herself that his absence was not the result of accident, but of some sudden whim. Still, she felt a vague dread, and could not sleep till she heard his steps on the stairs. Mrs. Dunder, who had magnanimously volunteered to sit up for the truant, had long since lapsed into the peaceful slumber of the virtuous, and Pearl, once sure that Philip was safe, was soon also asleep and dreaming of a happiness that might never more be hers, unless there were some conditon of life hereafter, as she sometimes fondly hoped, which her pleasant dreams foreshadowed. Philip, too, slept soundly, but his dream was but the shadow of the sad waking dream that had passed.

When philosophy balances up the ills and pleasures of life she will make but a bungling account if she omits our dreams for the reckoning. Who shall tell how much we suffer and enjoy in the lengthened hours of slumber?

A sick child lay by its mother's side, who, wearied with long watching, had fallen asleep.

"Mother, dear, I am well now," murmured the little sufferer, in a painless moment. One minute after the mother awoke, and told the child how she had dreamt that she had heard her voice saying she was well now, and calling her to walk in the meadows. Then she arose, and hand-in-hand they went for a long walk over the blessed fields, and gathered handfuls and handfuls of flowers, and hunted bright winged butterflies away-away over miles and miles of cowslip-sprinkled meadows. And at evening they returned and played with Mary and Emma and Alfred in the garden, singing and laughing till the twilight fell over their glee.

And all this passed in one minute of time, as the clock reckons. If the soul can live a day so long in sixty seconds of slumber, who shall say how much it may enjoy or suffer in a night? When I see a man with a wrinkled, haggard face, and a dull wretched eye, I think-there is a man whose dreams are bad. "Eccovi l'uorn ch' è stato all' Inferno." And when I meet one who under all the lines graven by daily care and suffering carries a quiet peace and a ready smile, I envy him his nights. Call no man happy till he is deadtill the light of eternity reveals the lost record of his dreams. The sun was far up over the hill when Philip awoke,

and Pearl, who had already breakfasted, was gone out for a walk, having first left a note with the landlady apprising Philip of her advent and whereabouts. His surprise was so unbounded that he could eat nothing, but hurried out in search of his most welcome and unexpected visitor.

Pearl had not walked far, her object being, as he surmised, not so much exercise, as a desire to escape the curiosity of Mrs. Dunder. She turned to meet him with a smile, so bright and loving, that his heart beat wild with delight. There was no mistaking Pearl's love now, as she stood there, just without the shadow of the hedgerow, with the mellow sunshine on her face, so beautiful in all the charms of gentle womanhood. Philip thought it was just as he would have liked his sister, his mother, to have looked. The guilty blush that often clouded her beauty-the fiery flash of suppressed passion that he had always seen latent in the depths of her dark eyes, seemed to havs passed from her life. He had left her the most beautiful of Magdalenes; she stood before him now the most beautiful of saints.

"What has happened, Pearl?" he asked as soon as the first transport of wonder and delight was over.

"Nothing has happened, brother. I only come to bid you good-bye."

"To say good-bye?" echoed Philip.

He looked earnestly into the deep tranquil eyes. No; there was nothing there to frighten him, yet he could not altogether forget that night on the bridge, where he first met her.

Pearl continued-"I am tired of London, brother, everything reminds me of what I would forget. I must go awayfar away, where I shall never see or hear of the people who have known me any more. You are not angry with me, brother, for seeking you here?"

"Angry, Pearl, with you?"

66

'No; I am sure you are not. sometimes, brother?"

"Always!"

You will think of me

She put her arm through his, nestling to his side, like a fond child, and so walked silently on till they came to the churchyard

Then Philip said

"Pearl."

"Yes, brother."

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"My mother's grave is here. Would you like to see it?” Pearl said, "Yes," and he led her through the graveyard to that lonely spot where reposed all that Philip held sacred in the land of his birth. A brief while they stood, hand-in-hand, silently gazing on that gray neglected stone. Then, wher Philip looked up, he met Pearl's tender eyes brimming over with tears.

"Oh, brother," she sobbed "you are happier than I.. I have not even a mother's grave to bind me to the world." Philip pressed her hand; he could find no words to reply. Her grief, like her love, was so violent that it beggared all language. He waited till the first paroxysm was past; then he stooped down, and plucking one of the fading flowers from the stone he placed it in the bosom of her simple black dress.

"Sister, our lives have not been happy; perhaps they never will be. I know little of your history, but I know that you have loved in vain, and so have I. Those passionate hopes are dead, Let our bitterness and regrets die with them. Let us bury them here in mother's grave, leave these scenes of sorrow and error, and go hand-in-hand in search of happier years.”

She hesitated, but only for a moment; then she raised her head and looked up into Philip's enquiring face. He quailed before that strong fearless gaze, that seemed to look into his inmost soul, and read the sad thoughts that lurked half conscious beneath his cheerful words. There was a slight compression of those wonderful Beatrice-Cenci lips, and a flash in the black eyes that hinted at a terrible expression he had seen there once before and hoped never to see again. But it quickly vanished, and she was once more the beautiful, gentle girl, that had bent over his sick bed and nursed him back to life and hope when both seemed lost.

"The grave is for the dead, not the living, brother; we must wait till our passions die before we talk of burying them. It will be in another grave, which I pray may not be made for many years, that you will bury your love for Emily Aldair. No, brother, you have been very kind to me, and I shall die the happier for having known you. But our paths. henceforth lie far asunder. I will carry this little flower with

me in token of your brother's love, and when I see it, I shall think of you, and think I see you happy with her you love. It will be so-shall be so-only hope, and all will be well."

She spoke with an earnestness that carried conviction in every tone. For the time Philip forgot the last night's sad farewell, and his sanguine young face glowed with the old passion. "You are my good angel, Pearl; God bless you for your kind, wise words and your dear sisterly love, and make your future as happy as your past has been miserable."

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Happy? Dear brother, I am joyful!

And Philip looked and saw as it were the face of an angel. A long time they lingered under the shadow of the green old church, and when at last Philip led his beautiful charge along the lanes towards the village inn, the poor peasantry stopped still, shading their eyes with their rude brown hands, to look at them as they passed, and went to their daily toil the happier for having seen so fair a sight. That afternoon Pearl bade her adopted sad farewell, and vanished from the unobtrusively as she had come.

(To be continued.)

brother a long, Greyhound as

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO.
ВОССАССІО.

I. HIS LIFE AND WHAT HE DID WITH IT.

ELLEIUS Paterculus is not an author of much repute

now-a-days: there is a lack of continuity about him

which destroys whatever value he might have otherwise had as a historian; he is a most unblushing flatterer: and, finally, the text of him is hopelessly corrupt. For all that he was a clever fellow, and the author of some happy sayings which are still remembered. His remark, for example, on the death of Qu. Metellus, the prætor, in B.C. 149, is singularly graceful:-" Hoc est nimirum magis, feliciter de vitâ migrare, quam mori." And here is a maxim, which, rendered into French,would pass muster as one of Rochefoucauld's own:"Ubi semel recto de erratum est, in præceps pervenitur; nec quis-quam sibi putat turpe, quod alii fuit fructuosum." And here again is a very pretty remark—all rank flattery of course,. for in reality everybody knows that she was a horrid old woman-about Tiberius' mother;-" Per omnia Deis quam hominibus similior femina; cujus potentiam nemo sensit nisi aut levatione periculi aut accessione dignitatis." But that remark of his which will best serve our purpose just now is one, of great shrewdness, to the effect that great intellects (like misfortunes) come in crops. He verifies this by a reference to names and dates, and the history of the eighteen hundred and odd years that have rolled away since he was gathered to his fathers, amply confirms the truth of the maxim. The great triumvirate of Greek tragic poets, the majestic dynasty of which Socrates was the keystone,. and the brilliant array of wit and wisdom, which adorned the courts of the first Roman emperors, prove the rule in ancient times. Nor in search of medieval and modern instances need we go far afield; for the reign of Elizabeth of England and the period of the First Republic can furnish a list of names which will compare favourably with the illustrious rolls of antiquity. The correctness of the observation of Paterculus has, however, been perhaps never more conclusively attested than by the simultaneous