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heaviness and aching in her heart. It was not that she wished to be out listening to the band, moving about in the warm air, hearing the babble of society-that was not what she cared for; but to be lying there out of the current; to have dropped aside out of the stream; to be unable for the common strain of life! So he read, sadly thinking, not knowing what he read; and she half listened, not knowing what she was listening to. It was the first time, and the first time is the worst, though the best. "It is only once in a way," he said to her, when the long evening was over; "to-morrow you will be as well as ever." And so she was. It was the most natural thing in the world that both or either of them should be tired, once in a way.

The Beresfords stayed for a long time on the Continent that year. They went about to a great many places. They stayed at Baden till they were tired of the place. They went to Dresden, because Mrs. Beresford took a fancy to see the great San Sisto picture again. Then they went on to lovely old-world Prague, and to lively Vienna, and through the Tyrol to Milan, and then back again to the Italian lakes. Wherever they went they found people whom it was pleasant to know, whom they had met before on their many journeys, people of all countries and every tongue-noble people, beautiful people, clever people-the sort of society which can only be had by taking a great deal of trouble about it, and which, even with the greatest amount of trouble, many people miss entirely. This society included ambassadors and hill-farmers, poor curés, bishops, great statesmen, and professors who were passing rich on five shillings a day. Nothing was too great or too small for them, and as wherever they went they had been before, so wherever they went they found friends. Sometimes it was only a chambermaid; but, nevertheless, there she was with a pleasant human smile. And, to tell the truth, James Beresford began to be very glad of the friendly chambermaids, and to calculate more where they were to be found than upon any other kind of society; for his wife had followed her usual practice of coming without a maid, and as her strength flagged often, he was thankful, too thankful, to have some one who would be tender of her, and care for her as he himself was not always permitted to do, and as nobody else but a woman could. Oh, how he longed to get home, while he wandered about from one beautiful spot to another, hating the fine scenery, loathing and sickening at everything he had loved! Commonplace London and the Square with its comforts would have pleased him a hundred times better than lovely Como or the wild glory of the mountains; but she would not hear of going home. One day, when the solemn English of a favourite Kammer Mädchen had roused him to the intolerable nature of the situation, he had tried, indeed, with all his might to move her to return. "Your goot laty," Gretchen had said, "is nod-well. I ton't untershtand your goot laty. She would be bedder, mooch bedder at 'ome, in Lonton." "I think you are right, Gretchen," he had said, and very humbly went in to try what he could do. "My love," he said, "I am beginning to get tired

of the Tyrol. I should like to get home. The Societies are beginning. I see Huxley's lectures start next week. I like to be there, you know, when all my friends are there. Shouldn't you be pleased to get home?" "No," she said. She had been lying on the sofa, but got up as soon as he came in. "You know I hate autumn in London; the fogs kill me. I can't-I can't go back to the fogs. Go yourself, James, if you please, and attend all your dear societies, and hear Mr. Huxley. Take me to Como first, and get me rooms that look on the lake, and hire Abbondio's boat for me; and then you can go."

"It is likely that I should go," he said, "without you, my darling! When did I ever leave you? But there are so many comforts at home you can't have here; and advice-I want advice. You don't get better so fast as I hoped."

She looked at him with a strange smile. "No; I don't get better, do I?" she said. "Those doctors tell such lies; but I don't get worse, James; you must allow I don't get worse. I am not so strong as I thought I was; I can't go running about everywhere as I used to do. I am getting old, you know. After thirty I believe there is always a difference."

“What nonsense, Annie! there is no difference in you. You don't get back your strength"

"That's it; that's all. If you were to leave me quite alone and quiet, to recruit now? yes, I think I should like to know that you were in London enjoying yourself. Why shouldn't you enjoy yourself? Women get worn out sooner than men; and I don't want to cripple you, James. No; take me to Como-I have taken a fancy to Como-and then you can come back for me whenever you please."

"I am not going to leave you,” he said, with a sigh. "You must not be unreasonable, my darling. What pleasure would it be to me to go home without you? It was you I was thinking of; for me it is all right. I am quite happy here. As for Huxley and the rest, you don't think I care for them. It was you I was thinking of."

"You said the Societies. Whatever you do, James, speak the truth. I suppose," she added, with a laugh which sounded harsh, "you are afraid I shall get very ill-die perhaps, away from home?"

Poor man! what was he to say? "O, Annie!" he cried, "how you stab me! If I thought anything of the kind, you know I'd have Sir William here to-morrow, or anyone, if it should cost me all I have. I know very well there is no danger," he went on, taking a certain forlorn comfort out of his own bold words; "but you don't get up your strength as you ought, and knocking about in these bare rooms can't be good for you; and, living as we are-and you have no maid—” "I hate a maid. I like Gretchen a great deal better. She makes so much of me."

"Then take Gretchen with you, my dearest; take her to Como; keep her with you till you get home."

"Oh, how like a man that is!" she said, laughing. "Take Gretchen with me-Gretchen, who is her father's only daughter, the life and soul of the place! What would he do without Gretchen? He would have to shut up altogether. I might drop out of the world, and I would not be missed half so much as she would. Do you know I begin to get tired of this place, and the hills, James," she cried, starting up. "Let us go and ask about Donato and his horses. I want to get to Como before October. Why, we'll come in for the vintage! I like the vintage; and there are advertisements everywhere about a sale at one of the villas. be sure to pick up something. Is it too late to start to-day?" "My darling, when you take a thing in your head-" "Yes, to be sure, I like to do it all at once. I was always hot-headed. Now mind, we are to start to-morrow. I always loved Como, James; you know I always did. We went there the first year we were married. I don't call it honeymooning when we don't go to Como; and remember this is our last bout of honeymooning; we shall have Cara next year.”

We shall

She laughed, and was very gay all the evening, delighted with the idea of the change. But when he put her into Donato's big old-fashioned vettura next morning, and saw everything fastened on, and prepared for the long, slow journey, poor Beresford was very sad. He thought, if he could only have a long talk with Maxwell, and hear what Sir William had got to say, and know what it was that he had to fear, he should be less unhappy. There must be something, or she would not be so strange; but what was it? Almost anything was better, he thought, than fighting in the dark-fighting with ghosts, not knowing what you were afraid of. She was quite light-hearted at first, interested with the drive, and waved her hands to the hills as they went slowly out of sight. "Goodbye," she said, "you dear old giants! I hope those white furs of yours will keep you warm till we bring Cara. What will Cara think of the mountains? She never saw anything better than Sunninghill."

"Sunninghill has the effect of being much higher than it is with that great level stretch of flat country. It impresses the imagination just as much as your giants. Don't laugh, Annie; but your mountains stifle I never have air enough to breathe. I like miles and miles of country round me. You know my weakness."

me.

"Sunninghill before the Alps!" she cried, laughing. ""Tis clear you are a true cockney. Give me your shoulder for a pillow, I think I shall go to sleep."

And so she did; and the horses jogged on and on, now slow, now fast, their bells jingling, and Donato's whip making harmless circles and slashes over their heads; and houses and hedgerows, and slopes of mountain, flew past in a dream. James Beresford could see nothing but the wan lines of the face that rested on his shoulder, solemn in that deep sleep of weariness. How worn she was; how pale; growing whiter, he thought, and whiter, till sometimes in terror he stooped down close to make sure that the pale lips were parted by living breath.

A Greek Hymn.

"I PRAISE Demeter the beautiful-haired and her slender-ankled daughter"—so begins a poem which is one of the most beautiful of all antiquity. But before we listen to the voice of the Greek singer himself, let us pause a little, and consider the subject of his song.

Who Demeter and her daughter are, we know. Demeter is the Greek goddess we commonly call by her Roman name Ceres, and her daughter is Persephone, or, as we again say after the Romans, Proserpine. There is nothing unfamiliar in these names, nor in the story which they call to mind. How the maiden was gathering flowers among her playmates when Pluto sprang upon her and took her to be his bride among the dead-how the mother rushed in chase, and in her despair cursed the fruits of the earth so that they grew not-how a covenant was made at last, whereby she won back her child for a part of every year, and took the curse away-all this makes up one of the most moving and best remembered tales of the ancient poets. Even if we were inclined to forget it, our own poets would not suffer us. They are never tired of alluding to it, and have brought it in, again and again, to heighten with a crowning touch their own happiest effects. Thus Shakspeare gives the last charm to that passage of the Winter's Tale, where it seems as though all the sweetness and all the purity of girls and flowers together had passed, by some magical distilment, into his verse, when he makes Perdita think what are the flowers suitable for maids, and then remember Proserpine, and say:

Ah! Proserpina,

For the flowers now which, frighted, thou lett'st fall
From Dis's waggon;* daffodils

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one.

But why repeat that melodious catalogue, which everybody knows by heart? In like manner Milton, in a passage not, like this, of nature and

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inspired fancy, but of great rhetorical opulence, when he has exhausted his own inventions for enriching the landscape of Eden, effects his climax by reciting what other landscapes, the fairest seen or sung of, were nevertheless not so fair as this, and first—

not that fair vale

Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower, of gloomy Dis

Was gathered, which gave Ceres all that pain
To seek her thro' the world.

Generally, we may say, the thought of these goddesses is not only dear to poets, but inspiriting, and has the power of raising them to their best. Without stopping at Schiller's famous Lament of Ceres, or looking beyond our own time and country, we can remember how Mr. Matthew Arnold is at his best when, in the elegy on Clough, he thinks of Moschus and his elegy on Bion, and recalls the wish of Moschus that he might follow the dead Bion down to Tartarus, and catch the notes of the songs he sings in Pluto's halls to Proserpine :

O easy access to the hearer's grace

When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!

For she herself had trod Sicilian fields,
She knew the Dorian water's gush divine,
She knew each lily white which Enna yields,
Each rose with blushing face;

She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain ;*
But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard!
Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirred!
And we should tease her with our plaint in vain.

Or again, there is Mr. Swinburne, who surpasses himself in that Hymn to Proserpine where he puts into the mouth of a Greek of the Theodosian age a last protest against the new creed that is casting out the old, and a last supplication to the goddess to take him from these troubles to her rest.

In some degree or another, then, we have all felt the charm of this myth. As to the meaning and origin of the myth, and the ideas which are embodied in the figures of Ceres and Proserpine, though scholars will have these matters present to their minds, to all of us they may not be so clearly present. The reader who wishes to inquire into them, will find a study of several parts of the subject written by Mr. Pater, with his accustomed charm of thought and style, in two recent numbers of the Fortnightly Review. In a course of lectures at Cambridge last autumn I attempted, myself, a history, such as the labours of many Germans have made possible, of these goddesses and their cycle as they come before us in ancient literature and art. For that history the following translation was originally written. In order to understand of what

* Moschus, iii, 129:

κἀκείνη Σίκελις καὶ ἐν Αἰτναίοισιν ἔπαιξεν

ἄγκεσι, καὶ μέλος οἶδε τὸ Δώριον.

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