"VALENTINES.-Behold, St. Valentine's Day is coming, and all are seeking for messages to be despatched under cover of this Saint to friend or foe. They are provided of all kinds, styles, and varieties, ready for use. The turtle-dove kind, with its coo! coo! the sensible sentimental, the cutting and severe, and, in short, everything that can be required. Just call on George Howard or J. H. Baumgarten & Co., and you can be suited to a T.'

Does the curious though hazilyinformed reader wish at this stage of our progress to suggest. a question as to who St. Valentine was? That is a question to which, thanks to the Acta Sanctorum' and Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints,' an answer is tolerably easy and precise. 'Valentine was a holy priest in Rome, who, with St. Marius and his family, assisted the martyrs in the persecution under Claudius II. He was apprehended, and sent by the Emperor to the Prefect of Rome, who, on finding all his promises to make him renounce his faith ineffectual, commanded him to be beaten with clubs, and afterward to be beheaded, which was executed on the 14th February, about the year 270. Pope Julius I. is said to have built a church near Ponte Mole to his memory, which for a long time gave name to the gate now called Porta del Popolo, formerly Porta Valentini. The greatest part of his relics are now in the church of St. Praxedes. His name is celebrated as that of an illustrious martyr in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory, the Roman Missal of Thomasius, in the Calendar of F. Fronto, and that of Allatius, in Bede, Usuard, Ado, Notker, and all other martyrologies on this day. To abolish the heathen's lewd, superstitious custom of boys drawing tho names of girls, in honour of their goddess, Februata Juno, on the 15th of this month, several zealons pastors substituted the names of saints in billets given on this day.' To this we would only enter the single caveat that the true relics of St. Valentine are, in a beatified state, at this present moment flaunting in unnumbered stationers' windows,

and waiting to be scattered abroad to the four winds of heaven on the wings of every post. St. Francis de Sales, a bishop and prince of Geneva, who died in 1622, and was canonized in 1665, to whom we are inclined, for the sake of his devout treatise on Practical Piety,' to forgive everything but this, was one of the zealous pastors' who, to use the words of Alban Butler, 'severely forbade the custom of valentines, or giving boys, in writing, the names of girls to be admired and attended on by them: and, to abolish it, he changed it into giving billets with the names of certain saints to honour and imitate in a particular manner,' It is too heartrending to contemplate the disappointment of the ingenuous youth who, hoping to receive the likeness or the name of the blooming Mariana or the saucy Julietta, received instead the effigies of some musty and dyspeptic ascetic at loggerheads with the devil-some Antony of the Desert, or some Dunstan of the Tongs.

In the early part of last century it was the custom for young folks in England and Scotland to celebrate a little festival on the eve of St. Valentine's Day. An equal number of maids and bachelors,' says Misson, a traveller of veracity and discernment, get together; each writes their true or some feigned name upon separate billets, which they roll up and draw by way of lots, the maids taking the men's billets, and the men the maids'; so that each of the men lights upon a girl that he calls his valentine, and each of the girls upon a young man whom she calls hers. By this means each has two valentines; but the man sticks faster to the valentine that has fallen to him than to the valentine to whom he has fallen. Fortune having thus divided tho company into, so many couples, the valentines give balls and treats to their mistressos, wear their billets several days upon their bosoms or sleeves; and this little sport often ends in love.'

The great Pepys has some quaint and picturesque particulars of his valentine experience. We copy the following entries from his 'Diary':

'Valentine's Day, 1667. This morning came up to my wife's bedside (I being up dressing myself) little Will Mercer, to be her valentine, and brought her name written upon blue paper in gold letters, done by himself, very pretty; and we were both well pleased with it. But I am also this year my wife's valentine, and it will cost me 5l.; but that I must have laid out if we had not been valentines.

'February 16. I find that Mrs. Pierce's little girl is my valentine, she having drawn me: which I was not sorry for, it easing me of something more that I must have given to others. But here I do first observe the fashion of drawing mottoes as well as names, so that Pierce, who drew my wife, did draw also a motto, and this girl drew another for me. What mine was, I forget; but my wife's was, "Most courteous, and most fair," which, as it might be used, or an anagram upon each name, might be very pretty.' Pepys tells us also that the Duke of York, being on one occasion the valentine of the celebrated Miss Stuart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, 'did give her a jewel of about Sool.; and my Lord Mandeville, her valentine this year, a ring of about 300l.'

But we meant to have anticipated another question on the part of the benevolent reader. St. Valentine being such as he was, and not a bishop who immortalized the day by writing a love-letter upon it-as we were in very early youth given mistakenly to understand by a heresiarch of a nursemaid-how comes his name to be used as a cover for all the love-doings that take place under the quoted sanction of his name and authority? This has already been vaguely explained in the quotation from Alban Butler. But we may say ten more words about it; and these words we choose to say by deputy of the author of a paper entitled " "The true story

small

of St. Valentine,' which appeared in the Churchman's Family Magazine' for February of last year. In ancient Rome there was, about the

As &

middle of February in each year, held the public festival called Lupercalia, which was given in honour of the Lycæan Pan. One of the numerous ceremonies at this pagan festival was to put the names of young women into a box, from which they were drawn by the young men, as chance directed; and as in those days auguries were thought much of, and exercised great influence over the minds of the superstitious Romans, the girl whose name was thus drawn by lot from the box was considered as a person very likely to become the future wife of the drawer. good deal of barbarous and licentious conduct was often the result of this ceremony, the zealous fathers of the early Christian Church used every possible means in their power to eradicate these vestiges of pagan superstitions. The names of saints instead of these girls were placed upon the billets, and that saint which each drew was to be his tutelary guardian during the following year, and as the Lupercalia was, as we have already mentioned, held about the middle of February, they appear to have chosen St. Valentine's Day whereon to celebrate their reformed festival. The exertions of the priests were not altogether barren of good results, for although St. Valentine's Day is a day peculiarly devoted to love affairs, its festivities are no longer associated with the pagan aspect which called forth the righteous ire of the good Fathers of the Church; a result for which we ought to be truly thankful, and one which is a striking example of the good work which Christianity is ever doing. It has not abolished the custom, but purified it. It has taken away the old heathen coarseness and licentiousness, but has left unchanged the play of human feeling and affection; true-hearted lovers, instead of being afraid of their newly-discovered emotions, may have reason to congratulate themselves that they are under the tutelage of so good and noble a saint as Valentine of Rome.' S. ST. M.

AND who never delivered it.

Perhaps it would have been too much to expect of him that he should do so; too much to expect that the little packet, carelessly taken and thrust away amongst others, would ever enter his head again. At any rate it did not. He was a young man still, though he had been for some years a widower; and he had fallen in love, and was on the way to learn his fate.

It cannot be flattering to a young lady, if she knows it, that her suitor should be capable of taking thought for any one besides herself; but certainly Sir Hugh Rainham tried to believe that he was not making his own happiness altogether the first consideration. There was the well-being of his little girl to be thought of; and what did he know about bringing up little girls? He had heard sensible people say, and he was ready enough now to accept the dictum, that the wisest thing a man in his position could do would be to marry again; wisest both for his own future and his child's. He said this to himself as he stood in Evelyn Neville's drawing-room, hat in hand, waiting, looking out upon the bare branches which were soon to be green again, and wondering, in a desultory fashion, if this February day would bring him another spring-time, or only the desolate branches, the dead leaves whirling about, and the cold sky beyond. He had not long to wait. When she came into the room, and that thrill went through his heart which the presence of one we love alone can bring, it must have left some mark upon his face; for she knew why he had come, and in a few rapid arguments had decided upon her answer. He was rich; but she did not care so much about that, not knowing what it was to be anything else; he was Sir Hugh Rain

ham; but she didn't care for that either, her pride being of another sort: he was good, generous, and devoted; these things she did care for. He loved her; and he came on a day when that same pride of hers was smarting under a sense of neglect. In the few seconds allowed her before he spoke, Evelyn Neville made her decision. She had thought that he knew, and was jealous of, her friendship with that cousin Frank, whom she had fancied might one day be nearer than a cousin. But that was over. The cousins had kept up a childish habit of exchanging valentines; and to-day there was nothing from him, while her own had gone as usual. That was the humiliating part of it. If she had broken through the custom, it would have been well; but that he should be the first! and when, too, he had given her cause to expect that his would be no ordinary valentine! Here, within her reach, was the means of punishing him; at any rate, of letting him know that she did not care.

Evelyn listened to Sir Hugh with a forced attention; but he knew nothing of that. When he spoke of his little girl, falteringly, she roused up and saw the strong earnestness and anxiety in the man's face; and, strange to say, this touched her more just then than any passionate, lover's pleading from his lips would have done. She turned towards him suddenly, and put her hand into his, and said, speaking of the small Cecilia

'She shall be very dear to me, and precious: I will care for her, as much as you could desire.'

And when Sir Hugh had left her, she did not repent. It is true that there came upon her a certain sense of being bound; of having done what could not be undone; and that half rebellious desire to be free, which is almost always inseparable

from an act that seals one's own fate. And then the drawing-room was rather lonely; the trees outside the window got a ghostly look, and seemed to wrap themselves up tighter as the fog gathered round them; and-altogether, she thought she would just go and tell her brother, by way of convincing herself that the thing was finally settled.

When she told him, he lifted up his eyebrows and stared at her.

'Is it true?—You look as if it were. Rather scared, and that sort of thing. Not that there is anything to be scared about; only I suppose it's proper. Hem! I might have thought of Frank Neville; but this is wiser.'

She bit her lip, but never answered him. She wished he had not said that about Frank, and she didn't like the word 'wiser.' What had wisdom to do with it?

She started from her sleep that night, with a mist before her eyes and a great throbbing at her heart, for Frank's voice was in her ears. Would he care?

But what use to ask, now that it was too late? And that it was too late no one knew better than herself; for to her, having once decided publicly as it were, change would have been impossible.

And on her wedding-day she was to Sir Hugh a radiant princess, far away above him, stooping to crown him with the blessing of her love. Anyone who had seen him that day might have doubted about its being altogether, or even very much for his daughter's sake that he took this step.

I have reason to be grateful,' he said to his new brother-in-law, when the speechifying was over, and the bride was going away to change her dress.

George Neville looked at her and nodded.

'She's a good girl enough: a little self-willed, perhaps; but then she has always had her own way.'

'And will have it still, I hope,' said Sir Hugh. If I don't make her happy, I shall deserve to be a miserable man all my life.'

In years to come he recalled the

speech, and wondered whether some strange misgiving had moved him to utter it.

Just then Frank Neville was saying to Evelyn, 'So you did not think me worth an answer!'

She was passing through the throng towards the door, and she never faltered or raised her head. No one knew that the words fell upon her with a sudden chill, like a cold hand grasping her heart. She had seen her cousin amongst the guests, and knew that he was looking miserably ill, but she had been too much occupied to think about that.

'What do you mean, Frank?'

'Oh; not much. Valentines don't require answers in a general way; but I think you might have given me a few words last February. However, you'll keep my secret. one knows it but you, unless it is your husband. What's the matter, Evelyn? You look as if you didn't understand.'

'I don't.'

No

'You must have had it. I missed the post over-night, and gave it to Rainham, there, as I knew he would see you the next day.'

"To-my husband?'

'Yes; I'll ask him--'

'Frank,' she said, with a heavy hand on his arm, forget all this. Never speak of it-for my sake.'

He looked at her with a perplexed expression of inquiry, but he saw that she was white and flurried, and gave up the point.

'Well, we have always been friends; have we not? I would ask you yet for your good wishes, as you have mine; but the doctors say there's something amiss here,' touching his chest; and I may not live to never mind! God bless you, Evelyn l'

CHAPTER II.

ITS MARK ON THE YEARS TO COME.

Sir Hugh brought his wife home: and his hair was not grey, neither had any premature wrinkles marked his face. To his servants there appeared no change in him, either for better or for worse.

He was just the same grave, silent, rather deliberate master they remembered. They did think, indeed, that he was dreadfully polite to his lady; but perhaps that was proper -before servants.

Sir Hugh, taking Evelyn to the drawing-rooms, which he had caused to be altered and brightened for her, turned and said to her, Welcome home.'

And as he said it, the memory of his own dreams of that home stung him so bitterly that he half put out his arms to take into them the Evelyn he had once known. But she never saw the movement; and would not have heeded it if she had scen. She passed on into the room, the brilliant light of which seemed to hurt Sir Hugh's eyes, for he put his hand over them suddenly; and for a moment he stood at the door, irresolute; then closed it gently, and went to see after his little girl.

That was natural enough, they said-those gossips down stairs who were always on the watch.

But

why didn't he take his new wife with him? And why did he stay with the child, hour after hour, till none of the evening remained? The first evening, too! Above all, why, when the household had retired, and all was quiet, did a tall, slight figure, which rustled a little as it passed, go into the nursery and kneel down beside the sleeping child and sob?

The nurse saw, for she was not asleep, as my lady fancied; and she was not likely to keep it to herself, either. These and such things were puzzling. At first they formed a constant source of whisperings and shakings of wise heads; but gradually the gloss of newness wore away from them; the dull days swept on, and something of the grimness of the stone heads that guarded the sweep of steps at the hall-door seemed to have crept into the house. It was so still and silent; so monotonous. But for the small Cecilia, it would have been unutterably dismal. But she was ja child, and had childish ways, which remained unchecked. She was quite young enough to take very kindly to the

new mamma, who was so beautiful and so good to her.

'Not like nurse said she would be-ugly and cross,' she said to her favourite playfellow-but good. I think she could have brought the little princess to life again, as well as the fairy did. You never saw such eyes in your life as she has got; just like the pool under the willows, where we are not to go, Charlie, you know; down, as if you couldn't ever see the bottom; ever so deep. And she kisses me, too.'

To which the boy replied, with decision, that she couldn't be a fairy in that case, for fairies never kissed anybody; it wasn't lucky, that was unless they were wicked fairies. And it was all very well now, but when Cecil married him, he shouldn't allow her to kiss anybody.

By-and-by, however, as Cecil grew older, she used to wonder in her wise little head what made her father and mother, when they were alone, talk to each other, if they did talk, so like company.' That was her idea of it. She jumped up from the piano one day, and waltzed round to the footstool at Lady Rainham's feet, with a sudden thought that she would find out.

'Well,' said Evelyn, looking at the pursed-up lips, which evidently had a question upon them, 'what's the matter? Is your new musiclesson too hard?'

'My new music-lesson is-is a fidgetty crank,' said Cecil, hesitating for an expression strong enough; 'but it's not that. I was just wondering why you and papa

Sir Hugh let his book fall with a sudden noise, and went out of the room, passing the child, but taking no notice of her.

'Why you and papa,' went on Cecil, reflectively, are so odd, like grand visitors. When there's any one here I know I have to sit still, and not tumble my frock, nor cross my feet; but when there's no one, it's different.'

'Your papa and I are not children,' said Lady Rainham. 'Grownup people must be steady, Cis.'

Then I don't want to be grown up. And I'm sure, quite sure, that I'll never be married, if one is to do