pointing out errors and shortcomings in many accepted works, supplies a formidable list of omissions and errata in that "Nouvelle Biographie Générale " which is, as a whole, one of the most creditable products of French scholarship, and one of the most inseparable companions of the modern student. Under the head of Nicholas Bérauld, Jean de Langéac, Gratien du Pont, Liset, &c., erroneous information, or no information at all, is supplied. I have rarely had occasion to find serious fault with this work, but have failed to find in it the name of Touchard-Lafosse, the author of "Les Chroniques de l'Eil de Boeuf," or that of Sacchetti, one of the best known of the Italian novelists-a man who appears in English biographical dictionaries, and whose works have been reprinted by the famous Typographical Society of Milan. Mr. Christie draws attention to the fact, which most who use the work must have noticed, that whereas the letters A-P occupy more than forty volumes, somewhat less than six are assigned to those from Q to Z. It is not known to him, or indeed to many students, and so is worth recording, that this state of things was due to the somewhat tardy discovery that printing the "Biographie," as it had commenced, would entail on the publishers a heavy loss. The scheme was accordingly terminated with a rapidity and a want of completeness fatal to the claims of the book to Occupy the foremost position which might otherwise have been assigned it. It is pleasant to find Mr. Christie, in the preface of his volume, while dismissing as unimportant or inaccurate most references in English works to the subject of his biography, singling out for praise some essays upon Étienne Dolet which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine. Not less pleasant is it to hear a man who occupies a quasi-ecclesiastical position as Chancellor of the Diocese of Manchester, rebuking the ignorance and bigotry which are current in England, and speaking of Rabelais as "the great genius of the age," and asserting that "a word of praise from him is itself sufficient to confer an immortality." That Mr. Christie should, in dealing with the life of the great printer and martyr, speak indignantly of what, in a phrase quoted in the book, Peacock calls "philoparaptesism” - roasting by a slow fire for the love of God-is natural. His eloquent protest is none the less good to read in days like the present, wherein “ an influential party, led by men of exalted rank and high culture, greatly regret and would gladly see restored" the times which celebrated Church festivals by such slaughter as that of Dolet. I, for one, share with Mr. Christie the comforting assurance that reactionary effort is futile and ridiculous, and that "an unsurpassable barrier is placed between the good old times and this nineteenth century." SYLVANUS URBAN, H CHAPTER XXXIII. Defter was neither Faustus nor But Falsehood turned the other way? to ELEN had been carried off into the drawing-room, to be entertained by her hostesses until it should be time summon the gentlemen from their wine to the tea-table. Everything had evidently been prepared for the reception of the new great lady, who had a house in town, in due form. But, with all their pride in being the aunts of such a nephew as Gideon and of such a niece as Helen, it was clear that the Miss Skulls, though in their own house, could not contrive to feel at home. The old themes of talk between the great house and the Rectory had faded out with all these years; Helen had changed, and yet all that might have caused the change suggested nothing to say. She seemed, they could not help thinking, a great deal more like the brotherless orphan than like the heiress and the bride who ought to have been full of Gideon and Copleston, and eager to learn from her new aunts what she ought to think and do. Gideon's own talk, too, about railways and coal-pits made them feel as if they were sitting upon a powder-magazine to which the train had been laid. Helen asked them no questions, and let their attempts to interest her in the increasing deafness of old Grimes ramble round her in vain. It was very far, indeed, from her intention to be impolite, but she was more tired out than she herself knew. She fancied herself ashamed at being so little moved by her return to the neighbourhood of her old home: whereas, in truth, her seeming apathy did not arise from the want, but from the fear, of feeling. She could not dare to let herself feel. . . . And so Bertha Meyrick was married! . . . "Yes, better die of a bullet than a heart-break," was the refrain to her thoughts that kept on ringing through her mind. She had her own views of what love and marriage ought to mean; and it was better for Alan to be safely dead than to have married one who could have cared for him so little as to marry another man before she could possibly have learned that her first lover was not still alive. Were all women, even Bertha, like herself? and was it by the very nature of their sex that they sold themselves to any satisfactory bidder? She was catching Gideon's own views about such things. "Well-I must drift on, like the rest," was the end that all her thoughts came to. No wonder the Miss Skulls thought her changed and dull. She made them feel dull themselves. Presently Miss Sarah was summoned mysteriously from the drawing-room; and, when she came back, it was to say, with an awful gravity, "Gideon says you are to go to him in the study at once. Something very strange has happened, Helen-something very strange, Anne. Mr. Waldron has called to see Christopher. I wonder what he can want to say? And Christopher is so little fitted to face excitement nowand Mr. Waldron once threw a lamp at his head, and broke it; he has never got over that shock, and never will. I wish Mr. Waldron would ask to see me. But, luckily, Gideon is there." "Gideon wishes me to see Mr. Waldron ?" asked Helen, startled at last into taking an interest in one of her new aunt's speeches. "He could not mean such a thing. You must be mistaken, indeed." "Gideon is not the one to make mistakes, nor I to be mistaken. If he wishes you to see that man, he has good reason for it, you may be sure," said Miss Sarah, whom something in Helen's tone did not please. "Helen must see him, too.' Those were his words." "Must see him?' Well, then, if he said must," said Helen, "I will go." She meant a great deal more than met even her own ears. If she must henceforth drift, and surrender all that was left of her blind and useless will to the control of blinder chance and circumstance, then drifting could only mean implicit obedience to the will of Gideon Skull, in great things and small. If Walter Gray had been right, it was the only semblance of a duty left her: one cannot go on fighting with the wind all one's days. Where there is nothing to be gained by battle, one must at last, if only for sleep's sake, give oneself up to the blast, and let it drive one whither it will. To do something, anything, simply because she was told she must, was almost a luxury in her present mood, which was not likely to prove only a mood. As for seeing Waldron, that was nothing, after she had been brought to see Hillswick steeple again. It was better to meet the face of an enemy than to look upon that of a friend. "Anne," said Miss Sarah, as soon as Helen had left the room, "there is something wrong between her and Gideon, mark my words. I hope he has got a good wife as well as a rich one, because I have always been strongly of opinion, and always shall be, strange as some people may think it, that a bad wife is a decidedly objectionable person, however rich she may be. I have always thought that, and nothing will ever make me think differently. And there was always something-something, you know-about Helen Reid. She never would take advice any more than that table, and was as obstinate as she was high." "But she went when she was told," said Miss Anne. "Yes, when Gideon said must," said Miss Sarah. "That's just where it is, Anne. I should like to see the man who would say 'must' to me!" Helen went straight to the study, and did not pause before entering after she had once touched the handle of the door. There, by the light of a pair of candles, she saw her husband, his uncle, and Walter Gray. If this was drifting, it was drifting as we drift in dreams. It was so startling that she could scarcely feel surprise. She had been summoned to an interview with Victor Waldron, and she found herself face to face with Walter Gray. meant, or how it was possible. Bertha was married. And what might be ? She did not ask herself what it Everything was possible, since did anything mean, whatever it Nevertheless, she was too much absorbed in this new recognition to note the expression of her husband's face as he watched the meeting between his false wife and her treacherous lover. He was bent upon probing to its depth every glance of the eye, every movement of the hand, every change of colour. And who ever looked for things of this sort that he failed to find? Helen's eyes did become filled with a sudden light, her hand did tremble, and her colour came and went again. Such signs may mean a thousand things, from mere confusion and bewilderment to anything short of actual guilt: for actual guilt is the only thing that looks like innocence in the eyes of those who judge by visible signs. How far Helen's deepest heart was innocent there is no need to say. Sheer bewilderment, and nothing more, was the root of all she showed now. And there is nothing which looks so much like guilt as bewilderment, as all who do not judge by visible signs know well. In the eyes of Gideon Skull, who found what he looked for, she was already judged and doomed. His revenge was justified before it had begun. He almost smiled as he said, " Mr. Victor Waldron-my wife, Mrs. Gideon Skull-but I forget: you two have met in Hillswick before." He looked at Victor now. Victor, with the thought of his unanswered letter still stabbing him, only bowed. But Gideon could not fail to read the sublimity of hypocrisy in that bow. It was not returned by Helen: and Gideon read something worse than hypocrisy in her greater honesty. "I am glad of the chance," he said, "that brought you to call upon my uncle Christopher, while I and Mrs. Gideon Skull "-he seemed to find a zest in dwelling upon the whole of her married name" are here. It will save a great deal of trouble to us all: and, when a thing has to be done, the sooner the better. No time like now for an unpleasant thing." "As you say no time like now," said Waldron. "And so--” "Yes-and so. You had better hear my-my wife's business with you before we come to your business with my uncle, whatever that may happen to be. Do you remember the day when my wife's father, the late Henry Reid of Copleston, died?" "I don't think you need ask me that," said Victor. "Go onwith whatever you have to say. Assume that I forget nothing, if you please." He was speaking in this cold way to the man who had, like a scoundrel, as he held, tricked Helen-or rather say any woman—into a marriage she had learned to abhor. Gideon translated his tone into |