ment is also rest. Such is your happy experience — you two peculiarly blessed ones. Well, now I hurry on, for the postman comes for letters now at two o'clock. The other day Miss called, and having talked of Switzerland all the time (I liked that), just said as she was going away, "I hoped you liked my dear Mr. Constable!" Not the remotest idea that I had ever seen you before, nor has she by this time the remotest idea of it, spite of all I said. Miss ignores one's existence so totally. There is discourtesy in her blandest tones, therefore, because the first element of courtesy is to make another feel that they are recognized as entities at least, as something, even if a disagreeable thing. Miss is both insolent, virtually so, and insincere. Yet I don't hate her, but I do think her hateful.

(Undated.) It is all mystery-but surely love never dieth. At Bath we met some charming people, excellent people in all the affairs of life, mild, indulgent in temper and judgment, and they are quite enthusiastic about their faith of the negative kind—no God conceivable, and decidedly no immortality! I felt with them as one may on a glacier — beautiful to the eye, sunlit like the rest, but deadly cold to touch. Then I saw a good deal of a dear good meek soul, who after agonies of inward conflict, and a night spent on the floor — alone with God- crying out of its depths for guidance, believed itself guided to the Church of Rome. And finally I had long talks with a fervent semi-Swedenborgian. But all these were earnest, unworldly, superior either intellectually or morally or both.

(1870?) And so there is another of those absurdabsurd only they are so melancholy persecutions going on among the U. P.'s, as well as elsewhere. Who can, who does, hold to that extract from the Westminster standards? It seems as though the human mind was undergoing some organic change, and not only could not

believe, but could not conceive of as believable, many and many a doctrine taught me in my childhood, unhesitatingly subscribed to by me till of later years, nay, never questioned in words by that blessed mother of mine, who was all tenderness, as you know, and would not have hurt a fly, yet who was never consciously delivered from the bondage of a terrific creed. Not, sweet soul, that, save perhaps for herself, it ever did terrify her. Good hearts are driven to bad logic in such cases. But oh, the difficulty of the whole question -the difficulty of retaining! That is, I believe, the great trial of the present time to all those on whom is laid the necessity of thinking, and it is just the purest and best who realize the pang. A nature like mine is too frivolous, too much at the call of trivial interests, to feel it save in flashes; and as regards conduct there is no difficulty in knowing the right at all events.

(1870.) The sorrow the death of Charles Dickens has given me I cannot put into words. All England must mourn, and would have better missed, I think, any other man. I feel that a source of personal happiness is closed to me. Perhaps no one but a person living out of society and without personal cares could so look forward to those green numbers as I did. No other writer can give the vivid delight this true genius gave.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THINKER AND LOVER.

Or this so joyful double life a part at least of the secret is an open one. No endowment and no propitious circumstance can open the gates of this Eden save to the pure in heart and the disciplined in life. How absent from these two are all rivalry, ambition, jealousy! Not one pursuit or passion here that brings collision with another's good. And they are free, too, from that which so commonly mars life's joy,-anxiety about material things. Most of mankind are forever troubled about food and raiment. This pair seem as care-free and as joyous as the sparrows and lilies. But they earn the freedom with a double price, which is gladly paid. They limit their wants, and they husband their resources. An utmost modesty of desire and a scrupulous economy win for them exemption from the fear and care that haunt so many households. How womanly and delightful are the touches in the wife's letters of just an occasional subdued regret for daintiness and prettiness which they must forego! Those very light and transient regrets are all it costs them to give up the luxury and elegance which are to so many the end and aim of life. Luxury? Have they not love, thought, each other? Elegance? This whole glorious world of beauty is theirs, this world of humanity too, by the tenure of reverence and sympathy. Little does it reck them of fine clothes, houses, equipages! But there is in them no fancied superiority to responsibilities of pounds, shillings, and pence; down to a postage stamp, every expense is care

fully measured. So they honestly pay the price of their liberty moderate wants, strict economy, and hence, nights and days undisturbed by care.

the poor.

Their paradise secludes them in a way from the rest of the world; yet the wife we see preserves active and sympathetic relations with a wide circle of friends, makes kindly ties in every new lodging-house wherever their transient home is made, becomes a gracious helper among But the husband, save for her society, appears almost as much as ever a recluse. That innate bent to solitude, or the second nature wrought in the long years, does not yield even to the spell of her influence. He lives in her and in his thoughts. So interior is his life, so little has it of outward action even in little things, that not even her letters often show him to us in any distinct picture. The finest camera cannot take photographs from a life that is all thought and no action. The reader may sometimes wish that of the actors in this drama of two the man's figure stood out more distinctly. To read the wife's story is like looking at a religious picture, where the face of the adoring saint glows on the canvas, but of what the saint sees only a hint is disclosed. Nor can we much supply the want from other sources. Those who met William Smith felt a rare charm in him, but it was something so subtle, so little embodied in definite acts, that small record of it could be made. One or two glimpses of him we may here borrow, from a friendly and impartial observer, who shows him to us doubtless as he appeared to those who were not of his inner circle. Mr. Alexander Strahan, so often mentioned by Lucy Smith, contributed to the "Day of Rest" for August, 1881, as one number of "Twenty Years of a Publisher's Life," a sketch of William Smith; and from it we quote the most descriptive passages.

It was either late in 1861 or in the beginning of 1862 that one forenoon Mrs. Smith called at my office. As I went for

After the first

Hardly could it, in some de

ward to meet her, I noticed, a step or two behind her, a slightlybuilt gentleman, somewhat below the middle height, and no longer young, though at the same time not showing age much. He had stopped in following Mrs. Smith, and was, in fact, looking disturbed, and as if, on the whole, he would rather be on the other side of the door. I scarcely needed telling that I at length saw the author of "Thorndale." The shyness which he showed was shyness of a very peculiar kind. minute, it did not pain an observer to witness it. it be said that as you talked on it passed away; gree, stayed, but you came not to take it into account. A smile of perfect graciousness began to flit over his face, and the bright dark eyes met yours fully, in no way shrinking from looking into your mind, and quite ready to be looked into. But for the eyes, the face scarcely could be called impressive, though it grew more and more interesting as you gazed. The forehead was not high, but was well-formed. I afterwards found that he might fairly be described as a brilliant talker, when he was once roused. At this earliest meeting, however, in spite of some unconcealed encouragement from Mrs. Smith, the remarks he made were very brief, though always prompt and given with a smile. The shyness, meanwhile, went a little, came back again, and afresh faded, but towards the close of the talk it was reinstated in nearly full force on my venturing to allude to his writings. I found that the diffidence could become an actual embarrassment if one did not restrain the natural impulse to offer words of praise. But the instant the conversation turned away from himself, Mr. Smith's mind quieted again. Taken altogether, there was, as I now try to recall that first interview, something nearly boyish in Mr. Smith's bearing, - a touch of old-fashionedness, as though he had strayed for a minute into this world out of another; but it was another world which, if not so bustling as this, was kinder, and in which everybody was very sincere. Only in some such way can I try to explain to myself the readiness with which you felt at full ease with one who was so shy constitutionally. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were at this time living at Brighton, and I very willingly accepted a kind invitation that I should visit them there.

Some months passed before an opportunity for the visit of