that he is rich, very rich. Why the man goes on with his profession I can't conceive. He must lay by thousands every year."

The shadows of the foliage concealed the lady's countenance, or Mrs. Ogleby's thoughtful looks at this announcement would not have tended to diminish the squire's opinion that "widows are up to any thing." She took care, nevertheless, not to let the conversation flag, lest he should suspect that more was passing in her mind than she cared to utter. She sat silent a brief space, and then heaved a profound sigh. "What's the matter, madam ?" exclaimed Thorburn, surprised at this sudden display of emotion.

"Ah, Mr. Thorburn," said she, "I was wandering in thought away from Mr. Croft, and Sir Reginald, and the mortgage you were talking of. The sight of this beautiful conservatory woke up old feelings almost too painful to bear. You are a hearty prosperous man; but I'm sure you can make allowances for the sadness of those who have gone through as much as I have."

"I'm deuced sorry to hear it," cried the sympathising squire; "but what is there in this greenhouse place to make you miserable?"

"It reminded me of my poor father's favourite pleasures, said the widow, sighing again; "it was his favourite hobby; the conservatories, and greenhouses, and pineries, in my earliest home were the admiration of the whole county. The fortune my dear father spent upon them annually was immense; but it was nothing to him then; his income would have borne twice the outlay."

"But what's become of it all now?" asked Thorburn, bluntly.

"Gone from me to the heir-at-law," said the widow, "except some miserable twenty or thirty thousand pounds, that my man of business tells me by law is mine, and which he assures me will be in my possession within twelve months. The first legal steps for obtaining my rights are already taken."

The squire's value of the widow rose fifty per cent. Thirty thousand pounds! "A widow indeed," he said to himself. He instantly grew more tender, and, not very cleverly, threw a dash of the sentimental into the phrases with which he expressed his condolence with the good lady on her losses. But the widow was not to be deceived. She saw the

squire through and through, and had already matured another step in her plans. Thorburn must be played off against Croft, and the eagerness of the former employed to stir up

the cold emotions of the latter. She knew, as well as if Thorburn had presented her with his banker's book, that his income must be inferior to that of Croft; and she shrewdly suspected that Croft was a rising man, and likely to be twice as rich as he now was before he died; and that Thorburn was, like Sir Reginald, living at the least fully up to his means.

More than this, Mis. Ogleby was not altogether bereft of the feelings of humanity. The three possible husbands on whom she speculated were not equally indifferent to her as a matter of personal liking. The squire disgusted while he amused her. Lord Pangbourne's coronet did not prevent her from acknowledging to herself that his lordship was undeniably a bore. Mr. Croft at once attracted, repelled, awed, and irritated her. His handsome face, fine figure, singular gravity and earnestness, and entire superiority to all her arts, united with the fact that he never seemed, like Mary Somerset, to be suspecting her and searching into her secrets, produced a mixture of sensations in her mind whose true nature she could not comprehend. One effect upon her was clear; she was beginning to be conscious of a sort of intense determination to make him marry her, not from affection to him, but as an object capable of calling forth all the energies of her determined character. Hardly knowing why, she began to feel herself impelled to employ any opportunity that might turn up to aid in the advancement of Mr. Croft's fortunes. In this, moreover, she found a gratification for her passion for intrigue; a passion which ruled over every other in her bosom, and made her, with her great natural cleverness and iron will, a very dangerous person wheresoever she once established herself.

With the rapidity of a commander-in-chief, who in a few moments seizes the plan of a whole campaign, Mrs. Ogleby's genius sketched out for herself a complete scheme of operations, even while the blundering Thorburn was pouring his clumsy nonsense into her willing ear. She would command Croft's respect by a character for piety, steadiness, and selfdenial; she would arouse his jealousy by flattering the eager attachment of the squire; and she would win his gratitude by aiding in the increase of his wealth, an object which she felt confident was dear to the last degree to a man of his sedate and business-like habits and modest and almost parsimonious style of living. If any thing had been wanted to give an additional zest to her schemes, it would have been supplied by the dislike, every day growing more keen, which she felt to Miss Somerset. Any thing that would at once benefit herself and

injure Mary presented an attraction which she could scarcely resist.

"And so you think, Mr. Thorburn," said she, after a short pause, "that Sir Reginald will find it difficult to find the purchase-money for your property. May I ask how much

you ask?"

"Twenty-seven thousand pounds," said Thorburn; "and I know Sir Reginald could not find twenty-seven thousand pence."

"Come now," said the widow, in her most insinuating tones, and lowering her voice to a confidential whisper, "do tell me, as a friend, you know,-is Thorburn really worth that? It is impossible for me to be perfectly indifferent to your interests; and I should like to know the truth, in case I should be able ever so little to influence Sir Reginald's decision on the purchase."

"Honour bright?" asked the squire; "eh, Mrs. Ogleby? What, I suppose Sir Reginald likes a handsome widow for his adviser; eh, is that it?"

"I ask it out of the purest friendship to yourself," said Mrs. Ogleby, in a pathetic voice; "I am a friendless woman, Mr. Thorburn; but I have a heart, and I own I was touched by your kind interest in my happiness."

66

Well, then," responded he, " in the strictest confidence, you know, the estate is devilishly out at elbows, and I shall be precious glad to get rid of it at that price, or even less. But remember, honour bright, eh?"

"Sir Reginald shall not hear one word of what you have said, my dear sir," replied Mrs. Ogleby. "I have your interest too much at heart. And you think he must borrow the money on mortgage from this Mr. Croft ?"

"I'm confident of it," said Thorburn. "The baronet was fool enough to let out something of the kind to me himself, when we were going over the estate. Besides, I overheard him say something about it to Croft."

"Dear me, how late it is!" exclaimed the lady. must not stay longer here, or we shall be talked about."

"We

Mrs. Ogleby, however, wished it to be supposed that the squire was smitten with her charms; and therefore re-entered the drawing-room with an air of hurry and self-consciousness, and was delighted to see that for once Mr. Croft's eye was fixed observantly upon her.

(To be continued.)

VOL. V.-NEW SERIES.

D

PROTESTANTISM IN THE PRESENCE OF THE CHURCH. THE AUSTRIAN CONCORDAT.

THE English world has unwittingly been recently furnishing one or two striking illustrations of the truth of the Catholic religion. An "illustration," we may premise, of the truth of any system, is practically a "proof" of a peculiarly cogent kind. Many a mind which is not equal to the fully grasping of what are strictly called the proofs of a statement is powerfully impressed with the force of those facts which may be termed the "corollaries" of the proposition in question. This is peculiarly the way with those who term themselves emphatically practical people. They either cannot or will not enter into the merits of any system that comes before them theoretically only. They turn up their noses at the whole affair as something speculative, i. e. whimsical,—and unworthy the notice of a man who is in thorough earnest. They do not comprehend things in the abstract. They cry out for some tangible result, which they can hear, taste, or handle, just as, by the way, the Pagans cannot do without gods whom they touch with their hands and see with their eyes. Whatever the subject be,-religious, moral, political, agricultural, astronomical, or what not, they are never thoroughly convinced till they see the working of what looks so perfect on paper.

No doubt, in some respects, this anti-theoretical habit is a laudable and prudent virtue. Considering the fallibility of the human intellect, there are certainly few things that can be trusted till they are tried. It is only in its exaggerations, and its conceited contempt for scientific reasoning, as such, that this "practical" spirit is to be condemned. Good or bad, however, it is certainly a characteristic of our worthy fellowcountrymen. An Englishman glories,-not by any means in the spirit of intellectual modesty,-in being a practical man. Theory is all very well, he thinks, for drowsy Germans and excitable Frenchmen; but give him the results of experience, and all your scientific speculations may go to the winds. We may rest assured, that if all the world had ever been like ourselves, Euclid's Elements would never have been discovered; and the human race would have known no more of the mysteries of the algebraic x, y, and z, than popular Protestantism knows of the real facts of Catholicism.

With our worthy fellow-countrymen, then, the kind of "illustrations" we speak of are peculiarly adapted to be of

practical efficacy. They show our religion in its results; and those results being precisely what they would be on the supposition that our religion is true, we point to them as corollaries to the reasoning by which we establish the divine origin of our faith. We contrast them with the practical results of Protestantism. We say that they are the logical and necessary consequences of the truth of our faith, and that they are visible manifestations of the reality of that supernatural agency which our faith declares to be existing around us and within us, unseen by the bodily eye and unheard by the bodily

ear.

The only difficulty that lies in our way in bringing these arguments home to our fellow-countrymen is this, that they will persist in their inconsistent reasoning to the end. Their boastings of justice and candour all vanish into air the moment the Catholic appears on the scene. Proofs, irrefragable in the case of a Protestant, prove nothing at all in the case of a Papist. When we have done every thing that can be legitimately required of them, it turns out that we are accounted as having done nothing at all worth mentioning. If they act up to their professions, they are to be held as at least consistent. We, on the other hand, are not to be tried by any professions of our own. We may say that such and such is our creed, and this creed we assert to be true; but the world first disproves the doctrines we do not hold, and then denounces us for holding them. We maintain, that there is only one true and pure gospel; this shows that we pervert the one true gospel. We condemn mistranslations of the Scriptures; this shows that we hate the Scriptures. We conditionally re-baptise Protestant converts, on their own confessions of Protestant carelessness in baptising; this proves that we insult the Sacrament of Baptism. We refuse to pay spiritual obedience to the temporal sovereign of the country; this means that we pay temporal homage to a foreign prince. We believe that God gives grace through the Sacraments; this proves that we care nothing for grace, but place all our trust in forms and ceremonies. We hold that a purgatory must purify the soul from every stain of sin before it enters heaven; this implies that we believe that the worst sinners will be saved if the priest absolves them. Truly the round of Protestant objections to Catholicism is the most delightfully ludicrous collection of non-sequiturs that the annals of reasoning can supply. Take up any book of curious fallacies, and you will find it far outmatched in absurdities by the infallible proofs by which sensible, solid, practical English Protestantism establishes the wickednesses and follies of us poor, igrorant, unreasoning,