longings even before his own; but associate him in his holiday with large numbers of his fellows, and he immediately becomes boisterous, noisy, selfish-often brutal and unmanageable; and from this reason it makes the policy of these universal and constantly recurring holidays somewhat questionable. Were it possible, more real and rational enjoyment would ensue if large establishments gave their employés each a day's holiday in rotation rather than all at once.

Unluckily the working classes have seldom the opportunity or taste for the cultivation of a hobby, though the more intellectual amongst them occasionally develop faculties and capacities which have only to be rightly directed to lead to very creditable results in directions far removed from those wherein they earn their daily bread. But then, with this order of intelligence, there is seldom any fear of a holiday being ill spent; it will usually be devoted to the pursuit of that favourite fancy of theirs, whatever it is, breeding canaries, pigeons, poultry, puppies, window or other gardening, turning, model-making, or such bits of carpentering, house-painting, and decorating as may increase the comfort and ornamentation of their own humble abodes. The attractions which large crowds on general holidays have for the masses will in no wise affect the way in which these good folk employ their leisure; they are, however, in a small minority. Would that we might be sure that higher up the social scale the relative minority were lessened! If it were, there would not exist that headlong craving for general movement and excitement which we see about us; holidays 'all round' would be spent more rationally than they often are; but it is because the majority have so comparatively few resources within themselves that we are overdone

with schemes for fast and frivolous pleasures.

to

Directly a holiday looms in the 'possible,' there instantly starts up some sort of questioning about making up a party to go hither or thither,' excursionising, picnicking, what not, as though quiet leisure were worth nothing in the world. With youth and robust strength, this state of things may be natural enough, and if kept within reasonable bounds cannot be objected to; but it is just because the bounds are so often overstepped, and a craving after excitement permanently established, that so many people in middle age come be incapable of rational intelligent holiday-making. They seem, as it were, to have started with an idea that life is to be one prolonged sort of evening-party supper, a perpetual holiday, and by the time they find out their mistake everything which does not tend to keep up the illusion becomes flat and unprofitable. They resent all conditions which make their error evident, blindly fighting against facts, and striving to convince themselves that they are not mistaken after all, and that it is really a very jolly thing, when they have a holiday, to spend it in a perpetual whirl.

Well, perhaps they can hardly be blamed forsooth, for it is too late, and without their accustomed excitement there falls upon them a sense of appalling inanity, boredom, and depression, which makes rational intellectual occupation impossible. They have become social dram-drinkers, who without their accustomed succession of 'nips' find their nerves unstrung, their spirits annihilated, and their minds a blank.

Holidays therefore, even from the school-days point of view, need careful administration, so that they shall not only not be unduly prolonged, but that they shall also not be entirely spent in mere idle ex

citement. A too constant whirligig of pantomimes and children's parties in the winter, or a too everlasting succession of cricket matches or boating parties in the summer, only tend to lessen the value and use of the 'holiday' as a rest from study, and encourage that irrational craving for amusement which is so much to be deprecated. If all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,' all play, even in holiday time, and no work, may very likely make Jack a dull man. If he were taught early that the true purpose of rest is to enable us to work, in contradistinction to the popular notion that the purpose of work is to enable us to rest, he would more often turn out a healthierminded individual than he does, and be capable of using the holidays he earns more wisely and profitably. He would return to his millstone, congenial or not, as it may be, with something like a zest, and certainly with a renewed capacity and energy. His mind may dwell longingly and regretfully on those pleasant hours of relaxation just passed, and he may grumble that his holiday is over, but on the whole, as with most well-balanced dispositions, he will not be very sorry to be again in the collar.' His so-called idle days having done their beneficent work, and restored his flagging spirit, will have begun to seem unnatural to him, and he will gradually become convinced that, after all, one of the great pleasures of going away for a holiday is the coming back again. He certainly will be nothing loth to renew his old habits, industrious and otherwise; he will be glad to see his old friends, and interested in all changes that have taken place during his absence.

Then again, if, as has been suggested, he has employed his holiday to some extent in the pursuit of his favourite hobby, there will be the

trophies that it has yielded to remind him of the pleasant times, and to enable him to live through them again and again. Man is a collecting animal, prone to hoarding and arranging, and the fresh specimens, botanical, geological, ornithological, and entymological, or whatever they are, that he may have obtained, will have to be set up in their proper order, and displayed lovingly and triumphantly to sympathising acquaintances.

Particularly will this be the case if he be a sketcher-for, looking round upon all the ways in which time can be most pleasantly occupied during a summer holiday, not one seems to offer greater attractions than that of sketching. However humble his powers, however unpicturesque the region into which he has drifted, the holiday-maker with an artistic turn will assuredly find a fund of solid enjoyment out of sketching, hardly yielded by any other pursuit. It will teach him to observe closely, if it does nothing more, and once started on that trail, his investigations of colour, form, light and shade, and so forth, will become so interesting as to be a positive occupation, even when he has no pencil or sketch-book in his hand. He will see things undreamt of before he began to try and draw them, and instead of finding Nature a sealed book, he will ponder over her pages with fresh and ever-increasing delight; he will be able to extract pleasure and profit out of a saunter by the side of the commonest hedgerow; he will learn that beauty surrounds him on all sides, even in the least pretentious landscapes, and will come to understand that it is not necessary to go to what are vulgarly called 'fine views' in order to enjoy Nature. Nay more, the due cultivation of such artistic faculties as he possesses will show him in his own room enough pictorial effects

to make a voyage round that chamber almost as interesting as one round the world. But as for the mere results of a holiday, none can be more tangible and delightful than a portfolio of sketches. They are at once a pictorial illustration of the spots we have visited, and a journal-like record of the circumstances by which we were surrounded at the time; for, with the name and date of its execution in the corner of each sketch, there starts up before us the recollection of a host of trivial incidents with which it was associated. member where we were staying, who was with us, what was said or done, and if the perusal of a journal be, at the best, somewhat melancholy reading, it surely is rendered the least so when we find it in the form of a sketch-book or a portfolio of drawings.

We re

Contrast the return home after a holiday laden with this sort of trophy with one in which we have brought back nothing, save a sense of fatigue, ennui, and the recollection of the sums of money our outing has cost us. At least there is something to show for our money in the first case, and a something that helps gratefully to infuse into lives spent in ugly toil, and amidst dingy bricks and mortar, an idea of Nature and the beautiful; and considering the break-neck pace at which the business of the world in large cities is conducted nowadays, and the noise, racket, and clatter incidental to it, it ap pears perhaps more requisite than ever that we should try to keep our memories of rural scenery as fresh and green as its own tints.

The hardening process induced by the ways of modern life absolutely needs the counteracting and softening influence of the country. Green fields, silver streams, and blue seas are becoming more and more essential as antidotes to dry,

dull, grinding, noisy daily toil. But as it is only possible for the busy workers of the hive now and again to reap the full enjoyment of the silence and the rest which natural scenery yields whilst in its midst, as most of us can, at the best, but get little more than a month or six weeks per annum of actual country, surely it is well to cultivate the power of producing counterfeit presentments which shall bring the reality whenever we please vividly before us.

As has been already said, the humblest efforts are valuable in this respect; the most untutored lines will serve to feed the imagination of any one who has been sufficiently interested in a natural scene to sit down before it, with a wish to reproduce it.

Away, then, at least for part of the holiday, to some region where the four winds of heaven may visit our cheeks without leaving smuts upon our noses; where the eye may range over some bit of pure untended landscape; where flowers, trees, and hedgerows grow wild, and are not trimmed to garden garb, and not hemmed in by castiron railings set in Portland cement; where the song of birds, the splash of waters, the rustle of corn, the chirp of grasshopper, and hum of bee are not broken in upon by the screech and roar of the railway train; where cliff, shingle, and shore are not smoothed, flattened, levelled, esplanaded, and studded with crescents, places, terraces, and parades. Let us, we say, in a word, get a glimpse of Nature in such a way, that whilst we obtain from her rest, silence, pure air, and that elevation of spirit which our jaded energies demand, we may have a chance of capturing and perpetuating some of her beauties, and of bringing them home in the shape of a portfolio of sketches.

W. W. FENN.

HER PLIGHTED TROTH,'

YES, 'little things' brought back to Mrs. Keane 'the thoughts of by gone hours.' So completely had all the enjoyments of life dropped from her, that she had fallen to loving and lingering over a few inanimate objects that appertained to the past, and of breathing to them her sorrows and misfortunes as though they were gifted with feelings and sympathies.

Certes, it was only to the inanimate things that she did breathe the story of her woes and wrongs, for no human ear ever heard her complain.

And so it was that, when the battered old armchair came back into her possession so suddenly and unexpectedly, like a morsel of driftwood rescued from a flood, it became inexpressibly dear to her. She hailed it, in her morbid lonely existence, almost as a sign that Providence had not utterly forgotten her. She wept over it-large genuine tears, that oozed up slowly, but surely, in her eyes, and trickled down her careworn face on to the faded amber cushion. And the very tears were an inner source of relief, for, as a rule, they lay down

VOL. XXI.

heavily on her heart, as though kept there by the presence of heavy trouble; and God help the unfortunate man or woman whose tears don't spring to the surface, but lie buried and frozen over by a deadly weariness of life, a perpetual dull kind of pain.

In

In her complete solitude-for Mrs. Keane was left entirely to her loneliness-she fell to loving the old chair, and added it to the list of treasures-worthless and hideous to all save herself-which nothing had induced her to part with—no, not even the very depths of poverty, the cravings of hunger, or even his importunity. The chair, as has been said before, was old and stained and shabby beyond redemption. many a place the richness of the amber had turned into a neutral tint, and glimpses of the coarse underlining showed through the frayed edges of the seams; in many a place the very passable carving of the wood had broken away hopelessly, and the pieces were lost. Still the poor woman believed that something might be done to bring back the old splendour.

Q