ple-hearted, enthusiastic child. His strong form; his pale, oval face; the bright, crisp auburn hair, that was cut closely enough to clearly define the proportions of his handsome head; his dark, earnest-looking gray eyes, that looked down on her so kindly-all these things seemed to her to be the realizations of the most perfect ideals of beauty which she had ever formed. And with it all he was so considerate, so chivalrously attentive to the "little women," who were accustomed to so very much neglect. Sothern was on the boards that night as David Garrick; and, somehow or other, when it came to the sham drunken scene Mina found herself speculating as to what she should feel, and how she should act, if it ever came to pass that Philip Bray tried to disenchant her. The predominant thought in her mind that night was that he seemed to be too young and too good to be papa's friend. This disloyalty, this apparent straying from the proper path of filial sentiment, was an ungovernable impulse. It was her honest thought that Philip Bray was good; and she admitted the honest thought, and rather cherished it than otherwise, just as she admitted the thought of the fact of a midday sun being bright, or of a midsummer night's moon being beautiful. It was a fact to her from the first moment of her seeing the man. There was no disparagement to her father intended by it. Long years after, when he was fallen from his pedestal in her imagination, when her beautiful ideal was lying shattered at her feet, she recalled him as he looked (and as he was) this night—a young, earnest-souled man, without a stain on his life, without a shadow on his conscience, without a doubt in his mind as to his power of living the life his mother had taught him to admire-the life of a knight of purity. He became the poem of Mina's life after this night. Every thing she did was with reference to him. The lessons she learned, the books she read, the hard self-education she gave herself without any foreign aid, were all regarded by her as so many steps of the ladder by means of which she might in time climb up to him-climb up to a more perfect comprehension of her hero. He was a strange friend for Mr. Felden to have made. A young, hard-working, highhearted, industrious, God-fearing man-an art student too. And Mina soon held the happy notion that no good art student could be a bad man, and so loved the whole fraternity for his sake. Her father, always engaged himself in trying to give tangibility to some foggy chimera of his own brain, laughed at her enthusiasm for the plodding artist, who was contented to gain what Mr. Felden, in his impecunious magnificence, called a "pittance," by drawing on the wood for a second-class magazine. But the laughter and ridicule glanced off her harmlessly. To her he was the happy prince with joyful eyes, who had wakened her from the long dream of insensibility into a full knowledge of the bliss of loving and esteeming. In short, he was her hero-a golden-haired young king-the sovereign lord of her heart from that night when she had first beheld him. Years passed away, and the Feldens knew many fluctuations of fortune. The comedy that was the offspring of those frequent visits had been brought out, and hissed off the boards by a lot of kindly critics, the majority of whom had tried that sort of thing and failed in it themselves. It is true, the dialogue was jargon, and the situations were hackneyed; but these things are frequently but slight drawbacks to success. However, in Mr. Felden's case, they were sufficiently condemnatory, and the comedy was withdrawn after one night's trial. How their drawing and music and languages were paid for these girls never knew. Perhaps Philip Bray could have told them; but he kept silence altogether on the subject, and only worked the harder at his drawing on the wood when he thought about it. His style had proved a taking one; and when the Felden girls were finishing their studies, and curbing the luxuriance of their hair by putting it into chignons and coronets, he came to tell them one evening that he had received a splendidly remunerative offer from a celebrated author to go to America and illustrate a new serial work which the celebrated author had upon the stocks. For the first time, as he made this announcement, it came home to the heart of Mina Felden that, without him, the world would be a very dull place indeed. And for the first time it came home to him that the beautiful children he had known and loved as children were wo men. For mere beauty of person the elder sister, Bertha, carried off the palm. She was one of those resplendently colored and luxuriantly formed women, with a touch of imperialism about them, who seem born to roll through life in carriages, and to be attired in raiment of price. Tall, with shoulders and bust shaped like the Venus of Milo, and a splendid little head, wrapped round with rich hair full of copper-colored reflections, she would have attracted admiring regard even if her face had not been as perfect as it was. But when you came to look at her deep, wood-violet eyes, and to watch the sweet, tender smile that always hovered over her perfect lips, your judgment was gone in an instant, and you could no more carp at the languid indolence which suffered the onus of every thing to fall upon her sister than you could have caviled at a star for being only bright. As for that sister, she was a magnificently revised and improved edition of that mother who had been the brightest and the best influence of theirs and their father's lives. "Care and sorrow and child-birth pain" had never, to the eyes of the observant, even set their traces on the heart, or brain, or appearance of the glossy-headed, bright-faced woman who had varied the labors of an essayist and reviewer with those of a maid-of-all-work. There had Well, it won't be dissolved as speedily as Bertha's. She speaks of my generous patron in the masculine gender. My celebrated novelist is a lady, Bertha-none other than Mrs. Ferrers ;" and he mentioned a name that had resounded very favorably through the ranks of fiction of late years. "Does Mrs. Ferrers-" Mina began; then she paused, and Bertha filled up the pause by asking: been hours of which the world knew nothing, | said, laughing. “That's your delusion, is it? when the biting, withering sense of its being all of no avail-all of no use, however hard she worked-had overcome that faithful little laborer of love. During these hours tears that made her ache for days afterward had been shedtears of agonizing sorrow-that when so much was needed of her she could do so little; tears of pity for her children, who had such a frail rod to depend upon as was the reading public's appreciation of what she wrote; tears of sympathy with her husband, whose proverbial ill luck (never properly crushed down) had induced him to marry a woman without money, "when he needed so much, poor fellow!" she would say, pathetically; and sometimes-but this very rarely-tears of pity for herself, for that she did not dare to rest and take breathing-time in order to widen her knowledge and strengthen her style by a thorough course of-and there is her husband." reading. This was the mother who had set the stamp of her character and her intellect and her beauty upon Mina Felden. Only in Mina all three-character, intellect, and beauty-were intensified to a degree that made the girl a dangerously pretty as well as a dangerously clever and impressionable one. Though she lacked the large, languid, splendid beauty of her sister, there was still a sufficiency of warmth and color about Mina. The dark, hazel-nut-colored hair and eyes were just dark enough and soft enough to tone down the rich bloom of the face to a most harmonious tint. The nose had just deviated sufficiently from the straight Grecian line to be interesting. But the mouth was Mina's strong feature-the beautiful mobile mouth, that was at once so flexible and so firm. It is Shirley Brooks who says, in one of his wonderfully vivid descriptions of women, that the girl who "knows how to leave off smiling," and whose smile is often accompanied by a little inquiring frown, is a rare creature. Mina possessed this combination of rare charms. She knew when to leave off smiling, and she had a way of bending her brow upon any one whom she was questioning with a most interrogatory frown. Notwithstanding this latter fact, the normal expression of her face was bright as her mother's had been. And from that mother she had inherited a great love of all things appertaining to art and literature. So there was this reason (among others) why Mina should sparkle up and look more especially interested when Philip Bray came into their sitting-room one evening, and told them of the offer that had been made to him. "And as all the world will read his book, all the world will see your drawings, Philip," Bertha said, carelessly. He was not a hero to Miss Felden; she called him "Philip" without a tremor. "Is she an old frump of a woman, Philip? She must be, for I read her novels when I was quite a child.” "What "No, she is not," he said, tersely. were you going to say, Mina?" "Does Mrs. Ferrers go alone?" the girl asked, hoarsely. "Alone? no! Why, I am going, I tell you "Oh! she has a husband," Mina said, heaving a sigh of relief. "I thought women who wrote novels very seldom had husbands," Bertha said. "I thought they took brevet rank, and just called themselves Mrs.' to enable themselves to frisk about in the world a little more freely. Well, Philip, we shall miss you; but I hope you'll come home a rich man.' "I hope you'll come home a happy and successful man," Mina added. "You darling well-wishers of mine," he said, warmly, "it's an awful pinch to leave you, though I feel I am only going away to make my fortune. Don't forget your drawing-lessons, Mina ;" and then he bent his head close down to the girl's, and added, "and don't forget me!" Forget him! "The bridegroom may forget the bride Was made his wedded wife yestreen; And a' that thou hast done for me." "No, I shall never forget you." And her heart gave a jump as she recalled those happy drawing-lessons, in the giving of which he had so often taken her hand and pressed it fondly. It was hard, bitter, passionate pain to the girl to part with him, even though he was going away to fortune and to fame. She would like to have had some fuller assurance as to what manner of woman Mrs. Ferrers was. Philip was to be "one of the family," he told them, and Mina's heart foretold that Mrs. Ferrers would be engrossed with thoughts of work to the exclusion of thoughts of Philip's comfort. He was so dear and important to the girl that she could ill bear the idea of his being passed over or neglected in any way. And probably "And all the world will delight in them," this Mrs. Ferrers, whose books they had read Mina said. when they were children of ten and eleven, "Thank you, Mina, for the prophecy," he was a selfish old woman, unsympathetic and sordid. Well, at any rate, they were only go- | ered. He was her husband—a man who had ing to America for six months, and six months been brave enough to take the pretty authoress would speedily pass, brightened by the knowl-"for better, for worse," though legions of faredge she had that Philip would soon be able to sighted friends told him that the day would command the success that he so well deserved. surely come when he would repent him of "the The young man spent a part of his last even-imprudence." He disregarded their warning, ing with the Feldens. They made a little fes- as was only natural, looked upon them as sortival for him, but farewell festivals are always did-souled and narrow-minded, and fearlessly more or less sad and fast-like. "I wonder and hopefully and trustingly linked his fortunes will you two have changed into demure ma- with those of the well-born young lady, who trons, whose husbands won't like my calling you had a strong dash of the Bohémienne in her, and by your Christian names, when I come back," who, though she had the courage to marry him, he said; and Bertha replied, candidly: had the cowardice to blush for his being in trade. "I do hope so, Philip, for I am rather tired of being poor Miss Felden. Mina can afford to wait a year longer than I can, for she's younger, you know." "Can Mina afford to wait for me?" he whispered, bending his head down to her. And Mina whispered "Yes," in an ecstasy of bliss, and so these two young people became engaged. And while they were trying to reduce their chaotic emotions to order, and make some coherent plan, Mr. and Mrs. Ferrers were holding their little farewell-to-England festival in their handsome apartments at a West End hotel. A few literary friends had gathered round the popular, pleasing authoress, who was still a young and pretty woman, though Bertha and Mina had read some of her books when they were children. His trade was a very remunerative one-almost as remunerative, indeed, as were his wife's novels. He was a wholesale manufacturer and exporter of something or other that is in daily use in every household, and between them they kept up a large establishment on a luxurious scale. But for all the solid comfort that surrounded her, for all her own rapidly increasing popularity (and only a woman can understand how dear a certain kind of popularity is to the heart of a woman), for all these and many other things, Mrs. Ferrers was not a thoroughly wellsatisfied woman. It was a daily cross to her that her husband's position was one that might be questioned by people who were proud to welcome her. "He is not accepted on his own merits, the dear, good, generous fellow; he is accepted because they want me," she would say to They were some of her earlier works, written herself. And for a while she had girded against while she was still "an infant in the eyes of the this fact, and had held herself aloof entirely law"-written, in fact, before she was twenty- from the class who either passed him over or reone. Now, at thirty, she was that most seduc-garded him solely as her husband—a being with tive of all things when it is seductive at all-whom, independently of her, they could have a charming young married woman of thirty, with all the freedom of matronhood about her, together with the coquettish fascination of a girl. Nature had been very prodigal in her gifts to Mrs. Ferrers. Look at her now, as she presides at the supper-table, round which are assembled many of the representative literary men and women of the day. She is dressed in black velvet, relieved at the neck with white lace. The sleeves just reach below the elbow, and are richly ruffled there with more white lace. Mrs. Ferrers's arm is a beautiful one, and her hand is a very graceful pendant to it. The position, therefore, which displays to the full extent the beauties of that hand and arm may not be an entirely accidental one. She is a tall, fair woman, with a neck like polished marble, shaped not so much like a swan's as like a grand old Greek statue. She has a fair proud face, and great brilliant blue eyes, and masses of almost golden hair. A handsome, queenly looking woman in repose is the popular authoress, too. And she can rouse herself into such bewitching animation that clever men, whose ears are better cultivated than their eyes, admire her as much as artists do. "What makes Philip Bray so late to-night?" she said, once, to a man who was seated opposite to her at the delightfully cozy and sociable round table, about which the group was gath nothing whatever to do. But, after all, this class was her own class-her own class both by nature and habit-and it was hard to be separated from them because her husband was not one of them. So it came to pass some time before this epoch that she had gone out a great deal alone. "Society bored Mr. Ferrers," she exAnd in society she had seen a good deal of Philip Bray. plained. The arrangement that he should join the menage, and go to America with the Ferrerses, had been come to quickly. Mrs. Ferrers longed for a change from the "Old World stagnation," as she called it, and a trip across the Atlantic offered her the prospect of the craved-for change. Moreover, there was something very delightful to the artistic-souled woman in the thought of the free, unfettered companionship she would thus have with one whom she had already distinguished as a thorough artist. So the plan was made, and they were on the eve of carrying it out. "Philip Bray is taking leave of his friends the Feldens," one of the guests said, in answer to his hostess's remark. "I thought that would have been a match long ago." "What would have been a match?" Mrs. Ferrers asked, quickly. "With poor Arthur Felden's daughter; there are two of them, and it's generally believed that Philip Bray has been in love with them ever | such cases-that her betrothed was very opensince they were babies; one is a perfect Venus." ly at the feet of the married woman, of the be"The one it is to be a match with, of course?" witching authoress, Mrs. Ferrers. It was nearMrs. Ferrers asked, coldly. ly death to her to doubt him; but when more and more weeks elapsed between the receipt of his letters, she had a mighty struggle to retain her faith in him. And while this agony of suspense was going on, Bertha married a wealthy country gentleman, and Mina was left alone with her father. "No; she will look higher. It's the pretty one, not the beauty, who regards our Philip as a demi-god." And then there was a little talk about "poor Arthur Felden," and a little laughter about the erratic existence the family had led, and then the subject was dismissed from the minds of the majority of those present. Once on the voyage out to America Mrs. Ferrers referred to it. "Why have you never spoken to me about your friends the Feldens, Philip?" she said. "My husband and I feel piqued. We thought ourselves your nearest friends, and we suddenly hear from an outsider that there is a nearer one still, and a dearer one yet than all others. How is this?" "You heard a little more than the truth," he answered. "The Feldens are dear friends of mine, but that is all." Her course of hard work has been spoken of. She chalked it out herself, and followed it assiduously. She worked like a loving slave at the school of art at the Kensington Museum in the mornings, and in the afternoons gave drawing-lessons to the daughters of rich parents, who paid her liberally. "I will never be an encumbrance to him," she determined. "When I'm his wife he shall find that, like dear mamma, I can help to maintain my children." Then she would flutter with delight at the thought of the pride her hero would feel in such a helpmeet as she would be to him, and the thought would give her fresh strength to struggle on to excellence. "Is that really all ?" she said, in a low voice. She was a great enchantress, and she held the notion that a man is to a great degree lost to his lady friends as soon as he is married. Ad- The year had elapsed, and Bertha was away ditionally she wanted, should this American in Italy on her wedding tour still; and Mina scheme provė a success, to organize a tour on was going her rounds with a gayer heart than the continent of Europe, and, together, estab- usual, for his last letter had told her that her lish a firm of fame that should glorify their hero would be due in England a fortnight after union of talent very greatly. Accordingly it her receipt of it. That letter had been lying had vexed her that he should be contemplating in her bosom for fifteen days, so he might apa marriage with any body. "Make your art pear before her now any hour-her love, her your wife for a long time yet, Philip," she said, future husband, her hero! No wonder that in her most flatteringly persuasive tones. "Mar- her hand trembled a little that day; no wonder riage is a mistake for an artist." This was all that she curtailed her pupils' lessons by five that was said on the subject then; but they re-minutes, in a way that was quite contrary to curred to it many times afterward, and Philip her usual conscientious practice; no wonder gradually came to feel that he had been prema- | that, when she bounded into her own room ture in proposing to that "loving child, Mina Felden." To himself, even, he called the bond that existed between them a half-and-half engagement only, "one that would surely come to nothing; for Mina ought to do better than to marry a poor wandering artist." Besides, if he was going to be a faithful soldier to her under whose banner he was fighting at present, a wife would be a sad hinderance. Under the influence of these feelings correspondence with Mina became a laborious thing to him; and though he loved Mina still, he found himself wishing that it had been his fate to have found Mrs. Ferrers free. when her day's labor was over, the little maidservant who waited upon her thought "Miss Mina looked years younger than she did a month ago." There was a foreign letter lying on the table -a letter from the bride, her sister Bertha. "We shall be home now in a month," the happy beauty wrote. "John has given up the partridges this year for my sake; but a dozen wives wouldn't keep him from the first 'meet' of the season, I believe. You must go straight home with us, my dear Mina, and marry a duplicate of John, if you can find one." "Was Bertha mad," Mina wondered, "that she could speak to Philip Bray's betrothed of marriage with another man?" Then she read on: "I was thunder-struck, a few days ago, by meeting Philip Bray in the gallery of the Louvre. Mr. Ferrers died on the voyage home from America, and that handsome wife of his is in Paris too. I never believed in him as you did, my darling Mina; but even I am shocked to hear Meanwhile Mina had lived through twelve that they are going to be married, if they are months of such passionate pain that only the not married already. We did not speak to hard work to which she condemned herself had him, and he looked moody and miserable, as saved her heart from breaking. Rumors had well he might." There was a little more sisreached her rumors always do reach girls interly sympathy in the letter, and Mina read it They staid in the United States a year, and then Mr. Ferrers wearied of traveling, and sighed for a return to those business habits that custom had made dearer to him than the dolce far niente of the life he was at present leading; and so, with something that closely resembled pangs of regret, Mrs. Ferrers and Philip Bray found themselves steaming back to England again. to the end without flinching. When she had finished it she locked her door, and did battle with herself alone until the evening. Then she came out and faced her father, and told the tale of her own agony and her Philip's downfall without faltering. observed to a friend that night. "She looked like a child in the face this morning, and now she looks like a middle-aged woman.' Mrs. Ferrers continued to write sparkling novels under the name by which the public had learned to like her. But Mina Felden never "Miss Mina do vary so," the small abigail heard of her hero again. DOMINIC AND THE INQUISITION. Dominic of Guzman we are told, upon | ly the path of the missionary, and was estab O'the unerring authority of infallibility, that lished wherever the worship of Mary extended, whether in Lima, Goa, or Japan; it devoured the Netherlands, silenced Italy or Spain, and its hallowed labors and its happy influences are still celebrated and lamented by all those pious but diseased intellects who advocate the use of force in creating unity of religious belief. Its memory is still dear to every adherent of infallibility; nor can any one of that grave assembly of bishops who so lately sat in St. Peter's venture to avow, without danger of heresy, that he doubts the divine origin of the institutions of Dominic. his life was surrounded by a cloud of miracles: that at the sound of his inspired voice the dead arose and walked, the sick were healed, the heretics converted; that often in his moments of ecstasy he floated in the air before the eyes of his disciples; that the fiercest flames refused to consume the parchment upon which were written his divine meditations; and that, in the midst of the carnage his eloquence excited, the saint ever remained the gentlest and meekest of his race. Once, as Dominic stood in the midst of a pious throng in the convent of St. Sixtus, conversing with the Cardinal Stephen, Nothing, indeed, can be more impressive a messenger, bathed in tears, came in to an- than that tender regret with which the Italian nounce that the Lord Napoleon, the nephew of prelates lament over the fall of the venerable Stephen, had been thrown from his horse, and tribunal. Modern civilization has inflicted no lay dead at the convent gate. The cardinal, deeper wound; modern governments have nevweighed down by grief, fell weeping upon the er more grossly invaded the rights of the infalbreast of the saint. Dominic, full of compas- lible church.1 One of the means, the bishops sion, ordered the body of the young man to be exclaim, which the church employs for the brought in, and prepared to exercise his mirac-eternal safety of those who have the good forulous powers. He directed the altar to be ar-tune to belong to her is the Holy Inquisition; ranged for celebrating mass; he fell into a sud- it cuts off the heretic, it preserves the faithful den ecstasy, and, as his hands touched the sacred from the contagion of error; its charitable soelements, he rose in the air and hung, kneeling, licitude, its exhortations and its teachings, its in empty space above the astonished worshipers. venerable procedure, its necessary and remeDescending, he made the sign of the cross upon dial punishments, have won the admiration of the dead; he commanded the young man to generations of devoted Catholics. It has been arise, and at once the Lord Napoleon sprang up hallowed by the approval of a series of infallible alive and in perfect health, in the presence of popes; it is consecrated by the voice of Heaven. a throng of witnesses.2 For a time it may be suppressed by the action of hostile governments, by the corrupt influence of modern civilization. But the church has never for a moment abandoned its most effective instrument; and in some happier hour, when the claims of St. Peter are acknowledged in every land, his infallible successor will establish anew the charitable solicitude and the remedial pains of the Holy Office in Europe and America, and the civilized world shall sit once more, humbled and repentant, at the feet of Dominic and his holy inquisitors. Such are the wonders gravely related of Dominic, the founder of the inquisition; yet, if we may trust the tradition, the real achievements of his seared and clouded intellect far excel in their magnificent atrocity even the wildest legends of the saints. He invented or he enlarged that grand machinery by which the conscience of mankind was held in bondage for centuries; whose relentless grasp was firmly fastened upon the decaying races of Southern Europe, the converts of Hindostan, and the conquerors of Mexico and Peru; whose gloomy palaces and dungeons sprang up in almost every catholic city of the South, and formed for ages the chief bulwarks of the aggressive career of Rome. The Holy Office, from the time of Dominic, became the favorite instrument for the propagation of the faith; it followed swift 1 Vaulx-Cernay, cap. vii. A contemporary account of the Albigensian war relates the famous miracle. 2 Butle, Lives of the Saints, viii. 62. 2 |