Adela, which was second at Leicester; and the gay and snug Rosa, which was first as a calf at Manchester. Prince Arthur also holds his court, and one out of three bullocks, under Christmas high pressure, is a beauty. Mr. Brebner considers that the Devons prove earlier, and have more good internal fat than other cattle. About fifty head of bullocks, of the three different sorts, graze in the Park. We had not time to go on to the Rapley Farm, where Galloways are the beasts in possession; and we turned home once more by the conservatory and the little chapel in the Forest. At length we wind round the craggy base of the Royal Statue-" Patri Optimo Georgius Rex "--whose outstretched finger is said to point to the place of his royal birth; and so, as the twilight gathers in, and the stags' rutting bellow at the distance alone breaks the silence, we drop down the great elm avenue to Windsor once more.

H. H. D.

E

VOL. IV., N. S. 1869.

THE CHRISTIAN VAGABOND,

BY BLANCHARD JERROLD.

CHAPTER I.

THE CHAPEL OF EASE OF AGE.

*

old was he, in that company of the aged, that Dame Rebecca implored Sister Ursula to put back the lapping frill of her nightcap, that she might strive, with her dim.

sight of ninety years, to make out his face and figure. He had had the ancient force and frame; and still, although there was infinite weariness in his face, and lassitude in the movement of his stoutly set limbs, he appeared of a race and build whereof we see only rare examples in these later days of an enervating civilisation. Dame Rebecca was the eldest by nine years of the old dames who were gathered about the Vagabond; and she had been, for a year or two, a curious sight to the visitors whom Sister Ursula brought to her bedside. The constant wonder of the sisterhood was-would Dame Rebecca see a century out? They could find no ailment in her. She had neither cough nor craze. Only the lamp gave a pale light-as a beacon seen from afar. The old lady seemed to speak and look from a mighty distance; and the face was not capable of much change of expression. It was sweet and placid: lighted coldly as with the flickering of a corpse-candle. The wrinkles had lost their depth by dint of stealing one upon the other, until the human mask was broken up like the ancient glaze on jars oldfashioned mothers prize. The colour was solid yellow, white at points or nearly so; but nowhere suggesting the movement of blood beneath.

As she looked, supported in the bed by Sister Ursula, Dame Rebecca held forth her hand to the Vagabond. It was of sallowgrey colour, and so thin and frail, the Stranger took it in his ample palm

"What is age?

But the holy place of life, the chapel of ease
For all men's wearied miseries."-MASSINGER.

with the utmost gentleness. And then he bent forward and placed his lips quietly upon the wrinkled brow of the dame, saying:

"Peace be with you, my sister; you have journeyed far."

As the Vagabond withdrew his touch from hand and brow, Dame Rebecca's face beamed with a passing light; and she sank back upon her pillow. The quiet fingers of Sister Ursula played tenderly about the venerable head, smoothing every fold of the clothes-while from the poor mouth, broken out of all shape, came murmurs of something that seemed to be of the far away.

And while the Vagabond looked steadfastly upon the old, old plaything of Time before him, marking all the wonders the years had wrought, without being able to lay an icy finger upon that human heart; he said, as to himself, unmindful wholly of the silent host of the aged who had gathered about him :

"It is a good face. Smooth the brow: plump the cheeks, and pass a Spring's rosy finger over them: set the dew and crimsons of youth upon the lips; remount the pearly portals of speech, and wake girlhood's music in the alabaster throat. Nay, but it must have been a good face. The barely covered skeleton proclaims it. Lady of Charity," the Vagabond continued, laying his hand on the flannel sleeve of a pale figure that hardly reached his belt, at its full height, and without drawing his eyes for an instant from the placid face of Dame Rebecca, "Lady of Charity, your sister hath a noble countenance, as she waits in the antechamber, to pass. She should have garnered, in the almost complete century she has spent under the stars, a profitable round of experiences. That she has suffered I know; for sorrow has scalded every pore of the comely face. It is reverence-worthy by its burden.”

Stealing to the bed-side near Sister Ursula, the Lady of Charity lifted a finger, and inclined her ear.

The eyes of the Vagabond passed from the sleeper to the watcher; from the Sorrow ending upon the bed to the living Beauty, strong and gentle too humble to meet approbation in the eyes of men, and too earnest to be feeble. She was so light that her movements made no noise. The spirit was held to the earth by a thousand threads of sympathies, and not by a single fleshly tie. Not a woman to be wed, save for the sweet example of a perfect mother. And yet beautiful as a woman is, at her best and highest-and, something more. feature to commend, still less any to condemn. An expression that resented praise; and, if aught so gentle could command, compelled worship; a voice, gladdening to the ears, and glorifying to the heart, as the melodies to which a hermit sups in summer woods; an eye,

Νο

under the melting holiness of which anger dropped his arm, and unclosed his hand; and curses sweetened to kisses. But the brush disgraces the Lady of Charity-for never pure, enraptured nun in voluntary prison lying comfortless, saw a brighter presence in his dreams. And still she stood, her flannel robe flowing from over the radiance of her head to confused graces of rippling lines about her "She sleeps," Sister Ursula presently said, softly and dutifully,

by the ear of the Lady of Charity.

Sister Charity-chief sister under the roof which at that moment covered the Christian Vagabond-dropped her lily hand within her flannel folds, and smiled towards the Vagabond-raising her eyes no higher than his girdle. It was then that, for the first time that day, she spake.

"She sleeps!" No softer nor more plaintive note has the nightingale. Sweeter beseeching the sick child has not, than the Lady of Charity bore in her modulation of two simple words.

Sleep, seldom closer in its portraiture of death, fell upon the wasted image of God. Was it worth the trouble of waking again in the antechamber now that all the limbs were composed, and that the spirit's wings were stirring the air?

"Death never had such a counterfeit before," the Vagabond said. "A baby's hand would stay the poor heart: but yet, patiently it beateth onward to the appointed number. Ninety-eight years passed! I cannot tell why I should be so drawn to this bed-I who have seen every aspect of death, and have rested coin enough upon the closed eyes of sisters and brethren to tell a modest man's fortune. I am as one dreaming that I am dreaming; and, all at sea, my brain is on the stretch for some derelict fancy-some treasure-galleon once sighted, and now sunk."

Fifty weird, old faces were turned towards the Christian Vagabond, as he spoke to the air by Dame Rebecca's bedside. Some looked devoutly, some wonderingly, many vacantly, and others interlaced their hands in a neighbourly way; and, albeit frightened, could not forbear from chattering under their breath, as the habit of their lifestage is.

"You know her story, Sister Charity?" the Vagabond asked, moderating and warming his voice and manner.

The Lady of Charity moved from the bed lest her tongue should disturb the sleeper; and bowing, as she passed the Stranger, bade him follow her. But first she did the honours of her house.

It was a holy kingdom, wherein all the inmates-or nearly all— had passed the allotted span of life: and all things were adapted to

There were contrivances

the easy use of palsied men and women. by which the man who had only one valid limb could make it serve him to the utmost. By happy art, the whisper was borne far off to the attentive sister. The old men knew not, under that roof, when the east wind blew. The windows laughed with flowers. Song-birds gladdened the covered galleries where Age sate echoing idly the strains and laughter of youth. There were suites of rooms of various temperatures, about which the guests of the Lady of Charity could travel, taking a season to their liking. No dull, soul-saddening round of sameness in ward and uniform, and food, and hours of sleeping and rising, oppressed the spirits of the guests. They were free to go and come. Only the divine witchery of the eye and lips of her, whom they christened "The Lady," and whom the sisters called simply—albeit she was chief-Sister Charity, kept the house full, and drew supplicants to the gate.

Every morning when the hour of solitude was over-an hour which sisters and guests alike gave up to peace with God and prayer, each according to his own heart and the example he had been taught to follow-the gates were thrown open, and, through a grove of olives, the poor without, paced to the chamber in which the Lady of Charity sate to receive them; but so many were infirm, that it was seldom the Lady kept her seat, for to the first aching creature who limped she gave her chair, and would not be refused. The many whom she could not shelter, she sent away blessing her. Her holy handmaids bound their limbs, cloaked them against the winter, put comforts in their baskets, and were they very feeble or in grievous plight, would accompany them home. "The Lady" kissed her poor as she dismissed them, giving them good counsel, and sustaining them with hopeful words. It was part of the duty of her sisterhood to follow them, and mark their conduct in their daily lives. "The best come to me the first," the Lady said every day. "I wish I could take all." And when she had to chide-as chide she must and could at times she put the force of her reproach in the deeper gentleness of her voice, and smote to the wrong-doer's heart with the genuine tears which a story of sin called into her eyes.

“Leave me, to-day," she would sob to an old woman who had been found yesterday quarrelling with her neighbours, or besotted, or doing an unhandsome action, "leave me : it is too painful to see you. But come back to me soon, and let me kiss you, and some day put you among my best, that I may smooth your pillow, and wipe your feet, and hold your last cup to you, if I may be here when you are called.”