her smile that evening I can see now. The other vision of her is yet more vivid. She and Edith had been at Mount Hazel by the seashore, where she and her husband once lived; and in the twilight she came in on her way home to give me a white pebble and seaweed from the beach. Her dear eyes were full of light, and her cheek flushed, and her black veil had the dew of the autumn evening upon it; and she spoke a few sweet words about the old life there, and of still knowing he was near her 'my dearest out of sight.'

"Was ever sorrow so unselfish as hers! It never closed her heart to that of others, who, if I may judge by my own feeling, looked upon her as one guarded, set apart, by her sacred grief, from intrusion of theirs. But she drew it out by her magic sympathy, and then came the flow of wise, helping, raising encouragement. Many more than will ever be fully known in this world owe the restoration of life and hope to her, in her own widowhood and loss of personal happiness — if indeed that is a true description of the dear heart which felt as its own the joy of those she loved. And then the thought for her friends the exquisite work she would adorn their houses with! Even during a few day's stay in London, she would find time for copying a beautiful design in needlework for a country cottage. Oh, to be more like her, not only to admire and reverence!"

To Mrs. Lorimer.

PLAS COCH, LLANBERIS, July 31, 1876. I have a very early friend with me, have had for a fortnight, Sophy L. Her sister, one of the loved band out of sight now, was especially dear to me, but this is a precious friendship so old and so familiar. She was a shy child of twelve and a half, I a girl of fifteen, when we first knew each other, and though we have not been much together of late years there is a perfect ease and

confidence between us, not the necessity for any effort or restraint. Dear Sophy is a very sweet, gentle, highminded woman, a beauty for her age, and so graceful I like to watch her. She paid us three visits in the days of my life, and William liked and admired her very much, and then she had a most beautiful voice. This day

week she and I walked up Snowdon and back, taking it quietly and seeing glorious views of far and near, the Wicklow mountains being indigo blue over a bright blue sea, till we arrived at the hut at the top. A high wind suddenly sprang up, and gravel and dust flew blindingly about, and then white clouds came up rapidly from the north, and swept the lower hills, and rose till they swallowed us up, and we really thought we should have to sleep there. A tourist with an excellent countenance said, "This is the very time for a sing," and as we all cowered around the fire and the wind rattled our sheltering hut, he took Moody and Sankey's little volume of hymns out of his pocket, and struck up spirited' airs, "Hold the Fort," and many others, all new to me; not so, however, to some of the guides, who chimed in- and though one would no longer have put one's deepest hopes into the same words, still there was a power and sweetness too in the hymns; and I felt my enmity to those evangelists greatly modified. When the wind lulled, Sophy and I marched off into the mist, for the path was good, and there was light enough for the next step, and we got back at ten, not overdone, and drawn the closer by the experience. I cannot tell you how the old life seems to reanimate me on the mountains, when seeing the splendours seen and loved by him, when he looked at the earth and sky, and I saw their beauty best in his delight.

I liked Lord Shaftesbury's speech on the Eastern question, and his declaration that he would rather have the Russians than the Turks at Constantinople. I think pub

lic opinion will grow strong in that direction, and shake off the ally of the past with horror; not because he is Mohammedan, but because driven to such cruel warfare, and guilty of incapacity to control the savage hordes that eke out his army.

To Mr. Archibald Constable.

PLAS COCH, Sept. 17, 1876. I know my kind Archie will like to know that Fiske came at the very moment I wanted just that sort of reading. I was so worn out I staid in bed for breakfast, and rested myself with those grand attainments to scientific facts with which we blend, which give us the energy and the impulse to blend, high hopes and the sweet trustfulness of "infants crying in the night," "knowing a father near." I want my darling Mary to have some of this excitement. I do believe that just the effort, the upward gazing after those who soar, is more favourable to health than any drug. Bromide is the fashionable mischief just now, and I believe very deleterious. It's all guess-work as yet, and doctors have not got beyond substituting one complaint, one abnormal condition, for another. Such is my firm belief.

THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY.

"To love is the great glory, the last culture, the highest happiness; to be loved is little in comparison.". WILLIAM SMITH, Gravenhurst.

Yes, the love that we get is a joy and a power
'T is as rain to the deep-thirsting root;
As the sun-light to open and colour the flower;
As the sun-warmth to ripen the fruit.
We will hail it and prize it so long as we live;
But the life of the soul is the love that we give.

If the root underground be worm-stricken and dry,
If the flower have all withered away

What avails that the soft rain still falls from the sky

Or bright sunbeams be still at their play? But from darkness and drought we may suffer, yet live; For the life of the soul is the love that we give.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

LED ONWARD.

"I CAN vividly recall the feeling," writes Mrs. Emily Pfeiffer, "with which in the summer of the year 1875 I read the letter in a then unknown hand which now lies before me, telling of the sympathy and trust which my writings had won for me from a soul'too stricken for comfort' but whom my words had helped to suffer.' The letter of this stranger expressed a wish that I should become acquainted with a memoir, printed at that date for private circulation only, 'a faithful record' by herself of her husband's life and death.' This letter was from Lucy C. Smith; the precious deposit which quickly followed it was a volume containing the printed works of William Smith (who had at that time been dead about three years), and the memoir above mentioned.

"Letters and sonnets were exchanged at intervals after this, but no meeting took place or was so much as thought of, —indeed my correspondent gave me to understand that there were reasons for which she did not wish it, until in the autumn of 1876 my husband and myself found ourselves at Bettws-y-Coed. She had told me that she could express herself more fully to me with the idea that we were not to meet in the flesh, for that she desired no new pleasures, not even that of acquaintanceship, nothing but what had some part in the memory in which she lived. The fact therefore which I learned incidentally that we should be her neighbours for a few days at the Llanberis Hotel gave me no expectations of meeting her.