been the furnace in which sustained endeavour
was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done
for the old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury
School was to shoulder him into it, "your
way is, and always was, a lame way. You
summon no energy and purpose. Look at me."

"Oh, botheration!" returned Sydney, with a
lighter and more good-humoured laugh, "don't
you be moral!"

"How have I done what I have done?" said
Stryver; "how do I do what I do?"

"Partly through paying me to help you,
I suppose. But it's not worth your while to
apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you
want to do, you do. You were always in the
front rank, and I was always behind."

"I had to get into the front rank; I was not
born there, was I?"

"I was not present at the ceremony; but my
opinion is you were," said Carton. At this, he
laughed again, and they both laughed.

"Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury,
and ever since Shrewsbury," pursued Carton,
"you have fallen into your rank, and I have
fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow-
students in the Quartier Latin, picking up
French, and French law, and other French
crumbs that we didn't get much good of, you
were always somewhere, and I was always—
nowhere."

"And whose fault was that?"

"Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not
yours. You were always driving and riving and
shouldering and pressing, to that restless degree
that I had no chance for my life but in rust and
repose. It's a gloomy thing, however, to talk
about one's own past, with the day breaking.
Turn me in some other direction before I go."

"Well then! Pledge me to the pretty
witness," said Stryver, holding up his glass. "Are
you turned in a pleasant direction?"

Aparently not, for he became gloomy again.

"Pretty witness," he muttered, looking down
into his glass. "I have had enough of
witnesses to-day and to-night; who's your pretty
witness?"

"The picturesque doctor's daughter, Miss
Manette."

"She pretty!"

"Is she not?"

"No."

"Why, man alive, she was the admiration of
the whole Court!"

"Rot the admiration of the whole Court!
Who made the Old Bailey a judge of beauty?
She was a golden-haired doll?"

"Do you know, Sydney," said Mr. Stryver,
looking at him with sharp eyes, and slowly
drawing a hand across his florid face: "do you
know, I rather thought, at the time, that you
sympathised with the golden-haired doll, and were
quick to see what happened to the golden-haired
doll?"

"Quick to see what happened! If a girl,
doll or no doll, swoons within a yard or two of a
man's nose, he can see it without a perspective-
glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty.
And now I'll have no more drink; I'll get to
bed."

When his host followed him out on the staircase
with a candle, to light him down the stairs,
the day was coldly looking in through its grimy
windows. When he got out of the house, the
air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the
river dark and dim, the whole scene like a
lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning
round and round before the morning blast, as if
the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first
spray of it in its advance had begun the
overwhelming of the city.

Waste forces within him, and a desert all
around, this man stood still on his way across
a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in
the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable
ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In
the fair city of this vision, there were airy
galleries from which the loves and graces looked
upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life
hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in
his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing
to a high chamber in a well of houses, he
threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected
bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; and it rose upon
no sadder sight than the man of good abilities
and good emotions, incapable of their directed
exercise, incapable of his own help and his own
happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and
resigning himself to let it eat him away.

THE PARLIAMENTARY M.C.

HAVING a past life to be proud of, Parliament
is pleasantly remarkable for rigid settlement
into the innumerable little habits and ceremonies
natural to any orderly body of advanced years.
Of these little ceremonies we shall here act as
master.

The year of the birth of our Imperial Parliament
is an interesting mystery. The good old
body does not live in single blessedness.
Parliament comprises the whole substance of the
government of the great British empire. It
includes the Queen herself. Five hundred years
ago, the Pope having asked homage and arrears
of a grant made by King John to the Holy See,
Edward the Third laid the demand before Parliament.
The prelates, dukes, counts, barons, and
commons, thereupon answered and said, with one
accord, that no King could put himself, or his
kingdom, or people, in such subjection without
their assent. Even in the time of Queen Elizabeth,
who pushed royal prerogative to the utmost,
a prominent writer upon our political system
taught that "the most high and absolute power
of the realm of England consisteth in the
Parliament," and then proceeded to assign to the
Crown the same place in Parliament that has
been assigned to it by statute since the
Revolution. Her Majesty, then, is a member of
Parliament.

Still the Queen is supreme. The assembly
of the House of Commons takes place in
obedience to royal will expressed by the Queen's