was the eminent man who shed over the times of Anne the luster of a genius, no less signal in peace than that of Marlborough in war; and yet, as we said at the outset, between execration on the one side, and eulogium on the other, it is exceedingly difficult to arrive at the truth. Bolingbroke's character has yet to be viewed through the distorted medium of party feeling and religious hatred, and the estimate of the man must still depend on individual opinion. Of his greatness there can be but one estimate.

"No, by moonlight. The wind is southwest, and blowing straight on the rocks." Puff, whizz! An eddying breeze whirled my Panama off my head, and carried it adroitly over the stone wall that shut in the lane. It went on ricochetting among the scrawny bushes of the meadows, till it caught in the blackberry thorns and stopped. When I returned from the pursuit, Gloriana was poising pensively on the grass ridge which the cart ruts had left in the road, her eyes demurely on the ground. Her pose made me nervous, because she seemed to be looking at my boots. Great dabs of mud lay on them,

for the soil of the pasture was swampy. Some people always gather misery out of misfortune; the more fools they. 1 prefer to get advantage from it.

"A stout wind, you see. It will pile up the waves. Spouting Horn will be magnificent to-night."

Gloriana ceased to regard my boots; her eyes looked straight before her. As I happened at that moment to be standing straight before her, our glances met. It was magnetism! "You must see it. I shall be very careful."

"But will it be quite proper? You know we were only introduced this afternoon."

"Ask Hartley."

"Fudge! I won't. We will go. I rely implicitly on you."

The little fingers clutched closer to my arm. How they thrilled

me-so like tendrils! As I turned and looked down into Gloriana's

eyes, I thought instinctively of the oak and vine. graceful vine it was!

What a sweet,

It is astonishing, thought I, how rapidly a shrewd man can come to comprehend a woman. Only this noon, at dinner time, I was oblivious of the very existence of this soft being who floats upon my arm. Walking out on the piazza, smoking my post-prandial cigar, a hurly-burly at the hotel door caught my attention. The stage had just wheeled off, leaving on the steps an old gentleman with a cotton umbrella, a young gentleman with a silk hat, a Milesian female with a baby, and, for the rainbow after the storm, an incomprehensible sylphlike form, who gave an order to the porter, and then vanished up the stairs. There was an avalanche of trunks, too; but of these I took no notice at all. "Saratoga band-boxes" are my pet aversion.

Just as my cigar had cindered down to zero, Hartley planted himself before my chair. "Now, George, it is a pity."

"What is a pity?"

"That we have got to go to-morrow."

Humph! She can do very well without us; besides (and, doubtless, my face wore a grim sort of smile as I spoke), if you wish to stay, probably it can be managed somehow."

Hartley bit his lip. By a mysterious physical process, there also grew a faint red tinge, such as romancers might name a blush, upon his cheek.

"Now, be reasonable, and merciful, too, if I must say it. The facts are, that there is a fresh arrival, and I want you to be introduced." "What is it?"

"Helen, Hebe, Cleopatra-an old friend of mine."

Confound that Hartley; he is forever bringing up his old friends. He knows everybody. "Where is it from?"

"The moon. Come along."

I flung away the remnant of my Havana and followed. There is no evading the rascal.

Into the ladies' parlor-into the remotest, and darkest, and coolest part of the parlor. There she sat, or, rather, there she rose.

"My friend, George Hoderet, Miss Gloriana; Miss Gloriana, George." The fair débutante gave a cordial hand-grasp-I like that—and we two were acquainted in half an hour. If Hartley would only have kept out of the way! But, instead of this, he was maliciously persistently in the way, making all kinds of queer inuendos, and distracting our piquant enchantress, until my patience became exhausted.

Some people are fertile in inventions. As to that matter, well,

perhaps it is wiser to let actions be their own orators. Self-praise is abominable to a gentleman. An idea flashed upon me, and I beckoned to the superfluous H.

"Go down to the beach, and hire Sizer's trimmest yacht. We will be there shortly." [This last in a whisper, and so, properly, in small type-only Reade would be litigating about copyright.]

The man was quick at perception.

He went. Then I caught my

opportunity. "Miss- what shall I call you?'

"Oh, Gloriana, by all means."

“Miss Gloriana, would not you like to take a walk?"

"Is it not too hot?"

"Believe me, no; it is quite cool."

"Very well-yes."

So we went also, only in an opposite direction. I hope Hartley enjoyed his yacht, the scamp! The walk was enjoyable, at any rate.

Of course there are people who would be choked with envy at the ease with which I had just persuaded this bewildering beauty to make the evening excursion. It was certainly a notable triumph, but a great general never halts till the whole field is gained.

"Will your brother accompany us?"

"What brother?"

You dare to

"Pardon me. I am overwhelmed with admiration. travel alone-an American Ida Pfeiffer, only a great deal younger, and -forgive me-not quite so ugly!"

"I wish my uncle were here; you would find him ugly enough," said Gloriana, withdrawing her hand as she spoke and looking flushed and angry.

"A thousand apologies," I muttered, utterly taken aback by the result of my inquisitiveness.

"Not that any relative of mine is cross-eyed," she added halfaside.

"Nor cross-tempered either."

"You are plainly determined that I shall bear my cross."

"Rather would I crucify and abase myself before you. It was an honest compliment, that suggestion about a possibility of your traveling alone. Die Vernon is my household goddess."

66 Then you advocate woman suffrage ?"

"So far as voting for moonlit trips, most unquestionably, or riding on horseback, or bravely doing without us men, now and then, for the nonce. Does your uncle hold a different philosophy?"

"Perhaps so, and perhaps not."

"So you would be angry with me for a 'perhaps?"

"He would not understand you; though, of course, you meant well enough," continued my companion, relentingly. "I like courage in a woman, myself; but this time I am under excellent escort. Have you not seen him ?"

"Your uncle? I should be most happy. He was on the coach." "Clear on the top-seat, with his head uniquely protected by-by a cotton umbrella!" and Gloriana laughed merrily.

"Ah!" and very naturally I joined in the laughter, as the recollection of the apparition of the stage came more distinctly to my mind. "All the better, then (it is human to fib). He will make one of our party."

Gloriana smiled assentingly, and, as we started homeward to the hotel, it became quite evident that the blunder had been retrieved, and that every thing would run smoothly thenceafter.

They were ringing the supper-bell when we reached the piazza of the Agawam, and I had the honor of leading in my companion. Hartley sat opposite and glared. Only a saint could have resisted the impulse for mild revenge. The present narrator was not a saint. "Did you have a pleasant sail?" was my bland interrogation. "Capital: we were a little too jolly-that is all. As you didn't come, I invited half-a-dozen loungers, just over from Southwest Harbor, and they were rather hard on the champagne. Sizer thinks the sail will have cost you a round hundred—a mere trifle, though!"

Gloriana looked up admiringly. How women smile on the men who call a hundred dollars a trifle. I began to be jealous of Hartley. And then the audacity of the fellow! For a moment I could not speak. It was like a man's grinding his heel into your pet corn. "Ah," said I, at length, "a mere trifle." We were rather silent for the rest of the meal. But I beg the reader to understand that the question which troubled me had nothing to do with that silly yacht affair. I was melancholy, if it must be confessed.

To make my emotions clear, an explanation is necessary. Hartley, though sometimes maladroit, the vagabond, was the man that I have always most liked, as the world goes. It had been a friendship of ten years' standing, and was rather the better for age. Some ten months since, however, the scapegrace not ried. I was down in New Orleans at the New York, told the fellow flatly that I'd her photograph. Fortune favors the brave. England, thanks to the beneficent stars, and

only fell in love, but martime, and, on returning to never look at his wife or She was away in New Hartley was wandering

66

up and down Broadway in bachelor loneliness. Happy for a breathing spell," as I told him, only he was demented enough not to realize it. Summer came flaming on. The intrusive "she" still lingered in the vicinity of "the Hub." Hartley's mother-in-law was sick, if the truth must out, and I was cruel enough to hope she would continue so, provided it didn't hurt her. My old confrère found the dust and Simoom air of Manhattan disagree with him. The doctor insisted on a vacation and the sea-side. So one day we voted to make a flying trip, by grace of rail and paddle-wheel, to Mt. Desert Island. "Only," chimed in the exigent H., " when we return, you must promise to stay in Boston three days, and, well, be conquered by 'Trice!" What a jealous pang that mere atom of a name always produced in me! First I pooh-poohed and demurred; but there was no alternative. "Be it so, then-as to the stopping, I mean."

Thus the bargain stood, and we went whirling toward sunrise. Possibly the truth of history will require the statement that Hartley lodged one night in the modern Athens. But, hen, Niebuhr has proven that much of history is myth; and as to truth, what is it? as jesting Pilate and a thousand more have asked. In due time, at any rate, we had reached that roughest and most charming of New England wildernesses, the Island of Mt. Desert. Up to this very hour of the appearance of Gloriana, we had lived, breathed, and had our being among the hills, along the trouting-brooks, and out in the deepsea fishing-grounds. It was emphatically jolly, and I had begun to feel fairly sentimental when news came that mamma-in-law was better, and

What is the use of wasting words. Hartley and I were bound to go "Hub-"ward by the morrow's sun, and the prettiest romance in the world was likely to be nipped in the bud. Any one would be saturnine in such circumstances, and the vexation of it clouded my enjoyment not only at the table, but after, when Hartley proposed we should stroll down to the beach and get sight of the fishing boats as they dropped in before the twilight.

Gloriana accompanied us, and, certes, if every thing else seemed dismal, she was sunlight itself. What rifts of golden sunsets lay in her magnificent hair! How sad and pensive were the glimpses of azure under those amber, delicately arching eyebrows! How they would mellow and sentimentalize in the dusk of the moon-lit cliffs of Spouting Horn! As we sauntered over the shingle on the beach, Hartley was good-natured enough to leave us a good deal to ourselves, and, under the bewildering influences of the moment, it was