you; off with that bauble, and throw it under foot." Katharine instantly took off her cap, and threw it down. "Lord!" said Hortensio's wife, "may I never have a cause to sigh till I am brought to such a silly pass!" And Bianca, she too said, "Fie, what foolish duty call you this?" On this Bianca's husband said to her, "I wish your duty were as foolish too! The wisdom of your duty, fair Bianca, has cost me a hundred crowns since dinner-time." "for lay"The more fool you," said Bianca, ing on my duty." "Katharine," said Petrucio, "I charge you tell these headstrong women what duty they owe their lords and husbands." And to the wonder of all present, the reformed shrewish lady spoke as eloquently in praise of the wifelike duty of obedience, as she had practised it implicitly in a ready submission to Petrucio's will. And Katharine once more became famous in Padua, not as heretofore as Katharine the Shrew, but as Katharine the most obedient and duteous wife in Padua.

THE SHEEP AND THE GOAT.1

The thousand streets of London gray

Repel all country sights;

But bar not winds upon their way,
Nor quench the scent of new-mown hay
In depth of summer nights.

And here and there an open spot,
Still bare to light and dark,
With grass receives the wanderer hot;
There trees are growing, houses not-
They call the place a park.

Soft creatures, with ungentle guides,
God's sheep from hill and plain,
Flow thitherward in fitful tides,
There weary lie on woolly sides,
Or crop the grass amain.

And from dark alley, yard, and den,
In ragged skirts and coats,
Troop hither tiny sons of men,

Wild things, untaught of word or pen-
The little human goats.

In Regent's Park one cloudless day,
An overdriven sheep,

Arrived from long and dusty way,
Throbbing with thirst and hotness lay,

A panting woollen heap.

1Works of Fancy and Imagination. By George MacDonald, LL.D. London: Strahan & Co.

COUSIN MARY.

About four years ago, passing a few days with the highly educated daughters of some friends in this neighbourhood, I found domesticated in the family a young lady, whom I shall call, as they called her, Cousin Mary. She was about eighteen, not beautiful perhaps, but lovely certainly to the fullest extent of that loveliest word-as fresh as a rose; as fair as a lily; with lips like winter berries-dimpled, smiling lips; and eyes of which nobody could tell the colour, they danced so incessantly in their own gay light. Her figure was tall, round, and slender; exquisitely well proportioned it must have been, for in all attitudes (and in her innocent gaiety she was scarcely ever two minutes in the same) she was grace itself. She was, in short, the very picture of youth, health, and happiness. No one could see her without being prepossessed in her favour. I took a fancy to her the moment she entered the room; and it increased every hour in spite of, or rather perhaps for, certain deficiencies, which caused poor Cousin Mary to be held exceedingly cheap by her accomplished relatives.

She was the youngest daughter of an officer of rank, dead long ago; and his sickly widow having lost by death-or that other death, marriage all her children but this, could not, from very fondness, resolve to part with her darling for the purpose of acquiring the commonest instruction. She talked of it, indeed, now and then, but she only talked; so that, in this age of universal education, Mary C. at eighteen exhibited the extraordinary phenomenon of a young woman of high family, whose acquirements were limited to reading, writing, needle-work, and the first rules of arithmetic. The effect of this let-alone system, combined with a careful seclusion from all improper society, and a perfect liberty in her country rambles, acting upon a mind of great power and activity, was the very reverse of what might have been predicted. It had produced not merely a delightful freshness and originality of manner and character, a piquant ignorance of those things of which one is tired to death, but knowledge-positive, accurate, and various knowledge. She was, to be sure, wholly unaccomplished; knew nothing of quadrilles, though her every motion was dancing; nor a note of music, though she used to warble like a bird sweet snatches of old songs, as she skipped up and down the house; nor of painting, except as her taste had been formed by a

minute acquaintance with nature into an intense feeling of art. She had that real extra sense, an eye for colour, too, as well as an ear for music. Not one in twenty-not one in a hundred of our sketching and copying ladies could love and appreciate a picture where there was colour and mind, a picture by Claude, or by our English Claudes Wilson and Hoffland, as she could—for she loved landscape best, because she understood it best-it was a portrait of which she knew the original. Then her needle was in her hands almost a pencil. I never knew such an embroidress-she would sit "printing her thoughts on lawn," till the delicate creation vied with the snowy tracery, the fantastic carving of hoar-frost, the richness of Gothic architecture, or of that which so much resembles it, the luxuriant fancy of old pointlace. That was her only accomplishment, and a rare artist she was-muslin and net were her canvas. She had no French either, not a word; no Italian; but then her English was racy, unhackneyed, proper to the thought to a degree that only original thinking could give, She had not much reading, except of the Bible and Shakspeare, and Richardson's novels, in which she was learned; but then her powers of observation were sharpened and quickened in a very unusual degree by the leisure and opportunity afforded for their development, at a time of life when they are most acute. She had nothing to distract her mind. Her attention was always awake and alive. She was an excellent and curious naturalist, merely because she had gone into the fields with her eyes open; and knew all the details of rural management, domestic or agricultural, as well as the peculiar habits and modes of thinking of the peasantry, simply because she had lived in the country, and made use of her ears. Then she was fanciful, recollective, new; drew her images from the real objects, not from their shadows in books. In short, to listen to her and the young ladies her companions, who, accomplished to the height, had trodden the education mill till they all moved in one step, had lost sense in sound, and ideas in words, was enough to make us turn masters and governesses out of doors, and leave our daughters and grand-daughters to Mrs. C.'s system of non-instruction. I should have liked to meet with another specimen, just to ascertain whether the peculiar charm and advantage arose from the quick and active mind of this fair Ignorant, or was really the natural and inevitable result of the training; but, alas; to find more than one unaccomplished young lady in this accomplished age is not to be