fixed on Miss Morse with a deeper interest than they had ever yet shown in that young lady.

"Did you know," Ada burst forth, "that was written while he was very young, and he wanted in after years to prevent its going forth to the world in exactly the form in which it was written? It was a crude production. He failed to recognise, in his righteous hate of things unlovely, the deep, fair truths that lie at the base of all mythologies. He forgot that with all manʼs early conceptions of the Deity, man's own evil passions mingled, and the image of the grand, and true, and beautiful was marred and warped by the mirror minds that had to reflect it, as best they could, for others to gaze at."

"Ah, well," said Miss Maggie, still resting on the counter, "you don't think it's right for young minds, Miss Morse, to be taking up subjects of that kind too soon, do you?"

"Young minds and bodies learn how to breathe and to feed themselves," cried Ada. "They ought to learn how to think for themselves, and not be the slaves of horrible-horrible custom. It is so superb to try in one's little way to comprehend the thoughts of such men as Shelley-to feel, to some extent, one with such minds as his."

Miss Ada was gazing out at the blue sky that was resting on the rugged summits of the far-away hills that you could catch a glimpse of between the houses opposite. The older and the younger women were silent for a minute. The voice of practical Miss Macnamara broke two very different reveries

"Here is the book, Miss Morse."

Ada took the beautifully bound volume, and turned over its pages mechanically for a second or two. Presently she stopped and gave the book into "the other Miss Macnamara's" hand

"There! read that, Miss Maggie, and say if an Atheist, as you call him, could write so ?"

Miss Maggie read aloud with excellent emphasis

'Spirit of Nature! here,

In this interminable wilderness
Of worlds, at whose immensity
Even soaring fancy staggers.
Here is thy fitting temple;
Yet not the lightest leaf

That quivers to the passing breeze,
Is less instinct with thee:

Yet not the meanest worm

That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead,
Less shares Thy Eternal breath.

Spirit of Nature! thou!
Imperishable as this scene,

Here is thy fitting temple.'

'He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird:
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move,
Which has withdrawn His being to its own:
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath and kindles it above.'

"Why, the last part isn't there !" cried Ada. in the Adonais, the elegy on Keats.”

"It's

"Yes," said "the other Miss Macnamara," with a quiet smile, "I was quoting from memory. Listen to this, too," she went on. "It is the Ode to Heaven' a bit of it-

'Even the name is as a god,

Heaven! for thou art the abode
Of that power which is the glass
Wherein man his nature sees.
Generations as they pass,

Worship Thee with bended knees.

Their unremaining gods and they
Like a river roll away,

Thou remainest such alway.'

"And you think a man that had no belief in anything higher than mere matter, would have written thus ?

'For birth but wakes the Spirit to the sense

Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shapes
New modes of passion to its frame may lend :
Life is its state of action, and the store

Of all events is aggregated there,

That variegate the eternal universe:
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom

That leads to azure isles and beaming skies,
And happy regions of eternal hope.'

"Why," whispered Ada, in a sort of awe, "you know more of Shelley than I do."

To her Miss Macnamara, one or the other, had always been a Glenlow person, at best, a fairly intelligent seller of keepsakes, and here with wonder and, perhaps, a beneficial sense of half-humiliation, Ada Morse heard this Scotch woman, who had never been to any of the great cities, quoting a poet from memory, and evidently knowing far more about him than she did.

"I know something of him, and I love him," said Miss Maggie, simply.

66

"So you ought to," said her sister, who was looking for the price of the book. For you were excommunicated from the kirk because you read and admired him."

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That's, maybe, why I read and love him the more,' said "the other Miss Macnamara." "Poor boy! 'Tis like the mothers, love most the bairns that give 'em the most trouble."

66

"They are always the cleverest," said Ada.

"I'm right glad you read such books, and think about them, Miss Ada," said "the other Miss Macnamara," still in her half-reclining posture, and still with her eyes fixed on the fair young face that now bore a flush of interest.

"It's rather different from the time when you came in as a bairn to buy sticks or knives,' "said the more practical sister, "or at most one of those writing cases with 'Came ye by Athole lads, with the phillibeg' on it."

"Shelley is rather different sort of poetry from that, Jane," said the "other Miss Macnamara.' "Indeed, that's not poetry at all."

"I don't know so much about that," said Jane, stoutly. "Lines that can set a whole clan's heart beating faster, and can make men clench their claymores tighter, or that can make a great Highland laddie in the far countries snivel like a woman, must have some ring of poetry in them."

"Scotland has only produced one real poet that wrote in verse," said Ada. Being young, she had strong opinions, you see.

"And that's Robbie Burns," said "the other Miss Macnamara," rising erect and laying her hand on a volume in the open case behind her.

"And what about Sir Walter Scott ?" asked her sister. "He was only half a poet. He was a marvel at telling you of things going on outside you." "An objective writer," put in Ada. "Yes, that's the grand word. He could describe the fight between Roderick Dhu and Fitzjames, or Melrose Abbey, or Marmion's death, but he never takes hold of my heart and rings it like Robbie Burns does." And the speaker patted the volume on the shelf, lovingly. "What made you say just now, 'only one real poet that wrote in verse?" she asked Ada.

"Don't you think there are prose poems?" said Ada, who was quite fascinated by Miss Maggie's energy and mode of talking, more, perhaps, than by her ideas, which most of us, I dare say, would vote very crude and wanting in accuracy, after all.

"Did you ever read Thomas Carlyle ?" Miss Maggie answered one question, woman-like, by another. "Or George MacDonald? Ah George is my notion of a poet. Look at that beautiful novel of his—”

She paused for the name. Her sister, who was making up parcels for the post, gave it her. "Robert Falconer." "Yes, 'Robert Falconer.' That prayer of the old grandmother-what poetry and pathos are there! " "And indeed, in the whole of her character," said Ada.

"Yes-and then Robert's notion, as a boy, that if he got up among the storm-clouds and turned them over he'd find the lightning lying underneath like great forked tongues of fire. That's poetry to me."

"It's not proper electricity," said Jane.

"Are you reading Seory MacDonald's story that is coming out in the Glasgow Fierail?" asked Ada. "Jes. sure the the?

Agan ber sister gave her the name.

“Tes. . tha: poor mat in. Is there poetry in the drawing of him & Always seeking for the FatherGod. Wherever he wanders. Se goes out into the wild woods at night, and or the snapper he may find him. Always yearning and panting after Him in his poor bind way, and always coming back with the sac feeling that it is

the likes of Ein.."

for such as he to come across

“Like Lancelot searching for the Holy Grail," said Ada, softly, the guest was not for him."

“And do you mind how, when he's gazing on the sea one right, and the sky is a dark with clouds, save one far-away rifi mies and mies over the waters, where the moonlight streams through, and makes a small, bright silver patch far out to sea, he wonders if yon's the glimmer of His feet?"

“Oh!” said Aña, earnestly, with her eyes fall of tears, " that is poetry!"

It was a strange sight presenting itself to the strongly built young man who entered from an inner door just then. Miss Macnamara was tying up and directing her parcels with methodical care, but casting, now and again, glances, not unmixed with pride, at her clever sister. "The other Miss Macnamara" was standing with her hands folded in front of her, and her eyes fixed on Ada Ada was gazing again at the far-away blue sky resting on the rugged hills.

The young man who entered was of middle height. He was carefully, but not expensively dressed. His face, with his thoughtful grey eyes, would have been handsome but for the utterly bad set of teeth that the full black beard failed to hide. He was Miss Macnamara's younger brother. The next house communicating with