fallen in love with new men. Altogether my experience is rather mixed.

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I

Fred Vincy.-I am not fit to be a poor man. should not have made a bad fellow if I had been rich. Mary. You would have done your duty in that state of life to which it has not pleased God to call you.

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Mary.-I could not love a man who is ridiculous. Fred has sense and knowledge enough to make him respectable, if he likes, in some good worldly business, but I can never imagine him preaching and exhorting, and pronouncing blessings, and praying by the sick, without feeling as if I were looking at a caricature. His being a clergyman would be only for gentility's sake, and I think there is nothing more contemptible than such imbecile gentility. I used to think that of Mr Crowse, with his empty face and neat umbrella and mincing little speeches. What right have such men to represent Christianity—as if it were an institution for getting up idiots genteelly-as if

Mr Farebrother.-Young women are severe; they don't feel the stress of action as men do, though perhaps ought to make you an exception there. But you don't put Fred Vincy on so low a level as that.

Mary.-No, indeed; he has plenty of sense, but I think he would not show it as a clergyman. He would be a piece of professional affectation.

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Mr Farebrother.-Fred says frankly he is not fit for a clergyman, and I would do anything I could to hinder a man from the fatal step of choosing the

wrong profession. He quoted to me what you said, Miss Garth-do you remember it?

Mary. I have said so many impertinent things to Fred-we are such old playfellows.

Mr Farebrother.-You said, according to him, that he would be one of those ridiculous clergymen who help to make the whole clergy ridiculous. Really, that was so cutting that I felt a little cut myself.

Caleb Garth.-She gets her tongue from you, Susan, Mary.-Not its flippancy, father. It is rather too bad of Fred to repeat my flippant speeches to Mr Farebrother.

Mrs Garth.-It was certainly a hasty speech, my dear. We should not value our Vicar the less because there was a ridiculous curate in the next parish.

Caleb.-There's something in what she says, though. A bad workman of any sort makes his fellows mistrusted. Things hang together.

Mr Farebrother.-Clearly. By being contemptible we set men's minds to the tune of contempt. I certainly agree with Miss Garth's view of the matter, whether I am condemned by it or not.

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Mary. I don't love Fred because he is a fine match. Caleb.-What for then?

Mary.-Oh dear, because I have always loved him. I should never like scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in a husband.

Fred Vincy.-You do think I could do some good at this sort of work, if I were to try?

Caleb. That depends. You must be sure of two things you must love your work, and not be always

looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honourable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There's this and there's that-if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is-I wouldn't give twopence for him, whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn't do well what he undertook to do.

Fred. I can never feel that I should do that in being a clergyman.

Caleb.-Then let it alone, my boy, else you'll never be easy. Or, if you are easy, you'll be a poor stick.

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It makes me very happy, Mr Farebrother, that I've got an opportunity again with the letting of the land, and carrying out a notion or two with improvements. It's a most uncommonly cramping thing, as I've often told Susan, to sit on horseback, and look over the hedges at the wrong thing, and not be able to put your hand to it to make it right. What people do who go into politics I can't think it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few hundred

acres.

:

A man may do wrong, and his will may rise clear out of it, though he can't get his life clear. That's a bad punishment.

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Things may be bad for the poor man-bad they are; but I want the lads here not to do what will make

things worse for themselves. The cattle may have a heavy load; but it won't help 'em to throw it over into the roadside pit, when it's partly their own fodder.

I hold it a crime to expose a man's sin unless I'm clear it must be done to save the innocent.

The young ones have always a claim on the old to help them forward. I was young myself once, and had to do without much help; but help would have been welcome to me, if it had been only for the fellowfeeling's sake.

The soul of man, when it gets fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toad-stools, and no eye can see whence came the seed thereof.

(To his wife.)—A true love for a good woman is a great thing, Susan. It shapes many a rough fellow.

Marriage is a taming thing.

Mrs Garth.-It seems to me, a loss which falls on another because we have done right is not to lie upon our conscience.

Caleb.-It's the feeling. You don't mean your horse to tread on a dog when you're backing out of the way; but it goes through you when it's done.

There's no sort of work that could ever be done well if you minded what fools say. You must have it inside you that your plan is right, and that plan you must follow.

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Caleb.-It's a thousand pities Christy didn't take to business, Susan. I shall want help by-and-by. And Alfred must go off to the engineering—I've made up my mind to that. I shall make Brooke have new agreements with the tenants, and I shall draw up a rotation of crops. And I'll lay a wager we can get fine bricks out of the clay at Bott's corner. I must look into that: it would cheapen the repairs. It's a fine bit of work, Susan! A man without a family would be glad to do it for nothing.

Mrs Garth.-Mind you don't, though.

Caleb.-No, no; but it's a fine thing to come to a man when he's seen into the nature of business: to have the chance of getting a bit of the country into good fettle, as they say, and putting men into the right way with their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and solid building done-that those who are living and those who come after will be the better for. I'd sooner have it than a fortune. I hold it the most honourable work that is. It's a great gift of God, Susan.

Mrs Garth. That it is, Caleb. And it will be a blessing to your children to have had a father who did such work: a father whose good work remains though his name may be forgotten.

Celia Brooke. I will go anywhere with you, Mrs Cadwallader; but I don't like funerals.