where are the friends of our early days; where are those who sat on the same bench with us at school, who studied their Virgil or Cicero in the same class with ourselves, who shared in all our boyish diversions, and who, so far as man could judge, seemed to have as strong a grip upon life as ourselves? Alas, for the old, old story! The flower has been destroyed, and the shadow has flitted by; the silver thread has been broken, and the golden fillet has been rent in twain. We, ourselves, are still plodding on with weary, and, it may be, with faltering steps; now up and now down; and, spite of all our efforts, scarcely able to hold our own in the battle of life, till there are times enough when, were it God's good will, we could almost envy those who started in the race with ourselves, but who, beaten down and discomfited, broken utterly and hopelessly, have long since disappeared for ever from the course, but too glad to close their eyes upon the world, in the blessed hope of opening them again in that better land where there shall be no more hunger or thirst, no more suffering or pain, and where God, leading His children to the fountains of the waters of life, shall wipe away for evermore the tear of sorrow from the eyes which have wept their fill. When we were boys at school how glibly the old proverb used to run upon our tongue, Tempora mutantur, et nos cum illis, Times are changed, and we are changed with them; but it is only when year has followed year with such rapid succession that age is upon us almost before we had begun to think of its approaches, that we fully appreciate that times indeed are changed, and that we are changed with them. Not that I think there is anything in all this to make an honest, simple-hearted man melancholy or

sad. There are times when my thoughts wander away to the past, and when the bygone years come before my mind so vividly that, for the moment, I seem to feel the earnest pressure of hands that have long since turned to dust, and to hear the sound of voices that long years ago spoke their last word upon earth; and, as I wake with a start from my reverie, I think that I should be less than a man if I did not find the tear trembling in my eye, if I did not find my heart beating somewhat more quickly than usual within my breast, if I could think without emotion of the graveyards where I saw true and faithful friends laid to their long, last rest. But such thoughts do not make me melancholy. God forbid. I suppose there are few of us who, at one time or another, have not lost a dear and faithful friend. But, if we were faithful to him in life, and if, at the last solemn moment, as we clasped his hand for the last time, and whispered into his ear our burning words of hope, of love, of trust eternal in the tender mercies of Him to whose bosom he was hastening, we also bade him remember that, as we had been faithful to him in life, as we were faithful to him in death, so, too, with a fidelity that should never swerve, with a loving remembrance that should never grow cold, would we be faithful to his memory for evermore--I think there is nothing to make us sad or melancholy in the recollection of such a scene. Such scenes should but remind us of the day that is to come for ourselves. They should but stir us up to do our duty all the more earnestly, all the more honestly, all the more faithfully, in that state of life in which God's good providence has placed us; that so, when our brief span is exhausted, we may, in the trusting assurance of that duty faithfully and truly done,

close our eyes upon a world that, at its best, was never more than a place of exile-that so, we may rejoin those whose fight was shorter than our ownthose who were summoned to their rest and their reward long before ourselves. They should but remind us that time is passing onwards with its never-flagging steps-that every day the world is slipping more and more surely from beneath our feet-that every day which is added to the past does but make the inevitable end one day nearer for us all.

But, to put an end to these vague abstractions, which have been forced upon me, so to speak, by the task which I have undertaken in promising to pen the simple narrative which will form the subject of this book, I think, in all sober earnestness and reality, that nothing will so forcibly remind a man of the flight of time, and of the mutability of all human things, as a work such as that which I have entered upon in commencing this tale. You will, dear reader, understand more clearly what I mean, when I tell you that, at the very commencement, I must ask you to go back with me in imagination, I won't say to the beginning of the present century, but, at all events, to a period when it was still comparatively young. If, as a necessary consequence of such a request, it follows that I, the narrator of this history, am getting on in life, what can I do but confess the fact (I was going to say the melancholy fact, but I retract), and remind you that my gray hairs and my growing years may possibly be my misfortune, but that they, certainly, are not my fault, inasmuch as I am in no way responsible for them. Yes, I must ask you to go back with me a good many years, to the time when England was only just

recovering from her long fears of Napoleon and the threatened French invasion, and when Waterloo was just as fresh in men's minds as Inkerman and Balaclava are in our own. I must ask you to accompany me (always in imagination) to one of the northern counties of England-let us say, Yorkshire. The time is five o'clock on a bright summer's afternoon, and the place is a quiet country village in the very heart of that rich and luxuriant county. The hay harvest is all over, and the reaping of the fields of waving corn has fairly commenced. Men, women, and children are all out, engaged on the work. None are left at home except the old and infirm, so that the village has quite a deserted look; and nothing breaks the stillness of the scene except that indescribable hum which sounds at once so soothingly and so pleasantly on a summer's afternoon, telling, as it does, of all nature at peace and rest, except, perhaps, the busy bee which flits so unceasingly about the flowers, and the varied insects which seem to find it almost too much trouble on this drowsy evening even to give out their usual hum or drone. Through the midst of the village there runs a small river, and all the cows of the parish, that can manage to make their way to it, are standing up to their knees in the stream, although they also seem almost too lazy to drive away, with a sweep of their long tails, the flies which torment them so unmercifully. Presently, the rector and his wife drive by in a low carriage drawn by two handsome ponies. The rector drives at a very leisurely pace, whilst his wife lounges comfortably at his side. A groom in a very smart livery sits in a little seat behind, bolt upright, and with his arms folded upon his breast. He looks decidedly ill at ease, and as if he would

very much prefer to imitate the more comfortable position of his mistress, if the proprieties of life and the dignity of groomship would permit such an unheard-of innovation. The rector (of whom we shall have more to say a little later) is a small, thin man, with gray hair, and with a pale and fretful, but, withal, intellectual face. He was educated for the bar, but the rectory of Atherby becoming vacant, and the presentation belonging to a member of his family who offered it to him, he forsook the bar, at which it must be confessed he had not attained a very high position, and entered the Church. When I have added that he is the younger son of an earl who was very glad to have him thus provided for, the rectory of Atherby being worth some two thousand a year, I have said all that is required in this place concerning him, The lady who lounges with such an aristocratic air at his side is a very different personage. She is very tall, and of commanding presence. Her large Roman nose tells of high breeding, whilst every gesture and movement show that she is one who is accustomed to move amongst the upper circles of society. However, like many another member of the upper ten thousand, her fortune was scarcely equal to her blood, and report says that she was glad enough to accept the rector of Atherby when he made her an offer of his hand. It is not to be supposed that the high-born rector and his aristocratic wife immure themselves the whole year round in such an out-of-the-way place as Atherby. The rector has no such overstrained notions of duty as this would imply. He deems that he has done all that can possibly be expected of him when he has paid ninety pounds a-year to a curate, who has to undertake all the work of the parish, and maintain