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dience. Grace and faith will resist it, and make them lowly, gentle, willing, obedient, active, without relying on any works of their own. Whosoever withdraws his heart and senses from the bustle and noise of this world, looking for salvation through the blood and righteousness of Christ, will certainly find there that 'better part, which shall not be taken from him.""

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That day Julia remained for the sacrament. turned home feeling happier than she had done for some time; she had cast her burden upon Him who could alone bear it; she had sought God and found him, and peace was once more in her heart. It has been truly and beautifully remarked by some one, that "moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtue." Lady de Clifford felt this, and made no violent resolves; but a calm determination never to think of Italy, or anything connected with it, seemed to diffuse itself over her mind. On her return home little Julia ran into her dressing-room.

"Dear mamma," said she, kissing her, "how well you look ; like what you used to look."

“E vero, vero," chirped the starling that Cheveley had given her; the sound of the bird's voice for a moment sent the blood from her heart to her cheek; but, making a great effort, she turned to Beryl, who was taking off her things, and said,

"Take the bird down to Jones's room, Beryl, will you, for it disturbs me."

"Poor Pipola," cried little Julia, "do let me have him in the schoolroom, mamma?"

"No, love," replied Lady de Clifford, "he would disturb you at your lessons ;" and she blushed as she made the objection, for she felt it was a subterfuge; but, being so often there herself, the poor little starling would as much remind her of all she wished to forget, as if he had remained where he then was. Beryl took the bird: his mistress gave one last look at him as he left the room; and if, for a moment, tears gathered in her eyes, they only served to commemorate the first signal victory she had gained over herself.

From that day Lady de Clifford pursued "the even tenour of her way," and gradually began to regain the peace she had been so long a stranger to; her chief solace was in the instructive society of Mr. Osborne and his kind-hearted wife. She received few letters,

except from Fanny and her husband, and they breathed the very spirit of affection and friendship; in his last, Saville had mentioned that Mr. Herbert Grimstone had been appointed to a northern embassy, and had taken his departure the preceding week. The only drawback to the quiet enjoyment of her present mode of life was the occasional long country visits she had to pay over bad crossroads, with miserable posthorses. All newspapers she had eschewed, for they were sure to contain something to annoy her, one way or the other, and she had made a resolution that she would not be annoyed. She was sitting one evening on the lawn, looking at little Julia and Zoë running races, when she saw Mr. Osborne walking up the broad gravel walk of the "pleasaunce." She rose to meet him.

"Good evening, Mr. Osborne; what a lovely day this has been. I hope you are come to stay, and that you will allow me to send down to the rectory for Mrs. Osborne."

"Thank your ladyship, not this evening," replied Mr. Osborne, "for I have to go and see a poor man who lies dangerously ill five miles off; but as you say you never look at a newspaper, I could not resist bringing you this, and begging you to read the ablest and most eloquent speech, without exception, that I have read in a long time; it has made a tremendous sensation in London, and, politically speaking, has nearly annihilated Lord Melford."

"I have no great love for politics," said Julia, smiling; "but, to please you, I really think I could read a whole debate. What is it about?"

"Lord Denham and the colonies," replied Mr. Osborne, looking down the columns of the paper. "Ah, here it is. "The Marquis of Cheveley rose in reply."" Luckily, a garden seat was near, into which Julia sank; for at Cheveley's name, coupled with such unqualified approbation, the blood seemed to eddy in a whirlpool round her heart, and a sudden faintness came over her. "Dear Lady de Clifford, you are ill," said Mr. Osborne, anxiously.

“No, no, only a slight spasm; it will be over in a minute."

"I fear the grass may be damp, as the dew is falling; you had better not stay out."

"Oh, I am better now," said Lady de Clifford, rising.

"Which gate did you come in at a walk will do me good; I'll go as far as the lodge with you."

"I came by the lake, and left my horse at the other side of the ferry."

"Very well, then, we'll go across the park; that will be the shortest way," replied Lady de Clifford, taking Mr. Osborne's proffered arm.

During the walk, Mr. Osborne could talk of nothing but Cheveley's speech in reply to Lord Melford; and his praises were too sweet to Julia's ear for her to interrupt him. Nor was it till some time after she found herself alone that she was sufficiently composed to read it herself, while her heart responded in audible echoes to the "cheers" with which it was thickly interlined. Qh! what triumph has earth for us like the fame of those we love? Julia felt an indescribable pleasure in repeating over and over again every word Cheveley had uttered, and reiterating the plaudits he had received; in imagination, she heard every varied inflection of his deep, eloquent, and beautifully-modulated voice; what wonder, then, if she lingered

"By the lake with trembling stars inlaid, till earth was still, And midnight's melancholy pomp was on the distant hill.”*

* I know not who may be the author of these two beautiful lines, but I found them in Dr. Weatherhead's very clever and agreeable Pedestrian Tour through France and Italy. Simpkin and Marshall, 1834.

CHAPTER XIII.

"To be a beggar, it will cost the richest candidate every groat he has; so, before one can commence a true critic, it will cost a man all the good qualities of his mind, which, perhaps, for a less purchase, would be thought but an indifferent bargain."-SWIFT.

"My brain, methinks, is like an hourglass,
Wherein my imaginations run like sands,
Filling up time; but then are turn'd and turn'd,
So that I know not what to stay upon,
And less to put in art.'

BEN JONSON.

"His low and charmed voice made the still air so sweet, That bees might leave Hybla to seek honey there." Unpublished Play.

CHEVELEY had taken Saville's advice, and had forsaken the prison of Solitude to work on the treadmill of Society. And oh! the weary toil it was to him. "But another year," he thought, "and there will be no necessity for this sacrifice; and for her dear sake what would I not do?" The very homage he received in the world disgusted him; for he knew that it was not for himself, but his position; and that, had he been the most stupid or the most wicked of God's creatures, he would have been equally popular and equally caressed. The Savilles were still at Latimers, so that he felt every day more and more the desolation of the crowds in which he mingled; for companionship he had none.

Lord Melford had again made fruitless overtures to him, the result of which was a total cessation of all private intercourse between them. And, though gifted with no ordinary powers of eloquence, Cheveley had no ambition to be an orator; but he felt that he had no right to form part of the legislature of his country without defending her interests by exposing political profligacy whenever its nature or extent forced him so to do; and, roused both by justice and indignation at the flimsy equivocations and true Whig chicaneries by which Lord Melford had attempted to deny and defend some of his most undeniable and indefensible measures, he had made the able and magnificent speech at

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the beginning of the session which Mr. Osborne alluded to in the last chapter. If the congratulations of friends, the extorted praise even of opponents, and the universal celebrity it ensured him, could have made him happy, Cheveley ought to have been so; but when the mind is swayed by one master passion, what mere bubbles, formed and dissolved by a breath, are the greatest triumphs that do not relate to it! If he did feel anything like gratification at the sensation his speech had made, it was only when he thought that Julia would read it, and approve of the principles which dictated it, and the manner in which he had advocated them; he also felt a secret and natural satisfaction at the blow he had struck at the party of which the man he despised most on earth, Lord de Clifford, formed one of the tools and supporters. With him personally he had no intercourse whatever; but it provoked him to see a man, by dint of party spirit and puffery, maintain his footing in the world, whom, if his real character were known, the least fastidious would have shunned. Plato does not deserve all the credit he has got for saying to Speusippus, when his servant had been guilty of a great fault, "Do you beat that fellow; for I am angry with him, and shall go farther than becomes me;" for when others avenge us we are doubly avenged; it is the having none to do it for us that makes us use our own hot anger, and "go farther than becomes us."

It was this conviction that kept Cheveley out of Lord de Clifford's way; for he felt he could not trust himself with him. That he should hate his wife was no longer a mystery to him; for, as Seneca truly observes, ""Tis a damned humour in great men, that whom they wrong they'll hate;" especially should wives (as they are foolishly apt to do, when they writhe under them) venture to complain of their vices; for then they reward their interference like that of Prexaspes, and convince them, after a King Cambyses's fashion, that a continuance of their excesses only enables them to pierce the heart, and destroy life with a more unerring aim.

Oh, what an odious monster is an unprincipled pressgang! writing, telling, and propagating lies from morning till night. Smiling in the face, and stabbing in the back! Of all reptiles, scribbling underlings are the vilest. Who, from parasitical maggots, gloating on the meats of the rich man's table, turn into literary panders

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