The others, thank you, are doing well, and Here he was stopped by a sneeze, so sudden and so powerful, as to have all the effect of a violent shock from a galvanic battery. There was a tremendous report, and then his whole frame vibrated, after which he stood for some seconds, clutching at the wrong pocket for his handkerchief, and struggling as it were with a fiend of sneezing, which had been exorcised, and was now doing his worst, and last, on quitting Mr. Verney's human form. The noise brought out nearly everyone to inquire into the cause, Mr. Langlands among the rest, who, proud of recognizing Mr. Verney as an old theatrical acquaintance whom he had known "behind the scenes," and who would assist his own reputation by corroborating his theatrical experiences, seized upon him at once, and insisted upon his recovering his equanimity by means of a glass of sherry, or other refreshment. Floyd lounging in at this moment was introduced to Mr. Verney, and then stood staring heavily at little Julie. Floyd was, at this time, something between a raw recruit and a middy. I was still in wonderment at little Julie little no longer, and yet she was not so tall as I-she looked so much older than she ought to have looked; and the secret of this I have since discovered, though, when at this time she told me the reason herself, I was not sufficiently experienced to understand her. "Do you still play in pantomimes," I asked, "and come out of flower-beds ?" She was quite indignant with me. "Oh dear, no!" she answered, "I haven't done that for ever so long. Why, last two seasons I've been in the opera.' "The opera?" I exclaimed. Floyd stroked the down on his upper lip, and regarded her attentively. The notion I had of the opera at this time was not in any way founded upon what I knew of a theatre. The opera (I remember this fancy so well) was, to my mind, some enormous building like the Colosseum at Rome, of which I had seen pictures, with singers and music and dancers, somehow, all about, with the irregular regularity and inconsistent consistency of a dream. That little Julie, who had played with me, who had looked over my picturebooks, and received some instruction at my hands, who had, moreover, only, it seemed to me, quite lately been small enough to go into a theatrical cauliflower or a parsley-bed; that this little creature should be, in a long dress of the fashionable style of the day, with bonnet, and the neatest wristbands, and gloves to match, telling me of her prowess at the opera, was a greater puzzle, far greater, than if Mr. Verney had announced his appointment to the see of Canterbury, and had walked in dressed in a shovel-hat, knee-breeches, apron, and gaiters. "The Italian opera," said Julie. "I was one of the pages in the 'Huguenots' and in Favorita.' "What!" exclaimed Alice's voice. She had advanced with Austin unperceived, and had overheard the conversation. Floyd was still caressing the fluff meditatively. No one seemed to take any notice of him. And, after all, he was only a supernumerary in the theatricals. Stranger still. Comparing Alice with Julie, there seemed to be but little difference. Both were, in my eyes, young women, only that I knew Julie's age. Little Julie's life, hard work at home, and the necessity of working for her livelihood, had nearly made up the interval of years between them. As I looked from one to the other (for I was confused, and did not know exactly what to do), Julie became less and less; dwindling away, in spite of her dress and bearing, to the little Julie with whom I had gone marketing to the à la mode beef-shop-my Julie, in fact, of Frampton's Court. "You accompanied Mr. Verney?" Alice inquired, with some hauteur in her tone, while Austin appeared interested in the new-comers. "Yes," answered Julie, pleasantly. She was not a whit discomposed, but as much at home, and as unembarrassed, as though she had lived in palaces all her lifetime. "This is Miss Alice Comberwood, Julie," I explained, blushing. I loved Julie, but Alice was older and grander. Had the choice been then given me between the two, I should have taken Alice, but should have requested Julie to wait until she was eighteen. In my own estimation I was two years ahead of anyone of whom I had become enamoured. My love gave me the superiority, and, somehow or other, the notion that, in carrying off Alice, I should be a successful rival of Cavander, was at the bottom of it, I believe. Poor Cavander! had it remained with me to banish him to the mines of Siberia when I was just on fourteen, or to let him stay in the city, Cornhill would not have seen much of him for Where, Alice, dear?" "There," answered Alice, inclining her head towards the spot where Julie was seated. Mrs. Comberwood was vexed. I could not then understand why she should have been; but I remember the fact, as, having overheard the conversa "I wish I were an actor," he said tion, I felt it incumbent upon me to regretfully. Julie smiled. She knew Frampton's Court as well as the Portico theatre. Alice was annoyed with Austin. "An actor, Austy! how can you say so, when you've set yourself on being a clergyman." It was Alice's pet idea of his future. Austin said that he did not really mean it, which pacified her; but I could see by her manner that there was something deeper than mere annoyance at her brother's thoughtless wish, when, on being summoned to attend the rehearsal, she left us, and called her brother to accompany her. assist with such information as I could bring to the subject. "Does your father allow you to associate with-with-these people?" Mrs. Comberwood asked me, raising her eyebrows. I was bound to reply that my parent knew nothing at all about it. Whereupon Mrs. Comberwood was of opinion that she ought to let Sir John know. This distressed me. I saw there was something wrong with the Verneys, at least in the eyes of Alice and her mother, and I determined to ask Austin what it was. Mr. Verney was very great at rehear"You remember going to the opera sal, especially with the ladies, Miss Alice and Miss Tabberer, whom he had to direct. With the gentlemen he was affable, but firm; with the ladies equally firm, but overpoweringly courteous. When he wanted to show the practical bearing of any stage-direction, he would request Julie to assist him in giving the lesson. "Stage-management," he said, stopping to lecture, "is an art-an art, I regret to say, almost entirely lost. Thalia and Melpomene may do their best, Apollo may give us his most sparkling tunes, and, to come to modern days, a Garrick or a Kemble may conquer by the force of a genius which would sweep all before it, like Niagara over a dustbin, and absorb every moving creature in its own exhaustive vortex with the irresistible succulency-I should say, the tremendous suctional power-of the Northern Maëlstrom." Here he paused, expanded his chest, which was swelling out, as it were, with the great notion of the last simile, and beamed on us all round. "But," he continued, "without the stage-manager, what is the use? Cui bono? I repeat, cui bono? Hamlet may be perfect, but if he be lost in the crowd, or if Rosencrantz and Guilderstein are brought too prominently forward, where is the opportunity for the gifted Roscius? No, sir-pardon me "-this to Jakeman, who was beginning to be a little impatient-"whether it be low-comedy, which I take to be your line, sir," to Jakeman, who was standing as if waiting his turn to advance in a quadrille"or light touch and go, Charles Mathews' line, as I take to be yours, Mr. Langlands"-whereat that gentleman gave a mock bow, but was really highly flattered-"no matter whatever it be, stage-management is as much the necessity to our art as the light of heaven to a Michael Angelo at work on his immortal frescoes. Stage-management is the generalship of our art, ladies, and we make our successes as the noble Roman warrior made them, by strategies, which are to the ignorant, like a truffle to a bumpkin. The finest picture and the merest daub of a signboard are of equal value in the dark; and Hamlet put out of sight in the Play scene behind Ophelia, instead of in front of her, might as well be in the sixpenny gallery sucking oranges over the brass rail as in such a position as would ruin the chance of the greatest dramatic genius in the world. I beg your pardon, sir. Now let us proceed." From this specimen it may be imagined what time the piece, which was to last an hour in performance, occupied in rehearsal. Mr. Verney and his daughter were obliged to leave early, in order to catch the train for town, their engagement at the Portico necessitating their presence there soon after six. "Yes; higher salary, I mean." She stopped suddenly. At that moment a vague sense of the line of demarcation between us occurred to her. She changed the subject abruptly, and asked me whether I would not like to see her Aunt Jane again. "Nurse?" I asked. The word returned to me most familiarly. "Yes," said Mr. Verney, who was now wrapped for his journey. "She is still a nurse. Head-nurse, too, in a very large family. very large family. She is superintendent at St. Winifred's Central Hospital, near the General Post Office, where she cheers the pallid invalids like a blooming Aurora smiling on a sickly swede in a kitchen garden." Mr. Verney's similes smacked of the country atmosphere. He asked, "Shall I tell her that you will do yourself the pleasure of paying her a visit?" "Yes, please." "I will. We must make haste, Julie." At this moment Langlands and Floyd entered, and Mr. Verney emerged from the upper fold of his comforter to bid them farewell, and do something in the way of an advertisement. "We shall see you at the Portico, Mr. Langlands, one night after the Convivial Lambs, where Mr. Floyd will give us the honour of his company." Floyd bowed, and said he should be very happy to renew the acquaintance of Mr. Verney and his daughter. "Julie, Mr. Langlands, now plays. Dolly, in The Wish," continued Mr. Verney; "a soubrette's part of considerable responsibility; something between the Humby and the Vestris in, of course, quite the early days. You will go and see her play one night, I trust. She grips the part, sir"-here he extended his right hand and suited the action to the word-" she grips the part, sir, with the nip of an irritated panther. You'll be astonished, I assure ye. There's an intellectual grasp about her, sir, that makes you sit tight in your stall, and yet turns you over like a crocus in a whirlwind. Come, Julie. Goodbye for the present, gentlemen. Goodbye, Master Cecil." "Good-bye; and good-bye, Julie." When we had last parted, we embraced. But now, I was a guest at Ringhurst Whiteboys, and she was playing a chambermaid in a farce, a page in an opera, and wearing heels to her boots in order to obtain some addition to her week's salary. It was not a parting as of old. The next day Mr. Verney's visit was repeated, but he was out of spirits. His conversation was pitched in a minor key, his similes were dull, his instruction tame, and he did little more than merely his stage duty. He spoke to me occasionally, and disappeared earlier than on the previous day of rehearsal. I asked for Julie, but she had not accompanied him, and "would not," he added, "be again required on this scene." Her absence threw a gloom over my day, as I somehow felt that I had, indirectly, been the cause of her banishment. I was for putting this question to Alice, who, I fancied, knew more about the matter than anyone else, but, just then, her attention was fully taken up by the theatricals, and Mr. Cavander. To be continued. MANZONI. "EI FU." Such are the opening words of that great effort of Manzoni's genius, the Ode on the Death of Napoleon, and they are now applicable to the Poet himself. He was, he no longer is, the author of the greatest work of fiction in the Italian language, the poet whose best energies were employed in the praises of religion, the champion of truth and justice, the defender of the Christian faith against the attacks of infidelity; for on Thursday, May 22, 1873, at the great age of eighty-nine, Manzoni went to his rest. "The city wears mourning" ("La città è in lutto "), was proclaimed in word and deed at Milan, and so it should be. Nevertheless the lamentations, which the loss of one at the same time so virtuous and so eminent would naturally occasion, are checked by the consideration that a life of singular honour and distinction, prolonged far beyond the usual term of existence, with full possession of all the faculties, has been brought to a peaceful close at his native place, and surrounded, if ever man was, by all "that should accompany old age,' "as honour, love, obedience, troops of friends." The slight sketch which follows is intended to induce the general reader to pursue the study of Manzoni's life and character in his works, and, in however humble a degree, to contribute to their estimation. Alessandro Manzoni was born at Milan in 1784. His father, whom he had the misfortune to lose in early youth, was Count Manzoni, his mother the daughter of Beccaria, the author of a treatise on "Crimes and Punishments," once much, and not undeservedly esteemed. She inherited, and further transmitted to her son, a portion of the sound wisdom and generous principles which animate that work. It was not unbecoming the grandson of Beccaria to record, as it will be seen he did later, his horror of torture, and to expose the wickedness and uselessness of it as a judicial mode of discovering the truth. Manzoni's ambition was early fired by the example of the three great contemporaries who immediately preceded him in the difficult path of letters-Vittorio Alfieri, Vincenzo Monti, and Ugo Foscolo. He was barely twenty-one when, by an epistle in blank verse, he proved himself not unworthy of being admitted into that fellowship. In these verses he imagines that the spirit of his friend appears to him after death, and, in reply to the question as to whether he was not reluctant to tear himself from this world, he puts into Imbonati's mouth a fearless and spirited condemnation of those vices which had already filled with disgust the youthful mind of Manzoni. In them we see the first germ of those feelings by which his life was influenced -the love of truth and justice, and the abhorrence of oppression and wrongwhich appear in all his works, and which, first professed at twenty-one, he maintained unchanged through a life prolonged to its ninetieth year. These verses, while by no means destitute of individual merit, are so remarkable on this account that a translation of some of them is here given :— "Hadst thou my death Foreknown-for that foreknowledge and for thee Alone I should have wept-for otherwise, |