"Ah, I always row then. I hope our boats will often meet." "That would be very pleasant! I hope they will," answers Cicely, from the bottom of her heart, with perfect innocence.

"There, it is a compact," bending his handsome head to look

at her.

A little later Cicely is seated at the piano, and fills the room with her fresh, young voice; towards the end of her song her voice wavers, and she leaves the piano hurriedly, and seats herself by the open windows. Is it because she feels a pair of hazel eyes are looking at her furtively, as their owner stands near her and pretends to turn over the leaves of music. George Armstrong sat near to Madame, but he did not hear a word of her soliloquy on the present fashions; he was suffering intensely, as only a man can suffer who has passed his early youth without even a passing fancy, and now, in his ripe manhood, has given his love only to see it thrown aside. He sees Treherne's face bent towards Cicely with a tender look in his eyes; he notes the unusual flush on her cheeks, the expression on her face.

"I ought to have guessed I was too old for her to love me," he thinks, already making his love a thing of the past. "It is only natural Treherne will love her, and she will be happy, and yet, I cannot bear it.”

He hears Cicely sing a song he had often heard in the old happy days (which now seemed to be years ago), when he had hoped she would learn to love him; but now the refrain sounds in his ear like the dirge of his fading hopes

"Oh, love, for a year, a week, a day,

But alas for the love that loves away!"

Madame stands on tiptoe before the mirror and arranges the artistic coiffure of lace and mauve ribbon which rests on her grey curls.

"Georges!" she cries, in her little shrill voice, putting her head on one side like a canary. "Tell me, then, this coiffure, does it suit me? Have I the air of an Anglaise, or am I a Française perfectly well coiffée?"

George answers in his usual loud, cheerful voice, and then Madame seizes on him, and pours into his patient ear her last ideas on the manufacture of her head-dresses.

Yes, we must play our proper parts on the stage of life,-be cheerful, interested, lively, as the moment may require; it does not matter that the actor is faint with a deadly wound, let him only have a little patience until his role is over, then he can groan aloud behind the scenes, as a recompense for his self-restraint.

Lancelot stood at the window and looked at the garden.

"Madame," he said, "would it not be pleasant to have a little croquet in the twilight; there is quite light enough, and it is not at all damp?"

"Go, my children; go and play; but I don't like the rheumatism. I will stay indoors and watch you," Madame answered.

"Then come, Dent and Miss Armstrong, and have a game. Mr. Armstrong, of course you will come?"

"No, thanks, Treherne; I will stay with my sister."

"Cicely will not want me-I shall only bore her," thinks George Armstrong, as he seats himself by Madame.

Lancelot had not asked Cicely to come, but merely glanced at her, as if it were unnecessary to go through the form with her; and so out they all went in the grey twilight to the lawn, which lay in front of the windows, with the privet hedges on each side concealing the kitchen-garden, a strange mixture of flowers and vegetables. "Treherne, chose your partner and let us begin," said Dent. Lancelot turned to Cicely, and said smiling

"Suppose we two watch Dent and Miss Armstrong play, and improve our minds by watching the scientific manner in which they treat the game?"

"You do not care to play?" said Cicely, feeling a little disappointed.

"The fact is, Miss Vane, I play badly, and that makes my 'angry passions rise,' as Dr. Watts says; so I avoid the game on principle. Let us have a stroll instead, and explore the garden."

"All right! Miss Georgie and I shall play capitally together, I know," says Dent, seizing a mallet.

"Come on, old fellow!" answers Georgie, and throws up a ball in the air and catches it again with great skill. "Ten to one I beat you-now then!"

Lancelot and his pretty companion turned the corner of the hedge and sauntered slowly up the grassy paths that ran between the beds. In that pleasant walk he told her a great deal about his house in Cornwall (unconsciously bragging somewhat of its magnificence), his rich father, so indulgent and yet so strict on some points, and his pretty cousin, Lady Susan, the great heiress.

"What a splendid rose! I must steal it," said Cicely, gathering a half-blown Gloire de Dijon, as she passed a bush covered with fragrant blossoms. She held it in her hand, half hidden by the folds of her dress.

"I know you will think it a strange question, but tell me, did you ever give a flower to Robert Dent or Mr. Armstrong?" said Lancelot.

"No, never-why do you ask me?"

Q Q

"Because I have an odd fancy that I should like to be the first man to whom you ever gave a flower. Very silly, is it not? But you will give me one-won't you?"

A little white hand shyly put the rose in his, and a voice whispered, "A very silly fancy! the rose is not worth having." Lancelot held the little hand for a minute in his, while with the other he put the rose in his breast-pocket.

"Oh, you will spoil the poor little flower! You shall wear it in you buttonhole," said Cicely anxiously, in her childish voice. "How can I wear your gift like any other common flower? No-no; I will treasure it as long as I live!" he whispers to her; but as he speaks there comes across his memory another day, not many months ago, when he had uttered almost the same words to another girl.

Cicely's beautiful eyes shine like stars in the dusk; her lips are parted in a smile of innocent pleasures; she looks up at him and sighs softly

"Oh, no, Mr. Treherne; you are talking nonsense; you are laughing at me."

"Laughing? no, my darling," he says

In a minute she has flown from his side, and nearly reached the boundary-line of hedge; but Lancelot Treherne has followed those flying feet, and holds the trembling hands in his; the blushing face, wet with indignant tears, is turned away from him in silent anger. "Forgive me," he says, "I know I have behaved like a brute; but say that you will forgive me."

Not a word from the closely-shut lips.

"You will break my heart," he whispers; "only press my hand, and I will take it as a token that you will try to forgive me.'

Cicely's heart was divided between two emotions-anger and some feeling she could not define; but at last her hand gave a little fluttering pressure, and then she was gone.

"By Jove, I am a lucky fellow!" thinks Lancelot Treherne that night, as he walks up and down the lawn and smokes his evening cigar; "I always find some little amusement prepared for me wherever I go, and the prettiest girls always like me. What an innocent little beauty she is! she made me more precipitate in my proceedings than I quite like; my deuced tender feelings are always running away with me."

At the Grange, Cicely is tossing on her sleepless bed.

“I hate him—I detest him!" she says, aloud, to persuade herself against her own will." He has insulted me; he thinks I am not a lady—I will never speak to him again!"

ANTECEDENTS OF SERVIA.

DESCENDED according to some from a colony which migrated from the country beyond the Carpathians between 634 and 638, the Servians or Serbs, are among the few Slavonian* races who retain the name of the family-that of Sirbia. According to other versions, after having long combated the Greeks of Byzantium, and having been themselves subjected by the Avari or Awars, the Slavonians of the Danube concluded an alliance with the Greek Emperors; they expelled the Awars from Illyria, and founded new colonies under the name of Slavonia.

The most remarkable and significant epoch in the history of the Slavonian nations belongs to the ninth century. The migrations had then ceased; immense tracts of country had been taken possession of, and those numerous tribes, of whose names the ancients were scarcely cognisant, had advanced some steps within the limits of historical and geographical recognition. Foreign rule, like that of the Awars, had been cast off, and the time come for the Slavonians to raise themselves into independence, and to attempt political institutions. It was, for example, by a union of Slavonic-Tshudish tribes, under Norman princes, that the Russian empire was originally formed.

Leaving it to antiquaries to trace out the origin and migrations of these people, by combining languages and myths with fragmentary traditions, it suffices to point out, that from the earliest times we find them in the country which they occupy to the present day, and more than that, they had adopted the Christian religion-the Slavonian Apostles, Methodius, and Cyrillus were even distinguished from most of the early missionaries by their endeavours to elevate the standard of the national languages, by using them in the Church service-and they had their Grand Shupanes and their kings, centuries before the invasion of Europe by the Turks.

Ever since powers have been established on earth endeavouring

* Much discrepancy exists in writing Sclav or Slav, but whether the word is derived, as some argue, from Slava "glory," or from Slovo "word," the original etymology would alike be Slav. But it appears that as far back as the Byzantines, they corrupted the word into Sclaben or Sclav, so it is not surprising that different modes of spelling the word are in use in Hungary, Croatia, Servia, Bosnia, and Dalmatia. This was in the seventh century, and Christianity is supposed to have begun to spread among them at the same time, for the sixth synod at Constantinople (A.D. 680) enumerates the Slavonians among the Christian nations.

to realise, to represent, and to promote those general ideas which involve the destiny of the human race, it would seem that no nation is allowed to develope itself by the unrestrained exercise of its own innate strength and genius. The progress of all development depends materially on the relation into which a newly-emerging people enters with the nations already in a state of civilisation; and in reviewing the history of the various Slavonian tribes, it is evident that their development was determined by the influence thus exercised upon them. It is so to the present day, when we have the three great families of Russian Slavs, Austro-Hungarian Slavs, and Turkish Slavs. Poland, which Napoleon the Great, declared to be a mere geographical expression, maintained its independence the longest of all. It is in the face of these great facts that Panslavism, or the unity of the Slavonian races, becomes a dream—that is to say, a thing that has as yet no basis or foundation in the existing realities of the world, or in the actual distribution of political power.

With respect to Servia, while the western Slavonians joined themselves to the Western Empire and to the Latin Church, the Eastern tribes associated with the Eastern Church; but although settled on the soil of the Greek Empire, and acknowledging its general supremacy, the Servians, more or less secure in their mountain fastnesses, strained every nerve against the attempts made by the Emperors to increase their power over them.

The Greeks made a first attempt to bring Servia under their immediate control in the eleventh century; but they were expelled the country by Stephan Boistlaw, who further captured vessels from Byzantium laden with rich treasures. In 1043, Constantine Monomachus, sent a numerous army to re-establish the dominion of the Greeks, but it was encountered by the Servians in their mountains, as the Tyrolese and Swiss peasants have so often met their enemies, and the entire Greek army was annihilated in their almost impassible defiles.

This defeat was decisive. It firmly established the princely power of the Grand Shupanes, whose existence depended on the preservation of the national independence. In the time of the Emperors, as in the time of the Sultans, and in the resistance which they had in after-times to oppose to the Greeks, it was an advantage to the Servians that they were settled on the borders of Western Christendom: as they derived from it, if not always open aid, at least a certain degree of support. The Grand Shupanes eagerly sought to ally themselves in marriage with the princely houses of Western Furope; the Servians rejoiced in being connected with Venice, they hailed the first crusade in 1189, under Frederic Barbarossa, with the enthusiasm of vassals of the German Empire,