to you on a happy day for us, which is also the last of our life!"when we learn all this, we are proud of the beauty and solace of these flowers of thought, and feel how sweet are the words of the philosophers as well as those of the singers when in the green and gay domain. Joy of soul can never pass from the humblest garden. Such, and more, is our Garden to us TO A FROZEN WATER-COURSE. SOME Souls, beneath the grip of misery So brave, so true, so warm with energy, E. G. PERSONALITIES OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. XXXI. MR. GRANT DUFF. WHEN Mr. Gladstone formed his ministry in 1868 he appointed the Duke of Argyll Secretary of State for India, and Mr. Grant Duff Under Secretary. In the mere matter of external appearance there was an obvious and amusing, though, of course, quite accidental propriety in thus associating these two gentlemen in the same department of Government. The Duke of Argyll is a short, reddish-haired Scotchman-so is Mr. Grant Duff. The general physical resemblance, indeed, between the two, as illustrative of a certain type of Scotchman, is almost striking. But the similarity does not end there. They both bear about with them the self-same unmistakeable air of the born official, delighting, nay revelling, in the exercise of official work for its own sake. The Duke always has a look about him which irresistibly suggests that he finds official business to be as much his natural element as a duck finds water to be hers, and that blue books are merely his "light reading;" and the same may be said of Mr. Grant Duff. Moreover, there is a remarkable intellectual resemblance between the two men. Both are more savants than statesmen; and in Mr. Duff's case, at any rate, there is also a distinct affinity with that prig tribe of which we lately cited some samples. Something of that small self-conceit, of that petty self-satisfaction, of that general dwarfishuess of the spiritual being, which proclaims the genuine prig, unhappily pervades the individuality of the member for the Elgin Burghs. Only a short time ago he made a speech in which he declared that the destinies of our colonies at the present time were pretty much in the hands of Lord Cranbrook, Colonel Stanley, and Sir M. Hicks-Beach-" three gentlemen who were not distinguished by any remarkable ability." Considering that Mr. Grant Duff has only once in his life been a member of any administration at all, and then only an under secretary, it could only have been the fatal vice of priggism which could have prompted such a small and gratuitous sneer at three political opponents who are as unquestionably regarded by Parliament as statesmen above the average of ability as they undoubtedly are the intellectual superiors of the member for Elgin. This little demonstration of Mr. Duff's was quite on a par with Mr. Tre velyan's conceited chatter about the sons of ministers being all dunces. Indications, too, of that petty, restless vanity, and absorbing egotism which are so commonly associated with minds of the doctrinaire order, are not wanting in the honorable gentleman's personality. He dabbles in foreign politics, in which be believes himself a perfect expert, and his wonderful revelations as to the confidences which European potentates have reposed in him have provided food for many a bantering article in various organs of public opinion. He is fond, at the end of the Parliamentary Session, of taking trips through Europe or to America; and when he pays his periodical visit to his Scottish constituents, he has always a marvellous story to tell them, which, in its way, is really a charming historical romance. It is in the highest degree edifying to notice how the simple folk of Elgin hang, with bated breath, on the oracular periods of the dainty, fastidious-minded, and nicely-critical little gentleman who condescends to represent and instruct them. When he tells them those exciting stories about the private interviews he has had with Bismarck and Andrassy, and the Russian Emperor, and warns them not to put any trust in the Government's declarations on foreign policy, because the information which he himself has obtained through the said interviews is infinitely more authentic and reliable-when they hear all this, how proud they must feel of their statesmanlike member, and what a perpetual puzzle it must be to them how Mr. Gladstone should have shown himself so wanting in discrimination as to have made Mr. Grant Duff only Under Secretary for India in place of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs! One autumn the honourable member saw fit "to do" India, and, of course, the moment he returned he hastened to present the rich fruits of his observations of that vast British dependency to an expectant public through the medium of a widely-circulated periodical. What Mr. Grant Duff thought about our Indian Empire, after having viewed it with his bodily eyes, was naturally of much importance to an eager nation! Besides, there were the usual thrilling stories; from a political point of view, almost as wondrous and captivating as Othello's narrations to Desdemona! He had to tell of interviews with the Viceroy, of interviews with one native prince, and the other native prince, of interviews with almost everybody except the great Mogul. It is quite conceivable that he and the Duke of Argyll worked together like brothers in the Indian Office; and it is just as conceivable that they were equally responsible for the terrible hash of Indian affairs which they made while they were there. For five dismal years our empire was governed by a couple of small savants-by two political doctrinaires-living, moving, and having their being in the mere pedantries of officialism. The essential of their cacaothes scribendi seems to be as much an existence as it is of that of their political chief. The Duke is continually contributing to the Nineteenth Century and the Contemporary Review, and only the other day he produced two massive volumes on the Eastern Question. Mr. Grant Duff has the same passion for rushing into print. Even when Mr. Gladstone came forth with his " Bulgarian Horrors" his subordinate could not sit still, but must needs pen a letter to the Times, in which he promulgated some wild nonsense as to placing the Duke of Edinburgh on the throne of Bulgaria. How could two such pure official pedants be expected to understand the Ameer, or to penetrate the plans of Russia? Mr. Grant Duff's demeanour in the House of Commons is about identical with that which he observes outside it. He fires off, every now and then, neat, fluent, excessively precise little speeches which, judging from his manner of delivering them, appear to give unqualified satisfaction to himself, if they don't to anybody else. They are listened to by the House with a kind of lazy tolerance, and the result is to impress the stranger with the conviction that the lolling Commons have permitted the clever glibness to which they have been treated to go in at one ear and out at the other. Mr. Grant Duff's personality, indeed, is not of the kind which the House of Commons ever much loves. The House instinctively shrinks from the cut-and-dry, stereotyped official person, and more especially if he seems to surround himself with an air of preternatural knowingness, and of one who deems himself an intellectual head taller than most of his audience. This may possibly account for the hon. gentleman's exceedingly prim and tidy, but slight and fragile, oratory being usually received with indifference, if not with actual impatience. MOTLEY. TALES FROM THE DRAMATISTS. ByALFRED HENRY BROMILOW. No. X.-COMEDY. 66 A BOLD STROKE FOR A WIFE." THIS author of this very lively comedy, first produced at the Theatre Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1718, was Mrs. Centlivre. It is full of bustle, and, though the plot is highly improbable, and the language in the original edition far from chaste, it was, and has always been, a favourite with the public. In 1774 it was played at Covent Garden with Mrs. Woodward in the principal part; and, again, in 1814, it was brought forward at Drury Lane, with Mrs. Bannister as chief actor. COLONEL FEIGNWELL and his companion, Freeman, were drinking wine in a small room in a fashionable tavern in London. The Colonel did not appear to be in most buoyant of spirits, and to the inquiry what was the cause of his depression, he confessed that he was in love with some beauty he had met at Bath, and whom, in addition, he was determined to win. He was certain she had come to town, and in sore necessity of being relieved from an irksome position. From further conversation, Freeman made out that the object of the soldier's amour was Anne Lovely, of whose unfortunate placement all the city had heard. No one was more fitted to give the details connected with her station than the landlord of the tavern, Sackbut. He had known the damsel's father, as also the young girl from her birth. Sack but was therefore summoned, and the Colonel having explained matters, the host answered him that it was useless to think of marriage in that quarter. Miss Lovely's father was the embodiment of eccentricity, and, to prevent his daughter from getting married, had, in his will, handed her over to the care of four distinct guardians, under each of which she was compelled to live one quarter in every year. All of these guardians were opposed to each other in tastes and manners. This one was a withered beau; another a canting Quaker; a third a 'Change broker; and the fourth a half-witted virtuoso, whose occupation consisted in gazing upon objects of antiquity, and in reading the stories of Sir John Mandeville. Yet, forsooth! the claimant of Anne's hand was obliged to have the consent of all these gentlemen before marrying her, or, least, before obtaining her portion. From this description none would have doubted the truth of Sackbut's assertion, that a wedding in that quarter was, if not |