sweet in its gentle chiding of my wrongful
fears. It was implied rather than said that
Ashleigh Sumner had proposed and been refused.
He had now left the house. Lilian and her
mother were coming back; in a few days we
should meet. In this letter were enclosed a few
lines from Mrs. Ashleigh. She was more explicit
about my rival than Lilian had been. If no
allusion to his attentions had been made to me
before, it was from a delicate consideration for
myself. Mrs. Ashleigh said that "the young
man had heard from L——- of our engagement,
and—disbelieved it;" but, as Mrs. Poyntz had so
shrewdly predicted, hurried at once to the
avowal of his own attachment, and the offer
of his own hand. On Lilian's refusal his pride
had been deeply mortified. He had gone away
manifestly in more anger than sorrow. "Lady
Delafield, dear Margaret Poyntz's aunt, had been
most kind in trying to soothe Lady Haughton's
disappointment, which was rudely expressed—
so rudely," added Mrs. Ashleigh, "that it gives
us an excuse to leave sooner than had been
proposed— which I am very glad of. Lady Delafield
feels much for Mr. Sumner; has invited him
to visit her at a place she has near Worthing:
she leaves to-morrow in order to receive him;
promises to reconcile him to our rejection, which,
as he was my poor Gilbert's heir, and was very
friendly at first, would be a great relief to my
mind. Lilian is well, and so happy at the
thoughts of coming back."

When I lifted my eyes from these letters I was
as a new man, and the earth seemed a new earth.
I felt as if I had realised Margrave's idle dreams
—as if youth could never fade, love could never
grow cold.

"You care for no secrets of mine at this
moment," said Margrave, abruptly.

"Secrets," I murmured; "none now are
worth knowing. I am loved—I am loved!"

"I bide my time," said Margrave; and as my
eyes met his, I saw there a look I had never
seen in those eyes before—sinister, wrathful,
menacing. He turned away, went out through the
sash door of the study; and as he passed to-
wards the fields under the luxuriant chesnut-trees,
I heard his musical, barbaric chant—the
song by which the serpent-charmer charms the
serpent;—sweet, so sweet— the very birds on the
boughs hushed their carol as if to listen.

IN AND OUT OF SCHOOL.

IT is an old notion, and in the main a true one,
that we do not often get original thought out
of a man with an extensive memory. Memory
comes of attention, and one cannot easily have
the strength of an equal memory without the
weakness of an equal disposition to attend to
everything. I never am impressed with stories
about Julius Caesar and others, who were able to
do hall' a dozen things at once read a letter on
one subject, hear a letter on another, write a
letter on a third, and dictate a letter on a
fourth, while they beat time with their feet to
one tune, whistled another in the intervals of
dictation, played a game of chest; with the left hand,
and took part by expressive grimace in a
theologic controversy, all during the odd minutes
when they were being shaved and washed, and
brushed and oiled, and put into their clothes.
Very well I know that whenever Julius Caesar
had anything serious to attend to, he gave his
entire mind to it, and, for the time being, had
spare attention to bestow on nothing else.

Here is the whole history and mystery of the
bad general memory of men who excel greatly in
any one pursuit, by giving to it as far as the way
of the world permits a whole and sole attention.
With their busy minds attentive to their own
work while their bodies are inactive, and while
they may look like the very idlers, they withdraw
so much attention from the odds and ends
of talk and incident by which they are
surrounded, that these never take a fair hold on the
mind. The scholar's absence of mind is the
absence of his mind from that which is not his
affair, and the presence of it with his own proper
work in life. To that only, he is able to give
undivided and continuous attention. A diffuse
and too universally ready memory is, therefore,
no sign of intellectual strength; and even in
children—as we commonly read that the man of
genius was taken for a dunce at school slowness
of general apprehension may be the result of an
earnestness that fastens with especial energy
upon some chosen objects of attention.

From the first moment of a baby's "taking
notice," to the fixed heavenward gaze from the
death-bed, the power of attention is as the
very life-blood of our minds and souls. It is
not a thing to be spilt idly, though the world is
full of bores who are ready at every turn to
bleed us of it with their little pins and fleams
of talk. To nourish and strengthen it in
childhood and youth, is to do for the mind what
we do for the body by securing to its life-blood
purity and fulness. It is not only that during
early years of life the secret of successful
teaching for good or for evil is the full securing
of attention, but it is necessary that the youth
should pass into manhood blessed in his mind
with a sound habit of attention, if his
intellectual life is not to be through manhood
weak.

Of the truth of this old principle, which has
been dwelt upon for many a year by the
metaphysicians, practical evidence of the most
striking kind has lately been brought together
in a body of facts that would seem to many
people very nearly incredible, if they were not
fully supported by each other, and authenticated
by the best of witnesses.

For, it is set forth, not as mere probability,
but as a proved fact, that half a day is better
than a whole day of school-teaching. If three
hours instead of six be given daily to the
school-master, and be so managed that the pupil is
physically and mentally able to give bright
undivided attention to the whole of his work, he not
only can learn absolutely as much as the child