Then she got up, and disregarding her brother's efforts to detain her, passed quickly away between the smooth trunks of the orange-trees, and was soon out of sight. Her head was aching and throbbing when she reached the solitude of her own room and sat down to think; but she had all her wits about her-as indeed she always had-and the situation in which she was placed was as clear to her as daylight. Of course M. de Saint Luc must be paid. Equally, of course, he must be paid out of her marriageportion, since that was the only sum of ready money which the family could raise without grievous loss, scandal and humiliation. If, then, Barrington were to become her husband, it would be necessary that she should ask him to resign all claim upon the greater part of her fortune, and the prospect of having to make this request was a sore wound to her pride. To ask a favor, even of the man whom she loved best in the world, would be disagreeable to her; to ask for money would be more disagreeable still; to make her acceptance of his hand dependent upon his reply would be most disagreeable of all. The thing, however, had to be done; and Jeanne, who had never yet lacked courage in any emergency, made up her mind that she could do it without flinching. That Barrington would meet her with a refusal did not seem likely. She believed him to be a rich man ; but even were he not so, his love, if it were worth having at all, must needs rise superior to mercenary considerations. Knowing that she herself would have laughed at the idea of any question of money creating a breach between them, she could scarcely imagine that he would show himself less magnanimous. But supposing that, by any chance, his masculine common sense or English phlegm should revolt against the frittering away of his wife's fortune to fill the pockets of a gamester, what alternative would then remain ? This possibility also Jeanne forced herself to contemplate calmly, and arose from the consideration of it with something of a shudder indeed, but with no hesitation in her mind. Sooner than that the name of de Mersac should be disgraced and Léon's future career blighted, she would pay in her own person the losses he had so carelessly incurred, and become Saint-Luc's wife. Many another woman had gone knowingly to as hard a fate with a less noble aim in view, and had lived through it and earned some sort of contentment, if not happiness. "And happiness is not every thing," thought poor Jeanne. The absurdity of sacrificing her whole life for a mere mistake did not strike her. To her, not less than to Léon, it would have seemed in the highest degree dishonorable to accept a gift of money or release from a debt, however contracted; and thus, at this turning point of her earthly course, she stood alone and unwavering, bright hopes on one side and utter darkness on the other, and all her future resting upon the will of a good-natured, romantic, selfish fellow, whose yes or no might be affected by his breakfast or the state of the weather, or any other trivial external influence. Of this Jeanne was not aware; but she felt that so momentous an issue could not fitly be decided in a ball-room, so she sat down and wrote a few lines to Madame de Vaublanc, saying that she did not feel well enough to go to the Palace that night. Barrington would undoubtedly call the next morning to inquire after her, and then her fate could be decided at once and for ever.-Cornhill Magazine. IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY.-A DRAMATIC VIGNETTE. BY AUSTIN DOBSON. Amour, malheureux Amour! Où vas-tu donc te nicher? HUGH (on furlough). HELEN (his cousin). HELEN. They have not come ! And ten is past,- -Aunt DORA, now you've made us wait! Don't you agree that it's a pity Portraits are hung by the Committee?—Belgravia Magazine. VILLAGE LIFE IN THE APENNINES. BY E. M. CLERKE. No feature in the Italian landscape is more strikingly suggestive to the Northern traveller than the aspect of the lesser towns and villages scattered through the mountain districts. In other countries the rural dwellings are to be seen nestling in lowly comfort in the hollows, or straggling in careless security over the plain; and the thatched roofs and village spire generally mark the course of some highway, whose facilities for communication have determined their site. Even in Switzerland, the land of mountaineers par excellence, the population follows the same law of density as the atmosphere, and is mainly crowded into the narrow, reeking valleys, where towns. and hamlets seem as though crouching at the mountain foot, and man is almost thrust out of sight by the portentous magnitude of the features of nature. Villages with an altitude of three or five thousand feet above the sea are there relatively low-lying as compared with the mountain masses towering above them, and the inhabitants show the effects of restricted sunlight and impeded circulation of air in the most repulsive forms of physical degeneracy. But change the Alpine for the Apennine districts, and the practice of the people in choosing sites for their habitations is exactly reversed. There, for one village built on the valley bottom you will see ten looking proudly down on it from heights varying from one to two thousand feet above it; for one through which your carriage passes on the broad highway you will leave. twenty or thirty to right or left, on pinnacles superbly scornful of such modern innovations as wheeled vehicles, and accessible only to the stout pedestrian, or sure-footed mountain ass. For before roads were, they sat en throned, these discrowned queens of the Apennine-eyries of the Roman eagles robbers' nests of the rapacious Lombard chiefs-each from her sun-bleached crag ruling her miniature kingdom with as stern a sway, and casting her infinitesimal weight into the balance of warring powers with as high a' courage, as the great cities of the plains; from them, too, catching the contagious fury, together with the world-famed watchwords of Italian civil strife, till the challenges of Guelph and Ghibelline-the names of Cæsar and Pope-made these gorges ring to wars without a history, and battles without a name. In the archiepiscopal archives of Lucca is a document of the tenth century enumerating a large proportion of the mountain villages in that district by the names they still bear; thus establishing their existence for a trifle of nine hundred years, and leaving the imagination free to carry it still farther back into the past. Roman origin is ascribed to many and, in the Apennine of Pistoia especially, the names seem sufficiently obvious derivatives from the Latin originals-as Rio Flaminio, Vellano, from Forum Avellanum; Piteglio, Pupiglio, and Gavinana, from the Petilian, Popilian, and Gabinian families. of the churches date from the ninth or tenth century, and are in many cases interesting specimens of old Lombard architecture, attributed to wandering brothers of the builder monks of Como. With such a claim to respectability as is given by an antiquity of eight or nine centuries, these little communities may not be considered unworthy of a closer inspection, that we may see how their inhabitants, living amid surroundings little, if at all, changed since the Middle Ages, are affected by the altered conditions of the rest of the world. Following, then, the great highway, which, after leaving the rich plain of Lucca, penetrates, by the valleys of the Serchio and Lima, into the heart of the Apennines, we find ourselves in a country widely different in culture and aspect from the lowlands of Italy, yet equally unlike any mountain district we are acquainted with elsewhere. For the first few miles the road passes some scattered villages, or houses of entertainment of the poorest class, but after a while it enters a sylvan solitude, where the chestnut takes the place of all other cultivation, and human habitations disappear from the scene. No lordly villas among the trees bespeak the presence of landed gentry or resident proprietors, for here the peasant is lord of the soil, and to seek his dwelling we must take to rougher paths and more primitive modes of travel. The road meantime runs like the avenue of a nobleman's park through forest slopes unfenced on either hand, where no indications of rural industry tell that the beautiful trees were planted for other than ornamental purposes. For two thousand feet above the valley they clothe all the lower spurs, the jutting forelands that push the river into serpentine curves, with a velvet robe, whose rich green folds follow the rugged anatomy of the rocks beneath, and mark their contours as drapery does the limbs of a statue. Above the forest zone, the higher summits abruptly thrust their gaunt nudity into the upper blue, the savage sculpture of their stony ribs accentuated by amethyst shadow, and starting out in strange contrast from the soft mantle of verdure that clothes their lower extremities. as to fall sheer away for hundreds of feet from the foundations of the houses on either side the street. From a strategic point of view their positions are well chosen, for they almost invariably command the approaches from all sides, and, held by a stout garrison, would be impregnable against all attacks save those of artillery or famine. famine. They tempt us irresistibly to a nearer approach, and if we do not fear a steep climb up mountain paths that are none of the smoothest, we shall find ourselves amply rewarded. Every foot of ascent in this enchanted atmosphere lends new magic to the scene, not alone from added breadth of horizon, but from the greater depth of liquid medium which transfigures every thing looked at from above. The long swathes of chestnut-covered ridges seem to undulate, too, in more sinuous curves as we rise; the wooded gorges to guif themselves below in more aerial depths of distance; the nearer summits to rear overhead in more ridgy bulk of sun-gilt granite; while across the visionary blue of the Garfagnana the phantom Alps of Carrara-too fair and 'pale for peaks of common earthly rock, too keenly carved for unsubstantial cloud-soar into the ether like ghosts of mountains of an elder world. elder world. Still up and up, through miles of hanging forest, while our goal is far above us, now seen through an opening in the trees, now hidden by the winding of the path. Surely that glorious mural crown, circling the mountain's brow as closely as if carved in the living rock, is not a mere mountain hamlet, the abode of a few poor shepherds and herdsmen, but rather some enchanted city, whose inhabitants, banished or spell-bound, are but waiting the fated hour to reanimate its silent streets with the bustle or pageantry of life! Midway between their Alpine regions and the valley level dwells the great bulk of the population, not in rural solitude: Meantime, as we draw nearer to it, among their woods and vineyards, but congregated in the villages of which the road affords but occasional glimpses. Seen thus from below they add a singular charm to the scenery as they come into view-here overhanging a wooded gorge from a dizzy precipice of crag, there crowning a rocky pinnacle with a cornice of gleaming walls and bristling roofs and towers-or, again, balanced like a rope-dancer on a ridge so narrow we can observe its structure more closely, and see that its walls form either a complete circle or an arc whose chord is supplied by a sheer face of crag precipice, so that we must necessarily skirt the enclosure until we meet a gate. This mural enceinte has its upper portion pierced with windows, and is not a separate structure, but consists of the external wall of a continuous row of houses, united thus in self-defence, like a band |