thought of running away from her husband and his tyrannical motherbut whither could she go? She had no relations or friends-no one to countenance her; so with a heavy heart she went back to her gloomy prison.

If Jessy had been unhappy before her marriage, she was still more discontented and wretched now, for the light of hope was extinguished in her mind. Bitterly did she lament her own folly in allowing herself to be chained to such a creature as her cousin Archy. Intensely did she hate Lady Lilias, and her naturally sweet temper became soured by her many trials. To her aunt she was distant and sullen, to her husband contemptuous and often cross. Archy saw how changed she was, but it did not give him much annoyance; he solaced himself by drinking more freely than ever, and he had always been inclined to the vice of drunkenness.

About this time Donald Munro, Jessy's humble friend, married a young woman who had been a dressmaker at Wigton, and the flirtation, for such it was on Jessy's part, which had helped to break in a slight degree the tedium of her life, could not be carried on so vigorously. Another event, however, happened soon after the gardener's wedding, which made very great changes at the castle.

One evening when, as usual, gloom was on every countenance, and stillness, unbroken save by the sound of the winds and waves, reigned within that cheerless mansion, two gentlemen, accompanied by a servant, applied at the gate for admission. They were going from England to the Highlands of Scotland, and had taken a circuitous route to see this wild part of the country. The roads in the neighbourhood of Craig Luce were bad; driving perhaps carelessly, they had been overturned; both were bruised, but one was much more injured than the other. The least hurt was Lord Angus, a young Scotch nobleman, and a distant relation of Lady Lilias by her father's side. He claimed her hospitality for himself and his friend, and Lady Lilias exerted herself to receive them courteously, nor did she think it necessary to prevent Jessy from assisting in doing the honours of the castle.

Much shocked were both the guests to find so beautiful a young woman as Jessy thrown away upon such a miserable creature as Archy; and they were still more surprised when Lord Angus called to mind that her father had left her a considerable fortune. She was the theme of their discourse after the ladies had retired to rest, Mr. Latimer declaring he had half a mind to run away with her when he recovered from the effects of his accident, and Lord Angus vowing that had he known such a gem was under the charge of his old cousin, Lady Lilias, he would have besieged the castle, made the fair Jessy Lady Angus, and taken comfortable possession of her golden stores. Both agreed that Lady Lilias was a cunning and wicked old fox to sacrifice such a sweet girl to her ugly idiot of a son. But by what magic had she achieved this sacrifice? That puzzled them.

Poor Jessy's dreams that night were tinged with romance-a knighterrant and his faithful squire had arrived to deliver her from bondage. Lady Lilias was condemned to imprisonment in the dungeon-keep beneath the castle, and placed in the custody of Donald Munro, who appeared equipped in armour, with a shield and helmet, among the lofty plumes

of which floated a lock of her own beautiful hair. Archy was compelled to divorce her, and was carried off to be shut up in a monastery of La Trappe; while she herself, in a garment of silver tissue, with a diamond coronet resting on her brow, was led to the altar by the knight, who turned out to be a prince in disguise!

From these vagaries of sleep she awoke to the pleasant reality that there were two agreeable strangers in the house, whose society she might enjoy, unchecked even by the odious Lady Lilias. Happy days these were for the poor recluse! She constituted herself Mr. Latimer's chief nurse, and never left his sofa except for a walk or a ride with Lord Angus, who speedily drew from her the history of her wrongs. He said all he could to console her; assured her that Archy would soon drink himself underground; and promised that he would then get his sister to invite her to her house, and, once introduced into good society, she would be certain to make a brilliant marriage, for everybody liked pretty young widows. Lord Angus did not add-what he thought-" and rich ones."

Lord Angus loitered eight or ten days at the castle; then finding that it might be some time before Mr. Latimer would be able to travel-at least so said Latimer, and the doctor did not contradict him—and having a large party invited to join him at his Highland abode, he took his departure, with many protestations of gratitude to Lady Lilias for her kindness, and many apologies for still imposing his English friend as a guest on her.

Time flew on, yet still Mr. Latimer remained at the castle as if it had been his home. He was now quite well-he could no longer assume to be an invalid-what caused him thus to prolong his stay? Had that question been asked of Jessy Lockhart, her heart would have answered-love; Had it been asked of truth, the answer would have been-sin. Mr. Latimer found Jessy beautiful, artless, and affectionate, and he did not scruple to take advantage of her misplaced confidence in him. It was a pleasant little episode in his life, nor was his object very difficult of attainment, for the young dame of the castle was not fortified against his seductions by much strength of principle. At first their intimacy was carried on with a good deal of caution, and Lady Lilias having been confined to her room by illness for some time, they had not her lynx eyes upon them. But when she got better, she soon perceived enough to arouse her suspicions. She watched them stealthily, but closely, and it was not long before conviction forced itself on her mind. Dire was her wrath at the discovery, and eagerly did she pant for revenge upon the smiling traitor who had brought ruin and disgrace into the family, under whose highly honourable roof he had been received with so much hospitality.

"My son must take vengeance on the miscreant!" she exclaimed to herself. "Half idiot as he is, he will surely feel such dishonour."

Archy generally kept very much out of his mother's way, but she knew his haunts, and she intercepted him one day as he was making for a cottage where a rustic beauty resided of whom he was a great admirer. "Archy, stop, I wish to speak to you," she said.

"If you're going to gie me a screed about the kirk, mother, it's no use: the minister may say what he likes, but I'm not going to put my foot in the kirk." And the poor fool endeavoured to assume a very

courageous look, though his eyes quailed beneath his mother's blazing glance.

"It is not about the church that I want to speak to you; go to it, or stay from it as you please. I wish to speak to you about your wifeabout that wretched Jessy."

"Oh-ay! Jessy. Well, I can't help if she's wretched; you made her so, not me. I ken very well that she'd rather hae married Donald the gardener than me; and I'm sure I'd rather hae married Bessie down yonder. She's worth fifty Jessys."

"Archibald! that miserable Jessy has played you false: she has taken up with yon villain of an Englishman, whom, to our misfortune, my cousin, Lord Angus, brought here. That base betrayer must not go unpunished; you must revenge your wrongs."

"How?" asked the injured husband, very calmly.

"Need I tell you? You must horsewhip him soundly-you must kick him out of the house, and then shoot him as you would shoot a mad dog."

Do

"Ay, must I? That's easy said, mother, no so easy done," replied Archy, with a broad grin. "Two people can play at that game. you think now, my leddy, that yon English chiel is going to stand, like a blind, auld, mangy cur, for me to beat him, and kick him, and shoot him? Hoot, no! I'll be the one that'll be beaten, and shot too; and I'm not going to give my life for any Jessy."

"Archy, think of the disgrace-the dishonour cast upon our name!" "But look here, mother-if you'll just keep your tongue quiet," said Archy, who was waxing bold in his colloquy with Lady Lilias, "and no be screeching about it, who's to know it? They won't tell upon themselves. I'll not say a word even to Bessie; and where will the disgrace be then?"

"Oh, fool-fool! Despicable craven!" cried Lady Lilias, wringing her hands in despair. "Can there be a drop of my blood in your veins ?" "Of course not," replied Archy, with a wise look. "How could it come there? I've got my own blood in my veins, and I'm no going to have it spilled for any havers about disgrace."

"Oh, Hector! my noble Hector! would that you had lived to have sustained the honour of our now fallen house-our ancient name!” exclaimed Lady Lilias, in great agitation. Then turning once more to her living son, she said, "Young man, will nothing induce you to punish the Southron scoundrel as he deserves?"

"Nothing!" replied Archy, doggedly. Any allusion to his brother always offended him, for he well remembered how differently, as children, they had been treated.

"Then a woman's hand shall do the deed!" hissed Lady Lilias, as her features assumed a determined and fiendish expression. Her look absolutely frightened Archy, who slunk away; and when he had got to the distance of a few paces from his mother, began to stride rapidly across the field, as if to escape her terrific presence.

"She'll murder that man," he muttered to himself, when he stopped to take breath. "But that's nae business of mine. I'll keep out of her way though, for fear she murders me too, now she's got the deil in her. Oh, but she's an awfu' woman, yon!"

BARTHOLOMEW FAIR.*

QUAINT and recherché is this handsome volume, outside and in. The fine old-fashioned type, the accurately copied old engravings, the fantastic head-pieces and tail-pieces, the matter of the book and the manner of the man, all are in excellent keeping. If all the fun of the fair is inside, there is an under-current of grave beneath the gay. Mr. Morley -as previous works of his have notably attested-is contemplative philosopher as well as industrious compiler. And, indeed, by any historian unaddicted to the moralising mood, a record of Bartholomew Fair, or Coventry Fair, or May Fair, or Vanity Fair, or any other, would be unendurable in a thickset demy octavo.

The memorials of a national institution must always be attractive to students of national life and character. And a national institution once was Bartholomew Fair, though now dead and gone, and that without leaving one decent mourner to bewail it with a Why did ye die? In its early days it had the form of a religious gathering. That lost, it still flourished as a gathering-place for traders; and then also, and long afterwards, as a means of popular amusement; and its historian's design indirectly is to show, how, as knowledge advanced and refinement spread, better enjoyments than it could offer drew away from it, beginning from above, class after class, till such pleasure as it was in its nature to afford became a true thing only to the lowest. "When, even to these, there were offered and made acceptable purer sources of enjoyment, Bartholomew Fair no longer represented any living truth; and as it had long ceased to be a place of worship or a haunt of trade, so, also, it was outgrown by the people as a haunt of pleasure. Therefore, become worthless in its last possible form, it has, in our own time, vanished from the midst of London."

The story of the Fair shows it to have been, says the author, as truly as the House of Commons, part of the Representation of the English People; not, indeed, its Lower, but its Lowest House. "When Spain threatened us with an Armada, the monkey of the Fair was taught to show defiance of the King of Spain. When Gunpowder Plot was the topic of the day, it was the great show of the Fair, played to eighteen or twenty penny audiences, nine times in an afternoon. When England broke loose from civil and religious despotism, the Puritan was in the Fair preaching down vanity; and the Cavalier was in the Fair with all the puppets on, his side, crying down excesses of religious zeal." And so it went on, the booths presenting a coarse but energetic embodiment, from age to age, of what was uppermost in public opinion-satirising the folly of the day, grossly enough, and glorifying the favourite of the hour, quite as grossly. At one time the incomparable, indomitable, impeccable King Elizabeth is made a divinity of; at another, poor, discrowned, dethroned, runaway James the Second is the sport of the groundlings.

Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair. By Henry Morley. With fac-simile drawings, engraved upon wood, by the Brothers Dalziel. London: Chapman and Hall. 1859.

Sir Robert Southwell, in 1685, wrote from Kingsweston to his son in London, a shrewd and sensible letter on the subject of the Fair (which son Ned and his tutor will visit of course), in the middle of which this markworthy paragraph occurs: "The main importance of this fair is not so much for merchandise, and the supplying what people want; but as a sort of Bacchanalia, to gratify the multitude in their wandering and irregular thoughts."

Mr. Morley expresses his belief (pp. 423 sq.) that the quiet love of what is best called "fun," in which the Englishman stands high above all rivalry, and his quick instinct for the ridiculous, which is a part of it, have been even more serviceable than his patriotism in checking dangerous extravagance, and keeping safe sense uppermost in public writing and in public action. That, in fact, if there had been no spirit of fun in us, we might have gone to ruin in one Revolution; and then, good patriots as we all are, have clashed about the fragments of our constitution in the chaos of a dozen revolutions more. Therefore he looks with no contempt at all the fooleries of Bartholomew Fair.

The jack-puddings are gone, he continues, "but we have still good store of clowns every Christmas, and the nation is the stronger for its power of enjoying them. The Humours interspersed' at the Fair with tales of Rome and Babylon, still live in the farces and burlesques which keep us merry at the theatres. We practise ourselves well in laughter over feigned absurdities, and we in the mean time learn to subdue with laughter also real absurdities of life, which, in a nation holding itself to be wiser for its want of foolishness, would prompt only to follies that occasion tears and groans. Then let us not stand aloof magnificently from the nonsense of the Fair. The ludicrous things to be read in the Manifestoes of its Ministers of Pleasure, are in the worthiest sense State Papers to us, if we understand them thoroughly." As State Papers our author deals with them, and constitutes himself a commission to report the result. Which result is no unreadable Blue Book, but these entertaining Memoirs, clad in crimson and gold.

He tells from first to last the story of a Festival which was maintained for seven centuries in England. Of the few popular Festivals, he says (pp. 493-4), that occasion yearly gatherings of strangers in the open streets of one of our great cities, this was the chief. In its humours he shows us the humour of the nation blended with the riot of its mob. Yet when the nation had outgrown it, a Municipal Court with the help of but a few policemen put it quietly away. From Seneca he selects the apophthegm which gives character to his title-page :

Omnia Mors poscit; Lex est, non Pœna, perire.

The origin of modern fairs has by some been referred to the markets of the Romans. But the nundines of the Romans, Mr. Morley objects (p. 96), were not fairs, they corresponded in effect to our own weekly market-days. To modern fairs he ascribes a natural and independent origin all their own, and he allows them to be analogous to nothing in the ancient world but the assemblies formed during the celebration of the public games. "There were the Greek church festivals, begetting fairs. Thus, a true fair was associated with the Olympic Games; and we learn from Demosthenes, that all causes relating to the festival of Bacchus