then held, though without knowing it, the questionable theory of Cain the man-slayer-that I was not my brother's keeper. I thought, that to his own parish he stood or fell, and that salvation was a thing limited by boundary stones and landmarks. I might have shuddered to put it into these plain words, though the only reason for not doing so, lay in the fact, that they were too truthful.

"I dare say, Enderby," said the doctor, after we had walked some little way in silence" I dare say you may have wondered why I never come to Springclose. The fact is, I am so well satisfied with our parson over yonder, that I seldom go elsewhere. Indeed, until the last few months, I went nowhere." "Over there?" said I, putting his words interrogatively"where ?"

The doctor pointed to a house just discernible over the next range of hills, which I at once recognized as marking the whereabout of Mr. Jeroboam Waddington. The hill before it was the identical one up which I had walked some years before with Major Goode, when the merits of this wonderful man were discussed, as mentioned in a former paper.

"Impossible?" I added, as I made sure that the doctor's finger moved in the direction referred to, "You surely don't listen to that fellow Waddington ?"

"Waddington!" exclaimed the doctor, in a tone of indignant remonstrance-"not I-it was quite enough to hear of him. He went off some months since, and nobody knows where he has gone; and perhaps nobody cares-but the poor shopkeepers who have lost money by him. He owed a long score at the Starling!"

Though I now recollected what I had heard on my last visit to the Walkinshaws, I was surprised to learn the sad sequel. Major Goode, whom I had seen not long since, had said nothing of it, and his wife seemed as light-hearted as ever. But these slips are seldom thought much of by persons of the same school; and the probability is, that Mr. Waddington was now busy in raising another "cause" in some remote village, whither, if he were to be believed, he had been driven by "persecution." On subsequent enquiry, I found that he had lost his character in the place by conduct which, if not actually criminal, was, at

least, highly suspicious, and though his finances were not crippled, he had disappeared without betraying any great anxiety to pay off his debts there.

Growing interested in each other's conversation, we had neither of us noticed that the sky had become suddenly overcast, as is not unfrequently the case on a sultry summer's morning. A shower at this moment suspended our conversation, and we were glad to take shelter in a ruined kiln on the hill-side till it was over. The wild thyme breathed out a richer fragrance as we sallied forth afterwards, and the little rills gushed onward with a louder song. Yet their mission was the same. They still hastened to their confluence. Increase of strength brought no wish for independence; it only gave them greater meetness for their work, and enabled them to break down or turn aside every obstacle that lay between them and their destination. We crossed many of them in our walk that morning, and when we reached the garden-wall of Bath-hanan, the stream there was swollen to a torrent and rushed under the dark arch that led into the grounds with a noise like that of a mill-dam.

"Bath-hanan Pavilion"-for so it was named on the colored lamp that overhung the entrance gate-was an odd place; a starch, square, formal town-house, dropped down in the midst of country scenery, and surrounded by high bare walls of brick. The stream, which as we have said ran through the garden, might have been made highly ornamental to the property, but by a singular perversion of good taste, it had been severed into half-a-dozen rills, each of which in its course turned about as many toy-windmills and cherry-clappers. Instead of beauty, there was noise and vulgar show, as the little hammers kept up a perpetual clickety clack, and the useless wheels spun round and round. It was a curious and instructive problem, for it shewed by a very intelligible symbol how usefulness might be split into empty clamour, and how the deep-mouthed harmony of truth might be so anatomized, that the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal of profession should become alone predominant.

Even in the height of summer the place looked bare and cold. A few trees and shrubs ornamented the garden, but they had as yet attained but little growth. Every thing was harsh,

tasteless, and repulsive, which was the more surprising to me as I had expected to find it far otherwise; the lady who occupied the place, and under whose direction the whole had been planned, being no other than Miss Walkinshaw, late of the Lindens, who having reached an age at which unmarried ladies begin to think themselves aggrieved, and grow misanthropic, had removed thither to live quietly upon her own property, of which she had been perfect mistress for some years past.

"From the name she had bestowed on her dwelling, I at once conjectured that she had "followed" Mr. Waddington, as the phrase is; but in this I was mistaken. Few persons whose religion is in their lives, are very solicitous of parading it in their names; and experience has generally taught me that those who, like Miss Walkinshaw, call themselves "daughters of grace," are usually amongst the most graceless. Hence I supposed that the religion of word professed by the worshippers at the Hill Mizar would have exactly suited her temperament. But I found to my surprise she had never been there, and on asking Dr. Shoveller, who it seems had made her acquaintance when she removed to his neighbourhood, and now knew her intimately, it appeared she was in the habit of attending the little church of Picton Montague, some five or six miles off in the opposite direction. This church was a quaint, old fashioned place, lying in a secluded hollow almost surrounded with trees. The few houses which formed the village nestled together near the summit of one of the hills which overlooked it, and for this reason it is conjectured by antiquaries, to have obtained its old name of Peaktown, now modernized into Picton. The adjunct of Montague it derived from an old family of that name who had long held the manor, of whom Sir Skyffen Montague, an acquaintance of the Walkinshaws, claimed to be the present representative. On one of my earliest recorded visits to this latter family, I had noticed his card in the drawing room at the Lindens, and when sent for thither on a subsequent occasion, it will be remembered that a carriage was just rolling off as I arrived, in which were a gaily-dressed lady and gentleman. These were no other than Sir Skyffen and his wife; and that visit, trivial as it seemed, exercised a deep and abiding influence on the silly inmates of the Lindens.

Sir Skyffen Montague was a real, live baronet, and though somewhat gauche, and not distinguished either for good manners or good sense, inherited a large patrimony, and was, as already hinted, of very ancient family, True, he could not trace his pedigree so far back, or so satisfactorily as the poorest jew-salesman in our streets, who bears ample evidence in his face and in his speech, that he had Abraham to his father— but still he was of good aristocratic lineage.

Now the Walkinshaws were just as much vowed to gentility, as were the old Ephesians to Diana; and for the image that fell down from Jupiter, they merely substituted the model that came down from Rank. Not that wealth or family always confer these; but if the world think so, it amounts to much the same thing. So the young ladies at the Lindens finding that the Montagues were willing to recognize the connexion, did all in their power to coax it into full development. Amongst many things that were distingué in the doings of the Montagues, their religion, such as it was, held a prominent place. Their minister at Picton was a "choice" young man; and the whole circle of worshippers in that little church were very select. Yet in truth, if the truth must be spoken, the doctrines preached there were an easy form of spurious and diluted Calvinism, which was neither milk nor strong meat. A curious old friend of mine described it very graphically as "declamation and water.” Though less vulgar than Mr. Waddington, his teachings were about as unlikely to be influential on the lives of his hearers; and indeed there was little evidence amongst any of them that they understood the true end of preaching. Yet to this church, led by a wish to please their richer friends, the Walkinshaws managed usually to find their way once every Sunday, having, without alleging any reason, quitted their accustomed pew at Springclose-so feeble is the tenure by which such persons are retained in any duty when "some new thing" comes across their path, or a prospect of empty wonderment from the world awaits the change.

We must here take leave of the family at the Lindens, now reduced in numbers by the retirement of Miss Walkinshaw to Bath-hanan, and the settlement of Louisa in a nunnery in the

West of England. For, as already stated, the last-mentioned young lady had attained her majority, and having no longer any control over her finances she had joined the sisterhood respecting which she had written home at such length; and though so anxious to show that she was no Romanist, was in the daily practice of all the silly rites and will-worship and soul-deadening forms of Popery. Mr. and Mrs. Walkinshaw and their second daughter still flitted through life as if it had no resting point. Floating on, they now rose higher as they felt the favoring gales of flattery or empty admiration, and now sank, as some unlooked-for mortification touched their gentility to the quick. Even the Sabbath brought no rest-no satisfaction-no cessation from the busy heart-corroding anxieties of objectless idleness: it was more sunshiny, perhaps, than the other days of the week, but then it was more wearisome from its very glare and brightness. There was neither health nor appetite in anything they thought, or said, or did.

And little-sadly little-was the prospect of improvement. Every thing lay on the surface. You might touch that sometimes and cause a stirring in the outward complexion of affairs, but the ripples thus awakened would soon disperse to nought. You could have no hold on such characters. To reach the secret

springs of action was impossible; and even could have got

you

at them, like Agur's prayer against riches, they had lain so long out of use as to become almost rusty. There had been no cultivation or discipline of heart or head-they believed any thing or everything at caprice-they felt at convenience, and acted by impulse, if anything so powerful lived within them. Thus they dreamed away life to wake up to stern and awful realities in Eternity, and find themselves firm in the iron grasp of the "powers of the world to come."

But to resume. The doctor, as we walked onward, talked much, and with a feeling of genuine humility, of the religious workings which had lately gone on in his own mind. He told me frankly that he had been accustomed to look upon christianity as a trade; and said he, with a faithfulness more honest than welcome, "the parsons have themselves to thank for it in some respect. I can tell you why," he added, "they make so little head against the world—they are divided and re-divided,