!"

But Jacob did not go back; and the man shouting from the garden did actually arrive at the conclusion that he was a poor-hearted sort of chap not to be able to listen to the end of a story like that. The truth all the truth! Jacob had heard enough. He had heard more than he felt he could bear to think of with any degree of manly self-possession while the eyes of men looked on him. So he stood out here alone, under the great sweeping arms of the elms that were almost like friendly things to him in his deep suffering, with two or three fire-like rays from the hot July sun thrown across his face and his bare head and his sadly-worn clothes, and all his mind absorbed in appalled and incoherent contemplation of this pitiless flood that had suddenly rushed down upon his life. It was said, indeed, in this smiling land of Teignbury that Jacob Laur's mind was not a matter of any great moment either to himself or to the world at large; yet a stranger passing just then through the solitude of the leafy canopy under which the rough-hewn dwarf was shrinking from the light, might have imagined, perceiving the expression of the man's eyes (supposing he did not avert them, which he likely enough would have VOL. CCLXXIII. NO. 1941.

Q

done) and the eagerness of his rugged dark face, that he was not incapable of some sort of meditation alike on things seen and things unseen. There was a kind of indefinable pathos in the simple fact of such a man's existence. He did not seem to be wanted by anybody in the world—at times he did not seem to want himself. If he had been born in a town he would probably have been brutalised beyond all hope. But he had lived always with his face close to the breast of the Great Mother, and a widespread reputation for stupidity was the worst that had ever been urged against him by the people among whom he had spent his years; and, to say truth, stupidity was considered no unpardonable sin in Teignbury. It was so very common. Nor had Jacob ever been harshly condemned on the score of his unmistakable plainness of feature, and his still more obvious ungainliness of body. His physical imperfections were acquiesced in almost reverentially by the country folk in that scattered neighbourhood, very much as they accepted the ugliness of the toad, the craftiness of the weasel, and the fact that some days were pleasant and some not, and some harvests good and some bad. When people with short memories were speaking of Jacob, and happened to forget his name, they might be sure of making his personality manifest by referring to him descriptively as the ugly man of Teignbury. And truly he was less than handsome. One of his shoulders was a good deal lower than the other: the right side of his ill-shapen body appeared to be partially paralysed; his hands and feet were out of all reason; and his face, with its curiously ungraceful black beard, its high cheek-bones, and dark bewildered-looking eyes, could hardly be said even remotely to suggest anything like an ideal dignity of manhood.

There came the sound of laughter from the garden, and Jacob moved farther from the door in the wall. He usually seemed to walk with difficulty, though he was accounted a good workman; but now his step was like the pained movement of some sorely wounded creature. Each ring of merriment from the garden had an effect upon him as of actual laceration of the flesh. Still, he did not hurry: he was a slow son of toil. When he got out from under the trees he came to a stile beside a small pond; on the other side of the stile was a pathway leading through more trees, an irregular avenue. Some rabbits were scampering about this path: some of them frisked round, cocked their ears, and stared saucily at Jacob; and Jacob leaned slightly on the stile and watched them with a familiar sense of companionship. He had always cla med kinship with the animal creation-not that he ever said so, or even thought of anything so

pagan still, the paganism, if paganism it be, was there, deep-rooted in his nature. There was something very solacing in the reflection. that though men might make merry over this shameful thing that had happened, yet the creatures of wood and field would, at least, remain respectfully silent. He loved them all the more ever after for this consideration they showed him in his hour of suffering.

But there came a noise like the growl of a dog in the pheasant cover south of the avenue, and the rabbits fled. The declining sun could send down his glory here, and there was the shine of it all upon the little stagnant pond. Floating on the water, its stem and half of its petals already sucked down, was a white rose; evidently some one from the Hall had let it fall into the water while getting over the stile. The rose was lying close to the bank, and Jacob went down on his knees, took it from the water, shook it with friendly gentleness, and threw it upon the grass, where a passer-by would be likely to see it. As he was getting up from his knees the stable clock chimed six. "I'll go back and put on my coat and things," Jacob Laur said to himself. The other men were hastening to the tool-house, but Jacob contrived to slip out his coat and hat without their seeing him. Then he limped home through the avenue and the fields. He lived with his widowed mother, and he was her only child.

He washed himself with a great splashing noise in the garden behind their cottage; then, having rubbed himself with a coarse towel until you might have supposed he was trying to get the skin off his face and arms, he sat down in silence with his mother at the teatable. She was a very old and weary-looking mother. No one seemed to see much to admire in this bent and white-haired woman; yet her wrinkled sad face was a face of wonderful sweetness and beauty in Jacob's eyes. And all that she was to him he was to her. He had always told her all his heart so far as he had been able to tell it; and as they sat together at tea on this lovely July evening in the little sitting-room that was dearer to them than the pomp of kings, with the sunshine on the low wall where hung the faded picture of a famous battle, the canary (a venerable and beloved creature also; making believe to sing in its big wicker cage at the open window, and the fragrance of the common flowers heavy upon the summer air, Jacob told his mother of the sorrow that had come upon him. She was a wise old woman, this labouring man's mother, and very little it was that she had to say in reply.

"It mayn't be true, Jacob," she said, regarding him with infinite compassion. For she knew perfectly well, and had known for weeks