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after as Ruskin knew them, matter and form together. The present neglect of form in Catholic pages is to me perplexing. Distinction and literary grace were of old cultivated by Churchmen at a period when the classic elegance had been forgotten. Bossuet thought it due to the Gospel that he should utter its truths in a style worthy of them. We, however, stand midway between the classics, which we have ceased to make our own, and the high modern authors whom we do not profess to know. A supreme English standard was given us in Newman, but how few are the traces of his influence on the religious publications that find a welcome among our people! Meanwhile the question I have raised, though urgent upon us during a good half-century, remains without an answer. What is to be the Catholic way of dealing with England's great literary achievement, the Authorized Version of the Bible?

Strong precedents favorable to a policy of assimilation or reconcilement are by no means far to seek. All through the Church's missionary campaigns, from St. Paul's speech on the Hill of Mars, it has been her maxim to build up rather than pull down. Her eclectic spirit is even a charge against her. Languages, philosophies, rites, festivals, antique places of pilgrimage, customs beyond number, she has absorbed them all. She vindicates her right to them by use and profit, as the man of science becomes lord of the elements which he controls. Latin was once the language of her persecutors, now it serves to express, with magnificent pathos, the liturgy, in

The Dublin Review.

which all day long she praises God. There is no reason why another tongue, spoken throughout an Empire to which the Roman was a province, should not yield her as great a homage in the Scriptures translated to do her harm, but now made to acknowledge her protection. For the Church is at last seen to be the true keeper of the Bible, having an indefeasible right to watch over it, wherever found.

Catholics, on the other hand, by recognizing the English Scriptures in their permanent literary form, would have taken a long stride towards the unity in all things lawful which is a necessary condition of their acting on the English world. To an extent which many do not realize we still speak a foreign language, not understood of the people whom we address. A common Bible, itself rich with the spoils of the mother tongue-not so much a creation of its own century as incorporating all that was precious from ages far past -would be a Catholic trophy, the well of English pure and undefiled to our successors, who must put off the speech of aliens that they may the better explain the universal creed. It is not, then, a thesis in literature that I have dwelt upon for its own sake, but an interest of deepest moment to religion. That Bible of the Imperial race, which we regard, and justly, as hitherto the most formidable hindrance in the way of conversion, might surely be turned to a means of Catholic triumph, were we courageous enough to deal with it as the Fathers dealt with Greek wisdom and the Popes with Northern customs and usages. der correction.

But I speak un

William Barry.

HARDY-ON-THE-HILL.

CHAPTER VIII.

BY M. E. FRANCIS

(Mrs. Francis Blundell.)
BOOK II.

The summer had waxed and waned, and now it was autumn again; not such a golden autumn as had witnessed the installation of the Leslies in the previous year, but wild and wet. Some of the corn was even yet unharvested and stood brown and sodden in the marshy fields; the roads and lanes were strewn with wet branches which the never-ceasing wind wrenched from the wayside trees. The dank grass of the pastures was half hidden in places by the fallen leaves, some still green, others a sickly yellow-none of the vigorous reds, and browns, and oranges, which as a rule enliven the autumn landscape, were to be seen this year. The floods were out in the neighborhood of the river seldom, indeed, had the springs been known to "break" so early in the season.

On one particular afternoon Richard Baverstock, seated opposite his daughter by the cottage-hearth, was in a mood that would have seemed to harmonize with the stormy condition of the world without, had it not been for a single item. He complained most bitterly of being dry.

"There, Father, do give over!" exclaimed Sheba impatiently, as she tossed a darned sock on to the pile which she had been mending. "It bain't half an hour since we've a-had tea."

"Tea?" said Mr. Baverstock, with the greatest disdain. "I tell ye, Sheba, it bain't tea as 'ull quench the drith o' my mouth!"

The girl made no reply, and after a while he went on with a kind of whimper:

"It bain't in rayson-'tis what I do tell 'ee! Here be I, so hale an' hearty as ever I've a-been in my life, I mid say. Gie I my crutch an' I'll get along the road as fast as any one. Ꭺ moderate glass an' a chat wi' a friend 'ud do I all the good i' the world. Yet ye do let I sit here day in an' day out, month arter month, all alone by mysel' an' feelin' that lonesome"

"Father, ye know I do have to go out to earn money for us both to live on."

"Psha!" exclaimed her father, with withering scorn. "You what mid be Mrs. Hardy o' the Hill, any day ye liked. Stephen Hardy told me so hisself t'other day."

"What!" exclaimed Sheba. "Ye never got talkin' to en o' sich a thing?" Old Richard wagged his head portentously.

"I did get a-talkin' wi' en though. I did think it my dooty. I did ax en straight out when he were a-goin' to keep his promise an' marry ye, an' he answered me back in them very words: 'It do depend on Sheba,' says he. 'She do know,' he says, 'she can be my wife any day she'd like to name.'"

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take no money fro' Stephen Hardy except what I can earn. 'Tis by his wish I bain't earnin' money i' the wold way, wi' field work an' trantin'; but if he has too much pride to wish me, what's to be his wife some day, to take wage from other folks, I've too much pride to take money fro' he wi'out it's as wage-an' I'll not take a penny more fro' he nor what I'd do from anybody else."

""Tis all a girt piece o' nonsense," growled Baverstock. "What be puttin' off weddin' for?-that's what I do want to know. Theer's no sense in it. An' it's crool hard on me. If you was once married 'tisn't here in this lonesome place I'd be bidin', but up-along at the Hill Farm. beggin' for tuppence I'd be my sonin-law 'ud not see I go shart-"

An' 'tisn't

Sheba's temper, never of the meekest, flared up.

""Tis hard on others so well as you," she cried hotly. "If you could content yourself wi' a quiet life an' every comfort, an' wasn't for ever cravin' for drink, there'd be nothin' to prevent my marryin' Stephen now. But you know I never could trust ye."

"Well," said Baverstock with deep indignation, "this is a pretty thing! So it's just to prevent your poor wold father havin' a happy home for his last days that you be a-holdin' out this road! Well, you be a reg'lar onnat'ral-" he paused for an epithet"Jezzybel! I be sorry now I done so much for ye. Let me tell you 'tis me what made Stephen Hardy think o' marryin' ye-there now! So ye needn't be that sot up! Your wold father musn't meddle, mustn't he? Well ye mid so well know as if it hadn't ha' been for your wold father the match 'ud ha' never been made up."

Sheba, who had sprung from her chair, dropped back again, pale and trembling.

"What do you mean?" she cried.

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"What do I mean?" repeated her father triumphantly. "I mean, 'twas me as axed Stephen Hardy to have ye -there now!"

There was a long silence-a silence so long that Richard had time to exchange triumph for alarm; never had he seen his daughter look so strange.

At length, however, she seemed to collect her energies and forced herself to smile.

"That's nonsense-talk, Father," she cried. "Stephen's not the man to do sich a thing. He bain't sich a fool as to marry a girl he don't care about, jist because her father axed him."

"Bain't he?" queried Richard, with returning courage; Sheba spoke quietly enough, though she looked so queer.

"Come, let us hear about it," she cried, still affecting incredulity. ""Tis one of your notions, Father. When do ye think ye axed him?"

"When? The night arter my accident, my maid-when I did think I weren't above an hour or two for this world. I axed en solemn, as a dyin' man 'ud be like to do."

"Was that it?" murmured Sheba, her great eyes seeming to grow larger with anxiety. "Did ye ax en to make ye a promise because ye were dyin'?"

"Nay, he wouldn't make no promise, my maid," returned Baverstock, now assuming a narrative tone, and being evidently pleased with his own importance. "He wouldn't make no promise an' he did tell I to my face as he'd never thought o' such a thing."

Sheba's lips parted, but she did not speak. Richard continued, chuckling—

"An' what's more, he did tell I as you'd never thought o' sich a thing. But as I told en straight out, I knowed better. 'Why,' I says, 'the maid have been fond on ye ever since you an' her were children. She've never thought o' no one else, an 'she've allus hankered arter you!"

"He wouldn't believe you!" interposed Sheba, huskily.

"He wouldn't at first, but when I did tell en about the watch an' about the bit of a note he wrote ye, what ye had hid away-"

"Father, you didn't tell en that!" exclaimed the girl-the words came in a sort of cry, but Mr. Baverstock, being now in the mood to prove his own powers of argument, continued emphatically

"Didn't I though? "Twas that what done the job. 'Well,' he says, 'I'll think on it'!-Why Sheba, what be the matter, my maid? What do make 'ee look at I like that?"

"Because I'll never forgive ye." she cried passionately: "never, never! Oh! it was wicked!"

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"Hush, there now, give over, Sheba! Ye didn't ought to say such things-I done it for the best, I'm sureHere he broke off to whimper, continuing in a deeply injured tone, "an' it done ye no harm, my dear-ye did ought to thank I for gettin' ye such a nice husband."

"He'll be no husband o' mine.", said Sheba. "Never! No, Father, I haven't fell so low as to let any man take me out o' charity. Ye've shamed mebrought me down to the dust, ye have, but I bain't come to that-I'll tell en so this very evenin'-I'll not let another night go over my head without his knowin'! I'll never eat another mouthful in his house, nor take another penny of his money. You an' me 'ull go on the tramp again-we'll earn our own livin' wi'out bein' beholdin' to Stephen Hardy."

"On the tramp!" gasped Baverstock. "Why, what good will that do us?"

"It'll do us that much good that I can get away from this place where I can never hold up my head again. We bain't beggars that we need live on Farmer Hardy's charity-'tis naught but that-naught but charity.

We'll

pack up to-morrow, and get the wold cart out an' see if us can't find a home where the folks won't be lookin' down on us."

She had dashed across the room while speaking, and possessed herself of her hat, and as the last words fell disjointedly from her lips, she opened the house door and rushed out.

Richard sat staring at the door with starting eyeballs and a dropping jaw, and presently began to cry like a child. Was there ever such a hard case as his? Deprived in five minutes not only of a prospective son-in-law and the hope of the comfortable home which, his daughter's obstinacy once conquered, could at any moment be theirs, but of all sense of security. They were to leave even the miserable roof which now sheltered them and to start again on their precarious wandering life.

"We'll get the wold cart out again," Sheba had said. Well did Richard know the discomfort of travelling in that old cart, and the hardships it entailed-cold, hunger, wet-while those occasional "tuppences" which alone brightened his existence were doled out at ever-lengthening intervals. They had often wandered thus for weeks at a time, halting at different places, and obtaining employment in potato-getting, or turnip-hoeing; formerly Sheba had occasionally persuaded her father to assist in these labors; in his present crippled condition that would be impossible; nevertheless, it would be almost as bad to sit shivering in the wagon or by the roadside, as he would probably be made to do now.

If he could only find his crutch, he would hobble off to the Blue Fox in search of the only consolation known to him, but it was Sheba's custom to hide it away in her room whenever she left home. Without its support her untrustworthy parent was comparatively harmless and previous to her en

forced absences she was wont to lock her door and carry off the key in her pocket. It was, indeed, unlikely that Richard, in his decrepit state, could have climbed the ladder leading to her room, but he had shown himself on various occasions so artful in his endeavors to circumvent her that she took care to provide against even the seemingly impossible.

As Baverstock, in the intervals of wiping his bleared eyes, suffered them to wander round the room, they fell all at once upon the door in question, and, starting from his chair, he exclaimed aloud:

before Sheba put her threat into execution-that was the puzzle.

"Maybe I mid find some one to advise me at the Blue Fox," he said to himself.

But, strange to say, although some of his cronies were weak enough to treat him, he received neither sympa. thy nor proffers of help. Even the boozers gathered together at the Blue Fox had conceived a certain respect for the girl whose self-sacrifice was known to all the country-side, and they refused to abet her father in circumventing her.

Richard was inebriated but not ex

"Why, she've a-forgot to take key hilarated when, at the landlord's inwi' her this time!"

In her frenzied anguish and excitement Sheba had, indeed, forgotten her usual precaution.

Baverstock's tears stopped as though by magic, and a cunning grin twisted his mouth as he shuffled across the room, supporting himself on the various pieces of furniture, and reaching the stairs, dragged himself slowly up them.

Sheba's room was but a small one, and the crutch was not very cunningly concealed, but stood propped up by the bed.

"Ah," chuckled Richard, "she did think I couldn't get up the stairs, and she did take advantage of I."

Having possessed himself of the needful support, he descended with great caution, and hobbled promptly out of doors. As he passed the shed, from which a portion of the battered wagon protruded, he paused to shake his fist at it.

"I'll get the better on ye yet!" he cried.

All the way to the Blue Fox he cogitated on the possibility of destroying the wagon. If that were once got rid of Sheba could not "toll him off" round the country. But how to get rid of it in the short time which must elapse

stance, he took his way home again, a thousand wild projects forming themselves in his muddled brain, all dealing with the wished-for abolition of the detested cart, but each in turn being rejected as unfeasible.

"It'll come to I yet, though," said Richard, as he stumbled across his own threshold. "It'll come to I if I do think long enough."

CHAPTER IX.

Mrs. Hardy was sitting by the window, making the most of the fading light, and humming to herself as she neatly inserted a patch in one of her best pillow-slips; suddenly she heard the outer door open and shut with a bang, and Sheba burst into the room.

"Back again, my dear?" said Rebecca, looking up in placid surprise. "I thought you reckoned to bide at home this afternoon."

Sheba looked round the room, her eyes were strained, her face eager, excited, miserable.

"Bain't Stephen here?"

"Nay, love, he bain't. He be out somewhere about the place."

"He bain't, though," returned Sheba. "I've been huntin' all round for nigh on an hour an' I can't find him nowheres."

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