was familiar to me in his face when we first
met; and yet it was also something that
suggested the idea of change. I had a notion
once that my patient at the Inn might be a
natural son of Mr. Holliday's; I had another
idea that he might also have been the man
who was engaged to Arthur's first wife; and
I have a third idea, still clinging to me, that
Mr. Lorn is the only man in England who
could really enlighten me, if he chose, on
both those doubtful points. His hair is not
black, now, and his eyes are dimmer than
the piercing eyes that I remember, but, for
all that, he is very like the nameless medical
student of my young days—very like him.
And, sometimes, when I come home late at
night, and find him asleep, and wake him, he
looks, in coming to, wonderfully like the
stranger at Doncaster, as he raised himself in
the bed on that memorable night!

The doctor paused. Mr. Goodchild who
had been following every word that fell
from his lips, up to this time, leaned
forward eagerly to ask a question. Before he
could say a word, the latch of the door was
raised, without any warning sound of footsteps
in the passage outside. A long, white,
bony hand appeared through the opening,
gently pushing the door, which was prevented
from working freely on its hinges by a fold
in the carpet under it.

"That hand! Look at that hand, Doctor!"
said Mr. Goodchild, touching him.

At the same moment, the doctor looked at
Mr. Goodchild, and whispered to him,
significantly:

"Hush! he has come back."

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL OF ART.

No longer ago than when Hazlitt wrote,
English connoisseurs were stigmatised as a
selfish class, who chiefly valued their treasures
because nobody else could derive pleasure
from them. They played the Blue Beard
with all the beauty they could get into
their possession. They locked it up; would
admit only a chosen few to a share of their
enjoyment, and even those under stringent
conditions and vigilant surveillance.
Frequent exposure to the basilisk eyes of the
vulgar world, would, they believed, strike it
dead. They had a not unreasonable horror of
the hands of the vulgar also; for, it was then
alleged, that the uneducated would resent the
rarity of such opportunities, by carving their
names on statues and defacing pictures, the
beauties of which they could have no
cognisance of.

Times have changed. The Great Exhibitions
that have come into vogue since eighteen
hundred and fifty-one, have induced many
of the wealthy cheerfully to commit their
most cherished Art-objects to the risks of
packing and rough handling in transit, for
the very purpose of disseminating the enjoyment,
which is, by strict but churlish right,
solely their own. In their belief—contrary
to that of their fathers—that the value of
their Art-possessions is increased rather
than diminished by wide appreciation, instead
of confining, they feel a pride in extending,
the bounds of sympathy with their own tastes
a sympathy which flatters the judgment
that made the objects of it their property.

Limits, however, ought to be set to
borrowing by the promoters of Great Exhibitions;
otherwise, the generosity of lenders may be
greatly abused by the application of an
unwarrantable sort of pressure. Will you incur the
odium of refusing your countenance, and your
cherished valuables, to a glorious enterprise
that is to awaken the million to a sense of
the beautiful in Art? Will you refuse what
Royalty itself has granted?  Have you the
courage to despise the noble example of His
Grace of This, or of My Lord That? Queries
of this kind have, we believe, forced valuable
loans from unwilling but facile collectors, which
their owners had strong and legitimate
private reasons for wishing to keep at home—
reasons quite independent of a want of
confidence in the million-fingered public;
the old theories concerning whom, experience
has thoroughly reversed. Despite the extravagant
predictions of ruin and devastation
that were vented when the national galleries
and parks were unrestrictedly thrown open
to the people, no grave abuse of the privilege
has been detected: the maniacal destruction
of the Portland vase in the British Museum
alone excepted; an exception which proves
the rule, for that crime might as readily
have been committed in the old time. The
reports of the Minister of Public Works show,
that nearly every wilful act of wantonness in
public places and in public galleries has been
perpetrated, not by the uneducated, but by
the so-called respectable: not by the suspected
poor, but by the vulgar rich.

The metropolitan lieges having come out of
such ordeals with honour, a, new and striking
instance of the respect which large numbers
of people show for works of Art has
been furnished by the Exhibition of Art
Treasures at Manchester. This well-fulfilled
project has proved, that the provincial public
do not, as their enemies asserted they would
do, misbehave themselves while partaking
of a tempting Art-banquet; and, although
fewer of the poor class have partaken of it
than were bidden to the feast (at, be it
remembered, a shilling a head), yet it is no
light additional contradiction of the old slander
about the destructive propensities of the
English mob that nearly one million individuals
of all classes have passed through the
Manchester building, without any perceptible
damage having been done to any one of the
ten thousand Art-objects of various descriptions
that have been, for six months, placed
within their reach.