|

more. To Elmore himself she appeared in better spirits than at first, or at least in a more equable frame of mind. To be sure, he did not notice very particularly. He took her to the places and told her the things that she ought to be interested in, and he conceived a better opinion of her mind from the quick intelligence with which she entered into his own feelings in regard to them, though he never could see any evidence of the over-study for which she had been taken from school. He made her, like Mrs. Elmore, the partner of his historical researches; he read his notes to both of them now; and when his wife was prevented from accompanying him, he went with Lily alone to visit the scenes of such events as his researches concerned, and to fill his mind with the local color which he believed would give life and character to his studies of the past. They also went often to the theater; and, though Lily could not understand the plays, she professed to be entertained, and she had a grateful appreciation of all his efforts in her behalf that amply repaid him. He grew fond of her society; he took a childish pleasure in having people in the streets turn and glance at the handsome girl by his side, of whose beauty and stylishness he became aware through the admiration looked over the shoulders of the Austrians, and openly spoken by the Italian populace. It did not occur to him that she might not enjoy the growth of their acquaintance in equal degree, that she fatigued herself with the appreciation of the memorable and the beautiful, and that she found these long rambles rather dull. He was a man of little conversation; and, unless Mrs. Elmore was of the company, Miss Mayhew pursued his pleasures for the most part in silence. One evening, at the end of the week, his wife asked:

What could the child care for the Brides of Venice? Now be reasonable, Owen !"

"It's a romantic story. I thought girls like such things-everything about getting married."

"And that's the reason you took her yesterday to show her the Bucentaur that the doges wedded the Adriatic in! Well, what was your idea in going with her to the Cemetery of San Michele ? " I

"I thought she would be interested. had never been there before myself, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to verify a passage I was at work on. We always show people the cemetery at home." "That was considerate. And why did you go to Canarregio on Wednesday ?"

"I wished her to see the statue of Sior Antonio Rioba; you know it was the Venetian Pasquino in the Revolution of '48

"Delicious! She cares so much for Tintoretto ! And you've been with her to the Jewish burying-ground at the Lido, and the Spanish synagogue in the Ghetto, and the fish-market at the Rialto, and you've shown her the house of Othello and the house of Desdemona, and the prisons in the ducal palace; and three nights you've taken us to the Piazza as soon as the Austrian band stopped playing, and all the interesting promenading was over, and those stuffy old Italians began to come to the caffès. Well, I can tell you that's no way to amuse a young girl. We must do something for her, or she will die. She has come here from a country where girls have always had the best time in the world, and where the times are livelier now than they ever were, with all this excitement of the war going on; and here she is dropped down in the midst of this absolute deadness: no calls, no picnics, no parties, no dances-nothing! We must do something for her."

"Shall we give her a ball? " asked Elmore, looking around the pretty little apartment.

"There's nothing going on among the Italians. But you might get us invited to the German Casino."

"I dare say. But I will not do that," he replied.

"Then we could go to the Luogotenenza,

to the receptions. Mr. Hoskins could call with us, and they would send us cards."

"That would make us simply odious to the Venetians, and our house would be thronged with officers. What I've seen of them doesn't make me particularly anxious for the honor of their further acquaintance." "Well, I don't ask you to do any of these things," said Mrs. Elmore, who had, perhaps, mentioned them with the intention of insisting upon an abated claim. "But I think you might go and dine at one of the hotels at the Danieli-instead of that Italian restaurant; and then Lily could see somebody at the table d'hôte, and not simply perish of despair."

"I-I didn't suppose it was so bad as that," said Elmore.

66

Why, of course, she hasn't said anything,-she's far too well-bred for that; but I can tell from my own feelings how she must suffer. I have you, Owen," she said, tenderly, "but Lily has nobody. She has gone through this Ehrhardt business so well that I think we ought to do all we can to divert her mind."

"Well, now, Celia, you see the difficulty of our position-the nature of the responsibility we have assumed. How are we possibly, here in Venice, to divert the mind of a young lady fresh from the parties and picnics of Patmos ?

"We can go and dine at the Danieli." replied Mrs. Elmore. "Very well. Let us go, then. But she But she will learn no Italian there. She will hear nothing but English from the travelers and bad French from the waiters; while at our restaurant

""

"Pshaw!" cried Mrs. Elmore. "What does Lily care for Italian? I'm sure I never want to hear another word of it."

At this desperate admission, Elmore quite gave way; he went to the Danieli the next morning, and arranged to begin dining there that day. There is no denying that Miss Mayhew showed an enthusiasm in prospect of the change that even the sight of the pillar to which Foscarini was hanged head downward for treason to the Republic had not evoked. She made herself look very pretty, and she was visibly an impression at the table d'hôte when she sat down there. Elmore had found places opposite an elderly lady and quite a young gentleman, of English speech, but of not very English effect otherwise, who bowed to Lily in acknowledgment of some former meeting. The old lady said, "So you've

|

reached Venice at last? I'm very pleased, for your sake," as if, at some point of the progress thither, she had been privy to anxieties of Lily about arriving at her destination; and, in fact, they had been in the same hotels at Marseilles and Genoa. The young gentleman said nothing, but he looked at Lily throughout the dinner, and seemed to take his eyes from her only when she glanced at him; then he dropped his gaze to his neglected plate and blushed. When they left the table, he made haste to join the Elmores in the reading-room, where he contrived, with creditable skill, to get Lily apart from them for the examination of an illustrated newspaper, at which neither of them looked; they remained chatting and laughing over it in entire irrelevancy till the elderly lady rose and said: "Herbert, Herbert! I am ready to go now," upon which he did not seem at all so, but went submissively.

"Who are those people, Lily ?" asked Mrs. Elmore, as they walked toward Florian's for their after-dinner coffee. The Austrian band was playing in the center of the Piazza, and the tall, blonde German officers promenaded back and forth with dark Hungarian women, who looked each like a princess of her race. The lights glittered upon them, and on the groups spread fan-wise out into the Piazza before the caffès; the scene seemed to shake and waver in the splendor, like something painted.

"Oh, their name is Andersen, or something like that; and they're from Helgoland, or some such place. I saw them first in Paris, but we didn't speak till we got to Marseilles. That's his aunt; they're English subjects, someway; and he's got an appointment in the civil service-I think he called it-in India, and he doesn't want to go; and I told him he ought to go to America. That's what I tell all these Europeans." "It's the best advice for them," said Mrs. Elmore.

"They don't seem in any great haste to act upon it," laughed Miss Mayhew. "Who was the red-faced young man that seemed to know you, and stared so ?"

"That's an English artist who is staying here. He has a curious name,-RoseBlack; and he is the most impudent and pushing man in the world. I wouldn't (introduce him, because I saw he was just dying for it."

Miss Mayhew laughed, as she laughed at everything, not because she was amused,

Elmore had quieted his scruples as a good Venetian by coming inside of the

THE task which was committed to the companies of English and American scholars who have just completed their labors on the New Testament, had strictly defined limits. They were to correct errors, and, even in doing this, they were to deviate as little as might be from the vocabulary and style of the existing version. Their success must be judged by the agreement or disagreement of their work with the standard which they set before them. But the plan, with its limitations, we hold to be a wise one. There is no objection to new translations of the Bible in modern English, by competent hands, for private use, like that which De Wette made in German. But such a translation can never have the power, or secure the place, which belongs to the ancient rendering. The translators from whom the authorized version mainly springs, whatever may have been their defects of scholarship, were, nevertheless, owing to the character of the age and to the circumstances in which they wrote, able to give to the English Bible a racy, idiomatic diction, a home-bred flavor, and a melody which it would be impossible to rival now. "It lives on the ear," says the Roman Catholic, Faber, "like a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church-bells which the convert hardly knows how he can forego." To be sure, the Scriptures were first written in dialects then in familiar use. The English versions at first were in terms and phrases current among the people for whom they were composed. But if a book really comes from a far-off day, why should we deprive ourselves of the gracious influences flowing from that consciousness of its age which is silently imparted by venerableness of style? Who would wish to have Lord Bacon's Essays or the "Novum Organum" sound as if they were written yesterday? And when forms of words have been on the lips of many generations, have blended themselves

with holy and tender recollections, have been inscribed on the tombstones of the loved and honored dead, why should we needlessly discard them? Is not the "old wine" better? Then, it must be remembered that if King James's version, like other versions before it, was a revision, still, the whole period covered by the successive English Bibles prior to it, as far back as the Reformation, was less than a century—a century, too, of debate and ferment, when everything in religion was undergoing change; whereas more than two centuries and a half have elapsed since the English Bible, in its final form, began to mingle itself with the whole literature and life of the English-speaking race. For these, and other reasons, the restricted plan of the new revision we believe to have been a

wise one. But a revision was necessary. Tyndale, from whom the pith and marrow of all subsequent translations of the New Testament have been derived, and who deserves to be held in everlasting remembrance for the noble service for which he suffered martyrdom, in a pathetic passage of his preface went so far as earnestly to beseech that errors might be eliminated from his work. This injunction was in the spirit of his famous reply to a "learned man" who had said that he would rather be without God's law than the Pope's: "If God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth a plow shall know more of the Scripture than thou doest." The authorized version, from the effect of the lapse of time upon the English tongue itself, and from the progress of knowledge in Greek criticism and philology, needed a good deal of correction. Wisely then the attempt has been made, under as favorable auspices as could be expected to concur at any one time, not "to sew a piece of new cloth "— or, as the revisers more correctly say, "of undressed cloth "-" into an old garment," but to mend the old garment with cloth of a