given me more relief by saying that than you could have done by placing at my disposal all the wealth of the world, and no mistake."

Harry also was much relieved at the sudden change in Mr. Rooke's conduct, which was now as pleasant as it had been before disagreeable.

"I must explain why I have questioned you, or I shall be scarcely understood. There is an infernal viper in this town, a liar and a scoundrel: it is your schoolmaster."

"I think you are mistaken, sir; he is one of the best-"

"I tell you he is a rogue, or else you have not spoken the truth-which is it?"

"I have certainly spoken the truth." "Then your schoolmaster is a wilful liar; for he sent me a note yesterday saying that my son had not been seen at his school either morning or afternoon."

"There's some mistake."

"Yes, and this is what it has led to. I thought Tim told me a lie when he said he had been to school; so I thrashed him and locked him up in his room. This morning I went to fetch him down to breakfast, and his bed was empty. The window was open, and he is gone--run away!"

Harry, in his surprise, could only repeat"Run away!

"It is too late for you to go to school now. I am just going to see your schoolmaster. I will satisfy him on that point, and he shall satisfy me on another."

"Harry, stay here till I come back, and if my wife comes downstairs tell her what you have told me, my boy, and that will comfort her."

Mr. Rooke went to pay his second visit to Mr. Jacob Augustus Wadden; whilst Harry, wondering what could induce Mr. Purden to write such a letter, remained to keep house.

Ten minutes afterwards there was a knock at the door, and when Harry opened it he stood face to face with Mr. Purden. When they saw each other they both appeared to be embarrassed.

"I see you are playing truant this morning with our new scholar," observed Mr. Purden.

“Oh, no, sir—indeed I am not,” replied Harry, colouring. "Will you please to come in, sir? Mr. Rooke will be back again

soon.'

It was a cold, foggy morning, and both went into the room telling each other so. Harry explained what had kept him from school; in fact, he went over nearly the whole of his conversation with Mr. Rooke.

"This is strange," said Mr. Purden. "I never was more astounded in my life. I am grieved for both parents and son; for Tim, I thought, was a fine boy, and I am fully convinced he would have turned out a good scholar. Some one has been at mischief here. I did not send a note to any one yesterday, let alone Mr. Rooke; and, besides, what reason should I have for telling a wilful falsehood? However, I can't stay now. Tell Mr. Rooke I have called; that I will see into the matter, and call again this evening. You'll be at school this afternoon?"

"Oh, yes, sir," said Harry.

The schoolmaster strode slowly away to resume his duties.

Harry sat alone for nearly two hours, without Mr. or Mrs. Rooke making an appearance. Tired of sitting, he went to the window, when the first thing that met his eyes was Mr. Rooke making a rapid advance with his umbrella, but without his hat.

"Where is your hat, Mr. Rooke?" asked Harry, when he had reached the house.

"Never you mind about the hat, sir," he replied, locking the door, and putting the key in his pocket. "This is an infernal business; but I'll get to the bottom of it, make no mistake, or I'll shoot myself and everybody else. I must talk to you again, sir."

"Whatever is the mat-"

"Go to the devil, and sit down. I have been insulted and turned away without my hat, all through a young brute like you!"

"I'm very sorry," said Harry, wondering how to proceed. "The schoolmaster came just after you left, and has been waiting to see you."

"That's a lie, you impudent young vagabond-he has not been out this morning." "Indeed, Mr. Rooke-"

I

"Hold your tongue, and listen to me. have been convinced by the boys and by the master that my son was not at school

yesterday; and as for you, why, dammy, they don't know yer!"

"Mr. Rooke, I never

"Silence, you little villain! I tell you that, although I have been insulted, I have been convinced by the schoolmaster, Mr. Wadden, of Boomby House"

"Mr. Wadden, of Boomby House!" repeated Harry, amazed. "I don't know him!" Fury and fire-irons!" roared Rooke, raising his umbrella. "What on earth will you say next? Am I on my head or on my heels, or on Mount Vesuvius? The next lie you tell me, I'll kill you on the spot-I will, by Jingo-by Jingo, I will! Perhaps you'll be kind enough to tell me what school you do go to?"

"Mr. Purden's."

"And did you take Tim there?” "Yes; we went together." "Then perhaps you'll explain why you took my son there?" said Rooke, eyeing Harry severely.

"Well, sir, when I called on Tim last week, you asked me what school I went to, and I said Mr. Purden's. You said it was your intention to send Tim there, and we had better both go together."

Rooke could see through the mystery now; but he was not quite satisfied.

"But," said he, "my son knew he was going to Wadden's-what did he say?"

"He was surprised when I told him you were going to send him with me, and said he was glad that you had changed your mind; and that you had talked of sending him somewhere else."

"And now I'll go to Mr. Purden's," said Rooke, jumping up.

"He was here a short time ago, and has promised to call again to-night."

"Then I'll wait till to-night. I think I have got to the bottom of it now."

They parted soon afterwards, the best of friends; Harry promising to give Mr. Purden full particulars of the mistake.

OUR VILLAGE.

THE CURATE OF ST. BOANERGES.

AMONG the characters often to be seen in the high street of our village, there remains to be described the curate of St. Boanerges, at Ironopolis. His visits were made on an errand of Cupid's, for he had condescended to bestow his affections on one of Mrs. Timepiece's daughters.

He was a very vain young man, and had received presents of so many slippers from young ladies in the congregation of St. Boanerges, that he conceived in his heart that he had only to ask any of the sex to receive his suit, and it would be received, and that the morning stars would sing for joy thereat. The Misses Welkin would have broken their piano-strings with boundless delight if he had made any of them an offer; but the Misses Welkin had no money. And there were twenty other young ladies, and more, who attended the week-night service at St. Boanerges on the Thursday evenings, who pondered him in their hearts. He smiled at them all, and by a wonderful ubiquity and unction kept alive in each of their breasts a spark of hope. It must have occurred to most of them that only one could be the successful candidate; but the number of competitors made the game the more exciting. He was poor, yet capable of making many rich. He was an extempore preacher, and his cheeks were full of holy oil. His heart overflowed its banks oftener than the river Jordan, of which he was wont to speak in his sermons. It was all love, love, love. Love took all the stings out of poverty-the Misses Welkin's feet were very unquiet upon their footstools when he said this.

Love undoubtedly gave him the slippers, but he did not mention this in his discourse. Love was the cure for all diseases and all trials.

He was out to dinner almost every day, and generally found some little delicacy provided for his advent, to which his eye was prone to stray rather slyly before he came to the end of a very long grace. He could pretty nearly guess, by the size of the dishcover, what was underneath it. It was known that he was fond of sweetbread and kidneys, and these viands seemed to make him more and more loving. They were done on buttered toast, which he cut with great precision and emphasis, fitting it to the sweetbread as scrupulously as a tailor measures you for a waistcoat.

He liked woodcocks, but they had so many bones in them, which were as little spokes in the wheel of love, and rather interrupted its even flow. He was a great man, also, for tea; and could take, without any discomfort, four or five large cups. They seemed to increase his love, as he sipped them with alternations of currant tea-cake,

well buttered. It was a treat to see him baptize a child. He took it in his arms as if he were an experienced wet-nurse, and his countenance was as the sun when he shineth in his strength.

At prayer meetings he ascended higher than the cedars of Lebanon, and went from peak to peak in a chariot of fire.

As he walked along the street, he seemed fully conscious that every one was looking at him; and he had a constant habit of running his fingers, like a hay-fork, through and through, and through again, the large tufts of hair on each side of his head, which gave one the idea that there might be concealed in them some of the dew of Hermon, or the holy oil which ran down from Aaron's beard.

When he met a lady friend in the town, he held her hand nearly all the time he was speaking to her, as a bridegroom that of the bride after he has put on it the ominous ring.

It was all Love; but this manner of holding the hand was rather trying to the small nerves of some of his friends, and made them twinkle rather funnily, and suggest a polite attempt to get loose; but they found their hand held as in a vice.

Coleridge says that hell knows no fiercer passion than love when turned to hate. The curate of St. Boanerges, when he got up against the Papacy and Roman Catholics in general, was somewhat of an illustration of this. He turned red in the cheeks and nose as the aurora borealis in the northern heavens; his chest swelled rapidly as a soap bubble; and he drew back his right arm, as a Lancer does in a cavalry charge, as if he were just about to pin the devil against a wall for

ever.

I think it is not improbable he will burst a blood-vessel in some of these assaults.

His wrath is prodigious, and his eyes burn like comets' tails as he denounces the Scarlet Lady, drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of martyrs - Mystery, Babylon the Great, and the abominations of the earth.

It has a tremendous effect on the congregation, who go out of St. Boanerges feeling as if they had been out in a terrific thunderstorm without getting wet; whilst the preacher puts the hay-fork rapidly to his tufts of hair, wipes the perspiration from his forehead, and sits down like a fallen thunderbolt. Yet I have discovered that the

curate of St. Boanerges knows the value of money. He had observed in an old column in a bound volume of the Illustrated London News, at the Mechanics' Institute, that the will of the late Mr. Timepiece had been proved under £25,000 personalty, and that legacies of £5,000 each had been left to each of the daughters.

This information seemed at once to affect his nose, and a noise went up from its Alpha to its Omega that ought in society to be either modified or prevented by a pockethandkerchief. But he was alone when the tidings just caught his eye. The sensation did not stop long at his nose: it passed into his heart, and thrilled his very toes. Here was an object worthy of love; and the way to it, even at first sight, seemed not at all difficult.

When Mr. Roecliffe, our village parson, wished to go south for two or three weeks, and had, with the rector of St. Boanerges' consent, obtained his curate's promise to be locum tenens for that short space, it seemed to the curate-now that he had seen the paragraph in the Illustrated London Newsthat this arrangement had the hand of a special Providence in it. It reminded him of the story of Abraham sending his servant into the land of Mesopotamia to seek a wife for his son Isaac.

He gave way to a sigh of joy and expectancy, and thought that goodness and mercy had followed him all the days of his life.

It was all love. But the curate of St. Boanerges was about to fall-like him whom he had so often shut up in the bottomless pit-from "high heaven.”

Providence had prepared a wholesome and never-to-be-forgotten lesson for his vanity.

During his three weeks' locum tenens-ship, he made frequent pastoral calls at Mrs. Timepiece's, and talked a great deal about love in general.

It did once or twice cross Mrs. Timepiece's mind that he might have some latent meaning of love in particular; and one day, when, from her bed-room window, she saw him coming through the wicket-gate in front of the house to make a call, a thought of this kind came, and made her laugh almost audibly.

It was a laugh of ridicule; but I question, if the curate of St. Boanerges had heard it, if he would have taken it as a warning.

Vanity deludes the eyes; and he would probably have construed it into a laugh of

Verdi, we find Wagner has been introduced, accepted, and admired. The reports given of the representation of the "Lohengrin" Lohengrin" tell us of an audience literally fired by enthusiasm and fervour-an audience which rose simultaneously to greet the production as a master-work of a master-mind. Dr. Gunz, who has only once sung at our Philharmonic concerts, brought forward for the first time in this country an excerpt from this opera, "Lohengrin," which bore the unmistakable traces of exquisite imagery and splendid orchestral workmanship. Since then, modern German music has been passed about in many ways, and the names, if not the motives, of the school are well known, whether for good or evil. His admirers have been untiring in their devotion, and, to give them their due, have acted with admirable tact. They seem to have argued that if the name of the principal and chief be an offence, the particular school of thought may not be so obnoxious; and in this way have managed, by the production of works of a similar type, to make a hearing, and so evoke honest, unbiassed opinion.

The plan has succeeded. There is an organized Wagner Society in London, which has ostensibly in view a plan for the acquisition of seats at the coming performance of the trilogy, "Der Ring des Nibelungen," but which has really for its higher aim the desire not to say the intention-of making modern German music familiar to the public, and of creating a sounder, healthier taste among musical Englishmen. The idea, as far as experience goes, may be Utopian; but it is hard to find fault with those who have laboured so assiduously, and who have so successfully surmounted what at one time appeared impregnable. Nor is this success of any doubtful kind. Not only have these enthusiasts ventured on making their topic a topic of general interest, but they have created an audience which-to put it on the lowest grounds-insists on giving fair play to all engaged in the republic of Art; more especially to those who are carving landmarks for themselves, and are hardly content to tread monotonously in the footprints of those who have gone before. We all know how such daring spirits are met; we are all aware they are called idlers, triflers, dreamers, men who have no object other than self-glorification and self-importance-men, in short, who live for personal reputation. And yet, against whom might

not such a charge be made? Every unit engaged in any occupation whatever is liable to the accusation, which, if made in terms sufficiently general and elastic, will be difficult to meet, still more to rebut. Happily, however, in the case of Wagner, direct principles are enunciated, and, so far, have been followed. That such principles are altogether sound it is not in the province of this paper to discuss; still less would we care to admit the efficacy of the rules which have hitherto guided composers of established repute.

The idea of opera generally, when only viewed partially, presents a ludicrous side, and is open to grave objections. For it is thus that some men argue:- "Tragedy is bad enough. We are just able to submit, for the time, to stilted talk and exaggerated expression. We can tolerate the unnatural, because, under a certain set of conditions, supremely rare, we might picture heroes indulging in rhapsody and bombast. But is it conceivable, think how we will, that any given set of creatures would give vent to their feelings by way of song?" And to do such questioners justice, we are bound to admit that no set of human beings do sing when they talk, or gesticulate so freely in their daily intercourse. But then all this is material; and in music we seek the ideal, which is really the other side of the question, and what materialists have failed signally to grasp. However elevating, nevertheless, poetry may be, or however sublime music may become, we must all allow that the one is enhanced by the other; and if, by the conjunction, either loses some of its own peculiar beauties, the whole is harmonious, the meaning clearer, and the purpose more defined. This fact with Wagner is of paramount importance. In opera, both poetry and music have to be represented; and he insists on the principle of both being so blended and woven together that the poet's art shall be heightened and coloured by the melody of the musician, and not that the musician should melodize at the expense of the words. Those who frequent the opera or study the subject artistically will understand the scope of this last remark. It would be difficult to find, and we might almost challenge the production of, any Italian opera which did not sink its metrical responsibility in aid of the musician's art. The real fact is, operatic music may be, for the most part, beautiful and inspiring. But