probably not have regarded a young lady's change of mind towards a not very eligible suitor as a matter of great regret. And Emberance knew herself to be charming, the Major confirmed in her that sweet sense of the power of attraction, which is more intoxicating to a girl than the knowledge of beauty or any other personal advantage. It would take too long to tell all the little incidents, all the words, and half the glances that carried a vain man a little further than he had intended, and went far to turn the head of a vain girl.

Emberance looked prettier and took more trouble with her dress than usual during this important fortnight. But if she had a vain head she had an honest heart, and Major Clare's former attentions to Katharine could not be forgotten. It was flattering to be preferred to her heiresscousin; but still he had won Kate's affections first, and Emberance never really contemplated his urging any serious suit upon her. Only it was pleasant to be known as the object of his attentions.

"I am a foolish, horrid girl," thought Emberance, "and it is a mean thing to care about, but that's all, and I am sure they are all mistaken in fancying he has any serious intentions. Besides, as if I would listen to any one but Malcolm. I never, never will."

She was walking by herself home from the High Street, where she had gone to buy some little bit of finery, and down the lane that led by a short cut to the suburban district where she lived. It was only a dull lane, narrow and dirty, with a wall on one side and a closeclipped hedge on the other; but Emberance always chose it because it was here that she and Malcolm had met on the day when he had told her of his love and of his poverty, and asked her if she could bear to wait while he made his home, if she could put up with the weariness and the waiting that fell to the lot of a poor man's betrothed.

"Oh, I can!" Emberance had answered warmly, and Love Lane or Hatchard's Lane, as it was called, according to the tastes of the speaker, always brought her promise to her mind. She stopped a minute in her walk, and looked over the hedge across the cabbages in Hatchard's market garden, and said to herself,

"I'm not bearing it, I'm trying to escape it. I am giving in just as mother always said I should. And all because I like to feel that a man like Major Clare admires me. And I can't even tell Malcolm that I am sorry."

Tears filled her eyes and dimmed the long rows of cabbages. Emberance said a little prayer to herself, and made up her mind. She

would stick to her true love and to her true self. Not bound indeed! Did not her conscience bind her?

"Ah, Miss Kingsworth, good morning. I am just coming from your house. Mrs. Kingsworth gave me a hope of meeting you."

Emberance turned with a violent blush to see Major Clare standing beside her.

"Is this a favourite walk of yours ?" he said as she gave him a confused greeting.

"Yes," said Emberance, "it is."

cr

"From a fine sense of natural beauty ?" said Major Clare, lightly. "No," said Emberance, as bluntly as Kate could have spoken. "It's not pretty. But I don't care about that."

66

‘Indeed, there are times when outward beauty makes very little difference to us!"

"Yes," said Emberance, "but it would not do for me to think very much about places being pretty,-or particularly comfortable, because, -because I'm not likely to live in pretty or comfortable places."

"Why, how so?" said Major Clare, surprised.

"Because," said Emberance, looking straight before her, "a girl who hopes to be a settler's wife mustn't care about comforts. I am engaged to be married, Major Clare. I-I prefer to tell my friends about it, but mother would rather nothing was said, as we expect to wait for a long time first. But my uncle knows it, and Katharine.”

She made her little speech in a ladylike and dignified manner, though her face was crimson, and she wished that the old wall would tumble down and hide her.

Of course her motive in the confidence could not but be apparent enough, hard as she had tried to hide it; and Major Clare felt a pang of intense vexation as he felt that a second time his tale had been stopped before it was uttered. But he kept his counsel.

"Indeed! allow me to congratulate you," he said, lightly. "You have kept your secret well, Miss Kingsworth; no one would have guessed it."

"I was desired to keep it," said Emberance, ashamed. do not mention it in Fanchester."

"Please

"Of course," said Major Clare, "I feel your confidence an honour, -most undeserved, I am sure, and unexpected."

Emberance hated the Major more intensely as they walked down the remaining bit of Love Lane together than she had ever hated any one

in her life. He had carried off the rebuff cleverly, and had stung her too keenly to allow her to perceive that he was stung also.

They wished each other good morning cheerfully and courteously, and parted at the lane's end. Emberance hurried home feeling rather small and foolish; but with a sense of relief predominating. She was duly asked if she had met the Major, and after a little preamble her mother said,

"It is very pleasant to meet any one who is so discriminating.

He

is well acquainted with all our family history, and takes a very proper view of it."

Mamma, what have you been saying to him ?" cried Emberance vehemently and rather disrespectfully.

Nothing, I assure you, that he did not know before. He only expressed his sympathy with us, and said that your unconsciousness of any wrong couldn't hide how well you were fitted-in short, one couldn't help seeing that he thought you would make a much better heiress than Kate."

Emberance stood for a moment with her hat in her hand.

Then," she said, with much emphasis, "he is worse than any villain in a book."

She walked away without further explanation, and Major Clare vanished from the lives of Emberance and Katharine Kingsworth.

He returned to India still unmarried,—still faithful, his brother said, to his first love. And perhaps he was so, but his efforts to replace her, and his love of producing an impression had made a crisis in the life and in the character of the two Kings worth cousins.

S. RICHARD OF CHICHESTER.

THE sun uprose, the shadows fled,

It was the blesséd dawn of day,

And far below on Arun's stream

The mists like white swans sailed away.

And one1-the pale wan amber light

Of morning in the Minster found

1 In the time of Edward I, a harper used to play at the shrine of S. Richard in Chichester Cathedral: the shrine of silver is supposed to have stood behind the high altar before the entrance to the Lady Chapel. The Tomb of S. Richard is now in the south transept.

A harper by a dead man sat,

Living and dead, on holy ground:

Now woke green woods, now western winds
Curled soft across the summer sea,
And all the dales of that fair land
Sang "Benedicite."

Uprose the minstrel, silver strings
He tuned beside the holy dead,
And through long transepts wave on wave
Wondrous his stream of music fled :

Midway like Aldhelm' so he seemed

To weave 'twixt heaven and earth his rhymes,
Beneath him, rolled the stream of time,

Above him, stretched the fadeless climes :

Of fair white blooms-that rise from death
The minstrel by the dead man sings,
Of life-that every April hour

Quickens the herb that upward wings:

Of songs-sweet words that Faith can hear,
In minsters where no dirge-bells ring,
Of crowns once made of thorns but changed
To asphodels of fadeless spring.

Thus sang the harper, day by day,

His song ne'er faltered, nor his love,
He seemed a saint to sing for saints,
Or angel errant from above.

1 Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne at the beginning of the eighth century, used to be in the habit (in order to arrest the attention of those he wished to preach to) of standing on the bridge at Sherborne, and singing a ballad he had composed.

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SOME WANTS OF THE CHURCH.

WE borrow this title for our paper from a pamphlet1 which is so named by one of our most energetic and munificent laymen, Mr. Richard Foster, whose good works are known in every part of London and its neighbourhood.

Mr. Foster's own pamphlet does not travel beyond London (including what has been carved out for the Bishop of Bedford) and the contiguous Dioceses of Rochester and S. Alban's; but there is an Appendix by the Rev. J. M. Procter, which also examines the condition of the great northern Dioceses of Lichfield, Manchester, Liverpool, Ripon, and Durham.

For ourselves we do not propose to regard Diocesan limits, and shall begin with a brief review of the Church's general work. Of Cathedrals very little need be said. With the exception of two, their restorations are so nearly completed that no considerable extraneous help is needed; their own corporate bodies seem now able to complete what remains to be done. S. Paul's simply awaits the dying out of rival schemes which have been pressed with so much jealous acrimony, and Peterborough, which is the other one referred to, has not yet put forth any appeal; but when the claims of the diocese have been more fully met, we have little doubt that it will be made. Farther, scarcely any of the great historical churches (whether Abbey or Collegiate churches) remain unrestored. Some, as S. Mary Redcliffe, SS. Peter and Paul, Dorchester, Sherborne, and S. Mary, Stafford, have been done thoroughly well. At the same time it would be easy to point to dark spots, both in towns and dioceses, which are much below the proper level, and which must await some change of administration before better things can be hoped for. Nevertheless, so much may be truthfully said, that the towns, speaking generally, have made a great start during the last few years, while the country villages have been so nearly reached by the hand of the restorer that, with one good harvest, the jubilee of the Tracts for the Times, which falls in 1883, might see the Church of England in a really good working condition. Once more it may be said that Religious Houses have increased so much and provided themselves with such large and lasting buildings that little remains to be done on this 1 Published by Rivingtons.