last evening, when you and Arthur went into the balcony to look, you said, at the fading rays of the sun that still lingered on the summit of Mont Blanc-though I have heard you both say before that you could not get a glimpse of Mont Blanc from that spot; and I never risk going out to see anything when the dews are falling that your arm was passed through his, and that he held your hand, by no means, as I perceived, against your will. The sun's rays were, I presume, invisible, for he seemed to be consoling himself by gazing on the bright beams from your eyes; and certainly they shone warmly and gaily upon him. Perhaps the twilight deceived me; but I think he snatched a kiss. I am not romantic and sentimental, and, therefore, may have mistaken two friends for a pair of lovers."

Mamma, you are cruel," said Charlotte. shielded me from this."

"You should have

"I think otherwise," replied Mrs. Thirlwell. "But there must be an end of this scene. I will not be angry with you, Charlotte, but I tell you plainly, I was never so talked to and taken to task by my husband, and I don't choose to be lectured by my daughter. Let this subject never be brought before me again."

There was a pause-then a knock at the door. It was Mrs. Thirlwell's maid; probably she had been lending a listening ear to the conversation.

"Mr. Tollington, ma'am, has been waiting some time in the drawing-room," she said.

"Very well, Jones, we shall be down immediately."

As soon as she was gone, Mrs. Thirlwell sprinkled some eau-decologne on her handkerchief, and breathed on it; then applied it lightly several times to Charlotte's eyes. She smoothed the wavy bands of her sunny hair, and kissed her affectionately; for in her heart she was really sorry for her perverse child, as she called her and even for Edward, who was a favourite of Mrs. Thirlwell's.

"But what prudent mother," she thought, "would allow her, daughter rashly to sacrifice a yearly income of twelve thousand pounds to a legacy of six, for the sake of what she called her first love, which might end, as first love often had done, in misery or disgust."

Charlotte sat in silence, while her mother fluttered round her rendering those little services by which she hoped to efface the traces of recent tears.

"Now, dear," she said, coaxingly, and took her unresisting hand, "look bright and smiling. Trust in your mother, who knows what is best for you, and seeks only your welfare and happiness. Bear in mind, too, that Arthur has been most liberal towards you, and that from the most disinterested affection. The

trifle you have, and the addition to it you may expect from your uncle, can be no consideration to him."

"I know that well; I shall not fail in my duty, mamma," said Charlotte, as they descended together to the drawing-room.

Mrs. Thirlwell endeavoured, by an unwonted gaiety of manner, to draw off Tollington's attention from the yet visible signs of Charlotte's sadness and tears. But the lover was not slow to detect that something had occurred to dim the beautiful bright blue eyes of his beloved. And he sympathised much with her, for he fancied that her mother was often harsh towards her. But that would soon be at an end, he thought.

Mrs. Thirlwell and her daughter were to leave Geneva the next morning at ten, and Tollington's travelling servant was to accompany them to Florence, as they had not made the journey before.

"Mrs. Thirlwell," he said, "was to give no care or thought to anything. Lestocq would take all that on himself. She would find him a perfect treasure, unequalled in all respects as a courier."

His orders were to see that the most comfortable arrangements were made for the ladies, and afterwards to prepare for his master, who might be expected in Florence in the course of a fortnight. Tollington's marriage with Miss Thirlwell was to take place there, as had been already decided, in a month after his arrival.

Mrs. Thirlwell bade adieu that evening to her friends the Podowskis, who promised to visit the young couple in the spring. Tollington accompanied Charlotte and her mother to the train, and there confided his heart's treasure to the watchful care of Lestocq.

(To be continued.)

ALLEGORIES OF THE MONTHS.

APRIL.

ALL hail, on this morning of the calends, the great community of fools! Society might get on without its philosophers, but would stagnate without its fools. They are its very salt, lacking which it must inevitably lose its savour.

It is difficult to trace the connexion between fooldom and April-aperilis, the opening month, when buds begin to gem the flowers, or, at least, leaves the trees, reckless of the inevitable east wind due on the 1st of May. It can scarcely be the verdure that

suggests the connexion; for I fancy the evil repute of greenness is of later date than the fool-tradition of the 1st of April. We will even fall back, then, upon our first-literally our "opening" -thought, that the fool-idea has some subtle connexion with the reappearance of Nature, fast bound as she has been since November last in the iron prison of winter.

In the first place, what an admirable foil for the wise people is supplied by us April fools-for I own myself one born. I came into the world on the April Calends. Are we not a sort of green background for the groupings of society? How would your wise men stand prominent but for the fools? There would be no pretty faces, if there were none ugly!

But, for positive as well as merely negative value, who can appraise rightly your fool? Did not Shakspeare see this, and polish his Fool in Lear as exquisitely as he did Hamlet himself? Nay, how much of the depth of the philosophic Dane himself lies in his folly! Who shall draw the line between folly and philosophy? I always think it when I go through the wards of a lunatic asylum, whither some fascination often draws me about full-moontide. Which are the wise people, and which the fools? Verily I often incline to the great Communion of Innocents. My natal star decidedly influences me in that direction.

Let others make a people's laws; let me make their songs, said somebody somewhere. So say I, let others affect the savans; commend me to the fools. What is more idiotic than a kitten, or a lambkin, or a two-year-old child, or a "maiden of bashful fifteen?" But I like them all. Decidedly the astral influence is upon me to-day. Dulce est desipere. I devote the calends to the kitten, the child, the bread-and-butter "miss." "To-morrow we'll be sober."

I could easily find a serious side to my subject. I bethink me how the Wise King spoke of the sorrows of knowledge; how the disciple of Gamaliel and the Tarsus schools wrote, "I speak as a

fool."

But I have elected to be the fool pur et simple to-day. ""Tis my vocation, Hal." It is my prerogative, my birthright;_shall I exchange it for the chicanery of your smooth-faced Jacobs? No; there are quiet joys in fooldom which philosophy never dreams of. I don't go in for being a savant; so I haven't to use long words, look glum, or cram dinner-conversations. I let the wise people do all the work, while I sit silent on the suave mari magno principle, and all because a destiny I once thought unkind, but whose benignity I now acknowledge, timed my natal day on the 1st of April. MAURICE DAVIES.

THE LOST "HAMLET."

WHY is it that we look upon Hamlet as being no other than Shakspeare himself?

Why is it that the moody moraliser upon charnel-houses and mouldy bones has come to be identified with the jolly companion of the Mermaid, the wine-bibbing joker of the Falcon, and the Apollo Saloon? Because Hamlet is the most elaborately-painted character in literature. Because the springs of his actions are so profoundly touched, the workings of his soul so thoroughly laid bare, that we seem to know him more completely than we know our most intimate friends. Because the sea which washes between personality and personality is here, for once, rolled away, and we and this Hamlet touch, soul to soul. That is why we ask whether such a character can be the mere evolvement of the artistic mind at work. That is why we exclaim, "The man who painted Hamlet must have been painting himself." The perfection of the dramatist's work betrays him. For really and truly no man can paint another, but only himself, and what we call "character painting" is, at the best, but a poor mixing of painter and painted, a "third something" between these two; just as what we call colour and sound are born of the play of undulation upon organism. Therefore, when a character lives as Hamlet lives, is it not natural to ask whether we have not here, under the mask of the character assumed, a portrait pure and simple of the painter himself?

As to what was his reputation among his contemporaries, that is comparatively unimportant in discussing the question what, at heart, was William Shakspeare. For often it is through literature alone that a soul will unfold itself to other souls. Was he really the calm passionless mirror critics talk about, reflecting Nature as an unruffled lake reflects the shifting cloud-pageantry of heaven? Or was he at heart the maker of small jokes at the Mermaid? Or was he at heart the moody dreamer of Elsinore -morbid, yet heroic; dreamy, yet designing and craftily manoeuvring; sombre, yet steeped in a humour so rich, so deep, that all other humour seems shallow in comparison?

Now that Hamlet was a favourite character with Shakspeare, none can doubt. All his other characters are only allowed to exhibit themselves trammelled by heavy conditions. They are mere working characters, all-that is, they are plot-ridden. Wonderfully individual they are (for surely Shakspeare as well as

being the greatest poet that ever lived, was the greatest though not the ideal dramatist), but these other characters act largely and speak largely to carry on the plot, and must so act and speak. But, as high as ever the Emperor Sigismund soared above grammar does Hamlet soar above plot. The story but uncoils itself to develop his character.

Again, Shakspeare's works as a whole (even if we leave out the Sonnets), show that his mind, like Hamlet's, was not a healthy one, in the sense that Homer's was a healthy mind, and that Chaucer's, and Cervantes', and Scott's were healthy minds. And if it be said that in this tangled web of life no clearest-seeing mind can, in this sense, be healthy, that is not a refutation of what we are saying, but a confirmation. It is not merely that this one play of Hamlet is full of morbid, charnel-house broodings, but Shakspeare seems to have kept a sort of Hamlet note-book, full of Hamlet thoughts, of which "To be or not to be," may be taken as the type.

These he was burdened with. These did he cram into Hamlet as far as he could, and then he tossed the others indiscriminately into other plays, tragedies, comedies, and histories, perfectly regardless of the character who uttered them.

This is rank heresy, of course, yet surely it was from the Hamlet note-book that such thoughts as these slipped into the mouth of a man like Claudio, who never could have had them himself:

Aye, but to die and go we know not where,

To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot!
This sensible, warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world.

Again, it was from the Hamlet note-book that these reflections were put into the mouth of Macbeth, in the midst of action so busy that he had scarcely time to take breath.

To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.