heard excitedly arguing with some one at the back door. But there was something on Henry's mind that he felt he must say, and then he would go. Taking out a note book and pretending to inspect its leaves, he murmured,—

"Poor John, of course not. But," and he leant forward with a confiding air towards Mary, "I've often worried if he was angry with me. It's been on my mind. Yer know, I think he was angry with me that Christmas?" He stopped, for something in Mary's manner disconcerted him. Then he took courage and went on. "I would not have hurt him for the world. Only my chaf-' His words stopped and his ideas fled. What had he said? What was wrong? For Mrs. Tilbury had become very white, and the next minute had put her handkerchief to her eyes, and, murmuring something unintelligible had hastily left the room.

SO

after

For fully ten minutes Henry Biddulph sat where he had been left, feeling thoroughly staggered, and more like a whipped hound than an noon caller has any right to do. He waited on, half hoping she might return, and, in view of the further embarrassment it might involve, half dreading she would do so. It was all so disappointing. He blew his nose with a large red handkerchief, and thought what a muddle he had made of the visit. Yet he could not understand why she had changed and seemed so unfriendly to him, and at last he picked up his hat and left the rocm, telling himself he had been treated rather badly, and that it was the last time he would try to console disconsolate widows, whether he their oldest friend or not; and so, looking neither to the left nor right of him, he found his way to the stables, and climbing heavily into the dog-cart, went sadly back down the hill he had so lately climbed. And Mary watched him from her window, and as he went out of sight, overcome by mortification and vexation, she burst into tears.

was

had ended in making her ridiculous in her own sight and probably in his. And at the thought of this she dried her eyes and became scarlet and hot with shame by a new terror, that he must have seen through her constraint and silly flight, and with a man's natural vanity would have made a pretty near guess at its cause. Perhaps she thought, hot-eyed with horror, he even knew the cause; men were so odd, her husband might have mentioned his curious whim to him. And so in a piuful state of mortification she spent the evening, sometimes blaming him, sometimes herself. However, when next morning came, she did the only thing which was left to her. She wrote him a little note saying how sorry she had been to leave him so suddenly, but she had felt overcome.

With the despatch of this she came to the quiet determination to receive him when he next came as she used in John's time, as an old friend without any constraint. And the end of it all was that Biddulph some weeks after came again up the hill, with doubts in his heart as to his reception, and was met with a warmth of manner which pleased, but left him more puzzled than ever at the ways of women, and widows especially.

Although Mary did not keep this up always, and some of her old constraint returned to her at times, yet it must have been only in a small degree, for gradually Biddulph found, living as he did only four miles away, that somehow or other most of his drives led past the "Borrowed Plume," and something always went wrong with the harness, or the mare wanted watering, or he had some business information to communicate which necessitated his getting down. She was lonely, he would tell himself, and he owed it to poor John to take care of her. For there is always a certain satisfaction in looking after a pretty woman, and telling yourself that there is not a touch of sentiment in the feeling. For Biddulph had convinced himself of this, and told himself a dozen times a day that it was only so.

But gradually she got very used to his visits, and found herself looking forward to them; for life was monotonous, and even Biddulph's heavy facetiousness was a relief. The old emotions which had made her lose her head when first he called were dormant, but only dormant. Even the jar had lost its import, and was now always on her dressing-table. Mary even had thought of taking it downstairs, but lacked the courage. But Annie had come into her bedroom one day, and yielding to a sudden impulse, had taken up the jar and looked at it, saying, "Let's put it in the parlor. It's lost up here."

Then she remembered with a heightening of color her last defeat in this direction; but, somewhat to her surprise, Mary said nothing but only nodded, and in triumph the blue jar was carried down and put on the old Jacobean dresser in the parlor which John had loved so well.

About this time a long course of selfdeceit came to a climax with Henry Biddulph, resulting in mental perturbations and indecision to which he was little accustomed, and which was wearing his "too, too solid flesh" away with worry.

He had to decide one way or another what was honestly his position to Mary Tilbury. He had woke up one morning and realized suddenly, as he stared at his towel-horse, that he was a fraud, and he ought at once to acknowledge that his feelings had drifted into quite another channel since he had begun to set himself a course of dutiful attentions to his old friend's widow.

And as Henry Biddulph was an honest man and given to making up his mind suddenly, he sat down to break fast with the firm determination that he would put matters to the test and settle it one way or another. Then he worked himself almost into a brainfever thinking how he was to do it,

Mary was in the garden when he arrived, but came in soon after. Her hair was disarranged, and she was looking very pretty, dressed in pink cotton, and when she saw Biddulph a woman's intuition told her that her trial had come. Almost unconsciously she sat down facing the jar. It seemed to give her help.

Now that Biddulph had come, all his courage had fled, and he talked about everything except what he come for, casting about how to begin.

At last his wits and his courage came to his rescue, and with that solemnity of manner which shyness always imparted to him he said:

"Mrs. Tilbury, don't you find it very dull here?"

"Dull? not at all," was the prompt reply, and then the voice fell,-"though things are different now."

"I find living alone very dull," said Henry stolidly.

"You? Why, you've lived alone forwell, all your life."

"Yes; but I can't do it much longer. I suppose I shall have to marry." "Suppose!" cried Mary

ironically; "you must not sacrifice yourself. There are other ways out of the difficulty-you might live with your sister."

"I once thought," said Biddulph, pursuing the even tenor of his remarks, for he was determined now to say his say, and she should not laugh him out of it-"I once thought you might find it dull also. What is life alone?"

The question seemed to open a large field of speculation, and Mary stared hard at the table-cloth, her heart beating a little faster than she liked.

"And if I am dull and think of marriage, and you are dull, why should not you think of it also? I am sure, if you would have married me, I could have made you happy," he went on, and his words were like the man, very simple. "I'd stand by you and love you."

Mary winced and the color left her

gave them birth, I must now be the only remaining witness.

Such is my apology for what now follows; in excuse for any mistakes of dates, I must plead my inability from the failure of eyesight to verify my references.

Like Roebuck and John Mill, I first made acquaintance with Maurice through John Sterling, though not for their reason that he was too shy and reticent to be got at directly. All thoughtful young men who knew of Maurice were already aware that his stores of wisdom were great, but found it hard to get at them. My cousin, Charles Buller, was a fellow undergraduate of Cambridge with Maurice and John Sterling. Sterling was introduced by Charles Buller to his (Charles Buller's) mother and her sisters, Lady Louis, and my mother. John Sterling's warm heart, frank and genial disposition, and brilliant intellect made him universally welcome. The poems and philosophy of Wordsworth and Coleridge were a special bond between him and my aunt, Lady Louis, and in her house I first heard from him, if not the name of Frederick Maurice, certainly that of "Eustace Conway." This philosophical novel, as I may call it, was written after Maurice had left Cambridge, and was editing the Atheneum while studying law. It was accepted by the publisher, Mr. Colborne, after it had been cut down to half its original length, and was published in 1835 by Mr. Bently, successor to Mr. Colborne. In the interval Maurice had become a clergyman, and, as his sister Priscilla told me, had endeavored to get back the copyright, as he thought it was not right, or at least not expedient, that one in holy orders should publish a novel. Coleridge, for whom Maurice had always a profound reverence, though he never saw him, spoke highly to Sterling of the book. To so enthusiastic a friend as Sterling himself it seemed the opening of a new era of life and light. It was, indeed, a day of great revivals in Church and in State, and of a corresponding enthusiasm, which was as great if not so wild in its hopes as

that which Wordsworth describes as existing in his youth. And Sterling was right in believing that Maurice was to play, and had already begun to play, a most important part in the day then dawning.

I read the book, but was disappointed to find that it did not correspond to the expectations I had formed from Sterling's account of it. My own youthful ideals of life did not seem to be there. But in the following year a younger contemporary of Maurice at Oxford, Henry Butterworth, gave me to read Maurice's "Subscription no Bondage," then just published. It was the word I was wanting to hear said. There are moments, I suppose, for every man in which by a flash of unexpected light he sees into the life of things; and such a discovery and declaration came to me, as to many others, in this pamphlet. Not that I knew or cared anything about the Thirty-nine Articles, but with an interval of returning health after long illness had come the need for some key and clue to the mystery of all this unintelligible world beyond what could be found in Peter Sterry, Law, and Madame Guyon. This key and clue Maurice declared rather say, announced-to be found in the science and study of theology, properly understood. Theology is the study of the character of God in his relations with man. In these relations consists the government of the world. God's state is kingly and his kingdom rules over all; every human interest of thought and feeling, all the relations of the family, the nation, and the Church are interests and institutions of his kingdom.

The doctrine was not new, but Maurice had come to set it forth in the new form which it needed that it might be intelligible and suitable for the present age. It was the new corn, "which cometh year by year out of the old fields." It may be seen in Maurice's reference in later years to this pamphlet that he was conscious of its permanent worth and importance, while he freely declared that he had been mistaken in supposing that the actual subscription to the Articles should or could be continued. And it is noticeable that

among those on whom “Subscription no Bondage" made a deep impression was John Mill, a man for whom Maurice had respect and regard, but whom he once spoke of to me as one whose mind had an ever extending circumference, though he could never find a centre for it. It is likely enough that, after the training he had from childhood, he owed it to Maurice that the existence of such a centre was even a probability to him. If my memory is not at fault, Maurice so spoke in a tone of regret, but without any of that severity of judgment which he certainly expressed in a published letter to me on the same subject. And a like set-off to Mill's favorable opinion of "Subscription no Bondage" may be found in his autobiography. In the same way Maurice and Carlyle gave contradictory estimates of each other. I remember how, when I had read to Maurice the pathetic description in "Sartor Resartus" of the human conscript on whom the lot of ignorance had fallen, he said with scornful indignation that it was the description of a man lying down drunk in a pot-house; yet about the same time he told me one day, with manifest pleasure and sympathy, that on his meeting Carlyle in the street that afternoon Carlyle had said to him, "I always feel loyal to you." And then, about a year later, when Maurice was expressing his admiration to me for Carlyle's Lectures and his reverence for the man, he added that he feared the feeling was not reciprocal, but that Carlyle thought him a sham. I believe that these estimates, though contradictory, were all sincere. These men felt the intellectual power and moral earnestness of each other, though these forces had failed to pass from opposition into harmony.

In the spring of 1836 I ascertained through Sterling that Maurice, who was now appointed to the chaplaincy of Guy's Hospital, would like to have a pupil to read with him for Oxford or Cambridge; and after a correspondence, of which Maurice's share has been given in his life, I went to live with him for about six months. Dur

ing the remaining thirty-six years of his life he always seemed to me to be the same man with whom I had thus first become acquainted, though in truth his mind and character were always in full growth and expansion in every direction. He was very shy, and therefore reserved and silent till some subject stirred him to an enthusiasm which carried him away. He felt his shyness painfully. He reproached himself with being unpractical, as indeed he often was, in small matters; and he suffered much from deep depression, always, I think, liable to return, though never so great after his happy marriage with o e who, in this as in all things, was his helpmeet. I remember once he was half murmuring to himself, "The world is out of joint;" his sister Priscilla, who kept house for him, cheerfully replied, "Then you must set it right." And he rejoined, with great earnestness, "Ah, that is the misery of it. You know Hamlet goes on,

O cursed spite

That ever I was born to set it right. And it was this conviction that he had been sent into this disjointed world, and that he was unequal of himself to the task, which so habitually weighed upon his spirit. When we read his letters together with the record of his actions at all important moments, we seem to see two men, not the less in contradiction because one is understood by the other. The perfect healthiness of the humility with which he habitually speaks of himself and his shortcomings makes it impossible to doubt that this humility was thoroughly sincere. But then, out of this sense of weakness comes a consciousness of power and resolution to act, which are no less sincere and which do completely master the others. That "modest stillness and humility" so became him that there was nothing of awkwardness, but only the frank and genial courtesy of a gentleman. There is no one to whom I would sooner give that name.

When I recall the image of my old friend there rises with it that of an