was

before he was so now; and so they went on, dashing across the long level Campagna roads, where there nothing to break the sunshine but here and there a nameless pile of ruins.

The sunshine began to fall low and level on the plain before they reached the gates. "One thing at least is certain— he cannot take her out of Rome to-night," said Colin. It was almost the only word that was spoken between them until they began their doubtful progress from one hotel to another, through the noisy resounding streets.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

"Now we have found them let me face them by myself," said Colin, to whom the interval of silence and consideration had been of use. They were both waiting in the hall of one of the hotels facing towards the Piazza del Popolo, to which they had at last tracked Mr. Meredith, and Lauderdale acquiesced silently in Colin's decision. The young man had already sent up his card, with a request that he might see not Alice but her father. After a considerable time, the servant who had taken it returned with an abrupt message that Mr. Meredith was engaged. When he had sent up a second time, explaining that his business was urgent, but with the same effect, Colin accompanied his third message with a note, and went with his messenger to the door of the room in which his adversary was. There could be no doubt of the commotion produced within, by this third application. Colin could hear some one pacing about the room with disturbed steps, and the sound of a controversy going on, which, though he was too far off to hear anything that was said, still reached him vaguely in sound at least. When he had waited for about five minutes, the clergyman, whom he had not in the least thought of or expected to see, made his appearance cautiously at the door. He did not attempt to admit the young man, but came up to

good friend, my excellent young friend," said the puzzled priest, with a mixture of compunction and expostulation which in other circumstances would have amused Colin, "let us have a little conversation. I am sure you are much too generous and considerate to add to the "But here the good distress of-of

man recollected just in time that he had pledged himself not to speak of Alice, and made a sudden pause. "There in that room," he went on, changing his tone, and assuming a little solemnity, "is a sorrowful father, mourning for his only son, and driven almost out of his senses by illness and weakness, and a sense of the shameful way in which his daughter has been neglected-not his fault, my dear Mr. Campbell. You cannot have the heart to increase his sufferings by claims, however well founded, which have been formed at a time

"Stop," said Colin, "it is not my fault if he has not done his duty to his children; I have no right to bear the penalty. He has cast the vilest imputations upon me-"

'Hush, hush, I beg of you," said the clergyman, "my excellent young friend-"

Colin laughed in spite of himself. "If I am your excellent friend," he said, "why do you not procure me admission to tell my own story? Why should the sight of me distress your sorrowing father? I am not an ogre, nor an enemy, but his son's friend; and up to this day, I need not remind you,' said the young man with a rising colour, "the only protector, along with my friend Lauderdale, whom his daughter has had. I do not say that he may not have natural objections to give her to me, a poor man," said Colin, with natural pride; "but, at all events, he has no reason to hurry her away by stealth, as if I had not a right to be told why our engagement is interrupted so summarily. I will do nothing to distress Alice," the young man went on, involuntarily lingering by the door,

protest against being treated like a villain or an adventurer-”

"Hush, hush, hush," cried the unlucky peacemaker, putting out his hand to close the unfastened door; but before he could do so, Mr. Meredith appeared on the threshold, flushed and furious. "What are you else, sir, I should like to know," cried the angry British father, "to drag an unprotected girl into such an entanglement without even a pretence of consulting her friends, to take advantage of a deathbed for your detestable fortune-hunting schemes? Don't answer me, sir! Have you a penny of your own? have you anything to live on? That's the question. If it was not for other considerations, I'd indict you. I'd charge you with conspiracy; and even now, if you come here to disturb my poor girl-—. But I promise you, you shall see her no more," the angry man continued. "Go, sir, and let me hear no more of you. She has a protector now."

Colin stood a moment without speaking after Mr. Meredith had disappeared, closing the door violently after him.

"I have not come to distress Alice,"

said the young man. He had to repeat it to himself to keep down the hot blood that was burning in his veins; and as for the unfortunate clergyman, who was the immediate cause of all this, he kept his position by the door in a state of mind far from enviable, sorry for the young man and ashamed of the old one, and making inarticulate efforts to speak and mediate between them. But the conference did not last very long outside the closed door. Though it did not fortunately occur to Colin that it was the interference of his present companion which had originated this scene, the young man did not feel the insult the less from the deprecatory half-sympathy offered to him. "It is a mistakeit is a mistake," said the clergyman, "Mr. Meredith will discover his error. I said I thought you were imprudent, and indeed wrong; but I have never suspected you of interested motives

young lady;-but think of her sufferings, my dear young friend; think of her," said the mediator, who was driven to his wits' end. As for Colin, he calmed himself down a little by means of pacing about the corridor-the common resource of men in trouble.

"Poor Alice," he said, "if I did not think of her, do you think I should have stood quietly to be insulted? But look here-the abuse of such a man can do no harm to me, but he may kill her. If I could see her it might do some good.-Impossible? Do you suppose I mean to see her clandestinely, or to run away with her, perhaps? I mean," said Colin, with youthful sternness, "that if I were permitted to see her I might be able to reconcile her a little to what is inevitable. Of course he is her father. I wish her father

were a chimney-sweep instead," said Colin; "but it is she I have to think of. Will you try to get me permission to see her?-only for ten minutes, if you like in your presence, if that is necessary; but I must say one word to her before she is carried away."

'Yes, yes, it's very natural-very natural," said the peacemaker; "I will do all I can for you. Be here at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning; the poor dear young lady must have rest after her agitation. Don't be afraid; I am not a man to deceive you; they do not leave till five o'clock for Civita Vecchia. You shall see her; I think I can promise you. I will take the responsibility on myself."

Thus ended Colin's attempt to bring back the Signorina, as he said. In the morning he had reached the hotel long before the hour mentioned, in case of an earlier departure; but everything was quiet there, and the young man hovered about, looking up at the windows, and wondering which might be the one which inclosed his little love, with sentiments more entirely lover-like than he had ever experienced before. But, when the hour of his appointment came, and he hurried into the hotel, he was met by the indignant clergyman, who felt his own honour

measure. Mr. Meredith had left Rome at dawn of day, certainly not for Civita Vecchia, leaving no message for any one. He had pretended, after hot resistance, to yield to the kind-hearted priest's petition, that the lovers might say farewell to each other, and this was the way he had taken of balking them. It was now the author of the original mischief who felt himself insulted and scorned, and his resentment and indignation were louder than Colin's, whose mind at first lost itself in schemes of following, and vain attempts to ascertain the route the party had taken. Lauderdale, coming anxious but steady to the scene of action half an hour afterwards, found his friend absorbed in this inquiry, and balancing all the chances between the road by Perugia and the road by Orvieto, with the full intention of going off in pursuit. It was then his careful guardian's time to interfere. He led the youth away, and pointed out to him the utter vanity of such an undertaking. Not distance or uncertainty of road, but her father's will, which was likely to be made all the more rigorous by a pursuit, parted Alice from her young protector and bridegroom; and if he followed her to the end of the world, this obstacle would still remain as unremovable as ever. Though he was hot-headed and young, and moved by excitement, and indignation, and pity, to a height of passion which his love for Alice by itself would never have produced, Colin still could not help being reasonable, and he saw the truth of what was said to him. At the same time, it was not natural that the shock which was so great and sudden should be got over in a moment. felt himself insulted and outraged, in the first place; and in another point of view he was equally mortified-mortified even by the relief which he knew would be felt by all his friends when the sudden end of his unwelcome project was made known to them. The Ramore household had given a kind of passive acquiescence to what seemed inevitable-but Colin was aware they would all be very glad at

Colin

and it was a failure, howsoever the tale might be told. Thus the original disappointment was aggravated by stings of apprehended ridicule and jocular sympathy, for to no living soul, not even to his mother, would Colin have confessed how great a share in his original decision Alice's helpless and friendless position had, nor the sense of loss and bondage with which he had often in his secret heart regarded the premature and imprudent marriage which he had lived to hear stigmatized as the scheme of a fortune-hunter. It was thus that the very generosity of his intentions gave an additional sting at once to the insult and the sympathy. After a day or two, his thoughts of Alice as the first person to be considered, and deep sense of the terrible calamity it was to her, yielded a little to those thoughts of himself and all the humiliating accompaniments of this change in his intentions. During this period his temper became, even by Lauderdale, unbearable; and he threw aside everything he was doing, and took to silence and solitary rambles, in utter disgust with the shortsightedness and injustice of the world. But after that unhappy interval it has to be confessed that the skies suddenly cleared for Colin. The first symptom of revival that happened to him came to pass on a starry, lovely May night, when he had plunged into the darkness of the lonely quarter about the Colosseum alone, and in a state of mind to which an encounter with the robbers supposed to haunt these silent places would have been highly beneficial. But it chanced that Colin raised his moody eyes to the sky, suddenly and without any premeditation, and saw the moon struggling up through a maze of soft white clouds, parting them with her hands as they threw themselves into baffling airy masses always in her way; and suddenly, without a moment of preface, a face-the face-the image of the veiled woman, who was not Alice, and to whom he had bidden farewell, gleamed out once more through the clouds, and looked Colin in the eyes, thrilling him through

The moment after was the hardest of all Colin's struggle; and he rushed home after it tingling all over with self-contempt and burning indignation, and plunged into a torrent of talk when he found his friend, by way of forgetting himself, which struck Lauderdale with the utmost surprise. But next day Colin felt himself somehow comforted without knowing how; and then he took to thinking of his life and work, which now, even for the sake of Alice, if nothing else, he must pursue with determined energy; and then it seemed to him as if every moment was lost that kept him away from home. Was it for Alice? Was it that he might offer her again the perfected mind and settled existence to which his labours were to lead him? He said so to himself as he made his plans; but yet unawares a vision of deeper eyes came gleaming upon him out of the clouds. And it was with the half-conscious thrill of another existence, a feeling as of new and sweeter air in the sails, and a widening ocean under the keel, that Colin rose up after all these varying changes of sentiment were over, and set his face to the north once more.

It's

"It's awfu' strange to think it's the last time," said Lauderdale, as they stood together on the Pincian Hill, and watched the glowing colours of the Roman sunset. "It's little likely that you and me will ever see St. Peter yonder start up black into the sun like that another time in our lives. grander than a' their illuminations, though it's more like another kind of spirit than an angel. And this is Rome! I dinna seem ever to have realized the thought before. It's awfu' living and life-like, callant, but it's the graves we'll mind it by. I'm no meaning kings and

Cæsars. I'm meaning them that come and never return. Testaccio's hidden out of sight, and the cypress trees," said the philosopher; "but there's mony an eye that will never lose sight of them even at the other end of the world. I might have been going my ways with an awfu' different heart, if it hadna been for the mercy of God."

"Then you thought I would die?" said Colin, to whom, in the stir of his young life, the words were solemn and strange to say; "and God is merciful; yet Meredith is lying yonder, though not me."

"Ay," said Lauderdale, and then there was a long pause. "I'm no offering ony explanation," said the philosopher. "It's a question between a man and his Maker-spirit to spirit. It's an awfu' mystery to us, but it maun be made clear and satisfying to them that go away. For me, I'll praise God," he said abruptly, with a harsh ring in his voice; and Colin knew for the first time thoroughly that his faithful guardian had thought nothing better than to bring him here to die. They went into the church on the hill, where the nuns were singing their sweet vespers as they descended for the last time through the dusky avenues, listening as they went to the bells ringing the Ave Maria over all the crowded town; and there came upon Colin and his friend in different degrees that compunction of happiness which is the soul of thanksgiving. Others,-how many!-have stood speechless in dumb submission on that same spot and found no thanks to say; and it was thus that Colin, after all the events that made these four months so important in his life, entered upon a new period of his history, and took his farewell of Rome. To be continued.

MY DEAR SIR.-Your last letter was evidently written in much anxiety. You feel that a question has been raised in one of the colonies of Great Britain which must affect all her colonies. If it has not yet approached yours, you yet hear the threatenings of what may be a tempest. And it is a tempest which it cannot be solely or chiefly the business of statesmen to avert or to encounter. The clergy must be in the midst of it; they are asked to assist in raising it.

You say that the controversy in the diocese of Capetown has evidently entered on an entirely new phase. The question about the authority of the Pentateuch has been abundantly discussed; you have no doubt that truth will issue from the discussion; your sympathies were not with the Bishop of Natal in that strife. But, for the purpose of condemning him, claims have been put forward which involve, you see clearly, the establishment of such an ecclesiastical authority as is absolutely incompatible with the Queen's supremacy, as must issue in the dissolution of the bonds between any colony wherein it exists and the mother-country. Your own experience makes you dread this result, and other results that will accompany it. You hear much of a free Church, and of the bondage which it is now suffering from the State. You foresee anything but freedom for either clergy or laity under the régime which is to supersede the one under which you are living. Still you find it very Still you find it very difficult to maintain your ground against the number of arguments which are addressed directly to your clerical conscience. "Ought you not to assert that "there is a Kingdom of God which is

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higher than all mere secular arrange"ments? Ought there not to be a

power strong enough to compel the "clergy to confine themselves within the

religious system which is set forth "in the Articles to which they have "sworn? Can jurisdiction upon such

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a subject be safely left in the hands "of laymen? Have they not proved by their acts that it cannot ?" These are questions which you think ought to be answered, and which we in England ought to consider as well as you. They are mixed, of course, with suspicions and denunciations which are more or less disagreeable. But such you have learnt to expect. You consider them the proper badges of your profession.

When you wrote, I think you cannot have received a copy of the "Case" which Dr. Pusey submitted to the Attorney-General and Sir Hugh Cairns, and of the Preface "To those who love "God and His truth," with which he has introduced it. After you have read that preface you will understand that it is no specially colonial debate in which you are involved. The battle you will see has to be fought here. You will learn with what weapons Dr. Pusey thinks that his side should provide themselves. You will see that ecclesiastical dominion and the Kingdom of God are identified in his mind; that he does not for a moment seek to distinguish them. He considers the decision of the lay courts in the case of Mr. Wilson to be simply wicked. Every one who loves God and His truth must do his utmost to get it reversed, and to establish a permanent jurisdiction which shall secure the

1 "Case as to the Legal Force of the Judg ment In Re Fendall v. Wilson; with the Opinion of the Attorney-General and Sir Hugh Cairns, and a Preface to those who love God and his Truth." By the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D. J. H. and J. Parker, and Rivingtons. Second edition.