of those placed under an Oriental prince-"Distinguished! In Russia no one is distinguished save him to whom I speak, and he only so long as I speak to him." Great families are rarely founded; the man who is a barber to-day may be vizier to-morrow, while the Vizier may have a cup of café noir, or a present of a silken bowstring. Under such circumstances, pride of birth would be an absurdity, and, indeed, the only descent valued is that from the prophet. The sultan himself is insolently called the son of a slave, and for another man to be so likewise is no disgrace.

On the 14th of June, 1862, the Prince again landed in England, after a tour more extensive than any British prince had ever before taken, and one the beneficial results of which may, and we trust will, become evident, when many years hence he shall be called upon to ascend the throne of his ancestors.

HOW SUSY TRIED TO BE A HEROINE :

A Story of Christmas Ebe.

CHAPTER I.-SUSY'S VISIT TO LONDON.

Ir was Christmas twenty-five years ago when all this happened, allow me to premise. But Susy remembers it well enough, you may be very sure; and for that matter none of the people about Westlands are likely to forget certain of the circumstances in a hurry. But I must begin at the beginning.

That is the farm, once the manor-house, which rises between you and the sunset, if you walk up the village street of an evening; and it still is one of the pleasantest, cosiest, most picturesque old houses that ever attracted the notice of an artist wandering in search of subjects for his pencil. I cannot say to what particular order of architecture it originally belonged, for its various occupants had taken such delight in adding a room here, a passage there, and unexpected windows and doorways everywhere, that you might doubtless have recognized traces of successive styles from the date of Elizabeth, when possibly the foundation-stone was laid, up to that of George the Third. However, time had softened all these differences of detail into a wonderfully harmonious and attractive whole; and both over the building itself and the surrounding domain, peace and plenty appeared to be blandly regnant. It was a satisfaction, even to a non-professional eye, to sce the prosperity manifest over every acre of John Rushbrook's farm. How rich the land looked, whether lying in regular finely-ploughed ridges, or with the crops just freshly green above the brown earth, or waving tall and high in early summer, or imperial golden in the harvest season! And how deliciously pastoral were those meadows that sloped down to the valley, through which the shallow stream danced along to its own perpetual music, with the line of trees defining its course, under whose shade the emerald verdure deepened to intensity, and the cattle loved to lie in the hot summer weather!

Placed well up on the opposite slope, with a vagrant connection of the great Redwood protecting it on the north, stood the old house itself-wide-roofed, and liberally gabled, and chimneyed, and windowed, after the diversified fashion before-noted. Twenty-five years ago, the south wing was the most noticeable and picturesque portion of the whole edifice. It was built of cool gray stone, over which the delicate kind of veined ivy crept lovingly, so as to decorate and not conceal what it clung to. One side of the wide porch was monopolized by a wonderful growth of honeysuckle, while a passion-flower and an "Eastern rose" amicably shared the other between them. At one end

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of this south wing, an oriel window just asserted itself through the smothering luxuriance of clematis and Virginian creeper to which it was a comfortable-looking victim. Quite at the other end lay the more ancient portion of the building, now devoted to humbler if not less useful purposes than it had originally been constructed to serve. The kitchen may have been a dining-hall; and the servants' bed-rooms above it boasted bits of ornamental carving on cornices and chimney-pieces, which though now somewhat worn and illegible, had doubtless been costly decorations in their day. More than this-in one of the outhouses, now used for stowing away gardening tools, farm implements, and general odds and ends, there still existed curious little niches in the walls, and fragments of sculptured stone, which, as the learned in such matters affirmed, sufficiently proved it to have been at one time a Roman Catholic chapel. Mrs. Rushbrook, indeed, always turned a deaf ear to such representations. Sturdy Protestant and Churchwoman as she was, and holding the strong opinions incident to profound ignorance, on the subject of "Papishes"-she more than once declared, with an air of not unconscious magnanimity, that--much as she detested idols-to her thinking a chapel was a chapel, and shouldn't ever be turned into a tool-house, on her husband's premises, if she knew it. But she didn't know it. Don't tell her, indeed! She could tell better than that, any day, without the help of those there groping antiquities, who was always finding out something that wasn't true, or reasonable, or likely. In this controversy, as in many others of a similar character, the farmer himself took no more part than was comprised in an occasional growl of comment, and a twinkle of the eye and nod of the head, which signified a good deal of shrewd intelligence, while it committed him to no opinion. Like most husbands of women of energetic and mercurial temperament, John Rushbrook was rather solid and quiet in his looks and ways. Not that he was inactive by any means, nor still less, that he failed to be master in his own house whenever he saw sufficient occasion to exert his authority; but he was a man of few words, and seldom attempted to interfere with his wife's special accomplishment of talking-her proficiency in which art he secretly admired, with the reverence of a person who sees another do casily what is most difficult to himself.

In fact, farmer Rushbrook was not only a fortunate man, but a contented one; and was generally disposed to regard his own belongings as the best of their kind, from his wife and children down to his hay and turnips. The tenth commandment was no difficulty to him. He would not have changed places with any inan in the county-squire of the parish, and lord-lieutenant inclusive. Why should he? He was one of the most substantial yeoman of his district; he held the farm which his father and grandfather had held before him, and it had even increased in value under his judicious management, so that the always

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respected name of Rushbrook now stood higher than ever in the estimation of his neighbours. He gloried in his farm, and in working with his own hands on his own land; and as for making use of his prosperity to step out of his class, or bring up his children as "gentlefolks," like some of his degenerate brethren, he scorned the notion silently but absolutely. He had no higher ambition for his sons than that they should be farmers; for his one daughter, than that she should be a farmer's wife. This being the case, it may be imagined with what patronizing compassion he looked on his brother, who had stepped out of his class and was a lawyer in London. About once in three or four years this gentleman came down for a few days' visit to Westlands. A pleasant change it must be for him, the farmer considered; from that musty office in Chancery Lane (he ignored altogether the domestic establishment at Brixton) where the dirt was thick enough on the windows to sow tares in, and where you had to half-dislocate your neck to get a glimpse of an inch or two of smoke-coloured sky. When the pallid and prematurely-old looking lawyer offered to take Bob, his youngest nephew, as pupil and clerk so soon as he should be old enough, it was as much as John Rushbrook's good feeling could do to hinder him from laughing outright at the notion.

"Thank ye all the same, Tom. But I don't fancy as a town life 'ud agree with our boys. So what's the use? No, no! They'll stick to the farm, I doubt, like their father and their grandfather afore 'em; and I don't fear but the farm 'll stick to them, likewise."

Mrs. Rushbrook entirely acquiesced in her husband's sentiments on this point, and lost no opportunity of expressing the same, with emphasis. Even had she not agreed, it is probable she would have kept her dissent to herself-knowing that when John did make up his mind to a thing, it was sure to be pretty firmly fixed. Like a wise woman, she never needlessly risked her influence, and was quite ready to compound for having her own way in various minor directions, by giving it up with a good grace on an occasion of suitable importance.

Now, though she went with her husband in this matter of the sons, there was another question on which, though tacitly, they were at issue. It was as yet rather a potential than an actual disagreement; but Mrs. Rushbrook at least was perfectly aware of its existence. She knew that their ideas were frequently at variance on the subject of their daughter. It had been rather an achievement to get her sent to school at the principal assize town; and even when he gave his consent to that, the farmer had been inexorable in refusing to let her have lessons in French and music, and it went sorely against the grain with Mrs. Rushbrook to give in on that occasion. Not that she really thought any more than the farmer that it would be of much use to the child in after life, to talk French or strum music. They had no piano at Westlands.

John Rushbrook would as soon have thought of an electric telegraph as a piece of furniture; and as for French chatter, it wasn't likely she'd ever see any French people, much less have need to talk to them. All this was reasonable enough; yet still, reasonable woman as she was, the mother could not reconcile herself, till after a protracted struggle, to Susy's going to school and not having every advantage and all the extras. Then again, when Susy came home from school, little difficulties arose more than once on the subject of her dress, her employments, and her goings abroad. The father's taste in female attire was based on certain old-fashioned notions of suitability, convenience, etc., which have been rather set at nought in latter days. Skirts that reached the ground were hideous in his eyes, flounces were contemptible, and a silk dress on a "working-day" seemed to him, somchow, like an underhand desecration of the Sabbath, which it behoved all good Christians to protest against and set far from them. Moreover, he liked to see his little girl helping her mother in the dairy, or the kitchen, or the garden. If he did not exactly disapprove of all other occupations, he only tolerated them, and was apt to grunt in a manner which, though inarticulate, was sufficiently expressive of discontent, when he found her reading "poetry books," or worse still, novels-a study which she pursued very ardently-or embroidering fine cambric, or with coloured wools. Now, on the contrary, Mrs. Rushbrook liked to see all these evidences, as she considered them, of "good education" in her daughter. She never cared to open a book herself, but it aroused her pleased wonder to see how much Susy liked reading. Why, she'd get quite lost sometimes, in her book, and not hear her name when she was called! As for her working in the dairy, of course it was all very well, and she should take shame to herself if a daughter of hers couldn't take the management of a dairy of twenty cows, and conduct the same with advantage and profit, and never have a churning turn out ill, except once in a way, may be, at the fall of the year (when it was unaccountable what stuff the cows would get at to eat)—which was what she herself might look back upon with pride and pleasure. But though all that was very well for her when she should marry, and have a house, and a dairy, and cows of her own; at present there was no need, there really wasn't work for her to do, and youth was the time for pleasure. Let her read her books, and work at her muslins, and enjoy her parties and teadrinkings now, poor lamb, she'd never be younger than she was, and it was nothing but right and natural as a pretty, well-grown young girl should like to see and be seen, and have a little enjoyment. Which theory of youthful life Mrs. Rushbrook frequently quoted from, more or less at length, as occasion offered, to the silently listening, but utterly unconvinced farmer. Especially was it freely drawn upon when the great question arose, should Susy be allowed to go to London, on