industry. I will lead you to the Irish bogs, to
the vacant desolations of Connaught, to
mistilled Counaught, to ditto Munster, Leinster,
and Ulster. I will lead you to the English fox
covets, furze-grown commons, new forests,
Salisbury Plains; likewise to the Scotch
hillsides and bare rusty slopes, which as yet feed
only sheep, moist uplands, thousands of square
miles in extent, which are destined yet to grow
green crops, and fresh butter, and milk, and
beef without limit (wherein no foreigner can
compete with us), were the sewers once opened
on them, and you with your colonels carried
thither. In the three kingdoms, or in the forty
colonies, depend upon it you shall be led to
your work. To each of you I will say: Here
is work for you; strike into it with manly
soldier-like obedience and heartiness."

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

What significance lies in that little phrase—
What might have been! Who does not know
the days when his fortune was balanced on the
chance of a moment, when the turning into one
street instead of another, the paying one visit
and leaving another owing, the writing of this
letter and letting that remain unanswered, changed
the whole current of his life, and gave the world
another cycle of generations to what might have
been? I can count up on my fingers numerous
instances known to me, among my own friends,
whose fortunes were this creation of chance
moments, and who might as easily have obtained
any other combination as that which gave them
happiness or ruin. See what chance did for
poor Miss Mary, the young governess at Merton
Hall. Miss Mary had two offers— I mean for a
situation, nothing more— one, was from a vicar's
wife somewhere down in Wales; the other, from
Miss Merton, of Merton Hall, a county family
place in Devonshire. Miss Mary was a goose—
as Miss Marys often are— and thought that the
grand county family who sealed with a flourishing
coat of arms, and who had their names in the
county history, must be a better speculation than
a little unknown parsonage behind the Welsh
mountains; besides, they offered five pounds a
year more, which represented a gown, a cloak,
and a bonnet to Miss Mary. So, stifling the
instinct which inclined her to the gentle motherly
vicar's wife, who wrote so kindly and so
modestly, she preferred Dives and his flourishing
coat of arms, and transported herself to the grand
county family. All very well; nothing to find
fault with; Mrs. Merton as condescendingly
considerate as fine ladies of good hearts generally a
re to their dependents; and Miss Mary was
thankful, and remained where she was till the
bloom of her youth had passed. She might have
found a hundred worse situations, she said, and
she said truly. But down in that Welsh village
lived a certain clear-eyed clean-limbed brave-
hearted young doctor, just setting up in practice,
and sorely in need of a wife. If Mary had
accepted that gentle lady's modest offer? well!
Mary would have been what the other governess
became— young Doctor John's wife, and
both Mary and Doctor John would have been
better for the arrangement. She would have
suited him better than Mrs. John, who was of a
high temper, and somewhat overbearing
manners; and she would not have lost all her
roses so soon, or have been so ready to adopt
gloomy views of life, and to believe in the virtues
of conventual rule. Poor Miss Mary! If she
had only known under which casket lay her
happiness, and where was hidden the talisman
of her fate! And yet how easily it might have
been!

If rich old Mr. Scroggs, worth half a million,
had not paid such persevering and demonstrative
attention to pretty Evelina at that very dinner-
party where young Captain Blake had decided
to propose, she might now have been the happy
wife of the portly Colonel, instead of the faded
spinster, angular and peevish, who passes half
her time in bewailing her positive misfortunes,
and the other half in lamenting her possible
blessings had fortune but taken the other turning
in her lane of life. She knew that Captain
Blake— timid, poor, and proud— wanted but
courage and uninterrupted opportunity, and she,
on her part, desired nothing better than to
bring matters to a crisis and whisper " Yes," as
her echo to his " Do you?" But that hideous old
Scroggs who never meant anything serious,
must needs plant himself between them at dinner,
and make such open love to her over the
champagne, that all her plans were brought to nought.
Her pretty eye artillery and liberal armoury
of charms missed fire and fell harmless of their
mark; the shot fell into the ditch when she
aimed it at the tower, and neither ditch nor
tower yielded. Captain Blake, who thought his
hundreds no match against the old sinner's
thousands, went off to Norway for the summer,
and next season married Laura May whom he
had met upon his travels, and who understood
to perfection the art of angling, hooking, and
landing desirable fish. And all this brought
about because Mrs. A. asked Evelina and Mr.
Scroggs to the same dinner, and forgot to
organise her table with due regard to the best
pleasures of her guests ! If Captain Blake had been
placed next the fair Evelina, what might not have
been of happiness for both!

And if Aunt Susan had never given that
memorable party of hers, or if her favourite friend
had not walked home in the moonlight with her
favourite niece? Ah me! the years of pain and
agony, and hope deferred, ana long unending
strife of love and circumstance that would have
been spared— the bitter anguish of the present
hour— the solitude of the one, the fettered
loneliness of the other! Oh! all that might have
been now passing before my eyes, had love and
circumstance agreed together! I see a home
set in a fair place, with love and honour like
sweet blossoming roots about its gates: I see
a troop of little children, blue-eyed and brown-
haired, noble, brave, and strong as the father,
faithful, loyal, and loving as the mother— I see
them standing there, their baby fingers knitting