wicked, fascinating Templar dies of heart failure at the right time, without feeling the tears in their eyes, has no sense, no feeling, no brains, and no heart-that's my opinion.'

'What a gallery of beauties Sir Walter's heroines would furnish!' said Eric. 'Indeed, I do remember seeing one in school-boy days, but I am afraid they were guilty of ringlets, and so would be voted unfashionable by the latter-day Johnnies -Edith Bellenden, Flora MacIvor, Rose Bradwardine, Julia Mannering, Amy Robsart, and a host of others among them one Vanda! but I have less pity for any of their woes and misfortunes than for those of Clara Mowbray in St. Ronan's Well. Nothing finer in romantic tragedy can be found than her meeting with Francis Tyrrel on the road to Shaw's Castle.

"And what good purpose can your remaining here serve?' [she said]. 'Surely you need not come either to renew your own unhappiness or to augment mine?'

"To augment yours-God forbid !' answered Tyrrel. 'No; I came hither only because, after so many years of wandering, I longed to revisit the spot where all my hopes lay buried.'

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Ay, buried is the word,' she replied― 'crushed down and buried when they budded fairest. I often think of it, Tyrrel; and there are times when, Heaven help me! I can think of little else. Look at me; you remember what I wassee what grief and solitude have made me.'

"She flung back the veil which surrounded her

riding-hat, and which had hitherto hid her face. It was the same countenance which he had formerly known in all the bloom of early beauty; but though the beauty remained, the bloom was fled for ever. Not the agitation of exercise-not that which arose from the pain and confusion of this unexpected interview, had called to poor Clara's cheek even the semblance of colour. Her complexion was marble-white, like that of the finest piece of statuary.

"""Is it possible?' said Tyrrel; 'can grief have made such ravages?'

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Grief,' replied Clara, 'is the sickness of the mind, and its sister is the sickness of the body; they are twin-sisters, Tyrrel, and are seldom long separate. Sometimes the body's disease comes first, and dims our eyes and palsies our hands before the fire of our mind. and of our intellect is quenched. But mark me-soon after comes her cruel sister with her urn, and sprinkles cold dew on our hopes and loves, our memory, our recollections, and our feelings, and shows us that they cannot survive the decay of our bodily powers.

"Alas!' said Tyrrel, 'is it come to this?'

"To this,' she replied, speaking from the rapid and irregular train of her own ideas, rather than comprehending the purport of his sorrowful exclamation-it must ever come, while immortal souls are wedded to the perishable substance of which our bodies are composed. There is another state, Tyrrel, in which it will be otherwise; God grant our time of enjoying it were come!'"

'I cannot imagine anything more exquisite,' said Mrs. Banneret, than the portraiture of the ill-fated lovers, whose lives the arts of an unscrupulous villain had ruined, almost at their entrance into the paradise of wedded love. But the characters depicted throughout the novel are masterpieces of humour and descriptive accuracy. Lord Etherington, the fashionable, dissipated nobleman of the period, might have issued from a London Club. Touchwood, egotistical, kindhearted, interfering, is the nabob, common enough in old-fashioned fiction. Lady Binks, John Mowbray, Sir Bingo, the choleric Highland half-pay Captain MacTurk, Winterblossom, the dilettante art critic, and the man of law, are exactly the denizens of a fourth-rate Spa; not to mention Meg Dods, the very flower and crown of Scottish provincial landladies. Then the dramatic incidents of the climax : Clara fleeing through storm and snow, from her brother's house in the night, to escape the forced and hateful marriage; the duel; the late appearance of Touchwood on the scene.'

"He was stopped by Touchwood, who had just alighted from a carriage, with an air of stern anxiety on his features very different from their usual expression. Whither would ye?'-stopping him by force.

For revenge-for revenge!' said Tyrrel. 'Give way, I charge you, on your peril!

"Vengeance belongs to God,' replied the old man, and His bolt has fallen. This way-this

way,' he continued, dragging Tyrrel into the house. 'Know,' he said, that Mowbray of St. Ronan's has met Bulmer within this half-hour, and killed him on the spot.'

"Killed!-whom?' answered the bewildered

Tyrrel.

"Valentine Bulmer, the titular Earl of Ether

ington.'

"You bring tidings of death to the house of death,' answered Tyrrel; and there is nothing in this world left that I should live for !'

CHAPTER XIX

'No one can have a higher admiration for dear Sir Walter than I have,' said Vanda, and I agree with Eric that this is one of the most pathetic scenes in the whole series of the novels. I have wept over Clara Mowbray myself, "full many a time and oft," as people used to say. Still, how many in number are the Waverley Novels?'

'I know,' answered Hermione, for I counted them last week. There are twenty-five, besides the poetical works. What a miracle of industry he was! A genuinely hospitable country gentleman -in earlier life a hard-working Clerk of Session, or whatever it was; while in his leisure hours he dashed off such trifles as Waverley, Ivanhoe, Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, and the rest. So if we set to work to discuss all the heroines in all the novels, with the pathetic and tragic incidents of their lives, it will take us years to "do" Scotland, and we shall never get back to England at all.'

Every one laughed at this summary of the situation. Mrs. Banneret thought Hermione's view correct in the main. Suppose,' she continued, that we coax our dear Mrs. Maclean to