hundred yards off on the hill-side. There a man, Mary shall come and keep my housewere and are, a great many yews in the grave-won't you Mary?" I promised him. yard, and under one uncle Paul lay, with a plain slab of gray stone over him. (My brother Robert's grave is to the right of it, only marked by a low head-stone.) We sat down on uncle Paul's grave, and began to talk about him. We both admired him sincerely. As I remember my brother Robert in his boyhood, he was slight and tall, with a great forehead and bushy brown hair; his eyes were blue and his skin brown; he had what one would call a fine countenance. His temper was cheerful and kind; and with uncle Paul's love of true and beautiful things, he had a character of more muscle and force. I always loved Robert the best of my brothers, and sympathised with his dislike to our topid state of existence. But what could we do against the rest? CHAPTER IV. We were amazed to see how my father took it, when aunt Anna told him Robert was set on going, and nothing could stay him. The two took a long look at each other, as if measuring their strength; then they shook hands. My mother cried to see it. "If the lad will go, let him go in peace," said my father; I can make nothing of him. Anna, fetch up a bottle of wine to drink his health at the dinner. Thy grandfather will be displeased, lad; thou'rt as wilful as ever Paul, my brother, was, and I misdoubt me that thou'll prosper as ill; but thou shall not go with a curse at thy back, my lad." And so Robert left us. I should be twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old at that time, and in my own mind I had a strange hankering to go after the lad and take care of him; and as if to give me my liberty, in the year that followed the old grandfather and grandmother were both taken away, and those who were left were well able to take tent for themselves. Still I don't know that I would have left home if my own mother had not said, one Christmas night, the first he was away, "Our Robert will be glad to see you, Mary. Your father and I were From fourteen to eighteen, Robert went on fretting, fidgeting, and working alternately, until one day there was a rumor of a grand new bridge to be built over the Alster, about eleven miles above our house; beside it, where there was a fall in the water, a manufactory was going to be built for weaving of stock-saying, why should you not go and stop with ings. Neither good words nor ill words would keep Robert from going up there day after day, and staying to nightfall. It was in the time of hay harvest, and my father was often angry at his absence. One day he said to him in a rage, little thinking his words would be taken in plain earnest : "If any of those engineering, architect, machine fellows will take thee, Robert, thou may bind thyself to them for life; I never want to see thy idle face again." him for the change." My mother spoke for me as much or more than for him; but what for, has nothing to do with Robert's story; so I pass over that. he was-an ugly great town then, not what it I went away to Robert at Birmingham, where is now-and truly, the lad was glad to have a face that he knew about him. I had a little fortune of my own, so I was no burden on him; but afterwards, as things turned out, a help. I took three rooms in a cottage a good half-mile from the town, and he changed to live with me. In the day he was at work in one of those vast manufactories of iron machinery-I did not see one once but what with the heat, the noise, and the stir, I could not tell what it was like-and in the evening I had him mostly with me. He was not so merry a companion as he had used to be, for his great "Nay, I've my father's leave;" and he idea had just begun to germinate, and many a stood up with his bonnie young face all glow-silent hour I sat at one end of the table, while ing and brave, fearing none of us. "When I'm he at the other was working out his calcula Robert did not come back that night, but the next morning he fetched his clothes when his father was out in the field, and only the women at home. Aunt Anna was terribly vexed, and sent to call his father in. My mother would have had Robert go without seeing him, but the lad said: tions, and making drawings of different parts of machinery. He got to making models after, and many a one did he fling down and break. There was difficulty after difficulty to overcome. He would lecture to me about his drawings sometimes, and try to make me understand the relative power of this and that lever and wheel; and though I could have remembered at the time I could not tell you now, if I would, one-fifth part of what he said. This was to save labor and waste; that for safety; this for speed. It was impossible to avoid being interested in his work, seeing how his heart and soul were bound up in it. I was as eager he should succeed as he was himself. "If I do succeed, Mary, it will be the making of me; and I will succeed," he used to say, after every failure. And I believed he would. CHAPTER V. 66 Months went on, years went on, and Robert was twenty-five, with his idea still unwrought out. In the midst of his hard toil and absorbing thoughts I was glad that he still kept his kind, warm, manly heart. There is a short bit in his story that I must not leave outthat about Rosie Kirwan. Her mother was a near neighbor of ours, and we had made acquaintance in our walks. Rosie came to tea with me sometimes, and that was the way she and Robert came, first to know, and afterwards to love, each other. Rosie was not so pretty as she was fresh-looking-fresh as a May morning in Alsterdale, or as a half-blown rose; a tall girl, straight and strong, with a round waist and a throat as white and smooth as a marble figure; a firm step, a quick eye and rather a breezy temper. I liked her very much; she was a frank, honest, sensible girl, and her mother had brought her up well. They came to an agreement between themselves soon, and it was really a pleasant sight to see Robert at his work and Rosie leaning over him, bending her fine brows and setting her lips firm in a conscientious endeavor to take it all in, and then giving me a quick little glance across the table, as much as to say, "I can't understand it one bit." Mrs. Kirwan was satisfied with the engagement, though I did not quite approve of her way of speaking of it. She said, "It is always a good speculation for a girl to marry a young man of talent and energy, though he may not be rich; he is almost sure to make some way in the world. I must confess that I should not let Rosa throw herself away on anybody; and, if Robert gets forward as he promises to do, I shall be glad to let him have her. She is a good girl." The young things made no calculations, being content, apparently, with the present time of loving each other. CHAPTER VI. At last the day came when Robert walked into my parlor one night and said, "It is done, Mary." His face was all alight with pride and satisfaction, for Rosie was there, and, when he spoke she marched straight up to him, and gave him a kiss. "I promised I would, Mary," said she, blushing like a rose; "I promised him six months ago;" and the shame-faced girl looked as if she had done wrong, whereas Robert vowed she had been hard as flint, and that was the very first time she had suffered their lips to meet. is a kiss for luck," said I; and Rosie was as still as a mouse all the evening after. Then it We had to hear about his success now. It was a grand invention we knew then, and all the world knows it now; but, there were many things to be done before Robert was to be a made man by it. I believe people are no more ready now than they were then to adopt new systems; but it had been submitted to a number of men, both scientific and practical, and they all pronounced it the finest invention of the age. He must get it patented; he must do this, he must do that, he must do the other. Words. He bade Rosie and me good-bye, and carried his model to London—it was a great expense— and there he stayed; we being very anxious all the time. Te tell you the backwards and forwards work he had, the advice on one hand and the warnings on the other, would be more than I could do, or than you would care to hear. Besides, is it not known well enough, by all who interest themselves in such things, the trouble there is to get a new invention adopted? All this time in London was lost time. Robert wanted money, and money he had not, and he was not earning any. My father had done for him all he ever intended to do, so I parted with my fortune, all but a bare maintenance, and kept him for a month or two longer, trying on all sides to get some one to adopt his invention. Nobody would or could. It was a depressed season, and there was no spirit to risk the production of anything novel and costly. He came back to me; that time I was alone, and glad I was that it so happened. I should not have known him if I had met him in a strange place unexpectedly. All the healthy brown was gone out of his face, his skin was pallid, his eyes and temples were sunk, his clothes were hanging about him as if they had been made for a man twice his size. When he spoke, it was in a hurried, nervous way, and his hands trembled as if he had had a stroke. O, how ill he looked! It is my belief that, in the last month he had been away, he had never had enough to eat. room. "Don't talk about her, Mary! How long is it since she has been here?" Rosie and her mother had been away in London ever so long, I told him. "And they have not come back? then you don't know?" He came to a full stop in front of me. I said no, I knew nothing. What was there to know? "Rosa and I have broken. I declare, Mary, it was almost a relief; for how could I keep her as she has been kept? Her mother heard how badly I was prospering, and said the engagement must be dropped. I did not try to hold her to it-she would have stood by me; but" and the poor lad's voice broke down. Rosie married, a year or two after, a cousin of her own: I believe it was a perfectly happy and suitable marriage. CHAPTER VII. After this, Robert had a bad illness, and his brain was affected, more or less, to the end of his life in consequence; but, the intervals between were long, and he and I together led a not unhappy life. In less than two years there was scarcely an extensive manufactory in the kingdom that had not adopted Robert's invention, and its usefulness was extended to far other and different purposes than he had designed. It was like a new principle in mechanical powers that he had discovered and developed, for others to carry forward. The person whose capital had enabled him to bring to practical results what Robert had designed, grew a very rich man speedily; he once sent Robert a fifty-pound note, and we were not in the position to refuse it. As I said before, I had parted with all but a bare subsistence. Robert was never more fit for work. We went to a sea-side village, and staid there a year or two, in the hope that the change would restore One stormy winter night he came, without having given me warning. He was drenched with rain, and I said to him something about the folly of walking in his bad health in such weather, and where was his luggage? He spread out his poor, thin hands, with an attempt at a smile, "I carry all my possessions on my back, Mary;" and then he flung himself down into a chair, and leaning his face on the table, sobbed like a child. I shall never forget him as he appeared that night-never, while I live. He was no more like the Robert who had left me nine months before than the broken bits of drift-wood lying on the seashore now are like the brave ship that sailed out of harbor a year ago. He could tell me nothing that night; but, next day, he said that, finding he should never be able to do better for his invention, poor as he was, he had given it up to the manufacturer of ma-him; but it never did. He liked to sit on the chinery in whose service he had worked, on condition that he would bring it out within three years. "I don't care for profits, Mary; let us have enough to live, and I shall be satisfied," said he. You see he was so weakage. and worn down that his spirit was half-broken. But Rosie Kirwan," I suggested. sands, tracing out impossible designs with his stick, and demonstrating their feasibility to me. From the lectures I got, I ought to be one of the first theoretical machinists of the There is nothing more to tell: he lived eleven years longer, and we went home to Alsterdale He got up, and walked quickly through the to my mother. My father was dead then, and 66 Charles had the farm; and old Tate and he held long talks on uncle Paul's grave, andI think that's all. He frequently said, especially towards the last, Mary, whatever people think, and however it may seem, remember, I am not a disappointed man. I have done my work." Poor Robert's opinion may not be the opinion of those who read these lines; but it was his and it is mine. After all these years, it matters not a thought who is right and who is wrong. I always hoped that he would be taken first, for who would have cared for him like me? I had my desire. I have out-lived him more than thirty years. IMMORTALITY.-How beautiful the following, from the pen of Prentice, and how happy the heart that can see these beauties as he portrays them: "Why is it that the rainbow and the cloud come over us with a beauty that is not of earth, and thus pass away, and leave us to nurse on their faded loveliness? Why is it that the stars, which hold their festival around their midnight thrones, are set above the grasp of our limited faculties, forever mocking us with their unapproachable glory? And why is it that bright forms of human beauty are presented to our view, and then taken from us, leaving the thousand dreams of affliction to flow back in Alpine torrents upon our hearts? We are born for a higher destiny than that of earth. There is a realm where the beautiful being that now passes before us like a meteor, will stay in our presence forever!" ON GENDER.-Punch slanderously says:"The sun is called masculine from his supporting and sustaining the moon, and finding her the wherewithal to shine away as she does of a night, and from his being obliged to keep such a family of stars besides. The moon is feminine, because she is constantly changing, just as a ship is blown about by every wind. The church is feminine, because she is married to the State, and Time is masculine, because he is trifled with by the ladies." THE way to get good is to do good. For the Schoolmaster. Stanzas. BY MANFRED. "Look not mournfully into the past-it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present—it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear, and with a manly heart." LONG not for the years that have faded, Yet mourn not for hours that have vanished, But improve with wisdom the present, From evil or malicious design; Sow broadcast through the land, seeds of Truth, Go forth to the shadowy future With a true and a manly heart, And mountains shall dwindle to mole-hills,The going is only thy part. Be not troubled by clouds in the distance, Or waves that may seem to o'erwhelm ; For thy bark should never know danger When Duty stands true at the helm. For the Schoolmaster. A Glance at Anglo-Saxon Literature. Alfred the Great-Cadmon-Monkish LearningAdhelm and Asser-The Venerable Bede-Labors of the Old Monks, their Degeneracy and Decay-The Conquest-Chaos, and the English Language Formed. C THE name of Alfred the Great is familiar to every school-boy, The story of his faithful service, repaid by the loyalty of his subjects in the dark day of the Danish invasion, and particularly, the incident, during his safe seclusion in Aethelingay, of the rude rebuke by the cowherd's wife, for allowing her cakes to burn while she left them in his care, have been told again and again, and will continue Wearmouth are not even marked on the map to be told as long as the English is the lan- of England. In the course of years, the faithguage of historical record. Alfred opened the ful monk degenerated into the jolly friar, the door of Literature; he not only pointed his friar, doing no good, finally passed away, and people to the inner temple of learning, but with him the records of the Saxons ceased. entered himself and sacrificed at its altar. We cast a last glance through the little stonebounded window into the lonely cell, and the scene changes. Two centuries before Alfred, lived the poet Cædmon. His style which Paradise Lost resembles, is not more memorable than the singular birth of his poetic powers. Listening, one evening, to the recitations and songs of his brother monks and his companions, he was ashamed of his own want of poetic skiil. In his dreams, that night, there appeared one who commanded him to sing of the Beginning of Created Things. Excuses prevailed not; the work was begun in his sleep, and recited to his astonished hearers when he awoke. The poor monk of Whitby afterwards held rank among the acknowledged poets. In the time of Cadmon and later than the days of Alfred, learning was but little known outside of the cloister walls. The educated men in Alfreds' dominions were monks, with scarcely an exception. Bishop Aldhelm, author of a translation of a portion of the Sacred Writings, and Asser, the invited guest, the instructor and intimate friend of Alfred, were, except one, the most celebrated of the prose writers of that class who lived previous to the ninth century. He, the Venerable Bede, of all the ancient writers, is best known in history for his labors and his literary works. History cannot do him more than justice if she tells of a whole of a long and useful life spent in study in the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, during which he wrote a large portion of the Ecclesiastical Chronicle and the Saxon Chronicle, besides translating into Saxon the Gospel of John. His death was as beautiful as his life. How we would like to look in for an hour, through the cell window of the faithful monk, poring over well-worn manuscripts or copying, neatly and patiently, the precious volumes to which few but himself had access, that he might preserve the valuable records. Those which remain of these attest their faithfulness. The Tyne and the Wear flow on now in the course which they followed a thousand years ago, when the Venerable Bede walked and meditated on their banks, but Jarrow and William the Conqueror, in 1006, overthrew the old government, establishing himself upon the English throne. The Anglo-Saxons, for the first time, were conquered. Like their customs and their government, their language reluctantly changed; the Chronicle closed, and the Saxon became a Norman subject. In the chaos of language which ensued the Conquest, the Saxon tongue struggled with the Norman French, but neither gained a decisive victory. In spite of the earnest attempts of the Normans to make theirs permanent, the i Saxons would not relinquish their homely, but expressive dialect. Not till the twelfth or thirteenth century did the two languages compromise, and not till many years afterwards were the claims of the disputants withdrawn, and the tongues blended into one. TRUE POLITENESS.-Lord Chatham says,"I believe politeness is best to be known by description, definition not being able to comprise it. I would, however, venture to call it benevolence in trifles,' or the preference of others to ourselves in the little hourly occurrences of life. It is a perpetual attention to the little wants of those with whom we are, by which attention we either prevent or remove them. Bowing ceremonies, formal compliments, stiff civilities, will never be politeness; that must be easy, natuaal, unstudied; and what will give this but a mind benevolent, and attentive to exert that amiable disposition in trifles to all you converse and live with?" A WORD of kindness, is a seed which when dropped by chance, springs up a flower. |