behind. Round its base, dividing it from the glossy sea, ran a delicate line of silver-the surf caused by the ground swell; and in front the whole promotory was dimly mirrored in the quietly heaving ocean.

"What a noble headland," said Marston; "is that grass on the further peak too steep to walk upon?"

"There's some one a'walking on it now," said old Evans. "There's a woman a'walking on it."

None could see it but he, except Mathews, who said he couldn't tell if it was a sheep or no.

Charles got out his glass, and the old man was right. A woman was walking rapidly along the peak, about the third of the way down.

"What a curious place for a woman to be in!" he remarked. "It is almost terrible to look at."

"I never saw any one there before, safe the shepherd," said the old man. "It's a sheep path," said one of the young ones.

"I have been along there myself. It is the short way round to Coombe."

Charles would have thought more of the solitary female figure on that awful precipice, but that their attention was diverted by something else. From the south-westward black flaws of wind began to creep towards them, alternated with long irregular bands of oily calm. Soon the calm bands disappeared, and the wind reached them. Then they had steerage, and in a very short time were roaring out to sea close hauled, with a brisk and ever increasing breeze.

They saw that they would have to fetch a very long leg, and make a great offing, in order to reach Ravenshoe at all. The wind was freshening every moment, changing to the west, and the sea was getting up. It took them three hours to open Ravenshoe bay; and, being about five miles from the shore, they could see that already there was an ugly side surf sweeping in, and that the people were busy on the beach, hauling up their boats out of harm's way.

"How beautifully these craft sail," said Marston, as they were all hanging

Why so?"

"These lug-sails are so awkward in tacking, you will see."

They ran considerably past Ravenshoe and about six miles to sea, when the word was given to go about. In an instant the half-deck was lumbered with the heavy red sails; and, after five minutes of unutterable confusion, she got about. Marston was expecting her to broach to every moment during this long five minutes, but fortune favoured them. They went freer on this tack, for the wind was now north of west, and the brave little craft went nearly before it at her finest pace. The men kept on her as much sail as she could stand, but that was very little; fast as they went, the great seas went faster, as though determined to be at the dreadful rendezvous before the boat. Still the waves rose higher and the wind howled louder. They were nearing the shore rapidly.

Now they began to see, through the mist, the people gathered in a crowd. on the shore, densest at one point, but with a few restless stragglers right and left of that point, who kept coming and going. This spot was where they expected to come ashore. They were apparently the last boat out, and all the village was watching them with the deepest anxiety.

They began to hear a sound other than the howling of the wind in the rigging, and the rush of waters around them a continuous thunder, growing louder each moment as the boat swept onward. The thunder of the surf upon the sand! And, looking forward, they could see just the top of it as it leapt madly up.

It was a nervous moment. They stood ready in their shirts and trousers, for a rush, should it be necessary. And the old man was at the helm. They saw the seas begin to curl. Then they were

left them on the sand, and three brave fellows from the shore dashed to hook on the tackles; but they were too late. Back with a roar like a hungry lion came the sea; the poor boat broached to, and took the whole force of the deluge on her broad side. In a moment more, blinded and stunned, they were all in the water, trying to stand against the backward rush which took them near midthigh. Old Master Evans was nearest to Marston; he was tottering to fall when Marston got hold of him, and saved him. The two young men got hold of both of them. Then three men from the shore dashed in and got hold of Charles; and then, as the water went down and they dared moved their feet, they all ran for their lives. Marston and his party got on to dry land on their feet, but Charles and his assistants were tumbled over and over, and washed up ignominiously covered with sand. Charles, however, soon recovered himself, and, looking round to thank those who had done him this service, found that one of them was William, who, when the gale had come on had, with that bland indifference to the studgroom's personal feelings which we have seen him exhibit before, left his work, and dressed in a Jersey and blue trousers, and come down to lend a hand. He had come in time to help his foster-brother out of the surf.

"I am so very thankful to you," said Charles to the two others. "I will never forget you. I should have been drowned but for you. William, when I am in trouble I am sure to find you at my elbow."

"You won't find me far off, Master Charles," said William. They didn't say any more to one another, those two. There was no need.

The tall man Mathews had been cast up with a broken head, and, on the whole, seemed rather disappointed at not finding himself in paradise. He had stumbled in leaping out of the boat, and hurt his foot, and had had a hard time of it, poor fellow.

As Charles and William stood watching the poor boat breaking up, and the men venturing their lives to get the nets out of her, a hand was laid on Charles's shoulder, and, turning round, he faced Cuthbert.

"Oh, Charles, Charles, I thought I had lost you. Come home and let us

dry you, and take care of you. William, you have risked your life for one who is very dear to us. God reward you for it! Brother, you are shivering with cold, and you have nothing but your trousers and Jersey on, and your head and feet are bare, and your poor hair is wet and full of sand; let me carry you up, Charles, the stones will cut your feet. Let me carry you, Charles. I used to

do it when you were little."

There was water in Charles's eyes, (the salt water out of his hair, you understand,) as he answered.

"I think I can walk, Cuthbert; my feet are as hard as iron."

"No, but I must carry you," said Cuthbert. "Get up, brother."

Charles prepared to comply, and Cuthbert suddenly pulled off his shoes and stockings, and made ready.

"Oh, Cuthbert, don't do that," said Charles, "You break my heart."

"Do let me, dear Charles. I seldom ask you a favonr. If I didn't know that it was acceptable to God, do you think I would do it?"

Charles hesitated one moment; but he caught William's eye, and William's eye and William's face said so plainly "do it," that Charles hesitated no longer, but got on his brother's back. Cuthbert ordered William, who was bare-foot, to put on the discarded shoes and stockings, which William did; and then Cuthbert went toiling up the stony path towards the hall with his brother on his back,-glorying in his penance.

Is this ridiculous? I cannot say I can see it in this light. I may laugh to scorn the religion which teaches men that, by artificially producing misery and nervous terror, and in that state flying to religion as a comfort and refuge, we in any way glorify God, or benefit ourselves. I can laugh, I say, at

a form of religion like this; but I cannot laugh at the men who believe in it, and act up to it. No. I may smoke my pipe, and say that the fool Cuthbert Ravenshoe took off his shoes, and gave them to the groom, and carried a twelve stone brother for a quarter of a mile barefoot, and what a fool he must be, and so forth. But the sneer is a failure, and the laugh dies away; and I say, "Well, Cuthbert, if you are a fool, you are a consistent and manly one at all events."

Let us leave these three toiling up the steep rocky path, and take a glance elsewhere. When the gale had come on, little Mary had left Densil, and, putting on her bonnet, gone down to the beach. She had asked the elder fishermen whether there would be any danger in beaching the boat, and they had said in chorus, "Oh, bless her sweet ladyship's heart, no. The young men would have the tackles on her and have her up, oh, ever so quick;" and so she had been reassured, and walked up and down. But, as the wind came stronger and stronger, and she had seen the last boat taken in half full of water-and as the women kept walking up and down uneasily, with their hands under their aprons and as she saw many an old eagle eye, shaded by a horny hand, gazing anxiously seaward, at the two brown sails plunging about in the offing-she had lost heart again, and had sat her down on a windlass apart, with a pale face, and a sick heart.

A tall gaunt brown woman came up to her and said,

"My lady musn't fret. My lady would never do for a fisherman's wife. Why, my dear tender flesh, there's a hundred strong arms on the beach now, as would fetch a Ravenshoe out of any where a'most. 'Tis a cross surf, Miss Mary; but, Lord love ye, they'll have the tackles on her afore she's in it. Don't

ye fret, dear, don't ye fret."

But she had sat apart and fretted nevertheless; and, when she saw the brown bows rushing madly through the yellow surf, she had shut her eyes and prayed, and had opened them to see the boat on her beam ends, and a dozen struggling figures in the pitiless water. Then she had stood up and wrung her

hands.

They were safe. She heard that, and she buried her face in her hands, and murmured a prayer of thanksgiving.

Some one stood beside her. It was Marston, bareheaded and barefooted. "Oh, thank God," she said.

"We have given you a sad fright." "I have been terribly frightened. But you must not stand dripping there. Please, come up, and let me attend you."

So she got him a pair of shoes, and they went up together. The penance procession had passed on before; and a curious circumstance is this, that, although on ordinary occasions Marston was as lively a talker as need be, on this he was an uncommonly stupid one, as he never said one word all the way up to the hall, and then separated from her with a formal little salutation.

To be continued.

27

THERE is a certain triple-arched and bridge-like pile whose influence in creating street difficulties is but too well known to every pilgrim between the city and west-end of London. Bridgelike, overarching, as it does, a living tide such as flows only through the main arteries of the greatest city of the world, its bridge-like functions are limited to that office, for its span is traversed by none save, perchance, the ghostly feet once appertaining to the heads that, of yore, served as its ghastly balustrade.

Time, which has swept away the rival obstructive power of the riverold London Bridge-has dealt more gently with Temple Bar, and but transferred its relative position from the circumference of ancient to the centre of modern London; sparing what appears to be so apt a type of the obstructo-conservative element which pervades the Englishman, and as such the fitting entrance of his traditional metropolis.

There are sermons, as well as songs, "without words," and Temple Bar urges its voiceless text as forcibly, if more silently, than did the preacher of St. Paul's Cross. So thought we, as we marked how the busy circulation of the streets, whose life-blood is human souls, grew languid and stagnant on its approach to this aneurism of the city's heart; how the passenger on horse and on foot, the carriage of the peer, and the costermonger's barrow, the omnibus containing the living (we could not write the quick), and the hearse bearing the dead, were wedged in one motionless, entangled, chafing mass of humanity.

TENNYSON.

And as we, in common with some hundreds of fellow-impatients, were at length brought to a full stop, we fell into an unconscious calculation of the sum total of men of business who would make default at their appointments, of the travellers who would miss their trains, and of the number of watches and purses which would prove a harvest to certain conveyancers who figure in a peculiar law-list of their own, and who are ever in professional attendance on such occasions. And somewhat sadly

thinking how this scene of daily occurrence typified the spirit of the Englishman, impatient of delay, though long suffering of its cause, we meekly bowed to the Moloch of precedent embodied in that sooty pile which looked down in grim mockery of human impatience, and, as if exulting in the sacrifice of time and temper at which we were a reluctant votary. Standing in close alliance with "the dusky purlieus of the law," it then seemed no unfit representative of the dark side of our legislature-the idea being intensified by the remembrance of the grisly balustrade before alluded to, while the crowd at its foot was equally suggestive of law's delay. Alike in cause and effect, the scene we witnessed shadowed forth the obsoleteness and obstructiveness of another favourite, legal edifice of John Bull,-to wit, his Statute-book. Like Temple Bar, the impression it creates depends pretty much on the circumstances under which it is observed; whether by the client weary with all the sickness of hope deferred, or by the student eager in quest of curiosities and

historical associations. For this legal edifice has its picturesque as well as its repulsive aspect. It presents many an ivygrown and owl-frequented nook, many a shattered, though yet grotesque, effigy of beings that have passed away, and (incongruously enough, withal) the latest improvements of the Cubitts of St. Stephen's, connected with the more antique structure by full many an obscure and lengthy passage.

Of this same ancient building, it is now our purpose to speak; and, as the old housekeeper gossips of the extent, number of rooms, and curiosities of the family mansion, we would say something of the multiplicity of our statutes, their curiosities, and the incongruities they present, disclaiming at the outset any intention of exploring the whole of the vast piie, or of giving a ponderous antiquarian or legal dissertation thereupon.

This same multiplicity of laws is, according to Montesquieu, the price we pay for our freedom. If this be so, and the price paid is in any degree a just measure of value received, any one who turns to our Statute-book will be convinced that the lines prefixed to these remarks contain no empty boast. It is well to be thankful that such is the case; it is also well to remember that they present but one phase of the truth, and that the most flattering to the Englishman. Civilization breeds its intellectual difficulties as well as its physical diseases; and how to deal with our statutes and our sewage seems to be the two main problems which we, "the ancients of the earth," are now, at last, driven to solve. Our national temperament is peculiarly unfavourable to the solution of the former problem, and, meanwhile, the accumulation bids fair to overwhelm us. The "nolumus Leges Angliæ mutari," at this moment recorded in the pages of our Statute-book, is, after the lapse of six centuries and a quarter, as characteristic of our nation as when first uttered by the barons of Henry. Despite our affected enthusiasm in the cause of law-reform, and statute consolidation, our genuine

though sneaking-fondness for all that is ancient in our legislation is precisely such as Bacon would have classified among the "Idola Specus;" or, to use more familiar language than that of the Novum Organum, it is closely akin to that sentiment which the country squire entertains towards his old and well-worn shooting-jacket and small-clothes. Old and threadbare they may be, tight and uncomfortable for the bulky proportions to which he has attained; he will nevertheless patch and repatch them many a time ere he will give up wearing them; and, when dismissed from active service, he will find them a resting-place on the shelf of his wardrobe sooner than make up his mind to part with them for ever.

Now, as Squire Bull is, to say the least, middle-aged among his compeers, and bulky as befits one of ripe middle age and robust constitutional tendency, we shall be right in supposing that his garments, from his infancy downwards, have varied widely both in size and fashion, and have been alike manifold in number and multiform in shape. Coupling this with the fact that his reluctance to part with them amounts well nigh to monomania, and that he was never remarkable for order in the arrangement of his wardrobe, we shall further infer that the said wardrobe, with its accumulated contents and miscellaneous fashions of centuries, will be more suggestive of Rag Fair and Monmouth Street than befits a gentleman of his respectability. And thus in sober earnest, if we open our Statute-book, our wildest notions of confusion will be more than realized. The survey is one of no great difficulty; as, about six years ago, under the auspices of the then existing Statute-Law Commission, a careful examination of the entire body of statutes was undertaken and accomplished, and a catalogue was framed of those which were respectively obsolete, expired, or virtually repealed. The results of these labours are embodied in various Blue-books, and on these we shall venture to draw largely both for facts and statistics. There is a certain