Through moss-grown walls the woodbines creep,, The sound of many waters pours And roses kiss the hoary keep. Versez moi vite, etc. Wild echoes on thy startled shores; BLACK LIVERY STOCKINGS.-In Southey's Letters from Spain and Portugal, London, 1808, p. 199: "A Duke of Medina Celi formerly murdered a man, and as the court would not, or could not, execute so powerful a noble, they obliged their pages to wear black stockings, and always to have a gallows standing before their palace door. The late king permitted them to remove the gallows, but the black stockings still remain a singular badge of ignominy." Can any of the English families whose liveries have black stockings be traced to a similar origin?-Notes and Queries. MOTHER AND STEP-MOTHER. MOTHER AND STEP-MOTHER. CHAPTER I. sympathy so ready and so intelligent; that he felt as though the dearer half of his soul were taken away, and as if it were impossible for the other half to linger behind. The caresses "WELL, after all, I suppose it is not very and necessities of his son, a child of some three much to be wondered at! Your disconsolate years old, were powerless to rouse him. He widowers are always the first to take comfort. was unhappy in having nothing to force him His ample means, his obsePoor dear Ann! not dead two years till Sep. from his sorrow. tember, and Edward married again. The quious retainers, his anxious friends-all mindoctors ought to be ashamed of themselves, istered to it. Toil, the hard but sweet necessiputting it into one's head that he was going ty of the sorrowing multitude, brought no aid into a decline. I am sure I couldn't rest day or night for thinking of him.” to him: he nursed his woe and fed it, till his bodily strength gave way. Friends interfered; "I congratulate you on the relief this news doctors were consulted; his affection for his must be to you, Fanny. Thomson says your child was appealed to; and he submitted pasbrother is looking better than he ever did in sively to be sent to Italy, that change of scene his life; and he tells me his wife is a decided and change of climate might be tried. He went without hope-without desire of recovbeauty." "I cannot help thinking that he might have ery. Italy or England-what mattered it to given us warning of his intentions earlier. It him? The world was one graveyard, with looks so awkward to know nothing of one's one barren mound of earth, by which his I talked so much heart sat and wept. So he said, and so he own brother's affairs. about his grief that I shall get finely laughed thought. at when he comes home with a young wife." "You must endure with your usual patience, Fanny. I do not think he has used us particularly well; but it seems she was furious for him, and when a beauty of eighteen falls violently in love with a man of six-and-thirty, it must be allowed that it is sufficient to turn his head." O! you men always attach so much importance to youth. For my part, I should have thought Edward would have had too much sense to be caught by a miss in her teens; besides, what can such a girl know about the management of children." "I suppose she cannot know very much at present; but that comes by instinct. I do not think she is likely to make the worse stepmother because she is young; and Frank is such a pretty child that the danger will be of her spoiling him." "O, it will be well enough till she has chilPoor little Frank's good dren of her own. looks will not do him much service then; and you may take my word for it, Wilton, that it was a bad day for the poor child when his father first saw this Helen Macdonald." Sir Edward Irwin, the subject of the foregoing tête-à-tête, was a baronet descended from a respectable family, and possessed of very considerable estates in the North of England. He had married, early in life, a lady of a sweet and amiable temper, and, eschewing fashionable gayeties, had found his happiness in domestic enjoyment, and in literary and scientific pursuits. The premature death of his wife startled him from the even tenor of his life. It was the first sorrow that had befallen him, and he was overwhelmed by it. His wife had been so constantly his companion; she had met all his requirements with a He took his child with him; for, though in his saddened mood the sight of the pretty boy only served to whet his sorrow, he clung to him as all that remained of her he had lost; and watched over him with a nervous solicitude grevious to behold. The contrast between the healthy child and the sorrow-stricken father could hardly fail to strike the most careless observer; it very quickly awakened the attention of Mrs. and Miss Macdonald, who happened to occupy an adjoining palazzo in Florence, whither Sir Edward had betaken himself by the direction of his physicians. The simple story of his bereavement roused the interest of both ladies-an interest which, in the younger, quickly assumed the character of passion. Young, beautiful, and undisciplined, Helen Macdonald revelled in wild notions of an allconsuming and imperious love. Her ardent temperament had been exaggerated by the loose morality of the unprincipled South, and she easily accepted the handsome stranger as the incarnation of an ideal, which already at eighteen she had despaired of meeting. Sir Edward's sunken eye and wan checks, his tall, worn person, and his rare and sorrowful smile, moved her, as the perfection of health and manly vigor might have failed to move her. What was not the love worth which could set such a mark on the bereaved one? She sympathized with, she admired his sorrow; and to soften it, to pour balm into the wound which he loved to keep open, became the ambition— the object of her life. Occasion is rarely wanting to those who heartily seek it. In the present instance the child naturally opened the way to the father. The little boy's heart was easily won by the smiles and caresses of the beautiful stranger, who spoke to him in the language of his moth-pliments, as she drove to visit the bride at er, and folded him in her arms almost as ten- Mivart's Hotel. derly. The name of Helen Macdonald was If her prejudice had been stronger than it constantly on his lips, until it became familiar was, it must have yielded to the grace and and grateful to his father's ears. Courtesy beauty of the stranger. Mrs. Brook, too. required that Sir Edward should rouse him- could not but be struck by the improvement self to show some sense of the kindness lavish- in her brother's appearance, and she was ed on his child. The first step taken, the rest grateful to her who had effected it; for, followed naturally. Secure in his grief, Sir though a worldly woman, she was not defi Edward submitted to the attentions of his cient in natural affection. Sir Edward was neighbor. Her profound admiration, her sym- her only brother, the head of her family, and pathy unuttered, but spoken in every look, in she almost forgot poor Ann when she gazed every gesture, were a flattery which he ac- on his renovated form, and saw the tender cepted without suspicion. The meeting with pride with which he watched the moveher became the event of the day, until the ments and listened to the words of his young sweet pale image of his lost love passed from wife. his mind like breath from the face of a mirror, The appearance of the child awoke the and the living passionate Helen reigned su- train of old recollections in the mind of his preme. One bitter struggle he endured-aunt, and when she had admired his growth one sickening attempt to return to his past and caressed his fair long hair, she could not state of feeling; but the flesh overcame the refrain from whispering to his father: spirit, and with a sigh, half of sorrow at his "How like poor Ann!" instability, half of relief, he yielded himself to the intoxicating rapture of his new pas sion. Helen was so very beautiful; so tender, yet withal so jealous, so imperious, that she kindled for a time his more placid temper into a semblance of her own. She was his tyrant and his slave; but in all her moods, so full of witchery, that she left him no time for backward thought, but filled him heart and soul with her own image. Lady Irwin caught the whisper; her lip quivered, and the color deepened in her cheek; she drew the child closer within the circle of her arm, and said softly-"I think him so like Edward." "So he is," returned Mrs. Brook. "He is like Edward about the nose and mouth; but he has his mother's eyes." It did not please Lady Irwin that the child's eyes were so large and tender. They are very beautiful," she said, with an No obstacles stood in the way of their union anxious, half fearful look at her husband; but except such imaginary difficulties as the rest-there was no sorrowful recollection in his less fancy of Helen created. Her mother, who countenance-nothing but present love and in many respects resembled her daughter, was happiness. still in the meridian of her beauty, and was "You can form no idea, Fanny, of what a not ill-pleased to be relieved of a child whom mother Frank has in this dear little sister I she could not govern, and who had become a have brought you. I cannot understand it, rival, and to have her creditably established as such a child as she is. Well might the poet the wife of one of the oldest baronets in Eng-say land. Sir Edward, on his side, had no near relations but his sister, and he had been so little in the habit. of consulting her, that it was φιλότεκνὸν πως πᾶν γυναικεῖον γενος. "What! you hav'nt cured him yet of his only on the eve of his marriage that he wrote abominable habit of quoting what nobody can to her. And the same letter which announc-understand, Helen ?" ed to her his complete recovery and approaching marriage, informed her of his intention of bringing his wife immediately to England. CHAPTER II. "O no! I don't wish to do it, either. You will laugh at us, I dare say, when I tell you that he is to give me regular lessons when we get home. I know a little Latin already, but not enough to be of any use. We have arranged our occupations for the winter. Edward's wife ought not to be a smatterer, you know." IN spite of the dissatisfaction which Mrs. Wilton Brook had expressed at her brother's marriage, she was by no means deficient in "But I hope you are not going to let him anxiety to see her new sister-in-law, and she bury you and himself down at Swallowfield. appreciated her brother's position too highly It was bad enough before, but to hide you not to be anxious to ingratiate herself with a in the country would be a crying scandal inwife who she felt would exercise a strong in-deed." fluence over him. She accordingly dressed her pretty person in the most approved fashion, and prepared her lips for smiles and com "O, we have not the smallest intention of *The love of children is a woman's instinct. doing anything of the kind-have we, Ed- at her intelligence; so that the hours he ward? Do not alarm yourself, dear Mrs. spent in assisting her in the severe studies Brook, I am quite as fond of society as you she undertook, were the pleasantest of his can desire." day. 66 Well, that's some comfort. I only hope and trust that you do not intend to lay yourself out for a literary lady; that will do some twenty years hence; at present it would be a positive sacrifice. I am not sorry that you are only passing through town now; it would not have done to take off the gloss of your debût by appearing at the end of the season." “O no! that would be an improvidence indeed," returned Helen, laughing. "I have'nt tired Edward out yet, and we intend to live demurely and properly this winter, that I may come out span new with country cheeks next spring. We are going home to-morrow. It sounds so strange to talk of going home to a place one has never seen, but I almost seem to know it, I have made Edward tell me so much about it, from the lime avenue by the river side to the old oak cabinet in his study. I shall soon know the ways of the house, and then I hope you will come and see us." "That's a very civil speech of yours, my dear," said Mrs. Brook, in high good humor; "and you may trust to my discretion not to break in upon you too soon. But what do you say to leaving me the boy for the present? I will take great care of him, and my girls will be nice playmates for him." This invitation was declined with thanks, but with a haste which showed that neither Sir Edward nor his wife were inclined to forego the pleasure each derived from the presence of the child. Perhaps Mrs. Brook had given the invitation to test the real state of her sister-in-law's feelings towards her little nephew; certainly she did not seem displeased that it was not accepted, and took her leave, enraptured with the bride, and perfectly reconciled to her brother. CHAPTER III. And Lady Irwin was happy. Her husband had no thought beyond her, the boy throve and loved her; but yet her happiness was not perfect. Mere passion never brings happiness; it is of the earth, earthy, and bears the elements of corruption in itself. The love that does not come from Heaven, that does not look to Heaven for its perfection, cannot raise, cannot purify the heart—it is a restless wind that stirs the troubled soul, and will not let it be at peace- - it is unquiet and ingenious as self-torture. So it was with Helen Irwin; between her and her happiness came a shadow, the phantom of one who had ceased to be. The picture of the first Lady Irwin hung in the drawing-room, and she would sit and gaze at it until the canvas seemed to glow, and the sweet thoughtful face to live, smiling down upon her in secure triumph. She tortured herself by imagining the tenderness with which those large gray eyes had hung upon her husband, the loving words which those lips had uttered. If at any time his eyes dwelt on the picture, or if he involuntarily compared the features of his son with it, she could hardly control her impatience; and she would break from the boy in the midst of his caresses, if the resemblance he bore to his mother happened to strike her. So time passed till a little girl was born to her, and the disquiet of her soul was hushed for a while; the infant stole the trouble from its mother's heart, and wakened in her bosom strange yearnings for something better and purer than she had yet known. The great mystery of that new life, made so dear by suffering, and still so dependent on her, stirred her to meditation on the great mystery of our being the weakness incidental to her condition, while it humbled her pride, softened her heart to receive with meekness the only doctrine that can explain it. But in a few A FEW weeks saw Sir Edward Irwin and months the frail infant sickened and died. No his lady established for the winter in their tear wetted the mother's cheek, she endured handsome country mansion. When the plea- in silence the affliction to which she would not sant task of showing his estates to his wife submit, impiously arraigning the Hand that was over, and the excitement of returning in sent it; and the vague conception of religious joy to the home which he had left in sorrow truth which she had begun to entertain vanand weakness, had subsided, Sir Edward re-ished, and darkness closed in upon her soul. sumed his old but long interrupted pursuits;| She had her child buried in a quiet corner and his wife, true to her intention, entered of the churchyard, away from the vault where on a course of study which should enable her Lady Irwin lay, and thither she would wander to share them. Nor did her energies flag at lonely hours, and sit on the little mound after a few weeks of strenuous exertion; her with dry eyes and an angry heart. The haremind, vigorous and inquiring, demanded a bells that grew spontaneously about it she pursuit which called its powers into action, plucked and bore away, but she hung no garand her proud spirit rose with the difficulties lands on the stone and planted no flowers over which presented themselves. Her husband the place of her infant's rest. smiled at her eagerness, and was delighted Her studies, which she had rather neglected |