of seeing likes and unlikes seems to be, and seems to fade with childhood. Are they the petals of my feet ?' Dicky asked, looking at his pink toes after his first botany lesson. (The transcribing of babies' babble no longer needs an apology, since wise men and learned have turned their scientific attention that way.)

The children will prove, I hope, a source of interest to our stepmother, but as character fixes the point of view of every situation, woe be it to each one implicated should the perambulators stand oftener at the maternal grandmother's door than at the door of the step-paternal ancestress. And please bear in mind, lest the gravity of the situation escape you, that the dwelling of Mrs. Vivian, measured by a blue silk inch-measure on the map of London, is, if anything, further removed from Lower Berkeley Street than is that of Laura, Lady Etchingham; so the doctrine of propinquity cannot excuse the too frequent progress thitherwards of the nursery people.

I thought that you and Mr. Follett would discover each other. The neighbours generally-not the cottage folk; they swear by • Parson Follett'-are inclined to look askance upon him, and to call his orthodoxy in question. Every one in the country does not go with you in preferring charity to the Creeds.

Tell me if the Titles of Honour' supplies intelligence meet for Sir Augustus, who, for some reason best known to himself, has developed a tendency to visit us incessantly. He seems keen, also, that we should go to have tea at the Heralds' Office with some one known to him. (What a pity it is that he is not a pursuivant himself! He would idolise his tabard.) If, as I expect, Mr. Follett unlocks for your benefit both his heart and his bookcases, Tolcarne will blossom out in books like the rose. I hold in affectionate remembrance the shelf of old folio editions of the English classics. It was from that shelf, one afternoon in spring, when the birds sang and the sunlight came slanting through the network of mulberry branches, that Mr. Follett took and laid upon the study table the great brown volume in which I first made the acquaintance of The Faerie Queene.' The rightful adjuncts to The Faerie Queene' still seem to me to be the song of a thrush, gold sunlight slanting through the branches of the old mulberry tree that adorns the parsonage lawn, and the scent

Mrs. Follett's pale-blue hyacinths,

6

I was called yesterday from my writing to the drawing-room, there to find Mrs. Vivian-between whom and Laura, by the way, there is no love lost. Mrs. Vivian shocks Laura ; Laura bores Mrs. Vivian. Is it better to be bored or shocked ? 'To be bored,' would say the holy; To be shocked,' would think the profane. (There is one thing about it: no one likes to be bored, and many like to be shocked.) However, I trust that on this occasion neither Laura nor Mrs. Vivian was, thanks to the other, in ectremis, for fate, in the person of Harry and Sir Augustus, provided Mrs. Vivian with her panacea for all ills—an audience, and dowered Laura with a dock to her nettles in the guise of a sympathiser-old Mrs. Carstairs.

Mr. Vivian's taciturnity was the subject of Mrs. Vivian's flow of words. (She looks as pretty as ever, and grows younger with the years; she is ten years younger than Minnie already.) My husband,' she said, 'never speaks, unless it is to ask if any one has seen his umbrella or knows where “Bradshaw” is. When I tell him he really must talk, he says he can't-he has nothing to say. I dare say he hasn't. Still it would be a relief if he would even groan, or strike the hours like the clock.'

A solemn Very true' here, from Sir Augustus, who is too self-occupied to catch the gist of words that have no bearing upon one of his own hobbies, and a significant cough from Mrs. Carstairs, whose collection of present-day criminals now includes Mrs. Vivian.

By Laura, of course, these utterances were taken seriously, and, fortified by Mrs. Carstairs's sympathy, she was evidently prepared, had a pause in Mrs. Vivian's oration allowed of more than an ejaculatory reply, to argue that 'a groan from the lips of a dumb animal, even, must be excessively painful to rightminded hearers. How much more so from the lips of a human creature whom we love!' Mrs. Vivian, speaking in the direction of Harry and Sir Augustus, went on to say that she did not know how it might be with right-minded people, but that she would often be glad to hear her husband groan, just to prove that she was not sitting alone with the tables and chairs.

At this point we were invaded by Mr. Biggleswade (once Jim's Oxbridge friend, now the Vivians' Dampshire vicar). Having pretty well ignored our stepmother, who is always polite to clergymen of every persuasion, he produced from his pocket a very slim volume, and presented it to Cynthia-- As I promised.'

* Are those your pagan love-poems, or the verses in which you

patronise Christianity, Mr. Biggleswade?' inquired Mrs. Vivian.
'It is so kind of Mr. Biggleswade to believe-most thoughtful
and considerate, is it not?' Thereupon Harry's 'gwuff' laugh
was heard, and a repetition of Sir Augustus's impressive 'Very
true.' Mr. Biggleswade, however, lost none of his jaunty airiness
of demeanour. He fixed his Oxbridge smile for a moment upon
Mrs. Vivian, and admitted, as he seated himself upon the sofa by
Cynthia's side, that he did not pretend to be one of the old
school of clerics.' What he then went on to say to Cynthia, 'not
knowing, can't say,' to quote old nurse; but evident was it
that his discourse embarrassed the child. As the colour which
had flickered in her cheek since Mrs. Vivian announced, in quite
audible tones, ‘Miss Leagrave is just like a Romney,' heightened,
Mr. Biggleswade's bantering laugh grew more frequent. Will
Harry go to the rescue, I wondered, or shall I? But, as I
wondered, lo and behold, suddenly the Oxbridge smile petrified,
Mr. Biggleswade's cheek blanched, and terror wrote itself in his
eyes. Had influenza marked him for its own?
Had he just
developed a conscience, or a heart disease? No. Dropping my
gaze from his face to his feet, there saw I our Trelawney
suspiciously snuffing the Biggleswade boots; and, having sniffed
and not approved, what did our Trelawney but proceed to sharpen
his claws upon the leg of Mr. Biggleswade's chair, as if preparing
weapons of attack. Poor pseudo-pagan love-poet! Poor patron
of Christianity! Poor disconcerter of shy Cynthias! With an
incoherent reference to train-catching, the Thing was gone.

And now, Richard, put kind inquiry concerning his rheumatism to Enticknap, pat the ancient Merlin and the mute Songstress for me, and beg Margaret, as cats do not always care for caresses, to make Luna's pat from me a-pat of butter. Dear Dickory, dear Richard, ever and always your

Affectionate sister,

ELIZABETH.

IV.

From Sir Richard Etchingham to Miss Elizabeth Etchingham.

MY DEAR ELIZABETH,—How like you this return of winter out of season? There is no talk now of almond blossom or any other; lucky is the plant that has not been over-hasty. Luckily for Enticknap's temper, too, he is not idle, for there is a good day or two's work in clearing the snow off every piece of exposed roof. The drift is two feet deep in the Little Buckland lane, moulded by the wind in places into crests running almost to a knife-edge. For my part, I am glad to be away from town, as I prefer clean snow to dirty mud, and that you are swimming in mud I make no doubt. And so yesterday being, as Pepys would say, a very foul, snowing, windy day, I trudged across to the Vicarage and had a good time with Parson Follett among his books. I have fancied now and again that I was really meant for a bookworm. On the other hand, the professional scholars I know have mostly given me to understand that they envy those to whom scholarship is a recreation; and I suspect that a man who gives himself to books before he has seen anything of the world is but penny-wise in his own craft, for it may be doubted if he will ever more than half understand his books. The Vicar, at any rate, thinks that pure ignorance of men and affairs is answerable for many astonishing conjectures and futile controversies of learned persons.

We had out Selden's ‘Titles of Honor'-not Honour with a u, so much for the new-fangledness of American spelling '-which seems to be an inexhaustible mine of elaborate frivolities. He sets forth the authentic documents about the origin of Baronets at large, and nothing can be less romantic. We date from 1611; King James I. founded us in the most undisguised manner to raise money for the settlement of Ulster. It must be allowed that he did, or endeavoured to do, the business in a decent fashion, not by way of selling the dignity to the highest bidders.

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The transaction was for a fixed price, with ready money for part and good references for the rest. There were Commissioners' for treating with such as desired to be created upon the terms in the preamble of the Patent,' and they were instructed to inform applicants that those who desire to be admitted into the dignity of Baronets must maintain the number of thirty footSouldiers in Ireland for three years, after the rate of eight pence sterling Money of England by the day; And the wages of one whole year to be paid into Our Receipt, upon passing of the Patent.' Mr. Follett bade me observe the Scottish prudence of the king as to the sterling money of England; Irish money was worth much less (like Scotch, with which-or the lack of it-he was of course well acquainted). The applicants had to show both a personal and a property qualification besides their money : the Commissioners are to proceed with none, except it shall appear unto you upon good proof, that they are men of quality, state of living, and good reputation worthy of the same; and that they are at the least descended of a Grandfather by the Fathers side that bare Armes, And have also of certain yearly revenue in Lands of inheritance in possession, One Thousand pounds per Annum de claro,' or an equivalent. Knights were not necessarily to be preferred to esquires, knighthood being such a mark as is but temporary.' There was sense in this too, said Mr. Follett, as in James I.'s time several of the best and most ancient families in England had never been anything but esquires from father to son, as indeed some of them are to this day. Mr. Follett himself has stayed with a western squire who still punctually receives a rent of a pound of black pepper reserved by a deed of the thirteenth century, and he has seen a writ of William Rufus in the Record Office containing the identical Christian names and surnames still used by the same family at the same place. The secret of these fortunate stocks must have consisted in being just big enough people to hold their own, and not so great as to be tempted into high treasons and other dangerous adventures. I don't think James I. caught many of them to be made baronets.

I am glad they went on, and still go on, as plain gentlemen; it is one of the things that make an English gentleman's position unique.

James I. (to return to his new creation) was even careful to provide against corruption and extortion ; every newly created baronet was to take his oath that he had not directly or inPirectly given more for the dignity than the regulation price as