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A CONVERSATION ON BOOKS.

BY THE EDITOR.

MAGAZINES.

Spider. Our neighbours are trying to set up a club for periodicals Will you join in it, Arachne ?

Arachne. I am not sure that I should like it. I think it would result in reading nothing but the magazines, and not very much of them. I should feel as if a continual stream of-let me see-Bath buns were passing before me, and I had just time to snatch the sugar plums off the top of each without ever getting to the solid part.

Spider. The sugar plums would still be there for the next person, luckily. Yes, I see it would result in something of the kind, unless each house kept the numbers for a long time. But you do

not object to stories in serials, like the people who will never read a story till it is complete.

Arachne. On the contrary, I rejoice in being debarred from looking on to the end. I also think that the speculation and discussion a really good story excites while coming out in this manner is a very good employment for tongues, and obviates gossip, or, rather, it is gossip all the same, but it can do no one any harm.

Spider. Periodicals are not all stories though.

Arachne. And one great use in them is in bringing forward papers too brief or of too ephemeral an interest to stand alone.

Spider. Yet you decline to join this club.

Arachne. I decline the having an unlimited amount of them poured upon me, without the power of selection on my part.

Spider. You need not read what you don't like.

Arachne. Partly I don't trust myself with the temptation of having something exciting and unwholesome at my elbow; partly I don't wish to leave it in the reach of my young friends; and partly I don't wish my subscription to maintain what I disapprove.

Spider. Yours would not make much difference.

Arachne. What is popularity made up of, but the breath of insignifi

cant atoms?

Spider. Well, what would you advise me to read or let alone? Arachne. A sweeping question for one who does not profess to read all the periodicals in existence.

Spider. Only tell me what you know to be safe. There, I do believe you are going to begin with the Old Quarterly and Edinburgh.

Arachne. Don't be a goose and despise them. I don't agree with all they say, especially when they meddle with Church matters, which

they do not understand; but you will get no harm out of them, for most subjects are treated on sound principles with religion below them. I regret very much the modern custom of mixing the very opposites in reviews, as in the two or three clever Reviews which I need not mention.

Spider. Is it not a good thing to hear both sides?

Arachne. We should have our choice. I think it is hard that we should not be able to get a sight of an argument by a good Churchman without having close beside it some sceptical speculation or half-flippant, half-sneering comment, taking for granted that all beliefs are relinquished.

Spider. Then you would not take in those Reviews that profess to give all sides ?

Arachne. No; I would only read such papers as were specially recommended, leaving the whole to those who are obliged to see all the evils to be combated.

Spider. And you do read the Church Quarterly. Some of the papers. are very difficult.

Arachne. Yes, but there is always some clearing of one's mind on some important point, or explaining what work is to be done.

Spider. Now for the Monthlies.

Arachne. Macmillan's is one of the best in a literary point of view. Mrs. Oliphant always writes her best there, and the articles on practical matters are very good, though sometimes there are speculations I cannot like or approve.

Spider. You were always fond of your old Blackwood.

Arachne. I used to think it one of the safest and wisest of magazines; but I have been much concerned at the two stories that have lately appeared, John Caldecott' and 'Dr. Wortle's School,' and I feel less confidence in consequence in the magazine.

Spider. I suppose the Cornhill is the cleverest ?

Arachne. It sometimes has excellent articles, and is always amusing, not often putting in anything undesirable. But I do not know enough of that stamp of magazine of which it is the leader to discuss it freely. There are several more, generally named from parts of London, which always have some novels of a fair though not a high' order, and quantities of lighter tales fit to amuse a railway journey.

Spider. You dropped the Argosy because it was so sensational. Arachne. The first two volumes of the Argosy long long ago were admirable, but it has been on a lower level ever since.

Spider. Good Words and the Day of Rest are very much alike. Arachne. Good Words has generally commanded high literary talent, but was not uniformly careful in excluding stories that are simply painful, such as 'Macleod of Dare.' There are sometimes unorthodox sentences in its graver articles; but on the whole it is a great boon.

Spider. I have delighted in 'Sarah de Berenger.' Poor Hannah Dill is a very fine character; and now I see Miss Ingelow is going to give us a changeling story called Don John' in the Day of Rest.

Arachne. Where Mrs. O'Reilly has been the great attraction, though I find that I like her children's tales better than her full grown ones. they are rather too wordy, and written too much from a distance to suit for reading to the poor as well as I should have expected.

Spider. The Churchman's Companion seems to me to improve year by year.

Arachne. Its serious and instructive articles are some of the best I ever see. The stories vary; some are weak, but those now beginning are of high promise.

Spider. For children, Aunt Judy is the best of all; but I think it grows older, and is fitter for twelve years old and upwards than for quite little ones.

Arachne. Yes, Little Folks and the Chatterbox do best for them; but nothing has ever quite taken the place of the Magazine for the Young. Spider. Then there are the Parish Magazine and Friendly Leaves and the Dawn of Day for the school-children and young servants.

Arachne. It was a good move to separate the Advertiser from Friendly Leaves, so as to enable the G. F. S. associates to be spoken to separately.

Spider. You know our dear Madgie de la Moth takes in the Watchword the magazine for the Society for Watchers and Workers; and in the Christmas number there is a most beautiful vision, by the author of the Gate of Paradise,' a sort of practical dream growing out of St. Christopher and the Madonna di San Sisto.

Arachne. Do you know that odd numbers of magazines are always welcome to the Gravesend Mission to out-going ships? Sometimes a whole volume can be made up by putting together the waifs of many quarters.

STRAY PEARLS

FROM THE

MEMOIRS OF MARGARET DE RIBAUMONT, VICOMTESSE
DE BELLAISE.

CHAPTER II.

A LITTLE MUTUAL AVERSION.

I HAD cried half the night, and when in the morning little Nan wanted to hear about my ball, I only answered that I hated the thought of it. I was going to be married to a hideous old man, and be carried to France, and should never see any of them again. I made Nan cry too, and we both came down to breakfast with such mournful faces that my mother chid me sharply for making myself such a fright.

Then she took me away to the still-room, and set me for an hour to make orange cakes, while she gave orders for the great dinner that we were to give that day, I knew only too well for whose sake; and if I had only known which orange cake was for my betrothed, would not it have been a bitter one! By and by my mother carried me off to be dressed. She never trusted the tiring woman to put the finishing touches with those clumsy English fingers; and besides, she bathed my swollen eyelids with essences, and made me rub my pale cheeks with a scarlet ribbon, speaking to me so sharply that I should not have dared to shed another tear.

When I was ready, all in white, and she, most stately in blue velvet and gold, I followed her down the stairs to the grand parlour, where stood my father, with my brothers and one or two persons in black, who I found were a notary and his clerk, and there was a table before them with papers, parchment, a standish, and pens. I believe if it had been a block, and I had had to lay my head on it, like poor Lady Jane Grey, I could not have been much more frightened.

There was a sound of wheels, and presently the gentleman usher came forward, announcing the Most Noble the Marquis de Nid de Merle, and the Lord Viscount of Bellaise. My father and brothers went half way down the stairs to meet them, my mother advanced across the room, holding me in one hand and Annora in the other. We all curtsied low, and as the gentlemen advanced, bowing low, and almost sweeping the ground with the plumes in their hats, we each had to offer them a cheek to salute after the English fashion. The old marquis was talking French so fast that I could not understand him in the least, but somehow a mist suddenly seemed to clear

away from before me, and I found that I was standing before that alarming table, not with him, but with something much younger—not much older indeed than Eustace.

I began to hear what the notary was reading out, and behold it was 'Contract of marriage on the part of Philippe Marie François de Bellaise, Marquis de Nid de Merle, and Eustace de Ribaumont, Baron Walwyn of Walwyn, in Dorset, and Baron de Ribaumont in Picardy, on behoof of Gaspar Henri Philippe, Viscount de Bellaise, nephew of the Marquis de Nid de Marle, and Margaret Henrietta Maria de Ribaumont, daughter of the Baron de Ribaumont.'

Then I knew that I had been taken in by the Prince's wicked trick, and that my husband was to be the young Viscount, not the old uncle! I do not think that this was much comfort to me at the moment, for all the same, I was going into a strange country, away from every one I had ever known.

But I did take courage to look up under my eyelashes at the form I was to see with very different eyes. M. de Bellaise was only nineteen, but although not so tall as my father or brother, he had already that grand military bearing which is only acquired in the French service, and no wonder, for he had been three years in the Regiment de Condé, and had already seen two battles and three sieges in Savoy, and now had only leave of absence for the winter before rejoining his regiment in the Low Countries.

Yet he looked as bashful as a maiden. It was true that, as my father said, his bashfulness was as great as an Englishman's. Indeed, he had been bred up at his great-uncle's château in Anjou, under a strict abbé who had gone with him to the war, and from whom he was only now to be set free upon his marriage. He had scarcely ever spoken to any lady but his old aunt-his parents had long been deadand he had only two or three times seen his little sister through the grate of her convent. So, as he afterwards confessed, nothing but his military drill and training bore him through the affair. He stood upright as a dart, bowed at the right place, and in due time signed his name to the contract, and I had to do the same. Then there ensued a great state dinner, where he and I sat together, but neither of us spoke to the other; and when, as I was trying to see the Viscount under my eyelashes, I caught his eyes trying to do the same by me, I remember my cheeks flaming all over, and I think his must have done the same, for my father burst suddenly out into a laugh without apparent cause, though he tried to check himself when he saw my mother's vexation.

When all was over, she highly lauded the young gentleman, declaring that he was an example of the decorum with which such matters were conducted in France; and when my father observed that he should prefer a little more fire and animation, she said—' Truly, my lord, one would think you were of mere English extraction,

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