ing his worth, bewailing his approaching absence, and lo! instead, came an appeal to the company to rejoice.

"I think that it is exquisitely bad taste," he cried, angrily; "though I have no doubt it expresses precisely the author's sentiments."

Frances waited calmly till he had finished his remonstrance, then she said with becoming dignity

"You misjudge me; if you would only listen to the whole piece you would find it but endeavours to carry out your own idea, expressed yesterday, that people should be happy together while they could."

"Well, carry out the idea, and finish the precious morceau."

Unruffled, Frances recommenced, and after reading it through, supplied copies to the group round the piano, and they sang together

"Come let us be merry to-night,

And forgetting how soon we must part,
Bid our spirits rise joyous and light,
And keep back the sad sigh that would start.

With no thoughts of to-morrow's adieu
Dim the eyes that are beaming so bright;
Our moments of union are few,

So let us be merry to-night.

In singing our favourite song

Once more let our voices unite,

And, while the gay measure flows on,

O let us be merry to-night!

For the last time; yet through the long years

We are lost to each other's fond sight,

Recollection will smile through her tears
To think how we were merry to-night."

The long years.

into Cecile's breast!

With what a painful thrill the words sank How was it that everything, everybody she loved, or that seemed to love her, was taken away by some unaccountable fate! Frank-Fred-that dangerous, evanescent cousin― Fred, who had throned himself (despite her silence), an idol, an oracle in her foolish heart, or fancy (which is it predominates at nineteen?) Dreamily she sat apart after the song ended, and Fred, condemning the ode (not altogether groundlessly) as pitiful doggrel, criticised remorselessly its every rhythm and cadence.

Presently Mab, who found the entertainment not apres son gout, took her departure.

"I shall see you home, Cecy," whispers Fred. “Our last drive."

Blasé, Fred Macnamara had, from the pure force of opposition it seemed, fallen in love with his shy, unsophisticated pretty cousin. The impending separation only intensified the tender sentiment.

"Nobody cares for you as I do. Won't you, then, promise to care for me till I return-won't you, Cecy?" he murmured beseechingly, as they stood in grandmamma's hall. Her heart gave certainly a more willing and ready assent than her lips; but that last was not very reluctant either. She promised.

"And mind you keep it a dead secret from the powers that be," he added, glancing up stairs.

"Yes," she repeated, rather more falteringly, but the exigeant Fred was satisfied, and with a hurried farewell the cousins parted.

Would the little mile of romance they had traversed in life's journey, be marked in the future by a "white" or a "black" stone?

1 ...

L

IN RECESS.

"Deus nobis hæc otia fecit."

GONE the long struggles of the working time,
When need, or wealth, or honour urge the strife,
Waged by unlettered or the taught, to climb
Onwards or higher in the path of life.

Hushed is the senate's busy hum: the brow

Of ardent statesman by the wave may clear, Be soothed to sleep where sea-foam whitens near, Or wear its calm 'neath singing pine-tree bough.

Life moves more leisurely, like some fair cloud,

Its shadow widening on the purple waves, Advancing slowly o'er the deep-sea caves, Where varied treasures lie, a nameless crowd.

What mighty changes who shall prophesy,
On the horizon of the social plain?

But Wisdom holds the joyance and the pain, Conceals, but for our weal, the future from our eye.

Then let us take with thanks the golden glee

Of moving with the spacious, heaving waves; Or stern delight of gazing from the crags, Where eagles erst would wheel full bonnily.

H. P.

THE PATRIARCHAL THEORY OF HISTORY.

"STRANGE! that fatherly authority should be the only original of Government amongst men, and yet all mankind not know it: and stranger yet that the confusion of tongues should reveal it to them all of a sudden." It was, as the reader will probably be aware, from the pen of the immortal John Locke that this exclamation proceeded, in his just wrath against the specious but absurd arguments of Sir Robert Filmer. But the words bear a peculiar significance in modern times and seem to breathe almost a prophetic tone of thought; for, however strange the contemplation, it yet remains a fact that modern historical science has established the Patriarchal Theory of the origin of society upon a sufficiently scientific basis to take it, from the domain of theory, almost into that of established fact. "The effect of the evidence derived from comparative jurisprudence," says Sir Henry Maine, "is to establish that view of the primeval condition of the human race which is known as the Patriarchal Theory; "* and this conclusion from the latest developed of the comparative sciences almost closes the evidence of the various studies which are now recognised to be constituent elements of history.

But the writers of the seventeenth century viewed the evidence of patriarchal society from a stand-point wholly destructive to its scientific value. If the spirit of historical study be traced with the growth of English learning, it is easily perceivable how the mind, in trying to unfetter itself from the narrowness of historical vision, had drifted into narrowness of philosophical research, and this state of things militated against the acceptance of the Patriarchial Theory as an historical fact apart from a religious belief. A class of thinkers arose who affirmed its importance from its position in the Jewish writ, and deduced constitutional maxims for their own age and country which were applicable only to that stage of progress in the development of a nation which altogether precedes the political. Sir Robert Filmer's work naturally opened the door for Locke's theory of the original contract; and the celebrated chapter of controversy on the literature of this age again developed the theory of Hobbes. But these celebrated exponents of thought, though differing so widely in their conclusions, agree in the one point, that they exhibit an actual unhistorical condition of the human race. Where they used history at all they degraded it into an instrument of political controversy, and

* Ancient Law, p. 122.

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table portions

rent themselves to bis

Mower Blatory, as example, from on

people % another, d an arbale to a sivulled a

proposed to illustrate this from the position of the Paintba Treory in hovory.

For very obvious reasons, and from what has already been salt, it w... be better to pass over Eastern history. The peculiar posi bon which the Hovorical books of the Bible occupy in Western thought preclude the evidence to be derived from their pages from entering into the calm scientific area which Western history admits of; and the remains of those great empires of civilisation which preceded the rise of the Jewish Lation are not yet sufficiently elucidated to gather any clear evidence of their appreciation of historical study, and their recognition of the value of institutional life.

Considering that historical composition commenced so early in Grecian literature, it might have been expected that something would have been reflected from Homeric life to the subsequent stages which the Grecian people arrived at. But the isolated bounds of Grecian experience prevented a comprehensive view of early institutions. Their antipathies, too, were against spreading their inquiries far back into the life, or beyond the frontier line of their own people. Thirlwall ("Hist. of Greece," vol. i. cap 10) has taken great pains to show that Aristotle's survey of the Greek forms of

* Professor Jowett would exempt Plato from this proposition. He is far above the vulgar notion that Hellas is the civilised world, or that civilisation only begins when Hellenes appear on the scene."-Introduction to Plato's Laws, p. lxii.