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RUTH NEVILLE.

"On, Grace, on for life-nay, never stop to say farewell-hear you those shrieks. Bertram, in God's name mount her on the black horse-it is the swiftest. Herman-why do you tarry? you will kill me if aught happens to her. Bertram -gallop for life or death." But her voice was almost lost in the mad yells which grew louder and nearer every moment.

"Grace-leave go my neck-you must-you shall away-they clamour for your blood; Grace, I implore you leave me."

"Ruth, come with me. I will not leave you to their rage and fury, twice to destroy you, to rack your mind first, blight its peace, and now leave your poor fragile frame to the savage fury of that horrid crowd. but never leave you. call for me ?"

Ruth, I will die with you,
How do you know they

Ruth drew the fatal placard from her pocket. There was the one word still; the reward, all there before her. But the yells increased more and more; the cottage was surrounded, the doors besieged. With a desperate effort Ruth dragged the encircling arms of Grace away; by force she was lifted on to the horse; in another moment Bertram and old Herman were mounted, and the galloping of the steeds' feet was soon lost in the shouts of the yelling crowd.

But now Ruth's attention was directed to the cottage, for execrations and expressions of disappointed rage burst from the rabble.. Their prey had escaped them, gone they knew not whither. Pursuit was their next thought, and acting on that thought, they turned into the path where Ruth stood. There she was before them-there -and with a cry of exultation the ringleaders sprang forward and seized her; hurrying her on; loading her with abuse, shouting in her cars each coarse and brutal epithet. And Ruth bore it all; for she saw that their mistake-the mistake of supposing they had the real culprit would effectually screen Grace, would give her ample time to escape-so she walked on with her savage conductors, speaking no word, uttering no sound, rejoicing-yes, rejoicing in the part she was playing. Into her cottage, into her own little parlour. They placed her in a chair, they bound her to it; some dozen of the ruffians remained in the room with her, their coarse language ringing in her ears, their ribald mirth calling the hot blood to her pale cheek.

A detachment of the party had gone to Douglas with the news of her capture, and now they waited but the arrival of the proper authorities, to convey her to Castle Rushen. And she knew all this, and sat there still, calm, unconcerned, unfaltering. A few hours more and she would tell her own tale; it might be believed or not-she scarcely cared; but those few hours would save her sister, so there she remained among that lawless crew. Her quiet dignity seemed even to awe them, for by degrees their loathsome jokes ceased, and only a few remarks mingled with some oaths,

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(for these had become part of their natural language, and they had lost a sense of the sin in the frequency of the repetition), fell from them. So went the night away; a night which set its brand on the brain of Ruth Neville--the memory of which clung to her while life lasted, turning her dark hair to silver, planting deep furrows on her brow; and transforming her at once from youth to the premature old age of sorrow.

Daylight came at last, and with daylight the officials, who were to convey Ruth to Castle Rushen. And Herman? He had not returned, so Ruth was still in uncertainty as to the fate of the fugitives.

"Your name is Neville, Ma'am."

It was a constable, or some other legal person, who thus addressed her. Ruth did not know who he was, she was anxious only about Gotlieb, for he ought to have been back; so she answered mechanically, "Yes."

Then came some other questions, then some painful legal explanation or form, and then Ruth stepped into the car which was waiting for her, and telling Amalia, Herman's old wife, to follow her as soon as he returned, set off for Castle Rushen.

As the carriage reached the top of Laxey Hill, Ruth looked over the calm waters of the Irish Sea. A vessel-a cutter-her masts bending under a load of canvas, stood boldly out to sea. Ruth knew that small craft well, and she could hardly help an expression of joy as she caught sight of it, Could those on board have seen how, and wherefore she was there watching them—their expressions would have taken anything but the semblance of joy. But the fate of those two sisters was but an epitome of the world's justice-the innocent jolted uneasily over its rough roads, the guilty gliding smoothly over its sunlit waters.

That night Ruth sat alone in her cell at Castle Rushen. Money had procured her some additional comfort in the way of food and furniture, but it was a horrible place for one so young and good.

Some one craved to see her; and the request being accompanied with the usual order for admittance, was granted, and Herman Gotlieb entered. He was changed, utterly changed, in aspect during the last few hours. He avoided her glance, did not address her, but stood gloomily beside her. There was a turnkey in the room, and Ruth could not speak as she wished; could not ask distinctly all she wanted to know; so she was obliged to veil her questions, and be content with ambiguous an

swers.

"Did you leave all well, Herman ?"

He bent his head, as his grey eye rested on her, and told her all she asked.

"Have you been home? But of course you have, or you would not know where to find me."

How difficult it is to talk, when a third person mars the intercourse we wish to hold with one with whom we have some object of more than common interest. We pause-and then begin

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and pause again-and then utter some commonplace remark, which means nothing, and says nothing, while our heart is bursting with the one thought we long to utter!

Thus was it now. Ruth longed to ask Gotlieb how poor Grace had fared-and Gotlieb longed to say something to Ruth: but the turnkey was there, so both Ruth and Gotlieb were obliged to be silent for that day at least. But a thought had struck Ruth-a thought she determined to act on. Money, she had no doubt, would purchase a few moments' seclusion, therefore she asked Gotlieb for her purse. He understood her, and replied that he would return with it on the following morning.

And the following day he came; and a few golden pieces purchased the absence of the turnkey, and then Ruth could talk to Herman without

reserve.

"My sister, Gotlieb ?"

"She left within two hours of your parting from her, and by this time is crossing the Atlantic, far from all pursuers. Let her rest. I must speak of yourself. You must no longer lie here. The mistake can now be rectified-the truth owned." "Are you sure she is safe ?"

"Not quite. The 'Sea-bird' may be detained in Liverpool. We cannot be sure that she is safe till the cutter returns."

"When will the cutter return ?"

the packet, and in a short time Douglas was but a distant speck.

The

But the Captain now looked grave and anxious, for the vessel could make no way. The wind howled horribly-great waves came rolling in like monsters ready to destroy the fated vessel. bright forked lightnings played through the murky clouds as if all creation had been given up to them, for the benefit of their mad gambols.

The waves looked black-black as night-a sea of ink-with white crested monsters dancing here and there in mocking glee.

A shriek-for one monstrous billow had struck the vessel. She trembled-shivered-recoiled. It was a moment of horror, but it passed; and as she recovered from the fearful shock, she again held on her course- if that could be called “holding on " which was merely remaining as an almost stationary mark for the wild fury of the waves.

And now there was a whisper of dismay, for the engine fires were out, and the poor disabled vessel seemed but a mere wreck. Another moment and the horrible cry, of "a leak" was heard, and all hands were ordered to the pumps; the water was deepening in the hold. Work as the sailors would, the leakage gained on them; the packet was filling fast; if she could only hold on a little, Liverpool might be gained, but the tide had turned, and was now against her.

Ruth stood on the deck of the sinking vessel,

"When your sister and her husband have sailed, calm, but not unconcerned; she never was unconsuch were my orders."

"Then I remain here until such time."

She was inflexible, and Herman was obliged to yield to her. That evening, the cutter was again on the shores of the Isle of Man, and brought intelligence of the embarkation of Grace and her husband.

Then Ruth consented that the truth should be known. There was great indignation-a general outcry-but the indignation and the outcry were futile. It was proved beyond a doubt that Ruth was not the person against whom the warrant had been granted; therefore she could no longer be detained. So she was set at liberty, and the law lost a victim; the lawyers lost a case; those bloodhounds who had taken her lost their reward.

But the Isle of Man was now no place for Ruth. On a cold grey morning, when the sea and horizon both look of the same leaden hue, and the earth is a stranger to the warm sunbeam-she left. The wind was blowing keenly, and as she approached Douglas it was whispered that there would be danger in crossing to Liverpool. Ruth cared nothing for danger on her own account, but she had no right to peril the lives of the old servants who attended her. So she appealed to them, and gave them the choice of crossing that day, or delaying their departure until the morrow.

Herman decided on the former plan, and his wife, as a matter of course, coincided in the decision. The luggage was therefore put on board

cerned for the miseries of others. She looked at those straining seamen, and she thought of the wives, the little ones who depended on them for support-and she wept, wept for the sorrow she saw might be. Then she heard her name pro nounced in a strange, low tone, and turning, she beheld Gotlieb.

"Miss Ruth, dear lady, dear mistress-I would speak with you."

She was alarmed, and fancied the terrors of the storm had scared him, for he looked so wild and haggard.

"Come this way, I have much to say to youa horrid secret to cast off my soul, for if I mistake not we are on the threshold of eternity."

He drew her to the end of the vessel, holding her firmly, for the sea rolled fearfully.

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RUTH NEVILLE.

impress of the old clergyman's seal, and a pencilied paragraph on the cover from him, stating that, although he was himself ignorant of the contents, Herman had sworn to their truth.

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boldly asked for that which we did not want. A glance at that now unveiled face-and it was the very face which for ten years we had thought of by day, dreamt of by night-the face of dear

"Gotlieb, how did this come into your posses- Ruth Neville; and her bright smile-and her scarsion, and who is the murderer ?"

let blush told us the meeting was as welcome to

"I wrote that paper; it is my own confession-her as to us. for the murderer stands before you." She recoiled from him.

She was very much changed; but the kind thoughtful face wore its old expression. Her voice

"You, Gotlieb-and wherefore ?-what harm had its own peculiar tone, and there was the same

could that poor babe have done you ?"

I

"None. But I hated the mother and her paramour, and I swore to have my revenge on them. I hated her for she had broken your heart. hated him for he had been false to you. I hated both for their joint crime of bringing disgrace on the good old name. I entered her room that night with a false key-for hers was withdrawn from the lock-I told her to do that, persuading her that it was safer. She slept soundly-for I had ensured that also-her evening meal had been drugged. I painted her face and hands with her child's blood, for I meant the suspicion to fall on her, and I would have given my life to see her hung. She was proud and haughty, and she never spoke to me as you did--and then-when she took your place with him, I swore she should rue it bitterly."

For one moment he stood silently beside her as if he expected her to speak. Then-ere she could stay him, a bound--a plunge-and the boiling sea closed over him for ever. It was impossible to save him, they were compelled to abandon him to his fate.

And now the ship seemed to make better way,the sea was quieter. The sailors worked still unflaggingly, but the success of their efforts would have been doubtful, had not a steam tug come to their assistance, and dragged the vessel safely up the Mersey.

Ten years passed, and we had undertaken a We were pedestrian tour through North Wales. sauntering near the foot of Snowdon one evening, when we met a lady walking silently, sadly along the road. There was something which reminded us of days gone by-of scenes perhaps, of other lands and other days-and, with an uncontrollable impulse, we bent our steps in the same direction as hers. She was so closely veiled that we could not see her face, but she very soon came to a small cottage (which, as we imagined she would) she entered.

Now, we thought, the veil will be raised; what excuse have we for entering? A glass of water. Good. It will do. So we went in boldly, and as

graceful movement and gesture-for Ruth, like her sister, was very graceful.

She told us she was living in the neighbourhood, in a paradise of a cottage; and she invited us to come and see her; but she said she had many more visits to pay ere she could return, and we must even go with her and pay them, or wait while she went and paid them alone. We preferred going with her, and so we went; and stood stupidly and uselessly by in each cottage she enteredstaring at her as she spoke her words of love and kindness.

How the village children loved her! She was friend, mother, companion to them. Were they sick?her shoulder was the pillow for each feverish head.

Were they well and merry? She joined in their mirth, and made that mirth more mirthful. Her life was happy, because useful; there was no sickly, sentimental sorrowing, no maudlin repining about, or allusion to, blighted hopes and misplaced affection, to an existence whose whole peace had been destroyed; no pondering over what "had been," "might have been;" Ruth Neville was noble-hearted woman, conductiug herself nobly in every phase of her eventful life.

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And now we whisper one little secret. For ten long years we had a lingering hope that Ruth Neville might some day be Ruth Neville no longer. And so one day we told her, but she shook her little head-and muttered some nonsense about "many more worthy in the world," which we did not believe one bit.

We should have been very miserable at the shake of the head-but her own bright smile played around her mouth, and negativing the shake, bade us hope-and we do hope-hope auxiously for the day when, at God's altar, we shall take Ruth Neville for our own, dear, glorious wife.

And, moreover, the day is not far off, we fancy-for we think we heard another whisperand the whisper was

"Not yet, dear Ralph. Let the bright spring come first, this dreary winter pass. 'Twill metaphor my life, Ralph-its cold and sorrow over-its time of sunny gladness coming."

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"The honourablest part of talk is to give the occasion; and then to moderate again, and pass to somewhat else."-Lord Bacon.

PLAGIARISM.

THE ethics of Literary Originality have yet to be settled. Whoever reads and remembers knows very well that correspondences, even of a close and verbal kind, are frequent between writers of all classes, whom mankind have long ago, and for all time, admitted to the highest honours; and that they occur so frequently, and under circum-; stances so equivocal, that the question of origin is, in eight cases out of ten, indeterminable. More over, any one who is in the habit of thinking as well as reading, (whether he write out his thoughts or nct,) soon discovers enough of his own liability to excogitate ideas which have been produced before, to make him cautious in bringing charges of "plagiarism." If the same thought and the same illustration occur to two different people, a similar form of expression follows as a matter of course, and it is the gratuitous churlishness of pedantry to take for granted that A, who says something noticeable in almost the very words of B, has read B. It is quite possible he may never have done so. The writer of these lines has been before now suspected of imitating authors whom, he has never seen—with the unfortunate addition that they were authors who n it is assumed every reading man must have read. On the other hand, he has just found out in a standard philosophical work to which he will not now more particularly refer, a sentence so startlingly like one of his own that, until he had ascertained that the work in question was written several years ago, he suspected an unconscious appropriation-his own sentence having occurred in a casual paper which was rather freely quoted at the time. He could greatly multiply such instances, from his own experience and that of literary friends-instances, that is, of correspondence, minute and verbal, in cases where appropriation, conscious or unconscious, was absolutely impossible.

But it is certain that this word "correspondences" does not suffice to cover all the cases in which great writers have produced passages like those of other writers. Malone (I have not read him, but I quote him on the authority of Emerson) says of the First, Second, and Third parts of Henry VI., that "out of 6,043 lines, 1,771 were written by some author preceding Shakespeare; 2,375 by him, on the foundation la d by his predecessors; while 1,899 were entirely his own." The case of Shakespeare, as re-creating a dramatic literature (if we should not rather say creating it), was peculiar; and so was that of Chaucer-also instanced by Mr. Emerson. But often there is a cer tain insouciance in the highest order of minds as to

where their material comes from. In truth we may observe that the man of genius is distinguished by two characteristics-1. He says things that never were said before; 2. He says things that have been said from time immemorial by men of genius. A third characteristic is that he is a constant self repeater. No writer that is worth twopence has more than half-a-dozen good things to say, and these he keeps on turning in and out, and applying here and there in new ways, so that the profane vulgar fancy he is propounding novelties, while the elite (such as you and I) and himself know that it is nothing of the sort.

After all, there is such a crime as plagiarism recognised in the Republic of Letters, and in very flagrant cases we all know it for what it is. Coleridge was a plagiarist when he deliberately cribbed from Schelling.* Sterne was a plagiarist when he almost copied from Sir Thomas Browne. But between absolute originality, and absolute plagiarism, there is a wide borderland in which it is not always easy to find the right word for characterising a particular instance in which one author may be, or seem to be, indebted to another. The following observations may not be quite unworthy of attention :—

I. In every generation there will probably be a large number of writers-chiefly, perhaps, poetic writers-in whom facility will tread rather closely on the heels of genius, without the presence of any great amount of imaginative faculty. Writers of this stamp will be likely to produce from the resources of their own minds precisely those sorts of ideas which are of frequent occurrence in good literature-ideas which, excellent in themselves, lie very much upon the surface of the topics in nature and life to which they belong. In other words, the originality of such minds will have all the appearance of borrowing. Gray was an instance in point. Thomas Wharton is another. It has been said that "every line" of Gray's Elegy, immortally meritorious as it is, "may be traced to another." The real truth is, not that Gray stole his ideas, but that he hit upon such ideas in the poetry of his theme as poetic minds of all ranks would be pretty sure to seize. Hence, he was original in the sense of not being a plagiarist, but not original in the sense of saying things before unsaid. Yet something of high originality belongs

*It is said, however, that Coleridge would sometimes attribute his own remarks to other people, in forgetfulness Some men of their origin. soon forget the origin of ideas once assimilated. I have a friend who will repeat my own remarks to my face as if they were his own, and new, a few days after I have made them.

PLAGIARISM.

to Gray; for what he wrote was quite individual -his manner was his own. The same remark does not apply with quite equal force to Wharton; but he belongs to the same order of minds.

II. Minds not overstrong assimilate crudely and give off too readily, so that the work of others shows through theirs when theirs is done. Poets, says Shelley, are a very chameleonic race, and betray what they have been feeding on by their colour. Let us illustrate by example. Longfellow is a great, a very great, borrower, and I scarcely know what verdict to pass upon some of his " appropriations" of other men's ideas and words. But, apart from all question of plagiarism, no poet that ever sang (and a poet I call him*) shows in his works more frequent traces of the suggestions of other men. In the "Golden Legend" are these well-known and beautiful lines :

PRINCE HENRY.

I cannot sleep! my fervid brain

Calls up

the vanished past again.

Come back! ye friendships long departed,
Come back! ye friends whose lives are ended,
Come back, with all that light attended,
Which seemed to darken and decay,
When ye arose and went away.

They come, the shapes of joy and woe,
The airy crowds of long ago,

The dreams and fancies known of yore
Which have been and shall be no more-
They change the cloisters of the night
Into a garden of delight..

and so forth, till LUCIFER come out of the flash of lightning. Now, for a restless man to be thinking of his friends by night is common enough; any poet may use the situation. But certain features in the metre and phraseology here inevitably suggest a passage in the first canto of the "Lady of the Lake," verse xxxiii., rather too strongly to permit us to escape from the idea that Longfellow was a debtor to Walter Scott,-unconsciously a debtor, and not so to any large extent, but still a debtor,-in the construction of those lines. Let

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Of varied perils, pains, and woes.
Then,-from my couch may heavenly might
Chase that worst phantom of the night!
Again returned the scenes of youth,
Of confident, undoubting truth;
Again his soul he interchanged

With friends whose hearts were long estranged.
They come, in dim procession led,

The cold, the faithless, and the dead,

As warm each hand, each brow as gay,

As if they parted yesterday, &c.

* So does Tennyson. In "In Memoriam," the reference

I hold it true, with him who sings

To one clear harp in divers tones,
That we may rise on stepping stones
Of our dead selves to higher things-

is to Longfellow, and his poem of the "Ladder of St. Augustine."

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This instance will serve for a thousand. Cases of mere suggestion or reminiscence, more or less new, do not receive the name of plagiarism, though their frequency may be taken into account in estimating a writer's strength.

III. Neither is plagiarism the word to use, when similarity of phrase arises from the employment of unavoidable epithets, or quite natural epithets (however common), or commonplaces in composition. A sharp-sighted weekly contemporary has included in its list of "plagiarisms" of Mr. Alexander Smith several passages which are excluded by the exceptions just laid down. A few may be selected for comment here:

Some soft and soul-subduing air.-Smith.

Her soul-subduing voice applied.-Collins.

This is not a case of plagiarism--" soul-subduing" is hackneyed; it is a mere commonplace, at anybody's service. It might be found in a thousand places besides.

Checquered my page with shadows of the grass.-Smith.

Checquered with woven shadows, as I lay
Among the grass-W. Allingham.

The same remark applies.

The passage is a com

monplace in both writers. The next quotations are more doubtful:

Loose as a film that flutters on the grate.-Smith. Only the film that flutters in the grate.-Coleridge. This is not precisely a commonplace-but the "film" in question is so natural an image for "looseness," and it is so natural to describe it as "the film that flutters in the grate," that a score of poets might write the line without borrowing

from each other. It comes under the same category as

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Among his dames, faint-challenged, claps his wings,
And crows defiance to the distant farms.-Smith.
Stoutly struts his dames among.-Milton.

The shrill defiance of all to arms
Shrieked by the stable cock received

An angry answer from three farms.-Coventry Patmore. I think any artist with a healthy self-consciousness would avoid coincidences like these, but I do not call them "plagiarisms." You must call the bird in question a cock, a "rooster," or a chanticleer, and the last is the accredited thing in poetry. You must say he "struts," if you describe his movements at all, for he does strut, and nothing else. As for calling the hens his "dames," that again is hackneyed, too hackneyed to be called a plagiarism. And to describe the cock's crow as "defiance so natural that anybody may do it. Once more :Streaks of rain fell on the yellow woods.-Smith. Yellow woods were waning

is

Heavily, the low sky raining-Tennyson Good gracious! Is this a plagiarism? Why,

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