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"Things being so," Augustus concluded, "we could not but feel that for you and your fortune to be at the mercy of a man who has never shown even the most common prudence in money matters would be a very disastrous thing. And it was with the greatest joy that we received from him an assurance that he was willing to accept an annuity, and not to take upon himself the responsibilities of paternity. In other words, my dear child, you will be in exactly the same position as if you were really Anthony's daughter."

"I have seen him," said Alison, quietly. "He has told me that he does not want a daughter. He can never feel any affection for me; it is better that we should part."

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Much better," said Augustus.

"I confess that it would be impossible for me to practice the same respect and obedience toward him as to my dear fath-I mean my uncle Anthony-"

"Always your father, Alison," said Gilbert. "Quis desiderio," by Alderney again, when the door was thrown open, and the new father appeared.

He was acting elaborately; he had thrown aside the dark and down look with which he received Alison in the afternoon; he had assumed an expression of candor mixed with some kind of sorrowful surprise, as if he was thinking of the past; his dark eyes were full, as if charged with repentance.

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'Alison," he said, looking about the room, "I see you are with my cousins, my very good friends, and Mr. Billiter, my well-wisher from youth upward. I have disturbed a family gathering. May I ask, my child, what poison concerning your father they have poured into your ears? Miss Nethersole! Is it possible?"

Aunt Rachel shook her head violently, and pushed her chair back. But Stephen thought of the message.

Alison sprang to her feet, but was silent. She tried to speak, but could not. Gilbert held her hand.

"Stephen," cried Augustus, "what is the meaning of this language? You have already forgotten the interview of this morning. Must we tell your daughter all?"

"All that you please," said Stephen, airily; "you are free to tell Alison whatever you like." He took her hand and drew her gently from Gilbert. "Alison, my daughter, let me repeat your own words: 'We have thought hard things, we have said hard things of each other. That was because we did not know the truth. Now we know it, let us not be separated.'

"I was wrong this afternoon, because I had not yet realized what it meant to me, this gift of a daughter. I have thought it over since, and

have resolved that it will be better for me, and for you too, if I renounce my scheme of living abroad, and instead, become your father, guardian, and best friend. As for my former life, it has been, I admit, devoted to pleasure; that is all finished. I was then a man without ties, and therefore, to a certain extent, a selfish man. Now I have you, my daughter, I have some one else in the world to live for. My brother Anthony acted, no doubt, for the best, but he acted wrongly toward me. Had I known, had I suspected, that you were my child, my course would have been different indeed; perhaps it would have been as blameless as that of my cousin, Alderney Codd."

Alderney jumped in his chair and changed color. It was to be hoped that Stephen was not going to begin revelations at this inconvenient time.

"I say so much, Alison," Stephen went on, while Mrs. Cridland sat clutching Miss Nethersole's hand in affright, and the partners with the old lawyer stood grouped together-Gilbert retained his position behind Alison-“I say so much because you ought to know both sides. It matters little, now, why my cousins have become my enemies. You see that they are. I come here to-night proposing new relations. I take blame for the things I said this afternoon, Forgive me, my child. Your father asks for his daughter's forgiveness."

"Oh!" cried Alison, moved to tears by this speech of the père prodigue, “do not speak so. Do not talk of forgiveness. There is nothing to forgive."

"Together, my dear, we can face our enemies, and bid them do their worst."

He drew her to his side and laid her hand on his arm, in a manner as paternal and as true to nature as an amateur heavy father at private theatricals.

"This is truly wonderful," said Mr. Billiter.
"Let them do their worst," continued Ste-

phen.

"Why, in Heaven's name-" began Augustus, but was stopped by Stephen, who went on without taking the least notice of him.

44

Miss Nethersole," he said, "I owe to you an explanation of a very important kind. I have read to-day the journal of my late wife, with feelings of the deepest sorrow. My neglect was not willful, but accidental; the reduction of my wife's allowance was due to a heavy pecuniary loss; our separation was by mutual consent; I never received any letters from her at all. I concluded that she had carried her threat into execution and left me. When I had my remittances returned from Lulworth, I concluded that she had gone away from me altogether."

"But, man," said Rachel Nethersole, puzzled

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with this glib show of explanation, you went on tion was Stephen. He was quite certainly the drawing her allowance from me."

"I did," said Stephen, frankly-"I did; and the hardest, the most cruel, the most unjust accusation ever made against any man was made against me this morning by my own cousin. -Alison, you shall hear it, unless, indeed, they have already told you.".

"What we have spared your daughter," said Augustus, solemnly, "you, too, would do well to spare her."

'Spare her!" Stephen repeated. "It was out of no consideration for me. Rachel Nethersole, I drew that hundred and fifty pounds a year for six years after my wife's death. She could not, poor thing, receive any of it. But how was I to know that? Who told me of her death? What did I know?"

heir to the great estate; everything, including his daughter, was his, and in his power. The difficulty about the Letters of Administration could not any longer stand in his way; the crime was forgiven for the daughter's sake; and what, in Heaven's name, would be the end of the great Hamblin estate, grown up and increased through so many generations, developed by patient industry and carefulness to its present goodly proportions, fallen into the hands of a profligate, a black sheep, a prodigal son, who would waste, dissipate, lavish, squander, and scatter in a few years what it had cost so many to produce?

"It is a sad pity," said Mr. Billiter, speaking the thoughts of all.

"Stephen," said Alderney, "if you are really going to take over the whole estate for your

'This is truly wonderful!" said Mr. Billiter self—” again.

"Dora, before we parted to meet no more, signed a number of receipts. It was understood that she was not to be troubled in the matter. I heard no more. I went on presenting the receipts. I drew the money. That money, Rachel Nethersole, has been strictly and honorably laid up ever since, to be returned to you when occasion should serve. I first laid it up for Dora, but, after six years, I heard from Anthony that she was dead, and then resolved to hand it over to you. But my life has been, as I said before, a selfish one. The money was there, but the occasion never came. At the same time, Rachel, I thank you most heartily for the message of forgiveness sent me by Alison. Although there was nothing to forgive, I accept the message as a token of good will."

Rachel stared at him, as one dumfounded. "Am I," she asked, "out of my senses? Is this true?"

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"

Mr. Billiter laughed in his hard, dry way. 'Quite as true, madame," he said, as any other of the statements you have heard. Pray go on, Stephen.”

"No; I shall not go on. I have said all I had to say to Alison, my daughter, and to Miss Nethersole, my sister-in-law. To them explanations were due. To you, my cousins, and to you, lawyer of the devil, I have nothing to say except that, as this is my house, you will best please me, its owner, by getting out of it at once."

The position was ludicrous. They who had come to tell Alison gently how her father, having been such a very bad specimen of father or citizen, had acquiesced in their proposal and was going to the Continent for life, never again to trouble anybody, stood looking at each other foolishly, the tables turned upon them. They were quite powerless. The master of the situa

VOL. VIII.-22

"I certainly am," Stephen replied with a short laugh.

"Then there are one or two things that you must do. As a man of honor and generosity, you must do them. There is Flora Cridland, for instance; you must continue to behave toward her as Anthony did."

"Go on, Alderney."

"Here is Gilbert Yorke, engaged to Alison." Go on."

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His face expressed no generous determination to do anything at all.

"Well," said Alderney, his nose becoming suffused with a pretty blush, "if you can not understand what you have to do, I can not tell you."

"I know what you mean. I am to continue to give my cousin, Flora Cridland, a lavish allowance for doing nothing. Flora, you know my sentiments. I am to take, with my daughter, all the hangers on and lovers who may have hoped to catch an heiress. Mr. Yorke, at some future time you may have an interview with me, in order to explain your pretensions. Lastly, Alderney, I am to lend you as much money as Anthony did, am I?"

"I was not thinking of myself," said Alderney meekly. "I only thought, as the poet says, 'Suave est ex magno tollere acervo.' It is delightful to help yourself from a big pile. However-"

But Alison broke away from her father's arm, and caught the protective hands of Gilbert.

"No," she said, with brightening eyes, "Gilbert will not need to ask your permission; he has my promise. And he had the encouragement of my-my uncle Anthony."

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a pretty group was formed of Alison in the middle, Gilbert at her right, and Rachel at her left.

Stephen's face darkened; but he forced himself to be genial.

"Well," he said, with a smile, “one can not expect daughters like mine to become obedient in a moment. Marry whom you please, Alison. Your husband, however, must look to please me before any settlements are arranged. Rachel Nethersole, I am sorry to see that your usual common sense has failed you on this occasion."

Rachel shook her head. She mistrusted the man by instinct.

nothing to suspect or to disbelieve. I did not know for six years and more of the death of my wife-"

He did not hear the door open behind him: he hardly observed how Alison, with panting breast and parted lips, sprang past him: he did not hear the cry of astonishment from all, but he felt his dead brother's hand upon his shoulder: he turned and met his dead brother face to face, and he heard him say: "Stephen, that is not true; you knew it a week after her death."

All the pretense went out of him: all the confidence: all the boastfulness; he shrunk to

"If I could believe you," she murmured-"if gether: his cheek became pallid: his shoulders only I could believe you—” fell and were round: his features became mean : he trembled.

There happened, then, a strange sound in the hall outside-shuffling steps—a woman's shriek -the voice of young Nick, shrill and strident, ordering unknown persons to be silent; in fact, they were William the under-gardener, and Phoebe the under-housemaid, and he was entering the house with his captive when they rushed up the steps and Phoebe screamed, thinking in the twilight of the June night that she was looking upon the face of a ghost.

"Silence, all of you!" cried young Nick, excitedly, trying not to speak too loud; "you chattering, clattering, jabbering bundle of rags, hold your confounded tongue! Take her away, William, stop her mouth with the handle of the spade-choke her, if you can! Now, then."

They hardly noticed the noise in the study. It happened just when Miss Nethersole was expressing her doubts as to Stephen's perfect veracity. Everybody was discomfited. Mrs. Cridland was miserably wiping her eyes, thinking of the days of fatness, gone for ever: Miss Nethersole was uncomfortably suspicious that the man had not told her anything like the truth: the two partners were silent and abashed-they felt like conspirators who had been found out: Gilbert was hot and angry, yet for Alison's sake he was keeping control of his temper. Stephen himself was uncomfortable, trying to devise some method of restoring confidence, cursing Alderney for forcing his hand. Alderney was ready to sit down and cry: Mr. Billiter was apparently saying to himself for the third time:

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'This is truly wonderful!"

And then Alison broke from Gilbert and Rachel, and, standing like a startled deer, cried: "I hear a step-I hear a step!" And for a moment she stood with her hands outspread, listening.

Stephen took no notice of his daughter's extraordinary gesture. He addressed himself to Rachel, having his back to the door.

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As Stephen walked rapidly away across the common, it was some consolation to think that at this, the darkest moment of his life, he could reckon on the friendship of one man in the world-and on the promise made at a death-bed by another. As for the game-he had played for a high stake-he stood to win by long odds and he lost.

"Oh, my dear! my dear!" cried Alison, forgetting her father altogether, as she clung to Anthony, and kissed him a thousand times. "Oh, my dear! I said you would come back to me some time- somehow. I said you would come back."

Ten minutes later, when the confusion was over, young Nick touched his uncle on the arm, and whispered:

"It's all right about that desk in the office, of "I repeat, Rachel," he said "that you have course? Very good. And now, if I was you, I

would sneak up stairs and change my boots, and put on another coat. I'll amuse Alison while you are gone.... Old lady," he stood in the full light of the gas, with his right hand modestly thrust into his bosom, and his left hand on his thigh" old lady, and everybody here present,

I give notice that I am about to change my name. Henceforth I mean to be known as Nicolas Cridland-Hamblin, Esquire, about to become, as soon as I leave school, a clerk in the firm of Anthony Hamblin and Company, Indigo Merchants, Great St. Simon Apostle, City."

MR

HENRY

THOMAS BUCKLE.*

kitchen over, gave his nurse's daughter a peashooter, and had shooting-matches with her; and on another occasion, when he went to call on his old nurse, turned everything there topsyturvy, romped about, threw the daughter's cat out of the window, and, finally, walking with them down the street, sang and was generally uproarious, seizing fruit from the open shops, and behaving so as to make them quite afraid that he would get into trouble." He was sent again to a private tutor's, and there, though he never seemed to learn his lessons, he was always foremost. His health, however, failed, and again he had to be taken home. In the latter part of this time his father's conversation gave him an interest in politics and political economy, and by the time he was seventeen he had composed a letter to Sir Robert Peel on free trade. His father, a cultivated man who had been at Cambridge, and used to recite Shakespeare to his family, wished his son to be an East India merchant like himself. Buckle entered the office much against his will, but when he was a little over eighteen he was released by his father's death, which occurred on the 22d of January, 1840. His last words were to bid his son "be a good boy to his mother." Buckle was taken fainting from the room. He always repaid her self-sacrificing devotion with the tenderest attachment; he never really recovered from the shock of her death. She was a very remarkable woman. Miss Shirreff said, after meeting her in 1854:

R. BUCKLE'S reputation is unique in more ways than one; after a long preparation he burst upon the world with a masterpiece, and this masterpiece was received with instant acclamation by the public, and depreciated so far as possible by most of those to whom the public generally looks for guidance. The most singular thing of all is that during the period of preparation he deliberately abstained from any partial or tentative work, and that he entered upon the work of preparation with an utterly undisciplined, not to say unexercised intelligence. He was a very delicate child, and had hardly mastered his letters at eight, and was quite indifferent to childish games. Dr. Birkbeck was of opinion that he ought to be spared in every possible way, and never made to do anything but what he chose. His great delight was to sit for hours by the side of his mother to hear the Scriptures read. Up to the age of eighteen he read hardly anything but the "Arabian Nights," "Don Quixote," Bunyan, and Shakespeare, whom he began at fifteen. He was sent to school for a short time to give him a change from home, with strict directions that he was never to be punished or forced to learn; nevertheless, out of curiosity, he learned enough to bring home the first prize for mathematics before he was fourteen. Being asked what reward he would have for this feat, he chose to be taken away from school. He knew hardly anything, and was proud of showing off what he knew. He would stand on the kitchen-table, and recite the Creed and the Lord's Prayer in Latin and French, translating sentence by sentence. she was a very interesting person to know. It is cuApart from her being the mother of such a son, He would play with his cousin at “Parson and Clerk," always preaching himself, according to lives seem to have produced no impression; they rious how many people there are on whom their own his mother, with extraordinary eloquence for a child. This is more like a precocious child of may have seen and felt much, but they have not reflected upon their experience, and they remain apfour than a clever and backward child of four-parently unconscious of the influences that have been teen. The same may be said of his less intellec- at work around and upon them. With Mrs. Buckle tual amusements. "On one occasion, for in- it was exactly the reverse. The events, the persons, stance, he turned every chair and table in the the books that had affected her at particular times or in a particular manner, whatever influenced her actions or opinions remained vividly impressed on her mind, and she spoke freely of her own experience,

* Life and Writings of Henry Thomas Buckle. By Alfred Henry Huth. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

and eagerly of all that bore upon her son. He was now in better train for reading than I was at
the joy, even more than the pride of her heart. Hav- first, so that I think, on an average, I may say
ing saved him from the early peril that threatened eight days will suffice for each history." He was
him, and saved him, as she fondly believed, in a
aware that this proceeding was hasty and super-
great measure by her loving care, he seemed twice ficial, and he looked forward to completing his
her own; and that he was saved for great things, to knowledge by further study of larger and more
do true and permanent service to mankind, was also elaborate works, such books as Sismondi's “His-
an article of that proud mother's creed, little dream-toire des Français," and by reading in biographi-
ing how short a time was to be allowed even for
sowing the seeds of usefulness. . . . When I said
above that Mrs. Buckle spoke freely of her own ex-
perience, I should add that her conversation was the
very reverse of gossip. It was a psychological rather
than a biographical experience that she detailed. I
rarely remember any names being introduced, and
never unless associated with good.

It is natural to compare Buckle's training, or want of training, with Rousseau's, and perhaps the reason it turned out so differently was, that it was conducted by a Calvinist mother instead of by a libertine father, and that the physical conditions were healthier. Rousseau when a child habitually turned night into day; it was an event when Buckle sat up to write to Sir Robert Peel. Entering life at eighteen his own master, with powers that had never been taxed, with an imagination ceaselessly stimulated, it is no wonder that he was enormously ambitious. He set to work at once to gratify his ambition. He traveled] for more than a year on the Continent with his mother and an unmarried sister, studying the manners of different countries, and taking lessons in the languages from masters, who taught him to talk them fluently, but could never break him of his British accent; the grammar he found he could master more quickly and thoroughly by himself. At the same time he began a course of omnivorous reading, and his wonderful memory very soon made him seem a prodigy of information, especially as, like Dr. Johnson, he had the talent of tearing the heart out of a book.

The way he began his studies with a plan of the "History of Civilization" in his mind is exceedingly characteristic. He began the "History of the Middle Ages" in Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopædia," finishing thirteen pages in two hours, during which he referred to Hallam and Hawkins's little work on Germany for verification of dates. "This brings me from the invasion of Clovis in 496 to the murder of Sigebert by Fredegonde in 575. I have at the same time made copious abstracts of the times referred to." This is from the first entry in his diary, October 15, 1843. Ten days later we read: “The sketch, then, of the history of France during the middle ages has occupied me just ten days, but then on one of those days I did not read at all (on account of a thick fog). And, besides that, I am

cal dictionaries the lives of all the notabilities of the period he was studying, for he made it a rule to go through a period in many books, instead of going through many periods in one book. One can not say that his method of study was exactly uncritical; he found out the first day that Dr. Lardner quite deserved his reputation for inaccuracy, but he took no precaution against having to unlearn more important errors than a wrong name or date. A professional scholar does not feel that a fact is the foundation of an opinion till he is sure that he has reached the right point of view. In all but very exceptional cases this method leads to more questions than answers, and constructive effort has to restrict itself increasingly to monographs, and the largest speculation generally turns upon the application and extension of one or two conceptions, such as the primitive family or the survival of the fittest. Now Buckle, like Bacon, thought that it was possible to pick out facts from the best second-hand authorities, like Hallam, or even from authorities which were not the best, like the "History of Helvetia," in two volumes, which he picked up for eighteenpence in a book-stall, and then to tabulate the facts picked out, and gradually sift them into a system.

Wherever he could he used translations, because he could go through them faster, but, as many works were not translated, he learned nineteen languages, seven of which he could write and speak serviceably (he introduced himself to Hallam by interpreting for him in Germany). At first he still found time for travel, and formed æsthetic preferences; he thought, till he saw Egypt and Petra, that he preferred beauty of form to beauty of color. He had a marked dislike to being bullied or cheated, which reminds us of Schopenhauer. At Naples, for instance, the boatmen threatened to leave him in a cave at Capri unless he would pay more than he had bargained for. He gave them his purse, but took care to stay and have them punished. At Dresden a chess-player gave out that Buckle was not good enough for him to play with; he placarded a challenge to play the braggart for five hundred thalers, with the result that he did not venture to show his face till Buckle left. Again, when he had bought a new carpet from a man who had promised him discount for cash, and then asked for the whole sum, Buckle quietly returned the

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