people to learn that for a noise to be poetical, it must be unfrequently heard. The warmest adherent of tradition and admirer of the past would not care to live immediately beneath St. Paul's, were the bells always clanging. A position scarcely less objectionable is that of one who has in front of his house a tramway, to the cars on which, or to its horses, bells are attached. That these things are unnecessary is proved in the fact that they are only adopted on certain lines. Those, too, who live in busy thoroughfares scarcely guess how maddening is the effect of street noises and street music in quiet districts where sound travels far. That weapon of torture, the barrel organ or the street piano, was designed to prevail over the rattle of London life, and its horrible grind might be heard through the din of a beleaguered city. Those who know it only as it presents itself in crowded thoroughfares cannot conceive over how wide an area its sound is capable of extending. It is a very mitrailleuse of noise.

SINCE

INCE describing, in the Gentleman's Magazine for November ISSO, the manner in which the "Nouvelle Biographie Générale " is scamped towards its conclusion, I have been struck by the number of books of which the same thing holds true in a greater or a less degree. Wright's "Dictionary of Provincial English” thus gives in a first volume the letters from A to F inclusive, and sums up the remainder of the alphabet in the second. Very many works of reference deal after a similar fashion with the alphabet. Now, the exact division of the alphabet occurs, of course, between M and N; and although the latter half includes two or three lettters, like Q, X, and Z, under which very few words are classed, this fact is not enough to account for such irregularities as I have indicated. Richardson's" English Dictionary," one of the most careful and scholarly works of its class, makes a just division in closing its first volume with K; while, in the "Biographie Générale," half of the work carries the reader no further than a third of the way through H. These proofs of large ambition and comparatively small accomplishments are of course sadly human. It is creditable to Dr. Brewer that

his two useful volumes, the "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," and the "Reader's Handbook," are conscientiously carried out; the middle of one being in the letter L, and that of the other at the close of K. The first half of M. Vapereau's "Biographie des Contemporains" extends no further than half-way through H. The application of a test of this kind furnishes a species of criterion of conscientiousness of workmanship.

SYLVANUS URBAN.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

G

APRIL 1881.

THE COMET OF A SEASON.

BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M.P.

CHAPTER X

CLEMENT'S EVENING WALK.

ERALDINE was very thoughtful all the evening after her

excursion to Tower Hill. She was a good deal interested in Clement Hope, and somewhat touched as well as amused by his melancholy and his passion. She was sorry that Melissa did not care for him, and yet was inclined to think that it would not be well for the young man if she did.

It is superfluous to say that Geraldine was greatly interested in love-making of any kind. She had never as yet been herself in love. She had not even felt the schoolgirl's immemorial passion for the music-master or the drawing-master. She had had a great deal of admiration, and she often knew well enough that men were hinting love to her; and she had even had direct offers of hand and heart, and so forth. But although she liked men in general, and some men in particular, she had never been brought to heart-throbs for any man as yet. The very fact gave her much of her ease and what might be called good-fellowship in the company of men.

She had lived in all her younger days a happy and a sheltered life. She was so deeply attached to her father, and had such a friend and companion in him, that she liked all mankind the better for him, and no one man in particular, for the same reason. Then came sorrow; and after the worst of the sorrow had passed away, a season of anxiety, not yet drawn to an end, in which money matters were a VOL, CCL. NO. 1804.

CC

good deal mixed up. It was not even yet certain whether Geraldine and her mother were to be actually poor or not; whether Geraldine would not have to fight her way through the world by teaching or by such painting as she could do, or in some such way. Her mother was a very sweet but not very strong-minded woman; and the most of the thinking fell upon Geraldine. Her visit to Europe with Captain Marion's family was Geraldine's first holiday of any kind for some years. It was her first uprising after the prostration of grief and the long season of anxiety. It was like a convalescent's first drive in the open air. When she was leaving her American home her mother made one earnest request of her. "Darling, you are going to have a holiday; now, let it be a holiday. Promise me that you will really do your best, your very best, to enjoy yourself; that you won't keep thinking of things that make you anxious, and that you will let yourself be happy with our friends." Geraldine promised, and was determined that she would do her very best to keep the promise. It was very, very difficult at first; but as the days went on it became easier and easier, and now in London Geraldine was really and truly enjoying herself. She had by nature a soul and spirit made for enjoyment; made to find happiness easily and to give it freely. She had health and strength, a splendid constitution, and high spirits. Perhaps her courage and elasticity of temperament might have made her even heedless and over-impulsive-in her ways,. if so much of her natural inclinations had not been curbed and made patient by a sudden sorrow and prolonged anxiety.

"I like your young friend very much," said Geraldine to Miss Aquitaine that same evening when they had returned to their home. "What young friend ?" asked Melissa languidly.

"Oh, come! you know; your hopeless Mr. Hope. I like him very much."

"Do you?" said Melissa.

"I am very glad. I don't." "I think he is a sweet boy," Geraldine declared.

"He is not quite a boy," said Melissa; "I suppose he is four- or five-and-twenty. I think he is quite old enough to have more sense,.. and to know what he is going to do with himself. I think he is a very stupid boy, or man, or whatever you choose to call him-stupider. even than men in general, if that were possible."

"He seems to me very clever and full of promise. I should think he is a young man likely to make a name for himself-in the world."

"I wish he would make a name for himself," said Melissa, "if he likes it; but what I object to is his trying to make a name for me.".

"I think you like him, after all, in the bottom of your heart," Geraldine said, trying to find response in Melissa's downcast eyes. "If he comes here very often he will soon find whether I do or not," was Melissa's genial answer.

"How do you like Mr. Montana ?"

Melissa remained silent, and Geraldine, fancying she had not heard the question, put it again.

"Mr. Montana," Melissa said at last, "is a very different person from Clement Hope."

"Yes, he is indeed," Geraldine answered with emphasis, "very different. If I understand anything of men, I think Young Hope is a true man."

"I don't understand anything of men," said Melissa, "and so I don't know whether he is true or false, but I don't regard Mr. Montana as an ordinary man, and I don't care to discuss him on the same level with Mr. Hope."

Somebody entered at this moment, and the conversation dropped. Geraldine was full of pity for Clement Hope, and not without a certain womanly anger for the scornful little maiden who thought so lightly of him and his love. She could not help wondering in her heart what it was that Clement Hope saw in Melissa to make him so completely her slave. "He seems such a fine noble young fellow,” she thought, "with a good deal of the poet's soul in him, and after all there is nothing in Melissa. She has not much brains, and I don't think she has any tender feeling, she is a sort of girl who ought to be happy she has everything she can want for herself, and she scarcely seems to think of anything but herself; she is safe against any chance of falling in love; and if she fell in love, it would not hurt her. Whatever is wrong with her, it can't be love." Geraldine suddenly remembered that there certainly was something wrong with Melissa. Her tears the other day were very genuine.

Meanwhile, Clement Hope was going home with his mind and heart all aflame. The incidents of the day might seem unimportant to others; they consisted for the most part of a muddy walk round three sides of the Tower, and an introduction to a gentleman from America but they seemed to Clement to promise a revolution in his whole conditions of being. He hardly found himself able to analyse his own emotions, to say what had become of old thoughts, and what was the meaning of the new ones that were coming up in their place. Clement really was what Mr. Aquitaine had described him, one of that class of mortals, very trying to all the world outside themselves, the poets who do not compose verses. His mind

had for a long time been filled with his hopeless love for Melissa. Mr. Aquitaine had gauged very accurately the depth of his feelings on that subject. Melissa was the first pretty and graceful girl Clement ever had the chance of knowing, and he met her at a time when his fancy and his feelings were alike yearning for some one to fall in love with. A pretty servant-girl would almost have served his purpose if no more attractive woman had come in his way. Melissa's little rudenesses and saucy ways had naturally rather the effect of inflaming than chilling his love. He grew more and more into the conviction that she was the one being essential to his happiness, the one love for his life. He honestly believed that he was in love with her, and that he never, never could be in love with any other woman on earth. This idea he had nursed and humoured so long that all the strength and sweetness of it came to be added to the self-delight and self-torment of imagined passion. He had no serious hope of marrying Melissa, and indeed, for the present, marriage was out of the question for him. Gratitude to the old man who had adopted him and made him a son rendered it impossible for Clement to think of taking any step in life which could have interfered with his home duties. Besides, to this young man, brought up modestly in the great northern seaport, the bare idea of his marrying a daughter of the house of Aquitaine seemed about as wild a fantasy as it would be, according to Major Pendennis, for young Arthur to dream of asking in marriage a daughter of one of the great houses into which his uncle kindly introduced him. Perhaps at this time of his life, and of his feelings also, it was rather gratifying than otherwise to Clement Hope to believe that he fed upon a hopeless passion. Despair is a great deal more soothing to the self-love of youth than hope. To believe oneself marked out by destiny for a ruined life tends very much to make the life itself pass meanwhile pleasantly. Clement was not conscious that he thus enjoyed his despair, but the enjoyment was

there none the less.

In the midst of his conflict of emotions there rose upon his horizon the figure of Montana, as yet but a shadow to him. He heard of the great strange orator and leader from the new world, who was opening up an entirely fresh career to young men of promise and of soul. In a moment Clement became impressed with the conviction that under the banner of Montana it was his duty to rank himself. Aquitaine had put it well. Montana and his new colony became the Saracens and the Holy Land of Clement's disappointed imagination. A few centuries before he would have longed to buckle on his armour and make his way into Syria to fight the infidel and obtain, if