Strengthened by such support from opposite quarters, we may sum up Kant's argument in favor of the transcendental or à priori character of this and the other categories in this short sentence:

"That without which no experience, not even the simplest perception of a stone or a tree, is possible, cannot be the result of repeated perceptions.'

There are those who speak of Kant's philosophy as cloudy German metaphysics, but I doubt whether they have any idea of the real character of his philosophy. No one had dealt such heavy blows to what is meant by German metaphysics as Kant; no one has drawn so sharp a line between the Knowable and the Unknowable; no one, I believe, at the present critical moment, deserves such careful study as Kant. When I watch, as far as I am able, the philosophical controversies in England and Germany, I feel very strongly how much might be gained on both sides by a more frequent exchange of thought. Philosophy was far more inter national in the days of Leibniz and Newton, and again in the days of Kant and Hume; and much mental energy seems wasted by this absence of a mutual understanding between the leaders of philosophic thought in England, Germany, France, and Italy. It is painful to read

One

the sweeping condemnation of German metaphysics, and still more to see a man like Kant lectured like a schoolboy. may differ from Kant, as one differs from Plato or Aristotle, but those who know Kant's writings, and the influence which he has exercised on the history of philosophy, would always speak of him with respect.

The blame, however, does not attach to the English side only. There are many philosophers in Germany who think that, since the days of Hume, there has been no philosophy in England, and who imagine they may safely ignore the great work that has been achieved by the living representatives of British philosophy. I confess that I almost shuddered when in a work by an eminent German professor of Strassburg, I saw the most advanced thinker of England, a mind of the future rather than of the present, spoken of asantediluvian. That antediluvian philosopher is Mr. John Stuart Mill. Antediluvian, however, was meant only for AnteKantian, and in that sense Mr. Stuart Mill would probably gladly accept the name.

Yet, such things ought not to be: if nationality must still narrow our sympathies in other spheres of thought, surely philosophy ought to stand on a loftier pinnacle. -Fraser's Magazine.

CHAPTER I.

"BRINDISI, August. "DEAR HARRY, Our plans are all formed. We start from this on Tuesday for Corfu, where we have secured a small cutter of some thirty tons, by which we mean to drop down the Albanian coast, making woodcocks our object on all the days pigs do not offer. We are four-Gerard, Hope, Lascelles, and myself-of whom you know all but Lascelles, but are sure to like when you meet him. We want you, and will take no refusal. Hope declares on his honor that he will never pay you a hundred you lent him if you fail us; and he will-which is more remarkable stillbook up the day you join us. Seriously, however, I entreat you to be one of us. Take no trouble about guns, &c. We are amply provided. We only ask yourself. "Yours ever, GEORGE OGLE.

"If you cannot join at Corfu, we shall rendezvous at Prevesa, a little town on the the care of the Vice-consul Lydyard.” Turkish side, where you can address us, to

This note reached me one day in the late autumn, while I was sojourning at the Lamm, at Innspruck. It had followed me from Paris to Munich, to Baden, the Ammergau, and at last overtook me at Innspruck, some four weeks after it had been written. If I was annoyed at the delay which lost me such a pleasant companionship, for three of the four were old friends, a glance at the postscript reconciled me at once to the disappointment - Prevesa, and the name Lydyard, awoke very sad memories; and I do not know what would have induced me to refresh them by seeing either again. It is not a story, nor is it a scene, that I am about to relate. It is one of those little incidents which are ever

occurring through life, and which serve to remind us how our moral health, like our physical, is the sport of accident; and that just as the passing breeze may carry on its breast a pleurisy, the chance meetings in the world may be scarcely less fatal!

I have been an idler and a wanderer for years. I left the army after a short experience of military life, imagining that I could not endure the restraints of discipline, and slowly discovered afterwards that there is no such slavery as an untrammelled will, and that the most irksome bondage is nothing in comparison with the vacillations and uncertainties of a purposeless exis

tence.

I was left early in life my own master, with no relatives except distant ones, and with means, not exactly ample, but quite sufficient for the ordinary needs of a gentleman. I was free to go anywhere or do anything, which, in my case at least, meant to be everlastingly projecting and abandoning-now determining on some pursuit that should give me an object or a goal in life, and now assuring myself that all such determinations were slaveries, and that to conform to the usages by which men sought success in public or professional life was an ignoble drudgery, and unworthy of him who could live without it.

In this unsettled frame of mind I travelled about the world for years at first over the cognate parts of the Continent, with which I became thoroughly familiar - knowing Rome, Paris, Vienna, and Naples, as I knew London. I then ran all over the States, crossing the Rocky Mountains, and spending above a year on the Pacific coast. I visited China and India. I came-I will not say home, for I have none-by Constantinople, and thence to Belgrade, where I made the acquaintance of a Turkish Pacha, then governor of Scutari in Albania, and returned along with him to his seat of government. A vice-governor of Prevesa induced me to go back with him to that unpromising spot, assuring me how easy I should always find means of reaching Corfu or Italy; and that, meanwhile, the quail-shooting, which was then beginning, would amply reward me for my stay.

Prevesa was about as wretched a village as poverty, sloth, and Turkish indifference could accomplish. The inhabitants, who The inhabitants, who combined trade and fishing ostensibly,

really lived by smuggling, and only needed the opportunity to be brigands on shore. Their wretched "bazaar" displayed only the commonest wares of Manchester or Glasgow, with Belgian cutlery or cheap imitation jewellery. But even these had no buyers; and the little stir and life of the place was in the cafés, where the brawny natives, armed to the teeth, smoked and lounged the live-long day, and, to all seeming, fulfilled no other duty in existence.

I suspect I have an actual liking for dreary and tiresome places. I believe they somehow accommodate themselves to a something in my temperament which is not misanthropy, nor mental depression, nor yet romance, but is compounded of all three. I feel, besides, that my imagination soares the more freely the fewer the distractions that surround me; but that I require just that small amount of stimulant human life and its daily cares suggest to prevent stagnation.

I was at least six days at Prevesa before I was aware that her Britannic Majesty had a representative there. It was in a chance ramble down a little alley that led to the bay I came upon the British arms over a low doorway. It was a very poorlooking tumble-down house, with a very frail wooden balcony over the door, distinguished by a flagstaff, to be doubtless decorated on occasion by the proud flag of England.

Framing I forget what imaginary reason for inquiry, I entered and knocked at a door inscribed "Consular hours from—” and then a smudge of paint obliterating the rest and leaving the import in doubt. Not receiving any answer to my summons, I pushed open the door and entered. A man in his shirt-sleeves and slippers was asleep on a very dirty sofa, and so soundly that my entrance did not disturb him. Á desk with some much-worn books and scattered papers, a massive leaden inkstand, and a large official seal, were in front of him; but a paper of Turkish tobacco, and a glass of what smelt to be gin, were also present, and from the flushed cheek and heavy breathing of the sleeper, appeared to have been amongst his latest occupations.

It is not necessary I should record our conversation. In his half-waking and not all sober state he had mistaken me for a British sailor who had been left behind somewhere, and was importuning to be sent

on to England, but whose case evidently had inspired scant sympathy.

"I'll not do it!" grumbled out the Consul, with his eyes more than half closed. "You were drunk, or a deserter -I don't care which. My instructions are positive, and you may go to the dfor me. There now, that's your answer, and you'll not get any other if you stayed there till dusk."

"I suspect you mistake me, sir," said I, mildly. "I am a traveller, and an English gentleman."

"I hate gentlemen, and I don't love travellers," said he, in the same drowsy voice as before.

"Sorry for that, but must ask you all the same if my passport permits me to go into Italy ?"

"Of course it does. What sort of traveller are you that does not know that much, and that if you wanted a visa, it's the Italian should give it, and there's no Italian or Frenchman here. There's no one here but a Russian, Strantopskyd his eyes-good morning ;" and he again turned his face to the wall. I cannot say what curiosity prompted me to continue our little-promising conversation, but there was something so strange in the man's manner at moments-something that seemed to indicate a very different condition from the present--that I determined at all hazards to linger on.

"I don't suppose the sight of a countryman can be a very common event in these regions," said I," and I might almost hope it was not an unpleasant one!"

"Who told you that, my good fellow ?" said he, with more animation than before. "Who said that it gave me any peculiar pleasure to see one of those people that remind me of other times and very different habits ?"

"At all events I, as an individual, cannot open these ungracious recollections, for I never saw you before,-I do not even now know your name."

"The F. O. list has the whole biography. 'Thomas Gardner Lydyard, educated at All Souls, Oxford, where he took first-class in classics and law; was appointed cornet in the 2d Life Guards, 6th 18-; sent with Lord Raycroft's Mission to Denmark to invest His Christian Majesty with the insignia of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. Contested Marcheston, 18-, and was returned on a petition.' I'll finish

what's not in the book-backed Queen Mab at seven to two-got a regular cropper-had to bolt, and live three years in Sweden-took to corn-brandy and strong cavendish, and ended as you see-V.C. at Prevesa. Is not that a brilliant ending for a youth of promise? do you remember in your experience, as a man of travel, that you can match it?"

By this time he had risen to the sitting posture, and with his hair rudely pushed back by his hands, and his face grown red with passion, looked as fierce and passionate as high excitement could make a man.

"I've heard your name very often," said I calmly; "Close and St. John used to talk of you constantly; and I remember Moresby saying you were the best rider of a flat race amongst the gentlemen of England.”

"I was better, ten times better, across country. I could get more out of my horse than any of the so-called steeplechaseriders; and as I seldom punished, the betting men never knew when my horse was distressed. Close could have told you that. Did he ever tell you that I was the best cricketer at Lord's? What's that?" cried he, suddenly as a small door at the end of the room opened and closed again, almost instantly. "Oh, it's dinner!-I suppose if I had any shame I should say luncheon, 'for it's only two o'clock, not to say that the meal itself will have small pretensions to be called a dinner. Will you come and look at it ?"

There was nothing very hearty in the invitation, as little was there any courtesy ; but the strange contrast of this man's shabby exterior, and the tone in which of a sudden he had burst out to speak, excited an intense curiosity in me to see more of him; and though I was not without some scruple as to my right to be there at all, I followed him as we walked into the inner room.

A young girl, whose pale careworn face and gentle look struck me more than the elegance of features I afterwards recognised, curtsied slightly as we entered.

"A distressed B. S., Marion," said the Consul, introducing, me; "my daughter, sir-I'm not aware of your name." "Lowther."

"Lowther, then-Mr. Lowther, Miss Lydyard; that's the regular form, I believe. Sit down and let us have our soup;" and

as he spoke he proceeded to ladle out a smoky compound in which rice and fragments of lamb were freely mingled.

"This is all you will get for dinner, Mr. Lowther, and so secure what solids come to your share; and here is such wine as we drink here. It comes from Patras, and has its fine flavor of resin."

I ate and drank freely, and talked away about the place and the people, and at last induced my host to speak of himself and his own habits. He fished and shot, he said, some years before, but he had given up both; he also had an Arab nag or two, but he sold them-in fact, as time wore on, he had abandoned everything like pastime or amusement, and now droned away life in a semi-stupor, or between gin and sleep. 66 Capital fellows these Albanian brutes for letting a man have his way. No one asks how you live, or with whom. The hogs in a stye are not less troubled with a public opinion. Except once that the Pacha sent me an offer for Marion, I don't know that I have ever had a state communication since I took up my post."

The young girl's face flushed crimson, but she never spoke, nor had I yet heard the sound of her voice.

"My Russian colleague," continued he with a savage laugh, grew half terrified at the thought of my influence here if my daughter became a Sultana, and got some fellow to write a letter in a Paris newspaper to denounce the British intrigue, and declare that I had become a Mussulman: and the F. O. people wrote out to me to inquire if it were true; and I replied that, as I had not owned a hat for five-and-thirty years, I wore a turban when I went out, but as that was an event that didn't happen above twice or thrice a-year, they needn't mind it, and that if her Majesty made a point of it, I'd not go out any

more.

"After that the official fellows, who seemed to have forgotten me before, never gave me any peace-asking for returns of this and reports of that. How many piastres the Pacha gave his cook-how many kids went to a pilaff-how many wives to a small harem-what was the least a man could live on in the English service and whether keeping men poor and on the prowl was not a sure measure to secure them of an inquiring and inquisitive disposition.

"I take it, they must have liked my des

patches, for not a month passed that they did not poke me up. At last there came a young fellow this way; he was on a walk down to Thessaly, he said, to see Mount Olympus; he hurt his foot, and he stayed here several weeks, and he wrote them a despatch in my name, and said what a stunning fine thing it would be to make all this country and the Epirus Greek; and that we should checkmate the Russians by erecting a rival state and a heterodox church, and I don't know what else. He got up his Greek theology from Marion, here her mother was from Attica-and he made believe that he knew all the dogmas."

I stole a look at Marion, but as quickly withdrew it, for she was deadly pale, and looked as if about to faint.

"Marion knows," continued he, "all the fine reasons he gave for the policy, and how it was not to be confounded with what the Greeks call the Grande Idée-no Byzantian renaissance humbug at all, but some sort of protectorate state, with England, France, and Italy, I think, as the protecting powers; and, in fact, he got to be so plausible, and quoted such marvellous names, that F. O. rose to the bait, and asked to have further information; but, by that time, he had gone away, and we never saw more of him."

The young girl rocked to and fro in her chair, and fearing she would fall off in a faint, I half arose to catch her, when a look so imploringly sad as to go to my heart arrested me, and I sat still, and to avert attention from her, asked the Consul some questions as to the value of the project he had written about.

"I suppose it was about as wise as such things generally are," continued he; "it may have had its little grain of sense somewhere, and all its disadvantages required time to develop. He was a shrewd sort of fellow that William Hope that was his name; he borrowed twenty pounds of me, and he sent it back too, and a very pretty writing-desk to Marion, and a box of books; and he said he'd come back some fine day and see us, but he has apparently forgotten that, and it's now two years and a half we have never heard of him. Is it not, Marion ?"

"Two years and eight months," said she, calmly; but her lips trembled in spite of her.

I was not sorry when our chiboucks

were introduced, and the young girl had a fair pretext to steal away; for I saw with what a struggle she was controlling her emotion, and what a relief it would be to her to escape notice.

The Consul was so pleased to have any opportunity to relieve his mind that he talked away for hours, and of his most intimate concerns. In inveighing against the hard lot that sentenced his wearing out his last years of life in such a place, he told me his whole history. There was but one point of any doubt; whether Marion's mother had been a wedded wife or not I could not discover. She was dead some years, and he spoke of her with more feeling than he seemed well capable of showing. She had died of that peculiar form of disease which is found in the lowlying lands of Greece, and the seeds of the disorder he had already detected in Marion. "There is a little short cough, without effort, but when I hear it it goes to my heart," said he, "for I know well that there lurks an enemy nothing can dislodge. You hear it now, listen!" cried he-and he held up his hands to impose silence, but I heard nothing.

I sat on till evening, chatting as smokers will do in that broken and unconnected fashion that admits of anything being taken up, and as lightly abandoned. There was not a little to interest in a man whose mere incongruity with his station imparted a strange turn to all his opinions and judgments, and who even in his banishment tried to follow the events of a world he was destined never to share in. For many a year he had thought of nothing but how to escape from this dreary spot-to exchange with any one and for anything; but now with something like a dread of civilization he hugged himself in the thought of his exile, where he could be as barbarous, as neglectful, and as degenerate as he pleased.

Of this same savagery one trait will suffice to indicate the extent. Prevesa was formerly a yacht station where men frequently came in the woodcock season or for the quails; but a terrible brigand outrage, in which two Germans and an English naval officer were killed, put an end to all such visits. Lydyard declared that he never regretted an incident that freed him from all intrusion of strangers, and averred that he at least owed a debt of gratitude to the Klephts.

When I wished him good-night he was far too deep in the gin-flask to make his words impressive; but as he told me he'd like me to come up often and sit with him, I determined to accept his invitation so long as I lingered in the neighborhood.

CHAPTER II.

I stayed on five weeks at Prevesa, for though I gave my evenings to the Consul, I passed every morning with Marion. I never saw a girl whose society had the same charm for me. Heaven knows there could scarcely have been so dreary a spot, nor one where life had fewer pleasures; but there seemed a capacity for enjoyment in her mind, which, whether for sun or sky or shore, for breezy mountain or dark nestling wood, could extract its own delight and be happy.

I had seen enough even on the first day I met her to be aware that Hope had not made a merely passing impression upon her heart, and I was cautious to avoid all that might revive the memory of his name. This reserve on my part seemed actually at length too much for her patience, for in one of our long walks she suddenly asked me if I had never known him.

66

No," replied I, "never; and I have been guardedly careful not to ask you about one of whose intimacy with you I feel jealous."

"How do you mean jealous?" asked she, turning on me those large full eyes that reminded of the Homeric simile, the "ox-eyed."

66

Perhaps my word was ill chosen," said I, in some confusion; "but what I tried to convey was the discomfiture I felt on thinking that there had been one who walked with you where we are walking, and whose words, it might be, interested you as much, or more, than mine."

"Yes, it is true," said she, softly. "Which is true ?" asked I, in a low voice.

"That he loved me!" said she, in the same unaltered tone.

"And you;" but I caught myself at once, and, shocked at the ungenerous daring, turned it off by saying, "I should like to hear more of him; tell me what you know of his history or belongings."

"I know nothing, except that he was poor as ourselves; that whatever he should become in life must be his own achievement; that he was friendless and alone."