ment, in telling the story in later years, | But apart from this festival, to which all was characteristic: "Now the dear old his friends who took an interest in such soul would exclaim as eagerly, 'Thank matters were bidden, there was scarcely a God, it is white!" The sermon was on week in which he did not carry the memthe great words of St. Paul on Mars Hill, bers of some one of the clubs round the and took up the strain of the morning, Abbey, pouring out to them the wealth of that every man is a child of God, whether his historical knowledge, which played he will own it or not. The story of the round, and invested with ever new internegress who, when all her children had est, monument, and statue, and aisle, and been kidnapped, went out into the woods buttress. and found comfort, and years afterward, herself a slave in America, hearing the words, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden," jumped up and cried, "That is He" (told first, I believe, in the key to Uncle Tom's Cabin), was introduced with signal effect, so that in the end the whole congregation rose and joined in the evening hymn. Stanley was even more moved than in the morning, and again lost his shoes, or rather his pupil's slippers, which had been lent him for church, his own shoes having got wet in an afternoon's walk we had taken him to Bethnal Green. He went home that night an exulting man and historian, declaring that the battle was already won (as, indeed, it proved to be, though there were still many small outbreaks of perverse rowdyism), and that a chapter full of instruction in ecclesiastical history had been acted that day under our eyes. There was some quality in him which produced an effect on men of the artisan class which is as rare as it is precious, making each one of them rise to his best, or "feel good," as the expressive Western phrase puts it. What it was I can not say with any certainty. He was utterly unlike their usual favorites, so unconscious, and yet so full of tact of the highest kind; some peculiar combination of dignity, gentleness, simplicity, which brought him at once very near to other men on the ground of their common manhood. Condescend he could not, for he had no pedestal from which to come down, but he had a deep feeling of sensitive sympathy for the cares and strain of lowly life. Whatever it was, it has gone from us— alas! for no one has inherited his mantle. And with it has gone that chivalry which always drew him to the weaker side, and made him again and again the champion. It was not till after he came to West- of men of whom he was neither friend nor minster as Dean in 1863 that the connec-admirer, but against whom the popular tion commenced between him and the va- current was running. He never, that I rious metropolitan organizations of work- can remember, cared to speak when he ing-men, which produced such good fruit was on the side of the majority. No man in his later years. One of his first exper- saw more distinctly that danger of deiments was quite out of the path which mocracy, the tyranny which a roused he ultimately settled on. On the appli- multitude is so ready to exercise, or stood cation of the promoters of a large arti- against it more firmly and consistently. sans' dwellings company he became their It mattered not to him how much or how chairman, and when he found out the little he agreed or sympathized with a bearings of what he had done was not a man who was not getting fair play; his little embarrassed. By his desire I ac- first business was to see that he had that companied him to the first meeting at at any rate. And it was this which was which he was to preside, and which he the main cause of that angry and susmanaged should be also his last. But his picious feeling about his beliefs and his relations to the working-men's clubs and influence, which was undoubtedly wideinstitutes continued to the last. He was spread for many years, and by no means their host and cicerone, always ready to lived down even at his death. welcome them, and to make them feel at home by his simple and generous kindliness. Once a year there was the general gathering of the union, when the Deanery was thrown open, drawing-room and library tables being covered with photographs and engravings, and tea served in the College Hall, where Henry IV. died. His life as a Churchman was one consistent illustration of his own pregnant saying that in our country and time the great lesson of the parable of the Pharisee and Publican was the one of which we stood most in need, and that for the common cry of the religious press and world, "God, I thank Thee that I am not as thi heretic," every Christian should substi- | was after his visit to America, where "the tute, "God be merciful to us sinners, Presbyterian, Anglican, Roman, Greek, or Lutheran." The most persistent of the cries against him rested on the thinnest foundation; for instance, that he rejected the doctrine of the atonement, because he had pointed out that the word occurs once only in the New Testament (Romans, v. 11), and once in the liturgy, in the prayer for rain. I have even heard it stated confidently that he did not believe in the resurrection, by persons who knew him well, and were constantly meeting him in society. Little as he recked of these cries generally, this accusation touched him keenly. His hymn on the Ascension-day should have been a perfect answer to all such gainsayers, as it was, to my knowledge, to several of them, when their attention had been called to it. The last part especially is so characteristic of his own life and teaching, and embodies his faith so tersely, that a part of it may well find a place here, as those who have never read should read, and those who have will be glad to read again: "He is gone! Toward their goal World and Church must onward roll. singular buoyancy and elasticity of the national and individual character," "the brilliant, exhilarating climate," "the vast horizon opened out by their boundless territory," and the warmth and sympathetic tenderness of his own reception, had not only recruited his health, but fired his imagination and touched his heart. It delighted his friends to hear the vivid dramatic power come out as freshly as ever in his accounts of his visits to the sacred places of New England-to Salem on its two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary; to Plymouth Rock, from whence he saw the little crew of the Mayflower with yearning as toward the cradle of a sacred state; to Ticonderoga, the only ruin he met with, brooded over by the mysterious legend of the death of Duncan Campbell, of Inverawe; to Niagara, where the silver column of spray, glistening in the moonlight, and rising high, silent, and majestic above the falls from out the turbulent whirlpool below, was to him an image of the future America which should emerge from the distractions of the present. Nevertheless the change was there, seen in the far-off and sad look which so often came across his face in repose, significant in one who had felt so keenly all his days life's myriad grasp, and had thrown himself so keenly into all its phases. I well remember, years ago, walking away with him from the funeral of a friend, when he expressed very strongly his sense of the unreality and insincerity of the words, "We give Thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world," which occur toward the end of our burial service. They were not a true utterance or presentation, he said, of the hearts of mourners at such a time-a blot on one of the grandest portions of the liturgy. A few years later, the service had justified itself to him. Death, which he had never feared, but had hated almost passionately, had for him put on a new aspect, so touchingly expressed in those latest lines, published the week after his funeral, which must have come with healing to the hearts of many who stood by his grave: It was this personal faith which made him what he was in his personal relations with men. Every one who had the privilege of consulting him in trouble and difficulties came away refreshed and cheered by his patience, his sympathy, and the strength which seemed to come out of him. Even in the last years, after his wife's death, this continued to be so in spite of the constant sense which he bore about him that the sunshine had passed from his life, and that his work was done. Not seldom, however, even in those years, his old bright, buoyant self came back again; indeed, at one time it seemed as though the sunshine had altogether returned, as in a Martinmas summer. This Our life in God shall make us one forever." Which "Death with his healing hand needs but that one link, which none may sever, And yet to the last, though his own task was done, and his heart already far away, the old power of inspiring others never failed him. The last time I saw him was on the Tuesday before he died. Calling to inquire, his old servant said he was sure he would like to see me, and I went up to the large, plainly furnished room at the top of the Deanery in which he was lying. Without intending it, as I sat by his bedside, I betrayed some of that despondency which the present aspect of affairs both in Church and State has produced in so many English minds; and once again, little thinking it was for the last time, heard him speak of the assured victory of good in the end, and came away with renewed hope from his presence. He was far better than I had expected to find him, and spoke with pleasure of getting up to tea, the doctors having given him leave. The next day erysipelas set in, and within the week he was gone, leaving a void which can never be filled in many hearts, but with it the priceless legacy and example of how a life may be lived in the world, yet kept from the evil-how a catholicism may be held fast consistently which, under all forms of thought and worship, is ever seeking and finding the good, the pure, and the true. THE MAN WHO CAME HOME. I. NE March day Mr. Mark Hunter arrived in the city of Boston. His personal appearance was commonplace, and his reputation did not warrant the anticipation of his advent by Mayor and Common Council. Nobody met him at the dépôt, and nobody watched for him with eager anticipations of joy or sorrow. He expected no greeting other than a glimpse of the familiar streets, church steeples, and Common of the town where he was born, and yet a certain music had chimed in his ears during the journey hither. This refrain, monotonous and unceasing, had been, The man who came home. Yes, he was the man returning home after an absence of thirty years. What should he find? All faces were strange to him. Stay! an old friend swooped around the corner, and embraced him with rough cordialitythe March wind. moredly. "The same old friend, I declare! An east wind!" "Eh, sir?" said a sharp voice in his ear. The tone of the voice was interrogative, while the aspect of the speaker was condemnatory. Mr. Hunter turned and confronted a thin and dry little man, with a beaked nose, his throat swathed in a white silk handkerchief, a gold-headed cane, and a hat betokening great respectability, if the wearer's manner evinced eccentricity. An east wind!" repeated the little man, irritably. "What of that, sir? It may be a trifle fresh. Pray are you familiar with the bise of Dresden or Paris? Possibly you prefer the sharp, dry east wind of England in May ?" 66 "I have had no experience with the caprices of either zephyr mentioned," replied Mr. Hunter, mildly. "You are an Englishman? Humph! You arrive from Canada, likely. Have you seen our-monuments?" 66 "I am a Bostonian," said the man, whose home-coming was destined to be curious, if not dreary. The eccentric stranger darted a keen glance at him, and trotted away. Mr. Hunter smoothed his beard and smiled. "I never expected to be mistaken for an Englishman," he mused. "Had I been one, the eccentric old gentleman would have shown me the lions, I dare say. As it is-" He did not complete the sentence, even mentally, but was driven to a hotel with his portmanteau. The day was changeable, and the wind blustering. Pedestrians were warmly clad, and walked at a brisk pace. The sky was blue, and the waters of the bay of a deep ultramarine tint, refreshing to the eye of this exile. Foliage of tender hue appeared in sheltered nooks breathing a promise of spring. Life beat in the arteries of the city. Mr. Hunter had kept the memory of it enshrined in his heart during all the years of absence, and set the goal of return before his eyes as an object in his existence. This hope had upheld him amidst manifold disappointments and baffling trials, and had kept his courage unwavering while the tardy gold pieces of fortune dropped into his purse, during thirty years of steady application to business at Hong-Kong. to business at Hong-Kong. Yes, he would return home, and end his days in peace, as the Swiss merchant comes back to his "Why, so it is!" exclaimed Mr. Hunter, native canton, and builds a mansion recatching his hat, and laughing good-hu-sembling a New England farm-house or a South American villa, in recognition of Then he looked at himself in a mirror with a novel interest, and saw reflected a stout, middle-aged man, with bronzed complexion, long beard tinged with gray, and shrewd, kind, hazel eyes. Clearly he presented no distinctive American type, and had become a citizen of the world. while awaiting the hour of supper! Oh, the good times of hot biscuit and gingerbread, broiled salmon and brown-bread toast, with a keen young nose turned in the direction of the family kitchen, as a famished urchin swung on the church chains awaiting the happy moment to dart across the street into the house door! The house was opposite the church: a comfortable brown mansion, with yard and gate, an apple-tree overhanging the wall, and cellar door on the street, favorite resort on which to execute jigs of a winter night in defiance of bed-time. "The old place must be shabby enough now," thought Mr. Hunter. "Perhaps it has been converted into a tenementhouse." He paused in dismay. The house was gone, and a row of shops met his astonished gaze. The windows of plate-glass sparkled, the great gilt signs seemed to mock at him with an offensive prosperity. But the church? Surely that remained as a landmark? A cloud of dust, a heap of bricks and mortar, and a tower which seemed to totter beneath the dull, resounding blows of workmen's tools replied in the negative. An hour later he rambled forth. He was Rip Van Winkle awakened after a long sleep; he was a pilgrim who had reached his Mecca by traversing sea and land; he was a man returned home where none remained to welcome him. Surely "Abominable desecration!" muttered the east wind was keener than it had been Mr. Hunter, and a passing vehicle struck in the morning. He strolled along a his hat over his eyes as a timely warning crowded thoroughfare in search of boyish that the middle of a street is no place for souvenirs. The glance of the street scru- | reverie. He lifted the hat, and read the tinized him swiftly, and he read in it that largest of the gilt signs-Peter Wigmore he was foreign, perhaps quaint, in attire and Sons. The sign of Peter Wigmore and bearing. A Chinese boy stood be- actually hung on the site of the old homefore a stoop, with demure, yellow counte- stead. School-mate of the same class, son nance, and glossy black hair braided in of a poor widow who kept a little threadthe conventional pigtail down his back. and-needle shop, Peter Wigmore had oftThe oblique Oriental eye recognized him. en shared his portion of hot gingerbread Was he also a waif of the Celestial Em- on the cellar door. pire? Already two voices warred in his soul-that of protest, fierce, cynical, bitter, and that of resignation which veiled hope. The nature of the man was sound, sweet, uncorrupted. Once he played foot-ball yonder, when he was a pupil of the Latin School. How one ran to join eager mates, after the weekly catechism by the minister, in the back parlor at home! He could find the church with his eyes bandaged-the church on the corner, built of gray stone, with the old colonial tombstones in the shadow of the wall. How often he had stared through the railings at the epitaphs, and swung on the iron chains, thereby incurring the wrath of an irascible sexton, "In a time of golden prosperity does Peter Wigmore ever recall those days?" pondered Mr. Hunter, and entered the store, which proved to be an important exporting house. Mr. Wigmore appeared-a young man, with keen gray eyes, brown mustache, incisive manner of speech, in the act of drawing on faultless driving gloves, a movement inseparably associated in the mind of an observer with a dog-cart waiting outside, and a groom in top-boots. Peter Wigmore of hot gingerbread memory had been dead ten years, and his sons carried on the business. That was all. Mr. Hunter visited the Mount Auburn Cemetery, and plucked a rose from the On unobtrusive grave of his parents. "Peter remained at home, reaping wealth and honor, and gathering all the moss of domestic association about him. He is dead. What would one do with life if given it all back again?" exclaimed the visitor, striking his cane on the ground. He quitted the cemetery without glancing behind him. Twilight gathered in the hotel chamber where the occupant gazed out on the street. The Rip Van Winkle sentiment was very strong in him just then. "How well the world goes on without one!" he said, aloud. chamber by the gas of the street lamp. An energetic woman and fond mother, Mrs. Erskine had calculated the expenses of this feminine feast, and sought among her acquaintance for those guests from whom returns would be the most immediate. Such is the currency of society. "The girls must be advanced this winter, as they have ordered new ball dresses, and perhaps Charley may find an heiress." Mrs. Erskine had thus meditated, staring at the gas-light on the ceiling, and it was only when the milkman uttered his familiar call at dawn that she tied her night-cap strings and fell asleep. The luncheon party was the happy result of midnight calculations. A spring day, a pretty dining-room, and an animated group of ladies gathered about a well-served table at two o'clock. The hostess surveyed this field with satisfaction. "Feed your neighbor luxuriously if you would open his heart and his door to you," she thought, as she urged tenderly the acceptance of more broiled oysters on the wife of a millionaire shipbuilder, in black satin and diamonds. Each dish may have been said to repre He saw the street, with its twinkling lights, bright, busy, cruel; but he also saw something beyond. In the twilight, memory clothes old cities with tender hues; the gas jets grow dim; the Mansard roofs fade; the wide thoroughfares contract to the modest dimensions of earlier years. Mr. Mark Hunter beheld again the gray church, with square tower outlined against the winter sky, and the fam-sent a future ball or German for "the ily mansion opposite; the ruddy glow of girls," while no intoxication lurked in the fire-light on window-panes here and there; golden depths of the Champagne glasses the notes of a jingling piano touched by equal to the sparkling elation of Mrs. Erssister Hetty's fingers; the patter of child-kine in contemplating the mothers of sevish feet from cellar to garret. eral heiresses thus drawn within her net. "Dinner, sir," said a brisk waiter at the The ladies gossiped about Paris fashions, door. "I should like some clams," rejoined slander imported from London society. Mr. Hunter, meditatively. the summer at Newport, a spicy item of "Clams!" echoed the startled waiter. "If not clams, then apple-pie," added this exile, incoherently. II. Mrs. Erskine was giving a luncheon party to some lady friends in her home in the city of New York. The lunch was quite an informal affair, as she assured each guest in a cream-tinted note of invitation bearing her family crest-a cock gazing at a light-house, on a silver ground. This form of invitation signified to everybody a repast combining all the delicacies of the season, in the shape of game, salads, and jellies, stimulated by chocolate and coffee, and concluding with Champagne. The lunch was the result of a sleepless night, when Mrs. Erskine had gazed with wide-open eyes at a bar of light thrown on the ceiling of her bed "That woman has actually been invited to Sandringham by the Prince of Wales,” said Mrs. Goldover, a pretty blonde in a Watteau costume. "She would not be received at home by any one," echoed Mrs. Silverton, a brunette in mauve and yellow. Money commands any position in all countries now," sighed Mrs. Erskine, slicing a Neapolitan cream. The party unanimously agreed that such a condition of the civilized world was truly shocking, and something in the way of social reform should be done; then they ate their cream in most harmonious mood. At this juncture a servant opened the door with a flurried manner, and a stout gentleman, with bronzed complexion and gray beard, appeared on the threshold behind her. "Hetty!" he cried, joyously, and advanced with outstretched hands. |