more, and be remembered nowhere save in his heart. I should know the fire there. Did not Prometheus filch it from heaven? Perhaps it would mount higher and higher on good work done till it touched the heavens again. But all this you think mere craving for excitement, a lack of repose, an aching to be prominent. It is none of these. Still, in my heart there is nevertheless a leaning forward towards the future not my own future, but the whole world's. Nonsense, you will say; what have I to do with that? We have all to do with it; we cannot separate ourselves off from it, for this present self-consciousness that we call life is not the whole of us unless we choose. There is one thing ours from the time we enter the world if we did but know it it is part of life's mystery that we should so seldom know it the power to fashion our own immortality, not in our own bodies, but in the things we do. A sort of choice or chance which is it? seems to be ours, to seek the stars or tread the depths. Have we not come out of the past leaving strange histories we cannot even remember behind us? Here in our present day we choose, so it is given to me to feel, whether we will let the potentialities stamp us out, or whether, having in some shape paid the world for its light and shelter, its love and joy, though its alternatives were pain and woe, we go on into the future ages stronger for that with which we have nourished our souls. Oh, my dear, it is not excitement that I want. I believe I could wait long years to meet a single day, and having known it live. long years again remembering, though never a ripple stirred Time's surface before or after. But I could not be content with your life and its lack of possibilities. You would not ask me to go to you hungry if you had no food, shivering if you had no shelter? Yet this would be little beside the starvation you offer me. Why should I give up to you all my chances, all my ambitions, my hopes and longings, the wild love and satisfying life that may be mine-nay, my pain and bitter woe, for I would miss and the work that will surely some time come to my eager hands and heart, for what? To please you now for just a little space, till you awoke to realize that life together was not what you had imagined it would be, that something was wrong, was missing, you could not tell what; while I, who had never slept, would understand well enough all the time, and some day, feeling the twitch of the demon's finger on my arm and his whisper in my ear, I should vanish, how or where I should none hardly know. For the marriage vow between us would not be one that bound my soul, and my feet would be swift to follow that whither it went. To hold fast by one's soul as long as may be is the wisdom of the gods. It is no use saying more. Perhaps you are right in thinking that I don't know what I am driving at. Do any of us know whither we are going? But that does not prevent us from feeling driven; and this I know, that the Fates are driving me with a strong hand away from you. We shall never get nearer to each other though I write on and you read on forever. Be content with the past. I have loved you. I do. But not with the love that would let me be your wife, content to spend my days by your side, trying to make your days happy; perhaps it is some of your own good-for-wear-and-tear affection that I give you back. I do not know. There are many men like you, thank God-many good women to mate with them, crowds of you both, happy enough to walk along the beaten track with your fellows, doing as they do, being as they are, a rest and comfort for the like of me to take shelter with sometimes, but not to abide with always. For your place is in your home, and your duties are to fulfil the easy obligations that keep it going; but mine, in some strange fashion, seems to be along the world's highway, staying now and again in its workshops, though it be but to watch my masters, or to be cuffed and made to stand aside till my own turn comes. Perhaps I should be happier if I were like your cousin Nell, and could be satisfied but I cannot. Home and its influences; a husband who would love me and to love back and help in an easy routine like yours; children with their games and laughter, growing up to be the world's good citizens sometimes it comes into my heart to long for these, to ache for the rest they would mean, the simple life and further-reaching power than those who live within its fences think, the safe and even way that most women yearn to walk, looking neither up at the heights nor down at the depths, but only at the road before them, content enough to tread it. But no. It is so strange, this inner life, with the outward one that hides it - the brother and his delicate wife, the visitors coming and going, the dogs and the horse, the long rides and walks, the pulls on the river or the dreaming beside it, the going to town or to country houses and the hurry of life there, the men, "the half a dozen fellows," as you call them, who talk of love, not knowing how much or how little they mean. It all seems a little way off from me, and yet I am here in the midst. You! Oh, but it has been all a sad mistake! I loved you, and thought you understood. That you love me, or have loved me, I know well enough; but there is a great space between us, a desert in which we should have to walk if we tried to be together. No, again and forever, no. Your life stands out clear before you, but something tells me that mine has other chapters than this. There are some words that went to my heart long ago. Oh, my dear Englishman, perhaps you will say that they were written by an improper poet. Zola and Swinburne! Marry your cousin Nell by all means. I do but watch and wait like those "... who rest not; who think long Till they discern as from a hill At the sun's hour of morning song, Known of souls only, and those souls free, The sacred spaces of the sea." Some day, perhaps, I shall see and know more, but then 1 shall not be here. Good-bye, once again. VI. HIS MOST INTIMATE FRIEND. CONSOLING. DEAR E, I don't think you an awful cad for sending on her letters, and I don't wonder at your being puzzled by them. Of course I will keep their contents hidden in the innermost recesses of my soul. They are not like ordinary love-letters thank Heaven. For a nice little note, with a monogram in the corner, a word or two doubtfully spelled, and crammed full of dears and darlings, is worth a stack of these, which might have been written to her great-grandmother. I take her in pretty well. She is n't altogether a fool, you know; but she is one of the large-minded, great-souled people, longing to suffer and distinguish themselves in the cause of humanity and for the good of the world, who are such a nuisance nowadays. She means well, but she would be death to marry; there's no knowing what she would be up to by the time she was thirty. The amazing thing about it is that, if I remember. rightly, she is that pretty woman who came over with the Fenwicks to my aunt's place last Easter. She was about six or seven and twenty, played lawn-tennis better than any one else, flirted all round, and finally drove herself away on a high dogcart with a learned, half-starved-looking cuss, from whom she was probably imbibing some of these notions. Nature made a mistake in sorting out her physique; she ought to have been tall and lank, with long arms, high cheek-bones, and a washedout complexion. All the same, in spite of her good looks, I shudder to think of her as mistress of Bingwell. The only good bit in the whole of her letters is the polite allusion to the savory and the salad. That looks as if she could order a dinner; but she would probably forget to do so half her time, and I suppose she would scorn to eat it-though the material side of her does n't seem to be undeveloped. Before she had been installed a month you can bet she would have shocked the neighbors and fought with the parson. And what a woman she would be to stay with! She would have an open contempt for her visitors all round, and lead them a nice life, except the unwashed few she calls the masters of the world. It is really a fine name, if you come to think of it; somehow it reminds me of Spain, where every beggar in tatters asking for cuartos is a gentleman. No, old man, marry your cousin Nell (in spite of her fancy for life's alternatives, she does n't seem to like that one of yours), or any other sensible girl who does n't think she has a destiny or a mission, and thank your stars that this magnificent person would not have you. - Ever yours. ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. CLOUGH, ARTHUR HUGH, an English poet; born at Liverpool, England, June 1, 1819; died in Florence, Italy, November 13, 1861. When nine years old the boy was sent to England, and was educated at Rugby and Oxford. In 1843 he became a tutor in Oriel College. Between 1849 and 1852 he was professor of English Literature in University College, London. After a visit to America in 1852, he was appointed examiner in the Education Office of the Privy Council. While travelling in Italy he died suddenly of a fever. His longest poem is "Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich" (1848). He also wrote "Dipsychus," "Mari Magno," "Amours de Voyage," and numerous miscellaneous poems, and revised Dryden's translation of "Plutarch's Lives." In conjunction with Thomas Burbidge, he produced " Ambarvalia" in 1849. VOL. VI. - 4 THERE IS NO GOD. "THERE is no God," the wicked saith, For what he might have done with us "There is no God," a youngster thinks, "There is no God, or if there is," The tradesman thinks, "'t were funny If he should take it ill in me To make a little money." "Whether there be," the rich man says, "It matters very little, For I and mine, thank somebody, |