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another unfortunate being flung from his horse. Here we have a poor fellow falling out of window, and to keep him in countenance another victim is swimming beside an overturned boat. All these pictures are "votive offerings;" they are hung there by the survivors of accidents and casualties of all kinds, in gratitude for the assumed help and protection of Notre Dame de la Garde. The sailors have tontributed the greater part of the collection. Some of the pictures of maritime rials represent certainly a most terrific state of things, the seas towering over the topmasts. In other cases, owing either to the misinformation of the offerer, or a grudge on the part of the artist against Notre Dame de la Garde, the storm represented is not quite so terrific as may be frequently encountered between Gravesend and the Nore. Chapels of this kind are common in the sea-ports of France. In the northern provinces, where the people are much further advanced than in the south, the vessels represented are almost invariably mere fishing boats, and the humblest class of coasters, showing the rank in life of the offerers. In the south you see great three-masted ships on voyages to China or America preserved from some peril, a puff of a squall for instance, not by the seamanship of her captain or crew, but by the kind interference of Notre Dame de la Garde.

A paragraph more about the harbour of Marseilles. It is the origin of the town, the pride of the town, and the pest of the town; in fact, it plays the part both of harbour and cesspool. All the drainage from the circumambient city find its way, and has done so for ages, into this common receptacle; and as no tides stir the Mediterranean there it lies, there it rots and stagnates, and from there it spreads throughout the city pestilence and death. The Plague at Marseilles is as celebrated a visitation as the Plague of London; and cholera is awfully fatal when it smites the southern city. Visit the quays on a hot summer or autumn day, strong will the olfactory nerves and mighty the stomach of the stranger be, if he can stand the up-pouring of the putrid miasma. The worthy Marseillais boast that they are used to it, and, in fact, that they rather like it than otherwise-but it is overpowering. The hot shiny water is encrusted with a dense and putrid scum; when oars stir it, the fluid gleams and flashes in strange bright colours, and when paddle wheels churn it the clouds of typhoid exhalation sent up are terrible. It is even said that the stagnation gives birth to horrid inarticulate forms of life, and that glutinous, jelly-like snakes and polypi are to be seen gliding amid the corrupted depths. The process of passing in a boat over this salt water cesspool is as pleasant as may be imagined, but you are repaid in an instant after getting clear of the harbour mouth. Then the breeze comes dancing freshly over the brine, and the waves are as pure as salt waves can be. The graceful feluccas go bending under their striped canvass around you. Perhaps half a dozen stately steamers are in sight, French men-of-war from Toulon and Algiers, or English mail packets from Malta or Gibraltar. The Adriatic has sent its moyenage-looking craft with peaked and carved prows, and the Levant its quaint zebecs and polacres. Dozens of canopied boats from Marseilles are afloat, fluttering with colours, and the graceful catalan fishing craft shoot through the fleet like greyhounds,-all is life, motion and vivid colouring. The dark brown and grey sweep of the coast,-the peep of the city above the forest of masts,-the deep blue of the sea and the bright blue of the sky, all make up a picture which it is well worth while having crossed the styx of the harbour to enjoy.

THE PALE BLUE LIGHT.

BY J. E. CARPENTER.

THE pale blue light is gleaming still upon the storm-beat shore,
While, far away, the signal gun booms through the breakers' roar;
And anxious eyes peer through the night as they their mid-watch keep,-
Oh! God preserve that stately ship now wrestling with the deep!

The fierce storm howls! the fated bark still drifts before the wind,
The hidden rocks lie in her track-the boundless waves behind;
The vivid lightning strikes the mast, but still their course they keep,-
The morrow's sun may never see that bark upon the deep.
The life boat's manned-they launch her now upon the surging wave,
While still the pale blue light shines out, a warning to the brave;
They see it now-and, like a bird, beyond the rocks they sweep,-
Thank God! that stately ship still rides in safety o'er the deep.

THE PRIDE OF THE BRIDGENORTHS.

(Continued from the February Number.)

A LITTLE child-pale, thin, delicate-featured and bright-eyed, lay on the ground, his head resting on the little grave. An old red cloak was carefully spread over his lower limbs. A girl, about sixteen years of age, reclined beside the child. She was tall and finely formed. Her dress was of dark blue stuff, fitting to her shape and leaving only the beautiful throat and the arms, from a little above the elbow, bare. The admirable form and healthy colour of the arms attracted attention immediately, as she reclined, in an attitude the united dignity and abandon of which it would require the chisel of a Bailey to represent adequately; words are useless for the task. She was turned towards the child, with her back towards us; one elbow rested on the mossy grave and supported her head, as she bent over him to catch his small faint words; the other arm was raised to the branches of the yew tree which stretched a little over them, and which, in compliance with his wish, she was bending down that he might pluck some of the berries himself. The child seemed delighted.

"How pretty they are!" he said. "I wish we could always be here Gracey, darling! It is so hot in the house! My head does

not hurt me here."

"But, my sweet pet," replied Grace, "we must go back to the village now; I think church must be over, and your mother will wonder what I have done with her little Tom. Shall I lift you, now?" and she made a motion as if to take him up in her arms.

"Oh no! no!" said the child; "not just yet. Don't take me away yet Gracey, I have you all to myself here; and when you are in the village your father and mother and everybody else wants you as well as me! Am I a naughty boy to say that? I dare say I am; but I can't help feeling it-indeed I can't. I do love you so, Grace;" and he put his poor thin arms round her neck and kissed her rosy cheek with his pale lips. "Stay just a little longer to-day. It will be a long time before we get up here again, perhaps. They won't let you stay away from church next Sunday, I know. They will leave me with Betty Carter. Ah! there comes the sun in my eyes again;" and the little fellow turned his head restlessly.

Grace soothed him with soft words and caresses. After a few minutes his face lighted up as if he had thought of something pleasant.

"Gracey, will you do something for me?"

"Surely, my darling-if I can."

"Oh! you can do it easily enough. Don't you remember one day last summer when you let down all your hair for me to play with. Well! I don't want to play with it now; I only want you to let it all down and shake it out like a veil, and then stay where you are, and it will keep the light out of my eyes and the sun will look so pretty through it."

"You are a strange, whimsical little thing," said Grace laughing, but beginning to comply with his request.

"Ah! that's nice again! now I can see you, and I can look out

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yonder without being blinded. What pretty colours there are in your hair now; it does not look half so pretty when it is fastened Now it looks as if it had sparks of fire and ever so much gold in it. I don't think anybody has such pretty hair as you, Grace! "I'm glad you like it, dear. Now, shall I sing you that pretty hymn you asked for ? and then we must go, or some one will be sent to look for us."

"Thank you, Grace;" and the child composed himself to listen, with his large eyes fixed on her face.

She began the air of the "Sicilian Mariners' Hymn" to some simple English words, in the same sweet clear voice we had before heard.

The sounds penetrated to the hearts of other hearers than little Tom. Leonard, who had mounted to the side of Miss Graham, saw that her lively eyes were dim with tears; and, to say the truth, his own were not very clear. When the voice had ceased, we all remained in the vain hope that it would be heard again. Miss Graham did not move or speak-she was absorbed in admiration of what to her, too, seemed the wonderful beauty of that village girl. When her song was ended she rose from the ground and stood at her full height, while she shook out and bound up those glorious tresses. I have never seen such on another head, though I have seen many golden and auburn and chestnut. They were a rare mixture of dark red, black and gold, beautifully described by Anacreon—

"Deepening inwardly, a dun;
Sparkling golden next the sun,"

He also mentions a

as Mr. Leigh Hunt translates the couplet. comparison of similar locks by Ovid to cedar trees with the bark stripped. There is no doubt in my mind that both the Greek and the Latin poet were occasionally favoured with the sight of hair like Grace Bridgenorth's, though that they were fortunate enough to see it falling around a face and form so beautiful as hers I cannot easily believe. She was almost as tall as her mother; and her shape was beginning to assume that perfectly symmetrical development which was, perhaps, her highest beauty. Yet how can I say this and not do injustice to that sweet, noble face of hers, from which her father's eyes beamed with a softened splendour.

It is well that we should recall thy young beauty, sweet flower of Ferndale! It was impossible to look on thee, to hear thy soulmoving voice and not to love thee. Yet all the love of the many who loved thee could not shield thy life from desolating sorrow.

Why was it that Elizabeth Graham trembled and her eyes filled with tears as she looked on you first? Why did her heart yearn towards you? Why, when you lifted your little charge and carried him away in your arms, and passed from her sight-why did the place where you had been seem to become dark? It was that you were, indeed, beautiful; and that she had a heart to feel true beauty. They are most happy who are endowed with Elizabeth Graham's faculty of perceiving and feeling beauty-the light which is God's shadow upon earth; for it illumines and gladdens their own souls and brings them nearer to him. Those who have the gift to see and

feel true beauty need not envy the beautiful, for they are as richly

endowed.

"A thing of Beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health and quiet breathing.
Therefore on every morrow are we wreathing

A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days

Of all the unhealthy, and o'er darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,"

and such was Grace Bridgenorth. Elizabeth Graham recognised this truth when she beheld her for the first time tending the sick child, amid the ruins of the old Castle of Ferndale. From that hour Elizabeth's love for the village girl began; a love that worked strange things for both of them.

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AIDS TO DEVELOPMENT AND VIEWS OF THE VICARAGE.

It was a fine Saturday afternoon, about three weeks after the date of the last chapter,-I was taking a solitary ramble while my old friend staid in the house preparing his sermon for the morrow, when the following words struck on my ear,

"Uncle Seymour! you are the very person I want; come here a

moment.'

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It was my niece's voice. I looked up in astonishment, for I believed myself to be quite alone. I had not met a creature since I left the village an hour before, with the intention of exploring, for the twentieth time, the summit of the Castle Fell. On geological thoughts intent, I had not troubled myself to look round among the ruins of man's labour, and was returning leisurely through the centre of the old castle, when I heard Elizabeth address me thus.

She was seated on the little grave beside the yew-tree, in the sheltered angle where we had seen Grace with the sick child. Her bonnet lay on the grass beside her, and she sat with her hands folded on her knees, looking towards me with a half smile.

"Come here a moment, Uncle Seymour; I want to speak to you." I took my seat beside her, and laid aside my hammer and "bag of rubbish," as she was pleased to call the specimens I had collected. "How is it that you are here-and alone, too?" I asked.

"I am here because I wanted to come, and alone, because I took good care not to let any one know where I was coming. My aunt has no idea that one can ever wish to be alone. Is not this a lovely spot? Don't you love it?"

"Yes; but that is not what you had to say to me, is it ? "

"Not all-though I like you to agree with me, even about scenery. I wish we could carry that waterfall yonder with us to Hanoversquare next week!"

"I wish we could, niece; it might save me many a concert-ticket." "Uncle, did I not hear you and Mr. Launcelot talk of a plan for your taking Ralph Bridgenorth with you to London ?"

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'Yes, my dear. We both of us think it would be of great advantage to the young man. Launcelot is quite right; I have seen enough of him and his scientific tendency to be sure that he needs only good teaching, and access to libraries and museums, to become a first-rate geologist and botanist."

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"And you mean to offer him these at your own cost?" "Oh, that is not a fair way of putting the case, Elizabeth. I always expect a quid pro quo. Besides, after all we have heard of the pride of these Bridgenorths, I do not suppose either the youth or his father would accept such an offer. No, no; what I propose is to take him into my service as a sort of secretary and curator of my little museum. I really want some person in that capacity, and should prefer a youth of genius like Ralph Bridgenorth, to whom the business would be a pleasure, and whose education would be an object of real interest to me."

"This is very kind of you, Uncle Seymour," said Elizabeth, putting her hand on mine.

"Not at all, child, not at all; this boy will live to reflect honour on the instrument of his education. Only put the means within his reach, and you will see whether he will know how to use them or

not."

Ah, uncle, your swans always turn out to be geese. However, I do believe that there is something very uncommon in that handsome, solemn-looking Ralph. His sister tells me that he never seems to care for any amusement or society; that his whole heart is devoted to stones and plants, and books about stones and plants. I dare say he will one day rival Linnæus and Lyell; and at all events, uncle, it will be a comfort to you to have him with you, and to watch the expansion of his mind. Do you know, uncle, I was thinking of doing a little work in that way myself, when you came upon me just now.' "You, Elizabeth!" and I laughed heartily.

"What are you laughing at, uncle ?" she added, looking a little vexed.

"Why, my dear," I replied, still laughing, "You know your father and mother are pleased to attribute all your independence of character and unconventional mode of thought and action to me; and hitherto I have been very contented with the reputation. But, when they reproach me with such a caprice de femme as the present, I really do not know. However, first tell me who is the favoured youth whom you desire to take home and educate? If it be your cousin ?"

Elizabeth coloured a little and laughed a great deal. At last she said,

you

"Since you are so very stupid, Uncle Seymour, I shall tell nothing more, unless you promise to take me back to the vicarage now directly. Mildred and I are to take tea with you and your grave friend. It is getting late."

"We shall be delighted to have your company, my dear. You are a favourite with Launcelot. Put on your bonnet and let us go."

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