carriage, which was empty, came nearer, the coachman touched his hat. "Perhaps she is coming back to the Hall to-day."

The words were uttered carelessly, for she was thinking of other things. When they at last stood on the platform and Mr. Roscorla had chosen his seat, he could see that she was paler than ever. He spoke in a light and cheerful way, mostly to her mother, until the guard requested him to get into the carriage, and then he turned to the girl and took her hand.

"Good-bye, my dear Wenna," said he. "God bless you! I hope you will write to me often."

Then he kissed her cheek, shook hands with her again, and got into the carriage. She had not spoken a word. Her lips were trembling-she could not speak-and he saw it.

When the train went slowly out of the station, Wenna stood and looked after it with something of a mist before her eyes, until she could see nothing of the handkerchief that was being waved from one of the carriage windows. She stood quite still, until her mother put her hand on her shoulder, and then she turned and walked away with her. They had not gone three yards, when they were met by a tall young man who had come rushing down the hill and through the small station-house.

"By Jove!" said he, "I am just too late. How do you do, Mrs. Rosewarne? How are you, Wenna?"—and then he paused, and a great blush overspread his face-for the girl looked up at him and took his hand silently, and he could see there were tears in her eyes. It occurred to him that he had no business there-and yet he had come on an errand of kindness. So he said, with some little embarrassment, to Mrs. Rosewarne

"I heard you were coming over to this train, and I was afraid you would find the drive back in the waggonette rather cold this evening. I have got our landau outside-closed, you know-and I thought you might let me drive you over."

Mrs. Rosewarne looked at her daughter. Wenna decided all such things, and the girl said to him, in a low voice

"It is very kind of you."

"Then just give me a second, that I may tell your man," Trelyon said, and off he darted.

Was it his respect for Wenna's trouble, or had it been his knocking about among strangers for six months, that seemed to have given to the young man (at least in Mrs. Rosewarne's eyes) something of a more courteous and considerate manner? When the three of them were being rapidly whirled along the Launceston highway in Mrs. Trelyon's carriage, Harry Trelyon was evidently bent on diverting Wenna's thoughts from her present cares; and he told stories, and asked questions, and related his recent adventures in such a fashion that the girl's face gradually lightened, and she grew interested and pleased. She, too, thought he was much improved how she could not exactly tell.

"Come," said he, at last, "you must not be very lownhearted about a mere holiday trip. You will soon get letters, you know, telling you all about the strange places abroad; and then, before you know where you are, you'll have to drive over to the station, as you did to-day, to meet Mr. Roscorla coming back."

"It may be a very long time indeed," Wenna said; "and if he should come to any harm I shall know that I was the cause of it; for if it had not been for me, I don't believe he would have gone."

"Oh, that's all gammon !-begging your pardon," said Master Harry, coolly. "Roscorla got a chance of making some money, and he took it, as any other man would. You had no more to do with it than I had— indeed, I had something to do with it—but that's a secret. No; don't you make any mistake about that. And he'll be precious well off when he's out there, and seeing everything going smoothly, especially when he gets a letter from you, with a Cornish primrose or violet in it. And you'll get that soon now," he added, quickly seeing that Wenna blushed somewhat, "for I fancy there's a sort of smell in the air this afternoon that means spring-time. I think the wind has been getting round to the west all day; before night you will find a difference in the air, I can tell you." "I think it has become very fresh and mild already," Wenna said, judging by an occasional breath of wind that came in at the top of the windows.

"Do you think you could bear the landau open?" said he, eagerly.

When they stopped to try-when they opened the windows-the predictions of the weather prophet had already been fulfilled, and a strange, genial mildness and freshness pervaded the air. They were now near Eglosilyan, on the brow of a hill, and away below them they could see the sea lying dull and grey under the cloudy sky. But while they waited for the coachman to uncover the landau, a soft and yellow light began to show itself far out in the west, a break appeared in the clouds, and a vast comb of gold shot shining down on the plain of water beneath. The western skies were opening up; and what with this new and beautiful light, and what with the sweet air that awoke a thousand pleasant and pathetic memories, it scemed to Wenna Rosewarne that the tender spring-time was at length at hand, with all its wonder of yellow crocuses and pale snowdrops, and the first faint shimmerings of green on the hedges and woods. Her eyes filled with tears-she knew not why. Surely she was not old enough to know anything of the sadness that comes to some when the heavens are cleared, and a new life stirs in the trees, and the world awakes to the fairness of the spring. She was only eighteen; she had a lover; and she was as certain of his faithfulness as of her own.

In bidding them good-bye at the door of the inn, Mr. Trelyon told them that he meant to remain in Eglosilyan for some months to come.

The Wartons.

THE brothers Joseph and Thomas Warton were conspicuous figures among the men of letters who flourished under that most unliterary of monarchs, King George III. The elder was the Master of Winchester and Prebend of St. Paul's; the younger, who was also a clergyman, occupied the post held earlier in the century by his father, of Professor of Poetry. He was, moreover, Camden Professor of History, and succeeded Whitehead as Laureate. Both the brothers were Oxford men, and Thomas, who never married, resided at the University more than forty-seven years; both were small poets, Thomas being by far the better singer of the twain, both were poetical critics, both were men of high culture, but neither of them, it may be said, has left an ineffaceable mark in literature. The work they did is for the most part done well, but none of it supremely well, and the popularity they enjoyed among their contemporaries passed away with their lives. It is curious to note how little of biographical interest has come down to us about the Wartons. Their memoirs were written by learned but dull men, who did not know that the object of a biographer ought to be to produce a vivid and genuine representation of his hero; and thus, instead of giving us a finished portrait of the brothers, we find it scarcely possible to catch the outline of their features.

The Rev. John Wooll undertook, six years after Joseph Warton's death, to write the biography of his late friend and master, and to publish a selection from his works. Accordingly in 1806 appeared, after the fashion of those days, a bulky quarto volume, printed in admirable type, and with wide margins. To it we owe a few facts for which we are bound to be thankful, and at the same time it may be acknowledged that the writer's views of a biographer's duties are carried out in the most exemplary manner. "To descend," he says, "to the minutiae of daily habits is surely beneath the province of biography," and he intimates at the same time that all letters of a domestic character are suppressed, and that the reader will be disappointed "should he expect a detail of those peculiarities and trifling incidents which are by some indiscriminately termed strokes of character." Wooll observes, and no doubt justly, that a good deal of injury may be inflicted on a man by his biographer; but he does not see that it is possible to deal gently and wisely with a person's weaknesses and foibles," and at the same time to produce a characteristic portrait.

Biographers have sinned frequently, no doubt, in trenching on sacred ground, but that is no reason why the memoir-writer should confine himself to the statement of a few barren facts. To know where a man lived, what

offices he filled, what books he wrote, who and how often he married, is not to know the man. Yet this is the principal information, useful no doubt in its way, supplied by the Rev. John Wooll. What of it is needful for us to state may be put into a few paragraphs.

Joseph, who came into the world six years before Thomas, and died ten years after him, was born in 1722, and educated at Winchester and at Oriel College, Oxford, where his skill as a poetaster appears to have been first exhibited. At the age of twenty-two he was ordained, and three years afterwards was presented by the Duke of Bolton to the rectory of Wynslade, when he married the lady to whom he had been for some time attached. The Duke expected a service in return for the favour he had conferred, and one which any clergyman worthy of the name would have declined with scorn. "In the year 1751," writes the biographer,

Warton was called from the indulgence of connubial happiness and the luxury of literary retirement to attend his patron to the south of France, for which invitation the Duke had two motives: the society of a man of learning and taste, and the accommodation of a Protestant clergyman, who immediately on the death of his Duchess, then in a confirmed dropsy, could marry him to the lady with whom he lived, and who was universally known and distinguished by the name of Polly Peachum.

Wooll allows that the circumstances attendant on this expedition were "not the most eligible in a professional view," but praises Warton, notwithstanding, for his laudable wish to improve his income. The connection appears to have terminated abruptly, since, before reaching Italy, Warton left the Duke and his mistress and returned to England. Warton now produced his edition of Virgil, gaining thereby a considerable reputation for scholarship. In this edition he published Pitt's translation of the Eneid and attempted himself a translation of the Eclogues and Georgics which proved that, though an elegant scholar, he was not a poet. Pitt's chief fault as a translator, says Mr. Connington, who of all modern critics was the best qualified to judge, "is a general mediocrity of expression. Warton was heavier and more prosaic than Pitt, without being much less conventional. His ear was worse, his command of poetical language more restricted. Yet he sighs in his dedication over the necessity of using coarse and common words in his translation of the Georgics, viz., plough and sow, wheat, dung, ashes, horse, and cows, &c., words which he fears will unconquerably disgust many a delicate reader. When Virgil rises Warton does not rise with him; his version of the Pollio' and of the Praises of Italy' may be read without kindling any spark of enthusiasm."

He also wrote several papers for the Adventurer, a popular periodical, some of them containing, in the judgment of his biographer, inimitable criticisms on Shakspeare. Of these essays the best are devoted to critical topics; but it was asserted at the time, and not without justice, that Warton exhibited his learning too freely in a periodical designed for general reading. In some of the papers there is an attempt at humour, which in these days would be considered heavy. Characters at Bath

and Letters of Six Characters for instance, were no doubt regarded by the writer as lively, or even witty, but we suspect that they will strike the modern reader as dull and laboured pieces.

Thanks, perhaps, to his Virgil, Warton was elected second master of Winchester School, and while in this position produced the first volume of his ponderous Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, a quarter of a century passing before the publication of the second. Warton was a sound critic, with a just appreciation of some of the more subtle charms of poetry; but his method of criticism, like the method followed by his brother, is pedantic and obsolete..

Nothing but curiosity or a peculiar interest in the subject could induce anyone now-a-days to wade through the two volumes which contain his Essay on Pope. It forms an exhibition of the author's learning, a rather wearisome exhibition it must be owned; but it is only just to Warton to observe that Thomas Campbell thought otherwise, and pronounced the essay entertaining. Dr. Johnson also said, and said truly, that “he must be much acquainted with literary history, both of remote and late times, who does not find in this essay many things which he did not know before." It may be well, moreover, to remember that much which seems to us familiar and obvious in Warton's criticisms might not have been so evident when it was written.

The following passage, for instance, would very likely have struck Warton's first readers as original and suggestive; to readers in our day it will sound utterly trite, and yet not more trite than some passages on the same subject written more than seven years later by Macaulay :

*

Correctness is a vague term, frequently used without meaning and precision. It is perpetually the nauseous cant of the French critics, and of their advocates and pupils, that the English writers are generally incorrect. If correctness implies an absence of petty faults, this perhaps may be granted. If it means that because their tragedians have avoided the irregularities of Shakespeare, and have observed a juster economy in their fables, therefore the Athalia for instance, is preferable to Lear, the notion is groundless and absurd. Though the Henriade should be allowed to be free from any very gross absurdities, yet who will dare to rank it with the Paradise Lost?

In some respects both the Wartons broke up ground which has been since so well cultivated that we are apt to forget how much we owe to them. The very growth the two brothers endeavoured to stimulate has been injurious to their fame, and their criticism fails to impress us, not because it is intrinsically worthless but because we have outlived it. While

*We refer to the celebrated essayist's review of Moore's Life of Lord Byron, in which correctness in poetry is discussed at considerable length. It is probable that Macaulay's remarks were suggested, though perhaps unconsciously, by the observations of Warton. We have space only for one brief quotation :-"What is meant by correctness in poetry? If by correctness be meant the conforming to rules which have their foundation in truth and in the principles of human nature, their correctness is only another name for excellence. If by correctness be meant the conforming to rules purely arbitrary, correctness may be another name for dulness and absurdity."