was summoned to the bedside of his most timate friend, a gentleman who, like himself, had passed through the Crimean war, but who was now alarmingly ill at his home in the north of Scotland. Richard knew he left a zealous and efficient substitute in the person of Mr Ballow. That gentleman could not go to Llynbwllyn in person. But he prepared to write the matter out for Eva, and to urge her, as quietly as might be, to take a long farewell of Mrs. Roberts and the Dowlases, and come back to Minchley and

happiness at once. Richard would probably join them on any favourable turn in the illness of his friend.

Mr. Ballow wrote this letter in London, on Wednesday, the 30th of July, and himself went back to Minchley the very same evening.

The letter was in Eva's hands in the early afternoon of Thursday, the latest day of July. And to Eva and to Llynbwllyn it is high time that we should ourselves return.

THE EARLSWOOD HOME FOR IDIOTS.-He (the physician) is the head and chief-he it is to whom the committee look for organizing the system on which the industrial is to be carried on, and he it is to whom the Commissioners in Lunacy look for results such as will satisfy them in their report. And we were soon compelled to observe that all the plans of management were the reflex of one mind, and that of one whose heart, no less than his head, was deeply interested in the work. We accompa nied him round the building, and visited the patients engaged at intellectual employments; some were sitting at looms making mats, but the education necessary for their being able to perform this work is very great, as will be seen by a little reflection. In asylums for the adults the patient has usually received some sort of mechanical or industrial education- often, it is true, a most imperfect one but still a groundwork on which the system lays hold, and which it seeks to develop; but here the patients are idiots, have been born without reason's light, and therefore their mind is but a tabula erasa, over which passions and instincts have swept, but where education has left no mark;, they enter here not knowing their right hand from their left. They are first employed in picking to pieces the fibre of the old cocoa-nut matting, as most of them have a muscular action of the fingers which leads them to tear up their clothes. When this is got over, a knowledge of colour is imparted, and then, when this is achieved, they are taught to count ten. Thus equipped, they are instructed in mat making, and not only do they make all the mats that are used in the house, but turn out fancy ones, which are sold to those interested in helping to augment the charity's fund. In the tailors' shops are made all the garments worn by the patients, and also the blue cloth uniforms of the officials. The poor lads were most anxious to show their workmanship, and an exclamation from the master of "Well done, Joseph," to one who exhibited a neatly made waistcoat, was followed by a remark from him to us that the

gentle, fair-haired lad who stood before us came to the asylum with the mark of an iron chain on his leg, as, in the village where he lived, he was regarded as one more to be dreaded than pitied: one to be restrained rather by iron links than influenced by those divine chains of love in human hearts which bind all things themselves. In the shoemaking room we stopped to examine the workmanship, and to have a chat with one of the patients. -a tall lad of perhaps eighteen or twenty. "Now," said the doctor to us, "you shall not ask him any questions in history or in any subject he has read about which he will not answer." So the question was put- "Who was Oliver Cromwell? and at once not only were we told, who and what he was, but also the names of all his children, and whom they respectively married. In fact, so full did his information appear to be on this part of our history, that it seemed as if he too had made it his special study with a view of throwing some light on this intensely interesting period. The doctor then stopped him, and shifting the scene from England to Greece, asked him if he knew anything about the wise men of that country, upon which he introduced us to a number of departed worthies (to some of whom our memories had done but scant justice) and who had assembled for the purpose of discussing the important question, "What State is that which is best governed?" young friend then related the opinion which each sage gave on that occasion, with an earnestness and intelligence of manner that rendered it difficult to believe that the gulf of idiocy separated him from those of whom he was speaking. On leaving him the doctor explained that the mental condition of this young man was most peculiar. He could not read on entering, and now his mind retains everything that is conveyed to it through the eye, but cannot remember any instruction that is imparted orally. Here is one whose store of information may be increased almost indefinitely, and yet the condition of an untaught child possessing reason is to be preferred. Sunday Reader.

Our

From the Spectator.

HYMNS AND THEIR AUTHORS.*

MR. MILLER has a very just impression that hymns of any beauty and power, more even than other lyrical poems of equal beauty or power, gain greatly in the fascination for the imagination of the reader when you can trace them to their personal origin in the character and special circumstances of the nature which gave birth to them. He is undoubtedly often right. But with the increase of fascination thus gained by the poem there may be not unfrequently a loss of specific effect in the hymn. The lesson conveyed by a deeper knowledge of the personnel of most of the greater hymn writers is, like almost all those conveyed by our deeper knowledge of religious questions, one calculated indeed to deepen awe, but to impress us also, still more profoundly than before, with the mystery that envelops the answers to even the purest craving for divine light. Cowper's hymns, for instance, as Mr. Miller justly enough indicates, gain infinitely in beauty and depth when we see the sad interior of that tender, melancholy, yet playful and innocent spirit from which the passionate craving for divine light went forth. Thus, when we read, with this help, the well known verses, of no great power in themselves, on the mystery of God's government, the hymn, we mean, ending with the line about God being "His own interpreter," and "behind a frowning Providence hiding a smiling face," or the hymn on the intervals of peace which a believer enjoys, —

'Sometimes a light surprises

The Christian while he sings:
It is the Lord who rises,
With healing on His wings,"

-a

diate stimulus which the hymn affords to spiritual trust. This is not only due to the remembrance of the thickening clouds which drew together, with fewer and fewer partings, as his life drew towards a close. For, to think of him petting his hares, rambling with his spaniel beside the Ouse in search of water-lilies, reading his verses to Mrs. Unwin, laughing with child-like glee over the story of John Gilpin, man, in short, in every way adapted to find his fullest happiness in the mild humour and only his spiritual nature been at peace, tender poetry of quiet domestic life, had shattering his gentle nature against the systematic divinity of John Newton, and spiritual assurance of pardon was needful for him, and was not often to be extorted from the silent skies, to think of him able to enjoy God's love in such sweet and delicate minutiae of creation, and yet doubting it because he could not distinguish clearly between the natural and the supernatural assurances of it, adds at once a new depth to the yearning of his prayers, and a new mystery to the awful Providence which did not speak to him out of the whirlwind, Such tender joy in solitude as Cowper sometimes exquisitely expressed, has a tendency perhaps, when taken up by those who know his fate, to make them ask bitterly why the fountains of that joy were so soon dried

crushed beneath the belief that a distinct

up:

"Far from the world. O Lord! I flee,
From strife and tumult far,
From scenes where Satan wages still
His most successful war.

"The calm retreat, the silent shade,
With prayer and praise agree,
And seem by Thy sweet bounty made
For those who follow Thee.

"There, if Thy spirit touch the soul, And grace her mean abode,

Oh! with what peace, and joy, and love, She communes with her God.

Her solitary lays,

Nor asks a witness for her song; Nor thirsts for human praise.'

Why, one cannot but ask, were the heavens so often dark and cold above such a tender flower as this? Why were these moments of joy so transient, and the gloom of the last years so impenetrable? Is there a dark necessity which limits even the intercourse of God with His children? Is it

THE LIFE OF THE MARCHESA FALLETTI DI BAROLO. By Silvio Pellico. From the original. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton (Bentley)-This very graceful volume, commendable alike in form and essence, is a becoming tribute to a great benefactress of her species. We do not grudge the Roman Church the glory that accrues to it from a life such as that of the subject of this memoir, and the heads of that Church have only themselves to blame if in Italy benevolence is not appreciated when it is associated with the forms of religion. Such, however, seems to be the case at present, and the Italians look with suspicion upon both the charity and the patriotism of those who, like the Marchesa and her portege are on intimate terms with the members of the hierarchy. But this will not affect the interest of the present volume in the eyes of English readers. They only know Silvio Pellico as the author of My Prisons, and they will read with pleasure the touching tribute, exquisite in its simplicity, that he pays to the great lady who soothed the years of pain and sickness that elapsed between his imprisonment and death. He was only one of countless recipients of her bounty; she was the reformer of the Turin prisons, the founder of orphanages, and generally the leader in all works of charity. The key to her character is to be found in the prayer with which she entered upon her prison visitations, and in a sentiment that is extracted from one of her letters. The former runs thus: "O my God! I am a poor weak creature, but I do believe and love you with all my heart and all my strength, and I wish nothing so much as to make others also love and know you;" and the latter is contained in the simple but forcible expression, "J'adore qu'on m'aime." Under the influence of these feelings this daughter of an old Vendean house, which had furnished its quota to the scaffold, devoted herelf to the service of the poor, held her salon in the prison, and displayed there all the tact and esprit of her race. We must add that she was decidedly in opposition to the liberal Government, and held conversations with the ladies of the Royal family which almost

that of Cavour, and no doubt by this time the two are reconciled in the world where half-truths are made whole. Lady Fullerton has brought to the duties that devolved on her the ability and taste that might have | been anticipated, and supplementing the original memoir with matter from other sources, reminiscences by the Marquise de Chenaleilles, and notable extracts from the letters of the Marquise herself, has produced a volume which combines in an unusual degree, interest of subject and charm of style. - Spectator.

SELECTION FROM THE WORKS OF WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED.-Edited by Sir G. Young, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. (Moxon.)- Without discussing at length, as the editor does in his able preface, the distinction between poetry and verse, and leaving the exact classification of the author quite undetermined, we think that we may safely say that the present volume contains more pleasant reading than is generally found within the same limits, and that whatever other appellation may be denied to it, there can be no question about the appropriateness of the epithet "delightful." Sir G. Young is quite right in saying of Praed that he caught the fine perfume of cultivated society, and had an instinctive sense of the limits of delicacy. His humorous sketches never degenerated into vulgarity, and seldom lacked that undertone of pathos which is characteristic of the genuine student of human nature. His satire was of the gentle and tasteful kind that gives as much pleasure to the victims as to any one else, and his drawing-room verses are models for all time. The present selection has been judiciously made, contains all the famous pieces, as, for example, "The Vicar," "Sleep, Mr. Speaker," and the beautiful lines to his wife, which would be quite perfect if "fretful" could be substituted for "fractious" in the line, "The daily tendance on the fractious chair," and perhaps is more commensurate with the requirements of the public of the present day, than the two volumes which were published a short time ago, under the superintendence of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. — Spectator.