(138 spots), 512 (167 spots, a cannon intervening), 531, and 752 (220 spots, two all-round breaks intervening). Next to Cook, Joseph Bennett has made the largest break on record-viz., 510 off the balls, including 149 consecutive spots. At present Cook is champion, and for some time to come there is every reason to believe that the holder of the cup will be found in either Cook, Bennett, or Roberts, jun., who are the three leading players of billiards. I gather these interesting notes from a new book on billiards, by Joseph Bennett, edited by "Cavendish," and published by De la Rue and Co. This work, for the first time it seems to me, reduces the game to a complete and comprehensive system. "Cavendish" has shown a remarkable capacity in other directions for harmonising and working out general principles; with the aid of a finished player, he has brought his theory of a systematic treatise to a practical issue. The new billiard book must become a necessary companion to those who study the game scientifically.

WHO shall write the Life of Lord Lytton, as that of Dickens is being written by his friend John Forster? I cannot think of any man who has lived in the midst of us down to these last days whose biography would make so varied and so intensely interesting a story of high literary and political life during the last half century. Dickens was always a lion among men of letters; Thackeray was a constant attendant at clubs, and haunted the studios of artists; but the author of "The Caxtons," "The Lady of Lyons," and "King Arthur"-the poet, the pamphleteer, the novelist, the Whig politician, the Tory statesman, the peer: the man who from the beginning of his career was behind the scenes in every phase of public life-political, literary, dramatic, artistic, diplomatic, aristocratic, Bohemian, or whatever else during a period covering the life of two or three generations, must have left behind him the materials of a biographical work hardly less attractive than his most successful book or his most famous play. His letters, his memoranda, his rough literary sketches, his diary, if he has left one, the materials of autobiography whereof we shall most likely hear very soonwill make one of the most popular books of the next ten years. And what if it should contain private revelations ? There are domestic passages in the biography of Dickens which the world is expecting shortly to hear narrated. A mystery as yet unrevealed hangs over the home experience of Thackeray. Already the contemporaries of the author of "Pelham" have been shown a little way

behind the scenes of his married life. Will anything more be told; will misconceptions be removed; will the story as it stands be confirmed; or will not a word be added to the imperfect picture? But first we are all looking for the posthumous novel, "Opinions of Kenelm Chillingley," which happily received the author's own finishing touches before he died. In that he was able to set his seal to the last of his numerous works he was so much more fortunate than Thackeray, Dickens, or Macaulay. The novel must be great to add to his fame. When will England produce another to perform highclass work in so many and such varied fields of intellectual activity?

FEW more interesting controversies, both in a literary and an historical point of view, have ever arisen than the discussion which has recently been carried on respecting the authenticity and genuineness of the Swiss legend in which the archery feats of William Tell are described. The object of this brief note is not to attempt to settle the dispute, but merely to state that the story has penetrated the Arctic circle. In the metrical traditions of Lapland and Russian Karelia all the leading particulars in the life of the Swiss hero are closely reproducedunless, indeed, the story be of Northern origin. In Lapland literature it is varied, so that the son is the active, and the father the passive, personage in the tale. The latter has been taken captive by a band of Finn marauders. The former-a boy twelve years of agethreatens the party with his bow from a position of safety on the other side of a lake. The captors, dreading his skill, promise the father's liberty on a condition similar to that related in the Swiss legend. "Raise one hand and sink the other, for the water will attract the arrow," is the father's advice. The apple is duly cloven, and the father released. The incident of the jump from the boat is also recited; and the northern locality specified as distinctly as the Lucerne of Swiss history. The legend in this form was discovered about thirty years ago by Mathias Alexander Castren, a native of Finland. In the Finnish and Lappish metrical writings he also discovered the leading particulars of the adventure of Ulysses with the Cyclops. From what original source-says a reviewer of Castren's work-or through what channels these traditions have travelled, it is probably vain to inquire or dispute the triumph of courage over numbers, of policy over brute force, has its charm for the rudest nations, and from Jack the Giant Killer to William Tell the key-note of the strain is ever the same.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE

MARCH, 1873.

CLYTIE.

A NOVEL OF MODERN Life.

BY JOSEPH HATTON.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE BRINK.

WO men loved her. One was rich; the other poor. Her whole life was influenced by an accident, a mistake, a misunderstanding, a calumny. They who loved her most were her detractors. Sometimes our best friends are the first to be deceived by appearances which belie us. Tom Mayfield gave her the name of Clytie even before he had spoken to her; she was so round and dimply, and had such wavy hair, and such brown tender eyes, and was altogether so much like the popular statuette of the goddess who was changed into a sunflower for very love. Tom Mayfield was a student in Dunelm University, and he saw Clytie first at a boat-race on the Wear. She was accompanied by her grandfather, the organist of St. Bride's, with whom Tom speedily made friends, that he might have facilities for wooing this belle of the cathedral city.

Tom had already a rival before he had the right to regard any man as his opponent. Love's shadows of doubt and fear had fallen upon him before his sun of hope could even be said to have risen. Tom was poor. Philip Ransford was rich. Tom was a palefaced student, and burnt the midnight oil over hard tasks that were his battles for wealth and fame. Philip Ransford was a big, VOL. X., N.S. 1873.

S

burly fellow, who followed the hounds, belonged to London Clubs, kept a yacht, and was the son of James Ransford, whose cotton factories manufactured money with a daily regularity that at any moment could be made into a sum and reckoned up to the closest nicety.

When Philip Ransford learnt that Tom Mayfield was a frequent visitor at the organist's pretty little house in the Bailey, he swore with his fist clenched that he would ride over Tom in the street, or brain him with his whip-handle.

"Calls her Clytie, does he?" Phil muttered, as he strode along the Bailey on a summer's evening, after a day's salmon fishing up the river; "I'll Clytie him!"

It was glorious to see the sun finding out the moss and lichens in that dull street which echoed the footsteps of Clytie's swashbuckling lover. The quaint gables of St. Bride's flung purple shadows over the road, and the great Cathedral towers rose up strong and bold against the red sky. On one side of the street a high wall shut in the Cathedral Close and St. Bride's; on the other the back entrances of some dozen houses opposed the gloom of the mossy wall; but now and then you had a peep of paradise, for the fronts of the houses looked out upon the Wear, and here and there a door was open, showing a long vista of lawn and garden, of tree and river, and of distant hills cold and blue, in contrast with the red of the sun which set behind St. Cuthbert's towers. Farther down the street called the Bailey, as you came to a bend of the way, an arch closed the road. It seemed to be filled with a picture of laburnum, lilac, and elm, with a bit of balustrade and a shimmering glimpse of river. This was an outlet into the Banks, separated from the Bailey by the Prebend's Bridge, on which Tom Mayfield first saw Clytie, who lived within the Bailey, and a few yards on this side of that lovely picture of laburnum, lilac, and elm framed in the crumbling old archway of Prebend's Bridge.

The Hermitage was a small house. It was hard to divine how it had come to find a place among the fine houses which were built on either side of it, with gardens sloping down to the beautiful northern river. It was rented at only twenty-five pounds a year; but it belonged to the Dean and Chapter, and they were very particular about their tenants. Indeed, it was looked upon as a patent of respectability to be allowed to rent the Hermitage. Old Luke Waller, when he arrived in Dunelm with his grandchild, then an infant of six, brought a special letter of introduction to the Dean from a noble lord, through whose influence he had been appointed

organist of St. Bride's, at the handsome salary of two hundred a year, one hundred and fifty of which came out of his lordship's purse, unknown to Luke Waller, whose antecedents were a complete blank to the citizens of Dunelm.

Luke had a history that would have astonished the ancient city of St. Cuthbert. Sometimes when he was playing the voluntary at church, and thinking of the past, he got his story mixed up in the music, and found himself wandering in imagination through the streets of London. It had been necessary on several occasions for the parson to send a message round to the organ-loft to stop the musical reverie with which he was accompanying his reminiscences. On these occasions Luke Waller would suddenly pull himself together and go through the service with an earnestness that lent additional charms to the quiet simplicity which marked the orthodoxy of St. Bride's. But he would go back again with Clytie when the church was empty, lock the doors, get the girl to blow for him (it was a small organ, and she delighted in the work), and play out his dream. He was a strange old man-a tottering, grey-headed old man, with almost a youthful blue eye, white teeth, and cheeks like the streaky side of an old-fashioned apple, red and wrinkly. Life to him was a daily devotion to the happiness of his granddaughter, Mary, or Clytie, as I have re-christened her in deference to the poetic fancy of Tom Mayfield, and for some suggestiveness in the name which may be justified hereafter.

Phil Ransford entered the Hermitage on this summer evening of my story, with his fishing tackle and a creel containing a brace of salmon, which in all their red and silvery beauty he laid on a bed of grass before Luke and Clytie.

"Those are fine fish,” said Mr. Waller.

"I brought them for your acceptance, if you will oblige me," said Phil.

Clytie looked up admiringly at Phil's manly figure, and smiled with a quiet satisfaction.

"Thank you,” said the old man--"thank you, Mr. Ransford; one will be quite enough for us."

I

"You can pickle the other," said Phil; "your cook is up to that, suppose, eh, Miss Waller ?"

"Oh, yes," said Clytie.

"Yes, she can cook," said Mr. Waller; "that must be said in her favour."

Phil had sat down, and laid his fishing-rod in a corner of the

room.