fair dealing, you told me an abominable lie about an engagement of hers, which never existed!"

"Gently, my dear sir, gently; there may have been some misunderstanding about the length to which matters had gone with the young people. Priscilla is not easily fathomed, and it is quite likely that she may have assumed the signs of an attachment or engagement which, as you say, did not exist; I never spoke to Priscilla on such delicate subjects myself, but took my belief from that of my wife, who assured me that Priscilla had evidently formed a real and reciprocated attachment, which it would be most unwise to disturb. The event proved that we were mistaken-ah! how often are our most careful calculations overthrown by Time, the great expounder of life's riddles; this should teach us

"Look here," I interrupted, "the statement that any attachment existed on Priscilla's part was simply a lie, invented to serve the purpose of those who uttered it, and to separate her from me. It is too late to discuss that subject; what I wish you to understand is, that you will be served with a legal notice to surrender the property which you claimed and appropriated, well knowing that it did not belong to you but to Susan Armstrong's child, the fact of whose existence you wilfully suppressed."

I was quoting from a short statement of the facts, drawn up by the solicitor whom I had consulted.

"I shall gladly appear, my dear sir, and surrender all that it is in my power to give up-the truth, that is, entire and simple. It is quite true that I administered for the property in my own name, because it was in this way only that I could conceal from the world the error that my son had committed in marrying a woman of the lowest social grade, and the consequent stain upon Priscilla's birth and parentage. It is also true that I invested the property which I was thus guarding for Priscilla's future use, in some of the most promising speculations of the day, and that they failed, contrary to all human foresight, entailing upon me tremendous liabilities, besides the actual loss of the invested property. So that instead of having to return to Priscilla her own with usury,' I find myself in the position of a hopeless debtor to her, and to the various companies by means of which I hoped to make her the heiress to wealth undreamed of by Michael Stump. The very same thing might have happened to his investments, but the crowning misfortune of injuring one we love, while planning for her benefit, appears to have been reserved for me."

What could I say in reply? I briefly reminded him that he was accountable to English law for having appropriated property which did not belong to him, and further, that a strict inquiry

would be instituted about the existence of any remaining assets. He expressed himself perfectly satisfied to give up every document relating to Priscilla's property, and in answer to the threat of legal proceedings, he calmly told me that "if it were Priscilla's wish," he was prepared to suffer any penalty for the mistaken zeal with which he had striven to hide her misfortune even from herself, and to increase the property which had been left to her.

It seemed useless to remain there any longer, and so I left him.

TRIUMPHS OF STAGE ILLUSION.

SIR WALTER SCOTT has somewhere described the encouraging impetus it gave him as an incipient poet, to have a shrewd farmer friend, to whom he read the first canto of the Lady of the Lake, listening with great attention through the whole account of the stag-hunt, till the dogs throw themselves into the water to follow their master, who embarks with Ellen Douglas-and then starting up with a sudden exclamation, striking his hand on the table, and declaring, in a voice of censure calculated for the occasion, that the dogs must have been totally ruined by being allowed to take the water after such a severe chase. The thing was real to the man for the moment; and as a passionate admirer of real sports, he could not contain himself, but must give tongue to a hearty protest. Well could the gratified poet afford to forgive his friend the vehement tone of his strictures, in consideration of the proved power of the poem to-not quite carry the man off his legs, but at least force him to get on them, in order to emphasise the eagerness of his deprecation, on behalf of the hounds.

Complimentary, in some measure, to the illusions of the stage may be the often recorded instances of similar interruptions, or interpolated outbursts, on the part of unsophisticated beholders. But not in any high degree, generally speaking; for the performances in a village booth have perhaps excited as many sallies of this sort, as the most refined exhibitions of metropolitan high art, with all appliances and means to boot. Upon the whole, it may be questioned whether the implied tribute to the acting, or the scenery and properties, or all combined, is not counterbalanced by the confusion, and "solution of continuity" in the performance,

consequent upon such interruptions, when at least they assume, as they sometimes do, an obtrusively demonstrative form.

Lord Macaulay adverts, in one of his critical essays, to the alleged fact that, in some parts of Spain and Portugal, an actor who should represent a depraved character finely, instead of calling down the applauses of the audience, is hissed and pelted without mercy. It would be the same in England, he remarks, if we, for one moment, thought that Shylock or Iago was standing before us. And he goes on to say that while the dramatic art was in its infancy at Athens, it produced similar effects on the ardent and imaginative spectators, who are said to have blamed Æschylus for frightening them into fits with his furies. And Herodotus is quoted for his story of their fining the author of a tragedy on the fall of Miletus, in the penalty of a thousand drachmas, for torturing their feelings by so pathetic an exhibition. They did not regard Phrynichus "as a great artist, but merely as a man who had given them pain. When they woke from the distressing illusion, they treated the author of it as they would have treated a messenger who should have brought them fatal and alarming tidings which turned out to be false.'

Suetonius caps his story of Nero's stage heroics as Hercules Furens, by telling how a young sentinel, on duty at the door, ran forward to his assistance, "as if the thing had been done in good earnest," and not merely, and technically, in Ercles' vein. It is with a reference to such incidents that Lord Bolingbroke remarks on the peculiar effect a play well played may have upon the mind, by heating the imagination, and taking the judgment by surprise.

Of the story in Suetonius we have a sort of parallel or pendant in the memorabilia of the Spanish drama. Archbishop Trench enforces his high praise of Calderon's La Niña de Gomez Arias, by relating what once occurred during the performance of the scene in it where Gomez sells to the Moors the mistress of whom he has grown weary, and who now stands in his way, despite her entreaties and reproaches. He accounts it nothing strange to hear that on one occasion a poor Spanish alguazil, who was serving as guard of honour on the stage, drew his sword, and rushed among the actors, determined that the outrage should not go on before his eyes.

A Sheffield daily paper, no longer ago than the winter of 1864-65, reported "an extraordinary occurrence," "on Wednesday night last, during the performance of Othello at the Lyceum" in that town. It told how, in the last scene, where the Moor smothers the gentle lady wedded to him, and just before the smothering became, to all stage intents and purposes, an accomplished fact, "a young man named Greenwood, who was seated in

the pit," rose in irrepressible excitement, backed Desdemona's unavailing plea for pity, and then declared that he would not remain to witness the perpetration of a murder. In a frenzy of bewilderment he forced his way across the seats and over the heads of the pittites, and finding his progress barred at the door by "the burly form of Police-sergeant Carroll," he menaced that officer with personal punishment if he allowed him not an instant exeat. The crowded audience are said to have been for a moment evidently taken aback by so unexpected an occurrence, but, speedily recovering themselves, gave way to the most boisterous laughter, in which Othello ("but oh! the pity of it!") was bad actor and jolly good fellow enough heartily to join.

John O'Keeffe, in his Recollections, relates his experience at Limerick of a Romeo and Juliet bespeak night, under the auspices of the so-called "Badgers' Club," consisting of "the first gentlemen in the county" the Grand Badger, or President, filling a chair of state, at middle distance on the back of the stage, as Head Centre of the occasion; a very old gentleman, with a full powdered wig, who, by the rules of the club, wore a high cap atop of his wig, made of a badger's skin. The tragedy went on smoothly enough, it seems, until the death of Juliet, "a very pretty, thin, delicate little lady." The Grand Badger had, with others of the club, gone in and out, backwards and forwards, taking their glass, &c.; and on his return from one of these sallies of a thirsty soul, the now mellow President, touched to the quick by Juliet's wailings, stepped gravely down from his throne, and whilst she lay lamenting over the dead Romeo, walked up to her, and bade the "pretty dear" hush her laments, and "get up, get up," and take a glass of lemonade or orgeat (he had not been taking lemonade), to comfort and recruit her. "He stooped over Juliet, badger-skin cap, wig, and all; and though, in an undertone, she remonstrated against his kindness, he lifted her up tenderly, and took her to the sideboard, where there were refreshments.' And so the tragedy ended, but as a screaming farce, and in most admired disorder.

Charles Mathews the elder, in his autobiography, has a ludicrous story of his acting Richmond at the Richmond Theatre, as an amateur youth, whom the manager allowed to appear for a fee of ten guineas, and who had at the time an insatiable passion for fencing, in the indulgence of which he resolved to have his money's worth, in spinning out ad libitum, and quite extra licitum, the final combat with Richard. In vain, he assures us, did the tyrant try to die, after a decent time; Richmond would not let him give in, but drove him by main force from any position convenient for his dying speech. The audience first laughed, then

shouted, but Richmond heeded not, and only kept pegging away, as President Lincoln would have called it. Had they hooted, he would still have kept lunging on. He believed the fight to last nearly a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. Now there sat in the gallery a matter-of-fact fellow, "who in his innocence took everything for reality;" and who, absorbed in the endless encounter, at last shouted out, with an oath, "— him, why doesn't he shoot him?"

In the Mémoires sur Carnot, by his son, may be read how that military genius, as such second to few in France, or elsewhere, was taken by his mother, at ten years old, to a theatre at Dijon, where a piece was performed containing military evolutions; during one of which, little Lazare Nicolas Marguérite-for that is the lad's style in full-dismayed his mother and astounded "the house" by starting from his seat, and remonstrating with the general of the stage troops of the stage stagey-on the "unmilitary character. of his operations;" backing the protest by a demonstration that the artillery was exposed unnecessarily to the enemy's fire, and showing the scared commander where it ought to be placed. The actors are said to have fallen into confusion, Madame Carnot to have been in despair, the pit and boxes to have been convulsed with laughter-while the boy alone sat self-possessed in the "premonitory assurance of military genius.'

Byron was some years younger than that, when his nurse took him one night to the theatre at Aberdeen, to see the Taming of the Shrew, and the following episode enlivened the performance. In the scene where Katharine and Petruchio differ as to the identity of sun and moon,

Kath. I know it is the moon.

Petr. Nay, then, you lie,-it is the blessed sun,

little Geordic, as they called the child, jumping up from his seat, cried out boldly, "But I say it is the moon, sir!"-Sir Walter Scott, again, loved to recal the witchery of his first night at the play, when his uncle Robert, arriving at Bath, took him (like Byron, a little lame boy) to see As You Like It. "I made, Ì believe, noise more than enough, and remember being so much scandalised at the quarrel between Orlando and his brother, in the first scene, that I screamed out, 'A'n't they brothers?" He adds, with that quiet humour of his, that a few weeks' residence at home. convinced him, who had till then been an only child in the house of his grandfather, that a quarrel between brothers was a very natural event.

The author of Black Sheep, in an autobiographical essay, relating mainly to his connexion (both paternally and maternally)