dear ugly old woman, and present her to the
world as my wife; the choice I have made from
among the hundreds of beautiful young
creatures ready to my hand. But to her lawful
proprietor she is as much her former self as her
present; for the change has come so gently
that he has not noticed how it came, and has
never been shocked by it, as he would have
been shocked by a sudden revelation. He loves
her, both for what she was and what she is; and
remembers how she lost this beauty which had
once been so characteristic of her, and how that
infirmity came upon her—when their child died,
and she nearly broke her heart for grief — when
he himself was ill, and when she nursed him
and lost her complexion, and got a skin disease
in consequence, which not all the skill and
persistency of physicians can overcome. And
remembering all this, he feels that there is an
honour greater than mere skin-deep beauty even
in her wrinkles and her loose lines, her stiff
joints and her spoiled complexion.

Our feeling for places known and loved in
early life —for the old home and conditions—
is another form of returning to the old love.
Such places come back to us in our dreams
more frequently than persons return. We
smell the pine woods and the bracken; we see
the lake and the heather-clad hills; we are
standing under the white cliff watching the sea
come foaming and tumbling in as we used when
we were children; or we are out in the grey of
the morning, with that old dog at our heels; and
we put up the little brown birds and the startled
whirring pheasants as we used to put them up
a long time ago. The burning glories of the
American forests, the luxurious loveliness of
the South, the romance of the East, the fervid
life of the tropics, all are as nothing to us
compared to one day of the " hard grey weather"
of our youth, one hour of the sport and vigour
of old times. Alas! we want to be young again,
that is what our dreams mean; for, without
youth, our return to those old loves is not
practically satisfactory. How often, when we do
actually go back home after a life spent
elsewhere, our dreams vanish! We cannot climb
the familiar crags as we used; we cannot stand
the fatigue of a long day's partridge shooting
through the stubble, or of grouse shooting on
the moors; the oars are heavy and not so easily
feathered as of old; our gun and rod are less
manageable than they were; the young enthusiasm
which cared no more for a ducking than
it cared for a midge-bite, is washed away in the
fear of the rheumatic pains sure to follow damp.
Alas, for the frailty of the flesh in the presence
of so much stoutness of soul! Sometimes,
indeed, we are able to work the new vein opened
up on the old ground, and to accept the former
love in its altered relations with ourselves. We
then content ourselves, like my Uncle Toby,
with mimic repetitions of what we can never
perform in their former fulness again; or we
satisfy ourselves with watching what we cannot
share. If we cannot climb those purple crags,
our young ones can, while we wait down below,
watching the sunshine and the shadow hurrying
over them, and bringing out, or covering down,
every jut and cranny, every patch of purple
heather, or golden gorse, or tuft of waving fern,
with the rapidity of a transformation scene.
The love of nature increases with time, and
grows by knowledge; the longer we stand by
this great desk, the more we get to love the
lessons learned on it, and to appreciate the value
of the work it enables us to perform.

Old books, too, are old friends, to which we
return with faithful loyalty. It is doubtful if
any one who reads Gil Bias, Don Quixote, or
the Thousand and One Nights, for the first
time in mature life, ever has the same exquisite
enjoyment of them as those who have read
them, while young for the story, and when old
for the art or the philosophy. Delightful they
must always be to every one with brains; but
they have lost that delicious aroma, that magic
colouring, which the imagination of youth
supplies out of its own richness.

On révient à ses prémiers amours in religion,
too, as well as in other things—if not always,
still often enough to furnish an example. The
convert who has lived contentedly enough in
his new faith, not unfrequently turns back to
the old upon his death-bed, and dies in the
creed in which he had been born—but had not
lived. All of which gives us occasion to speculate,
whether the mind be really independent,
or only seemingly so, and whether first
impressions are not of more importance than all
the subsequent self-education acquired.

FATAL ZERO.
A DIARY KEPT AT HOMBURG: A SHORT SERIAL STORY.

CHAPTER XI.

SATURDAY.—I am getting more and more
entertained every hour with the spectacle
here. Again I repeat there would seem to
be no such dramatic touchstone to bring
out human nature and human character.
If one had but a window in every forehead!
The strangest thing is the utter ignorance
and wildness of these poor dupes, who play
on without principle or approach to system.
So simple, so easily attainable, and yet it
occurs to no one. This morning I win
eight times in succession. In spirit I mean.
I paste the card in here as a little relic, and
as a proof of my forecasting powers. The
marks show when I played—I mean in spirit.