too, his (as everybody then thought) | to repay some of his obligations to her; brother poet and future biographer, came but when helplessness fell upon Mary to Weston; and, what was still more won- Unwin, Cowper's days of possible comderful, Cowper returned his visit with his fort had come to an end. In 1786 they inseparable Mary, now falling herself into went to Weston, It was in '94 that the the exhaustion of age, and enfeebled by final break-down came. Lady Hesketh some premonitory attacks of paralysis. arrived to find the household in wild disThis was the last gleam of sunshine that order, the woman who had so long swayed remained to him. Nothing could be more it fallen into dotage, and the carefullyenthusiastic than Hayley's description of guarded master of the pleasant home, he the pair who were thus tottering on the whom everybody had concurred in watchlast verge of happiness. "Here is a Muse ing over and keeping from all harm, actof seventy that I perfectly idolize," he ing as nurse in his turn, though himself says; and he describes the manners and hovering on the verge of madness. It is conversation of Cowper as "resembling needless to follow to its end the sad and his poetry, charming by unaffected elegance lingering story. When the circumstances and the graces of a benevolent spirit." were known, his cousin and all his friends With such guests coming and going about them, the two invalids kept up, propped by the love of their friends; and it was in this last glimmering of evening light that Cowper wrote two of the most exquisite poems in the language - his own most perfect productions-poems, every line of which is instinct with a profound and chastened feeling to which it would be difficult to find a parallel. These are the lines addressed to his mother's picture, and those entitled "My Mary." Poetry has never produced any utterances more gently deep and true. They are without passion, for passion does not belong to filial love. And there is not a phrase in them, not a word, which jars upon the most susceptible ear, not a tinge of exaggeration, not a touch that is excessive. This was the love he knew. Other affections had skimmed over him, calling forth here and there "a swallow-flight of song." This one love alone was fully possible to him, the love half reverential, half protecting, without fear, or doubt, or possibility of delusion in it, which a son bears to his mother. The fact that he who gave forth these supreme utterances of filial love was himself old when he did it, brings into the relationship a strange tender equality which is marvellously touching. The two women whom he celebrates are above him, yet on his level, his companions, his saints, his servants. Gratitude in the one case visionary, in the other how real, a sense of superiority, mingle and blend as poetry never blended them before. Any true lover of Cowper who was asked to select his poet's best, would reply with one of these two poems. They are the expression of the master feeling of his life.

But now his faithful guardian, his tenderest friend, was no longer able to lend her supporting arm or stand by him in his trouble. Love gave him a little strength

gathered round him, each ready to help and serve. Some impatient bitter words fell from Lady Hesketh's lips in regard to the now helpless and burdensome companion from whom gratitude and decency alike made it impossible to sever the poet; but these were, no doubt, the mere petulant utterances of grief in sight of so sad a spectacle. One imbecile, babbling and laughing in her weakness, the other sitting "still and silent as death," speaking to no one, asking nothing, dwelling in an awful visionary world of his own diseased and morbid fancies, such were the terrible charges whom Lady Hesketh undertook to guard. After a while a younger guardian stepped in and beguiled the poet and his helpless mate away from Weston, hoping as people always hope in vain for the benefit to be derived from change of air. But no benefit remained in this world for Cowper. When his Mary died he made no sign of feeling, being lost in the stupor of his own gathering malady. He sat silent with wild sad eyes in the Norfolk parsonage, to which he had been taken, and had novels read to him the livelong day, finding in them heaven knows what solace for woes that were never to be cured in this world. Sometimes the moaning of the sea would soothe him, sometimes he would rouse up to make a mechanical correction of his Homer; sometimes, even, he would write a cold and gloomy letter without beginning or endfor one of his delusions was that he had ceased to be capable of affection for any one -to his cousin. All that tender care and affection could do for him was done. His kind cousins the Johnsons gave themselves and their home up to his service, and no doubt hoped that when Mrs. Unwin's death had been got over, new life might come back. But the only life that remained for him was a better than this.

He survived his faithful companion more cordial, "What can it signify?" What than three years, but they were years of did it matter? one hour of weakness more darkness, without hope or consolation. A or less, a pain the greater. By that time year before his death he wrote the "Cast- the gloom had reached its blackest, the away," the last of his poems, and perhaps light was near. What did it signify?

the saddest. And there was not even re- Who can doubt that all the ceaseless sufferserved for him that gleam of light at the ings of his life, all his miseries, some hours last which so often gives a pathetic glad-thereafter, had become as dreams to him ness to a death-bed. He went down un- in the great and new revelation which consoled into the dark valley. The last awaited him at the gates of heaven? words he said were, when he was offered a

"So, after all, there is an under-current setting outwards in the Straits of Gibraltar.

66

SIR J. HERSCHEL ON OCEAN CURRENTS.-We the presumed salt spring' of Smyth and Wolare permitted to publish the following letter laston, making it clear that the whole affair (probably one of the last written by Sir John must have arisen from some accidental substituHerschel on scientific subjects) which was ad- tion of one bottle for another, or from evaporadressed by him to Dr. Carpenter, with reference tion. I never put any hearty faith in it. to his paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, "On the Gibraltar Current, the Gulf Stream, and the General Oceanic Circulation," a copy of which had been forwarded to him by Dr. Carpenter on its publication, with a request that he would reconsider the opinions he had formerly expressed as to the inadequacy of differences of temperature and specific gravity to produce great movements of ocean water:

"COLLINGWOOD, April 19, 1871. "MY DEAR SIR,- Many thanks for your paper on the Gibraltar Current and Gulf Stream.

66

Assuredly, after well considering all you say, as well as the common sense of the matter, and the experience of our hot-water circulationpipes in our green-houses, &c., there is no refusing to admit that an oceanic circulation of some sort must arise from mere heat, cold, and evaporation as vere cause, and you have brought forward with singular emphasis the more powerful action of the polar cold, or rather the more intense action, as its maximum effect is limited to a much smaller area than that of the maximum of equatorial heat.

"The action of the trade and counter tradewinds in like manner cannot be ignored; and henceforwards the question of ocean-currents will have to be studied under a two-fold point of view. The wind-currents, however, are of easier investigation. All the causes lie on the surface; none of the agencies escape our notice; the configuration of coasts, which mainly determines their direction, is patent to sight. It is otherwise with the other class of movements. They take place in the depths of the ocean; and their movements and directions and channels of concentration are limited by the configuration of the sea-bottom, which has to be studied over its whole extent by the very imperfect method of sounding.

"I am glad you succeeded in getting specimens of Mediterranean water near the place of

Repeating my thanks for this interesting memoir, believe me, Dear Sir, "Yours very truly,

"Dr. W. B. Carpenter."

"J. F. W. HERSCHEL

We congratulate Dr. Carpenter on having obtained from so eminent an authority, as one of the last acts of his honoured life, this córdial and well-considered acceptance of the doctrine he had previously opposed; and this distinct recognition of the new aspect in which Dr. Carpenter's own observations and reasonings had placed it. The success of his appeal shows that he did not underrate the noble candour of the great philosopher, to whom, more than thirty years previously, he had dedicated his first scientific treatise, as an expression of his gratitude for the moral and intellectual benefit he had derived from the "Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy.'

Nature.

the

BARON WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, the younger of Goethe's two grandsons, has commenced to print for the present, we (Athenæum) are sorry to learn, for private circulation only results of his many years' researches in the archives of Rome, Florence, and Venice, referring to the ecclesiastical history of Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The first number of the first part has just been distributed, as an earnest of the whole. Friends who have been favoured with copies praise the work highly. Wolfgang von Goethe, the younger, was formerly attached to the Prussian embassy at Rome, and made his literary début some twenty years ago with a little volume of poems and a philosophical drama.

Pall Mall Gazette.

CHAPTER VI.

in reality his father's successor. Even Lady Rivers, who was a rich young widow when she became Sir Austin's wife, and had a comfortable jointure house in another county, openly referred to that time, and as openly regretted that her step-son did not turn his thoughts to a second marriage.

HANNAH was fond of the Moat-House; in the way that we are often fond of people thrown temporarily in our way, thinking: "I should like you if I knew you," but well aware that this will never happen. Often, as in her walks she passed by the grey old walls, she could quite understand Mr. Rivers's strong clinging to the only "But he will soon, of course; and you home he ever knew, the resting-place of ought to take every opportunity of sughis family for generations. She sympa-gesting it to him, Miss Thelluson; for, in thized keenly in his admiration for its his position, it is really his duty, and he quaint nooks and corners within-its says one of the great advantages you are quainter aspect without; for the moat had to him is, that you always keep him up to been drained, and turned into a terraced his duty." garden, and the old drawbridge into a bridge leading to it; so that it was the most original and interesting house possible.

Miss Thelluson would have gone there often, but for a conviction that its inhabitants did not approve of this. Wide as their circle was, and endless as were their entertainments, it was not what Hannah called a hospitable house. That is, it opened its doors wide at stated times; gave the most splendid dinners and balls; but if you went in accidentally or uninvited, you were received both by the family and servants with civil surprise. Hannah was, once calling of an evening after an early dinner; when the effort to get her an egg to her tea seemed to throw the whole establishment, from the butler downwards, into such dire confusion, that she never owned to being "hungry" at the Moat-House again.

Nor was it a place to bring a child to. Rosie, always good at home, was sure to be naughty at the Moat-House; and then grandmamma and aunts always told papa of it, and papa came back and complained to Aunt Hannah; and Aunt Hannah was sometimes sorry, sometimes indignant. So the end was that she and the child never went there unless especially invited; and that paradise of most little people "grandmamma's house" and "grandmamma's garden". was to Rosie Rivers a perfect blank.

Nevertheless, Aunt Hannah never looked at the lovely old house without a sense of tender regret; for it was so very lovely, and might have been so dear. Perhaps it would be, one day, when Rosie, its heir's sole heiress, reigned as mistress there. A change which another ten or fifteen years were likely enough to bring about, as Sir Austin was an old man, and young Austin, the hapless eldest son, would never inherit anything. Everybody knew, though nobody said it, that Bernard Rivers would be

To these remarks Hannah seldom answered more than a polite smile. She made a point of never discussing Mr. Rivers's marriage: first, because if his family had no delicacy on the subject, she had; and, second, because every day convinced her more and more that he was sincere when he told her he had no present intention of the kind.

Yet he was perfectly cheerful now - not exactly in his old buoyant fashion, but in a contented, equable way, that Hannah, at least, liked much better, Theirs was a cheerful house, too. "Use hospitality without grudging" was Bernard's motto; and he used it, as she once suggested to him, principally to those "who cannot repay thee." So the House on the Hillthe clergyman's house - was seldom empty, but had always bed and board at the service of any who required it, or enjoyed it. Still, this kind of hospitality, simple as it was, kept Hannah very busy always. Not that she objected to it: nay, she rather liked it; it roused her dormant social qualities, made her talk more and look brighter and better-indeed some people congratulated her on having grown ten years younger since she came to Easterham. She felt so herself, at any rate.

Besides this outside cheerfulness in their daily life, she and her brother-in-law, since their quarrel and its making-up, seemed to have got on together better than ever. Her mind was settled on the marriage question; she dreaded no immediate changes, and he seemed to respect her all the more for having "shown fight" on the question of Grace Dixon alas, Mrs. Dixon no longer now!-she took off her wedding-ring, and was called plain Grace; she had no right to any other name.

“And my boy has no name either," she said once, with a pale, patient face, when, the worst of her sorrow having spent itself, she went about her duties, outwardly resigned.

"Never mind!" Hannah replied, with a choke in her throat. "He must make himself one." And then they laid the subject aside, and discussed it no more.

Neither did she and her brother-in-law open it up again. It was one of the sore inevitables, the painful awkwardnesses, best not talked about. In truth-in the position in which she and Mr. Rivers stood to one another how could they talk about it?

The Rivers's family did sometimes; they had a genius for discussing unpleasant topics. But happily the approaching marriage of Mr. Melville and Adeline annihilated this one.

"Under the circumstances nobody could speak to him about it, you know; it might hurt his feelings," said the happy brideelect. "And pray keep Grace out of his way, for he knows her well; she was brought up in his family. A very nice family, are they not?"

Hannah allowed they were. She sometimes watched the dowager Mrs. Melville among her tribe of step-daughters, whom she had brought up, and who returned her care with unwonted tenderness, thought of poor Grace, and sighed.

called them, and his loving eye saw all their faults very small, and their virtues very large. Hannah tried, for his sake, to do the same. Only, the better she knew them the more she determined on one thing-to hold firmly to her point, that she, and she alone, should have the, bringing-up of little Rosie.

"I daresay you will think me very conceited," she said one night to Rosie's father-the winter evenings were drawing in again, and they were sitting talking, in that peaceful hour after "the children are asleep"-"but I do believe that I, her mother's sister, can bring up Rosie better than anybody else. First, because I love her best, she being of my own blood - secondly, because not all women - not even all mothers - have the real motherly heart. Shall I tell you a story I heard to-day, and Lady Rivers instanced it as 'right discipline?' But it is only a baby-story; it may weary you." Nothing ever wearies me that concerns Rosie and you."

"Well, then, there is an Easterham lady - you meet her often at dinner-parties young and pretty, and capital at talking of maternal duties. She has a little girl of six, and the little girl did wrong in Adeline's marriage was carried out with- some small way, and was told to say she out delay. It seemed a great satisfaction was sorry. 'I have said it mamma, sevento everybody, and a relief likewise. Young ty-times-seven to myself.' (A queer Mr. Melville, who was rather of a butter- speech; but children do say such queer fly temperament, had fluttered about this things sometimes; Rosie does already). nosegay of pretty girls for the last ten But you must say it to me,' said mamma. years. He had, in fact, loved through the 'I won't,' said the child. And then the family - beginning with the eldest, when mother stood, beating and shaking her, at they were playfellows, then transferring intervals, for nearly an hour. At last the his affections to Helen, and being sup- little thing fell into convulsions of sobbing. posed to receive a death-blow on her en-Fetch me the water-jug, and I'll pour it gagement; which, however, he speedily over her.' recovered, to carry on a long flirtation through.) with the handsome Bertha; finally, to everybody's wonder, he settled down to Adeline, who was the quietest, the least pretty, and the only one out of the four who really loved him.

Bertha was vexed at first, but soon took consolation. "After all, I only cared to flirt with him, and I can do it just as well when he is my brother-in-law. Brothers are so stupid; but a brother-inlaw, of one's own age, will be so very convenient. Miss Thelluson, don't you find it so?

(Which she did, wetting her This is the way I conquer my children.' Now," said Hannah Thelluson, with flashing eyes, "if any strange woman were ever to try to 'conquer' my child

"Keep yourself quiet, Hannah," said Mr. Rivers, half smiling, and gently patting her hand. "No strange woman' shall ever interfere between you and Rosie."

"And you will promise never to send her to school, at Paris or anywhere else, as Lady Rivers proposed the other day, when she is old enough. Oh, papa," (she sometimes Hannah scarcely answered this- one called him papa," as a compromise beof the many odd things which she often tween "Bernard," which he wished, and heard said at the Moat-House. However," Mr. Rivers ") "I think I should go franshe did not consider it her province to tic if anybody were to take my child away notice them. The Riverses were Ber- from me." nard's "people," as he affectionately

"Nobody ever shall," said he, earnestly

So she did; and Hannah continually watched in wonder the little new-born soul, growing as fast as the body, and spreading out its wings daily in farther and fairer flights, learning, she knew not how, more things than she had taught it, or could teach.

Then Rosie comforted her aunt sowith the same sweet, dumb comfort that Hannah used to get from flowers and birds and trees. But here was a living flower, which God had given her to train up into beauty, blessing her with twice the blessedness she gave. In all her little household worries, Rosie's unconscious and perpetual well-spring of happiness soothed Hannah indescribably, and never more so than in some bitter days which followed that day, when Mr. Rivers seemed to have suddenly returned to his old miserable self, and to be dissatisfied with everything and everybody.

Even herself. She could not guess why; but sometimes her brother-in-law actually scolded her, or, what was worse, he scolded Rosie; quite needlessly, for the child was an exceedingly good child. And then Aunt Hannah's indignation was roused. More than once she thought of giving him a severe lecture, as she had occasionally done before, and he declared it did him good. But a certain diffidence restrained

Hannah sat alone, and rather uncomfortable. Had she vexed him in any way? Was he not glad she declared herself happy, since, of necessity, his kindness helped to make her so? For months now there had never come a cloud between them. Their first quarrel was also their last. By this time they had, of course, grown perfectly used to one another's ways; their life flowed on in its even course-a pleasant her. What right indeed had she to "pitch river, busy as it was smooth. Upon its surface floated peacefully that happy, childish life, developing into more beauty every day. Rosie was not exactly a baby now; and often when she trotted along the broad garden walk, holding tightly papa's hand on one side and auntie's on the other, there came into Hannah's mind that lovely picture of Tennyson's : —

"And in their double love secure

The little maiden walked demure, Pacing with downward eyelids pure." That was the picture which she saw in a vision, and had referred to why had it vexed the father? Did he think she "spoiled" Rosie? But love never spoils any child, and Aunt Hannah could be stern, too, if necessary. She made as few laws as possible; but those she did make were irrevocable, and Rosie knew this already. She never cried for a thing twice over- and oh how touching was her trust, how patient her resigning!

"I don't know how far you will educate your little niece," wrote Lady Dunsmore, in the early days of Hannah's willing task; "but I am quite certain she will educate you."

into him," as he had laughingly called it, when they were no blood relations?-if blood gives the right of fault-finding, which some people suppose. Good friends as she and Mr. Rivers were, Hannah scrupled to claim more than the rights of friendship, which scarcely justify a lady in saying to a gentleman in his own house, "You are growing a perfect bear, and I would much rather have your room than your company."

Which was the truth. Just now, if she had not had Rosie's nursery to take refuge in, and Rosie's little bosom to fly to, burying her head there oftentimes, and drying her wet eyes upon the baby-pinafore, Aunt Hannah would have had a sore time of it.

And yet she was so sorry for him-so sorry! If the old cloud were permanently to return, what should she do? What possible influence had she over him? She was neither his mother nor sister, if indeed either of those ties permanently affect a man who has once been married, and known the closest sympathy, the strongest influence a man can know. Many a time, when he was very disagreeable, her heart sank down like lead; she would carry