Bolton's friendship and protection-how earned I never knew-my father would have come to grief years before, for he was a thorough Italian, and always up to the neck in conspiracies; he had been in that Bonapartist affair at Rome; was a Carbonaro and a Camorrist, and Heaven knows what besides. And though Bolton was a man very unlikely to sympathize with these opinions, I take it my respected parent must have been a bon diable that men who knew him would not willingly see wrecked and ruined. Bolton was most kind to myself personally. He received me with many signs of friendship, and without troubling me with any more details of law than were positively unavoidable, put me in possession of the little my father had left behind him, which consisted of a few hundred francs of savings and an old chest, with some older clothes and a mass of papers and letters-dangerous enough, as I discovered, to have compromised scores of people—and a strange old manuscript book, clasped and locked, called the Diary of Giacomo Lami, with matter in it for half-adozen romances; for Giacomo, too, had the conspirator's taste, had known Danton intimately, and was deep in the confidence of all the Irish republicans who were affiliated with the French revolutionary party. But besides this the book contained a quantity of original letters; and when mention was made in the text of this or that event, the letter which related to it, or replied to some communication about it, was appended in the original. I made this curious volume my study for weeks, till, in fact, I came to know far more about old Giacomo and his times than I ever knew about my father and his epoch. There was not a country in Europe in which he had not lived, nor, I believe, one in which he had not involved himself in some trouble. He loved his art, but he loved political plotting and conspiracy even more, and was ever ready to resign his most profitable engagement for a scheme that promised to overturn a government or unthrone a sovereign. My first thought on reading his curious reminiscences was to make them the basis of a memoir for publication. Of course they were fearfully indiscreet, and involved reputations that no one had ever thought of assailing; but they were chiefly of persons dead and gone, and it was only their memory that could suffer. I spoke to Bolton about this. He approved of the notion, principally as a means of helping me to a little money, which I stood much in need of, and gave me a letter to a friend in Paris, the well-known publisher Lecoq, of the Rue St. Honoré.

"As I was dealing with a man of honour and high character, I had no scruple in leaving the volume of old Giacomo's memoirs in Lecoq's hands; and after about a week I returned to learn what he thought of it. He was frank enough to say that no such diary had ever come before him—that it cleared up a vast number of points hitherto doubtful and obscure, and showed an amount of knowledge of the private life of the period absolutely marvellous; but,' said he, 'it would never do to make it public. Most of these men are now forgotten, it is true, but their descendants remain, and live in honour amongst us. What a terrible scandal it would be to proclaim to the world that of these people many were illegitimate, many in the enjoyment of large fortunes to which they had not a shadow of a title;

in fact, said he, it would be to hurl a live shell in the very midst of society, leaving the havoc and destruction it might cause to blind chance. But,' added he, it strikes me there is a more profitable use the volume might be put to. Have you read the narrative of your grandmother's marriage in Ireland with that rich Englishman?' I owned I had read it carelessly, and without bestowing much interest on the theme. 'Go back and re-read it,' said he, and come and talk it over with me to-morrow evening.' As I entered his room the next night he arose ceremoniously from his chair, and said, in a tone of well-assumed obsequiousness, Si je ne me trompe pas, j'ai l'honneur de voir Monsieur Bramleigh, n'est ce pas ?' I laughed, and replied, 'Je ne m'y oppose pas, Monsieur;' and we at once launched out into the details of the story, of which each of us had formed precisely the same opinion.

"Ill luck would have it, that as I went back to my lodgings on that night I should meet Bertani, and Varese, and Manini, and be persuaded to go and sup with them. They were all suspected by the police, from their connection with Orsini; and on the morning after I received an order from the Minister of War to join my regiment at Oran, and an intimation that my character being fully known, it behoved me to take care. I gave no grounds for more stringent measures towards me. I understood the 'caution,' and, not wishing to compromise M. Lecoq, who had been so friendly in all his relations with me, I left France, without even an opportunity of getting back my precious volume, which I never saw again till I revisited Paris eight years after, having given in my démission from the service. Lecoq obtained for me that small appointment I held under M. Lesseps in Egypt, and which I had given up a few weeks before I met you on the Nile. I ought to tell you that Lecoq, for what reason I can't tell, was not so fully persuaded that my claim was as direct as he had at first thought it; and indeed his advice to me was rather to address myself seriously to some means of livelihood, or to try and make some compromise with the Bramleighs, with whom he deemed a mere penniless pretender would not have the smallest chance of success. I hesitated a good deal over his counsel. There was much in it that weighed with me, perhaps convinced me; but I was always more or less of a gambler, and more than once have I risked a stake, which, if I lost, would have left me penniless; and at last I resolved to say, Va Banque, here goes; all or nothing. There's my story, mon cher, without any digressions, even one of which, if I had permitted myself to be led into it, would have proved twice as long."

"The strength of a chain is the strength of its weakest link, the engineers tell us," said Longworth," and it is the same with evidence. I'd like to hear what Kelson says of the case."

"That I can scarcely give you.

His last letter to me is full of

questions which I cannot answer; but you shall read it for yourself. you send upstairs for my writing-desk?"

Will

"We'll con that over to-morrow after breakfast, when our heads will be clearer and brighter. Have you old Lami's journal with you?"

The only thing I have here is

"No. All my papers are with Kelson. a sketch in coloured chalk of my grandmother, in her eighteenth year, as a Flora, and, from the date, it must have been done in Ireland, when Giacomo was working at the frescoes."

"That my father," said Pracontal, after a pause, "counted with certainty on this succession all his own papers show, as well as the care he bestowed on my early education, and the importance he attached to my knowing and speaking English perfectly. But my father cared far more for a conspiracy than a fortune. He was one of those men who only seem to live when they are confronted by a great danger, and I believe there has not been a great plot in Europe these last five-and-thirty years without his name being in it. He was twice handed over to the French authorities by the English Government, and there is some reason to believe that the Bramleighs were the secret instigators of the extradition. easier way of getting rid of his claims."

"These are disabilities which do not attach to you."

There was no

"No, thank heaven. I have gone no farther with these men than mere acquaintance. I know them all, and they know me well enough to know that I deem it the greatest disaster of my life that my father was one of them. It is not too much to say that a small part of the energy he bestowed on schemes of peril and ruin would have sufficed to have vindicated his claim to wealth and fortune."

"You told me, I think, that Kelson hinted at the possibility of some compromise, something which, sparing them the penalty of publicity, would still secure to you an ample fortune."

"Yes. What he said was, 'Juries are, with all their honesty of intention, capricious things to trust to;' and that, not being rich enough to suffer repeated defeats, an adverse verdict might be fatal to me. I didn't like the reasoning altogether, but I was so completely in his hands that I forbore to make any objection, and so the matter remained."

"I suspect he was right," said Longworth, thoughtfully. "At the same time, the case must be strong enough to promise victory, to sustain the proposal of a compromise."

"And if I can show the game in my hand why should I not claim the stakes?"

"Because the other party may delay the settlement. They may challenge the cards, accuse you of a rook, put out the lights, anything, in short, that shall break up the game."

"I see," said Pracontal, gravely; "the lawyer's notion may be better than I thought it."

A long silence ensued between them, then Longworth, looking at his watch, exclaimed, "Who'd believe it? It wants only a few minutes to two o'clock. Good-night."

The Love of the Alps.

Of all the joys in life, none is greater than the joy of arriving on the outskirts of Switzerland at the end of a long dusty day's journey from Paris. The true epicure in refined pleasures will never travel to Basle by night. He courts the heat of the sun and the uninteresting monotony of French plains, their sluggish streams and never-ending poplar-trees,— for the sake of the evening coolness and the gradual approach to the great Alps which await him at the close of day. It is about Mulhausen that he begins to feel a change in the landscape. The fields broaden into rolling downs, watered by clear and running streams; the green Swiss thistle grows by river-side and cowshed; pines begin to tuft the slopes of gently rising hills; and now the sun has set, the stars come out, first Hesper, then the troop of lesser lights; and he feels,-yes, indeed, there is now no mistake, the well-known, well-loved, magical fresh air that never fails to blow from snowy mountains and meadows watered by perennial streams. The last hour is one of exquisite enjoyment, and when he reaches Basle, he scarcely sleeps all night for hearing the swift Rhine beneath the balconies, and knowing that the moon is shining on its waters, through the town, beneath the bridges, between pasture lands and copses, up the still mountain-girdled valleys to the ice-caves where the water springs. There is nothing in all experience of travelling like this. We may greet the Mediterranean at Marseilles with enthusiasm ; on entering Rome by the Porta del Popolo, we may reflect with pride that we have reached the goal of our pilgrimage, and are at last among world-shaking memories. But neither Rome nor the Riviera wins our hearts like Switzerland. We do not lie awake in London thinking of them; we do not long so intensely, as the year comes round, to revisit them. Our affection is less a passion than that which we cherish for Switzerland.

Why, then, is this? What, after all, is the love of the Alps, and when and where did it begin? It is easier to ask these questions than to answer them. The classic nations hated mountains. Greek and Roman poets talk of them with disgust and dread. Nothing could have been more depressing to a courtier of Augustus than residence at Aosta, even though he found his theatres and triumphal arches there. Wherever classical feeling has predominated, this has been the case. Cellini's Memoirs, written in the height of pagan Renaissance, well express the aversion which a Florentine or Roman felt for the inhospitable wildernesses of Switzerland. Dryden, in his dedication to The Indian Emperor, says, "High objects, it is true, attract the sight; but it looks up with pain on craggy rocks and

barren mountains, and continues not intent on any object which is wanting in shades and green to entertain it."

Addison and Gray had no better epithets than "rugged," "horrid," and the like for Alpine landscape. The classic spirit was adverse to enthusiasm for mere nature. Humanity was too prominent, and city life absorbed all interests,-not to speak of what perhaps is the weightiest reason- -that solitude, indifferent accommodation, and imperfect means of travelling, rendered mountainous countries peculiarly disagreeable. It is impossible to enjoy art or nature while suffering from fatigue and cold, dreading the attacks of robbers, and wondering whether you will find food and shelter at the end of your day's journey. Nor was it different in the Middle Ages. Then individuals had either no leisure from war or strife with the elements, or else they devoted themselves to the salvation of their souls. But when the ideas of the Middle Ages had decayed, when improved arts of life had freed men from servile subjection to daily needs, when the bondage of religious tyranny had been thrown off and political liberty allowed the full development of tastes and instincts, when moreover the classical traditions had lost their power, and courts and coteries became too narrow for the activity of man; then suddenly it was discovered that Nature in herself possessed transcendent charms. It may seem absurd to class them all together; yet there is no doubt that the French Revolution, the criticism of the Bible, Pantheistic forms of worship, landscape-painting, Alpine travelling, and the poetry of Nature, are all signs of the same movement-of a new Renaissance. Limitations of every sort have been shaken off during the last century, all forms have been destroyed, all questions asked. The classical spirit loved to arrange, model, preserve traditions, obey laws. We are intolerant of everything that is not simple, unbiassed by prescription, liberal as the wind, and natural as the mountain crags. We go to feed this spirit of freedom among the Alps. What the virgin forests of America are to the Americans the Alps are to us. What there is in these huge blocks and walls of granite crowned with ice that fascinates us it is hard to analyze. Why, seeing that we find them so attractive, they should have repelled our ancestors of the fourth generation and all the world before them, is another mystery. We cannot explain what rapport there is between our human souls and these inequalities in the surface of the earth which we call Alps. Tennyson speaks of

Some vague emotion of delight
In gazing up an Alpine height,-

and its vagueness eludes definition. The interest which physical science has created for natural objects has something to do with it. Curiosity and the charm of novelty increase this interest. No towns, no cultivated tracts of Europe, however beautiful, form such a contrast to our London life as Switzerland. Then there is the health and joy that comes from exercise in open air; the senses freshened by good sleep; the blood quickened by a lighter and rarer atmosphere. Our modes of life, the