my soul to perdition!' I rushed out of the house thinking to quit it for ever." The story now nears its close. Hazlitt went back to the house the same evening, and gave some explanation of his conduct to Mr. Walker, who professed himself utterly ignorant of what had been going on, and seems to have admitted that his lodger had received great provocation. The next day he returned to Scotland, and after such an émeute, it is not to be wondered at that Mr. M should refrain from speaking confidently concerning his chances of success in the further prosecution of his suit. A little hope was, however, enough for Hazlitt. He wrote to Mr. Patmore after receiving his letter, "You have saved my life," and as soon as his long-desired freedom was attained he started again for London. Sarah received him with something like cordiality, and nothing discouraged him or damped his hopes but her frequent and mysterious absence from home. This was something new and incomprehensible, and one day he set out in the direction he was told she had taken, hoping to find her. He found her indeed: came suddenly face to face with her, but she was not alone, and her companion was a Mr. C, a former lodger who had been during his stay in Mr. Walker's house an object of Hazlitt's fierce jealousy-a jealousy which had only been lulled to sleep by Miss Walker's repeated protestations that he was nothing to her. He passed the couple twice, but no words were exchanged, and for long he roamed aimlessly the "desert streets," in one of which he met Mr. Cagain, this time alone. He stopped him and begged a few minutes conversation on a subject of interest to them both the request was granted; and Hazlitt, in the course of an interview which lasted for four hours, learned how completely he had been made a victim. Mr. C's relations with Sarah Walker had been precisely similar to his own: C had breakfasted first and enjoyed an hour of her society; she had then come up to Hazlitt, received his caresses, and bamboozled him with the story of a phantom love. There was now no longer any room for doubt with its attendant tortures; agonising suspicion had given place to benumbing certainty; his idol was shattered, his dream had fled. His farewell conversation with Sarah seems to have been calm and dignified. He indulges in no reproaches now, but only in counsels of prudence which she has lost all right to regard as an insult, and for which indeed she coldly thanks him, bidding him good-night with no show of any kind of emotion, and vanishing from his sight and ours. The night passed, and "with the morning's light," writes Hazlitt, "conviction glared in upon me that I had not only lost her for ever, but every feeling I had ever had towards her-respect, tenderness, pity all but my fatal passion, was gone I saw her pale, cold form glide silent by me, dead to shame as to pity. Still I seemed to clasp this piece of witchcraft to my bosom; the lifeless image, which was all that was left of my love, was the only thing to which my sad heart clung. Were she dead, should I not wish to gaze once more upon her pallid features? She is dead to me; but what she once was to me can never die." In so saying Hazlitt made as great a mistake concerning his own character as he had ever made concerning that of the object of his passion. His emotions were different in what, to use the language of the race-course, may be called staying power: and his grandson observes that "It does not seem that the passion left a very deep or abiding impression on his mind. It was a piece of Buncleishness which soon evaporated, and we hear, fortunately, very little of it afterwards, and then only in casual and half unintelligible allusions." It was indeed not a love but a frenzy, and the record of it is a contribution to pathology rather than to biography. Despite some of the passages I have quoted, and some I could not quote, I confess that I can feel no contempt for the writer, but only wondering compassion. The book is the product not of a man, but of a disease, or rather of both. Just as 'Kubla Khan' was the beautiful outcome of Coleridge and opium delirium, so the Liber Amoris' was the grotesque outcome of Hazlitt and erotic mania. It would not have been written by him in his saner moments; but, on the other hand, it could not have been written by any one else, even under the influence of a similar madness. It leaves upon the mind a vivid impression such as is never left save by writing of real literary vigour. It is throughout careless, not always even grammatical, but it is always direct and incisive; and here and there come little descriptions of nature, and even touches of healthy sentiment, in which we seem to get a glimpse of the true Hazlitt, not the writer merely, but the man. Sometimes a study of the morbid helps our comprehension of the normal; and what principally makes this strange and half-forgotten book worth reading and worth writing of, is the fact-which seems to me undeniable that its utterly unreserved record of weakness does give one a fuller and truer idea of the nature and the possibilities, as well as of the limitations, of Hazlitt's strength. The Thorn. Ir was morning in the garden, And the birds were singing matins, And away there in the distance O the glory of the sunshine! O the murmur of the hives! And the subtle, saintly fragrance That floats about a maiden Just risen from her prayers. And the parrot bowed his top-knot Then half ashamed, I muttered, The thorn remains with me!" Straight from her housewife dainty, O Molly, still I see you, As you there beside me stood, In girlish, simple beauty, God knows that you were good. And I hear you softly saying, "Do I hurt you? does it smart ?” The silent hills stood watching us Ah! little witch, you haunted me And by-and-by, in evil hour, I asked you once again, To pluck a thorn from out my heart, And you would not, or you could not, The time of flowers is over, The rain falls cold and chill, The mist comes creeping sadly O'er every sunlit hill. Yet I can suffer for your sake, Since better may not be.- C. B. The Beautiful Miss Roche. BY MRS. G. W. GODFREY, AUTHOR OF 'DOLLY,' A LITTLE BOHEMIAN,' 'AULD ROBIN GREY,' ETC. [Some of the situations in the earlier part of this story were suggested by a French play.] PART I. "You are certainly hard on her," she says, swinging her foot to and fro with some impatience-a very pretty-looking foot that barely reaches the ground. "Most men would find excuses for such a handsome woman-you have none." She is sitting at one end of the deep old window-seat, he at the other, certainly a good deal farther off than there is under the circumstances any occasion for him to be. It is the half-hour between daylight and lamplight, the best half-hour in all the winter's day in a country house if it be spent under certain conditions. But though they are alone in the room together they are by no means availing themselves of the possibilities of the occasion. On the contrary, the firelight, lighting them up by fits and starts, as firelight is apt to do, shows a certain defiance on her small face, shows him sitting with crossed arms and a pucker on his forehead, a good three feet away from her. "It is impossible to be too hard on a woman of that sort," he answers hotly. "Her very beauty is devilish." "Devilish?" (raising her eyebrows)" that is a strong word." She glances at him as he says it. She can only see his profile, but it is a very handsome profile. In her heart she would like to be friends with him-like to give in-like at any rate to make the most of this halfhour before she is obliged to go away to the rest of her friends, to pour out the five-o'clock tea and play her part as pretty little dainty mistress of the house for the rest of the evening. But there are points she feels on which a woman must have an opinion, "Not too strong," he answers resolutely. detestable class, a class that did not exist ten years ago. Then women were one thing or the other, ladies or-not ladies; now, Grod knows what they call themselves, I do not. I only know that they use their eyes and their tongues and their beauty, if they chance to have any beauty, in a way that is altogether to be abhorred. Women who behave as your friend behaved last night with that and this is one of them. "She is the type of a |