horse, smaller and slighter, which he had seen in the paddock exercised by a groom. "Do you ever ride that chesnut? I think it even handsomer than this."

"Half our preferences are due to the vanity they flatter. Few can ride this horse, any one, perhaps, that."

"There speaks the Dare-all!" said Lionel laughing.

The host did not look displeased. "Where no difficulty, there no pleasure," said he in his curt laconic diction. "I was in Spain two years ago. I had not an English horse there, so I bought that Andalusian jennet. What has served him at need, no preux chevalier would leave to the chance of ill-usage. So the jennet came with me to England. You have not been much accustomed to ride, I suppose?"

"Not much; but my dear mother thought I ought to learn. She pinched for a whole year to have me taught at a riding-school during one school vacation."

"Your mother's relations are, I believe, well off. Do they suffer her to pinch ?"

'I do not know that she has relations living; she never speaks of them."

"Indeed!" This was the first question on home matters that Darrell had ever directly addressed to Lionel. He there dropped the subject, and said, after a short pause, "I was not aware that you are a horseman, or I would have asked you to accompany me; will you do so tomorrow, and mount the jennet ?"

"Oh, thank you; I should like it so much."

Darrell turned abruptly away from

the bright grateful eyes. "I am only sorry," he added, looking aside, "that our excursions can be but few. On Friday next I shall submit to you a proposition; if you accept it, we shall part on Saturday-liking each other, I hope; speaking for myself, the experiment has not failed; and on yours?"

On mine-oh, Mr Darrell, if I dared but tell you what recollections of yourself the experiment will bequeath to me!"

"Do not tell me, if they imply a compliment," answered Darrell, with the low silvery laugh which so melodiously expressed indifference, and repelled affection. He entered the stable-yard, dismounted; and on returning to Lionel, the sound of the flute stole forth, as if from the eaves of the gabled roof. Could the pipe

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of Horace's Faunus be sweeter than that flute?" said Darrell

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Utcunque dulci, Tyndare, fistula, Valles,' &c. What a lovely ode that is! What knowledge of town life! what susceptibility to the rural! Of all the Latins, Horace is the only one with whom I could wish to have spent a week. But no! I could not have discussed the brief span of human life with locks steeped in Malobathran balm, and wreathed with that silly myrtle. Horace and I would have quarrelled over the first heady bow! of Massic. We never can quarrel now! Blessed subject and poet-laureate of Queen Proserpine, and, I dare swear, the most gentlemanlike poet she ever received at court, henceforth his task is to uncoil the asps from the brows of Alecto, and arrest the ambitious Orion from the chase after visionary lions.”

The next day they rode forth, host and guest, and that ride proved an eventful crisis in the fortune of Lionel Haughton. Hitherto I have elaborately dwelt on the fact that, whatever the regard Darrell might feel for him, it was a regard apart from that interest which accepts a

responsibility, and links to itself a fate. And even if, at moments, the powerful and wealthy man had felt that interest, he had thrust it from him. That he meant to be generous was indeed certain, and this he had typically shown in a very trite matterof-fact way. The tailor, whose visit

had led to such perturbation, had received instructions beyond the mere supply of the raiment for which he had been summoned ; and a large patent portmanteau, containing all that might constitute the liberal outfit of a young man in the rank of a gentleman, had arrived at Fawley, and amazed and moved Lionel, whom Darrell had by this time thoroughly reconciled to the acceptance of benefits. The gift denoted this, "In recognising you as kinsman, I shall henceforth provide for you as gentleman." Darrell indeed meditated applying for an appointment in one of the public offices, the settlement of a liberal allowance, and a parting shake of the hand, which should imply, "I have now behaved as becomes me; the rest belongs to you. We may never meet again. There is no reason why this good-by may not be for ever."

But in the course of that ride, Darrell's intentions changed. Wherefore? You will never guess! Nothing so remote as the distance between cause and effect, and the cause for the effect here was poor little Sophy.

The day was fresh, with a lovely breeze, as the two riders rode briskly over the turf of rolling common-lands, with the feathery boughs of neighbouring woodlands tossed joyously to and fro by the sportive summer wind. The exhilarating exercise and air raised Lionel's spirits, and released his tongue from all trammels; and when a boy is in high spirits, ten to one but he grows a frank egotist, feels the teeming life of his individuality, and talks about himself. Quite unconsciously Lionel rattled out gay anecdotes of his school days; his quarrel with a demoniacal usher; how he ran away; what befell him; how the doctor went after, and brought him back; how splendidly the doctor behaved-neither flogged nor expelled him, but after patient listening, while he rebuked the pupil, dismissed the usher, to the joy of the whole academy; how he fought the head boy in the school for calling the doctor a sneak; how, licked twice, he yet fought that head boy a third time, and licked him; how, when head boy himself, he had roused the whole school into a civil war, dividing the boys into Cavaliers and

Roundheads; how clay was rolled out into cannon-balls and pistol-shot, sticks shaped into swords; the playground disturfed to construct fortifications; how a slovenly stout boy enacted Cromwell; how he himself was elevated into Prince Rupert; and how, reversing all history, and infamously degrading Cromwell, Rupert would not consent to be beaten ; and Cromwell at the last, disabled by an untoward blow across the knuckles, ignominiously yielded himself prisoner, was tried by a court-martial, and sentenced to be shot! To all this rubbish did Darrel incline his patient ear-not encouraging, not interrupting, but sometimes stifling a sigh at the sound of Lionel's merry laugh, or the sight of his fair face, with heightened glow on its cheeks, and his long silky hair, worthy the name of lovelocks, blown by the wind from the open loyal features, which might well have graced the portrait of some youthful Cavalier. On bounded the Spanish jennet, on rattled the boy rider. He had left school now, in his headlong talk; he was describing his first friendship with Frank Vance, as a lodger at his mother's; how example fired him, and he took to sketch-work and painting; how kindly Vance gave him lessons; how at one time he wished to be a painter; how much the mere idea of such a thing vexed his mother, and how little she was moved when he told her that Titian was of a very ancient family, and that Francis I., archetype of gentlemen, visited Leonardo da Vinci's sick-bed; and that Henry VIII. had said to a pert lord who had snubbed Holbein, "I can make a lord any day, but I cannot make a Holbein ;" how Mrs Haughton still confounded all painters in the general image of the painter and plumber who had cheated her so shamefully in the renewed window-sashes and redecorated walls, which Time and the four children of an Irish family had made necessary to the letting of the first floor. And these playful allusions to the maternal ideas were still not irreverent, but contrived so as rather to prepossess Darrell in Mrs Haughton's favour, by bringing out traits of a simple natural mother, too proud, perhaps, of her only son, not caring what she did,

how she worked, so that he might not lose caste as a born Haughton. Darrell understood, and nodded his head approvingly. "Certainly," he said, speaking almost for the first time, "fame confers a rank above that of gentlemen and of kings; and as soon as she issues her patent of nobility, it matters not a straw whether the recipient be the son of a Bourbon or of a tallow-chandler. But if Fame withhold her patent-if a well-born man paint aldermen, and be not famous (and I dare say you would have been neither a Titian nor a Holbein, why, he might as well be a painter and plumber, and has a better chance, even of bread and cheese, by standing to his post as gentleman. Mrs Haughton was right, and I respect her."

Quite right. If I lived to the age of Methuselah, I could not paint a head like Frank Vance."

"And even he is not famous yet. Never heard of him."

"He will be famous-I am sure of it; and if you lived in London, you would hear of him even now. Oh, sir! such a portrait as he painted the other day! But I must tell you all about it." And therewith Lionel plunged at once, medias res, into the brief broken epic of little Sophy, and the eccentric infirm Belisarius for whose sake she first toiled and then begged; with what artless eloquence he brought out the colours of the whole story-now its humour, now its pathos; with what beautifying sympathy he adorned the image of the little vagrant girl, with her mien of gentlewoman and her simplicity of child; the river-excursion to Hampton Court; her still delight; how annoyed he felt when Vance seemed ashamed of her before those fine people; the orchard scene in which he had read Darrell's letter, that, for the time, drove her from the foremost place in his thoughts; the return home, the parting, her wistful look back, the visit to the Cobbler's next

day-even her farewell gift, the nursery poem, with the lines written on the fly-leaf, he had them by heart! Darrell, the grand advocate, felt he could not have produced on a jury, with those elements, the effect which that boy-narrator produced on his granite self.

"And, oh sir!" cried Lionel, checking his horse, and even arresting Darrell's with bold right hand"oh," said he, as he brought his moist and pleading eyes in full battery upon the shaken fort to which he had mined his way-"oh, sir! you are so wise, and rich, and kind, do rescue that poor child from the penury and hardships of such a life! If you could but have seen and heard her! She could never have been born to it! You look away-I offend you. I have no right to tax your benevolence for others; but, instead of showering favours upon me, so little would suffice for her, if she were but above positive want, with that old man (she would not be happy without him), safe in such a cottage as you give to your own peasants! I am a man, or shall be one soon; I can wrestle with the world, and force my way somehow; but that delicate child, a village show, or a beggar on the high-road-no mother, no brother, no one but that broken-down cripple, leaning upon her arm as his crutch. I cannot bear to think of it. I am sure I shall meet her again somewhere; and when I do, may I not write to you, and will you not come to her help? Do speak-do say Yes,' Mr Darrell."

The rich man's breast heaved slightly; he closed his eyes, but for a moment. There was a short and sharp struggle with his better self, and the better self conquered.

"Let go my reins-see, my horse puts down his ears-he may do you a mischief. Now canter on-you shall be satisfied. Give me a moment to-to unbutton my coat-it is too tight for me."

"Lionel Haughton," said Guy Darrell, regaining his young cousin's side, and speaking in a firm and measured voice, "I have to thank you for one very happy minute; the sight of a heart so fresh in the limpid purity of goodness, is a luxury you cannot comprehend till you have come to my age; journeyed, like me, from Dan to Beersheba, and found all barren. Heed me if you had been half-adozen years older, and this child for whom you plead had been a fair young woman, perhaps just as innocent, just as charming-more in peril -my benevolence would have lain as dormant as a stone. A young man's foolish sentiment for a pretty girl. As your true friend, I should have shrugged my shoulders and said, 'Beware!' Had I been your father, I should have taken alarm, and frowned. I should have seen the sickly romance, which ends in dupes or deceivers. But at your age, you hearty, genial, and open-hearted boy-you caught but by the chivalrous compassion for helpless female childhoodoh that you were my son-oh that my dear father's blood were in those knightly veins! I had a son once! God took him;" the strong man's lips quivered-he hurried on. "I felt there was manhood in you, when you wrote to fling my churlish favours in my teeth-when you would have left my roof-tree in a burst of passion which might be foolish, but was nobler than the wisdom of calculating submission-manhood, but only perhaps man's pride as man-man's heart not less cold than winter. Today you have shown me something

far better than pride;-that nature which constitutes the heroic temperament is completed by two attributes unflinching purpose, disinterested humanity. I know not yet if you have the first; you reveal to me the second. Yes! I accept the duties you propose to me; I will do more than leave to you the chance of discovering this poor child. I will direct my solicitor to take the right steps to do so. I will see that she is safe from the ills you fear for her. Lionel ; more still, I am impatient till I write to Mrs Haughton. I did her wrong. Remember, I have never seen her. I resented in her the cause of my quarrel with your father, who was once dear to me. Enough of that. I disliked the tone of her letters to me. I disliked it in the mother of a boy who had Darrell blood; other reasons too

I

let them pass. But in providing for your education, I certainly thought her relations provided for her support. She never asked me for help there; and, judging of her hastily, thought she would not have scrupled to do so if my help there had not been forestalled. You have made me understand her better; and at all events, three-fourths of what we are in boyhood most of us owe to our mothers! You are frank, fearless, affectionate a gentleman. I respect the mother who has such a son.'

Certainly praise was rare upon Darrell's lips, but when he did praise, he knew how to do it! And no man will ever command others who has not by nature that gift. It cannot be learned. Art and experience can only refine its expression.

THE inherent connection between national life and national art is in an Exhibition like the present specially apparent. The life of a nation in its earlier simplicity, or in its later complexity and luxury, in the earnest endeavour of its healthful rise, or in the intoxicated levity of its fall, are all impressed in corresponding characters upon the national art. Compare the early-cloistered Italian works in the first saloon, with the Venetian luxury and colour in the second; or the pictures by Van Eyck and Mabuse, careful and conscientious, with the florid extravagance of Rubens, and then think of the wide diversity in national life which must have led to such bold contrasts in national art. We take it, that a grand international gallery like the present will be comparatively useless, unless it be made the basis of conclusions as wide as the collection is itself extensive. While disconnected works lay scat tered in distant churches, palaces, or private galleries, criticism could with difficulty assume a consecutive completeness, or throw into its treatment of dissevered parts the system inherent to a united whole. It seems, however, in these days the special use and province of museums, whether of Natural History or of Art, to group together into the completeness of a system materials which formerly lay scattered in individual isolation. Criticism of separate works or of individual artists had not to wait for this Manchester Exhibition; but a criticism which shall embrace nationalities in their wide diversities or close analogies-which shall give to each art its comparative position in the world's history, show the relation between a people's life and a people's pictorial fancies, is now, for the first time, rendered practicable. In our previous article we dwelt more especially on the characteristics of the ancient masters; in our present, coming to modern times, we shall treat of the merits, position, and tendencies of our English national

school. We shall endeavour to show how far it is representative of our national life; how far, as with the art of the middle ages, our own school now answers to the requirements of the times; and how far, failing of highest aims, it leaves existing wants and aspirations still unsatisfied.

In art, as in politics, the great difficulty is how to combine with a wise conservatism the possibility of progress; how to acknowledge, yea, even to adopt all, for example, that is eternally true and beautiful in the pictures of Claude or of Poussin, and yet at the same time not to barter away our pictorial independence, or pervert these works, which should instruct and guide our liberty, into fetters for our bondage. It was the rare merit of Reynolds to strike this happy medium between the obedience due to the past and the independence due to himself and his country. The pictures of Reynolds in this Exhibition, such as "Mrs Anderson, Pelham" (155), "Nelly O'Brien" (19), and "The Strawberry Girl" (18), happily combine with an independent treatment of nature the pictorial knowledge which the onward history and development of art had established, thus giving to his works at once historic maturity and national vitality.

In landscape art, likewise, the examples in the first saloon sufficiently show that our English school, now so original, was, in its outset, content to be taught by the wisdom of the past. The noble works of Wilson, his "Niobe" (32), and “The View on the Arno" (39), owe their nobility and their beauty to Poussin and Claude. In like manner Loutherbourg, in his "Landscape with Cattle" (94), wisely submitted to the tuition of Berghem; and Nasmith, it will be seen from various examples, adopted the style of Hobbima. That this humble attitude, this state of pupilage, was, in the infancy of English landscape art, needful and salutary, we think is manifest, not only in the nature of things, but by the results which this