and, passing his arm through that of the mayor, they left the sunny garden through a small gate leading to a field beyond.

II.

"You are grave, my fair cousin; has my cruelty to Jasper hurt you so deeply?" asked Annette Lerroche, as she joined Madeline in the house just as the clock in the town-hall of St. Vallier tolled seven.

"And if I am grave, Annette, it is surely no new thing," replied Madeline. "You often tell me I resemble that interesting bird the owl, whose gravity is proverbial, but whose wisdom may admit of some doubt."

"True, my most wise cousin," said Annette, laughing; "but methinks you are a thought graver than usual; nay, you seem sad. Tell me if my sorrows weigh upon you; or if any wayward speech of mine has offended you?" and as she spoke Annette passed her delicate arm around her cousin's waist, and embraced her fondly.

"You are right, dearest Annette,-I am sad; but what vexes me most is, I have no cause for sadness, only some vague, undefined feeling of coming danger. I feel-I cannot say how; only very miserable ;-as though some dark shadow had fallen across my path, and clouded my

scene.'

"This is strange, dearest Madeline; you are not thus generally. Shake off this weakness. I will play to you on the harp the airs you love so well."

So saying, Annette approached the instrument, which stood by the open window, and passing her hands lightly over the strings, she filled the chamber with the soft, thrilling music which few can hear unmoved.

"Annette," said Madeline, suddenly, as her cousin ceased playing, "I am dull and low-spirited to-night. Will you for once leave your favourite green bedchamber and sleep with me?"

“If it will give you pleasure, willingly," answered her cousin ; "but what has filled you with these fancies, Madeline? Surely no romantic lover has turned my wise cousin's brain!"

"Truly no lover has crossed my path, Annette; but I am sick at heart to-night," and something I saw in the garden startled me."

"In the garden! What saw you there startling? Not a rat or a

raven ?"

"No, no," replied Madeline; "but a pit, a-in fact, a grave!"

"What!" said Annette, starting, and turning pale; "you must be dreaming, Madeline; or what you took for a grave must have been a pit for leaves, which the gardener has made. But if the fancy that you are to be murdered really troubles you, I will sleep in your chamber to-night, and you in mine; and will this ease your fears?"

"Indeed, dear Annette," said Madeline, "you are very kind; nor should I hesitate to accept your offer, but that I fear for you."

"Oh, have no fears for me; in fact, I am sure," said the lighthearted Annette, laughing, "no one would kill me: neither do I believe there is any killing in the case; our town is too well disciplined, my father too much feared as a magistrate. But here he comes with Jasper; say nothing about our little arrangement; my dearest Madeline, be cheerful.”

As she spoke, the mayor of St. Vallier entered the room, closely followed by Jasper Alvard. Both had been busy at the toilet; and Jasper especially, perhaps to efface any shade of resentment from the mind of Annette, was dressed with scrupulous care. Gaily the evening passed away. Madeline Vidon's melancholy seemed to have dissolved before the jests and compliments of Jasper and the mayor; and when the cousins parted for the night at the door of Madeline's room, which was to receive Annette Lerroche, the former said:

"Good night, my cousin ; I trust my foolish weakness will not prove an inconvenience to you. Adieu; may your dreams be pleasant!"

And so they parted: Annette, happy, thoughtless, and kind-hearted; pleased with the gay speeches of her lover, to whom she hoped soon to be wedded; Madeline, grave and still, in spite of herself anxious, and dreading something to come.

Morning dawned bright and serene over the white houses of St. Vallier; the June sun gilded the gay weather-cock on the town-hall, and flashed in the clear river which flowed without the town. The green hills and vine-crowned valleys all were gay in the early summer-morning. In the principal room in the mayor's house, breakfast was prepared. Jean Lerroche and Jasper Alvard sat silent at the table. The mayor looked pale and ill at ease. There was the same restless look in his eyes, the same starting and hesitation which he had evinced on the previous day; Jasper's dark face was calm and impassible as usual, as he gazed abstractedly from the window. The door of the apartment opened. The mayor started violently, and even Jasper turned uneasily round; and when the wide-opened door disclosed the person of Madeline Vidon, Jean Lerroche started to his feet, gazed for a moment with a look of fixed and intense surprise on his niece, then exclaimed with a convulsive shriek, "O God, she lives, and I have slain my child!" He sank heavily to the ground; Jasper Alvard gazed like the mayor upon Madeline, then bounding through the window, he was lost amid the foliage of the garden. Madeline Vidon, though amazed and alarmed at this singular scene, did not lose her presence of mind, but hastily summoning some attendants, she ordered two to watch her uncle, and the rest to follow her to her bedchamber. The door was thrown open, and Madeline darted to the bedside. A shriek of horror filled the apartment, and

the astonished servants, who crowded to the spot, beheld the unfortunate Annette lying lifeless on the bed, her clothes bathed in blood, and a knife near her which bore the same guilty stain.

Two months passed, and the quiet town of St. Vallier was aroused by the unwonted spectacle of a public execution. The new mayor of the town had just been elected, and his first duty was to witness the deaths of Jean Lerroche and Jasper Alvard.

The International Exhibition.

EXHIBITIONS of Industry are peculiar to modern civilisation. From their necessary connexion with art and science, it is easy to lose sight of their essential character, as the bewildered visitor to an exhibition-building generally seeks in vain for a common purpose in the various objects that he sees.

Philosophical speculators and intellectual sybarites lament the steady growth of practical ideas, and longingly look back to former conditions of society, now as hopelessly destroyed as the cities which Lot's wife regretted to her cost. We live in an age relatively without art, without even a sense of art; yet an age of the utmost vigour, and, if we look into its characteristics, a far better age than those that have passed. Now that the discoveries of archæology, and a juster criticism than that of the encyclopedists, have taught us what was the life of the ancient homes of civilisation, we may search in vain for any past time which may be compared with that in which we live, with this new age in its youthful strength. Complain if you will of the shackles of conventional life; but compare it with the more simple society of primeval Babylon or Thebes, where the king's will was his standard of right and wrong; with the refined corruption of the Athens of Pericles, the incredible luxury of the Rome of Nero, the elegant wickedness of Bagdad, and the weak indulgence of Byzantium; yet later, set against our follies the open violence of this City itself in the days of chivalry, closed by the street-murders of the Duke of Monmouth and his riotous comrades,—and then you will see that Christianity has not been working in vain, and that, notwithstanding our enormous population, our fierce competition, our foolish pursuit of riches, the age we live in is the best the world has seen, and this London of ours as great and noble as it is blessed with wealth and prosperity.

An age of industry is of necessity the happiest of all ages. The mere pursuit of pleasure must act on nations as on men. Yet more, no nation that has been given up to pleasure has prospered; and no prosperous nation has ever left its impress on those arts which minister to the pleasures of mankind. Art is not the pursuit of those masculine nations which have changed the face of the world, and given laws to those who have far outnumbered them in people, but not in men. Greece is no exception. Persia was not conquered by Athens or Thebes; the fairest Greek cities of the Asiatic coast ingloriously fell before the armies of the Satraps. What Greece achieved in the world's history was done by Macedon and Sparta. Macedon was barbarous; Sparta was kept out of Hellenic civilisation by the rigid laws of Lycurgus. Carthage and Rome despised the arts. The Arabs, as barbarians, conquered half the world, until Byzantine civilisation, like fatal Capua, stopped their progress.

If, then, our age is one of industry, and so of better promise than the

VOL. V.

times gone by, let us accept its character, and endeavour to do our part in its progress. We must relinquish all ideas of the past; and instead of devoting ourselves to the imitation of older civilisations, aim to develop the true work of our own. But as we do so, we must beware of treating that which is but an effect of moral improvement as its cause, and so of producing out of the perversion of higher good more evil than the perversion of lower good has ever brought about. One of the first results of so great an error would be the overthrow of that very civilisation which we should have made our idol.

The far-seeing genius of our lamented Prince first gave a great impulse to modern industry by the generalisation that produced the Exhibition of 1851, a generalisation so daring, that almost half England predicted that it would fail of success; so true, that it bore down all opposition, and left, like its originator, not an enemy nor a detractor. He felt that it was not enough that the arts of industry should compete confusedly in the almost countless places of sale, but that they ought to be measured in one great central place of exhibition of the work of all nations. If the first attempt should succeed, a periodical repetition would be obviously required, to indicate the progress which this method of comparison was intended to stimulate. Those who argued that because the first Exhibition succeeded there should be no second one, were mere idlers, who feared that a beautiful show would be spoilt in the memory by a clumsy imitation, and who had no distinct idea of the object which the Prince had in view. It will be well here to explain exactly what that object was, and how it was carried out under his superintendence in the first Exhibition.

To digress for a moment, we may mention the origin and history of national exhibitions. The idea, or at least its application, is due to the French, who first held a national exhibition under the old Republic, in the year 1798. It can scarcely be said that we are indebted to the Revolution for this happy innovation. The French mind has always been foremost in generalising; but in this instance we perceive, since the exhibition was national, not international, notwithstanding all that was then said of the unity of mankind, more of that desire to centralise all the power of France in Paris, that M. de Tocqueville has so ably shown was the product of the Monarchy, though it was the cause of the Republic, than of the wish to merge nationality in a broader feeling. This experiment was several times repeated in France; and at length in England the Society of Arts took up the matter, and in 1847 held an exhibition of British industry. This was followed by the Prince's magnificent scheme for an international exhibition. One sentence in a speech he delivered at a Mansion-House dinner in 1849 will show how philosophically he framed his plan. Having spoken of the existence of laws for the working of raw material, he thus continued, showing the distinct provinces of science, industry, and art in the various crafts of mankind: "Science discovers these laws of power, motion, and transformation; industry applies them; to the raw matter, which the earth yields us in abundance, but which be