up of a fictitious open secret concerning his birth, without the word ever being spoken, is a triumph of dexterity.

Some people consider Beauchamp's Career' the one book in which Meredith nods. Even if this be so, ich grolle nicht, remembering how Lady Holland used to enjoy the brilliant Macaulay's "flashes of silence." "The Egoist,' in 1879, doubtless represents Meredith's high-water mark. It is a contribution to the "best hundred books," the literature of all time. Clara Middleton is one of the few girls in fiction who are not only delightful but really alive, and one feels sure that the loathing her egoist suitor and his egoist suit excite in her (writ large, as for art's sake they must be) have defined the situation, and will yet define it for many a young woman in revolt. This history of a fortnight is made up of psychological situations. Its composition, in the painter's sense, is flawless. Of all Meredith's figures, the Egoist is the most thoughtfully created. He is by no means farcical, but altogether sadly human. He is the Malvolio of modern literature, but one that has been subjected to a keener vivisection than the cross-gartered gull could suffer. Shakespeare "blew through brass," Meredith "breathes through silver." There are masterly descriptions in The Egoist'—of a girl's dress, her curls, a publican's parlour, a landscape under rainy skies and southern wind. Meredith's scattered silverpoints from Nature, from Tyrol Alps and Surrey gorse-commons, are filled with imagination and truth.

'Diana of the Crossways' is an embroidery on the story of Sheridan's clever, unwise granddaughter, Mrs. Norton, as 'The Tragic Comedians' is a study in the character of Lassalle, the German socialist. The prototype of Diana was a famed conversationalist in days when English society aped the salons that had been, and Diana is a queen of wit and charm. She is diamond and pearl in one, her emotions are as direct as her mental machinery is complicated. It is especially in the case of his inconsistent characters, such as Diana Warwick and Richard Feverel, that one finds how self-consistent Meredith keeps them all. Two chapters in 'Diana of the Crossways,' "A Change of Turnings" and "A Disappointed Lover," are among the novelist's finest pieces of work; after the high-pressure talk of Mrs. Warwick's Sunday dinner-parties they at once soothe and astonish by their simple, onward flow of narration. These chapters, however, are not more powerful than the scene in the empty, moonlit house at the Crossways between Redworth, "true gentleman, heart, blood, and bone," and Diana, not finer than the book's sunset close. Many a deep word on character is imbedded

her remorse, "Oh! our We cannot escape it."

We cannot

in this novel, as where Diana cries in weakness is the swiftest dog to hunt us. Here is a last saying of Diana's with which to close this appreciation in miniature of Meredith's novels:

"Who can really think and not think hopefully? When we despair or discolour things, it is our senses in revolt, and they have made the sovereign brain their drudge. There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by—with that I sail into the dark; it is my promise of the immortal."

I have but skimmed the surface. Enough if I have reminded some of the readers of novels that the life of which our own nerves are sometimes so scant we may drink in from Meredith like wine, and feel it racing through our veins with a strengthening intoxication. It is by range of power, by width of view, that Meredith outdoes, where he does outdo, his fellows. They, it may be, have some intensity he lacks, but he combines "this man's art and that man's scope." Whatever his defects he moves in a larger, a more various, world than they, and that surely is the final word in settling a question of calibre-whether it be of novelist or mere mortal.

F. MARY WILSON PARSONS.

In St. Mary's Kirkyard.

To sit on a tombstone in this famous Border burial-place, and smoke a pipe, seems as profane and Philistine a thing as a man could do. We own we would shrink from smoking in an ordinary churchyard, which might nevertheless be not so sacred to us; yet here there is no human being at hand to rebuke or take offence at us, and under the peculiar circumstances in which we find ourselves we feel we are not desecrating the place.

It was with an irresistible impulse that, when we had reached this much-dreamt-of spot, we sought our occasional aid to reflection. We had left the road some quarter of an hour before, having not without pleasure cut ourselves off from the fellowship of the excursion coach and the bicycle; and, after a scramble along a sheep-track, which led us steadily upward in a slanting direction through the bracken towards the point where we knew the kirkyard should be, we came at length in sight of a rough quadrangular wall, which seemed like that of a sheep-fold, but that it was higher, and that over it there appeared the grey pinnacles of an imposing sepulchre. On the lowest side a rough stile gate afforded ingress to the enclosure; and passing within we made our way upward through the many unpretending mounds and past the low head-stones, some of them of quite recent date, with which the ground is thickly covered, towards the lofty and elaborate monument which dominates the whole. It showed on examination no traces of its identity, and we were not very curious, after all, to know whom it commemorated. It seemed, except for its grey and worn solemnity, out of keeping with the other quite simple memorials of the dead.

The church itself, or the ruins of it, we did not look for, as we remembered Sir Walter's lines

"In feudal strife a foe

Hath laid Our Lady's chapel low."

The place was none the less thrillingly suggestive of solemn

thought. Here, we reflected, had been formerly the focus of religious life and worship for many types of men. Roman, Anglican, and Presbyterian rites had each in turn been celebrated in the House of God, which once looked proudly down from this commanding height on the loch which still bears its name. Baron and knight and monk, Border robber and peaceful shepherd had been wont to gather here periodically at the time of prayer, just as even now, on the occasion of the preaching of the "Blanket Sermon," the hillside is alive with worshippers, who thus keep up the unbroken tradition of worship on this spot.

The thought of the play of human passion that has taken place here, running through all the gamut of remorse and penitence, and sacred joy and aspiration, and love and sorrow, is of itself enough to detain for long the musing mind. But our attention is diverted to the present aspect and the peculiarity of the situation of this most romantic of churchyards, and it is that we may take full note of this, and impregnate ourselves with the spirit of the locality, that we assume an attitude of ease and repose, and prepare for ourselves the reverie-inducing narcotic.

Almost in self-defence against the oppressive solitariness of the scene are we moved to do the latter. We are far from all trace— except for a distant view here and there of farmstead or cottageof man or his handiwork. We are alone with the dead and with Nature in her severer and wilder form. The scream of the wild bird and the warning cry of the sheep to its offspring, like expressions of resentment against us for our intrusion upon their haunts, but increase the sensation of loneliness.

And now, from this point of vantage, we look out over the full length and breadth of St. Mary's Loch. There is no sun, and the light wind prevents that transparency of the surface which Scott, in his Introduction to the second canto of Marmion,' and Wordsworth, in his Yarrow poems, had led us to expect. We had seen the swan on our way upward, but it was not "floating double, swan and shadow;" and of the loch itself it could not be said that "not a feature of the hills was in the mirror slighted." The water was of a dull leaden colour, though the clouds were not low enough to obscure the bare green hills that embraced it. We noticed that the place had undergone some change since Sir Walter wrote

"Nor tree, nor bush, nor brake is there,
Save where, of land, yon slender line
Bears thwart the lake the scatter'd pine."

There is now a long fringe of wood along the northern side of the loch, in the midst of which there rises a modern hotel.

However, the rest of Sir Walter's description is as true now as when he penned it

"Nor fen, nor sedge

Pollute the pure lake's crystal edge:

Abrupt and sheer the mountains sink
At once upon the level brink;

And just a trace of silver sand

Marks where the water meets the land."

What he says of the solitariness of the place is equally true

"Nor thicket, dell, nor copse you spy,

Where living thing concealed might lie;

Nor point, retiring, hides a dell,

Where swain or woodman lone might dwell;
There's nothing left to fancy's guess,

You see that all is loneliness."

"St. Mary's Loch is disappointing," many people say who have visited it. Yes, it is disappointing, if you look in it for scenery only for exceptional natural beauty or grandeur. If the name of St. Mary's Loch only suggests to you beforehand such thoughts as those with which you first gazed on Derwentwater or Loch Maree, you will be, perhaps, even exceedingly disappointed. There is many a sheet of water in the United Kingdom that is superior to it in grace or sublimity. But what lake anywhere has quite the same associations of romance, or has been the scene and the theme of so much that still has power to deeply move us? When we call to mind what we have heard and read in connection with "lone Saint Mary's silent lake," it cannot fail to charm us with a charm that is quite its own, and to show its fitness for the peculiar fame that it has earned.

What is the peculiar fame, the special note, of the place? Other places that we have seen have for us their marked individuality, their unique and incomparable associations. The low rounded stony hills of Palestine-who that has been privileged to see them will fail to bear them ever in mind as the meeting-places between man and God, in the loftiest and most sacred experiences of the human soul? And the charm of the English lake district, of Grasmere, of Rydal, and Langdale, and Skiddaw, and Helvellyn— what is there quite like it on British soil? It is not a district of romance; it awakens no historical memories; during the long years over which our national records extend, the turbulent stream of human passion seems to have flowed otherwhere than amid these calm eminences and sylvan dales. Yet it was in this unhistoric neighbourhood-unromantic, but for the romance that natural beauty imparts-that Wordsworth was reared, and perfected his