he did not mean any harm. She laughed now at the suggestion which had made her angry at the time, for to-night Lottie could afford to laugh. But when she heard the maid-servant come in, Lottie, wearied with her long vigil and longing for a breath of cool air after the confinement of the house, agreed with herself that there would be no harm in taking one little turn upon the slopes. The townspeople had mostly gone. Now and then a couple of the old Chevaliers would come strolling homeward, having taken a longer walk in the calm of the Sunday evening than their usual turn on the slopes. Captain Temple and his wife had gone by arm-in-arm; perhaps they had been down to the evening service in the town, perhaps only out for a walk like everybody else. Gradually the strangers were disappearing; the people that belonged to the precincts were now almost the only people about, and there was no harm in taking a little walk alone; but it was not a thing Lottie cared much to do. With a legitimate errand she would go anywhere; but for a walk! The girl was shy, and full of all those natural conventional reluctances which cannot be got out of women; but she could not stay in any longer. She went out with a little blue shawl folded like a scarf-as was the fashion of the time-over her shoulders, and flitted quickly along the Dean's Walk to the slopes. All was sweet in the soft darkness and in the evening dews, the grass moist, the trees or the sky sometimes distilling a palpable dewdrop, the air coming softly over all those miles of country to touch with the tenderest salutation Lottie's cheek. She looked out upon the little town nestling at the foot of the hill with all its twinkling lights, and upon the stars that shone over the long glimmer of the river, which showed here and there, through all the valley, pale openings of light in the dark country. How sweet and still it was! The openness of the horizon, the distance, was the thing that did Lottie good. She cast her eyes to the very farthest limit of the world that lay within her sight, and drew a long breath. Perhaps it was this that caught the attention of some one who was passing. Lottie had seated herself in a corner under a tree, and she did not see this wayfarer, who was behind her; and the reader knows that she did not sigh for sorrow, but only to relieve a bosom which was very full of fanciful anticipations, hopes, and dreams. It was not likely, however, that Mr. Ashford would know that. He too was taking his evening walk; and when he heard the sigh in which so many tender and delicious fancies exhaled into the air, he thought-who could wonder?—that it was somebody in trouble; and drawing a little nearer to see if he could help, as was the nature of the man, found to his great surprise-as she, too, startled, turned round her face upon him-that it was Lottie Despard who was occupying the seat which was his favourite seat also. They both said "I beg your pardon" simultaneously, though it would be hard to tell why.

"I think I have seen you here before," he said. "You like this time of the evening, Miss Despard, like myself-and this view." "Yes," said Lottie; "but I have been sitting indoors all the after

noon, and got tired of it at last. I did not like to come out all by my self; but I thought no one would see me now."

'Surely you may come here in all safety by yourself." The Minor Canon had too much good breeding to suggest any need of a companion, or any pity for the girl left alone. Then he said suddenly, "This is an admirable chance for me. The first time we met, Miss Despard, you mentioned something about which you wished to consult me

"Ah!" cried Lottie, coming back out of her dreams. Yes, she had wanted to consult him, and the opportunity must not be neglected. "It was about Law, Mr. Ashford. Law-his name is Lawrence, you know, my brother; he is a great boy, almost a man-more than eighteen. But I am afraid he is very backward. I want him so very much to stand his examination. It seems that nothing-nothing can be done without. that now."

"His examination-for what?"

"Oh, Mr. Ashford," said Lottie, " for anything! I don't mind what it is. I thought, perhaps, if you would take him it would make him see the good of working. We are-poor; I need not make any fuss about saying that; here we are all poor; and if I could but see Law in an office earning his living, I think," cried Lottie, with the solemnity of a martyr, "I think I should not care what happened. That was all. I wanted him to come to you, that you might tell us what he would be fit for."

"He would make a good soldier," said Mr. Ashford, smiling; "though there is an examination for that too."

"There are examinations for everything, I think," said Lottie, shaking her head mournfully; "that is the dreadful thing; and you see, Mr. Ashford, we are poor. He has not a penny, he must work for his living, and how is he to get started? That is what I am always saying. But what is the use of speaking? You know what boys are. Perhaps if I had been able to insist upon it years ago-but then I was very young too. I had no sense, any more than Law."

The Minor Canon was greatly touched. The evening dew got into his eyes-he stood by her in the soft summer darkness, wondering. He was a great deal older than Lottie-old enough to be her father, he said to himself; but he had no one to give him this keen impatient anxiety, this insight into what boys are. "Was there no one but you to insist upon it?" he said, in spite of himself.

"Well," said Lottie meditatively, "do gentlemen-generally-take much trouble about what boys are doing? I suppose-they have got other things to think of."

"You have not much opinion of men, Miss Despard," said the Minor Canon, with a half laugh.

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'Oh, indeed I have!" cried Lottie; "why do you say that? I was not thinking about men-but only And then boys themselves, Mr. Ashford; you know what they are. Oh! I think sometimes if I could put some of me into him. But you can't do that. You may talk and

you may coax, and you may scold, and try every way-but what does it matter? If a boy won't do anything, what is to be done with him? That is why I wanted so much, so very much, to bring him to you."

"Miss Despard," said the Minor Canon, "you may trust me that if there is anything I can do for him I will do it. As it happens, I am precisely in want of some one to-to do the same work as another pupil I have. That would be no additional trouble to me, and would not cost anything. Don't you see? Let him come to me to-morrow and begin."

"Oh, Mr. Ashford," said Lottie, "I knew by your face you were kind-but how very, very good you are! But then," she added, sorrowfully, "most likely he could not do the same work as your other pupil. I am afraid he is very backward. If I were to tell you what he is doing you might know. He is reading Virgil—a book about as big as himself," she said, with a little laugh, that was very near crying. "Won't you sit down here?"

"Virgil is precisely the book my other pupil is doing," said Mr. Ashford, laughing too, very tenderly, at her small joke, poor child! while she made room for him anxiously on the bench. There they sat together for a minute in silence, all alone, as it might be, in the world, nothing but darkness round them, faint streaks of light upon the horizon, distant twinkles of stars above and homely lamps below. The man's heart softened strangely within him over this creature, who for all the pleasure she had, came out here, and apologised to him for coming alone. She who, neglected by everybody, had it in her to push forward the big lout of a brother into worthy life, putting all her delicate strength to that labour of Hercules-he felt himself getting quite foolish, moved beyond all his experiences of emotion, as, at her eager invitation, he sat down there by her side.

And as he did so, other voices and steps became audible among the trees, of somebody coming that way. Lottie had turned to him, and was about to say something, when the sound of the approaching voices reached them. He could see her start-then draw herself erect, close into the corner of the bench. The voices were loudly pitched, and attempted no concealment.

"La, Captain, how dark it is! Let's go home; mother will be look. ing for us," said one.

"My dear Polly," said the other-and though Mr. Ashford did not know Captain Despard, he divined the whole story in a moment as the pair brushed past arm-in-arm-" my dear Polly, your home will be very close at hand next time I bring you here."

Lottie said nothing her heart jumped up into her throat, beating so violently that she could not speak. And to the Minor Canon the whole family story seemed to roll out like the veiled landscape before him as he looked compassionately at the girl sitting speechless by his side, while her father and his companion, all unconscious in the darkness, brushed against her, sitting there unseen under the shadowy trees.

Malay Life in the Philippines.

IMPATIENT to be already at the term of his voyage, the homeward-bound passenger is generally, nor least so at the hurried moment of final parting, under a spell that blots out from the scroll of his "Pleasures of Memory" the records of whole years, it may be, of happy residence in the lands that he is leaving; and all by the fresh contrast of lively anticipation of what, too often in fancy only, awaits him in the land, his native home, that lies before. True it is also that some shores there are though to specify such would be invidious-which the longer one has sojourned on them, the keener the satisfaction one feels on leaving them without thought of return. Not so the "Isles of the East," the Philippines. Dull indeed must be his soul, unsympathetic his nature, who, whatever the hopes that may smile on him from the further vista of his journey's end, can stand as I do now on the deck of the Singapore-ward steamer, the little Leite, and see the forests and mountains of Luzon, Queen of the Eastern Isles, fade away into dim violet outlines on the fast receding horizon, without some wishful remembrance, some pang of longing regret.

It is not only that Nature--or shall we say "Hertha ? "—so niggard often of her gifts, has here lavished them rather than bestowed; though indeed not the Egaan, not the West-Indian, not the Samoan, not any other of the fair island-clusters by which our terraqueous planet half atones for her dreary expanses of grey ocean and monotonous desert elsewhere, can rival in manifold beauties of earth, sea, sky, the Philippine Archipelago from the extreme northern verge of the Formosan channel to where the tepid equatorial wave sinks faint on the coral-reefs of Borneo; nor in all that Archipelago, lovely as it is through its entire extent, can any island vie with the glories of Luzon. Set out eastwards from Manila, the tropical Venice amid her labyrinth of estuaries and canals, daily ebbing and flowing to the tides of the vast harbour-gulf, the secure vestibule of the typhoon-swept China seas; thence pass inland between the broad shades of clustered bamboo and palm up the eddying Pasig river to where, apt starting-point of its romantic course, it issues from the wide freshwater lake of Baï, girdled by a hundred miles and more of varied, ever-fertile shore-line, and the cloud-capped peaks of the giant Mahahai range beyond; traverse the yellow cane-fields of the wealthy Laguna district to where, hid among the hills and coffee-groves of Batangas lies deep the blue cliff-encircled lake of Taal, and amid its waters the fairy islet where, from the miniature central volcano, a shiftVOL. XXXVIII.-NO. 224.

8.

ing pennon of restless smoke and fire ever rises and spreads high over greensward and glossy tree; then across the rushing rivers, sounding waterfalls, and dark woods of Tayabas and the mid-chain, till, between slim tree-fern, and over forest-clad descent, the boundless Pacific opens out its sparkling blue; and right from the very breakers on the shore towers eight thousand feet in air the perfect volcano-cone of Albay, the fire-breathing marvel of these islands, as Fusihama of Japan.

I have taken, almost at chance, the first route that offered; Luzon has a hundred more, each different, and each as fair. Nor inferior in intrinsic beauty, though on a smaller scale, are the scenes that the comparatively lesser islands, such as Panay, Cebu, Samar, Negros, Leite, and others of names strange to the generality of European ears, have to show. More fortunate than their West-Indian sisters, no flat and chalky Barbados, no drought-stricken Antigua, no barren Virgin Island mars the perfection of the Philippine group; while Jamaica and Antigua themselves, those loveliest of the Antilles, must yield the palm of beauty to the mere average of the "Eastern Isles." Volcanic formation and soil, an abundant yearly rainfall, an equable climate, and the life-giving influ ences of the oceanic tropics have all combined here to do this, and it is marvellous in our, the beholders', eyes.

Marvellous in our eyes, impossible, not to be imaged, in the eyes of those who have only word-painting and imagination out of which to construct the view. Tropical scenery, be it of mountain or plain, forest or coast-line, lake or river, can no more be realised by those who have never seen it than colours by the blind, music by the deaf. A Kingsley attempts the picture, and behold a confused description of a Kew palmhouse; a Michael Scott, and lo! the side-scenes of a theatre. The scientific accuracy of a Wallace, and of his compeers, if there be any worthy of the name, may supply a correct outline; but even this must be filled up by remembrance, or supplemented by engraving. Pity that for the Philippines themselves no word-limner of note exists, to my knowledge at least, except the coarse, narrow-souled Jagor, of whose book, or libel rather, it is enough to say that the letter-press and the sketches are worthy of each other, and each not likenesses but caricatures. The want however is one that, for the time at least, must remain unfulfilled; subject, even were it accessible to my grasp, does not come within the scope of a writing like the present.

the

For, when all is said and done, the prime history of a country lies not in the land itself but in the inhabitants of the land; where they are unworthy of the beauties around them, the fairest scenery fails to charm; as, on the contrary, a noble people can cast a glamour of attrac tiveness over the dullest landscape. The barren rocks of Attica, the dreary plains of Rome, nay, the unsightly marshes of Holland are loved for their hero-children, while the gorgeous panoramas of Rio and Valparaiso, Yosemite gorges and Niagara chiefly suggest a feeling of dissatisfaction with the unequal inferiority of their vanished autochthones, or