"Oh, we may as well dance; it's no use sitting here," she exclaimed inconsequently; but before she could rise he had looked up and seen the unmistakable expression of the worst pain a woman can endure-jealousy-on her face. In a moment he had dropped the other girl's hand and had crossed over to the now triumphant Jane.

"I have been looking for you between each dance; where have you been hiding? Give me the next, won't you?" he began, taking up her programme and coolly setting his initials

over those of several other men.

The late partner, feeling very much like a rudderless ship, had considerately bowed himself off. Jane stole a look at the goldenhaired girl, expecting to see an air of indignant rivalry about her. To the surprise of Miss Herries, Captain Stafford's late companion was looking as well pleased as before.

"It's because she feels sure of him; it must be that, or she would hate to be left for me," poor jealous Jane thought. But the next moment the jealousy, possible rivalry, all, everything faded, as he offered her his arm and led her away to one of the aforesaid nooks.

"I wanted to have a yarn with you; never can talk with a hundred people's eyes on me; can you?" he asked, as they seated themselves side by side in a cosy corner that might have been in Arcadia, so entirely was it screened off by its floral walls from all worldly sights and sounds.

Jane heaved a happy sigh. She was so absolutely content that she could find no words to express it. Just to sit there by his side, away from everyone else, feeling his eyes fixed upon her with that look in them which tells a sweeter story than any spoken words can tell, was enough for her. Every nerve, every fibre in her was thrilled by that look. What a lovely place the world was. What had she done to deserve such happiness as this, that he should look as if he loved her?

Her silence gave him time to think, and his first thought was that he was going a little too fast. She was a darling. fetching darling," he called her to himself, but before he went much farther at this mad, delicious gallop he must know a little more about the whereabouts of that pearl necklace. Those sweet, delicately-carved red lips had spoken words concerning the absence of that necklace which he felt were not true. It

pleased him to recall the fact that these lips had quivered with painful emotion while uttering the little fiction. should have uttered it at all put him off, and that he was going too fast.

But that they made him feel

Still, the hour's influence urged him on. The subdued strains from afar, the scent of the flowers that encircled them as they sat so near together that each could hear the other's heart beat, the knowledge that she loved him already (this is a branch of knowledge in which man is generally proficient), all combined to test his self-restraint to the utmost. He began to speak of the strange sense of sympathy which he had experienced towards her when they met first, and he had given her a flower lesson in Helen Collette's drawing-room. His own utterances urged him on. Before he knew what he was doing he had taken her hand, told her how he had loved her from that day, drawn her towards him, pressed his lips on her too willing ones, and was on the brink of asking her to be his wife when there came an interruption which restored to him all his powers of self-control, all his prudent resolves. A sound of sudden turmoil, cries, excited orders given one moment, and rescinded the next, the voice of rushing, undisciplined, alarmed footsteps, then the tearing aside of the floral screen, and the request that "Miss Herries would come at once; his lordship had had a stroke," from the terrified servant who gave the order and explanation all in one breath, and after that chaos.

Lord Roydmore's case was hopeless from the first, but even in the midst of all the sorrowful agony she felt at losing her father so suddenly and so shockingly, Jane's young human heart cherished the memory of those moments which she had passed with Harry Stafford-moments of such passionate sweetness that they seemed to belong to a better world than the one in which these other people lived. A world of love and rapture, in which there would never be regret or remorse, disappointment, jealousy or care. A world in which it would be all kissing the lips each loved the best, and looking into the eyes that each thought the sweetest ever seen. A world made up of Harry Stafford and herself, in fact-poɔr, romantic, credulous, lovinghearted Jane.

(To be continued.)

William Blake.

BY EMILIA AYLMER GOWING.

THIS man was a poet of nature, a true son of the immortals, born for his sorrow into the false and pretentious eighteenth century; the spirit in him was kindred to that of his contemporary Burns; he was alike large-hearted, of a temperament as keen to enjoy every pleasure of the senses, yet without the excess into which the great Scotchman was betrayed. A scorner of "religion" as understood by degenerate, formal Churchmen, the pure faith of a Christian was his very breath of life. Despite his freedom of question, his wildness of speculation, he wrote his "happy songs," of love and trust in "The Lamb," the giver and sustainer of life, such as "every child may joy to hear."

This wonderful man, a fierce and tireless worker, as painter, engraver and writer, will keep his grasp upon posterity mainly through his shorter poems, some few thousand lines which no regular publisher would touch-so long as he lived. They date from his twelfth year till the zenith of his manhood; they were the only luxury of a hard existence that never knew the taste of repose. The poet's passion of immortal longings was crushed out of him with the gray cold years, by the grips of poverty and the patron's cold discouragement.

Of whom he inherited his rich and varied powers we know nothing. The good old English name he bore descended to him from a small tradesman, a hosier established hard by Golden Square, a locality of good repute in those days, at 28, Broad Street. Here William Blake was born, on the 20th November, 1757. There were four other children, sufficient bread and houseroom, but scant provision for book learning. William was taught to read and write: that was all.

With little occupation at home, he went out into the streets, for change, and soon learned to roam far afield over Westminster Bridge and on towards Dulwich, Norwood, and the attractive borders of the Thames. Many a quaint old English cottage, rose-trailed or bowered in honeysuckle and clematis, must have touched the artist's instinct in the child's quick eye; many a delicious lane and bye-path must have opened its hidden

treasures of rich scent and grand colouring to the budding fancy of the poet that should be; many a day-dream he must have dreamed beside the charmed river, by shady back-water or full broad rush of swelling tide, a lingerer in scenes whose beauty was in those days a sealed book to fashion and fame.

In his ninth or tenth year, this strange, solitary boy saw his first vision of angels, by lovely Dulwich Hill. Suddenly, in his walk, he lifted his eyes, and saw a tree filled with their bright wings, shining like stars through every bough. Coming home, he gravely told his waking dream to a practical father, and narrowly escaped a whipping for the lie. His mother's pleading saved him from the infliction, but the moral smart remained; he was punished for the divine gift that was in him, the very essence of his life. As a man, he grew up and lived in close communion with a higher world, a spiritual seer, blind and deaf to the laws and reasonings of common clay.

By rare good fortune, his father was early made sensible of the fact that the child was an artist born. He copied everything he saw, in nature, or on the walls, in every collection to which access could be found for him, helped not hindered by his work-a-day parents. Small sums of pocket-money were generously bestowed, and spent to the last penny for engravings after Raphael-known to him from childhood-Michael Angelo, Albert Durer, so close akin to himself, and others of the first greatest masters of design and colour: none less could content the critical sense of the "little connoisseur."

By-and-bye, a teacher was sought for him. At ten years old he was "put to Mr. Pars' drawing school in the Strand," the accepted training ground for young artists, where he was duly taught to draw plaster casts, after the antique, but no living models.

About this time he began to write irregular, defective verse, but full of broken music and immature promise. As early as his fourteenth year he produced a song, singularly free from those crude defects that never quite left his hasty pen, and rich and sweet with Nature's own cunning, like a strain of Herrick or Theocritus:

"How sweet I roamed from field to field,

And tasted all the summer's pride,

Till I the prince of love beheld

Who in the sunny beams did glide.

"He showed me lilies for my hair,

And blushing roses for my brow;
He led me through his garden fair,
Where all his golden pleasures grow.

"With sweet may-dews my wings were wet,
And Phoebus fired my vocal rage;

He caught me in his silken net,

And shut me in his golden cage.

"He loves to sit and hear me sing,

Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
Then stretches out my golden wing,

And mocks my loss of liberty.

After four years' tuition from Mr. Pars, Blake was bound apprentice to an engraver named Busire, in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. This step was adopted for him as the only way to secure his bread. Engraving was sure of pay as a marketable craft; the higher art of painting spelt starvation, except to a fashionable few, who gained their thousands by portrait work. No other English school of art was recognised in those days. "The old masters" were all in all. Access to the one outlet for native genius could only be furnished to young ambition through golden keys—that is, by a large premium paid to some eminent artist for instruction in his own house. This was beyond the hosier's narrow means, so the boy had to be content with the humble substitute of a journeyman engraver.

Busire was a sound but not very lucky choice. His style was hard and old-fashioned, and lacked the grace and charm to which Bartolozzi and others had educated the popular eye. Blake grew perfect, by sedulous practice, in all the mechanical correctness his tutor could convey. The firm bold outline on which he always set much pride, the masterly touches that dug their meaning, rough but powerful, with every trace of the graver, grew readily under the well- broken fingers; the living soul quickened the cold vehicle with its intensity and fire, but the form still lacked the indefinable something that can catch the common observation, and Blake remained to the end of his days, an artist for the cultured few only, a hired mechanic to the ignorant many.

He had missed his chance of better fortunes by his own too keen perception or "second sight." When brought by his father in the first instance to one Ryland, an engraver of far higher genius that Busire: