care or an anxiety, but I've got them in looking at you. I should like to know what's amiss. I've not seen such trouble in your face since that time when you first came back from Ashton. Stop; I've not done; what I mean is this-marriage is a mistake for such a man as you are; and if you and your wife are not happy together, part at once, and save each other a life's misery."

Paul started up; but Pritchard would be heard out.

Strange that he should have formed that opinion of Nuna! I wonder what he got it from her eyes, he said;" and Paul sat pondering till the lights grew brighter in the deepening blackness, and the hum of voices in the street below his window grew hushed, and left the dull plash of the waves to unbroken monotony. Was Nuna dissatisfied? He had told Pritchard he and his wife were happy together; happy - and then he began to question the meaning of the word.

"I speak for her sake quite as much as yours. She has a soul that will never be satisfied with any love that does not match "Why did I marry?" he asked himhers. Bless you "he tried to laugh, self, not repiningly, but in earnest seriashamed of his own earnestness-"I un-ousness -- and the answer came, he had derstand women: they're best studied married for happiness, with a yearning for through their eyes - when they are true that pure bliss which his own early memwomen, that's to say; but for all that ories had taught him was to be found in they were never meant to torment a man's a loving union, in a true home. life out to satisfy their conceptions of what life ought to be therefore I say, if a man isn't happy with his wife, it's a far kinder act to separate from her than to break her heart by constant disappointments."

He had been young at the time of his father's death, but still he had distinct detached memories of seeing his parents together. He recalled these now; he was trying to discover whether his notion of married happiness was not something fantastic and unreal.

Paul had stood grasping the back of his chair while he listened. "I've read that our capacity for happi"Unless you mean us to quarrel, Pritch-ness is larger than is our power of gratiard, you must avoid the subject altogeth-fying it, and this is one of the means by er," he was deeply offended, and his voice showed it; "but it seems better to tell you, once for all, you are quite mistaken: my wife and I are very happy."

He left the room. He would not go out; he was afraid Pritchard might follow him, or that he might meet the two artists, who just then would have been most unwelcome.

He went upstairs into his bedroom, and threw open the window. It had been a great effort to keep his hands off Pritchard. That he should dare to speak of his married life to him at all was unbearable; but that he should have studied Nuna so as to give him (Paul) a new insight into her heart, had been so startling, that astonishment had for the time held anger within bounds. It blazed out now fierce and unchecked.

That a free-thinking, pleasure-loving being like Pritchard should presume to give his advice on so sacred and delicate a subject as married happiness, was intolerable.

"What can he know about it?" said Paul; "what can he know about the love of any pure good woman, or about how it should be prized and cherished?"

He pulled up short here, as if his thoughts had run against a stone wall;

which we are taught to aspire to the perfect love of heaven; but yet I fancy there may be intense happiness on earth for those who have full sympathy in its enjoyment; surely, so simple, so uncostly a thing as domestic happiness is within the reach of all."

You laugh at Paul for thinking this, you say he is visionary, he has none of that valuable and popular quality which those who have no other faculty label "invaluable common sense;" but your common sense may help you here, if you remember that Paul Whitmore had seen little of married life, and that the few families he knew intimately were happy and united.

It seemed to him, as his thoughts travelled back to childish days, that his father and mother were always associated in his recollections - and then he remembered to have heard that they were not happy apart; almost Nuna's own words when she said good-bye to him. How wistful she had looked; and he had thought her tiresome not to take his absence more as a matter of course. A feeling of self-reproach came - how often he had left Nuna, and they had not been married a year!

"Though, in the love I am thinking of,

time would make no difference, unless indeed affection became deepened and intensified by daily growth-a growth quickened by acts of love, done for the sake of one another."

lovely tenderness. Was he unhappy away from Nuna? No;- he tried to answer Yes; but he remembered that of his own free will he had settled to stay a day longer with Pritchard than he had at first intended.

He was uneasy and restless; he got up and walked about. Pritchard's advice came back, and he felt more angry than ever that he should have given occasion for such an expression of opinion; and as he raised his head haughtily, and threw back his hair with the old familiar action, Nuna's eyes, pleading, tender, -how passionately tender!-seemed to be looking from the dark corner of the room.

Paul's head lowered suddenly, and his hand clasped over his eyes. He was not trying to shut out the picture he had seen, he was concentrating thought on it. His heart swelled and throbbed with a strange mixture of sorrow and joy: sorrow in which remorse was mingled, and joy full

wife; he had not been untrue to her: in his heart Paul still thought he had behaved admirably and with rare self-denial in his interviews with Mrs. Downes, but he ought not to have kept a secret from Nuna.

He was getting less visionary, you see, but he was still vague; he still trusted in love itself too much as a sheet-anchor, without premising that the love must be so pure, so perfect, so really heaven-born, as to make the home in which it hides itself from worldly eyes an earthly Paradise. He knew what he meant and what he wanted; memory told him, and something nearer than memory, that he was the child of such a home: but as yet Paul only knew it might be; he did not grasp that the treasure he sought lay on his own hearthstone, and might be his if he really loved Nuna as she loved him. If he had asked Nuna why she married, she could not have given the same deliberate answer. She would probably have said that life would have been intolerable of anticipation. Yes, he had wronged his away from Paul; if she had been older, and so had gained insight into her own nature, she would have known that the overmastering love she bore to Paul had so united her to him that she had no separate existence. Left alone away from him, life became grey and neutral-tinted, —she was like a chrysalis; her own life lay shrivelled in the past; only the presence of her love could quicken her pulses and rouse her from apathy and vacancy. No one had ever warned Nuna of idolatry: all other love since Mary's death had been thrown back on the ardent young soul, as the cold grey rock flings back the waves on the stones of the beach. Paul had drawn out her hidden love, kindled it, all unconscious of its intense and ardent power, till Nuna had grown to be lieve that there was no happiness that could satisfy so exacting a nature as her own. From the first she had a consciousness that she had been easily won, that her love had existed before Paul's had. It was her character to take blame to herself; it had not occurred to her, except in petulant, quickly repented of moments, seriously to doubt the strength of her husband's love.

"I never will have another," he said; "I'll tell her everything, and she's such a darling, for the very telling her she'll forgive me at once.'

In his usual impulsive fashion he settled to go home directly. Why not? it was not ten o'clock yet. He packed his bag, went down and wrote a note to Pritchard, who had gone to bed, and then found that no train left till six o'clock next morning.

This news set his impatience so ablaze that he went out, left his bag at the station, and resolved to pass the time awake.

He made his way to the pier and sat there, looking out over the sea, grown so quiet and still now, that its vast smooth surface seemed to vex his restlessness. He sat thinking still of Nuna; had he given her much unhappiness? The only time he had ever suspected she might have grief which she hid away, was on that night when he had been startled at the fire in her eyes; he had warned her against jealousy then, and he remembered the strange echo his words had had to him; he remembered, too, that on that same night had come the note from Mr. Downes.

"It would be terrible to make her jealous," he said thoughtfully; but he was

thinking more of the disunion and strife it her eyes looked hard and bright, and would cause than of the pain to Nuna's there was a feverish spot on each cheek, heart. He wondered now at the fascina- which showed that want of rest had not tion he had found in those sittings in Park overmastered the inward trouble that Lane, and side by side with the tender pas- was working in her heart. Literally at sion of his wife's eyes he saw that last look work in every pulse-beat, it seemed to of Patty's. He turned from it with a feel- thrill over her whole body; a feeling ing of reproach; he asked himself how till now latent had been roused to active he would like Nuna to look into any man's eyes as Patty had thus looked into his into Will Bright's, for in

A man came in, almost staggering under NUNA had not slept all night; and now, the weight he carried, but Nuna was as she sat before her untasted breakfast, pre-occupied, she did not look round

even to see where he placed the pic-that if she stayed near the portrait she

ture.

The man went out again, the servant followed him, and the door was closed.

The strange feeling of depression which had hung over Nuna lately was still heavy upon her. She felt nervous, and wished suddenly that the studio was not so large, so that the shadowy, far-off corners might lose the gloomy terrors which she thought oppressed her.

should do it a mischief. She made no effort against the wild tempest that had risen in her bosom. She had tried, at first, to tell herself that there was some accidental likeness, but conviction stifled this. It was Patty, and she had sought Paul out, and tried to rekindle his old love.

"Oh, God!" moaned Nuna, "take me in mercy! How am I to live, if Paul loves her?"

"

"I'll go to bed," she said; "I have sat up till I'm tired out. I believe I am afraid The night was full of torture. She had of that huge picture; I wonder what it spent it mostly in walking up and down can be. The best way is to look at it." her bedroom, pressing her bare feet on She had shrunk from doing this, re- the carpet with the longing after pain that membering Paul's dislike to be questioned mental agony creates; and now this about his portraits; but in his absence it morning she was not really calmer, only was such a dear delight to gaze on some-stilled by exhaustion. thing that his hand had touched some- She had tried to pray, but her dry, thing created by the mind she so wor-parched tongue had uttered words which shipped.

her heart gave no voice to; and now, as she thought of the hours she was doomed to pass alone in the same room with that smiling, lovely face, her despair grew to frenzy, and she wrung her hands.

The picture had been placed against the bookcase; Nuna had been sitting at the table with her back towards it. She took her reading lamp, and went close up to it; her eyes did not at once reach the face; Nuna had none of the helpless feebleshe was arrested by the marvellous paint-ness which makes some women seek for ing of the hands, the grace of the atti-instant support against sorrow - a feebletude; "so simple, so unstudied," she said. ness which, if rightly guided, brings true "Paul has given this fine lady the freshness of a country girl.”

help to the seeker, or, in another way it may be, deepens her misery. Paul had been the rock on which all her hopes had anchored. She had only relied on Paul's counsel and will, and now Paul had no more love for her. She must go on loving him; he was a part of her being now; but pride, every true womanly feeling, Nuna thought, must prevent her from showing her love.

She started so violently when her eyes reached the face that she nearly upset her lamp-started with a kind of superstitious terror- - a terror which raised the hair on her temples, and bathed her forehead in sudden dew; then a scornful smile of incredulity curved her lips; she raised the lamp higher, and took a still closer survey. She did not start this time. Something "He has separated us by his own act," seemed to steel her against any outward and the words pierced through her as she emotion. Her heart felt dead, stony spoke them. "Oh, Paul! could you have while she stood, still as the picture itself, kept this secret from me if you had ever taking in every detail of Patty's exceed-loved me at all?" ing loveliness.

She came back to the table at last, set the lamp down, and stood thinking with fixed eyes and clasped hands.

Not for long. Nuna felt on a sudden

She had no power to withdraw herself from the hateful picture, so she sat through the morning, dry-eyed, waiting for her husband's return.

THE Ant-eating Woodpecker (Melanerpes | trees, when thus filled, presents at a short disformicivorus) a common Californian species, tance the appearance of being studded with has a curious and peculiar method of laying up provision against the inclement season. Small round holes are dug in the bark of the pine and oak, into each one of which is inserted an acorn, and so tightly is it fitted or driven in, that it is with difficulty extracted. The bark of the pine

brass-headed nails. Stowed away in large quantities in this manner, the acorns not only supply the wants of the woodpecker, but the squirrels, mice, and jays avail themselves likewise of the fruits of its provident labour.

Nature.

CATHAY.

From Saint Pauls.

WITH NOTICES OF TRAVELLERS TO THAT COUNTRY.

THE popular impression is so strong that China was a new discovery in the sixteenth century, that if we were Irish we should be disposed to call this paper, "Visits to China, before it was discovered." The idea is, however, equally well conveyed without a bull, if we term it "Notices of Cathay." For to those who have paid any attention to the subject, the mere use of that name will define the period with which we mean to deal, viz., the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries.

Our notices of China as known to the West might indeed go many centuries further back, though not under the name that we have prefixed. We might go back to the Sinim of the Prophet Isaiah if we were bold enough; we might with firmer assurance go back to the Seres and Sinae of classic poets and geographers, which were but two names applied to the same great people as dimly seen from landward on the north, and from seaward on the south; and to the Tzinista of the Alexandrine monk and merchant, Cosmos, in the sixth century, which was but a Grecizing of the Persian appellation Chinistán. But to begin so far back would lead to prolixity; we confine ourselves, then, to Cathay.

It must have been during the period (ending with the overthrow of the dynasty in 1123) when this northern monarchy was the face which the Celestial Empire turned to Inner Asia, that the name of Khitan, Khitat, or Khitai became indissolubly associated with China.

A century later came the climax of the power of Chinghiz, the Mongol conqueror of the eastern world. One result of his conquests, and those of his immediate sucthrew, for a time, Mahomedan arrogance, cessors, by the depression into which they and, in fact, all the political partitions of Asia, was to open the breadth of that great continent to the travellers, traders, and missionaries of the west. "It is worthy of the grateful remembrance of all Christian people," says one of the ecclesiastical travellers of the next age, "that just when God let loose in the eastern parts of the world those Tartars to slay and to be slain, He sent forth also into the western parts of the world his faithful and blessed servants, Dominic and Francis, to enlighten, instruct, and build up in the faith." And, indeed, whatever we may think on the whole of the world's debt to Dominic (as indirectly, if not directly, the Father of the Inquisition), it is to the brethren of the two orders, but chiefly to the Franciscans, that we owe a large part of the notices of Eastern Asia that those ages have bequeathed.

to posterity, who found their way to the Thus, among the many wanderers dumb far court of Karakorum, on the northern verge of the Mongolian Desert, luckily for

us there went, also, in 1245, John of Plano

Carpini, a native of Umbria, and, a few broek, or De Rubruquis, both of them years later, the Fleming William of RuysFranciscan monks of superior intelligence, whose narratives have been preserved.

oblivion, Europe was told of a great and First by these two, after centuries of civilized people, dwelling in the extreme east upon the shores of the ocean; and to the land of this people they gave a name now first heard in the west, that of CATHAY.

This name, KHITAI, though its European use be limited properly to the centuries we have specified, is to this day that by which China is known to nearly all the nations which are accustomed to view it from a landward point of view, including the Russians, the Persians, and the nations of Turkestan. The name was originally borrowed from that of a people who were not, properly speaking, Chinese at all. The Khitans were a people of Manchu lineage (kindred therefore to the race of the present Imperial Dynasty), who in the tenth century overran all the northern provinces of China, and established a considerable empire, embracing those provinces and the adjoining regions of Tartary. This empire subsisted for two centuries. The same curious process took place which seems always to have followed the intru-turns to speak of them more particularly sion of Tartar conquerors into China, and strongly resembling that which followed the establishment of the Roman emperors in Byzantium. The intruders themselves adopted Chinese manners, ceremonies, and literature, and gradually therewith degenerated and lost all warlike energy.

The elder and earlier monk, after several incidental references to the Kitai, re

thus:

"The Cathayans are a Pagan people, who have a written character of their own. They have also, it is reported, a New and an Old Testament; they have besides a Book of the Lives of the Fathers, and they have religious recluses, and buildings used very much like