D'Arcy reddened, but interrupted her good-humouredly, "You women are always thinking of love and matrimony. I don't mean to set up a mill, I only want to set down self, and do something for other people. But come, dear, I have bothered you enough with my Radicalism, let us look and enjoy." The scene was lovely. The clear brightness of early autumn was tempered with a filmy haze towards the horizon, which threw back the distant undulations of the Park into a sort of aërial perspective, while the kingly robes of crimson and gold were faintly seen upon the forest trees; and the birds sang a merry roundelay; and the sparkling little river rippled on,―rippled on, with a voice that spoke of peace, and beauty, and quiet progression. Amidst the loveliness and the fitness of created things, the young man's spirit thrilled with the hope and belief, that He who had given its purpose in creation to each leaf, tendril, star, and insect, would do even so to him. It was not so with the dis contented heart beside him. suffering? What am I? "Why am I Where am I? What is to be ?" The fatal I and me of Self were yet paramount; and the external brightness fell like a dark shadow upon her and around her. D 66 CHAPTER IV. DOING GOOD. Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it."--Ps. cxxvii. 1. "I will direct their work in truth."-ISA. lxi. 8. "Get leave to work In this world, 'tis the best you get at all, For God in cursing gives us better gifts Than men in benediction. God says, 'Sweat For foreheads.' Men say, 'Crowns,' and so we are crowned, Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work-Get work- ELIZABETH BARRET BROWNING. "If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces." SHAKSPERE. THE path to the Lady's School, as it was called, passed close beside the ancient little village church, which stood in its grey solemn beauty on a slight eminence beneath the shade of the old forest trees. What a peculiar charm there is in those old English country churches! Something so unchanging and unchanged about their square towers, mullioned windows, sweeping chimes,-venerable tombstones, pavements, worn by thousands in old times who passed on to worship, to bury their dead, to plight their troth, to consecrate the wailing infant, but who are now treading the pavement of a land we cannot see. Lady Elinor drew her brother into the open door-way, but there to his eyes the charm vanished: simplicity either ancient or modern there was none; it was well-appointed and well-renovated, however, to judge from the coloured glass, crimson velvet, oak carving, highly decorated font, and golden candlesticks. Those in old time who went to the place by the river-side where prayer was wont to be made; those who worshipped on the deck of a fishing-boat, or upon a green hill-side, or upon the shore of the Galilean sea, might have hesitated to enter,-might have failed to recognise a temple for the worship of Him who is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. With an unacknowledged wish to impress upon D'Arcy a sense of her own good deeds-sceptical as he appeared to be on the subject-she said, pointing to the magnificent altar-cloth, "That's my work." "Is it, dear?" He said no more,-and Elinor was disappointed. D'Arcy was thinking in truth of the church he had been in but two Sundays before, though it seemed a long time since-of the simple church at the top of the steep path, up by the weeping birches and ferny rocks, away in far Scotland-and of earnest thrilling appeals to heart and conscience, from one who spoke "as a dying man to dying men." At last they came to the school-house, a picturesque little building, upon the fitting up of which Lady Elinor had bestowed great care and attention. A smart-looking schoolmistress with a coquettish cap, was giving out a lesson in a very drowsy tone to eight or nine children, dressed in very pretty uniforms, of an antique shape. The "young lady," as she designated herself, was profuse in her reverences, and complimentary speeches, and admonitions to the |