Omega of her life. I have seen her feelings appealed to, and I have smiled in half-pity, half-scorn at the appellants. None ever gained her ear through that channel, or swayed her purpose by that means. On the contrary, to attempt to touch her heart was the surest way to rouse her antipathy, and to make of her a secret foe. It proved to her that she had no heart to be touched : it reminded her where she was impotent and dead.

Never was the distinction between charity and mercy better exemplified than in her. While devoid of sympathy, she had a sufficiency of rational benevolence; she would give in the readiest manner to people she had never seen-rather, however, to classes than to individuals. "Pour les pauvres" she opened her purse freely -against the poor man, as a rule, she kept it closed. In philanthropic schemes, for the benefit of society at large, she took a cheerful part. No private sorrow touched her; no force or mass of suffering concentrated in one heart had power to pierce hers. Not the agony in Gethsemane, not the death on Calvary, could have wrung from her eyes one tear.

I say again, Madame was a very great, a very capable woman. That school offered for her powers too limited a sphere; she ought to have swayed a nation: she should have been the leader of a turbulent legislative assembly. Nobody could have browbeaten her, none irritated her nerves, exhausted her patience, or over-reached her astuteness. In her own single person, she could have comprised the duties of a first minister and a superintendent of police. Wise, firm, faithless; secret, crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and insensate-withal perfectly decorous-what more could be desired ?-Villette.

IN THE CLASSE.

One morning, coming on me abruptly, and with the semblance of hurry, Madame Beck said she found herself placed in a little dilemma. Mr. Wilson, the English master, had failed to come at his hour, she feared he was ill; the pupils were waiting in classe; there was no one to give a lesson; should I, for once, object to giv

ing a short dictation exercise, just that the pupils might not have it to say they had missed their English lesson ?

"In classe, madame? I asked.

"Yes, in classe: in the second division."

"Where there are sixty pupils," said I; for I knew the number, and with my usual base habit of cowardice, I shrunk into my sloth, like a snail into its shell, and alleged incapacity and impracticability as a pretext to escape action. If left to myself, I should infallibly have let this chance slip.

"Come," said Madame, as I stooped more busily than ever over the cutting out of a child's pinafore, "leave that work."

"But Fifine wants it, Madame."

"Fifine must want it, then, for I want you."

And Madame Beck did really want and was resolved to have me as she had long been dissatisfied with the English master, with his short-comings in punctuality, and his careless method of tuition. . . She, without more ado, made me relinquish thimble and needle; my hand was taken into hers, and I was conducted down stairs. When we reached the carré, a large square hall between the dwelling-house and the pensionnat, she paused, dropped my hand, faced, and scrutinized me.

"Will you," said she, "go backward or forward?" indicating with her hand, first, the small door of communication with the dwelling-house, and then the great double portals of the classes or school-rooms.

“En avant,” I said.

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But," pursued she, cooling as I warmed, and continuing the hard look, from the very antipathy to which I drew strength and determination, "can you face the classes, or are you over-excited?"

She sneered slightly in saying this-nervous excitability was not much to Madame's taste.

"I am no more excited than this stone," I said, tapping the flag with my toe: "or than you," I added, returning her look.

"Bon! But let me tell you these are not quiet, decorous English girls you are going to encounter.

Ce

sont des Labassecouriennes, rondes, franches, brusques, et tant soit peu rebelles."

I said: "I know; and I know too, that though I have studied French hard since I came here, yet I still speak it with far too much hesitation-too little accuracy to command their respect: I shall make blunders that will lay me open to the scorn of the most ignorant. Still I mean to give the lesson."

"They always throw over timid teachers," said she. "You will not expect aid from me, or from anyone. That would at once set you down as incompetent for your office."

I opened the door, let her pass with courtesy, and followed her. There were three school-rooms, all large. That dedicated to the second division, where I was to figure, was considerably the largest, and accommodated an assemblage more numerous, more turbulent, and infinitely more unmanageable than the other two.

The first glance informed me that many of the pupils. were more than girls-quite young women; I knew that some of them were of noble family (as nobility goes in Labassecour), and I was well convinced that not one amongst them was ignorant of my position in Madame's household. As I mounted the estrade (a low platform raised a step above the flooring), where stood the teacher's chair and desk, I beheld opposite to me a row of eyes and brows that threatened stormy weather -eyes full of an insolent light, and brows hard and unblushing as marble. Madame Beck introduced me in one cool phrase, sailed from the room, and left me alone in my glory.

I shall never forget that first lesson, nor all the undercurrent of life and character it opened up to me. Then first did I begin rightly to see the wide difference that lies between the novelist's and the poet's ideal jeune fille, and the said jeune fille as she really is.

It seems that three titled belles in the first row had sat down predetermined that a bonne d'enfant should not give them lessons in English. They knew they had succeeded in expelling obnoxious teachers before now; they knew that Madame would at any time throw overboard a professeur or maîtresse who became

unpopular with the school-that she never assisted a weak official to retain his place that if he had not strength to fight, or tact to win his way-down he went. Looking at "Miss Snowe," they promised themselves an easy victory.

Mesdemoiselles Blanche, Virginie, and Angélique opened the campaign by a series of titterings and whisperings; these soon swelled into murmurs and short laughs, which the remoter benches caught up and echoed more loudly. This growing revolt of sixty against one, soon became oppressive enough; my command of French being so limited, and exercised under such cruel constraint.

Could I but have spoken in my own tongue, I felt as if I might have gained a hearing. All I could do now was to walk up to Blanche-Mademoiselle de Melcy, a young baronne, the eldest, tallest, handsomest, and most vicious-stand before her desk, take from under her hand her exercise-book, remount the estrade, deliberately read the composition, which I found very stupid, and as deliberately, and in the face of the whole school, tear the blotted page in two.

This action availed to draw attention, and check noise. One girl alone, quite in the background, persevered in the riot with undiminished energy. I looked at her attentively. She had a pale face, hair like night, broad strong eyebrows, decided features, and a dark mutinous, sinister eye. I noted that she sat close by a little door, which door, I was well aware, opened into a small closet where books were kept. She was standing up for the purpose of conducting her clamor with freer energies. I measured her stature, and calculated her strength. She seemed both tall and wiry; but so the conflict were brief and the attack unexpected, I thought I could manage her.

Advancing up the room, looking as cool and careless as I could, I slightly pushed the door, and found it was ajar. In an instant, and with sharpness, I had turned on her. In another instant she occupied the closet, the door was shut, and the key in my pocket.

It so happened that this girl, Dolores by name and a Catalonian by race, was the sort of character at once

dreaded and hated by all her associates: the act of summary justice proved popular: there was not one present but in her heart liked to see it done. They were stilled for a moment; then a smile—not a laugh -passed from desk to desk: then-when I had gravely and tranquilly returned to the estrade, courteously requested silence, and commenced a dictation as if nothing at all had happened-the pens travelled peacefully over the pages, and the remainder of the lesson passed in order and industry.

“C'est bien," said Madame Beck, when I came out of class, hot and a little exhausted.

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"Ça ira." She had been listening and peeping through a spyhole the whole time.-Villette.

MR. EARNSHAW'S DEATH.

Now, Mr. Earnshaw did not understand jokes from his children: he had always been strict and grave with them; and Catherine, on her part, had no idea why her father should be crosser and less patient in his ailing condition than he was in his prime. His peevish reproofs wakened in her a naughty delight to provoke him she was never so happy as when we were all scolding her at once, and she defying us with her bold saucy look, and ready words. .

After behaving as badly as possible all day, she sometimes came fondling to make it up at night. Nay, Cathy," the old man would say, "I cannot love thee; thou 'rt worse than thy brother. Go say thy prayers, child, and ask God's pardon. I doubt thy mother and I must rue that we ever reared thee! That made her cry at first; and then being repulsed continually hardened her, and she laughed if I told her to say she was sorry for her faults, and beg to be forgiven.

But the hour came, at last, that ended Mr. Earnshaw's troubles on earth. He died quietly in his chair one October evening, seated by the fireside. A high wind blustered round the house and roared in the chimney; it sounded wild and stormy, yet it was not cold, and we were all together-I a little removed from the